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Opinions flare from ex-NCsoft employees about TR's closing
As Tabula Rasa approaches its end days, the anger, sadness and I-told-you-so sentiments are rising up more than ever. This week marks an interesting occasion where two former NCsoft employees each wrote detailed stories on their own perspectives regarding the sci-fi MMO's downward spiral.First we have this post by Adam Martin, former CTO of NCsoft Europe, where he explains his views on why the game failed. Granted, he admits he wasn't actually on the TR team, but he was privy to the internal mailing lists and information about the game from Alpha to launch. As a response, we have a post from Scott Jennings, who sums it all up fairly well with this statement: "The biggest failing, though, was that it was in development about twice as long and spent twice as much as it had any right to. And that's what promotes it, in this snarky outside blogger's view, from understandable failure to extinction-level company-slaying train wreck."Update: Although Adam Martin's post states that he was the European CTO at the time, we get word from NCsoft that he was never the CTO for NCsoft Europe. He was the Lead Programmer.
Echochrome: The PSP's philosophical answer to Brain Age
For most of our younger readers, school's no longer in session in observation of the midsummer months -- though we're certain that our studious readers won't allow their minds become dull as rusty butter knives during their valuable vacation time. That's why we turn your attention to a fascinating article written by PS3 Fanboy's newest columnist, Ph.D candidate and gaming enthusiast Kylie Prymus, who examines the effect that the Escher-esque Echochrome can have on our perception of our own three-dimensional world. Prymus posits that Echochrome's unique, manipulatable 2D perspective is not only jarring when compared to the robust 3D engines we've become accustomed to seeing in most games, but it also points out the "frailty of our own perceptual apparatus", which is fundamentally two-dimensional. Those who still possess unblown minds might want to give the article a read -- if only to give you some Hawking-quality discussion material with which to impress your gaming cohorts.
Echochrome - the new Brain Age?
Kylie Prymus is the first columnist for PS Fanboy. A Ph.D candidate in philosophy, Kylie specializes in the sociology of technology. Through this new weekly column, Kylie will explore the impact of PlayStation on thought and culture.Any gamer who has spent a significant amount of uninterrupted time staring through a 2D screen into a 3D game world understands the strange perceptual shift that takes place when returning to the truly 3-dimensional space of the real world. There is a disorienting effect, a sense of unreality, in coming back to a place where perspective changes are achieved not by the subtle movements of an analog stick, but by actually shifting the head which houses your ocular apparatus. I first experienced this 10 years ago after a marathon session of The Ocarina of Time, giving my not-yet-21 self a taste of the post-college-party vertigo to come. A similar effect can be achieved by long stretches of reading, focusing on a purely 2D plane for hours and then trying to adjust to the vividness of reality. Games also have a deeper effect on our perception of the world, one which far too much press has declared detrimental to gamers and society at large. Our actions in the game world can and do affect our real-world thoughts. Who can claim not to have had at least a small desire to put the pedal to the floor after playing Gran Turismo, especially when one of the licensed songs comes on the radio? How often do you think about the alternate routes through the grocery store a Portal gun would make possible? Beyond being whimsical fantasies divulged only in conversation with individuals at or above yourself on the gamer-nerd scale, some games can actually change the way you think in a positive direction. The intellect enhancing possibility of games has been exploited most successfully by Nintendo with their DS selling Brain Age series (despite a recent Wired article claiming it has no such benefit). Echochrome may well be Sony's answer to the Dendrite Stimulation genre. There's just one problem: what exactly does it make you smarter at?
He Said, She Said: Tauren Females
He Said , She Said is a new feature at WoW Insider, which looks at the game from masculine and feminine points of view. This week David Bowers and Amanda Dean take a look at what it takes to play a female Tauren. We all chose our characters for different reasons, potential class and racial abilities should be primary among them. Many people play only characters of their real-life gender, while others chose their character's gender based on appearance or role-playing needs. For whatever reasons, Tauren females are a vast minority. Amanda believes that in most cases it takes a real girl to roll one of these femmes, what do you think?Read on for our discussion. In a world of gamers and gamer girls, let's take some time to examine what makes us the same and what makes us different. Here at WoW Insider we're discussing all kinds of in game issues through the lens of gender. Check out our inaugural post, we welcome all of your comments, and be sure to send in your ideas for our discussion.
