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Storyboard: Out of the rut
Every day it's the same thing. You wake up, you go to work, you convince your boss that you're actually working for eight hours or so, you go home, and then you log into your game of choice for some roleplaying. Except lately, that's been feeling like just as much of a routine. If your characters are supposed to be like people, it's not surprising that sometimes they'll wind up in the middle of a boring routine just like anyone else. Granted, depending on your roleplaying, that boring routine might involve several betrayals, affairs, and potential murders, but a routine is a routine. The point is that your character can get stuck in a rut. No matter how much you might like a character, it's no fun to keep running through the same basic stories again and again. You need to kick your character out of that rut, preferrably without destroying the elements you like about the character in the first place. So how do you get out of stagnant waters and start churning things up again?
Anti-Aliased: How the game of the decade haunts us
Yesterday I posted the interesting find that Gamasutra readers had voted in World of Warcraft as the game of the decade, which inevitably caused a huge spark of rage in the comments. Some readers lashed out against WoW while other readers defended the game's award. Needless to say, this is a very opinionated topic on our site. On Twitter, the choice was more clear cut. I asked my Twitter followers in a non-scientific Sera Survey (TM) if they believed that World of Warcraft deserved the game of the decade award. Of the 32 people who responded, all 32 said that they believed Warcraft deserved the honor. Some even went the extra step and said that while they personally didn't play anymore, they felt that the honor was well-deserved. When it comes to this subject, I'm completely torn in half. As a former raid leader and player of World of Warcraft during much of its five year existence, I too agree that the game is worthy of this very weighty title for a number of reasons. However, once I begin to pan backwards and look at the rest of the market, all I can see is how we as an industry may be haunted by the ghost of success. World of Warcraft changed this industry in many ways, and not all of them are worthy of laurels.
