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The Daily Grind: Do you follow MMOs because of their designers?
An interesting Kill Ten Rats article a few weeks ago pondered the idea that gamers purchase games because those games are "by the makers of" some other game -- to their doom. Much ado, for example, was made over WildStar's dev team because of its members' work on World of Warcraft, and names like Jake Song, Brad McQuaid, and Mark Jacobs carry a lot of weight when attached to a new MMO title. Yet star power doesn't necessarily make for a good or successful game, especially if that famous designer wasn't directly responsible for whatever it was that made an old game great. Akaneiro is still a mess with or without American McGee's tag. What about you? Do you buy MMOs based on the past work of individual developers? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Star-studded studios
Maybe it's just us, but it seems more and more that it's cool for Hollywood, sports, and music stars to openly admit their love of gaming. 10 years ago? Not too many people talking about it. Now? It's everywhere. To add to this, we now have gaming companies started by the rich and famous. There's 38 Studios, owned by Curt Schilling, who has gathered Todd McFarlane and R. A. Salvatore and a hugely talented team to help build Copernicus, the code-name for their very-under-wraps MMO. Added to that, we have the news yesterday that Vin Diesel's company, Tigon Studios is saying that their previously-claimed RTS will actually be an MMO entry. (Or perhaps a true MMORTS as those are fairly rare.) It's definitely interesting to see.This morning we thought we'd ask you a fairly simple question about these two - will their star status, or star lineup, make you more interested in trying their respective games out when they hit the shelves? Does star status matter to you at all? Does it make you less interested in trying them out? Or do you just not care one way or the other about who makes a game, and will only really bother trying it if people you trust say it's fun/it has a free trial/etc?
PS2 guitar pedal allows for precision rocking
Sure, everyone loves activating star power and wailing on the whammy bar in Guitar Hero. But for a certain, incredibly anal subset of players, these actions and their distracting arm movements represent potential streak killers. Well, those finicky gamers are in luck, because peripheral maker React has now released a foot pedal that transfers those pesky arm motions to your feet, which were just sitting there tapping out a rhythm before. The wireless pedals, which require 4 AA batteries and work with any PS2 guitar, might seem steep at $25, but they're a bargain for the truly compulsive GH player. As the sole Best Buy reviewer put it, "I bought this pedal primarily because activating Star Power by raising my guitar usually results in missed notes." And was we all know, rock music is about exacting precision above all else. [Thanks Dan]
Preview of new Guitar Hero II co-op mode
In case you missed it on Friday, IGN posted a pre-E3 hands-on preview of Guitar Hero II's new co-op mode. It's a departure from the first game's multiplayer mode in that the two players have to depend on each other a lot more to pass each song and thereby make beautiful music together.While the old multiplayer option will still be around in the sequel, the new mode mixes distinct lead guitar and bass or rhythm parts where each player affects the other in various ways, whether by failing if either performance slips (as in DDR), sharing the same Rock Meter (with mistakes from either player resetting the score multiplier), and needing to both go vertical at the same time to activate the shared Star Power. Thankfully, different difficulty levels can be assigned to each player.The Joystiq team out in L.A. will probably find something to do until they get their sweaty paws on a guitar controller or two on the E3 show floor (maybe one of those wacky press conferences will help pass the time), but we're sure the wait to try the latest build of this rockin' series will be worth it. The seven songs available at E3 are listed below.[Thanks, murph]
