Barb Dybwad
Articles by Barb Dybwad
NCsoft's Operation Immortality to send human DNA into space
A banner atop the NCsoft booth at Comic-Con 2008 read cryptically: "DNA Test Site: Adam & Eve 2.0." Several rows of brightly-colored buttons arrayed on a table, there for the taking, were emblazoned with the same message. Even more puzzlingly, couples were lining up to swab their cheeks with Q-tips to be stored in plastic pouches labeled with their names and today's date. What kind of crazy cabal initiation was underway at NCsoft's booth?Without fully revealing the mystery of Operation Immortality, an NCsoft representative shed some light on the cheek-swabbing activities of the fans lining up two-by-two. Five couples, one per day of Comic-Con festivities, will be chosen to have their DNA sequenced and stored in a hard drive that will be jettisoned into outer space -- and why exactly? In case the horrifying possibility of a Bane victory renders the human population of Earth annihilated, we'll be able to repopulate it with the human DNA kept safe in the off-site storage of space.
Comic-Con 08: New DC Universe Online screens
Sony Online Entertainment released a handful of new official screenshots for DCUO at Comic-Con this past weekend, and also had a playable pre-alpha demo on the show floor for us to get our grubby mitts on. Check out the galleries below for the official shots plus some screens we culled from play sessions on the floor, and stay tuned for our hands-on impressions, gameplay videos, and coverage of the DC Universe Online Comic-Con panel with Jim Lee. DCUO Comic-Con screens >> %Gallery-28593% %Gallery-28594%
Costumes of Comic-Con 08: Days 1 and 2
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/comics_animation/Costumes_of_Comic_Con_08'; We're only halfway through the pandemonium that is Comic-Con this year, and the International Masquerade is still to come -- but in the meantime we wanted to bring you just a taste of the eye candy available on the show floor and in the clogged halls of the SDCC. Us? We're wearing our patented bedraggled blogger hobo look. These are the people who made an effort. Comic-Con Costume Gallery >> %Gallery-28557%
Comic-Con 08: Will Wright keynote
Will Wright gave the opening keynote today at the nerd-packed Comic-Con 2008, an event so chock full of fellow geeks we're hard-pressed to find a free patch of San Diego Convention Center floor to stand on. For the first half hour or so Will rattled off profound observations and inspirational quips at approximately the speed of light, leaving the second half of the presentation to an extensive demo of the civilization and space stages of Spore. The touted reveal of the MashON Spore Comic Book Creator wasn't much more than a few minutes' discussion of the tool that will live at http://mashon.com/spore/, enabling players to take the creatures and other assets they make in the game and import them into an interactive comic book creation engine. A booklet passed out to attendees while waiting for the keynote tells us you'll be able to drag and drop screenshots taken in Spore right into the tool, add audio and video clips and other assets, create and lay out the entire story environment and share it with friends via email or Flash embed code. Users can rate and save other players' stories on the Mashon.com site and play them back as digital flip books as well as print them out. Wright talked about how the Comic Book Creator fits within the overall ethos of the game, which is about putting players more in the role of George Lucas than Luke Skywalker, allowing them to actually create the worlds themselves beyond just playing in them.%Gallery-28501%
E308: DC Universe Online roundup
Sony Entertainment Online revealed a metric ton of new information on their upcoming superhero MMO DC Universe Online at E3 this week, and Massively was on hand to pick the spicy brainmeats of Creative Director Chris Cao, SOE-Austin VP of development John Blakely, and famed DC artist and Executive Creative Director for the project, Jim Lee. Check out the roundup of all the DCUO coverage from E3 including interviews, screenshots, a full breakdown of the trailer and analysis of DCUO's role on the console. Plus, don't forget to tune in next week for our exclusive interview with Jim Lee! Development team interview A top to bottom exploration of DC Universe Online How the DC world will come to life in DC Universe Online E308: DC Universe Online already 'released' inside SOE Screens and Trailer DC Universe Online screenshots First footage of DC Universe Online The DC Universe Online trailer explained MMOs on the console MMOs for your PS3 DC Universe Online's role on the PlayStation 3
Highlights from Microsoft's E3 press conference
If you're looking for the unabridged version in all its glory, look no further than our liveblog with our fine friends at Engadget. If you're afflicted with crippling bouts of ADHD like we are and just want the meaty (beating, bloody) heart of the announcement highlights, please direct your eyeballs further down this post and after the break: Fallout 3: will feature exclusive DLC on Xbox 360, Games for Windows. Resident Evil 5: they showed the world's first playable demo; online co-op mode was confirmed; the release date for North America and Europe will be March 13th 2009. Fable II is finished and will be out in October. Gears of War 2: A new mode was announced called "Horde," a five-player co-op mode taking on waves and waves of locust. GOW2 release date will be November 7, 2008.
ION 08: Getting the most out of user generated content
One might rightfully acuse the term "user generated content" of being a rather dry way to describe what is really a fascinating trend in media: the opportunity for "users" to contribute their own creations and have them incorporated into traditionally heavily produced "content." By nature interactive, the games industry is taking notice of the power of UGC, and in a panel yesterday at ION 08 we had the chance to listen to Flying Lab's Troy Hewitt and Linden Lab's Rob Lanphier talk about how user content has been working in Pirates of the Burning Sea and Second Life. Attorney Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University School of Law was on hand to discuss some of the legal issues surrounding UGC, and the panel was moderated by Scott Warner, owner and leader of the intellectual property and technology group at firm Garvey Schubert Barer. Scott: Troy, do you want to start us off by talking about how user content has been working in Pirates? Troy: Sure. As some of you may know, we just launched PotBS earlier this year. We have a system in the game where players can create flags and sails for their ships. There's a mechanism to distribute your work and they can actually create and sell their designs as well. Players can also create and model their own ships, and other people in game will be able to use those ships. We have 30 ships now in the game made by players, and these were actually done by only 13 people; so it's a small group of dedicated people creating these ships. With the flags and sails, about 20% of our player base is creating them and a much larger percentage actually use them.
ION 08: SOE Seattle studio tour
Our mission: infiltrate SOE's Seattle studio, obtain intel on The Agency, regale the awesomely hyperactive lead designer Hal Milton with questions from left field. Operatives were dispatched, urban primitive ladies were photographed, and foyer introductions were presided over by a really cool gun. Stay tuned for more news about living the life of an elite agent, and check out the gallery for tour photos featuring concept art from The Agency, giant robots, and a not-so-secret reveal.%Gallery-22924%
ION 08: MMOs and the television content model (SGW)
Joseph Ybarra, SVP of strategic operations at Firesky, the publishing subsidiary of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, presented a session today at ION 08 about the Stargate Worlds production model that borrows heavily from Hollywood and TV models. The goal for SGW is to approach content updates for the game more like a production cycle for television, in which an episode takes a predictable amount of time to complete (14-16 weeks in the case of Stargate Atlantis). After some background on Firesky and CME, Ybarra showed the Stargate Worlds trailer and launched into a discussion of the strategy with SGW. The idea is to adopt a movie model for the development phase and a TV model for the post-launch "live" phase. They chose to use the BigWorld middleware platform and Unreal Engine technologies in an effort to use proven tools: "don't reinvent the wheel." This allows them to both minimize risk and focus on the content.
ION 08: State of online games keynote
Globalization is one of the session tracks here at ION 08, as befitting an industry seeking the holy grail of a truly global marketplace for online games. Tuesday's keynote was delivered by Won II Suh of Neowiz, a Korean online games company with 20 titles currently supported or in development by 1000 employees across 8 regions around the world. Mr. Suh described the current landscape of online gaming in Asia and the state of East-West partnerships happening at an increasing rate around the world (Activision and Blizzard, Neowiz and EA, THQ and Shanda to name a few). Crossover from West to East already has some success stories (NBA Street, e.g.) while the East to West crossover is still fairly nascent. Suh spoke to a fundamental paradigm shift in the way games are made and played in both markets as part of the reason so much of this crossover is happening now. He stressed the importance of prioritizing human and cultural connections as predicates to success for Western companies hoping to break into Eastern markets, indicating that even if the business and financial plans make sense, companies are still prone to fail if they misunderstand or gloss over the critical steps of establishing real human relations and corporate culture due diligence when aspiring to do business in Asia. All of the slides from the keynote are available in our gallery.%Gallery-22795%
ION 08: What can game developers learn from web 2.0?
This is becoming a popular topic. Adam Martin, lead core programmer at NCsoft, tackled this topic today in one of ION's morning sessions entitled "Web 2.0: How I learned to stop worrying and love the internet." In light of the low cost, high audience model of web destinations like Facebook and Myspace, are MMOs even a good idea at all? Is WoW the last major MMO we're going to see? Martin started off with a brief history of MMOs starting with Ultima Online and Lineage in 1997. UO did well for years, remaining in the top 3 or 4 properties in terms of subscriber numbers, while Lineage was absolutely dominating the Asian market. When Everquest came along two years later it addressed a number of the technological problems that had been massively underrated previously, although patching was still a big and painful issue.
Announcing Joystiq's newest sibling: Big Download (beta!)
We have some special Big News to deliver to you dear, MMO-besotten readers: Massively has a brand new sibling to group with and we'll be playing with our new PC gaming-focused sister site, Big Download, quite a bit. In partnership with our good friends at GameDaily, we're taking the wraps off the beta version of a full-fledged, fast and free PC downloads engine married to a news and features blog powered by Joystiq -- chock full of all the Special Goodness TM our writers bring to you daily, including a number of names from the Massively roster you'll recognize. At Big Download you'll get all the news and views fit to print about PC gaming, a file tracking system that remembers your favorite titles, and no waiting, no fees access to demos, patches, mods, trailers and more. We're inviting you to come on in, make yourself at home and start poking everything with sticks. Like any modern web product we're launching in beta version -- there may be kinks and rough edges to be worked out, so bear with us, mind the dust and be sure to send us any feedback you have so we can make all the final fixes. Unlike certain products that stay in beta forever we hope to remove the beta tag with all due swiftness and come out with guns blazing. Big guns. We hope to see you at Big Download, where all the news is big and all the downloads are above average!
Announcing Joystiq's newest sibling: Big Download (beta!)
What's been missing from the Joystiq family? The console fans all have their homes, handhelds too, and even MMO enthusiasts and WoW players have a corner to call their own. Today we're happy to give PC gamers a place to call home at our new sister site, Big Download. In partnership with our good friends at GameDaily, we're taking the wraps off the beta version of a full-fledged, fast and free PC downloads engine married to a news and features blog powered by Joystiq -- chock full of all the Special Goodness TM our writers bring to you daily. At Big Download you'll get all the news and views fit to print about PC gaming, a file tracking system that remembers your favorite titles, and no waiting, no fees access to demos, patches, mods, trailers and more. We're inviting you to come on in, make yourself at home and start poking everything with sticks. Like any modern web product we're launching in beta version -- there may be kinks and rough edges to be worked out, so bear with us, mind the dust and be sure to send us any feedback you have so we can make all the final fixes. Unlike certain products that stay in beta forever we hope to remove the beta tag with all due swiftness and come out with guns blazing. Big guns. We hope to see you at Big Download, where all the news is big and all the downloads are above average!
SXSW08: How gamers are adopting the wiki way
One of the many excellent sessions in the ScreenBurn track at SXSW Interactive this year, the "How Gamers Are Adopting the Wiki Way" panel featured George Pribul (lead admin of WoWWiki.com), April "CuppaJo" Burba (Community Manager for NCsoft's Tabula Rasa), Angelique Shelton (GM of Wikia Gaming at Wikia Inc), and Jake McKee (Principal at Ant's Eye View) talking about the symbiotic relationship between gamers and wikis. Interesting factoid: WoWWiki is now the second largest English-language wiki in the world behind Wikipedia. At 3 million unique users per month, a full half of English-speaking WoW players visit WoWWiki every month. Head on over to our MMO-besotted sister site Massively for the complete writeup.
SXSW08: How gamers are adopting the wiki way
One of the many excellent sessions in the ScreenBurn track at SXSW Interactive this year, the "How Gamers Are Adopting the Wiki Way" panel featured George Pribul (lead admin of WoWWiki.com), April "CuppaJo" Burba (Community Manager for Tabula Rasa), Angelique Shelton (GM of Wikia Gaming at Wikia Inc), and Jake McKee (Principal at Ant's Eye View) talking about the symbiotic relationship between gamers and wikis. Interesting factoid: WoWWiki is now the second largest English-language wiki in the world behind Wikipedia. At 3 million unique users per month, a full half of English-speaking WoW players visit WoWWiki every month. One of the initial questions was the obvious, "Why wikis?" Pribul answered that forums, the traditional places where gamer communities gather, aren't very good formats for organizing information. Wikis not only organize information very well but allow community collaboration on data that changes over time. A question from the audience next asked about the significance of wikis for other industries besides gaming. Shelton responded, "Whatever people have a natural passion about, and any way you can enable your customers to come together and collaborate on their passion -- wikis are an amazing tool for that. Individuals can step up and take ownership of something." She mentioned that people often wonder why anyone would want to write content for free, and used a basketball analogy to counter that: even though you could get paid to do it in the NBA, people still play pickup games on the street. The social dynamics within a wiki give participants pride, attribution, and community elevation -- people get social status for sharing this information.%Gallery-17982%
GDC08: Highlights from GDC
Don't miss our roundup of all the highlights from GDC 2008: MMORPG highlights from GDC08 GDC08 Highlights: Age of Conan, Requiem: Bloodymare and All Points Bulletin GDC08 Highlights: Eve Online, Fusion Fall and Lego Universe GDC08 Highlights: Freaky Creatures, Habbo and Love GDC08 Highlights: The future of Virtual Worlds and the end of GDC08 %Gallery-16378%
GDC08: When Love came to town
Every once in a while you have one of those unique experiences where you catch a glimpse of inspirational human intelligence. We were lucky enough to have such an experience at GDC in the hour we spent with Eskil Steenberg, the gifted programmer behind the fledgling one-man MMO project, Love. Once you get past the stage of incredulity at the idea that anyone would even attempt to create a massive game as a solo effort in the age of WoW-sized development and content teams, you start to get a window into exactly why this work in progress is unusual, preciously unique and extremely exciting. Starting with a caveat: Love is not yet in production (indeed, there's no solid guarantee it ever will be), nor is it glossy and polished like most of the blockbuster AAA titles we feature in our list of core titles -- but the latter tends to work in its favor. It's not like any MMO you've ever seen; what we saw shimmering and dancing on Steenberg's laptop was otherworldly, breathing, and dreamy -- more reminiscent of a Van Gogh painting or of Waking Life than of any massive game we've ever played. The video embedded after the break is somewhat crude, having been shot off a laptop display (and occasionally featuring a reflection of Eskil himself, which you can decide for yourself whether it enhances or detracts from the experience), but captures the essence of the strange world in motion with its breathtaking landscape and day/night cycling as you wander about the planet.%Gallery-16906%
GDC08: Realtime Worlds shows off All Points Bulletin
What word is perhaps most synonymous with the current MMO playing field? Grind. Realtime Worlds' Dave Jones (no relation?) is setting out to change that with the studio's first massively multiplayer title All Points Bulletin we caught wind of back in September. He's hoping the formula Crackdown + MMO = crack will be proven true with variables like infinite, professional-looking character and vehicle customization, contemporary setting, integration with last.fm and dynamic, variable team-sized missions hidden in the equation. In today's innocuously-titled "My first MMO" panel at GDC, Jones revealed a number of details about those variables and showed off some gameplay and character customization demos that left a packed house audibly oohing and ahhing. Read on for a breakdown of the session and details on the game. Gallery: GDC08: All Points Bulletin
GDC08: All Points Bulletin info and eye candy
What word is perhaps most synonymous with the current MMO playing field? Grind. Realtime Worlds' Dave Jones (no relation?) is setting out to change that with the studio's first massively multiplayer title All Points Bulletin we've been following eagerly. He's hoping the formula Crackdown + MMO = crack will be proven true with variables like infinite, professional-looking character and vehicle customization, contemporary setting, integration with last.fm and dynamic, variable team-sized missions hidden in the equation. Hit up our symbiotic other selves at Joystiq for the complete overview of APB.%Gallery-16668%
GDC08: Blizzard's approach to MMOs
Rob Pardo, Senior Vice President of Game Design, spoke earlier today on Blizzard's approach to multiplayer game design. Pardo shared what the iconic company has learned over the years of releasing titles like WoW, Starcraft, and Warcraft regarding game balance, PvP and UI design, player psychology and more. Head over to WoW Insider to check out the full transcript from the talk and the Q&A session plus a gallery of all the slides (and Pardo's handsome mug). Gallery: GDC08: Blizzard's approach to MMOs