clivethompson
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"The Image of the Undercity"
Terra Nova has a fascinating read up about architecture in World of Warcraft, and to an extent, all videogames. In the latest Wired (which appeared on my doorstep yesterday), there's a Clive Thompson piece about Halo 3, and in there, he compares creating videogames not to creating movies, but to designing architecture. There are all sorts of challenges in dealing with the flow of self-driven players, and those are directly related to the forms and format of architecture, and you can see that kind of design all over Azeroth. When players grouped around the bank and mailbox in Ironforge, designers spread out both in places like Silvermoon and Shattrath. And as the article Terra Nova quotes makes clear, sometimes Blizzard wants the architecture to work for the players (as in Undercity, where everything is laid out in a circle, with lots of clues as to where things are), and sometimes it wants the space to work against them-- Blackrock Depths is a challenge to get through, which is fitting for (well, what used to be) a higher level dungeon.Just as we "learn" the places we inhabit in real life, we also eventually learn virtual spaces as well-- tell me you weren't confused the first time someone had to show you how to get to UBRS, and yet now you could probably get there blindfolded, right?Very interesting stuff. And it brings up one more question: Most players, by now, have learned pretty much all of Azeroth. But eventually (and we've seen this hinted at in the supposed "events" that will kick off the next expansion), the world will change. What if you entered Ironforge one day, and things weren't where you expected them to be?
Hearing voices in the World of Warcraft
Clive Thompson (who I've enjoyed reading for a while now) posted a piece on Wired the other day about how voice changed the way he saw fellow players in World of Warcraft. It's a really interesting read, not least of all because of the two academic studies mentioned: one study found that women were "treated differently" when using voice chat, and another found that gamers made more solid and trusting relationships with friends they knew by voice rather than those that knew by text.I don't know if Thompson has heard yet that voice is going to be builtin to WoW very soon now, but it's true: voice is about to play a much bigger part in our game. And it's also true that voice changes things a lot-- in my regular guild, I will often jump on our Teamspeak server just to chat with my fellow guildies and friends, even if I'm not in a group. In It came from the Blog (the official WoW Insider guild in which I occasionally can be seen saying crazy things), we haven't set up a Vent server (although it's coming, guys), and so I had the strange experience the other day of running an instance with only text chat to keep me company. Don't get me wrong, I like all the guys in IcftB, but I don't know if the reason I don't know them better is just because I haven't been with the guild as long, or if I just haven't actually heard their voices.In the end, Thompson marks it down to a generational thing-- some people are willing to share their voices and hear others, he says, and some just aren't. I'm not sure if that's true necessarily (I am pretty conservative on, say, my Myspace page, and pretty free with my Ventrilo joining), but either way, the use of voice chat in videogames has only just started to make itself known.
Practice extreme Christmas shopping online
"Only in America can shopping be considered a contact sport. And Christmas is the Super Bowl for competitive consumers." With these words, Persuasive Games took this year's hottest toys and made them objects for Shockwave arcade game.Xtreme Xmas Shopping has you trying to collect all of this season's hottest toys before the other parents can snatch them all up. Scuffling with parents is alright, so long as its out of the line of sight of wandering children. Of the five gifts quested, two of them are -- surprise, surprise -- the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3. You can try the game out for yourself here. [Via collision detection]
Clive Thompson on episodic gaming (he's in love with Alyx too)
Wired's Clive Thompson does the "episodic games are cool" thing and rounds all the usual bases: 24 and Lost are the television paradigms; episodic games are great for busy adults; Alyx is worthy of your adoration of geek lust. He writes, "There's an intimacy to episodic stories, and it's all the more intensified in a game because you literally go through hell with these folks. After Half-Life 2 and Episode One, I was pretty much in love with Alyx, one of the spunkiest and best-acted virtual characters I've ever seen."Hear hear! While Alyx played a pivotal role in HL2, she's playing alongside you in Episode One. Valve calls it "single-player co-op" and, like the paradigm of co-op multiplayer, Alyx feels like a buddy you're running through the game with. Like the lives of your favorite soap stars (or Jack Bauer, whatever) Alyx will be as important as the serialized story or the additional gameplay in convincing gamers to return for each consecutive HL2 episode. Now if they could only start getting these things out the door monthly ... weekly ... daily ...[Via collision detection]
The Jar Jar effect: "games do sci-fi best"
Clive Thompson has an essay up at Wired called, "Forget Film, Games Do Sci-Fi Best." Thompson's argument is that LucasArts' Star Wars games are better realized works of science fiction than Lucas' Star Wars prequels, a not altogether controversial claim. Thompson writes, "In the last 20 years, Lucas' vision has arguably been far better expressed in video games than in movies."Citing games like Rogue Squadron, Knights of the Old Republic, and Battlefront, he identifies the similarities that allow gaming to do sci-fi best: "Part of the fun of watching a sci-fi movie is mentally inhabiting a new world and imagining what it feels like to be inside. But now there's a medium that actually puts you in."Thompson is quick to temper his claims, saying, "Even the best 'narrative' games can't replicate the emotional undertow of a good film," though his basic point remains valid: that Lucas, specifically, is being outdone by his games. Fellow sci-fi movie maker James Cameron plans on creating an MMO that introduces players to the universe before the film comes out, so you can mentally visit somewhere you've already been.
