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London's V&A Museum names Sophia George as first-ever Game Designer in Residence
Considering that video games are the focus of many an exhibit these days, the following news shouldn't be too shocking. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has appointed Swallowtail Games founder Sophia George as its first-ever Game Designer in Residence. George, who won a BAFTA for her iOS title Tick Tock Toys, will be tasked with creating an interactive game for museum visitors. The first six months of the residency will involve researching the V&A Museum's extensive collection of 16th- to 20th-century art, and game production will kick off in mid-2014 at Abertay University. You know it's only a matter of time before the Met commissions a digital interpretation of its own massive sculpture gallery. [Photo credit: Paul Farmer]
The MMO Report: Catackalysm special
First things first, to really understand this week's intro to The MMO Report, you need to do a wee bit of homework, assuming you don't already get the reference in the title anyway. Pop over here and watch this user-created video about the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. We'll wait. OK, all caught up? Great. Off we go then! This week, Casey is joined by the lovely (and World of Warcraft-addicted) Morgan Webb, who sits down with Game Designer Tom "Kalgan" Chilton for a chat about the myriad things that have come in Cataclysm. Sure, it's chock-full of the normal things one would expect, like talk about things players both old and new will be experiencing in the expansion. Morgan also gets Tom to tell us more about some of his favorite quests in the revamped areas, as well as a bit more insight into Blizzard's development cycles for this expansion -- certainly a hot topic this week. In all, this will definitely be a treat for any World of Warcraft loving gamer. We've tucked the video behind the break for your enjoyment, or you can catch The MMO Report every Thursday on G4TV.
Guild Wars reveals large content changes
For those of you who spend their time in Guild Wars-landia, you might want to stop for a moment and take a look at game designer Linsey Murdock's most recent journal entry. In it she details some major changes coming to the PvP formats of Guild Wars, specifically the closing of the Hero Battles format and the conversion of Team Arena into a new Sealed Deck format.Sealed Deck is a game type that has been used at past Penny Arcade Expo showings of Guild Wars, and it has become popular enough to warrant being added into the game. The main drive behind changing up Team Arena and Hero Battles are due to the waning number of players that participate in those formats, as well as some very brutal flaws in the Hero Battles format.Beyond the addition of Sealed Deck, Linsey also details some other changes to PvP, such as the addition of henchmen that have builds designated by the community, temporary downtime for the Xunlai Tournament House, and many other tasty tidbits. If you're looking for the full info, check out her post over on the Guild Wars wiki.
Long-awaited skill queue coming to EVE Online
The sci-fi massively multiplayer online game EVE Online stands apart from other games in the industry in several ways, one of which is that it uses a real time skill training system rather than experience-based advancement. This is a feature many players like, as they're able to advance even when they're offline, but the downside is that you need to log in frequently to change the lower levels of skills (due to how quickly they finish.) For anyone who's bothered with it, actually getting up for 4am skill changes? Not cool. Getting a skill queue is one of the issues that the player-elected Council of Stellar Management (CSM) brought to the game's developers, CCP Games. (The CSM are representatives of the player base that work with the devs to ensure that development reflects what EVE's subscribers really want from the game.) Apparently the message got through loud and clear. EVE Game Designer Eris Discordia announced today that a skill queue is indeed in the works, in her dev blog "More Queue Queue."
Discover the wizardry of game design with WAR's Brian Wheeler
Gather around folks, get comfortable; we've got a tale of fantasy, kings and wizards to share with you. As seems to be the norm with our friendly neighborhood Mythic developers, Brian Wheeler has done his best to avoid bringing us a boring and straightforward Dev Diary, instead opting to explain his role of Senior Designer for Warhammer Online through a short story.It turns out that game designers are not unlike the great wizards Merlin and Gandalf (coincidentally, these two exist in the same space in Wheeler's fantasy world, and often enjoy a pint together) in that they come up with multiple ideas and solutions for a single problem, and present them all to the king to decide which will be used. They aren't necessarily ideas that the king couldn't figure out on his own, but the wizards can afford to spend all their time researching every possible strategy, giving the king the freedom to attend to other business. That's the short version -- to read Wheeler's longer and much more entertaining take, visit the latest WAR dev diary.
Fiction book features world domination via MMOs
With the world of creative fiction creating these bizarre, unrealistic stories about video games and how they magically kill people, it's a breath of refreshing air when something comes along that defies the usual conventions. The new techno-thriller novel Daemon by Daniel Suarez is one of those books that escapes from the usual traps of writing about video games.Daemon features a story about a dead game designer who rigs up multiple programs to run on the condition of finding his name in a obituary RSS feed. Programs that twist enough electronic mediums in just the right way to automatically steal identities, move money, recruit people, and even kill. And where is this virus hidden? In the dead game designer's MMO, of course!Daemon stays in the realm of plausibility via its writer, Suarez, who has a career as a IT consultant and is an avid gamer. While it originally had publishing difficulties, the book has picked up steam and is now available on his website through companies like Borders, Barnes & Noble, and others. So, when you're waiting during that next raid for your priest to show up and you have nothing else to do, why not give reading this book a go?[Via The Escapist]
BattleClinic's exclusive Factional Warfare guide by CCP Games
BattleClinic, a popular EVE Online web resource run by players, now has another thing going in its favor. Matthew Woodward, a Game Designer from CCP Games, has put together an in-character factional warfare guide, which is exclusive to the site. Woodward writes under the guise of one 'Sergeant-Major Illivia', and tries to whip the reader into shape as if they were a new recruit in Boot Camp. Sergeant-Major Illivia's ranting introduction to factional warfare in the Empyrean Age walks you through militia enlistment, battlefield intelligence, your objectives in the war, and most importantly -- how to stay alive in EVE. It's a clever way of conveying what's involved in factional conflict to a prospective recruit, although Woodward/Illivia does make you feel like a whelp at times. Check out the "Faction Warfare Enlistment Debrief" at BattleClinic for fiction with practical applications.
The Agency's game designer speaks
Sometimes we like to sit back and dream of what it might be like to design an MMO. We'd put together some fiendishly difficult boss battles, or plot some intensely engaging storylines ... or maybe just throw in a ton of Fury jokes. And then we snap out of it and get back to work.Tracy Seamster is a game designer for SOE's The Agency, to which she transitioned after writing for Everquest II for some years. If you've ever wondered what the day-to-day job of a game designer might be like, you can look for the answers in this interview. Covering such topics as finding inspiration, the tools used by a designer, and the particular challenges in writing for an MMO, this interview gives a behind-the-scenes look into one of the industry's more coveted positions.[Thanks, Beth!]
