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Crowdfunding Roundup: MiKey, SandPiper, Vaavud, and more
Every week, TUAW provides readers with an update on new or significant crowdfunded Apple-related projects in the news. While our policy is to not go into detail on items that haven't reached at least 80 percent of their funding goal, this update is designed to give readers a heads-up on projects they might find interesting enough to back. We're back this week with a pile of Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns for your viewing pleasure. Be sure to vote with your wallets, as some of these campaigns could use a boost. Let's get started with the Indiegogo projects: MiKey is already past its goal -- 180 percent funded with 10 days to go -- but that shouldn't stop you from jumping on the bandwagon. Think of the ultimate pocket tool with a USB to Lightning/micro-USB cable, flash drive, a Bluetooth locater, and a small battery pack built in, and you've got MiKey. Seriously, if I was going to be stranded on a desert island somewhere, I think I'd want to be stuck there with an iPad, a satellite phone with data capabilities, solar panels, a supermodel, an unlimited supply of food and booze, and a MiKey. This thing rocks! The SandPiper is an Indiegogo project that doesn't have a lot of the draw that simple projects do, but it has the capability of being something that could benefit a lot of people with respiratory ailments. It's a smartphone-enabled spirometer, something that can be used to train the lungs by measuring lung performance. it's a little slow starting -- only at one percent of funding with 44 days to go -- but hopefully it will catch on, or perhaps an investor will jump on the project. Our third project of the week from Indiegogo is Statement WKW, which bills itself as an "Extreme Charge and Data Cable for iPhone, iPod and iPad". Extreme? What, does this mean that you can use one a Statement WKW to rappel down a cliff? Apparently the "extreme" tag line got the attention of many backers, as it's 555 percent funded with 39 days to go. And now on to some Kickstarter projects. First up is Frebble, a haptic device designed to let you hold hands online. Yes, you read that correctly -- you and another person can be on a FaceTime chat, and give each other's hands a gentle squeeze. It's about a quarter of the way through funding with about three weeks to go, so this idea may or may not make it. You decide! Saddled with hundreds of passwords and can't remember them all? The idea behind Injector is to have a dongle that's inserted into your PC or Mac (or "tablet with USB port") that receives login credentials from an app on your iPhone. It's only 11.4 percent funded as of today, with two weeks to go. Personally, I don't want to keep track of a dongle and have to hope that my iPhone is charged up to be able to log in. I'll keep using 1Password, thank you. Art fans are going to either love or hate this project. The Electric Objects EO-1 is a computer made for art that hangs on your wall. Think of it as a large, high-definition version of those cheesy little internet picture frames that used to be so popular. Apparently there are a lot of people who want art by unknown artists hanging on their walls, because this campaign is 1181 percent funded with 27 days to go. Me? I prefer one-of-a-kind original art works, not mass-produced images that are being viewed by thousands of EO-1 owners. This next project is pretty cool; a robotic stabilizer platform for your iPhone or a GoPro camera that's called Hando. Think of it as a way to get very smooth, professional looking video from your device, as if you're using a Steadicam™ with a full-sized video camera. About 20 percent funded with a month to go, Hando could be just the thing for iPhone movie makers. I was going to put in a short blurb about Drop, an iPad-connected kitchen scale and digital baking assistant, but their website is down today. Your luck may be better, but right now I can't show you a video or give you any other information. Sigh. Finally, do you remember Vaavud, which was an iPhone-attached anemometer? I reviewed it last August and was very impressed. Well, the same geniuses are back at work, this time with a Kickstarter to get a new device that measures not only wind velocity, but direction as well. The Vaavud V2.0 campaign is almost 28 percent funded with 39 days to go, so I think it's going to be a winner. I can't wait to review it! And that, my friends, is the crowdfunding roundup for the week. Next week we'll be back with another crop of new projects, some of which will be incredibly exciting and others that will be yawn-inducing. Thanks to Hal Sherman for keeping me up to date on the flow of Indiegogo and Kickstarter projects, and if you're aware of any other crowdfunded Apple-related projects, be sure to let us know about them through the Tip Us button at the upper right of the TUAW home page for future listing on the site.
Perfect Ten: Annoying things you hear in general chat
General chat, sometimes called "Barrens chat" or "zone chat" or "the party line," is both the bane and the secret fixation of my existence. It's like a text-based reality show that plays out in real-time whenever I log into an MMO. If -- for some rare reason -- I'm bored of playing the game or talking with friends, at least I have the jibber-jabber of screeching opinions to fill my eye sockets. It's safe to say that general chat earns its bad reputation, but have you ever stopped to analyze exactly why that is? I have. I have traveled that long, terrible path, and at the end I peered over the edge into the abyss, and the abyss told me that I was a carebear who needed to L2P. Here are my findings.
The Think Tank: Happy birthday, Star Wars Galaxies
Today marks the 11th anniversary of the launch of Star Wars Galaxies, an MMO whose untimely sunset at the end of 2011 continues to make sandbox fans sigh mournfully. This week, in honor of the anniversary, I asked the Massively writers whether they think we'll ever see another new Star Wars MMORPG (other than those we still have, of course), let alone another epic Star Wars sandbox. It's time to speculate!
Perfect Ten: MMOs from the '90s
The course of MMO history and the developer pioneers who forged a path to online gaming have long fascinated me (so much so that I write an occasional column about it). While we often think of MMOs as modern entertainment barely out of its infancy, the truth is that you can trace the industry back decades to see a fringe group of devs and players striving to make these games a reality. While the number of MMOs in existence exploded in the early- and mid-2000s (and hasn't stopped growing since), the 1990s are often an overlooked decade that featured more than the one or two games that are usually mentioned in brief history overviews. There were actually far more titles than most assume, even if you dismiss text-based MUDs and the like. Today we're going to run down 10 MMOs that were born during the era of the dot-com revolution, dial-up modems, and the peak of the Simpsons (third through seventh seasons).
The Think Tank: The best of E3 2014's MMO offerings
E3 has come and gone, and we, the members of the Massively crew, have taken some time to reflect on the MMO shenanigans we saw and read about and experienced vicariously through the folks we conned into going to LA our dear and intrepid field reporters. Here's what our writers thought about E3's offerings for MMO players.
The Think Tank: Catching up on WildStar's launch
WildStar's launch has come and gone, and I missed it while I was away on a raid IRL (my loot? A legendary baby drop!). This might just be one of the few major MMORPGs whose launch metas I've missed out on in my entire span of playing MMOs since Ultima Online, so I asked the Massively staffers who've been playing either a lot or a little to catch me up on the state of the launch. How did it go from the perspective of the people on the ground (as opposed to the people in the peanut gallery)? I'd love to hear from our readers, too!
Massively's WildStar launch day roundup
Well howdy there! Guess what, ladies and gentlemen, it finally happened after what seems like an eternity. WildStar has launched today, giving everyone a chance to explore the mysterious planet of Nexus, whether your interests lie in building homes and fortifications, learning about the local wildlife, or just laying waste to everything around you with practiced zeal. So it's only appropriate that the game has a new launch trailer just past the break to celebrate the fact. But that's not all, boys and girls -- we've compiled more than a few bits of news that you might want to feast your eyes upon before you jump in-game. Or, you know, if you're at work and can't jump in-game at the moment anyway, that is also a distinct possibility. So watch the trailer, do your reading, and get ready to explore Nexus from top to bottom. It's a big old world, you know.
Perfect Ten: The MMOs that influenced me greatly
Every one of us has an "MMO resume": a list of titles that we've played, whether briefly or extensively. Some of those are just games, casual flings that meant nothing. But others can take a more meaningful role in our lives, influencing how we experience and view MMOs. I would scarcely say that my resume is one of the most robust you'll ever see; I'm sure plenty of you have played more than I. However, I like to think that I've had a journey over the course of a decade or so that's shaped who I am as a gamer. Since it's my birthday today, I'm going to share 10 of those influential MMOs with you and what they've done for me. You're going to get me cake.
The Think Tank: The best MMORPG character naming systems
My first MMO was Ultima Online, where character naming rules were so unrestricted that it wasn't uncommon for people to copy names from others to pass themselves off as other players, usually for espionage and infiltration purposes. My guild even lost a guild base that way once to a particularly savvy spy with the same name as one of our officers! Subsequent MMOs, all the way into the present day, usually curtail such exploits with harsh naming conventions, including WildStar, which made recently headlines with a botched reservation system for its unique names (in fact, the registration ends tomorrow!). But players don't seem any happier with unique names than with copycat names. I polled the Massively writers about their opinions on the best naming systems in MMOs and how they'd like to see naming systems improved in general.
The Think Tank: Listen to the music
When I logged into ultra-indie sandbox Villagers & Heroes a few weeks ago to explore its latest patch and arrival on Steam, the first thing that slammed into me was Jupiter. No, really: Holst's Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity, one of the iconic movements of The Planets suite that's been inspiring composers for a hundred years. I just wasn't expecting to hear it verbatim during character creation. It's... well, it's jolly and strangely annoying in a game context, even for someone who appreciates a good Holst-inspired game soundtrack. For this week's Think Tank, I polled the Massively writers about their in-game music preferences. Do they turn it off? Do they listen faithfully? Are they raiding to Bieber? I bet they are.
EVE Evolved: Eleven years of EVE Online
It seems that every year another few MMOs have closed their doors or convert to free-to-play business models to stay afloat. EVE Online has always enjoyed a level of insulation from these market trends elsewhere in the genre, and just last week on May 6th it celebrated its 11th year of year-on-year subscription growth. Following on from my previous column celebrating the EVE Evolved column's sixth year of operation, this week I'll be summarising all the major EVE news stories throughout the year. It's been a big year for EVE fans, one that many of us can be proud to have been a part of. The EVE community turned its financial wizardry toward the real world and raised over $190,000 US in relief aid following a typhoon hitting the Philippines, and CCP even built a monument dedicated to the community. Several massive player battles once again put EVE on the global media's radars, and the Odyssey and Rubicon expansions revitalised the game for explorers and PvPers alike. But not everyone can hold his heads up high this year, with details of more cyberbullying within EVE coming to light and several players being banned for defacing the EVE monument in Reykjavik. In this anniversary retrospective, I summarise all the major EVE news from the year in one place and take a look at what the future may hold for the EVE universe.
Perfect Ten: Great MMO time travel adventures
Writers and geeks alike can't seem to get enough of time travel, although the ratio of horribly crafted time travel tales to fun and smart ones is pretty lopsided. I've come to realize that MMOs are positively littered with ways that players are invited to jump around the internal timeline of the game, and I wanted to share a few of them in this week's countdown. When you think about it, the proliferation of time travel quests makes a lot of sense from a developer viewpoint. There is a ton of lore that goes into each one of these virtual worlds, but for the most part the players are affixed to a very specific (and unmoving) point in time. Hopping about in time is a great way to experience other eras and actually see history instead of just reading it in a quest box. Plus, if done right, these quests can be quite memorable.
The Think Tank: Non-combat roles in MMORPGs
Two recent topics have collided to create this week's Think Tank topic: Massively's Justin wrote about pacifist characters in MMOs, and Camelot Unchained reminded me that while there's no PvE, it'll be possible to play as a pure crafter to contribute to PvP. These shouldn't strike us as novel concepts. The genre has seen several MMOs (A Tale in the Desert, Glitch) that shed combat entirely, and many sandboxes (Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online, to name just a few), allowed players to roll pure crafters who raised neither blaster nor kryss to attack a foe. Yet many modern gamers still think of pacifist play as an anomaly, having been bred to believe combat is the end-all, be-all of an MMORPG experience. I polled the Massively team members for their thoughts on pacifist play and non-combat roles in MMOs. Have or would they play such characters and games?
The Think Tank: Founder packs, exploitation, and choices
Free-to-play MMOs have learned at least one key lesson from crowdfunding: Some people will shell out huge amounts of money for pixels, far more than we've traditionally paid for industry-standard preorders and collectors editions. Most recently, Landmark, ArcheAge, Trove, and Transformers Universe have come under fire for offering pricey "founder packs" that provide a range of early access benefits, some of them significant, for what are otherwise F2P games. I polled the Massively writers for their take on this trend. Is it exploitative or just the reality of modern MMO funding?
Daily Roundup: a new Engadget, sex ed on VHS and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
EVE Evolved: Six years of EVE Evolved
Six years ago to this exact day, I joined the Massively crew and published the first edition of this column dedicated to the ins and outs of EVE Online. The column has been home to over 300 featured articles since its creation, offering everything from guides and expansion reveals to opinion pieces, fiction, and tales of real in-game events. It's been my pleasure in the past six years to offer the Massively readers a digestible glimpse into the ordinarily somewhat impenetrable world of EVE Online and to introduce new players to the only game (other than Master of Orion II) that's managed to keep me hooked for over a decade. It's been a fantastic year to be a fan of EVE Online, with CCP announcing its long-term vision for deep space colonisation and the game being revitalised through the Odyssey and Rubicon expansions. I've had the opportunity to explore both expansions in this column and to share some hands-on experience with DUST 514 and CCP's upcoming dogfighter EVE Valkyrie. There's been no shortage of opinion pieces this year either, with articles on everything from PvP consequences and twitch controls to whether Star Citizen and Elite are a threat to the sandbox giant. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I round up the best articles from the column's sixth year of operation in one place.
The Think Tank: Wistfully watching MMOs across the pond
Black Desert has been filling our headlines lately because of its Korean beta, but over here in the US, we have no inkling as to when or whether we'll ever get our hands on the game. That leads us to this week's Think Tank question: Would you rather know all about the awesome games overseas we might never get to play, or would you prefer they just shut up until they have a plan for those of us in the west? I polled the Massively team members for their take.
Perfect Ten: Strategies for juggling multiple MMOs
Among my friends, I have a reputation for being "that guy who plays all the games." People are constantly asking me how I manage to handle so many MMOs simultaneously on top of work and family, as if I've managed to clone myself or I never sleep. The truth is far more mundane: Work and family get top priority with my time, and what I have left for gaming is simply spent wisely. The thing is that I'm just always enamoured with so many MMOs that I can't just play one and nothing else. I have to be a "juggler:" a player who balances online worlds. With limited time at my disposal and a desire to be in three or four MMOs at any given time, I've done a lot of experimenting with different ways to juggle titles. There is no one best way, I've found. It depends on how "fair" you want to be to your MMOs and whether it's a priority to you to give each of them more or less the same attention and time. Each of the following strategies has pros and cons, and if you're trying to handle two or more titles, you're simply going to need to figure out what works best for you and your allotment of time.
The Think Tank: Thoughts on PAX East 2014
PAX East came and went last weekend, and as we do most years, the Massively writers got together to discuss the highlights and the disappointments of the con. Join the conversation -- what did you think was the best (and worst) MMO or reveal at PAX?
The Think Tank: Putting The Elder Scrolls Online's launch in context
If you've been around the MMO industry long enough, you know that MMO launches rarely go smoothly for everyone. Some of them even crash and burn in such spectacular ways that veterans are still invoking their names a decade later. This week, I polled a few of the Massively staffers about the launch of the Elder Scrolls Online. How did it fare compared to some of the trainwrecks in MMO history?
