Sanya-Weathers
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State of Decay comes to the PC courtesy of Steam
PC gamers feeling left out while watching their Xbox comrades playing State of Decay can wipe those tears away; the zombie survival title has arrived on Steam. State of Decay is available through the digital distribution platform for a straight-up $19.99. If you're curious about Undead Labs' maiden game, then check out our hands-on coverage. The game was a huge hit on the Xbox and hopefully will be followed by an MMO set in the same world. Undead is also preparing the first DLC for State of Decay called Breakdown that will come to both the PC and Xbox. [Thanks to Soren for the tip!]
Undead Labs still negotiating with Microsoft on Class4 MMO
Undead Labs' latest game for Xbox Live, State of Decay, is a resounding success. The game moved over 250,000 copies in its first 48 hours of release, landing it the title of "Fastest Selling Xbox Live Game that isn't Minecraft." However, one successful game does not guarantee another, and Undead is still at the mercy of Microsoft when it comes to getting its next game off the ground. The studio is set to begin work on Class4, an MMO follow-up to State of Decay, but cannot proceed until Microsoft gives it the go-ahead. According to Undead's Sanya Weathers, none of this can happen until the two parties reach a "mutually agreeable contract." She also noted that the two companies must agree on the goals of the project and on where the technology will be by the time Class4 finishes its multi-year development cycle. According to Weathers, the discussion between Microsoft and Undead is "in progress."
State of Decay gets June 5th release date
While the news of State of Decay's release date was leaked out recently, today we have official confirmation. Undead Labs' maiden game will be coming to Xbox Live Arcade on Wednesday, June 5th. Founder Jeff Strain took to the official blog a couple of days ago to talk about the process of deciding upon and cementing a release date. "After that, our job is not done," he wrote. "We have a PC build of the game to finish and deliver. We will certainly want to fix a few bugs that slipped through (we saw a few in the video streams today that we jumped on immediately). And we have super secret plans for a few other treats to roll out in the future that Sanya would shoot me for even mentioning." So while it's not the MMO that will hopefully be forthcoming, it is set in the same world and it made a great showing at last year's PAX Prime.
State of Decay coming to Xbox Live in June
Undead Labs' zombie actioner State of Decay is coming to Xbox Live this June according to a brief update posted by Undead community guru Sanya Weathers. And when we say brief, we do mean brief, as the sum total of the update is "June. Officially." Fortunately the firm also released a new teaser that shows off a heaping helping of bloody, brain-bashing gameplay. You'll find it after the cut.
State of Decay Q&A talks skills, traits, and more
Undead Labs has posted the results of its latest State of Decay-focused Q&A session. The company parsed a bunch of the best community-generated queries and posted the answers in a mammoth forum thread that represents a great starting point if you're looking to learn more about the upcoming console zombie title. Several of the questions involve the previously mentioned skill system, and there is also some info on traits and survivor characters. Most crucially, we learned that sexting is an actual skill in the game (as are Sudoku and Reality Show Trivia)," according to community guru Sanya Weathers. "It does nothing in a world where cell towers no longer function," she quipped.
Undead Labs on making a believable zombie apocalypse
In their gory, gruesome office, Undead Labs' devs are hard at work figuring out the best way to disembowel you and turn you into a walking nightmare. So far it's going well, according to a new Q&A by CM Sanya Weathers. Weathers sheds some light on the difficulties of creating a zombie-infested world, particularly in relation to spawn points, mob density, and artificial intelligence. "It takes surprisingly smart AI to make zombie behaviors that are believably dumb," she writes. According to her, Undead Labs' Class3 will boast "thousands" of zombies, all of which will be able to react to sounds, light, and explosions. Weathers says that the game is in the final stages of pre-alpha production and we should be seeing gameplay footage from it soon. Other topics covered in the Q&A include player weapons, how to attract zombies, types of zombies, and a fast food joint called the Swine & Bovine.
Undead Labs hires community director, Class3 info forthcoming
With the rash of MMO-related job losses in recent weeks, it's nice to see the occasional blurb about a dev finding a new home. Former Dominus and Dark Age of Camelot community guru Sanya Weathers has landed at Undead Labs, where she'll be heading up -- you guessed it -- the community relations department. This is good news for fans of the firm's tentatively titled Class3 zombie MMO as well. As Undead Labs' Jeff Strain writes, "you don't hire a kick-ass community director if you have nothing to say."
Pitchblack Games' Dominus abruptly shutting down
We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but sometimes it's just unavoidable. Sanya Weathers, Director of Community for Pitchblack Games' in-development sandbox title, Dominus, posted on the forums today to inform players that, effective immediately, Dominus is no more. Weathers states that the team "simply cannot deliver the game [players] deserve with the resources [the studio has]." She goes on to apologize vehemently, adding that the forum is now read-only, though the game's Facebook page will remain open long enough for players to say their last goodbyes. Sanya signs off by thanking the players for proving that "there is a market for a game like [Dominus]." She concludes, "I will miss you all, and I know we'll meet again." Here's to hoping. Best of luck to the folks over at Pitchblack; we look forward to your next endeavor.
Dominus December beta invites delayed [Updated]
Those of you itching for a three-faction PvP MMO with a sci-fi twist will have to endure the discomfort a bit longer. Dominus has announced a slight delay in its beta testing program due to a new game engine that is currently in need of some tweaking. "The content is basically fine. But the animations are borked, and the lighting is all off, and everything needs to be re-optimized," explains Pitchblack community manager Sanya Weathers on Dominus' official forums. The bad news is that those players who were promised a spot in the December wave of beta invites are out of luck for the time being. The good news is that the spots aren't going anywhere, and you'll be able to do your part in Dominus' testing phase when new player acceptances resume after the new year. [Update: We've corrected our erroneous references to Dominus' old title.]
Pitch Black hosting Prime livestream event this afternoon
It's Friday, and if you're a fan of Prime: Battle for Dominus, you know that it's time for another dev chat livestream. Prime is a three-faction skill-based MMO set in a war-torn sci-fi universe of high technology and high adventure, but its livestreaming dev chats are a little less dangerous. Joining the fun is as easy as navigating to Pitch Black's Ustream channel and settling back with your favorite beverage. There's no need to sign up for anything unless you'd like to join the commenting crowd, in which case you'll need to register and log in with your Ustream account. Today's event kicks off at 3:00 p.m. EDT, and you can learn more about the game at its official website.
PitchBlack Games announces Sanya Weathers as new Director of Community
PitchBlack Games announced today that it has a new addition to its team in the form of former Mythic Director of Community Sanya Weathers. This is certainly a promising announcement for PitchBlack, coming hot on the heels of the official announcement of the studio's first project, Prime: Battle for Dominus. In regard to Weathers' reasons for choosing to join up with the Prime Online team, she says, "The opportunity to direct community for a PVP MMO at a startup couldn't be refused. The team at PitchBlack also shares my ideals when it comes to customer communication and service, and I look forward to seeing what we can build together." Given her history with Dark Age of Camelot, we're not surprised to see her working on yet another three-faction, PvP-focused MMO. We here at Massively wish Sanya the best at her new gig and look forward to seeing what she and the team at PitchBlack come up with. To round out this new announcement, we also have three pieces of concept art for each of the game's three playable races, which you can see in the gallery below. %Gallery-126763%
Blogger claims to be Mythic employee, tells "Why Warhammer Failed"
If there's one thing the internet needs more of, it's drama. OK, that's a giant lie. The stuff is everywhere, and the MMO industry is no exception. Here at Massively, we get tips about player and industry kerfuffles on a regular basis. It usually turns out to be either a minor conflict or some industry he-said-she-said, but every now and again something takes hold and causes enough of a stir to make everyone take notice. The "Why Warhammer Failed" blog post from "EA Louse" is a perfect example. EA Louse claims to be a Bioware-Mythic employee who will be "dismissed from Bioware Mythic during the next round of layoffs EA coming this November," and he or she has a bone to pick. We've attempted to contact EA Louse to verify his or her identity, but at the moment there's no way to determine whether this person is legitimate or a random troll. Either way, the post has gained an amazing amount of attention today -- including some from Mythic's former Director of Community Sanya Weathers. Sanya had quite a bit to say in response to EA Louse, and while the whole situation should be taken with a grain of salt rather than official EA news, it's still gained plenty of attention in the MMO blogosphere.
Massively multiplayer online... boobs?
Did you know that MMOs and breasts have a long history with one another? It's true, you know. From the time MMOs came onto the scene, so too did scantily clad women with huge hooters. Also, yes, this is indeed one of "those" articles. The article where we talk about breasts seriously, I mean.Sanya Weathers, no stranger to the MMO industry (or breasts, for that matter) just recently took a pretty funny tour of how breasts work into advertising, whether we like it or not. From box art to marketing departments, she looks at some of the good, the bad, and the downright horrible when it comes to putting hot women on boxes to sell games.If you're up for a laugh, go check out her article over at MMORPG.com. It's funny, it's insightful, it's historical, and it's full of what men want most -- awesome games. (Get your head out of the gutter if you thought that last line was going to be another boob joke.)
GamerDNA: A brief look at free to play games
By Sanya Weathers for GamerDNAWhen you're the market leader in MMO games, you can afford to do a little innovating – though not so much as to disturb or ruffle the customers you've already acquired. When you're making a top drawer MMO with thirty million dollars of other people's money, you can't afford to innovate. Refinements, sure. But no big risks.So where's the innovation? These days, you see it in the free to play genre, and its close cousin, the "freemium" game. Both of these games make their money from microtransactions. In order to get a customer to fork over a microtransaction, these games require customers that are vested into the world.But free to play means the player has invested nothing but the time spent downloading the product. And there's a perception among some industry professionals that "easy come, easy go."%Gallery-65681%
Gamer DNA: Plenty of market opportunity in MMOs
Today, we have another in a continuing series of articles written by the highly talented Sanya Weathers for GamerDNA. In this, her latest column, Sanya looks into the numbers and just what the breakdown for MMO players means.When you compare groups of MMO consumers, grouped by game title, it's easy to be overwhelmed by World of Warcraft's market dominance. Indeed, many developers have learned the wrong lessons from Blizzard's success, and copied/are copying WoW features – without copying WoW's reasoning, methodology, or execution. The results are products that feel derivative and incomplete, with features that the consumers identify as being less than organically developed. Furthermore, WoW's market reach is so extensive that the most influential players in a social network sense will identify a borrowed feature as being WoW's (even if WoW itself borrowed the feature), and cost the new product credibility as innovators.Still, when you just look at the data, it's hard to avoid the desire to copy WoW. As we saw last week, WoW players log in more often, and play for longer sessions.
Gamer DNA: Plenty of market opportunity in MMOs [part 2]
Another good measure of player engagement is by the average number of hours in a particular play session. Remember what I said about EQ2 being a success by any rational standard? The number of hours the EQ2 player spends in his game is illustrative of that point.
The birth of the Middle Eastern MMO scene
Much of our coverage of the MMO industry at Massively is clearly focused on North America and Europe, with the occasional article about what's happening in Asia, but we rarely have the opportunity to point out what's happening in MMOs in the Middle East. Truth be told, we weren't aware that MMOs are operating in this region of the world until an article we came across today. Sanya Weathers recently got in touch with Fadi Mujahid, general manager of a Dubai-based company called Game Power 7 which has localized the free-to-play MMO Rappelz for the Middle East/North African (MENA) market. In fact, to the best of our knowledge, Game Power 7 is the first company to focus on the MMO industry in the Middle East and North Africa to date.Mujahid explains to Weathers how Game Power 7 made these first inroads to the MENA market, from market research to localization efforts (adding 'Middle Eastern touches' to the characters and other changes to make the game less offensive to the market's cultures), to getting the word out about the Arabic version of Rappelz.
How much do guilds matter?
Today, we have another in a continuing series of articles written by the highly talented Sanya Weathers for GamerDNA. In this, her latest column, Sanya runs down some interesting and illuminating statistics about players and guilds, and just how they fit in to the macrocosm of MMOs. A long time ago, in a fantasy world far far away, I wrangled guilds as part of my job. At first, I wrangled them because it was terribly efficient for one person struggling with a beta. Why deal with thousands of individuals when I could deal with fifty, and put them in charge of their own groups? Guild leaders will always be more informed, more tuned in, and better suited to herding their own cats than a studio representative could ever be.But what started as expediency turned in to more.As a community weenie, I had my dearly beloved "frequent flyers" – people who sent in feedback, usually through email no matter how many systems I built for them to use, with a regularity previously reserved for clocks, robots, and dripping faucets. If it was 3 PM on a Thursday, it was time to get mail from him, him, her, and what I was pretty sure was a him but hadn't ever asked.
How to stop worrying and enjoy games like Darkfall
While they seem to draw a fair amount of controversy and commentary, massively multiplayer online games that offer kick-in-your-ribs PvP aren't really a new thing. Darkfall is the title that everyone's talking about of late, but it's really cut from the same cloth as the progenitor of all MMOs, Ultima Online. Granted, Ultima Online wasn't and isn't purely focused on player killing, but the fact remains that when you log into games that allow for the possibility of being ganked, in some respects it is what you signed up for. While the no-holds-barred style of play isn't for everyone, it certainly is what some players want. Or at least think they want. MMO world celeb Sanya Weathers, writing for Examiner, says "Darkfall has been, since its conception, an unapologetic return to Ultima Online's original style of full metal ham kicking. The gang at Aventurine never pretended their game would appeal to a mass market, and certainly never pretended that the game would have anything but a vicious learning curve."
Sanya Weathers on admitting you're an MMOG gamer
Sanya Weathers, a.k.a. Tweety, recently published a guide to breaking the news to your loved ones about your MMOG habit. She keeps her advice lighthearted throughout, but her tips are good ones. For instance, here's how she disarms those who outright scoff at the hobby: "If the person you're talking to gets dismissive, keep your cool. Ask how much television they watch. Ask if television is active or passive. Ask how many people a television viewer is interacting with, or working with towards common goals." Weathers has made her rounds in the MMOG industry before. She originally got her start at Mythic Entertainment after a blogging stint on the famed Lum the Mad MMOG rant site her rant site, as well as venerable rant site Corpnews.com. While she does freelance work, her current home is Eating Bees, where she blogs about community management issues.
