dolls-closet

My homepage on every browser I use is set to iGoogle . Thus whenever I open a browser, I get a quick overview of news, weather, time & date, my GMail inbox, and the stock quotes relevant to me. Now Google is telling me that they will stop that service in November of next year . I think that is the most recent in a string of similar bad decisions. Google, while having a near-monopoly in search engines, is obviously struggling to compete with Facebook in the field of social spaces, and with Apple in mobile platforms and services. In my opinion that leads to Google trying too hard to come up with the next big thing; in the process they are coming up with lots of different applications, only to abandon them after a few years. Google Buzz is already dead, Google Wave was stillborn, and now they are closing iGoogle. I think that strategy is flawed, because it only leads to me worrying about all the other Google applications I'm using. What if Google shuts down Blogger, or GMail, or G...

From Errol Flynn movies to watching the fencing events at the Olympics we all have an idea of how a sword fight "should" look, even if medieval sword combat probably looked a whole lot different. And from action and science fiction movies we have an idea of how combat with guns or blasters should look. If we compare that to what we see in our MMORPGs, sword combat isn't doing that badly. It isn't looking exactly like in a Hollywood movie, but it isn't all that far from it. Gun combat on the other hand just looks wrong in a MMORPG, because it looks very much like sword combat: Opponents standing toe to toe and exchanging blows for quite some time. Doesn't look like any movie scene at all. Nor does it look like what we are used to from shooter games. The reason of cause is that for the MMORPG a gun isn't handled all that much differently than a sword: Whether you hit and how much damage you deal is mostly determined by your stats, and in most games there isn...

... but I find the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union which states that Europeans have a right to resell their used software very interesting. Quote: “an author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet” . That has enormous consequences both for MMORPGs and for digital distribution platforms like Steam or Origin. If I wanted to sell my World of Warcraft account in the EU, Blizzard isn't allowed to stop me. Of course the devil is in the details. If Blizzard can charge you for server transfers, they might charge you for "transfer of your license to a different owner" as well. The court only says Blizzard isn't allowed to oppose the sale, they aren't obliged to make that transfer easy or free. The same probably would be true for sales of Steam games. It isn't even clear whether Steam must allow you to sell individual games, as opposed to your whole account. T...

The Id DM is writing about combat speed in D&D Next , which is a good topic. I admit I never felt the need to use a stopwatch to time combat, but during a playtest that sounds reasonable. So he is doing a 4-hour session in which his group fights: 7 Orcs 3 Orcs 2 Centipedes 6 Kobolds 6 Goblins 1 Ogre Six fights for a total of 94.5 minutes, with the other two thirds of the session being taken up with roleplaying and exploration. He enjoys that each fight is on average just 15 minutes, compared to 4th edition fights which on average are three times as long. I fail to see why that would be a problem. Because the very structure of combat in 4th edition is different. Basically the same session in 4th edition would have looked like this: One fight against 7 Orc minions, 3 Orc soldiers, and 2 Centipedes One fight against 6 Kobold minions, 6 Goblin archers, and 1 Ogre For a total of 94.5 minutes for the two fights, leaving the other two thirds of the session for roleplaying and exploration....

Wolfshead recently wrote that "Most game designer have a secret video game project that they guard in their heart of hearts; designing a MMO was mine.",  and sees that dream shattered by the failure of 38 Studios. I don't share his regret for the passing of Copernicus, as I have trouble believing that a company that badly managed could actually have produced a good game. But I do think that he is right that many people have a video game or MMORPG project in their head. Not just game designers, but also players and bloggers. Everybody knows what he likes and doesn't like. From there to believing that you know what makes a good game is just a small step. If only you had a $100 million to realize it! I think the lesson of 38 Studios is that even with $150 million you could well fail to turn your dream into a dream game. Even if your idea is solid, managing a multi-million dollar project is extremely difficult, which is why the people who can do it are so well paid. Of c...

I do think that Ryan Perez could have looked up Felicia Day on Wikipedia before g etting fired over questioning her contribution to the industry . I also do think that he shouldn't have put sexist remarks in his Twitter bio. Nevertheless I feel that over all the outcry some core point of his question has been lost: Would Felicia Day be as famous as she is if she wasn't that good-looking? To what degree is her fame based on creative contribution as script writer and producer to the industry, and to what degree is it based on male teenagers' hormones going wild when seeing her in the sexy  Do You Want to Date my Avatar? music video?

It is impossible to "roleplay" with yourself, as the interactive storytelling requires at least two people. However Dungeons & Dragons, especially 4th edition, is both a roleplaying game and a tactical combat game. And it is totally possible to play the tactical combat part against yourself. As a DM that has two purposes: Plain fun of exploring tactical options (although it isn't quite as much fun as playing with others), and preparation of your next adventure. You want every fight to be interesting, so testing that it isn't trivial or impossible under normal circumstances is a good idea. There might still be surprises if the players come up with exceptionally brilliant (or exceptionally stupid) ideas, but a combat try-out assures that the base line is okay. One idea I had after watching people play on virtual tables was to use a virtual table software to run these fights against myself. There is MapTools , available for free, and the commercial software Fantasy G...