Massive Multiplayer Online Games

Holy fereakin' crap!  The new South Park is brilliant!  I honestly don't know what else to say for now, but holy hell, that was funny. 

I figure you really must look out for a replay of this episode in the next week and watch it... maybe you can suck it out of the grand Interweb somehow, but I don't want to condone such things.  Maybe I'll come back in and blabber about it later.  Very nice.

An article about the frequency of swearing in online games (mainly Halo 2 for the Xbox) has found its way around the 'net lately.  It's an interesting read and it certainly confirms what I experienced on Xbox Live... profanity, screaming, insults and racial slurs abound.  Yuck.

My take on the subject moves the discussion into massively multiplayer games where I'm having more experience with voice communication.   For me, the cussing and such hasn't been as much of an issue in my primary groups, but as soon as I venture out of the guilds, the same problem surfaces rather quickly.  What's a solo player to do in the face of impending voice chat domination in MMOGs?  Well, I don't know yet, but read on to get a bit more insight...

"Need" is actually accurate here, I think.  I need to play more games this year.  I spent the majority of 2005 working through a really painful serious game project... pain, I say.  It was mostly fun due to the subject matter, but the process to get it done was brutal due to the parties involved.

 However, that project is almost behind me (one or two days of development left, I swear), and I am in dire need of brain relaxation time.  I didn't play nearly enough games last year and I endeavor to remedy that in The Six.  I've neglected a lot of new game announcements and there are games I'm freakin' paying for that don't get logged into nearly enough.

 Well.. that was useless to post, but maybe others feel the same.  I have plans to post my experiences in the various games I try out, so hopefully I can make time to do that.  It would be great to get some discussions started about game design and game theory issues in this whole MassMOG genre.  There are some decent games out and some very interesting goodies coming up.  For one, I'm hoping to roll the saving throw when confronted with the total crap.

Okay, back to work... couple days left and then I'm going to PLAY!!  (Well, for a while, at least... I don't want my wife thinking I'm talking about taking a month off or some such.  Whew!)

Thanks for dropping by.  Happy New Year! :) 

The Child's Play Charity is a Good Thing.  This year it hits closer to my home since the Denver Children's Hospital is on the donation list!  Suhweeet.  If you don't yet know about this fantastic charity, go check out the main site.  Also, you can read more of my blathering on the subject at my PointlessGames.com site, since I can't be bothered to copy the post over here.  So I'm lazy.. sorry.

Ameh is requesting the publishing of this post about Unification Wars.  As is usual for my recent working binge, I haven't had a chance to play the game or even to look very far under the hood of the Web site.  I'm not sure if there's any risk involved here, but I'll encourage you to proceed under it.  As I've said many times in the past, I enjoy helping the nooks of our beloved genre to get some recognition, so here goes... slightly busted English and all.  Don't be a language snob and just give Ameh a chance, eh? : 

The saga of Galactic Conquest continue with Unification Wars when the United War Council(UWC) collapsed after the year 11,000 A.D - 1000 years. The universe was at peace, harmony and love for all the species under govern of UWC. By the nature of the universe some off the species with strong empire are greed for power and wealth overcome their peaceful nature. They begin to attack weak empires to fulfill their needs. This is just the beginning, we are the one that have continue the Saga so the universe become a safe place again.

Unification Wars is 2D Massively Multiplayer Online Game that brings lot of satisfaction to the players. The games give all the needs that players wanted. It have 2 version in HTML for basis GUI and JavaScript for more interactive GUI. Even it is just a text based game but the graphics are more than that. Recently Unification Wars just updated their game with new features. For me it is very addictive and challenging game. But the most important part for gamers is that this game is FREE for life without trial period limitation.

For whom that are interested I suggest that to have a sneek look at this game at Unification Wars for more proof!!

I am an avid gamer and have played some sick number of games over the years, buying an embarassing number of games that often I don't finish, and many times I flat don't like at all.  The thing about all those games is that I got to sample the fruits of hundreds of different developers.  With so many different art and design styles as well as all the great music and (sometimes great) stories, I got a lot of value out of all these games.  Sometimes I play them over many years.

There have been several online games over the years that captured my interest -- sometimes slightly, sometimes excessively.  The big difference here is that you usually pay subscription fees and you're at the mercy of whatever company runs the game.  If they make sweeping changes to the game, you're stuck.  If they shut the whole sucker down, you're even more stuck... and you may as well snap the CD in half and burn the serial number, 'cause none of it matters to the universe anymore... you'll never play that game again.  Additionally, the cost barrier to maintain a persistent online presence is such that you may spend hundreds of dollars on a game that you never own.  If you stop paying, you stop playing... quite a diversion from what we're used to with "normal" video games.

Why, then, do we pay for these things?  Well, many people don't, but I do.  What follows is a rather lengthy (and hopefully not completely worthless) examination of a question of persistence of value... or somethign like that.  I'm not promising any conclusions here, but I've been thinking of this stuff a lot and I figured I'm long overdue for an editorial.  :P

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