Metaplanar Babel

Have I mentioned that I really can’t wait for this to be released? This guy looks really freakin awesome!

A great quote about the nature of internet game forums:

My view of a lot of the game forums is - it’s sorta like an anthill that’s on fire, except a lot of the ants brought in extra kerosene.

An awesome video of Okami. I really can’t wait for this game!

Hm..This game looks like it might be worth checking out. Maybe just another Diablo-clone, but it sounds like it might have a few interesting tweaks. Plus it’ll be moddable eventually, which could be cool.

Probably the best prediction for the MMO genre that I’ve seen yet:

Essentially, I don’t think you’ll see better MMOs until someone bites the bullet and funds MMO R&D (in either the academic or the industrial setting) reasonably extensively.

Well, I’m back. We had a great time in Austin - I really enjoyed being in a large-ish city again, after being in western Virginia for hrm.. like 8 years now, I guess. Also nice to see a real roleplaying game/anime/comic shop. Overall, Austin wasn’t really what I expected (a good thing, I think), being much more liberal and less cowboy than the usual Texan stereotype. I enjoyed the hot weather (it’s still only in the 50s to 60s here, boo), the company was great (cruinh’s cat is too cute for words), and much fun was had by all.

Thanks to cruinh, I got to experience the beginning of Jade Empire, Katamari Damacy, and a few other games (edit: including the ever-so-fun Ninja Burger, which I forgot to mention originally, as cruinh so kindly pointed out ). We also played a couple rounds of Rise of Nations, Tekken 5, and Soul Calibur II. We watched a few movies, had dinner with Patterson and the Jazzcat, spent some time on 6th street downtime (street of clubs, oi), and saw the world’s largest urban bat colony. Alas, we missed the Austin Air Guitar Finals, because they ended up not actually starting until about 11pm on Saturday night, and we had to fly out semi-early Sunday.

Jon also ran a mini-Earthdawn game; we got to play for a few hours with ~12th circle characters, which was fun (and fairly eye-opening as to how incredibly powerful magic and journeymen eventually become). I’m hoping we’ll actually try to keep running something with the three of us, using some form of VoIP and Fantasy Grounds. I really think it could work, though Jon had this wild idea to design some sort of virtual living room so there would be visual representations of the players and stuff, which I kinda think might be overkill. Ultimately, the roleplaying game experience can be narrowed down to the voice of those involved and dice if the system uses it, so I think all the other stuff is just overcomplication and distraction. That’s just me though.

Anyway, we had an awesome time and were very glad cruinh was willing to put up with us. I have some more to say, but it’s mostly ranting about various travel problems we hit, so I’ll understand if you don’t actually want to read it.

This is it, the week I’ve been planning for several months. Jon and I are flying down to Texas to visit some friends from college. Neither of us has ever been to Texas, so not only do we get to see friends we’ve only been able to keep up with online, but we also get to experience a new city. I know cruinh has some stuff planned for us, including the Austin Air Guitar Finals. Woot! We’re also planning to force cruinh to watch at least one movie that he was supposed to watch a long time ago. (Upon doing a search for that movie, I discovered that there’s a sequel in the works. I don’t know whether to be ecstatic or horrified..) Hopefully he’ll show us some of the games he’s been playing recently; I especially want to see Jade Empire, which actually had a review on MSNBC. I’m sure there will be much playing of Tekken 5, perhaps some Hunter: the Reckoning, some other movies that he wants us to watch. Plus, I’ll get to show off the preciouss. Good times, right? Can’t wait, though I’m not overly fond of flying any more, thanks to all the craziness at the airports these days. Anywho, we’re flying out Wednesday and won’t be back til Sunday, so don’t expect much in the way of updates between then (I know, you’re all crushed, right? )

In other news, my warrior in WoW is almost old enough to know the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. She graduated to platemail at 40 and just got a new sword too, though I forgot to take a screenshot of that (I’ll put one up later, since it’s awesome looking). Overall, I’ve been extremely happy with how she plays and with the game in general (it’s amazing how much getting a mount changes the enjoyability of the game..). I’m not the best player in the world, but I’m learning - it’s just hard to learn how to tank when you’re consistently playing in instances that are too high level for you, without a healer. Still, I’m sure I’ll figure it out; so far, I tend to take the most deaths, so I guess I’m not doing anything too wrong. I’m also psyched because the changes on the Test server for warriors completely rock for the fury/arms, dual wield build that Jori is. Whoohoo~

In the course of surfing around a bit this morning, I came across a couple of interesting articles. One, a semi-transcript of a presentation given by Raph Koster a couple months ago, is about the theory of fun - basically what makes something fun. Incidentally, Raph’s written a book about this same topic. The other, a recent Gamasutra feature, is about the psychology of gaming. Similar topics, and again evidence that more people take gaming more seriously that I would’ve expected.
(Continued..)

Where the hell was this when I went to high school? Ignore the fact that it’s run by EA..

Found a link to this video on another blog, and just had to share it with you guys. This is a college a capella group singing a medley of Nintendo theme songs. To add to the geek factor, they’ve added some movements to go along with the theme songs that perfectly suggest the games they go with. Great fun - enjoy.