More Blizzard Games
If you're a fan of World of Warcraft, you'll probably be pretty interested in this little rumor. If it's true, it means I'll soon be playing World of Starcraft or World of Diablo. I wonder if they'll miss me at work.
Blizzard (the company that created Warcraft) has a well-earned reputation for excellence. They make games the way Pixar makes animated movies--extremely well. So if these rumors are true, it's actually a pretty big deal for the online gaming community. After all, World of Warcraft is likely the most popular (and most profitable) online game ever made.
Never Mess With Diablo
Kris sent me this one. It's pretty funny, but probably only if you either a) use instant messaging or b) play Diablo.
New Zelda
I ran into a video trailer for the upcoming Legend of Zelda title, The Twilight Princess. The Legend of Zelda is arguably the most successful game franchise of all time, and is certainly one of Nintendo's oldest and most venerable. There are still plenty of old-school NES players like myself who remember the original Zelda games (and some of the more recent ones, too) with great fondness.
The Japanese audience for Zelda games is apparently quite insane, but the North Amercian video trailer nonetheless makes The Twilight Princess look very, very good. And I suppose it will have to be, if it's going to have any chance of living up to the hype that precedes it.
Online Worlds
I ran into this very interesting article, which talks about how the imaginary items in popular online games often have monetary value in the real world. The main focus of the discussion is on how that monetary value ought to be taxed. This begs a second question: when can I start paying my taxes in gold pieces, magic weapons, and interstellar credits?
I always thought that these types of online games are called MMORPGs. But in the latest vernacular, they are apparently now known as MMOs. Massively Multiplayer Onlines? Very well, MMO it is.
Some friends and I have recently started playing an interesting new MMO called E.V.E. Online. I have to admit, it's pretty good, although not nearly as addictive as World of Warcraft. It's an outer space adventure, where you develop and build your own ships and organizations in a huge, multi-galaxy environment. We have plans to build our own corporation--Colin will be the CEO. I'm also dreaming of a lucrative late-game career as a space pirate, preying on space miners who fly around with valuable cargo and minimal defenses.
E.V.E.'s graphics are great, but the game departs from the more traditional games in the genre (Warcraft, Everquest, Asheron's Call, etc.) in a few big ways. The most important one (to me) is that it appears to be possible to play effectively in as few as 10-15 minutes a day. That's compared to a minimum 2 hours per day for most MMOs. Of course, you can play those other MMOs for short periods of time too, but then you don't get anywhere. Watching your friends rapidly outclass you because they can find 6 hours a day to play is no fun at all. Or so I've heard.
Another interesting difference between E.V.E. and the other MMOs is that progress in E.V.E. is measured using economics, rather than the aquisition of experience, powers, and magical treasures. The goal is to become rich (very rich), rather than to become the baddest monster-killing machine in the realm. So in that way, E.V.E. might be a little more like real life than most games.
Video Games: Not So Bad
Now I don't want to say that video games are a uniformly positive thing; if you play games obsessively, you're going to cause yourself problems. In fact, doing any activity obsessively will mess you up.
But cases like that are rare. I suspect that for most people the worst thing about gaming is the way it encourages them to be sedentary. Many people already suffer health problems because they get no exercise, so we really don't need yet another reason to stay on the couch.
Despite this, video games and gamers get too much bad press, so it's nice to see a respectable article that supports games as a Good Thing. Apparently, video games don't really transform you into an anti-social young shut-in, and they don't brainwash you into performing homicidal shooting sprees! That's good news, because I had begun to think I was just doing it wrong.
