Seán Bulger

Remove Distractions from your Writing and Stay Focused

Seán — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 04:47:06 +0000

Is this really that relevant to your interests?

One thing that I learned pretty quickly when beginning this little adventure of mine in novel writing is that keeping your focus while writing can be very difficult. It is easy to just open a web browser for “research” and find yourself without a single word written three hours later, while you’ve been navigating the vast labyrinth of Wikipedia, wondering how you landed on an article about the Al-Marrakushi Crater when you were researching for your epic fantasy novel.

It is easy to get distracted by technology. Twitter, Facebook, Instant Messengers, the Internet, SMS, etc… are pretty much your enemy. I might be a Community Manager by day, but by night, these become my villains. Luckily, I’ve picked up a few tricks to help do battle against them.

Probably the easiest thing you could do would be to find a nice quiet place, a pad of paper, and a pencil. However, the very concept of writing by hand is a foreign and frightening thing to me, and simply isn’t going to happen. Instead, I’ve had to block out my distractions in other ways.

I have two monitors. The simple thing for me to do, is to open my writing application and simply shut down my other monitor. Since I usually keep most of my distractions on that monitor, it helps a fair bit. It doesn’t help entirely though, and I need to make certain that my primary monitor is as distraction-free as possible.

Be as boring as you can be.

To that end, I suggest using minimal text programs, and specifically ones that are designed for distraction-free writing. These are basically programs that are little more than full-screened text editors with a limited amount of options. They prevent you from fussing over settings and formatting too much, while also restricting you from seeing anything on your monitor, the text you have entered. This has been a blessing.

It is so easy for me to become distracted by any number of things on my computer. However, when all I have access to is a big black screen with some orange text, I write a few thousand words in a night while thinking of nothing but the work itself.

I personally use an application called FocusWriter, which I’ve come to enjoy simply because it is a pretty solid distraction-free editor, while letting me save files in an .RTF format. That means they’re simple to turn into a .doc(x) if I need to, and I can still add in some formatting, like italics. However, this is only one of a variety of programs available across a bunch of different platforms. If you’re thinking of writing to any extent – and that includes blogging! – but you find it hard to keep focused on your work, I recommend looking into one of these programs.

Scheduling Time to Keep Focused on Writing, or Any Side Project

Seán — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:21:45 +0000

One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with in the past when it came to writing has been actually sticking to it. That is to say, the hardest part of writing was actually making myself write. I think I covered that in some extent in my last post. However, despite what one may conclude from that write up, I did not overcome the problem by simply deciding in some resolute way that “Yes, I will now write a lot!” and that was the answer. Life doesn’t quite work that way.

Rather, what that did was inspire me to discover some ways that would help me keep myself focused on my writing. One of the earliest things that I did was to simply set myself a daily goal so that I would require myself to write a certain amount of words per day. This worked out pretty well at first, actually. I started with, what I considered to be, lower numbers. I had to write 1,000 words a day, with 1,500 on weekends. This eventually adapted to a flat 1,500 words every day. Some days I’d write more, other days I wouldn’t quite write as much, but I’d just find myself at a very good stopping point, and I’d go with it. It worked fine and kept me turning out some work on a daily basis, which is what I was going for.

The problem was pretty simple though. I had no particular time set aside for writing, and while that did not matter at first, it eventually started to slide later and later into the day, as it became increasly easy to find some things to distract myself with. It became very clear that this would not work. Not only did I find my writing time getting neglected further back into the evening, I also began to feel pretty guilty about partaking in other things that I like, which isn’t good either. We all need downtime doing other things too, after all.

So, I decided to scrap the system. It wasn’t working quite how I wanted, so I decided to go with something else. I was actually inspired by this particular little podcast, and while I’ve never been a huge Kevin J. Anderson fan, I think he made some great points: setting a time schedule, and sticking to it, is down right essential.

What I did was to lay out a very specific timetable for my writing. From 7pm CST to 9pm CST, I write. This is my writing time, where I focus on nothing but writing. I ignore any other distractions, I put aside anything that would take me away from writing, and I just focus myself entirely on the work itself.

Now, two hours is actually more time than I was putting in before. I type pretty quickly and my mind moves at a speed that is often too fast for its own good. So, I was turning out 1500 words in around an hour and a half, or sometimes an hour and fourty-five minutes. Setting a tim schedule for two hours, I laid down 3200 words, even with some allergies annoying the hell out of me.

I was more focused on it, I wasn’t worry about it getting too late, or it cutting into my time doing anything else. I found myself with an evening still wide open for me to do other things, without dumping a load of writing in the middle of it, instead of at the beginning. I felt relaxed while writing, and it was a great experience.

Write, or I shoot!

Now, I am making a few caveats. Every week I nerd it up and play some tabletop RPGs over Skype with my old RPG group from college – it is basically how we stay in touch for the most part, these days. That’ll run through my writing time. So, on Wednesdays, I’ll write later in the evening after we’ve finished. Also, since one of my big goals has been for writing to not kill off my poor social life, if people want to go out and have dinner, or what not, I’ll still do that. Again, I’ll just adjust as necessary.

Doing that can be a slippery slope, but there are always going to be things in life that we have to remain flexible for. The important thing is knowing what we can be flexible with, and what we cannot. Basically, I don’t want to scare away all my friends by never being seen by them again, because I’m writing during the main times we’d be hanging out. However, just because I feel like watching the next episode of Torchwood on Netflix, doesn’t mean that I’m going to. Only after my writing time is over with.

This is pretty much straight forward advice that I imagine most of us are perfectly aware of already. However, as I found in my own case, sometimes getting reminded of the little obvious things that can make our life better can inspire us to actually make use of them. This is also definitely not something restricted to writing. After all, I know a lot of people who complain that they’d love to draw and do more art, but they just simply can’t make themselves do it (but they probably could).

Why the Hell am I Writing a Book?

Seán — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 01:59:32 +0000

I’ve always had a very particular motivation when it came to this website, ever since the day it was first created. Really, if we track the history of my website as long as it has run under the EmergentFuture.com domain (and now SeanBulger.com) it has always had a very specific purpose. It was a portfolio. It was a place to house my resume and a place for me to put up work that I had done while I was in my later years of college before I entered into a professional career. The blog aspect of it was carefully chosen as a way for me to highlight myself even more. Given that I wanted to break into the game industry, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I wrote primarily about gaming. As time went on and I realized I was primarily interested in community management, it should be even less of a shock that topics related to that entered into my array of blog categories. Very few times have I strayed from that, and never without a real intent. My time living in Japan, for example, was too important in my life to not highlight a bit in the blog, more so because I believe that it would help me get a job (and I believe that it very much did). My interest in technological developments were also not very far off the path either. Given all of that, once I did get myself a job working in community management, it shouldn’t be surprising that this site has largely died.

It isn’t an uncommon story. I’ve had talks with numerous friends who have run blogs before, and they often turn out the same way. They land a professional career and they lose interest in the site. Once they lose their jobs, they become more active online once again. Part of it no doubt has to do with the simple fact that maintaining a blog can actually take a pretty significant amount of time, and the unemployed tend to have a little bit extra of that to spare. However, a lot of it has to do with the simple fact that a sizable segment of blogs are written for the same reasons as this site has existed. The people maintaining them no doubt enjoy running the site, and in many cases, the fact that they’re doing it for professional reasons is likely more in the back of their mind. I would have probably admitted to running this one for professional reasons in the past, but I would have always immediately followed up with a laundry list of other reasons.

I’ve attempted to return to this site on a number of occasions, but they always fall flat. I’ve often asked myself why that happens to be. Guilt has always been my prime suspect, and I’m pretty sure that has played a significant role. I hate leaving this site empty. One of the biggest reasons I changed the home page of the site to a profile page is simply because I hate the idea of it not having any real use. A profile page lets people know where they can find me spouting off my various opinions, that I am prone enough to do, even if I don’t find myself doing it here anymore. However, it has occurred to me that it isn’t the only thing that has fueled those prior attempts.

Guilt can be a powerful motivator. I walk a few miles nearly every day now, and eat healthier and in smaller portions, because I feel guilty I put on weight since I moved to Texas. Of course, guilt isn’t the only motivation either. The history of heart problems and high cholesterol running in my family, and my grandfather dying at a (relatively) young age because of heart failure, certainly are powerful motivators as well. My desire to live a long time, simply to watch in amazement at the development of humanity and society turns those motivations into something meaningful. I want to live a long time because I see a very solid reason in doing so, and I feel guilty that I’ve put on weight as it is counter-productive in my ultimate goals. Guilt isn’t the only motivating force, and I believe guilt really can’t be the only motivator. There has to be something there to cause the feeling of guilt.

So, I feel guilty about not writing here. Why? Well, there are several reasons. For one, I feel guilty because I had a few regular readers before. At least, I had people subscribed to my blog feed anyhow, regardless of how much they may have actually looked at the site. So, I feel guilty because they were expecting content from me and never getting it. I mean, I went into community management for a reason, after all. However, that isn’t the only thing. The other reason that I feel guilty about not writing here, is because I’m denying myself one of my greatest pleasures: writing.

I’ve enjoyed writing for a long time. I got into reading novels when I was in my later years of elementary school, and I partly attribute my alteration from an average-grade student in elementary school, to a All As, with a few Bs student in Junior High and High School, primarily to reading. I could probably get into why I do, but this article is already doomed to rambling enough as is. I was inspired by reading, and I began to write short fiction. I never did anything with them, of course, and they were mostly all quite terrible as anyone beginning to write finds their work – more so in retrospect, when you’ve learned a bit more. (And I still suck, but that’s beside the point).

More than once in my life, I’ve lost sight of my love of writing. In fact, I’ve lost sight of it a lot. It took me changing my major in college twice before I got into something related to writing. That got me into technical writing, which I found myself absorbed in. You see, it isn’t just writing fiction that I enjoy, it is just working with language in general. Needless to say, Technical Writing uses language in different ways than other sorts of writing, and that made it very fun. I also took courses on Editing, Journalism, Creative Writing, and other forms of writing as well. In many ways, until I wrote this very paragraph, I’ve barely even considered how much training I’ve had in the art. It sort of disturbs me that I’ve not done more with it.

I spent a number of years volunteering my time in game media, where I found myself drafting articles, and later on, doing game reviews (for a not-volunteer-but-starving-artist payment). In a lot of ways, I started to care about drafting articles more than I did about the games I was writing about. That was even more true when I was covering some eleven or so MMOs for WarCry. When I left, I tended to start paying more attention to this blog to better get my “fix” so to speak. Even now, I’m happily enjoying a bit of time blogging for my current job, even if that has not been the primary focus of it.

Writing to me, however, has always come in waves of inspiration. I sometimes go through periods where I’ll write a few dozen articles for a few months here, as some readers may well know, and then drop off of the world for some months more. My creative writing has historically been much the same. I will draft up a few short stories, and then never put the proverbial pen to the proverbial paper again for a very long time.

I hate that. It seriously bugs me. There are a lot of little issues I have regarding myself that I’m unhappy with, as everyone does (and many things I’m very happy about too!), but the one thing that annoys me the most is my denial of my favorite art form. The main problem is the same problem that has kept me from doing plenty of things in my life: I’ve lacked the self-motivation to just damn well do it. I get distracted by silly, mundane things that add little to my life that, in all honestly, I gain far less enjoyment from. They pass time, but ultimately leave me with an empty feeling. Time spent, nothing gained.

I know when I apply myself I can easily accomplish great things. I’ve proven this plenty of times. Not only did I decide one day “Hey, lets throw away everything I’m use to and go live in Japan for a year and see what happens,” I also managed to effectively get my dream job right out of college. Oh, I also moved across the country to Austin, Texas, a place I had never been before, just to do it. Oh, I also moved during the recession, with a pretty small amount of funds, and just pure determination to get me by. It worked.

Yet, I couldn’t get myself to write.

This website went quiet, my creative writing died off largely, and I had no where else to really write articles, aside from my job occasionally. I was able to be so determined about getting a job, because I felt a strong passion for it and I had a very compelling reason to do it: I needed to be successful in life to live well. That was pretty straight forward. I had passion for it, and I found the motivation to apply that passion. That resulted in great things happening for me.

I have long had a passion for writing. Recently, I was able to uncover a pretty compelling reason to do more of it.

So, why am I spending the time to write up this article? Why have I been holding myself to a pretty strict minimum of writing every day this year? Why am I enjoying every minute of it, despite the work, the effort, and difficulty inherent in writing? Why am I actually attempting to write a full length, 100 – 150k word novel?

Because I damn well want to.

I came to realize that I can’t think of a better reason to do anything I care about.

CCP Reaches New Heights. By Climbing a Mountain. For Real.

Seán — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:50:17 +0000

You know how I said that I didn’t want to report gaming news on this blog, despite the fact that it is what I mostly want to write about? Yeah. Screw that. Why keep a blog (blarg) if I’m not writing about what I enjoy?

CCP Stakes Claim to a Kilimanjaro

CCP developers Solomon, Diagoras, and Punkturis were also not willing to let themselves be kept down. Just they were looking to fight back against gravity by climbing to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is the highest point in the African continent. Frankly, anyone who climbs a mountain with a name that sounds like “Kill-a-man” deserves an awful lot of props.

This is, honestly, quite a feat. That is even more true more so considering that most game developers I know won’t even go out to parties during GDC much less scale a mountain. Still, there are always those occasional few that break the mold and show the world that us geeks can be out-going and althetic (even if it isn’t most of us) by practicing aviation, playing rugby, climbing a mountain, or even going (back?) into space. CCP themselves seem like a fairly adventurous company at that. While out at the Game Developers Conference this year, I noticed they had a photo album on one of their tables that showed off one of CCP’s company trips. The destination? Morocco.

That and free beer. I checked that out, too.

What is it with Game Journalism?

Seán — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:42:02 +0000

No, no, this isn’t a rant about journalists, I’m sorry to disappoint. Really, it shouldn’t be considering it is where I “got my start” so to speak. In fact, the very first thing I ever did related to the game industry was to work as a site manager for the WarCry Network when they were still focused on network sites. I ran their Vanguard site and later on I also picked up the EVE Online one as well. Eventually though, the WarCry Network changed format and mostly dropped the network sites for individual games. They focused on the main hub site while the network sites themselves became more like categories, showing news only about specific games. Over all, it became exactly like its sister site, The Escapist, which ended up being vastly more popular than WarCry (since it already was what WarCry started to become), although it is still around and kicking just fine with the MMO-focus.

I stuck with WarCry for a good while and became a news reporter for them. I covered something like 10 or 11 MMOs, and quite a few major ones at that. I also picked up a column that revolved around game design and online communities. Technically, it was similar to what I did on the Vanguard and EVE sites overall, save I didn’t have to worry about managing forums, drawing in new readers, holding contests, etc… etc… It was less responsibilities, but also a much, much broader scope. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, too. While I didn’t enjoy my stint as a game reviewer over at MMORPG.com very much – not because of the site, but simply because it drained the enjoyment out of playing games – it was still nice to get back into game media. That was even more true, given the fairly dull day-job that I had at the time.

I’ve found that game journalism has a strange sort of appeal to me, and before I joined on with Bigfoot Networks, I was actually considering trying to make a full career of it. While I love being a Community Manager, and I actually prefer it, I think game journalism will always have that draw in it. I really liked covering news for a wide variety of games. I also really liked attending conferences and tradeshows, and holding interviews with game studios and developers. It was a blast.

In a way, it is actually why I have such a hard time keeping the blog updated with new posts. What I find myself really wanting to post about is… well, game news, but I don’t really want this site to focus on that. There are plenty of great places to go if you just want to find out about what’s new in gaming already, after all.

… And no, there was really no point to this article. Thank you for wasting five minutes of your life here. Please do so again!

GDC 2010: Coming Full Circle, but With a New View

Seán — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:17:45 +0000

Shortly before midnight yesterday I stumbled back into my apartment after taking a flight from San Fransisco back to Austin. I was in California, of course, for the Game Developers Conference, one of the largest events in the world for the game industry. It wasn’t my first time at GDC since I had attended it in 2007, but much like the first visit, I consider it to have been a pretty profound trip.

GDC is now something akin to a marker for me. While the first industry event I ever attended was E3, it was at GDC that I feel I found my true calling. I knew I wanted to get into the industry, but I just didn’t know where it was that I fit. I didn’t like programming overly much, I wasn’t a great artist, and design wasn’t something you just waltzed into – nor was I sure I wanted to dance that dance. However, I attended a few panels on community management and social gaming, and everything became clear.

Since that time I graduated from college and actually got myself a career in community management and social media. During the first year of this job, I found myself back at where I felt it all started: at GDC. This time though, I wasn’t learning about what I wanted to do with my life, but instead I was actually living my dream. That was an accomplishment that felt like none other.

This year I wasn’t attending any actual sessions, but instead I ran a booth. Considering I’ve been to E3 as media and GDC as a student, actually working the show and running a booth was a totally different experience. Instead of holding interviews, I was the one answering questions. Instead of learning about every company I could find (well, I had plenty of time to walk the expo floor, so I did that too), I was doing the informing. It was different, and it was an awful lot of fun. I met a ton of very cool people and I am absolutely looking forward to the next show.

I Really Have No Idea What I Want in an MMO

Seán — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:42:58 +0000

Sometimes I really do wonder if I could ever find an MMO that would truly please me, that would really capture my ideal, and would engross me for years on end. I’ve played an awful lot of MMOs out there, partly because none of them have ever really captured me like that, even though I find many of them to be very solid, good, fun games. Yet, I think that what I want from an MMO is infinitely too contradictory for me to ever get something ideal.

What do I mean by contradictory? Well, here are just a few examples:

I want large, open, living, breathing worlds that lets me set my own goals.

But I guess I don’t. I like having some sort of a goal to work towards, as much as I’d really like to say that the journey is what I find fun. And, really, I think that is a very truthful statement, but without some sort of a goal, I seem to be unwilling to go out and have fun for the sake of having fun. Yet, if I’m allowed to choose my own goals, I have a very difficult time doing so. That’s why I never enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies much, because I could never figure out what I wanted to do.

I want players to be the ones that I’m working with and against to change the world, and share a dynamic setting that is far from dull and static.

But I guess not. EVE Online is a fantastic game that I highly recommend, and as much as I love the basic idea of the game, it has real issues for me. One of the biggest is the ‘atmosphere’ of the game. It is set in cold, harsh, uncompromising, and uncaring space: exactly like the game itself. Even when I am teamed up with with other players, there is always the fear of betrayal, and there is always the constant undefined conflicts. While it is very interesting, I know deep down I prefer a more cooperative environment.

Playing off both of those combined, I would like to see PvP that is more realistic and open, instead of artificial scenarios.

But I know that isn’t true. On some intellectual level, yes, I love the idea of open PvP. Yet, similar to the reasons above, I prefer a more cooperative environment. More importantly, it is extremely rare for any open world PvP fight to be anything remotely fair. I prefer my fights to be fair and fun, and not one-sided.

I want to have a high level of interactivity and dependency on other players.

But I guess not to the extent I use to think, at the very least. I like soloing often enough, simply because I like to play much more casually these days. I love grouping all the same, but I actually have never cared for raids. Yet, if I’m mostly concerned with playing in small (although frequently changing) groups of people, I almost question why I play MMOs to begin with. Ultimately, I guess what I mostly want is to have some sort of meta-game-esque thing that I’m working on with other players. For example, building a city in Star Wars Galaxies was pretty cool.

I would like to see MMOs incorporate more story into them.

Which… yeah, that one is pretty much true. Yet, it seems like most MMOs that try to do that do it very wrong. I don’t want to be the lone hero – because I know that a few thousand other people also just rescued the princess and defeated the big-bad-dude. Ultimately, I want a story that makes me feel like I am among the heroes, and the other heroes are the players – and I don’t want to feel like every accomplishment I make in the game is what everyone else has done as well, as near-impossible a it is to avoid that. Basically, I don’t want to be the lone hero, but I don’t want to be just some other random person.

Ultimately…

I want a game that is a themepark, so it can give me some sort of a goal, but is also an open world, and gives me the freedom to go out and do what I want. It should have open and more realistic PvP, but PvP that isn’t one-sided and unfair. I want to be heavily tied into playing with other people and have what they do affect me in a way that makes me feel like I am playing a game with thousands of people instead of a single-player game – but I should be able to do things on my own as much as I want. I would like to see an MMO with a real story, but one that doesn’t revolve around just me. It should make me feel like I am participating in it with many people, and in a way that still makes me feel like I am impacting things.

So, basically, I want something similar to this:

All styles of games, be they sandbox, themepark, open pvp, battlegrounds, or whatever, they all have problems. I idealize open, sandbox worlds, but I’ve never played one that I actually liked. Again, I love EVE on an intellectual level, but I know it isn’t for me. I think themepark worlds are pretty dull and far from an ideal, but I’ve spent more time playing them than sandboxes, and I’ve enjoyed some of them quite a bit. However, I always get bored with them rather quickly.

I imagine I’m not all that alone in my desire for this game of great contradiction, but I also don’t think that it is really feasible to create something like it. The only contradictory part that I think could really be fixed is the story one, and maybe the player interaction one. Neither would be easy to do.

How to Develop a Free-to-Play MMO Model that isn’t Irritating

Seán — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:17:23 +0000

Back in 2007, there was an awful lot of talk about how Free-to-Play games with microtransactions were not just interesting, but also a very viable direction to take. At the time, I did not disagree with this, and I haven’t been surprised to see more and more games coming out using this model. However, while I agreed with it from a developer standpoint, I was very skeptical about playing games that relied largely on microtransactions, partly for the reasons that make them so attractive for developers. After playing a few of them, my opinion hadn’t exactly improved much either, although there are a few examples of good microtransaction systems.

When it comes down to it, many Free-to-Play games are not well designed for the consumer. You can probably see that in games like Allods, which despite apparently being a very solid MMO, has been taking a lot of flack because of their microtransactions. I think this isn’t because people aren’t unwilling to pay, but rather because people aren’t willing to pay for certain things.

Don’t charge for small things that people don’t value beyond the fact that they make the game more convenient, playable, or are considered required by the player-base.

Ultimately, a lot of Free-to-Play games charge for the wrong things. That is to say, they charge for things that the player-base considers to be ‘required’ to play the game, such as the ability to get rid of massive stat-loss from death or extra bag space in Allods (sorry to keep picking on you guys, but you’re timely!).

Bags usually aren't awesome enough to charge for.

Honestly, I don’t think a bag is worth ten cents. It is just a bag. Heck, I have a hard time spending money on a bag in real life, much less a virtual one. That isn’t something that people value. It also isn’t something that adds to the game experience. Rather, it is something that they feel they need to buy to keep playing. It is a requirement to buy, not a fun thing that enhances their experience.

While many games that have items like these in their cash shops, they do tend to provide ways to get these items using in-game means. The in-game means are often gruelingly difficult to actually do. I understand why that is the case, of course. If it is just as easy to grab the item in-game as it would be to pay for it, then certainly no one would pay for it. But this highlights the other flaw:

The purpose behind games are for them to be fun and enjoyable. Your core game, without any add-ons, needs to be that. If your game is free-to-play, I shouldn’t have to engage in microtrasactions to enjoy it.

That might seem extremely unfair to the developer – and it is! A lot of work goes into creating a very polished, good, and fun game. However, I’m only going to drop money down on a game that I actually like and find enjoyable. If I have to keep shelling out real cash for upgrades that keep my character viable, I am probably not going to have fun with the core game, so I am less likely to keep playing.

I do think that there are ways to implement microtransactions correctly. While I haven’t spent overly long playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, and while there are flaws, I think part of their cash shop is a good example of Doing It Right. While they still have items that you can buy which buff your character somehow, generally speaking, their core game experience is playable and fairly fun.

While players shouldn’t have to pay to enjoy your game, they should pay for things that extend and broaden their enjoyment of the game.

Dungeons and Dragons Online provides a decent core experience. You have a character that can be all but two of the available classes and races. The things you cant be aren’t really overpowered. You can play through a fairly decent amount of quests and adventures that are supplied to you, free of charge, when you first install the game. You can, if you want, live off of that content and nothing else – although you will probably repeat dungeons often enough for lack of content, but they are, in theory, designed to be fun enough that you can repeat them. That’s fine, and I can live with that.

Wait, why would I want to pay to be like this guy?

However, if I’m a little bored of the content, I can buy a new module. A new module features new quest lines, new things to fight, new traps to work past, and new puzzles to solve. It is, effectively, a mini-expansion at a mini-price. I already pay for expansions to subscription-based MMOs, and I have a hard time saying that extra content isn’t worth money. It is obvious to me that someone took the time to craft dungeons and write plots, and it gives me a few more hours of fun times in the game. A “+5 Longsword of Ass Kicking” on the other hand may sound cool, but it doesn’t give me anything new to experience after I’ve worn out the content of the game. Why would I waste money on that?

Players need to be able to decide when they want to spend their cash on their own terms. You shouldn’t be deciding that for them. Let the players have as much control as possible.

You know it sounds like an epic adventure.

When I reach level 20 I don’t want to feel required to buy the “Bag of Carrying More Worthless Junk”, because more things drop from mobs at that level, and I’m expected to carry around a boat-load more stuff than I did a few levels before. However, I’m totally cool with purchasing the “Adventure Through the Grue Infested Caves of Darkness” adventure pack because I like the sound of it and I’d rather like to play through it. I don’t have to, but it sounds, well, fun. That’s the point of gaming after all, right? The freedom to decide when to drop my cash is important to me. Sometimes I can afford it, and other times I can’t. I also like the ability to choose what content I want to buy, and what content I don’t want to buy. I can tailor the game to my needs – which is actually really unique to Free-to-Play models.

The things you sell should encourage you to keep providing new content to your players.

It takes no time at all to create that “+5 Longsword of Ass Kicking” but it does take a while to create a new set of dungeons and quests. When you’re selling the latter, you’ll be encouraged to invest the time and effort to actually create new content for the community. When you’re doing the former, you have much less motivation to do so. Heck, I’ve played a ton of MMOs with subscription fees – which partly exist to fund live teams to keep producing new content – only to get nothing out of them until a $30 or $40 expansion comes around.

While I’m certain this isn’t a complete list, these are certainly key things that I would like to see future Free-to-Play MMOs work to implement. Also, this isn’t to suggest that Allods is a bad game, or that DDO is some sort of gaming Messiah (it isn’t). Rather, the former is just one of many games that I don’t think handle microtransactions correctly, while the latter is an example of a game that partly does it right – and partly does the same stuff that every other game seems to.

Serving up new adventure packs isn’t necessarily the end-all-be-all, but is rather one idea that I think works pretty well. What are some other ideas? Well, I’ll worry about coming up with them if someone pays me to do so. But I like being a community manager, so you’ll have to figure that out yourselves!

Rise From Your Grave! Heatwave Revives Gods and Heroes

Seán — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:33:56 +0000

You may recognize the name Gods and Heroes from a few years back. It was a game being developed by Perpetual Entertainment, the studio that was also developing Star Trek Online before they closed their doors. Whenever a studio closes, it is always a sad. Developers find themselves out of work, and the games that they were making are often lost to the void. Of course, Star Trek Online was saved from oblivion by Crytpic, and now it appears that Gods and Heroes, a game that was literally weeks away from going live when the company folded, has been revived by a local Austin studio, Heatwave Interactive.

Gods and Heroes in action

Gods and Heroes was a pretty interesting sounding game, and it had more than a few eyes of potential players locked onto it. While its return from the dead may indicate it, it actually had nothing to do with the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, but instead was a game set in ancient Rome that blended both historical enemies and mythological creatures. It was also interesting in that it focused on the players not just controlling their own characters, but also up to four ‘minions’ as well, which is similar to what we see in Star Trek Online now.

Of course, Gods and Heroes likely had some technical issues that Heatwave will have to work out, and there will also be the question of how much they will decide to change the game to better meet the current market, such as providing a graphics update, or other changes. Interestingly enough though, they’ve actually gotten hold of the license, as well as all of the work done on the game so far, so it is possible they may not stray too far.

While there were plenty of jokes about how Perpetual Entertainment didn’t exactly live up to its name when it folded, I find myself starting to disagree. While the studio may have closed, both projects have managed to live on now. It will be interesting to see how this one develops, and it is also just nice to see another MMO being worked on out here in Austin.

(Also, I respect anyone who gets the reference in the title of this post.)

Cheyenne Mountain Files for Bankruptcy

Seán — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:54:02 +0000

As much as I’d hate for it to seem like I’m coming out of blargging-retirement just to talk about how Stargate: Resistance and Stargate Worlds developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is filing for Chapter 11, and it really is more of a coincidence than anything, I practically feel required to talk about this one.

I’ve been skeptical about Stargate Worlds ever since I first heard about it. I enjoy Stargate. It was a fun movie, followed by a very fun show, and then followed by two other shows of varying quality. By no means have I wanted to see the game fail, but I’ve never really felt that Stargate had the right set up for an MMO. When Cheyenne Mountain reportedly ceased paying their employees, I became even more skeptical. Then there was the whole lawsuit thing over unpaid bills, and… well, CME’s history hasn’t been smooth so far.

Now it appears that they are filing for bankruptcy, which is usually not a good sign. That said, the company has stated that they are restructuring and the development of both of their games will not halt.

That means we might have a chance to step through the gate in spite of this.

Maybe.