Amber Night (rebooted)

§

Apparently making games is hard. And expensive. From Tobold’s blog:

The reader who goes by the symbols = # # = pointed out the news that Perpetual Entertainment, the company that cancelled Gods & Heroes to concentrate on Star Trek Online, liquidated its assets last month and is now under new ownership under the name Perpetual, LLC. A letter was distributed to the employees stating that STO would be redesigned to be “more casual”, and could possibly be financed by microtransactions instead of monthly fees.

Which brought me to F13 (via Tipa), which brought me to the MOGD interview with Daron Stinnett, Executive Producer of Star Trek Online. Stinnet seems to have seen the writing on the wall back in September:

So, when do I get my first ship? “Everyone gets their own ship,” said Daron, “Each player starts out with a small shuttle early on in the game, and then they graduate to successively larger ships as they gain in rank. They use that ship to get around the galaxy to fight against other enemy races, and to do missions for Starfleet on various planets. They will be able to group up with other players in space or on the ground.”

Which promted this spectacularly poignant F13 comment:

Remember that episode where Kirk, Bones, Spock, Sulu, and Scotty, flew their pack of ships to lower Neutral Zone, and camped some Romulans? Scotty forgot to repair, so the group broke up early. One of my favorites.

Stinnet on classes:

Star Trek Online will have classes similar to existing MMOGs, although they are called “professions”. I asked if they will be tightly focused and defined, or if they’ll have overlapping skills, allowing development of the quintessential “mage-tank”. Stinson responded, “We are going to make pretty well-defined categories for the professions.”

Stinnet on starships:

“The largest ships, the ones that players dream of walking around on and working with, those are the equivalent of “player cities.” It gives us a way to fill up these spaceships with real people instead of NPCs.” The alternative would have required people who control massive ships to sit around in a hub somewhere looking for enough people to man something of that scale. Not exactly fun; we all hate waiting.

(Yes, there’s simply no alternative to player cities starships. I mean, we could have gouged out your eyes with a potato peeler, but we chose to give you player cities starships instead.)

Stinnet on groups:

My next query was about group size; will three be as effective as eight? “It’s not something we’ve finalized yet, but we’re probably looking at a typical group size of five,” said Stinnett, going on to say “We’ll also have raids, called ‘Armadas’ and guilds, which we call ‘Fleets’.”

The game will also boast crafting, called “Space Crafting.” It’s like crafting, but get this: IT’S IN SPACE! Also, you can only use the transporter if you’re 20th level (called “levels”) or higher. At 50th level you get an epic transporter.

§

I doubt I’ll be posting again until next week, so if you celebrate Thanksgiving then please enjoy the holiday and be safe. If you’re nice I might be able to talk moxcamel into guest-posting about hot Russian women while I’m gone. It seems to have driven hot Russian women related Google hits through the roof, although I’m sure it’s also led to some disappointment post-link click.  Anyway, if you’re here because of hot Russian women, please don’t leave disappointed:

I guess I’m important spam-worthy enough to be on somebody’s press release list. From an email I just received from WOLFKING:

“Female gamers have an incredibly high set of standards when it comes to quality as well as design,” said Bob Costlow, director of sales, WOLFKING. “You can’t just paint something pink and say it’s for girls.

Which brings us to The Girl Gamer Warrior:

The Girl Gamer WARRIOR (MSRP: $34.99) features the same 54-key circular layout and USB 2.0 plug-and-play capability as the original WARRIOR, but now features a Flamingo Pink accent gradient on top of a full stealth black matte finish, with polished deep black audio keys. It offers all the functionality of the WARRIOR, but with a feminine touch.

And The Girl Gamer Trooper:

The Girl Gamer Gear TROOPER (MSRP: $39.99) also features the Flamingo Pink accent over a 6.4 megapixels-per-second laser mouse with a dpi range of 800-2200. The sense of style doesn’t compromise the high-end gaming mouse functionality gamers expect from the TROOPER.

To summarize:

Pink = Condescending.
Flamingo Pink = Total gamer grrl market dominance FTW!

Press release in its entirety is not currently up on the WOLFKING (lol caps) news page, but probably will be soon.

§

And other Dangers of “World of Warcraft.”

While the rest of us are content to just hate Bill Gates and Vista (in that order), Reverend Ken Hutcherson is gonna get bluescreen on their asses:

An advocate of a “biblical stance” against divorce and homosexuality, Mr Hutcherson, 55, is asking millions of evangelical activists, as well as Orthodox Jewish and other allies, to buy up Microsoft shares and demand a return to traditional values.

Microsoft, he declares, will be just the first company targeted in an escalation of the culture wars between evangelicals and corporate America.

No word on who the second company will be, but can I just say that if Reverend Ken can also get Vista to stop thrashing my disk every 30 seconds, then sign my ass up for the hating.¹

Still, I’m a bit skeptical. I can’t help but wonder if the good Rev has really thought this whole thing through:

“I told them that you need to work with me or we will put a firestorm on you like you have never seen in you life because I am your worst nightmare. I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me.”

See what I mean? It’s possible that he might be focused a little too strongly on the whole stock market angle, because when a black man has a “whole host of powerful white people” behind him, it’s usually less about the Merrill and more about the Lynch. And before you fire up the angry email generators, let me just clarify that neither myself nor the Reverend Ken is implying a correlation between teh gay and civil rights:

He rejects comparisons between the black civil rights movement and calls for gay rights.

“How many homosexuals have you ever seen had to ride on the back of a bus? I haven’t seen one. I know that many blacks have in the past.

“I’ve never seen an ex-black. Michael Jackson couldn’t even achieve that. But I’ve seen ex-gays. We minister to them every day. We talk to them about how to get out of that sin.”

Reverend Ken is, of course, absolutely correct in his analogy. Gays have never been targeted for abuse, discrimination, or…um…child molestation? Sorry, still not real clear on the whole Michael Jackson connection, but I’m sure it’s applicable on some level.

§

¹ I’ve got 8GB in my Mac Pro, so it’s not a memory thing.

The stoned dude on the upper level thought he was controlling it all.

Thanks Trin!

Update: I FINALLY figured out what was causing the problem with embedded YouTube clips.  So those of you reading from an RSS feed should be able to see the video now.  Sorry it took so long.

This must be stopped.  That is all.

By way of Broken Toys (which was by way of Jeff Freeman), an interesting take on what it means to be a writer for games:

Right now, for example, Bioware-Austin is hiring junior-level writers. I’m thinking about applying, because I have a lot of respect for Bioware’s consistent blend of strong action and strong stories. But I’ve read interviews lately in which the guys at Bioware-Canada (who are above Austin in the chain of command, I assume) say the only reason they didn’t write a homosexual romance story for Mass Effect is that they were constrained by time. As a faithful Catholic, I’d have to refuse if someone asked me to write a story condoning homosexual behavior (which is different than homosexual impulses). If it came to that, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was fired. Even if I wouldn’t be expected to write such a story, though, could I choose to be a part of an artistic work which includes advocacy against my own conscience?

As a writer (not for games), this isn’t something I’ve ever had to struggle with. Not because I’m some whorish keyboard for hire who will press keys in mostly grammatically correct combinations for insanely small sums of money—well not just because of that—but because I’ve never been in a position where I was paid to write something I considered personally aberrant. The bulk of my paid writing gigs have been technical. With very few exceptions, heavy machinery manufacturers don’t care much about the sexual orientation of their die-casting infrastructure, and it’s sort of a requirement of the job that anything electrical in nature runs positive to negative (or vicey-versey I forget) if you know what I mean and I think you do. My creative writings have all been my own, so they of course tend to reflect my own personal beliefs and outlook on life. That’s not a conscious decision, just more of a “write what you know” approach. Which would explain my current work on the history of swizzle sticks and other cocktail paraphernalia, tentatively titled “I Hope You’re Happy, They Cut Down The Rain Forests So You Could Have a Miniature Umbrella In Your Drink You Selfish Bastard.” It’s going to be a coffee table book.

It does seem dishonest to me that a writer would constrain themselves to what the Catholic Church thinks about certain issues. Based on this criteria, “hallower” (if that is his real name!) might want to disqualify himself from writing, playing, or being involved in the video game industry at all, given that back in January The Pope himself bloviated:

“Any trend to produce programs and products – including animated films and video games – which in the name of entertainment exalt violence and portray anti-social behavior or the trivialization of human sexuality is a perversion.”

Still, it’s an interesting mental exercise. As a card carrying fetus-hating tree-fornicating granola muncher, would I take a paying gig where my job was to write against my principles? Could I turn Dick Cheney into a sympathetic character who cuddles with puppies instead of shooting them in the face? Could I really bring myself to write a piece about Kirsten Dunst without including the adjectives “skanky,” “whorish,” or “stay-away-from-Toby-you-skanky-whorish!”? It would be a challenge. But unlike “hallower” (I don’t think it’s his real name) I like to think I’m open to the challenge of being “a part of an artistic work which includes advocacy against my own conscience.”

Are there some jobs I would absolutely refuse? Of course. I like to think I’d refuse a writing job from The Swiftboat Veterans for We Hate Cute Bunny Rabbits With Pancakes On Their Heads SO MUCH (or NAMBLA¹), but then again it really does make the pancake inedible, so are they really so wrong?

Fencing your imagination with hypothetical boundaries is the cognitive equivalent of an athlete refusing to lift a weight because it’s heavy. Sure you can grow and hone your craft by writing what’s comfortable and what supports your own ideals. Many established writers have never written outside their own biases and ideals and have been perfectly happy and even occasionally highly paid. But while many of these writers never left their own mental yards, it’s doubtful they erected fences to keep themselves from leaving.

§

¹The Daily Show writers are on strike. I’m just picking up the ball and running.

As seen at Penny Arcade, Bioware is looking for writers. (3rd post down) You don’t even have to be published or have worked in the industry. You just need to do a little work:

So yes, we’re shaking the usual trees and our HR folks are turning over
all the rocks they can think of but I had to go through over three
hundred qualified candidates to find the team I have now so a lot of
those trees have done already been shook. With that level of challenge
around finding writers, I want to throw out an open invitation for
anyone out there that thinks might be the strange combination of RPG
fiend and talented writer to grab a copy of Neverwinter Nights and start
putting together a writing sample. I don’t care if you can script, just
put three guys in a field and attach conversations to them. Make the
plot compelling, write the NPCs as real people who could exist in a
believable world even if the PC wasn’t there, give me an interesting
choice or two and you’re done — easily something can be done over a
weekend and there’s a ton of great community support online if you’re
really tech deficient.

Anyone out there want to write for the game company with three of the top five rated RPGs of all time on their biggest project ever?

Head here: BioWare Jobs