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You might look into Cel Damage. Third person driving shooter. Very Cartoonish, quite humorous. Panned by the critics, but lots of fun.

Actually, SimCity 4 lets you place your Sims in neighborhoods in your city.

/free-plug

"Dost thou have any idea of the number of dead people and creatures there are? I thought not. The dead of the ages are mine to summon and control. The graves of beloved ancestors will spew forth their contents into an army. A special treat for the living, mine undead monsters will be. Imagine a skeletal dragon that cannot be killed. Consider a cabal of everliving mages eternally enthralled to me. And the most beautiful part of my plot is that, as the living die in these battles, and they will die, they will swell the ranks of the undead host. I will rule supreme - a world of the dead!"

- Horance the Liche in Ultima VII: The Black Gate

Sims Proposals

Here are some proposals and documents I've written, describing the work I've done and projects I've proposed with The Sims character animation system, plug-in objects and tools. After four years, a great deal of useful information has been reverse-engineered by independent third-party developers and open source projects like The Sims Technical Library. I hope these ideas will inspire more tool developers to contribute their programming skills to the Sims community.

Will Wright's original vision was enabling creative storytelling, by allowing players to add their own characters and objects to the game, and encouraging developers to program new objects and create tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic. Before The Sims was even released, Luc Barthelet sewed the seeds of its success by providing fans with content and tools like SimShow, so they could start making web sites and character skins. By the time it was released, you could already download a wide range of skins from many different web sites!

Four years later, Sims Object hackers have taken it much further than anyone ever imagined. A third-party tool called "iffpencil 2" has taken the place of Edith (Maxis's visual Sims object programming environment) in the Sims object hacking community.

One mind-blowing example is Slice City, which is an amazing game within a game: SimCity within The Sims! Your Sims can walk around and interact with a live, growing city like a Lilliputian scene from Gulliver's Travels. I'm not making this up: this actually runs INSIDE The Sims, and is ingeniously implemented by plug-in objects!

You start with a power plant, which gradually grows a whole city populated by swarms of insect-sized people. As the city grows, it spawns new objects including buildings (reprogrammed houseplants that the gardener still waters), crowds of people (reprogrammed cockroaches that you can still stomp to death), parks, marinas and monuments. You can go into build mode and rearrange them however you like, place roads (that get extremely busy at rush hour), and interact with the buildings through pie menus in play mode. There's even a tornado that comes through and knocks down your buildings. And you can download add-ons and pre-made cities!

Nothing like SimSlice was in the original design plan, but Will Wright credits all the creative players as the primary reason The Sims has become the #1 selling game of all time.

I believe the starkly contrasting failure of The Sims Online has a lot to do with the fact that it doesn't support player created content like the original Sims. One of the fundamental reasons that original Sims players have been disappointed with The Sims Online, is that Maxis never executed on the original plan to let online players upload and exchange their own skins and objects.

In order to help more fully realize Will's original plan, I wrote these proposals and documents to support the community of Sims artists, tool developers and object programmers like Bil Simser, Judson Hudson, Michael Watson, Rick Halle, Tom van Dijk

looking for free games? or retail games($)?
Me, personally, I've been playing Battlefield 1942, which just got Punkbuster added to it. Then there's the free Desert Combat mod for it. Also been playing Call of Duty. And Battlefield : Vietnam should be out within the next month or so.

As for free... How about America's Army? I haven't played it in a long time, but I loved it when i did play it. There's also Wolfenstein : Enemy Territory.

Games that appeal to nerds are already being ported. To take over the desktop requires "The Sims" and children's games.

If your child must run MSWindows for Reader Rabbit and Barbie, then you are stuck with MSWindows on at least one computer. Unless you are a nerd, you will not want more than one OS in the house.

"The Sims" is "The #1 best selling game of all time" according to the website. I know people (mostly women) who have only played "The Sims" and versions of Solitaire. Spider Solitaire may be the killer app for WinXP, like Solitaire was for Win3.1. OK, maybe MSWord had something to do with it. But XP only has Spider, so it needs to be enough.

Make the women and children happy and the men will follow.

The good part is that neither "The Sims" nor any children's games require "massive amounts of time and money".

Quake Mods aren't modular, they're monolithic. The level of granularity is so coarse, that designers need to perform a huge amount of tedious work, in order to make a good one. And you can only experience on at a time, so if you have 100 good mods, they don't synergistically add to each other's value.

Sims objects and characters are modular mods, so they plug together into a simulated environment and interact with each other. You can take objects and characters created by many different designers, and compose them together with stuff you created yourself, into your own higher level, monolithic "mod" (a family living in a house).

Sims object and character creators don't have to worry about achieving "balance" -- that's the fun part of the game that the players do for themselves, in Build and Buy mode.

Achieving balance is the hard part of making successful Quake mods. But achieving balance is the fun part of playing The Sims. This approach lifts the burden of achieving balance from the shoulders of mod designers, and repackages it as entertainment for players.

Games that support truly modular mods like Sims objects and characters, enable mod designers to create interesting, expressive, stand-alone objects that players love to plug together (and value enough that they'll pay for downloading), at a more prolific, finer level of granularity than monolithic game mods like Quake.

Modular mods work together at many different levels, and they're open-ended, so there's never any end to what you can do with them.

The Palm House, Kew Gardens is a great example how many different artists, designers, historians and botanists have colaborated together at different levels, to create an accurate representation of the Royal Botanical Garden, Kew.

With the permission of the Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this theme celebrates the wonders of not only the Palm House, but the Temperate House, Dome and Formal Gardens of Kew in this prestigious time of it gaining World Heritage Status. You can read more about this important event here.

This exemplary historical recreation is not just the end-product of many people's colaboration, but actually a contributing source in a huge distributed feedback loop:

You can download the Royal Botanic Gardens, plug the lot into your game, move your own family in, furnish it however you like, rearrange the landscape and architecture, deconstruct and reassemble it again with your own collection of objects, direct the drama as it unfolds, take pictures with the built-in camera, write stories in your scrapbook, and publish your family and their story on The Sims Exchange, to share with other players, to download and play with all over again.

-Don

The Sims "level designer" (i.e. the architectural tools for editing your house, buying and placing objects) are built into the game, which makes it possible for 8-year-old kids to easily "design levels".

But there's a lot more to customizing and creating you own game than "level design". The Sims also lets you design your own characters and objects, plug them together to tell stories, and even publish the stories online.

The Sims' storytelling ability hinges on the player's ability to add their own characters (skins) and scenery (objects) into the set, to illustrate whatever stories they want to tell.

Thanks to player created content, The Sims becomes more like the open-ended Perky Pat layouts in Philip K Dick's book, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic not only make it possible for characters to customize the game to tell their own stories, but also share their creations with other players, and download objects from the web to play in their own games.

High quality subscription web sites like SimFreaks actually pay talented artists to create beautiful sets of themed objects, like the Christmas Gingerbread House set.

Some experienced artists are generous enough to freely teach other Sims players how to create their own objects, by publishing step-by-step tutorials in the principles of object making for the complete novice, at sites like The Bunny Wuffles School of Sims Transmogrification.

The celebrated designers at the Cultural Heritage Foundation have made names for themselves by using Transmogrifier and other tools to create all the necessary scenery to build amazing historical recreations, like The Palm House, Kew Gardens, London England, the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Theme, and the Turkish Baths.

Maxis has created a wide range of objects for The Sims, which are included with the original game, the seven expansion packs, and numerous free downloads. But the player created object outnumber the Maxis created objects by an order of magnitude.

The Sims also opens up opportunities for programmers as well as artists: third party software developers like SimPrograms and SimsTools have created a market for tools that enable players to manage their Sims objects, and artists to make even more of them.

I'm developing some easy-to-use tools that automate the Transmogrification process, and open up Sims object creation to wide range of people. RugOMatic enables anyone, even without artistic talent or technical skills, to quickly create their own rugs for The Sim by dragging and dropping pictures and text.

RugOMatic

EA would have sued.

Over at Penny Arcade they are talking about little girls who make money renting their virtual asses out on Sims Online. And not play money either, real money.

Not the same thing... or is it?

(And here I was feeling guilty over being a karma whore.)

Earth and Beyond has a 3 year storyline already on the table.

Women are more level headed in combat or so I hear, and being an engineer I am far better in support anyways as I familarize myself with the skills and mobs more so than a brute force warrior.

Women are more level headed in combat or so I hear, and being an engineer I am far better in support anyways as I familarize myself with the skills and mobs more so than a brute force warrior.

Wouldn't it be fun to let monkeys play themselves in role play games like The Sims? Or how about confronting a monkey head to head in Quake? Sure, the monkey would need better armor and weapons to match the experience of human players.

What Happens When a Linux Geek Takes Over a Canadian Football Team ?

* Bob Young, founder of Red Hat and Lulu.com buys Canadian football team the Hamilton Ticats.
* Ticats playbook submitted to SourceForge for development. Fans of the Canadian Football League are invited to submit revisions.
* Initially puzzled by open source strategy, other CFL teams begin using the plays.
* Ticats adopt open-channel Wi-Fi for communications between coaches and quarterbacks using new helmet developed under the GPL, known as the GNU-Helmet. Xs and Os on playbook diagrams are replaced with 1s and 0s. Fans begin to show up at games with laptops to IM the assistant coaches.
* Ticats playbook becomes bestseller .
* First season is devoted to eliminating bugs. Bob Young called an eccentric, fringe player. Headline screams "Playbook Bazaar -- Bizarre!"
* Innovation in CFL play explodes. Stadiums host record crowds. US newspapers run stories, but most assume that the sport in question is actually soccer.
* Bill Gates surprises press by purchasing Seattle Seahawks.
* In the third season, CFL continues to gain momentum. Young brokers a revolutionary agreement with the Australian Football League incorporating new rules and tactics. Games become more interesting. Cable channel TechTV signs contract to air every CFL game. US viewers begin to abandon NFL games in droves.
* NFL sues, claiming a process patent on option plays
* Clear-Channel takes over 90% of US stadiums and inks 10-year contract with NFL. Fans are routinely strip-searched for illicit food and drink items as they enter stadiums.
* Gates responds to decrease in attendance at games by inking broadcast deal with all four networks to air games simultaneously.
* Canada announces increase in immigration. MIT Beavers win Division Championship.
* Electronic Arts announces that "Madden NFL 2007" will be open source. Furor erupts. New version quickly surfaces in which characters can be forced to play soccer.
* NYT article notes that enrollment in youth football programs across North America are up, as are demands for reinforced padding and elastic straps for eyeglasses. 'Football is all about brains!" bellow coaches.
* 2010 - Ticats win Grey Cup for the first time in decades. Average size of defensive lineman is 5'7", 155 lbs.

What Happens When a Linux Geek Takes Over a Canadian Football Team ?

* Bob Young, founder of Red Hat and Lulu.com buys Canadian football team the Hamilton Ticats.
* Ticats playbook submitted to SourceForge for development. Fans of the Canadian Football League are invited to submit revisions.
* Initially puzzled by open source strategy, other CFL teams begin using the plays.
* Ticats adopt open-channel Wi-Fi for communications between coaches and quarterbacks using new helmet developed under the GPL, known as the GNU-Helmet. Xs and Os on playbook diagrams are replaced with 1s and 0s. Fans begin to show up at games with laptops to IM the assistant coaches.
* Ticats playbook becomes bestseller .
* First season is devoted to eliminating bugs. Bob Young called an eccentric, fringe player. Headline screams "Playbook Bazaar -- Bizarre!"
* Innovation in CFL play explodes. Stadiums host record crowds. US newspapers run stories, but most assume that the sport in question is actually soccer.
* Bill Gates surprises press by purchasing Seattle Seahawks.
* In the third season, CFL continues to gain momentum. Young brokers a revolutionary agreement with the Australian Football League incorporating new rules and tactics. Games become more interesting. Cable channel TechTV signs contract to air every CFL game. US viewers begin to abandon NFL games in droves.
* NFL sues, claiming a process patent on option plays
* Clear-Channel takes over 90% of US stadiums and inks 10-year contract with NFL. Fans are routinely strip-searched for illicit food and drink items as they enter stadiums.
* Gates responds to decrease in attendance at games by inking broadcast deal with all four networks to air games simultaneously.
* Canada announces increase in immigration. MIT Beavers win Division Championship.
* Electronic Arts announces that "Madden NFL 2007" will be open source. Furor erupts. New version quickly surfaces in which characters can be forced to play soccer.
* NYT article notes that enrollment in youth football programs across North America are up, as are demands for reinforced padding and elastic straps for eyeglasses. 'Football is all about brains!" bellow coaches.
* 2010 - Ticats win Grey Cup for the first time in decades. Average size of defensive lineman is 5'7", 155 lbs.

Alternatively...

They could just play the GLA in Command and Conquer Generals instead.

(I wonder if it would be harder to get reimbursed for a $40 game from petty cash than to get a multi-million-dollar simulation written...)

If the damn Sims would simply accept paying more taxes, I could build the nuclear plant and maybe get a stadium too. It would make them all happier too!

Why Is My Power Plant Aging So Quickly?

Hmm. Night approaches....

Why Am I Getting Riots?

If the damn Sims would simply accept paying more taxes, I could build the nuclear plant and maybe get a stadium too. It would make them all happier too!

Why Is My Power Plant Aging So Quickly?

Hmm. Night approaches....

Why Am I Getting Riots?

In general the explosions were touched up a bit, and i think they smoothed over the rocket trails in the second image. (It's been a few years, so i'm fuzzy on the details) In general units were added to make the pictures look more exciting. There seem to be more missiles in the second picture than can be accounted for by the number of Dreadnaughts.

The first pic has a very good example of this. First of all, when the game was finally released Carriers only launched three fighters at the time, although we experiemented with five and four fighters for a time. However i believe even if the carriers had five fighters at the time, the placement of the fighters in the pic is clearly artificial. You'd never see them in that perfect of a V formation in the game. And i can't remember for sure, but i don't think the fighters actually had contrails, don't quote me on that one though.

Perhaps people who have played the game more recently can spot more changes in the pics on the site. I wasn't involved in the process of touching the screenshots up, and i kind of lost interest in playing the game after they laid me off just after starting Generals (after we'd finished up the expansion pack of course,) so my memory of what the graphics and weapon stats in the release ended up being is a bit rusty.

In general the explosions were touched up a bit, and i think they smoothed over the rocket trails in the second image. (It's been a few years, so i'm fuzzy on the details) In general units were added to make the pictures look more exciting. There seem to be more missiles in the second picture than can be accounted for by the number of Dreadnaughts.

The first pic has a very good example of this. First of all, when the game was finally released Carriers only launched three fighters at the time, although we experiemented with five and four fighters for a time. However i believe even if the carriers had five fighters at the time, the placement of the fighters in the pic is clearly artificial. You'd never see them in that perfect of a V formation in the game. And i can't remember for sure, but i don't think the fighters actually had contrails, don't quote me on that one though.

Perhaps people who have played the game more recently can spot more changes in the pics on the site. I wasn't involved in the process of touching the screenshots up, and i kind of lost interest in playing the game after they laid me off just after starting Generals (after we'd finished up the expansion pack of course,) so my memory of what the graphics and weapon stats in the release ended up being is a bit rusty.

This guy reminds me of old crones reliving their glory days, whlist doing nothing productive in the meantime.

The browser has matured, and by quite a bit. His statement is analoggous to saying all innovation in word processing stopped with WordPerfect.. heck, maybe with WordStar 4. The days leading to Netscape 4 vs IE 5 were about development of the core browser standards, and of html itself. Now that we've learned to walk, it's time to get running. Future innovations will look to improve on other areas, like rich content, forms and security. Even on the interface developers are showing that new things are yet to come.. Mozilla's tabbed browsing is an excellent example, and though Black and White spin-offs involving gesture navigation didn't quite take off, i'm sure there is improvement still to be made.

Still, I can't recall a game that I haven't been addicted to without playing the demo first, e.g Uplink, System Shock 2, Sim Golf or even Rise of Nations. I mean even Mr. Driller I tried out before I bought the damn thing.

I cannot think of one game that has not been demoed, developers know that the one way to get a good game known and bought is to release a demo, well except for SS2.

There's a website put together by military spouses and military personnel on leave, and they make a great deal of money cranking out in-game money for The Sims Online and selling it for US $$.

(tongue in cheek) Amazing when the US Military is subsidising its income in the electronic entertainment industry.

Truthfully, I'm ashamed that they have to, but glad they have the opportunity to make the money they need in such a non-conventional manner.

Clive Barker was involved in a game called "Clive Barker's Undying." It was a fantastic horror game that received excellent reviews. Interestingly enough though, it sold very poorly. Do gamers want excellent storylines and thoughtful gameplay? Some of us do, but to the masses, pretty flashing lights are usually enough. Woo's strength in the action genre may be a bit more accessible to the public than Barker's horror themes though. It'll be interesting to watch just how far involved Woo gets involved with the game, as opposed to just getting paid to put his name on the box. I have no doubt Woo could contribute to an excellent action game, but will it sell? Sega's stuff doesn't exactly fly off the shelves...

in terms of internships, i know ea does summer internships and allows people to do their masters (and i think maybe their ph.d.) thesis with them. no on else that i know of really does that. from what i've heard, your best bet into getting into the industry is to do in house testing. the thing is though, i don't think that'll help much with programming. sorry i don't have a direct link to the ea internships page for ya. i gotta run and just saw this.

American McGee is a person, not a company. And this parody stems from his actual game "Alice".

American McGee has nothing to do with American Greetings, other than they both have the same "first name."

Don't forget:

Battlefield 1942

This seems to be quite popular. I know it has drawn in people who haven't played MMORPG's before.

Another game with the potential to draw many new users, especially women, to the MMORPG world is:

The Sims Online

It is technically a parody, but it is not protected under fair use. (Whether you use the same names as the original, or twist them into funny-but-recognizable versions like "Frodo->Frito" and "Biblo->Dildo" doesn't matter)

To get the fair-use exemption to copyright law, your work must not just be a parody- it must be a parody of the material you are infringing.

In this case, Penny Arcade used some kind of "Strawberry Shortcake" copyrighted material to create a parody of American McGee's videogame development preferences (as seen here).

Since the parody doesn't make any critical commentary about "Strawberry Shortcake", it has no legal justification to use those names or images.

The famous recent case on this subject was linked to (pdf) by Penny-Arcade. In that case, a parody called "The Cat NOT in the Cat" was banned for using images from a book by Theodor Geisel to make a comment on the conduct of the Orenthal Simpsom murder trial. Because the materials he was borrowing were neither positively nor negatively commented on by his work, he was not allowed to publish the parody.

In the case of EA it's about control of the consumer (for example, EA can advertise their own games on their own servers exclusively if they choose) and getting dollars from that consumer. At some point, I expect EA to announce a monthly or yearly fee to play their games online, or at least to use their matchmaking services like they do with Madden on the PC.

In short, here are the problems EA has with Xbox Live:

a) It is the only way to play seamlessly online with the Xbox (XBConnect, Gamespy Tunnel, etc. aren't "seamless" and require separate PC software)
b) Because Xbox Live users are already paying for XBL which provides matchmaking services, those customers are very unlikely to pay $5-6 a month to EA just so that they can get the same features for Madden, NBA Live, Battlefield 1942, etc.

The bad guys (for Xbox owners, anyway) here are at EA, not at Microsoft. Odd, but true.

Watching real fish move gracefully through a tank is one of the greatest pleasures in life. You can easily zone out for an hour or so just staring at the tank. El-Fish was almost as captivating. Cheers to anyone who tries to improve on that early effort.

--madgeorge

You don't need to look ahead to see a game doing that. Look at C&C Generals, out right now, which rather blatantly glorifies war... against Middle-Eastern terrorists, no less.

Did you ever play "Black & White". It had gestures and once you got used to them they were pretty cool. You would use your mouse to draw the gesture on any surface, and if the game engine successfully recognized it a bright white light would illuminate the path of your mouse (as well as implementing the selected command of course); usually this announced that you (being God in the game) are about to perform a miracle. There was a definite learning curve to using them, but once you got it it was genuinely useful and allowed the game to have almost no interface cluttering the screen. Though it isn't any where near the top of my list of favorite games, the gampeplay was unmistakably innovative.

The Ultima Collection, available from eastore.ea.com all of the single player Ultima's except for the last one, number nine. They also through in Akalabeth.

Caveat Emptor -- Several of the games do not work properly on modern systems do to memory incompatibities. IMHO, the only Ultima really worth playing is U7, which now works perfectly do to the new engine made by Exult. However, Ultima's 4-6 are also very good if you have the time and patience to get them working (U4 worked fine for me except the sound but I could never really get U5 & U6 running correctly)

I thought they were talking about Battlefield: 1942. I'm currently holding my breath waiting for the new patch to come out for BF:1942, so it was fresh on my mind.

And do NOT buy him a Klipsch surround sound system to go with them.

No. Really. I think this game is giving me PTSD.

I've been playing E&B for about a month now, and while it's quite addicitve and fun so far, I've heard from higher level players that there's not much to do yet when you get to the top...

Some of the psycho links aren't actually as insane as you may think...

I used to play the game Majestic online, and I know for a fact they set up a lot of "pseudo-pages" of companies, home pages, etc. to go along with the storyline, and some of these links that have been given are directly from that game, and a few may be from further down the road (then I was in the game), because they seem to read almost exactly the pages I saw when I was playing.

Sure there are psychos online, but there's also a lot of pages set up for other less insiduous or insane reasons.

Just something to think about.

First, it was never ECA. It was always EA.

You refer to the box-sphere-pyramid logo of Electronic Arts before the company began to use the EA Sports logo company-wide. It has been suggested that the sphere represented a G: "Electronic Gaming Arts" or something. Others have suggested that the logo change (from box-sphere-pyramid to EA Sports) represents when EA jumped the shark.

First, it was never ECA. It was always EA.

You refer to the box-sphere-pyramid logo of Electronic Arts before the company began to use the EA Sports logo company-wide. It has been suggested that the sphere represented a G: "Electronic Gaming Arts" or something. Others have suggested that the logo change (from box-sphere-pyramid to EA Sports) represents when EA jumped the shark.

Dsanfte is Right on about game companies not wanting to assist gamers about various issues.

I'll provide two examples as well, Two good and one bad.

I've never played Everquest so I can't comment on what this person is going through but I can comment on the following games:

No One Lives Forever 2

007: Nightfire

Day of Defeat - a Killer World War II Half-Life Mod

Both of these games have a predecessor that have had sucess in it's previous incarnations.

The 007 Games have had a standard to live up to ever since the console game 'Goldeneye' was released. This game gained it's popularity with the awesome multiplayer aspects on the console. IMO this was the predecessor to all the on-line console games that are out now.

No One Lives Forever 1 (NOLF1) was an amazing game with a multiplayer aspect that immensely enhanced the single player game and was the major reason that this game won all the awards that it did. (Running over people with Snowmobiles is sooo fun)

When NOLF2 was released the reviews on the single player was favorable but nothing was said about the multiplayer aspect. I began researching this game for a possible purchase and began vewing the Sierra Forums and noted Two problems:

1) All MP aspects that made NOLF1 a great game, was removed for a 'co-op' multiplayer version. The 'Co-Op' version was essentially teams of online players playing against an AI Opponent.

2) The MP code was buggy. People were complaining of too many dropped packets.

Sierra'sattitude for #1 was initally "If you don't like it go buy another game that has on-line player vs online player this is not what this game is about". (These threads have since mysteriously disappeared)

After player after player were complaining about the lack of the cool MP aspects that made NOLF1 famous and the fact that people were mad that couldn't return the game (they were all expecting the same MP aspects of NOLF1 in NOLF2), news came out that a new patch would be coming out to add DM maps and better MP code.

Needles to say this alienated players and left sour tastes in peoples stomach. This reason alone and Sierra's initial atitude/response to this issue are the reason why I didn't buy this game and I laugh when it received Game of the Year Award by Adspy..er GameSpy.

007: Nightfire is EA/Gearbox's entry into the James Bond Game arena. This game is based on the Half-Life engine and has an original storyline. The Single player is amazing and has all the cool elements of a Bond Flick. The Multiplayer blew me away by the maps and mods it released. (Imagine a CTF/DM map that is a near perfect recreation of the Fort Knox Scene in 'Goldfinger'.)

Granted, when this product was initially released, there were issues with the game (MP Exploit, No Server manual, No MP manual for N00bs who don't understand the concept of Team-Killing). EA/Gearbox provided two methods to give feedback about this game (EA - E-mail and Gearbox Via their forums) and they (after about amonth of the PC version being released) are releasing a SP 'after the new year'.

In addition, with immense interest in Modding for this game (our clan is looking into creating MP maps that are recreations scenes in Bond Movies. We're looking to create maps for all the Bond Movies.), There will be a SDK released after the New Year as well.

Day of Defeat is probably the best Mod I've ever played in MP (not a big counter-strike fan). In short, this is a World War II mod with the Axis versus the Allies in various map situations. The weapon Recreation, maps and the general popularity is slowly growing every day. I beleive one of the main reasons why this is is that The Day of Defeat MOD team has a direct link to the public through their forums and are looking for contunuous feedback on how this game can be improved.

I will always be a fan of this MOD because of the direct link to the developers.

My advice to anyone who have problems with various games is to browse/Post to the game designers forums or e-mail the company with your concerns, more often than not the various companies will listen to the customers for they are the people who will come back tothe various companies for their next release of a given game.

Granted, you may not always find forums with direct link to the developersfor Games (ID Software is a good example of this) but if you do, utilize these resources.

My advice to Game companies is to listen to your customer base and give them a foum to give feedback for they pay your salaries and they dictate wether or not your game will continue to sell.

Issues with games are easy to fix, runied reputataions over a given game are next to impossible to fix.

Dolemite

Master of Orion 3, since 2001... no, Nov 2002, December 4th... Maybe January?

Shadowbane, a MMORPG without all that pesky RPG stuff

SimCity 4, delayed 'till January. "It's in 3D, trust us", except you can't swivel the camera

- The Sims (say what you will... chix dig it)
- Ultima Online (no credit for first really successful MMORPG? Come on...)

Westwood studios (now owned by EA) has just started up a second generation MMORPG called Earth & Beyond. While it's not completely an MMO version Elite II, it comes pretty close. It has planets, star systems, trading, PvP games, teams, guilds, groups, mining, ore->componet->device refining/building, and some pretty eye candy to go with it all.

It's still in it's infancy and has some minor bugs on occasion, but nothing that blocks it from being quite enjoyable and addictive. They just released a monthly patch today as a matter of fact which added two major new gameplay elements to the game.

Has anyone else here tried it yet? I've only been playing it for a little over a week now and I'm down to 4 hours of sleep a night =D

I'm JE Kestrex on Orion if you want to group up or if you need any wormholes =D

Electonic Arts HQ

I think you may be wrong, I live in Vancouver myself and I thought Vancouver was it's HQ.

Redwood City, California, is the headquarters for Electronic Arts, the world's largest interactive entertainment software company.

Electronic Arts Canada (EAC), the largest development studio in the EA family, is located in beautiful British Columbia.

Other EA locations

Electonic Arts HQ

I think you may be wrong, I live in Vancouver myself and I thought Vancouver was it's HQ.

Redwood City, California, is the headquarters for Electronic Arts, the world's largest interactive entertainment software company.

Electronic Arts Canada (EAC), the largest development studio in the EA family, is located in beautiful British Columbia.

Other EA locations

Electronic Arts Canada Vancouver Office

Electronic Arts Canada (EAC), the largest development studio in the EA family, is located in beautiful British Columbia. (emphasis are mine)

I once read a very well respected Japanese developer said (I think it was Yuji Naka) [Some companies]"...make games at the desk." He was refering to game companies making games to make money, not to create something fun to play.

Electronic Arts is in the video game industry making sound business moves and producing disposable rubbish for an eager consumer base. They are no longer Electronic Artists and they no longer make great video games. This shows in the huge amount of crap they spew out each year.

Other companies were getting to be guilty of the same thing, but they seem to have realized it and are trying to make a turn for the better. Capcom, for instance, has pledged a shift towards quality and innovation, and shortly afterwards announced 6 new fairly unique looking titles.

3DO claims to be making a similar shift, and has cancelled many projects to focus on a few unique titles. Trip Hawkins even forked over his own personal money to help fund the company further along. How many CEOs do you know of who would do that? (Well, the President of Sega did that, too, then died shortly afterwards.)

Many of the more respectable publishers and developers are making this shift towards quality, but Electronic Arts openly clings to "tried and true" titles, even if it means saturating the market with crap.

I don't rant about it like I used to. I just stopped buying the shit. After all, there are other great video game developers out there.

Or Disney's Pinocchio 2.0: Let's See How Bad We Can Screw Up The Plot And/Or Theme Of The Story This Time.

(Interesting tidbit: In the ending of The Adventures of Pinocchio, a novel by Carlo Collodi, it isn't 100% clear that the whole story isn't all a dream, just like that season of TV's "Dallas".)

As far as I know, American McGee's Alice is the closest that EA has come to playing around with classic tales.

I think you need to read the ingredients list on your software...

Then you'd notice... E.A., it's in the game.

In an industry scrutinized by the government as a drug infested haven that pollutes our communities and destroys the ability to lead a productive life, there is another industry that has the potential to become even more dangerous than any drug addiction. I'm not supposed to be writing this. What was supposed to happen was I prove my thesis that I couldn't be sucked into a virtual reality like many people I have met before. I never really understood what I was getting myself into when I started my research experiment, playing a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

Three years ago at a nightclub I bumped into an old friend of mine who went by the nickname "Iggy". I was really amazed to see him because no one had seen nor heard from Iggy in over a year. Many of his friends had all wondered what happened to him.

"Jesus Iggy, where in the hell have you been?!"

"Everquest," was all he said. He looked down at his feet when he said it.

"Huh?" I had no clue what he meant.

"I've been playing Everquest."

As we spoke, Iggy opened up to me and confessed that he had lost his job, his friends and didn't want to go out much anymore.

"It's an addiction. I'm only out tonight because the server is down for patching and I'm miserable."

For some reason, he couldn't look me in the eye while he was talking. He was obviously embarrassed.

"Um. Okay." I mean, what was I going to say to something as incredulous as that? I've heard of game obsessions, like those college kids in the seventies that murdered their whole family while playing a Dungeons and Dragons game, but I just thought that sort of obsession lies only in the minds of sociopaths or people with a lot bigger problems than playing a game. Iggy was a really nice, normal guy who had lost a lot to some online role-playing game called "Everquest". I had no idea what to make of it.

I never saw Iggy again. Neither has anyone else who knew him that I have asked. Since that night I really pondered the absurdity of his situation. It nagged at me.

On the web you can put the words "gaming addiction" into Google and discover a thousand and one sites for support groups, self help courses, testimonials and various studies. There's the "Everquest Widows" forum, a site called "Ariadne - Understanding MMORPG Addiction", and a myriad of articles on topics like game addiction and the innocent bystanders that suffer from it.

As one Everquest Widow puts it, "I plan on starting "Widows Weekly." It will be a group that meets in a local coffee shop. Here, spouses can talk and help one another through this difficult process, and begin to realize that there is a life out there despite the loss of our loved ones. I plan to send the bill for coffee and snacks to Verant. It would be but a small compensation on their part to repay me and others for the loss of our loved ones--so pay up, Verant!" -- Christine Gilbert CD Mag.com

What I find interesting is that many of the people who author these articles or sites have usually neither played the games or have just been the "victims" such as spouses or family. Others who dissect the topic of game addiction tend to be outsiders looking in, shaking their heads or turning the study into one giant mouse in the maze science experiment. It's rare that you find someone, who actually plays games passionately, speak up or write anything about negative side affects.

The more people I met who played computer games, the more I wanted to understand the obsession. I also had another stake in this because my partner, Low, is a gamer and a "geek" in every sense of the word. Not to mention my fiancé. It was beginning to cause some strain on us from time to time in terms of "quality time". I was getting really angry with him on a regular basis actually. According to Low, it was I who had the problem, not him. This is how most gamers think. Deal with their gaming or don't deal with it at all. They will play either way.

So I eventually decided to do some investigation and find out what makes these gamers and role players tick. What sort of recreation has the ability to absorb people to the extent that marriages break up, jobs are lost, and they lose friends? How does playing a game on a computer make someone lose functionality in the REAL world, because they want to spend too much time in some imaginary reality? For crying out loud, I thought, it's just a game.

I had a lot of questions but no one I talked to had answers. Gamers would tell me, "You won't understand unless you are a gamer yourself." Ok, no problem. I figured I could just play a game I find entertaining and get bored and write about what nut cases gamers really are.

It just wasn't that easy. This little experiment of mine turned out to be more dangerous than I ever imagined.

I wasn't able to begin playing a game right away. The opportunity just never really presented itself directly to me. There just wasn't a game I really liked enough to "get into it" for long enough. Low would play his Quake, Unreal Tournament, Black & White, Carmageddon, Fallout, Diablo II and a multitude of other first person shooters, but nothing seemed all that captivating to me and there was no way I could play these games with him due to his extreme level of skill and years of practice in a 3D environment.

I played a little Diablo and actually had a bit of fun with that, but I found I only really enjoyed it when I played with Low or our friends in multi-player mode. We would go "adventuring" together as they call it, fighting demons and wizards and monsters and coming out winning or dying, but having some fun just playing together. It was my first taste of actually playing with another player in a game as a team. But when Low moved onto the next game, bored with Diablo, I didn't have the same drive to play anymore. So I put my project aside and put up with his gaming as best as I could.

Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG) have been around for many years. You can find thousands of websites, magazines, web-zines and the like that are devoted to the enormous market out there for online gaming. Sites like GameSpy, that literally receive millions of visits per day from gamers and industry types from all over the world, provide an almost infinite amount if information about these types of games. Hundreds of thousands of people play games like Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, and Ultima Online each day from all over the world. With the upcoming launch of The Sims Online, analysts and game reviewers are expecting the largest online game community ever seen to develop.

"The Sims promises to be one of the most interesting human experiments in the history of the Net." -- David Kushner, Entertainment Weekly

Low had tried many of these MMORPG's. He never stuck with one very long because, as he puts it, "I got tired of being a crappy tree-elf that always fell out of the damn tree village." In Ultima Online, he "got tired of having all my stuff stolen from me and getting killed by stupid 'PKers' (Player Killers)." Apparently for him, the rewards were far and few between to keep him interested in these games. He also has a very short attention span with most games. Play it, beat it, and move on to the next game is his motto. The more games you play in a single year the more well rounded you are apparently. With the new enhanced graphics engines, hardware and development that goes into games these days, it's amazing how stimulating the market can be right now.

Early in 2001, however, Low's opinion of online gaming changed drastically. He read an article about a new online role-playing game that was set about 30,000 years into the future, on a colonized planet. The story line was science fiction themed, with monsters, mutants, futuristic weapons, wars, and sinister political plots. The player would have the ability to create a character avatar from a wide variety of attributes and be surrounded by very realistic 3D graphics, with incredible scenery and sound. You would have to defend yourself, form guilds, make friends and alliances and your goal would be to "learn" or level your character as the game progressed in order to increase your skills and possessions. There would be PVP (player versus player) combat, PVM combat (player verses mobile or "mob" for short, a term used to explain computer generated enemy or monster) and a variety of other things one could do while in the game online. You could fly a plane, morph into animals and go on dangerous missions and epic quests. The game was called Anarchy Online.

Something about this Anarchy Online game really had his attention and right after it came out in July of 2001, he bought his copy and began playing, and once again I lost him to a game. He could not stop going on and on about how "cool this or that was" or the graphics or all the people he was meeting. His excitement was just ridiculous in my eyes but I had been through this before. Nevertheless, the game also captured my interest because of its science fiction theme. I am a sci-fi buff and the storyline had such a great plot that they actually sell the novels online for it. I read the chapters as they were released and was hooked on the storyline.

Low bought another copy about two weeks later. "I want you to play with me." By this time we were under some strain because he was really absorbed by this game every night. It looked really intimidating to me and I opted not to play it right away, stalling for time. The 3D environment bothered me because any game I had ever played, like Diablo, for example, had always been in third person view, which is a bird's eye view of the environment. The 3D graphics were dizzying as I looked over his shoulder from time to time.

In the end I caved in under the pressure and began playing it in September of 2001. I was a horrible player in the beginning, running into walls and getting lost or killed all the time. It didn't matter to me. I was playing a game with my boyfriend and found with each day that went by, I wanted to log on and play more and more.

So what was the appeal? Before I realized what was happening, I became addicted to playing this game. While logged into this game I met wonderful people, via their avatars, laughed to funny antics via chat window discussions, and experienced a futuristic sci-fi world via incredibly realistic 3D graphics and sounds. We ran through swamps with mutant wolves chasing us, the sound of our feet making wet suction sounds just like you would have in reality. We could hear birds chirping in forests we scouted and vultures crying overhead as they spotted us and attacked.

Our adrenaline would pump as we fought for our lives against twenty-foot tall robots with buzz saws for hands, or as we went on safaris to hunt giant brontosaur-like animals. We had the ability to heal and save each other as well as other members of our team at the time. We also had the ability to gain the respect, over more than a year later, of many online players, for being a great couple of characters in this game. We have, in fact, become high-ranking officers in our guild, which is almost like a family or alliance with other people to help you in the game.

In South Korea, some in-game alliances are valued more than real life friendships. A game called Lineage: The Blood Pledge has captivated approximately a third of the population. In Lineage, characters can take on the role of Princes, Wizards, and Knights and vow their loyalty to their clan or guild. This loyalty had lead to an incident in 2001 where a player was nearly beaten to death in real life for virtually killing the character of another player.

"He boasted that he had offed the gangman's virtual character just for the fun of it. Bad idea. The roughnecks dragged the 21-year-old into the urinal and pummeled him until he was covered with real-world bruises." -- By Michelle Levander, Time Magazine

It is easy to lose yourself to your imagination while you become someone you could possibly never be in the real world. You can become a hero, a bad ass, a wealthy person, someone with special powers or gain an enormous amount of respect from people who look up to you. This isn't to say you can't be that kind of person in reality, but what if everyone had this ability to find respect, admiration and status, simply by being in the environment long enough. What if all you had to do was play each day and level higher and higher, each goal leading to a new goal of achievement and possibilities. And what if you never had to leave the comfort of your chair to do this?

What if you could really become a diva, a soldier, a magician, or a samurai, and people respected or admired you unconditionally as long as you had a long red bar looming over your virtual head. Or, as in especially my case, what if while you were in this virtual reality, you didn't have to worry about deadlines, due dates, over 1000 emails per day to read and answer, or day-to-day stress that comes with what I do. The virtual reality could absorb you so much, that for the time you are logged in, you forget everything else. It doesn't seem to matter whether you are a strict role-player (someone who stays in character) or 'hardcore' (someone who spends more time in-game than an average user). You still can be addicted and absorbed with the attention you get.

The official Anarchy Online Community Forum, which gets thousands of posts per day, has also been one of my sources for observing how obsessed people have become with the game. Recently, a devoted and well known player had to throw in the towel due to her addiction problem.

"The level to which I got into things here is what has lead me to this point where I must say goodbye. My internet addiction and denial of it has taken me to a point where I must get a hold of it. I realize that many people have what it takes to play a game like this "casually" in a healthy manner. I am unfortunately not one of those people. I am currently battling bi-polar disorder (manic depression) and the escapism that a game like AO offers is too much like a drug for me."

The ability to be respected, to be admired, and to succeed, even in an imaginary world, is a very powerful lure. It can cause a person to produce endorphins, a chemical released into the brain that causes a feeling of energy and well being. Gaming also causes adrenaline production and extreme excitability. Scientists have proven that endorphins and adrenal rushes are incredibly addictive.

"There are indications that pleasurable games and activities cause the body to produce endogenous opiates such as endorphins. These substances are actually addictive. Some addictive drugs, such as heroin, are chemically similar to these natural substances, while other addictive drugs are thought to stimulate their production."
-- Leonard Holmes, Ph.D. from the article, Is Pokémon Addictive? 1999

It should be easy to see why gaming can be addictive as a direct result of the physical effects on the body. I also believe that people can become addicted to respect, admiration and power as well. Even though the production of endorphins can be a positive side affect in one way, it can be easy to overindulge and put aside productive living. But there are many ways to do this and online gaming is not the only vice out there. People find many different ways to escape the problems in their life or to combat stress.

People log on each and every day to find a level of respect that doesn't come easily in day-to-day life. They log on to escape reality or to escape other real problems such as illness and stress. I have met people in this game who have mental disorders or physical impairments. I have also played with people who are in IT jobs all day long, listening to customer complaints, getting bitched at regularly. Some have even admitted that they never hear the words "good job" in the real world.

One player who works in the IT technical services industry, told me "I get my faith in people restored when I get online. People treat me with respect and are actually nice to me. They don't expect anything in return. Also, they believe me when I tell them something because of my level in the game."

I know of other overly stressed out people who log in each day to escape their day-to-day experience of working or living in hard reality. We met a person in game, for example, who is an EMT. Everyday he witnesses death and horrible accidents. He told us that he plays the game to get it all out of his mind. I also met a nurse online with a similar story, and a school teacher who teaches eleventh grade in the Bronx, NYC, who is very stressed out by his job.

"Most human beings pass through periods in their lives, when they feel compelled to engage in some apparently mindless activity that, for the time being, seems to provide some relief from the prevailing chaos in their lives. This could be something as simple as spending hours in front of the television set. Or going on uncontrollable buying sprees just to feel and smell the newness of the product. Or getting into a series of dead-end relationships. Or going on eating binges. Or playing computer games, uncaring of unattended work piling up. Or playing snooker every evening at the club regardless of the family's legitimate demand for more attention. In other words, binging on anything potentially destructive to the body or the soul. Fortunately for many of us, after a period of this compulsive indulgence, we pull ourselves back to the mainstream and get on with our lives, until the next compulsion hits us."
-- Dr. Vijay Nagaswami, from the article, Who? Me? An addict, The Hindu Folio 2001

This is not to say that there are not positive aspects to interacting with people online. Online gaming opens the doors to people who might not have the ability to do so due to time, geography, or many more reasons. Gaming online is an inexpensive and quick way to make new friends, chat with people all over the world and share an experience with people you would never meet because they may be continents away.

One of our online friends, for example, who goes by the character name "Docker", lives in Leiden, Netherlands. Another friend, "Chanell" lives in Einselthum, Germany. These are really interesting people we would never have met if it was not for the game we play online. I asked Chanell why he started playing online games.

"It all began with Diablo II being released. Then my friend, Yppo, made me try it online. I found it was an incredibly boring and annoying game. Then Yppo made me try it online and I loved it. I joined his clan and had months of online fun, then it got boring, close to the moment DAoC [Dark Ages of Camelot] was released in Europe. While I went to DAoC, Yppo chose to go to A.O." Eventually Chanell started playing A.O. as well.

When asked how playing A.O. affects his social life, he reflected, "As for my friends... yes we hang together a lot less. This could be related to A.O. or the fact that we don't work in the same city anymore. I am not totally sure. I still have a lot of phone calls and meetings so I am not "lonesome" it just isn't an as high frequency as before."

And with that I can only think that one's social life is in the eye of the beholder. I interact with Chanell almost every day. In fact I interact with more people than I ever have before because of playing a computer game. They just are not all physically in my proximity.

Interaction with people... It got me thinking and I began to develop my own theories on what causes the addiction. Psychologists can use fancy terminology like "Motivation Factors" and "Attraction Factors" such as self-esteem and self-image problems. They can harp on the role of achievement problems and relationship deficiencies in a person's personality. But I think I can sum it up to one word that would work for any individual needing his or her game "fix" each time they log in, regardless of how well rounded they are in their lives or how much of a basket case they could be perceived as.

RESPECT.

I think it is just that simple. I like the feeling I get when people look up to me in the game or ask my opinion. It seems to be a common drive for players in general. That is, to be respected for being the best and reaching the next level in the game.

Not everyone who plays games neatly fit into these Psychologists stereotypes. "Solories", another Anarchy Online player, is an example of someone who just logs on for the sake of play.

"I would say that I am responsibly addicted, meaning I have never been late to work due to AO.
My wife would prefer that I not play AO as much as I do, but I always make time for her every night, and try and do one thing planned together every weekend. I have never been late to work, but the first night I played AO I stayed up until 4:00 am and had to get up at 6:00 am and the next day I played until midnight. I don't feel that AO affects my work habits, work is work and when it is time to play, it is time to play. I enjoy watching my character grow in his skills and MMORPG's in general let you get away from the normal day to day monotone life and do something out of the ordinary. In AO I am Solories Enforcer of Rubi-Ka a defender of the cause. I fight battles that help my guild get better and help the clans win a war against the Omni."

In the process of my gaming experiment, I became a casualty of the concept of being respected. If someone had asked me in September of 2001 if I expected to be obsessed with an online role-playing game a year down the road, I would have said with confidence that I am one of the most level headed non-addictive persons I know. No way could this happen to me. In fact, I would have been reminded of poor old Iggy and his demise.

I technically have ended my experiment. In the process, I haven't lost my job, and due to our simultaneous obsession, I have not lost my fiancé either. I haven't lost my real life friends, but they do sometimes look at me funny when I talk about the game I play. Low and I get our work done, run our business and have a great balanced life together I think. Anyone who actually knows me in real life can tell you that I have no self image or esteem problems and in fact, I have been accused of having quite an ego. I won't even go into Low's ego. I will admit though, that I have missed quite a few parties, nights out with the girls, shopping, and some chores needed around the office and home because of Anarchy Online. I will also admit that I want to log in as much as I possibly can every single day.

People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily. I don't have to wear ugly shoes, lose my hard earned money or do the wave next to someone I don't know and that just about makes it a no-brainer for me. It IS after all just a video game, like Neal describes in his great novel, Snow Crash. It is just another amusement park.

"Amusement parks in the Metaverse can be fantastic, offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies. But in the end, they're still nothing more than video games."
--Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

And I will leave you with that. Signing on now... Tenjikiito, level 157 Female Solitus Adventurer, Advisor to the Clan Guild Synergy Factor, the best damn guild on the world of Rubi-Ka, with the best damn virtual people one could ever virtually meet.

Special thanks to the following people for help with my research and leveling:
Sohjiro (Low Tek), Theevilcouch, Demnspawnt, Akarah, Chanell, Sheffy, Mr. Cheeze/Conqueso, Solories, Kirishami, Docker, Ramzie, Boco (who is to blame for all of this), Sultanx, Asmoran, Caddock, Meurgen, Tergwannabe, Trus, Ayanamie, Cplkane, Spherana, Ankokujin, Thedwarf (aka Notmyfault), Stromm, Molg, Butwalrus, Ciyt/Toonot, and Yokoduna.

Related links:

Anarchy Online
Dark Age of Camelot
Ultima Online
Diablo II
The Sims
Everquest
Try Anarchy Online free for 7 days! (We dare you to). =]