Wow… EA will take away your right to play Spore?

You know that clause in EULAs where they say “This program belongs to us, and you’re buying the right to use it”? They really mean it!

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-threatens-spore-ban-for-drm-talk

Spore currently costs $49.99 on Amazon.com, and EA can take away your right to play it just like that. Granted, the DRM in Spore is bad, but I believe that the complaints EA is receiving are not as much about Spore as they are about DRM in general. I think people just got fed up, and EA is feeling the brunt of it.

Update! Will the Spore controversy never end?

You know you’re too much of a fan when…

…you make one of these. Seven days until Open Pandora preorders begin!

You can find the .pdf design in this forum thread.

Why Christian video games are bad

The topic came up recently on the Christian Developer’s Network of why Christian games are rated so low. I replied to that thread, but I thought that it may help to explain some of the points a bit more, so I wrote this, hoping to prompt further discussion.

A quick Blender tip: Custom Orientation

If you use the 3d Manipulator in Blender, you know that you can align things in certain ways such as Global, Local, View, and Normal. Did you know there are other ways to align things, though? Yes, it’s true. You can’t find them in the menu at first, because you are the one who creates them!

Select an active object or face and press shift+ctrl+c, name your custom orientation, and you’re ready to go! You can now select that option from the orientation menu along with the others.

Happy Blendering!

Learning from the fanboys…

If there’s one thing that annoys someone trying to make a legitimate comparision of several games, it’s someone with an unreasonable bias towards a particular title. In a word, a fanboy.

My personal theory is that fanboy-ism is partially caused by a human need to belong. Not that these individuals aren’t social, but it feels very good to be a part of a larger whole. It gives us reassurance and a common area we can talk to like-minded individuals about. It makes us feel better about ourselves and sometimes even feels like it gives us purpose.

However, none of this helps when you’re confronted with someone who’s being unreasonable. You can’t put forth arguments without them being dismissed, and you can’t make the tiniest concession without a landslide of “see, I told you so!”

For game-creators, sometimes these individuals might be a core audience. Do you ever hear of a casual World of Warcraft player?

So my question is this: Do developers need to “create” fanboys to maintain a franchise or game? Should they?

Solomon’s Treasure released!

Blendenzo and I’s third-person adventure game, made for the CDN Speedgame contest, is out!

Download the game and trailer here.

It won’t run on Linu-… What?!

Maybe I’m overreacting, but when we Linux people hear about X program, what is our automatic assumtion? It’s not for Linux, right?

That’s exactly what I thought when I saw Gamedev.net’s article summarizing Unigine’s new demo. I went ahead and looked at their site, hoping for a video showing off their cool graphics when lo and behold! I saw their Linux demo! This engine is cross-platform!

I am still downloading the demo, but I’m hoping that things like this pop up more often, challenging my rule-of-thumb that if it looks really cool I can’t run it on Linux.

I want to make an MMO

…but I’m not about to try at the moment.

I know, everyone who’s ever even thought about game development has wanted to take a piece of the massively-multiplayer pie, and I’m no different. Fortunately, I’ve lurked around forums enough to know that it’s NOT a good idea to post my ideas and ask for help.

So, what’s a dev. to do? Post my ideas to… a blog? A blog it is, then!

Codename MiniMMO

As you may have figured out from the title, I’m not trying to design the next WoW. Ideally, I wouldn’t even categorize my ideas by genre, instead designing them to satisfy goals. Here are the goals I have for this game:

• Create a world where I can play with my friends…
  • …without worrying about what platform they are on.
  • …without having to deal with technical stuff like starting a server and hosting a game.
  • …that they would consider fun.
• Not focused on violence.
• Centered around evoking “fun” emotions.
• In-depth player customization.
• Appealing environments

That’s it. I will, no doubt, think of more, and as I do I will add them here, but at the moment that’s what I want from an MMO.

What do you want?