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Gamestop’s Used Game Thievery Is Finally Coming Home to Roost

Found this article thanks to John Gaudiosi of Forbes:

GameStop Exec Believes It’s Highly Unlikely Next Generation PlayStation And Xbox Consoles Will Block Used Games

My immediate reaction is this guy is just throwing up a smokescreen so Gamestop can protect their stock price as long as possible. If there is one issue game publishers [...]

Poisonous Online Communities and the Apathy of Developers

Every time another news article appears about EVE Online, I am reminded why I would never play this game. I’m consistently impressed by their open world, single server, high skill cap design, but depressed by their encouragement of a community based on harassment, abuse, and betrayal.

CCP launches investigation after Eve Online FanFest panel accused [...]

How Do Indies Get the Word Out?

This post is a bit self serving, but I think the information could potentially be useful to other indie game developers as well. I really hope everyone who reads this will share it as widely as possible so we can get as much feedback gathered as possible.

One of the hardest things for indie game [...]

Mark Jacobs sheds a little light on things at EA.

Not a lot of detail, but some of it is very interesting:

Former Mythic boss explains EA split

It sounds like Jacobs’ is saying that from the time EA bought Mythic, the direction of game design didn’t go the way he wanted or the way he felt was best.

Very interesting.

Perhaps this starts to [...]

Facebook Games: As Lame as I Remember.

So I broke down and started playing a Facebook game recently. Not much has changed. The same lame tricks and the same lame forcing you to spam your friends into oblivion.

Please give this article a read, and let me know what you think.

Facebook Games: Where Monetization Gimicks and User Growth Matter More Than [...]

Coin ‘n Carry: The social web game from Frogdice

The upcoming release of Coin ‘n Carry is a huge milestone for my company, Frogdice. It is our first mass market game, our first social web game, and our first non-RPG. That’s a lot of firsts, but I’m just getting started.

It is the first game where I did not write a single line of [...]

Video Games – The Best Entertainment Value… And Getting Better

I was looking for an old Dragon Magazine article in my handy dandy 5 CD reference I bought over a decade ago. While skimming through the April 1991 issue, I saw their “Role of Computers” section where they review computer RPGs. I’ve included a few screen grabs for your elucidation:

Blown up:

Full section:

[...]

Cancelled MMOs and MMO Companies of the last 10 Years

I’ve been working on a list of MMOs and MMO companies that have been canceled (either before or after release) from the last 10 years. In particular, I am focusing on post-2004 (for obvious reasons!). Here is the list I have come up with so far. I am sure I’ve missed tons. Please post in [...]

Is Blizzard’s Cataclysm the Worst Expansion in MMO History?

That is the question asked by Wolfshead, and he answers it in the affirmative. He makes a number of excellent arguments in his long and detailed post. I will summarize a few of the more salient points, and give my own answer to this question after the jump:

[...]

Bright Hub – Now a Top 200 Most Popular Web Site

Bright Hub is one of the top 200 most popular web sites.

Most of you know I am the Managing Editor for Gaming at Bright Hub. We produce about 300 articles (including guides, analysis, walkthroughs, and reviews) for games on all platforms (including pen-and-paper and board games!). I have been working there for almost [...]

Bill Roper – Still in Denial

In a comment to my Bill Roper – Computer Game Poison? article, BryanM passed along a link to a recent Gamasutra interview of Bill Roper. As always, it is interesting simply because of how disingenuous and dishonest (or at least in denial) this guy is.

And maybe, also at that time, that’s just to where [...]

Revolutionary Games That Made an Impression On You

One of my writers created this really interesting article recently:

Five Revolutionary Games That Amazed Us

It got me thinking about revolutionary games that really made an impression on me both as a gamer and a developer.

1) Age of Empires: In many ways, this is the game that got me back into playing games [...]

The Diverse and Growing Gaming Industry

Outsider raised a great point in the Games Are Not Bad! post.

“I don’t think we are going to be seeing the anti-video game crusade for very much longer(though there’ll always be a few loonies). Many adults in the 30-40 year old age range either played video games earlier in life, or still do. And [...]

Games Are Not Bad!

I love articles like this: the ones that give you something to think and talk about. I wish we had more of them (though the guides and walkthroughs are obviously valuable to our readers on bright Hub).

Silencing the Critics Who Say Video Games Are Bad

Obviously, the crowd of folks likely to read this [...]

Epicly Wrong Predictions or Opinions from the MMO Industry

When I linked my last blog post on Facebook, one of my friends (*waves to Carly McNamara*) reminded me that there was indeed a Norse-themed MMO in development a few years ago. As soon as I read that, I instantly remembered Mythica (largely because of the trademark infringement lawsuit between Microsoft, developers of Mythica, and [...]

Video Games Turn People Into Rapists? Ok, That’s Too Far Now!

Now that most of the “video games cause violence” people have been debunked and discredited, I guess the anti-video game freaks had to crank things up a notch.

Playing the rape card: “Media psychiatrist” ratchets up anti-videogame rhetoric

Pundits and legislators have been attacking the gaming industry for decades now, pinning the blame for tragic [...]

Bioware Co-Founders Talk About Competing with WoW

This is the $64,000 question in the big time MMO industry. Can SWTOR compete with WoW, and if so, by doing what?

Star Wars vs. Azeroth: Blizzard and Bioware talk competition

What do you think? Can SWTOR compete? If so, how? And more interestingly, what is your prediction?

Predictions for the MMO Industry in 2011?

Feel free to share your predictions for 2011′s MMO industy. I will start with a few of mine.

1) People will be relatively bored/done with Cataclysm in about half as much time as WotLK. It seems to me that WotLK was the big pro-casual innovation, and this expansion really did not add much. I also [...]

Was Going Free to Play the Right Move in 2010?

A number of major MMOs switched from subscription to free to play in 2010. Inspired by the game saving transition made by Dungeons and Dragons Online, and watching free-to-play games get all the users (aside from WoW of course), a number of major companies decided to change gears and give it a shot. Do you [...]

MOBA Games – Worst Communities Ever? Why?

MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. It is a really terrible acronym. I think they should have gone with MMORTS, but whatever. The granddaddy of MOBA games is a Warcraft 3 mod called DotA – Defense of the Ancients. There are now two commercial MOBAs out there. League of Legends (LoL) is the more [...]