Muckbeast

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 developers [...]

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 show a little more [...]

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 Good Game [...]

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 code. [...]

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:

The inside front cover [...]

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 [...]

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:

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 3 years now am proud to have been a part of its meteoric [...]

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 the [...]

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 after many years [...]

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 [...]

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 blog are [...]

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 [...]

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 events like [...]

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?

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 think [...]

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 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 [...]

This little bit of news really makes me angry. OnLive awarded important patent on streaming gaming content. The incredibly broad scope of this patent is an absolute joke.
“The present invention provides a system in which video games may be widely distributed and played without the need for multiple platform-specific hardware units or purchase [...]

Congrats to Blizzard. They set a new sales record by selling 3.3 million copies of Cataclysm in the first 24 hours. That’s really great because I know those hard working, under-appreciated folks really needed the money…
But why just 3.3 million? I mean, if you play WoW, is it really an option whether or not you [...]