Posted on March 5th, 2008%
As reported late last night on The Guardian Online, Gary Gygax, co-writer of Dungeons & Dragons, has died.
Say it isn’t so! What a sad day. Gary Gygax has no idea how much he influenced my childhood. I’m proud to say that I still have my original AD&D Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide. From time to time, I crack them open, taking myself back nearly 30 years in time.
Those books truly were a work of art (and, you may recall, dungeon mastering is both an art and a science). I can only imagine how different I would be today if I never found them. Without a doubt, Gygax’s skill as a writer advanced my reading skills by leaps and bounds, and the countless hours I spent in the worlds he created enhanced my imagination.
So much of what is in those books is burned into my mind. I can still tell you, with a high degree of accuracy, . . .
→ Read More: Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, dies at 69
Posted on October 3rd, 2006%
To those folks that follow professional baseball and multiplayer online games, it should not be a surprise that Boston pitcher Curt Schilling is an avid gamer. Sony even organized an event with him in their EverQuest II game (a game that Mr. Schilling is an avid player of).
In early September, Schilling and others formed Green Monster Games to create “industry changing games”. Good for him — it’s good to see online gaming and wargaming fans are not just avid sci-fi readers and nerdy IT types.
Schilling hasn’t sat back idly, either — he’s even reached out to the MMOG community, and I found that he has posted quite frequently on the web site of the Fires of Heaven guild (a World of Warcraft guild).
Side thought: Those Fires of Heaven guys are hard-core — they raid seven days a week, 6+ hours a day, and expect members to participate in 90% of the raids. I . . .
→ Read More: Baseball players are gamers, too
Posted on August 23rd, 2005%
When playing computer games (something I don’t have nearly as much time to do as I’d like), you want to maximize the performance of your computer for the task at hand. To do so, shut down all those unnecessary services to free up memory and some processor cycles.Dump the following code into a batch file to shut down many services which you don’t need for most games (even network games). The batch file was written for a standard Windows XP Professional build, and includes a section for disabling Norton AntiVirus. Add your own net stop commands to the list to get rid of what you don’t need. Then, run the batch file (I call it stop.bat) to shut down these services. net stop “automatic updates”
net stop “system event notification”net stop “com+ event system”net stop “error reporting service”net stop iisadminnet stop “kodak camera connection software”net stop “licctrl service”net stop “network connections”net stop “network location awareness (nla)”net stop “norton antivirus firewall . . .
→ Read More: Stopping unnecessary services when gaming
Posted on July 14th, 2005%
Microsoft signed an exclusive deal with Marvel Enterprises (the comic book folks), giving the software giant rights to use Marvel’s intellectual property in MMO (massive multiplayer online) games. Read about it on CNet.
This may sound like a good deal to Microsoft, or to fans of Marvel comics and MMOs, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Here’s why.
From the CNet article: “The deal is Marvel’s first MMO pact. The first title is expected in 2008.” We all know that really means 2009. That’s a long time away (although not a long time considering the development efforts required to produce an MMO), and a long time to wait when there’s already a superhero game on the market, City of Heroes, which is among the better MMO’s out there. (In fact, Marvel tried suing NCSoft, makers of City of Heroes, for copyright infringement. The suit flopped.)
Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), owners of the EverQuest franchise . . .
→ Read More: Microsoft and Marvel to sleep together (and other MMOG thoughts)
Posted on April 23rd, 2005%
The Online Games Special Interest Group (SIG) of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) recently published their second Online Games Quarterly, which focuses on casual gaming and who the casual gamer is. Among the articles include:
Understanding the Casual Gamer, a round-table discussion with executives from leading casual gaming companies;
MMOG Demographics: Perspectives From Industry Insiders, another round-table discussion with representation from companies such as NCSoft (City of Heroes, Lineage II, Guild Wars) and Mythic Entertainment (Dark Age of Camelot). [Ironically, I owned the domain name guildwar.com a number of years back and sold it for about $200. I should have held out for more...]
A worthy read for anyone with a vested interest in casual gaming (as . . .
→ Read More: IGDA’s Online Games Quarterly focuses on casual gaming
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