I’ve been a game designer for a little under 2 years now. I have a lot of ideas. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, some of them are further to the extremes. As I continue making games, I must acknowledge that someone somewhere has had or will have the same idea as me at some point. Sometimes it can be frustrating. There are no original ideas… or quotes. That is all.

I’ve made no secret that I’m looking forward to checking out Warhammer Online. I have the game pre-ordered for in-store pickup and I’m a member of a wish-we-were-still-hardcore casual guild called Casualties of WAR. Mythic recently launched a fun little site called Road to WAR in which players acquire real life territories for gold and power. If you join, enter my email address so I get some gold (rshwayder [you know what goes here] gmail [backwards tod] com). Continue Reading »

Lucky episode #5 of the Massive Guys on Massive Games podcast is now available. Hosts Ryan “Blackguard” Shwayder and Steve “Moorgard” Danuser discuss the Olympics, Michael Phelps, Alicia Sacramone, and PvP in the latest episode. Continue Reading »

We’ve taken the 5 pieces of concept art we revealed over the past couple weeks and made wallpapers out of them. They’re available in the most 5 most common screen resolutions of people who visit the 38 Studios website, so I apologize if the resolution you use isn’t available. I’m sure someone out there will convert them to other resolutions (hint). The wallpapers are available here.

There’s a raid in Final Fantasy XI that is intended to take 18 hours to defeat. It’s called Absolute Virtue. This is, at best, a very ill-informed design flaw, but I believe it to actually cross the line into being truly unethical and outright dangerous. If that wasn’t enough, there is also a more difficult raid involving the Pandemonium Warden that takes even longer. Continue Reading »

“A quiet reverence hung within the grand chamber as the ministers of justice debated their verdict.” Along with a brief interview with Todd McFarlane, IGN has revealed the final piece of concept art that we unveiled at Comic-Con. If you missed any of the other four pieces, you can check them out at Ten Ton Hammer and Zam.

I joined a guild for Warhammer Online called Casualties of WAR. It’s founded by and comprised of bloggers and friends of bloggers, and is off to a great start. We’ll have branches in both Order and Destruction (I’m planning on going Order), and you’ll see many familiar faces from the blogosphere like Genda, JoBildo, Ethic, Cuppycake, and a bunch of others. Feel free to apply to join. A list of known bloggers in the guild as of today after the break. Continue Reading »

I’ve talked before about recapturing the magic in games and trying to replicate it from a design standpoint, but recently I’ve decided to relive some old games. I picked up all of the Thief and Fallout games, both of which occupy places in my top three or so games of all time. But, I already know that I won’t enjoy them nearly as much as I did before. Continue Reading »

Fury is closing down. It’s not a big surprise, but it’s still sad to see a game go both for the players who enjoyed it and for the developers who worked hard on the game. 48 hours is pretty short notice, but I guess it’s a bit like the band-aid theory (shut down the game as fast as possible and it will hurt less). The message from Auran after the jump (because they’re closing down the site). Continue Reading »

Ever want to meet the man who invented the home video game console? You can! Ralph Baer is the very special guest speaker at tomorrow’s (that’s a Tuesday, NOT a Wednesday) Boston Post Mortem. It begins at 7:00PM on Tuesday, August 5 at The Skellig in Waltham, MA. Devs and non-devs are welcome. More info can be found here.