Psychochild’s Blog

Happy 4th of July! Let me take this opportunity to do something truly American: complain about my work.

Sanya has a post about "best practices" talks at conferences. She mentions that she has a sense of deja vu: saying the same thing to the same people taking the same notes as before. She then laments that conferences never really seem to be educational, just excuses to get together and network.

It's the same thing I was feeling several years ago and why, although I love making games, I really fucking hate the game industry.
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While we're considering business issues and how they affect game development, let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Let's consider, which comes first: the game design or the business?

This is an interesting topic, because some designers I've been talking to recently have advocated that some of the higher level business decisions need to be determined first. How can you design a game, they contend, unless you know the audience and their demographics?

As usual, the real issue isn't quite what it seems.
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This week, we're going to take a look at the intersection between business and design. How does business influence design?

Let's see how few posts we can get this week! :)
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No deep challenge this weekend given the news that George Carlin passed away.

I always considered Carlin a true artist. He not only found time to entertain us, but also to make us think. A goal I aspire to in my professional life.

We lost someone irreplaceable. :(
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As I mentioned in the recent Weekend Design Challenge, the topic of tradeskills/crafting has been on my mind. So, let's take a look at this from a developer's point of view.

What do tradeskills add to a game? What are some recent implementations? How are these implementations flawed, and what can we learn from them?
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I've been thinking a bit more about tradeskills and crafting lately. How does it fit into a traditional online game? What are the challenges? So, in anticipation of a blog entry on this, here's your challenge: What is the single most important aspect of in-game crafting, in your opinion?

A few initial thoughts after the jump.
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This week we have Over00 writing to ask:

For the last few days, I've been working on adding content to Golemizer, mostly quests. It's a lot of fun since it gets me to improve to AI system to build quests that can be more than just "kill 10 rats". However, content being what it is and being the only one adding content, I know it will take more than traditional quests to help keep interest.

So, perhaps the brilliant minds here can think about his issue and give some feedback.
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As part of my duty for getting a copy of AoC, I'm writing blog entries on another site about my experiences. This has the added bonus of not turning this blog into a "why I am frustrated Conan right this minute" rantsite. :P

I promise to try to keep posting some content on here, though.
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One common theme in online games is that it's hard to balanced ranged attacks vs. up-close (usually melee) attacks. In general, one or the other seems to be much more potent.

So, this week, let's talk about how to balance these two types of attacks.
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As I posted previously, I had to move hosts.

If you're reading this entry, then you're looking at my current site instead of the old one.

There may be some downtime over the next few days as stuff gets changed and upgraded. If you see any problems, please email me.