Spotted this (the notion “DevOps”) courtesy of Matthew Weigel, a term I’d fortunately missed-out on. It seems to come down to: Software Developers (programmers who write apps that a company sells) and Ops people (sysadmins who manage servers) don’t talk enough and don’t respect each other; this cause problems when […]
massively multiplayer
56 posts
I’m an idiot. It only just occured to me today to wonder how common a name “Markus Persson” actually is. My first reaction on playing with Minecraft was: “Ah, this (much success, this quickly, with this style of game) is what the WurmOnline guys would have loved to achieve, I […]
UPDATE: I’ll add other roles in as/when I get the OK from the relevant people; not all of these are public yet. — Despite the heavy rash of studio closures (well documented by Nicholas Lovell), it seems there’s a lot of exciting online/social games hiring going on right now – […]
Please note: the design described in this blog post has been much improved and updated and put up – with full source – on http://entity-systems.wikidot.com/. On the wiki linked above, there is now a wholly new Entity System design, based on this one, but much improved. There’s a brief post […]
I got this in my inbox a few days ago, and it’s been forwarded to me by a few people since: (NB: the fact that you still have to login MERELY TO READ THE DAMN FAQ linked from the PR statement is IMHO symptomatic of some of MP’s problems :( […]
I’ll do a follow-up post in a minute with the anecdote that lead me to this. But here’s the general opinion/analysis first. Project history (skip if you know all about Warhammer Online and Mythic already) Huge project (cost in excess of $50 million to develop), based on a 20-year-old IP […]
Conferences don’t make these public. But they should. So … here are the evaluations (from the audience) for our panel session at AGDC 09. Judge for yourself whether you want to attend any future sessions featuring us again (Adam Martin, Bill Dalton, Rick Lambright, Joe Ludwig, Marty Poulin). Head Count: […]
Autumn 2012: NCsoft just cancelled City of Heroes – a game that back in 2009 (when this post was written) was doing fine (although nothing stellar; it was a mid-tier MMO). If you’re interested in my thoughts on that, I’ve written a 2012 followup on the CoH situation in particular. […]
(Start by reading Entity Systems are the Future of MMOs Part 1) It’s been a long time since my last post on this topic. Last year, I stopped working for a big MMO publisher, and since then I’ve been having fun doing MMO Consultancy (helping other teams write their games), […]
Slides for our panel arehere: “Killing mmo tech sacred cows.pdf”. Final panel was myself (moderating) and speakers: Bill Dalton (Bioware), Rick Lambright (Gazillion), Joe Ludwig (Valve), Marty Poulin (Shady Logic). PLEASE NOTE: WE DON’T REALLY ADVOCATE EXTREMIST RESPONSES TO TECHNICAL QUESTIONS; THIS WAS JUST A BIT OF FUN. (Mostly).
Really? O, RLY? Well, no, probably not – but this is the kind of opening statement I often make at industry-conference parties. In this rare case, at LOGIN this year, I was showing something on my laptop at the time and happened to *type* my opening salvo, rather than just […]
Last week at the LOGIN conference I sat on a panel with three far more smart/successful/famous people than myself entitled “Online Games 2014: Twelve Spoilers for the Future” (I think I was there as “the argumentative one” ;)). The real value of the panel was the four of us arguing^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussing […]
Reviewing video games is hard. In some ways, it’s an impossible mission: a reviewer has too many conflicting interests: please the publishers or else be denied access to the materials they seek to review please their editor or else don’t get paid; but the editor’s primary source of capital is […]
Alex Evans, Media Molecule Mark Healey, Media Molecule Summary The MM guys are funny as ever, although Alex’s “I made it myself on the way here” presentation tool would perhaps have been more usefully replaced with something like Presi (or whatever it’s called – the “interactive” presentation tool that is […]
What’s the biggest single challenge to a Studio Director? Or to the VP of Development / Studios who oversees a handful of publisher-owned studios? Recruitment In the games industry there are no raw materials of variable quality, there is no variety of base services to build upon; everything that distinguishes […]
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22528 “It is probably safe to say that, despite decades of ever more spectacular Hollywood visions of extra-terrestial domination, humanity in its worst nightmares never imagined it would have to contend with spawn-camping aliens.” (also … If that article is accurate, sad but unsurprising to hear that (apparently) the underpowered […]
European Online Game Operators infamous for being overly secretive announce new association: “The founding members have set three major goals for PEOGA: * Networking. PEOGA is the meeting point for European companies from the online game publishing industry. * Improvement of the Public opinion. PEOGA shall improve the image of […]
Here are the founding principles of my next startup. It’s incomplete and imperfect, but for where I want to go … it’s a start. Incidentally, if you share them, and want to work with me, you should get in touch (adam.m.s.martin at gmail.com). I’m sure we can find a way […]
(4 posts in one day? Yeah! Too busy to be regular right now. GDC is on the way) At the end of my commentary on the formation of NC West, I added almost as an afterthought a little comment about Europe and the MMO industry: there’s a gaping hole in […]
I’m sitting in the Departures Lounge at Helsinki airport, which now has end to end free wifi (I can see 3 or 4 different wifi stations here, on two channels). It’s the “open a web browser window first and hit a button to say “yes, I agree to your terms […]