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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

June 13th, 2007: admin says...
True Dungeon gets yet more competition: get your Aliens on at Origins

And now here’s TerrorWerks, “a fully immersive event” set in “the immersive enviroment of a massive space station.” Also, it’s immersive. But I kid! I am psyched to see more attempts at this. I don’t think I ever posted properly about this other thing at Gen Con, either: “Guardian 6 is an immersive live-action event in which you take on the mantle of an agent working for a secret agency. As a secret agent you will be sent on missions that will take you to different locations where you will interact with mysterious individuals.” Different locations, eh? It’ll be cool to see if distributing the event makes it more immersive or less… and my ARG experience tells me to bet on more.

Posted in Conventions, LARP | 6 Comments

Monday, June 11, 2007

June 11th, 2007: Mike Sugarbaker says...
Hail Gleemax! WotC creates marketing initiative that actually makes some sense

Here’s the news version, and here is the somewhat less comprehensible thing itself. The announcement talks pretty big talk about a new social hub for gamers, and frankly, WotC’s assessment of the problem they face is dead on. “We’re slowing down in terms of recruiting that next generation of hobby gamers. Today’s 15-year-olds have such a different experience than a 15-year-old did five years ago or 10 years ago, or when I was a 15-year-old,” says WotC VP of Digital Randy Buehler; “So today’s 15-year-old is online and doesn’t necessarily have any reason to leave his computer because there’s so much to do there.” And this new endeavor, full of online games as it will eventually (they say) be, is meant to loop back around to supporting retailers… which it could certainly do if the execution’s right.

And there’s the rub. Because first impressions matter, and while I am certainly down for an online strategy-gaming hub seasoned with cryptic commands from an evil brain in a jar, my first impression is that gleemax.com is a fairly dumb play-by-post RPG that thinks it’s an alternate reality game. That’s fine as far as it goes, and there’s allegedly some more authentically ARG-y things happening somewhere, but they’ll have to make a clean break from this version eventually - ideally around the time they launch Uncivilized. They’re making noise about bringing online versions of some of the Avalon Hill hits to Gleemax eventually as well. Early versions of the social-networky parts of the site should hit at Gen Con… I guess that’s not such good news for the UnCiv ship date. Ah well.

On the whole, I’m glad to see this announcement. With regard to the social stuff, there’s certainly as much potential upside as there is potential for biffing it, and maybe more. And I want my hands on those digital games, as I’m sure I’ve made abundantly clear. Bring it, evil brain dude!

Posted in Computer and Console Games, Industry | 18 Comments

June 11th, 2007: Mike Sugarbaker says...
Attention motorists: Perplex City is closed

Yeah, I saw the news and didn’t post because it just made me unhappy. (Especially when people started asking, right there on the goodbye posts from the story team, if this was all a setup to the start of season 2. For some reason the jackassery of which the Internet is capable keeps surprising me.) Mind Candy has put the second season of the Perplex City ARG on indefinite hiatus, and everyone on the story team has left the company. Stony silence about the issue on Mind Candy’s corporate site, which is always a wwwwwwonderful sign, but there are various messages and discussions out there, and the PXC-focused sites do all have some in-story bits about the end.

So what’d we learn, kids? That tying your product to a $200K prize is a good way to have to keep doing it over and over, even if the product improves? (Wave 2 of the Season 2 puzzle cards will still be released, BTW.) That even a sucky story is a better purchase motivator than a delayed (and suckier) story?

(Postscript: Mind Candy is allegedly looking into doing an online-hybrid product in the vein of Webkinz and, yes, Bella Sara. I WARNED YOU)

Posted in Card Games, LARP | 2 Comments

Sunday, June 10, 2007

June 10th, 2007: Mike Sugarbaker says...
A brief technical note

We have changed our blogging engine to something halfway decent. Please let us know about any bugs or problems you might come across. Thanks!

Posted in OgreCave | 16 Comments

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