Via Slate Online Magazine comes the story of Why you can’t find any 360s for sale.

“It isn’t the scarcity of supply itself that is puzzling. That is almost inevitable for some of these seasonal toys. In any given year, many toys will be unloved and oversupplied, but a few lucky ones will be in unexpectedly high demand. We shouldn’t be surprised any more than we’re surprised that the champion of a knockout tennis tournament won all his matches. Somebody had to.

In Microsoft’s case, the Xbox 360 can be produced only gradually, but all the demand is there at once. Plentiful supply would be possible only if Microsoft made millions of consoles in advance and stored them without releasing them, or if it built vast production lines that only ran for a few weeks—both economically unwise strategies. It makes more sense to ship the consoles as they are made—and that means gradually. The steady supply can’t match peak December demand.

So, supply shortages are a fact of life. The puzzle is somewhere else: Why don’t companies raise prices when supply is short and demand is frenzied? “

Hmmm…I remember a chinese buffet and a long discussion of possibly doing something just like this…So we didn’t have the guts to make this Monkeys (you know who you are) but the time is fast approaching where MMOs are a bit more naughty.

Massively multiplayer online naughtiness - News at GameSpot:

Have you ever played The Sims and wished you could have your character skip work and jump into an S&M bondage orgy? The folks at Naughty America have. The adult entertainment site is tapping into the online gaming industry with a titillating new game cleverly titled Naughty America: The Game. The massively multiplayer online PC game is part online community, part dating service, and part adult fetish outlet.

Via Slashdot

Looks like lovers of City of Heros can breathe a sigh of releif. Noone will be coming in to take away your “smadamantium” claws anytime soon.

Long live user’s freedom!

+

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6839543456203292758

Ty Cotton!

Wired News: Star Wars Fans Flee Net Galaxy

According to this wired article:

“Their grievance: a controversial, sweeping redesign of the structure of the game that they say has ruined the fun — and made irrelevant the years of work they have invested into their in-game personas.”

Which begs an interesting concept. We all play MMOs and put countless hours into them, and yet, on a whim.. or.. dare i say.. a technical glitch, companies could cause the MONTHS of hard work to vanish in a puff of smoke.

Kind of lets you know what rights you have in this space doesnt it. ZERO.

What happens when a company nerfs too much?
I’ll tell you what happens, the company burns its revenue stream.

There are times when a PC Game grips you firmly by the cohones and doesn’t let go. Well, Civ IV does that, and then swings you around the room a bit.

I could easily spend hours gushing forth a full review of the game, but instead let me sum it up by saying: Get it. If you’ve ever been a Civilization fan, or if you’re a fan of strategy games in general, then this title will not disappoint. The game’s random world maps and time frame are scalable from Deathmatch size (1 hour games) to Ginormous (22 hour games). The graphics are great, the music gets stuck in your head, and the interface is a work of art. Seriously. I’ve never seen an interface successfully convey so much information in such a clear and understanding way. Plus it looks good to boot.

Also, the game was designed to be multiplayer-first and single player second. That doesn’t mean single player sucks (because it oh-so-much doesn’t) but picture this: dynamic multiplayer joins/quits where people play their entire singleplayer civ-game, in increments, but online. Random people will see the game, and dynamically join-up mid game to play as your competition. It’s insane. There’s no need to schedule a game with anyone - and yet you’re still playing against other people.

If you turn the table around, and look at it from the other way - At any point when you sit down to play, you can login to someone else’s world and play around in it for a while. Each time you play it’s completely different. That’s almost a new type of online genre itself — a missing link, or at least a successful step down the right path, toward a persistent MMOTBS (turn based strategy).

Enough.. time to go teach the Mongolians a thing or two about gunpowder.

For the record:
MonkeyGames - 5 Stars
Gamespot - 9.4
Gamespy - 5 Stars
IGN - 9.4

Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese - New York Times

Nothing too ground breaking, but its interesting how this story has been seeing more mainstream press. I have also heard some recent stories on NPR.

COMM 3344-1 :: Games for the web :: Students Via Boing Boing

I dont know waht ethnography is, but its interesting. There is ALOT of material to comb through.. but gems like this pop up:

“MMORPG-ocracy
I think the ideal political relationship between game developers and game players would be something of a democracy. I feel most things benefit from democratic discourse, including games. Though within this democratic framework, there with be those that “exercise” more power than others; the developers have almost absolute power on game play mechanics, storyline, and even access to the game, in the case of World of Warcraft, whereas the players’ only power is the ability to quit playing and paying for the game. Despite this, developers would be ignorant to assume they can do whatever they want to with a game. So a proper balance of power is needed to keep both developer and player content.

An example of this power struggle in the past: the beautifully executed naked gnome warrior civil disobedience at Ironforge. Hundreds of unhappy players congregated to protest to deficiency of the warrior class. Blizzard, the developers of the game, took action to disperse the unruly crowd that was heavily burdening the server by denying access to these player’s accounts for three hours. While not an immediate success, however, this did influence the developer’s decision about the warrior class in later patches. The developers obviously exercised the majority of the power in this situation, but the players were able to have (at least a little) say in the development.

It seems like these Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing World are little different from nations. The developer are the governing body, and the players are the citizens. Unlike the United States, however, it would be easy for the citizen of World of Warcraft to leave this virtual world, and I’m certain the developers fully realize this.”

Fascinating rumination indeed.

Ain’t It Cool News

This can be filed in the “Still a rumor” category. But AICN has an elaborate network of spies, and i have found them to be about 90% reliable.

So they are saying that Peter Jackson, and WETA have been pursuing Guillermo del Toro to make Halo. You may know him from such movies as The Devil’s Backbone, and Hellboy. Surley these are no “crazy blockbusters” but anyone who can bring the bizzare world of Hellboy to the screen, and have it not look totally laughable, deserves some credit.

I think he has the art style, and the cinemtographic chops to pull it out.

Now, they do say this could all fall through if del Toro’s schedule on Hellboy 2 conflicts too much, but it seems like PJ and Weta are willing to move the Halo schedule to make this work. Cool, sounds like they are not sacrificing talent to meet some dart board date.