10 by 10 room

(via DHH) In web development news, a relatively upstart framework (“Ruby on Rails”) reached 1.0. The release notes included this statement:

”…it works mostly right, most of the time, for most of the people”

Then in response:

Where do [industry leaders] explicitly state their framework runs perfectly for all users all of the time? They don’t because such a claim would be patently false, and there simply is no sexy way to articulate the truth [...] Such careless honesty from such a visible project may inadvertenly damage overall market perception of the f/oss community, regardless of the actual quality of the offering (over the short-term at least).

The above poster was trying to describe the relatively hostile market conditions out there, and the author indeed was more comfortable with the above statement, rather than the other response, that a framework would ever reaching 1.0 without claiming to “work just right, all the time, for anybody”.

If you’ve spent any time on the internet (yay internet) then you’ll recognize this quote:

Well, whatever. Whatever people say about Rails, it helps me do my job better, and have fun doing it. I look forward to new projects now, because I get to do them in Rails. To me, that’s key.

So you can keep up the “everything is okay” facade as is expected, or you can bid up your earnest but uncomfortable honesty, or perhaps you can count on a fanbase that’ll just like it and not worry about the bollocks.

“A story is a linked series of events which contains one or more conflicts.” – Clinton R. Nixon on “the most important post ever on my weblog”.

We almost have a sensible, non-objectionable answer to the question What Is A Story?, at least relative to the kinds of stories we want from of our games.

“The age-old battle is not Geeks vs Marketers. The age-old battle is Geeks vs Markets.”—Hugh Macleod.

Speakers for 10 by 10 room.

See also: “Guild Wars: The MMORPG That Won’t Own You” Some interesting conversations arose from friends comparing the worths of of WoW and Guild Wars.

Friend Y, extolling the virtues of Guild Wars:

With no monthly fee, the game designers have no reason to waste your time.

[In response to "Is the game better for casual play?"] Yes, definitely . Not having the monthly fee makes it a lot easier to put the game down for a while. The only qualification I’d add is that I haven’t tried PvP yet, but I expect there’s a big learning curve there — so many people have been playing for so long that there’s bound to be some intimidating metagame wrapped up in it, like Magic. But for PvE, I think the reduced transit time, no corpse runs, and general lack of drudge work should make for a more casual time commitment — though I’m sure it depends on your social circle, too.

Friend R, questioning some of his answers.

I’m just tired of people expecting WOW to be all possible things to all people. It’s one game among many with plusses and minuses, and niches it fills. Unfortunately one of the worst problems has been that so many people play it and talk about it, that it becomes easy not to play it for your goals, but for goals that are “cool”. Ie, you can get the impression that you’re wasting your time playing it unless you reach lvl 60 and get all purple gear – when in fact, the game is designed to be equally satisfying to people who only want to play to lvl 40, accomplish a few quests, and then maybe roll a new character or even quit the game.

Anyway, yes, go play a game with fewer people and be proud of how that means more focused players and less teenager L3g0l4s’s – but a lot of what you describe is simply a matter of putting yourself in a smaller group, not that either game is superior or not. Of course, that may be an excellent reason to play a more elite game: smaller pool removes the dreck. But inversely, that smaller group means less likely to be able to play with the people you want to.

If you know your goals and what’s important, and what’s not important, then by all means pick and choose a game on that. WOW knows it for people that want a diversity of possibilities, none of which are optimum.

I see interesting similarities between MMORPG design, and social game design in other mediums (RPGs, CCGs).

Lxndr: yeah, I'm not a pie person either.  cake ftw.

“Serenity takes that ball and runs with it. Its great strength is the same as that of Firefly, and before it Farscape and Blake’s 7: its heroes are on the outside, doing what they have to do because they don’t have the luxury of power.”

You Can’t Take The Sky From Me: A Firefly Fan’s View, by Niall Harrison, in Strange Horizons

subtitle: trumped-up excuse to test out posting images to the blog

CRN: “The topic of what to call these newer role-playing games that keep breaking the rules is annoying. It’s useful stuff we need to tackle one of these days, though.”

I think the naming-convention thing is finally throwing down. My vote is behind story games / storygaming.

An “enemy game” of your choice (KIRK: “Spawn of Fashaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!”) – chadu