10 by 10 room

“It is already impossible to ignore the economic impact MMORPGs are having on the tabletop sub-segment – they decimated it in 2005. Only time will tell if some value premise can be rebuilt from the foundations available to entice a new generation of gamers into the hobby – or if the battle has already been lost. Me, I’m betting on the guys with $480,000,000.”

Ryan Dancey, as resposted here.

“Here are some wolves and trolls that your dwarf character can shoot in the face.” – Mike Mearls was sold on World of Warcraft.

“Traditional rpgs built on long term campaigns are high commitment and very fragile social structures. MMORPGs do not require the high commitment at a single time, and are very resiliant to social shifts amongst the individual play groups.” – Chris

“So make RPG’s that offer other focuses, building on the Story & Role/Sim strengths of RPG’s, combat is cool and all, just don’t make gamist power-leveling and character strategizing a focus.” – Rob

“This is what RPGs lack. Even “light” games like PTA require (comparativly) lots of setup, lots of time, lots of organization [...] and I think that we should look to expand the territory they’ve opened up.” – Brand

Continual fallout from the original Terra Nova post on Horde/Evil. Liz Lawley at Many2Many:

“When I was playing online on Monday, Joi Ito said that he thought World of Warcraft was becoming the “new golf” for the technology set. I think there’s some truth in that, but it brings with it all kinds of additional social pressures and complexities, of which avatar racial choices are only the beginning. I think there’s some fertile ground for research in that boundary area, the crossover between the real and game worlds, and the extent to which they influence each other.”

Consider also that this conversation happened while online with World of Warcraft. Consider that I’ve once considered playing WoW for business networking reasons. (Now consider the impact Warcraft on your business life if your new business partner was short on mana when your tank really needed a heal.)

Oy, golf.

“The game world [of World of Warcraft] benefits from the ambiguity. What it lacks, unfortunately, is a way for players to make meaningful moral choices.” — Lydia Leong’s comment on Terra Nova, “The Horde is Evil”.

While I think that the Horde is not accurately “evil” (not moreso than the Alliance), there’s still a good point about the moral consequences of simply playing “evil” acts without taking some responsibility for what’s going on. There can be a mature gaming allowing for depiction of “evil” choices, but only within a framework that allows players to adequately separate themselves from what’s going on, and also be reflective about what’s happening. In other words, you need to play the rise of Darth Vader as the fall of a flawed hero into moral wrong, and not as a fun opportunity for griefing Alderaan.