A Green Mushroom

Steam recently announced that they are bringing the Steam platform and Source Engine games to Macs.  The viral campaign preceding the announcement had some cool images . I have never owned a Mac because I love to play games on the computer.  Besides Blizzard, publishers rarely release games for mac.  The gaming market is dominated by the PC. Don't get me wrong, I use macs all the time.  I know their advantages and uses.  But, when it comes time to buy a new computer for my own use I wouldn't even consider an Mac.  The lack of gaming support is that important for me.  It is a deal breaker. Maybe Steam coming to the Mac is the first step towards developers returning there.  I'll wait and see what comes from this, but for now I'm keeping my awesome PC.

Oh my god.  This is epic.  A children's choir sung Still Alive from Portal.  This is definitely a must see.

By all accounts Dungeons and Dragons Online has resurrected itself by switching its business model.  Since it has gone free-to-play over one million players have joined.  Before the switch over DDO was in its death throes. Pretty awesome business move if you ask me. This made me think, which MMOs would I be playing right now if they were F2P?  Well, probably quite a few.  I wonder why more companies don't try this out? I know new games are coming out designed around the F2P model, but maybe some of our current stock of MMOs could be saved - or expanded - if they were switched to F2P.  You could even throw in some micro-transactions and I wouldn't mind. I want to know, what games would you be playing right now - that you currently are not - if you didn't have to pay a monthly subscription for them?

I've been thinking about buying a PS3 lately.  I think it is mostly because they finally have a backlog of interesting console exclusives.  I would love to try Uncharted 2 and Little Big Planet especially.  On top of this, the recent announcement of Playstation Move and the poor video quality of FFXIII on my Xbox 360 have all pointed me towards getting a PS3.  I think I'll lay out my thinking. Reasons to buy: -Finally has enough console exclusives to warrant attention -PSN has FFVII, FFVIII, and soon FFIX -Blue ray player -Playstation Move -It has come down in price Reasons to not buy: -I have a Xbox 360 -Most games are not console exclusive -All of my friends play on Xbox Live or PC, not PSN -PS3 still costs a lot of money Looking at my lists I'm thinking no PS3 for now.  I don't want to spend the money.  But, if the console were to drop in price or come in an awesome bundle I might have to change my mind.

Game by Night has an interesting prediction about Cataclysm's content structure.  It fits in nicely with the expansion theme of the past week here on A Green Mushroom .  It asks whether Cataclysm will last long enough to keep players interested and makes some educated guesses about 5-man instances and upcoming raids. In my opinion, Syp's most interesting post this week was about middlers .  He wrote about how many of us never reach endgame in our MMOs.  I think it goes along with expansion discussion week because what is the point of expanding if the majority of your players will never reach the new content? Also, Tobold has an interesting thought experiment up about how the MMO scene would look if WoW wasn't a part of it. I would also like to ask my readers, what do you like to see in expansion packs?  Do you want new content? New features?  Do you like more updates consistently or lots of new material packaged together in an expansion pack? ...

After writing all week about expansion packs I've been thinking about two prime examples of expansions packs in action.  Namely, World of Warcraft and EVE Online.  Although their update structure is different, they both have some of the best updating practices on the entire MMO market. EVE Online uses the consistent but incremental system that I outlined in my last post.  They release expansion packs for free through patches containing new content and features. Sometimes these features are quite ambitious and create entire new ways to play EVE.  In the past they introduced exploration as a skill-set that differs from all the others.  They are currently working on implementing planet control and harvesting.  Their goal with the expansion beyond that is to allow players to walk in space stations and have a human avatar outside of their ship. Not only do the features introduce new scope to the game, but they are delivered consistently and freely.  ...

Patches and expansion packs both add new features and content to the games we know and love.  The difference is that patches happen on a small scale and expansion packs happen on a large scale.  Which is the better model to use when releasing updates?  Let's weigh some pros and cons. Patches allow developers to deliver new things to their players constantly.  Players are always itching for new features and content so they love having the influx of new stuff that consistent patches bring.  It also gives players a sense that the development team cares about the community and that they haven't abandoned the game.  If new content and features are added to the game regularly it gives the world a feeling of progression, it keeps the world from growing stagnant.  Another thing to keep in mind is that no one is going to argue with receiving free updates, which is exactly what patches do. Expansion packs help out the developer more than the players. ...