Thursday 30 July 2009

Twilight: The Video Game?

Daemon made me aware of a link last night that Craig had put up on Facebook. Apparently there's been a little bit of chatter on the net regarding "Twilight MMO". Before anyone gets too excited/enraged at the thought, I should tell you that [at the moment], no, it's not actually happening.

From what I can tell, what seems to have happened is Twilight Source put up a news post stating that there would be a Twilight MMORPG, probably after reading about it on Artuji, who may have possibly come across the story first on The Examiner. I think. I kinda stopped halfway through writing that paragraph and lost my train of thought to watch an episode of Psychoville with my sister.

One look at the actual website of this game however, tells you everything you need to know:

- The game is being created for academic purposes.
- Brandon Gardner is the Game Director and Lead Programmer, Steven Danielson is the Concept Artist.
- The game is not going to be an MMO.
- They are going to surrender the game and all it's materials to Summit Entertainment once it is finished, and it's up to Summit Entertainment whether they want to actually publish it or not.

If you want to know more, I suggest heading over to the "actual website" link above and checking it out.



On a more personal note, I seem to still be living in a sheltered world.

I'm a fan of the books and the story, and all the girls I know who have read the books loved it [as well as a few mums and a couple of librarians who had been introduced to them too]. It seems to be a chickflick of the book world. So it's no wonder to me that it's became so popular, that they made movies for it, and that anyone would consider making a game for it.

What did surprise me was the reactions of most of the articles I read about it. Such as this one on Massively. To put it simply: They didn't like it. Some thought the books were rubbish, poorly written and/or lame. Some thought a Twilight MMO would be the end of the world.

At first, I thought that point was a bit dramatic to make, just because one is not into the idea of romance and videogames [and people wondered why there weren't enough women into games...]. But then, I thought about it. Maybe, they're scared of the idea of a Twilight MMO. Women everywhere could take such delight in it, that their other-halves and/or sons would have to fend for themselves. Oh, the horror.

Imagine playing on COD4, or WoW, or whatever your addiction is, and suddenly finding that you're absolutely starving because the lady who normally brings you food has disappeared from reality. The thought of it kinda makes me wanna laugh and say, "Get over it, and stop playing that game for two seconds, or you can eat pixels for dinner." But on the otherhand, the idea of a game as addictive to women as WoW seems to be to, um, people who can't seem to stop playing WoW, is understandably scary.

I think the only way I could condone such a game would be if it helped women develop personally as they played - rather than turned them into one of those people that sit around letting their reality fall into disrepair, while they get sucked into an imaginary fantasy world because their reality sucks, because they've let it fall into disrepair... And if you don't think games can help a person develop as an individual, stick around. It'll happen. If a person can come away from a film feeling like they've learned something or been enlightened, I really don't see why a game can't be capable of the same and still be entertaining.

Saturday 18 July 2009

Age of Conan, The Last Bastion, and The Order of the Silver Dragons

I am so very intrigued right now. I came across the MMORPG, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and now I really really want to play it. Here's a "re-review" of the game, from curse.com.

I'll be honest, part of the attraction for me is the fact that it sounds different to WoW in gameplay. I was trying to play WoW the other day and found I'd forgotten how to play my belf rogue. Button mashing, anyone?

However, I also found what I've seen of the world to be quite pretty as well. Shiney water make Lottie go, "Oooooh! ^_^". Also, I kinda have a thing for watching the sun and shadows move in games as time goes on...



While researching AoC, I found out that somebody called Zsolaith has started an epic machinima series, The Last Bastion, inspired by the player Silverar in the guild they call the Order of the Silver Dragons. I'm intrigued by not only the way The Last Bastion came into being, but also by the idea of the Order of the Silver Dragons.

The Order of the Silver Dragons (OSD) are a long-standing multi-wing gaming community that was founded on January 9th, 2006, and exists well beyond any one game, being involved in many gaming environments. What makes the OSD unique is their ongoing commitment to mature interactions, their proud display of civility and concern, their desire for adventure and their healthy placement of value on individual effort and communications. They are known across many gaming servers for taking the high road when situations arise, and they pride themselves in the knowledge that they will always strive to help others. Their continued success stems directly from the OSD officers of this order whom take it upon themselves to uphold these virtues, reminiscent of the fabled Knights of the Round Table, which in turn are mimicked by the community of players within the guild.


- Zsolaith

Anyhooo, I've found Zsolaith's channel on YouTube and I'm about to watch what he's got there. You're more than welcome to join me :)

Wednesday 8 July 2009

XFIRE: Now you can spy on me gaming.. or lack of it.



Just joined the Xfire site and downloaded their thingy. I'll admit I've not come across anything quite like it, but I'm not a proper gamer yet, so I guess that'll be a given. I'm impressed though. How does it know how to find what games I have installed? Clever little thing :) But yeah, the point is that I've joined partly to see how much gaming I do, and maybe encourage me to game more. Not so sure the last part will work. WoW is probably the only thing that'll gain hours, if any..

Wednesday 1 July 2009

Time for some focus?

I'm having a little bit of trouble with this summer assignment, namely, I keep staring at things in my garden and doing little much else. Just had a bit of a revaltion now though, because I keep noticing the dreamcatcher-like things I made and hung up to decorate the BBQ area in my garden last summer, and the actual spider webs that have come to decorate the place in the time since.



I'm thinking bugs. Bugs and insects, and beetles and creepy crawlies. Butterflies. Moths. Dragonflies. Spiders. Lots of lovely shapes and sizes and colours for me to choose from with bugs.

And I'm thinking: I reheheally fancy some cheese on toast first.