Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[damijin]

I only know enough of any programming language to screw things up, but I *can* write pretty well, and I love complex interactions. Add a dash of creativity, and I could make a good Story/Content guy. Did I mention that I'd work cheap? lol

Well, 2006 has sucked for the virtual-world gamer, and it would be nice to see a new face in town. Maybe a MySpace/Sims/Tycoon/BF2142/ATitD/EVE kind of game?

Raph will just open up a forum where you, and everyone else who can write a decent story arc, will just tap it out in their free time at work, on the crapper, whatever, and post it up there. Raph will then ctrl+c, ctrl+v, your post into the world and, VIOLA!~

It's not theft, it's player generated content! 

(Probably, more accurately, player "directed" content, at least in the pre-release development community. But, I look forward to being stolen from anyway. :D)

and I told myself never again after SWG development boards... never again damnit :(

[Krakrok]

Areae was mentioned on Techcrunch. Shouldn't have a undersupply of resumes after that.

[Evangolis]

I like the thought of having one highly customized toon and living in a 90210 type place and having the ability to travel to westworld in the morning, medieval world in the evening it is intriguing.

So...in other words, Second Life? Or am I missing something?

Furries.

[Trippy]

I like the thought of having one highly customized toon and living in a 90210 type place and having the ability to travel to westworld in the morning, medieval world in the evening it is intriguing.

So...in other words, Second Life? Or am I missing something?

If all you care about are the visual trappings of such settings Second Life would support it. However my understanding of the Second Life scripting system, which granted is quite limited, is that you really can't create a full-blown RPG system within the game like you can with something like the LambdaMOO programming language. SL does support hit points and taking damage but that's about it. And "dying" always just teleports you to your home.

[CmdrSlack]

I like the thought of having one highly customized toon and living in a 90210 type place and having the ability to travel to westworld in the morning, medieval world in the evening it is intriguing.

So...in other words, Second Life? Or am I missing something?

If all you care about are the visual trappings of such settings Second Life would support it. However my understanding of the Second Life scripting system, which granted is quite limited, is that you really can't create a full-blown RPG system within the game like you can with something like the LambdaMOO programming language. SL does support hit points and taking damage but that's about it. And "dying" always just teleports you to your home.

There's actually one or two RPGs that exist within SL.  One is called either DarkLife or DarkLight, but it's basically a fantasy setting.  It has classes and levels, IIRC.  I haven't personally messed with it, so I can't say for certain how complex it is, but I know that people had been working on various other projects with a similar goal as well. 

[Trippy]

I like the thought of having one highly customized toon and living in a 90210 type place and having the ability to travel to westworld in the morning, medieval world in the evening it is intriguing.

So...in other words, Second Life? Or am I missing something?

If all you care about are the visual trappings of such settings Second Life would support it. However my understanding of the Second Life scripting system, which granted is quite limited, is that you really can't create a full-blown RPG system within the game like you can with something like the LambdaMOO programming language. SL does support hit points and taking damage but that's about it. And "dying" always just teleports you to your home.

There's actually one or two RPGs that exist within SL.  One is called either DarkLife or DarkLight, but it's basically a fantasy setting.  It has classes and levels, IIRC.  I haven't personally messed with it, so I can't say for certain how complex it is, but I know that people had been working on various other projects with a similar goal as well. 

Interesting. Well then we'll just have to wait and see how the stuff Raph is working on is going to differ from SL.

[Sky]

I'll put in for the lead guitar position.

[geldonyetich]

Opportunity doesn't get its greasy mitts on me until I've got my bachelors.

[Righ]

Apply now.

[geldonyetich]

On second thought, I'm all the bachelor I can handle.

[TripleDES]

Interesting. Well then we'll just have to wait and see how the stuff Raph is working on is going to differ from SL.

That RPG in SL is however slow and complex as fuck, because you have to hack your way around everything, especially data communication and storage.

SecondLife in itself is a great idea, but the shittiest possible implementation ever.

[WayAbvPar]

I might as well get in on the job begging.

Raph-
I want to decide who live and who dies. Thanks!

If not that, just give me admin powers to your forums and I will rule with an iron fist.

[tazelbain]

If not that, just give me admin powers to your forums and I will rule with an iron fist.

No, No, he should work a deal with Schild to get the forums hosted here! It'd be like every day is Festivus!

[Cheddar]

If not that, just give me admin powers to your forums and I will rule with an iron fist.

No, No, he should work a deal with Schild to the forums hosted here! It'd be like every day is Festivus!

Ironically that is not a bad idea.  Be a good way for f13 to pull in some cash.  Heh, kinda like UO using stratics.  Though having a different domain name would probably be ideal.

[Soln]

Only quibbles I have are that PHP != mySQL, there's plenty of support for heavier dbs now.

heavier? explain plz

[DataGod]

If not that, just give me admin powers to your forums and I will rule with an iron fist.

No, No, he should work a deal with Schild to the forums hosted here! It'd be like every day is Festivus!

Ironically that is not a bad idea.  Be a good way for f13 to pull in some cash.  Heh, kinda like UO using stratics.  Though having a different domain name would probably be ideal.

Oh i'd like to see some input from him on THAT wonderful idea.....ROFL....

[Righ]

Lua could have been there. I dunno why it isn't, actually.

Have a look at this: http://www.rebol.com/

The main disadvantage is that its more proprietary than the OSS stuff, and with that comes a smaller pool of knowledgeable users (though frankly any developer worth her salt should have no trouble learning the next language after the first couple). However, its lightweight and very elegant and internally consistent. Since it comes from Carl Sassenrath, the guy behind the Amiga OS, that's what I expected. I mention it because you seem to be headed down a path of stacking up heaps of heavy general-purpose services and middleware, where having some folks spend a few weeks learning something more specialised and elegant might pay dividends.

I figure, someone who is badass is badass, and the language is a detail.

Yep. Shame I'm systems badass rather than code monkey badass these days.

[Raph]

Oh, I don't think we intend to stack up heavy stuff. KISS is very much our motto. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to write our prototype all by myself. :)

[Cyrrex]

Excellent.  Keep it simple you say?  That's me.  And stupid at the same time?  Hell, you may have well just contacted me directly...no need to involve all these other people.  My brand of stupid cannot be found amongst the general F13 public.  Except perhaps for Tele, but he seems to have fallen into a hole somewhere.

So, you are going to want to hire me as your Personal Manager.  No, that wasn't meant to be personnel, I intend to manage you directly.  We need to be clear on that from the get-go, because I'll definitely be in charge.  You should be warned though, I don't come cheap.  Those three guys in the mail room?  You are going to have to let them go in order to afford me...we'll just have to heap all the mail together in a big pile.  Already we're making things simpler!

I've probably got you chomping at the bit already, but we better seal the deal with a list of my qualifications:

- I can't even program my phone, let alone all that other fancy stuff.  Think of it as a "fresh perspective".
- I can spot mistakes and bad decisions from a thousand paces.  Lord knows I'm an expert on that particular subject.
- I believe in a flexible work environment.  I'll saunter in around 10 and browse the net for several hours over the course of any given day.  Don't worry, I have an underling more than capable of Getting Shit Done (that's you!).
- I keep booze in my desk drawer.  If you've finished all your work, you can have a sip.
- I am a people person.  You seen that hot blond girl over in Payroll?  I'm planning to have sex with her.
- I am highly efficient.  I'll make important decisions on a whim, without clearing them with other people - thereby cutting down on bureaucracy, that many-headed beast.  Decisions will be handed down in memo format, or occasionally yelled at you from across the office.
- I am very results driven.  You'll see this for yourself as I'm leveling my Priest in WoW during meetings.  You will be in charge of the meetings, by the way.
- Attention to detail.  If you go to the can more than twice a day, I'll notice.  And I'll be timing you.

Right, now that we've gotten that part out of the way, we need to get to some of the particulars.  Those uncomfortable little details that now one wants to talk about during the interview process (which we'll be skipping anyway):

- I need a six-figure salary.  If you can't afford that, it simply means you need to let more people go.  Not the blond in Payroll, please.
- I insist on having my own personal restroom.  I actually do use it to rest, and I'll not have the plebes bothering me while I'm in there.
- Windows in my office, looking outside.  No windows looking into the office space that the rest of you will share...sometimes I'm, uh, doing stuff.  Just set me up with a camera system so that I can monitor what you are doing.
- Vacation days are not necessary.  I'll just generally come and go as I please anyhow.
- Company Car a must.  Personal driver would be handy too, as I'm often a bit tipsy during the commute hours.

That should do it, Raph.  I look forward to hearing from you (do remember to address me as "Sir").  Hell, I'll probably just stop by next week. 

[Endie]

Oh, I don't think we intend to stack up heavy stuff. KISS is very much our motto. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to write our prototype all by myself. :)

So that's what you've been wasting your time on when the world awaits a HAM simulator?

[Sky]

I thought this WAS the HAM simulator. I have a special pork solo written already.

[damijin]

pun... hurts...

[Sky]

I could've made a Hardware Wars reference. (Ham Salad)

[Signe]

Your ham is mostly corn.

[Sky]

With cheese.

[Thelurker]

Hey, I'm a game guy. And I have people who are waiting for the next Raph-worldy thing. I'm not going to ignore them.

Heh.
Nice fanboi petting in here Raph. Mentioning open jobs in here, gets the attention at least. I bet nobody on this site gets a job with you though.

Just like so many other talkative developers, I think you can talk the talk but not walk the walk. UO was made by many people, not just you. Star Wars Galaxies was UO in space with SW artwork, and it sucked. It had the most pointless and painful grinds I've ever seen, and I played EQ for years too. That's saying something.

Instead of pimping your site or your book or some magical game idea for fanbois to fawn over, how about proceeding on a game and coming back into the limelight. Let's see some action, and less talk. Years of pretending to know how to do it right on forums and dev lists must amount to something.

Personally I think the age of egotistical rockstar developers is over, but I could be wrong. I certainly dont think the age of MMO failures is over. So will you be like Tabula Rasa? Or will you actually get something shipped in this decade?

The market has changed a great amount since SWG first shipped. People are less tolerant of marginal results. What sounds good on paper is often not good in practice.

[Margalis]

I keep booze in my drawer at work...is that a bad thing? Nothing wrong with an Irish Coffee to start the day.

[schild]

As much as I hate to say it, the guy is right. It's why I ragged on Bartle being involved. SW:G was a train wreck. It's put up or shutup time. Had I been Raph, I'd have said nothing and shown something amazing when I was > 50% done. But that's just me. Sometimes it's just too early for grassroots. Especially when your last house burned down from top to bottom.

[Cheddar]

Heh.
Nice fanboi petting in here Raph. Mentioning open jobs in here, gets the attention at least. I bet nobody on this site gets a job with you though.

Has no relevence to what Raph is doing.  Most people here are either lawyers, slackers, or earning too much as IT professionals.

Just like so many other talkative developers, I think you can talk the talk but not walk the walk. UO was made by many people, not just you. Star Wars Galaxies was UO in space with SW artwork, and it sucked. It had the most pointless and painful grinds I've ever seen, and I played EQ for years too. That's saying something.

He is a director.  He does depend on a team.  That is why they released limited information so as to draw in resumes, so he can put a team together.  Refer to my quote if you need a reminder as to why SWG turned out how it did.  At some point during development people who held the purse strings and power made a major shift to SWG; you can read the 200 or so pages of ranting to garner the facts about that.

Instead of pimping your site or your book or some magical game idea for fanbois to fawn over, how about proceeding on a game and coming back into the limelight. Let's see some action, and less talk. Years of pretending to know how to do it right on forums and dev lists must amount to something.

I am going to do what you just did in this post and make assumptions.  I assume he went to SOE for the almighty dollar (kids need food), a chance to build a world out of a very fun IP, and some sorta promise of creative control.  Eventually pressure built, purse was tightened, and as we all know (you do know this, right?) he was moved from SWG and into another position.  And, I assume, offered more money.  Hey, from my armchair I can speculate how this happened.  SOE did not become the devil for awhile after SWG was officially launched!

The neat thing about it is he probably banked enough cash to run out whatever noncompete clause he had going with SOE (I assume they have this) and start a new company.  His book sales probably didn't hurt (God he musta sold 10k or so, plus his totally rad album!).

Personally I think the age of egotistical rockstar developers is over, but I could be wrong. I certainly dont think the age of MMO failures is over. So will you be like Tabula Rasa? Or will you actually get something shipped in this decade?

Raph is far from an egotistical rockstar developer as they come.  He partakes in the community, admits mistakes (again, refer to my sig), and seems to generally be a nice type of rennasaince man. 

The market has changed a great amount since SWG first shipped. People are less tolerant of marginal results. What sounds good on paper is often not good in practice.

Correct me if I am wrong, but was Raph not moved off of SWG before it shipped?  I think the real issue here is there were not enough Wookies. Everyone loves wookies.

I am of the mind that Raph is one of the few people with the power to break outside the current "diku" model.  The EvE team does as well.  Besides those two, who really has a vision + funds? 

As much as I hate to say it, the guy is right. It's why I ragged on Bartle being involved. SW:G was a train wreck. It's put up or shutup time. Had I been Raph, I'd have said nothing and shown something amazing when I was > 50% done. But that's just me. Sometimes it's just too early for grassroots. Especially when your last house burned down from top to bottom.

I disagree.  Bartles theories are well documented and it cannot hurt to have him as a consultant.  He needs to recruit and probably has more people begging for jobs than he can deal with now due to his limited press release and limited website.  Shit, they fully admit they are in infancy mode.  His last house was Sony. 

It was meant to burn.

[Krakrok]

Personally I think the age of egotistical rockstar developers is over, but I could be wrong.

Unpossible! Spore isn't even out yet.

[schild]

I disagree. Bartles theories are well documented and it cannot hurt to have him as a consultant. He needs to recruit and probably has more people begging for jobs than he can deal with now due to his limited press release and limited website. Shit, they fully admit they are in infancy mode. His last house was Sony.

It was meant to burn.

The types of people that would be attracted to Bartles theories will not create anything I want to play. The types of investors attracted to Bartles ideas is not something I want to pay to play. See, here's the problem - the guy is a minor rockstar. People expect him to be Bartle. They will get money based on him and Raph. I'm ok with that, other than that money will expect them to be Bartle and Raph.

His last house wasn't Sony. It was SOE. Raph, arguably, built his own prison there. He was pushed into a position that did not result in him creating and ended up leaving. But he was pushed into that position because he was Raph Koster. Not becasue SW:G was a runaway success.

Here's the skinny - I like Raph. A lot. I like a lot of his IDEAS. I'd like to think he can implement them and can put a team together to get those ideas to us. Do I think it's possible. Not sure yet.

Also, I'm sure he can recruit his own people. And you damn well know it.

Personally I think the age of egotistical rockstar developers is over, but I could be wrong.

You're wrong.

Or at least Igarashi, Inoue, Sakaguchi, Kojima, Miyamoto, Mizoguchi, Uematsu, Cliffy B, Wright, Garriot, the folks at Rock Star games, the people at Red 5 who got funding BASED on the success of WoW, and many others disagree. Completely.

[Cheddar]

The types of people that would be attracted to Bartles theories will not create anything I want to play. The types of investors attracted to Bartles ideas is not something I want to pay to play. See, here's the problem - the guy is a minor rockstar. People expect him to be Bartle. They will get money based on him and Raph. I'm ok with that, other than that money will expect them to be Bartle and Raph.

From what I understand he is a consultant.  That means he gives input and it is taken from there; yeah, maybe he is a patsy to bring in funds.  Put at the end of the day Bartle is still a consultant which means its all Raph. 

His last house wasn't Sony. It was SOE. Raph, arguably, built his own prison there. He was pushed into a position that did not result in him creating and ended up leaving. But he was pushed into that position because he was Raph Koster. Not becasue SW:G was a runaway success.
<praise>
Also, I'm sure he can recruit his own people. And you damn well know it.

SOE is Sony.  They are in the business of making money, so at some point someone somewhere within Sony (who ultimately holds the cash) may have stepped in.  I made assumptions, same way TheLurker did.

One of our major bitches around here is that the gaming (specifically MMO's) industry is rife with incest.  I find it strange that we would bitch about a major icon (I still grate at calling Raph a rockstar) making a public statement so as to pull in fresh talent. 

Most the people that shout about what is going on are worthless.  By making his little website and posting on a few forums he has positioned himself to pull in true talent; hell in this thread he even mentioned pulling in people who they do not need yet, but will; that IMO is called vision.  You can call me a fanboi, but I think if anyone is currently poised to pull in the 6 million sub market it is Areola, or whatever name it is.  In 2 years (tops, depending on how streamlined the dev cycle is). 

Seriously, Raph change the company name.  It was a poor decision.

[Yoru]

The age of the rockstar developer isn't quite over. It's being supplanted by the age of the rockstar studio, though. I expect that studio owners and publishers are far happier to have brand loyalty to a studio, which can have interchangeable employees, than brand loyalty to a person, who can quit, form his own company, and take the fanboys with him.

How many people are faithful to Stieg Hedlund or Rob Pardo? Okay, now how many people will buy anything Blizzard makes?

Seriously, Raph change the company name.  It was a poor decision.

And it gives me terrible flashbacks to junior-high Latin class. And your translation is wrong. "Areae" is merely the plural of "area", which basically means an open space, and connotes play. So it's more like "playgrounds" or "open places" rather than "many places".

Edumacation! :)

[geldonyetich]

In what little Bartle I've read, it seems to me that he's a little too abstraction-happy.

In what little Koster I've read, it seems to me that he's put a lot of thought into what it takes to make an entertaining game.

TheLurker is making the classic mistake of blaming Koster for everything that he may not have liked about SWG and UO.  There is a definite niche of players that seemed to like SWG and UO.

In the end, though, it's going to come down to the implementation - like most other games.

Also, the age of the rockstar developer isn't over until my fabulous game design career comes to fruition.  Otherwise, how am I going to get groupies?

[Hartsman]

On the Bartle comments: 

It's hard to say that "what he believes" would be a positive or negative impact to any given world, or be any kind of basis for whom it would appeal to.  I suspect he'd be the first person to tell you to challenge whatever he's saying, draw your own conclusions, and go with what you believe.

I've (briefly) worked with Richard before.  The exact time you want him to be around is when you're at the "sitting around a room, kicking around ideas" stage, when there's lots of abstract thoughts flying around and you want to spend quality time discussing them. 

Not only were they some of the most hilarious professional discussions I've ever been a part of (In person, the man is an absolutely unassuming, understated riot), but genuinely insightful as well. 

I wouldn't say that I walked away from those conversations with a lot of concrete implementation specifics -- That wasn't the point.  I did, however, learn a lot of different ways to even think about worlds/games just from those conversations.  There's a few things that resulted that have since developed into firm beliefs of mine that I credit to discussions like those.   (Most notably, the way relative audience size between worlds acts almost literally like a gravitational pull, and how that impacts the best strategies to succeed in various positions, among others.)

Did they have immediate practical effect?  Nah.  Have they been the kinds of things that have become more big-picture, operational tenets of the way I do my job ever since?  Definitely.

- Scott