f13.net

Was reading this Businessweek article on the new deal (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2007/tc2007123_075300_page_2.htm), which of course we're already discussing over in this thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=11530.0). This new post though is about a ironic quote I read on page 2:


(emphasis mine).

Is this Businessweek not checking their facts? Or is this an open-hand slap to the two prior giants of the genre?

Sure neither company has Blizzard's 40% margin, but I'd argue that some of that freakin' 40% could go to more content (which EQ2 has far surpassed in quantity) and a better delivering system (it's insulting they still use torrent). This deal seems to truly highlight their cash-cow status, but also two really weak points that presents a disadvantage if someone else can at least come close to their other competitive advantages.

I'm pretty sure Nintendo isn't scrambling to get fat MMOG cash. They can barely be arsed to get online multiplayer in their games.

Midway? This article if fucking terrible.

Goddamn gaming journalism by real journalists is worse than fake journalism by gaming journalists.

Real journalists have better things to do than write about games.  I imagine this article was tossed to a newbie looking for something to write.  Games are a division of entertainment, and entertainment writers are worse than gaming 'journalists'

In fact.. clicking on Vella's name links to articles he's written about things such as Cars, auto shows and hedge funds.  Yeah, he's the 'hey, Mike owns an x-box he can write about this games shit..' guy.

Given the state of journalism today, no, they really don't. it would be a step up.

The last real journalist died three years ago.

Correct.

I'm not claiming to be real, but I am a mainstream news journalist working in a major media company's newsroom, as news editor of their web venture.

The problem with most real journalists is they get a basic working knowledge of something in order to write a story, but are ultimately airheads about everything because they only ever reach those basics. There's an old saying: a good journalist knows a little about everything, and a lot about nothing.

Me, I'm a casualty of the Internet boom. I know too much about one area. I was all trained up as an everyday news journalist, but became a nerd by getting involved in IT journalism during the boom. After the dotcom crash I became an actual technical person to survive, then clawed my way back into mainstream journalism in its web form.

Most of my fellow journalists don't even know I'm a journalist. They know I do something with websites, so they think I must have IT training. I get introduced as "our IT guy" and asked to fix their email, even though I sit next to them all day doing exactly the same thing as them: writing and editing (but for the web).

That MMO story is what happens when a journalist with that basic working knowledge makes the mistake of trying to sound authoritative. It's going to wash with most readers, because they have less than a basic working knowledge. I see this happen around me sometimes, and try to correct the journalist concerned, but often I just get a blank look like "what would our IT guy know about journalism?". My destiny is probably to be escorted from the building after smashing a laptop in someone's face for writing yet another story about the revolutionary new 3D thing they're doing on the Intarweb called Second Life.

Long in the distant past (mid 90s) I was also a sort of web journamalist. The regular writers and PR flacks still looked at me and my team as "the guys that would fix your email when you couldn't  get the dinks in IT to do it."

I feel your pain.

Luckily (depending on who you ask), I got out of that and went into investment banking and then stuff for the Steve  :ye_gods:

Every day the ignorance becomes more pronounced.

You gonna back that up with a whole bunch of shit worth reading or just keep trolling?

You read?

fixed

Thanks for that public service announcement. No one was able to ascertain the thrust of my post without you translating it for them. You do good work.

I just wanted to add another embedded box.

From the article:

So even when you look at the new combined company, a single game accounts for nearly one-third of the revenue. With its 40% margin, that single title becomes even more important to the bottom line.

Apart from being an amazing fact about WoW, that makes Activision Blizzard quite vulnerable if there's ever such a thing as a WoW killer.

There is no WoW killer on the horizon.

That is all.

I dunno.

All those WoW players are going to be looking for a deeper experience sooner or later.

I wish you hadn't made that green. Then I could've responded with "Just like all those Wii owners." :oh_i_see:

Sorry 'bout that.

True story.

When I attended my last E3 as a lumthemad.net writer, I had a spiffy Media pass and everything. I stopped by Turbine to check out the current state of AC2 and Jeff Anderson came out, saw me, saw my pass, and sneered the word "Jooour-na-list".

You know, I don't think he liked me very much.

For what it's worth, I don't like the AC2 developers very much.

So, anyway, I typed something into Google and found out that Midway's MMO is already out and you've played it (http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/23/midway-to-co-publish-lord-of-the-rings-mmorpg/).   As for Nintendo, their MMO is apparently Animal Crossing (http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7666&Itemid=2).

Re: Businessweek, they probably know as much about gaming as I do about money.

They've improved the torrent since its original incarnation. I haven't felt the need to go download the last couple of patches from alternative host sites; the patches become available for download some time before the patch goes live. A technique I've seen somewhere before. (http://www.cityofheroes.com/)

If Blizzard is going to continue to leave it to their playerbase to make up for their deficiencies, I'd like them to continue their trend of co-opting third-party development work on the UI. After QuestGuru (and its predecessors) and ATSW, the standard UIs for questing and crafting are just painful to behold.