You can't snark me as much anymore

[Nebu]

Meatplace.com? 

[Raph]

Uh, not that I meant to reply to the thread with just more brag. :P

The reason why I say some of those pioneers maybe should get it before me is because, well, they predate my arrival on the scene. Randy & Chip (& Doug Crockford with them) did a HUGE amount of fundamental stuff and already got one other Pioneer award from GDC. People here think of Mark Jacobs solely in terms of DAoC or Warhammer, forgetting the years of stuff back no AOL. Same with Jessica Mulligan's work with GEnie.

[ill-advised angst in public]

As far as the "really really" part... why is it odd that this causes introspection on the "now what?" front? I mean, yeah, everyone is crawling out of the woodwork saying "build us a new sandbox MMO!" And maybe that is what you meant. I am pretty sure there is at minimum a great lifestyle business there and possibly something much bigger, sure. But it has tradeoffs -- for one, it's expensive enough that you can't do it small. You need funding, and that means strings attached all over the place, and running a business, etc. And I know exactly how time consuming, family-destroying, health-crushing that is. The Metaplace experience landed me in the hospital and on heart medication.

I also meant it about the stuff I haven't done. I DO want to write. It was first love, before games. I am pretty good at it too. People don't know this, usually, but I fit in fine at writing workshops with a lot of SF/F writers you have heard of, they invite me in. (There's a part of me that goes "yeah, but games are TODAY'S medium," no question...)

I DO want to do more with the music. I realize that none of you expect a tiny fanbase maybe in the Guitar Thread actually care about the latter, but *I* do. I have never gigged except for those online MP concerts. Playing a show of original material to 20 people would be, no joke, a highlight of my life.

Making some small indie games would be immensely fun, and the best times in my career have always been with tiny teams (early UO, early SWG, the awesome stuff we did at SEO R&D that nobody ever got to see, early MP were all like that). The worst have always been the big team times. And I have a LARGE backlog of little games that are begging to be on an iPad or iPhone. There's no built in audience there, you all want a sandbox MMO instead, it'd be starting over.

Making more games would basically be saying "next is a bigger lifetime achievement award" or something. Maybe I should try to get a lifetime achievement award in something ELSE, you know?

I dunno... Let's put it this way... this is sort of like finishing volume one of a book. Is volume 2 going to be more of the same, or is the plot going in new directions, you know? I really do feel super ambivalent about it.

[/ill-advised angst]

[schild]

Making more games would basically be saying "next is a bigger lifetime achievement award" or something. Maybe I should try to get a lifetime achievement award in something ELSE, you know?

I honestly can't even make a post without being unreasonably mean since online gaming has been the same people durdling around spending hundreds of millions of fucking dollars a year to result in next to nothing. Also, this is hard because I like you and I think you have some good ideas - but Metaplace was totally more of that durdling around. Star Wars Galaxies, much as I loved it, was Durdling Online: The Game.

Let's not pat ourselves on the back too much for this one, cool?

[Raph]

See now, there's the snark I was counting on! 

[Pennilenko]

A wild Schild appears!

[schild]

Snark implies sarcasm.

[Signe]

Never heard of those games. Where they any good?

I think I played C|NET once. 

And, by the way you guys, I'm older than most of you and I like it that way.  It makes me feel... umm... well... old, I guess. never-mind.

[tazelbain]

Only you can decide if the cost is worth it, but I doubt anyone believes you have done all you can do in the MMO space.

[Raph]

Snark implies sarcasm.

The word "durdling" alone pushes it over the line for me. I mean, it's such an awesome word. "Durdling." DURdling. I may just sit and repeat it all day.

[ezrast]

I may just sit and repeat it all day.

Go for the lifetime achievement, imo.

[taolurker]

Does this now make you an "award winning" developer?

Um, I kind of already was. How quickly you all forget.   From the CV on my website:

BIG LIST OF GAMES OMITTED

Hey Raph you responded to my post not tazel's about the award winning developer comment (so your quote referenced the post I was quoting). I did not mean "award winning games" or stuff you were associated with, I meant that this was an award solely for you being a developer. Saying you worked on/lead "award winning projects" is different than saying you're an "award winning developer".

[Lantyssa]

Making more games would basically be saying "next is a bigger lifetime achievement award" or something. Maybe I should try to get a lifetime achievement award in something ELSE, you know?

Do what you love.  Screw everyone else.

[LC]

So when are you going to make another game.

[MahrinSkel]

Congrats, Raph.  Seriously, you earned it.

--Dave

[Signe]

Snark implies sarcasm.

The word "durdling" alone pushes it over the line for me. I mean, it's such an awesome word. "Durdling." DURdling. I may just sit and repeat it all day.

I do that sometimes.  The other day it was the word "explicit".  Some one said it on the telly and I repeated and couldn't stop saying it.  When I do this at home, my sister checks my pupils.  She's a worrier.  Explicit.

Explicit.  Sort of just needs to be said again and again.

[OandA]

STOP PUTTING THOUGHTS IN MY HEAD. I WORK IN A PUBLIC SPACE WHERE PEOPLE ARE LOOKING AT ME MOST OF THE TIME.

[Ratman_tf]

And I know exactly how time consuming, family-destroying, health-crushing that is. The Metaplace experience landed me in the hospital and on heart medication.

Jeez, man. I've pushed myself doing OT in QA a few times, but nothing is worth your health. Can't participate in putting a game out if you're dead...

[Torinak]

Is there any monetary reward with this??

No. I think I get a metal-and-glass brick like this one.

That looks handy! You can use it to smite your detractors.

Ding gratz and all that, for an award well-earned.

[Sheepherder]

We can graduate from snarking to pulling on Superman's cape!

Rather

If I weren't lazy I'd dub "Game Designer" over "Hero."  EDIT: maybe "Durdler" over "Dark Knight."

[Brennik]

Congratulations, Raph.

[eldaec]

Does this mean we can make a swg thread outside of the graveyard?

Anyway, grats on the ding.

[Xanthippe]

You should know better than to throw down the gauntlet like you did in the title of this thread, Raph.

Congratulations!

[Slayerik]

My star-fucking of Raph is what brought me to wt.o, and my love for UO has never been a secret around these parts. Thank you for your part in making a dream (for us early PC adopters) a reality. Those were some awesome experiences, and even with SWG falling short it still had its own charms.

Regardless of where you go from here, you have my respect and thanks (and curses) for hundreds of hours of MMOs since you hit the scene. Congrats, Raph.

 

[Scold]

Uh, not that I meant to reply to the thread with just more brag. :P

The reason why I say some of those pioneers maybe should get it before me is because, well, they predate my arrival on the scene. Randy & Chip (& Doug Crockford with them) did a HUGE amount of fundamental stuff and already got one other Pioneer award from GDC. People here think of Mark Jacobs solely in terms of DAoC or Warhammer, forgetting the years of stuff back no AOL. Same with Jessica Mulligan's work with GEnie.

[ill-advised angst in public]

As far as the "really really" part... why is it odd that this causes introspection on the "now what?" front? I mean, yeah, everyone is crawling out of the woodwork saying "build us a new sandbox MMO!" And maybe that is what you meant. I am pretty sure there is at minimum a great lifestyle business there and possibly something much bigger, sure. But it has tradeoffs -- for one, it's expensive enough that you can't do it small. You need funding, and that means strings attached all over the place, and running a business, etc. And I know exactly how time consuming, family-destroying, health-crushing that is. The Metaplace experience landed me in the hospital and on heart medication.

I also meant it about the stuff I haven't done. I DO want to write. It was first love, before games. I am pretty good at it too. People don't know this, usually, but I fit in fine at writing workshops with a lot of SF/F writers you have heard of, they invite me in. (There's a part of me that goes "yeah, but games are TODAY'S medium," no question...)

I DO want to do more with the music. I realize that none of you expect a tiny fanbase maybe in the Guitar Thread actually care about the latter, but *I* do. I have never gigged except for those online MP concerts. Playing a show of original material to 20 people would be, no joke, a highlight of my life.

Making some small indie games would be immensely fun, and the best times in my career have always been with tiny teams (early UO, early SWG, the awesome stuff we did at SEO R&D that nobody ever got to see, early MP were all like that). The worst have always been the big team times. And I have a LARGE backlog of little games that are begging to be on an iPad or iPhone. There's no built in audience there, you all want a sandbox MMO instead, it'd be starting over.

Making more games would basically be saying "next is a bigger lifetime achievement award" or something. Maybe I should try to get a lifetime achievement award in something ELSE, you know?

I dunno... Let's put it this way... this is sort of like finishing volume one of a book. Is volume 2 going to be more of the same, or is the plot going in new directions, you know? I really do feel super ambivalent about it.

[/ill-advised angst]

Why not try something that truly hasn't been done before but would still scratch the sandbox itch -- thread the needle between Sandbox and Theme Park with a 'small world, many servers' design? A level-less (or not terribly leveling-dependent) game that feels in many respects like a single-player game, but where other players take over many of the key roles from NPCs over time as the server evolves, and it works because you have a small number of players per server (between 50 and 200, let's say) with thousands of servers. A game where over time you can actually become the king, or the rogue assassin hunted by his troops, or any other number of roles, not because you catassed the most a-la Korean MMOs like Lineage, but rather because there are only 200 users per server, and potentially thousands of servers, with each of them taking the world to a very different place?

I imagine this game being 2D, and looking something like Zelda: A Link to the Past -- simply because it's so much easier to do dynamic content and art assets in that medium. Nobody's tried it yet, and it feels like something you could do amazing things with.

[Venkman]

Heck, link up with Mojang. Would love to see what you could come up with.

[Sky]

Heck, link up with Mojang. Would love to see what you could come up with.

True!