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Author Topic: A few website updates  (Read 44574 times)
Shockeye
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Reply #35 on: November 16, 2005, 02:00:24 PM

Hey Lum, where should we order it so that you get the most money kicked back?

Like the guy who is riding his motorcycle around the world has a spot on a website where you pay him like $25 and he mails you a signed hardcover book, instead of paying $16+$5 shipping for a non-signed paperback off amazon.

I would assume since it's part of the Dummies series, he won't see any extra kickback from certain venues. I would imagine he sees money based on the number of sales, not where it is sold.
Sky
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I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.


Reply #36 on: November 16, 2005, 02:05:01 PM

Quote
We don't need blue, we need blues
Merusk
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Reply #37 on: November 16, 2005, 02:17:05 PM

After all, he will likely outsell me by an order of magnitude. :P

Once again reality taught Raph the harsh lesson of designing for the lowest common denominator versus an elite subset.

 Rimshot

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
Hoax
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l33t kiddie


Reply #38 on: November 16, 2005, 02:34:28 PM

After all, he will likely outsell me by an order of magnitude. :P

Once again reality taught Raph the harsh lesson of designing for the lowest common denominator versus an elite subset.

 Rimshot

Really that was sad then funny.

A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation.
-William Gibson
Warryyr
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Reply #39 on: November 16, 2005, 02:53:48 PM

Raph, I enjoyed your concepts behind Entertainers in SWG.  And your "Theory of Fun" was an interesting read.  Too bad the theory wasn't put into practice.

Although it's hard to define what exactly IS fun for most people, here's just a couple things that are most definitely not fun:

1.  Standing in a virtual cantina that is empty, except for yourself - waiting for someone to come by so you can enhance them and their gameplay, after which they run off and leave you all alone again (The Entertainer post-Mastery "content" in SWG).  Not fun. 

2.  Asking questions regarding the NGE changes for Entertainers, before the NGE went Live, and being totally ignored.  Not fun at all.  You guys just copied and pasted the same blurb about Entertainers.  I know we're not a big segment of the gaming community, however that is more a result of the complete failure of Entertainers to really help provide serious fun atmospheres in the game...more than people just don't want to play that playstyle.  Allow me to specify:

     SWG had a ton of event decoration stuff thrown in the game awhile ago.  Stages, Jukeboxes with REAL Star Wars soundtrack music, city decorations, NPC decorations, and so on.  This is a great way to facilitate some fun in the game with player events - player-created content.  And who sells all of these fabulous trinkets?  Entertainers?  No, a non-player character.  A money sink in the game instead of applicable content for Entertainers to facilitate fun in the game.  Poor decision.

Again, liked the book.  Theories are nice.  Just wish you'd put some of that into practice and let Entertainers have fun in this game.
Shockeye
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Reply #40 on: November 16, 2005, 02:59:32 PM

And your "Theory of Fun" was an interesting read.  Too bad the theory wasn't put into practice.

What I got out of "Theory of Fun" was that I was able to better articulate to myself why I wasnt' having fun in certain games and how to avoid games that I won't find fun.
stray
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Reply #41 on: November 16, 2005, 03:12:47 PM

Again, liked the book. Theories are nice. Just wish you'd put some of that into practice and let Entertainers have fun in this game.

I thought that the Theory of Fun was partly born out of the experience that he had designing and overseeing SWG (as well the criticism thrown against it after it was released). Kind of hard to apply it to that game, wouldn't you think?

I still haven't read it, but I'm totally with him as far as the main point (as I know it) goes..

I'd really like to play one of these games Raph has made since the book (not to mention see him do something commercial again).[
Furiously
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Reply #42 on: November 16, 2005, 03:45:17 PM

And can I mail you a copy and get it signed? Not that I would mail you a sock filled with mustard.

Shockeye
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Reply #43 on: November 16, 2005, 03:54:02 PM

And can I mail you a copy and get it signed? Not that I would mail you a sock filled with mustard.

Perhaps it would be easier for Raph if everyone sends their book to schild or me and we can harass Raph to sign them at GDC provided he's going, of course.
Raph
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Title delayed while we "find the fun."


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Reply #44 on: November 16, 2005, 04:36:44 PM

Rimshot

OK, how long has this icon been there? I luv.
Margalis
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Reply #45 on: November 16, 2005, 04:42:34 PM

The problem with entertainers is complicated. Yeah it sucks that people run in, get buffed, then leave. Then again, why would they stick around?

At one point I don't think entertainers even gave buffs. (Or useful ones, anyway)  You could make the buffs take 20 minutes to perform and be a virtual requirement for combat, but that would just piss everyone off.

I think making it so that people HAVE to hang around with entertainers is a poor approach. A better approach would be to allow entertainment to not count against your total mastery points (or whatever SWG calls them) and have it be basically a role-play thing only. In real life people watch entertainment to be entertained. In a game, they are already supposed to be being entertained! It doesn't make sense. "Go to this cantina to have a good time." The whole game is supposed to be a good time - that's the point.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
Signe
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Reply #46 on: November 16, 2005, 04:54:35 PM

Rimshot

OK, how long has this icon been there? I luv.

A really long time, poor old Raph.  When you reply, click on "more" next to the smilies.  I don't even know what some of them are for... like what does it mean when I say this:   Cthulu ?

My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
Raph
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Title delayed while we "find the fun."


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Reply #47 on: November 16, 2005, 05:14:10 PM

I assume that means that our Future Lord And Master Cthulhu is coming to get you. Remember, he eats his worshippers first to spare them the years of pain and madness. Sounds like the MMO industry. ;)

On entertainers--the thought back then was that if coming to cantinas is optional, people simply won't. At the time, there weren't really many examples of successful social spaces in MMOs where everyone was chasing around looking for XP. Taverns in just about every game were empty.

Turns out the secret was dancing and skimpy clothes, but who knew, other than AO? Now dancing is in all the games (and yes, I am bitter about how much fun people made of me when I wanted to put dancing in...).

What I wanted was to tune it to the point where you stopped by a cantina or town every few hours for a few minutes; little pain, opportunity for bumping into folks. Given the giant-size worlds, pulling people back to town felt important. WoW solves this differently, by only allowing you to successfully exist in a very few possible locations at any gvien level, so the density is usually high.

I also have to point out that the tavern scene was actually pretty good until Holocrons went in; that really changed the tone of everything in the game...
Signe
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Reply #48 on: November 16, 2005, 06:01:15 PM

I had a great time dancing in the cantinas way back when.  I never once afk macro-ed myself in them either... once in a great while I left myself logged in on a lonely mountaintop... but that's about it.  I thought dancing, musician and image thingy person were inspired touches.  Those and being able to be a creature handler or smuggler were what got me to join... the whole choosing your skills scheme, actually.  It certainly wasn't Star Wars that compelled me... I've never been a fan and thought the movies were kind of awful.  I was sad when the cantina scene dried up and people started afk grinding their way up the ladder.  It was all very clever until then.  I never did the skimpy clothes/lap dance/cyb0r thing, but it was good fun to watch!  I really felt as if I were in a real cantina. Half the time I did my dancing in my combat armour and thought it was TOO cool.  Some of the most clever things I've seen outside of a mud were in that game!

My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
Warryyr
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Reply #49 on: November 17, 2005, 06:05:52 AM

Again, liked the book. Theories are nice. Just wish you'd put some of that into practice and let Entertainers have fun in this game.

I thought that the Theory of Fun was partly born out of the experience that he had designing and overseeing SWG (as well the criticism thrown against it after it was released). Kind of hard to apply it to that game, wouldn't you think?

I still haven't read it, but I'm totally with him as far as the main point (as I know it) goes..

I'd really like to play one of these games Raph has made since the book (not to mention see him do something commercial again).[

Well, I guess I was going with the idea that he came up with ideas for "Theory of Fun" while he worked on the game, not over a cup of coffee and a notebook after stopping all work on SWG.  Some of the concepts in the book were likely being devised while he worked on the game, and Entertainers became a rather unfun thing to do in SWG for quite awhile.  We had our moments, of course, like Cantina Crawls - where 100's of Entertainers from across the galaxies would join on one server and visit a planet's cantinas.  But the development side did little to foster more fun for us in our everyday play, aside from some new songs and dances that didn't really affect our gameplay much.  And removing Battle Fatigue, which then caused the cantinas to sit deserted most of the time, or with a lone Entertainer (who often was AFK).
Warryyr
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Reply #50 on: November 17, 2005, 06:14:29 AM

I assume that means that our Future Lord And Master Cthulhu is coming to get you. Remember, he eats his worshippers first to spare them the years of pain and madness. Sounds like the MMO industry. ;)

On entertainers--the thought back then was that if coming to cantinas is optional, people simply won't. At the time, there weren't really many examples of successful social spaces in MMOs where everyone was chasing around looking for XP. Taverns in just about every game were empty.

Turns out the secret was dancing and skimpy clothes, but who knew, other than AO? Now dancing is in all the games (and yes, I am bitter about how much fun people made of me when I wanted to put dancing in...).

What I wanted was to tune it to the point where you stopped by a cantina or town every few hours for a few minutes; little pain, opportunity for bumping into folks. Given the giant-size worlds, pulling people back to town felt important. WoW solves this differently, by only allowing you to successfully exist in a very few possible locations at any gvien level, so the density is usually high.

I also have to point out that the tavern scene was actually pretty good until Holocrons went in; that really changed the tone of everything in the game...

Interesting.  Thanks for the reply.  And yes, holocrons pretty much threw everything in the game into chaos. 

I guess I'm just most disappointed with the fact that for several months Entertainers, who were to be a means of providing...entertainment....weren't very entertaining.  Rather than entertaining others, it became a "watch your avatar move around or play music" thing - because the cantinas did become abandoned, except the odd crafter who came by (if one came by at all).  And, I guess your fears of nobody coming to cantinas pretty much came true.  I only hope there's something else to draw folks back, purely for fun, and that it happens sometime in the very near future.

Cantinas used to be a blast.  I got into Entertainer right before the holocrons got into full swing and the AFK buffbots took over our buff roles.  Those two things were a pretty devestating blow to Ents.  Theaters also stand pretty much empty - I wish there was a lot more functionality there.

Anyways, good book - but I wish some of those things you came up with were applied to SWG, because for Entertainers...if you're not having fun and providing a fun environment for others, why be in the game?
Sky
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Reply #51 on: November 17, 2005, 06:55:55 AM

Quote
At one point I don't think entertainers even gave buffs. (Or useful ones, anyway)  You could make the buffs take 20 minutes to perform and be a virtual requirement for combat, but that would just piss everyone off.
I get this mental image of a mariachi trio following adventurers around...


Quote
On entertainers--the thought back then was that if coming to cantinas is optional, people simply won't. At the time, there weren't really many examples of successful social spaces in MMOs where everyone was chasing around looking for XP. Taverns in just about every game were empty.
Serpent's Cross Tavern? But as you mention, AO held one key, the LCD, anyway. Skimpy clothes, blah. Why not jut add in exotic dancing if your pimping for geeks? Problem is, socializers might like taverns, but achievers don't.

I say fuck the achievers (™ Carlin). But hey, that's the OCD $$$ base.

I tried to string together flourishes to make some decent little tunes, it was just too rudimentary to be of interest for more than a short time. At least a midi interface, imo. I think the system I proposed in beta (that I acknowledge would be HARD) was similar to Acid loops. None of my ideas should ever be implemented, because you'd have loops of fucktards saying "poop".

Really, mmogs suck because there are too many people with not enough accountability. I don't know how you can fix that, if I did I'd build a money house.

But it all comes down to accountability. Without it, you can't put in the cool and fun stuff, you can only make these dumbed-down safety bubbles. How about A Theory of Accountability?
Righ
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Reply #52 on: November 17, 2005, 08:43:07 AM

I say fuck the achievers (™ Carlin). But hey, that's the OCD $$$ base.

That Bartle player type thing is well past its sell by date, and is itself highly perverted by the design decisions of the MMOG industry. Let's take the 'explorer' motivator, which would be the strongest one for me. Content is usually tiered in such a way that a player must take the path of the catass achiever in order to discover new things and fiddle with new skills and gear. Half the people in WoW actually want epic loot and raid dungeons to play with something new and different, not to lord it over the less endowed. Once they have explored, they care not that they are ahead or behind the other achievers.

SW:G was good for the tourism part of exploring, apart from there being too much dynamic scenery, and not enough static stuff. But exploring is like hacking too - you want to fiddle with all the possiblities of the characters and crafting and so on. The 'blue frogs' of test center were explorer nirvana. However, more than anything, exploring is discovering things, figuring out how to get into parts of the game that havent been unlocked, solving puzzles. No MMOGs ahve done more than throw a few scraps to those who enjoy such gaming.

As it currently stands, in most games, in order to explore, you have to achieve. In order to kill, you have to achieve. Hell, in order to effectively socialize, you have to achieve. So, in that regard, I agree, fuck the achievers in at least half the game mechanics, because you'd be surprised how few people it actually does affect.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Dren
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Reply #53 on: November 17, 2005, 10:09:28 AM

I get this mental image of a mariachi trio following adventurers around...


Hey, I know I'd feel and do better if I had a band playing my "theme song" while walking around the office.  I'm going to look into that service.
Nebu
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Reply #54 on: November 17, 2005, 10:18:33 AM



Just like this guy!

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

-  Mark Twain
Dren
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Reply #55 on: November 17, 2005, 10:23:41 AM



Just like this guy!

Yes!  Rock Out

Except better.
Bunk
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Reply #56 on: November 17, 2005, 10:34:17 AM

I fiddled with the Entertainer thing in SWG in the early days - it was a new twist, and I liked making characters that went against the norm, always have. I didn't want that to be the only thing my character did though. So I focused on Mastering a crafting skill, built up a little bit of combat skills, and nearly maxed two lines of Dancer.

I was a Master tailor, that could dance fairly well, and could fight off Womp Rats (barely). The problem was, I actually wanted to experience the game beyond a one mile radius around my home town. Didn't have the combat skills to go anywhere else safely though. At the time, Player cities were ghost towns, cantinas where filled with bots, and trying to run a competetive buisness (without buisness skills - didn't have room for em) was a full time job. It felt like a job too, not a game. So I quit.

I think WoW got one thing right with Fishing and Cooking, in letting everyone do them, but making it a big grind to actually get to the top tiers. Had Entertainer been a skill line that didn't count towards your total limit, I could have actually made a rounded enough character to do more in the game.

Or you could have given us two character slots, and then I would have just made an entertainer Alt :)

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Sky
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Reply #57 on: November 17, 2005, 11:25:57 AM

I've always thought that social skills (politician, entertainer, crafting) should be separate from adventure skills (kill, stealth, heal).

edit: Meaning two separate skill lines for the same character, so you could be a thief and a musician, for instance. Making them exclusive severely limits player options.
Dren
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Reply #58 on: November 17, 2005, 12:18:17 PM

I've always thought that social skills (politician, entertainer, crafting) should be separate from adventure skills (kill, stealth, heal).

edit: Meaning two separate skill lines for the same character, so you could be a thief and a musician, for instance. Making them exclusive severely limits player options.

I as well.  That was my biggest complaint with SWG especially since they limited to one char per account.  Once I grew tired of being a ranger, I quit the game because I could go back and forth between other non-combat related classes without screwing up my tree.  As I said, don't force me to do just one thing throughout the game.  I get bored and want to do different things, but don't necessarily want to always start from scratch in doing so.  I'm an alt-a-holic and that really won't change.
Shockeye
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Reply #59 on: November 17, 2005, 12:36:18 PM

I get bored and want to do different things, but don't necessarily want to always start from scratch in doing so.  I'm an alt-a-holic and that really won't change.

Save us Tabula Rasa, you're our only hope!
Glazius
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Reply #60 on: November 17, 2005, 01:51:44 PM

I get this mental image of a mariachi trio following adventurers around...


Hey, I know I'd feel and do better if I had a band playing my "theme song" while walking around the office.  I'm going to look into that service.
Apropos of nothing, if you play a Mastermind in CoV you can have one of your minions break out a boombox while everybody else starts fighting. Of course, he doesn't exactly have musician's immunity.

--GF
Warryyr
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Reply #61 on: November 17, 2005, 03:24:57 PM

I get this mental image of a mariachi trio following adventurers around...


Hey, I know I'd feel and do better if I had a band playing my "theme song" while walking around the office.  I'm going to look into that service.
Apropos of nothing, if you play a Mastermind in CoV you can have one of your minions break out a boombox while everybody else starts fighting. Of course, he doesn't exactly have musician's immunity.

--GF

That's hysterical.
Raph
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Title delayed while we "find the fun."


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Reply #62 on: November 17, 2005, 05:47:50 PM

The MIDI idea was shot down for legal reasons. But originally, it was in there, and so was a writer profession so that board-posting-ranter-types could make money IN the game for writing stuff for the in-game Holonet.
Righ
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Reply #63 on: November 17, 2005, 08:33:52 PM

The MIDI idea was shot down for legal reasons. But originally, it was in there, and so was a writer profession so that board-posting-ranter-types could make money IN the game for writing stuff for the in-game Holonet.

It's not hard to think of legal ways to deal with this, especially when you're taking monthly subs from people. However, record companies (and indeed most media companies) have always been reluctant to embrace alternate revenue streams, even when they already have existing payment models and cross-charging from small-scale rebroadcasting licenses. It comes down to the corporate will not being there. So it kind of sucks you got into bed with Sony then. :P

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
HRose
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Reply #64 on: November 18, 2005, 02:58:25 AM

On entertainers--the thought back then was that if coming to cantinas is optional, people simply won't. At the time, there weren't really many examples of successful social spaces in MMOs where everyone was chasing around looking for XP.
The MIDI idea was shot down for legal reasons. But originally, it was in there, and so was a writer profession so that board-posting-ranter-types could make money IN the game for writing stuff for the in-game Holonet.

(I bundled those two quotes for a reason)

Because are there examples of successful social spaces today?

What I'm noticing is that the trend is to specialize. Instead of building games that try to reach a wide public and create a virtual world that appeals to different player "types" (we had this discussion long ago), we have games that specialize more and more in just one precise direction.

There's a natural and even obligatory drift to focus more and more. On the thread of Grimwell Brad wrote that he thinks it's possible to arrive to a virtual world starting from a Diku and by adding progressively more "world-y" parts and move closer to the ideal. But instead what I see is that both the games, devs and players focus progressively and erode the game to the essential. In DAoC the players focus on PvP and the PvE is more and more left out, despite a decent amount of resources have been spent on it with the time.

What I'm saying is that these games seem to become progressively "poorer", eroded to the minimum common denominator. Specialized and focused as much as possible. I don't think is exclusivelly a matter of the continue optimization done by the players.

The general impression is that a game offers progressively *less* as the time passes. Maybe the focus helps to rise the quality of that specific part but there doesn't seem to exist a possibility to move in the other direction and enrich the game instead of draining/exhausting it.

I'm not sure how to wrap all this up, this is just what I observe. Then I blame the mudflation as always.

Ubiq wrote about this in January but I think there's more than just marketing observations...

-HRose / Abalieno
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Lum
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Hellfire Games


Reply #65 on: November 18, 2005, 06:58:17 AM


Because are there examples of successful social spaces today?

Yes.

I do agree that the market in general is heading towards specialization. That's an inevitable part of the marketplace. People will seek out the game that meets what they're looking for, much like they do in any other commercial endeavour. Companies that seek to differentiate themselves will try to find a niche, then be the best at filling it.

I'd argue that the last holistic virtual world was Ultima Online, not so much because of its design (although there are parts of it that haven't been matched yet anywhere else) but because of its place in time. It literally was the only commercial virtual world at its height (not counting M59, which was screwed over by its publisher repeatedly), which meant that it had every possible type of player.

I wrote more about why we probably won't see "the good old days" of UO here, when I was feeling considerably more bitter.

(In unrelated book news, the publication date looks like it slipped to 12/12. Oh well. I did have a coworker paper my office with xeroxed copies of the cover yesterday, so all wasn't lost.)
« Last Edit: November 18, 2005, 07:06:12 AM by Lum »
Righ
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Reply #66 on: November 18, 2005, 07:22:31 AM

We will see other holistic virtual worlds. However, they are not going to come from the games divisions of super-sized media companies. As a result, they may take a hit in production qualities, and there's going to be a period of there being nothing on the market. However, they will be back, if for no other reason than because there is a sizable demand for them, no matter how many foozle beaters there are in the world. Divorcing the persistant world online gamers with differing interests from one another by offering breadth in the market will in fact be the very thing that makes holistic virtual worlds possible.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Sky
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Reply #67 on: November 18, 2005, 09:29:00 AM

The MIDI idea was shot down for legal reasons. But originally, it was in there, and so was a writer profession so that board-posting-ranter-types could make money IN the game for writing stuff for the in-game Holonet.
cry

 Mob
Shockeye
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Reply #68 on: November 18, 2005, 10:21:29 AM

I did have a coworker paper my office with xeroxed copies of the cover yesterday, so all wasn't lost.

You have your own office now? Not just a cube?
Lum
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Hellfire Games


Reply #69 on: November 18, 2005, 11:07:05 AM

I did have a coworker paper my office with xeroxed copies of the cover yesterday, so all wasn't lost.

You have your own office now? Not just a cube?

It's a cube. But it's a very nice cube. Has real walls and everything.

(I had a real office for years, but moved to a cube so I could work in the same area as the rest of the Camelot team.)

In other news, I had a taco for lunch.
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