Icarus Studios News
The Virtual University, Part 1
A New Twist on Online Education
Not long ago, when I was teaching at a local university, I had occasion to hold office hours online in the popular virtual world, Second Life. The class focused on exploring the role of the computer in contemporary society, so we looked at everything from questions of ethics to enabling technologies and the digital divide. It’s an exciting course for students because it challenges them to think critically about things they deal with in their everyday lives—things like digital rights, Web cookies, privacy issues, and so on. For the virtual office hours assignment, students were asked to explore the virtual world, experiment with various avatars, and interact with other, regular citizens of the world.
Say It, Don't Spray It, Part 3
Writing a Great Game Design Document
Part 3: Okay, But How Do I Make My Game Design Document Full of Win?
If you want to write a really great design document, you should cover the basics (detailed in Part 1), but also get into the world-building features. Briefly—and here’s a word I’m going to use often in these posts without actually accomplishing brevity—describe how your game engine will address things. These topics include conversations between users; the creation of both NPCs and PCs; the plan for cool features particular to various factions, classes, and races; suggested items in players’ inventories; and proposals for interesting locations, creatures, and objects. You might also include information about puzzles and mini-games, which may or may not be consequential to the main quest game-play, but are intriguing additions to the entire game experience.
Say It, Don't Spray It, Part 2
WRITING A GREAT GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT
Who Decides What the Game Design Document Says?
Short Answer: The client.
Long Answer: The client company’s owner and higher ups, your company’s owners and higher ups, your boss, your team leader, and sometimes the Elder Lord Cthulu, if he deigns to take an interest in your project. (And pray that he doesn’t, for that never ends well.)
So, that’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen. How do you manage to figure out one straightforward plan of attack?
Icarus Studios Selects Live Gamer
Live Gamer Selected to Integrate Player-to-Player Trading Marketplace Within Icarus Studios’ Virtual World and MMO Game Platform
NEW YORK – Live Gamer (www.livegamer.com), the $24 million venture-backed developer of the world’s premiere publisher-supported virtual marketplace, today announced it has been selected by Icarus Studios (www.icarusstudios.com) to provide a marketplace for the Icarus virtual world and MMO game publishing platform. The Live Gamer Exchange™ marketplace will be pre-integrated into the platform, enabling Icarus and its multitude of media/publishing partners to seamlessly and easily enable safe and secure real-money-trading (RMT) of characters, coin and items within their MMO games and virtual worlds' titles.
Say It, Don't Spray It, Part 1
Writing a Great Game Design Document
Why Do You Even Need a Game Design Document?
Over the course of his or her career, a game designer will write thousands of pages of content. This content will be rewritten, resubmitted, used as alternatives to coasters or toilet paper, handed back with requests for even more revisions, and “lather, rinse, repeat” until a final draft is accepted. Some of these documents will include pitch ideas, request for information, concept documents, proposals, treatments, beat outlines of episodic content, industry white papers, sample scripts, mission write-ups, statements of work, templates for data entry, informal blog posts, and—here’s the big one—game design documents.
Coordination, Part 2
The most common methods of encouraging players to coordinate in MMOs are party roles, buffs, and fights that require advance discussion. In many ways, however, these don’t always feel like true coordination: filling party roles and an optimal strategy are often arbitrary requirements for success, while applying buffs is often an easy decision. What are the less common strategies for adding coordination to MMOs, and how do they compare to the original three?