Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind the massively multiplayer — and massively popular — online game World of Warcraft, has touched off a firestorm of controversy in the gaming community by requiring that users divulge their real-world identities when they post comments in the company’s WoW forums. Read More »
Tech
WoWPals is a new location-based service for World of Warcraft players who want to connect with other WoW fans, be they from halfway around the globe or right down the street. A spinoff of Israel-based company GamersFlux, the service extracts data from the
Game industry analyst DFC Intelligence will publish a comprehensive study of massively multiplayer online worlds next month, and was nice enough to give us an advance peek at their list of MMOs and MMORPGs that earned the most revenue in 2008. The numbers are primarily… Read More »
Last week, President-elect Obama appointed Kevin Werbach, assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, and Susan Crawford, who teaches communications and Internet law at the University of Michigan, to co-chair his FCC transition team. In preparation for his incoming administration, the two,… Read More »
Mythic Entertainment, the studio that developed Electronic Arts’ new MMORPG Warhammer Online, has adopted an extreme anti-gold selling policy. But much as gamers claim to hate gold sellers, almost one in four patronize them — Mythic, therefore, is risking alienating a quarter of its user base. Read More »
Famed game developer and analyst Scott Jennings recently announced on his blog that he’s quit online game publishing giant NCSoft to join John Galt Games. His new home is the small casual game startup developing Web Wars, a sci-fi game played via… Read More »
Real-world games have been tried before, but population density has always been one of their biggest challenges. The gaming might be good in Shattrath, but go to Times Square and you’re alone. Could World of Warcraft’s loyal followers help it make the first big real-world MMO?… Read More »
RuneScape is one of online gaming’s biggest success stories, but unless you play it or know someone who does, you’ve probably never heard of it. Launched in 2001 by Jagex Software, an independent studio based in the UK, it’s a traditional fantasy role-playing… Read More »
Second Life is either peaking or busy crossing the chasm, depending on who you believe. IMVU stealthed its way to tons of users. Club Penguin found its windfall by figuring out how to reach children safely. Blizzard had revenues of $1.1 billion… Read More »
Based on publicly available data, it looks like an Internet milestone will be passed by the end of next month: World of Warcraft will lose its undisputed status as the most popular massively multiplayer online world. It’s struggling to defend that title as… Read More »
While it may temping to lump every game that has chat or a shared leaderboard under the social gaming umbrella, to do so muddies the water of a category that just may be the natural progression from social networking. It’s time to define what we mean… Read More »
The NYT tries to get its readers to ‘level up’
A new commenting system at the New York Times has drawn fire from readers, but the motivation for the move is sound. If media companies want to behave like communities (which they should), they need to encourage their readers to “level up” and become more engaged. Read More »