|
Written by Sean
|
|
Thursday, 21 August 2008 |
|
|
|
Last Updated ( Thursday, 21 August 2008 )
|
|
Read more...
|
Well, the last few days have been a bit busy as I'm getting ready for a move, but I wanted to take a moment to discuss something interesting I found on the old Internets that was released by Mythic, the people developing Warhammer Online. That would be the Road to War website. Now, to put it lightly, I'm interested in game communities. As an extension to that, I'm also rather interested in game marketing. Now, while I am intending on picking up Warhammer Online when it releases already, it isn't its attachment to the game that draws my attention, but rather Road to War's marketing potential that intersts me.
Let us take a look at the various reasons why this website is an amazing marketing tool:
|
|
|
Written by Sean
|
|
Tuesday, 02 September 2008 |
|
|
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 03 October 2008 )
|
|
Read more...
|
 Well, Google has recently released it's new browser into a Windows-only Beta state. While I primarily use linux for my OS, I was happy enough to boot into Windows to give this a go. I can state right now, that Chrome, while only in a Beta state (of course, what isn't from Google?) is already in contention for being my browser of choice. I'll be up front though. While I use Firefox 3 (well, Iceweasel 3) for my primary browser, I've never been entirely happy with it. Sure, it is a great example of successful open source software, it is stable, it is feature filled with a ton of great plugins, and it works fairly well. However, it is far from perfect. Firefox is a bit on the bloated side and has been suffering from memory leaks for years. While Firefox 3 has certainly helped this, it hasn't entirely fixed the problem either. Firefox is also a little on the slow side as well, with the Gecko rendering engine which is, to say, not the best. So, this is where the new Google Chrome comes in. First off, it uses Webkit instead of Gecko and the difference is immediately noticeable. I actually thought that Firefox 3 was fairly speedy. Clearly, I had no idea what speed in a browser could be. There is a very noticeable difference in speed between the two browsers and very much in favor of Chrome.
|
|
|
Written by Sean
|
|
Friday, 03 October 2008 |
|
|
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 03 October 2008 )
|
Just yesterday I was wandering through the Michigan Technological University Campus after a meeting for Husky Game Development to grab dinner and kill some time before my weekly Linux Users Group meeting. As I did, I was carrying my laptop with me. It was turned on, since I was only walking a short distance to grab a meal, but it was still a waste all the same. I had no Internet in that area and I'd have to reconnect when I got to the cafe. I also couldn't easily glance down at it and see if someone sent me a message over IM or IRC either. Just before that, during the end of the meeting, the Vice President of Technology ran up to me to ask a question about the website. I gave him an answer, but I also considered showing him exactly what I was going to do to solve the problem – and heck, I could have solved it within a few seconds right then and there. Yet, even with the laptop it still would have taken a moment to open it up, make sure I had the Internet connection still, and then actually show him the solution. Doing so would have felt like I was just wasting his time. My laptop is plenty portable at 14 inches, but it isn't always handy. As I was walking I also thought to myself how nice it would be to have something more like a tiny netbook, or an iPhone, or an Android Phone, with wireless everywhere... You know, it makes me happy that mobile computing was being such a huge focus in technology right now.
|
|
|
Written by Sean
|
|
Tuesday, 07 October 2008 |
|
|
|
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 07 October 2008 )
|
If you know me, or if you have checked out this website in the past, there are probably a few things you can tell about me. For one, I like technology. Two, I've lived in Japan. Three, I'm on the geeky side for certain. Then most importantly, four, I have an interest in both gaming and game development. That certainly is true. Over my time in college I've worked for a game development group here, I volunteered for the WarCry Network, I'm a member of the International Game Developers Association, I've been to E3 twice, and the Game Developers Conference. A lot of my past articles have also focused on gaming, online communities based around games, and a little bit of game design theory. You'd also probably notice that most of the blogs found in my blog roll are from people who are in the game industry. Yet, my interests don't all include gaming - in fact, that's largely just one subset of my interests. While the idea of working in the game industry does intrigue me, that even is far from the only possibility I see for myself. I also have this crazy thing for the web industry and for communication in general. Really, communication is my main area of interest. I study communication at college, the areas of game development I'm interested in all revolve around community, and the same goes for online applications as well.
There is actually a rather major overlap between the game industry and the web industry. While I might argue that the web industry has made itself out to be much more mature than the game industry has at times, they're both relatively new. They both are highly technical fields with products that are enjoyed by people who aren't always so highly technical. They both add to the value of our daily lives and can offer plenty of entertainment. They also both have the possibility to bring people together. While game development itself is interesting, the area that interests me the most in that industry is actually the web industry part embedded within it. Basically, I'm interested in online games - and I mean basically anything that has multiplayer capabilities, the ability to share content, and/or the fact that the game just happens to be embedded in a browser or something.
Now, other people have certainly talked at great length about how the game industry can learn a lot from the web industry, but I certainly have to agree. Really though, both could learn a lot from each other. The web industry has found some remarkable ways of distributing content, creating content, and interesting business models. The game industry also knows an awful lot about interactive media and other related things. So, while I don't intend on making any major revelations in this post today - oh, but I will soon enough - I would just like to ask you to do just this: Think about online games, think about how much they could benefit by greater web integration. That is something I have talked about before. Yet, communication is something that doesn't need to be a one way transmission. Rather, communication has the ability to be very much a two-way process of learning. These two fields share a surprising amount in common. So, don't just think about how web integration can help out with games, think if there is some way we can take things learned in the game industry and start to apply them to the web as well. You know, in ways that would be feasible, beneficial, and not make tasks harder, so drop the crazy paradigm shift of a full 3D Internet for now.
|
|
|
