One of the things I remember Bartle banging on about in his Designing Virtual Worlds book was how many designers simply copied ideas and systems from earlier games without fully understanding why the original designers had implemented them. I was reminded of this recently when reading about a MUD in development called Casadona. There’s a… [more]

I’m not talking about the potential for game imbalances that a pay for perks system creates, but rather is it ethical to construct a payment system that allows players to spend large amounts of cash on a game which is designed to be compelling, or even addictive? I’ll take an IRE game as an example as… [more]

Earth Eternal is a new browser based MMO from Sparkplay Media, a company formed by Matt Mihaly and Chris Kohnert of Iron Realms Entertainment. I’ve been keeping an eye on the development because of the MUD connection and recently got around to trying it out. This isn’t going to be a review of the game,… [more]

Hot on the heels of my introductory screencast comes this one on making triggers with the IRE client. Hopefully I managed to explain the ‘this’ keyword without making it sound too baffling! Next up will probably be a remake of my aliases tutorial with improved sound and maybe some better examples.

Now that IRE are using the Flash client as their default web based client for new players, I thought it was about time I got around to doing some more screencasts. I even splashed out on a new headset so hopefully the sound is a bit better quality this time. This first video is just… [more]

I thought I’d try recording some screencast videos to demonstrate how to use the scripting functions of the client. This first video covers creating aliases and using a variable for targetting. I’m not sure about the sound quality so I think I’ll try and improve that for the next one! Any feedback or suggestions for… [more]