In a study done on player interactions within World of Warcraft, a graphics-based online multiplayer game, the results found that “solable” classes, in other words classes that required the least social interactions, were the most popular classes of characters chosen, and the overall research concluded that players within the World of [...]
After reading Michaël Samyn’s post on achievements I realised that more and more games are implementing this, though not always calling it achievements.
Games like LocoRoco or echochrome do already implement it by not going the “Oh, you died, start all over again” way. They let you keep playing, but giving you stats about how perfect [...]
WoWWhee Originally uploaded by animakitty.
Maybe I should have handed in my application for art school like this.
I wouldn’t want to see the count of slaughtered minions I need to have until I’m at level 70 – but then again, when I’m playing, I’m mostly interested in what I lack until I can complete the quest. It may just be two shades of gray, but it illustrates the job of every good information designer: weighting information by importance, and moving those information pieces accordingly into the fore-, respectively background – and by doing that, new meaning can evolve through the importance those pieces get.
Of course – everyone else blogging about that interview Gamasutra had with Blizzard is fretting about that mysterious team 3…. “World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys.” That explains a lot of things. Not only do they have their own dedicated cinematics team, it is also more than twice as big as the development teams of two of their games!
Ooohh … look what I got: a combination of Warcraft (yeaahh!), Manga (or, more correctly: manhwa – the artist is korean –: coool!) and dashing heroes (yum!): what can you probably want more? (Okay, a story would be nice, but as I have yet to read and not just marvel at the imagery, I’m [...]
Some designers at Blizzard obviously did a good job. Almost too good, in fact …