games

I've always been curious as to what is the appeal of online games. It seems to be a thinly-veneered way of getting anti-social computer users to interact in a pseudo-social environment. My roommate is a big fan of Dark Ages of Camelot, and the devotion he places into playing the game on a regular basis confounds me.

I picked up this book to try and see what the key ingredients are that make some games flop and others flourish. I learned that it's service. Most computer games leave the publishers office, and are never dealt with again, except for patches and such. Online gaming requires a certain amount of devotion after publishing that many game publishing companies don't understand. A persistent world requires persistent staff, running servers, customer service, etc.

The book is excellent for developers; they will see the pitfalls and dedication they must place into a game during and after placing them on the retail shelves. I was more interested in the social aspects of gaming from the point of view of the player, and I wasn't that impressed with the book. If you use my review as a basis to purchase/not purchase this book, understand that I wasn't the target audience that this was directed to.

The know-how of professional in game programming are like a gold mine. You can buy this one and take some for you. Great book.

In an industry still in its infancy, but with more of a history than most people realize, comes a couple of experienced pros to share their experiences and understanding of the phenomena of online games. This book is chock full of real numbers and real documents as well as anecdotal material to back it all up. Jessica and Bridgette give the floor to some well known designer/developers to let them share their experiences with us, too. And most of it is in Ms. Mulligan's slightly ascerbic but eternally hopeful-that-we'll-finally-get-it, wit that we have come to know and love in her Biting the Hand online games column. If you are about to spend several million dollars on one of these modern epics or have some part of the responsibility of getting one to market, you have to have this book right by your side all the way through the process. Great forward from Raph Korsten (Ultima Online, SWG), good stuff from Gordon Walton (Kesmai Games, EA, SOE), Jonathan Baron (XBox Online), Damion Schubert (Meridian59, Shadowbane), and several others. Looking forward to her next book in the series - how to manage one of these beasts!