Smiles, everyone… smiles!

Being born in 1974 means that my impressionable youth is crammed with the television and movies of the late 70’s and early 80’s.  Chief among my earlier memories are those of watching Fantasy Island on TV.  I am dismayed that only season one has been released on DVD.  I’ll likely purchase it someday, but I don’t have the heart to rush out and get it since no further seasons have been released.

Even more disheartening though was learning of the death of Ricardo Montalbán.  He brought to life both Mr. Roarke of Fantasy Island as well as bringing us, arguably, the best villain of the Star Trek franchise in Khan Noonien Singh, from both the TV series and the epic Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.

Rest in peace, Señor Montalbán, in soft Corinthian leather.

Embrace Your Niche

If you have been keeping up with MMO news in the last couple months, I’m sure you’ve heard some part or some version of the saga of Perpetual. First they had Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising (you might still be able to find pre-order boxes on sale at Best Buy), then they got Star Trek Online, then they cancelled Gods & Heroes (if you find the pre-order boxes on sale at Best Buy, don’t buy them), then they lost the Star Trek license. I’m sure rumors will be plentiful about who is going to land that albatross in the coming weeks, until something gets announced for sure.

In the mean time, over at Elder Game, Eric, who worked on STO for Perpetual, gives out advice for whoever gets the license.

I couldn’t agree less. I mean, Eric is a game designer who has worked in the industry and I’m just some schlepp gamer (who also does happen to be a programmer, but only for data warehouses and time management software thus far), so obviously you should believe me, right?

Every point he makes is valid under the assumption that, as he says himself, your intent is to:

Make a game for WoW players who kinda liked Star Trek. That should be your target audience. Trust me, it’ll be fine.

And that’s where I diverge, and the reason I say I disagree with his points. If you follow me around the Internet reading the posts I make on message boards and comments I put on other people’s blogs, you’ll see that I have a gentle disdain for WoW. That feeling comes from the fact that I find the game to be highly polished but bland. I played WoW for 2 years and in that time I can honestly say I didn’t hate it, but I can also honestly say that I didn’t love it either. The game just sort of happened, and its that level of mild pleasure without displeasure that has helped WoW hit the numbers it has hit. And while it is wildly successful and Blizzard executives laugh as they frequently drive truckloads of cash to the bank, it isn’t the only way to do things.

Games like WoW are not inherently bad. In fact, to a degree they are good because they expand the market place, but not every title should or even can expand that market place. As much as people tout the polish of WoW as the key to its success, the reality is that it was and is a perfect storm of game and license. WoW has “9 million subscribers”, which isn’t entirely accurate because some of the asian countries don’t do traditional subscription models, and I’d wager less than half of those are in the US, maybe even the US and Europe. Asia has been big on Warcraft for a long time. But how big is Star Trek in Asia? Do they play Star Trek RTS games like they play Starcraft and Warcraft?

For me, I’d rather see whoever gets the Star Trek Online license embrace their niche and not make a WoW clone set in the Star Trek universe. And while I do agree with Eric that they’ll have trouble making a game that is true to the previous work and pleases all the fans, they shouldn’t just ignore them and make WoW. Can you imagine a game with player created and controlled capital ships, with a captain and officer crews, away teams and engineering staff? Star Trek Online shouldn’t aim for WoW… they should, in my humble opinion, aim for a mix of Puzzle Pirates and The Sims with some Dark Age of Camelot style RvR thrown in, and the only non playable race in the game should be the Borg because players, even chinese gold farmers, have too much personality to be Borg.

Update: Since I wrote this, Eric has gone on to elaborate his opinions. And it doesn’t change my opinions at all.

Stuff on the Net XI

Ever wanted to know everything that was never true about Television? Go here. Every time I go, I find something to laugh about.

It came from Ofasoft… a well intentioned thread about Pirates of the Caribbean 2 turns into a discussion about Johnny Depp’s Americanness.

Picard vs. Vader … at last the “Trek” versus “Wars” dispute is settled.

A guy I know is in a movie… check out the preview on its MySpace page: The Signal.

People want the President of Russia to answer some questions. Mostly about young boys, humanoid robots, and Cthulhu.

Over on Yahoo, Stephen Hawking asks “How can the human race survive the next hundred years?

21 June 1998

Finally moved my .plan stuff off of my IRC /finger to my web page, which I finally decided to work on.
So far I think I’m going to include a page for the various games I play (1 page for all the games, not a page for each game) and just sort of cover what I’ve seen that I have liked, new stuff I’m looking forward to and other assorted stuff. Then there is the North 5 page… hopefully that will come to something worthwhile, checkout that section if you have a moment (and if I have something there). Of course there is the “Me” page, where I have my resume and other stuff about me… I’ll think about posting a picture. And then there are these… the .plan files, which I will try to update every day.
Anyhow… gotta start cruisin’ the Sunday Classifieds soon… still lookin’ for that job. BTW, if you know anyone in the Atlanta area who is looking for someone, check out my resume and pass me on to them and shoot me an email telling me who to talk to. Thanks…
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Today’s Song: Zeroes by Spacehog… Just had it on today and kinda diggin’ the groove… Resident Alien is one of those CD’s that once it goes in the player it doesn’t come out for a couple of weeks.
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Today’s Movie: Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan (Letterbox Edition). After seeing some trashy sci-fi, I decided to watch one of the good ones. Has anyone other than me noticed that the good Star Trek movies are the even numbered ones, and they all reference Moby Dick? In any event, the Letterbox version of any movie is preferable to the sliced-n-diced version. “From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee. For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”