neils clark

After a quick conversation about which Azerothian (World of Warcraftian) God was top dog, a friend and I settled on Addictor the Ravager.

Addictor the Ravager! Fear his awesome reach!

Addictor now battles the Pantheon of Age of Conan, which already boasts 400,000 visitors. Honestly I don’t think that’s critical mass. Their pace has to quicken significantly and soon if they hope to capture the long-term income that the linked news piece suggests they need.

A lot goes into grabbing and sustaining MMO player populations, with many hardcore players (to an extent regardless of Crom’s skill in combat) very likely to turn back to WoW come Wrath of the Lich King. I tried going in-depth on one of the big determining factors with the Beating Warcraft at its Own Game article. But there were many, many other enabling factors employed (knowingly or not) by Blizzard when they united the diverse ‘tribes’ of gamers. Many of those moves were long term, not fully utilized by Funcom. At least not with a great deal of the player populations out there.

Then again, did Funcom really want to live forever?

Neils Clark :: May.27.2008 :: Games :: No Comments »

A quick google maps search of “Highway to the Danger Zone,” actually winds up revealing a small section of interstate, just east of Roswell New Mexico.

Click for a bigger picture

Neils Clark :: May.26.2008 :: Games :: 1 Comment »

So even when I’m taking time away from games, a few times a week I hop onto the different Ventrilo servers where old friends kick back and talk smack. Ventrilo, for the uninitiated, is a mix between a conference call and a chat room. My buddy Cheese and I got to talking about the friendships that you make online and off. He suggested that in games, we have “on-demand relationships.” If you’re not familiar with On-Demand cable, it’s where you use your TV remote to browse between shows that different channels offer up for you to watch at any time.

On-Demand

Part of this conversation had to do with the way offline relationships work. Someone suggested that we don’t always live by the people we’d prefer. As the conversation went, at times people who live in a proximity to one another are obligated to give support during hard times when they might not even like these people. Are these the gesticulations of people who are perceptive, sith masters or just spoiled by WoW?

“ALL I WANTED WAS A CUP OF SUGAR!!!”

Relationships online are with people who we literally pick and choose to socialize with. Does that make them more lovable, or is there a consumptive element? Or is it both? As soon as we’ve gotten our fill of that “on-demand channel,” we can flip channels or just turn them off.

“The force is strong with you. Let’s be friends.”

Obviously gaming empowers new types of connectivity, which some people really take advantage of in finding enjoyable conversation. On the other hand, when we turn off the game or, as I have done, “take a break,” what happens to those relationships? It seems that there’s really no platform that compares to “let’s grab a beer,” or “see ya at church.”

Is it the ’same as it ever was,’ or are new dynamics in play?

Neils Clark :: May.23.2008 :: Games :: 2 Comments »

From now on I’m allocating all of my time to creating a paper-and-dice videogame research game. There aren’t broad mechanics or character classes yet, but there is a suspense-ridden addiction research module!

Armed with a d4, a d10 and google, I can finally roll my way to victory!

Neils Clark :: May.17.2008 :: Games :: 5 Comments »

Superb nerdery.

I just watched a screening of the sequel to the cult gamers movie, The Gamers. The Gamers: Dorkness Rising is pretty awesome. While a 5x backstab damage multiplier is not to be had by any ballistae, the movie has its hooks: undead rotisserie, player/character gender confusion, a bard with both a high seduce modifier and personal body count, and, yes, a paladin aching to butter the dark toast of evil with some kind of light spread. Pairs well with Mazes and Monsters.

Neils Clark :: May.14.2008 :: Games :: 2 Comments »

This was the suggested reading that I couldn’t distribute after the talk (note that this was intended as a handout - hyperlinks were added to the version below, where full-text versions are freely available):

1. Secondary worlds: J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘On Faerie Stories,’ located in the Tolkien Reader. Published by Del Ray.
2. The texture of game worlds: [Dr. Thomas Malaby’s Beyond Play] published in Games and Culture but freely downloadable from ssrn.com.
3. Physical immersion: Anne Marie Barry’s chapter from the Handbook of Visual Communication. Published by Routledge.
4. Game-influenced pathologies: [Dr. Jerald Block’s Pathological Computer Game Use], available at jeraldjblock.medem.com. Note: Pathologic Computer Gaming is a similarly titled but different piece of research on that website.
5. Google [Dr. Ivan Goldberg’s criteria for “Internet Addiction Disorder].” Compare those to the criteria available at [Dr. Kimberly Young’s website] netaddiction.com. Each of these criteria certainly has some relation to addiction in the more universal sense, but it’s important that we look at how normal non-harmful, even therapeutic gaming structures could be picked up by this sort of a definition.
6. For a great look at the effect of real-world culture, check out [Florence Chee’s “The Games We Play Online and Offline: Making Wang-tta in Korea].” Published in Popular Communication 4 (3), 225-239, 2006.
7. [Nick Yee’s Daedalus project] and [Richard Bartle’s MUD player archetypes].
8. To follow that up with some theoretical definition, check out the idea of structural characteristics in Wood et al’s ‘The Structural Characteristics of Video Games: A Psycho-Structural Analysis.’ Published in CyberPsychology & Behavior 7 (1), 2004.

Please let me know if this posting was useful. I’ve been meaning to actually organize a more detailed list of good resources - if there’s enough interest then I will.

Neils Clark :: May.09.2008 :: Games :: No Comments »

I’m making my slideshow and personal notes for the talk available under a Creative Commons license to use and modify, under the provision that you note Neils Clark as the original author and the Games for Health 2008 proceedings, where this talk was first given.

Notes | Slides

I haven’t made any alterations for readability (they’re just notes to myself, many of which were 86ed before I gave the talk) - feel free to email if you want clarifications on any of it.

Please, please also note that none of this is clinical advice whatsoever. This talk is based off of an academic piece that looks at the more subtle elements of how game addiction may operate - but one of the major points is that none of the work out there is the gospel truth.

Most of all, I appreciate any and all feedback. The piece to go up on SSRN is still being put into a first draft - so critique is more than welcome.

Neils Clark :: May.09.2008 :: Games :: 2 Comments »

After 26 years and 3 months, I now own a cellphone.

Visual Evidence:

Neils Clark :: May.06.2008 :: Games :: No Comments »