Games, Articles, and Blogs…Oh My!

Image Courtesy: MMORPG

If you’ve ever wandered over to my projects page, you’d see that I wrote a games correspondent article for MMORPG.com. Well, I’m back at it again, penning my second article for the site as we speak, and blogging about news in the mobile MMORPG community as well.  By the way, these guys know how to treat a writer! They fork over 50% of your monthly gaming fees for any titles you are currently playing, and they give you a few bucks for each article you write. For me, it’s not about the money though. I’d like to make sure that my gaming thoughts are being picked up by the right audience, and sometimes it’s better to feed the horses in their stable than to drag them out to the fields. Bad analogy, I know, but I think you get my drift. So, check out the MMObilized! blog at MMORPG and be on the lookout for my second article, which will be introducing everybody to Fallen Earth.

Meanwhile in Real life….

Hi all,

I know you’re probably saying to yourself, “Man, it’s been about a month since I got a new update from this blog”.  Well, you’d be right.  As many professional bloggers know, frequent and fresh content is the key. Meanwhile in real life, your job needs to be performed among the other things that consume your life on a day to day basis.

I’ve had some time to do some real soul searching (and get some work done in between my one-man meetings) on what’s most important for me to accomplish this year.  Here’s what I’ve been able to come up with:

Staying gainfully employed (Eating complex carbs on a day to day basis is important, and they cost money)

Spending time with family (obviously…)

Churning out ONE KILLER Application (social networking app?  mobile game, perhaps?)

The first two bear no explanation, but the third one has been in my mind over the last few months.  I’d like to explore all of my options, set the heading, then execute until I get to that destination.  I’m leaning towards an idea that takes no more effort than my own.  Something that I can sit down, design, develop, wash, rinse and repeat until I’m happy with the outcome.  I’ve been reading stories of developers creating iPhone apps in their spare time that turn out to be great success on the App Store.  One man bands that take their spare time, what little they have, and dedicate themselves to working on something novel.  Take the story of Steve Demeter- he was able to turn his iPhone game project into a very lucrative side project for himself.

Who else out there is like me?  Has a wonderful career, but at the same time that career doesn’t diminish the dreams and aspirations that you have for yourself?  Are you finding time to work on that dream?  Is home still being taken care of and not neglected by your ambition? Are you still performing your ‘day job’ to the best of your ability while striving to reach those personal goals?

Blogging about this topic is important I think.  Especially for me to read myself.  Often times it’s easy to give pep talks to other people, but difficult to be critical of you.  Anyway I’m starting to ramble, and I only have a couple more minutes to spend on blogging.  I said all that to say, stay tuned.  More updates to come here on jaytheblogger.com.

Meanwhile in Real life….

The Playstation 3 Linux Experience

Good Monday Morning everyone!

After relinquishing my X360 for a PS3, I’ve decided to not only embrace it’s power, but it’s ‘openness’.  By now, most people know that it is perfectly legal to install a LINUX operating system on the PS3, but until I actually had the console in front of me and witnessed the “Install Other OS” menu item from the XMB (Xross Media Bar aka ‘The Dashboard’), I wasn’t exactly sure how legal it was to do so.

Out of all of the LINUX distros out there, I’m a huge fan on Ubuntu LINUX- the always free, heavily community supported Debian based distro of LINUX (those are alot of adjectives).  Anyway, I found the PPC disc image for it, and burn it up.  The installation process was quite easy.  Here’s how it went down:

1. Format your PS3 Hard Drive

I learned the hard way that simply partitioning your PS3 Hard Drive to have a reserved 10GB space for LINUX requires you to reformat the entire hard drive.  Luckily I had nothing on it really, except for a couple demos.

Resource for more info: http://psubuntu.com/wiki/SetupPS3

2. Boot to your LINUX CD

After preparing your PS3 hard drive for the LINUX partition, throw in your LINUX CD.  The system reboots to the kboot boot loader.  Type ‘install’ and the not-so-sexy text install for LINUX begins.  For most LINUX fans, the default settings will work throughout the entire process.

Resource for more info: http://psubuntu.com/wiki/InstallUbuntu

3. WAIT.  And WAIT.  And WAIT.

At times it seemed like the install process was hung up, but be patient.  The PS3 has a whopping 512MB of addressible RAM, and LINUX runs inside an emulator called ‘Hypervisor’.  This not only makes the installation slow, but from what I can tell the system once up and running is a bit sluggish as well.

4.  Reboot, and Enjoy.

That’s really about it.  I was able to login, get on the web.  SSH to a couple remote servers, etc.  Again, it’s a bit slow, but I’ve been reading up on a few hacks to get maximum performance out of it.  Not exactly sure what I’m going to *do* with LINUX on my PS3 yet. Any suggestions???

Resource for more info: http://psubuntu.com/wiki/SetupPSUbuntu

Play, Create, Share and Social Gaming

What is this new genre of video games called ‘Play, Create, Share’?  Is this really a new genre of video gaming?  Or, have they now just put in a formal term for it?  And what about this social gaming paridigm?  Is this something that is new also?  Let’s explore both of these:

Play, Create, Share

Photo Credit: PS3vault.com

This term was first heard about a year ago when Sony announced a new exclusive title to the Playstation3 called ‘Little Big Planet’.  In this game, players not only have the opportunity to play a unique side scroller, but to also have a chance to create their own levels, and then share those levels with other players.  This adds to the replay value of the title.  But the question is, isn’t that what game mods do?  Unreal, Warcraft, Quake, and a number of other titles allow gamers to create their own levels using built-in editors and scripting languages.  You play the game first.  With a little ambition, you create your own modifications using their approved tools- and when the time is right, you share your creations with the other gamers.  That sounds alot like ‘Play, Create, Share’ to me.

Here is the ONE major difference.  The GAME itself is the editor.  The GAME is your development environment.  There are no extra tools or programs necessary in order for you to create custom content and/or share that content within that community.  This is where Little Big Planet, and the recently announced ModNation Racers differs from game modding.  The ambition to learn what is required to create your custom content is still required, but the barrier of entry is significantly lowered.  These PCS titles are meant to allow ‘average’ gamers to create new content for the title, and not hardcore gamers and/or aspiring game designers.  When looked at from that perspective, it’s easy to see the difference.

Social Gaming

Now, correct me if I’m wrong- social gaming is the idea the games are hosted on top of social platforms?  i.e games played on Facebook?  Well, yes and no.  Social gaming is a broad term that refers to the idea that when playing the game, you have access to a number of other players.  I would go as far as to say 3 or more.  A head to head Street Fighter 4 match isn’t exactly social gaming, unless you are playing it on XBL and 20 other people are watching the rounds.  In that case social gaming would include the following:

Board Games (on and offline)

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

LAN Games (Local Area Network)

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)

So, although these ideas have been around for quite some time, we are seeing unique applications of them to an extend that warrants a new way of referring to this type of interactive entertainment.  All in all, we see more and more cases where the idea isn’t to just sit in front of a screen and interact with preprogrammed AI, but to actually connect with the players on the other side of the screen.