My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The January patch has landed and we’re discussing all the changes (not all of which have appeared in game yet). There’s also a World-versus-World reset happening later today, and ArenaNet is requiring all users to change passwords by February 7th for security purposes. All that plus the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.
February 1, 2013
This week in Guild Wars 2
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EFF joins effort to quash “Gaymer” trademark
Chris Vizzini registered the trademark “Gaymer” in March of 2008. More recently he’s started trying to enforce his trademark by sending a cease-and-desist letter to Reddit, which has a large, active, vocal gay gamer community in the r/gaymers subreddit. If you know anything about Reddit communities, you’ll not be surprised that they’ve rallied to fight against Vizzini’s efforts to shut them down:
The response was immediate. The first option presented was to change the subreddit’s name. Others looked to see if the trademark could even be considered valid, tracking down examples of prior use, one of them dating all the way back to 1991. Also discussed was the possibility of licensing the term for a nominal fee, the downside being that even if Vizzini did accept, it would do nothing to prevent him from pursuing others who used the word “gaymer.”
While the trademark’s description seemed to cover a large portion of Reddit’s “goods and services” (with a few notable differences), the discussion focused on whether or not Vizzini should have been able to trademark what many viewed as a descriptive or generic term.
The stakes were raised again when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) became an active participant:
And, as if facing the wrath of united redditors wasn’t enough, the EFF has now joined the push to have this trademark cancelled.
[I]n a petition filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today, the group asks the USPTO to cancel the “gaymer” trademark registration so that people around the world can continue to use the word without interference.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the law firm Perkins Coie represent the Reddit gaymers — members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community who have an active interest in video games…
“This registration should never have been granted,” said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. “Gaymer is a common term that refers to members of this vibrant gaming community, and we are happy to help them fight back and make sure the term goes back to the public domain where it belongs.”
“Trademarks have one primary purpose: to protect consumers from confusion about the source of goods or services,” said EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels. “This registration isn’t being used to protect consumers — it’s being used to threaten free speech.”
EFF’s petition cites the same complaints the redditors discussed: that the word “gaymer” is both generic and descriptive and that it predates Vizzini’s application for exclusive use of the term (in relation to the services listed above — there’s also an unrelated Gaymer line of ciders). Whether or not the USPTO will find this argument convincing remains to be seen. Many dubious claims have made their way unscathed through the registration office in years past. The main benefit of this action is it puts the pressure on Vizzini to defend his claim to the term, something he may have no interest in doing.
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January 25, 2013
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The January patch is just around the corner, along with the introduction of guesting and the end of free server transfers. All that plus the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.
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January 18, 2013
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. We had a lot of new information from ArenaNet this week, which has sparked lots of discussion/analysis/angst/whining. All that, plus the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.
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January 17, 2013
MMO armour: not just fantasy, but total nonsense
At Massively, Justin Olivetti has a quiet little rant about how ridiculous most MMO game armour really is:
This is probably a rant best saved for another day, but I want to know when it became completely acceptable not to demand that MMO studios explain the building blocks of their game universes. The devs know that we’ll just draw on tropes (usually fantasy) to fill in the gap, so most of the explanations they give for in-game reasoning have to do with a weak backstory of a class instead of why, say, a liquid potion binds together bones and allows you resurrect completely after being chopped into 60 pieces.
I get why tropes are depended on so much, but in my opinion, they rob these games of the potential to be more immersive and lifelike. Pretty much most elements of MMO games break down even when you apply the game’s own internal logic (what little has been revealed) to it. Chief among these borked elements? Armor.
MMO armor just doesn’t make sense, nor does it hold up to even a light level of scrutiny. Today we’re going to cast aside the “it’s just fantasy, go with it” excuses to investigate why your gear is completely ridiculous from a common sense standpoint. Heck, I wasn’t even breathing hard by the time I counted to 10 on this one.
Related: “Why do you hate the shape of breasts in plate armor so much?”
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January 11, 2013
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. What seems to be transfixing the community commentariat is pinning down the exact meaning of the word “expansion” plus the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.
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January 9, 2013
Will Defiance channel its inner Firefly?
Massively looks at the new trailer for MMO-and-TV-show Defiance and senses some Firefly DNA:
As you’re probably aware, the company’s Defiance MMO shooter is entering beta later this month. As you’re also probably aware, the game is being developed in concert with the TV show of the same name, both of which will debut in April.
Yesterday, Syfy released a slick new teaser for the show, and while it doesn’t feature any game footage or really mention the MMO at all other than in the closing tag line, we squeed a bit at the Firefly-esque music and the general awesomeness on display.
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January 4, 2013
This week in Guild Wars 2
My regular Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. With Wintersday coming to a close, ArenaNet brought down the banhammer on players using a crafting exploit with one of the new seasonal items. There’s also lots of discussion about the next few months’ announced content additions, plus the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.
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January 3, 2013
Rhode Island’s 38 Studios the new poster child for crony capitalism
The 2012 bankruptcy of Rhode Island-based video-game developer 38 Studios isn’t just a sad tale of a start-up tech company falling victim to the vagaries of a rough economy. It is a completely predictable story of crony capitalism, featuring star-struck legislators and the hubris of a larger-than-life athlete completely unprepared to compete in business.
Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, an iconic figure in New England after anchoring a historic playoff comeback which ended a legendary 86-year title drought, founded 38 Studios near the end of his baseball career in the hopes of becoming a big shot in the intensely competitive multi-player gaming world.
Since 2006, Schilling invested millions of his own fortune into 38 Studios, and with the self-assured bravado he exhibited as a major league baseball player, set out to find investors to infuse his company with the roughly $50 million needed to complete 38 Studios’ first game. Although Schilling is the kind of local legend who could get a meeting with every venture capitalist in New England, Massachussets VCs passed on 38 Studios. WPRI-TV’s Ted Nesi reported that one such potential investor said “it would have taken a lot of babysitting to do a deal with Schilling because he was inexperienced and the management was inexperienced.”
Enter Gov. Donald Carcieri (R-R.I.), term-limited and searching for a legacy after presiding over one of the worst state economies in the U.S., featuring long spells of double-digit employment and frequent last-place finishes in rankings of business friendliness. In a classic spasm of “do something, anything” government desperation, Carcieri made it his mission to lure 38 Studios from its headquarters in Maynard, Massachusetts to Rhode Island.
Using his bully pulpit as both governor and chairman of the Rhode Island Economic Devlopment Corporation (RIEDC), a quasi-public agency whose mission is to promote business in the state, Carcieri pushed hard for 38 Studios to receive a $75 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan.
Each loan guarantee must be approved by the Rhode Island legislature, and when the votes were cast in 2010, only one lawmaker voted against it. Rep. Bob Watson (R-Greenwich) noted “a lot of red flags” in a “very risky” deal that was “too fast, too loose, and frankly, a scandal waiting to happen.” Watson added “more often than not, politicians are very poor when it comes to making business decisions.”
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December 29, 2012
Your past will indeed come back to haunt you
Long ago, in the days before personal computers were ubiquitous, there were “zines” (short for magazines, correctly reflecting both non-professional status and less-than-totally-serious content). There was a wide variety of zines for all sorts of interests — rather like the back corners of the internet today, except they were physically distributed using the post office (and therefore had to stay within certain boundaries to be safe). Clive and I used to publish a zine for postal Diplomacy:
 Download PDF |
 Download PDF |
If you want to read ’em — and I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest if you didn’t — you can download a PDF of each issue from Doug’s Diplomacy and Eternal Sunshine. You’ll note that it was a much more innocent time then, as we not only listed our own contact information, but that of many others through the game listings and other parts.
Doug only has issues 11 and 12 available, but they’re a generous representation of what the rest of the production run was like: amateur, laboriously assembled, totally ignorant of both copyright and appropriate credits, and full of in-jokes that nobody aside from the production team would hope to understand (except the “Skulking Cavorter” column: even the publisher and editor had head-scratching moments over that, but it had a noisy fan club among the subscribers). It was a lot of fun to do, and once we ceased production I found I missed it a lot (but not enough to get back into doing it again). I published a few other zine-like things over the next few years, but didn’t get back into a regular publication schedule until I started the blog.
So, thanks to William Plante for digging up these musty relics and bringing them to my attention.
December 28, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. With Wintersday still ongoing (and the real-world holiday season at the halfway point), there aren’t quite as many blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community (but enough to keep you busy for a while if you want to get caught up).
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December 21, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. With Wintersday in full swing, there are lots of guides and commentaries about the new content for the event, and ArenaNet is gathering a swath of end-of-year awards from various gaming sites. All that, plus the usual blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.
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December 14, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. With a big event — Wintersday — about to kick off this afternoon, I doubt many folks will be looking for links after today.
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December 7, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. This is the 52nd edition of the column, and I’m still confident that it’s the most comprehensive regular link collection for Guild Wars 2 fans. We’re in waiting mode now for the next big event (Wintersday) beginning next week.
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December 2, 2012
GamingBolt.com interviews ArenaNet’s Colin Johanson
George Reith of GamingBolt.com talked to the director of Guild Wars 2, Colin Johanson:
With Guild Wars 2, the initial reception was pretty stellar, with some great sales figures and a pretty high Metacritic average. How did you feel about that? Are you happy with how the game is performing?
I’m thrilled. To be honest, I think the predictions of how we thought the game would do, at each step along the way, it always was bigger, and more popular than we had ever expected it could be. And it’s been really humbling, honestly. Every step of the way, there’s been more people that showed up for all our betas and more people who signed up to play it on day 1 and more people who purchased the game so far since it came out than any of the numbers we expected. Our last big November weekend — at the high point in the weekend, we were using about 90% of our total server bandwidth for the demand of all the players logging in. And that was just awesome to see. It’s not something that we necessarily expected to be quite so big and we’re continuing to grow. And it’s just really humbling and really exciting to see how much people are falling in love with the game over a short period of time.
Do you have any kind of regrets regarding the development? I mean, obviously you can’t have that many regrets because, well, you’ve released a pretty good game. But if there anything, personally, that you think you would differently if you got the chance to do it again?
You know, there’s always the time element. We spent five years on the game and that’s a really long time to spend on any project. In the game industry, that is eons to be working on anything. You know, the game came out, and I play it everyday, and I everyday I see something in it. There’s always the little detail that sticks out to me- ‘Oh, we could have done that better!’ If we just had one more fix we could make, to make it more spectacular. There’s always a little detail that stands out to me, something we could have done if we had a little more time. But you know, honestly, we could sit on it for ten years and we could keep working on it, never put it out, and we probably still wouldn’t be happy. [Laughs] So it’s hard to say.
At the end of the day, I think that we’ve done a really good job, getting a really solid game out the door. There are certainly some areas that we know we need to grow in, and add more features. PvP is a big one for me. We know that there are some features that we need to have to get the PvP up to where we want it to be. Those were not included in release, and those are all things that we have either already added since the game came out or we have a team of people building right now. So it’s one of the big ones for me, really, growing that competitive PvP feature-base.
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