User contributions
27 January 2018
Elder Game: Indie Games, Prototyping, and Fun Finding
Created page with "Our indie MMORPG development continues! Together, Sandra and I are able to put about 20 hours a week toward the game, which isn’t much, but makes continuous progress. It’s..."
Elder Game: New Year, New Method
Created page with "Eric and I have a blog. Who knew, right? Well, you probably did – you are reading it after all. Anyway, we’ve been posting here for over three years now. Our posting rat..."
Elder Game: There Shouldn’t Be A Signup Form
Created page with "When I buy a AAA game from the store, I have a vested interest in liking the game. I’ve plonked $60 down for it, so there’s less of a chance I’ll abandon it just because..."
Elder Game: Converting Players with Content is a Waste
Created page with "The other day Eric posted about why There Shouldn’t Be A Signup Form. His post smacked me over the head with something I should have thought about a long time ago: the futil..."
Elder Game: Joust is Not Coming Back
Created page with "One hard lesson that new developers have to learn is that not all game difficulty is equally fun. Some types of difficulty are perceived as fair, but other types are perceived..."
Elder Game: Ready the Meat Sacrifices
Created page with "Scott Jennings of Broken Toys (whom I still call Lum in my head) posted last week about the upcoming slate of 2011 MMOs. It’s a good post, and if you read this blog I expect..."
Elder Game: Beginner’s Luck and Expert’s Intuition
Created page with "We’ve all grouped with great healers. It’s not really very hard to be a great healer: just keep track of all the little health meters and make sure nobody dies. But have y..."
Developers
2011
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Elder Game: Why We Need More Women Developers
Created page with "When game developers have a conversation about women gamers, if often goes something like this: Women gamers are a vast untapped market. :- If we can tap into that market we..."
Elder Game: Classes vs. Open Skill Systems
Created page with "A few years ago, I was interviewing for a systems designer gig. The design interviewer had been at Turbine many years prior, so we vaguely knew each other from there, but she..."
Elder Game: More on Classed vs. Unclassed Games
Created page with "I’ve read a lot of really great posts as a result of my hornets-nest stirring post about how classes are better than unclassed games. Some rebuttals have been pretty smart a..."
Elder Game: Graphical Upgrades Are Dangerous
Created page with "You are an older MMO. You don’t look sexy anymore. Your players think a graphical upgrade would help you recruit new players. They tell you how embarrassed they are to be s..."
Elder Game: Retention and Rebound
Created page with "Rage-Quit vs. Yawn-Quit Long ago, when my friends and I were playing EverQuest, one of our party members decided to do some soloing after everybody else had gone to bed. He f..."
Elder Game: Who’s In Charge of Quality?
Created page with "Who gets to say when an MMO patch is ‘done’? Does QA answer to the live producer? Can QA stop the launch of a patch or does the producer alone have that responsibility? E..."
Elder Game: Proximity Breeds Endearment
Created page with "Here’s another example of where our brains trick us into enjoying things in spite of ourselves. I was reading a book of folk tales and I got to the story of The Snow Queen...."
Elder Game: “The Dev Team” Footprint
Created page with "Sanya Weathers at Eating Bees posted last month about “Things That Make Me /Facepalm When I See Them From Moderators“. You should read and embrace the post in its entirel..."
Elder Game: The Griefer With The Coin Bag
Created page with "Got back from GDC week and still trying to get back into the swing of things… and here comes a funny story straight from GDC! Go ahead and read it, it’s pretty funny. (Or..."
Elder Game: Evolving Quests
Created page with "Side-quests are a classic game mechanic, as ancient as roleplaying. When playing D&D with friends, we’ll stumble upon a traveler being mauled by a bear and we’ll take swif..."
Elder Game: You Can’t Bolster Your Newbie Hose With Self-Indulgence
Created page with "The latest numbers are in for World of Warcraft, and as of March 1st they were down 600k subscribers. That would ruin any other subscription MMO on this continent, but for the..."
Elder Game: Punditry is dumb. Switching to developer mode!
First mention of Gorgon (I think)
Elder Game: World vs. Game, Emergent Gameplay, and the Fun Loop
Created page with "[This is part of a discussion of my indie MMO, codenamed "Gorgon" for no particular reason. This week is about some of the earliest questions you have to ask before you begin..."
Elder Game: Permanent Character Choices in a Classless Game (or, “Werewolves!”)
Created page with "Most modern MMOs require the player to make very few permanent choices. Permanent choices cause stress, especially in games where players feel they need to make “the right c..."
Elder Game: Alpha Art Woes: Sex-Crazed Elves
Created page with "[I didn't finish the blog post that was supposed to go up today, so here's some gripes about temporary art problems in the MMO I'm developing.] A lot of the art in my game ne..."
Elder Game: We Can’t Have Nice Things (They Keep Decaying)
Created page with "[This article is about my upcoming 3D fantasy MMO code-named "Project Gorgon."] One of the many design elements I haven’t fully figured out yet is item decay. This is a tou..."
Elder Game: Item Decay Redux
Created page with "There’s been some great replies to my last post, and I want to thank you for the ideas. I’m still sifting through them and figuring out what I can realistically make work,..."
Elder Game: Go Big or Go Home
Created page with "“Go Big or Go Home.” I hate this phrase. But this comic made me realize it’s less intimidating than it sounds. Of course you can just go home! You don’t have to fight..."
Elder Game: Notes From The Coding Pit
Created page with "[This week I haven't done any design philosophizing... I've been busy coding game systems for the MMO, so I haven't gotten a chance to write anything too clever. These are jus..."
Elder Game: NPCs as Systems Nexus
Created page with "My plans for NPCs have been refined a bit. At first, what I envisioned sounds similar to the “Storybricks system” recently announced by Namaste. I’ve abandoned that, now..."
Developers
2011
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MediaWiki:Vector.css
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Game updates/2018-01-27
UI improvements:
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Game updates/2018-01-27
Added patch notes
26 January 2018
Elder Game: Creating a backstory for the game
Created page with "I had intended to write about combat this week but it turns out that all my writing time is being taken up by the game itself, so I’ll keep this really brief! Basically, my..."
Elder Game: Thinking about Gorgon Combat
Created page with "[This post is about Project Gorgon, an indie MMO in development.] Pop quiz time: say you have two attacks that do the same damage, but one hits a single target and the other..."
Elder Game: The Stamina Bar
Created page with "[I'm not working on the game this week, instead I'm doubling up on my other work so I can spend a full week on the game next week. But I've had one little anecdote bubbling ar..."
Elder Game: A Psychologist, a Fire Mage, and a Dickweed Walk Into a Bar…
Created page with "[This is about Project Gorgon, a fantasy MMO I am making. It is an insanely difficult project and easily the most ambitious undertaking I have ever made. Join me, won't you, a..."
Elder Game: the reason you write clean code
Created page with "(02:26:08) Eric Heimburg: the reason you write clean code isn’t to be awesome, it’s so that you can spend that cleanliness at the proper moment of desperation. Like at the..."
Elder Game: The first exploiter?
Created page with "No real post this week — I just had a very productive week of development but now I have to switch gears to non-MMO stuff for a week… will be back to the MMO next week! I..."
Elder Game: Minimizing Tedium: Not Always Straightforward
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Elder Game: Minimizing Tedium: Not Always Straightforward
Created page with "A couple weeks back I talked about how you can pick two combat roles at once in my MMO, and switch them out in town. A comment from David Grundy: ''Interesting on the role sw..."
Elder Game: Project Gorgon Screenshot Diary
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Elder Game: Project Gorgon Screenshot Diary
Created page with "(Apparently if you don’t have a Google+ account those pictures can’t be seen? What the heck is up with that?! Guess I’ll do it the old fashioned way… click to enlarge..."
Elder Game: Early prep for newbies
Created page with "Getting people started in an MMO is the hardest part. Their first hour has to be informative but also incredibly entertaining, and it has to set expectations for the entire ga..."
Elder Game: Pot-Luck Dinners and Dungeon Sushi
Created page with "I’m working on some very simple content for the pre-alpha build. Today I added potatoes and onions for the Gardening skill. Now I’m taking a quick break before diving into..."
Elder Game: Words of Power
Created page with "[This post is about 'Project Gorgon', an MMO in development.] I needed something for the Lore skill to do. It’s a prerequisite skill (meaning lots of skills will require it..."
Elder Game: Delays, Thoughts about Launches, and Some Icons
Created page with "My regular job — the one I’ve been doing half-time — has had a crisis and I’ve had to switch back to doing it full time while we deal with an emergency. This will prob..."
Developers
2011
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Category:Elder Game Blog
Created page with "The blog posts listed in this category were once found at www.eldergame.com"
Elder Game: Project Gorgon’s Death Penalty
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Elder Game: Back to work! Pre-Alpha Combat Skills
Created page with "I am finally getting back to work on Project Gorgon, and after a few days of “Oh my god this is a full-sized MMO what the hell is wrong with me” terror, I got back into th..."