Community Manager Appreciation Day

So… I missed Community Manager Appreciation Day by a day this year. In my defense, I don’t currently HAVE a Community Manager keeping track of me (though I will soon enough!), but that doesn’t REALLY forgive the oversight.

With that mea culpa out of the way, three cheers for all of our Community Managers! That should be coming from developers and players alike. A good Community Manager is equal parts ombudsman (or ombudswoman) and canary in the coal mine. They represent both sides of the player/developer relationship and it’s too-often a thankless job.

So regardless of what side of that divide you’re on, take some time today (or tomorrow… it’s getting late – though your Community Manager is almost certainly still up and working) and say thanks.

For developers:

How many times have you been talked down from a ledge (or talked out of an ill-advised response to a troll or slanderous flame-war) by your Community Managers? How many late night tests, patch releases and player events were overseen for you by your Community Managers? How many public floggings have they taken on your behalf? Do your karma a favor and spring for lunch tomorrow. At least. AND NO CHEAPING OUT ON THE APPETIZERS.

For players:

I know it’s hard to tell sometimes, but Community Managers have your back. They’re your voice for a variety of reasons and while it might sometimes SEEM like that voice isn’t being heard as much as you’d like, trust me when I say that this ISN’T because the Community Managers aren’t going out – every day – and fighting on your behalf. Every Community Manager I’ve been lucky enough to work with is a passionate gamer, a reflexive “people person” and a tireless advocate for what they think is right – even when that doesn’t make them popular. So cut them a little slack today. Make a point to track them down and say something overtly positive.

So… yeah. To everyone whose ever been saddled with the burden of keeping an eye on me because I can’t be trusted to look after myself, thank you. I love you guys!

On health care and creativity.

Here’s a fact:

Fans of video games aren’t getting the best, most creative work from our industry because the American health care system sucks.

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10 Great Republicans

Tomorrow (well, technically later today since it’s just past midnight) is the “Rally to Restore Sanity” in my old home town, an event hoping to cool the boiling blood of the American body politic by drawing attention to the fact that – despite our differences of opinion – we’re all in this together and should maybe be a little nicer from time to time.

While I can’t attend in person, I can attend in spirit. With that in mind, here’s a tribute to the folks on the Right – the list of my Top 10 favorite Republicans:

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Lead Level Designer wanted.

Do you kick ass? Specifically, do you kick ass as a level designer/world builder? Even MORE specifically, do you kick ass as an MMO/RPG level designer? Then we’re looking for you!

Folks I know/who know me: Feel free to ping me with questions directly. Everyone else, leave comments here and I’ll answer what I can.

Happy Birthday, WAR!

A few moments from two years ago, today:

From WAR-Launch

Angie declares “Cake time” while the last pre-WAR moments tick away.

From WAR-Launch

09/18/08 – 12:01 AM: Watching the first players log in.

From WAR-Launch

A few hours later, on the roof of the office, hanging a giant banner (and annoying the bankers in the building). Amazingly, no one died.

From WAR-Launch

Police arrived shortly after this picture was taken to tranquilize James, who had been awake for seven days straight and had gone quite completely insane.

So… yeah. Happy birthday, WAR! Long may you WAAAGH!

An Elseworlds review of DC Universe Online

The following is a transmission from a parallel Earth within the Multiverse where DC Universe Online has already been released:

DC Universe Online is a courageous breath of fresh air!  They have admirably risen to the challenge of building a game around iconic characters that players will NOT be allowed to control.  Yes, dear readers, they have done the seemingly impossible – they’ve built a game involving Batman where *I* don’t mind that I can’t BE Batman!

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Butterfly dreams and Dark Cities – A review of Inception

Spoiler-free review:

Inception is a very good film. If you’re one of the handful of people who haven’t seen it yet, you should make time to do so. It’s well-acted, tightly-directed and provides a story that unfolds in a generally satisfying way. Its most successful moments are almost entirely visual and those portions of the film are truly unique and compelling and make it a worthy effort entirely on their own.

That being said, I found its core philosophical and narrative challenges to be rather uninspired and some of the story’s choices (particularly near the end) were disappointingly shallow. Inception is a movie defined by new vistas, but not new ideas.

In my view, it exists on the film spectrum occupied on one end by The Matrix and on the other by Dark City. In fact, it felt very much like a movie that has been written and re-written numerous times in the shadow of those earlier films. The result is a partial success – it is better than The Matrix and not as good as Dark City.

Spoilers follow from this point forward:

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A WordPress update – my OLD NEMESIS! We meet again!

The upgrade to WP 3.0 borked a few things visually, so I’ve bumped over the new default layout for a bit. Please excuse the dust in the meantime.

UPDATE: All is now well.

LOST thoughts.

Consider this your obligatory spoiler warning.  Proceed at your own risk.

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A note to Roger Ebert on art and video games.

I love Roger Ebert.  He is, in my view, not only the finest film critic of all time but also a tremendous social critic, political gad-fly and general Fan of Life Well-Lived whose stories and commentaries on everything from rice-cookers to Russ Meyer films utterly intrigue me.

I hold his opinions in high regard.  That is not to say that I AGREE with them all the time, but I find that he regularly displays an extremely difficult-to-balance mix of advocacy and objectivity in his writing.  Objectivity, contrary to the notions put forth by cable news outlets and the like, is NOT simply the act of “presenting both sides” or of creating a bullet list of positive and negative aspects of the thing being considered.  Objectivity allows you to (even DEMANDS that you) take a stand and defend your position, so long as you are willing to have your mind changed by a reasonable counter-argument.

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