Azaroth

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

According to Damion’s blog, female characters in the upcoming Age of Conan start out as a sex slave.

I guess reaching a mass market wasn’t one of their goals. Forcibly disenfranchising half of the worlds population really isn’t a great start here. I suppose they’re hoping to REALLY nail down the “greasy 14-30 males” demographic by being “uber hardcore”. That’s probably a really bad idea. And not only has it proven to be a really bad idea in the past, but they’re creating one hell of a headache for themselves in the future.

Not only are these guys asking for a playerbase that’s going to destroy the will to live of every CS person they have on staff, and not only is it going to cannibalize itself by its very nature, but going so far as to DARE women to play the game by threat of forced cockslap?

Now, seriously guys.

And hell, what about all of those males out there who like to play females? I imagine *most* of them are going to forgo that particular habit, since any guy playing a female character in this game will get far more than the odd strange look for doing so. “So how’d you like that newbie experience, dude?” “It was aight, my guild totally helped me powerlevel”.

Update: Comments seem to imply that this particular aspect of the game is “tastefully done”. There are ways to do that, I suppose. But even being the heartless chauvinistic misogynist that I am, I think it’s probably just a little over the top regardless of how it’s ultimately presented. In any event, they’re seriously handicapping their potential audience - and that’s never a good thing.

“The Saturday Night Live alumnus was pulled over in part because of the unusual sight of a golf cart in Stockholm traffic.”

“Bill Murray nabbed by Swedish police at wheel of golf cart.”

Old actors never die, they just get drunk and drive drunk in golf carts down highways in Sweden.

It just struck me to write about it a little. I suppose I’m bored. But I’m kicking at this can on the move, so stay with me here. Even though I don’t think I ever plan out anything I write. It’s a blog people, come on.

(more…)

Now, this isn’t a shot at anyone who does this legitimately. I know for certain that several respectable companies run free games and/or simply sell items that exist only inside of those games as their main profit stream instead of using the old tried-and-tried monthly account method. That’s fine. But your game has to be built for quickness, and it can’t take itself too seriously. Exhibit A being something like Puzzle Pirates.

But, somewhere along the way we got greedy. Or, would it be called smart?

Regardless, at some point… people figured out that kids make their parents buy things. They then figured out that kids like cute things. Now comes a seemingly endless supply of cheaply made (and I’m not insinuating shoddy workmanship… I’m just saying we’re not talking AAA games here, and their break even point is going to be relatively low) children’s “MMOs”. Virtual worlds? I don’t know.

Point being, there’s a lot, they’re targeted at children, and they’re pretty fucking smart if you ask me. Smart in an.. “we’ve figured out how to use this new type of product to exploit children into getting their parents to hand them a credit card” way. Which I suppose can be called smart. If not terribly difficult.

But it starts out with things like Webkinz, then you have Barbie World. Where people, apparently (and by people I mean kids.. and by kids I mean their parents) buy real life toys in order to collect certain in-game items. Including very expensive toys, like Barbie MP3 players. I’m sure they have several other methods of punishing parents for ever having a girl post-1980. But it’s all deadly.

Now of course comes another game, which is labled MyePets. That’s My “e” Pets, not some kind of clever phonetical play on words. Just incase you were wondering why the fuck they spelled My with an E.

Now, as if we haven’t gone through enough examples of totally bastardizing any original vision that anyone ever had for Virtual Worlds by not only using and abusing the idea of RMT, but wholly designing entire games around it to exploit children (I’m sure Richard Bartle and Raph Koster are currently rolling around in their communal grave that we MMO players made them after PKing them for various system changes), a new example arises. As I’m sure one would every day when it’s this profitable and easy.

However, as seen over on Matt Mihaly’s blog, this one has an amusing twist.

Apparently, this game plans to have children spend more time with (and buying things for) their E Pets by killing their real pets.

Yes that’s right, they’re encouraging children to buy chocolate snacks and feed them to their E Dogs (which are the only kind of E Pets, so it can’t be argued that this was really intended as a kitty cat treat).

Well, when designing serious virtual worlds, one must struggle with the balance between kewl loot and more practical equipment. Maybe this is the equivalent of dropping big, glowing red swords from rats. It’s exciting. It’ sexy. It’s a hell of a lot more likely to sell than 80% ash content Senior Formula Canine Biscuits.

Except the kids have to buy it. And it kills their dogs.

And you wouldn’t want to kill your MyePets dog too, right kids? STOP BUYING IT TREATS AND IT DIES.

Video of it being slaughtered available for $9.99.

The last two comments do not reflect actual game features. That I know of. In this game. Yet.

Now where’s that fucking graphic artist… I need a cute animal with big eyes to say that so it doesn’t sound so bad.