Valve Running a Business like a Market

At the end of last week, I saw this longish story on the Valve blog discussing how valve manages their company like a market. To sum up, Valve the company has no management structure. Employees are given a desk with wheels and are told to go find projects they are interested in and start pitching in. Projects and teams are self organizing. Employees are free to work on whatever they want. Sounds cool. However, I have my doubts. Could you apply the same principles to Tech Support? Janitorial services? I wonder.... What do you think?

Star Wars the Old Republic: Thoughts and Patch 1.3

IGN has a story on a new patch 1.3 for Star Wars the Old Republic. So I have been playing the game the last few months and thought I should comment. By the way I started, The Force Journal blog to document tips for those new to the game so check it out if you ever play.



What is Star Wars the Old Republic?

A massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) similar to World of Warcraft. The main difference, of course, is that this game takes place in the Star Wars universe. Specifically, the game takes place thousands of years before the events of the Star Wars universe when both Sith and Jedi roam the galaxy.



You can play the Sith (Empire) side or the Jedi (Republic) side. You can play as a Jedi Knight, a Sith, a Smuggler (like Han Solo), plus a number of other options.



What's new? What's cool?

• Each toon you play has its own story line that changes based on your choices. Stories are done using video cut scenes which is pretty cool. Definitely well done and the best part of the game.


• Each toon gets a series of companions that help you play the game. This makes game play easier. In addition, it makes grouping easier as companions can substitute for real players.


• You can romance some of your companions. Given the high degree of hotness of the female companions this is quite fun. The romantic action is pretty tame and pretty much G rated, so don't get your hopes up kids.


• You get your very own Starship to roam around the galaxy in, complete with robot butler.

What's meh?

• In the game you can choose if you are good or bad. (Yes you can make a good Sith for example). Some of these light/dark side choices are questionable at best. For example, on a Sith toon, my dark side choice was to kill the person. My light side choice? Let the person be tortured to death by my master. Really Bioware?


• Game graphics are good and bad. When released the hardware requirements were way to high. I only have 1 machine that will run the game. Blizzard figured this out a long time ago. People can not play your game if they can't play your game. Bioware really hurt themselves with this I think. Any game today, should play well on an average laptop because that is what most folks play on.


• So the scenery and background look spectacular. Which is stupid. I could care less how good the grass and the rocks look. Non-player characters don't look very good and do not behave naturally. In Warcraft, you can see a NPC because the move naturally. In SWTOR, NPCs often don't move at all, which makes them difficult to see.


• Lots of nonsensical monsters. For example, the rackgouls (sort of zombies, but they aren't undead) have survived without a food source for 300 years. Nice trick.


• The social/chat system is unchanged or even more primitive than World of Warcraft. Come on people, stuff like this needs to be improved not ignored.


• Tank/healer/DPS paradigm is unchanged from World of Warcraft. You still need these roles if you want to raid.

What sucks?

• Playing groups is very buggy, here is why
  
  
  • Remember all those cool cut scenes. Well they don't always work if you are grouped. Sometimes you can see another players class quest, sometimes you can't. Very sucky.
  
  
  • Getting on another player's ship when they have a class quest on the ship, is impossible. As soon as the cut scene starts, which is usually right away, you get kicked out. Maybe to your ship, maybe to the fleet, maybe to a space station. You just don't know.
  
  
  • When asked a light/dark question in a group, only 1 person gets credit for answering. This totally sucks because there are a lot of game mechanics that rely on your light/dark score. So you are penalized for playing in a group.
  
  


• The economy is messed up. Essentially, your toons are bankrupt from level 1 until about level 28. That is over half the game! The cost of training is totally ridiculous.


• Once you pick a class type, you cannot change it. Totally stupid if you ask me. Respeccing a class is not that difficult, but still is way too costly and difficult.

Summing Up

Overall, it is a very good game. I think the story angle provides a lot fun and playability. Haven't tried PVP or raiding, but I probably don't have time for either.



I wonder about the focus on leveling, stats, and gear. It just makes these games way to complicated. I just want to play the game and work through the story. Having to figure out things like surge rating just wastes my time and I don't have time. to waste.

Felcia Day Dragon Age II Videos

Felcia Day is doing a series of shorts for the game Dragon Age II. Here is the first video in the series. Enjoy!

91 Percent of Kids are Gamers

According to CNet, the NPD group has found that 91 percent of kids today are gamers. This should not come as a shock to anyone who has talked to kids today. Even my nieces play video games.



The TV industry should be shaking in their boots. Because in about 10 years they could become pretty much irrelevant. Do you think the next generation will relax by watching TV? I think fewer and fewer people will. Games like World of Warcraft or similar content will become the TV of the 21st century.

Zombie Shooter for iPhone/iPad

Zombie Gunship

Macworld had a small blurb in the November issue. Not only do you get to shoot zombies, but you get to save people at the same time! It doesn't get much better than that. Details on the iTunes store.

Woot! I'm a Noob!

Now people will be able to understand me. As of today, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary have defined Woot and Noob as official words. Get the scoop from CNET.



Woot is Officially a Word

A New High Powered HD Wii on the Way?

According to Mashable, Nintendo could be announcing a new Wii as soon as this summer.

Get Ready for the Nintendo Wii 2 [REPORT]



If the console is as powerful as the Playstation III and XBox 360, that could make things very interesting. Although, I am not sure you can pry existing Call of Duty players from their console of choice.

Felicia Day Starring in a new Web Series: Dragon Age Redemption

USA Today provided us with this story on Felicia Day, star of The Guild. She will be starring in a new Web series, Dragon Age: Redemption. The series will tie into the Dragon Age universe defined in the current game Dragon Age: Origins and the forthcoming Dragon Age II. See the article for details.



It just goes to show that hard work pays off. I've seen Felicia in a few SyFy channel movies and a few TV shows. Pretty cool for someone who plays WOW. :)

Firefox Browser Gaming Competition

The Mozilla foundation is sponsoring a browser based gaming competition. Details from Mashable.



This a great idea. It will make a lot more developers aware of what is possible in a modern browser. Plus we should get some cool games out of it. :)