What happend to the Semantic Web? FOAF? RDF? OWL?
Why is it that everyone is afraid of anything beyond RSS?
Why is it that when I look for articles about any of these technologies it seems like they dropped off the face of the internet a few years ago?
Have no fear, the true meaning of Web 2.0 will soon be known, and the Semantic web will live again...
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
The Death of the Dungeon Crawl
Recently I was talking with someone in their early 20s about computer games. Of course he was a World of Warcraft player. I told him I didn't play MMORPGs (yeah, I said it like that too), but I had grown up playing Dungeons and Dragons and didn't want to get sucked into that drain on my life.
He had never heard of Dungeons and Dragons.
He had no idea what I was talking about.
For a long time now I've been wondering why I've rarely enjoyed the video game adaptations of the D&D genre, and I feel like even with the success of Baldur's Gate (which I believe was probably the most successful single player RPG of recent years), it's taken the advent of online play to really bring D&D to digital life. I'm still not sure if 12 people screaming into their computers, preying to the Internet Gods for smooth bandwidth as they slay the Orcs is quite the same as playing in person, but I'm really not going to risk finding out.
I've been playing games my whole life, but thus far have avoided falling prey to WoW and it's ilk. Like many suburban kids of my generation, I grew up playing D&D (the real kind, where you sat around with your friends after school and someone actually made up the story, complete with maps and painted lead figures) and followed the progression through the 80s of Adventure, Wizardry, Ultima and the Infocom text based games.
The Dungeon Crawler genre as a video game always suffered from the plot manipulation problem. The beauty of RPGs is based on three elements: character development, plot and combat. Most games (I'm back to the real thing, but now it's college, and you and your buddies are playing in a dorm room, stoned on weed your friend brought back from Christmas in Northern California and you have an English Lit major for a Dungeon Master, your Half-Elf Fighter/Thief is Comp Sci. concentrating in Cryptography, the Dwarven Barbarian is an Architecture student, you have a Wizard double majoring in Physics and Chaos Theory and the Druid is an Environmental Conservation major) had good character development as long as you chose well amongst your friends. Combat was pretty much fixed since Junior High, it was just a question of how rigid the gamers wanted to be. Did you bother with speed factors and weight limits or did you just roll dice and slay the bad guys. But the X-Factor was always the plot.
It all fell on the DM. A good dungeon master was critical to a good game. I played with some great ones in my day, and I even ran a game or two, but it was never my strong suit in those games. A bad DM could ruin a game. A good DM added color, characters, a good story and kept you engaged and enjoying yourself. A bad DM was like sitting through a boring class. A good DM would have maps made and interesting sub-plots, and frequently he would create divisions within the group assigning characters conflicting quests.
As bad as a game is with a lame DM, without a DM you had no game at all, which is what most of the RPG video games offered. The early attempts by TSR and others to bring D&D to the computer were too linear. It was far too easy to throw the game into an plot wormhole by slaying the wrong NPC (Non-Player Characters, "extras" really) or just running off and ignoring the plot altogether. The games were frequently based on multiple choice questions of the NPCs, and if you answered incorrectly you would lose out on treasure and fun sub-plots. Similarly, if you got killed, you would either have to start back in the game (and waste hours retracing your footsteps) or lose all of your hard earned gold and cool weapons. So the games became a series of save and reload. Save and reload.
I stopped playing most of those games as soon as the Real Time Strategy (RTS) games came out. My father and brothers and I used to play Risk and Axis & Allies growing up. WinCiv was our first strategy game on the computer, which of course led to the Civilization series, and as soon as Command & Conquer, Red Alert and Age of Empires came out we were hooked. The games took an evening, there was nobody hiding pieces up their sleeves and let's face it... it's fun to sneak a spy into your brother's base camp and blow his shit up.
Our youngest brother is in college (youngest by far) and he grew up in the generation that never played with a real live Dungeon Master. He plays WoW. My other two brothers and I who are all in our 30s don't. To be fair, I do know people who grew up playing the real game who play online... and they're completely sucked in.
That's why I don't play.
He had never heard of Dungeons and Dragons.
He had no idea what I was talking about.
For a long time now I've been wondering why I've rarely enjoyed the video game adaptations of the D&D genre, and I feel like even with the success of Baldur's Gate (which I believe was probably the most successful single player RPG of recent years), it's taken the advent of online play to really bring D&D to digital life. I'm still not sure if 12 people screaming into their computers, preying to the Internet Gods for smooth bandwidth as they slay the Orcs is quite the same as playing in person, but I'm really not going to risk finding out.
I've been playing games my whole life, but thus far have avoided falling prey to WoW and it's ilk. Like many suburban kids of my generation, I grew up playing D&D (the real kind, where you sat around with your friends after school and someone actually made up the story, complete with maps and painted lead figures) and followed the progression through the 80s of Adventure, Wizardry, Ultima and the Infocom text based games.
The Dungeon Crawler genre as a video game always suffered from the plot manipulation problem. The beauty of RPGs is based on three elements: character development, plot and combat. Most games (I'm back to the real thing, but now it's college, and you and your buddies are playing in a dorm room, stoned on weed your friend brought back from Christmas in Northern California and you have an English Lit major for a Dungeon Master, your Half-Elf Fighter/Thief is Comp Sci. concentrating in Cryptography, the Dwarven Barbarian is an Architecture student, you have a Wizard double majoring in Physics and Chaos Theory and the Druid is an Environmental Conservation major) had good character development as long as you chose well amongst your friends. Combat was pretty much fixed since Junior High, it was just a question of how rigid the gamers wanted to be. Did you bother with speed factors and weight limits or did you just roll dice and slay the bad guys. But the X-Factor was always the plot.
It all fell on the DM. A good dungeon master was critical to a good game. I played with some great ones in my day, and I even ran a game or two, but it was never my strong suit in those games. A bad DM could ruin a game. A good DM added color, characters, a good story and kept you engaged and enjoying yourself. A bad DM was like sitting through a boring class. A good DM would have maps made and interesting sub-plots, and frequently he would create divisions within the group assigning characters conflicting quests.
As bad as a game is with a lame DM, without a DM you had no game at all, which is what most of the RPG video games offered. The early attempts by TSR and others to bring D&D to the computer were too linear. It was far too easy to throw the game into an plot wormhole by slaying the wrong NPC (Non-Player Characters, "extras" really) or just running off and ignoring the plot altogether. The games were frequently based on multiple choice questions of the NPCs, and if you answered incorrectly you would lose out on treasure and fun sub-plots. Similarly, if you got killed, you would either have to start back in the game (and waste hours retracing your footsteps) or lose all of your hard earned gold and cool weapons. So the games became a series of save and reload. Save and reload.
I stopped playing most of those games as soon as the Real Time Strategy (RTS) games came out. My father and brothers and I used to play Risk and Axis & Allies growing up. WinCiv was our first strategy game on the computer, which of course led to the Civilization series, and as soon as Command & Conquer, Red Alert and Age of Empires came out we were hooked. The games took an evening, there was nobody hiding pieces up their sleeves and let's face it... it's fun to sneak a spy into your brother's base camp and blow his shit up.
Our youngest brother is in college (youngest by far) and he grew up in the generation that never played with a real live Dungeon Master. He plays WoW. My other two brothers and I who are all in our 30s don't. To be fair, I do know people who grew up playing the real game who play online... and they're completely sucked in.
That's why I don't play.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Yogini Salutation
Jordan and Quincy practicing their yoga in the kitchen! Unfortunately the tape ran out before the levitation poses.
Monday, March 5, 2007
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