BrokenToys - Lum

Adventures in Modern MMO Production

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1 hour 42 min ago

September 4, 2008

16:16
Mark Jacobs has a blog.
Categories: Bloggers

September 3, 2008

16:24
Gamespot interviews EA’s Frank Gibeau on those newfangled MMO thingies. We already have two operating MMOs. We launched a game called Ultima Online in 1997, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and that’s still in business. It’s still got hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Then there’s Dark Age of Camelot, which we picked up when we [...]
Categories: Bloggers

September 2, 2008

18:15
Mark Jacobs, in the latest of a series of interviews with the hard-hitting journalists at, um, MTV, explains that no, he really wanted Age of Conan to succeed, because, er, now it’s all on them, you see. “At some level I wanted ‘Conan’ to succeed because for the last few years people have been saying it’s [...]
Categories: Bloggers

August 28, 2008

18:04
Today’s angry candy: It’s always sad when the bloom is off the rose. Funcom, now lovingly deemed “Failcom” by a good portion of the planet Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself “Why the hell would Funcom devs read this…?” The answer to that is I’m going to personally e-mail it to every one of them. Complete with personal [...]
Categories: Bloggers

August 26, 2008

05:23
I gave an interview to Wagner James Au over at gigaOM about my new gig which has gotten a lot of press (and flack via the press) in the past couple of weeks. Specifically, two paragraphs where I discussed the problems with standard MMO production (huge budgets, inability to manage projects) were boiled down into: Why [...]
Categories: Bloggers

August 22, 2008

17:20
The Empire visits San Francisco
Categories: Bloggers
16:43
Mark Jacobs, EA VP and head of Mythic, had this to say about the Warhammer credits foo frah. There is a fate reserved for those who betray the Emperor’s trust. It is not death. It is not life. What is it when flesh and mind are taken into the body of the Golden Throne? What is [...]
Categories: Bloggers

August 21, 2008

16:35
I went out for a drink last night and showed up on the news. NO, REALLY.
Categories: Bloggers

August 20, 2008

22:24
Eric Schild at F13/Giant Realm interviewed me last night; the result was just too big for one site to hold. Fullscreen version: http://www.giantrealm.com/gaming/interview-scott-jennings Widescreen cut: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14160.0
Categories: Bloggers
03:27
McCain’s latest salvo at Obama: It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement… Someone needs to let Granddad McCain know that since he left the military in 1937, quite a few of today’s Generation Kill actually not only play Dungeons [...]
Categories: Bloggers
01:16
As you may have seen from pretty much everywhere on the Interwebs, the Warhammer Online beta NDA has been lifted. Now that it has, I am finally authorized to announce, per express permission of Mark “Here To Fix Yer Gubbins” Jacobs: I am not in the Warhammer Online beta. Thank you for waiting until today for me [...]
Categories: Bloggers

August 18, 2008

19:54
Finally, 1UP nails the Flagship founder for an interview about his side of the drama surrounding Hellgate: Explosion. Part of the challenge was that when we originally came up with the concept of doing the game, the whole idea of continuing content was pretty amorphous. How that was going to happen, who pays for that — [...]
Categories: Bloggers
09:24
Final Fantasies One Through Three: don’t count. FF2 REALLY doesn’t count because it uses the worst use-based skill system EVER. You have to get beaten to gain hit points. This is not a message we want to be sharing with our children. These games have all been re-issued for every platform out there, because everyone [...]
Categories: Bloggers

August 16, 2008

10:25
I give a brief interview to Wagner James Au over at GigaOM. I ran on at the mouth longer than would fit in that, so here’s my complete answers to questions he posed (reposted with permission): In a nutshell, what do you mean by “where I think gaming needs to go”? The current game development model is an [...]
Categories: Bloggers

August 13, 2008

20:06
Today was my last day at NCsoft. Although there are plenty of rumors flying around about what’s going on at NCsoft this week, most of them are pretty overhyped. However, my team was let go as part of ‘refocusing’. I’m sure there will be some sort of press release to that effect shortly. I don’t hold any [...]
Categories: Bloggers

August 12, 2008

19:45
No news for lunch today (and probably the rest of the week) but had to note this: Funcom GM cybers hot chick, Crying Game twist, is fired Really, what more needs be said.
Categories: Bloggers
04:46
(As seen on Jeff Freeman)
Categories: Bloggers

August 11, 2008

16:59
Two quick newslunchy squibs, and then we can all move on with our day: MYTHOS RESURRECTED as Runic Games. They don’t own the Mythos license, but they do own the Flagship Seattle people who made the game. Well, not literally own. You know. They work there. MOVING ON. STAR TREK ONLINE RESURRECTED as Star Trek Online. They [...]
Categories: Bloggers