Archives for Gaming

On things that aren't fun, and fun that is bad... (August 9, 2006) Last Friday - around ten in the evening - Pentheus, my main character in World of Warcraft, hit level sixty. Thinking back, I'm now not entirely sure where he was when this happened, although I believe it was in the...

Twelve steps to give up World of Warcraft? (June 13, 2006) Spotted in Wired Magazine and consequently making me laugh - represented in part here because it was neat (and directing your attention in particular to the bottom and third books from the bottom on the left). In addition recommending that...

Self-reflexive rulesets in online communities... (May 9, 2006) It's Tuesday morning and I've been in Seattle since Sunday evening at this year's Microsoft Social Computing Symposium and frankly, I'm completely braindead through jetlag. I'm barely hanging on to intellectual coherence by my fingernails. Sunday evening I got...

On wanting to stop wanting 'World of Warcraft'... (May 2, 2006) There's a command in World of Warcraft that tells you exactly how long you've played with your active character and how long you've been playing at your current level. All you have to do is type /played into your...

The end is in sight... (March 23, 2006) I'm coming to the end of my month in the US and to be honest I'm absolutely bloody exhausted. I only have one major US leg to go and then Dear God I'll be done and I can sleep in...

An update from Nordrassil... (February 21, 2006) The weirdest thing about my weblog is that I rarely write about what I'm doing at work, and normally write about the stuff that's going on in the wider web and that I'm up to in my spare time. Except...

Supernova '05: Byron Reeves on MMORPGs... (July 3, 2005) It's difficult to articulate how busy I've been since Supernova - what with servers falling over and jet-lag and work and general calamities. All of which probably explains why I'm still writing up Supernova notes almost two weeks after...

Political economies in self-moderating communities... (October 13, 2003) Derek Powazek wrote an interesting piece last year about rating-based moderation systems: Gaming the system: How moderation tools can backfire. One of the most important lessons in online community management is that top-down management is seldom particularly successful in forcing...