I started this post off, thinking I would write a (typically) long winded diatribe on the recent blog fury that I’ve been reading in the wake of this year’s GDC. So I started going over the different articles (yes I’m so old fashioned I still refer to blogs & news posts as “articles”) in this post, and I spent a much longer time re-reading over all of them than I certainly should have, by any right.
So if you ever do any blogging, the end of the year always presents an interesting challenge. That challenge is.. do I do a “year in review” post, or a “predictions for the upcoming year” post. If you’re especially prolific, which I’m not, you do both. The “year in review” posts can be fun because it’s always interesting to look back, see what was launched, which trends took hold that we didn’t expect, and to see how things panned out. But they also require work, as you actually have to spend time going back through articles, checking dates, cross-referencing performance numbers against your claims (it’s all well and good to say that Champions Online tanked, but did it really? I’d have to check my numbers. Honestly I don’t think it did. It just felt like it did), and in general do research. Prediction posts, on the other hand, are much easier, We get to simply talk out of our butts about whatever we think is going to happen, and there’s almost no work involved at all, save putting our prophetic statements to paper. Lazy blogger that I am.. you can guess which kind of post this is.
There’s been a fairly large what-to-do this week about some comments made by Ryan Barker, during a recent interview, about how supposedly there WILL be an MMO that will once and for all crush World of Warcraft, and it will be on Facebook! Now, the thing is, first, this isn’t what Mr. Barker said at all. But that’s how it was presented by the press. And more than anything else, this is a stellar example of press proliferation of what is essentially a misquote, or at the least, misrepresentation. But the only thing people are seeing over and over again is the tweet or the caption: Facebook MMO could crush World of Warcraft! And it’s got a lot of people up in arms, because many of them, like myself, loathe Facebook games. And love MMO’s. So I thought I might try to offer up my take on what was said and what was meant, and maybe convince people to put down their pitchforks for just a moment.
