Reverse Difficulty in RPGs

This weekend, I finally decided that I would buy myself an X-box 360. I have not had the console anywhere near enough time to write a review, but it led me to thinking about something else, as a consequence of the game I purchased — Mass Effect.  Now, I already have a review of Mass [...]

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Roleplaying vs. gaming… is there tension?

Well after my “open letter to Cryptic”, I will admit that I did end up buying and am still playing Champions Online.  I did this for a few reasons. First, when I stopped playing it (after my post was written), I found that the game-play had grown on me, and I found myself missing it.  [...]

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An open letter to Cryptic Studios

In a few days, Cryptic Studios, the creators of City of Heroes, will be launching their new game, Champions Online, which is loosely (and I mean, very loosely) based on my favorite pencil-and-paper RPG of all time, Champions (by Hero Games).  This weekend I downloaded the open beta to take a look at it, and [...]

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The price of failure

(Note: The above was originally posted on my LOTRO blog, but since I quit that game, I wanted to move it here, because it is a general commentary on game design.)
Today I’m going to discuss a fundamental flaw in the design of most MMORPGs (including LOTRO, which I recently canceled), which is that they frequently [...]

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Risk vs. Reward… or Risk without Reward?

I’m going to continue musing today on a topic that I touched on in my LOTRO review: the concept of Risk vs. Reward, and how, in my view, the scale is so completely broken as to be meaningless in LOTRO.  First, I will begin with the game design theory, and then I will describe how [...]

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