GDC executive director Jamil Moledina's updated his Director's Cut blog with a bit more news about the upcoming Game Developers Conference, cluing us into to the fact that Dave Jones, of Lemmings, GTA and Crackdown fame, will be spilling some beans about his latest project: An MMO.

Moledina says that all he can tell us is that the audience for Jones' session, "My First MMO", will be in for a real treat. He does go on to say that there is some details out there, some of which can be discovered by reading between the lines of the session description:

As designers look to make the leap from a finely crafted single player experience to a persistent living breathing world with hopefully millions of connected players what would you do to herald your entry into this space? With a rich heritage of creative IP from DMA Design/Realtime Worlds, Dave Jones walks and talks us for the first time through something a little different from the fantasy based RPG's. From the DNA of games like LEMMINGS, GTA & CRACKDOWN you should expect some thinking outside of the box.

I would assume that this will be about APB, the open-world criminals versus cops game that sounds an awful lot like a Crackdown MMO.

Moledina also points out that famed MMO designer Raph Koster will be doing a postmorten of his Metaplace gameplatform community... thingie in his presentation "Metaplace Postmorten: Reinventing MMOs.

Director's Cut: The Biggest Unanswered Question Is . . . [Director's Cut]

I love when you chided everyone [at GDC Austin]. I watched Sulka Haro [of Habbo Hotel] talk, and ... I could feel this slightly electric vibe of tension between the MMO guys in the audience and Haro. I don't want to overgeneralize, but... I got this "We don't like you, and you don't like us," kind of feeling, because they feel like he's doing something different.

RK: Sulka has been coming to GDCs for years! He's a guy who has been bridging the gap all along. Honestly, it's more cases like... Nexon never comes out and talks, because they really do think that they're just a different industry, as far as they're concerned. I don't want to ascribe motives — I don't really know — but they just don't do the talks! Because honestly, how relevant would many of the talks here this year be to them? Not very! I think it's really, really, really important that people in any industry get out of their village and go anywhere else and check out what's going on. Travel is broadening.

It's an enjoyable interview to read with some different ideas on a number of aspects of the industry.

Defining Games: Raph Koster's Game Grammar [Gamasutra]

At the Austin Games Conference, game designer Raph Koster says that television isn't become kinda like gaming, but is flat out ripping it off. Koster points out:

We now have television shows with Easter eggs. In fact, they're putting Easter eggs in the commercials. Our best tricks are getting stolen.

And they have been getting stolen for a while. Now, they're just getting more stolen. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Wonderland]

We see [games] as being driven by their narratives. In fact...the narratives tend to be a vestigial part of games that has been carried over from earlier forms. When people play games, they aren't playing them for the story. They aren't playing them for a narrative arc of any kind.

So, we're just playing them to shoot shit up? Anyway, the article is interesting and worth a read. And as Kotakuite Flink points out: If you buy the issue, you get a bit of chat-log transcript from one of the Columbine killers! Value added! Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Harpers Magazine] Thanks, Flink!

Master MMO designer and Ultima Online graduate, Raph Koster points out the emergent artificial life simulation created by a Second Life user in the non-game.

While the thing itself is very interesting (our very own Wagner James Au has a terrrific write-up over on his site), what I find even more fascinating is Koster's reaction to it.

He calls this sort of self-sufficient world, where bee's beget plants and clouds beget rain, the future of dynamic world enviroments.

Natural resources and natural shifts in them offer plausible reasons for AIs to behave differently over time. Add in users affecting abundance or scarcity, and you get systems with changing dynamics. If it doesn't spin out of control, that is. But you can curb that with balancing mechanisms.

Going to a simulation level also allows players to interact with the world and actually affect it.

In other words, developers may begin to program ecosphere's as opposed to static graphics and AI-embedded characters. Better still, Koster says based on what he's done and seen, this way would be way cheaper. Brian Crecente

Way Cool [Raph Koster]

So you can imagine our consternation when we discovered that Next Generation's article really ought to be titled "Homoeroticism's Top 100 Hot Developers." There's not a chick on the list! Worse yet, it's filled with pictures of pasty dorks like John Carmack and hirsute yetis like Raph Koster! Although I suppose we can all be thankful none of them deigned to pose in a bikini.

According to Next Gen, this was their judging criterion:

We selected the Hot 100, based primarily on their studio s market success in 2005. In addition, we kept in mind any potential huge successes for 2006, as well as people who are clearly industry luminaries regardless of their recent or upcoming projects.

Boo, Next Generation. Boo!

The 100 Hottest Game Developers [Next Generation]

What if instead of weaving fire and ice through giant dragons, MMO-gamers healed, stitched and saved creatures for phat loot? Boing Boing points to bright mind Raph Koster's thoughts on a game that was just that - a healing adventure. From Koster: "Picture an MMORPG just like the ones today, but everywhere you see combat, replace it with healing. A six-man encounter would be a surgical operation that required teamwork. Soloing would be a brilliant doctor doing drive-by diagnostics. Raids would be massive experimental treatments.

Rather than spawning mobs, spawn ill people. Instead of weapons, have medicines. Instead of managing aggro, manage fever. Instead of armors, we have disinfectants."

Koster goes on to explain how the mechanic is basically the exact same way that MMOs are played now, just the way the game is marketed would have to be changed.

What Would an MMORPG Around Healing Be Like? [Boing Boing]
The Healing Game [Raph Koster]