But, yeah, there’s a lot of less sexy parts to running a game. And, the trick is to get more information. Of course, the further problem is that sometimes it’s hard to pick out the schemers from the clueless. Some person might have legitimately thought their Orc-Raper was purple, but they were thinking of a friend’s, or maybe theirs was a dark blue they call “purple”, etc.

One of my favorite stories from them involves a woman calling because she bought a mac product for a PC… pretty common call for us considering we port lots of Mac titles… but long story short, by the end of the phonecall, she’s on with the director and just screaming “Bullshit” once about every fifteen seconds.

They sent her a copy of an old PC game.

Well, I know that’s what they’re intending. =) The reality, I assume, is that not everyone who plays Second Life is as adept at creating content, so there must be a subset of users who simply log in for the social interaction.

One of the problems with chat bubbles is that you don’t get a sense of sequence like you do with a chat box. Also, the log of a conversation will look more like a traditional chat box.

It’s also important to realize that CoH has one of the most extensive avatar customization features in any game. Looking at the different costumes is one of the attractions of the game. It’s interesting to see what people do in order to customize their characters. Contrast this with most of the other games out there, where the avatar customization is much more limited and less interesting.

I’m going to reply by asking, isn’t this essentially what Second Life is?

No, Second Life is a platform intending to make use of user-created content to create a compelling experience. Avatars are one part of that. Also, you can’t necessarily export your avatars from SL to another world yet, which is one of the main appeals of the “avatar services” I refer to. Also, Second Life hasn’t turned a profit yet. Not to say that it won’t eventually be huge.

If you want to see an example of an avatar service like I’m talking about you can check out Meez, which has gotten some attention lately.

In today’s larger games, your guild and associates are people while the enemy realms and those you don’t get along with are basically NPC’s with organically evolving dialogue and reactions… at the end of the day, you can go to a different zone and avoid your aggressors because the world’s so large you’re likely to never see him again. Or if he’s actually a member of the group allowed to speak to you, there’s the /ignore feature mixed with the same technique described above.

Some would say this change is a positive one, and I’d be inclined to agree had I not been through the forced community that was Meridian59. I know I miss it.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten.