“Wizard101 is an online virtual world with a 3D client. The title allows users to customize outfits and accessories for their wizard avatars, play puzzles and mini-games, adopt magical pets, and learn from seven different schools of magic – collecting cards, which can then use to engage in card duels alongside and against other players.”

It’s been a while since I’ve linked any actual games journalism on this site, but I’ve been pretty busy with behind the scenes stuff and (in particular) my current task of editing Worlds In Motion – where, actually, I’ve done several interviews recently:

Interview: GMG Entertainment On Pre-paid Cards’ Potential In Retail
Interview: Koinup’s Pierluigi Casolari On Social Networks for Virtual Worlds
Interview: Tandem Games On The Microtransaction Model For Web-Based MMOs
Interview: Lazaro Fuentes On The Green Latina Themes Of Hip Chicas

“Los Angeles may be a town known for the highest excesses of rock n’ roll debauchery (with legendarily wayward rock acts such as Motley Crue and Guns N’ Roses synonymous with the city) but Activision’s headquarters – a dull grey box located in sleepy Santa Monica – is hardly the most thrilling place in the world to get my hands on with Guitar Hero World Tour for the first time.”

As they’ve lobbed my E3 preview of Guitar Hero World Tour up online, now is as good a time as any to link to it!

There’s a small mistake in both the online and print editions of this article (you can read this preview in issues 111 of PSW, with more pictures of me, like the one above, in it) in that it lists PSW’s deputy editor Barry Keating as the author, apparently the fault of a nameless sub editor.

Oh well, such is life; at least I can set the record straight here. I wrote this preview and had fun doing so. Guitar Hero World Tour’s drums really are superb and I can’t wait to get my hands on them again.

“In Urban Dead, players create a character, either a zombie or a survivor (and if a survivor, from a number of classes, including consumers, firemen and army privates) and is dropped into the city of Malton either to cause as much destruction as possible (as a zombie) or to survive by an means possible — most usually by banding together with other players in barricaded buildings (if a player.) Players have a limited number of action points each day, but are forewarned that even if they have run out of action points, the rest of the world goes on around them, while they ‘sleep’.”

I really liked Urban Dead – until I spent weeks as a corpse waiting to be resurrected, that is. Once that happened the shine basically wore off. I still think it’s a remarkably fun virtual world, but I think that it’s unfairly weighted towards the undead – that you can’t kill them permanently (even with a headshot!) makes it less interesting as a massive simulation of a zombie infested city than it could otherwise be.

“As the casual game biz gets more complex, and the mainstream game biz examines complexity – where to now? To investigate this growing industry, Gamasutra talks to some of its leading lights: John Welch, CEO of PlayFirst (Diner Dash); Jason Kapalka, CCO of PopCap (Peggle, Bejeweled) and Russell Carroll, director of marketing at developer and (via Reflexive Arcade) casual games distributor Reflexive Entertainment (Wik and the Fable of Souls) for their unique takes on the importance of the casual games industry — where it’s headed and what that means.”

This article has been quite well received, being picked up on sites including Wired, which I found very pleasing.

“In Virtual MTV, users choose a generic avatar to start with and select the brand they (at least initially) wish to explore. Each of the brands is an MTV reality property — such as ‘soap opera’ The Hills or car modification show Pimp My Ride — and the user can take part in an experience tightly related to the concept of the show. So in Virtual The Hills users are expected to socialize, care about their appearance, and can create and sell items. In Virtual Pimp My Ride, users can play games and perform challenges to earn vMTV ‘bucks’ to spend on customizing their car.”

I think little to nothing of Virtual MTV, but this article is remarkable for the fact that I admit publicly that I’ve seen nearly every episode of The Hills. Can my career survive such a shocking revelation?

Plus, an interview:

Interview: Henrique Olifiers on Jagex’s Procedurally Generated MMO, RuneScape HD

“In ForumWarz, players choose one of three classes and begin a largely single player adventure to gain levels, earn Flezz (the world’s currency) and “pwn forums”. Each player is allowed a limited number of forum visits per day. Players who choose to can take part in multiplayer aspects, including clans, “Forumwarz Domination” (a player vs. player challenge), building new forums or Incit, a mini game about creating amusing text to accompany images.”

ForumWarz is absolutely great – and produced in Toronto, too, apparently, though I’ve never met the fine folks at Crotch Zombie Productions personally. It’s one of the few browser-based RPGs that I enjoyed almost unreservedly, and I await the second episode with more anticipation than I’ve ever had for any other kind of episodic content (including the Half Life 2 episodes.)

Also! Some interviews I did for Worlds In Motion that I have forgotten to link:

Q&A: Eric Hayashi And Steve Hoffman Talk Rocketon
Q&A: Vivaty’s McCurdy On Being More Social Than Social Networks

“In Barbie Girls, players create an avatar, design their room and can then explore a virtual world where they can earn ‘B Bucks’ play games, watch videos and chat with other girls in a safe environment.”

Yep – I’ve played a Barbie game. But then I’ve also played a Bratz game, so…

Anyway, I’m LA for E3 all next week, so I’ve got an excuse for not updating my site properly for a while. But there will be interesting updates, I’m sure, when I return!

“Kingdom of Loathing probably isn’t the kind of game you’d plan to look at if you were trying to work out how to build a community in your MMO, but it only take a short time playing to realize such an assumption is dead wrong. Kingdom of Loathing might be more of a ‘game’ than an ‘MMO’ but as either, it easily outclasses many of the competition.”

I liked Kingdom of Loathing! As a single player game it does get repetitive quicker than some other browser-based RPGs (like the excellent ForumWarz) but it’s fun for a while.

“Build-A-Bearville offers a customizable avatar, home and spaces for players to interact with each other. Only players who designate each others as friends can chat freely, with all other discussion keyword based ‘safe chat’. Players can play games and embark on quests to earn “Bear Bills” which can be used to purchase clothes and furniture in in-world stores.”

Build-A-Bearville is for kids who like Build-A-Bears. For that purpose, it is rather good. And that’s about it!

“…This conclusion is unusual, because it takes only a very short amount of research to find that two of the tracks from Crystal Castles listed above—”Mother Knows Best” and “Loving and Caring”—feature unapproved samples and are commercially available.”

I’m posting about this article before my Film Friday because, well, it’s important enough to stand up on its own. As this is my own blog I can state that on one level, this article is as much about my personal feeling that if you’re going to write “journalism on the internet” you should hold yourself to as high a standard as possible, as it is about how Crystal Castles should really admit and apologise for all that they’ve been up to in public rather than just put out more misinformation.

The basic fact is the Pitchfork article that this article is a response to is gob-smackingly bad. It takes maybe ten seconds of research to learn that the conclusion they draw is completely incorrect, and in fact, they’re actually proven wrong by at least one of the articles that they link to!

Some folks I have talked to put this down to an undercurrent of “well these chiptunes artists don’t really matter and Crystal Castles says everything is peachy so let’s just believe them!” Which is pretty likely, I guess. And makes it even worse.

Sigh.

(Oh, and special thanks to David Topping for working with me at length on this article, polishing it up into the tip-top hard journalism it is now.)