WoW hits 11.5 million subscribers

There sure is no stopping the World of Warcraft juggernaut, not when it’s hit a 11.5 million subscriber base. As Gamespot puts it:
World of Warcraft just reached the 11-million mark roughly two months ago. As for what could have spurred the extra growth, an obvious culprit is the November launch of the game’s second expansion [...]

Game Review: Final Fantasy Dissidia

Yes, Dissidia, not to be mistaken with the closely named “Disgaea” series made by Nippon Ichi, Dissidia is about the first fighting game that Square Enix has published. The fighting system is similar to Kingdom Hearts, published by the same company. Hell, even the graphics look the same, what else can it be?
It has taken [...]

Night photography

A couple of GET staff (Mr. Toh, Mr. Ng and myself) and students from IIT hit the down town area to take night pictures. It was a bit of a Nikonian gathering: two D300s, two D40s, one D60, one D70, three SB600s, one SB800 – and no Canons in sight. I’ll be adding the links [...]

Night Shoots

Something completely off topic. Mr. Ng is organizing a small photographic event on Monday or Tuesday evening, 22nd/23rd Dec tentatively. It’ll be a night shoot of the Christmas lights along Orchard road. There’re a couple of GET Juniors and some DIT students too. And assuming if the GET staff are alive after heavy-duty test paper [...]

Gamasutra’s 2008 Top Five Gameplay Mechanics

Gamasutra has just posted up an article on its top five gameplay mechanics this year. This is definitely something that should be read by all of us, the more so if you’re thinking very hard how to make your game special:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21380
Excerpts:
Top 5 Gameplay Mechanics of 2008
Braid (Jonathan Blow/Number None; Xbox 360)
Mechanic: time manipulation
Left 4 Dead [...]

Patapon by Mr. Jet Lim

Mr. Jet Lim has just written another game review for Patapon, which he’s just described as “crazily fun”. Do take a look at it – especially if you’ve got a PSP.:)
Link right here.

IGE – The Story

Players of World of Warcraft may be familiar with IGE, or Internet Gaming Entertainment. The company is one of the largest MMORPG services companies in the virtual economy market. And depending on your attitude towards virtual gold, you either love those Chinese farmer bots for providing a service where you can buy WoW gold on [...]

Game Reviewers Wanted

GET is going ahead with a project to produce student game reviewers for industry magazines. Mr. Chee and myself will be identifying students in all three years very soon to write these reviews.
Plenty of incentives: including your writings published in these magazines, and more importantly, getting your hands on the latest games (PC, XBox360 primarily) to [...]

An interesting article.

As with the title, I chanced upon this article. It features some objectionable use of language, so readers beware.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

Player Behavior in MMORPGs

Personal plug. The Temasek Polytechnic library has now copies of a new book I wrote on player behavior in MMORPGs. It’s titled “Grief Play Management” and looks at the controversial play style of gamers in large MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, EverQuest II, Ultima Online and so on.
The book costs USD124 on Amazon.com – yeah expensive – but [...]