MMO crunch asks is borderlands a mmog, and in doing so asks if there is a story http://www.mmocrunch.com/2009/11/09/is-borderlands-a-mmog/

This is what I had to say in short:

In terms of story, I always look at gamers who expect to read a story in an interactive medium and think “Wha!?”. It’s an interactive medium – YOU make the story.

What I would grant is that these games, not at all right now, have any tools to record player actions and layout a story (or atleast a log of cool events). So it’s easy to forget the story you just made.

I wrote more on my other blog

There’s more than a few bits in the prince of nothing novels where he refers to something like men take the wreckage of what has become, then call it their own choice and declare that to be themselves.

I was idling through elfwood and saw this. One of the comments is ‘How did she die?’.

That’s the human mind – not asking why it grieves over a dead love to begin with, but asking how did she die. Just taking the wreckage of what has happened and going on from there, pursuing why she died, rather than pursuing why it was a concern at all that she died, to begin with. Your roots may as well determine your destination, but we ignore our emotional roots and simply act as extensions of them.

Calling it story gauntlet now, over at: http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/2009/11/gauntlet10.html

The game I made for it now is a short adventure shoot ‘em up! I quite enjoy this one, rather than it being just a quick platformer mock up. Though there’s an easy difficulty cheat code, found at that link, if it’s a bit tough to beat!

Just viewing the other blog helps with page views, which grants a small amount of income simply from the ads being shown to visitors. And if you have any monetized blogs of your own now or in future you would like visits to, I’m really happy to return the favour

From here

Specifically

I’ll give this one last shot and I’m done.

Do you think I’m wrong in detecting a ‘I’ll give this one last shot, because I’m absolutely certain I’m right on this…there is no room for doubt in my mind. I can not be wrong at all on this at all’

Even Richard Dawkins, who raves about Evolution, will actually provide you methods to disprove his beloved theory, like ‘Fossilized Rabbits in the Precambrian’ (I think that was the time period – it was definately a time period they shouldn’t show up in. Comments left will prompt me to find the reference).

I mean, I don’t think it means one more shot at understanding the details of any evidence against it, as the rest of the post is just trying to add more evidence for it, rather than asking questions or such.

Here’s a quote from me, which has probably been said in the past, but I have paralel developed it.

“The man who is absolutely certain is the man who does not care what happens if he is wrong”

As a supplement to my thread here.

Looking at the D&D forums, they also have a little forum culture where they start granting themselves rights. Like ‘Oh, the GM can’t cheat’ and such. And they have a thread where they all agree with each other that that is the case. And ‘thus’ it’s the case for their group. Except it’s only the people on the forum who have agreed with that, not their group.

Wow, writing for a ‘play to turn the page’ format is sooooooo easy! No wonder it’s so prevalent!

‘Play to turn the page’ means you play a game, but it means absolutely nothing to the story – you just play so as to bring up the next cut scene or text. It’s like playing a game simply to turn to the next page in a book – it’s pretend interactivity.

And it’s so easy to code for! I’ve been writing another game for use in the ‘effort’ revenue model, as I posted about before – and once you make it just to gather effort rather than having the action make some sort of story in itself (or atleast more story than ‘I shot all the space invaders’), it’s just so easy to slap together something!

Well, that’s good for getting over writers block. But man, it does repeat the million and one play to turn a page games already out there. Still, I’m doing it as part of a ‘effort’ revenue model and doing it is helping me practice my skills toward something that combines both play and a sense of story.

The cockatiel we found in the backyard about a year or two ago…well, we were cleaning around the cage and in a nook under the cage (there’s a gap left between it’s base and what it rests on), we found a couple of eggs. So he’s not a he. Just really surprised. She’s abandoned them already, though I remember when she was spending a fair bit of time under the cage.

Just wanted to share that bloggy sort of thing!

Philosophy: An arguement against “Humans are fundamentally bio-mechanical”
http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/2009/10/philosophy-arguement-against-humans-are.html

I’ve started it on my other blog! Please check it out!

http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/2009/10/stark-land-family-threat.html

I’ve called it a story game at the moment, though I don’t like the term over much. Maybe I’ll make up another one latter.

Anyway, it should be an interesting online interactive project to watch!

Ah ha!

Okay, so I’ve had an idea! At some point soon I’m going to spin a bit of a yarn, in text, about a world in some sort of strife. Then I will pitch two choices, of which one can be chose and that will influence that worlds future to some degree/will influence the yarn.

Instead of going full blown crpg, I’ve written a small platformer game (mostly modded up the game maker example). At the end of the level is a star that gives a code. The first person who gives the code, gets to make the choice!

“Why?”

Because instead of shooting for fiscal return straight off the bat, with all the workload for a mere chance of return that entails, what I’m going for is simply someone giving the effort of completing the simple platformer. That’s the ‘fee’, so to speak. Or perhaps it’s like bartering – I dunno. But it’s not working for absolutely free, there is a return involved – and that encourages development that moves toward getting more complex gameplay than a simple platformer.

In latter ones I’ll most likely have multiple codes, so as to give more than just the first person to the post the influence. But for now I’m keeping it simple until a return comes in.

Stay tuned for that yarn – I’m pretty sure I have one coming