Are any of you nerds following this?

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/

Every few weeks I'll see an article pop up somewhere about the game hitting a new crowd-funding goal, but I didn't bother to learn anything about the game until today.  It's essentially going to be a multiplayer space sim sandbox.

- Modular ship customization (I think?)
- Space dog-fighting combat (PvE & PvP)
- Player organizations
- Crafting/harvesting
- Economy/trading/hauling

And yes, it's slated to have Rift support.

It looks interesting, if not insanely ambitious.  They're aiming for a buy-to-play model (pay-to-alpha right now), and they're not at all shy about relying heavily on microtransactions.  B2P and microtransactions are things I really prefer to stay away from.  If a game is good, I'm more willing to pay a monthly sub as long as I know I'm getting the complete experience for my money.

I'm keeping an eye on it but remaining very skeptical. 

If I order something that is under 5 pounds and available within a ten mile radius, I'll just go get it myself.

Welp... I know how I'll be spending my Christmas vacation:

http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/

Commander Keen, Hugo's House of Horrors, mother fuckin' Troll's Tale

Blizzard appropriately books an aging, increasingly irrelevant band to promote their MMO.

People who still think MxO will/should come back:

You... passed out while on a date?

The first few minutes of the video reminded me so much of my recent playtime in GTAV.  If there's one thing Rockstar knows how to do, it's world design.  The map for GTAV is huge.  Every time I play, I keep wondering how a game of this magnitude fits on a single disc.  And of course with a world this big, exploration is going to come into play.  But this is probably the only instance in which a map this large can be a bad thing.  Despite all the interesting stuff there is to find and play with, there's a lot of space in which there is absolutely nothing of interest.

Not to say that it's boring or empty.  The entire map feels very much alive, and there's a lot of freedom in all that space.  But you can easily spend two or three hours just wandering around and not find anything particularly special.  Unless you google the locations of all the secret goodies that someone has datamined from the game code, you likely won't find them on your own.

As for MxO's storytelling, I think the concept of the simulated reality gave the Wachowskis/Chadwick/Chamberlain a lot of breathing room, and it became a major crutch for all of them to lean on.  Since everything was virtual, then pretty much everything was on the table, and it could easily be explained away with "matrix magic".  (Morpheus simulacrum, anyone?)  Many of the plot points seemed to exist for the sake of convenience, not necessarily because they made a lot sense when taken into context.

As for player-agency, I now believe even that was meant to be illusory from the start.  I'm sure there's irony in there somewhere.  But it hit me during one of the early Cypherite live events.  There was some kind of chase around the city lead by Niobe, to guide the Zion players to the garage entrance of Club Hel.  As everyone assembled there, Niobe announced that she would need to send someone in to investigate.  Everyone started volunteering, and Niobe called on a low-level player named "Vashuo" to enter Club Hel and report back.

I remember thinking how lucky that player was, and how great they must have felt to be chosen by a live event character and play a key role in the story.  This is what the game was all about!

Come to find out later... Vashuo was actually a live event character all along.  Another member of the events team playing the role of a regular player.  Having Niobe pick them for the event was a set up from the beginning.  It really killed the magic for me.



I guess the silver lining is that that realization came early in the game's life, rather than near its end.  Good video, and good stuff to think about!