posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 5:07 AM by Endie

SWG, NYT and other TLAs

Yet more from Star Wars Galaxies: that version of the 1943 eastern front for MMO developers.

Via Broken Toys and elsewhere, the New York Times is covering the Star Wars: Galaxies "New Game Experience" laugh-a-minute-because-I'm-not-a-subscriber apocalypse.  I was initially surprised, but I suppose that virtual worlds are interesting enough to get into print, especially in the arts section.

It is serious knocking copy.  At first, I thought that it was a freelance piece submitted on spec that had got lucky, but Seth Schiessel has been doing tech pieces for the New York Times for years.  It's well-informed and well-researched, as well as strongly opinionated.  No publicity may be bad publicity, but some publicity can be even worse.  This article won't sell any boxes, that's for sure.

Comments

# re: SWG, NYT and other TLAs

Saturday, December 17, 2005 3:56 AM by Kyle
To be honest, it read like an unbalanced fluff piece to me. There was little attempt to get other player viewpoints -- the writer had a thesis and drove for it, hard.

But yes, it's fascinating that the issue even made the NYT.

# re: SWG, NYT and other TLAs

Tuesday, December 20, 2005 11:23 PM by Endie
I don't know about fluff, but you're absolutely right that it was an opinion piece rather than "news", per se. But it was in the arts section, where you can get away with opinionated pieces more easily.

I keep reminding myself that I'm essentially neutral on this one. I loath certain key players (Torres and Smeley in particular) but I think many of the technical personnel are extremely talented: I like Koster's work a lot and there's a link to Jeff Freeman at right. It's just hard not to write in awe at their QA and PR gaffes.

I liked your piece "MMOGs will change the world", by the way. I'm tempted by the subject.