Resurrecting an old flame: the “look, I don’t have time to pontificate deeply, but here’s some news” post.
China: World of Warcraft Hurt Me Deeply Tang Jun of Shanda, one of China’s major MMO publishers, is quoted in Pacific Epoch as saying that foreign developers “are not responsible toward Chinese gamers in their licensing strategy when they license the same product [line] to multiple operators.”, calling out The9′s problems with WoW in particular. I’m not sure what he’s talking about, except the persistent rumor that Blizzard was thinking of having someone else in China publish the WoW expansion as leverage against The9 during licensing talks. But as far as I know that has just been a rumor. I’d look more at the actual article in China Internet, but, well, you know.
They Come From The Land Of Lasers And Snow Meanwhile Eve seems to be doing very well in Chinaspace (it’s security level 1.0).
God Loves Curmudgeons Chris Crawford shakes cane at goddam kids, yells about how games suck. Note: second half of interview explains how his new devkit for interactive fiction will make them suck 1.4% less.