Posts tagged academic 
The Game Archaeologist and the What Ifs: Climax's Warhammer Online
Let's begin with a little personal history. Back in 2008, I decided to get into the blogging scene by jumping on board the latest MMO hotness -- in this case, Warhammer Online. As I was growing increasingly tired of World of Warcraft, WAR seemed to offer a refreshing alternative: a darker world ...
Educators find common ground in Second Life, for now
There's no doubt in our minds that virtual environments are here to stay, for a significant fraction of the foreseeable forever. Love them or loathe them they're in their third decade now, and like the Web, it's now more a matter of how they fit in to the rest of the world, rather than if they ...
New study reveals insights into gender in MMOs
A new study has appeared over at the Virtual Worlds Observatory, the home of a team of social scientists interested in researching online games, and it delves into perceptions of gender in online games and the reality behind it. Utilizing EverQuest II, the study uses a sample size of over 7,000 ...
Stop playing your favorite game
Do we have everyone's attention? Great. Now do exactly that. Stop playing your favorite game. Not forever, just for now. Just let it rest and play something else for a while. That's the idea proposed by Bio Break in an entry about letting go. The idea, as it's put forth, is that the best way to ...
The art of the expansion
Expansions are a fact of life for MMOs. We all know it, and while we might not necessarily like the fact that at least once a year we probably have to drop another chunk of change just to keep playing the game, we accept it as the price of progress. (And if you're a Guild Wars player, it's not ...
The catch point of the free-to-play model
With the successful transition of Dungeons and Dragons Online to the free-to-play model, there's a lot of talk about why other games don't move over to the same model, with Warhammer Online frequently being cited as a game that would enjoy a great benefit from the switch. It would bring in more ...
The Daily Grind: Is it lonely in here, or is it just me?
There's nothing like the feeling of going back to an old favorite. You might or might not be enjoying Champions Online, but either way it could inspire you to go back to City of Heroes to see how the old stomping grounds are faring. Final Fantasy XIV might put you in the mood to take a trip into ...
The Daily Grind: What game has generated the strongest feelings for you?
There are some games that you just sort of play. You pick them up, you enjoy them, and then you walk away without any real feelings about them one way or the other. And then there are the games that you launch into a screaming two-hour argument with one of your closest friends about on your ...
Achievements across the genre
By now, you've likely heard of the World of Warcraft player who managed to fill out every single achievement in the game, covering every single currently measurable objective. (If not, well, there you go.) Bio Break recently took the opportunity to discuss achievements as an interesting social ...
The Daily Grind: What games can you just not stand?
We all have games we love, that's a given. But some of us also have games that we have a deep and abiding resentment toward. Maybe you were so disappointed with Champions Online that now even the mention of the game gets you annoyed. You might have disliked the grind in Aion to the point where ...
