Hi Everybody,

I have some news that some of you have probably not been looking forward to. GameTap has decided to discontinue the operation of Myst Online: Uru Live.

The decision was a very difficult one and was made for business reasons rather than due to any issues regarding the design and vision of the amazing world that Cyan Worlds and Rand Miller have brought to us. Despite the great Myst Online experience coming to a close, Cyan is still a very valued partner of GameTap, we are on excellent terms, and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the future.

Many of you have made good friends while playing Myst Online, so here is the bittersweet part. Although Myst Online: Uru Live will be completely shut down in the near future, the game servers will remain live for the next 60 days. During that time, both newcomers and existing players can continue to experience the amazing world of Myst Online, explore the game’s many Ages, and interact with other players in the game and on the MystOnline.com website and forums. After 60 days, the title will be removed from the GameTap service, though MystOnline.com will remain live and active for fans to continue to share their passion for this important game franchise.

I know this is not the news fans of Myst Online wanted to hear. I want to thank all of you who have been extremely supportive of the game and made this grand experiment in an alternative MMO format so much fun. All of us at GameTap also want to thank you again for your tireless enthusiasm for the title.

There has been a clamor for information about the status of season 2 for some time, and the reason we haven’t announced anything sooner is because we have literally been examining a wide variety of possibilities for maintaining the game, but in the end, we had to bring the exploration of the great cave to a close.

So thanks again for supporting us as we launched this truly unique game. GameTap is still committed to exploring new genres of gameplay and encouraging bold visions. If you haven’t already tried Season 2 of Sam & Max, give it a try, it is as anarchic as one could hope. And I can tell you from first hand experience that the upcoming Grimm is novel and exciting experiment as well.

Ricardo Sanchez
VP of Content and Creative Director for GameTap

Currently very busy at Turbine, so not much time to read or do commentary, but these are interesting enough to pass along!

Read more at Kotaku.com.

There have been rumors that the new developer is Cryptic Studios, currently making Marvel Universe Online.� It’s a justified rumor. They are interviewing people from P2. Though it’s very common for developers being laid off to be poached by other studios. Sporkfire’s comment about they are just interviewing them for their “current projects” neither confirms or denies the rumor.

With them selling the City of Heroes/Villains to NCSoft completely, it would seem they are not interested in partnering with a service operator. Having multiple products will help justify building out the infrastructure. Not to mention in their FAQ, it does say they are “developing new titles and new IPs”.

Back to P2, so this speaks clear to me that Gods and Heroes will never see the light of day unless it gets snatched up by some company, AND said company is willing to license the Perpetual Platform. Even more worrisome is that BioWare has licensed the Perpetual Platform. I can only see that as a hindrance to their upcoming MMO.

I refrained from spreading this because I thought it was ridiculous. Then he apologized, so I guess it’s all good? The man’s got the right idea of keeping adult contents out of underage hands.� I do sincerely think we need voices of oppositions in our society in order to maintain friendly tensions to propel us to the next level. But please, research your facts, throughout, before you speak out. This is very lasting damaging effects in mis-informing people. Someone not familiar with the issue would read the first post and just take it as is without doubt.

In any case, I still can’t agree with writing on such topic without even playing the game yourself. He based his judgment solely on YouTube videos, as well as conversations with his “gamer friends” (one would wonder if he considers these friends of his “gamer-nerds”?). He argued that you didn’t need to experience what a strip club has to offer before making a judgment about it, but this argument is flawed. A strip club has only one function. You know what goes on. Video games have all different kinds. You don’t really know what a game offers unless you actually play it.

In any case, I am not completely against government censorship, other than the fact that it will adversely affect development cycles. ESRB is not perfect yet, but I would love for ESRB to be so effective that we don’t need to waste our government resources to police video games. That would be ideal.

�Then there�s a lifestyle element: there�s fewer green spaces and kids are sat home playing computer games on the TV when in the past they�d have been burning off energy outside.�

How about for once, we don’t blame things that go wrong with our kids on others? Wait though, if we do want to blame it on someone, let me think who should take it… the parents (or guardians, or what not). If your kids are sitting at home playing video games all day, and eating McDonald’s all the time, and you don’t do anything about it, and your kids got fat. Who should we blame?

McDonald’s, or any other business in the world, are only interested in making money. They can’t be blamed. If there’s no demand for the “bad” stuff, then “bad” stuff goes away. Of course, there’s the argument of businesses should have morals and work towards the betterment of society. But blah, that’s easier said than done and I personally don’t hold any business trying to make a buck legitimately. They have products, if you buy them, you are the suckers and should take responsibility.

These are not rocket science but common sense. But as we all know, common sense is not common. It always amazes me that we let anyone, just anyone, in the world to have sex and have kids, but being a manicurists takes a license. I am not advocating Gattaca. But you know, some government funded parenthood training programs might not be a bad idea. And as long as they are religion and agenda free, they can only do good and help get our kids better care from their parents.

You know, as much as I hate having to carefully craft (AKA, lie through my teeth) an answer to “What was Vanguard’s biggest failing?” in job interviews, I realized after reading that rather disappointing article how proud I am of it.

Know why? Because I can honestly say with 100% validity: I’m a big reason for Vanguard’s failure. Not Brad Mcquaid - not Microsoft. Me. And Guess what? I’m really kind of proud of it.

Brad Mcquaid didn’t do shit. (News Flash?) He’s had an opiate addiction for years now, which only got progressively worse as the project failed. His cumulative face time with sigil designers in the most crucial final years of development? Approx: 15 minutes. And some of the time was spent begging for legitimately acquired narcotics (Or in times of desperation, jacking them from people’s desk).

The lead designers didn’t do shit. (News Flash?) Sigil fired all of their golden-boy, EQ-Genius designers (Save One) who this board once speculated simply “left.” It wasn’t even secretive. It all happened on the same day.

Sony didn’t do shit. The extent of sony’s help was 2 designers who ended up writing some diplomacy quests in Tanvu and some adventuring quests in Tursh. I think there was an artist that came in 2 days a week or something for about a month also. Thom Terrasas (sp?) is the only Sony employee that ever directly affected the direction of that game.

The only part Sony really played in Vanguard’s destiny was to let its life unnaturally and undeserving-ly continue. And apparently, it’s simply because they were naive enough to think this project was worth their cash. Hah! Even the staff at sigil was left wondering why the hell Sony would buy us. Dozens of lunch hours were spent trying to figure out why.

“What profitable web of intrigue and mystery was big’ol Smed spinning with this crazy move(????),” we’d often cry

It was pretty shocking (and just lame) to hear John Smedly actually get angry and complain to people after the layoff’s that he, “didn’t know what he was buying.” He even expressed anger at Jeff and Brad for bamboozlin’ him. Poor guy. Maybe next time tough-guy Smed decides to spend several million dollars on something he’ll expend some brain power figuring out what it is first.

Dave Gilbertson DID do some shit. (News Flash!) But this guy? Man, so much stuff I could say about this guy. He was truly unbelievable. Even when you thought his insanely unprofessional antics couldn’t get any more outrageous, he’d go and do something like tell everyone they’re getting a raise (to keep crunching) and then one by one call people into his office who WERE actually getting raises (but would never actually get them), how much they were going to get (VERY, soon). Unfortunately he would move through desk rows one by one and simply skip over the unlucky ones. It took a whole 5 minutes for the office to see through his brilliantly laid out scheme. He used the same plan for the lay-offs too. Classy huh?

He’s literally never played a video game in his life, yet when Brad died off and Dave inherited the position of Vanguard Jesus, he decided he must be the final call on every design decision. I guess if you ride dirt bikes with a gamer god, his genius just wears off on you.

Fortunately, sometime this would result in getting played like a fiddle by whoever happened to be lovingly pulling the strings that day. But more often than not, this just meant people had to go around him to get something in, only without the help of (Place whatever department here) that was necessary for a game feature to actually turn out right. Imagine for a second people at Sigil actually knew how to do something right? (Believe it or not, we did on occasion) this guy would become the bottleneck to prevent that from happening.

If there was a ceremony for the Gamespy award, Dave would be accepting. For the sake of all our future video game consumer habits, let’s hope this guy goes back to the only thing he’s qualified to do, whatever that might be.

Anyway, enough of my blabbering. The most shocking reality that I don’t think anyone really ever understood is that Vanguard was made (exclusively the design staff, I should say) COMPLETELY by amateurs. People who had been hired less than a week with 0 prior experience were tasked with designing entire newbie areas that shipped. People who had never produced a game in their life were asked to fix a 40 million dollar fuck up. People with no experience were asked to fix the item, diplomacy, ability, content, quest and pretty much every system in the game.

The game that exists now was designed in a single year by people with 0 experience. If that sounds too vague think of it like this: about 1 year from release we had 0 quests in the DB because the tool didn’t exist yet. When I decided to split the team there was over 30,000 quest object entries. Yeah, explains a lot doesn’t it?

What a huge let down indeed.

Oddly enough, the whole situation was probably a bigger let down to the designers than the consumers. I accepted a position thinking I was going to work with a bunch of experts - Masters of their craft - and really learn the ropes of game design. Instead, my fellow design associates and I were unwittingly tasked with trying to fix a failed video game that had literally been canceled twice before any of us were even hired. So in retrospect, despite everything, I guess I’m still pretty proud of vanguard. Every team member should be proud in spite of a truly pitiful and pathetic waste.

• Supposedly murder because of stupid drunk teenagers imitating Mortal Kombat
• Soda companies blaming video games for child obesity

All I have to say is… /sigh Can we find some other scapegoat? Like D&D, rock and rap music, media violence, internet? Oh wait, those have already been blamed. For all you parents out there, you are supposed to be watching what yours kids are doing. If your 12 years old are playing GTA and get screwed up in the head, you are to blame because you didn’t catch him/her doing so, and provide proper guidance/parenting.

Also, I think the number of accidental gun shot deaths in households is way higher. In 1999, in 3,385 firearms-related deaths for age group 0-19 years, 214 unintentional were unintentional. Pardon my old numbers, I can’t find any newer ones, but with guns more and more common today in US, I can only imagine that number being higher. Let’s fight more worthwhile fights, shall we?