Chatting about MMOs in real life can be an interesting challenge, and one that I typically can avoid in favor of RL topics that are more relatable to the general population. But when games become a default way to fill our free time, it can lead to some awkward moments with friends and family curious about what we’ve been up to.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the stigma that gaming tends to carry, although that certainly is a related topic. But regardless of that, I find that it can be a challenge to explain an MMO world to someone who has never experienced anything like it. Usually, such conversations go something like this:

Friend: (Finishes explaining the details of a date she went on the night before)… So, what have you been up to?

Me: Oh, not much. Lots of work around the house. Yesterday I was able to take a break and get in some gaming.

Friend: Sounds like fun. What kind of game, like Farmville or Angry Birds or something?

Me: No, World of Warcraft. I’ve been leveling through the new expansion’s content and running some dungeons.

Friend: (wide eyes of confusion)

Me: It’s a lot of fun. You get to form groups and play with other people, and find new items to power up your character, explore the world and collect pets and armor, things like that.

Friend: (clearly doesn’t understand even with the simplification of game terminology) … … Sounds fun?

Well, you can’t always win, I suppose. I’m clearly not ashamed of the fact that I enjoy gaming. I write, and tweet and Facebook post about it. I want to share my experiences with the people I care about and revel in the details. But then you risk completely losing your audience, like comedian Nathan Anderson up there. Sometimes, even when put into the clearest of words, it’s just that nothing can explain the experience of an MMO better than actual gameplay.

I suppose that’s part of what makes writing about WoW so enjoyable for me — I get to relate things that I enjoy or that irk me about the game to an audience that understands, can relate and sometimes even writes back. So, thank you for that.

How do you explain your MMO experiences with friends and family who don’t understand? Or do you avoid the topic altogether?

Bethesda Studios announced today a new software studio based in Austin, Texas. Headed by Rich Vogel, known for his leadership in MMOs including Ultima Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Star Wars: Galaxies, the new studio is already working on an “unannounced project”. There are job openings at Battlecry and the other ZeniMax studios, so seize the opportunity and head over to their jobs page!

The job page alludes to the possibility of a Playstation 3/Xbox title and MMO and FPS experience. With Vogel on the team, I think we are all hoping for some new MMO news from them in the near future in addition to Elder Scrolls Online from Bethesda.

We covered Vogel’s departure from Bioware in July. He had these remarks on joining Bethesda:

“I have always admired and respected Bethesda’s approach to making great, original games. It’s a belief and passion I share, and I’m looking forward to building a team of high quality developers who want to bring that same commitment and creative energy to the games we’ll be creating.”

Stay tuned for what ultimately comes from this new studio!

First off, I’d like to apologize for the lack of posts, or the infrequency of videos, with a video & a post mixed together!

Second off, I’m going to show the video (after the video, hit the jump to see the rest of the post:

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Last time, we looked at some of the pricing implications of the Diablo 3 auction house fee structure and why Blizzard implemented these fees. This time, we’ll propose some other fee systems and consider some economic ideas that have relevance to the Diablo 3 auction house.

One of the basic ideas of economics that gets thrown around a lot by laymen is “supply and demand“. They are really two separate ideas that can be used in conjunction with each other to predict market behavior. Let’s delve into some of these economic ideas to approach the auction house and its fees.

To make a basic graph of what “supply and demand” looks like, we need to understand how suppliers and consumers react to pricing. Intuitively, if something (lets say a super-awesome sword) can be sold for a high price, people are going to do what they need to in order to get it so that they can garner a large sum of money. Conversely, if the sword is offered at a lower price, less people are going to be willing to sell it. At higher prices, more swords will be offered for sale, and at lower prices, there will be less swords. As for consumers, they will buy more swords the lower the price is, as they will be able to more easily afford them at lower prices and be more willing to part with less of their hard-earned cash. At higher prices, people will only buy swords if they really want them. Thus, at higher prices, less swords will be bought, and at lower prices, more swords will be bought. If we asked sword-producers how much they would sell a particular sword for at a variety of prices and graphed it, then asked sword-consumers how many swords they would buy at a variety of prices, we would get a graph like this:

The important idea is that the supply curve has a positive slope, whereas the demand curse has a negative slope.

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