Clint Hocking about Gamer Generations

This talk impressed me not only because its presented in very funny and direct way but also because he views gaming from a different perspective.

Noch ein Interview

Ein kurzes Videointerview was ich auf der Quo Vadis noch führte findet ihr hier.

German: My video Interview on Golem.de

Ich wurde interviewed aufgrund meines Vortrages auf der Quo Vadis über den Games Markt 2015. Der Vortrag hängt als PDF im Artikel am Ende von Seite 4 und kann aber auch hier runtergeladen werden.

Video: Interview mit Teut Weidemann über den Spielemarkt im Jahr 2015 (7:58)

Creating Worlds

I wonder what influence the movie Minority Report had on the industry regarding interfaces, but this video one beats it all. Touchscreen is the latest craze of the industry, the iphone woke up the mobile industry and now computers move to touch as well. This one shows the future, watch this first before the second video, which shows the touch interface in the real world ... awesome stuff!

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Next² Console Generation?

If games characters look like the following in a couple of years, where will movies be? The following pictures are all 3d rendered images, most of them can be found at Cgsociety.org.

Lecturing and Teaching at Universities

As some of you know I am an active teacher at two universities. One course is Game Design at the Media Design Hochschule in Düsseldorf (also active in Munich and Berlin), the other one is the famous Filmacademie in Ludwigsburg (even earned OScars for their films).

At the first I am looking for an easy to use level design tool with a game attached already. They need to learn the tool pretty fast and be able to design a complete, playable level within 1-5 weeks. Any recomodations? This can be an online game, single player game (any genre) and needs to be freely available.

Please leave comments about recomodations.

"World of Warcraft is officially Casual!"

I am quoting the headline from a friend of mine who droppt this in a chat. And he is right. Considering that you can level from 70 to 80 in days very easily plus you can enter instances/dungeons in normal mode 5 levels before the level requirements and having no difficulties helps the casual player reaching goals he would never be able to earlier.

At level 80 random groups for Naxxramas, the 10 man instance, were running Naxx successfully days after the expansion has been released. Even for the heroic version of Naxx, the first 25 raid you might enter, are being run with success.

Now 2 german players solo'ed Loatheb, a boss in Naxx, in heroic mode! Thats how easy it has become.

The elite guilds hate it, casual players love it as the difficulty is ok for them. Two things start to happen: the elite guilds miss the challenge and casuals are raiding like the pro's have been before. Fun fun fun, but Blizzard has a problem. The pro guilds were the heros of WoW and casuals saw them as their role model. Of course they complained that they never can raid like they do, but still they liked that there is somethign after their level cap to reach, unlikely, but it is there.

Now everyone can raid and the feeling "there is somethign beyond" is missing. That might lead to the problem that pro guilds stop playing or waiting for the next expansion as there isn't an alternative for raiding outside WoW right now (neither WoW nor Lord of the Rings do it "right"). My personal opinion is that Blizzard needs to offer an elite content patch real soon otherwise they are going to loose the role models of the masses.

Check this: the majority of the playerbase never saw the inside of Sratholme before Burning Crusade came out, less than 5% of the players at that time never saw Naxx from the inside. Less than 5% of the playerbase before Wrath of the Lich king saw sunwell from the inside.

Yes, its the right move Blizzard to make things more casual and more fun for everyone, but do not forget what principle (among others) made WoW big: Elite content for the core players.