Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair.

As if the threat of addiction, loss of sleep and those wierd dreams weren't enough, there is now a potential new threat to all you MMO gamers out there: TERRORISTS!

According to a report that has something to do with the Director of National Intelligence, (Not the same guy who is responsible for high school students not knowing in which century the civil war happened. We're talking about another kind of intelligence.) government spies may soon be infiltrating an MMO near you in order to find terrorists among us.

No. We're not kidding. According to the report, the intelligence community is working on developing software to identify those nasty terrorists who aren't just content to bring their wanton destruction to the real world, but the virtual ones as well.

Yeah, we know what you're thinking. And you're right. If you want to avoid your house being raided at 3:00 in the morning by black-clad, submachine gun toting guys in gas-masks, you should probably stop doing all the bad stuff you're doing. This means ditching the epic suicide vest you found in that desert instance, leaving any guild that rhymes with 'Jihad' and resisting the urge to shout "The streets will flow with the blood of the infidels" whenever you get shafted by that healer in your guild who always "just happens" to be doing something else whenever you really need help. Kyle, you dick.

As for us. Say goodbye to old avatar Entaro McKickass. And say hello to our new avatar: Ayatollah Assahollah.

Ooohhh! Jimmy's Down!

Once again we're forced to report on Perpetual Entertainment, or rather, P2, or rather, that company that used to be Perpetual Entertainment and P2.

Reports (or rumors, or rumors of reports. We're not sure.) are that P2 has now shut down. After a recent slew of bad news, the MMO company appears to have ended their run. Here's a quick list of why:

1. Terminating your flagship project: Gods and Heroes
2. Pulling out of development for Start Trek Online.
3. Getting sued by your public relations firm.

It's too bad. Both of their projects looked interesting. But, and we hate to harp on this, it's just one more sign that the MMO community is not broad enough to support so many games or game developers. Dedicated cult following is how we have come to label the MMO community. The MMO players are out there, but it doesn't look like anything other than WoW has been able to capture any significant portion of those who wouldn't normally play them in the first place.

And not to get off on a tangent, but taking a look at the handful of posts on gaming blogs about this story/report/rumor, we wonder how all this information gets disseminated. No, we don't have any industry insiders or cool remote-control bugs that we can send into places to be the proverbial fly on the wall. All we have is a computer, a connection to one of the internets (the blue one, we think) and the ability to listen to whatever our helpful office leprechaun tells us when he finds us passed out in the mornings. What we do isn't journalism. (Though we do write in an online journal, nay, Blog.) It's us writing our thoughts about the industry in which we have a miniscule part in and occasionally think about. So all these reports of the rumors, or the rumors of reports, or reported rumors seemed strange to us. It kid of reminded us of high school, where someone hears something and it quickly goes through the grapevine. the things is, the only people who care about it are the people who talk about it anyway. The people who don't care about it don't give it a second thought. So it begs the question, even if the rumors are true, does anyone care besides the people who report on the rumors? We don't know.

Besides. The leprechaun is getting jumpy. It's time for our 10:41 whiskey sour.

The Doctors say he has a 50 percent chance of making it. But there's only a 10 percent chance of that.

Recently, a panel of MMO insiders convened at the Game Developers Conference 08 to discuss the future of MMO's. Apparently, much of the conversation revolved around the current, WoW dominated state of MMO's. As we've known for a while, every MMO that's been released after WoW has barely been able to attract attention. This was pointed out by Jack Emmert of Cryptic studios who pointed out that only LoTRO has been able to reach the 100,000 subscriber mark since it's post-WoW release.

Just another reason why we think the state of MMO's today is that of a subculture. There are some avid practitioners, but the medium has yet to reach the popular appeal of console gaming, film or television. We think some serious changes need to be made for MMO's to reach those levels. And apart from someone inventing a holo-deck, prospects for that happening in the near future are not great.

Reports of my death have been mildly exagerated.

We posted several days ago about the death of Marvel Universe Online. With the MMO having been killed by Microsoft (the deep pocket), it looks as if the developer, Cryptic, is using the work done on the game to come up with a new super-hero MMO ala City of Heroes.

We wish them luck, but we're a little skeptical. After all, City of Heroes is still doing pretty well. A super-hero MMO that tries to compete against them is going to have to make one heck of a sales pitch to do so. Given that the comic-book (excuse us, graphic novel) fan-base Cryptic could have drawn upon with Marvel Universe isn't going to be there, we're wondering how the market will receive another non-familiar super-hero game. Yeah, we'd love to see Wonderboy face off against Nasty-Man, but it isn't the same as standing next to Wolverine and Havok as they blast the Sentinels into oblivion.

So to all you super-hero fans out there, we say... Excelsior!

You have chosen...Wisely.

Because these movies are the best thing since the invention of things, we're linking to the trailer for the new Indiana Jones Film. Enjoy.

Expand my brain, learning juice.

For everyone who has ever wondered why the ratio of men-to-women gamers is about 100 gajillion to 3, there is new evidence that shows a physiological basis for this phenomena.

A recent study shows that men's brains react differently to video game stimulus, providing a more rewarding experience when compared to a woman's. The study showed that a man's brain showed more activity in the 'Miyamoto-Meier' and 'Blast-o-Bang-o' zones as they played a game in which they tried to control more territory. Women, on the other hand, responded positively to images of Hello-Kitty and pretty-girls who have since become fat.

Respect.

Excelsior?

We'll refrain from humming the opening bars to Another One Bites the Dust. Instead, we'll listen to the under-rated rocker: The Hero. And while we're rocking out with our...well...you know, we'll let all you fans out there know that Marvel Universe Online is officially dead.

No, Galactus did not come and eat it up, nor did Dr. Strange do something...strange. Instead, it looks like neither the eater of world nor any other super powerful comic book figure was the cause of yet another upcoming MMO's demise. No, it looks as if Marvel Universe Online was terminated because of the 10-million-ton juggernaut that is World of Warcraft. The developers felt that the current MMO industry just can't support another game that has no chance of challenging the dominance of WoW.

Since we canceled our WoW account some time ago, we're wondering what it means that pretty much everyone who currently plays an MMO is at least playing WoW for about a thousand hours a week. Ok, maybe we exagerate, but seriously, 10 million players are on WoW, and there are about 50 million MMO players. If the marketplace cannot grow beyond this, the industry is not doing well. This again leads us to the conclusion that MMO gamers may just be a very enthuthiastic sub-culture.

It's kind of like Mac users, at least in the olden days. They loved their product, but the appeal to the masses was never achieved. (Though it looks like lately Mac is becoming even more popular. Not only are their sales up, but they are expanding into Best Buy.)

But we'll see. There are a lot of talented people out there. Someone will come along and make something that can challenge WoW.

Some day.

All your base are belong to us.

For all of you playing along at home, it appears as if Nintendo has no intention of getting involved with MMO's any time soon. Satoru Iwata (CEO of Nintendo) recently stated that Nintendo believes MMO's are in the early stages and don't have a broad enough appeal for Nintendo to get involved. (Or at least that's what we say he said. Read the GameSpot interview here.)

Given our recent ruminations, we can't help wonder why Nintendo isn't eager to get into the MMO market. Or rather, we kind of understand why they do. Their past history with games shows that Nintendo has a knack for reaching a LOT of people. And they reach a lot of people by making their games fun. And yeah, we think MMO's are fun. But again, it prompts us to wonder about MMO gamers and whether or not they represent a distinct sub-culture. Are MMO gamers different than other gamers in a way that doesn't easily cross over into mass-market demographics? We think so. Even given the large numbers of MMO gamers (50+ million or so is a rough estimate we have often seen), it still represents a very small percentage of gamers, and an even smaller percentage of the general public. Yeah, WoW has 10 million players, but it isn't exactly a casual experience.

If MMO's are really going to take off and go from sub-culture to culture-at-large, we think the genre will need to find its Shigeru Miyamoto to breach the divide. A mass-market MMO that will appeal to casual gamers as well as dedicated MMO fans may seem like an impossibility, but if the genre wants to get past the devoted cult following of its current subscription base, we think the change is a necessary one.

You know we're living in a society!

So we were online yesterday, grinding away in PotBS so we could get our Naval Officer to level 37 and get our Defiant Frigate so we could help our society with it's impending port battle. We were in a group of 6 fellow society members and attacking the hated Spanish, and during one of the battles we started picking up on something we have noticed before but have not commented upon.

What are we talking about? Well, there is no easy way to say this, so we're just going to say it: a lot of gamers are downright socially inept.

We previously posted about the forthcoming MMO documentary that investigates the lives of a small portion of the 50 million or so MMO players out there, and since then we couldn't help but wonder about the nature of the community. MMO games, and video games in general, are immersive, time consuming endevors. People can spend hours a day playing them. And even with voice chat options and similar group activities, the games are solitary. These players don't get out much. Maybe they don't have strong people skills. They spend a large part of their waking life in a place that doesn't exist, interacting with people they will never meet.

We've also noticed that a lot of MMO gamers seem to be, let's say, Renaissance Fair friendly. (Yeah, we went to the Ren-Fest once. ONCE.) They like the clothes, the fake-accents, the role-playing, the...whatever. And it's not that these people are bad in any way, it's just that they are a little...we're not sure. It's hard to put your finger on it.

And no, we're not making a qualitative judgment of any gamer, or the gaming community. It's your life, do with it what you like. The only life you have to look back upon when you die is your own, so act accordingly.

But we are asking this: do gamers derive more satisfaction from the gaming interactions than they do from other interactions? Does this subset of society exhibit a trait that is not found in most other areas, or does it tend to exhibit it more strongly? Are gamers introverts who thrive in their own inner-world's, yet do not do so well (when compared to others) in social environments?

We think the answer is pretty clear. Though there are exceptions to the rule, we would guess that the gaming culture is largely composed of people who don't excel in social environments. They enjoy fantasy settings. They enjoy the imaginary. They enjoy living in a world that is perceived first through their imagination, and second through their senses.

At least, that is what we think. For now.

Til next time, True Believers!

Are you out of your Vulcan mind?

We're updating our blog features. While we know you read our outstanding, erudite, pithy posts with relish (though no mustard), we wanted to add some new features that will let your enjoyment grow to new heights. Well...okay. Depths.

In addition to adding a Technorati account and visit tracker, we'll be adding features that will let you subscribe to our posts. We may also be changing our layout, but we're not sure yet.

Til next time, True Believers!

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We have a piper down. I repeat, a piper is down.

We've posted a few times about Perpetual entertainment, and the demise of Rome Rising and Star Trek Online. Well, it now looks like Perpetual's website has been taken down. We're not sure what's going on, but it probably has something to do with the fact that their two main projects have been abandoned.

That and commies. Definitely commies.