Ten Ton Hammer Article Roundup: Beta Testing

My latest article about beta testing online games at LotRO @ Ten Ton Hammer.

Not too long ago, beta tests were reserved for a select few people who had connections, experience and a reputation for testing games, however, as MMORPG’s became more elaborate, more massive and more complex, gaming companies realized that they needed more people in the game to test various aspects of the game. They needed to see how massive amounts of people doing the same quests simultaneously would affect the stability, they needed to see how the server reacts when the population exceeds normal.

Read the full article at LotRO @ Ten Ton Hammer.

In-Game Advertising, What Could Possibly Go Wrong - My Latest Article for Ten Ton Hammer

In Game Advertising Could Be the Next Best Thing to Gaming
By J.P. "Agon Thalia" Sherman

There's no easy way to say this… ingame ads are here and they're only going to get more prevalent. There are racing games that contextually place billboard ads according to the players' web traffic habits, there are plans to make interactive items ingame, like a can of Sprite on a table that a player can "drink". Some ingame art like graffiti can change according to advertisers demands. Even now, Google is courting with companies like AdScape Media to put their own brand of personalized, customized and targeted advertisements inside our games. I have seen the future and it is full of ads.

Read the Entire Article at Ten Ton Hammer...

Section by Section Book Review: Pfeffer and Sutton's: Hard Facts

I've started to hit the books hard, books on search, competitive intelligence, analytics, data gathering, analysis and even math. The more I read... the more the world of data opens up into an amazing pattern.

Rather than stay in my little reading hole, As I read the books, I'm going to do a section by section review of what I've learned.

The first book I'm going to take a look at is Jeffery Pfeffer and Robert Sutton's book: Hard Facts - Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense (BN, Amazon). The book is about examining the pre-suppositions, assumptions and ingrained beliefs that managers, analysts and decision makers face when making decisions about strategies and processes that affect their business.

Pfeffer and Sutton take evidence based management methodologies and deconstruct the myths and assumptions, and they take close aim to the more dangerous half-truths and faddish business mantras. Already, I've read the first few chapters and I've been impressed with the skill in which they dissect some of the all too common axioms and slogans that populate business training.

Stay tuned, I will be doing another post on the book later. So far, I'm enjoying it.

Ten Ton Hammer Article Roundup

As I've mentioned before, I'm one of the staff writers for the MMOG site Ten Ton Hammer. While the Ten Ton Hammer organization as a whole organizes the communities and continually creates new features and values for their users, each sub-section - each game has, like World of Warcraft or Everquest 2, has their own community, staff, writers and participants.

In fact, they've just recently launched the Ten Ton Wiki, and amazing resource to collect information on all of the MMOG's there are.

What I do for Ten Ton Hammer is write for the upcoming MMORPG, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (official site - LotroSource @ Ten Ton Hammer).

The following links are the articles that I've written so far for them.

1: The Balance Between Exploration and Socialization in MMORPG's
2: Designing a MMOG for a Mature Audience
3: Demographics and The Average Gamer
4: Online Community Management Strategies for MMO's: The Player Correspondent
5: The WoW Effect: Homogeny, Hegemony and the Horde

As I write more for Ten Ton Hammer, I will continually update my blog with the articles, thoughts and potentially ideas that I had that didn't make the final word edit. (I've been told I tend to be verbose) :)