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TIL Twitter is a video game. Feminist Blogger Anita Sarkeesian Lies About What the Video Game 'Hitman' is About : videos. MMOs Mutate: After 'Wildstar', 'Defiance' Goes Free-To-Play, 'Secret World' Goes Tokyo. Syfy's 'Defiance' gets innovative with video game tie-in. Syfy Original Series aren't exactly known for their narrative achievements.

Syfy's 'Defiance' gets innovative with video game tie-in

Or lavish budgets. Or good acting. Or success. But give Defiance credit for one thing: innovation. The latest effort by the basic cable network — about a post-terraformed future Earth in which humans and aliens eke out a hardscrabble existence shoulder to shoulder — isn't what you'd call good television, but it is trying a novel way to target its core audience by tying it to an MMO counterpart.

Try as it might, Defiance is a lackluster show. Now is when things get intriguing. Spoilers: In this week's episode, Rynn the Irathient managed to slip away from Nolan's control while being transported to prison for her penchant of using nasty CGI creepy-crawlies to kill people. Considering Syfy already has announced the series has been renewed for a second season, we can logically expect to see Rynn (and perhaps other characters) go back and forth at least a few times.

How would that work? Inner Space. There’s hidden beauty in abandoned World Of Warcraft cities · Special Topics In Gameology. Special Topics In Gameology is an in-depth look at a specific corner of the gaming world in miniseries form.

There’s hidden beauty in abandoned World Of Warcraft cities · Special Topics In Gameology

For this edition of the feature—Empty Spaces—we’re examining games’ most fascinating realms of desolation. America has seen plenty of cities rapidly grow and fade. From the boom towns of the Gold Rush to Detroit’s rise and fall alongside the country’s auto industry, the narrative is the same: People are drawn where they think they can make their fortune. When the money and jobs dry up, some stay out of attachment—they want to see their home rise again. And many have nowhere else to go. This phenomenon has played out repeatedly in World Of Warcraft. That overpopulation can have a tangible effect, slowing the game down as PCs and servers struggle to cope.

Darnassus There are plenty of other ways to feel alone in World Of Warcraft. When Blizzard released Burning Crusade, its first expansion for WOW, the developer introduced three new cities. Shattrath I go anyway. Exodar. How World of Warcraft helped me come out as transgender. In early 2006, almost five years before I came out to my family and friends as transgender, I started playing the online fantasy game, World of Warcraft.

I played it a lot. As with other multiplayer online adventures (MMOs), players live in a Tolkien-esque world of trolls and elves, battling for treasure among millions of other players. But World of Warcraft, and other games like it, are often about much more important things than looted gold and slayed dragons. They provide a place in which identity can be explored safely. And for me, someone who the world viewed as male, World of Warcraft provided a space to discover that I felt more comfortable when treated as female. One of the very first things you do as a World of Warcraft player is design your character. Maybe it was because I didn't know anyone else playing the game before I started.

War and addiction Right from square one I was hooked; I didn't want to leave. Personality And Play Styles: A Unified Model. Personality And Play Styles: A Unified Model By Bart Stewart [In this comprehensive analysis, multiple psychological systems of gameplay are surveyed, to try and arrive at a unified model in which player behavior can be understood and, crucially for game developers, catered to.]

Personality And Play Styles: A Unified Model

Numerous models of gamer psychology have been proposed and debated over the past couple of decades. One of the earliest and simplest has proven to be one of the most referenced and most enduring: the Bartle Types. I believe this is because the Bartle Types are a functional model of human personality in a game playing context. In fact, several of the best-known play style and game design models share many conceptual elements.

(Please note that any and all references I make in this article to the works of Richard Bartle, David Keirsey, Christopher Bateman and others that aren't clearly sourced as quotations are my own interpretations. The Bartle Types The Keirsey Temperaments (Stewart Format) (click for full size) 1. Why You're a Scumbag in The Stanley Parable.