Games Writer for games.on.net
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Since September of 2009, I have been working as a freelance writer for games.on.net, the gaming arm of Adelaide-based ISP Internode. My work has branched out from occasional reviews and features to a regular schedule of weekly content, including two days of providing news articles, as well as two weekly columns on the subjects of massively-multiplayer online games, and real-time strategy games respectively. In addition each week sees me creating an editorial comic about gaming news of the week.
In addition to this, I continue to provide regular reviews, previews and feature articles for the site. You can click this link to see a list of all the articles created by me on the games.on.net site. Below are highlights of some of my more recent works:
Review: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
“…what this boils down to is a tacit and unspoken admission by Blizzard that levels in World of Warcraft don’t actually matter anymore. The game hands out experience like candy, with the rate of level progression so constant and smooth that you barely notice how far you’ve come until you stop to take a breath. Long-term World of Warcraft players often stress that the game only begins at level cap, and it seems like Blizzard have taken this to heart. Levels 1-85 (with a few exceptions) are now reduced to a series of bite-sized chunks of casual entertainment, a string of tiny zone-enclosed stories to make you laugh and smile (and maybe even cry a little) while preparing you for an end-game smorgasboard of raids and dungeons…”
Ikonoklasm: The Rise and Fall of Krome Studios
“…it seems like Krome’s fortunes were balanced on a knife edge, and that knife was being held firmly by Uncle Sam. When the economy took a dive in 2009 during the global financial crisis, Krome had to let about thirty of its staff go from the Brisbane and Melbourne offices, citing difficulty securing projects from US publishers who no longer had the money to throw around. But then in 2010 when the economy recovered and the Aussie dollar was squabbling for parity, things were actually even worse. Krome’s business model of licensed games hinged on the fact that US-based publishers could push them out to Krome to develop on the cheap: with the skyrocketing dollar and a track record dominated by mediocrity, the big Australian game-farm suddenly lost a lot of its overseas appeal…”
Exclusive Interview with StarCraft 2 Brand Management
“…games.on.net: So based on that, is it fair to say that StarCraft 2 has not been as successful in Korea as Blizzard had hoped? Or is just a matter of time?
Bob: Yeah, it’s fair to say that it didn’t come out of the gates as well as we’d hoped. But we’re working on some things, such as the GSL with our partner GomTV, and some other initiatives to try and continue. There’s definitely a lot of interest there, we’re definitely in the top 10 as far as the played games in the IGR’s and we’re seeing some upward mobility there so we’re doing what we can to prop that up….”
“…the singularly most frustrating part about the Alpha Protocol experience is that it’s so easy to see what could have been. With only a few more months development time, or a broader public testing programme, this could have been a game that stood up next to Mass Effect or Splinter Cell – two games that the developers clearly admired – and been acknowledged as the herald of a glorious new franchise. Instead we are faced with what seems to be an almost clumsy homage, a mishmash of competing design ideals that tries to be everything and ultimately, ends up being nothing…”