The Art of Building and Maintaining an Unpopular MMO | Hacker News Reader

The Art of Building and Maintaining an Unpopular MMO

benjamincoe.com

22 points3pt1415913 comments

I know some people still minimize the importance of good design, but it seems particularly important for games. The site that this article is about is http://www.hackwars.net/ and it's very poorly designed. It's simply not exciting or intriguing, even though the game itself sounds interesting.

I agree completely, I think that the site for HackWars (which I happen to be partially responsible for maintaining) is a horrible usability failure. We went with the Drupal CMS early on, which has a template system that, with my limited CSS skills, I find really annoying to work with -- I've tried a couple times to enlist someone with a panache for design and usability to rework the website, without any real success. Having said this I'll attest to the fact that the game is neat.

Look What You've Set in Motion ;)

[8:39:32 PM] johnny_heart: Internet people are really ragging on our shitty drupal theme.

[8:39:45 PM] johnny_heart: I sure agree that it looks like balls.

[8:39:55 PM] draconisravenix: Why do you think I said that in my Twitter.

[8:42:31 PM] johnny_heart: honestly I'd love to basically have your template rather than ours ;)

[8:42:38 PM] johnny_heart: it looks about fifty times better.

[8:42:39 PM] draconisravenix: >:D

[8:42:44 PM] draconisravenix: iWin.

[8:43:07 PM] draconisravenix: I'll get it to HW (with some modifications, small ones) asap.

Yeah I agree, this website's design is abhorrent. Any website worth its salt should:

a) look like an iPhone

b) have boobs all over it even though boobs have nothing to do with the site

c) look like an iPhone running an app involving boobs

I should know, I work for a major web design firm.

"Skills reflected ... port scanning other systems ... unlock APIs ... maliciously install on other systems ..."

They should have named it CrackWars...

Hacking is not about breaking into computer systems, unless you're ignorant about the true meaning of the word.

I think, being a fictional role-playing game, Hack Wars is about hacking in more the "Hack The Gibson" sort of way, than the "learn about how things work" sort of way. The Blog post itself, however, is discussing this game in terms of the learning experience involved (for better or for worse) in cobbling the game together.

does anyone outside of hacker news think of "hacking" as "learn about how things work"? i always thought pg made this up. whenever i talk to people outside of hacker news i say "maker" instead of hacker.

rambling: i like to think i've found the awesomeness that is hacker news (and ycombinator) despite poor naming choices. the 'y' in ycombinator combined with photos of men and combined with the classical hacker culture really lowered my expectations for this community....then i discovered it was totally different. ps - even knowing lambda calculus and fixed point calculations, i still half thought the choice of 'y' was ostentatiously male. on the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time i had a skewed perspective of language and culture.

Fairly worthwhile documentary discussing the etymology of the term Hacker:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5464925144369700635#

http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is is a good read about 'hackers' in the true, original meaning of the word.

"HackWars" is probably a better name for the purposes of marketing. "CrackWars" sounds like a game about drug enforcement.

I'm not sure how old you are, but I'll assume that if you listen to me I can save you 50 years of repeatedly shoving your brain through a meat grinder.

Hacking is not about breaking into computer systems

Everyone at HN already knows this and has heard it repeated ad nauseam. No one else cares, and your attempts to correct them will do little beyond branding you as an angry nerd. If you must persist in your sisyphean effort, at least realize that you are doomed to failure. Language is shaped by common usage, not edict.

Java game, drupal default website, pass.

Here's the cool thing about a Java-Applet-based game, it can run OpenGL in your web-browser, that's all I'm saying ;) also, the game was built three years ago, around the time my friends and I were insanely addicted to Runescape in the computer lab at university (this certainly helped drive the technology choice that has been haunting me to this day).

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." -- Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda

But seriously, maybe there's more to a game than what platform it uses?

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