Innovation – in-no-va-tion.

1. Something new or different introduced: Numerous innovations in the high school curriculum.

2. The act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.

(Source: Dictionary.com)

I've spent a great deal of time lately wondering what we can do to save MMORPGs from their grim fate. It's no secret that over the past few years the fantasy MMORPG genre has been slowly dying, this mainly being caused by the hundreds horrible games that are released on an almost weekly basis.

As a gamer the solution to this problem is simple – stop playing them - as if we stop playing them, then companies will stop making them and we won't be bothered by the problem any longer. However, as a game reviewer the solution is not so simple. We are required to p

Online or Off? - A Writer Club Presentation

Does anyone here remember Mario Kart 64? If you do, then like me you’ll probably have a special section of your brain dedicated solely to some of the awesome memories you had playing it multiplayer with 3 of your mates. You may also have another section dedicated to the dead arms they gave you when you hit them with a red shell right before the line, and waved as you flew past and took the cup. I still have bruises….

What about Counter Strike at your local LAN café? I still remember the sound of 24 players buying their weapons and switching to their knife booming across the hollow room, followed soon after by someone yelling "Orping is for losers you camping f$%&!" It wasn’t the prettiest sound in the world but it definitely had some memorial properties to it.

Then there is the library of other games that you may have played in a darkened room with your mates too, like the Tekken series, 007 Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Halo…and the list goes on. So where am I going with this? Well, you may not have noticed but this style of gaming is basically obliterated, and replaced by the monster that is

I think the answer is no, and that the term 'addicted' is thrown around too loosely these days. I think that this newly formed 'Video Game Addiction' comes under the same category as several other 'addictions' that have popped up over recent years, like shopping addictions, sex addictions, and drinking milk from the carton addictions. Personally, I don't believe these are addictions at all, I believe these are simply bad habits and below I'm going to explain why.

Firstly, I think its important to define what exactly is an addiction, and what is a simply a bad habit. An addiction from my perspective is usually created in the physical realm, like Nicotine and Heroin, whereas a bad habit is something that is created mentally. Now in a world such as ours nothing is ever a certain (excluding death and taxes), and as such there are always exceptions to the rule. I do not believe that all physical addictions are substance based, nor do I believe that all mental addictions aren't, but the vast majority are.

So on that basis, I believe that Video Game Addiction is not an addiction at all, but simply a bad habit that can be easily remedied with willpower and self-discipline. Now I'm

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, then you've probably heard a little about the 'battle of the clones' that has been taking the MMO Industry by storm lately. Why after over 20 years of gaming has this issue regarding one game intentionally copying another to leech of its success just started to surface now? Well, it hasn't. This issue has risen many times over the course of gaming history, and I'd bet money that's it's going to rise again.

Cloning, as it's called, (or as I'm going to be referring to it) doesn't just appear in the MMO Industry either, it appears all over video games, and believe it or not, all over every industry in the world. Think about it for a second, I bet we've both got toasters, but what are the chances that they are both made by the same company? Or both exactly the same?

[Why toasters? Well, I was eating toast....]

Slim, very slim. That's because over time so many different companies started making the same thing with the smallest of changes that once enough time had passed, it simply wasn't an issue anymore. Or maybe they sold the patent, I really don't know. The point is, that there are thousands of different toast

Where's the Polish?