

The Art of Building and Maintaining an Unpopular MMO - 3pt14159
http://www.benjamincoe.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100117-162446

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adriand
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.

~~~
BenjaminCoe
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.

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john_liar
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.

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Luyt
_"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.

~~~
BenjaminCoe
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.

~~~
diN0bot
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.

~~~
BenjaminCoe
Fairly worthwhile documentary discussing the etymology of the term Hacker:

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

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pclark
Java game, drupal default website, pass.

~~~
BenjaminCoe
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).

