Tobold Scaling it Back

Tobold is notorious among gaming bloggers. Admired and derided in equal measure by those who read him.

I was sad to read today that he's scaling back his blogging activities. I have a great deal of respect for him as a blogger and while I don't always agree with his views (he doesn't like EVE and doesn't understand how people can find it fun) He generally has some interesting things to say about MMOs and his vision of the perfect one.

The latest series of posts from him and Nils regarding what makes a game 'good' , is exactly the kind of discussion that needs to be had, if only to dispel the notion that sales = quality and that there can be any kind of subjective measure of a game's 'goodness'.

He cites the reason for this down-shift in his blogging is that its all become so predictable. He gets the same commenters, making the same comments, on almost every post. To the point where he could write those comments themselves and properly attribute them to the right commenters. I would contend that by blogging about MMOs from the perspective of a WoW player he has left himself open to the e-peen waving of the gearscore whores, as that is basically what that game has become.

Games, especially virtual worlds, are about getting the players to tell themselves and each other engaging stories. If the only story you have to tell is that you've beaten an instance for the umpteenth time and only have to do it x more times to get this bit of awesome gear and then your score will be y. Yeah, its going to get boring.

He says in his post that he's going to play more and write less, well I would give him this piece of advice:

Play more, and play widely. Play everything that comes your way and go looking for anything that doesn't. Build a picture of the wider gaming landscape and get as many different perspectives of what a game could be as possible. Then maybe you'll have something that you feel is worth writing about."

I'll still be following his blogging, its a shame there won't be as much of it as before though.

M out