Column: 'Blogged Out: Fishing for the Future'

In today's daily column, regular columnist Jim Rossignol presents this week's 'Blogged Out', a news report that looks at the world of developer blogging and the conversations being had with the community at large. This week, Rossignol looks at the need for MMOs to return to their Ultima Online "roots," the O'Reilley Emerging Technologies Conference, and the overcomplication of game interfaces. In this extract, Rossignol discusses the instant appeal of Capcom's very large and very complex controller for their Xbox game, Steel Battalion: "Watching people play Steel Battalion is a unique and perhaps unparalleled gaming experience. Everyone wants to have a go. While I've been at parties where people don't want to jump on the dancemat, or really aren't interested in mashing buttons for Tekken 4, no one passed up the opportunity to power up a giant robot and hit the 'clean window' button during a firefight. This is clearly an important lesson: giant electronic novelties are a great way to entertain people at otherwise dull cocktail parties. And it probably says something about game development too..." You can read the full Gamasutra feature, including a look at popular MMO blogger Darniaq's theories about the future of the genre (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).