Black Prophecy Quick Thoughts

I play a ton of games and wanted to start writing about them more frequently. Probably won't be a lot of substance in these posts, but I'll try to make sure these amuse-bouches are fantastic. That's bouche, not douche.

Black Prophecy is a space dogfighting MMO. Sounds a bit like EVE Online, no? The key difference is that in EVE, you tell your ship where to go (i.e. orbit this celestial body at 10km at this speed, or approach this station at this speed). In Black Prophecy, you directly control the ship.

Some of the best games of all time have been space sims. Like TIE Fighter. Freespace 2. Even Freelancer did some brilliant things. When Black Prophecy finally released a North America beta client, I dove in.

You can see the light at the end of the tunnel

Some scary and awesome things are happening at the moment. I realize most of these things didn't happen JUST NOW but I think the combination of all of them is really cool.

Digital Downloads are amazing for pretty much any medium. I haven't had to go to a bookstore in years thanks to my Kindle/Kindle app. I don't seem to be the only one as Borders is dead. I have bought a large quantity of games the last few years, fewer and fewer at Best Buy and Gamestop.  I haven't purchased a physical music album in years.

Free to play games are also becoming more and more palatable. Sure, the bizarre business strategy from Asia still has some kinks to work through. A lot of MMOs use the shift to free to play to as the final hail mary for a failed game. I'd put Age of Conan, Champions Online, and Pirates of the Burning Sea in that category. Other MMOs, like Lord of the Rings Online have been very successful with it. I imagine niche games like Fallen Earth will prosper and grow more with such a business model. Even traditional shooters like World of Tanks and now Arma 2 are free to play. I know the former is successful and I believe the latter will slowly grow and prosper more with such an offering.

Enamored of the Free that Isn't

I find my game time dominated by a small portion of free-to-play (aka freemium, f2p) games that have all, surprisingly, earned money from me. No, I'm not talking about games on Facebook or even iPhone apps. These are huge games on the PC!

I still think the majority of Facebook and iPhone free-to-play games need to do more to entice me, both as a player and a payer. But, if World of Tanks and Spiral Knights are indicative of the future, I'm all for it.