Suttree.com: Casual Games, Social Software by Duncan Gough

This is a hotch-potch of MMO news from my new favourite MMO news website, times.hankooki.com.

• Upcoming Online Casual Games in 2006 outlines the increasing Korean move away from dungeons and dragons style of MMO’s for more lightweight, casual themes, primarily sports.
• Student Scores With Football Flash Game outlines something that would never happen to Western casual games developers. A young developer creates a simple flash game which becomes hugely successful. The twist, however, comes next - “because Raccoonegg is currently in boot camp, he probably doesn’t know how successful the game has become and, most importantly, the legal ramifications of his creation.”
• In Court Victory Wins NCSoft a Lot of Foes, a big Korean MMO developer takes a legal stand against cheaters, and wins.
  The Seoul Central District Court last week sentenced two distributors of “LinMate’’ computer program to suspended jail terms of two years and a 10-million won penalty on the charge of obstructing NCSoft’s operation of its“Linage’’ game.

  (LimMate being a Linage ‘bot’.) Could you imagine the in-game silence if Valve did something like that to anyone caught cheating on Counter Strike? There would be some very, very empty servers.

• Speaking of Counter Strike, via blog.johnsto.co.uk comes this amusing screen-grab:

  

And finally, having read through eurogamers review of Wii Sports, it seems that Nintendo have decided to take full ownership of the core game types by simplifying and distilling them into pick-up-and-go style. This feels pretty much like Nintendo moving the proverbial goalposts in order to win back the kind of mass market, universally understood games that will become the cornerstone of the Wii’s future success.

I want a Wii, I want a Wii-mote and I want to play Wii Sports :)