Jorgen Djuve’s Website

Some weeks ago I was interviewed by freelance journalist Nils Gjerstad. Norwegian newspaper Varden has now published the interview (in Norwegian only).

In a not so surprising move (imho), Google launches Lively - a virtual world which can be entered through Facebook - or any other website (check out my island below). It can also be played through the standalone Lively client. The virtual world features fully customizable avatars and rooms. Over at Gamasutra there is an interview with Google’s Head of 3D Operations, Mel Guymon, which sheds a bit of light on the project that has been in development for 2 1/2 years.

One month ago, with pre-launch on the 17th of May, official launch in US the 20th, and in EU the 23rd, Age of Conan finally went Live. It was great fun to see thousands upon thousands of players making their way into Hyboria for the first time!

Having been working on the project for 1 1/2 years, it felt great to finally hand over the game to the players; I had a big grin on my face that day. Happy, excited, proud, scared, eager, nervous — these are all words which could describe my feelings the days before, during, and after the release.

And with release there are reviews…

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Want to join the Age of Conan open beta?

Check out the Fileplanet AoC Beta Page.

EA officially announces that they are the kings of the world, having the worlds most popular game The Sims - which now has sold a wooping 100 million copies.

The interesting thing about The Sims is that 60% of the players are women — the most popular game of all time has a majority of female players. What does this teach us? Well, first of all, if you ever thought that games were a guy-only-thing - you couldn’t have been more wrong.

It also teaches us that, first and foremost, if a game is supposed to be super-popular (most are), the game should cater to men and women.

Working at Funcom is challenging, rewarding and a great fun. But sometimes you may see stuff that you’ve never seen before… Stuff that you would never imagine experiencing at work.

A couple of weeks ago, I had such an experience.

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There’s a few, essential game dev sites out there. Raph Koster, a leading character behind MMOs such as Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest II and the upcoming make-your-own-MMO Metaplace, has an regurarly updated blog. Gamasutra is maybe the best source for game design related articles; check out this interview of Habbo Hotel’s Lead Designer Sulka Haro. Richard Bartle made the first ever text based MMO; MUD, here’s his blog. Damion Schubert was Lead Designer on the ‘first’ 3d MMO, Meridian 59. He has also worked on UO and the never-to-be-released UO2, The Sims Online and Shadowbane.

Yes, the list is short; more to come.

Ever wanted to work at a sushi restaurant? Or maybe not? Either way, Sushi Go Around is a sweet little game where the goal is to serve sushi, order ingredients, while keeping the diner as clean and neat as possible. At every level you have to earn more and more money within x amounts of time while keeping your customers happy.

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This isn’t game related, but it still belongs under the broad “user content” umbrella. University of California, Berkeley, has begun sharing some of their courses on YouTube. Physics for Future Presidents is one of them. Below is the first lecture, focusing on atoms and heat.

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From time to time I’ll be posting game concepts. I write these mostly to challenge myself in making quick game ideas – my goal is to get the basic gameplay concept and features ready within an hour, and finalize the whole concept in two hours. This will off course lead to the concept not being as good as if I’d worked on it over a longer period of time.

Feel free to post any comments, rants or suggestions on how to make Ant Life better.

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