When Left 4 Dead 2 was announced at E3 2009, many gamers were flabbergasted. This was a sequel that was scheduled to be released a year after the original Left 4 Dead. Valve hadn’t delivered on the downloadable content it promised for L4D, and it appeared as though the company was merely cashing in on the franchise. The outrage over the sudden release of L4D2 has since subsided, but Valve has learned an important lesson from all this.

Since the free browser-based MMMORPG zOMG! started allowing players in 2008, it has been widely talked about in the forums. Guilds have formed to help others complete quests and meet other players who love the game.

I had a chance to talk with zOMG! senior producer and creative director Dave Georgeson and got an update on what has been happening on zOMG! and find out about future updates.

Just got word from Kate Pietrelli at TriplePoint that the crew over at Gaia Online are pleased with the more than 500,000 players who have joined to play zOMG!

“Hi Lucy. Hope all is well with you. I just wanted to give you a heads up about our recent announcement that the Gaia Online casual MMO just reached over 500,000 players in Open Beta! So exciting!” Pietrelli said.

A majority of the new Gaians joined out of curiosity about zOMG! and, for existing Gaians, it’s a celebration to…

When I last spoke with Zach Wigal, founder of Gamers Outreach Foundation, he was just finishing up a Halo 3 tournament in January to raise funds for his community.

I caught up with Wigala few weeks ago and learned he has just earned the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award.

Wigal said he only became aware of the program a few months ago after doing an interview with Chris Erickson of 360StyleCast podcast and added that…

I just received a message from Gaia online today that asked a strange question: “Hi Lucy, What do Neopets, MapleStory and Habbo all have in common?”

Out of curiosity I logged into my Gaia Online account to see what Kate Pietrelli, an account manager for TriplePoint (Gaia’s PR agency), is typing about and, sure enough, along the top of the page is the option to send an instant message my fellow Gaians…

Gaia Online just announced the release of celebrity-inspired items for Gaia users. This week’s items now allow registrants the opportunity to dress up their avatars as Snoop Dogg or The Incredible Hulk with hairstyles, purple pants, green fists and more. This marks the first time fully licensed celebrity-branded virtual items have been sold in the virtual world.

In a partnership with virtual goods sales and distribution system Virtual Greats LLC, Gaia Online will allow users to collect or “snare” quality celebrity items each month to create…

PlayXpert, which provides in-game community solutions, has joined with Vivox to bring its users in-game voice calls. Now PlayXpert users will be able to make high quality voice calls to other gamers from any game, allowing them to communicate more effectively.

Gamers will be able to enjoy the feature after they register for PlayXpert’s services. Beyond gamer-to-gamer chat, PlayXpert will offer other more sophisticated voice services including a private guild channel chat.

The advanced voice functionality should…

With the increasing popularity of MMOGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Games) and the growing user community, the technologies behind them have to evolve in order to accommodate hordes of players living and interacting in a virtual world. As hundreds of thousands of users conduct raids and battles, powerful computer clusters have to keep track of every move and action users make. As the users keep on coming, companies have to figure out ways of keeping these worlds running smoothly.

While different companies employ different architectures to simulate these virtual environments, all of them are working to develop a solution in which all the players could really share a single virtual world. In case of the popular World of Warcraft, Blizzard uses what they call “shards,” which are copies of the same world running in different machines. Users of WOW, which now total over 9 million, are distributed amongst these shards to…