Sea-Fever blog

In the Art’s Section of today’s (January 31, 2008 ) NY Times, Seth Schiesel reviews the new online game Pirates of the Burning Sea from Flying Lab Sofware. A Form of Internet Piracy That Involves Actual (Virtual) Pirates

That it is based in a semblance of reality is one of the most refreshing aspects of Pirates of the Burning Sea, the captivating new online game from Flying Lab Software that opened last week after six years in development. After all, there are dozens of games out there for aspiring sorcerers, dwarfs and elves. There are another handful for would-be space jockeys. But until now there have been almost no major online games set in an approximation of the real world.

Schiesel also writes:

It is not as polished a gem as World of Warcraft, but all of the major game systems seem to work well, and the star of the game, the finely tuned ship-to-ship combat, is downright addictive.

The sailing model is accurate enough to feel right without being realistically punishing. Mr. Williams said the game’s long development time reflected the team’s willingness to admit when features it had spent months working on simply were not feeling like fun, and then start over.

“We first built this very realistic sailing system where if you turned into the wind and didn’t take down your sails, you would slow down and stop and actually go backwards,” he said. “Real-life sailors thought it was pretty cool, but most people hated it.”

Damn, those real-life sailors! Always looking for the hard way to do things!

See you on the Burning Sea!

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