How Richard Garriott’s RPGs evolved from Ultima to Shroud of the Avatar (video)

Richard Garriott shows how his old style of making hex-based maps carries over to the new fantasy role-playing game universe.

Xseed completes Operation Rainfall trilogy with Pandora’s Tower this spring (updated)

Xseed Games is bringing the third and final role-playing game in the Operation Rainfall trilogy to the U.S.

Guild Wars 2 challenges MMO establishment with hybrid business model (preview)

The massively multiplayer online (MMO) games business is about to get even more competitive. Market leader World of Warcraft (WoW) dodged a bullet when the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) put only a minor dent into its …

E-commerce sales hit $25B, up 15 percent

U.S. online holiday spending is holding strong, with e-commerce sales reaching $25 billion, up 15 percent from a year ago.

Market research firm comScore said that spending for the first 39 days of the November-December selling season were $24.6 billion. …

Superhero online game City of Heroes launches as free-to-play today

City of Heroes, an online role-playing game run by NCSoft, will now use a freemium model that makes money off the sale of premium goods in lieu of requiring all players to pay a subscription fee.

All City of Heroes …

Why Star Wars Galaxies’ demise will be a tragedy

Star Wars Galaxies, one of the first online Star Wars games run by Sony Online Entertainment, will shut down December 15 — before the release of the highly anticipated online game Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Ever since the release …