Monthly Archives: September 2013

Fun is Measured in Time

Posted on by

There are a few posts going around lately that argue the financial around F2P and the concept of bypassing challenge – or rather quickening your way to reward.

The core concept here is the old addage that time equals money. The modification I would bring is the “fun” variable to time. If I did something I found a lot of fun I would pay extra for it.

If the value is intrinsic, that is the journey is the prize, then either money or time is a justifiable payment.  If the value is extrinsic, that is the prize at the end of said journey and that journey wasn’t fun, I’d be more likely to spend money.

The reason for this in my mind is that I make a lot (if not all) of my money working. I know exactly what an hour of my time is worth. It’s easy for me to figure out if doing something boring is worth 5$ for a month or not. The answer is quite often a no.  For example, the Sparkle Pony back in the day caused some uproar.  This was in the days where you didn’t share mounts and it was a hassle to get new ones.  Not in terms of gold so much as time.  Buying it gave a ground and flying mount for every character, on every server.  In effect, it allowed you to bypass a boring part of the game for a fee.  Hence the millions sold.  Whether you want to argue poor design in the first place to make that bypass worthwhile, is a different matter.

Where it gets complex is in the mix between intrinsic and extrinsic reward structures. You can only kill bosses for so long before they no longer have intrinsic value. If you’re also not socially driven – say a guild or friends – then there’s even less value after a few runs.  Using WoW again, you could run LFR for 2 weeks, see every boss, likely upgrade half your items and be done with it.

It really is a systematic problem with themeparks as a whole.  If you’re only concentrating on the end of the road, rather than the journey, then there’s no way that can keep you coming back.  If you enjoy the ride, then you can have fun so long as that lasts.  If you play the same content for hundreds of hours, it takes amazing design to keep that relatively fresh.

Where F2P shines is in setting up a smooth, repeatable game with items that provide intrinsic worth. The most common example is with consumable customization options – like dyes.  Another example is services for alts.  It’s a very complex balancing act to maintain and few developers do it well.  Too many people are copying successful games without properly understanding why they are successful.

It’s really simple.  Get a fresh player, have them play until they think an hour is up.  If they are below that when they finish, you have a problem.  If they are above it, then you have a damn good game.

Liebster Award

Posted on by

Liebster Award

 

Nuuryon nominated me for this and it’s really a chain letter that gets you seeing other blogs.  The rules are here.  I need to do more research to actually refer to 11 more blogs though and time is rather pressing at the moment.  I will re-post that list in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I do think the 1st half of the effort, getting to know things about me, might provide some additional context when you see my brain farts (aka postings) in the future!  To that end….

1) What was the first video game you remember playing?

Pong.  At my grandmother’s.  I was amazed. This was mid-80s.  That kicked off this whole fascination with gaming and computers.  It’s the reason I have the job that I do I guess.

2) What is your favorite video game character (originating from a video game)?

Tough one.  Link is probably the one though.  I’ve never gone wrong with a game with Link in it.

3) If you were stranded for the rest of your life on a desert island with Jar Jar Binks and one other item, what would that other item be?

A knife. For the coconuts.

4) Who would you cast for April O’ Neil in the upcoming Ninja Turtles movie instead of Meagan Fox?

That list is pretty long.  I don’t know if people actually read the comic books or what the source material is for that movie but the real April O’Neil isn’t a damsel in distress.  More of an in-your-face character with brains.  Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone — Katee Sackhoff!

5) If you won the lottery but had to spend it all in one place, how would you spend the money?

Interestingly enough, I’ve actually planned out what I’d do with that money.  I’d invest it in a fishing lodge on a lake in northen Ontario.

6) Who is your favorite villain (any medium), and why?

Khan.  He wasn’t really a villain, just trying to survive.  I much prefer the intellectual villain to the murderous rampage.  Sometimes by the end, you realize the villain was actually the hero (such as in Omega Man/I am Legend).

7) Have you ever participated in a project you felt you did not get enough credit or recognition for, and if so what? 

I think everyone goes through this.  In my line of work, due to the fact that I’m under 50 (34 actually), it’s extremely difficult to get credit for half the things I do.  So while I might not get public credit, my name has gone around enough circles to assure me a fairly long career in my field.  It’s actually entertaining to hear people talk about my projects without realizing I ran the majority of it.  It’s even funnier to see them take credit and then quiz them on it. (I swear I had an interviewee do this).

8) What is your favorite book you had to read for school, or were otherwise obligated to read?

The Chrysalids. I’ve always liked reading but once I took a bite into this book, I was sunk into the golden age of sci-fi.  I think read into the Foundation series, Ringworld, Neuromancer and a bunch of space sci-fi.  Childhood’s End and Ender’s Game are the two best books I’ve ever read.  The concepts in both simply changed the game for every book that followed.  I still get chills about it.

9) Which of Ramona Flowers’ 7 ex’es would you be?

Gideon Graves.  Sadly, I’m a lot like him in the real world.  Professional defect, though that’s not really a good excuse.

10) If you could trade places with any historical, non-contemporary figure, who would it be?

Leonardo DaVinci.  The renaissance period is simply fascinating.  We’re still implementing some of his ideas today.

11) What is the most obscure game/movie you have ever seen/played?

Hard to think of a game here since I’ve played so many.  I’d gather most people reading this blog have as well.  Most obscure games and movies are so because they stink.  Casshern is a Japanese movie about a re-incarnated man in a ninja suit fighting massive robots and zombie-like enemies.  Amazing visuals.

 

As mentioned above, I’ll think up my questions and links in the next 2 weeks.

Addendum

Posted on by

Time is short and work is crazy busy making for nights that end quickly.  A few more detailed posts are being worked on but in the meantime I wanted to add a bit to the previous posts.

First though, I wanted to dwell a bit on D3 itemization.  That horse isn’t dead yet!

Diablo ItemizationThe above shows a fairly good roll against a fairly bad roll.  Look at the estimated DPS loss (character runs at 102K DPS) from a weapon.  That’s a 96% difference in damage from one item.  Take that horse!

 

Second item is the defense of subscription.  Gaffney posted some stuff defending WildStar’s decision while Jack Emmert will talk about the opposite in a few weeks.  These are both people with significant experience in the field.  Both have seen F2P on their games (Gaffney was with Turbine and NCSoft) and have seen subscriptions as well.

Perhaps we’re at a point in the hype cycle that subscriptions can become niche again and that the MMO tourist avoids it due to the massive F2P options out there but WildStar doesn’t seem to be aiming for niche.  TESO certainly isn’t.

In regards to the PLEX variant WildStar is aiming for, that only works in a closed and extremely well developed economic system.  It works in EvE because everything is player created, everything required sweat equity and everything is relevant, even at max level.  Taking a cue from any themepark, even the recent GW2, economies from start to max level-1 are completely irrelevant 1 month after launch.  I “beat” WoW’s auction house, making a few million along the way – PLEX would have failed hard in that market. This isn’t apples and oranges.  This is apples and nuclear missiles.

 

In Defense of Subscriptions

Posted on by

I like Gamasutra, there are some solid articles about the business side of the industry. Ramin and Isaac are on my reading list not so much because I agree with them but because they expose a side that we rarely see.

Ramin is more of an internal systems designer with strength in economic systems – auction house, crafting and so on. I am guessing he’s working on one of the two Big MMOS coming around the bend.  Isaac is a service guy, looking more to the economic systems outside the game – support models, client interactions and whatnot.  Both of their fields intertwine but I consider the above their specialties.

Isaac’s latest post attempts to support the subscription model along 3 main issues. First, subscriptions push people to get value for money by rushing content. Second, development of said content needs to follow and be of quality. Third, companies cannot price discriminate as everyone has the same fee.

While conceptually I think he has some strong arguments I think there are some flaws and realities that are unaccounted. Let’s say his baseline is accurate for playerbase – 30 to 40, kids, working, no huge time available. Yes they sink less time but they are hyper-aware of dollar per smile economics. Subscriptions drop when similar services are available for less cost, that’s why F2P works.  The math is simple enough.  I have X dollars to spend per month, where can I get value for that money?

Two, content delivery must meet player expectations in terms of volume and quality. Iceberg Blizzard has paid massively for their schedule. SWTOR’s 4th pillar destroyed their ability to quickly iterate and expand (voice acting).  This bleeds a bit into the first topic.  2 months after launch, the content that was there was consumed at a rate far exceeding expectations and what was left lacked value for money.

Three, price discrimination is a red herring. All games have internal metrics to see what is consumed and for how long. WoW saw that their moneysink – raids – were only hitting 1% of the userbase in Cataclysm. That brought us LFR, and now Flex Raids. DDO only offers what sells, same with NeverWinter. Companies know exactly how to nickle and dime. There is no other reason for lockboxes.

Are subscriptions bad? No, they provide a baseline income that investors can see and development can project. They are however, an easily accounted for expense for players to compare to other games. The argument simply becomes “can I spend 15$ or less in another game for the same or more fun?”. The answer, today, is a yes and that bodes extremely poorly for Wildstar and TESO.  They must “out content” all other MMOs (not really seeing this as possible), provide an iterative schedule faster than what is offered by competition (everyone is better than WoW, few are better than Rift) and somehow target their material/pricing to bring in the most dollars/effort possible – without existing metrics.  One heck of a tough road.

Holy Bangarade

Posted on by

10 weeks on parental leave and back to work now for 2. It’s annoying when you delegate work and nothing at all got done. Now I have 10 weeks of work to do in a few days. Quality!

Suffice it to say I need a mental breather some nights. Lack of time means minimal investment though, so I’ve been giving F2P games a hit.  No RIFT, GW2, WoW, or any game that I can’t simply drop within 2 minutes.

The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot

This one is in open beta and a lot like Dungeon Master and Diablo in that you can set a castle full of traps and run other people’s castles. It has upgrades with timer (where the F2P stuff comes in) which is fine I guess. The gameplay is horribly balanced though where the tanky class can run through anything without batting an eye, even 6-7 levels above them. The other classes have no chance. But it’s beta and the concept is solid. Maybe in a later patch.  The file size is rather small.

Infinite Crisis

I got into the beta, which is beta.  You’re comparing LoL to a game with an admittedly limited character roster.  You might have 4 flavors of Batman but it’s still Batman.  There are technical bugs, some serious balancing issues but overall the game is pretty solid.  Community management is going to be the real kicker here.  Current playerbase is nice enough, since it’s test.  But once you get the crud coming in, there needs to be a way to filter that out.  The learning curve is extremely high but that’s expected in beta.  Oh, and it needs way more maps.

Dragon’s Crown

I don’t play a lot of console games, only when I’m on the bike.  This one is pretty solid, with a link back to the arcade D&D games.  Is it worth 60$ though?  No.  Maybe once it hits 30$.

Marvel Heroes

A new patch (1.2) fixed the defensive skills, added a ton of itemization and huge balance changes. This is what the game should have launched with. It even has 3 difficulties making the trek from 25 to 60 different than running the same zone for 20 hours. The itemization and skills are the polar opposite of Diablo3, which is good.

Diablo3

Just a few days in, tried a new Monk build. Cost me about 25 million in gear to make it work due to the way itemization works in game. And this isn’t even for hard stuff, just regular Inferno. What’s the point of upgrading gear if you need to swap nearly all of it to change builds? Maybe 1-2 pieces but not 10.

And of course the AH is going away in 6 months – likely the launch date for the expansion. It annoys me that Loot 2.0, which is what the consoles got, has been getting great reviews but the gamer base has to wait so damn long for it. Anyways, the AH simply focused on Jay Wilson’s poor direction for multiple systems. A loot system that dropped inferior gear even at high difficulty, itemization that drove stats to absurd levels to even compete, the requirement for “perfect” rolls for the item to have any possible value and a difficulty setting that made no sense. All of those systems by the way, have been or will be removed.  The game today is wildly different than launch and the console version is yet another massive leap forward.

Listen, the AH was a good concept to avoid gold farming and scamming. If I knew I could get upgrades while playing (I have never once with my monk past 60), then the AH would just be a slight nudge. When I can see that a single item on the AH can raise my damage by 10% and costs 20 minutes of gold farming time, there is a massive problem in the loot system.  Shutting down the AH is one thing, shutting down the RMAH is another, as that thing certainly brought in a sizeable amount of income.  It takes some pretty large brass to through that away – baby and bathwater.