Category Archives: Games

Social Core

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There’s an old saying that goes something like this.  If I have an apple and you have an apple and I give you my apple, you have two and I have none.  If I have an idea and you have an idea and I give you my idea, we both have two.  For a long time this basically was a separation between the tangible and not but in today’s world, I have a bank full of intangible swords and there is an infinite supply (or near enough) of digital books.  In that train of thought, what you really are exchanging are concepts or frameworks.

This translates well into games so that two people who play the exact same game, the exact same way come out with different results.  You might come out of Tomb Raider antsy from the fighting or wondering about the next step.  What you are given is not necessarily what you actually receive, or interpret to receive.

If we move back a few years in the MMO space, when the time and social requirements were much more stringent the game didn’t provide you content as much as the people consuming the content provided it.  In my UO days, you could spend hours just sitting in the guild castle, talking with friends, working on some skills, maybe bring in a dragon to fight.  In contrast, today’s game is a wham-bam thank you ma’am affair of instant everything.

We’ve been down this road before but gaming is a reflection of the times and as the average “core gamer” age (~30) increases, it is extremely evident that they have less and less time to play.  Today’s younger gamers have thousands of venues to compete for their attention – Twitter, Facebook, all the Internet, Netflix, smartphones, tablets.  When I was younger, I had to leave the house to see friends. As a quick aside, Keen mentioned recently that he’s finishing up grad school this week (congrats!).  That would make him 22-24ish.  His experience in UO would have made him around 6-8 years of age.  It’s safe to say that UO had a different impact at that age than when I was playing (16-18) – especially from a social perspective.

For example, my largest gripe with SWTOR wasn’t that the game had bad ideas, just that they were poorly implemented from a social/time perspective   You were rarely able to find the social aspect while leveling (due to having a companion, very heavy instancing, low difficulty and no tools) and it stuck out like a sore thumb at max level when you 100% needed a social framework.  The time aspect was inversely proportionate to the fun factor.  You spent more time waiting around (again, with no social) for the fun to start – or even to get to the fun.  Sadly, the necessary game updates came 6+ months after launch and 90% of the playerbase had left by that point (they went from 211 servers to 23 in 6 months, now 20).  I firmly believe that the single most important reason Rift is not yet F2P is because of the social/time aspect being a core concept of game design.

Now TESO and Wildstar are both coming in with some new concepts to a genre that was originally founded on the social aspect.  I’ve heard aspects from Wildstar as to how the social portion is going to be important, in a non-combat way, but next to nothing from TESO.  I have my fingers crossed that both can maintain that core concept, with a little tweaking, in order to make either successful in the long term.  I mean, I don’t log in to kill the big bad guy for the 30th time, I log in to talk to my friends for the 300th time.

Fun Tax

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Would you pay 10$ to skip 10 hours of repetitive content?  Would you pay 5$ to acquire enough skill points to use that amazing sword?  Free to Play games are betting you value their items more than your time.  It’s the basis of the market and at a simplistic level, it’s quite accurate.  The problem is that we long-time gamers don’t play game so much for the reward as much as the journey.  I didn’t beat BioShock to see the last bad guy (there isn’t one), I played it to be engrossed in the story.

Games today don’t always follow that mentality.  Some are designed for instant (or partially delayed) gratification.  A harsh slog, through horribly produced content in order to see the really good stuff.  Any game that says “get through the first couple hours and then it’s great” is a poorly designed game.  The intro to FF13 or Kingdom Hearts 2 spring to mind.  EQ2 when it launched was like this.  Games that provide random drops in order to progress (most F2P city builders, like FarmVille) are built around the concept of the result and not the journey.  Rightly so, people will buy their way to the fun part.

Then you might get a game like SWTOR, where the good stuff is actually the journey and not the end result.  Perhaps the journey gets long in the tooth on the 3rd or 4th attempt and then the company can make money.  That could be convenience items or costumes.  Some might sell new journeys.

While I disagree with Jacob’s assessment of the F2P market going through some sort of apocalypse in 3-5 years time (I’m more inline with Wilhelm on this one), I do see some rather drastic changes to the core concepts.  The idea of a “fun tax” seems to be the current model, where you need to pay to have fun.  Game following this model are likely to be doomed (or closed as Playfish) as you can get more fun, for less money on a mobile platform.  The concept of a “fun bonus” is more likely to succeed.  Think of it as a trial of an awesome game, like demos of old.  “Oh, I get 20 hours of great gameplay for 20$?  And you want an extra 5$ for 5 more hours?  That’s reasonable.”  The kicker here is that the content has to be of the same quality or better.  WoW expansions sell on this.  Skyrim was 50/50.

There is certainly a lot of money to be made in the F2P model (or the buy to play model).  You just have to figure out how to make people want to give you money rather than need to give you money.  That is, if you want long-term success.  I mean, there’s a reason the 3 card monte guy isn’t sitting at the same street corner for more than a hour.

Less is More

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March sale estimates are out and they paint an interesting picture.  Both GoW games sold poorly while the more mid-stream, quality games, sold well.

God of War sold 360,000 (down from 1.1 million for the last game) and Gears of War sold 425,000 (down from 3 million for the last game).  Both had rather poor reviews of the same rehashed combat, lack of story and general “same-ness”.  Essentially, they were expansions priced as full priced games.

In contrast, Tomb Raider sold 696,000 copies and Bioshock sold 665,000.  2 years ago, if you told me that Tomb Raider would sell more than God of War and Gears of War combined, I would have called you crazy.  Today, we’re a few thousand copies away from that being fact.

I look at this with optimism.  People are getting tired of the franchise cycle and this bodes really well for gaming as a whole.  The days of just re-skinning the same game every year are hopefully dying, or at least making developers think twice about charging full price. (*cough* EA Sports *cough*).

My fingers are crossed that the gaming community as a whole keeps on this path of rewarding quality games and shunning the crud.  That way we can get more amazing games, as we’ve been rather blessed with so far these past few months.

Interplay Sale

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If you’re older than 25, you likely played the heck out of Interplay games.  I’m sure I put in a few hundred hours into both Fallout games.  Stonekeep, Lionheart, JAGG and Freespace also took up a huge chunk of time.  Some poor management decisions in the early 2000s meant the end of that company but it doesn’t mean you can’t still find the games.

GoG.com is having a 50% sale on most Interplay games.  There are at least 5 games in that list that I’ll be getting.  I have no idea when I’ll be playing them mind you, but having them in the back pocket for when my internet craps out (all day yesterday) is a solid investment.

For those that are a bit younger and might not have had the chance to play these games, at the very least you should try out Fallout 2.  Every sandbox-RPG built in the last 10 years owes that game.

Differing Opinions

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I read Tobold’s blog not because I agree with him but rather because I don’t.  He often starts with complicated ideas, boils them down to a black and white question and picks a side.  It’s hard to think of a personal gaming blog that elicits more comments, both for and against, so something must be working.

A recent case in point is the defense of EA argument.  In it, he postulates that disagreeing with an artist’s intended ending isn’t grounds to dismiss the game or the artist completely.  Perfectly reasonable.  Applying this logic to Mass Effect 3 however, the argument loses ground.

Rohan has a solid critique of the ending and the idea here is that a story’s ending, a twist though it might be, is dependent on the preceding elements in order to be accepted.  Casablanca might not have a happy ending but it’s acceptable and memorable due to the characters remaining true to the entire story to that point.  Bioshock Infinite might not please everyone but you can’t deny that each and every character gives additional weight to the ending through their actions in-game.

Some might have read the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.  The first half of that series was pretty solid, the second half, so-so.  The ending was a massive Deus Ex Machina – magic saves everything.  It completely nullifies the rest of the story up until that point because the entire series could have been wrapped up in book 1.  Mass Effect 3’s ending was so poor, so full of plot holes, that they needed to retcon a few things and clarify some leaps in logic for people to accept the ending.  Even then, barely a decision you made up until that point had any impact whatsoever on the options presented to cap the series.  Starchild?  Really?

To the original topic.  EA didn’t win the golden poop because of the ME3 ending.  They won it for micro-transactions in every game, poor quality games, draconian DRM practices that inhibit gaming and for generally being so out of touch with what they are delivering that they want to blame everyone but themselves.  EA hires great companies with great ideas and somehow manages to burn out every original idea and spit out a husk of a former team.  There has to be a balance somewhere between the game experience and the bottom line – hopefully EA can find that again.

Same Story, Different Eyes

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I’m running through a second playthrough of Bioshock Infinite, having given some time to digest the complete story from last time.  I mentioned that there was a twist, and to be quite honest, I didn’t see it coming.  I normally have a decent eye for that sort of thing but I think I was just too engrossed in the tale to notice.  There’s just something about a good yarn that makes you put logic at the door, put on your kids’ mind of open wonder and just goggle up whatever the story says.  Sure, there might be some plot holes but they are so slight that you can forgive them.  This isn’t Prometheus!

Back on topic. The thing about the twist is that it pretty much puts the entire game in a different light.  The prime driver of the game changes, the setting changes, the people change. Heck, you change.  Every little tidbit of information, the little tales spread between recordings, the images, everything is in on the twist.  Where once I read rhetoric, now I see truth.

I think that’s Bioshock’s (the series) best accomplishment.  That the entire story can be played multiple times with a completely different mindset.  Where once I was the savior, now I am the criminal.  Where once there was hatred, there is love.  It’s a really weird feeling to be told the EXACT same story, word for word, and get a 180 degree interpretation.  This “grey zone”, if you will, is astounding.  I’m looking forward to seeing this through to the end again.

 

Follow Up

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In relation to the previous post, Microsoft brass has come out with an apology for what seemed like a crazy tweet.

“We apologize for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday. This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers. We are very sorry if this offended anyone, however we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter.”

That makes step 1 complete.  Step 2 will likely be happening on May 21st, if sources are correct.

This does beg the question about pricing and was one of the main reasons the PS3 had such a hard time penetrating the market.  2006 was a good financial year and still the >$600 price point was too much.  Today’s market is garbage, worldwide.  For the same price you can get a decent laptop and build a media center, wifi everywhere and build a massive collection with Steam/GoG.

Microsoft’s push towards the subscription model isn’t folly.  They’ve had it since the first XBOX with a sub model to connect to their network. This “subsidized” model allowed them to sell consoles at a loss and make it up over the years.  Sony did not do this, but instead gave you the best price Blu-Ray player at the time.  If MS is going to push a contract model, similar to cellphone arrangements, this could work in their favor.  Let’s say they sold you the console with free network access for 600$ but also had a 300$ console with a 15$/month connection fee, I would gather the former would sell like crazy.  You’d end up paying more by year 2 with the contract but the system would be on your shelf.

If you were to read the internet about this whole MS vs. Sony debate, the only “
known” factor seems to be the network connection – and it’s not even confirmed.  People can’t compare price, spec, game selection, there’s just no information out there.  Instead people will latch on to the tinniest piece of information, rumor or not, and preach it as the death of X console.

In my RL job, I do a lot of analysis and this entire process is quite the case study.  There is the advantage of early PR on Sony’s behalf, with not a peep from them since – nearly 2 months ago.  The big picture PS4 is out there but we have next to no details past that.  MS has a die-hard following on XBL, with 10+ years of network service behind them.  That they maintained the console lead for so long, with next to no technical/game reason for it is a testament to the online service’s integration.  You would think by this time more info from MS would be revealed, even if it was just a teaser site.  This gap of information, in an age of instant information, is causing massive speculation.  I have never found a time where speculation was positive.

May 21st is a long time out, a couple weeks before E3.  With a near complete lack of details from either camp, there really isn’t much to do until then.  But when has that stopped the interweb?

 

So I Hear You’ve Been Living In A Cave

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First with the introductions.  Adam Orth is the creative director for games at Microsoft.  He sent out a tweet, in response to rumors that the next XBOX is going to require always-on internet, that basically said he didn’t get what the problem was.

MS twitter

To which many a person replied.  Orth then compared internet access to electricity, in that it’s just always there.

A few points.  Point the first.

Now, I’m no rocket scientist but I do knows my stuff things.  My electricity goes down maybe twice per year and I might suffer a brownout or two (where it drops and comes back suddenly).  My internet however, goes down more than a few times per week due to multiple issues, the least of which is a crappy router.  My provider, as reliable as they are, still are not anywhere close to the reliability of electricity.  And I live in a high urban area.  My friends in the burbs or in the country, well they either don’t have access at all or suffer through horrendous service and garbage speeds.

I know people who live year round near my cottage have no internet other than tethering to a phone, facing north, in a special 4in x 4in corner, with no clouds, and no one can move while the internet is up.

Point B)

Has Mr Orth been living in a cave this past month?  Year?  There wasn’t a day in March that didn’t talk about SimCity and the always-on requirement.  Hell, it (partly) cost the CEO of EA his job.  Diablo 3 is standing right behind you, same with the UPlay from Ubisoft.  Steam is somewhere there smiling too, what with the offline mode and all.  Always-on is clearly not ready for prime time.  Unless you want to cut your market share.

Point the 3rd.

It is hard to believe that someone so highly placed within MS think this way.  Even more so when it comes to the gaming division.  I have such a hard time believing it that I am beginning to think that his account was hacked.  That truly seems to be a more reasonable answer to this.  Or, the entire point of the tweet was to gauge the public’s readiness – maybe.  That seems too meta for MS though.

Final Sum

Here’s what I’m thinking is going to happen next.  Orth is going to tweet a clarification of some sort (or move companies).  Microsoft is going to modify their always-on requirement so that offline play is possible. There will continue to be massive speculation about always on until MS comes out with an official statement.  Until that statement, every discussion about that console is going to likely be negative press.

Now That’s an Ending

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Here I sit, nearly 2 AM on a tear of a run to finish Bioshock Infinite  done and done.  Irrational has a propensity for twists and turns in their tales and this game is no different.  Expecting a twist is different from expecting the twist, much in the same way you can’t really watch the 6th Sense a second time but you’ll still sit through another one of M. Night’s movies to see what’s next.

I finished the game, in a bit over 16 hours.  I played on the hard difficulty, which I suggest most others do as well.  I had a few problems at the start but after a few upgrades, it was relatively smooth sailing from then.  Up until the last fight.  You know it’s the last fight as the mechanics change a tad but it’s a solid run.  Little note for those trying the game, I highly suggest you upgrade the Murder of Crows and Possession to their highest.  While the game is certainly a FPS it is much less about running and gunning as it is about tactical fights.  Both of those skills give you a lot of breathing room.

There are some issues within the game, I’m sure you’ll find them from time to time, but on the whole, the entire game has a great flow.  The pacing is superb up until the final penultimate act.  You companion, Elizabeth, becomes such an integral part of the game that  when you are separated from her for any amount of time, you feel exposed.  There is something to be said about an NPC character leaving such a mark and I can think of only 2 others that come to mind – the Princess in the Prince of Persia reboot and your horse Agro in Shadow of the Colossus.

I won’t spoil it for anyone as it really is a game to be experienced.  Not played mind you, that comes naturally.  You need to experience the story, the world, the people.  When the twist happens and you think back to the trip you’ve taken, you’ll appreciate it all the more.