Category Archives: Games

Causation without Causality

Posted on by

You know how they say people go to the internet to find people they agree with?  I always try to find some dissenting voices – if those voices can clearly communicate.  Tobold, Keen (not Graev, since I agree with him 99% of the time) and Syncaine tend to do the best job that I’ve seen so far.  Just to be clear, I don’t always disagree with them, just more often than not.  I would say that the common thread for all three is that they are incredibly nostalgic and unlikely to take change well.  Plus they are much more meta about gaming than I am.  I also think that’s why they get so many people posting on their topics, since they tend to take a very different approach than most.

Take Syncaine’s post about the problems of depth.  Read through the comments a bit to find that while the concept of the post is sound, the arguments used within are less so.  If Syncaine is the target demographic for PvP and has 3 accounts, is that the baseline we should assume?  PvP doesn’t run the economy as ISK needs to come from somewhere – and that is PvE.  Sort of how in WoW nearly all money in the system is now generated from  Daily Quests.  EvE is a success story in marketing and development for being able to keep so many people active.  It is not a success story to show that a new game today should have the same amount of depth.   If EvE were to launch today as it did back in the day, it would fail.  Not a question.  Others have tried with the same model, minus the community, and have all failed.  Worse than the PvE ones.

Game succeed and fail for dozens of reasons in terms of gameplay but they all fail because they don’t have enough money to keep the doors open.  No matter how good your game is, no matter how deep it is, you need people to play it.  People who are willing to invest in a game, PvE or PvP or Sandbox combination, are invested in their current game.  There aren’t 500K people out there who are willing to subscribe to a game long term because they are already subscribed to another game out there.  Developers need to aim smaller, much smaller and build from that point.

Gold Spam is Gone

Posted on by

One of the things I think everyone on the planet has a distaste for is gold seller spam in games.  Some games it’s absolutely ridiculous how pervasive it can be.  WoW used to be really bad until gold became next to useless in Cataclysm since everyone could get thousands a day with next to no effort.  Any game with a monetary system that actually makes sense is going to be spammed.  Read into those last 2 sentences a bit…Games that are Free to Play to start are the worst offenders (see TOR lately, or LOTRO).

Anyhow, when I look at action RPGs like Diablo and Torchlight the same problem occurs to differing degrees.  D2’s set stat system had trade chat spam but it was out of game.  D3’s auction house, I’ve covered on dozens of occasions now, but remains to say that it’s one of the largest gaming failures I have ever seen from a player perspective and not from a developer’s perspective.  Torchlight’s randomness and upgrade system makes trading impractical on the long.  Gear is important but character builds more so.

Then comes Path of Exile.  Action RPG in the same vein as D2 and Torchlight.  Stat based, tons of gear and walls of trade.  But no 3rd party spam.  Why?  Because there’s no money.  Every single trade is bartered with PCs and NPCs.  Want that sword?  2 orbs of transmute.  Axe?  Maybe two scrolls and an armorsmith piece.  I am curious as to how this works out in the end but the best part is that any spam in game is from other players.  And that’s the type of spam I actually WANT to pay attention to.  Not having to filter out gold spam is such a nice thing, I didn’t realize how bad it was in other games until now.

Punching Through

Posted on by

I find it interesting that in a typical MMO, I’m moving through the story to get to the combat.  You know, the stuff that’s repetitive and burns people out like nobody’s business? As much as I like the social aspects of MMOs, the actual game part is severely lacking.  I don’t feel any investment in my character or the game outside of the meta.

Transfer that thought for a minute to single player games, where evidently the entire game revolves around you.  Clearly you need to be the king of the game, the be-all, end-all and the story is naturally tailored around that.  Choices matter because they are contained and you’re not affected by others.

I’ve played a couple hours of Ni No Kuni now, a JRPG of simple design but amazing execution.  While yes, you do take the prototypical white knight the portions outside of the main story are the true gems.  Your companions matter in more than simply being numbers – each means something.  The Wizard’s Book is more akin to the WAR Tome of Knowledge, slowing growing in complexity as you progress through the game.  Visual art and sound are so consistent and engaging that you don’t realize you’re in a game, more like a movie.

I miss the feeling of purpose and discovery that I get in single player games compared to the MMO space.  It seems like the latter is more of a lobby with numbers in order to chat rather than a game proper.

Nostalgia vs Reality

Posted on by

With all this recent talk from diehard nostalgia blogs about UO, it makes you wonder what game they were and should be playing. I mean if you’re willing to pirate an IP, why are you not playing the legit client?

If you removed the trammel/felucca split from UO today, would the game be different? Would the PvE folks who were camped for 4 years somehow decide to come back? I loved UO, even with its faults. I made a LOT of money selling plots of land and characters. The latter was a time investment, the former was a clear limitation due to squatter’s rights. I’m sure I could have made a business of flipping houses on eBay.

UO had 95% of the game right. Sadly, that 5% remaining was a core concept of the game that failed in execution – murderers and consequence. There is a very, very good reason UO subs dropped like a rock when EQ came out. Probably related to the fact that EQ had only a smidgen of PvP compared to the massive push on PvE. EVE is a great example where even the PVP aspect is only consumed by a tiny (though vocal) minority.

This sort of bleeds into the WAR debate of what was done right vs what was done poorly. A lot was great but the portions that mattered were done poorly. SWTOR is the same, where the obvious investments actually had next to no long term appeal. The only themepark that has had any success in the subscription model is Trion and I’ll assume this is due to their business model of aiming for a small sub count. I mean if you’re aiming for a million, then you need to offer WoW. If you’re offering that, why would someone from WoW swap years of investment? Aim small and build rather than aiming big and tearing down.

Would UO have been better with consentual PvP? Griefing would have still happened certainly. With more punative costs to “murderers”? This would have potentially deterred most. If UO Forever, which is played by admittedly more hardcore players, is unable to contain their “murderer” problem, then what possible hope did the game ever have?

Nostalgia is one thing. Actually seeing the patch notes show that the core problem from 10 years ago still exists should be enough to finish the point.

MMO Sub Fees Are Like the Dodo

Posted on by

IGN has an op-ed piece on subscription fees for MMOs up for debate.

World of Warcraft is casting a long shadow with eight years of iteration and fresh content under its belt, asking anyone to pay the same for a new release seems ludicrous.

Above all, this is the most important quote to keep in mind for the argument and it applies to more than WoW – it applies to EvE just as much.

When SWTOR came out and people got to max level in a month or so, they looked at the game and then said “what now”?  The problem wasn’t that SWTOR didn’t have much to do (ehhh) but that compared to it’s competitor, it had a fraction of the things to do.  RIFT suffers from this as well and to its credit, it contains more in the recent expansion pack than WoW currently offers (minus pet battles) but even at that, it struggles to maintain market share.

It is extremely hard to argue that any new game coming to market can succeed with a subscription model unless it can maintain a core set of users and not require more than say, 200K players at any given time.  Other than WoW and EvE, the next game with the highest subscription is RIFT or LOTRO with about 250,000 subs.  200K, to me, would be a massive success.

This brings us to the The Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar.  The former has been blunt to state that it’s going subscription while the latter has been mum on the subject.  TESO is directly competing, in every shape and form, with the existing fantasy themepark tropes and I see no reason for it to be able to break the 200K mark.  If the Star Wars IP can’t maintain the numbers (remember, it dropped subs by 90% from 3 million), how can this one?

Wildstar is a wild-card though.  While it does take the fantasy setting it is less themepark and more sandbox/themepark hybrid and doesn’t seem that it will require the same break-even point as TESO.

Are subs dead?  I wouldn’t say so exactly, more that subs are going to be smaller in scope and that any dev expecting to get a subscription game to market AND pull more than 100K players is taking a massive risk.

Final Acts

Posted on by

I just finished Darksiders 2 and while the game as a whole left a lot of positive, I can’t help but notice a growing trend of games that just call it in for the final act.

Act1 I cleaned out an entire land with 4 dungeons, Act 2 was even bigger so that the combined play time was well over 20 hours without any effort to “complete” areas or anything other than the main quest.  Act 3 was compete in under 2 hours, with only a single dungeon.

There are quite a few games that seem to just give up at the end and rather than increase the challenge, they increase the difficulty by just plunging massive enemies in your way rather than continue the run through the game.  Diablo3 is a perfect example where rather than provide new zones and challenges, they fill the screen with dozens of enemies and bosses.  COD/MOH are pretty similar too.  Maybe this is supposed to make me feel more powerful?  Like I’m some sort of deity that can take on any challenge?

It’s interesting that RPGs typically take the complete opposite path, where the entire game opens up at the end.  Like all of a sudden you’re finally strong enough to take on hundreds of challenges rather than a single gauntlet.

Small rant aside, I have to say that Darksiders2 was a great game.  For the price I paid (~15$), I got nearly 25 hours out of it, clearly putting it into my value bucket (of which 1$ per hour is my lower limit).  I think I would have been happy with just 10 hours too, so I got some extra goodness from the game.  Refreshing.

Darksiders 2

Posted on by

Darksiders 2

Over the holidays I picked up Darksiders 2 and I’ve put a few hours into it with some pleasant surprises. While the setting is simple enough (4 horseman, angels & demons) it has the comic book feel that Joe wanted. There’s a “big-ness” to everything which just feels right. There’s a good spread of bosses and they all seem to get bigger and badder as you go along. The story takes a couple odd turns but nothing too out of the blue.

From a gameplay perspective, it’s more akin to Zelda than I would have thought. There’s an overworld with travel on a horse. The majority of dungeons are about puzzle solving rather than continuous combat. There are 4 general skills that affect puzzles with the traditional grapple hook and teleportation. There’s a cool character split mechanic, allowing you to work in tandem with yourself. Combat is like most action games, weak attacks, strong attacks, combos, special attacks. Your weapons actually make a difference though, as all gear has stats and some weapons attack at different rates (maces vs gauntlets). Plus the weapons can be upgraded, adding a nice little RPG mechanic.

It’s hard to pick a weakness other than the typical “Zelda” weakness of not wanting to complete anything past the final boss. There are plenty of side objectives but in terms of relative power/effort, they rarely seem worth the time. Mind you, one particular side quest was well above my character level and I died multiple times, which was fun in itself.

I’ve completed 2 of the 3 acts and I’m still entertained. Each zone is designed into chunks, so you can drop in, play for a bit and feel like you’ve completed something rather than the extra long chains of other games. While I like God of War’s combat, no one can say that Kratos is relatable, the story is anything near quality and that the dungeons don’t bleed into each other. Darksiders is a nice break from that tradition and I’m hoping someone buys the IP from THQ and continues the quest.

New Gadget

Posted on by

My wife owns a Galaxy Tab 10.1, which I use often enough.  I have a customized gaming laptop for gaming sessions but the mobile aspect of the tablet form factor is really appealing.  We were at a cottage for a large chunk of the holidays and it was easy to have the tablet around for a quick spot of Netflix, keep track of emails of even check the news with a coffee in the morning.

I’ve been looking at options and I see very few that appeal to me.  While the iPad 4 is shiny, has great power, decent battery life and a slew of accessories, the price point is simply ridiculous.  I can practically buy an ultrabook for the same price.  Plus the whole 4:3 ratio seems 5 years old.

The Acer Transformer Infinity has the same power, better battery life and a keyboard attachment that is just bat-crap crazy.  I could connect the thing to my TV with a simple dongle, increase my storage space with an SD card and a wide range of other features. Sadly, they stopped making the keyboard and I can’t find anything to replace it with.  Argh!

Google’s Nexus 10 looks amazing, has more power and features than any other Android app, beats the iPad in every benchmark but has no stock anywhere.

This is discounting the software edge that Apple has.  Nearly every application is  designed for Apple first, then ported (often poorly) to Android.  And most Android apps are made for phones (Facebook is a major offender).

CES is here though and hopefully I’ll spot something that makes sense.

What’s in a Game

Posted on by

Joystiq has finished their top 10 games of the year list and for the first time, I know what they are talking about. One of the site’s strong suits is that it covers all games, from the smallest to the largest and does it with blogging flair. Any given day can have 10-20 articles go up. Compare that to the big guns like Gamespot or IGN who can barely put out half that amount, plus fill your screen with more ads than content. The second good thing that comes from their format is the personal opinion pieces. While most sites will video chats (which is good) they have next to no text about their opinions. The Best of the Rest gives us an inside peek to writer’s minds, especially those we tend to align with.

There’s a saying that people go to the internet to find people that agree with them and while on the whole this is true, I like to read dissenting ideas. It makes me appreciate the medium as a whole rather than the specific flavours I am accustomed to. It’s like going to a restaurant and only every ordering the club sandwhich when there is a whole world that can be on your plate.

 Which brings me to the main topic for today, buying games. I’ll buy just about any game as long as the perceived value is there. I won’t pay full price for a game that I’m hesitant on but I will buy it if it comes on sale. The Secret World is a great example of this. I’ll dump money onto Torchlight 2 in a jiffy but Halo 4 needs to be on sale before I’ll touch it.

 This sort of puts a tiered structure for fun. I am willing to pay 1$ per hour of fun for a game I’m not so sure about but willing to spend 5$ per hour on a game I am very sure I’ll have fun with (Batman comes to mind). Other than multiplayer, which I don’t consider “fun” in terms of value, how many games pass the 10 hour mark, let alone the 20? FTL, a game I adore, already has over 20 hours into it and I got it on sale for under 10$. WoW has provided hundreds of hours of entertainment but also cost me hundreds of dollars. I stopped playing – and paying – when the fun value no longer matched the price value.

 In today’s day of Steam and Used game sales, we are all being taught to better value our entertainment dollars. While there will always be a mad rush to the door for CoD on launch day, other than 2-3 games a year, every other game needs to find the right balance and every gamer needs to do the same.

2013 Predictions

Posted on by

We’re only a few days into the New Year so there’s still time for some predictions. I would say that 2012 went rather the way I thought it would, with a few surprises, so hopefully I’m not too far off the mark for this year.

Access

With the “death” of Flash, the surge of HTML5 and proliferation of mobile devices, it’s a safe bet to say that the majority of gaming will be mobile and through a browser or mobile app. Internet connectivity will be required for most gaming and digital distribution will cause gaming stores to close doors at an even faster pace.

Steam Big Picture (or set top box) will change the way people game from this point forward. Unless consoles can move away from box copies into a streaming model that is pick up and play (eg: no more daily patches on the PS3), I don’t see much of a future for them. This year’s crop of games has shown that graphics don’t mean much anymore and most processor power is wasted. We don’t need stronger consoles, we need entertainment units.

Video Streaming

Up here in Canada, it’s next to impossible to rent any movies, unless you’re subscribed to Zip or know some corner store. Netflix in Canada has about a quarter of the content of the US feed and most people just proxy to a US address to get a better feed. I expect this to be one of the last years for cable TV, where we get to a personal distribution model. I don’t want 200 channels I never watch, I want a dozen or so that I care about – or even better, just the shows that I want to watch.

Payment Models

This is the year that F2P finds its footing. While it’s naïve to think that you can game for free, it’s also insulting to pay a subscription fee’s worth of F2P items and be further restricted than a subscriber. Buy to Play, with some cash store, is likely to be the new standard for success in a post-Zynga world. Get rich quick schemes will stay, certainly, but the game lifespans will be a year or less. This likely means the end of LOTRO and TOR.

MMOs

WoW will remain the behemoth it has been but drop to under 8 million subs and be unable to maintain any reasonable patch schedule. Rift will lose more subs but find a stable ground for dedicated gamers and continue to shame other developers in terms of content for value. EvE will grow a bit more but likely reach a critical mass in game in terms of power, which will have an Us vs Them mentality. Wildstar will launch and jump straight to F2P, filling a nice gap in MMO action gaming. Firefall won’t ever leave beta. Many existing F2P games will close their doors, where the models simply can’t support the operating costs. TESO will surprise people in terms of quality of content but disappoint in terms of quantity of content. Feels more like this year will be the year of MMO house cleaning.

Games

Bioshock Infinite will launch to acclaim. GTA 5 will launch and break sales records. The Last of Us is going to be my game of the year. Tomb Raider will reboot the franchise. God of War and Gears of War will stink but sell well. Kickstarter games will start coming out of the gate, raising eyebrows in terms of quality vs quantity. Indie games that show up out of the blue are going to be the real story drivers, blending nostalgia with current gaming controls (ala XCOM).

Overall

I see 2013 as a year of path finding. There’s a current glut of gaming and a lot of new territory for people to try out. Mobile gaming is going to kill Facebook gaming and put a focus on short, intense gaming sessions, rather than the 4 hour raids of WoW. Shops will close, playing it big will fail and your Mom is going to end up gaming with you.