What's Fun?

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As with all gamers, I play for fun.  If I end up getting paid to do it, all the better, but the entire point of gaming is fun.  The kicker is what each person determines as fun for themselves and how that paradigm somehow should apply to every other soul playing the game.  At the conceptual level, this makes sense and it’s how developers pitch their game ideas.  At the logical level it gets quite a bit more complicated and cliques form.  At the physical level, the actual game mechanics themselves, this is where you have vocal minorities.

For me, I’ve always been fascinated by puzzles.  When I was a kid, I would marvel at the 6 piece wooden ones I had lying around.  I played Perfection until I had a system going that was 75% wins.  Operation was another one.  I then moved on to the 500 and 2000 piece puzzles, finally into the 3D puzzles when they were the craze in the 90s.  When I was in post secondary, I played a puzzle game everyday (usually on the Shockwave site) in order to get my brain going.  I still do the puzzles in the paper when I take the bus to work.  My brain simply needs some sort of challenge.

When video games came around the challenge was, at the start, dexterity based.  You could be the smartest player in the world but you would still get wiped with Battletoards or Ghosts and Goblins.  PC games were better as they were bigger and the RPG was where I found my solace.  The Ultima series, Bard’s Tale, Stonekeep, Quest for Glory and all those games had me coming back for more.  I even gave a shot at MUDs when the first came out.

Nearly all of my fun was in single player games.  When UO came out, I jumped in with a friend and got hooked.  The challenge was daily – staying alive, boosting skills, making stuff,  building a house.  There was always something to do and I did most of it.  I sold plenty of characters and I think I’m still living on the cash I made back then.  Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve paid out of pocket for any gaming since I was 20, but that’s another matter.

UO was a pain with PvP though and I moved onto EQ.  EQ was full of puzzles and challenges but the time requirement was just plain stupid.  Waiting hours to get any progress done was hard and when WoW came out, 90% of the EQ players moved.  WoW had challenges but you could solo them.  Group stuff for me has never really worked, other than the social aspect.  I can’t get 4 hours straight to sit through something.

Now, I’m really into the F2P and indie scene.  The advantages, other than price point, are that I can get a whole lot of stuff done, at my own pace and the pieces are bite sized.  Rift does this well too, WoW is horrible at it and MoP looks to continue that trend  – which is fine.  TSW is another pretty good example of puzzles in small sized chunks.

I get the most fun solving puzzles and completing challenges that I can either do piecemeal or complete in a small step.  A 12 step attunement process to play with friends is not on that list.  A dedicated time and place for 4 hours is simply not possible.  It’s sort of like if I told you to complete a 500 piece puzzle, you had 15 minutes or I would burn all the pieces. Some people like that and I get it.  I don’t.

Thankfully with the indie scene, there is a massive proliferation of games that suit my needs.  Grimrock, Limbo and Braid are super examples.  This isn’t to say the MMO side is done for me (or gamers as a whole) but in the big picture, I know what I like and I like me some puzzles.

Another Exec Leaves BioWare

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From Gamasutra.

Yet another casualty in the BW/SWTOR saga.  This time the main project lead for the entire game.  Even if he left on his own accord, this is essentially the CEO of SWOTR saying bye-bye.

For a game with so much potential and so much money thrown at it, I don’t understand how it simply is not doing what is necessary to get financial success.  I cannot believe that it took 6 months to make an LFG tool (which is amazing by the way).  I can’t believe that they still don’t have functioning ranked PvP (which every competitor has).

They hedged their bets that there would be enough people who wanted to play alts to keep the game afloat long term.  They did say 500K subs would be enough and apparently they are still above that number.  Why there are massive lay-offs and cries for Free to Play from the developer is beyond me, other than EA screaming they need the money back.

SWTOR was the last great hope for a new AAA themepark with a subscription model.  Rift seems to be still doing strong, TSW is surely going to go F2P in a few months and then Elder Scrolls will fail in amazing fashion.  The genre is done

Tipping Point?

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When a game’s forums are being bombarded with hacks and exploit concerns and the devs have been silent for over a week, what exactly does that say to the players?

I read a lot of news for gaming and Diablo 3 is always interesting.  The devs have been missing since June, where you’d see a dozen posts a day.  Now the main forums are a solid chunk about the various hacks, scams, cheats and dupes plaguing the game.

The kicker here is that Blizzard makes money off every sale and if there are more sales, then they make more money.  It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination for people to think that Blizzard is either actively adding items to the AH system and helping botters get gear to sell.

As a gamer, that’s so ridiculously offensive it boggles the mind.  As an investor, it makes you wonder how slippery that slope is and how long you can ride it until it turns about.

Power Scaling

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This is in relation to the Power series I had a while back.  This particular post will deal with the relationship between challenge, power and time.

In most games, there is some level of challenge to reach a goal.  Beating a boss requires specific move set, typically a given set of power and a set amount of time.  Older games (and some new ones) ignore the power portion and just make you memorize patterns.  In those games, the challenge is 100% on the player’s end.

Newer games, specifically adventure games (MMOs included) give you power over time (gear, skills, levels) in order to defeat larger and larger challenges. WoW’s raids are initially very difficult but as time goes by, people get better gear and the challenge is gone.  Some bosses (in Vanilla WoW certainly) were simply impossible without given power levels or skills.  Today, the best of the best can beat a boss with little to no power while the rest of us need power upgrades to get to the same point.  Those are multi-dimensional challenges where the more power you gain over time, the less skill you actually need.  This is hard to balance and the expectations from the developers need to be clear.

Even in those games, the acquisition of power is typically linear.  Rarely does any one person get a massive (10% or more) increase in power in a single event.  This allows competition between players an no one person feeling like they absolutely must do something in particular to advance.  This avoids the brick-wall effect from older games (EQ, WoW Vanilla/BC, etc…)

Now, in single player games this is a bit different as you’re competing against yourself.  Devs can give you huge boosts (Ninja Gaiden, FF series) and you’re only looking at the mirror.  When a dev takes a single player game and adds a multiplayer component (Diablo 3), the competition and scaling factor goes out the window.  Those walls can be circumvented rather easily through mechanics external to the game (the auction house) and those single player brick walls become massive road blocks with a pay wall.

Diablo 3 Inferno mode is a great example of poor planning.  If you played without the Auction House, you could reach Act 1 with a couple dozen runs for gear in Hell mode.  Act 2 and Act 3/4 are completely impossible without the auction house or dozens of people farming for you.

The power increase from level 1 to level 60 is as thus:

  • DPS : 1 to 5000
  • Armor: 0 to 1500
  • Resists: 0 to 0

The power increase to do Act 1 Inferno

  • DPS: 10,000
  • Armor: 4000
  • Resists: 400

Act 2 and Act 3/4

  • DPS: 25,0000 – 35,0000
  • Armor: 6000-8000
  • Resists: 600-800

These are exponential increases in power where a single item can add 10% or even 50% increase in power.  This means that if players want to progress, they need those items in order to do so.  Farming is simply inefficient as there is a less than 1 in 10,000 chance for any given item to be an upgrade and you need 5-6 new ones in order to move through the acts.

Instead, you play the game for money then use that money to buy power.  Enter the RMAH, the exact tool to make real money off that process.

I am not trying to be cynical here since you can still acquire power through in-game means and just as much power as with cash.  The difference is in the speed of acquisition of power.  Real money you have, in-game money you don’t.  This also means that any content the developers have put in goes 100% out the window once someone has enough power to beat the content.  Which once you have enough cash, happens instantly.  There is no long-term game to be had.

It is an interesting example of social gaming, marketing and profiteering that happened here and I plan to revisit it again in a few months once a major content patch hits D3.

 

There Goes My Summer

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Steam Summer Sale has begun.

I’m going to be completely honest, 95% of the games on sale as worth much, much more than what they are being offered at and well worth the time to give a shot.  The Original XCOM is 2.50$.  If for some reason you haven’t played Skyrim, 40$.  Grimrock? 6$.

And get the Indie Bundles.  The games in those packages are amazing.

Do We Need New Consoles?

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I read an interesting article on IGN that states our current console era has lasted too long and it’s to Sony and Microsoft’s detriment.  The core concept is that due to poor scaling of platforms, innovation has been stiffled and forced developers to look at other platforms.

The XBOX360 launched in 2005, the PS3 in 2006.  You’re talking as old as World of Warcraft here.  It’s been a few years now that both companies have been able to recoup their initial losses but at the same time, they have less computing power than a 200$ laptop you can get today.

In terms of available market, there are 62 million 360s (including those the have died) and 63 million PS3s.  There are over 70 million iPhones sold so far this year and nearly everyone has a computer of some kind (over 1 billion at last count).  We’re not even talking the same league here.

The advantages to mobile and PC are the distribution of software and integration with the internet.  It’s easy to patch, easy to distribute, easy to sell.  Consoles require a disk (remember when we thought cartridges were the best?).  All devices can integrate with a home theatre system.

Developers that focus on consoles typically focus on recyclying their existing IPs.  You rarely get any indie games on a disk, they are all on XBLA or the PS Store – again, digital distribution.  Heck, they all have integration to NetFlix now (which is another story I will get into).

Are console games better?  They certainly sell a lot of copies but in terms of profit I would say that mobile and PC gaming is much more profitable.  An indie game like Legend of Grimrock would never have seen half the sales on a console.  True FPS games are still dominated by PC players.  The largest gaming prizes are still on the PC.  If I want to play a 10 year old PC game, I can.  Can’t say the same about console games.

So is it time for a new generation of consoles or simply an entirely new platform for content delivery?  What really differentiates a PC from a console today anyway?  I’m more apt to say that the next consoles will be delivery platforms and I’m sure we’re going to find out soon enough.

Nerf or Planned?

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Another Blizzard dev post triggered this post.  Currently, Act 3 &4 drop rates have seen a rather sharp decline than before the 1.03 patch, which was supposed to improve overall rates.  Here’s the particular quote.

With all the said “development and testing” that goes into these patches, how did the development team not identify the current loot table/drop rate issues? Doesn’t make sense.
The drop rates in 1.0.3 are exactly as they’re listed in the 1.0.3 design preview blog, so there were no issues as far as validity/accuracy of the changes. Obviously a reduction in drop rates later on in favor or increased drop rates earlier on (and overall more high end items circulating in the economy) wasn’t very popular. We agree it was a bad change, so we’ll be correcting it, but it wasn’t a quick enough change to get into 1.0.3a.

There are 2 ways to read this.

First, the drop rates for Act 3 & 4 were originally higher pre-1.03 and they purposefully reduced the drop rates.  This seems absurd.  Completely absurd.  Why would they reduce the rewards for the absolute hardest content?

Second, that they think there are too many high level items in the game at low levels – like Act 1 – and that they plan to make changes.  What changes?  Reduce the drop rates for all items?  Drop rates aren’t a problem, the AH is a problem.  Even a 0.1% change over 1 million Inferno players is 1,000 items.  How are they addressing the issue of bad high level drops?

Blizzard sure does make you scratch your head with their comments.

EA Financials and the Future

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As I quickly mentioned in the last post, EA’s stock price has dropped 50% in the past year, though most drastically since TOR’s launch period.  The total value lost is around 2 billion dollars.

The world 2nd largest gaming company (Activision being #1) lost half it’s value by hedging it’s bet on a game that was to compete with WoW and by all accounts has lost 90% of its playerbase in 6 months.  I guess they are praying that Madden and Battlefield can re-supply the coffers.  As an investor though, you really have to be wondering if the people leading the company are the ones that should be.

Let’s look at a couple misteps from EA over the years.  First and most obviously, is their inability to market any MMO.  They bought UO a few years after it’s prime, killed 3 expansion packs and have since left it alone.  The other ones that they’ve launched and failed are:

  • Motor City online
  • Earth and Beyond
  • Sims Online
  • Tiger Woods online
  • Warhammer Online
  • Star Wars Old Republic

I wouldn’t actually call any of their games real large successes but perhaps the Battlefield Heroes F2P game is the closest.  Even their Origin service has had issues.  First, they removed their games from Steam for no explained reason.  Then they launched a service that was always on, yet failed to connect.  Then they banned players who played storebought games through their service.  Then they simply had foot in mouth disease – lately the idea that Steam discounts are a bad idea while EA is simultaneously selling their games at 50% off.

Many of their new IPs have failed, for various reasons and those that have succeeded have been on a yearly pillage for some time now.   FIFA, NHL, Madden, Battlefield are all games with mediocre if barely noticeable improvements sold as a new game every year.  Any time there’s a small or medium company that makes decent games, EA will buy them up and turn them into a corporate beast.  BioWare is certainly the most prominent recent example where their quality games have been diluted to all new lows.

This coming from the company that used to send out amazing quality games, various IPs and always had people talking about them in a positive light.  10 years ago you’d be hard pressed to find someone who had something bad to say about EA.   Today’s it’s the complete opposite and investors have to be scratching their heads as to why that is.

What turn did EA take along the path that made the gamer base turn against them?  Was it a single step, did they take risks where inappropriate (Dante’s Inferno anyone?!), did they simply absorb the smaller companies and change the spirit of those games?  Is it possible for EA to turn the boat, the giant boat, so that they get back to their gaming roots and start giving us the quality games we know they are capable of producing?

As a gamer, you have to really worry when the #2 company loses half it’s value and is unable to turn out quality anymore.  That slope is getting slippery.

Did You Really Buy It?

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In a move that it sure to astound every gamer on the planet, Blizzard has decided to no longer honor your digital purchases for the first 72 hours.  Basically, you buy it and get to play the free-to-play version for up to 3 days.  I am pretty sure this amounts to fraud in some countries.

The irony of it all is that Blizzard (more specifically Activision) makes more money per day now on the RMAH than on box sales, so they can technically crap all over their playerbase as long as people are paying real cash for items.  And they get to take 15% off the top, twice.

Well, this just put Blizzard on my do-not-buy list.  Amazing that EA and Activision have managed to burn their bridges so effectively and rapidly.

On a side note, EA’s stock price has dropped 50% in the last year, more specifically since TOR’s launch.  A topic to expand on another post.