Hole in my head

D'you know what I mean?

2011-05-23T18:09:00.018+01:00

There's a strange but wondrous current flowing through game design over the last five or so years that's slowly but surely changing the face of players' interaction with the medium; I'm not talking about motion-based control but intuitive emotional response.

Okay, so "intuitive emotional response" is a term that I've just made up... but as far as I can tell, that's exactly what these systems are supposed to be about. I'm speaking specifically about the Mass Effect (and Dragon Age 2) wheel and, most recently, L.A. Noire's "trust" system. These mechanics are designed to assign an emotional response from the player to an easy traffic light system of "Yes, maybe and no!". It's the easiest way of getting around the problematic issue of fully voicing games that have a lot of dialogue, providing both choice and depth. The problem with these early systems is one that psychologists and philosophers have wrestled with for many centuries... and it's basically that not everyone sees or interprets the world in the same manner.

Ideally, when people converse, we understand each other perfectly. I mean, we have words and numbers, facial expressions and body language. These are all tools that allow us to more effectively communicate how we feel and what we want. However, these tools are only useful when used in the right context and the right environment. Anyone who's been abroad to a foreign-speaking nation (and even those that have the same language, to a lesser extent) will know just what I mean here. Your "safe and known" context is thrown out the window in a culture that is different from your own. Humour is notoriously hard to translate because people's social constructs work differently between cultures. Gestures, specific words... jobs, gender roles, religion and history all play a part in how we are able to relate to the world of communication along with myriad others and they can't always easily be translated.

Moving back from that complex morass of detail, even to those people within our own culture, we see that communication and understanding of communication is not universal. So it is with this in mind that, although I think that these emerging IER systems are good, I say that I miss the old days of knowing exactly what it is I'm about to say.

There is nothing more frustrating in a game than when it mis-reads what you are trying to do. When you press jump near a wall and kick off of it, doing a back flip instead of reaching up and grabbing a ledge to climb.... it's annoying. So taking something like that, which can more often than not be repeated, and slicing it into an aspect of the game which is "permanent" because, unlike in most normal conversations, there's no take-backs or apologies in the defined conversing of game worlds (yet).... it's just asking for frustration to be aired. Granted, no game system is ever going to be per-... oh wait.... Text conversations were perfect, never mind.

Seriously though. If IER systems ever want to take off, designers need to realise that they need to tell players exactly what their choice will do and not just give them a vague set of rules that they don't appear to follow anyway. Perhaps some way of physically telegraphing your avatar's general mood when going to select the choice (e.g. during selection of conversation choices in Mass Effect) would go some way to avoid frustrating the player when an unexpected or completely disproportionate response is elicited from a seemingly innocuous choice.

The only bright spot in L.A. Noire is that you can go into a lie option and back out of it, without any consequences..... which basically means that you can usually eliminate one of the options based on your avatar's reaction, not on the reaction of the interviewee. However, this feels a lot like gaming the system since you cannot press for more when you pick truth or doubt and it's "that is all there is to say about that!" result. I also found that most of the items/pieces of evidence you use to convince people that they we know they are lying are too narrow. There were some cases in the game thus far where I knew the person was lying but that crucial circumstantial pieces of evidence that you could and would use in the real world for further information were useless. For example, a piece of rope used in many murders and an identical rope found outside of a suspect's house is useless because you cannot use it in your conversation with him.

For all of the technical wizardry that goes into making these games, I feel that perhaps designers are missing out on the psychological component that could make them more transparent and accessible to people who are used to using real-world logic instead of the twisted "you are eaten by a grue" game logic. Going forward, I would like to see games become more forgiving in their conversation systems - especially because the player is increasingly being given less control over what and how they interact in those conversations.

Podcast! After Hours Episode 1

2011-05-17T19:44:00.007+01:00

Surprise! We now have another podcast! Ever wonder what happens to all that stuff i cut out of the show? Like the coughs and sneezes..... the long, rambling diatribes and non-sequiturs? What's that you say? We already have them in the main podcast? Well, "EFF YOU" buddy! We're doing this anyway!

So, basically this is all the outtakes, cut and slashed bits of the conversation.... They are largely unedited and with no reference surrounding them. I'm trying this as an experiment so let me know how you think this has turned out. Also, i wrote a new theme tune.

Credit goes to juskiddink for the guiro sound i used in the ending theme tune licenced under the CC.

After Hours Episode 1

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Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 17

2011-05-17T09:44:00.004+01:00

Welcome back, campers! Welcome to our "second season" of The Easy Button. We're back and better than ever! I have a new microphone, Tboon has a clean office and I'm still failing at introductions.... well, we can't improve 100% now, can we?

This week on The Easy Button: EU3, Victoria 2, Far Cry 2, Portal 2 (though not in much detail), Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2. We also have a bit of a wander off talking about negative consequences in games and how they pretty much don't exist any more in modern game design.

We've also got a new idea coming up that i'll be posting about soon. So keep an eye out for that!

Here's a link to Spoiler Warning - the MST3K style show i've mentioned a few times on the podcast!

The Easy Button Episode 17

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Shapes in the Mass effect series...

2011-04-21T17:12:00.002+01:00

Mass Effect is, in my opinion, a very strange beast as series go. It is a game series that is founded on no constant concept.... It's a bit like Final Fantasy in that regard. What am I talking about? Well, let me explain...

Shapes:

The universe of Mass effect was founded on curves. Curves in space, curves on ships... hell, even their weapons had curves!!

Mass Effect 2 either forgot this or there was some fundamental shift to a parallel universe where people can be magically resurrected after de-.... oh, wait. Does that explain the story of ME2? Anyway, the shape du jour in ME2 is the rhombohedral, specifically parallelograms. The world has it, Cerberus' insignia has it the ships have it... hell, even all the new weapons have it!

Mass Effect 3? A little too early to tell... but i'm going to go for hexagons.

Story type:

ME1: Save the universe at the cost you see fit. It's a classic pulp sci-fi endeavour complete with inspirational music and varied environments that are fantastical in nature. A bit like an entire series of Stargate or Star Trek rolled into one game.

ME2: Guns of the magnificent seven. The story of 2 is very simplified and actually doesn't make much sense if you let yourself stop and think about it for even a minute. The environments are more bland and similar with fewer types of area to visit... the art style is more utilitarian and less fantastical. The only mission that felt like Star Trek was for Jacob's loyalty, the rest? Bleh, Gears of War eat your heart out.

ME3: We'll see but i'm pretty sure it's Battle beyond the stars with smatterings of both the previous two games.

I'm sure there are more things that you can think of that trend to the untrendable for Mass Effect and its universe. Let me know via the comments or our email address: the.easiestbutton at gmail.com.

The thing about the PS3 version of Portal 2...

2011-04-14T06:06:00.002+01:00

Most places on the internet are focusing on two aspects of the Portal 2 release on PS3. The first is that Steam is now on PS3 and you can link your Steam and Playstation accounts - allowing you to play with and/or against your PC brethren if the game so allows. The second is that the PS3 version comes with a code for a free PC or Mac version on Steam, allowing you to enjoy the game on two/three platforms.

These are nice features to be sure, especially having a good/working friends list and community on the free-to-use Playstation Network that brings it in line (and possibly surpasses) with the 360 Gold accounts. But there are two other consequences that are far more important for me.

The first is that I will always have Portal 2. It is my game and i control when i play it (dependent on technology working) as opposed to being tied to Steam and the Steam DRM. This is an important aspect for me in being able to appreciate the longevity of the games i purchase - as the recent DA:O debacle has shown. If more publishers do this then i'll be a very happy, though poor, gamer as it presents the best of both worlds (the DRM and non-DRM) to my enjoyment and the publishers' pockets. Of course, being the pessimistic person i am, i doubt that publishers will see it this way and instead would see it as them losing a PC sale... which they would never have made in the first place.....

The second consequence is that Steam is DRM and a community and a matchmaking system. The recent hack of the PS3 has pretty much left it open to anything and everything. If i were a publisher i'd be worried about releasing games on the PS3 because of this and their likely propensity to be pirated more easily now. However, tying a game to Steam and introducing a free PC/Mac copy with a code included in the box hits two targets that the industry is trying to hit: gamers buying new and gamers buying used. This is appealing to the "buy-new" gamers because, hey, i get two copies of the game.... i can play with my PC friends or using my friends on Steam AND i get all the other features of Steam too. This increases the number of gamers who are willing to pay full or near-full price on these titles.... including myself; the person who hasn't bought a full price DRM game for a long time. Presumably, the PS3 game itself isn't locked to the account and so can be resold, if you wanted to, which is still really cool. (If that's not true then we get an addition to point two which is it stops reselling altogether.)

This appeals to the industry with regards to used sales because they don't have to make extra content to hold back (aka The Dragon Age/Mass Effect content that you need to register with their stupid networks to get working from the disc).... they can charge people money to enable the game on Steam by buying a new code.

I think this is an interesting direction for the industry and holds a lot of promise and, for once, my pessimistic granite stone heart has a pulse of optimism. Lets see what the industry does going forward, shall we?

Musings on Mass Effect 3....

2011-04-11T18:34:00.003+01:00

Now, this may be obvious to some people who've not been on a media-blackout of ME3 but i've been playing through ME2 and it dawned on me that this whole time they're setting up the third game to be a standard Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven style story.

::Spoilers ahead!!::

So, i've met Liara, i've met Wrex and also Ashley (i got rid of stupid Kaiidan in my ME1 playthrough).... These people are "saved" for the third game through me not being able to recruit them. What ALSO struck me was that other choices i made in the first game, and presumably this one, will coalesce into a saving grace in the third. It was actually the brief little salute from the Rachni Queen in ME2 that put me on this line of thinking.... and all of a sudden i realised that Bioware are essentially making "Battle Beyond the Stars: Mass Effect Edition".

While i'm having some fun with ME2.... it's not all that i thought was in the promise given from ME1..... Now, seeing that ME3 is a "round-up and save them" quest in the making, i can see why they've gone the route that they have.... though i don't really understand why they essentially have used the same formula in ME2 just with a different focus... It's more like "Guns of the Magnificent Seven" than "The Magnificent Seven".

HD offerings... part deux!

2011-03-27T09:30:00.004+01:00

And on to Warrior Within.

This game fares better than The Sands of Time mainly because it's newer and had both PC and Xbox versions out of the gate. Unfortunately, this game also suffers from the half-assedness of TSoT HD version, however, luckily there are no problems with balancing issues for the sound!! Prosit!!

On the other hand, the game is blatantly just upscaled. There are no new textures and even the menus and menu fonts are pixelated due to the stretch to an HD resolution. It's pretty pathetic to see the textures on the characters (apart from the prince) being so blocky and low-resolution. I'm also realising now that TSoT version on this Blu-ray is probably cribbed from the PC version and any improvement in texture and resolution i was seeing was from that version (which i didn't play).

I'm guessing that Two Thrones will tell a similar tale and to be honest it's quite dissapointing. There's nothing new or extra for this release, and the poor implementation of this HD/3D version means that none of these games have been treated with the respect they deserve or respect for the customer at the price at which they've been released. Myself and Tboon talked about HD re-releases not long ago on the podcast and one of the things that came up as a positive was allowing new fans to come to the series and experience good games. I'm not sure, if i didn't have nostalgia to help me along, that i'd want to play or buy these games that look so much worse than anything current gen in just a less-muddy resolution.

This is not the way to do an HD update.

However, there are some franchises i would love to see in an HD offering. I would love to see Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics revive and release their Soul Reaver/Legacy of Kain series. I loved those games back in the day and would love to see Soul reaver 1, 2 and Defiance and possibly also the two Blood Omen games in one package on the PS3.

HD offerings...

2011-03-26T06:25:00.003Z

I'm a big fan of the Prince of Persia series and, having been given some vouchers for my birthday, I decided to get the Prince of Persia Trilogy HD collection on PS3. If this is the way that companies re-hash old classics to make them into HD offerings then i won't be buying any more.

The Sands of Time:

First off, it's a lazy port. Seriously, the sound during cutscenes is so quiet that you struggle to hear it and the voices aren't tied to the "voices volume" but instead to the music volume, meaning that you can't improve the situation because if you manually crank up the volume on the TV set, the music drowns out all the important dialogue regardless.

Secondly, the "HD textures" are pretty limited. Most of the environment has been updated texture-wise but the textures on the character models of the prince and Farah are poorly done. Whenever the prince opens his mouth and i see a bright red, flat surface in there it pulls me right out of any immersion i might have had. Similarly, when i see the inside of Farah's eye sockets for whatever reason (i'm assuming that there's some conflict with the way the port renders on the PS3) i'm wondering why i'm not playing this on my Gamecube where these weren't issues. Flat, monochrome textures should have no place in an HD update, this isn't the N64 we're talking about here....

Finally, if they're going to do an HD update of a classic game, at least make SOME effort. Remake the character models in higher poly-counts - as long as you keep the same dimensions you can just tie them into the same animations. It would be nice if they also didn't mess up the sound levels in the game as well... Yeah, it would be nice to be able to appreciate these classics as i once did.

As it stands, i really can't recommend anyone buy any HD classic remakes unless they hear good things about them.... I'm really disappointed in the quality of this release.

::Addendum::

Well, having played through three hours of this classic game, i'm starting to appreciate how much the sound and conversation in games (and specifically this one) makes a huge difference in how much enjoyment you get out of th experience. Whoever did this port to the PS3 HD version really messed up the sound. The talking is too quiet so you miss half to three quarters of the conversations and quips; removing character and character development between the two protagonists.... The effects noises are completely out of whack with the rest of the game world, with knocks and plods from the nearby enemies overwhelming other sounds. Specifically, directional sound is broken, i find, as when you run around, things that Farah says are lost in the background noise compared to the originals.

The worst part is that the only tools the user has to balance these things are pretty useless. Reducing the music level also reduces in-cutscene dialogue (as i mentioned above)... so you need that high.... but leaving that high means that you can't hear the talking.... so you need that option set to high as well.... but, ideally higher than the music.... but then you can't hear the talking during the cutscenes..... and then there's the sound effects which are quiet as well.... except for those enemy noises when you're not in combat.

It's probably the most frustrating sound-balancing/design that i've ever encountered in a game..... and doubly so because it was perfect in the PS2 and GC versions of this game.

More complaining?

2011-03-15T14:51:00.003Z

Well, i was going to write up some more saddening thoughts about Dragon Age 2 but, really, the fine professional writers over at RPS have done that so well, that i figured i should just point to their article and do away with my own diatribe.

Visit it here.

The only difference between his viewpoint and mine is that, i actually quite like the game, despite the complete and total creative mess it is. I like the exploration and running around whacking things (it's an action RPG at normal difficulty) and the mindlessness of the whole enterprise. It fills that hole that i've been looking at in my gaming experiences for a while.

One thing i would like to mention is that he is spot on about the lack of ability to roleplay in this game. Having the choice between goody-two-shoes, flippantly unfunnily rude and evil "i'll cut your eyes out and gut you" is not good. The only time you get to exercise any sort of interesting dialogue trickery is when you have an appropriate squadmate present to intervene on your behalf. No more jedi mind tricks or verbal trickery at high intelligence or wisdom levels.

One thing the RPS article doesn't mention is how the stats system is now pointless. There is no reason to have "strength, dexterity, magic, cunning, willpower and constitution" because each class only really utilises two of them and, if you don't put your points into those two attributes when you get them, you end up with a nerfed character who either can't wield a good enough weapon or can't wear the right armour for your level.

I don't necessarily mind that they've done it this way, but for gods' sake, take out the attributes if they're essentially meaningless. Instead make armour and weapons dependent on your skill and class choices. Let's face it, there's no reason why a fighter (who was in the army) would be unable to wear a piece of plate mail that is level 1 or level 20.... the weight should be the same (or even lighter for the higher level and better quality item). So just do away with the increased, Dragonball Z-esque, strength requirements and instead tie them to skills you purchase with points or to the level of the character. Especially if my putting points into the "dodge" skill makes me unable to wield a weapon for a few levels because i'm always playing catch up DPS...

The illusion of choice in the game is pretty claustrophobic and means that the game is pretty shallow.... sorry, i meant 'streamlined'.

Dragon Age 2: The complainening....

2011-03-12T06:05:00.004Z

Now, it may surprise some of you that i got this game, having not played the original.... It may also surprise some of you that i'm complaining about something..... But while this game has been okay so far, so much of it smacks of sloppy writing or game-design. So, below you'll find some random, unfiltered thoughts as i play through the game:

1. Sidequests: There is SO little exposition for sidequests, sometimes i'm accidentally turning in sidequests and not understanding the point of the quest or why it was needed in the first place just by "using" everything and everyone that i can use. I found a stone toe - i thought, i'll read the journal entry later - and then found the person it belonged to in the next area. The guy was so happy he said "Haha, thanks! Well, that'll teach me for doing that!" Or some such non-committal nonsense. What was he doing? Why was he doing it?! Nothing! Was he hiding in the wardrobe because some angry lover burst into the room he was sharing with a whore? What was going on?

Also, how does he KNOW i have a stone toe? Am i going around, showing it to everyone?! Or do i wear it on a string around my neck like a trophy? It's hackneyed and stupid and previous journal entries are replaced with the latest bit of info so you don't have any clue. "What was it about that toe i just gave away? Let's read the journal - Oh! quest completed, guy has his toe back! Hooray!". Very informative.

2. I keep running into groups of armed guys surrounding an empty spot with some sort of leader in their midst that i can talk to. These guys aren't doing anything and if you talk to the leader he just tells you to piss off. I haven't triggered it yet but i KNOW that they are just there to wait for me to stand in their center after being given a quest to talk to the guy and then let them "ambush" me. Stupid, stupid, stupid STUPID!!!

3. Where everybody knows your name. Seriously. You're in this city for a year's worth of servitude - but NOOOOO. Bioware didn't make it into a quest or playable intro so you just skip ahead a year and "poof" you're free - no blurb to tell of your exploits, nothing. The problem with this is that EVERYONE knows you. You've got people coming up to you telling you to stay safe and how Athenril (or whatever the rogue choice's name is) really did well with you.... or they give you something for old-time's sake. I mean... who the fuck are these people? Did Bioware think having people who you've never met recognise you is a cool thing? You know what people call it when that happens in real life? Creepy..... or possibly amnesia... But you get the picture!

Minor Complaint: A - No first person camera. There's this beautiful, detailed world and you're restricted to a camera distance that doesn't let you see it properly. It's actually quite annoying for me.

More soon!

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 16

2011-03-01T19:29:00.001Z

Happy anniversary! This week, Taylor talks about Crusader Kings, i moan a bit about Test Drive Unlimited 2 and we think about things over our first year of podcasting together.

The Easy Button Episode 16

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Test Drove me doolally 2...

2011-02-21T20:45:00.004Z

Test Drive Unlimited 2 is a game i *really* want to love... It's a game i already like, despite my pure hatred of its mechanics, where there are rich vistas you can skirt along as you thump towards the horizon in a car of your favourite make with a half-decent sound track blaring over the speakers. It's just a shame that their "from scratch" driving model just doesn't work.

I mean, seriously! How many super cars do you know that will uncontrollably spin off the road at speeds of less than 60 mph because you nudged the wheel slightly? Sure, there are super cars like that which exist in the real world.... but would a Subaru Impreza spring to mind in this scenario? Not to me it wouldn't. This car, this beast that is pretty much designed for road-holding both on tarmac and in the rough should be more than up to the task of sticking on a wide road with minimal bends.... but it can't - or at least not without some serious handling from the driver.

It's incredibly frustrating then, to drive the cars in this game in any of the races and time trials where, in comparison to the one-off missions that pop up around the map from time to time, the bar is set so high.

Even worse is how the AI and you interact. That is to say, if you bump into the AI you go flying.... if the AI bumps into you, you also go flying! Just watching the AI during and after some of these interactions makes me question the weightiness of my car and of the sanity of the developers. The AI appears to be able to right their car with the minimum of ease from a spin or fishtail without travelling great distances.... Compare this to myself where i've travelled 20-50 m off the road before i've managed to bring my heap of steaming shit to a stop (if some physical barrier hasn't already done this for me). It feels (though it's not) impossible to make the AI crash in such a way as to actually set them appreciably back in a race.

The sad thing is that this so-called driving model was built from the ground up to accommodate the all-terrain mentality of this sequel when it appears as if no lessons, or even ideas, were learnt from the first game.

Sadly, the in-game radio stations are a bit limited and you are unable to create your own or play your own playlist within the game from your library of games..... when in the first you were perfectly able to do so.

Finally, what really irks me is the whole licence system. In the original you started off with modest cars and learnt the driving model through cars that weren't so fast as to be uncontrollable. You had restrictions on certain races but you could do one at any time. Now, they've taken away those races and events and made them random and instead require you to achieve licences to be able to partake in championship races. They also start you off in the "classic" car side of things... which unforunately is not conducive to learning the controls when, in theory, you're driving cars that take more effort to drive (not that the 'difficulty' indicator would have you believe it!).

What they should have done was do something similar to the original - have you work your way up from the lower class cars but also provide you with fixed events that you are able to enter in an amateur manner, allowing you to win money and also hone your skills.

There's also a lot of complaining about the broken multiplayer side of things, but since i don't use MP, i'll not mention those!

Unfortunately, TDU2 is a game that could have been a classic.... instead it's relegated to the sideline because of its rather blatant flaws.

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 15

2011-02-14T18:30:00.002Z

Hey everybody! Here's a new show to brighten your week! We're back to the usual format this week with some talk of the recent(ish) news, games we've been playing and even a topic! We talk about our comfort games.... so download or listen in your browser and maybe send us some of your comfort games to our email below.

The Easy Button Episode 15

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Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 14d

2011-01-05T21:15:00.002Z

And so it comes to an end..... our best and worst games of all time.... to date..... that we have played! No further qualification is needed so step inside and lend an ear to hear our mutterings, ramblings and complaints about these terrible titles.

Also, i mess up the intro again - but this time it's funny! :D

The Easy Button Episode 14d

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Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 14c

2010-12-18T21:27:00.003Z

The third part of our top games of all time marathon epic... You might be able to tell from my voice near the end but after four hours of talking (and perhaps drinking alcohol on an empty stomach) i was feeling worse for wear. :)

The list this time is our games that didn't quite make it into the top ten.

The Easy Button Episode 14c

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Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 14b

2010-12-08T21:03:00.002Z

Here's the second part of our top ten games of all time! You get to hear us both wax lyrical about the final five games on our lists.

The Easy Button Episode 14b

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Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 14a

2010-12-01T21:19:00.003Z

This week we've split up the podcast into segments! Surprise! It's our top ten most awesome games of all time..... this part is just five of them from each of us but it's not in any particular order so you won't "get to the good stuff" by skipping this and heading to part deux.

I won't spoil which games we pick so listen in for enlightenment. :)

The Easy Button Episode 14a

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Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 13

2010-11-17T19:33:00.001Z

This week we talk about Fallout 1 and 3 and there's also a chat about Master of Orion 1 and 2. There may also be calls for listener submissions for their top and bottom games of all time..... You'd better listen to get the lowdown!

Oh, and we also made the show shorter. I think some people will be happy with that! :D

The Easy Button Episode 13

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Comic #1

2010-11-14T16:50:00.004Z

I get these ideas from time to time but I don't really have an outlet.... then I remembered this blog and i thought: "What the hey?!" So if I get the inclination you might find these sorts of comics popping up from time to time.

The joke's a bit obtuse but hopefully some people will get it :)

(Mis-)Characterisation...

2010-11-13T10:17:00.008Z

This video was recently brought to my attention and, while i haven't played Other M, I have seen the youtube uploads, read the reviews and seen other comments from gamers on the characterisation in the game.

So basically, it’s some guy saying that Metroid: Other M is a good game because the writing is perfectly fine and that if you're opposed to what they've done you view women in one of two extremes (in the kitchen or cold-hearted, man-hating witch). I feel i just have to respond to balance out the stupidity. Onward!

He says that Stoic means that someone overcomes their negative emotions through a journey – however, that’s not the dictionary definition, nor how society uses it ERGO that is not what it means.

Stoic means to overcome your emotions through not allowing them to control you. You’re stoic if you show emotion but don’t let it affect you or your actions in a negative manner just as you’re stoic if you control your emotions so that they don’t shine through and are observable to the outsider.

Now that that is out of the way, I’ll move onto the orders thing. Samus and her team have all the equipment needed to survive in the game but are under orders NOT to use it until told to use it. Game mechanic-wise, it’s no different from finding a piece of equipment and being able to access a new area. Logically it is BATSHIT INSANE.

Seriously, if we’re going off the logic that Samus is a trained and battle-hardened bounty hunter and that this team of military personnel are similarly experienced then they will have full authorization to use necessary force and equipment to allow their survival. No right-thinking military commander is going to expect his troops not to put on their gas masks and biohazard suits if the shit hits the fan just because he didn’t give the order. It’s completely counterintuitive and takes away from the human reality that is projected onto the game. If this was a game about ants or bees where those lifeforms mindlessly obey their superiors then, yes, that makes more sense… but these are human beings and we, being human, understand the human condition very thoroughly.

Next we’ve got the personality switch for Samus. We’ve got a development studio that is known for their disrespectful and immature portrayal of women (i.e. oversexualisation, huge boobs, whiney voices and ‘helplessness’ even though they are hugely capable warriors) compared to the stoic (though I would never have described Samus as such), strong, non-sexual, lethal and capable Samus Aran. To put it into film terms (and ignoring Batman because that’s the example the video uses), Leon: The Professional, trained his whole life to be the best at what he is, he’s smart, logical, tactical, fit, capable and taciturn (perhaps stoic too). Even in the face of absolute terror and the finality of death his focus is pin-point sharp. Samus has also been compared to characters like Ripley in Aliens who is a little more emotionally weak than Leon but she still has most of the other characteristics however, she has to rely on her luck and anger/inner strength to get her through those situations so in my opinion she’s less like Samus than Leon is.

So, what do we get in Other M? We get the Hayden Christensen version of Darth Vader in comparison to James Earl Jones. It’s a slap in the face of the character and I’m wracking my brain to think of another action ‘hero’ like this to compare to Leon but there aren’t any I can think of – the closest is Shia LeBoeuf in Transformers. Honestly, I despair if the meaning of multidimensional characterization means that characters who are established as being strong and capable and free thinking in dangerous situations become self-doubting, helpless and mindless drones. It’s a completely ridiculous to argue that this is a good thing and provides character development when it’s completely the opposite. Leon would not cower in fear at an enemy he had previously thought he’d vanquished. He would not turn into a quivering wreck and be unable to act.

And regarding his Princess Peach comparison? Was he not around when the discussion about the fucking tantrums and emotional ‘powerups’ in Super Princess Peach was ongoing? He comes off as a completely unknowledgeable and anti-progress in computer games writing and characterization. There’s a world of difference between continuing to portray a character as weak and fragile and subservient and actually regressing a character to that state.

Then he takes GREAT leap of logic to assume that people who dislike this change in characterization is those people equating a “strong independent woman” with “pathological man-hating ice queen”… He just used a straw man (no I mean in the video) right before this bit to devalue the arguments opposing this change in character. I mean, the irony is strong with this one. /Yoda

This guy’s argument is vacuous and mindless in its stupidity.

Then he goes on to say that a slight change in gamers’ perception of Samus’ character has resulted in a huge blow out of anger… And yet, these are not small changes these are huge changes. Darth Vader is Stoic – Anakin Skywalker is not. But at least in those films it makes some sort of sense – there’s a character progression, a suppression of his human emotions (except for a seething anger that powers his dark side force powers) as he becomes less than human. If, in the middle of The Empire Strikes Back, this type of character change had manifested itself everyone would have collectively gone “WTF?!” and been very angry with the writers and director for breaking some pretty cardinal rules of human interaction and storytelling. Unless someone’s having a huge emotional or mental breakdown (of which there are many signs beforehand) then there’s no justification, no logic to doing that…. And yet he’s defending exactly this in his argument. In a word: Ridiculous.

Next he somehow gets onto an idea that the strong characterization of Samus (that gamers projected onto her) is rejecting her femininity. I mean…. WHAT THE FUCK?! I know of no women who would instantly pulverize this guy (probably metaphorically) for being such a huge sexist scumbag. Either the straw man he’s constructing here is so big he doesn’t see the looming shadow of ridiculousness OR he really has no idea that femininity does not equate to weakness and subservience. I am actually a little lost for words at this point because his arguments make no sense and are offensive to fans of Samus and other strong women in media.

Yes, being a strong woman does not mean you reject your femininity…. But, and this is a HUGE thing here, women can define what they feel is feminine. I’m a guy and I’m not some hulking brute of a man. I’m sensitive and I cry occasionally and I get overwhelmed when things get tough but I don’t collapse and I don’t become a mindless drone to a superior ‘just because’ or because I have unresolved emotional issues regarding my parents. I consider myself to be a strong man. I still have weaknesses but that doesn't mean they rule me.

You know what? Those people do exist and it is difficult to get out of those sorts of things (having my own separate issues, I know about this) but you don’t tend to find a person’s character altering so suddenly very often. A strong woman will not usually suddenly become all weepy eyed, subservient and emotional when an older, father figure man comes into the picture. A strong, stoic woman would recognize these feelings and keep them in mind as she’s doing her job to the best of her abilities. It doesn’t preclude her from being feminine (whatever she defines that as) and it certainly doesn’t make her a man-hating ice queen because she doesn’t instantly give in to those emotions. This is no binary situation you can be strong and sensitive and even strong in some ways but weak in others… but it’s very rare (and possibly impossible? Maybe the psychologists can answer that one) that you are simultaneously strong and weak in the same area. You don’t not fall, crumpled into a ball at the sign of another soldier dying or surviving wave after wave of enemies only to suddenly and completely cave in when it happens again a moment later. Usually you just go through the actions and sort the emotions out later on and if you don’t that’s where things like post-traumatic stress come into the picture. You know what would be good? It’d be good if perhaps Samus had that as another aspect to her character. Does she? No. Instead she has (as his video points out) “daddy issues”.

Some people might, at this point, try and point out that Samus shows PTSD in Other M - specifically in relation to her encounter with Ripley. These people need to go and read the definition of PTSD, the wikipedia entry on PTSD and then they need to go and look at where Other M falls on the Metroid timeline. Once they've done this they should hopefully recognise that Samus has been in similar situations to the original attack on her colony (resulting in the death of her parents) in conflict with both the Space Pirates and Ridley many times before Other M comes along. This portrayal does not include PTSD and there's no logical reason for her to be suffering, all of a sudden, after defeating the guy and the pirates many times from PTSD or this level of PTSD. Instead Samus falls into the 'revenge' and externalised/internalised anger side of things rather than being unable to process and cope with her emotions regarding that original incident.

…. and finally he compares her to Ripley, saying that she is an anti-social loner who is strong but cold and emotionally distant. I’m thinking that somehow we watched two very different cuts of all the Alien quadrilogy films…. It’s as if he completely misinterpreted Sigourney Weaver’s acting and the character of Ripley. I seriously don’t get it and I think it’s possibly where a lot of his argument comes from and simultaneously falls down. They take a lot of pains to show Ripley's emotional side and the complex interactions between fear, survival instinct, anger and motherly protection in those films. She is never a loner or anti-social or emotionally distant.

This, all in context, makes his high-horse ponderings about other gamers’ views on gender hysterically funny and very sad and worrying. The problem is that a lot of the things he mentions in the conclusion are good parts of a three dimensional character (add your own echo effects here) but that the execution and depiction of those character flaws and intricacies in Other M are so childish, out of character and (I’m going to repeat childish here) immature as to be offensive to the majority of sane people. If you’ve ever watched any of the “Awesome” series you’ll be intimately familiar with over-the-top characterizations of erstwhile human emotions and troubles and that’s the line of portrayal that Samus has in Other M. There’s no subtlety or loving craft gone into it…. Instead it feels like the designers have looked at the checklist of ‘interesting’ human traits (like this guy reels off at the end) and chucked them in without any sort of thought on the logic behind those choices and how they’d fit with a murderous bounty hunter in space.

You know who had ‘issues’? Boba Fett. He was not only conditioned against the Republic but also saw his father beheaded by the Jedi order. Sure, his character wasn’t fleshed out but did you see him fall into a quivering blob during the fight above the Sarlaac on Tatooine when faced with a Jedi Knight (Luke Skywalker)? No!! And you know why? Because that would have made no sense.
His insulting final thought that there’s only two extremes for female characters being ‘allowed’ by his opponents just seals the deal and it’s sad that so many misinformed, like-minded individuals have latched on to his pretty much derogatory and intellectually worthless comparisons and arguments to reinforce their own negative opinions of what is allowed for female protagonists and characters. There is nothing progressive about Other M’s characterization of women.

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 12

2010-10-31T18:55:00.002Z

Another episode of this hit show! In this episode: reduced audio quality! We also talk about Minecraft (shock!), Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate and Elemental: War of Magic.

The Easy Button Episode 12

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If you want to contact us please feel free to email us with comments, shout-outs, suggestions or questions at: the.easiestbutton AT gmail.com

Partners in...

2010-10-21T17:11:00.005+01:00

I’ve been thinking about the partner effect recently. No, not the partner effects or the partner effect. The effect i'm thinking of is one you may have encountered in your every day lives - it's when someone who has an emotional tie to someone else backs up the other person's point of view no matter how stupid or ridiculous it is and in fact may go against what they themselves would normally think in a certain situation.

Example 1: A husband states that something is stupid because of some silly reason.... Person C does not agree and states their reasons why. Wife (or partner) of Husband comes in and echoes Husband's opinion despite it being a bit stupid.

Example 2: Programmer 1 questions programmer 2 as to why a piece of software is written the way it is when this other way could be more advantageous. Programmer 2 responds that it's better this way for some dubious reason however, it later becomes apparent that programmer 3 wrote the software and has been good friends with programmer 2 for a long time.

In both these hypothetical situations the 'partner' takes the position of their partner despite obvious flaws in the reasoning or whatever.

Now, personally, i find this annoying and, as far as i'm aware, i do not do it. In fact, i was once told by my mother that i shouldn't undermine my partner despite me not agreeing with what they said. This is all a bit by-the-by and is more of a starting-off point in this thought process.

We talk about emotional investment and involvement with our characters in games and for those of the NPC or AI partners that we engage with. So..... can we evoke this same behavioural response for a gamer and their computer controlled friends? I think, on some levels, this has already been accomplished. Many people talk about their minions in Fallout (1-3) like they were long-lost family members. Similarly, Fable 2's dog evoked a lot of emotional attachment for some players. However, that emotional attachment is different than the one i'm going for. What i want to be able to do is make a player like a character so much that they're willing to change the way they play the game at that moment in time - and not necessarily for the better.

Say you've got a companion who accompanies you throughout the game - they're useful, not annoying or helpless - and you converse with them and learn about them and the world through those conversations. One of the game mechanics is that you're able to eat these pods that grow on grass-like stalks in certain places throughout the world to regain health. Maybe it becomes apparent that these are the babies of a race of beings and your friend is really for continuing to eat them? A lot of people would probably stop eating those foetal beings and take the hit in health or power though some people would continue on anyway due to it just being a game mechanic..... But could we influence those players who would turn away from power to instead embrace it?

I guess the way i'd try and do it is by slowly influencing the gamer's play through insertion of partner opinions. Start off small with suggestions like "Jump when the enemy attacks you and you will have a greater probability of dodging their attack" to "if you combine these potions/items you'll get this really cool thing" and "this guy looks evil, we shouldn't trust him" (he then turns out to be evil).... Doing this is basically offering small cheats and hints to the players but it might also engender trust between the player(character) and the partner through repeated links in the brain of the player to their partner being 'correct'.

I suppose another possible way you could help with this is have the partner completely voiceless and non-interactive during testing and having a person sitting there with the player. Telling them how to play and offering advice on characters within the game. Record these sessions and take the most effective lines and put them into the game for the character to use (and don't have them as 'set' interactions, make it random which ones the player gets). It might work sort of like a sales pitch when journalists are playing the games for the first time - the very action of reinforcing the game's strengths can make them appear stronger and its weaknesses less significant.

It's partly how salespeople perform their pitches too; use positive framing and whatnot.... then, when the trap is honeyed, you reel them in by applying the 'false' logic you've built up around the situation or product along with the positive framing to close the deal.

Perhaps i should rename this post "What gaming could learn from selling..."?

Blood Bowl Game Diary #5

2010-09-23T20:01:00.003+01:00

Playoff 2 VS The Bramble Blockers

So we were up against our nemesis – The Bramble f*ckers. Those namby-pamby, wishy-washy, no-good do-gooders of the wood elves. The very same team that had beaten us 4-0 in our opening match.

I looked over our team and, to my consternation, found we were missing a Witch Elf! Where had she gone? I had no idea…. It’s possible that the hit on the head she received from the Dwarven Blitzer had brought about a sudden onset of Stockholm syndrome and she’d ‘gone native’ on us… or at least on the Blitzer in question. I checked the stats for the match and there were no dead but two injured. I guess that she had reached her injury limit and had retired…. Probably with that damn dwarf blitzer!!

At any rate I’m wasn’t bitter I still had ten men and Mo- Morty?!! Morty, what’s wrong with your hand? Oh, my terrible and dark gods! You… you can’t play? So there I stood in our changing field with Mortbean, the star player of the team so far, sitting on the grass with a hand the size of a melon. A quick look in our war chest told me that we only had 50,000 gold which wasn’t enough to purchase any players outright. I glanced over at the score board from the game the Bramblers had fought against the Scaled Scavengers the day before and saw that the had won 3-0… again!! This wasn’t going to be pretty.

My heart was pounding as I went to look at their team roster…. Seven men!! They only had seven men left! Oh, was it possible that we could pull this one out of the bag? The only problem was that they still had their catcher and thrower… Hopefully I would be able to do something about at least one of them.

So with my heartbeat pounding in my ears, we set off to do battle. In the pre-game warm up and bribery I managed to f*ck things up considerably. Instead of putting 50,000 gold into the pot to buy stuff…. I managed to input 50 gold instead. There was no way back either! Luckily, or rather, unluckily, a band of mercenaries turned up at the last minute with me receiving two of them and the bloody lucky Bramblers getting four. I guess the odds and gods were no longer in our favour! It was now apparent to me why I’d received that loner, Indhil, in the final match of the pool against the dwarves – you always start with 11 players, regardless of your actual player roster.

Having no runner with which to pick up or kick the ball, I used the only other player I had left with high stats – the witch elf, Riisilneth. She would be our runner. Considering this was her first kick off, she did quite well, shunting it into the depths of the enemy half. Unfortunately the wood elves proceeded to set up a really strong box of players around their thrower who was likely to knock it down the field once they got their catcher into position. The only option I had was to take out the catcher and other free linemen then close in on the ball… OR hope for an interception like I had done before. That would make me champion of interceptions in our little league.

We surrounded the catcher with two linemen and our wittle baby Fear Might jogged forward and stabbed the guy through his armour, knocking him completely out and taking him off the field – probably for the half. I stared in shock. The most useless player in our side had actually come through and done something useful! Not only that but it was the first action of the game. Things were looking up!

The second action of the game resulted in the other free wood elf lineman getting sent off the pitch on a stretcher…. It was beautiful! I had to wipe tears from my eyes as the rest of my team surrounded their defensive box.

Unfortunately, my run of good play was soon back to normal when both my strongest players – the witch elf and the assassin – were knocked unconscious for two turns, leaving the rest of my team to fend for themselves. In a rather silly tactical error on my part, we managed to leave an opening at the edge of the pitch, just large enough for the thrower to run through and around my line. Oops.

Luckily, my assassin and one lineman were free to track back and block their progress and, as one of their players powered forth to knock the assassin back into the diapers he so rightfully normally wears, he flicked his leg up and stopped that weakling wood elf dead in his tracks, leaving a nice boot print on his face. It was good times!! Unluckily, my witch elf kept on getting knocked down on her follow-up attacks… allowing the enemy wood elves a second shot at the assassin that stood in their way, this time knocking him down and out – completely off the pitch. Nuts!!

The thrower ran through the newly-made gap and there was only one lineman who could reach him in time to stop the touchdown. He charged… and was knocked out by the stupid, weedy thrower – of all people!!

0-1

The only bright side to the score was that, during the celebrations, my assassin recovered and returned to the pitch but their two players did not. The loss was also compounded by the seemlingly witless witch elf fumbling when picking up the ball. Where was Morty when I needed him?! Even worse, while the rest of my team performed defensive duties, the witch elf proceeded to fumble the ball, seemingly unable to get a grip on it at all! I immediately called to the ref for an inspection of the ball for tampering by the bramblers but it only served to remind him that it was actually well into half time and the whistle was blown.

After the break we got back to business, with the witch elf vindicating herself by collecting the kicked ball and running up the field. The assassin stabbed another wood elf, knocking him out completely and the offensive line began it’s (hopefully) inexorable push forward. I grinned and rubbed my hands accordingly.

The next few minutes were a veritable bloodbath with several key players getting kicked and gouged around. First off, our assassin was knocked for six and, while scrambling to cover our ball carrier, the witch elf, the wood elf catcher’s head was almost taken off as he tried to dodge around several of our players. I silently hoped that it was a crippling, permanent injury.

As the dust cleared, the witch elf saw her chance and slipped through the defence towards the touchline. Then, from out of nowhere most of their team sat up and seemed to come alive…. Well, I mean figuratively – they weren’t undead! Whilst most of them were blocked by my fearless blitzers and assassin, the catcher ran past three players, dodging all their attacks and, in a fit of frenzied rage, punched our blitzer, Rianndrir, so hard that his pelvis momentarily appeared to be above his shoulders; a frightening sight that I hope you only see happening to your enemies… This left him being carted off the field and a gaping hole in the defensive line that was preventing runners from catching up with the witch elf. Though, I guess it was ironic that the runner that did catch her did so from a completely different hole in the defensive line that I hadn’t spotted. There was still a chance though! She had been able to dodge attacks before and she was within distance of scoring… Nailbiting resumed. SCORE!!

A couple of horny linemen came to the witch elf’s rescue, momentarily distracting the wood elf and allowing her to run to the end zone.

1-1

Upon resuming the game and the witch elf making the kick, I was struck with a sudden fit of genius, allowing me to magically rearrange my team without penalty while the ball was stuck in the air. Brilliant! I moved up my players and had them ready to attack the opposition’s half. The move obviously paid off because a lone wood elf, driven to madness by the unlikely turn of events then threw himself at my left-most lineman, knocking him down and himself out in the process. The lineman, a hardy fellow by the name of Malion, proceeded to get right back up before spitting on the wood elf as he was carted off the pitch. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the pitch, my linemen blasted into the front line of the wood elves, injuring one guy and pushing the other back - the poor sod who was on the receiving end of that attack also happened to be holding the ball, spilling it onto the floor ready for the pick-up. Amazingly, the same lineman who had just crippled the other player proceeded to grab the ball in the middle of a somersault and avoiding the defensive play of the nearby wood elf lineman. This, of course, left the rest of the team in a dumbfounded daze and I screamed at them to pick their jaws up off the floor lest they be shattered by the quickly regrouping Bramblers.

The assassin, taking advantage of the general lethargy of everyone else, glanced around before placing a handkerchief over the wood elf that stood next to him until he was unconscious. I was beginning to like this Fear Might fellow afterall. However, despite the number of wood elves off the pitch and on the floor a couple were able to catch up to the courageous lineman, Mormal (one of the mercenaries who I suspect might have been a ringer), though with my two covering blitzers close behind. They knocked out one wood elf and Mormal was able to dodge his way past the other to score!

2-1

This was just unbelieveable. Just one and a half turns to go and we would win. This called for an all-out defensive strategy of blocking and delaying. There could be no mistakes made this time – not with the wood elves annoying propensity for being able to run long distances. I carefully placed the members of my team, noting that the Bramblers only had 4 starting players on the pitch. Strangely, though I had been cock-sure, once the game started they had the full compliment of 10 players (11 minus the injured player) and the kick went straight into the hands of their damned thrower… If there was any way they were going to draw and get extra time in this game it would be through a throw and score approach. I held my breath.

Our assassin lept forward into the breach of their closing defence around their thrower and was promptly knocked out for his bravery… simultaneously, their thrower chucked the ball down the pitch to a player that wasn’t their catcher because, for some unknown reason, he had ran behind the rest of the team towards his own end – doubtless scared of our aggressive nature. The lineman that tried to catch the ball took his eyes off of it and let it spill to the ground at his feet. The whistle blew, we had won!!

The victory was cut short though, when I realised that I was unable to hire Mormal directly after the match despite having 50,000 in the war chest and earned 20,000 in the game. They apparently hadn’t collected the ticket sales yet and so I had to let this apparent superstar go. Damned rules!!

Overview

It’s amazing really – and a tribute to my skill and passion for the team and my players – that we won the trophy despite finishing last in the group stage. Actually, we graduated with flying colours. Learning a game that is actually pretty brutal - even on easy mode - can be quite difficult and i'm quite happy with myself for managing to bring it all together. This will be the last diary for the time being. I have played through a second season where the introduced Chaos team really gave my team a spanking and i lost a few good players... If people have an interest i can write it all up and post it. So let me know in the comments!

Hope you enjoyed this little foray into game diaries. I'll try and think of other games i could do this in and if i get any ideas then i'll probably put something together.

aaand.... GoG is back...

2010-09-22T20:47:00.001+01:00

Seriously, what a terrible way to do this whole thing. It was all just a PR stunt. Great.

Dickheads.

And it's done.... Bye bye Good Old Games

2010-09-19T18:44:00.005+01:00

(Update: So it's possible that this is all one big, huge, misguided publicity stunt. However, these are just rumours so we'll have to wait and see...)

Well, there's one less thing that's good about PC gaming. DRM-free older games on Good Old Games are no more. Seriously! Just go and have a look.

Sucks... doesn't it?

I hadn't even downloaded some of the games i had bought, because of our monthly download limit, such as Masters of Orion 1+2. They say, in the very light blurb on their replaced main page, that they will try and give a way to redownload the games for their customers some time this week. We'll see how that pans out.

As such, it's a nice little test of all these claims by companies, like Valve, who claim that if the worst comes to the worst and they are bought out or go out of business then they will release patches for their games to enable their customers to continue playing them. Not quite the same scenario since, if you have the installer for the game already then you're covered - which was one of the immense pros of GoG.com.

The two most disappointing aspects come of all this: It looks like the DRM-free model is dead. The idea, despite what GoG themselves have stated in their words, seems dead and unworkable. The reasoning for this is linked in with the second aspect which is that there is essentially no reason given for this closure. Worse, it was so sudden that it seems unreal. They had only just added new games and had a sale on Activision titles.

What their blurb seems to say is that "the idea of DRM-free old games is unworkable... but we couldn't make it work." Since they were the only game in town with this then... well, there was practically no competition and that potentially means that the publishers and developers who were making the contracts for their games on GoG.com didn't want the service to work. If the publishers and developers don't believe in the service then the service will not exist. Essentially, DRM-free games are gone; the future is a bleak mishmash of always connected DRM-authentication combined with ultra-small and lower quality games that contain little DRM but which are still tied to a service environment like Popcap and Zynga with a minority of small and lower quality independent titles like Evochron and Minecraft that subsist on their playerbases over incremental updates in a symbiotic relationship.

It's possible that publishers and developers will change their minds on how they treat and interact with their customers and my bleak prediction of the future of gaming will not come to pass. However, given the current economic and political trends that seems unlikely... The bright side of this all is that music will never suffer the same fate as games and movies due to the lower budgetary requirements and level of difficulty to produce a track or album (e.g. skillset, technology and manpower) than it is to make a movie, TV show or game.

I look at times like this and I wonder what sort of a world I will be experiencing in 10 years time...

GoG's release below:

We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is. We've debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we've decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form.

We're very grateful for all support we've received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming.

This doesn't mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We're closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.

On a technical note, this week we'll put in place a solution to allow everyone to re-download their games. Stay tuned to this page and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

Blood Bowl Game Diary #4

2010-09-18T18:19:00.007+01:00

Playoff 1 VS Iron Head Wanderers

I was against this blasted team again – Top of the group and I’d only just managed to scrap that draw. Worse yet, I’d been unable to afford to buy Indhil the Loner who had subbed in my team randomly last match when I only had 10 players after the unfortunate death of one linesman who’s name will not go down in the annals of history as I lost the slip of paper it was written down on. (Still not sure how that happened!) Luckily, once the funds had cleared from the ticket sales, I was able to afford a new player and I quickly snatched up the strangely named Fear Might, an assassin of no renown. I figured that having someone of that profession on the pitch would sway things in my favour.

I wasn’t looking forward to this game, but play on I did. I watched as my brave sacrificial lambs, er players… er, beloved players took to the pitch against the Dwarven threat. We let them kick off and I watched as the ball sauntered through the air to land not far off my runner, the heroic Mortbean, who in true style was kept in the rear due to his lack of muscle. I sent my linemen, blitzers and witches all off to block and guard the dwarves who had once again fielded two Troll-slayers and their one Blitzer… all three of which appeared to be nearly unbeatable in the last game. Then, with Morty heading forward my attack began to falter.

Left and right, players from both sides were going down in the maelstrom of pitched battle…. And then promptly getting back up again after a quick nap. Morty managed to pass off the ball to the Camfindys, the witch elf, and she made a run between the Dwarf Blizter and one of their blockers – skilfully dodging a blow or two as she did so – and i watched as she ran wide right where there were fewer dwarves. Unfortunately, it was at this time that my blocking spree in the centre crumbled as my assassin tripped on the dirk he had pulled from his boot and fumbled to the ground in a failed stab attempt on one of the troll-slayers, promptly being knocked on his ass and as the whole mass of players moved forwards a two blockers emerged from behind the pack to race across the field to intercept my witch elf. She managed to hand off the ball to a blitzer, Argthar, who was promptly knocked out, the ball sent flying out of play. This, of course, annoyingly meant that it was flung back onto the pitch right into the midst of the main body of dwarven players… just my luck.

Immediately I shouted a time-out to the ref (who ignored me until I called his mother a slimy pus-bag at which point he came over to enquire how the old slimy pus-bag was…. It was all very embarrassing. I had to lie about her health being poor which seemed to please him greatly and he granted us a moment to talk to our teams). Drawing my meatbags around me I told them to hit the dwarves hard and to keep them in their half it they could. “No mercy!” I remember shouting as they ran back onto the pitch which, in retrospect, seemed rather redundant. Amazingly my team proceeded to do very well for the next six or so turnovers. They hemmed-in the dwarven defence who were crowding their runner and stopping any meaningful progression. My assassin managed to fail three other stab attempts and as the referee’s whistle blew to end the half I was considering murdering him and taking his apparel and putting it on a child I had seen waving a pointy stick in the crowd. He probably would have been more deadly.

The second half started as you’d expect. I kept my assassin in the centre along with a witch elf and a blitzer, spreading the rest of the team wide to cover any runners. The ball soared into the air and all hell broke loose. From what bleary memory I do have of the event it seems that one of our cheerleaders accidentally threw her knife-edged pom-pom into the eye of one of dwarven players' wives…. who then fell backwards into the warm ale she was stirring, spoiling it for all the potential drinkers in the crowd. The crowd, thus incited, went on a rampage, spilling onto the pitch and attacking all the dwarven players and subs and knocking virtually the whole team out. Double out, in fact…. They were seeing at least six or maybe eight stars each! It was a beautiful sight. Unfortunately, there was a little collateral damage with both of our players on the left of the pitch knocked partially unconscious (just four stars) as the players exited to the stands to enjoy the rest of the half.

Unsure of what had really happened, everyone just stood there until Morty, that god-blessed devil of a man, sprinted up and claimed the ball right from underneath the noses of the befuddled dwarves. The rest of my players dusted themselves down, kicking a few of the dwarves for good measure in the process (the ref didn’t notice… in fact he may have been unconscious too!), then proceeded to run a standard blocking pattern. It’s mighty effective on unconscious dwarves and is now a staple in my playbook in case such an event should ever happen again.

So off he went, towards the touchline when a couple of dwarves picked themselves up and trundled off after him. Once again, Morty came through. He dodged a tackle and, as they knocked him into the ground, threw the ball to our Blitzer, Argthar, who turned around and scored a touchdown!

1-0!!

(Later on, after the match, Fear Might – the assassin – informed me that he had directly contributed to the score by not using his stab ability and thereby confusing several of the surrounding dwarves. He still hadn’t knocked anyone down or out though!)

We only had four or so turns left in the match too and all’s we had to do was run interference. Back to kick-off positions and we launched the ball high into the air where it once again landed near their back blockers. One of them picked the ball up and was immediately surrounded by the defensive-minded dwarves. My players moved in for the blocking kill. It was at this point that the dwarven blitzer and his blocker mate went on a bit of a bender. The blocker knocked my witch elf out – sending her off the pitch into the recovery zone… where she then died. Dead?! Camfy was dead? This was a terrible loss but the pain wasn’t over yet because then, with the help of one of the troll-slayers, he opened up a huge hole in the midfield by knocking out another man. Down to nine men - I wasn’t hopeful of the outcome after being left with only five in the last turns of the preceding game against the dwarven scum.

Slowly, the dwarves motored forward with a combination of knocking my players down and running a diagonal pattern around my blocking formation: The blocker who had the ball switched from the left to the right of the field and made his way into my half. It was at this point that I realised that the only person between the blocker and our touchline was good old Morty. There was another lineman off on the far left of the pitch, covering what I had thought would be their route, who was running over to cover the centre but who would be unable to make it in time to aid in the interception. Morty lept. My hands were gripping the railing of the dugout so tightly that the knuckles went white. Morty hit the blocker and pushed him back and toward the centre of the pitch – near the lineman who was running to join him. Another dwarf broke through the centre and came to sit behind the ball holder and, obviously overexerting himself, promptly fell on his face. Taking advantage of that mess, the lineman ran next to the blocker holding the ball and caused a distraction while Morty gave him a good push and collected the ball as it fell to his feet.

There was only one problem: In the intervening period most of the team had been knocked senseless and now there were a metric f*ckton of angry dwarven Blood Bowl players heading towards Morty and the linesman. So Morty did was any blue-blooded Dark Elf would do in his situation…. He ran! First he ran towards me and the coaches in the dugout. I began screaming, “No!! Get away!” and at last he took heed and turned…. Straight towards out touchline!! What the hell was he thinking? Well, it turns out that old Morty had a bit of a brainwave (or that’s what his story is post-match at any rate!). Why waste the final moments of the game letting himself get tackled and possibly allowing them to score when the slow as molasses dwarves would be unable to keep up with him?

Unfortunately, as he ran back and forth across our touchline in an effort to confuse the dwarves he was tripped by a sneaky runt of a dwarf who then stomped on Morty’s catching hand. Morty, injured as he was, left the pitch but the game was won! The match was over!

I had done, er I mean, we had done the unthinkable and beaten the strongest side in our league.

Blood Bowl Game Diary #3

2010-09-17T13:59:00.000+01:00

Match 3 VS Iron Head Wanderers

This next match was weighing heavily on my mind. Looking at the group table, the Iron Head Warriors were top – having easily won their previous two matches. Worse still, I was a man down – Riisilneth wasn’t able to play having been severely injured in the previous game – and instead Indhil, a wandering mercenary stepped in to fill the gap.

Starting the match, we received the ball, via Mortbean’s pick-up and charged up the field, handing off to Camfindys. Unfortunately, I hadn’t taken into account the stoutness of dwarven players and Camfindys was knocked completely unconscious just past the halfway line by a dwarven blocker and dragged off the pitch. The rest of the dwarves began knocking our players senseless up and down the field. It wasn’t a pretty sight! Morty, sensing an opportunity, sprinted up and re-collected the ball in the midst of the confusion and passed it out of the melee to Enddar, who waltzed up the right sideline towards the touch line, covered by Rynnear. Meanwhile, a little fight had broken out between Mortbean and a dwarf named Hurrig over beard-pulling or some such. Morty, in an uncharacteristic bout of truthfulness to his name, planted the seeds of death and outright killed Hurrig in a move that could only be described as audacious. Somehow he got away with it and the ref didn’t bat an eyelid.

I made a mental note not to mess with him if he was in a bad mood and when I looked up I saw Enddar crossing the touchline and scoring!

1-0

Excellent! The plan was coming together. The play started off innocently enough with a few blocks and manoeuvres but, somehow in a triple move including the two troll-slayers, perhaps in revenge for the earlier death, Banfil’s skull was crushed-in and he lay dying on the pitch. I immediately called forth the apothecary and sent him out to save the poor lad. Unfortunately, the damned physician spent the time applying leeches or something instead of un-caving-in Banfil’s skull and he actually ended up more dead than before. Ah well, he shalt be remembered!

The dwarves rallied as my team began to lose cohesion and pushed forward with the ball – I noted that they liked to play very tightly around their ball carrier in a similar, but shorter, manner to the lizardmen. Argthar, Enddar and Malion lead a counter attack, knocking the ball-carrier down and allowing Lamael to collect it from his twitching hands. Lamael turned and ran up the pitch with two dwarves in close pursuit… there was only one outcome possible really – the dwarves knocked him to the ground completely unconscious and he was taken off the pitch. Damnit!! They immediately counter-attacked but, as their players pushed forward to make space for the ball-carrier, one of their players was severely injured from a tackle and also stretchered off the pitch… Shame it wasn’t another death!

Once again Agthar, Enddar and Malion stood in the way of the ball carrier and managed to collectively push him back. Somehow, though, during a bit of pushing and pulling, Rynnear was knocked unconscious and had to also be taken off the pitch – we were down two men!! As I reeled from these continued losses, Agthar, Enddar and Malion were getting thrashed as another player was knocked unconscious just as the half time whistle was blown. Phew!!

Coming back from a few light refreshments, we kicked into their half. Three of our knocked out players recovered and returned to the pitch – bringing us equal in number, if not skill to the dwarven side. Receiving the ball, the dwarves pushed forward – their blitzer, Noragni, holding the ball. We tried valiantly to stop this advance but with the knocking out of Camfindys and Mortbean there was no one left but Argthar to defend deeply and the touchdown was inevitable once the seemingly indestructible Noragni also palmed him off.

1-1

Camfy rejoined the play after being roused by the cheering which helped me formulate a plan of attack. After the kick (which was sent to our touchline), Morty retrieved the ball and passed it to Camfy (the pairing of these two is remarkable – I wondered if perhaps there was some sort of extra curricular activities were happening off-pitch) who sprinted up the field, covered by Malion and Enddar. In the centre the troll-slayers were getting their arses kicked, however this unexpected sight merely resulted in distracting both Malion and Enddar who were promptly shoved away from the nearly defenceless Camfindys who tried to run away but was tripped in the process with the ball falling to Malion’s feet. With our luck running low, however, he was also tackled and the ball fell free.

Our only chance at interception before the whistle was also knocked out and stretchered off the pitch and, as the dwarven player trundled along towards our touchline all hope of drawing seemed lost. The only man in the way was dependable Argthar, who, in the tradition of the blitzers of legend, blocked the run whilst Camfy, angry at her earlier deposal, trounced down the pitch and knocked both the dwarven player and the ball for six. Annoyingly, the ball was sent back to the halfway line in no-man’s land, however, Rianndrir had enough presence of mind to run over and pick it up – completely uncharacteristic of a blitzer! He then ran towards our own touchline with a couple of dwarves closing in quickly. Camfindys and Argthar rushed to cover his retreat as Rianndrir circled around and stood on the touchline awaiting the game’s end. A cynical move, some supporters might say, but one I was thankful of!

We drew! Against the group leaders! Awesome! Things were definitely looking up.

Blood Bowl Game Diary #2

2010-09-16T22:11:00.001+01:00

Match 2 VS The Scaled Scavengers

After a stern talking-to and a quick browse over a book I found in the library titled “Tactics: You may need them”, my team rallied for their next engagement. This time I was up against the lizardmen of Katchanooth. I noticed that the majority of the lizardmen team was made up of weak but fast players…. however, their stronger players were beasts twice our team’s average height with prehensile tails that could trip us as we passed them. It wasn’t looking like the match would go well.

We won the toss and took the received the kick. Good old Morty stepped over and caught the ball as it hurtled into our half. “Nice catch!”, I yelled though my voice might have been lost in the mug of warm beer that I was drowning myself in – in preparation of our impending defeat. The rest of my team ran something called an “interference pattern”, covering and blocking all the lizards so that they would be unable to hit Morty with any force.

Unfortunately it appears that we underestimated those weaker, faster lizards as they easily moved around our players without so much as a trip or foul. They closed down on poor Morty and tackled him to the ground though, once again, he managed to pass off the ball to one of our players (this time into his hands). Banfil (the guy with the ball) shot up the sideline towards their touch line and was immediately knocked out of play by a charging Skink. Those things are annoying!

The ball was thrown back into play in our own half and, as the players all ran to collect it, the lizardmen Saurus took the opportunity to fell most of our team. Mortbean, the ol’ mucker, grabbed the ball before the Skinks could arrive and score and passed it off to Camfindys – who sprinted heavily up the pitch towards our unconscious players and the Saurus who had done the unconscioufying. Luckily, all of my players got to their feet and provided cover from the front while, unluckily, the Skinks caught up with Camfindys from behind. She managed to fend off one attack but was knocked out by a second Skink who sacrificed his own consciousness to pry the ball from her hands.

This must have confused the other lizardmen as they managed to collect the ball and then field a pass backwards into empty space. Camfindys and Argthar pushed forward, blocking and collecting the ball. Camfy did a sweet-looking little pirouette and ran to the touch line where she scored. I briefly considered adding more armour to her attire so as to protect her from the depredations of enemy teams but, as she performed her celebration, all thought of such things quickly evaporated as I made a mental note to personally congratulate her later that evening for making the score.

1-0

A decision that I may come to regret after she was knocked out upon kick-off. Is it considered taking advantage of someone who has amnesia? I guess we’ll take care of that if it crops up! Fortunately, half time came around and allowed her to regain her senses and return to the field for the second half.

We kicked to the lizardmen, who collected the ball and formed a Cambrian square dance around the ball holder. It was an effective defensive manoeuvre which also resulted in them being unable to move the ball very quickly. Taking advantage of this, Lanlil and Ryanndrir took out a Saurus, injuring him in the process. Quite satisfying!

Unfortunately, breaking that Cambrian square dance was proving far trickier and none of my players could get a hand on the Skink holding the ball. Lanlil, overconfident from his take-down of a saurus, launched himself at a puny skink and was knocked completely unconscious for his troubles and stretchered off the pitch. This gave the lizardmen a chance to make a break for our touch line with only Mortbean and Ryanndrir blocking the way. What with the Skink’s ability to run circles around our defence, the next moment screaming filled the air as it ducked through Mortbean’s legs and scored.

1-1

The lizardmen, sensing victory, kicked the ball deep into our half, requiring Mortbean run backwards to pick it up. Unfortunately, Morty must have picked up some sort of eye injury because he promptly fumbled the ball and stood there wiping his face as the lizardmen tried to move forward against our defensive lines, though they held firm. Once he had actually collected the ball, Morty ran up the field and handed off to Riisee (I should really look into making up nicknames that aren’t so cutesy) who also ran around the lizardmen right against the left sideline. She obviously wasn’t looking where she was going because a Skink came from midfield and chucked her into the roaring crowd, sustaining a major injury in the process. Somehow we managed to retain control of the ball after the lizardmen fumbled a pass and Morty once again sprinted with the ball across the pitch to hand it off to Enddar who wasn’t far from the lizardmen touchline… just in time for the final whistle to blow. Nuts!!

I took this opportunity to purchase another cheerleader and also an apothecary for any future matches as I thought he might come in useful at some point…

Blood Bowl Game Diary #1

2010-09-15T16:22:00.012+01:00

Match 1 VS The Bramble Blockers

As my team lined up on the pitch a sudden tremor hit me…. I barely knew how to play the game. I mean, I really barely knew how to play the game. I’d done the tutorials but they often felt like they covered up information or didn’t make the mechanics clear enough to me during die rolls. However, strong-willed as I am I set my face in stone and watched the match begin in grim determination.

They kicked to us and as the ball landed the centre of our field pushed theirs back while the runner, Mortbean, picked up the ball and ran straight across the field to an opening our team were leveraging wide on the right side of the pitch. Having run out of steam, Mortbean attempted to pass the ball off to another player and promptly dropped the ball on the floor. I realised now, that throwers are named so for a reason!

Taking advantage of the situation, several wood elves streamed through the defensive lines and picked up the ball. My players tried to organise a defence but it came to nothing as, time and again, they were knocked to the floor trying to get to the ball holder, a wardancer named Balldeorn (I think the translation of this is ball hog). My team appeared to rally briefly as they knocked down several Bramblers until my idiotic witch elf, Camfindys, pushed Balldeorn ‘back’… by which I mean forward toward our touchline. She tried to salvage the situation but the wardancer just, well, danced around the witch elf and scored.

0-1

After the kick, Camfindys, who obviously felt some portion of guilt (a weak emotion if ever there was one!) charged into the fray. This would have been a noble endeavour if not for her managing to get herself injured and stretchered off the pitch. Somehow though, despite the sight of one of our stronger players being removed from play, the rest of the team pulled up their panties and made a run up the pitch, with Mortbean, holding the ball, steaming ahead of the pack…. Only to run out of steam and fall over, spilling the ball. This unfortunate event allowed a wood elf to pick up the ball and pass it off to their thrower and, as my defence organised themselves, the thrower threw the ball through a humongous gap in my central defence to their receiver who scored an immediate touchdown.

0-2

I slapped my hand on my forehead – something that one of my coaches later suggested that we patent, though I dismissed him saying that it was unlikely to catch on – and cursed the benevolent gods of the flammable wood tribes, Deh and Ooh. This was going to be a long match.

My team were quickly losing cohesion. After the kick off, Argthar and a couple of others hit their central formation hard in a fit of anger. They knocked one guy down and, right in front of the ref, proceeded to kick the everliving sh*t out of him.

Red card.

Stupid m*therf*ck*ng Argthar!! What the hell was he thinking? Worse still, the player on the floor didn’t even appear to be hurt and the wood elves pushed through our lines to attack Mortbean who had idly picked up the ball during the fracas. I and the rest of our measly supporters (who, granted were mostly here to watch the cheerleader) shouted at him to move as Ball Talu (translation: Ball Breaker), a wood elf lineman, hurtled towards him. Semi-luckily, Morty tossed the ball forward in panic before being flattened and it landed next to one of my players who watched it as one of the wood elves nimbly sprinted by and plucked it off the ground. Damnit!

I looked at the clock and realised that they might not even have enough time to effect a touchdown before half time and I frantically waved my arms around in what I thought was a motion that would induce our team to do something. Luckily, they did and a couple of running wood elves were tripped as they tried to get past our defence. Half time came none-too soon!

After a break, during which I swore and swore until I had no words left, Mortbean kicked the ball into their half and I watched as they formed an Aladrian circle (which is actually more of a square) around their thrower who had picked up the ball. Their catcher and a lineman ran forward and thankfully my team moved to surround them as the thrower cast the ball into the air. We all watched as it sailed towards the catcher only to be intercepted by our brave Rynnear who hit the ground running with everyone who was in our half directly behind him. I should have known not to get too excited about this turn of events as, just past the half-way line, he was knocked down by the angry catcher who then tossed the ball back into my half – though no one was there to receive it.

“Another bit of good luck”, I said to myself as I rubbed my hands. Only, it wasn’t… since Lamael moved from next to the big Ent, er, I mean Treeman towards the ball without first looking for low-hanging branches and was promptly stretchered off the pitch with a nice big red lump on his forehead. Stupid boy!

Balldeorn streamed forward and collected the ball, followed closely by several wood elves playing a defensive formation. There literally was nothing my players could do, though Riisilneth the witch elf who tried to block the soon-to-be scorer from making the touchline.

0-3

What a mess! There wasn’t much time left on the clock now so I called to my team to run an all out attack to try and score at least one retaliatory touchdown. Unforunately, my shouting obviously distracted the players because the damned wood elves breezed past our team as the ball they had just kicked flew through the air into our half.

Sensing disaster, Malion threw himself at one of the charging wood elves, only to knock both himself and the runner down. The rest of the wood elves collected the ball and scored without any of our other players even moving from the starting position.

0-4

I wasn’t sure if managers could be fired before they’d even played one game but I felt as though it might be happening to me in the dying moments of this abortion of a game.

In an odd bit of luck, or perhaps pity (the vile scum!), the wood elves dropped the ball short into their own half, allowing my team to select who received the ball; I gave it to Riisilneth so she could charge down the pitch and score. The wood elves decided that their good natured pitiful action was over and quickly knocked down the rest of my team as they surrounded Riisilneth, who jumped past them, only to be knocked down once she got into their half.

Game over.

I was beginning to regret the decision to enter into this tournament. My distant relative died for nothing…

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 11

2010-09-15T16:18:00.001+01:00

Amazingly, there's a new podcast up and edited! Crazy stuff!

We talk a lot about Bioshock: Infinite, Dragon Age 2, Drakensang, Hearts of Iron 3, Minecraft, Oblivion and more!

The Easy Button Episode 11

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Blood Bowl Game Diary

2010-09-15T14:47:00.001+01:00

It was the night before Christmas, when all through the… wait a minute, it’s not December and we don’t celebrate Christmas in the world of Warhammer!!

Not to fret, instead I thought we’d celebrate through a good game of Blood Bowl (or two)! So I figured I’d set up a league and see about doing one of these autobiographical/fictional playthrough diary thingies.

Let’s set the record straight right here at the very start: I’ve never played Blood Bowl before. In fact, my only experience playing any of the Games Workshop games has been a little of the 40K universe, Necromunda and Warhammer Quest. These games are not really at all similar to something like Blood Bowl … well, apart from all the blood! In fact, I’m not really even very good at any of those games (nor, as you’ll see, at Blood Bowl itself).
On the other side of the equation I’ve played games like Championship Manager and in various Fantasy football leagues… never finishing in the top few places in any of them.

To put it short: I’m a newbie, a fool and an idiot for thinking I would be able to manage a team in a sport that I know nothing about. But that’s never stopped me before. So, just to make it so that you’ll have something to read I set the game up so that it was in classic rules mode and also on Easy (I’ll be playing against the AI).

**And so it starts!**

Liistgar Anstronmel (that’s me) is calling on his fellow evilies *ahem* …er, I mean vile and underhanded Dark Elf brethren to show these other pitiful races what-for! I’ve come into a bit of an inheritance after one of my distant relatives fell on a sword he borrowed from me…. (right after I gave it to him) and I’ve booked a place in one of the lower Blood Bowl leagues. Our team shalt be named: Valkyrie Warriors!

I started by looking over the types of players and seeing what their strengths and weaknesses were…. And immediately bought 4 Blitzers, 2 Witch Elves, 4 Linemen and a Runner. Let’s see who we’ve got!

Riisilneth – Witch Elf
Camfindys - Witch Elf

Argthar – Blitzer
Lanlil – Blitzer
Enddar – Blitzer
Rianndrir – Blitzer

Lamael – Lineman
Rynnear – Lineman
Malion – Lineman
Banfil – Lineman

Mortbean – Runner

I had a little spare cash after that spending spree to get one cheerleader to increase my chances of getting luckier random events that can happen upon kicking off. It basically appears to be a luck modifier to my untrained eyes…. Something that every team desparately needs in Blood Bowl.

More to come soon! I should be posting one up every couple of days.

Thoughts on Kong 2005... late though they may be...

2010-09-10T22:57:00.006+01:00

So, while i'm busy with other stuff. I thought i'd talk about King Kong (2005).

It's simultaneously a great-but-..... amazing take on humanity in desparation, greed... racism and passion. Episode 11 is coming soon - i promise!! But i'm watching the film. It started off, passionately enough. The 1920s or 30s era of America was depicted fantastically! The desperation of the characters is shown and expanded upon. Then, however, the film has a weak point where it depicts tribal africanism and becomes, IMO, quite racist in its depiction - not because those particular characters are black but because they are depicted in the most unthinking savagery that it becomes degrading in its spectacle.

Of course, there are many fictions within this period of the film that also do not work; such as the carrying of the sacrifice (Anne) during transit on all fours. (I think that she would have been crushed at this point as no load-bearing stress on a fist would not crush the person within the fist).

Then, further on, the fight between the ape and t-rexes....... the anthropomorphism between the 'lizards' (aka Tyranosaurus rex'es) makes no sense. Why would a being dedicate itself to the eradication of some entity it had just barely been made aware of, no less 3 or more T-rexes all coming to the same conclusion at the same time.

Clearly, if i were a T-rex, standing 3 stories tall, i would concentrate my efforts on a prey that was able to satisfy my appetite for more than a few seconds (aka the female sacrifice) otherwise i would ignore it. That is standard evolutionary procedure...

The worst thing of all is that the writer (as in the actor) is a metaphor for the courage of the writers...... which is possibly the most impotent and offensive part of the whole narrative.

Then, of course, the inverse existence of any participants that show adversity in the face of existence.... draws parallels between white and blonde idealism......... To a point. Mainly since Jack Black is dark haired. It is, to be fair, a strange realm, to be sure...

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 10

2010-08-19T07:25:00.005+01:00

Surprise! Episode 10 of The Easy Button: Double digits edition! This episode i find that i am incapable of talking. We chat about the games we've been playing - mainly Alien Swarm, Oblivion, Hearts of Iron and Echelon Book 1.

Enjoy!

The Easy Button Episode 10

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Minecraft!

2010-08-17T16:05:00.006+01:00

Games like Minecraft are why I love PC games. It is also an example of why, when people talk about PC games dying off, I shrug my shoulders and go play another PC game.

Minecraft is about as open-world a game as you can imagine. You start off by spawning into a 3-D world made of blocks of stuff. This stuff can be anything from water, dirt, gravel, and sand to coal, iron ore, diamonds, or gold. You have to build everything, the game gives you nothing at the start. But by mining different blocks of stuff and combining them in your inventory (actually, a crafting table in your inventory) in different ways, you can combine different sorts of stuff into tools or better items.

For example, you can take sand and coal, put them into a smelter (which you build using a different recipe) and create glass blocks. These glass blocks make great windows for your tower (or pyramid or house or - well, you get the idea).

The beauty of the game is that only your imagination is the limit. Well, and a few laws of physics. Gravity works, for example; you will fall to your death more than a few times. Also, at night monsters spawn (zombies and spiders and I am sure a few other nasties) and will try and kill you, so you will need some shelter in order to live through the night. Of course, you can make weapons to defend yourself but only after you find the appropriate raw materials.

My comments on this game would not complete without acknowledging the old-school, 8-bit graphics. While I like the simplicity of the presentation, others may not like the retro look of the game. Their loss. This game actually looks fantastic - some of the views are awe-inspiring.

Build roads. Explore dark caverns. Create towers. Plant trees. Do a million other things. Just get it and play it.

Free older version is available here. For-pay (9.95 Euros during the Alpha) version available here. The free version is browser-based, the for-pay version can be run in a browser or as a standalone application. Since it is written in Java, it should run on almost any computer.

Oh yeah, one other thing: it supports multi-player. There is a server version available. I have not tried it yet, but I hear that it is pretty cool sharing the world with other people (as long as they aren't assholes :) )

Support an indie developer and buy this. You will not be sorry, except for all the sleep you will lose. I will leave you with a video - enjoy!

75% Off.... for your soul.

2010-08-07T09:49:00.003+01:00

Seriously, it's a trite title but i'm pissed. So Machinarium, a cool-looking point and click game that i never wanted to get at full price is now $5 or £3.25ish (from memory) because of pirates (apparently) whereby the creator decided to lower the price down as an amnesty for un-bought copies. Of course, it's just a bit of clever marketing since anyone can buy it for that price.

So i was going to buy it.

"WAS."

Why is that word in the past tense, Duo? Well, my friend it's because of the stupid way in which you need to buy it. You can go to the site, click on download the game - click on purchase the game and then the real issue comes to the fore. You have two options for payment: credit card and paypal. Regardless of whether you want to do either one you are required to enter your:

First and last name
Your email address
country
full address including postcode (ostensibly as your mailing address)

So, not wanting to give out these precious details with no restrictions or legal wrap around them, i clicked on paypal which does not require any of these things to work. Funny thing is that you STILL can't proceed with the order. It's ridiculous. The whole point of paypal is that you only give out your email address and the funds are transferred from your bank account. This just smacks of fishing for information to resell onto other companies.

Worse still is the whole "mailing address" thing because, quite clearly, on the page before it states:

You will get download links for 3 versions of the game (Windows, Mac, 32bit Linux) and the soundtrack (in MP3 format). Please note that you are not ordering CD version of the game! Also you need at least 1024x768 screen resolution!

So it makes even less sense.

Amantia design - i'm willing to buy your game, just make it so i can do so without giving away my first born.

Is the gaming industry about to die?

2010-08-04T19:49:00.002+01:00

Controversial title aside, there is some evidence that this may be the case!!

It's come to my attention that yet another beloved PC non-FPS franchise is likely to be FPSed (Definition: first person shootered; see neutered): Syndicate. Not bad enough that X-com is also going this route but I soon expect to see the announcements of FPS 'revivals' of Wing Commander, Koronis' Rift, Baldur's Gate and Theme Park.

"So why the doom and gloom?", you ask.

"Renegade...", I sourly reply. "See, also, Enforcer."

Yes, that's right! Two FPS games in a long line of non-FPS games (that's RTS and TBS respectively). The birth of Renegade marked the end of Westwood Studios and the downward spiral of the Command and Conquer series. Similarly, Enforcer was the death knell for the X-COM brand.

Extrapolating these events draws me to the shocking conclusion (and also the title of this post)..... is the gaming industry about to die?

VAC a palarva!

2010-07-27T15:58:00.002+01:00

So, there was this whole malarky with Valve and mass bannings via VAC, the automated cheat detection software, of supposed Modern Warfare 2 cheaters. They all complained and they got beat on by the community because 'Valve is never wrong'..... then today, Valve admitted that the bans had been handed out in error, apologised, restored the banned accounts, gifted away a free game and it seems everyone has moved on. All hail our Valve overlords, those gracious, beneficent godsons!

Or not quite... at least for me. I've been long-term unhappy with the way that Valve's support system works. They appear to be understaffed, resulting in long wait times for simple queries or issues which are also often written in the form of copy/pasted FAQ standardised responses.... Hey, Valve, if the answer was in the FAQ then don't you think i would have looked there first as when you go to submit a ticket it tells you about 10 times about the FAQ...?

Then there's the whole golden egg in which VAC bans are definitive, 100% correct and are unable to be queried, petitioned or appealed. The logic behind this is that VAC is never wrong. Only that, as seen this week (and in previous instances), it can be.... Since right-minded people know that software is never 100% all the time and that humans themselves can also make mistakes and you end up with a system which is almost, in effect, the gaming death penalty for your Steam account.

I say almost because VAC bans result in the loss of the online portion of your game and all other games utilising the same engine under your account for VAC-enabled servers.... What you will also find is that the account itself it labelled as being VAC banned which can and will result in third parties banning you from their servers if they look at your profile. It's also the case that the ban is permanent. I feel that, for such an infraction (and while i never cheat myself and hate cheaters with a passion) banning more than just the game that you were caught banning on is wildly unfair though many with a scorched-earth, shoot now, ask questions later mentality see these issues as collateral damage in a war in which it is acceptable to have that collateral damage. (These are words from discussions i've had with people in various places like RockPapgerShotgun!)

****

What gets me the most riled up about this instance is that before, the unquestioning Valve-lovers stated emphatically that VAC was never wrong and if you complained in the forums for being banned these people demonised you, basically spitting on your virtual body with Valve's moderators (and at other places too) doing nothing to stop this.... there's no question of innocence because VAC and Valve are never wrong.

So now we have an instance where Valve has widely and publically stated that the system had picked up a false positive due to "a combination of conditions" (though there have been other times in the past whereby innocent use of mods has resulted in a ban). What this results in is not questioning of the system as it stands but instead people who rally to Valve's banner will now confidently state that if you're banned you're either a cheat OR Valve will rescind the ban and apologise for it. There's no admission that Valve simply will not catch all times that their software and their personnel fail (which will happen) and it means that they can just continue steamrolling away without any real thought towards the consequences to any innocent person crushed by a ban - both through financial/game and also social means.

****

The support/deterrent sytem needs improving and there are several things i'd have in mind to improve it:

1. Make bans an escalation offense. There's a reason why the death penalty (or any other piece of legislation that effectively destroys that aspect of a person's life) is not approved by the majority of people. Most systems have a graduated response.... after all, you don't lose your car and your driving licence because you went 2MPH over the speed limit once.
E.g.

First instance of cheating - warn the user that they have been caught cheating via a PM or email and then ban them from online activities across the whole of steam for a week or two. - This gives them time to appeal and also sort out any problems with their account. i.e. if they've been hacked or whatever (imagine if Blizzard or your Bank closed your account every time there was suspicious activity going on in it with no way to appeal or try and sort it out!)
You then get a probationary period after this of, say, 8 weeks in which time, if you are caught cheating again you go straight to number 5 on this list.
Second instance of cheating you get a 6-12 month online ban in the game you cheated in and get a temporary label on your account detailing which game you cheated in.
Once they have served this sentence they get the label removed and are on probation for 6 months. If they break their probation they go onto numer 7.
Third instance of cheating you get a 12-24 month ban in both the singleplayer and online portion of that game and the label is again added to the account.
Probationary period after this is again 6 months.
Fourth instance, you get a permanent ban in the game you were cheating in - both online and offline and people will be able to see that you are banned from the game in your steam account - though there won't be a label on the account next to the name.

So, say, if you are banned initially you would get a ban of two weeks. If your appeal fails you will be playing with extra scrutiny on you in the eight weeks following that. If you don't cheat in that period then you go back to being 'threat level 1' though if you are banned a second time you will be banned for 6-12 months. If you are caught within that first probationary period then you could be banned for 12-24 months. etc. etc.

The bans would also not be stacked across different games. So if you were banned in Half Life 2 then your copy of TF2 or L4D would not be affected. Plus, there would be a time-out clause in the system as well whereby, if you were banned once... if you weren't caught at all again on any game within another 12 months then you would only receive a two week ban if you were banned a second time after that 12 month period.

It's not perfect but it stops people from being unduly punished in the case they are innocent... It also helps people who were tempted to cheat to mend their ways. You could even cut out the appeals process and i'd be happy with this system... but having no appeals and no graduated response is just a double whammy that is bound to impact many legitimate players.

A new idea for Quick Time Events...

2010-07-23T17:35:00.003+01:00

After reading one more time about how people hate quick time events I had an idea of how to remove one of the obstacles whilst still keeping them (since developers seem keen to tie them to cutscenes wrapped around gameplay).

Essentially, one of the complaints levelled at QTEs in Shamus' article/comic is that your attention is diverted away from the action. This is an entirely fair critique and is one of the reasons why i do not like QTEs. The idea i had was to separate QTEs from the cutscene. i.e. The gameplay would pause as if you were queuing up actions (which i seem to remember from a game i once played a long time ago - though which one it was escapes me at this moment) and the prompts would come up.

There's two ways you can do this and one is already sort of implemented in some games where they slow down the gameplay and blur the screen while you try and hit the button. The downside with this mechanism is that the player might have to go through the component parts of the cutscene and then fail again.

The second way, and the one i would prefer, is to have all the prompts come up on the screen before the action starts. Then if you pass or fail you get to see the whole sequence in one go - allowing the player to enjoy the action as if it were just a cutscene.

Of course, all of this is just an end-run around the problem: I'd prefer to just have a cutscene or actual controllable gameplay. Also remember, developers, don't put things in the cutscenes that you cannot do in the game!!

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 9

2010-07-15T19:33:00.003+01:00

We're live(ish) again and forging ahead with the podcast-making. It's sort of like baby-making... but with less thrusting and more feinting. This week we talk about the games we've been playing... possible futures for the Team Fortress franchise along with a unintended divergence into privacy and other such things!

The Easy Button Episode 9

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Privacy...

2010-07-13T05:19:00.006+01:00

Just a quick note/thought here.... We talked a little about privacy on our upcoming podcast but i thought that this article on Ars Technica was interesting since it highlighted one aspect of industry-led governance that i find troubling.

The ESRB has a "Privacy Certified" badge (which i had no idea existed) but what this badge is and what it represents is a little more nebulous than it sounds:

"The role of the ESRB Privacy Online program is to make sure that member websites—those that display our seal on their pages—are compliant with an increasingly complex series of privacy protection laws and are offering a secure space for users to interact and do business online"
"This includes addressing issues like what types of personal information can be collected, how companies must handle that information with respect to individuals' right to privacy, and ensuring that people are informed of exactly where and how their information will be used."

This is all good... though i'm not always satisfied that this complex information is easily and clearly provided to users. Those massive T&C for websites are usually no better than the EULAs of games.... lots of legal talk that makes little real-world sense.

"But online privacy protection doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as anonymity. It's about making sure that websites collecting personal information from users are doing so not only in accordance with federal regulations but also with best practices for protecting individuals' personal information online"

This is where i have a problem. "Best practices" is essentially a cop-out phrase that means "there's no industry standard, we just took an average of what everone's doing and then said that was okay". If no company is performing well then the standard they are held to is lower... if one or two companies are holding themselves to a higher standard it does not affect the average overall if the larger percentage of companies are more lax. The ESRB, PEGI and other industry bodies need to sort out a base-standard of privacy along with an easily understandable bit of text that explicitly outlines what is collected and what is done with that information. It also needs to be higher than legal requirements as they are often the very lowest rung of responsibility.

My problem with the whole Blizzard forum thing is that it is the primary means for tech support since, from what i've heard, the phone support is completely overwhelmed by demand. The article says that the ESRB worked with Blizzard to make the whole thing opt-in and 18+ only.... however, that doesn't seem to be the case since you could not opt to use the forums without using your/a real name.

[EDIT]

And this is why we need higher standards. The ESRB, in a response to the privacy complaints from all the people who wrote to them about the debacle over at Blizzard's forums, sent out an email containing each and every person's email address. Granted, it's probably minimised a little through the fact that these people were all concerned about privacy and are so unlikely to take advantage of other people's disadvantage.... but it's certainly a bloody nose considering all the talk of privacy within the email itself!

"ESRB, through its Privacy Online program, helps companies develop practices to safeguard users' personal information online while still providing a safe and enjoyable video game experience for all."

Hehehe...

Why Videogames Are Not Art

2010-07-07T01:28:00.001+01:00

or, How Mass Effect 2 Ruined the Mood

I was finally finishing Mass Effect 2 (caution, thar be slight spoilers here!). I'd done all the loyalty missions. I'd upgraded my ship, flew through the relay thingy, fought a bunch of weird bio-mechanical dudes. I killed the last big baddie. I'd saved my crew. Hell, I'd saved the entire damn galaxy - humans, Turians, Solarians, Quarians, Geth, Asari, even those funny little guys with the breathing problem that kept calling me "Earth-clan". It was all very dramatic - intense, and fulfilling, and (more to the point of this post) cinematic.
As the last big foozle explodes, stuff starts falling all around. Again, a very tense, tightly directed sequence that is the payoff for thirty-ish hours I invested in the game. As my party and I are running for our ship, a slab of something from the baddie's ship falls on Shepard and knocks him down. Shepard gets up....

...and his backpack clips right through the huge slab of alien masonry.

Oh, videogames! How much money was spent on that final sequence? How many man-hours and blood and sweat and tears by extremely talented people? How much of myself was invested in that final scene? (Too damn much, for this to make me react the way that I am) And, sure enough, videogames show that, once again, they are videogames.

Provocative title aside, what is my point? My point is really that video games have a long long long way to go before they can be considered as being able to deliver complete emotional experiences. Videogames as a medium are at the point where, for a small sliver of time, they can be provocative, terror-inducing, funny, tender, capable of inducing a panoply of emotions. The problem is that this is only for a tiny sliver of time; then, it's back to the grindy, videogamey foundation. It's not that videogames are not capable of creating an emotional response, it is that they cannot sustain it for any length of time.

Think of a game, any game, where you've had an emotional response. Think about how long you were actually responding. Then think about something that happened shortly thereafter that "took you out of the moment". I could have been a technical glitch or an achievement pop-up (dammit, don't show those when they would be off-putting in the game to show!). It could have been some ham-fisted story-telling, incongruous dialog or action by an NPC. It could have been something else. But I am pretty certain that something happened that killed the emotion you were feeling. You may have gone on and had fun with the rest of the game, but something important died then. Something important about our shared hobby and us as people.

"It's just a game!" I hear you saying, oh hypothetical reader. "Who cares?" And you have a valid point. It is just a game, something we do for fun and entertainment. But we also watch film and read books and listen to music for the same purpose. We would not tolerate something like this in those media; it would be decried as being "bad". Poor dialog, for instance, in a book or film makes for a bad book or film, not a great one.

Why should we give videogames a free pass on this? Mass effect 2 was a really well written, well directed game; I don't think anyone would hold it up as being "bad". On the contrary, one could successfully argue that Mass Effect 2 much much closer to the pinnacle of videogames story-telling and "cinematic" experiences than the nadir. So we are not talking about a "bad" game here by any means. Which I think proves the point about why videogames are so far from being able to carry an emotional response for any length of time - if a really good game works less well in this regard than a poor piece of music or a novel, that's a problem with videogames as a medium. The fact that it works well sometimes, for small instances of time, just makes the "videogaminess" of it all stand out in contrast that much more.

What gamers accept as being "just a game" would not be tolerated in the worst Uwe Boll claptrap. Games have the ability and the promise to be so much more than they are, but we settle for so much less. And that's sad.

NGJ: Wishing for the moon but finding that you've already been there...

2010-07-05T19:43:00.004+01:00

NGJ (Or New Games' Journalism as it is sometimes known) has been doing the rounds for a number of years now. Popularised by some minor British journalist*, and taken up by a number of outlets and other 'journos' (as we in the industry call them*), it received and receives a fair amount of coverage. Honestly, i'm not sure i get what all the fuss is about.

Reading through the examples given i'm struck with an overwhelming sense of dejá vu. What is probably rightfully described as a new wave of gaming journalism (because, lets face it, what we had before was primarily a review-based format) this is not new in the wider scheme of things.

We're talking about an article - plain and simple.

Yes i know the term 'article' in common usage covers every type of written piece in a publication but when i think of article i think of what NGJ is.... and it's been around for quite a while; from travel writing and cookery books to men's and music magazines, alternative styles of writing - somewhere in between an opinion piece and a history lesson - has enjoyed a long history of minor success and while it's important that the gaming industry also has this aspect to its journalism the type of pompous self-importance that names an existing style of writing needs to be carefully managed.

Of course, perhaps i'm purposely misinterpreting the reason that this whole thing was started - as a means of trying to instigate change in a stagnant industry. In that respect, perhaps it's succeeded or perhaps it's just the inevitable creep of this style from other areas of publication.... the question is: How would we ever know?

It's unfortunate that New Games' Journalism isn't new at all, it's just that gaming is still catching up....

* This is completely tongue in cheek

Kinect and it's specs!

2010-06-30T12:17:00.004+01:00

Seems it's a busy day, news-wise!

Seems Eurogamer has the scoop on Kinect. I was quite skeptical of Kinect and it's abilities on our last podcast and it seems my fears might not be that far off the mark. The technology for the kinect is generally scaled down from its prototype (take that Bioshock 2 haters!):

Maybe Tboon can enlighten us a bit better on the field of view specs (which i've posted below).... that's a little over my head, but the resolution is half of what we thought with at a distance of up to 3.5m. My simple calculations for a distance of 2.35m (middle distance for the depth sensor) put it at approximately 3.24 DPI. Considering they're supposedly only tracking whole body parts as opposed to individual pieces (such as the fingers) as the tech was originally designed to be able to do, then it's unlikely to be much of a problem for gesture control..... that poor depth 'perception' might limit what developers can and can't do on the system though: Gestures won't be able to be too slight otherwise they will not register - especially if the camera is unable to properly detect the depth. This likely means the movement of an arm that is in the plane of the body will be easier to detect than if it is pointing towards the camera.

More worryingly is the potential only two player limit. I don't quite understand why the system can track six people but with only two participants.... i'm not understanding the difference there. This could limit the appeal of the system as opposed to the Wii and Move but then, to be honest, how many games allow more than two people to play a game when on the screen at the same time anyway? From my understanding this is rare even for Wii games.

One interesting tidbit is that the motorised portion of the device is only for effectively setting up the monitoring area of the cameras so that it'll work on multiple surfaces/height levels and in different environments. It won't be used to follow users around if they move towards the edges of the monitoring area - which is what we saw from demos at E3.

Overall these differences in spec from prototype to final product might not make much difference in user experience as Eurogamer reports that, having tried both pieces of tech, they state that "the overall experience is fairly close". Playing devil's advocate - it makes me wonder if the overall experience is being held back...

Sensor

Colour and depth-sensing lenses
Voice microphone array
Tilt motor for sensor adjustment

Field of View

Horizontal field of view: 57 degrees
Vertical field of view: 43 degrees
Physical tilt range: ± 27 degrees
Depth sensor range: 1.2m - 3.5m

Data Streams

320x240 16-bit depth at 30FPS
640x480 32-bit colour at 30FPS
16-bit audio @ 16 kHz

Skeletal Tracking System

Tracks up to 6 people, including 2 active players
Tracks 20 joints per active player
Ability to map active players to Xbox LIVE Avatars

Audio System

Xbox LIVE party chat and in-game voice chat (requires Xbox LIVE Gold Membership)
Echo cancellation system enhances voice input
Speech recognition in multiple languages

I love this...

2010-06-30T08:48:00.005+01:00

Mark Rein has been talking about the new platforms like the iPhone and future handheld devices and is saying that triple-A games won't go away. I agree with him on that note but what has me more worried is what he goes on to say:

"I'd rather sell 10 million games at $25 and have a chance to sell DLC than 5 million at $50 on a disc that gets traded around," he said.

"I think it'll change, and it'll change for the benefit of the customers. We're definitely going to experiment with micro-transactions and lower-price games."

Well, of course you'd rather do that! So would everyone. I mean, lets take an example of how much it costs to make one of those games these days.....anywhere between $20-100 million. Those are the copies that are being shoved around on disc which your customers are trading around. Those filthy scumbags!

So the new plan is to half the cost to the consumer but the games will be on cheaper platforms: we're talking about development costs of less than a million. Not only that but there'll be micro-transactions as well though no guarantee that they'll be on those cheaper games.... PSYCH! Of course they'll be on the cheaper games.

Great business plan guys. Shit for consumers though.... but hey! Like many people I see on gaming forums say: "Who cares how much we're shafted when the developers are making money and giving us games?"

(Okay, no one actually said that.... but i interpret that sort of thing from what they do say!)

:)

Seriously, it's just a slog towards taking all control away from consumers... making exponentially more money whilst offering exponentially less for the same amount of money.... reducing value. The problem i have with it is that it will work.

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 8

2010-06-26T13:06:00.004+01:00

Hello, and welcome to the Easy Button!* The show were you get to hear me miss the point several times as Tboon goes over my head with his high-brow humour and intellectual debate.

You might have to pre-stitch up your sides this week as Tboon had sharpened his wit to a fine edge so prepare yourself for some laughs! Though he also pulls out his "old man curmudgeon" act for a bit of naysaying. :D

Enjoy!

The Easy Button Episode 8

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*I swear i'm going to get that right one of these days!!

Ponderings: Deus Ex

2010-06-24T20:23:00.004+01:00

It's interesting playing Deus Ex 10 years after its release. Doubly interesting for me because this is the first time i've played it.... ever. There's no rose-tinted glasses to improve my experience. No past knowledge of controls or levels or AI to exploit. Even worse, I have all the knowledge and experience of nouvelle gaming – all the improvements and accoutrements afforded the modern gamer and their games of choice. Usually, in this cutting light, the games of the past just do not hold up.

Deus Ex does.

I often say that gameplay trumps graphics and this is definitely a case of that; though in its time Deus Ex was no slouch in the graphics department. I'm about 7 hours into the game and enjoying it a lot. People often extol the multitude of choices available for the player when talking about Deus Ex and, yes, every level has multiple paths on which you can walk..... narrow paths, but (marginally) different nonetheless. Going in with no expectations of the game I haven't been disappointed with these options so far but ultimately they seem a lot more shallow than some people might lead you to believe – they're not so far from the choices available in System Shock 2 or Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (which SO needs a sequel!!) in that what you specialise in with your augmentations and skills tends to dictate what method you use to bypass whatever obstacle is in the way.

What sets Deus Ex apart from other games like the ones mentioned is the pseudo-RPG mission mechanics with primary and optional secondary objectives available from various places within the mission areas. There just isn't another game that I can think of that combines this multifaceted mission approach that is often found within RPGs with the linear-ish plot and interface of a traditional first person shooter.

On the poorer side of things the dialogue isn't great, nor is the voice acting but then they're not any worse than 90% of the games released today..... and that's the saddest thing about this and various other games from that golden era of PC gaming: that games really haven't improved much over the last ten years. Even Half-Life 2, the second coming for PC games, showed little in terms of gameplay improvement over its predecessor – it was all prettied-up and the set-pieces were all perfectly calibrated for various play styles – but the “go here and do this for no real reason” element of the early behemoths of gaming was still there. Not only this but story and plot were pretty much espoused in that game in favour of “experience” and they only really came to the fore during the subsequent (and excellent) episodes.

Looking back, there was so much promise coming into the new millennium for gaming and yet overall I don't think we've really hit those expectations yet. There's always room for growth and it's nice to be able to mull over what worked and what didn't and then try and emulate and evolve what has gone before. However, i'd like more games to emulate the other excellent games that aren't Half-Life from around the 1995-2001 period. Half-Life is great and I do enjoy the games and appreciate what they've brought to the gaming landscape but when every first person shooter you play reminds you of the meticulous set-pieces and emotionally-charged dialogue and inter-character relationships of Half-Life 1 and 2 you get to wondering where the other influences should be.

I'm tentatively looking forward to Deus Ex: Human Revolution as I want what Deus Ex had to offer but with the influences of Half Life to bring it all together. It may be that this is the first game of its type to make something more than Half Life in a different skin.

Co-op or competitive?

2010-06-15T23:13:00.002+01:00

Back in the day, competitive meant playing against other people. It meant 1 VS anyone else. Team play meant competitive play in a cooperative environment. You don't play a team game alone. However, it looks like game playing itself has come down to this.
Players do not see themselves as part of a team. They do not control themselves as part of a team, of a greater whole. You watch those people play online and you see them just shooting, regardless of the consequenses because alls that matters to them is whether they, personally, get more or less points. What happened to the team game? What happened to sacrifice and honour?

Did the lack of team play on console over the last few years do this? Or maybe the current trend towards self-glorification? Honestly, it's probably neither and both a the same time. Humans have, as a society during my lifetime, become much more self-obsessed and self-indulgent... they believe that they are more important than other people and so there are corollary effects on how we perceive ourselves both in-game and in real life. It's a never-ending feedback effect that results in people that experience life in a way that is alien to most older people: they are part of a team but soley responsible.... they are not co-operating but innovating. You look at corporate CVs and you see the result of this social experimenteering... none of it is real and yet it all is. But how do you tell the difference?

Every single thing is real and yet it is not the exact experience of reality. *I* am responsible for X and yet, unknown to you, several dozen people were also responsible for X taking shape. It's ego... it's personality.... it's everything and nothing all combined to form a globulous whole that results in a non-definition. I worked in a team that resulted in my own personal goal....

Personally, i hope we move away from this self-aggrandisement because ultimately we are not generally responsible.... nor are we capable. Society is a mass of links and co-operations against other cooperations.... 1 vs 1, or deathmatch.... that is individual skill. Anything else is co-operation. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we see where our strengths lie.

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 7

2010-06-10T12:58:00.004+01:00

Amazing! Another podcast, just one week after the previous one..... We'll just ignore the fact that it was over a month since it was recorded. ;)

This episode we talk around the water cooler as usual; Fable 2, Master of Magic et al. but we also chat about remakes and reboots and why they're good or bad.

Enjoy!!

The Easy Button Episode 7

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Regenerating health and infinite bad guys: A recipe for boredom?

2010-06-08T20:38:00.009+01:00

In the years since Halo was first released regenerating health has become very popular in many first person and third person games - we've even discussed it on the podcast - but the last few games i've played that included this mechanic began to bore me pretty quickly. I think that i identified the problem: infinitely respawning enemies combined with a lack of AI challenge.

When you're given a game you want to be challenged at least slightly by the enemies at all points of the game. You want to be able to beat down enemies because of your skill (especially the enemies you faced at the start of the game during the latter part of the game) not because they're easy at all points in the game. At some point it becomes a shooting gallery and your god-like character has virtually no resistance with the exception of certain insta-kill situations.

Take the most recent example i played of this type of game, Wolfenstein (2009). The game was pretty good. There were weapon upgrades as well as power upgrades all set within a hub world that allowed limited exploration and collection of items. I really enjoyed it to begin with but after a few hours i'd grown bored due to the 4 types of enemies acting very predictably. They never did anything except advance on me and take cover so they died pretty easily. This meant that my character had infinite health and infinite ammo on at least two weapons as you could just travel around the hub world exterminating the zombie Nazis* and collecting their dropped weaponry. The fact that you get really cool-looking super weapons was lost on me because apart from one or two notable instances there just was no reason to use them and, since the ammo for those was scarce, i tended to save them until those particular instances occurred (there's three i can think of).

This is not to say i didn't die. The game itself has a difficulty though i would call some of the developer's tactics a little cheap or underhanded.

The way i'd fix this** would be to have limited enemies like there are when you're actually on a mission. Killing a thousand Nazis in the city made no sense. I'm a good soldier but not that good... and eventually tactics and strategy would result in the Nazis pulling out of the city and just bombarding it into ashes and rubble. That's what logic would say - rather than just sending legions of peons to their inevitable deaths. To help with this new mechanic i'd make it more difficult to have a head-on approach. Your allies in the two factions of the game would become very important then: do a mission to curry favour and then ask them for a diversion or for safe passage through espionage into enemy territory.
I'd design the levels to allow flanking by having the linear path dotted with arenas (something that this game lacked) as was previously seen in Halo itself. Allow movement within a space so that the player and the enemies can use it to their advantage.

One particularly underused feature in Wolfenstein (or at least i thought) was the being able to walk through certain walls that had a black sun icon stencilled onto them. There was no reason for the stencil to be there in modern achitecture that i could think of and the mechanic tended to be used very sparingly to tackle obvious obstacles such as reaching a document in a locked room etc. I would have preferred this ability to be more universal in its application to the battlefield arenas whereby the player could use it to disappear and then reappear elsewhere. A real beneficial ability rather than what i ended up using it for: spotting enemy targets when they were poorly outlined against the background.
I'd make some of the AI enemies have the same powers as me but not better than me. Especially if they're supposed to have "equal" amulets or suits or whatever. Give them improved AI routines to allow smarter thinking by assessing the situation (e.g. their and my health, their and my ammo and the surrounding allies on both their and my sides) than their dumb but cannon fodder-esque minions. There's nothing worse than having your super-powered guy only able to use his powers for 4 seconds when the enemy are able to use them indefinitely. Allow room for players to invent their own tactics on the fly by making the enemies use their powers and then have to recharge and then taking advantage of that.

So what do you think? Does this type of gameplay bore you? What would do or want to fix in a game like that?

*There are no zombies in the game, just bog-standard AI.
** I enjoyed Wolfenstein for what it was - which was certainly not a bad game.

Futurism and the negative Nancy's of today's future thinkers...

2010-06-07T01:25:00.003+01:00

I realise that it's late in the night and that, possibly, my self-induced drunken stupor is writing this response reflexively instead of my intellectual self writing this in an engaged manner but i was spell-bound by Jim Rossignol's musings on post-apocalyptica.

The thing i found most interesting was the paragraph where school children were found to have become more melancholy in their visions for the future. This resonated with me because, well, for a number of years now i've been quite melancholy in my visions of the future as well. I think that while Iain MacLeod's observations probably ring true in general, they are an indication of a much larger trend in human behaviour. Jim mentions the rosy past of futurism but, again, that was purely a reflection of the social feeling of the time. You look at the period from the end of WW2 towards 1960/70 and you see an unprecedented economic recovery AND expansion of knowledge which, coupled together, led the way forward to where we are today. It's not surprising that this period sparked fantastic imaginings for the world of tomorrow.

However, look a few years earlier (before and during WW1/WW2) and you quickly find that futurism was so much more darker.... indeed, even those works drawn up on the eastern horizon during the post WW2 - 1960/70s period were darker than those we are more familiar with in the west. Why? Because life was harder for those people. Let's face it, we are a collection of our experiences and art reflects and magnifies the hopes and fears of humanity.

So, while the golden age of western comics and sci-fi dealt with unlimited expansion in technology and zeal (while reminding us of the terrors of tyranny/bigotry/racism coming from the world wars), recent times reflect the more realistic imaginings of science and technology as depicted through the eyes of a sensationalistic and morbidly-focused press. We know so much more now..... we know what can be possible and what is more likely to be improbable. Where once our pages were graced with flying cars for everyone, we now realise that clean fuel technology is more likely to be present in the transportation of the future. Spin that image around in the politicalised news-reporting machine and you end up with an energy deficient future where only the privileged can afford to travel. Send it back through the poltical reporting machine of the 1950s/60s and you would instead end up with the Mr Fusion's of the Back to the Future franchise - a car that runs on rubbish and which has no emissions.

I guess what i'm trying to say is that the attraction of the golden age of sci-fi/imagination isn't that it was all positive and amazing... but how naive we were to believe what we thought it was okay to believe. I think, in this regard, Fallout 3 has this sentiment nailed perfectly; a place where each car has its own nuclear power supply and radiation disperses within a few minutes or years..... where unbound optimism has lead to a land devoid of hope. The new age is a place of reality and is where we strive for more realistic goals and in doing so we achieve hope through our efforts. Humans have survived as long as we have done because of our foresight: we can predict outcomes and though they're not always 100% right, knowing that something can happen means that you can be prepared for it. This means that we can be hopeful for the future despite naysaying that same future.... we must just be mindful in order to preserve our kind.

This isn't neccessarily bad, it just IS. It prepares us for the inevitable in such a way as to keep us motivated to do better. The old us would have made the expensive and hugely inefficient Concorde, the new us is going to make planes that can fly around the world non-stop on half the fuel load of a normal long-distance flight.

Isn't that amazing?

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 6

2010-05-31T14:26:00.003+01:00

Amazing! We hit a bank holiday weekend and I managed to get something done! I know it's a bit unconventional but I should be getting episode 7 up in the next day or so too.

Of course, all news is seldom good news and this post is no different. I managed to botch up the recording of this particular show which has meant that you're only getting the last two thirds of what we did originally. Ah well.... you win some you lose some.

This week we talked around the water cooler about the games we were playing and also some talk about how developers, publishers and communities interact.

The Easy Button Episode 6

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Podcast: The Easy Button Episode 5

2010-04-19T22:28:00.008+01:00

Okay....

Dear Readers... er, listeners... or whatever you prefer,

I'm writing in regards to the discussion we had last time about the podcast and am forwarding this on to you as per your request. Please find attached a copy of Episode 5

The Easy Button Episode 5

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Podcast: The Easy Button Episode 4!!

2010-03-29T20:49:00.005+01:00

It's finally here! Episode 4 of The Easy Button has landed after much disruption on my part. We have a bit more strong language in this episode so beware!

The Easy Button Episode 4

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The Easy Button drinking game words of the day:
Echo system
Nostalgia
Errm

**Warning, explicit language!**

1:32 Ubisoft DRM cracked?
3:33 Infinity Ward firings
10:40 Portal updates/Portal 2 hints

14:23 **The water cooler**
Brief mentions:
- Left 4 Dead 2/TF2 (PC)
- Europa Universalis 3 (PC)
21:42 - Interstate '76 (PC)
28:13 - Trine (PC)
32:46 - Shiren the Wanderer (DS)
36:44 - Resident Evil 5 (360)
44:55 - Brutal Legend

54:59 **Music Break**
56:25 **Topic of the week**
- Is the gaming industry releasing too many good games?
1:13:00 - Replaying games? Do you do it more on console or PC versus the other?
1:18:25 - Guilty game pleasures

1:26:20 **Music Break 2**
1:26:53 - Gaming regrets

The tower is falling...

2010-03-06T10:28:00.003Z

So, Ubisoft's DRM has apparently been hacked - or at least commented out in a cracked .exe. In a rather interesting move, the publisher has made it so that the first update to Assassin's Creed 2 allows the players to continue from the point where they lost their connection rather than being put back to the last checkpoint. It sort of strikes me as a move that's pointless since, most of the time you have to quit out of your game to sort out the connection issues in the first place and i'm pretty sure that once the game is closed, there's no way to resume from where you were...

It's interesting just how quickly this has been cracked. Even Starforce and other DRM took longer on their first sojourn into the world. Hopefully the answer from publishers and developers will not be to escalate this stupid war any further... the next step from this is a dongle-based authentication system..... Having to hack or buy hardware to use your games (although not undoable) becomes more unfavourable than just downloading a cracked .exe or ISO.

Podcast! The Easy Button: Episode 3

2010-03-03T23:55:00.004Z

It's amazing! We now have another podcast, done, dusted and with a minimal amount of dead chickens' entrails and other shenanigans to boot!

The Easy Button Episode 3

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Show notes:

The Easy Button drinking game words of the day: "Exposition" and "Errrm"

00:20 Ubisoft DRM
12:42 GoG plug!!
13:11 The water cooler - The games we've been playing:
13:18 Arcanum of Steamworks and Magic Obscura (link to GoG)
15:05 Interstate '76 (link to GoG)
16:47 Mass Effect 1
**Link to Shamus Young's ME2 story thoughts - WARNING SPOILERS** Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
23:55 Europa Universalis 3
32:28 Rainbow Six Vegas 2
42:25 Rome: Total War
56:39 - I wasn't talking about Age of Empires... I was talking about Empire Earth :D
57:06 Music Break
57:09 The evolution of co-op and social multiplayer - a.k.a. "Where I talk out of my ass about something i don't know anything about."
2:05:26 Outro

I'm afraid we lost the end of Tboon's part of the show so you'll have to suffer through my rambling at the end :)

DRM done (at least mostly) right!!

2010-02-25T10:42:00.002Z

Amazingly, despite the trend over the last few years regarding console to PC ports of games, Battlefield Bad Company 2 is looking really good. Not only is the game specifically designed to cater to the sensibilities of the PC (dedicated servers, server browser list, mouse interface, etc.) but its DRM also makes sense!!

If you're playing the single player game it only requires a CD/DVD check via securom. It does not contact the authentication server to see if there are activations available. If you want to play online then it does - you have to authenticate it once and that authentication lasts for 10,000 days before being required to re-authenticate. Another good feature is that when you uninstall the game, it automatically reclaims the authentication slot if you're connected to the internet as opposed to other games where you have to do it manually before you uninstall with a second, stand alone programme (I'm looking at you Dead Space and Crysis: Warhead).

Unfortunately, the game isn't perfect in its implementation. There's no LAN play, for example, and the DRM still has limited authentications but i'm impressed with the lack of online requirement to play the single player game. I seriously hope that this is a trend that is going to take hold in the gaming industry.

Podcast! The Easy Button: Episode 2

2010-02-10T19:25:00.006Z

Welcome back! Join us again on a journey of self-discovery, rambling overtures and general nonsense.

The Easy Button: Episode 2

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Once again, we have the games we've been playing: Aurora, Batman:Arkham Asylum and a few others to be sure.

Light sabers and their deadliness.

We talk about genres that we used to play and that have fallen out of our favour.

....and i have a rambling diatribe about the different types of gamer and how their choices can inform the evolution of games.

Dear Vegas 2 developers...

2010-02-07T21:50:00.002Z

Did you realise that your game is a little frustrating? I'm not talking about the good sort of frustrating that comes from a difficult challenge, either. I'm talking about the intentional cock-blocking and overall asshattery of your team mates who seem to think that in order to advance their own career that I must be removed, allowing them to take my place as squad leader.

I can't think of any tactical situation where moving out of cover, seeing tangos (sorry, i mean enemies) and trying to duck back into the same cover is not an inconceivable solution to the problem of avoiding death. However, my team mates immediately melt into the space my shadow was previously occupying with alarming regularity. Surely bullets penetrate even lightly armoured targets as myself and them standing/crouching so closely might result in their own untimely death. I didn't tend to notice this and other pathing issues that crop up frequently of the two AI-controlled squad members in Vegas 1 so i'm assuming that someone out there in developer land didn't remember the old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"...

Of arguably greater insult is the whole restart procedure whereby design leads (presumably) made the decision to have most equipment restock chests just after the last save checkpoint meaning that i have to re-equip any changes or refill my ammo/grenades every time i die in the sequence that follows that checkpoint. Not only is this particular oversight frustrating but it is accompanied by the decisions to a) not be able to clip through your team mates (or in fact, walk in a half metre radius around them or slide past them when at that half metre radius) and b) spawn with them directly in front of you and the line of progression, effectively making an impassable barrier to move forward each time you die and respawn until their dim-witted AI routines realise that you in fact do not want to "sex them up" by rubbing your body against their invisible clipping wall in a mime-icry of any true sexual act and instead wish merely to pass by their location.

Other than that, the game is okay, i guess. The sound could do with being balanced better in some circumstances when your audio settings for 99% of the game are fine but then for one or two "cutscenes" you are unable to distinguish the voice actors from the background noise of the helicopter despite having changed nothing.

Please could you address these issues in Vegas 3 (or whatever you're planning on doing with the Rainbow Six series next).

Kind regards,
Duoae.

Podcast! The Easy Button: Episode 1

2010-02-03T00:42:00.004Z

TA-DA!

We have a podcast, myself and Taylor (from the GWJ forums) and it's called The Easy Button. It's, surprisingly, a podcast about games and our love (and sometimes hate) of all things gaming.

Anyway here's the first episode:

The Easy Button: Episode 1

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Enjoy and leave feedback in the comments.

Compelling's replacement:

2010-01-24T00:20:00.003Z

I hereby declare that henceforth, "compelling" when used to describe an aspect of a video/computer game shall be instead replaced by submersive or immersive.

For example:

X feature makes the game more compelling.

Shall now read:

X feature makes the game more immersive.

......

X feature allows for a more compelling experience.

Is now:

X feature allows for a more submersive experience.

So please take note the next time you scribe an article or blog post or have a developer interview for some promotional aspect of your game.

That is all.

[edit]
According to online dictionaries submerisve is not a word although this surprises me because it is the logical extension of submersed/submersible as is immersed/immersible/immersive.

And now for something completely different....

2010-01-21T18:57:00.002Z

Or not!

Ha! Got you then.... yes, it's another post about DRM and.... wait, don't walk away yet! Bioshock 2 (PC) has gotten itself into a right tizzy with no one seeming to know what the hell is going on with the DRM, number of activations and the differences between the Steam and retail versions. Not even 2k themselves know what is going on with Steam (if you have the stomach to trawl through the pages for Elizabeth's posts). The amazing thing is that the Steam page has been "corrected" several times now so basically we still don't know what's happening.

Let me run the situation down for you and why it's bad (IMO):

Retail copy:
Securom disc check (i have nothing against this)
Games For Windows Live (GFWL) online check each time you install

Steam Copy:
Steam check/tie-in
Securom (?? We don't know why its on there at the moment)
GWFL online check each time you install

Now, originally it was said that GFWL has a 15 install limit (you can phone Microsoft for an extension of this number) and in Elizabeth_2k's own words that was "not a machine limit" which implies that even if you install on the same PC you use an install activation (this is in contrast to other types of install management DRM which allow unlimited installs on the same PC). This may, or may not, apply to the Steam version as well as the retail version but we just don't know because on the Steam page for Bioshock 2 it went from being listed as "15 install limit" to a "5 install limit" to now not mentioning installs at all (securom is still mentioned in the specifications though).

Next, well still keeping with GFWL, if you want achievements or to play Multiplayer then you need to create an online GFWL account.... which means that you need to be connected to the internet every time you want to play. If you create an offline account then you don't get the achievements or the chance to play multiplayer but you can access your save games any time you want to play. I've heard some rumblings about being able to copy over your saved game folders between the two accounts but i'm not sure if this is true or not. You can't change your account from one version into another so if you decide that you want to take your offline profile online then you have to make a new profile.

Finally, (still keeping with GFWL) because GFWL is basically attached to Xbox Live, if you're not in one of 26 countries you are screwed. What this means is that even though you buy your version on steam or in the shops where you live, if you are not in one of those 26 countries your game will not work online if GFWL knows where you really live. This is an unfixable problem, you can't just change your country setting because the cd-key or whatever is locked to that region and your copy now only works in offline mode.

And ultimately having all the extra crap on top of Steam's requirements is ludicrous. Why have securom if it's not used? (i.e. it probably is but we don't know how) Why have GFWL needing to run when the game is in your Steam list? Achievements can be done in Steam as well..... I may not be a big fan of DRM but at least have it make sense. What happens if your connection to any one of the services goes down (for whatever reason)? Do you lose access to your game?

And for those who prefer a boxed copy...

2010-01-15T22:06:00.003Z

... please find your DLC vouchers inside the box.

Seriously, i actually laughed (and then cried a little) when i found this out. Resident Evil 5 is getting a Gold edition which sounds pretty cool and i was thinking of buying it because it was a "boxed version" of all the content plus the announced DLC. Well it turns out that this is only the case for the PS3 version, the Xbox 360 version has the RE5 disc plus a voucher to get the DLC - which means that it's not on the disc and thus will be tied to your 360 HDD and the network availability (which is my reason for having them on a disc in the first place) if your HDD ever dies or you want to move it across to a new HDD.

For those RESIDENT EVIL fans who prefer a box copy, we are also happy to report that we will be releasing a RESIDENT EVIL 5: GOLD EDITION that will include the original game plus all additional content, making this the ultimate RESIDENT EVIL5 experience. RESIDENT EVIL 5: GOLD EDITION will be available for $49.99 as a single Blu-ray disc for the PLAYSTATION 3 or as a DVD with a token for the downloadable content for XBOX 360.

Well, unless this gets changed i won't be buying a copy. Ah, well... i still haven't played RE1-4 either.

Batman: Warrior Within

2010-01-12T16:59:00.002Z

The title says it all really (well, disregarding my absence).... I've been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum and i've been pretty happy with it but really it's like i've been suffering from deja vu or total recall or something weird to do with dreams you've dreamt that then come to actually happen in a sort of precognition manner. Batman: Arkham Asylum is Prince of Persia with a new face - specifically an amalgamation of Warrior Within and the New Prince of Persia in a ratio of approximately 95:5.

The games are almost carbon copies of each other in the manner in which they operate:

The combat system is nuanced - easy to use, difficult to truly master.... it's also not without its flaws and sometimes can be a bit unwieldy when fighting multitudes of enemies with certain button presses and stick flicks not registering as accurately as you would like.

Moving on, the platforming is pretty similar with leaping and whatnot a standard of the genre however the bat grapple gun being the equivalent of Elika - a get out of jail free/reset card that, ironically after all the fuss that was kicked up over Elika's function in New Prince of Persia, i've not seen anyone complaining about. Perhaps it's the inclusion of the ability to actually see a "game over" screen, would that have made a difference in the same people's eyes for New Prince of Persia?

Then there's the free-roaming, secret-finding aspect of the world which mirrors Warrior Within and improves on it. It was definitely one of my more favourite things about the two Prince of Persia games.

The same dark, gothic style and air that the game has... though i have to take time out here to kindly remind myself that Batman was around a long time before Prince of Persia was even a Twinkle in tens of programmers' eyes.

Finally, even the the Scarecrow sequences (which are inspired) mirror the chases by the Dahaka in their camera control and the variation they add to the general play.

It's incredible that the two games are so similar and i wonder if there was any conscious design implementation taken from the Dark Prince. It's also strange and slightly funny how the same game design (minus the improvements that Arkham Asylum brings - which are plentiful and all add greatly to the game) was hailed as a conceptual failure and generally disliked by most gamers who loved The Sands of Time and also the third game (which shall not be mentioned) but the other game is hailed as a masterpiece by most people who play it - including me.

I'm definitely looking forward to Arkham Asylum 2 but i'm also really looking forward to the next Prince of Persia game. Unfortunately i've heard rumours that Ubisoft have cancelled the sequel to New Prince of Persia and have instead settled for a movie tie-in with The Sands of Time movie..... which will be interesting as a game of a movie based on a game.

Possible explanation...?

2009-11-22T23:36:00.002Z

So i've been lamenting people's apparent selfishness in the gaming community quite a lot in my more recent posts and it turns out that there may be something to it. It turns out that those who have more tend to make decisions that are more self-centred/serving. According to the researchers:

This paper demonstrates that mere exposure to luxury goods increases individuals’ propensity to prioritize self-interests over others’ interests, influencing the decisions they make. Experiment 1 found that participants primed with luxury goods were more likely than those primed with non-luxury goods to endorse business decisions that benefit themselves but could potentially harm others. Using a word recognition task, Experiment 2 further demonstrates that exposure to luxury is likely to activate self-interest but not necessarily the tendency to harm others.

[....]

This suggests that luxury does not necessarily induce one to be “nasty” toward others but simply causes one to be less concerned or considerate toward them.

Now, it's by no means concrete evidence - they focused on the super rich and the tests were basic at best but gaming is a luxury. Is it possible to say that people who have more luxury goods (or more access to them) will view certain directions/decisions by the industry different from those who have access to less.

I'd probably, from my own experience, say no. I think that a person's character and upbringing would have more impact on these sorts of responses to different issues but i can imagine that someone who has more will be less likely to want to dilute what they have. It's one reason why people say: The rich just get richer while the poor get poorer. As someone who is well-off but completely broke i've found that my outrage or discomfort on certain issues has been made more apparent, however it was still there originally - when i had money, for example. Regarding matters within the game industry my disgust/disdain for certain practices and opinions has not altered (as can be evidenced by this blog and in certain other places).....

The way the wind blows...

2009-11-12T21:22:00.005Z

Now, i love Gamerswithjobs.com but sometimes i find (as with elsewhere) that i am at odds with the site's wordsmiths. This article is a case in point.

My main problem is the thesis behind the reasoning. Elysium speaks about how not supporting DLC, microtransactions and other piecemeal efforts that the gaming industry has introduced over the last ten years is resulting in the companies being unprofitable. He's railing against "the haters" to use a common phrase these days. To which he leads us to this part:

I hate to be dire, but I’ve seen 3 years of the Bobby Kotick doctrine, and if that’s what the future for companies like EA and TakeTwo and THQ is going to be then we’re going to sit back in a few years and long for the day when we got to whine about Day-1 DLC in a game like Dragon Age. Let me describe the future I see. Subscription based services married with microtransactions. Hobbled initial releases where the DLC is not just an optional quest, but key game mechanics. One-time required online authentication that prevents multi-player for used games. A virtual death of games like Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space, Ghostbusters, Brutal Legend, Borderlands or Dragon Age.

Of course, he doesn't see the opposite side of the story. The people who don't support those methods saw this writing on the wall years ago. Seriously, he's so far behind the curve that it's unfunny. I never supported DRM, DLC, microtransactions etc because i saw that it would lead to a future where we were nickel-and-dimed and it's strange that we could come to the same end through different conclusions.

On his worry that we won't see those innovative games? I don't have the same fear. There will always be companies willing to innovate and therefore people who want innovative products and therefore people who will pay for those innovative products. Innovation will not die because the current way of making the high-end games is unprofitable.

Also, on that note, why the hell are they unprofitable? Games were profitable 10 years ago... they were profitable during the last console generation.... some of them are even profitable nowadays and the market for games has increased by a huge amount. So what the hell is going on? Well, it comes down to this: The game companies (developers, publishers) are making products that make no financial sense and i don't mean that in the risk/reward way. We're not talking about releasing a hardcore product on the Wii (primarily casual market system), we're talking about just making a game which doesn't cost so much that it requires 2 million sales at full price to break even when there's not a large enough market to support that sort of sell-through rate for very many games. I've made this point before, but developers and publishers have no one else to blame for making games that are so expensive. Consumers were pretty happy with the lower graphics available five years ago but instead of moving forward slowly and growing their audience, they really jumped the gun with the Xbox 360 and PS3 - pushing almost more-than-state-of-the-art hardware - and in the process increased the development costs of a game by an order of magnitude and are now complaining when they don't make a return on their investment. Worse still, they've managed to convince a portion of their userbase that it's all down to a failure on the consumer's part that these problems are now rearing their heads for gaming companies. The worst part of his spiel is that he acknowledges that the game industry have backed a model that doesn't work but haven't changed it. If this were a conversation about the music industry then he would be chastising them for making the same decision.... why the difference?

Moving on to the piracy issue.... piracy has pretty much stayed constant on consoles and PC over the last 10 years. I mean, even if it has only grown 10% since 2000, that's still an 80% piracy rate if you take the most recent developer studies to date, the small jump to 90% just doesn't make that big of a difference. Further adding credence to this line of thinking is the fact that a large proportion of developers in the UK do not view piracy as a real threat to a game.

Finally, the nail in the coffin of his argument (from my point of view) is this:

Gamers have waged their own zealot war against a changing marketplace, irresponsibly made unreasonable decisions about their entitlements and bent the rules as they see fit to get what they think they’ve got coming.

[...]

Let me put it this way, if having Day-one DLC in a game like Dragon Age means that Bioware gets to make the sequel, and not having it means they don’t, I will happily take the opportunity to make my informed purchasing choice and I will fold my arms and look sternly at those who gripe and complain.

[...]

If you want an industry that can take chances. If you want an industry that can be agile and adaptable to niche demands. If you want publishers that are willing to explore new IPs and put resources behind projects like Dragon Age, then you, my stubborn and well-intentioned comrades, need to turn down the righteous fury.

It's a classic mistake and one that many others have made before him. It's also another thing i've highlighted here in the past. I'll let you into the secret one more time:

The hardcore gamers - especially those on PC - are a small part of the market. Out of that small part of the market the people who find DRM, DLC etc offensive on whatever level are an even smaller part. We're talking about a noisy but financially inconsequential part of the gaming market. Any action we take, any stance we make.... any code we break, any line we stake..... we'll be inconsequential....

We don't affect the bottom line on very many games and it's incredibly egotistical to think that we do.

The gaming class system....

2009-11-11T08:54:00.002Z

There's been a lot of clashing between people who are complaining about increased prices or games, DLC on day one and other issues related to gaming where features have been removed for PC players and people who will literally take anything that is thrown their way by developers.

Honestly, i think there's a class system coming from society that is breaking into gaming now. Originally, and this is just my opinion, gaming was taken up by the upper and middle classes as games consoles, PCs and games were all very expensive. Gradually the prices came down and the mass market penetration that is allowed by that also followed. Now, however, you're seeing developers and publishers pushing the prices of games up again - whether that's an extra cost at purchase or if it's day one paid-DLC (downloadable content) for more of the game. There's also the issue of DRM, whether that's transparent DRM (like securom) or if it's obfuscated through "signing up" services like Impulse and Dragon Age's community site (which allow you to get updates and unlock certain content).

Accompanying this push is the aforementioned gamer arguments and i tend to find that once again the middle/upper classes with lots of disposable income are willing to let anything slide. They have money and can spend it any way they wish. On the other side of the argument are the poorer people and those who are philosophically opposed to the particular practices that the gaming industry is evolving.

The thing that's interesting (but also personally annoying) is that those "haves" who don't mind all the crap that's continually happening each have their own breaking points - decisions made by companies that they oppose on philosophical or monetary grounds - but until they reach that point they continually dismiss and deride those other people who take issue with other decisions.

"It's just another facet of society", you might say..... We have already experienced this sort of behaviour many times throughout history (perhaps even constantly) and it's just seeping into gaming. The annoying thing is that it really doesn't appear to exist in any other entertainment media. Books, films/TV and music - you can freely complain about the price of an album or how it's not good value for money, you don't have to pay for extra chapters of a book that the author might think it was cool to write but didn't get them ready in time for the original printing run. No one bats an eyelid and yet in the gaming community you are constantly labelled as complainers or angry internet men. Whatever happened to having an open mind? What ever happened to people realising that a company "making money" isn't bad but a company "making money in whatever way possible" is?

IMO, there is a large swathe of the gaming community that has gone from being interested in the rights of the consumer to being company focused. There can be no questioning company decisions, they read from the manual of the Ministry of Truth and never look up to question those words.

We'll see how it plays out but i'm not confident in the game industry surviving in the future other than minigames, MMOs and free indie stuff. There's just no reason for you to pay the amount we do for a game only to discover that on day one you don't own (sorry, license) the full game.

Tabloid roulette and the demise of PC gaming...

2009-11-06T13:38:00.003Z

I've come to a conclusion: Modern Warfare 2 is the tabloid of first person shooters. Not only that, but it's not the only game to be this way....

Shock! Horror! Teh boycotts!

Anyway, i think you might understand why i think this if you read my reasons.

First, tabloids thrive on appealing to the lowest common denominator. They keep their language and punctuation at a low level because there are a lot of poorly literate people out there and they don't want to alienate those people by making them feel stupid. Hence their stories and writing are geared towards those people and the media interests in their lives. They also prey on fear and ignorance by using sensationalist tactics which they defend as "thought-provoking" and "challenging/hard-hitting" journalism.

Believe it or not i think this sort of tacit reinforcement of low levels of fact and literacy makes people more ignorant and fearful. It also makes them more likely to keep on using these "resources" as they go forward in their lives as opposed to more challenging resources that they might find boring and difficult at first but which they would never give a chance because they immediately dismiss the resource and switch back to their comfortable media.

I view the continuing pre-release of Modern Warfare 2 in the same light. They're utilising sensationalism in their "play as a terrorist" aspect, for one thing (we'll have to wait for the rest of the game to be leaked or released to really find out if this theme is extended) and also in their F.A.G.S. grenade video. They, through the implementation of IW.net and the non-support of modders and dedicated servers, are dumbing the audience of the game down - appealing to only the lowest common denominator which reinforces the uneducatedness of the general gaming population.
I mean, if you look at the history of gaming and modding, the modding community has always been very small but (and perhaps this is just my opinion) has usually been spawned from the larger, more popular games like Unreal Tournament, Doom, Quake, Total Annihilation, Command and Conquer, Warcraft, X-wing, and Diablo. These modding communities become larger as time goes by because there is the support from PC developers there and their games are not walled gardens devoid of any content outside of those boundaries. From these pools of modders (aside from lengthening the game's lifespan) new blood and ideas flow into the development community, it's not just some sink of pirates and jackasses that alter "your game" and by stopping that and not supporting those people or new modders to get into gaming you're (whether intentionally or not) partially strangling the future of game development where one of the avenues to get into gaming is removed.

Perhaps it's just a coincidence then, when there are so many companies turning their back on the PC and PC development, that Epic have released their software development kit (SDK) for their engines as free for all modders and non-commercial releases in a similar vein to id's engine licensing. It's certainly strange when considering that Epic are practically a console-only development house these days and have certainly scaled back their presence on the PC. Maybe there's still hope for the future of traditional (not mini- or casual games) PC gaming if the gamers themselves will release free games as proof of concepts or just fun projects before moving on to be snatched up by the "real" game companies.

Crysis Warhead....

2009-10-29T19:36:00.002Z

Again, i know i'm late to the party but it seemed like a good idea to follow on from Crysis with its "offshoot"/expansion, Warhead. While i enjoyed Crysis overall (including the zero-G sections) i found that the disparity between what was shown in cutscenes and the actual powers of the nanosuits really bothered me. I also felt that the balance between the power of the normal Korean footsoldiers and the player was leaning towards the wrong side, however, after playing through the rest of the game i realised that the nanosuit and weapons seemed to mainly be balanced against the aliens.... which is great for the last third of the game but not ideal for the first two thirds.

Warhead continues on with this trend. The opening cutscenes vastly overstate the power of the nanosuit which is still very annoying and completely breaks the immersion for me. It seems that the balance between the Koreans and the player has been changed - it now takes significantly fewer shots to down a Korean soldier which is what i was annoyed about in the original game, however your "armour mode" has also been significantly reduced in power meaning that a few stray shots from 100 metres or more away can pretty much kill you. (This is as of patch 1.1) It's a shame because the suit powers still lack any real "punch", each draining in under a few seconds, which combined with the pause between switching modes leaves the dream of being able to run, jump and punch people to a pulp a remote possibility (or fluke).

Again, not far into the game the cutscenes belie the actual game mechanics, with "Psycho" jumping down a cliff after engaging the strength mode, which results in a direct loss of health "in game" as compared to armour mode which drains armour first. The cutscene is a logical extention of real-world physics which unfortunately does not translate to the game world.

I'm not particularly far into the game as yet but it appears to be as enjoyable as the original which is no bad thing. Shame about the DRM and limited activations though and i certainly would never have bought this game if they had been known about before the release date.

Torchlight....

2009-10-29T14:44:00.002Z

Seriously, this is a good game. At its most basic, the game is WoW crossed with Dungeon Siege and it works very well and i say that because it doesn't feel like Diablo or TitanQuest, it feels more "action-y".

I like the limited spells your characters can utilise as well as their own skills, i like the weapons and the pet... i like the interface and the characters (though i wish they had included a male and female option for each class but that's just personal prefernce).

What don't i like? Well, i've only played the demo but i won't be buying the full game. "Why not?", you may ask, "After all this praise...". The reality is that this game requires authentication and (although it's not clear if it applies to every download service) it also has activation/install limits.

I'm sorry but that just isn't what i'm willing to sacrifice in order to buy your product. Please try again.

The importance of passion...

2009-10-27T09:53:00.003Z

I went to see The Vampire's Assistant yesterday (it was actually quite good) but it got me thinking about emotions, and the lack thereof, in games. One thing in particular that seems to get left out is passion - and i mean the word in every sense.

Part of this is down to the voice acting, where it's particularly grating when a character sounds dull and lifeless, but another part is the story within the game. How many games have a theme of passion? Passion for a lover, passion for a friend, the passion of a parent/carer. We constantly have the old and terribly simple "passion for revenge" which is so well-worn that it seems every game with violence in it relies on this premise to drive the narrative.

Where is the oedipus conflict? Where is the conflict of taking someone under our wings and protecting and nurturing them? Where is the conflict of being friends with someone that you should hate/be at war with?

I think a really interesting game design would be for the player, who is a powerful entity within the game world, finding and then protecting/raising a youngster where you get to see the growth and development of the youngster as your character becomes older and frailer. Sure, it runs the risk of being one, game-long escort quest but if it's managed carefully then it wouldn't be so bad. You could start off with the child being pretty helpless and they'd stick to you like an AI buddy in any other game (you could give rudimentary orders like fight, run and defend etc) but as they grow and become more powerful they observe you and your actions: They learn from you, the learn to fight and you see that they protect you as much as you protect them.

As the game progresses, the enemies will become more powerful/plenty and as the child grows up and draws close to your character in abilities and power then it becomes an AI co-op game. Then at some point during the game the tables will turn between the character and his charge. The child will become more powerful than your character and the game would begin to change to a ability management system whereby you survive by ordering around your protector.

I think this is an interesting example of where the player starts off strong but becomes weak - without neutering the player's agency in the world. It evolves from being an escort mission (a la Ico) to a co-op game (parts of Fable 2 and other action games?) to being a squad management game (like many of the recent console FPS games). I think this has a lot of potential and hopefully we'll see a game like this at some point.

Thoughts on Crysis...

2009-10-22T23:24:00.002+01:00

Yes, i'm late to the party..... Yes, this will probably never be read by anyone but i'm going to write about my experience with the game so far.

The main problem i've got with the game is that your "super suit" really doesn't differentiate you from the enemies that much. It's just not that super.

What i mean by that is the number of bullets you can absorb when you're in "armour" mode is pathetically close to what any ordinary armoured-jacket wearing Korean soldier does. Why is this the case? I can take the submachine gun or the AK47 variant and unload half a clip into a guy's chest a close range and he's still standing but what feels like the equivalent from one of the enemies has me in the same state - severely wounded and almost dead. If two enemies are around, one with a shotgun then i'm lucky if i'm not dead. So basically, the super-armoured capacity of my suit is around the same level as a standard kevlar jacket. Why not just wear a kevlar jacket underneath my super suit and instead use the "strength" mode instead? It beats me.

Then there's the problem of the suit's power, or rather the lack of it. The suit just doesn't have much of a charge and so any ability you're using runs out in less than 3 seconds. 3 jumps for the strength mode, ~3 seconds for the speed mode and a few shots for the armour mode. The stealth is actually a little better and lasts longer but again it just isn't effective. Not to mention that it's completely out of kilter with how the game presents the supersuit's abilities. During several cut-scenes you and other suit-wearing characters wander around in the cloaked stealth mode without a care in the world and there's instant recharging after moving objects (which would otherwise deplete your energy in gameplay) and no worries about moving around. It's really annoying.

The AI is mostly poor. While it tends to retain the eagle-eyed and sharpshooting abilities often seen in Crytek's predecessor, FarCry, they have managed to make the enemies act confused from time to time, whereby you may fire at one of their number and they won't all immediately know where you are and make a beeline for your location. It doesn't take long, however, and even if you use a silencer they always seem to know where you're shooting from if one of the people you're killing sees your location before he dies - despite the fact that he would be unable to relay your location in a similar situation in real life. That really kills the point of stealth in this game.

The only redeeming feature of the game is the weapon mod system which i actually really quite like. Being able to kit out each weapon with an increasing number of modifications such as sniper scopes etc is really nice and makes each weapon far more versatile than it would initially appear.

So far i think i'm about a third to half-way through the game and it's not a bad romp.... but i think it lacks the character that made FarCry enjoyable and doesn't quite match up to its own aspirations enough for your character to really shine as a multi-million dollar weapon of war.

Economies of scale in games....

2009-10-18T22:19:00.002+01:00

Shamus Young, over at the Escapist, has written about the general failings of game economies. It's a short and slightly tongue-in-cheek look at why economies fail: i.e. it's the loot generated through a player's actions. Reading over at his blog and through the comments on the article there are a few camps:

Reality/simulationists:

These people want to include aspects of reality such as stricter carry limits and smaller, less frequent combats. They also want to devalue products which are more numerous - which would lead them to become ridiculously cheap and would thus mean that blacksmiths etc are run out of business by the player.

Nerfists:

These people want to reduce the impact of selling loot by reducing the amount that vendors are willing to pay and/or increasing the cost of new items sold by vendors.

My opinion lies with a (seemingly small) third camp who are technically ultra-realists in the economic sense. i.e. The games would work as they do currently, with unrealistically large encumbrance levels and item storage etc. However, what would happen is that the world would act in a realistic way. This is also something i've thought about before, specifically regarding to MMO gameplay.

First off, there's a limited number of people but new people can be born and thus grow into adults and populate areas. These people will be free to join whatever faction they wish, whether they be bandits, bad guy minions, traders, townspeople or guards etc. Though this would have to come with some limits such as "tendencies" to go into a particular profession/lifestyle (e.g. gentry would be more likely to remain gentry or become knights in a medieval setting). To compensate for unlimited population grow you could, upon birth assign a person fertility % (i.e. their chance to be able to procreate) and, on top of this, you would have a population vs food check with each area having an upper limit of food production. If the population rose above this limit food would have to either be bought in from another area (trade) or people would starve and die (you could choose whether children or old adults would be more likely to die first with people in their teens and twenties the least likely to suffer from starvation).
Fewer farmers/hunters in the area would mean less food and thus a smaller population and if the player or bandits rode into down and killed all the food-makers then the rest of the population would suffer unless some people switched roles to start producing food.

This style of thinking would also be reflected in the items of the world. Each item would require the base materials, the right profession (or professions) to be present and time to produce. A sword, for example, might require 8kg iron ore, 5kg ashes, 1kg leather, a blacksmith, a tanner and two days to make. A better sword might require multiple blacksmiths or more of one material or additional materials. This allows the player to be more involved in the game world because they can commission, bring materials or products to different places to enable the creation of items and help with the local economy. Of course, the initial number of each item in the world would be limited and, to stop items becoming limitless and thus devalued, they would degrade with use and time, depending on the item.
For example, a cloth tunic might cost 13 coins, would take 2 weeks to produce and degrade within a year of use. If it was not in use then it would last 5 years (damn those moths!) and to account for use and disuse some simple formula could be implemented to say 1 day use = x% of 1 day non-use (and then divide that by the item's total "lifespan"). This mechanic would also allow a repair trade/economy to flourish though you'd also have to limit the effectiveness of each time the item is repaired, depending on the item type. e.g. Repair 1 would refresh 50% of the item's lifespan, repair 2 would refresh 30% etc. Until the cost to benefit ratio decreased to the point where it would be more cost effective to buy a new item. Item effectiveness could also be tied into it's repair/lifespan stats so that an old rusty/heavily used sword would be less likely to do heavy cutting damage than a brand new shiny sword.

The end result of these mechanics is that the player is unlikely to completely destroy any economy because any influx of items into the market would require them to be removed from the market elsewhere first. Plus, no vendor would be likely to have that much money to buy them - or want to buy them. Why would a blacksmith want to buy a sword for very much money when they've already got 20 in the shop? He might pay for the raw materials but that's not likely to be a large sum.

Of course, i've got my own ideas for magic items and telling that here would just be giving all of my secrets away :p

Steam is broken....

2009-09-09T09:25:00.002+01:00

It's a broken system and it's starting to get ridiculous that there are still no solutions.

1. Groups are pointless because in order to get the most out of them you need to "friend-up" everyone in the group, which can be in the hundreds and thousands.

2. Notifications minimise some applications and non-steam games. Notifications also often spam themselves for one event when there's actually only one notification planned plus there's no way of turning them off whilst having your status as "online".

No. 2 isn't a problem for me but i know it is for other people. No. 1 is my main gripe..... and it's ridiculous that it hasn't been fixed. I don't want a thousand people on my friends list - that's completely unmanageable! What i want to be able to do is join a group and to have the steam game i'm playing automatically let me play with anyone in the group.

Bang, bang.... is sensationalism dead?

2009-09-06T20:50:00.007+01:00

On the one hand, i like Leigh Alexander because she's like a female version of me.... a complainer and a dissector (and who doesn't like themselves? ;)). To people on the outside it appears as if we're never happy, though in actual fact we, or at least I (since i'm projecting and i have no idea whether Leigh is actually like myself), am. On the other hand, i get a bit fed up with how she puts across her thoughts. She's confrontational and never offers anything back when she takes something away.

Case in point, her latest piece over at Kotaku. Sure, it's good for grabbing headlines and perhaps that's why she's in the business of journalism... but this sort of sensationalism doesn't help matters and it's exactly what we decry when watching and reading content from the mainstream news outlets.
"Is creativity dead?", she asks.... and then completely fails to deliver or comment on this very question, instead side-railing onto the topic of inspiration. My main problem with the whole thing is that neither she or her interviewees makes any differentiation between story and mechanics and it's quite clear from the article that different people are talking about one or the other and never both at the same time.

Industry veteran and Zoonami CEO Martin Hollis, most recently creator of quirky Wii Ware title Bonsai Barber, agrees that the thematic range of games isn't very broad. "Pauline Kael famously criticized films as being only about violence and romance: ‘Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang'," he says of the great film critic. "Games are virtually all about violence, or at least conquest and dominance. So we can say games are all ‘Bang Bang, Bang Bang.'"

In reality, the thematic range of games is very broad it's just that the majority of games made are similar in theme, tone, story or mechanics.... but not necessarily all of those! Just because 30 FPS were produced last year and only 15 major games were quirky non-violent affairs the majority does not negate the minority. The majority of books and films are action or love blockbusters.... they're thematically unchallenging but no one would accuse all authors or books of being devoid of creativity because the truly innovative and interesting ones are in the minority. It's misleading and a petty thing to do but it's this sort of sentiment that permeates the piece.

"There are some outliers, but we continuously make the same games about the same things," says Heir, who worked on this summer's Wolfenstein sequel. "The only things that change are our mechanics. We regularly have white male generic space marine characters as protagonists. Our NPCs are often cookie cutter and stereotypical. We use the same backdrops of post-nuclear apocalypse or colonizing Mars, or crazy fantasy worlds."

And yet these designers have learned nothing from all their years of work in the industry. How many times do we splurt out, "There are no new ideas, just rehashes." Or, looking at the more cerebral side of gaming, game theory and story writing you'll be confronted with people who say that the same stories, character archetypes and game interactions/fantasies permeate society at an almost subconscious level travelling from generation to generation from centuries, perhaps millennia, ago.

What are we expecting to happen? That just because we have invented a new medium we'll suddenly re-write these age-old staples that connect with us humans at the deepest of levels and in the most exciting way? Face it, it's not going to happen.... so where does that leave us? I'll tell you where it leaves us: right where we are and where we've always been. We're not in some dire uncreative rut, we're not about to become shallow morons who only play the same game over and over again because that's not who we've ever been. Humans don't sit down and stop socially evolving: we create, we iterate and we change.

Here's a fun fact: The majority of recreational books written in the 18th and 19th century are what we call period dramas. Can we distinguish one period drama from the next? Probably not.

/sarcasm

Tim Schafer's and Marianne Krawczyk's comments only help to confuse the matter as they make allusions to an incestuous gaming industry that takes no input from outside itself, which results in the stagnation of the inspirational DNA of the people playing and creating games.... as if all people are identical, have the same world views and desire the exact same end-result - even if they do enjoy the same things. Guess what? I play football, i watch those footballers on TV. My idea of playing football is different to those who do play and those i play with.... and that's with a system that *I* can't change the rules for.

Of course, in the next few paragraphs they manage to save some face by stating the obvious that, yes, people do in fact take inspiration from their personal lives, from art from everywhere including within games and also without. It makes you wonder why they even said all that incestuous bullshit in the first place. Well done, the problem is solved a third of the way through the article! It's now a non-issue..... so why is there another two thirds to read through?

Risk-taking is a key element – Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello called Brütal Legend a "significant creative risk" — just before the publisher announced it'd be the one to rescue the title from its post Acti-Blizzard limbo. Fervent gamers now look forward to its breath of fresh air.

So.... it's about risk now? Ah, i see... being creative is about taking risks; though actually, it doesn't have to be as we see in the second half of Leigh's blurb surrounding John Riccitiello's quote on how risky Brutal Legend is. Anyone looking at Brutal Legend who says it's creatively new or different from what's been before needs to go and take a shower. It's a third-person brawler set to a violent and rock/heavy metal backdrop shoved together with common mythology.... with elements of Pikmin/Overlord to boot. Yeah, a real creative risk there..... really fresh.

So, sarcasm aside, is the real question that Leigh should have been asking for this article, "What do you consider fresh?". More often than not it would appear that remixing or iteration is the name of the day and i have no problem with that. You can't improve on 'perfection'. If something works you don't change it but iterate it instead because those people who like that specific thing will probably like it in its new form.... and because it resonates in the deepest levels of our psyche/brain there will likely always be people who want to consume that thing.

And yet the pattern of the video game industry tells us otherwise. Derivative games sell, sequels are the watchword for the holidays, and the audience's appetite for war campaigns and space marines seems never to wane. What's wrong with more of the same, if that's what people seem to want?

And yet this is directly at odds with what her interviewees are saying.... this conclusion is Leigh's own placed over a carefully constructed article so that it doesn't sound idiotic. If this were the 70's and we're watching all those movies with that iconic style and form, Leigh would be saying the same thing... but here we are, 40 years later, watching movies with radically different forms.

The same games keep getting made largely because that's all the core audience is interested in. So maybe it's gamers, not game developers, who need to get a life.

The problem with any sort of analysis of gaming and gamers is that we are a minority of the market. No one looks at rap or hip hop and says that's all people buy because music is ubiquitous.... gaming, specifically video/computer gaming is not there yet. Leigh brings out the 11 million units of the Gears of War franchise sold as an illustrative point that gamers only buy one type of game (male power fantasies) whilst crying out for more meaningful things like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. What this fails to take into account is that 11 million is nothing. 11 million? The population of the US is somewhere around 300 million alone... assuming those 11m units sold are all in the US that's a penetration of 3.6%. It's nothing, negligible - a statistical blip on one data point. Now, when we have the same penetration that music, movies/TV and books do come back and make some meaningful interpretations on the likes of people as a whole. At the moment the core audience are driving the expansion of gaming (and it is expanding) so of course we are going to get the games we want.... but that's not to say that there isn't a market for more arty games or non-violent, male fantasy games.... there just aren't the people in the games market to support as many of them at the moment.

The take-home message of the article for any readers is probably that if you look at something on such a small scale and with such a narrow view then you will undoubtedly make the wrong assumptions and get the wrong answers.

Now, maybe it's just that all of these interviewee's comments have been taken out of context and placed in an article that's solely trying to push it's sensationalist agenda or maybe none of these industry veterans are seeing the bigger picture.... and that to me is far more worrying than any fear of stagnation.

Predictions come true!

2009-09-04T13:02:00.008+01:00

Also acceptable as a possible title for this post is: I am a god!

In 2008 i wrote up a prediction of what i thought the next Xbox console would look like. I have to admit that i was wrong on the timescale but i think that's because both Microsoft and Sony have gone the 'mid-cycle upgrade' route through firmware and new peripheral hardware rather than bringing out a new fully-fledged console.

So what did i predict that i got right?

- Not sure about a motion controller but you'd need at least 2 hi-res cameras with something to focus on (like motion capture reflective spots) to get accurate enough 3-D information without accelerometers - kinda like the sensor bar with a standard ratio between the two cameras.

- If they do include motion control it will be a side-project and not the main focus of the console like it is for the Wii. There will still be a main controller like the one we're used to but perhaps the motion controller will be something you can buy like the Eye-toy or a dance pad for specific (read: Family oriented) games.

I think i pretty much just nailed Project Natal:

- "-DVR, media center, cable set top box functionality" is a given.

- The console won't ship for more than around £299 and they will try and keep that cost as low as possible (including the manufacturing cost/selling price ratio)

I'm pretty happy with these predictions as well though they are more "safe" than the camera style controller prediction.

Anyway, i'm off to play a game :)

Perhaps it's just me?

2009-09-04T00:17:00.002+01:00

I regularly visit a site called "gamerswithjobs" and while it's still a great site filled and visited by really nice (and generally intelligent) people i'm finding myself growing more and more distant to it. Maybe it's just me and where i am in my life at the moment that's making it worse but there's always been a large gap there and for most other gaming sites out there which are primarily US-orientated so there's that aspect that drives a stake between my interaction with the members there.

However, for a few months now i'm feeling a larger disconnect with the actual site itself. The content and podcast content. It's as if they've somehow transitioned from being a site run by geeks and nerds (of which cloth i am also cut) with content to match to slowly becoming a "lifestyle" site which tends to those who want to be included rather than those who are already practising 'the lifestyle'.

I know it's not a very good way of saying it and i'm still a bit confused over the whole thing but i don't get the same excitement from the podcast anymore and the front page articles are just.... well, bland. It's as if the site is slowly becoming a more broad version of gamerdad - and certainly some of the old contributors to their front page content were also cross-pollinating that site in its original form (gaming with children? When did that happen?). It doesn't speak to me in the same way and perhaps that's part of the site's growth...... but i'm beginning to find myself without a home on the internet once again as i did when i moved from the Anime Community Boards (before the pay per use) on IGN and then the boards over at 3D Realms.

Each place has a special hold on my heart and as Jim Rossignol states that special experience can never be rekindled no matter how hard you yearn for it. It's purely a product of who and where you are in life combined with who visits the site and where it is in its growth. I miss the ACB and the 3DR people and community i knew (and a certain other blog circle/support group i stumbled upon during the period between my activity on those two boards that i've since forgotten the name of)... some of them are still about but there's no ties between us. They don't know who i have become and vice versa.

My problem now is that i've reached a zenith in my board participation on gamerswithjobs and while i am thankful i was able to do so, where do i go from here? There, quite frankly, is no better place i've ever encountered and certainly no better and generally civil and intelligent people..... but i need something closer to home. Something British or European.... it doesn't exist. RockPaperShotgun? Good site but lousy forums (and unruly users too!). Eurogamer? Decent site but more aimed at the mass market review side of things and quite crappy forums/comments threads.

I tried to create my own little side universe in the Eggmen.co.uk (European Gaming Group) but we don't have any exposure and i need more third party involvement to get my ass in gear.... i'm pretty much resigned to the fact that it's a dead end for now - we don't have any big names or interviews and what-not. I'd love to continue to do a podcast but organising it and keeping the audio and subject quality high is a tough order.

So my search continues..... where will i settle next?

So no updates?

2009-09-01T20:52:00.002+01:00

Well, not true! I've been busy working on (and actually) submitting my doctoral thesis so that's why there's been so little on here and Eggmen.co.uk. One of the problems i've found with being unemployed over a long period of time is that you really struggle to motivate yourself as well as keeping your thoughts going. Conversely, when you're busy, you want to do more and you also think more and thus can have more ideas.

Hopefully, i'll get a job soon, if not, then hopefully i'll manage to keep my brain ticking over to bring you more insightful thoughts on the industry, games and game design.

Speak soon :)

The essence of thought and interaction....

2009-08-08T06:48:00.004+01:00

There's an interesting piece over here at The Atlantic (a site i've never visited before today, though thanks to Bill Harris for pointing it out).

It's basically some thoughts on how the net and connected world is affecting our reasoning, knowledge and social interactions. I don't massively agree with some of the things he talks about and i feel like the whole thing is a bit over-wrought and (ironically for me) wordy when it could be more concise.

I think the two things that stick out for me in what he writes about are attention spans vs interest and social interaction vs interaction with machines. Starting off with the latter (since i think it's easier to talk about): he brings up 2001 as an allegory to how we might evolve due to our 'skimming' nature of interaction with knowledge and society through the internet and new media.

In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

This may be a valid interpretation of the film's underlying tones.... but this example struck a completely different chord with me. Dealing with machines instead of people tends to lead you to emotional detachment. I don't think that Dave and his co-pilot act like machines because they have become socially mechanical, rather they act like machines because they are dealing with machines and while you can still get angry and mad at a machine, ultimately it does no good. Your choices are, deal with the problem.... or "Smash, Hulk! Smash!". I think i know which one seems more cultured and socially advanced.

For intelligent machines, as with HAL, the process is mirrored. We are beings of emotion and thus any intelligent machine will try to appeal to our emotions, to better understand and also to manipulate us as any baby would do. It's a natural process and while they may never achieve true emotional connection and understanding, any intelligent machine would be at odds with its own intelligence if it didn't try to interact with us on an emotional level. In my opinion, HAL's apparent emotional pleas are just another manifestation of manipulation and engagement with his human co-habitants.

On a bit of a tangent:
I can't imagine the amount of good that text conversations have done for discussing hot-button topics... certainly for myself, i find it's infinitely easier to approach a difficult situation or topic on the internet than it is in real life conversations because, even though emotions can still become high and people can get riled, you have the time to compose yourself and also your arguments. With a little patience you can be more verbose, coherent and persuasive than you could ever be in the middle of a conversation. Of course, there's certainly the argument to be had that you should be working towards being able to behave like this in verbal arguments - the age-old heritage of debating is the spirit of this notion incarnate - but not everyone can do this. A small amount of detachment is good for the soul, it appears. Too much, and yes we are in danger of becoming his worst fears - unable to socially interact without a 'mediator' medium. I don't think we'll ever get to that stage though.... there are too many checks and balances brought about by our continued reproduction cycles. If we ever stop reproducing and become immortal then all bets are off.....

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

It's funny, i thought i felt something familiar a few years ago.... but then it went away. Intelligence-wise i felt the most smart and sharp at the age of 16, i felt like i could do anything then and certainly my grades felt from my perspective to be easier to achieve than anything since. I've also felt what i thought was a shortening of my attention span and have even commented on it here in this blog.... but i still feel that what i said then still stands - we have more choice and so utilise it. Certainly, i am no less capable of sitting through a long stretch of education or entertainment..... but i what i often find is that knowledge-based articles - whether they be on the web or in print - do not always have the information i want as deeply as i want it. This sometimes leads to tangents in my reading which, yes do not always lead back to the original article, but then you have to ask the question: Why was i reading the article in the first place? I don't think that there are many times that i've been interested in the bulk of the article and flicked away to some other site or pastime for no reason..... most of the time small jumps to reference media (for further clarification of a word, phrase, object or notion) tend to be the norm - i just can't know everything all the time and many articles assume a certain level of competence or base knowledge on their particular subject. It's only fair. I don't expect a paper on the electron migration through a piezo electric material to cover all the fundamentals in the same way a textbook on the basics of semiconductor types would.... but then i still need to fill the gaps in my knowledge (or reaffirm them) to be able to truly understand the paper in question. The internet has enabled both the acquisition and understanding of knowledge much easier and at the same time made it more difficult to discern what we hold to be true and what is, to all intents and purposes, a joke or 'grief' (i.e. false or 'bad' information).

If we truly wish to know something then we will sit on hot coals to do so.... if we have nothing but a passing interest or we really want to know something else that we know is in easy reach then we will, more often than not, want to reach for that instead.

Rant - Lost Planet

2009-07-28T11:04:00.002+01:00

Well, for a while there i thought LP was an okay game.... if a bit quirky in its control scheme due to the separate movement and aiming thing which, IMO, affected the game in a negative way. Because you were free to move around independently of your reticule/aiming target you often would not shoot when you wanted to because your in game body was facing slightly the wrong way.... most of the time this wasn't important but the whole reason for this rant really threw that into contention.

I played through a few missions without much mishap though i died twice in the introduction sequence which i found very confusing and it also seemed to have ridiculous amounts of drain on your heat units which i never found to be much a problem in the main game. Then i hit "the wall".

"The wall" is usually in every game: sometimes there are multiple walls, ones that are big and small, ones with multiple steps to get past. Some people call them difficulty spikes because their location is either incompatible with the player's and game's skill and difficulty ramp. Either way, we all reach a wall in every game we play. Most walls are surmountable but every so often we reach a wall that we just cannot climb over unless we dedicate hours upon hours of playing that same section through.... some people turn to walk-throughs but they aren't always helpful when you discover that you've been doing the right thing.

My wall in Lost Planet was meeting the woman in the pink mech (Vital Suit). I watched a cutscene in which these two face off for a moment before being dropped into the middle of it.... and boy, was i ever dropped into it! The battle is ridiculous.... i replayed it 10-12 times before deciding that even if i ever beat it (which i was close to doing on two occasions) would i want to play through several more hours before hitting the next wall? The game, up until that point, had been pretty easy and i wasn't really looking forward to dropping the difficulty just because of one unbalanced encounter.

"How was it unbalanced?", you might ask.

Well, the two most frustrating things should have been addressed during development. First-off.... when she hits you or your mech (you can fight in or out of the mechs) with a rocket blast or the laser you are effectively stunned as well as damaged which immediately stopped any action you were performing. The recovery animation for getting unstunned lasts as long (if not very slightly longer) as it does for her to fire off another rocket.... which she often did. What this led to was what some people affectionately call, "rocket juggling".... where i was taking disproportionate damage to the mistake i made. Oh, and she could kill my mech in about 2 rockets and two laser hits.... which isn't very much at all.
Add to this the fact that, even when i hit her, she was never stunned meaning that she could carry out her attack freely while i was crippled. For example, if we hit each other simultaneously, i would sit there, unable to do anything while i recovered from my stun and she would sit there and fire another rocket at me, lengthening the stun period and allowing her to fire another round at me. The only saving grace of the AI seemed to be that she was required to occasionally switch between rockets and laser which gave me some breathing room to manoeuvre around and recover a little.

The second frustrating thing was that i couldn't always fire.... which is probably related to the aiming/movement scheme i mentioned above. Because the mechs are so slow and unwieldly in tight places my main tactic was to pull out my rocket launcher whilst on foot and try to kill her as much as possible before getting into my mech and running away/whittling her life down. The problem with this was that sometimes when i fully depressed the trigger the damn launcher would not fire - though i would stand still..... and when i did fire i was stuck to the spot for some inexplicable reason for around a second afterward - which led me to be vulnerable to attack by rocket and laser.

Of minor irritation during the encounter was the fact that when her rockets exploded they would exude this thick, admittedly cool-looking, cloud of black, bilious smoke which obscured my view of everything behind it. I could not see her but she could still accurately fire at me..... just another example of the bullshit AI 'super sight' we're all used to in many games.

Oh, did i mention that she could move around really fast as well? Some sort of rocket skates that i didn't have access to.

I really thought that game designers were learning this console generation? Cheap tricks and unbalanced/unfair feeling encounters are just not fun. I don't need to feel like a god of gaming - i know i'm not that good. I just want to be on the same or similar footing as the enemies i'm expected to kill. Don't give them special exemptions from the game's rules that apply to me and me alone. Don't make it so they have bullshit moves that i don't have when utilising the same technology or powers.

The game is being sent back as we speak. I have no time for this sort of thing.

Rant - Game logic: Lost Planet edition

2009-07-27T10:54:00.003+01:00

Okay, so i get that it's a gameplay mechanic but let me get this straight..... The humans return to the planet that is extremely cold and basically uninhabitable due to this cold because they encountered some giant insects that produce (well, have inside of them) heat energy which gets dropped when they are killed. Now, when you're in the game you pick up this energy and it gets used up by your suit and the mechs that you pilot to keep you alive in the cold.

The rate at which you run through this energy is around 2 units per second at idle but when in a VS suit it increases to somewhere between 5-15 per second if you're doing anything other than walking.... you can effectively run through 1000 units easily in a combat situation that lasts less than two minutes.

Oh, did i mention that the amount of heat energy you pick up from the deceased insects is pretty negligible most of the time, like 50-100 units or so? The larger units like mechs and huge things usually have 200-500 units but they're far fewer in numbers.

It makes no logical sense... i'm burning through this stuff while killing these things. It's not cost effective or an energy efficient process. In one mission that took me 42 minutes I collected 32,000 heat units but ended the mission with only 8000.... That's 24000 units completely lost. Why are we on this planet again?

Despite running down so quickly you get a lot from the beacons which inexplicably contain 1000 or so units which kind of makes the whole mechanic pointless since you're always able to keep your heat units topped up by these frequent reservoirs. The game would have been better served by just having regenerating health (as it already does) and none of this heat unit collecting stuff.

If you don't agree with this you must be a corporate ass-kisser...

2009-07-01T20:31:00.003+01:00

And while i'm on a non-game specific bent i may as well get my feelings about another phrase:

Angry Internet Men.

Whoever invented this phrase (i have a feeling it was someone over at RockPaperShotgun!) needs to go and hide away from humankind forever. Originally it was supposed to be a term for the most extreme people who overreacted and could not be logically reasoned with in any way, shape or form.... these people are just stereotypically angry and there's nothing anyone can do about it to shut them up or for them to really make much sense.

The phrase has evolved into a sort of derision or dismissal of any argument that goes against 'the establishment'. Complain about LAN functionality being removed from Starcraft 2? You're an AIM. Be annoyed by erroding consumer rights in the games industry? You're an AIM. Complain about Diablo 3's lightness and wow-gayness? You actually are an AIM - that's a legitimate use of the phrase ;)
Like the terms "ad hominem" (often AIM is an ad hominem) and "straw man" it's begining to get carted out during any discussion that has an argument against those in authority or control - regardless of whether the situation warrants the use of those terms. People use them to try and blindly discredit and undermine the arguments of their opponents by sowing seeds of doubt in third parties on the legitimacy of the arguments.

It seems like anyone who rails against a decision these days is a "whiner" or an "angry internet man" in the eyes of fans or the general public.... from the eyes of the publishers and developers they are "pirates". In response to the questions of 'Why no LAN option?' in StarCraft 2 the posted message just reads as a literal - if you want LAN then you must be a pirate - so stop leeching off of society and buy our game, no questions asked.

We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.

If I were to buy StarCraft II or any other title, I know the money I spent would be going to supporting that title. Personally, I would be upset that others were freeloading while others are legitimately supporting a title that has great potential and goals of making this title have 'long legs.'

If you like a song a lot, buy it, and that artist will only come out with more awesome songs for you. If you like a game, buy it, and we will promise to constantly work to make the player experience better at every corner we can.

Support the causes you believe in (This is applicable to all things, not just gaming).
Don't be a leech to society, innovation, and further awesome creations.

Similar intonations have been made by various figureheads throughout the gaming industry whenever DRM schemes have been questioned. Frequently it's a case of, "The people who care about DRM must be pirates and the rest who don't, don't care because they don't know about it."

Don't you just love arguments that rely on cultural division between 'them' and 'us'?

Get. Over. It.

2009-06-30T22:12:00.004+01:00

Three little words and yet i find them so offensively callous and childish in their nature and use. Someone typing or spitting these little mouth bullets thinks they're being cool and tough..... like disdaining someone's choice or reason for upset and confusion is a reason to be proud.

"You hurt your knee when you fell over? Well, get over it."

"Gamers may suffer some kind of identity crisis as the familiar markers of their beloved niche evolve – or disappear entirely. The solution to that one's easy: Get over it."

"You are finding it hard to deal with an ex dating one of your long-term friends? Get over it..."

These three little words speak to me on one level and tell me everything that is wrong with society on an empathic level. 'Getting over something' isn't a solution nor is it something you can choose to do. It's not a switch or a mechanism or a mindset or an ideology. You have a problem? You work it out, you try and understand why you have a problem or you analyse what you're feeling or thinking. The solution might be that you come to terms with that thing in your own way - you assign values to items, people and possessions and you can equally easily redefine those values thus changing their significance and thus impact on your life. However, the solution might not be to do that - it might be to keep being the way you are, to keep thinking the way you do or to keep feeling the things you feel.... even if that means that you do not like the 'new thing'.

It's okay to dislike things, you know? You don't have to agree with everyone or everything. You don't have to adhere to every rule, spoken or unspoken..... to sit back and watch the night draw in. Some people get up and turn the light on - not because they are afraid of the dark but because they do not want to sit in darkness.

'Get over it' is the phrase uttered by those who don't care, who don't want to know and frankly couldn't care less about it as long as they never had to hear about it again. They don't want to deal with it and thus, in an ironic turn, they will never 'get over it'.

E3: The Startening...

2009-06-02T12:50:00.004+01:00

So E3 has kicked off and it's already more exciting, more disappointing and overall just more than last year's smaller conference - at least in the online reporting department.

Things that i think are of note:

Splinter Cell Conviction - more action but looks like good fun, less frustrating stealth.
Crackdown 2 - AWESOME!! Though i wish they'd have stuck with the original style of cell shaded graphics than go for 'full, gritty realism'.
Alan Wake - release - 2010. Looks more actiony than previous coverage would have hinted at. Resi-frame (because the light seems to be a mechanic of weakening the enemies) or maybe more accurately "Silent Frame" because i think you can still move when you're firing. I think it'll be a solid rental but i'm not sure about its moodiness quality.
Shadow Complex - Looks awesome... a 'free roaming' metroid style 2D platformer.
Left 4 Dead 2 - seriously?! WTF?!! Released on Nov 17th for 360 and PC.

It's this last item that i'll spend the rest of the post ranting about. First off, it seems like a ridiculously short time period for a sequel from the meticulous Valve for one of their games. Secondly, it's only been a year since the first game was released - without a large portion of the promised content which has been rectified but the few maps available and the survival mode don't necessarily add up to the full price i paid for entry.
The most annoying information to come out of the event (actually over at the rock, paper, shotgun site) is that the Left 4 Dead campaigns will work in L4D2. Why not vice versa? Why isn't this new content (which really isn't much more of an upgrade to the game any more than the Half Life Episodes are to Half Life) compatible with Left 4 Dead?

The engine doesn't have a huge upgrade, in fact the only upgrades are to the AI director and the randomisation of mesh entities (map elements) since melee coding is already in the Source engine and could easily be applied to Left 4 Dead in a content update or via a paid download. In fact that's what i believe this content should be.... The options on release should be cut price for the content for people who already own Left 4 Dead and a download to include it within Left 4 Dead. The second option would be to buy L4D2 on its own at full retail price which already includes the content of Left 4 Dead (and this is the one that's been announced) - one executable, one menu. It should be a content platform like Rock Band, not a sequel.

Update: I've added more thoughts here about the Left 4 Dead situation

Ramblings....

2009-05-30T00:09:00.003+01:00

Is it just me or should remuneration really be renumeration.

Numerate: Origin:
1400–50; late ME: counted, numbered <>numerātus (ptp. of numerāre to number )

It just seems like a better fit.

But i digress....

Games... games.... g- I've actually very little to say at the moment. I'm having a bit of a mental block - something that i'm attributing to my out-of-workedness. Now, if only they'd come up with a word for that!

E3 is just around the corner though so no doubt i'll have plenty to say next week. As it is though i've not really been into playing games.... i've wanted to but nothing i have seems to be what i want.

I recently got Pokemon Diamond (it's only just been released here) and i'm about 20 hours into that - more through boredom than anything else - but it's still the same old game as it ever was. To be fair, it's the first game i've actually paid for since i originally played the game boy version on the PC through an emulator, so i can't complain too much about it not changing. One thing i'm liking is the berry system... it's like free items you can grow and multiply and effectively (along with the vs re-battle system) allows you to better manage your funds. I'm a bit stuck though. I got to the psychic pokemon dojo trainer leader (i forgot the actual title) and i can't beat her.... none of my pokemon seem to have any resistance to the psychic attacks and they don't seem to be vulnerable to any of my attacks.
I have electric, rock/ground, fire, water psychic, normal, flying, grass and grass/poison pokemon as my main 20-26 lvl squad but i can only kill one of her lvl 26 psychic pokemon before i end up getting my ass handed to me.

Anyway, what else have i been playing?

Through the rental queue i got Just Cause. I didn't like it. I played through about 5 hours and sent it back. Why? Well, there's a really poor lack of variety to the missions.... the vehicle handling is appalling as well as the ability to be able to get up in the air via the parachute. I feel like sometimes it takes a mere nudge/jump for that green button to come up, allowing me to open the chute.... other times i need to dive off a precipice before it'll even think about letting me get airborne. It seems to me that this is the 'fun feature' of the game and yet it's quite difficult to be able to achieve that feat. Just Cause 2 seems to be fixing this though if the trailer is to be believed.

Once i get a bit of money i'm tempted to buy Evochron (the latest version) and do some sort of 'space diary' that details my multiple lives as i start out in the game, explore and get lost with no fuel. We'll see how that goes!

Mass Effect? In brief:

2009-05-09T12:26:00.002+01:00

I just finished the game this morning - i manged to get through most of the side quests so i was pretty leveled up before taking on the baddies at the end of the game, which i assume made it much easier than if i hadn't. So, my thoughts?

The story was good, i liked it.
Fighting was serviceable though a bit broken:

If the enemies can run around at 50 miles per hour right past me and i can only turn at a rate of 0.5 of a degree a minute then please give me a lock-on feature. It's not an issue when dealing with enemies at range but frequently you're stuck in narrow corridors and other confined spaces where the enemies (and your allies) all run around you making it pretty difficult to deal with them.
Don't give the enemies one or two hit kill, super fast rocket launchers when indoors. This isn't Far Cry and at least i could generally dodge those in that game due to the distance (indeed, even when i was outside on the planets in Mass Effect).
Cover feature. WHAT?! Are you mad? This isn't really a tactical game. If i want to take cover behind something i don't want to switch position making it so that i can't shoot or move as fast as i normally can, I just want to be behind it. The cover feature is irrelevant in the game and only adds to the combat frustration.
Untrained weapons. Depending on the class you take you are 'untrained' in certain weapons. This doesn't mean you can't use them, it just means that your cone of fire is larger and that you can't 'zoom aim' with them equipped. This is another feature which makes little sense to me. Why allow characters to equip weapons they will never use? Especially if there's no way to train your character to be able to use them. It's superfluous, especially when considering that if your character is very good with a pistol and you have the right mods you can deal more (or the same) damage as another character trained with a weapon that you can't use.

Don't cut to a video of something that's happening elsewhere during the middle of a boss fight when i'm about to beat the boss and then, when my control is regained, give the boss back all his shields (and then allow him to spam rockets)! WTF? Seriously, it makes no logical sense in relation to how the game works - it wasn't my fault i stopped fighting, his shields shouldn't have recharged! Don't punish the player because you feel like being jerks.
Item lists.... tut, tut. I don't mind the single list during selling/buying/equipment screen... but it's ordered in the most difficult way. It's ordered by 'level' of item rather than item type which is very annoying because it has a very slow scroll speed and to see if you have cryo rounds 5 (so you can delete/sell all your cryo rounds 4) you must go through every thing that's level 4 before you get to the level 5 stuff and then to where the cryo rounds are located rather than having all the cryo rounds together by level. I don't know who designed that part of the game but they either needed more time on it or they need a better concept of how people would be wanting to compare/use the items. (I know this issue is 'fixed' in the PC release, though i'm not sure if it still sorts things by level or not).

Overall, it was an enjoyable game. The sci-fi universe they constructed is pretty interesting though i'd like less 'douchey' people in positions of power in the next game. It seemed like the requisite of being a leader was to be an asshole or perhaps the person who wrote it has some sort of problem with authority [/psychoanalysis]. I'm looking forward to the next one which i think is out towards the end of the year or possibly early next year.

The evolution of interaction…

2009-04-30T09:04:00.001+01:00

I used to read a lot when i was younger (well, relatively anyway) and while i still enjoy a good read i’ve found that i’m beginning to encounter some problems when doing so. It’s happening with film and TV, to a lesser extent, as well so i’m pretty sure that it’s not that i’m just going through a patch where i’m not too bothered to read.

During recent years i’ve had to put a few books down. I had to stop reading them for a day or two because i couldn’t stand what was happening in the story, not because it was stupid or annoying but because the story happened to visit places that i’d prefer to not travel to…. rape, forced marriage and lovers missing each other’s intentions and what-not (i’m not into romance novels though these examples clearly seem to indicate that they’re what i’m reading!).

At first i thought that this was because i’m adverse to these practices or perhaps emotionally tied to the characters who are missing each other’s interests but i’ve noticed a similar trend in my visual media consumption too. I turn off TV shows if the plot isn’t going where i like it to or if i feel that the plot devices are just too silly or stupid to make any kind of sense. This led me to believe that perhaps my attention span has been reduced by the constant “quick media” influx over the last two decades as is so often portrayed in the news media.

However, today i had a revelation. I don’t have a short attention span - i can play games or read books/watch movies for many hours at a time… i can have stimulating conversations or play complicated board games at length. My attention span isn’t short, it’s just that i have been taught to use my freedom to better choose what i consume or do. At the same time i think that playing games has also influenced my (and probably others’) perceptions of how i am allowed to consume various media. In games, *I* am the protagonist, i don’t always have a choice in what i do but at least i’m the one driving the interaction and progression. In games that give me a choice, i play a role (and since i’m the unimaginative sort i usually play the ideal role i’d like to live up to in real life) and that affects how i experience the game and it plays out. In films/TV and books i don’t have this interaction, i’m passive to the ongoings of the characters and i don’t know where the story is going or at what pace. At the same time, these strengths to the traditional media are making me balk at interacting with them in the same way because i’m used to acting on the knowledge given to me in a way that is impossible in pre-determined media. I want to step in and stop that rape, create a character to do so perhaps since i have no agency in that world. I want to play matchmaker between two forlorn lovebirds, befriend them and make them happy. I’m sure that some people would prefer the opposite or different results from these scenarios but they are equally as unable to affect the world.

In playing games i have spoiled myself i have created a god-like complex that makes me think i’m entitled to edit, change and manipulate the worlds in my media…. i pick out ‘flaws’ that clash with my perceptions of what is right and wrong or what just doesn’t make sense and i want to change them to fit my beliefs and desires.

*I* am player character…. do as i wish.

While i’m now aware of this and i can perhaps temper my feeling when entering these situations a little, is this leading to something bigger?

At the moment the web is all ado about web 2.0: user-created content and involvement. In the past it was all about what was fed to us by outlets… but even then (and even more so now) the news industry has always had a symbiosis with the consumers. We supply news, we create it and we devour it from the carefully crafted reports given to us by the news companies. Is this a hint of what’s to come? We’ve all heard of ghost writers - people who help out or completely write a novel or story in the name of another person. David Perry (and Acclaim) started a game design for a project that was/is a collaboration between users and developers - they have a say in what happens and contribute to the development process as well.

Is the next big ‘media’ evolution co-existing with the current generation? In thirty years time will we be talking to authors, giving feedback and helping to write our own collaborative stories? Will our visual media be the same? It’s an intersting concept and a nightmare in the making (as i’m sure Perry found out during the early parts of making the Top Secret project) but it seems like a logical extension of where we are and what we desire in our media.

So, what do you think?

Just to let you know...

2009-04-09T14:35:00.003+01:00

Just in case anyone reads here (including the elemental Wordsmythe) i've been trying to concentrate more on the Eggmen project for the time being. If anyone wants to join in on a podcast then let me know and we can knock around some ideas and see if we can get together and record it.

I'll keep posting here and perhaps duplicate some posts across the two sites but i've only got so many ideas in me and only so many words to write them in.

:D

Enough is enough.....

2009-04-04T11:05:00.002+01:00

Let's face it, if you've read this blog for any length of time you'll know how fed up i am with the games industry... it's my main pasttime so of course i'm going to get irate when things make that pasttime less valuable or less attractive. You might, however, join me in an incredulous sigh when you read what i'm about to quote:

But game companies say there is a bigger force at work: the proliferation of consumer choice in the game industry prevents them from raising prices on console games. Games for iPhones are considerably cheaper; indeed, many are free. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, a racing game that has been a longtime favorite on the iTunes App Store, costs $5.99. Zombieville USA, another top seller, is only $1.99. Games made for downloading onto the Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii cost $10.

“Video games used to be the type of entertainment that sucked dollars from TV, music and the box office,” said Evan Wilson, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. “Now, inside the video game industry, it’s having its own internal distraction issues. There are lots of options.”

So, when companies aren't making enough money in the games industry they first blamed the pirates, citing the huge numbers of pirated copies of games and *thus* sales they should be expecting if there were no piracy and they moved to stop that with copy protection and more recently DRM schemes.... then they blamed used games, citing the huge numbers of resold games which was draining the industry of their rightful profits and they moved to stop that by making the DRM schemes applicable to one person only...... now they're blaming CHEAP GAMES?!! Are you serious? Are you fucking with me? MY GOD!

The industry is basically telling the consumers that everything we believe is true in a free and consumer-driven market is just false. Consumer demand shouldn't drive price points, oh no.... companies should be able to set their price points and consumers should be forced to buy those items at the same rate as the cheaper ones they did before. Voting with your wallet to not buy a shoddy, half-finished and/or sloppy port shouldn't count when the industry is hurting - you should be forced to buy them anyway AND buy the DLC (that is actually on the disc) when it is released less than *two weeks after launch.... i mean, who do they think they are?

Companies in the games industry always go on about how whiney their customers are and how they can never please the "hardcore" segment.... well, maybe it's because we're used to the industry being such fucking babies about everything that makes us react in this way. Seriously, grow up! I have to admit that i don't read as much blurbs from other industries so maybe they're all like this but i've never heard so many ludicrously idiotic soundbites from industry executives as i have from the games industry..... When they're not blaming lack of performance on some nebulous thing, they're sticking their feet in their mouths and out the other end so they can carry on walking by making offensive comments about their customers.

*Judging from previous experience with knowing how releasing patches/updates and downloadable arcade games (i.e. Spacegiraffe) goes i know it takes a LOT longer than a couple of weeks to get something onto the online services of the consoles (though obviously the Fallout 3 DLC was just shunted through this process with a pass from some executive somewhere)

Zelda's ill and i don't know if she'll make it.....

2009-03-25T20:17:00.003Z

You know what the worst part of Nintendo's continued lack of hardcore focus is? For me, it's seeing the games you grew up with getting trodden on.

Take The Legend of Zelda series for example. I was happy with the direction they took up until Twilight Princess.... now i feel that Zelda has become a gimmicky horse, trotted out at every opportunity when Nintendo are trying to 'prove' that they still care about the hardcore gaming crowd. I played Phantom Hourglass but i didn't like it. I felt the game was heartless with no joy or irreverence that was present in the more cartoony entries in the series but it also lacked the grandeur of the more serious entries as well. The difficulty was also severely removed and i hated the touchscreen game mechanic which i had a really hard time being able to utilize effectively.... plus i hated travelling around in the boat.

I'll ignore Link's Crossbow Training as, well, I consider that to be a Zelda game in the same vein as the CDi games. Moving on to today's announcement The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, the sinking feeling that i had with Phatom Hourglass has returned. They've essentially kept the same game engine and mechanics, replacing the 'freedom' of the boat travel with trains..... on a track - as if the metaphor really needed to be underlined so acutely.

Where is the Zelda i like? Where is the grand adventure, the great story or the decent action? It's almost on par with the move from Star Wars eps 1-3 from 4-6 or Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull from the original three.... They take an established franchise and essentially throw out what it was that made it so great.

Initially when Aonuma took over from Miyamoto in the main development of the Zelda series i was quite excited as he stated he wanted to bring the stories together - to make sense of the timeline thus set out and integrate new stories into that..... well, i'm just not seeing this at all. Instead we're getting The Legend of Zelda: Wild, Wild, West.

At least i still have my beloved Prince of Persia... though, the DLC for that was so linear i fear that the open world might be removed in the second game which would be a travesty and reduce the game to exactly what its detractors said it was: a lengthy Quick Time Event (QTE).

The problem with Star Wars...

2009-03-21T16:26:00.003Z

Well, one problem at least. There is no change... actually that's incorrect: in fact there is negative change in the Star Wars universe. The original movies provided the fiction that had a certain style which reflected then-current thoughts on futuristic technology and cuture and the games that these movies inspired, from X-Wing to Jedi Knight, incorporated these design elements and continued them forward.
Then the new movies came along and royally fucked up the franchise - not just by being pretty poor in every respect (turns out Zebedee played the part of Yoda) but also because they re-wrote the styles and technologies of a universe that was set 20 or so years before the original films. Unfortunately this creep of what i want to call 'futurising' (though Futurition is the only word that comes close) has spread to the games as well... Kotor (1&2) and now the Old Republic MMO all feature pretty high-tech stuff.

I suppose that it's more a facet of having a franchise that spans almost 4 four decades than any particularly narrow-sighted vision of the Star Wars universe but i hate it so much. Now, i'm not greatly entrenched in the Star Wars universe but i'm pretty sure there was no galactic equivalent of the Dark Ages so there was no major loss of technology and culture, so why the hell are robots as good 4000 years before as they are in the 'present' of the movies? Unless there's some sort of technological limit that's been reached it makes no sense that there's all this cool stuff even one thousand years before the present let alone 4,000...

What this results in, for me, is an uninteresting universe where little is different at any point in time that the owners are likely to exploit in game, comic or movie form. They are too afraid to try something new in the franchise because then people might not recognise the fact that it's Tatooine or the bounty hunter class etc. I mean, mandalorian armour? Yeah, for the mandalorians that's fine but apparently Boba Fett was wearing pretty ancient armour because the Mandalorians were almost wiped out as a race in the Old Republic.

Just for once i'd like to see some innovation in the setting. For example, off the top of my head

Tatooine isn't colonised yet - no Settlements, it's just a desert planet... OR it's actually a lush, jungle planet and its sun is pretty weak but is showing signs that its intensity is increased OR there's an evil plot to throw a huge asteroid around the solar system which makes Tatooine's orbit adjust so that it's closer to the sun(s) and thus results in its desertification.
Light Sabres are unreliable (vibroblades are better) and usually only work for a limited time before they overheat or overload or something.... which adds a tactical element to their use by jedi to offset their powerfulness.
Ships are more awkward and slower.... they do not have hyperspace yet, or at least not the version of the drives we are familiar with in the 'modern' setting (maybe no streaks of light)
Blasters do not exist - there are only projectile weapons.... similarly with energy forcefields (or they have a similar feature to light sabres in that they're unreliable)
Droids do not exist in the sense that we know them - they are boxes with tracks or wheels and their appendages are stiff. Their personalities are undeveloped and unhuman-like. Protocol/translator droids are used but there are no complex combat droids and only very simple, possibly mostly remote controlled combat/repair droids.... which could be a character class (i.e. like being a pokemon trainer or whatever anime floats your boat)

That's just me and in the space of 1o minutes... what could a dev house full of dreamers, writers and creators come up with? Oh, that's right... i forgot that the 'house that Lucas built' is committed to running the franchise into an unimaginative grave.

Wading through the crap...

2009-03-12T18:20:00.003Z

I wrote a while ago about my belief that fewer, (and preferably higher quality) games on the Wii would result in better sales and performance for the third parties involved. Now, i'm beginning to take what i wrote even more seriously following a post from an iPhone game developer about how he'd made $535 on an investment (including his time) of $32,000 for his game, Dapple.

The iPhone has only been out since the end of June in 2007 and already there are 6000 games available on the App Store. That's essentially an 'infinite' number of games to trawl through (though only 17% are in the same genre as Dapple) unless you specifically know what you're looking for. Now, it's not like this is new to the gaming industry and in fact this problem is well known in the hotel/B&B industry (books, film etc), but there are three ways to get around this aspect of proliferation:

1) Produce fewer games (or only allow a limited amount each week).
2) Learn to effectively market your product.
3) Learn to 'monetise' your games effectively.

Number 1 just isn't going to happen. Apple are as greedy as any other company and won't want to halt the headline generating number of games available on their store.

Number 2 is difficult. You need to create a critical mass of reviews and public advertising for your product just before it is released and then capitalise on that pent up interest and curiosity. Further along you need to remind the populace that your game exists and this can be accomplished through re-advertising campaigns, sequels (and thus the link to the original game) and word of mouth which can only really help if your game is a runaway success - such as is the case with the DS and Wii. Keeping the game on lists (as the developer mentions) can be key to remaining in the public eye. It sounds like the guy at Streaming Colour Studios has learned this lesson and will be improving his marketing accordingly.

Number 3 is an interesting exercise and can pretty much come in any form. The best i've heard was on the recent podcast from GamersWithJobs where it was suggested to the resident iPhile that a subscription service which offered a random (not repeating) game per week for a fee (like a recurring rental service) would be an excellent way to sift the wheat from the chaff. This would not necessarily bring in the megabucks to the developer on its own but when that game is featured i'd bet there would be a related surge in sales numbers.... though i would not like to bet on by how much.

Ultimately the game companies (Apple, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony) need to sort this thing out otherwise they're going to end up with an indeciferable mess on each of their respective platforms. The only thing that currently saves the market is the console refresh every 5 or so years, meaning a blank slate can be slapped on top of the mess. Also, for previous generations there wasn't this proliferation of DLC or downloadable games which meant that there was no need or cost associated with keeping that content available for all users, even after the console has been discontinued (which i think will be a big disincentive to transfer to the next console generation aside from the monetary loss incurred from the horsepower battle that ensued between MS and Sony).

We've seen Microsoft come forward and say that they'd start removing games from Live! Arcade but so far i don't think this has happened in any meaningful way and this is probably down to an outcry from publishers/developers and users when it was first touted as a way to clean up the lists for sale. Since then there have been no other suggestions as to a solution to this problem and it's fast becoming the white elephant in the room. At least with physical copies there is a shelf life and limited number of copies in existance... for a digital copy there are unlimited 'items' available and, because of DRM, the 'original' needs to be kept for the customers to be able to redownload or reference if their copy is lost or corrupted.

DRM discussions aside, this is one of the reasons why i try not to support downloading games. At some point there is going to be a planned critical loss of information as we move from one platform to another and i do not want to be a part of that.

Would you like some lube with that purchase...?

2009-03-11T15:46:00.002Z

Nintendo, in all their wondrous and omnipotent glory, have decided to INCREASE the price of the Wii and upcoming games for both the Wii and DS/DSi in the UK. This is due to the weakened state of the pound in the international market and blub, blub blub.....

Wait, what the hell was that? Oh, right, that was the sound of Nintendo's UK sales figures sinking after this takes effect. Well, maybe not entirely but either way it's not a good idea. Basically, we here in the UK can't afford to be spending lots of money on games and game consoles and the prices of these items in relation to general income is usually higher than in the US but lower than some EU countries and significantly lower than Australia/New Zealand. So, in a time of economic 'crisis' where there are loads of people tightening their belts and/or being laid off.... how do you drum up more business? Oh, that's right! Increase the price of your items which were already making a profit on a per-unit basis anyway. Great strategy!

Of course, Nintendo don't actually set the retail price of their products in the UK and retailers are welcome to eat the ~£20 increase in order to keep sales going strong. Of course, this means that retailers, which are already doing badly in the current economic climate would struggle even more for a smaller cut of the item sold.... it's unlikely to happen. What i do see happening is retailers claiming that they're 'not receiving stock' or whatever excuse might apply so they can effectively stop selling the Wii in such quantities.

On the game side of the equation, a price hike is a ridiculous suggestion. DS games are so overpriced when taking into account gameplay hours and general quality (more complex games [i.e. not scrabble] usually sell between £20-30 though retailers tend to cut them down to sub £20 after a period on the shelves) and also, most importantly, cost to make vs install base of the platform. Wii games, again, are generally a sorry affair with respect to the quality of their build and i believe they are already at their sweet spot for selling to the mass market audience that Nintendo now calls their customer base.

Now, if the Wii had been targeted more towards a traditional or hardcore consumer base of game enthusiasts perhaps this would be a 'good' move for the company... while we complain about price hikes, game quality/whatever and can be pretty vocal about it all we still buy games. The lesson that Nintendo might be about to learn (just as other entertainment industries have in the past) the general consumer and mass market can be a fickle mistress... there's always something else.

2009-03-04T19:43:00.002Z

Following reading a reply to a post by the author (Iroquois Pliskin):

As I said, have this same problem with moral-choice games, I just always find them pretty uninteresting ethically. I think one of the things you're pointing to also is that moral choices in games would be a lot more impactful if the moral aspects were handled much more subtly.

It reminded me of a piece i wrote a while ago that was rejected from 'publication'. Enjoy:

Morality in games is generally your black and white, your good and evil – polar opposites. Role playing games and games with role playing elements strive to paint the game world in the shades of grey that reality has as a base coat. The problem with this is that any expressionistic medium is limited both by the person expressing it and the person experiencing it.

Inevitably one of the reasons why so many games fall into the trap of being polarised in their moral choices is because it’s easy - it’s much easier to write and script a game that is obvious in its intent than being ambiguous. Ambiguity could be said to be the nature of genius and many literary and artistic greats show this trait; allowing the user to discuss and imbibe the content, all the while applying their own world logic to it without the hindrance of being shown ‘how it should be interpreted’. Another reason is that the authors are conditioned to behave like this.

Look around in society and you will see the broad strokes of them and us, hero and villain, enemy and friend. It’s a trait that’s hard-coded into our survival instincts and it shows in our actions, our beliefs and the structure of society in general. It takes a lot to break away from this conditioning.

Essentially, I don’t believe that a person can truly express something that they’ve never experienced. They can guess but, at best, it’s still just guesswork. How many authors or actors will go out of their way to experience a way of life, either first hand or through extensively researching that way of life, to be able to excel at their work?
I think that the evidence is in front of us – in all the games we’ve played – the people who make games don’t know how to be bad people. Sure, they can call names and pretend to be violent but those are extremes. Where are the people who take a piss in a housemate’s shampoo because they’ve annoyed them one too many times? The people who are happy burning a business or home to the ground to claim on the insurance when their chips are down? These are the people who we need to be helping to develop games – or at least the people developers imagine themselves to be, to get into their mindsets and alter their perceptions of the world around them.

Going back to instinct and the social programming associated with that; we are designed to work together to produce favourable results - this is how the human race has survived for so long. Good deeds are rewarded on several levels: the burst of good feelings we get, the social reward of people respecting us and liking us and the related feelings we experience (along with the benefits we receive) from those interactions. There are also the negative effects of doing something ‘bad’ in society on whatever level: chemical punishments that our own bodies administer all the way up to social deprivation because of our bad traits or actions.
In many cases, this conditioning helps repress our darker sides, curtails our desires to fight for stupid reasons and try to dominate those around us for selfish reasons. There are those for whom the rewards don’t appeal: those people who get away with ‘bad’ deeds and feel a chemical reward from their bodies for doing those deeds. To back this up, there are studies that have shown that psychological disorders are associated with chemical imbalances: studies that show how some people don’t associate negative feelings of certain events and situations in the way that most ‘normal’ people do. These people do not have the same understanding of the world that the majority do and thus their ways are ‘bad’.

The problem with role playing games is that their authors have this applied to their world view. It’s the reason why good choices in games tend to be disproportionately rewarded and why the bad or evil choices are so simplistic in their implementation: be rude and kill.

If we want to start having more morally questionable choices in games, if games themselves want to start challenging our intellects in the same way that art, film and literature do, then those who make them need to start practicing whatever the equivalent of method acting is for game development. There needs to be a move away from the safe mindset of society and instead look inwards towards the absolute selfishness and cruelty that simmers just beneath the surface of any person. This would hopefully breed a broader moral spectrum in which a game can be played and also allow for more ambiguous characterisation and events to take place.

The best gaming intellectual and emotional experiences that I’ve had have come from games that make me question the intent of the designer and writer – to try to understand what is happening or what happened while I was playing. Games like Portal, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are the first step in the right direction. They don’t force the answers down our throats but instead allow a person to dissect the dangled hidden meanings if their own wish is to do so, or if not, just play the game.
This lenience in game understanding cannot happen when the choices or experiences allowed are polar in their presentation. You are allowed the designer’s intended emotions but not challenged to really think about how those emotions come about. Ultimately the player becomes passive in an intrinsically active medium.

However, if developers continue to push the boundaries of their and our social leanings, to help us question and understand that which makes us what we are... we may yet have our Citizen Kane.

RE5..... again!

2009-03-02T20:47:00.002Z

The BBFC have stated that Resident Evil 5 isn't racist. It's only due to people's biased view that the game might be inherently racist that it's even being questioned on it. I mean, Far Cry 2 has lots of black people (it's set in Africa) that you kill as a white person (there are multiple characters but only one of them has any significant colour to their skin) but i don't remember any controversy over that game and its themes of war and violence in war-torn Africa, let alone racism.

The other issue is with the BBFC and how people view the BBFC as not a ratings body but a censorship body (despite the fact that they've only banned two games in 20-odd years).... the phrase is actually used in the article above which i find quite funny. Intertwined with this view are the current shenannigans surrounding the new rating regulations about to be introduced in the UK and the fight between the BBFC and ELSPA/PEGI for the right to regulate and rate games here. I'm almost certain that if this was not ongoing the BBFC might never have been approached for a comment...

Published at last....

2009-02-21T10:48:00.003Z

Well, sort of. I wrote a snarky letter to EDGE magazine in December berating them for the crappy Prince of Persia review they wrote. While i'm fine with opinions being expressed in reviews those opinions should not colour the interpretation of the facts - something that i felt the EDGE review was guilty of.

To be honest i never thought they'd actually publish it in the letters section but they did and even replied to it. However, as you might imagine (if your view of me is of an 'angry internet men'), i wasn't totally happy with their reply:

Our problem with Prince of Persia was that it failed to give players a sense of involvement. Yes, most games largely consist of visual cues for interaction, but they should also give choice over it. POP's combat does indeed present cues for what will and won't work, but these rules feel arbitrarily imposed. As a result, Prince of Persia fails to provide play that's on the player's terms.

Now i'm going to say right off the bat that i disagree with this ridiculous statement as i did when they called the game a QTE which consisted of "see a visual cue and press the appropriate button".... which of course describes any platforming game.

My first problem with their reply is that the first line is completely opinion, it's not fact but is very clearly stated as so. What they should say is that the reviewer failed to have a sense of involvement and not extrapolate it to every player of the game - for instance, to contradict this statement I had great fun and was very involved with the game, enough to finish it twice over a period of 3 or 4 days (something i've never done with any other game).

The second problem i have is what i found in the original article as well (making me believe that the actual reviewer wrote the reply and not some editorial person): Games should give choice over the interaction in a game? WHAT?!! Did they really just say this? This is an incredibly weak argument in the extreme and a fallacy if i'm completely blunt. How many games do you know where you're given the rules to play and then you're allowed to alter those rules as you go along? Not since Pong was made a commercial success have we had a game that allowed you to have choice over how you interacted with a set rule. You hit the ball if the paddle is in the way, Mario jumps over a hole because there's no way around.... PoP:The Sands of Time has only one way of completing any given task. Sure, there are games that give the players choice but those games make it apparent from the beginning that there are choices available: They're judging the game by some sort of expectation that was never going to be met... It's the kind of unfair justification that you expect from a government body that has decided that "the computer says no".

Thirdly (and this is the point my letter was trying to address) is that the rules in combat are well-defined and set out clearly for the player as they meet each new rule addition.... they don't throw them all in there at once and they're not changing as you progress through the game: the vulnerable state to claw attacks always looks the same. So when they say that the rules feel arbitrarily imposed i'm shocked.... OF COURSE they're arbitrarily imposed.... it's a computer game set in a fantasy land. However, once those arbitrary decisions about the rules were made in development they stuck to them throughout the game - they DO NOT CHANGE.... i think the person either has an incorrect understanding of the term "arbitrary" or just didn't learn how to play the game (or worse, didn't actually play the game properly to get the review out on time).

Finally, "the player's terms"? What does that even mean? The game certainly isn't unfair - especially with people complaining it's so easy, something that this very reviewer also parroted in EDGE a few months earlier.... it lays out what you have to do and how you do it when the player encounters each situation. The play of a game is always on the terms of the developers - they provide the rules and constants of the game world - the player just plays and experiences and occasionally finds bugs or exploits that break these rules which then allows them to play on their own terms but not very often.

Maybe someone can explain that one to me....

On the downturn...

2009-01-23T15:28:00.003Z

**Update**

There's a few rumblings that FEAR 2 has securom DRM - though whether it's just the disc-check (which i'm fine with) or the online authentication form of the software (which i'm not okay with) we'll have to wait and see because, let's face it, Warner Bros. and Monolith aren't going to tell us until it hits retail shelves.... Potentially one less reason for me to buy it.

Maybe this recession is affecting my optimism for gaming but i'm not feeling particularly excited about any releases already announced for this year.

Dawn of War 2 just isn't my cup of tea. I don't like squad management games with hero units and it's one of the reasons why i disliked Warcraft 3 why i don't like Company of Heros. It's too much of a departure from the original Dawn of War (though i didn't like the game after the second expansion) and what i liked about that game. I feel like they should have left the name and kept the franchise. Warhammer 40K: Squad Commander..... oh, wait.... they already did that.

Fear 2 - i need to try the demo for this game but i'm just tired of generic FPSes. I liked FEAR and i'm sure i'll get around to playing this one but not at release i've not seen anything that makes me excited for it.

DNF - it may come around sometime this year but who knows? I used to be excited for this game. Hell! I'm still excited for the game that was based around the 2001 trailer but the new screenshots haven't been that exciting - too dark and gritty. Duke was never about being dark and gritty he was about over-the-top fun and ridiculousness. We'll see but my interest is diminished.

Anything else?

Empire Total War? The only setting i liked was Rome the games are all pretty much of a muchness when you get down to it and IMO it's the setting that matters most in this genre that Creative Assembly have manged to corner for themselves.

Bah.... these are depressing times.

Finally, someone else sees some sense...

2009-01-18T11:08:00.003Z

I've always liked Stardock's view on copy protection and customer support. I don't agree with everything that's coming through their new initiative that's trying to push towards copyright standards within the industry but at least they've always had a positive attitude towards piracy.

Now another company - again, one whose stance and methods i don't necessarily always agree with - has a spokesperson actually speaking with sense! Jason Holtman spoke recently at the Game Business Law Summit. He mentioned some interesting things about online versus retail sales but i was more interested in this little nugget at the end of the reporting article at gamedaily:

The final sacred cow that Holtman took a stab at was the issue of piracy. "There's a big business feeling that there's piracy," he says. But the truth is: "Pirates are underserved customers."

"When you think about it that way, you think, 'Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.'"

"We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia," Holtman says of Valve. "The reason people pirated things in Russia," he explains, "is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television -- they say 'Man, I want to play that game so bad,' but the publishers respond 'you can play that game in six months...maybe.' "

"We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly," Holtman says, explaining that Valve makes sure their games are on the shelves in Moscow and St. Petersberg, in Russian, when they release it to North America and Western Europe.

There are, concludes Holtman, "tons of undiscovered customers," because publishers look very narrowly at the Western market.

This is basically something that i've said for a long time and something that people in the EU, Russia, Asia and Australia know to be true. In an age were you can get up to date information at the touch of a button it is truly frustrating to see that you won't get a product until 6 months to a year - or maybe never - after everyone else, or even just the primary market.

Publishers and developers are too focused on releasing as soon as possible to one audience and of course this will mean that piracy will increase. The PC has always been easiest to pirate on because it's an open platform but as consoles become more pervasive and more people are exposed to the discrepancies in releases and release dates in each territory console game piracy will become more of an issue - especially because each console is region-locked (i know PS3 isn't technically region locked but a few of its games are) so people can't or won't import a whole console which means that they then have to import every game purchase they want.

It's saddening to see that apparently so few people within the games industry realise that the industry hurts itself the most by being narrow-minded in these aspects and that they think piracy can be decreased and sales can be increased through hurting consumer rights and their relationship with the consumer.

Back soon...

2009-01-16T13:33:00.002Z

Hey, all you zero readers!

I've been a bit out of things for a while now, partially due to trying to finish writing up and also because i've had other things on my mind such as having to pay a fairly large tax bill.... well, it turns out that i read the form incorrectly. I awoke to find a large amount of money in my bank account the other day which turned out to be from the tax office.... So i'm temporarily slightly better off than i was before and this means that i'll be able to buy and talk about new and not so new games in the coming months.

For the time being though i'll be pretty quiet until i get back home and have my usual set up surrounding me.

Chat soon.

A favour...

2008-12-17T07:30:00.002Z

I'm not sure how many people read this blog with any regularity but i have a favour to ask. I co-host a gaming podcast on a site called Eggmen.co.uk - however i get the feeling that no one listens to it. Normally i wouldn't be too bothered about lack of listenership because i'm doing it because i enjoy doing it and not because i'm looking for internet fame.

However, after doing three or four podcasts i think we need some constructive criticism and feedback on what we're doing right and wrong.... i'd like to be able to do the best we can do. If anyone could take the time to do something like this i'd really appreciate it.

Lara pollarva (or pallarva - can't find the exact spelling!)

2008-12-12T23:42:00.006Z

I've just gotten around to playing Tomb Raider: Underworld and boy.... I'm a bit let down. Not by the graphics - they're fantastic and in comparison with what i thought was next-generation in Legend this game really is a completely next-gen graphical parade - no, i feel that I'm let down by the controls.

I remember not long ago i read an article where one of the developers was saying how much they had changed under the hood of their engine and i agree with all of their graphical changes.... they've also upped the animation and Lara's interaction with the environment - that is to say that the environment isn't interactive but that Lara interacts with it more realistically; she will push away branches that get in her face, trip when she falls a small distance or stumble over rocks etc. They've really tried to get a more realistic feel to Lara's adventures... unfortunately they've almost completely wrecked the one thing that is really important in a game - the controls.

At first, when i played the demo, i thought maybe it was me and i was mis-remembering. I asked in forums if other people noticed the same things as i did and they said, "no" but i held off the purchase anyway. Then i saw the game for 60% off and one impulse buy later i owned it. Now, however i realise that i wasn't wrong and that i may just be more observant than other people. To make things worse, I've just gotten through playing a game with one of the most well-made control systems I've ever encountered (Prince of Persia) though some people argue that it takes a lot of control away from the player.

Let me explain what's happening. Underworld has twitchy controls or more accurately, it has twitchy controls for the analogue sticks. When i first played the game i became dizzy and felt really sick.... it only occurred to me as i was getting to the point that i had to put the game down that i actually was suffering from motion sickness - something I've never been susceptible to in gaming or real life. I put the game down, went to bed and have played some more tonight. It wasn't as bad but i still ended up watching flash-frame close-ups of Lara's behind/back/legs and random walls/floors.... you name it, as i moved around the levels.
Lara now turns on the proverbial dime, her movement is so fast and quick that my mind has trouble comprehending her almost jerky super-movements. Even the simple action of running is exaggerated to some degree and in a really annoying nerdy moment i realised that her hyper-fast legs run in an inward V-shape as if she was a model posing rather than actually running properly.... (okay, it's mainly annoying to me because i did cross country running for 7 years of my school life along with many other sporting pursuits.... i know what people look like when they run).... all of this means that Lara ends up looking like her animations were modelled after a toddler (watch any movie of a toddler or young child running and their body parts seem to be moving faster than they should be for how fast they are actually moving).

Then there's the typical Tomb Raider environment vs. movement affair we've come to know and love. I can't count the number of obstacles that i've tried to climb onto but have instead gone for a jump off. Try again, this time standing next to the face of the object or ledge, without the direction button and the same thing happens. Run Lara in a circle and retry and this time she deigns to grip the top and allow you to indicate that you want her to pull herself up. I've "tripped" when trying to drop down or jump off ledges/objects and met invisible walls that were really obtrusive and countless little niggles that all add up. Most of these things wouldn't even be a problem if her movement and camera controls were okay.

But hey, it's a 3rd person adventure game - why am I so hard on it when there have been so many games that had these same issues? The answer is because they didn't exist in either Legend or Anniversary or at least they were less of an issue then.

In Crystal Dynamics' move to make the newest Lara truly next-gen they seem to have abandoned everything that worked in the much-loved games and improved on some of those areas but made others more finicky and harder to get to grips with. I actually went back to play Legend and see if i was suffering from some sort of short-term nostalgia (i only played it a couple of months ago) and was happy to learn that i was correct... it wasn't all just in my imagination - just amplified by the ease and frustration-free controls of Prince of Persia.

In Legend, the camera is further behind Lara so, while you may not be able to get as good a shot of her arse in the game, when she rolls underneath an overhanging obstacle you don't get a front and centre view of her left ass cheek. Nor do you end up viewing some sort of Blair Witch-esque cinematography when platforming in general. You also had a first person view by clicking one of the analogue sticks.... which is really useful because even in Legend there are plenty of ledges and overhangs that will not allow the camera to be positioned such that you can see what's across from your position - they removed this feature in Underworld and replaced it with an over-the-shoulder-with-a-slightly-more-zoomed-in-position camera..... which can't be utilised when on said ledges... thus making it that much more difficult (and frustrating) to see whether you're about to jump to safety or a plunging crevasse.
I mentioned before that Lara turns really quickly, as does the camera, and there is less of a 'dead' zone and gradient applied to both analogue sticks - though there may be some way to reduce the sensitivity on them that i haven't found. To top it all off.... in Legend and Anniversary Lara's running was almost perfect - straight legs and everything!

Overall, i've been a bit frustrated with the first 'level' of the game (i've played through two levels but they both took place in the Medditeranean Sea and am up to the end of the demo in Bohisvarta) though hopefully i'll grow acclimatised to the controls and camera..... but it really is a shame that they ditched the control mechanisms from the last two games. I made the comparison between The Angel of Darkness Lara and Underworld Lara in my last post.... I just hope that the similarities don't get much more deeper.

[UPDATE]

I played through more of the game this morning... turns out that first person view has been replaced by a camera thing that Lara lifts to her face. The problem is that in confined spaces it's still useless as it's slightly zoomed in and has a depth of field effect applied to it's view.

Still not liking the camera and movement controls though i think i've pinpointed the problem with what they did for the camera. It appears that the developers have used a universal 'turning rate' for the camera - what this means is that the further away from Lara you are, the better control you have over the camera while the closer you are the more quickly the camera will move making it harder to control. Let me show you schematically:

Say Lara is at the centre point of a circle and we take the above slice as an example of wanting to move the camera through its arc. Having the camera always move at the same speed is annoying because when moving from point 1 to 2 it takes longer while the closer you get to Lara it becomes much quicker, e.g. from A to B. This is an example of a universal movement/turning rate where the distance covered by an object in a given time is not related to its position in the system. It's mostly annoying in Underworld because, as i mentioned further up somewhere, the camera is much closer to Lara this time than in the previous two incarnations. What you really want is for the camera to be on some sort of inversely proportional movement rate from its distance to the character so that you have fine control when zoomed out and when zoomed in.

One other factor that makes the game more frustrating is the fact that when the camera moves so does the direction that you are moving Lara. Say you're holding forward, running down an L-shaped corridor.... you can quite smoothly run Lara around that corner by gently moving the camera - which is good! But if that camera gets stuck on a piece of the environment or if it suddenly decides to jump to a different position you are left smacking Lara's head into a wall or something because your movement reference just did a 130 degree spas-out for very little reason.

While i haven't quite figured out the problem with the analogue controls for movement of Lara herself i spent about 20 minutes doing a 5 minute segment due to the finicky controls this morning. I was trying to jump from a beam to a pillar which you stand on. Because as soon as i went to the position to jump the camera would get up close and personal with Lara, making it difficult to aim my jump. The first two times it was really the camera that made me miss the pillar.... the second three times i aligned myself perfectly but for some reason Lara decided to jump over or right next to the pillar but not on it. Finally i managed to do it but it's very frustrating.