I’m just going to say this: It’s about fucking time. When are we going to see Mario RPG and Secret of Evermore?
In other news, I’ve just started with the Xbox Live Platform group this week, after much moving, which is why I haven’t posted in a while. Obviously you’re not going to hear anything out of me pertaining to that, but the future looks good.
Aside from my Achievement addiction, I have a profound love of Magic: The Gathering. Over the years I have abandoned the game, stayed away for several years, and then come back to it, each time harder than before. The last time I seriously got into playing Magic was during the Odyssey block, back in 2001. I played reasonably seriously, going to tournaments occasionally and spending hundreds of dollars on pieces of cardboard. Just before I began University, I gave up the game, and I haven’t played it since. Most of my friends at the time sold their collections and bailed out for good, perhaps keeping a couple of really well built decks for posterity.
Last week, a bunch of us got together and decided to do a booster draft - a game where everyone buys three $4.00 packs of 15 cards, and the cards are cycled around in a systematic way so that it’s possible to build a functional (although not very good) deck with a small investment, and play using only those cards. This has had much the same effect as a bunch of coke addicts deciding to do a line for old time’s sake. The game is so addictive that with that one brief exposure, most of us are considering getting back into the game, and building real decks once again.
Scott Lynch, in his extremely excellent The Lies of Locke Lamora describes a scene he calls The Shifting Revel. In order to defray tempers and choke off any uprising before it can gain traction, the Duke of Camor underwrites a giant festival which takes place at regular intervals in the local bay. It’s called the shifting revel because the festival takes place in the form of hundreds of boats - those of the attendees and local merchants - who lash themselves together in the bay. The attendance changes from revel to revel, as does the specifics of the entertainment - but there are always keystone features which remain the same and give the revel a grounding.
Magic is a Shifting Revel, and I think this is one of the reasons it’s both so addictive, and that it’s remained so popular over the years when nearly every other collectible card game has sputtered and failed. There is no specific strategy in Magic that is predominant - there are several major strategies, none of which is better than any other in general. The game is simple enough that the basics can be grasped in ten minutes, but complex enough that the building of a good deck requires knowledge of statistics. There are endless combinations of cards that can put together to make a deck, and no two players will use even the same deck in exactly the same way. The game is very well balanced, but this isn’t what makes it a shifting revel.
Most people who play magic at the tournament level play with what is referred to as “Standard Edition” rules. Essentially standard play limits the cards you’re allowed to use to the two most recently released blocks of cards, each block containing three sets. New sets are introduced every roughly 2 to 3 months. The effect this has on gameplay is profound. With any given set of cards, in a matter of weeks, tournament play solidifies around several ‘types’ of decks, based around the cards that are legal in the last two blocks. Each type of deck will revolve around a particular strategy for winning and involve several major strategic cards from these blocks.
The trick is that every time a new block is begun, an old block of cards will no longer be legal in standard tournaments. This typically has the effect of crippling all deck ‘types’ that are currently used in tournaments - and the scene shifts. New deck types emerge as players explore the possible combinations of cards from what is left, along with the new cards being slowly filtered in every two months as the new sets emerge - in fact, as each of the new sets in the block emerge, new possibilities emerge as well. These possibilities are not as severe as the shakeup when a block rotates out of use, but are enough that a fury of new deck styles must be explored.
The business potential of this strategy is huge. Games are fundamentally about exploring a possibility space, and when that space has been explored to its limit, the game ceases to be interesting. In Magic this possibility space is expanded at a rate that gives people time to master the space, but not long enough that it becomes uninteresting, and then is grown. On a yearly basis (or so) the entire space is turned upside down, things you used to know no longer apply, and there are new details to take into account. This is a shifting revel, and it allows the old to become new again, and again and again.
This is much to the profit of Wizards of the Coast, who have managed to create a game so popular that many pieces of cardboard sell for 500% of the price of a booster pack in the secondary market - some particularly useful cards can go for many times that. That’s a lot of money for a card that won’t be legal in standard play two years from now. The thing I find particularly interesting about this is that it hasn’t been done in online play (other than in the online version of MTG of course) for any other game that I know of.
Digital Distribution systems provide a very smooth way of rolling this out. Any game that contained the addictive hooks of MTG and based around shifting revel - potentially fueled by micro-transactions - that rotated on appropriate basis in line with the exploration curve of the possibility space… Well my friend, that would a license to print money. Systems like Xbox Live provide even further hooks such as Achievements (Imagine getting badges for beating someone using only direct damage, by milling their library to depletion, by using only creatures, for using a particular combination of cards, etc.), and if it was done well, might even outstrip the fanfare that Wizards of the Coast has been raking in for nearly the past two decades. This would allow for a game that is not only highly addictive, but extremely interesting ludologically as well. In any given year, MTG is recognizable enough as MTG - there are certain rules that never change - but the dynamics of the gameplay are totally different, if you’re willing to pay the price to keep up. There are very few games that evolve so organically over such a long period of time, and I think it’s time we had another one.
From a critical standpoint, Metacritic is about objective as things are likely to get. My own research uses Metacritic, and most of the industry looks to it for the “official” critical score. Steam embeds the Metacritic score right in the interface, and Microsoft announced yesterday that a low Metascore will be one of the trigger points for having your game de-listed from XBLA.
That said, the critical score isn’t the be-all and end-all of life. Gamasutra ran an opinion piece by former Eidos president Keith Boesky to that effect earlier today. Boesky’s main point is that critical success is not indicative of commercial success. It becomes intrinsically dangerous to pivot your entire business model on the critical reviews of your products.
If you look at a publisher like EA, they produce games that are commercially viable, even lucrative, but consistently receive mediocre reviews from critics. EA has published only three of the top 20 games on the 360, and is the developer on none of them. Additionally, of the hundreds of games EA has published since the release of the Xbox 360, only a handful have a Metacritic score above 80 for that system. EA’s new CEO, John Riccitiello has taken this to heart, having several times publicly stated that EA will be concentrating their efforts on producing newer, higher critical quality games than have been seen in recent years. That said, Riccitiello has also been quoted as saying that “You don’t cash MetaCritic, you cash cheques.”
There’s certainly a balance to be struck between the realities of business, and trying to create a game that tickles the critics. At the end of the day, I think that all of this concern is smoke and mirrors for the developer. All a developer can really do is try to create an amazing experience, to push the envelope of what’s possible with a technology, and to manipulate a player in new and interesting ways. If you can work your craft well enough, and on a scale that will appeal to a broad enough group of people, both the critical acclaim and commercial success will come. Understanding how to do that is where the mastery comes into play.
The Entertainment Software Association seems to be losing a lot of major players lately. LucasArts pulled out last week, followed by Activision Blizzard earlier this week, and now iD software. EA has stated they have no intention of leaving, but nevertheless, this smells strongly of a divisive precipitating event that’s cleaving apart the ESA’s members. I find it hard to believe that this is a coincidence, so what’s the triggering factor?
The first episode of Penny Arcade Adventures (On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness) was released this morning on XBLA. I’ve played it for the first few minutes, and I can tell you the game is extremely solid. Not trying this game out means you are part of the problem.
The gameplay is very much like what you would expect from an adventure RPG, but attacks have minigames in them, similar to the type of thing found in Mario RPG, only more clearly defined. Successful completion of the game will result in more damage, etc.
The artwork is gorgeous. It’s like being submerged in a 3D version of Gabe’s drawings, but instead of a pure 3-D rendering, elements are embellished, giving it a very comic-y feel. It’s the kind of impression you get from seeing movie adaptations of Frank Miller novels, like 300 or Sin City. Add a splash of steampunk grit, and you’ve got something special.
The writing oozes Tycho at every corner, and i’ve been laughing my ass off since the title screen. From the cryptic disembodied voice to the ramblings of the Fruit Fuckers, this is solid stuff.
Frankly, this is a retail title, and if Gamestop wasn’t run by idiots, it would be on shelves very soon. Hopefully it will be anyway. That said, I’m happy it’s being digitally distributed. This is exactly the kind of thing that systems like WiiWare and XBLA try to bring out: Innovative, risque titles that might not find a place on the shelf next to the FPS of the week. Good work Hothead, get to downloading people.
If you don’t happen to own an Xbox, you can also get it for PC (And by PC I mean Windows, Mac, and Linux) through Greenhouse here.
In my self-imposed hermitdom, I’ve been playing a lot of Browser Games as a change of pace and essentially as a time-eater. In particular the titles I’ve paid most attention to are Ikariam, Travian, and more recently Wild Guns. Ikariam and Travian are conceptually what you would get if you made a casual version of Civilization, built it as a browser game, and made it a lot shittier. Wild Guns is made by the same company as Ikariam, and it looks like they saw Travian, stole the gameplay and business models, and put a wild west theme on it.
A number of years ago I spent a lot of time playing browser games like Archmage, and while the production quality seems to have increased somewhat, the game play is not significantly better.
Gameplay works like this: Resources exist, and they are given to you as a function of infrastructure you have built over long swaths of time (like, hours). The purpose of this is to make you log on every day or several times a day, over weeks and weeks to maintain your kingdom. You use these resources to build further infrastructure, which in turn either generates more resources, or allows you to build a stronger military. You are then encouraged to attack other players using this military.
For me, this is where the game starts to fall apart. As there is essentially an indomitable amount of players in the game, you can’t hope to destroy them all. The only reward for attacking others is further resources, but the amount of resources you raid are almost certainly less than the resources it took to create the military you lost during the raid. There is no endgame, only an endless series of skirmishes, which are in themselves, unsatisfying.
Archmage happens to be an exception, in that if you manage to survive long enough, and become powerful enough, you can cast a spell which destroys the world, thus ending the game until the server is reset. You gain a certain amount of recognition for doing this. Nevertheless, any task that requires occasional maintenance has potential for addiction (see Tamagotchi), and I remain a willing slave, to a certain extent, until I finish the tech tree and will the inevitably get bored.
What irritates me more than the lack of solid javascript-based strategy games (Facebook is full of inane stunts in this manner) is the business model these games operate under. The business model itself serves no purpose other than to undermine the very foundations of the game they’ve delivered, however sloppily.
Ikariam, Travian, and Wild Guns all use the same principles: The game is free to play, nothing is restricted, and no ads are served. However, there are premium services you can buy for a micro-payment. The first form of these is an increase in the rate at which you generate resources. Essentially you can pay the company to gain a direct competitive edge. The reason this is horrendous is because it complete destroys game balance by giving players that are willing to pay a substantial advantage over those who are not willing to pay. You then have the choice to shell out a few dollars for more resources per hour (but only for a week, after which point you need to pay again!), or you can get slaughtered by those who will. From a design standpoint, this is exceptionally poor.
Even worse than this however, is the “Premium Account” bonus. If you give these companies an amount of money which is roughly equivelant to bumping up the production of every resource in the game, they give you access to a better user interface. They have developed a user interface which is better than the default one: it provides you with a build queue so that you don’t need to log in every time something finishes building to start the next build, gives you more detailed information about combat, a better layout with details about when your stockpiles will be full, what time you’ll be able to build something at current rates of production, etc. The company has built these things, but they withhold them from you unless you pay them. Even if you pay them, you only get them for a week, and then you have to pay them again. Jon Crowley was appalled, so you know it’s a bad move.
Three Rings has a much better handle on it (although I suppose their games aren’t strictly in-browser). In Puzzle Pirates, for example, payment confers the ability to captain a ship, as well as earn vanity items (e.g. clothing, furniture, etc.). This allows the hardcore to be hardcore without upsetting the balance for the non-paying crowd. In any case, any casual browser game needs to support itself on a small percentage of their entire user base actually paying money to play. GameForge AG nearly went bankrupt last year, Puzzle Pirates has 3 million pirate accounts. You tell me which business model is working better.
It’s been almost three weeks since my last post, and this is largely due to the evil that is final exams. Or to be more precise, it’s due to the aftermath of it. As any university student can tell you, final exams are a time where you are projected into a wasteland of caffeine and junk food, where you try to learn 4 months of material in a handful of days (or hours). The re-emergence from this wasteland has for me been traditionally curtailed by starting work the immediate week following.
Having now passed all of my final final exams, I’m now done with the University of Waterloo forever. Several weeks have now been spent arranging the particulars of my move to Washington, as well as soaking up some new releases. Having thoroughly ignored both my blog and my massive list of RSS feeds for the last few weeks, I should be emerging from my cave to say, at least, something, with frequency somewhat better than ‘once a month’.
A friend of mine recently introduced me to a game called Dwarf Fortress. The pitch went something like this:
“Have you ever heard of Dungeon Keeper?”
“Have you ever heard of Fuck Yeah I’ve heard of Dungeon Keeper?”
“Well this is like Dungeon Keeper, except way more sophisticated and in three dimensions”.
At this point I started gibbering maniacally as I attempted to assimilate the awesomeness of the concept leveled at my encephalon.
“Well there’s just one thing, it’s a roguelike, all the graphics are in ASCII”.
What an emotional roller coaster. I thought it was too good to be true. If Dungeon Keeper 3 ever emerged from the ashes of a studio murdered by EA, I would be waiting in line outside Future Shop with tears of joy in my eyes. The concept of hacking away at an ASCII game though did not really appeal to me. Nevertheless, I gave it a try.
That was a week ago, and I haven’t eaten or slept since. I sit here, moribund and wretched, hoping that this game will release me from its cruel, cruel embrace. The developers who wrote this game are clearly doing it for their own amusement, and find the development of gameplay to be infinitely more interesting than making it pretty or intuitive.
Despite the face that the game uses only ASCII graphics, it requires a modern processor. The reason for this is because all the cycles usually spent figuring out where polygons should go and how exactly to display them, in real-time, have been freed up to do insane gameplay things. For example:
This is not a game for the meek, but if you can get over the initial struggle, you may also find yourself near death in front of your computer, contemplating how many times the sun has gone up and down since you last went outside.
I’ve always wanted to choke a wookie.
If Portal was a Flash game, it would be You Have To Burn The Rope.
You should go play it right now. If you get stuck, here’s a walkthrough.
