Lego Lego Batman and Robin (and John)

These were delivered to my office yesterday:  c/o Warner Bros, two 500 lbs Lego statues of Lego Batman and Lego Robin (Lego John Schappert not included).

Valve and Google

There’s a rumor going around that Google is going to buy Valve in the near future.  While that makes some people really happy, I’m not one of them.  Google is interested in Steam, because it’s an awesome content delivery system for the PC, and it meshes well with Google’s roadmap.  What doesn’t really make a lot of sense is what’s going to happen to the game studio part of Valve.

Valve Software has some of the most talented people in the industry working in their studios - games like Team Fortress, Half-Life, and of course Portal don’t happen on their own.  Steam has lots of publishers on board already (Eidos, Ubisoft, Activision, etc.), and Google’s ability to run a game studio internally is a huge unknown (although I’ve been wrong before).

All in all, a very uncomfortable position for me.

[Update]: Or maybe not.

EA flips off Take Two

The finance sector is caught up today with the collapse of some of the biggest and oldest banks in the US.  This has largely overshadowed a more interesting piece of news to gamers:  EA has walked away from Take Two after 7 months of negotiating to purchase it.

As a result, Take Two’s stock price has taken a swan dive, as all kinds of speculators unload the shares of TTWO stock that sadly, EA is not going to buy from them at a premium.  What I find interesting is that analysts seem to think this is a mortal blow for Take Two.

EA saw a good opportunity to buy Take Two because they have some extremely talented people working there, and several key franchises EA would like to get their fingers in.  From my point of view, this little breakup is better for everyone involved, including you.

EA’s new CEO has been doing a fine job of diversifying their development portfolio into new IP, but you can’t do this entirely buy purchasing studios.  The value in a studio, even more so than in most companies, is in the people who work there.  Intellectual Property they own certainly has a premium attached to it, but no IP in the world is going to be profitable if you don’t put it in the hands of talented developers.  But buying studios wholesale is a risky business, because if those developers think you’re going to mess with the way they run things, they tend to jump ship, leaving you holding the empty - and expensive - bag.

EA needs to look across the continent from Vancouver to Montreal, and look at what Ubisoft has managed to do by developing highly innovative titles in house, much to the delight of their shareholders and the gaming community.  A purchase of Take Two would have consolidated the entire suite of sports franchises under EA’s grip stifling innovation in that arena even further - not something anyone wants to see.  Take Two has quite a few studios, and as much as analysts talk about EA being able to integrate these studios under their own technology stack, this has historically not worked out well for companies that tried to do so.

Take Two isn’t exactly bereft of cash.  GTA has historically been the foundation upon which Take Two operates, but they have other gems as well (Bioshock, Civilization).  If they can retain their top talent - and continue innovating new IP - I expect we’ll continue to see both shareholder value and excellent titles out of Take Two in years to come.

Rules of Achievement

In today’s episode, our hero picks a fight with Harvey Smith.

The Ellustrious Mr. Smith had a post up a couple of days ago in response to this article on the Psychology of Achievements.  I’ve written before about how achievements are essentially a psychological drug, but I happened to share Harvey’s preference.  When an achievement exists that highlights an unexpected area of gameplay - e.g. getting the gnome into space - I find that really interesting and exciting.

The problem I have with Harvey’s comments is that he sees any Achievement that doesn’t encourage “the right spirit of play” to be wrong, somehow.  It’s up to game designers to create fun spaces to explore, and nudge the players in the direction of the entertainment they’ve created.  Some people are going to do what you tell them to do.  Some people are going to build ladders out of proximity mines and escape your little world.  Some people are insane completionists and mostly just care about getting every achievement you provide them with.

And there’s a LOT of those people.

You don’t have to like that fact, but if you don’t cater to those people at all, then they’ll play something else.  Just because you enjoy open-ended game experiences doesn’t mean the entire world is looking for them.

That said, I think there’s ways to structure acheivements (or Trophies, or whatever) in a way that can satisfy most people:

The Rules

For the Explorers

• Force the player to change the way they play the game.
• Create a trail into a gameplay space that might go unnoticed.
• Example: Essentially any game by Valve

For the Achievers

• Reward completing sets of things
• Reward maximizing or minimizing variables (do this without dying, get the highest level in that)
• Example: Bioshock

For the Socializers

• Do Nothing!
• Socializers care about creating relationships, any little badge you put on that simply makes it seem trite.
• Creating “Social” Achievements will piss off your Achievers.
• Counter Example: Settlers of Catan’s “Invite X people to play with you” achievement.

For the Killers

• Do Nothing!
• Leaderboards serve this purpose already
• Creating “Killer” Achievements will piss off your Explorers.
• Counter Example: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

For Everyone

• Make some achievements easy to get, early in the game
• Avoid tedious achievements that require you to grind for hours.
• A single playthrough of the game should net the average player around 50% of the game’s achievements

The Real Way to Get Your Girlfriend Into Gaming

One of my coworkers was moderating a panel at PAX last weekend called How to get your girlfriend into gaming.  Kotaku’s summary is as follows:

1) Give your girl a game that’s tailored to her interests; don’t force her to play a game just because you like it.
2) Play co-op, not competitive. Some girls are unnerved by 13-year-old trash-talkers.
3) Don’t force her to identify herself as a gamer; it’s enough that she’s playing a game.
4) Spend as much time doing what she wants to do in her life as you expect her to spend time gaming with you (basic rule of relationships).
5) Don’t act like an asshole while you’re gaming – it makes games into the enemy.
6) Don’t belittle her choices of game; maybe she likes Barbie’s Horse Adventure.
7) Let her backseat game you and don’t argue with what she tells you to do; if she tells you to make Master Chief jump to his death, just do it – it’ll be fun for her and get her one step closer to trying it herself. (That’s my own personal rule.)

This list has some good points to it, but at the end of the day, if your girlfriend/wife/whatever isn’t into games to begin with, then she probably doesn’t know what kind of games suit her interests.  You have a limited number of chances to introduce her to things as well, because every time you introduce her to a game she doesn’t like, it makes it harder to do it the next time.  Let’s talk about three games you should start with to narrow the spectrum of games she’ll be interested in.

Castle Crashers

This is an excellent game to start with, because the controls are extremely straightforward, and the two of you are playing together to fight a common enemy.  If she falls in battle, you can essentially resuscutate her for free, so she isn’t dead all the time, watching you play the game.  The game is also pretty lighthearted, and gets her used to a controller without being too obtuse about it.  If this goes over well, you can start introducing her to games with a little more complex control schemes until she has the controller down solid.

Carcassonne

On the other hand, maybe your girl is more strategic.  This is the title I got my girlfriend into games with, and she kicks my ass at it every time now.  Games like Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Lost Cities, and Settlers of Catan avoid a sophisticated control scheme or twitch reflexes.  What they provide is a sophisticated strategic gameplay, and more importantly, a social one.  While she might be competing with you in these games, she won’t feel like you’re winning because you can handle a controller better than she can.  If she digs these games, try introducing her to strategically more complex games like Heroes of Might and Magic or Civilization 4.  If you’re going to go down that road, I would strongly advise playing a hotseat game, and walking her through everything you do, and explaining what things mean, what one might do in one situation or another.  Never tell her what she should be doing, part of gaming is exploring the possibility space like you once did.  Just be her guide, and hopefully she’ll be marching her armies into your capital in no time.

Spore

If the above two don’t work, Spore should be your litmus test.  The game is easy and intuitive to understand, and has great fun appeal.  Will Wright’s previous game, The Sims, was one of the greatest selling titles of all time with women, in part because of its social aspects.  You can pretty much set her loose with this one, and heal some of the damage you did when she hated the first two games.

Now if you’ve done all that, and she’s still not interested, I think we can safely say you’re SOL.  Just take into consideration that not every relationship needs to be fused with all interests.

Spore Hates your Macbook

I was just talking with a friend of mine, who was really, really excited about spore.  He even got a new computer to play it, just a year ago.

The thing is, my friend got a macbook, and if you have a macbook made earlier than late 2007, no Spore for you.

The problem is that until late 2007, Apple was making Macbooks with the GMA 950 graphics card embedded, after which it was upgraded to the GMA X3100.  Spore explicitly does not support the GMA 950.  I told you that you should have bought a PC.  None of the Macbook Pro line have this issue.

That said, I think this is more a Maxis fail than an Apple fail.  They’ve got like, 4 video cards guys, you couldn’t support one that was brand new in the system less than a year ago?  Fail, and fail hard.

[Update] If you run Windows XP in Boot Camp, however, it runs fine.  This seems to just be an issue with the GMA 950 on OS X.  Isn’t that interesting.

[Update]: xkcd brings up a solution for Mac Owners:

Spore

Just a little note to all my friends who don’t read gaming literature every moment of their life, Spore comes out today.  You might want to go get it.  That is all.

Stardock Impulse

I just downloaded Stardock’s new Digital Distribution platform Impulse, and thus far I’m reasonably impressed.

Without getting too far into it, it looks like both Steam and Impulse essentially have a web browser embedded in them, and they use the callbacks from this browser to kick off the downloads process.  Both services allow you to keep a catalog of your games, re-download them as many times as you want, and both services have community elements as well.

Steam has a better catalog of games, and has hooks into various Valve magic such as a Steamworks, and saved games in the cloud (which is awesome).

But Impulse is shiny, and that matters.  I currently use both Quicken Online (at least until my trial expires) and Mint for personal finances, and even though Mint is horribly crippled by not supporting Canadian banks, I still log into it because it’s prettier than Quicken is.  Additionally, Steam has the unfortunate habit of randomly hanging in the middle of downloads, requiring me to stop and restart the download.  This isn’t a show stopping issue, but it’s irritating, and Impulse can capitalize on that.

Web design has moved forward since Steam was launched, and it’s time for Steam to bring some of those design principles to the table.

The Electronic Arts Revival

Once upon a time, I was a wee lad in college applying for internships.  I had an interview with EA over the phone, at the end of which they asked me if I had any questions.  I asked them what they thought they were doing to advance the medium of Video Games.

They didn’t like that so much.

See, inherent in a question like that is the implication that I don’t really think you ARE doing anything to advance the medium, because if I did, I wouldn’t have needed to ask.  The interviewers mumbled something about graphics, and we ended the interview there, neither of us being particularly impressed with the other.  I went to go work for Microsoft instead, which eventually resulted in my position with Xbox now.

EA has in the past decade purchased and then eviscerated some of the most best and most promising studios the world had to offer.  In addition to this lovely practice, they had the unfortunate habit of working their employees to death and discarding their burnt out husks, primarily on insipid franchises which change only incrementally from year to year, and yet are released for full price.

John Riccitiello said he was going to turn this around.  Apparently I’ve assumed that CEOs and Politicians seems to share the trait of spewing whatever bullshit the public wants to hear, but it seems EA has actually gone and done it.

Dead Space, above, looks scary and fucking awesome.  Do you know that this game is banned in three countries?  That’s a far cry from the policies of the old EA.  Spore (say no more) comes out on Sunday.  Mirror’s Edge, a critically acclaimed first person runner, is a game that does not contain the color green.  BattleForge is an RTS that uses a collectible card game mechanic to drive gameplay (through micro-transactions even).

EA, you’ve either totally lost your shit, or you’re starting a Renaissance.  Either way, I forgive your past sins, and I look forward to what you’ve got to say for yourself in the future.

XBLA Game Pitch

James Goddard over at CrunchTime games has provided us with something very interesting.  Many independent developers dream of getting a title on XBLA (hobbiests have a better route through the upcoming Xbox Live Community Games).  Unfortunately, the path to that goal is fuzzy at best. 

Game Career Guide is hosting two documents that Goddard has made publically available, the game pitch, and the 60 seconds of gameplay documents, for his newly released game Shred Nebula. 

The pitch document is officially what allowed Microsoft to give the game the green light. The “60 Seconds of Gameplay” essay is a separate document that Microsoft requires of all its published games, whether developed in-house or out. In it, the authors must describe, step-by-step what the player does, sees, hears, and feels during a full 60 seconds of gameplay, which can be taken from any point in the game.

As a professor of game development, Goddard clearly understands and values the passing on of knowledge about game design to future generations, and it’s good for the industry to make the standard practices more transparent.  Hopefully more developers will follow suit in releasing their design documents in the future.

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