The PC is Dead, Long Live the PC

So Valve made an interesting announcement today.

To summarize:

• Steam is coming to the Mac platform, starting in April.
• Valve games, starting with Portal 2, will be simu-released on Windows, Mac, and 360
• Cross-play between Mac and PC is supported
• Purchasing for one platform can mean getting it for both (Steam Play).
• All existing Steam services will work for Mac
• Source Engine is also coming to Mac
• Source Engine code will cross-compile to either Windows or Mac, meaning less re-work in porting

Let that sink in for a minute.  This means a lot more than simply another way to buy Mac games, this is potentially the first step in a complete shift in the computer video game market.  About 60% of all AAA Mac games are published by one company: Aspyr.  That means that with a single business deal, Steam could be fronting a large portion of the entire Mac gaming catalog.  Steam is already easily the dominant digital distribution service for retail titles on PC, and could easily become the dominant force in Mac gaming too.  By making a bet on their future titles, they’re also saying that they see the Mac as a valid platform on it’s own, at least on par with Windows.

We’re moving to a world of digital distribution on the PC (Windows and Mac both).  The benefits to (transparent, non-obtrusive) DRM that becomes available on that channel make this a certainty.  To Valve, this isn’t just about opening a new market segment, this is about consolidating the retail channel under their house, and about continuing to provide further reasons why when you make a PC game, you should integrate with their user services and their social network.  If they’re successful, it means that they’ve abstracted away the OS.  The game will not be defined by what OS it runs on, but on what social network it’s tied to.  You won’t be a Windows Gamer, or a Mac Gamer, you’ll be a Steam gamer.

Google Wave

A few weeks ago, I watched a video about Google’s new product, Wave.  Ostensibly, Google Wave is Google’s view on what you would get if email had been invented now using modern techniques.  By combining the best of email and instant messaging, you would get a dynamic conversation that was both synchronous and asynchronous, stored in a central location so that there would be a single defined copy of ‘the conversation’, or wave as they like to call it.

In practice, what this sounds like to me is communicating with someone by editing a Google doc at the same time.

If this sounds kludgy to you - rather than brilliant - then congratulations, you have a critical mass of properly firing neurons.

Despite my skeptism, I decided to try it out.  I’ve been wrong before.  My impressions were thus:

1. Because HTML 5 (which will supposedly deprecate the need for silverlight and flash, it is to laugh) is not supported in Internet Explorer - the browser used by 65% of the world - and because google apparently can’t be bothered to make Google Wave work without it, the only way to use Google Wave in IE is to install the Chrome Browser Frame, essentially a browser within a browser that allows sites to switch out IE’s rendering engine and use Chrome instead, if they choose.  There are a million reasons why this is terrible.
2. At least when I was using it, it didn’t even work.  Friends of mine who have Wave can’t see Waves I invite them to, nor can I see waves they invite me to.  Waves I create are not even saved within my view.  This means that Google Wave currently does absolutely nothing at all.
3. In addition to installing a useless, market fragmenting plug-in to use their application which does nothing (or installing firefox, which is what I actually did), it apparently only lets me do nothing with people who are already on my google contacts list.  It will allow me to ’start a new wave’ with these people (ficticiously), or to ‘ping them’.  Both of these things seem to do the same thing, only one of them opens a wave above the top nav bar, and one opens it in the right view pane.  Neither works.
4. Even if this did all work, the usage model is bizarre.  When I say it’s like communication via google doc, I mean that in the worst way.  It also means it’s non-linear, so you can go back up further in the conversation and add new threads, which means as someone trying to follow the conversation, you need to continually scroll back up for new bits that have appeared further up the conversation.  Wave has a control panel similar to what you might see on a VCR to play and rewind a conversation, which should scare you.

This is perhaps the worst product I’ve seen out of Google yet.  Lots of people create useless products, but it takes someone really special to create something that does nothing, and would be useless even if it did what it was supposed to, with the kind of financial backing that Google has.

I really don’t know what the hell is going on at Google these days.  Once upon a time they were releasing things that were extremely complex and useful, requiring deep understanding of algorithms, or positioning information in ways that were useful and had never been done well before.

The offerings these days are applications based on web-kit, leveraging ’standards’ that haven’t been adopted in 2/3 of the browser marketshare, requiring anyone on the platform to get deeply in bed with Google, and providing no value whatsoever, unless in this brave new world confusion and failure are now valued monetary instruments.

Down for Upgrades

Ghostrazor.com will be down intermittently this weekend for server upgrades.  Likely this shouldn’t affect anything, but there may be short outages.

DreamBuildPlay 2009

Free Stuff below!

Every year, Microsoft runs a competition called DreamBuildPlay.  Last week DBP 2009 was kicked off.  Things you should know:

• DreamBuildPlay is a contest in which you or your team (of up to 7) build a video game for the Xbox 360.
• Your video game needs to be built in XNA Game Studio 3.0, or 3.1 when it comes out in May.
• You get a free 12 month subscription to XNA Creator’s Club just for registering.
• Grand Prize Winner receives $40,000.  Prizes of $5,000 to $20,000 available for subsequent winners.
• If the judges really like your game (even if you’re not the grand prize winner), they may offer you a publishing contract for Xbox Live Arcade.
• The Dishwasher, an XBLA title released last week was a DreamBuildPlay winner in 2007.  Other DreamBuildPlay winners are in the pipe.
• No theme this year, so you can build any kind of game you want.  But it has to target the Xbox 360, not Windows.
• Submission Deadline is Aug 6, 2009 (My Birthday!)

If you’re an amateur or hobbyist game designer/programmer/artist and you have a wild idea for a new game, this is your chance to hunker down and get some eyeballs on what you can do.

Register here.

Game Design: I Know Your Deeds

In an effort to keep blood pumping through my brain at regular intervals, I’ve started submitting entries to GCG’s Design Challenges.  My first one received an honorable mention, and is reproduced below.

I know your deeds challenges players to survive over the course of months and years, trapped in a city dominated by nightmarish zombies. While of course concerned with the ever-present threat these creatures represent, the player will face long-term concerns like obtaining sources of food and water, building shelter from attack, and the overall survival of the human race.

Game Mechanics:

The player begins in a semi-randomly generated urban environment. A full day and night will take place over the course of 20 minutes, the proportions of which will depend on the time of year (i.e. More of that twenty minutes is day in the summer, less in the winter). During the day, the player enjoys relative safety from zombie attacks (at least outdoors), and those encountered tend to be lethargic and confused. Days are typically spent scavenging for supplies and building materials, constructing barricades and traps, and investigating scripted plot points.

Crafting

A crafting system exists in the game, in which players need to collect tools and materials to build and reinforce whatever position they’ve chosen as their base of operations. Stress is induced in the player as collecting these materials, building, and setting up the barricades and traps will take up more time than they have allocated in a given day, and the attacks that will occur all night wears down these defenses, requiring repairs the next day.

Sleep

Sleep also takes a major position in the game. If the player refuses to sleep, they will begin falling asleep while performing tasks, and generally perform miserably. Sleeping during the day is safer, but sacrifices critical time that could be spent building and scavenging. Sleeping at night means you may be rudely (and suddenly) awakened by a zombie chewing on your throat. Additionally, nighttime sleep is less restful, due to the loud noises going on outside. Going to sleep on a daily basis thus becomes a thing of terror, rather than relaxation.

Freeform

Unlike most survival horror games, there are very few scripted events in I know your deeds, beyond the seeding of background story information and certain key events which are linked to game timeline. The plot is developed by finding items which piece together a patchwork background story, eventually resulting in a method of destroying the zombies en masse. The player can ‘hole up’ in any building they choose, and reinforce it as they can. Items and buildings are pseudo-randomly generated in a manner that makes each game unique, but also consistently playable and interesting.

Difficulty curve

As time goes on, more and more of the framework of society begins to fail (for example, initially the electrical grid may still be working, but will eventually collapse), creating an increasingly difficult environment in which to survive, and forcing the player to continually be allocating time to deal with these situations, instead of ‘base building’. Additionally, as time goes on, the zombie threat becomes continually more intense and ferocious.

End Game

The game ends when either the player can no longer handle the zombie threat and is overcome, or the player gathers the information and materials necessary to build a device which will end the zombie threat.

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