A Belated Welcome Back

Apparently, while I was away the newest Telltale episodic series - Monkey Island - has come out to solid reviews.  I’ll just downloaded the first episode; I still have Ghostbusters to polish off as well.

So far, I’m definitely enjoying “The Launch of the Narwhal.”  I’m a little skeptical of the new Guybrush Threepwood design (the goatee isn’t doing much for me), and the voice seems slightly off, but they’ve definitely captured the feeling of the earlier games; the sense of humor seems intact and the general tone is pretty accurate.  Even the voice acting seems solid - which is tough for an episodic adventure game.  The new MI seems more relaxed and comfortable than the Sam & Max games, which sometimes seemed like they were trying too hard to be off-the-wall and zany.

The puzzles, too, seem relatively straightforward so far (if a little too reliant on players picking up on subtle changes in the scenery that occur when actions are strung in a particular order… action figure sword, I’m thinking of you).  A pleasant surprise, and I’m glad to hear it’s exceeding sales expectations.

It’s good to play a PC game again.,

BREAKING: Sellers set their own prices for their own products

In a stunning realization, gamers discovered that the people who develop and produce their beloved games are actually allowed to determine their own price for the products they make.  Tempers flared in the gaming community when it was announced that the PC version of publisher Activision Blizzard’s Modern Warfare 2 would cost $60, prompting a possible boycott.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said avid button-masher Joe McCrybaby.  “I always just figured that there was some law that dictated that games were $50, especially PC games.  When I found out that wasn’t the case, I was shocked.”

Infinity Ward, the developers of the game, noted that publishers have been able to set the prices of games for years.

“There is precedent for this, believe it or not,” said Infinity Ward’s Community Manager Robert Bowling. “In the past, publishers have been able to determine what they thought was a fair value for their game.  This would sometimes lead to bargain games like Serious Sam for $20.  On the other end of the spectrum, Warcraft III originally debuted at $60.  We believe that’s a fair price for our game as well.”

McCrybaby reacted to this explanation with anger.

“Sure, less than $50 is fine.  But anything more than that is crap.  Blizzard learned their lesson after trying to pull that crap with Warcraft III.”

When it is pointed out that Warcraft III actually set sales records when it came out, McCrybaby simply complained that it would’ve done a lot better if it had debuted at the $50 pricepoint.

“A lot of people boycotted that game then just like I’m going to boycott Modern Warfare 2 now.  I’ll have plenty of other things to play anyway like Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, World of Warcraft and even Starcraft 2 is probably right around the corner!”

Activision Blizzard is the publisher of all of those games, as well as Modern Warfare 2.

*Note: This is satire.  None of the quotes above are real and no interviews took place.

Whodda Thunk?

I’m sure this is blowing the top business minds everywhere, but apparently giving people a free basically unlimited sample of something and then selling that something at a substantial discount will dramatically increase its use and sales.

I know, I know… Crazy, right?  But that’s the lesson we learn from the news that Epic’s Unreal Tournament 3 saw a 2000% increase in simultaneous players after allowing people to take it for a spin for free for a full weekend and discounting the game 40% off of its normal price on Steam.

Apparently, this result was so shocking that brilliant minds at Epic determined that they would extend the sale and do another free weekend.  Maybe it will be so successful that Epic will just feel compelled to permanently keep the game on “sale” and make every weekend a free one!

I guess Epic can’t take all the credit for this idea though… after all, this comes after Left 4 Dead sales increased 3000%, beating out even its own launch sales, after Valve discounted it 50% for a weekend.

It really is shocking… heavily discount a popular and well-reviewed game and its sales increase dramatically.  I never would’ve guessed.

Now, snark aside… I’m just glad that someone has finally realized that they can still have sales on digital items.  It seems that Microsoft is sort of getting the hint as well as they’re actually having weekly sales as well… though it doesn’t seem like it’s with things that are that interesting yet.  Why they don’t start discounting and having sales on some of their older catalog is beyond me, and the number one thing I am not looking forward to as we approach a discless gaming world.

Bad Controls, Bad Design?

Ludwig has a well-reasoned and plausible defense of the Resident Evil series’ control deficiencies, which he notes are intentional (suspense can’t be created as effectively if you’re blowing zombies away in between roadie runs like Gears of War).  And he’s absolutely correct that it wouldn’t be the same game if it overemphasized movement and action instead of resource management.  Ludwig argues that gamers tend to confuse this deliberate design choice with poor implementation, which is inappropriate, and I tend to agree with him.

That said, it got me to thinking - is a game whose basic nature is dependent on hampering the player’s ability to manipulate it fundamentally flawed, as a design?  Consider this thought experiment:

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Historical Fallout DLC

I may be the only person on the planet who feels this way, but I have absolutely zero interest in historical Fallout scenarios.  I’m mildly curious about the backstory to the game, but it’s really only of interest to me insofar as it explains why the world of Fallout 3 is the way it is.  Reliving Operation Anchorage?  Meh. 

I’ve noticed I have this attitude with respect to movies as well, and it might be tied to the fact that past events have already played out - the player (or reader or watcher) can’t get any really new information out of them that isn’t already reflected in something they’ve already played (or read or watched).  There’s a certain artistic technique to being able to flesh out backstory while avoiding continuity errors, but I’m not particularly interested in the details.  Once you know that Darth Vader is Luke’s traitorous Jedi father, do you really have to see him act out the specifics?

I’m much more interested to see what happens next.

It keeps going and going…

While it’s pace may have slowed down slightly, World of Warcraft has now hit 11M subscribers.  It is astonishing to me that after several years and several very well-hyped competitors that WoW continues to dominate like this.  Even though I don’t play it any more, Blizzard deserves enormous credit for somehow continually creating enough new content to keep old subscribers interested and new subscribers signing up.

Supposedly, Blizzard is creating another MMO now that is unrelated to WoW, but I’m guessing that it’s still at least 2-3 years away, as I imagine it’s going to take awhile before the number of WoW subscribers actually starts to decrease instead of increase, even if it’s normal pace of 1M per 6 months doesn’t quite continue (it took about 10 months this time).

Release the Devil

I’m sure by now that you’ve seen all the great new movies and hands-on impressions of Diablo 3 (here’s one such example).  It looks and sounds like it’s going to be a blast when it’s finally released.

But there’s the problem… For us unpatient folks, Blizzard just takes too damn long to release their games.  It’s actually with some relief to me that they announced that Starcraft II is going to be rolled out as a trilogy, because frankly, the thing probably wouldn’t be released until 2011 or later if they didn’t break it up.

In any case, Diablo III is probably still a long way away.  It’s true that no official release date has been announced for the game, but if I had to wager a guess, I’d say it won’t be released until 6-12 months after the first Starcraft II is released, and that probably won’t be released until late next year.  So my question is, with the demo looking extremely fun and everyone enjoying it, why don’t they just release this small taste of the game to satiate, but also excite, the ever-patient Diablo fans?  They don’t even have to enable online-play… just release a single-player snippet of the game.

Yes, I’m partially joking here, but in all honesty, why don’t companies release small samples of their games a bit early when they clearly have something people like?  Are they worried that an early demo will somehow reduce sales?  I don’t think they have anything to worry about in the case of Diablo 3.

$6,000,000 for doing it wrong

Blizzard has won a lawsuit against the creators of bot software for World of Warcraft called “Glider”.  I actually hadn’t been following this before, but personally, I find at least part of Blizzard’s reasoning for the lawsuit to be patently ridiculous.  In the original story, they stated:

“Blizzard’s designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time.”

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PC Game Must-Haves

RPS offers 10 suggestions. I agree with them all, but isn’t it odd that these irritated the hell out of me back in the early 90’s? Yet we still have the same issues.

I personally second the quicksave/quickload point.

Big World, Big Problem - A Challenge

I’ve recently been playing quite a bit of Mass Effect (I missed the boat initially).  I really love the game, except for the long vehicle sequences that have you driving around on each planet searching for metal deposits and fetch quest items.   It’s just tedious to have to move across huge expanses of mountainous terrian in what is effectively an ATV, for items whose purpose is basically completionist in nature.

While doing so, it occurred to me that Bioware has done a great job creating a massive universe, with purposeless planets, sprawling locales, and side quests galore.  Yet like most RPGs, it runs into a central contradiction: although expansiveness is valuable in creating the sensation of believability, it runs contrary to the central tenet of game design - keep your game fun.  In short, although it’s nice to know there are “real people” out there running about their daily business, they’re not people you really want to interact with.  Nor do you really want to have to move across the massive world in order to have that one conversation that marks the end of your quest and the award of loot or experience points or what have you.  Rather, when you play a game, you want to quickly identify who has something of value to you, interact with them as quickly as possible, and move on to more gameplay, which is the reason you’re playing in the first place. 

Many games attempt to alleviate this problem.  Mass Effect tries to help the process by putting notations on your map to highlight areas of interest; WoW has its exclamation marks, and many games offer “instant warp” spells or airships to ensure that you don’t actually need to cross their worlds in order to get where you need to go.  Yet the fundamental issue - that a massive world is great to see but not to touch - is left unresolved.  Taken to its logical extreme, the “warp” spell reduces the game to a series of scenarios, dialogue trees whose purpose is to load you up with information or items as efficiently as possible.

It seems to me like there has to be a better solution.  Yet I can’t tell you what it is.  Any thoughts on how designers can keep the feeling of exploration and scale in their RPGs, but avoid the tedium of pixel-hunting fetch quests and boring terrain traverses?