Resident Evil: Extinction

I actually saw Resident Evil: Extinction weekend before last, but I figured I’d dig out my thoughts on it for a Zombie Wednesday post. There are going to be spoilers. You have been warned.

I loved the first Resident Evil film. I’ve never played any of the games, so I went into it with just the expectation of a zombie movie, and it delivered. The only mild disappointment I might have had with it was the open ending and the not-quite-zombie monsters at the tail of the film. The second movie was more of the same, until they introduced the boss mob. That was silly. But hey, it didn’t totally suck.

The third movie, well, I was hoping for the end of a trilogy. It even seemed like it was going that direction. The world is infected by the T-Virus, dried up. If people stay in one place too long, the zombies will find them, so they stay on the move, driving around the desert in a caravan. Meanwhile, Umbrella is still around and is actually searching for a cure, sort of, and they happen to be in the desert too. Alice is still running around trying to save the people she can, and Umbrella needs Alice to manufacture the cure.

There are some really cool scenes of the caravan and of Alice as they move through this dead world. Stuff happens, people die, things go wrong… the usual. But then the movie takes a left turn. See, there is this scientist who has been using clones of Alice in place of Alice, and its not working out well. So he decides to go after Alice, but only after he creates some super zombies to fight her. The doctor ends up getting bit by a super zombie, and instead of turning into a zombie or even a super zombie he turns into a boss mob with tentacles and other weird shit (I’m told it is Tyrant from the game). Its lame. And then Alice wins, and she tells all the other hidden Umbrella labs that she’s coming to get them, her and her army… of Alice clones.

There are rumors and allegations going around that they are working on a Resident Evil 4, and as much as I now dread it, I hate movies with giant gaping open endings. Leave a couple loose ends untied? Sure. But the end of this movie was just too much. They need an RE4, if for no other reason than to put an ending stamp on it.

2007: Aftermath

As with every year, I really enjoyed Dragon*Con. I actually says a lot about the con when my biggest complaint is that I can’t see everything I want to see because there is so much I want to see.

The new Apocalypse Rising track was very interesting, although, at times I did feel a number of their panels were repetative, but that is the nature of the beast when talking about a topic that is very focused but encompasses so much. However, it was the first time around in the new format, so I’ll cut them some slack and see how they grow for next year.

The Game Programming (with a heavy MMO bent) spinoff of the EFF track was another favorite. The only downside there is that people seemed to want to talk about WoW too much, even when the moderators and panelists tried to veer off to another subject the attendees would drag it back to WoW. I guess that is proof that WoW really is the 800 lbs. gorilla in the market. I think this track can only get better.

In both cases, I’ve finally found tracks that have inspired me to get involved. I’ll be keeping an eye on both and seeing where I can lend a hand.

Other than a few panels here and there, or a couple trips to the short films room, the bulk of my time was spent in the above two panels. I never made it down to the Writer’s Track, which is where I normally spend most of my con time.

With panels and programming out of the way, let’s talk hotels… The Marriott is still under construction, however from seeing the parts that have been completed I have high hopes for the future of the space for Dragon*Con. Seriously folks, you really need to stop defaulting to the Hyatt bar and lobby. I know it has traditionally been the place to be, but even before the renovation the three levels of the lobby area of the Marriott were better. Lots of space for costumers to show their stuff, and even places where distance watchers can view the chaos without getting involved. The only drawback to the Marriott previously was the cruddy location of their only bar, but this year with the opening of Pulse on the atrium level, the Marriott is turning into the new place to be. Next year when they have the other 70,000 square feet of ballrooms and whatnot open, there should simply be no reason to remain in the cramped Hyatt lobby except to get a quiet drink at the little out of the way bar.

The Hilton also blossomed well this year. The halls of rooms for panels (used for gaming last year, which this year moved to the new business center of the Marriott) were fantastic, even if a little small for some of the panels they put in them (*cough*Zombie Squad*cough*). The exhibitor halls were nice, but I do have a small complaint about the dealers’ room… entering into the center of the hall and having to make several circular trips through to see everything was just odd and annoying. Some of this may end up back in the Marriott next year, but the Hilton Halls shouldn’t be left unused…

One thing I’ve always hated about Dragon*Con and still hate is the use of the itty bitty teeny tiny Learning Center in the Hyatt for the Film track. Every single set of short films ends up with a line and they have to turn people away, every one. They need a bigger room, perhaps the Marriott will have something they can use, or maybe if one of those Hilton Ballrooms winds up empty they can utilize one of them. The Learning Center is nice though, for smaller screenings, perhaps for invite only or contest won passes to exclusive screenings of new movies. That would be sweet. Or hey… you know about that Writer’s Workshop they do every year? Maybe they might consider a Film Maker’s Workshop…

The only other real complaint I can come up with about Dragon*Con in general is the lack of signs. Because of the construction in the Marriott, the traditional method of going out the back was blocked off. Thankfully, rather than forcing people to walk around the outside of the building, they opened up four staircases for use. The intent was obviously that two would be for going up and two for going down. They did place a Marriott employee there most of the day telling people how to use the stairs to get to the Hilton, but, across the street inside the Hilton is a Kinko’s, and for probably $20 or less (definitely less than the cost of manning the post all day) they could have printed up 8 very nice signs (4 staircases, 2 ends of each staircase) indicating the direction of travel, UP or DOWN. 90% of the traffic issues would have been solved right there. Other signs around would have been nice, maybe even ones indicating where photos should be taken instead of just a few signs stating when and where they could NOT be taken. They did have some signs around for things, but most of those signs where floor level signs… meaning that you can’t really read them until you are practically on top of them. Head height should be a minimum for signs, six feet, seven would be better.

So, with that I bid adieu to another year at Dragon*Con. 359 days until the next one…

2007: Day 2

Breakfast is good. Expensive, but good. Luckily this year we’ve got a ton of Marriott gift certificates to use to we basically eat for free… go, go credit card rewards points!

On to the zombie walk… okay, lets talk about a good idea: Get a bunch of people together dressed as zombies, stumble down the street. Now lets talk about poor execution… do this at the same time as the parade, along side the parade, but not in the parade. Seriously, a better show, since they didn’t get into the parade, would have been to pick a time, say around noon, and walk as a group through the three participating hotels. Ah well, maybe next year…

Saturday was looking to be a zombie day as I headed over to see the Zombie Squad. They were hilarious, but at the same time informative and cool. While they take on the far flung fantasy of a zombie uprising, they do so in focusing in general disaster preparedness. Take a look around your house, if you were to be cut off from communications, power, running water… if it were to all shut down, could you survive the first 72 hours on what you have?

A visit to Dragon*Con isn’t complete without a trip through the Art Show. Definitely some cool stuff to look at, but some times I wonder how they come up with the prices of the art… I see one piece, very nice, oil painting, $300… a few booths down, another oil, $6,500. I didn’t really see much of a difference between the two. There was another 1/8 scale diorama this year, last year was undead which was very cool… this year is Star Wars. Something about the little bastards of tattooine… jawas, storm troopers and sand people. Very nice.

After a short break, I went down and caught the end of the “Is Warcraft an MMO with training wheels?” to which the answer was a resounding “Yes” even though the “hardcore raiders” didn’t want to hear it. People were calling their game “easy” and “simple”, and it is, from level 1 to 60 (now 70) you don’t need help, you can level on your own and be just fine, but at the level cap the game gets “hard” because you wind up needing a guild, or at least a few friends to power through Arena and Battlegrounds.

That was followed by a panel on the nitty gritty of MMO Design. Mostly the room seemed to be filled with people who didn’t want to hear “Its not easy, in fact its a lot of hard work and takes a whole team of people.”

Ever watched a movie about the end of the world? Ever watched a bunch of them? Ever notice that the same archetypes of characters keep showing up? I attended a panel to discuss exactly that: what types keep showing up and why. Most interesting was the aspect of how American films differ from British films and both of those are miles away from Asian films. Fun talks.

While I skipped out on a screening of “The Signal” earlier in the day (I’ve seen it), I did want to attend a Q&A panel of the cast a crew. A.J. Bowen likes to wink at me, but I think only because I wink back… but its not in a gay way. Really.

The day ends as it always does… with drinking and people watching, running into old friends, laughing and talking… and sleep.

Good night.

Zombie Apocalypse

Yesterday’s post got me to thinking. Would I really want my zombie game to go on forever?

Sure, I can always spawn endless numbers of zombies and have the game drag on and on, but to inject a tiny bit of reality in the zombie scenario… Worst Case: You are the only survivor and every other person on the planet becomes a zombie. 1 living human versus approximately (using July 2007 numbers) 6,600,000,000 zombies. Zombies don’t breed, they only turn the living. It would be a long and arduous road, but eventually you could win. I mean, it would take years and years to kill them all, but then you don’t need to kill them all. You just need to build strong enough walls to keep them out and enough area inside to run a farm. Of course, in the case of a zombie uprising, the worst case scenario is very unlikely. There will be more survivors and plenty of people will die in ways that prevent them from rising again.

So, would a zombie game be well served by having it reset? Perhaps the world could reset when all the zombies are killed, or when a city is established and the area it is in is made “safe”. Or it could even be time based… the dead rise, but the virus that is animating them will die out itself in three months… six months… a year… just survive until then. I could award badges for surviving. Players who die can start a new character, but they lose out on the badge. Or maybe tag each account with a “death count” and award titles for length of survival, like “Six month survivor” and “Forty-seven month survivor”. With a game reset, you could even design a “start” event. The world begins populated by live NPCs for a few days, then one day chaos and zombies, people screaming, players running for cover… or do they run to the supermarket first?

Definitely worth considering as I flesh out my design.

The Cost of Gaming

This isn’t going to be some in depth study. Tobold posted an entry to his blog a while back about pricing models in gaming. It got me to thinking.

I enjoyed Puzzle Pirates. I still do from time to time, but I don’t play it enough to pay a monthly fee. When I get the itch, I go in, play some bilging or poker or sword fighting, then I log out. I don’t play enough to need my own boat, or super fancy clothes, or any of the stuff that money gets you in the game. (I’m Ishiro on the Hunter ocean if you ever care to look me up.)

While at first glance, I cringe at the idea of my other games going to RMT models, ultimately it wouldn’t matter. Just take World of Warcraft as an example. Before I quit, I couldn’t play in the Battlegrounds, I just didn’t have the time it took to earn enough gold to buy the items that would have allowed me to compete with the twinks. I didn’t do world PvP for much the same reason (and getting jumped 4 to 1 by the Alliance was just retarded). I didn’t raid because, even though I’d have liked to, I just didn’t care enough to put forth the effort it took to be a viable part of a raiding guild, farming money and “pots” and all that. The game I played in WoW was the solo or small group game, and sometimes we even went into instances. The game I played is the game that would be free.

As I look at all the other games I play, that play model stays the same: I really only actively participate in the sections of the game that would be free if they went to an RMT model.

The thing is… I still enjoy the games. Like Puzzle Pirates, only I play a little more often.

So, how on earth does this tie in to my Zombie game design? I mean, this is a Wednesday post, and Wednesdays are Zombie Wednesdays. I’ve been thinking about what kind of pricing model I’d go for with my own game. As cool as I think the game is going to be, asking $15 a month might be a bit much for an MMOTamagotchi, but the design I have in mind doesn’t lend itself to RMT, unless I want to charge people for the item designer I have envisioned or for other things, but I don’t want to have someone playing along and when they try to build a radio they get a “you can’t do that unless you pay me!” type dialog box. RMT just defeats the mood of the game I’m trying to make, and mood is important in a horror setting. The only other option would be to sell blocks of time, a number of cents per hour that you’d buy in 100 hour blocks or something.

Its definitely something to think about… but I suppose it can be delayed until I actually have a game. 🙂

I Am Legend

Normally, I am not a vampire guy. Except as bad guys. That whole Anne Rice immortally tortured gay blood sucker thing just put me right off. About the only time I have ever liked a vampire as the hero has been the TV show Angel.

Luckily for me, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend isn’t about do-gooder or tortured vampires.

The story tackles an idea normally reserved for zombie movies, what if the world were overrun by vampires. A virus of some sort has swept the world and slowly the world succumbed. There are two kinds of vampires, dead ones and live ones, but there is only one man left. Robert Neville is the last man on Earth, and with no end in site, with everyone he loved gone, for some reason he just won’t give up. He keeps garlic on his doors and windows by night and goes out for supplies and to kill sleeping vampires by day.

Given the bleak subject matter, its a true testament to Matheson’s writing that the story doesn’t spiral into a morose somber mess. Instead there is an odd sense of hope, and even humor, in Robert Neville’s life. The end left me a little wanting, I understand what Matheson was doing there, but some part of me just felt a little… cheated. But the rest of the book is good enough that I’ll forgive him.

If you don’t care to read the book, it has been made into a movie a number of times in the past, although always under another name (The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price and The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston directly, and I’m sure the story influenced quite a few other films), but this year we’ll see a more direct adaptation in I Am Legend starring Will Smith. I suspect it will deviate from the book much like Mr. Smith’s previous I, Robot did. But I would still recommend reading the book.

A Tiny First Step

In an effort to move forward on my little game idea, I’ve downloaded (once again) the tools from Multiverse to see if I can make heads or tails of building my own game world. I make no promises, of course, but any motion is good motion at this point.

Bring on the Zombies.

28 Weeks Later

Just got back from seeing 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later.

It was excellent. Similar to 28 Days Later, in 28 Weeks, the infected and the infection provide the setting, but the overall story is more about the people than it is the monsters. While this isn’t really a zombie movie, it follows along with alot of the same stylistic elements.

In 28 Days, you saw Jim wake up 28 days after a plague of “rage” has engulfed England. He quickly has a few close calls and hooks up with another person, and then two more, and they eventually head to a place that promises a cure. And here is where the “real story” of 28 Days began. Some soldiers were holed up at a mansion and in a moderately twisted way were planning to survive and repopulate the world.

28 Weeks involves none of the characters from the original. Here, we are introduced to a few survivors at the height of the plague, then transported 28 weeks forward to where US troops have reoccupied parts of London, the infected have supposedly starved to death, and reconstruction efforts are beginning. British travelers from abroad are being allowed to return, and in the current batch are two kids, children of a man who managed to survive on the ground in England. Like the original, the movie takes a little turn and takes the focus away from the infection and shows you the world… people living in the safe zone, the guards who protect it. The kids decide to jump the fence and retrieve some possessions from their old house, and as you can guess this is where the trouble begins.

If you were to say that 28 Days Later was like the movie Alien, then 28 Weeks Later is Aliens. It was exciting and scary, like the original, but with more muscle and firepower. If you liked 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later should be right up your alley. I definitely recommend it.

Aspect of the The Walking Dead

I’ve written about The Walking Dead before, and in my continued efforts to talk about my game idea without rehashing the same stuff over and over, I will write about them again.

There are six collections now instead of four as when I wrote before, and the story remains good. There are elements in here that just make sense to me, and are in line with the story of the world I would present in my game. If you haven’t read all the comics, I’m about to ruin one thing for you, so skip the rest unless you want the spoiler… its not that huge of a spoiler, so don’t get too bent…

In the comic, one of the things revealed that I really liked is the idea that everyone is doomed. See, The Walking Dead doesn’t refer to just the zombies. After an incident where someone who died through other means, never having been bitten by a zombie, comes back as a zombie, its apparent that whatever causes the zombies is already in everyone, just dormant. They are all going to become zombies, no matter how they die, unless their death involves the destruction of their own bodies such that they can’t rise.

This aspect will be integral to my game. I talked earlier about how players will have to manage food and resources, and how those will deplete even when offline. When you die, you are dead. There is no resurrecting or respawning, if you want to play more you have to start a new character. Then, if you want, you can travel to your old character’s hide out and kill the zombie-old-you if someone hasn’t done it already. When you die, you are undead. Your body will rise as an NPC, and if there are people unfortunate enough to be living with you, if they aren’t careful, they may be undone from within.