Latest Posts

Zombie Apocalypse

Gaming

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 End of the World

Gaming

Tobold’s had an interesting post up last week about the concept of a game that resets everyone back to zero as part of a cycle. It really is a nifty idea that I think more games should consider in whole or in part. But the question becomes, how often do you reset?

The first comment on Tobold’s post mentions resetting EQ1 every 90 days. Three months seems a little fast to me, especially given the huge amount of content the game has (not to mention the ridiculous keying and flagging for some zones). Of course, on a reset model, perhaps they could remove some unneeded content (like Luclin), maybe revamp the entire game to focus on one huge storyline. If they’d thought of it sooner, the Planes of Power expansion would have been perfect for this, seeing as how in the Plane of Time the defeat of Quarm results in story text saying your characters are being sent back in time or their memories wiped or something and the defeat of Quarm is being undone since he can’t be allowed to be killed. Three months might be perfect for a game that was only the original world, Kunark, Velious and Plane of Power. In fact, I think that game would rock. Maybe you could still throw in some of those mini expansions like Lost Dungeons and Ykesha, and every three months when they reset the world they’d revamp some zones, maybe add new features, change up the lesser stories. It would definitely solve my “empty world” scenario that happens when everyone is level capped and no one plays the low or mid level game anymore.

But for the casual player, is 90 days too short? If I was the kind of person who only got to play less than 5 hours a week, in three months I’d get in at most 60 hours of play, then I’d lose my character and have to restart. I wouldn’t want to play that game if I were that guy. Wherever you set your reset at, you’ll always be eliminating a set of players below a threshold. Another blog on the subject suggested two months… that short a period would need a very shallow and/or fast playing game.

Perhaps you could just reset the people involved in the final event, or people above a certain level… or maybe allow people to flag themselves as part of the “reset content” which opens up new areas, new raids, but means that when someone wins the final event, all the flagged characters get reset. But most of these limitations come in with level gated content. What if your game had no levels? What if the only progression in the game was in obtaining items and moving through the story?

It is a lot to think about.

Catan

Gaming

Almost four months ago, Big Huge Games released Catan for the XBox 360 Live Arcade platform. It is a good example of what to do right and what to do wrong with a game.

The game is a faithful redo of the board game Settlers of Catan. It retains all the fun of the original game, translating it wonderfully into a digital format. Because of this the reception of the game was high, everyone talking about how cool and fun it is, lots of people buying it, lots of people playing it.

On the other hand, right now it really plays best as a single player game. Many people have been reporting for a while now that there is something screwy with the network code. Random drops are fairly common so that its rare you finish a game with all the other people you started with. And then there is the problem with achievements… many players come to a point where they stop getting achievements, not anything being done on their part, they are completing the goals of the achievements but the achievements are not being rewarded. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it happens to enough people that the xbox.com Catan forum consists largely of people asking why they didn’t get an achievement they believe they have earned. The rest of the posts are about disconnections.

Joe Pishgar was the community manager over at Big Huge and he posted a couple of times about a patch being worked on that he said would be available “soon”. That was back on May 15th, about 13 days after the game was released. Three months later and we have no patch. We also have no Joe as he’s moved on to become the community manager over at Sony for Star Wars Galaxies.

I really want to play Catan more, but won’t until the problems are fixed… It was a great design, a good implementation, but with crappy follow through. And, for me, a black mark on Big Huge. If they can’t fix a game as small as this, I have no faith in their abilities as it concerns that new RPG they are working on.

It is a shame that more game review sites don’t go back and re-review games, because I’m fairly certain that Catan would get much lower scores the second time around, especially when you consider most of their good reviews were done within the first week of release. Some problems just don’t reveal themselves in a week.

Rock of Ages

Random Thoughts

So last night I headed down to the HiFi Buys Amphitheater (which everyone around here still calls Lakewood, because that was a much better name) and caught the Rock of Ages show: Foreigner, Styx and Def Leppard.

It rocked.

The traffic was horrible, so we missed about 15 to 20 minutes of Foreigner, but we did get there during “Jukebox Hero” and listened to them run through a few more hits. They did not play “I Want To Know What Love Is”, but then, they were the opening act, meant to warm up the audience, so they stuck to the upbeat rock stuff and that was just fine with me. I got to hear “Hot Blooded” and that’s about all I needed.

Then Styx took the stage. Tommy Shaw and James Young are the only two original members still in the band. Chuck Panozzo comes out and plays with them now and then, but that’s it. Still, they played “The Grand Illusion”, “Come Sail Away”, “Too Much Time on My Hands”, “Renegade” and a few others… they did not play “Mr. Roboto”. I was disappointed. Not with the band, they rocked, but I really wanted that song.

During the break the wife went for a T-shirt and I went for drinks. This turned out to be a huge mistake. The line was slow, because like many venues they get volunteers to run their concessions for a share of the take. Some volunteer groups are good at it, some aren’t. The problem with volunteer groups is that they usually don’t have anyone with them who knows how to fix a beer tap. So, while changing the kegs, someone screwed up and all the Coors Light taps were messed up (1/3 beer, 2/3 foam). No one could fix it. Personally, I could not care less, Coors Light tastes like piss, I just wanted a Coke, a water and one of those frozen daiquiri drinks for the wife. But I was in line behind a bunch of people who wanted Coors Light, people who were already drunk. Now, to save time the volunteers could have quickly put up a sign that said “No Coors Light” and been done with it, but instead they waited until people got to the head of the line. One guy pitched a fit and demanded Coors, so the volunteers sent a guy to another concession stand to get some, this was a bad precedent to set, because now everyone wanted Coors from the other booth without having to go to the other booth. Finally, I got to the window, got my drinks and fled. Def Leppard was already on stage…

Def Leppard is on the road partly in support of the 20th Anniversary of the Hysteria album, and they played a little over half the album. Their set list was exactly as listed here (the other bands varied a bit from the this). Its kind of amazing that these guys still rock so well after 30 years of playing and 20 years since they really hit huge. I’d gush more over them, but really this is just another example, like Poison who I have written about before (and may be going to see again next week), of a band that has managed to last based on the strength of both their songs and their stage show. Joe and the guys really know how to pull the audience in, and with the strength of their hit songs the audience that comes to the show really wants to be pulled in. Did I mention this is probably the most crowded I’ve seen Lakewood since 1991’s Van Halen “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” Tour? It was. Like a tightly packed sea of people all raising their hands, clapping to the beat and signing along.

A great show. I’m glad I went.

Part of the Problem

Random Thoughts

The other day I happened to notice that the main probablynot.com page had gotten a couple of new incoming links. Its odd because, honestly, no one really reads that site, they come here to the blog. But I suppose if you were Googling, since the most recent posts are RSS fed to the probablynot.com root site a person might get directed there.

As always, I like to know why people are linking to me, and what they have to say.

The first link was actually from back in July, so I’m not sure why it took so long to show itself, or perhaps I haven’t looked at my own root site since July 23rd. The site appears to be a collection of book reviews. I’ve seen these kinds of aggregation sites before, and I actually think its kind of neat to be scraped for it. Cool.

The second link looked funny. While the first site was a blog called “Crime Always Pays” and the post with my link was “The Monday Review”, the second site was called “Crime Review: The Monday Critical review”. It had nearly the same information. I say “nearly” because it was the same info, but it had been passed through two filters: the first changed some words to synonyms, and the second inserted some ad keywords. In fact, the entire site is just rife with Google Ads, and looking at the profile of the blogger, he has a bunch of similar sites all designed to draw traffic, collect clicks, and (he hopes) generate money.

Looking deeper, the second site copies nearly every post from the first site, up until August 1st at least… which lead me to examining the first site a little closer and noticing the review of mine wasn’t the only review of that same book to be tapped. In fact, page by page digging through the archives shows that it really is just repeating the same books over and over, slightly randomized. The site is chaotic enough to suggest it is hand made, but repetitious enough to belie that and show its true colors of most likely being a bot generated site.

I hate these kinds of sites. An aggregation post or site doesn’t bother me too much, but these automated Google Ad factories piss me off. And now I’m on one. Worse, in their quotes of me, they quoted my link to the book I reviewed with my Amazon Associates ID, so I may actually make money from this abomination.

The thing that irks me most however is that their link uses one quoted line of my book review and the link back to me does not go to the full review, but to the root site. Even now, that post has already scrolled off the RSS and doesn’t show there. Searching the root site you’ll never find that review, its on the weblog subdomain. My ill gotten traffic is being directed to the wrong place.

*sigh*

Oh well… its the Internet. There isn’t much I can do about it.

Ethan Haas Revealed

Gaming

A while back people were scouring the Internet looking for information on Cloverfield, the secret movie project by J.J. Abrams. I’ve blogged about the movie myself once or twice. During the hunt, people stumbled upon a site called www.ethanhaaswasright.com and a blog at ethanhaaswaswrong.blogspot.com. The first had a flash puzzle game, each level played a small video clip. The second was a blog that had just a couple entries speaking about something coming and then turning into script that had to be deciphered. Lots of people thought this was for Cloverfield, many people insisted it, and then J.J. Abrams came out at Comic Con and said the Ethan Haas stuff had nothing to do with his movie.

So what was all this Ethan Haas stuff about?

Turns out it was all hype for Alpha Omega, a new table top RPG. Of course, many of the people who’d been trying to figure it out were disappointed, table top games just aren’t exciting to lots of people, they’d have preferred it be a new TV show or a movie, or at the very least a video game. But me, I like table top games, and this one looks fairly interesting, especially since it doesn’t appear to be based on the d20 system. As nice as I think d20 is, its not the only way to play, so I applaud anyone who goes down another road.

I also applaud the effort made here. I can’t remember the last time a table top RPG managed to garner so much attention. No wait… yes I can.

If you want more out of your MMORPGs than levels and loot and grinding experience points, I recommend trying to get some folks together to sit around the table and play. If you are nervous about it because you’ve never done it before, I recommend Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies and Dungeon Master for Dummies to give you a nice overview and a little depth on both sides of table top game play.

Besides, if you love Science Fiction setting games, the MMOs have never really gotten it right, but table top games have been doing it right for a long time.

Product Placement

Random Thoughts

I was watching Flash Gordon the other night. No, not the movie (which is awesome), but the new Sci-Fi Channel TV show (which made dozens of needless changes to the Flash Gordon mythos but has potential if they can avoid more silly crap like the “IMEX”). In one scene, Flash goes to Google some information… no, wait, he doesn’t Google it, he “Snifferbot.com”s it, or something like that.

Seriously, does Google (or Yahoo or MSN or whoever) really charge a ton to be able to use their site in a TV show? This kind of little junk is usually what ruins TV shows for me. How can I ever suspend disbelief when they completely detach from reality like that? I thought companies paid money to get product placement… why are no TV producers taking advantage of having their actors actually drink Coke on screen instead of “Cola”?

Wake up guys. People are not watching commercials anymore. Except maybe during the Superbowl. If you want people to see your products, you need to get people in these fantasy worlds to be using your products.

On the flip side, last week when the esurance animated superspy chick showed up on Who Wants to be a Superhero? I threw up in my mouth a little bit. It was like someone hit the show with an esurance bomb and it got esurance goo on everything. There is a line… please don’t cross it.

The Cost of Gaming

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. 🙂

No RP in my RPG

Gaming

One of the things I find distressing in MMORPGs today is the lack of that RP part… you know, Role Playing. I suppose that’s why most articles these days are using just MMOG or seeking out new identifiers.

Mostly, when I play, I tend to RP, at least a little. I try not to talk about sports or real world news, I don’t go on and on about the latest movie that I saw. I’m in a world where I am a hunter, and I have been tasked to kill bears, and while I don’t keep things deadly serious, I try to keep things contextual. Lots of people don’t.

It starts with names. From a hundred yards, when I see you running across the field and I target you and see your name is ‘Meattank’ or ‘Roxxingursoxxorz’, I know immediately that you are not playing your role as defined by the game world. Instead, you are likely grinding exp, loot, money or faction. Grouping with you would be a mistake, because you are likely to spend our time talking about the real world, or worse, DPS numbers and quickest routes of progression, boiling the game down into its simplest form. Of course, some ‘bad’ players still have good names.

I find, as I get older, that I’m less tolerant of people. I’m more apt to just pick up my toys and go home rather than put up with someone insisting that not playing a game at its most minimal and purest form is a waste of time. People who demand that levels and stats be maxed, that can only tell you where things are by looking them up on the latest spoiler site. Mostly though, the lack of role playing goes back to the idea I posted about a couple weeks ago. The min/max play style trumps my role playing style. A player playing the stat and loot game can hear me talk about getting a beer down at the pub and just brush it off, but when a group member breaks out with “Okay, lull that mob and will split the pair, cast x, y and z, if we happen to get the second, I’ll offtank until you guys down the first mob. Stay to the back and sides to avoid the ripostes. Max melee range so you don’t push.” well, it just kills the role play.

There is no solution to this. I’m just venting. I’ll still keep trying to role play, but real role playing is probably going to have to stay at the table top game level.