Category: Games

Anything having to do with games (Computer & Tabletop)

Are used game sales harmful to the video game industry?

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Many gamers are as opposed to used game sales as they are to piracy, but I try to explain why that is completely misguided.

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Someone opened a question in reddit concerning used game sales, and the usual privileged moralizing was not slow to appear in force. This whole discussion is a prime example of how people go against perfectly fine practices for no other reason than that they perceive them to be a danger to their hobby…because those providing such hobby tell them so.

It’s no secret that the video game industry simply hates the used game sales, with as much and possibly more passion than they hate piracy. That hatred is of course misguided as much as it is when focused against piracy, but you can’t honestly expect much more from brain-dead executives who think that used game resellers are ripping them off. However one would hope that actual gamers, who are the ones benefiting most from a thriving second-hand market, would be more positive.

And to an extent it is, usually the highest comments are supportive of second-hand markets, but I’m seeing more and more upvoted comments and posts, condemning used game sales. Granted, a lot of this hate goes specifically towards GameStop, which people do have significant reasons to dislike, but then again, you also get a lot of comments strongly against used game sales for no other reason than the usual “It harms the developers”. The following is an archetypical comment:

Let me preface this by saying I’m very strongly against used game selling, as the basically the entire profit made from used game sales goes to the retailer.
hese two are very, very similar, and shouldn’t be treated as separately as you are treating them. The key difference between piracy and used game purchases boils down to the buyer. When someone buys the game used, they aren’t supporting the developers, however they are still paying at least something for the game.
Pirates, on the other hand pay nothing. Pirating a game is playing a game illegally. That is it. Pirates can try to justify their actions all they want, saying they are just trying the game or will buy it later. This does not change the fact that they are playing the game illegally until they pay for it. There are no exceptions, no excuses for playing without paying.
One additional point is that you are assuming that people who frown upon piracy approve of used game sales. This is very, very rarely the case. Both are detrimental and would be best eliminated, it’s just that one involves taking something for free and one involves the slightly shady business practices of some stores.
And Finally, you are neglecting the absolute most important piece of information: you are assuming all customers are aware that no profit from used game sales goes to the developers. Most people are simply casual players, and won’t give a second thought about their purchase. To them, a used game is simply a cheaper version of what they were going to buy. It doesn’t change the fact that the developer is cut out of the sale, I just want to clarify some important gaps in your initial complaint.

I won’t really bother to counter the arguments against piracy as I’ve done so already in multiple articles here, but it’s interesting on how a perfectly legal practice in the world, suddenly becomes anathema when in the context of digital goods. Kinda like how the practice of sharing, become the “evil” piracy when it is done with digital goods.

It is very perplexing how these people do not see any issue with second-hand markets on physical goods, which are not only established but also very useful in market economies. The same arguments one does here against used games, can be used against used TVs just as well. As much as a used game sale deprives its creator of potential revenue, so does a used TV sale deprive its creator of potential revenue. And the argument that items change hands doesn’t even apply here, since the entitlement of the creator to receive profit from each transfer of their product is not based on the concept of material transfer, but on the idea that they deserve reward for creative effort and to protect their business model. A concept that, needless to say, is very very wrong.

The fact of the matter is, as Techdirt has explained, is that second-hand markets in fact boost original sales at launch periods, by allowing people to take more risks with their purchases, knowing that they can recoup some of that cost if the game does not live up to its potential. It also allows people to buy originals at full price during launch periods, even if their value of the product falls below that price, since they can reduce the price via selling the game used. Finally it allows people who do not have the money to buy full price, to enjoy the game via used game sales which in turn helps the game to sustain the most-important community size and possibly spread more word of mouth, as a the lost of someone disgruntled can end up in the hands of someone enthusiastic.

The point is that there’s a lot of positive effects coming from second-hand markets, which are summarily ignored through the short slightness of game publishers who feel ripped off by used game sales. Unfortunately for them, second-hand markets for software have been deemed legal. Unfortunately for us, software companies have the capacity to implement ways to extract money from either resellers or second-hand customers via the use of Online Codes.

But while the gaming industry might think that Online Codes give them a cut from each used game sale, the reality is that this cost is usually passed over to the customer in some way. Because the value of a second-hand game without a usable Online Code is diminished, either the original customer will be able to resell it for less than they’d like and thus the original price for the game (and thus the risk) will be higher, which will discourage people from doing it, or the second-hand buyer will end up with a gimped game, and thus discover that the price they paid was not for a full product, leading to resentment. Another option is that the used games salesman like GameStop is going to take the hit by subsidizing the Online Code cost to its customers (and thus providing a voluntary “tax” of 10-30% or so to the creator on each sale they make), but this again has unforeseen consequences, as GameStop is so big and has such a margin that it can afford to do this, while smaller resellers cannot. If anything then, this practice plays into the hands of GameStop by allowing them an advantage which can improve their market share, perhaps to the points of monopoly, which would be great for GameStop and publishers (who only have to deal with GameStop after that), but disastrous for the customer.

In any case, the absolutely most frustrating thing when discussing such matters with gamers online is how often you see a stunning display of privilege from people who either don’t have to think about what to buy, or simply have masochistic tendencies. This comment exemplifies this attitude:

The gaming world is full of cheap ways to get games – Steam sales, app gaming, web-based gaming portals, FTP MMOs, ‘Greatest Hits’ discount re-releases, etc. The gamer that cannot afford to but full-price top-tier games on launch day should not buy them; just as a person living hand-to-mouth shouldn’t be going out to eat on a credit card or buying a fancy car when the bus is available

I.e. let them eat cake.

This is the kind of argument that really gets me annoyed. It’s not even enough to condemn pirates who, at least are doing something illegal, but now they condemn people who do something absolutely legal, just because they’re not rich enough to afford full priced games at launch day? It’s this frustrating attitude which implies that there’s either the very poor and the well-off in the world, and nothing in between. And if you belong to the former, then you don’t deserve to enjoy culture. This projection of privilege from smug neckbeards online is really starting to become a pet peeve of mine.

In closing, I’ll reiterate that used game sales are as much of a threat to the gaming industry as piracy. I.e. not at all. If anything, according to “executive logic” used game sales are worse than piracy since they are far closer to actual lost sales, since the people buying them are already ready to spend money and that money simply didn’t go to the developer. The actual reality however is that used game sales and piracy have various positive effects that are difficult to see and quantify and the more the industry reacts to things humans find natural, such as sharing or selling their stuff, the more resentment and reaction it will bring, which will ultimately be to their own detriment.

How can we design an engaging dialogue system in computer Role Playing Games?

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Can we ever make dialogue a meaningful part of RPGs, rather than something which can easily be ignored?

This post was inspired when I was writing about the dialogue system in my first impressions of SWTOR. There I mentioned that I liked the idea of the NPC dialogue with multiple players involved, but felt that it looks like so much lost potential given that the results of the dialogue are decided with a simple random roll which has little relation to how strong personality a character has, or how skilled in social relations they are. A misanthropist Sith has the same chance of affecting the dialogue progression as a charismatic smuggler.

It is perplexing to me why role-playing games don’t introduce their usual set of mechanics into social aspects as well. Why are skills only relevant to how well you can shoot or protect yourself, and not how well you can convince or manipulate? Sure, some role-playing games have tacked on some traits  which can affect dialogues, but the functionality of those is not engaging in the slightest, and they feel more like a random roll, rather than a sustained and challenging process.

And I’m not talking about silly mini games like the Oblivion wheel, I’m talking about making dialogue more like combat. But of course, before we see how, we need to look into what makes combat in role-playing games engaging and interesting.

Combat is not presented as a simple attempt at an attack, but rather a sequence of such attempts, using a variety of skills and tactics to overcome an enemy’s defenses. In most RPGs, an enemy’s first line of defense are their hit points/shields (i.e. how many successful hits a player needs to defeat them), but just HP are usually boring as the player feels like they’re just fighting a punching bag. So dodge chances, covers, armor/shield reduction/penetration, magic resistance and a host of other subdefences are added to different enemies, forcing the player to adapt their strategy in order to find the weak spot they can exploit.

The trick here is that while enemies of the same level as the player always take more than one simple attack to take down, if the player ends up with an enemy who is resistant against his usual attacks, and the player does not have a way to exploit their weaknesses, then it can suddenly become a very difficult battle, forcing the player to struggle with it or even lose. This created the rush of excitement which makes combat so engaging, as players move from enemy to enemy looking for more such rushes. This is why “boss” enemies exist, along with various “lieutenants” who suddenly spike the difficulty and force the player to stress, think and adapt.

And then, there’s also the dynamism of combat, where you don’t simply stand around whacking each other’s head with a club until one falls down  (OK, in some games you do, but those are generally considered very boring) but rather run around, jump to cover, throw fireballs and grenades and generally have a lot of activity peppered with special effects and explosions. In short, mindless action fun!

These two combine to make combat something which keeps the player engaged, from thinking about their next move in split second times, to looking at the beautiful effects their previous action achieved and how brilliantly they outplayed their opponent. Thus combat in RPGs stays fairly interesting throughout the whole game, simply by incremental additions to strategy and difficulty.

So now that we know what recipe makes combat engaging, we can immediately see the flaws that make dialogue distinctly less so. In dialogue as implemented in most CRPGs, it is a matter of simply selecting whatever option your character would say. On occasion there’s an option to utilize a “persuasion” skill, like threatening them, or charming them or whatever. This is done dryly, once off, and most of the time, using it or not, has no significant effect in the dialogue, except perhaps to give you some small reward. But game designers shy away from opening quests, or progressing currents quests through such skills, because if the player fails them, they would be left stranded and frustrated.

However this frustration does not exist when a quest progression is blocked by some enemy the player cannot defeat. Why is that? The answer is that even against an enemy that is too strong, the player is allowed to try, and if they discover in practice that it’s not possible, they can retreat (and death is treated in MMORPGs as a retreat basically, with some minor loss of wealth) and either grind for levels and better equipment, or purchase a number of strong one-use items to use specifically for this battle. Thus an impossible battle becomes simply very difficult but still within the capabilities of the player, who will have a nice challenge. And if they are defeated at this stage again, they can either replay it if they thought it was a close one, or go back to grinding a bit more. Whatever happens, the player does not feel frustrated by being thwarted by things they cannot control. Things such as random rolls on a statistic.

And this is the root cause why a dialogue loss based on a simple statistic such a persuasion would be frustrating if it ended up blocking progress in a quest. Not only does the player not have any skilled input in avoiding the loss, but retrying the attempt is either going to be stopped altogether, or be retried in such a heavy-handed way that it actually breaks the player’s immersion (for example, allowing the player to restart the conversation as if it never happened).

But what if instead of a simple skill roll to achieve the dialogue attempt, there were more than one. Not just skill rolls but skills as well. What if a player had different skills of persuasion and charisma that they can use in dialogue and convincing was not a case of a random roll, but a persistent attempt to sway the opinion of your opponent?

Lets try to see an example of this to see how it could work.

Let’s say you had a guard who was blocking your entrance to a compound you wanted to infiltrate. In most RPGs in the market today, the process would go approximately like this. You approach the guard and a discussion starts. She asks what you are doing there and you have the option to attack or talk further. If you attack, you get entrance in the compound but an alarm sounds so you get more enemies (i.e. failing the dialogue still allows you to progress at a higher difficulty). If you try to bluff your way inside, you will get a few options and (depending on the game) either you will convince her, or she will call your bluff and sound the alarm, at which point you end up at the first scenario anyway. If you manage to find the correct discussion path, you can enter without an alarm, at which point the game goes back to combat mode inside the compound, albeit with fewer enemies. If you have some ability such as Force Talk (or something), you might be given an option to use it in the dialogue, and if the random roll succeeds, you might either get in without going through the special dialogue path, or you might also get some small bonus, such as, say a key card to open some doors with extra loot.

Now lets take the same scenario, but in a game where the dialogue system has been advanced to be more engaging:

Of the three skill trees for dialogue, you have invested points in Quick Talking, rather than Charisma or Manipulation, so you’re well equipped for this scenario. The conversation starts and the guard asks for the reason of your presence there. As the discussion starts, you do not know much about this enemy, so you first need to understand their defenses before you can exploit them. So you select a Bluff attempt as an option and open up  with your bread&butter Quick Talking skill, the “Quick Bluff”. It uses no energy and the game informs you that you pretend to have important business with the leader of the compound. The guard’s Conviction bar takes a hit of 20 points and they now have 80 more left. If the guard was a simple mook, it would only take 4 more bluffs to gain entrance, so in this way it would seem like a normal combat, where you simply used your basic skills.

But lets assume that this is a more advanced guard as they are more important, and after the second bluff, they activate their defense skill, lets call it “Guard’s Caution” which damages your “Bluff Consistency” bar by 30 points. So now the situation is more urgent and you need to use some more powerful skills to overcome. So you bring about the “Force Talk” if you’re a Jedi, or you could see that the game has now revealed that the guard has the “loyal” trait (lets say that the more you talk, the more details you glean from your opponent), so you can fire up your “Military etiquette” skill from the Manipulation tree and exploit that weakness. If the guard’s defences manage to deplete your “Bluff Consistency”, your bluff is ruined and the guard can either raise the alarm, or become impervious to further attempts from you, forcing you to resort to weapons or sneaking (depends on the game).

Once in the compound via bluffing now, instead of passing onto combat, you simply have to bluff your way to the objective. So rather than fighting the random mooks in the state, you can talk to them, something which should be easier than the guard. In case of victory you could manage to make them leave the compound on some wild goose chase or just leave you alone. Finally you reach the “boss” and there you have a true challenge, where all your speech skills will be put to the test and you may actually lose. Losing might lead to combat, or death. But in the end, your success is actually in your skills, rather than one random roll.

Now the above scenario is simply a theoretical rule set for such game. It might not sound perfect but it’s just a sketch of just how such mechanics might work, while giving the player actual tactics to work with during such dialogues. This could then be combined with the group dialogue that SWTOR is using, to thus allow players to coordinate in tackling on more difficult opponents, by using their skills in combination. Or this could also be used to see who is going to speak in a conversation, by comparing perhaps the relevant stats of the players or allowing them to use some skill to take the initiative.

Now, it’s fairly easy to craft rule sets for such a system, but the largest problem in crafting a dialogue system that is engaging, is finding something to actually show to the player while they’re talking. As we said before, combat is dynamic and with a lot of sound, movement and assorted wow factor. Even the silliness of SWTOR where both sides just stand around shooting each other has a lot of pew-pew at least. Unlike that, a dialogue by itself does not have anything exciting to show, which theoretically might make people avoid it (not sure, it might be a great success that nobody expects. We won’t know unless some game tries it in practice), so the question then becomes, how to make discussion look exciting enough. Perhaps something like Ace Attorney, with a lot of strong gestures and flashing background might be employed if the style of the game permits it, but what else? Then there’s also the issue of sound. You can’t voice all such discussion without either being using an extreme budget, or using some way of cycling phrases, which will quickly turn repetitive. While the player tunes out or get’s used to blaster shots, explosions and grunts of pain, specific line of dialogue become very quickly recognizable (“Hold right there, criminal scum!”). I’ll admit that I’m really at a loss and I do believe this is going to be a strong block in implementing a dialogue system in RPGs that is engaging. Perhaps I’m wrong or perhaps someone more inventive than me can imagine something and implement it and revolutionize RPGs. I can only hope.

But certainly, if such an RPG came about, with a dialogue system that can be as useful and engaging as combat or stealth, it will have managed to add the aspect most RPGs are missing. Meaningful dialogue choices and play, which allows the player to stay true to their role.

First impressions on Star Wars: The Old Republic – Not impressed.

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I’ve managed to play SWTOR for a few hours yesterday, and these are my impressions.

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So yesterday night, I’ve had the opportunity to try the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic during its open/stress test beta weekend, so I might as well write my impressions of it.

First I want to say that from everything I know about it, I was not planning to play SWTOR. The reason for this is that the game, to me, frankly seems like a reskin of WoW, circa 2005. Few classes and races, holy trinity setup, not particularly innovating gameplay, cookie-cutter quests etc. The few videos I’d seen about it, made it seem like nothing particularly exciting, unless one was a hardcore Star Wars or Bioware fanboy.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the Star Wars universe quite a lot (albeit, I’d love if G.Lucas stopped messing with it, and let some people with a more realistic understanding of ethics and human motivation take over) and I’m still a Bioware fan, but WoW couldn’t keep my attention for more than 3 months (and that was pushing it) and thus I didn’t expect such a similar game to do any better. Also compared to other games like Guild Wars 2, which really seem to be doing a lot of innovative steps at a far lower cost (i.e. no subscription), I just didn’t see why I should bother.

That disclaimer out of the way, let me give you my impression of the various aspects of the beta.

Getting to the game.

I got my invitation, from the Bioware social site of all places. It came in a PM from the admin directly, and frankly, up until that point I never even bothered to try the beta out. But hey, I wouldn’t turn down a free demo of one of the largest games of the year. I’m guessing I got the PM because I had bothered to actually populate the Bioware social with my Dragon Age characters and the like and I was also currently replaying Dragon Age: Origins. I doubt I would have otherwise gotten a free invite. But perhaps I’m wrong and everyone registered there got one as well.

Downloading the game client was a bit of a headache as well, because for some strange reason, the installation program would crash if I had FRAPS running. It took a lot of search online and in the forums to figure this out. After I managed to get the client, came the very long download process, which went OK, barring an unexpected BSOD just as it had finished downloading, which I’m not sure was the cause of the downloading client, but anyway. Nevertheless, I still don’t get why they didn’t use EA’s Origin, which they rammed down our throat with Battlefield 3, but rather they used this standalone client, and thus yet another useless program to have on one’s PC.

As the open beta period was starting, I was hearing horror tales about hour-long queues, lag, crashes and so on, but to my surprise, everything went without a hitch. Europe had only half a dozen English servers and far too many German and French ones. No idea why this is the case, since everyone who doesn’t speak German or French is likely to go to the English ones. Nevertheless, even with so few English-speaking servers, the queuing times were very small. I managed to create characters in three different servers within an hour or so (I swapped servers due to miscommunication with Plutonick and some other friends I was supposed to play with). Still on the subreddit for SWTOR, I still see a lot of people complaining about the long queue times which I didn’t experience. The worst I had, was 25 minutes.

Character Creation

I won’t got into a lot of detail here, since you can find lengthy videos about this all over the internets. I’ll just mention the things that stood out to me.

Why are the larger body type men somewhere between overweight and ultra-beefy, while the larger body type women are simply displayed as (in structure) large and curvy, but still fairly slim/athletic type? What is it with game developers assuming that there are people who will play overweight men but not overweight women? Just give the option and let people choose for crying out loud.

I like the varied options for characters but I was disappointed when I found yet another game where I couldn’t play a long-haired guy. The best approximation I found for cyborgs was a fairly tame bob cut. So I went for the mohawk instead.

On the matter of hair, why don’t facial hair have their own slider for cyborgs but are rather tied in with either “hair” or “cybernetics”? Perhaps it is different for normal humans, but for cyborgs, I just couldn’t make what I wanted.

I still don’t get why in this day and age, a game thinks it’s a good idea to keep all starting character uniform rather than let them choose some preferred skills, abilities and clothes? Why is it so difficult as a smuggler to choose to be proficient with a blaster rifle, rather than a blaster pistol? Why do we all have to start with the same clothes? This is supposed to be a role-playing game goddamnit. As it was, the only differentiation between starting characters of each class, were body types primarily and faces secondary. And within the same body types, you might as well have had clones.

Playing

Disclaimer: I only played through the introduction area as I didn’t have enough time (since the beta was, as is common with these things, starting on US time. Yeah, America is the only place that counts obviously). As such, perhaps I’m missing how things improve considerably later but I’m not holding my breath.

The first area might just as well have been the clone vats. Dozens of identical-looking characters, doing the same quests, using the same skills, killing the same people. It was all fairly silly. I realize much of this was because of the beta and because everyone was new at the game, but the whole thing still was looking messy. Especially with everyone vying for the same enemies to kill and whatnot, even with the instancing that happens to separate all the people in the same area.

For someone who is looking for immersion, the whole area was really a blow to my suspension of disbelief. There was nothing permanent. Any quest you did, reset a few seconds later for the next person. I blew up a communications tower and it was pristine a few seconds later, enemies just popped into existence 20 seconds after you killed them and a horde of newbies, wearing the same clothes and wielding the same weapons, was running through an area that was supposed to be controlled by the enemy.

It also still left you with very little opportunity to choose your path. As a smuggler, my enemies were always the “Separatists”. Was there ever any option to start working towards joining them? To stay neutral? No, there’s a railroad quest-line with very little opportunity to avoid. The best you can do is select a light or dark answer at the end of some discussions, but effectively you still had always the same end result. Seriously, at some point I was offered a quest from, the main storyline, and I selected the option which very explicitly said “[Refuse Mission]”. I was expecting the classic Bioware nonsense which exited the dialogue and didn’t let you continue unless you talked to them again and accepted anyway, but surprisingly, I simply got the quest regardless of my choice. The main quests are very much a railroad and the side quests, (which you need to get in order to receive the necessary experience) are all very simple. Mostly go there and kill that, or go there and destroy 3 of these things, or go there, kill that guy and get this item. All very uninspired with their only benefit being the fully spoken dialogue.

That last part was really the only saving grace of the quests which were otherwise completely forgettable and superficial. You see, nothing that you do affects the world around you, and you do not really have much of a choice when doing them. It really felt too much like the way I felt when doing Borderlands quests. Just gather as many of them as you can, go to the area where they’re all concentrated and just do them one after another by the bucketful. I never really felt at all interested in most of what I was doing as I had almost no input as a role player. I had no option how to approach the scenario, no choice to avoid combat and very little choice on how to deal with the quests. Just bland Dark VS Light options (i.e. good vs Eeeeevil) which  sometimes manifested in you finishing the quest at a different quest giver than the original. The voice acting helped to draw you back to the quest, but it was only at the beginning or at the end of the quest line (with few exceptions) and thus, it was just not enough to make me care. It just helped me avoid skipping the dialogue altogether.

In this kind of game, I always try to play a character that is fairly outside the boring norms of good vs evil behaviour or lawful evil VS chaotic good. For example, two of my favourite archetypes I like to play is an Anarchist ((Direct action towards helping others, or let them help themselves, combined with actions which undermine established hierarchical authorities, such as armies, police, states and other kinds of oppression – i.e. closer to Chaotic Good in D&D terms but with a lot of fine details)) or an archetype I call “Benevolent Might Makes Right” ((A character who believes the weak should defer towards the strong (in power of arms) but that the strong have a moral responsibility to protect the weak who are under them. Usually I couple this with some underlying racism (not against human skin colour, but rather against other fantasy or sci-fi races) and xenophobia as well as a strong sense of honour, loyalty and respect for accepted authority. i.e. similar to Lawful Evil in D&D tems, but again, not exactly)). Both of these are imho closer to the nuanced ethics and ideology of many humans and it’s interesting to see how they interact in a very binary system of “Dark VS Light”. What happens is that there is rarely any acts or dialogue choices that are provided to me, fit within the character role I’ve selected. Very often I’m given three different options in a dialogue and end up saying to myself “Well, this character would never say any of these”, so I’m left to choose the out-of-character option that more approximates me. So that Anarchist archetype usually ends up coming off like a greedy opportunist with a good streak, while the Might makes Right Archetype sounds like a schizophrenic.

I digressed a bit above here, but this was to point why the quest lines of SWTOR and the dialogue left me unimpressed. The characters I like to roleplay cannot be done in this game of standard Bioware trinary morality (Good, Eeeevil or Greed), and the quests are generally uninspiring.

What I did like somewhat was the dialogue system when multiple player are involved, but I feel that this has so much untapped potential that they simply did not even consider. Why did they go for simply random rolls to see who speaks, which have no relation to who is a better talker or has more powerful personality? Why don’t we have skills pertaining to dialogue that can be utilized in these cases either in combination with the other players when trying to convince an NPC (and avoid combat for example) or against other players when trying to see which quest path you will take? Some mini game, based on skills and abilities between the speakers would be a great addition to a game so focused on dialogue. Unfortunately I can see why a fully voiced game would shy away from something like that, as it could theoretically increase exponentially the amount of spoken dialogue. But then again, that’s why I think that spoken dialogue can easily be a detriment in role-playing games as it severely limits available options.

On the graphical side, the game is good-looking but nothing particularly jaw dropping. Fortunately that meant my VGA could handle it, even though on the starting area, my FPS took a severe beating. Initially I thought it was because I had too high settings, but my FPS managed to creep up to the high 70s after I moved away for quests, so it seems to me that it had mostly to do with how many Player Characters were around my area.

A minor peeve was how the game prevented me from playing with my two Jedi friends which were apparently on a completely different planet. I understand that this can be amended after you reach level 10 and leave the intro portion, but it still annoyed that I couldn’t play with my friends, especially since the only guy I could play with, got bored with the game within a few hours and left me alone.

As for combat and general such gameplay – One word: Boring. Perhaps this was because I was still at the first levels, but I never felt any challenge, nor any need to actually strategize. It was simply a process of using my abilities one after the other as their cooldowns expired and my energy allowed. As a smuggler, the cover mechanic worked only half the time, as it was very often I would stand next to cover rocks or whatever, and the character would simply kneel rather than use them. I could however run behind them and kneel and then I would actually get the benefit of cover. I also don’t understand why I couldn’t take cover behind covers, or behind trees. If you actually hide behind a tree and use cover, rather than peek out and shoot, the game would tell you that you have no line of sight. As a result of this loss of opportunity, the level designers ended up spreading random barrels and chests on the rooms, simply to act as cover for people, where the corners would have sufficed much more believably.

I still don’t understand what is with their obsession with 3-man groups. Granted you still find the occasional solo beefy enemy, but usually it’s groups of 3 people standing around for you to kill, before they pop back into existence a few seconds later. It was fairly silly, and at some point Plutonick got killed by such a group of three when he went afk for 3 minutes and it ended up spawning on top of him, at an area we had just cleared. I don’t understand why we can have larger groups, as was the case with other Bioware games, thus forcing one to actually strategize with Area of Effect abilities, tactics in movement and cover (such as when being attacked from multiple sides) and so on. But no, usually just the usual boring 3 enemies waiting for passers-by, or a beefy single dude.

In closing

I’ll probably try to play it a bit more today and tomorrow and see if things improve at all outside the intro zones, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m also interested to see PvP, but I don’t think it will be anything to talk about.

After playing this beta, I’m sure I’ll be sticking with my original plan to completely bypass it and try Guild Wars 2 instead. The price for this game, is imho just not worth the lack of innovation and lackluster role-playing and story. The funny thing is that I would be perfectly willing to purchase this game if there wasn’t any subscription required, so that I could play it at my leisure with a few friends a few times per month or simply as single player. But this is definitely not something worth however much a monthly subscription will be.

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Why are gamers obsessed with review scores?

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Battlefield 3 fans are raging against reviews that gave the game just 9 out of 10. I explore possible reasons why.

BATTLEFIELD 3

Battlefield 3 is going live tomorrow and already the “Day 0 reviews” are hitting the net, and as is usual with these kind of things, the battlefield 3 fanbois are furious. Furious I tell you, that the game received only a…9 out of 10 on one review site which game Modern Warfare 2 a far better score back in the day.

Following that incident, there’s not only been quite a lot of flak thrown IGN’s way ((Disclaimer: I don’t have much love for IGN myself, for being a sold-out advertisement mouthpiece. This is an attitude I’ve had regardless of whether they are praising my favourite games or not. As a matter of fact, I would think that a 9/10 is very good, if I thought such numerical scales are a good way to rate games.)) but also a flood of review scores are hitting the front pages, celebrating the high score or denouncing the dirty rotten reviewer who dares to rate it lower than expected. Valid low points of the game, such as the campaign being far too trite, small and linear are trivialized (“BF3 was never about single player, why are you surprised”) and every high review score is upvoted to prominence.

The whole phenomenon is interesting to me because of how similar it is to behaviour of fans of sports teams who agonize for their placement in the league, for how many games they’ve won or lost and take it as an  almost personal insult when someone badmouths their team. And yet, video gamers tend to snub their nose at sports fans for their obsession with their teams, as if their own behaviour is better.

On the average however it isn’t. Time and again, reviewers not only get lambasted by the fans of a particular game when they rate it low, but there have been more than a few cases of threats and wishes of physical violence against such reviewers for doing such an unthinkable thing.

But reviews are generally directed at people who are undecided about a particular game, so why are those who are already convinced of its superiority upset about a low score or obsessed with achieving as many high scores as possible?

At a base level, I think this is because of the Illusion of Asymmetric Insight combined with Choice Supportive Bias. That is, the people already convinced of the quality or superiority of a particular game, either because they are long time fans, or because they have already put a significant portion of their disposable income towards it, tend to start thinking themselves in that group. When someone puts down their choice ((compared to their expectations that is, because giving a game a 9/10 instead of a 9.5/10 is not a big difference)) then the first explanation put forth for this event, is that the people doing it are in the out-group or stupid: They are biased, they are sold out, they are unprofessional and so on.

Thus if IGN rates the Battlefield 3 worse than Modern Warfare 2, then the most logical explanation is that they are playing for the another team, at which point the Illusion of Asymmetric Insight comes into play.

But further than this, we see a much greater obsession with scoring in reviews than almost everything else. In no other product will you see such praise or anger towards review scores from large publications, than you will see in video game circles. Sure, Android and iPhones, MS Windows and GNU/Linux, Vim and Emacs, they all get their own share of fanboi wars, but from what I’ve seen there’s just not this amount of bitterness created by such conflicts and when it happens, it’s usually because of the choice supportive bias such expensive gadgets create.

Now to be accurate, not all games create such a rabid protectionism in their followers. Games like Red Orchestra 2 for example, which are similar enough, never had such an extreme reaction to bad reviews. So there’s obviously some factors that drive up the fanboysim.

One of the most important ones I believe is that focus on multiplayer that a game has. The more multiplayer focused a game is, the more people you want to have playing it, so that you have a robust community with a lot of choices for the players. A bad review can cause people who are on the fence pass the game and thus reduce the community size, which will can indirectly impact the multiplayer experience of those who really like the game (i.e. nobody wants to find only empty servers). A good review on the other hand can make more people join the fun, and thus the incentive to promote and praise such reviews.

Incidentally, I’ve also seen the exact opposite result against games the majority didn’t like. A recent example is Brink, which for various reasons disappointed a lot of those expecting it. Personally I found the game great but in those initial days of its release, I found it practically impossible to find a positive review of it upvoted in reddit. Such articles were almost immediately downvoted and thus buried from eyesight, by those who felt they got burnt from the game. Why did so many people felt the need to prevent others from discovering a game they didn’t like? I’m guessing they thought they were preventing others from getting burnt as well, but could it also be that allowing the promotion of such a multiplayer game would in a sense “steal audience” from all the other multiplayer games?

The second reason I feel promotes fanboyism is when there’s active competition. Both Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 come out within weeks of each other. They are the most widely anticipated releases of the year and they compete for practically the same audience. Realistic looking modern warfare multiplayer FPS experience. There has always been a simmering comparison between these two, much like back in the time, there was comparison between Starcraft and Total Annihilation, even though they had significantly different playstyle. But the fact that both were Sci-Fi RTS that came out around the same time, gave rise to the inenvitable comparison between the two.

Today, in the eyes of many, the underdog that has been the Battlefield series, attempts to finally dethrone the leading champion that is the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. Many still enjoy both just as much, but the marketing force of EA certainly pushes the comparison in the eyes of the audience ((See for example how they close some of their trailers with a quote of “Beyond the Call”, which is a direct jab at the Call of Duty series)). So even if many players are prepared to enjoy both franchises, not only do the companies behind those games prefer a direct competition, but many of their fanboys see it this way as well, and will lose no opportunity to put down the opposition.

Which, unsurprisingly, is what a bad review becomes. The opposition. Treason.

Finally a lot has to do with the intended audience as well. The sheer popularity of those games and their target audience of teenage boys and young adult males means that those more impressed by the marketing and word of mouth, will also tend to be fairly impulsive and immature (Just take a look here and see how many references to male masturbation you can find). This is likely to exaggerate asymmetric insight and choice selection bias, thus further stoking flames against those badmouthing their newest favourite game.

I will admit, I’ve also noticed that I’ve fallen victim to a lot of the above biases. I too catch myself upvoting positive aspects of the game and downvoting mentions of negative. I check myself to avoid it, but it’s notoriously difficult to control one’s subconscious impulses. It is precisely because I see how much this drive to belong and support “my team” is affecting my behaviour, that I decided to write this post and explore the reasons behind it.

Personally I think review scores are irrelevant and that most major publications are sold out anyway, so there’s little reason to trust their reviews, whether those are negative or positive towards the game. I have a different idea on what constitutes a useful review in a findamentally subjective experience such as a video game, but that’s a subject for another day.

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The strange phenomenon of gamers finding violence against women in video games funny

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Gamers sure love to see women being beaten.

This is something that always leaves me scratching my head, I continuously see videos of various games where women are beated up, upvoted and promoted in gaming fora such as reddit’s gaming subreddit. Those videos usually contain nothing more than a short sequence of a video game character beating up women, such as this, and this or this, and yet, the reddit and youtube communities seem to think this is hilarious, as seen by the amount of “likes” and upvotes.

Not only that, but if you see the related videos in Youtube, you’ll find a large collection of videos simply about that. Beating up random women in video games.And this is not only in Deus Ex, oh no. A cursory search will easily turn up videos of beating digital females in Grand Theft Auto, Saint’s Row and the like. It’s like a special kind of humour for misogynists.

For some strange reason, it’s also primarily directed against prostitutes as well, which raises all sorts of secondary questions beside the love of female abuse.

What do you think about this phenomenon?

Full Bundle for Doomtown on OCTGN updated

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Torrent has been updated with newest rules and more High Quality scans. Gogogo!

I’ve updated the torrent for Doomtown to include the latest version of the game definition and markers and also the latest versions of the sets, which I’m glad to say, have finally started including High Quality scans.

For those who do not know, the Bundle includes everything you need to play Doomtown on OCTGN but it’s not updated as often, as usually only the game definition is updated. Nevertheless it’s the best way for a new player to grab everything they need, without downloading all the files 1 by 1 from the repository. Inside you will find the game and sets, plus pdfs with the rules, faqs and so on. Once you’ve downloaded it, you can simply direct OCTGN to install the files from that the directory, and if in the future you download a newer version of the bundle, your game on OCTGN will be automatically up to date (( Usually you don’t have to reinstall the files, but one occassion you do. I will let you know when you have to))

So don’t wait up, download the torrent file here and you can find information about the bundle in the forums.

Once you’re done, hit me up for a game 😉

 

Doomtown on OCTGN

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Doomtown on OCTGN is now very feature rich and playing it should be a blast for most. Here I explain how to set it up and why it’s so cool.

So my updated on the Doomtown engine for OCTGN continue at a rapid pace. I mentioned it before shortly but I thought I’d make a proper post about my progress with this and how to go around playing it.

EDIT @ 27/06/2013 : I’ve moved the installation instructions on to the dedicated page for this game definition. Please follow the step-by-step installation instructions for Doomtown there.

A Doomtown game in OCTGN in action. Currently in the middle of a shootout
A Shootout at High Noon

Not especially tricky as you can see. The trickiest is finding someone to play with. You can try subscribing to the Doomtown Facebook Group and see if anyone is available for a game. You can also create a game and hope that someone is online to join it since anyone who has Doomtown installed will see open game lobbies.

However I guarantee that if you like card or tabletop games, you will find this one a blast. In the recent weeks I’ve spent a lot of effort in automating away most of the more tedious stuff one has to do when playing card games online, such as modifying counters and typing each action that they do in the chat. I’ve literally spent the latter half of my vacation (while staying home sick) to code some pretty nifty stuff to use the powers that playing on a PC gives us in order to make the game easier to play.

For example, the game will let you know if you cannot play a unique card, because someone else has it in play (or it’s dead). It will automatically calculate your poker hand rank, taking into account jokers and what kind of poker you play. It will update your various totals (influence, control) as you play and lose cards and you can even force it to recalculate all your totals in case you lose track. It will pay your upkeep and receive your production at the start of the turn, and refresh your cards and hand at the end of the turn. It will even remember if you permanently modified a card before and add the same modifications in case that card leaves and comes back into play later on.

There’s still a lot of automation I’d like to implement soon and I keep thinking more as I work on it so I end up adding new features practically daily. You can follow the development in the forum if you so wish and I would really appreciate any feedback such as suggestions or problems you’re having.

 

Mortal Kombat is good fun, but oh my gawd the sexism. It burnsss!

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The new MK is back to its roots, but their representation of females is patently absurd and the story needs a lot of work.

I was planning to write an incenced post about absolutely ridiculous the female outfits of the new Mortal Kombat game are and then I saw this comic and I just had to do it now.

Seriously, the mortal kombat clothes are DoA-level absurd (Did they take hints from Team Ninja?), not only are they practically pieces of strong but because of the cloth destruction that happens in the game, those must be literally glued to their bodies. I cannot otherwise explain how a “breast cover” (which is basically a glorified string), which is hanging destroyed on the right side of the body can somehow defy gravity in its quest to cover up those nipples.

And what is with the high heels? Would any woman in her right mind think that running around in high heels is a good way to fight in close combat? Most ridiculous of course is Sonya who is supposed to be a hardcore military person and is still running (literally running) around in high heels rather than jackboots.

Oh, and how difficult is it to come up with female outfits that are at least different than each other? Jade, Kitana and Mileena all wear the same string-outfit, only with a different arrangement of strings, while the men not only have varied ones, but if their main outfit is bare chested (I don’t remember anyone going bare-legged, except Goro) they have also been provided with a fully-clothed alternative.

As much as I love the new game, the absolute ridiculousness of how females are repressented is a complete turn off.

Given this new trend, I’m waiting now for Mortal Combat Xtreme Outworld Basketball to follow, where it will be just the women competing for the skimpiest outfit while dribbling.

And since I’m on the subject of MK, can someone please advise them to hire a competent storyteller? Cheezus fuck those people can’t tell a good story if their life depended on it. I honestly hope the next estabilishment of the series will be based on the lore of the excellent MK:Legacy…including outfits!

 

Blasts from the past

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Doomtown is one of the best tabletop games ever and as always in this case, it’s defunct. However, I’ve just created a new way to play it online.

The back of a Doomtown card. It shows a wooden background with the words "Deadlands" printed in an old western font. A Cow skull is in the middleI always say that I’ve been very unlucky with the (non-video) games that I liked. I have a deep history of getting really into a game and then have it cancelled during its heyday due to some weird unfortunate circumstance, leaving me sad and looking for the next one that will “click” for me. Now I’m talking about the kind of games most of you have not ever even tried before, Collectible Card Games and Tabletop Miniature games primarily (Fortunately, RPGs cannot suffer this fate due to the inherent type of the medium, but they do suffer the Three Session Curse which is  thing for another post)

At the moment, none of my favourite such games are in production anymore, most of them for many years now. In order of how awesome I find them, here’s a small list and what happened to them.

  • Doomtown: A brilliant card game with a very novel take on game design combining elements of traditional CCGs, Poker and Chess. Got cancelled because Wizards of the Coast egregiously dropped the ball/killed it.
  • Chronopia: A tabletop miniature game set in very grim-dark fantasy theme, when grim-dark was not yet in fashion. Killed when its company reconstructed, even though it had strong sales.
  • 7th Sea: Another collectible card game with a novel ruleset and a fantasy-swashbuckling setting. Died due to a series of bad decisions from the publisher
  • Warzone: The brother tabletop miniature game to Chronopia which had a similarly grim-dark theme but in sci-fi. Killed for the same reasons,which was an especially sad fact as at the time it was a very strong opponent to Games Workshop’s exorbitant prices in the Greek market.
  • Mordheim: Because I’m a sucker for skirmish games with strong campaign elements built-in. Suffered the same fate all Games Workshop products which are not Warhammer or WH40k suffer.
  • Dune CCG: Yet another card game built on a rich sci-fi setting and with rules that fit brilliantly in the setting. Was just not popular enough to continue.
  • Legend of the Burning Sands: A card game similar to Legened of the 5 rings, but simply superior in gameplay.

And these are not even all the examples I can think of but they were definitely the ones who’s passing hurt me most. This occurrence is so common that it became almost a running joke in my gaming circle that any game that I started taking a strong liking to, would be inevitably doomed. The games on the other hand that managed to survive where those that I played just in order to have *something* to play, but never liked them particularly. Games like Warlord which I found had a very good setting but never really liked its rules ((Incidentally,  liking only it half-way, just delayed the inevitable, as Warlord has been suffering a slow death for many years now))

The good thing is that because these games I listed are just so good, they tend to develop cult followings behind them which can keep their embers alive far into the future and sometimes this helps.

I recently discovered a little game engine called OCTGN which allows one to build card game definitions and then play their favourite games on it for free, and given that I’ve been itching to play doomtown once more, this sounded like an excellent opportunity. Unfortunately there was no game definition for doomtown available and I took this chance to build one.

Yes, I am aware that there is a plugin for doomtown on the LackeyCCG engine, but I’ve tried it once and I was left a bit underwhelmed. After experiencing OCTGN, LackeyCCG just felt clunky (the program actually strained my eyesight during play) and it didn’t really offer any automation. I’m guessing that one could theoretically code such automation in LackeyCCG just as one can in OCTGN but on the other hand, OCTGN just looks better and as a very big plus for me, it does its scripting in python, which I’ve been itching to start working with.

So OCTGN it was, and after a whole weekend of trial and error I’ve managed to make a working game definition which I’ve been refining for the last few days as well. At the moment I’m happy to say that the game is completely playable and this is where the aforementioned core community comes in, as it can provide the people and the excitement to spread the joy. You can find the game files for the Doomtown CCG here btw and you can also follow updates on the forum. Hit me up 🙂

Once I’ve brought the game into as good a state as I possibly can, I think I’ll start working on 7th Sea or Legend of the Burning sands.

As usually when I get into this mood, I also checked up on some of my other favourite games, but unfortunately, Chronopia has not fared nearly as well as doomtown. I keep hoping that one day, once 3D printing technology is cheap enough, the game will be revived via allowing the sharing of model schematics and terrain. Until then, here’s some concept art that a fan created in the fora of a company which I don’t think even exists anymore 🙂

A Fan drawing of a Blackblood Army in the Chronopia universe

A Fan Drawing of a Devout army in the Chronopia universe.

If you thought S2's racist CEO was bad enough, wait until you see their community.

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Big Surprise, Heroes of Newerth fosters a profoundly racist community as well

[Trigger warnings for extreme racism]

A few days ago, I mentioned how the CEO of S2 games seems to be a blatant racist, some people who see this information, react with a “who cares” attitude, as if the behaviour of the most important person in the company doesn’t affect anything else. Well, today I noticed a thread on the Heroes of Newerth fora, titled “This game needs a black hero” and I pretty much expected what I found inside. You can take a look for yourself but I’ll post some of the “best” comments to give you an example (and in case the whole thread is taken down)

Definitely Black: , and Kongor

Probably Black:

Black because they’re in the jungle:

Problem OP?

The small images here repressent different heroes. you can probably distinguish the “race” of each if you look closely ((if you can’t see, it’s not really that important, they’re all obviously caucasian except the last one)). The last hero on the top row is an anthropomorphic simian and “Krongor” refers to the “Big Boss” of the game who is a huge gorilla. I shouldn’t really need explain this.


Looks like some kind of ape and he always steals my kills….

Self explanatory

No thanks. I don’t like heroes with base speeds of 375.

But it would be balanced because the base int and int gain per level would be extremely small.

Again, pretty explanatory (“int” refers to “intelligence”)

If Empath isnt a negro, I dont know what to say.

For reference, this is what Empath looks like.

Whoever the new black hero/alt avatar is, he or she will be the bloodlust kill every single game.

Ha ha. Get it? Because the token black guy always dies first.

A true black hero?He would need shitty skills, and be totally worthless for a team, kinda like gladiator, succubus noobs, blood hunter Brazilians.

His skills and name would of course be somewhat along the lines of

Blackster

1. Poor- Blackster is from the inner city and gets no clothes until he levels this skill up, clothes grant him extra attack damage to creeps.
2. Jump- Blackster is able to jump huge lengths at a time, does no damage, and has a %chance to twist his ankle.
3. Blackwalk- everyone knows black people walk slow as **** for some reason, probably to piss white people off, Blackster can enable blackwalk to move 150ms slower and take 50% reduced damage for 4 seconds.
4. ULTIMATE ABILITY- RACK EM’- Blackster breaks into song and dance also known as the Funky Chicken, he becomes intoxicated and flops around helplessly damaging nearby enemies with holy spirit spit.

Wow, just…wow.

they play the most important role in hon already, they dont need a hero(arguably they already have some)

try playing a game without a courier and see how far it gets you

The “courrier” is a little monkey that you buy from the shop and it serves to bring you items you buy in the map.

Honourary mention:

Game needs a kitchen for all you ladies.

Because what would the HoN community be without at least some explicit sexism.

And then of course, we have the vigilant underdog fighting against political correctness.

The multicult is never satisfied, S2. If you added a black hero who fit in the game, he wouldn’t be black enough. If you added a black-enough hero, he would ‘racist’ and stereotypical. If you carefully added a Black Superstar who is acceptably not black enough, you would now a ratio of 1:hero-count, and the multicult will complain about tokenism. If you added black alts and voices for every single human hero, you would have trolling uses of these alts, the alts would have to be free, you would be racists for defaulting to not-black.

Slam the door in the face of this proposal, at least internally, or you’ll never hear the end of it. The most rabid will already be turned away by screencaps of Maliken’s ‘racism’. The real thorn in the paw of the multicult isn’t that you don’t have black heroes, but that you have any heroes who are white, and you neither can nor want to ‘fix’ that.

You know, because respect and repressentation of other cultures, skin types, and genders/sexualities is a slippery slope…or something. Those “multiculturalists” will never be content until the white race is extunguished. White Pride!

Oh sorry, I got carried over in my in-character sarcasm there…

Some egregious comments have been deleted now that I’ve reported them, several hours later after they were posted. Unfortunately, my comment calling out people on their racism and S2 for tolerating it has also been deleted. And naturally, the reactionary bullshit is still there, as are much of the egregious racist filth that I didn’t have time to report yet. So S2 is just doing the bare minimum on this issue, putting more effort into avoiding any criticism of themselves (they’ve naturally deleted any mention of Maliken’s racism), than preventing racist shit from fermenting in their fora.

The kind of filth posted in there rivals the bigotry one finds in 4chan boards but from what I’ve seen, it’s par for the course given the nature of S2 senior staff, the people they try to market to, and the environment they foster through their (lack of) moderation practices and implicit support.

Honestly, I can’t recommend this game to anyone anymore. If you are not a straight white cis male without disabilities, you will be insulted and marginalized routinely. You will be reminded constantly that most other players of HoN consider you a sub-human, while S2 will  ignore you at best, or join in the denigration at worst. You have been warned.