I think maybe you anime fans might recognize the voice in this video.
See you, space cowboy…
March 4, 2011
March 3, 2011
MMO Style Points – Why I Like Oohs And Aahs
Maybe I’ve watched too many trailers for games lately, but reading the comments for some of them seems to be like reading the ones for the Oscars. There’s a lot of talk about what impressions are had, what kind of impact it means, and all that. But there’s also a curious amount of commentary related to style, look, and graphical representation, sharply divided into the “oohs and ahhs” camp of melty goodness and the rather dismissive “it’s only a pretty face” faction.
I fall squarely into the oohs and aahs camp, obviously, and not just because I tend to be a fairly excitable person when it comes to trailers and stylistic graphics. I think that MMOs that look good ultimately score points among gamers in general, and that there should be some priority for the look of a game, especially one that is meant to be played over the course of a couple hours. Now, some people may disagree with me, with the obvious argument that gameplay should trump graphics, and that the worst-looking game with good gameplay will have longer legs than one that looks great but lacks substance. I get that, and I somewhat agree with it, too – I mean, you’re talking to someone who has enjoyed and would probably still enjoy a good text-based MUD with a decent community behind it.
But that being said, there’s something to be said about style, and I think as long as people understand that the point of stylistic, visual elements is to give you that eye-filling rush of excitement, it quickly becomes apparent why developers use it in MMOs. More than anything, MMOs are an attempt at creating an immersive world that players can use in order to have fun, escape for a little while from the ills and trials of real life, and most of all, help your own imagination visualize what being in that world is like. I’m all about the limitless nature of the human imagination, but sometimes it does need a little bit of a boost from something graphically pretty and detailed. That’s where all those game trailers, ads, and character creation dialogs with zooms and bells and whistles come from.
I think if more people realized that style is not really a necessary function of an MMO but rather a method by which to get people excited, less of them would be apt to dismiss an MMO as something that looks good but doesn’t play good. Besides, it’s hard to really tell how something actually plays until you get your hands on it. Until then, be happy with the eyeful you can get of a game that not only looks like it has its own distinct look but isn’t afraid to show it off.
March 2, 2011
A 3-Month MMO Work In Progress
I check out a lot of other blogs in my spare time and I probably should respond to a few of them a bit more – there’s lots of talented folks out there who write about subjects that I’m interested in, and beyond that, quite a few that I can inject a bit of responsive optimism into. Today I poked into one such post by Keen, who writes that most if not all MMOs post-WoW apparently have only 3 months worth of shelf life and are built to “achieve failure”.
Whoa there, cynical train, stop pulling into the station. The idea that MMOs these days are built, consciously or unconsciously, to fall on their face is a bit of a sad analysis of affairs, is it not? I feel bad for Keen, as it appears he’s fallen into a pattern of creating positive posts about an MMO only to be dashed against the rocks and end up disliking it. I wouldn’t say that MMOs these days are built to fail within a time period of 3 months, per se. Rather, I think that MMO developers in general are finding that making a game such as WoW, or Everquest, or anything else for that matter is a work in progress rather than a finished product.
Players, however, don’t quite follow the same mindset. Some of this may come from the fact that the playerbase is larger, which means that the old school MMO player finds themselves surrounded by folks who were not raised on games like UO and EQ, but rather on things like console games and modern online play, which provide a mostly finished product with additions and bug fixes being the only thing that needed changing. The issue is that the mentality is transferred to MMOs, where finished products are expected of virtual worlds that are always changing and never quite set in stone. When these players crash up against the fact that an MMO is not only persistent but not something that has a closed end to it, they’re not willing to be as forgiving as they good be. The mass migration and practice of MMO tourism is pretty much based in this mentality.
The other fact is that the mentality of a finished product that is able to provide years of entertainment infects old school MMOers like Keen, too. There’s a bit of selective memory in some of us folks who’ve been around for a long time – we don’t really remember the fact that UO took years to fix some core bugs and player-killer issues or that EQ raids sometimes had issues that crippled encounters. We don’t really remember that in FFXI you used to be able to (accidentally or not) run a mob who was chasing you to the end of a zone for some poor adventurer to die to upon entry. We don’t even remember that WoW’s release had a couple classes that were arguably not fleshed out and a dungeon system that shouldn’t have, but did have some busted pull issues. We just remember when it was fixed, polished, made easier, or otherwise was made to be more fun, more engaging, and yes – more of a finished feel. That’s the stuff that takes more than 3 months.
I don’t think I’m saying that people should change their playstyle if they like to rush to level cap, prefer to take their time, or yearn for the increased difficulty and dynamic sandboxing that Keen does. You can only really stand in the way of that flood for so long. Nor am I advocating that developers release unfinished or unpolished products that they can use for a quick buck, either. What I am advocating, is a little bit more of a positive outlook and perspective on MMOs that last, persist, and have a community that sticks around for 3 months or more. A sort of idea that MMOs have bugs, have balance issues, have only a limited amount of content based on game design constraints, and most of all, that things can be changed, updated, or worked on. A chance for something like an MMO to evolve and grow with its interested playerbase, that understands and can commit to things being a work in progress and not an immediate failure.
I think if people adopted more of this attitude, both on the player and developer side, that we’d have less MMO “failures” and more MMO successes in the market – or at least a bit more shelf life to today’s MMO market. They say hindsight is 20/20, but I’d like to say that when it comes to foresight, you can only hope to get as good as 80/40, or worse. Why is this? MMOs, as I’ve said, are a work in progress, always persistent, always changing, and always affected by its players in new and unique ways, whether through innovation, or through bugs and exploits. There’s no real good way to test for the dynamic nature of human player interaction on a large scale. It’s why developers rely on meaningful feedback that isn’t a rant to fix and change things.
If the players were more positive on the long term outlook of a game that inevitably has to be changed and fixed, and the developers were more positive on the right kind of player feedback that can make their game better (even if it undoes the design a little), we’d have happier folks overall, and not ones that have a contentment level lasting 3 months.
March 1, 2011
The Return Of The Dynamic In MMOs
Today marks the launch of RIFT, a new MMO for which I know a couple community folks that are toiling away (be kind to them, they need sleep!). Like any MMO launch, the usual chaos and craziness abound, as well as a chance to try something different from what people have been waiting for or anticipating.
But one thing that I think the RIFT has been doing that has piqued interest for players is a bit of the dynamic. For those not in the know, occasionally there will be short public questing events that happen in random portion of the zone. These involve a rift opening up and a set of stages during which tasks need to be accomplished, usually in the form of killing things. At the end, players get rewards, so they’re encouraged to group up to get the job done. Sometimes, the event is zone wide, and with quest hubs and NPCs under attack, players across the territory are needed to group up together and prevent the invasion.
While this is not completely as such, this is really a return to dynamic events in MMOs. We haven’t really seen anything like it since, well, the time of the MUDs, where GM-controlled characters would roll around during holidays and setup events or give away some rare prizes to a lucky few. The logistics of setting up a dynamic events system have long since escaped developers due to all of the organization and the anticipated issues involved. While RIFT doesn’t return us to the days of yore with GMs that changed environments and spawned monsters, this certainly is a step in the right direction – mostly because people are quick to get bored with doin gthe same grindy thing in a zone. Rift events break that up a bit, and despite teh complaints, are a nice distraction.
More than anything, the dynamic event goes to show how well players work together in an MMO under some kind of pressure or timer. Watching some events fail with little to no coordination and others succeed with clockwork-like execution is a social experiment that I think the developers and players should keep an interested eye on. After all, MMOs in general are all about how players interact, plan, and react to situations placed in front of them. I’d say that putting a giant black and purple rift above them and spawning some crazy monsters might just give them the test they, and I, want to see in future games.
February 28, 2011
New Geek Toys
Most non-geeks remember getting toys at Christmas as kids and being excited about what they were getting. They’d get up early, try to catch a little bit of Santa if they could, and ultimately end up tearing open a large box that had everything they wanted inside. It’s one of those nostalgic things that sort of persists into your later years when they watch kids of a later generation do the exact same thing.
But for geeks, that feeling never quite fades away with age. Why is that? I think it’s mostly because geek toys sort of don’t know age, or at the very least, evolve with the geek. When I was young, it was Transformers, GIJoes, and toy cars. As I aged it was PDAs, digital cameras, and CD players. Now it’s computers, massive TVs, and video cameras. With every iteration I never really lost the wonderment of cracking open something and seeing the latest and greatest in tech staring back up at me. And even though these too, were things that were outgrown or obsolete (usually within the first two weeks) they were for me a bit of excitement at using and utilizing something new.
For geeks I don’t think it’s just about a toy for toy’s sake. Despite what some people might think about some of the latest devices out there (iPad comes to mind), most geeks are more excited for the fact that they might get use out of their new toys than they are for having the toy itself. A new computer allows for more to be done with regards to projects, businesses, and recreation. A new TV allows for better solution, nicer recording, and some features in HD that make everything seem to pop out a lot better. The list goes on. The practicality of something, the thing that makes anew device useful, is what truly excites and makes a geek go nuts over the best tech toys out there.
But that isn’t to say there isn’t a bit of that child-like idea of having something that no one else has, among geeks with their toys. First generation adopters have always been temporary darlings in the geek community, posting impressions, ideas, thoughts, and unboxing videos galore for others to live vicariously through. The rush of using a new piece of technology sometimes lasts hours and days, as fevered excitement infects others and causes them to potentially jump on the new geek toy bandwagon. I guess in some respects, it’s coming full circle, back to a childhood where the prospect of a toy was sometimes more exciting than the toy itself. Geek tech is no different, and I hope that even among the cynics, that some level of optimism can be preserved for grown up geeks squealing like kids getting their first game console.
February 27, 2011
The Appeal Of A Good Side-Story
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve always been a sucker for a good side-story. Whether it’s in a game or a good TV show, a story that takes a bit of a detour to take a look at something else from another point of view is one that intrigues me. But why is that? Maybe part of it is the fact that the story itself is meant to be optional or a bit less of a priority to the main plot. Normally when a writer does something like this, it’s meant to either flesh out the existing story or provide a nice little break from the main action for a bit.
In the case of the former, I like a good side story because it sometimes helps to augment things with a little bit of context. Heroes and Lost were two series that were notorious for this, even if they both did take it to an extreme at times. By jumping back and forth through different times and establishing the how and why of characters and events, you got to understand why in the main plot something happened. In some cases it can make hated characters sympathetic or certain coincidences destined to happen no matter what.
In the case of a latter, taking focus away from the main cast is a good way to show that there’s not just a self-contained bubble of characterization but a world that those characters affect. Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, and Battlestar Galactica all do this to a certain extent, taking the point of view of seemingly unimportant characters or events and making them have meaning in the context of the fictional world the main cast impacts. In games it is even more obvious and prevalent, as true sidequesting is a detour off the beaten path, or a stop along the way to look. It’s not always something that has to be done, but the incentivized bonuses for doing so become more and more tempting to today’s obsessive completionists.
Some people would argue that side stories and sidequests are a waste of resources, that a rich main story with deep and compelling characters should be the only thing to worry about. But if you really think about it, the stories that you see on the side do just that. They make the main story richer with their different content and the characters themselves become more compelling with a bit of meat behind the bones that writers come up with. While doing a side quest is completely optional and watching side story eps is not essential, people still experience them – if for nothing else to make their own processing of the action more worthwhile. Those tempted to skip such things in the interest of getting to what’s important might consider a side trip to find a little nugget that might just appeal to them, too.
February 26, 2011
Cheap And Cute Update From RIFT
I knew there was a reason I pre-ordered this game…
If anyone’s interested in grouping up for RIFT, I’ve divided my slow-leveling toons between Faeblight (Defiant), Deepstrike (Defiant), and Sunrest (Guardian). Look for Morden.
February 25, 2011
Cheap Updates Involve The Epic Elderly
Sure, it’s a bit on the sluggish side, but no one really complained at how non-epic the Obi-Wan and Vader duel was from Episode IV, right?
February 24, 2011
The Crazy Fun Of Launch Madness
A friend of mine once said that the best part of chaos is being right in the middle of it as it flows around you. Ok, granted, he was a dude who was the type to annoy people in crowds by stopping, but still, the quote has relevance.
Launch of something when it comes to MMOs is a unique experience. I say unique because of the fact that unlike something you might see in the annals of Black Friday or a midnight game or device release, it’s one that is lived entirely online. The curious part about that is that you still get the same kinds of archetypes you do when you have someone waiting for an actual release at an actual place. These include – the Guy Who Can’t Stop Whining, The Fanboy Who Knows Too Much, The Random Girl With No Interest In The Game, and Frazzled Staffer With No Sleep. The behavior is the same – people standing around talking about what they’re going to do, folks who’ve probably been camping the place since hours beforehand, at least one person who is yelling just a little too loud for someone’s benefit.
But more than that there is anticipation and excitement. An eagerness, if you will, to get your hands on something and experience it. A need to be the first to experience it. And above all, to share that experience with others. Yeah, it’s packed, and its crowded, and there are long waits and not everyone gets what they want on day one. But the fact of the matter is that you were there when it started, you suffered a little bit, but eventually you got to do what you came for. In MMOs, that holds even more power because of the fact that you’re sharing the experience not just with someone who is local, but with others who are all over the world.
No one can predict these days what will happen in the weeks following the launch of an MMO. Some succeed, some stay afloat, and others sink. But it’s nice to know that at least for a few moments out of the day, the madness of launch and shared excitement is something that no self-respecting geek gamer wants to miss. I hope everyone holds onto the excitement of logging in for as long as they can for their favorite MMO of choice on launchday. In the midst of the inevitable pain of patching, balancing, nerfing, and crashing, it is something worth remembering.
February 23, 2011
Kryptonian Traffic
As a modern geek, there are very few things that actually give me the sort of fear and dread that you reserve for monsters in your closet while you’re a kid. The thing is, I’ve written many a time about how geekery devices and modern technology happen to overcome even the worst of problems. The post I made about that ridonkulous blizzard that came through my area a few weeks ago proves it.
But being stuck in traffic as the driver is another story entirely, and something which happened to be early this morning.
The main problem with being stuck in traffic is that you’re stripped of your tools, essentially. There I was, hands on the wheel, watching as people crept forward with the speed of a snail stuck in molasses, unable to do anything to alleviate the stress or the fact that despite leaving at the correct time I was most certainly going to be 45 minutes late. Meanwhile, the electronic world was going by me, whizzing by while I was unable to do anything about it. Things were happening on the internets – and I couldn’t get to them. The only real analogy I can attach to my rather silly dilemma is to imagine that you are given your favorite food every day. You can have it whenever you want and in whatever amount you want. Now imagine that they suddenly take that food away, lock it in a dark room down the longest hall in existence, and put you in a line of people that looks like the one you wait for in the DMV, only ten times slower, and you have what I was going through.
Some of you might be asking one of two things as you read this, besides the fact that you’re wondering if I’ve lost my marbles. The first is whether or not I could just text, or call, or do something while driving instead. The thing is, I’m a safe driver for one, and the second is that a hefty fine in my city for being caught talking or texting is a huge deterrent. that, and the embarrassment of being caught doing either of those things while going 5 miles an hour. Worst police chase ever.
The second would be why I wouldn’t just use hands free or voice activation to get my fix. I’m ahead of you on that one. I have a mount in my car, I put my phone on it and I can do things like make it a GPS, map out my stuff, and check my mail. And to make it all legal, all I’d have to do is to use the voice-activation to ensure that both my hands are on the wheel and my eyes are on the road. This would work great, except for the fact that I am convinced that voice systems, while cool and neat, may not be up to par understanding me. When I say “E-mail….Hello, I’m running a little late, I’m sorry” and it comes out as “Hostess, I’m ratcheting a kettle set, time smash ee”, I think that there might be something that could be done to fix that little bit of technology.
Optimist that I am, I eventually got through the traffic and managed to get to work. Was I a bit apprehensive? No doubt I was. I managed to keep myself afloat, however, with a healthy amount of classic radio (which I fooled myself into thinking was an internet podcast) and a bit of thought about how to go about my day (which I fooled myself into thinking was checking my email) and only a tiny bit of road rage (which I fooled myself into thinking would be me driving my car into theirs, Twisted Metal style, and jaunting off to work). I hope no one ever gets in the same situation, but if you do, trust me – there are some ways to deal with not having your geek fix.