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Is it me?

Or is everyone having a nostalgia attack lately?

Sweet zombie Jesus, people. I’ll be the first to admit the last couple of years have been mediocre, but have some perspective. It’ll get better without the need to look back. We’re not going to be the first generation to destroy gaming. The guys in the mid 80s already did it.

Sometimes the sky is, indeed, not falling.

(this post is half tongue in cheek, but I’m not telling which half)

Smart but not pretty

Everyone’s going gaga over Fallen Earth, which is a good thing. Allah loves variety. I’m glad to hear the game takes some deviations, that it is engaging and I keep hearing good things about the crafting (not that I give a darn about crafting, but I keep hearing about it).

Sounds nice, and I wish everyone involved 101% super happy success time. However, I won’t play it. Just looking at the screenshots turns me off. It looks really unappealing to me, visually. Of course I’m not arguing to make it pretty and full of saccharine; it’s supposed to be post-apocalyptic. It is what it must be. But I look at that world, and I see the way it looks, and I have zero desire to spend time in that. The screenshots I’ve seen around range from unengaging to depressing, so why would I go there? I wouldn’t.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gameplay over graphics all you want. But my days of biting hard candies just to get to the (small) creamy nougat center of fun are over. I’m glad there’s fun in it. I’m glad it’s new. I just wish it wasn’t so ugly (in my view).

Our backwards virtual worlds

– In reality, we’ve moved from expensive metal armors to lighter, cheaper durable fabrics for protection.
– In virtual worlds the progression is to from cheaper fabrics to more expensive metals.

– In reality, adding an escort to a target dissuades enemy attackers by making the target more secure.
– In virtual worlds, escorting a target means an open invitation to be attacked by enemies which were not even there in the first place.

– In reality, packs of creatures in the wild protect their young and their weaker members by putting them in the center of the pack, out of sight.
– In virtual worlds, the weaker elements always surround the strongest member of the pack.

Continue reading Our backwards virtual worlds

Do open betas work better?

It’s a serious question. What do you think? Seems the custom for the last few years has been to open beta this and that, but I’m old enough to remember it didn’t always use to be like this, and open betas were very, very rare.

The question is twofold; there’s the technical angle and the promotional angle. So, on the technical side, are open betas “better” than closed ones? Do you get better results? I know you naturally get more results, but are they better? Do open betas improve or polish the product better than closed ones?

Then publicity, of course. Yes it’s nice to get many people interested in the game before it starts selling, but do they achieve anything that good marketing  (or, hell, even a short demo) can’t do?

Maybe it’s just me and I’m nostalgic like that, but it seems to me in the times of closed betas it wasn’t that we were churning out clunkers (or, rather, we didn’t churn out any more clunkers than we’re churning out now), and people heard about games, got in contact with games and played these games just fine without the need for early access to anything, really.

P.S.: Am I the only human being left that doesn’t give a damn about early open betas, lifetime subs, microtransactions, pay for zone, F2P, refer a friend deals, exclusive items, pre-ordering, collector editions and other aberrations? I can’t be.

4/10. Now what?

EG’s re-review of Darkfall is here.

Very good review, in my opinion. Just talking about the review in itself, that’s all. Enjoyable and informative, as reviews should be. This is why a second review was needed, and EG did the right thing on this one. People will say it doesn’t change anything; the faithful will keep playing it, the loathers will continue to loathe. But this is missing the point. The second review (and a good one like this one, at that) was needed because there’s tons of people that could -still- be looking for information about the game and could -still- use a good review of it. It changes exactly what needed to be changed; the replacement of a poor review with one of much better quality.

Does it change things about the game? To me? No. When reading the first poor review, with its errors (factual or not) notwithstanding, I knew the game wasn’t as bad as it was painted, but I also know the picture the review was attempting to present wasn’t that far off either. I don’t like using scores myself, and never liked it as a reviewer, but I can say that while I knew the game couldn’t possibly be a 2/10, I also knew it couldn’t possibly be 7/10 or higher either. The original review, terrible as it was in almost every metric you could apply to a review, was essentially not wrong in spirit. Unfortunately that spirit was buried under piles and piles of garbage. It was a bad review, but essentially not as wrong as the faithful claimed.

I wonder what happens now. Do people still care?

Problems with user content? Not new

One of the advantages of being old and decrepit, like I am, is that you remember old inconsequential stuff that may or may not matter (also that you forget important stuff that is necessary now but that’s not the point). There’s an anecdote from way back in the day that deals with the problem of user content. I don’t know if this anecdote is true, but from what little I’ve read around, some of the people involved do validate it.

Goes something like this…

Continue reading Problems with user content? Not new

/back

Well, I’m back. Move went well. Nothing lost, nothing damaged (except for several of my muscles). Still tons of things that need to be done, but we’re slowly getting back into the rhythm of things in the new place.

Had a bit of a hiccup with the internet deal but, credit where it’s due, we got it solved thanks to some great customer service from AT&T. On a sunday. Almost at midnight. That CSR is getting a wonderful survey straight back to her manager, because she was that good. She was the difference between being connected and not.

Now that the move is slowly getting behind us, time for my new master plan to begin.