Author: Zubon

I still think this three-year-old post covers a lot of ground, but some recent events brought me back to the topic.

A friend recently held a small LAN party, and we got to talking about some game or movie that was reaching ahead of itself in terms of graphics. “They were good for the time.” No, they were awful for the time, once you got past “ooh, computer graphics” to “wow, those are really blatant computer graphics.” The technology was bleeding edge for the time, but its use was poor; if the acting or the special effects break your immersion such that you notice them as acting or special effects, they are probably bad acting or special effects. Good special effects look like they belong and are part of the world, not like they are special effects. If you want to see why Peter Dinklage won an Emmy this year, watch any episode of Game of Thrones and pick out which characters seem to know they are in a fantasy epic, versus the people who seem to be their characters.

I saw Vanessa Carlton perform this week. (You know her for this song. Can I comment on a world in which Britney Spears has sold 75 million albums while Vanessa Carlton is an opening act in small venues? Buy Heroes and Thieves. Digression over.) She mostly performed songs from her latest album, and it sounds much better live. She kept describing it as an “arts and crafts album” that was self-funded while she was living in The Shire. Performed as such, with just her, her piano, and her friend with a violin, it sounds great, personal and moving. The published album has obviously been worked over in the studio, and the “obviously” is a problem, particularly when the artist does not need it.

See also Powerpoint presentations using multiple animations per slide and/or an avalanche of clip art.

I link these to the hype and expectations post because they are all under the rubric of “obviously trying,” which usually means “failing.” Some people award points for effort, because they were obviously trying for something big. I say that jumping halfway across the Grand Canyon is not something that should be encouraged. If you have enough bricks for a one-story ranch house, do not build the first foot of a mansion, run out, then pat yourself on the back for daring to dream. Portal was a small game but a great game. Torchlight did little but did it very well. Alganon aimed for a modest success and embarrassingly failed at even being worth the time to download, which is a sad update to the original post.

Do dare to dream, but in the end your accomplishments weigh more than your aspirations.

: Zubon

While writing this, I discovered that Peter Dinklage and Summer Glau will be in Knights of Badassdom next year. I may already be sold.

A reader bought a yearlong subscription to Rift for $120 the day before it went on sale for $108.

Now, I know it’s only a matter of $12, but that’s not what irked me.

I am curious to hear your particular take on whether or not a company should offer this type of incentive before or after a large portion of their player base has to choose to re-sub or not.

Obviously, I am biased because I re-subbed regardless of the price…but it doesn’t make me feel very special (customer from day one, etc, etc) that I had to pay more.

The economic term we want here is price discrimination. That is probably a prejudicial term in modern American parlance, since “discrimination” has strong negative connotations beyond the simple denotation of being able to tell things apart. And as demonstrated, those in the (even slightly) more expensive market segment will tend to have negative feelings about this price discrimination. Did I tell you about the time that I bought an item on a good Steam sale the week before a GREAT Steam sale, or when I picked up Anivia in LoL two weeks before a permanent 50% price drop? Continue reading The Day Before It Went On Sale

Is “nerfed” now a simple antonym to “buffed,” in the context of game changes (rather than “de-buffed” for, say, a spell that reduces your armor by 20 for 15 seconds)? Or do we (should we?) reserve the term for a reduction that makes the play value questionable? The imagery of the term still suggests its original use: our swords have been replaced with nerf swords (and killing things with nerf swords is about as difficult as doing so with a herring). But the term also arises on smaller changes, like a 5% reduction in one ability’s damage. Do we have another term in general use for a weakened ability that does not suggest that any decrease makes the ability worthless? I don’t hear “weakened” much, although it seems apt.

Or perhaps that is the nature of internet discussion. There is no word for “reduced in effectiveness but in a reasonable and non-alarming way, such that one might continue using it, whereas before its power was a potential balance issue.” If it’s your class, it’s “nerfed”; it it’s his class, it’s “fixed”; if you’re a developer, it’s “re-balanced.”

: Zubon

X is a problem with the community or structure of a game such that others can have a large negative effect on your gaming session. Usual recommendations: solo, bring your own friends/group, avoid potentially risky (i.e. anything involving gameplay) interactions with others.

I keep saying that if game Y is fun so long as you bring your own group of people, almost anything is fun if you are just using it as an excuse to hang out with your friends, so the game is contributing nothing. You could randomly pick any of dozens of options, and you will probably be better served by playing something other than an MMO. But most folks seem comfortable with this equilibrium in which we are contact with building gated communities within gated communities instead of pushing for pro-social game designs. This pushes me away from MMOs, because what’s the point without that first M, and into lobby-based games where we get up to 4 friends together, done.

On one hand, this is a natural consequence of the Hell that is other people. On the other, shouldn’t we expect better?

: Zubon