The only thing that is dead is the MMORPG gold rush, and that is something to be thankful for. It only created a huge number of very bad games in the hope of getting rich quick. Surprise, surprise, video game players aren’t total idiots, and bad games don’t really do well. Especially not if you have a business model where you expect your customers to keep paying for a long time, instead of selling them a game they can’t test first and running with the money before the customer finds out the game is bad.
— Tobold
Author: Zubon
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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.Serendipity and Anti-Indicators
Blogs are useful for the discovery of serendipitous information. There are plenty of news sites, and many blogs will repeat the same stories. The big value add is having someone else who will highlight just those things you are likely to care about; once you have found that you have similar tastes to Ethic, following his pointers is a big time-saver. Beyond that, once you have established similar tastes, you can try tangential items that you might not have tried or even heard of if not for this one dude you know on the internet with similar tastes. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, really? (Hence Amazon’s “people who bought/looked at this also bought…”)
But the opposite is useful, too. Once you know that some movie reviewer is a doofus who you always disagree with, you can start using his reviews as a guide, just with the scores reversed. It is really hard to find your perfect opposite, but when you do, treasure him. I have someone on my RSS feed specifically because he reliably gets really excited about games that will crash within three months of release. I need to find his equivalent for the stock market.
: Zubon
DLC Is the New Expansion Pack
Between sales, the price of Civilization V on Steam is $49.99. The total cost for “All Downloadable Content For This Game” is $49.39.
When DDO came out, I wondered why it was not using a module pricing strategy: base game cheap/free, sell the dungeons individually. You could even have a store for player-made, developer-checked dungeons for which players get a cut. Of course, selling the packs piecemeal encourages power creep by the question of whether this pack is worth the $5. Is the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus awesome enough to spend extra money on it? The same power creep/worth it question arises every time Team Fortress 2 puts a new weapon in the store, but at least there you face a near-certainty of getting the weapon as a drop (or crafting it) fairly soon.
: Zubon
Improving Their Respectability
If I told you that a browser-based “strategy” game was advertising itself with ad banners reading, “One Click for a Roman Orgy! Click Now!” could you guess the game? I cropped the name out of the picture, to avoid giving them that bit of free advertising, but… wow. The big surprise, really, is that they are still in business.
: Zubon
Advertise discreetly, my lord.
Engi Census
Playing the Steam free game of the weekend, I have come to wonder: how many games have an Engineer that builds a turret; how many games have an Engineer that does not build a turret; and how many games have a non-Engineer that builds a turret. (I think I will avoid counting Warhammer Online’s Magus and units/classes that “summon” rather than “build.” I’m unclear whether the Raven builds, summons, or do we count “deploy”?) Was there some first game that set the standard that Engineer = build a sentry gun? It feels like engineers and self-directed turrets have become a standard game item, but perhaps exploring some examples will reverse this. I keep finding near-hits, where perhaps they consciously avoided calling the turret-builder an Engineer in recent games. I wonder if non-builder Engineers are also intentional aversions? Inventory below the break, please contribute in the comments.
Edit: let’s see what happens if we add in enemies that do the same, some of which may mirror heroes. Continue reading Engi Census
Accentuate the Positive
Civilization V uses policies where previous editions had civics or governments. They function as little talent trees for your nation, and one great virtue is that they have no drawbacks. You no longer pick a government type that receives more production at the cost of less science or an economy that is good for guns but not butter. You just pick “more production” or “good for guns.”
Invisibly baked in is that “less science” and “bad for butter” are the default states. There are bonuses for production or science, and when you pick production, you do not pick science. Balanced around this, the effect is the same, but the player is happier because there is no visible penalty. In MMO-land, designers have learned to give a buff for eating rather than a debuff for not eating; the math is the same, but the psychology differs.
The trade-offs are more visible in the mutually exclusive policies. There is a pair and a trio, and you can pick only one from each set, but the other five are open to everyone. Do you prefer hard-coded mutual exclusivity or just the exclusivity caused by having limited choices?
Civ V also uses a soft cap for policies, with increasing culture costs for each, rather than a hard cap. The game will not run long enough for you to unlock 42 policies, so the potential for another is always there.
: Zubon
It is the weekend, so I can play Civilization. I have learned that it is bad for my sleep schedule to do so during the week.
Not To Scale
Not To Scale is a little flash gem. It takes a simple game mechanic that you know (swap the tiles to assemble the picture) and adds a twist (the “squares” are different sizes, and the tiles stretch themselves to fit). I don’t know that I see anywhere further to take the idea, but it is a novel variation on a classic puzzle that utilizes the strengths of the computer, the way that Elements does for collectible card games with mechanics that change and duplicate cards in ways you could not with physical cards.
: Zubon
The 20-Hour Day
The little things matter. One of the solved problems in multiplayer online gaming is that 1/day timers should use an 18- to 22-hour day rather than a 24-hour day. I call this “solved,” but I still see many games using 24-hour timers. (Feel free to debate the merits of individual timers versus “everyone and everything resets at midnight.”)
If you play everyday, you probably start around the same time, usually before/after work/school. A 24-hour timer gradually shifts your activities unless you are clockwork-perfect and can consistently complete X exactly 1,440 minutes later, and may the server gods help you if some blip renders the timer slightly off. More likely, you cannot begin whatever quest or instance has the timer until the old timer resets, so if it takes you an hour to complete it, you effectively have a 25-hour timer. There might be some merit to keeping people from building up a daily routine (use a 28- to 32-hour timer in that case), but these games tend to encourage that daily habit. The best mechanics are invisible, not pulling the players out of the game world to check whether the group is waiting on Bob’s reset timer because he hit traffic on the way home last night.
Some examples:
- City of Heroes alignment missions reset every 20 hours.
- League of Legends gives you the “first win of the day” bonus every 22 hours.
- Spiral Knights (from the makers of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy) refills your “energy” every 22 hours.
: Zubon
Serious Business
A community which cannot or will not realise how insignificant a part of the universe it occupies is not truly civilised. That is to say, it contains a fatal ingredient which renders it, to whatever extend, unbalanced. This is the story of one such community.
— opening lines of Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss
: Zubon
Great Moments in Scam Spam
A classic scam went electronic, and you have probably seen some version: you receive an e-mail, IM, social networking message, etc. from a friend who is far away, has had his wallet stolen, and needs you to send him some money. Of course, your friend is not in Istanbul, and he would be surprised to learn that he has e-mailed everyone in his address book.
“Everyone” was driven home this morning when an out-of-state high school (not a high schooler, the school’s business address) e-mailed our state police criminal background check address asking if we could help it get back from Scotland. The Academy was on a trip when its bag was stolen, and wouldn’t you know it, its passport was in that bag, and it needs to pay for the hotel and the flight home.
On behalf of a records help address, we have heard your personal appeal from a generic business address, and our heart goes out to your difficulties overseas.
: Zubon