Author: Zubon

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Rental !s

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That single exclamation point in the title of the post got you reading this far. Just imagine what you can do with three or five! Did you notice how much more exciting that last sentence was, just with a different punctuation mark? We also provide consulting services to help you identify sentences that can be spruced up with exclamation points or made more efficient by using fewer letters per word. Check out this satisfied customer:

Before: I think the new instance may be bugged. The difficulty of the final boss is much higher than expected, and it does not seem to be possible for most classes to defeat solo. This should not be marked as solo content.

After: Devs! wut is up with that new boss?!?!!! lolbroken!! fix it

Wow. That kind of post really lets them know just who you are and how much thought you put behind your comments. I think we all know what kind of reaction you deserve. Show them what a winner you are, champ!

: Zubon

Questing by Random Death, and the Players Who Love It

This is an interesting comedy of errors. The original poster did not realize that a maze quest instance comes with a list of riddles (inventory item). Solve the riddle at each fork and make it through safely. If you answer wrong, that path leads to an insta-kill trap, with an invisible wall beyond it in case you avoided the trap. To the player not noticing the riddle list, this looked like Trial and Error Gameplay: random, unavoidable death as an intentional design element.

A few pages into the thread, someone mentions the riddle list, but here is what interests me: until then (and after, for those who did not read the thread), at least half the posts were about how much a whiner the original poster was, how this is a good thing because the game has too much easy mode, etc. If you do not suffer, you suck: the litany of the hardcore. But these are people who really think, and will publicly avow, that trial-by-error gameplay is a good thing, especially when “error” is punished by insta-death. (One can only imagine that it would be better with perma-death.) This is odd to me. By what concept is “guess, die, guess, die, pass by process of elimination” fun gameplay?

Note: I am not criticizing the quest in question, which seems to do it right: give the player the needed information to get through without experimental suicide. I am wondering at the population that thinks clearing a minefield by random walks is a good time. On the other hand, recognizing that population, I wonder a lot less about how games end up like that so often (see the link above). There is apparently demand for it. We deserve the games we get, it seems.

: Zubon

Remind me someday to track down the various flash adventure and puzzle games that effectively say, “Welcome to the next-to-last level! Here is a new tool or mechanic: learn to master it in the next ten seconds with no instructions. If you fail, don’t worry! We will put a save or continue mechanic in our next version.”

2009 PC Releases

This is a really exciting link. Go pick what excites you most. For me, that would be League of Legends and Demigod. You know I love DotA, and now real DotA games, rather than trying to graft it onto an existing game? Excellent. Of course, execution is everything, but this is the first I have heard of them, so I am now interested.

Starcraft 2 and Dawn of War 2 are obvious sequels to look for. Solium Infernum sounds interesting enough for me to look into it. Machinarium may be interesting just because steampunk looks cool.

A nice thing about not following development way in advance? Most vaporware goes away before I hear about it, and I have no emotional ties to games that launch late or broken. There are several superhero and sci fi MMOs in development for next year. I look forward to thinking about them about 30 days before they launch.

This is your chance to point out what looks awesome. Or, if you are a developer, to link to the parts of your stuff that you want everyone to use for their first impressions.

: Zubon

H/T: Ghostin

Downloadable Content for Offline Games

No one worries about pirated copies of World of Warcraft. The client is useless without the server, so you need only worry about pirate/private servers (I think this idea would effectively lead to licensed private servers). While EA is putting its customers through DRM hell (and itself through PR hell as a result), having an online component clearly helps you make sure that you the developer and you the publisher are getting your cut.

It need not be perfect. A dedicated and competent burglar will get into your house, but if you can deter the stupid and the lazy, you will have solved 90% of the problem. I am going to propose a hybrid online/offline publishing model that seeks to deter copyright infringement by using online content to encourage players to use verified-legitimate copies (by whatever means you verify).

This is mostly enshrining what is already the case for most PC games: have an explicit plan to finish developing content after the game goes gold.

Continue reading Downloadable Content for Offline Games

Anything Worth Doing

is worth doing half-assed. It is a basic principle of efficiency and economy: do no more than necessary. What would be the point of doing more than is necessary? Unless there is some sort of bonus for doing more than clearing the bar, in which case you just have tiers of “necessary,” you are wasting effort. Do you know what another term is for “more than enough”? Too much.

Once you have reached “acceptable,” accept it.

You spend 90% of your time dealing with 10% of the problem (or 80/20 or 95/5 or whatever aphorism you like that conveniently adds to 100%). Learn to ignore that 10%. You can have one thing that is 100% effective or ten things that are 90% effective. Better yet, if the chances for failure are independent, you have a 99% of getting it to work in two tries. You can live with pushing the button twice every now and again. Look how many more buttons you have!

If 100% effectiveness is mission-critical, sure, you must spend all that time and make it work right. If occasionally pushing the button three times is okay, you can accomplish so much more and still have 99.9% acceptability.

: Zubon