Category: Asides

Bait and Switch

An established online gaming company with some moderate success in its record released its next generation MMORPG based on a popular fantasy intellectual property. Whatever the initial hoopla, it was pretty quickly recognized as an incremental improvement on the WoW quest-based MMORPG model, with some changes such as a central quest line running through the story from tutorial to endgame, with the early parts customized to your character. One of the notable differences from comparable games was the financial model, which included buying an account once rather than paying a monthly fee; a cash shop provided assorted character boosts and account upgrades.

The game had immediate appeal Explorers and Socializers, and frequent events were a big draw that gathered players together, although it did split them into multiple instances of the zone which could be inconvenient. The PvE was relatively relaxed, the community was more positive than average. There was a lot of play and exploration below the level cap, and the endgame content was structured around single-group dungeons, although content did exist for larger groups of characters to tackle together, if you were up for fighting a dragon. It also had a draw on Achievers with its take on achievements, which linked back to Explorers given the range of achievements available. As much as the game tried to advertise to Killers with its PvP area based on taking keeps and sieging the central castle, it was mostly a PvE playground.

For its first expansion worth of content, it added a new tier of items, along with a new mechanic whereby dungeons would be more difficult unless you had run the dungeons enough to get equipment that countered the debuff mechanic. This new equipment also had the best stats in the game. You are familiar with the sort of forum wars that erupt when you put the best equipment in gated group content, but the Lord of the Rings Online got past it, and the game is still available with 4.5 years’ worth of updates if that is the game you are interested in playing.

: Zubon

#tylertweets [GW2] Edition

  • In the twilight of the WoW era (is it?), we must ask again whether mailboxes are essential to the online social dancing experience.
  • The deeper message of the bots is that the game really is that shallow.
  • Vendor+1c: the ultimate expression of ZMP workers?
  • A human plays a charr. The charr wears a Halloween costume. We reveal our selves by the ways we disguise ourselves.

: Zubon

Incomplete explanation, but it’s really just a bit of inter-blog silliness.

Kickstarting

Three items to note for you on Kickstarter:

Have you seen The Gamers? There are two movies, and the creators have taken to Kickstarter to fund the third. I hadn’t realized they also had a series, so I must check out JourneyQuest. I pledged.

If you liked Defense Grid, would you like to support Defense Grid 2? Defense Grid: the Awakening is an enjoyable tower defense game. The million-dollar, “fund the whole sequel” stretch goal seems out of reach, but they are most of the way to the first goal. I pledged.

And in our MMO world, Shadowrun Online is seeking funding. I’m not sure what it means that the MMO is going for $500,000 and the smaller tower defense game is going for $1,000,000. Shadowrun seems to be planning to use every revenue model at once: having separate F2P and buy-the-box servers, plus “premium” subscriptions on the F2P server and selling quarterly expansions on the campaign server. The monetization plan, at least, is thorough. I’m not a backer, but I thought y’all might be interested in the project.

: Zubon

Levels of Concern

This applies to gaming as well. It is occasionally helpful to remember that most people just don’t care all that much. In increasing order of “you really don’t represent the average player,” we have people who read the forums, [people who post regularly on the forums, people who read the blogs,] and people who write gaming blogs. (I’m not sure of the ordering of those middle two.) You are odd in Western society if you spend 10+ hours a week pretending to kill pigs as an imaginary elf or orc. You are odd within that minority if you spend additional hours reading commentary on imaginary pig slaughter.

You and your friends are weirder than you think, even after taking into account the fact that you and your friends are weirder than you think.

: Zubon

High Heels

Digital high heels are entirely cosmetic. They are almost recursively cosmetic.

High heels serve certain functions in meatspace. They make someone taller. They make legs look longer and change their shape. They make it harder to run and present various other mobility problems depending on the specifics of the heel. Some like these cosmetic aspects or not.

Digital high heels do none of these things. If you want to make a taller character, you make the model taller. If you want the legs to look different, you can do that directly, too. When you look at a character in high heels, your simian brain is applying intuitions and judgments that have absolutely no applicability in a virtual world. Her shoes and leg appearance and entirely independent. If you just wanted her to stand on her toes and levitate a few inches off the ground, as if she were wearing invisible heels, that would be easier than implementing the high heels. It is all cosmetic, and it is completely independant of any physics.

This applies to both pro and con. Reasons I don’t like high heels? No applicability to digital high heels at all. She could have no feet and still play soccer; the game rules do not care about appearances. She cannot feel uncomfortable, and I can give her superspeed just as easily as any other character. The reasons you think high heels are sexy? No applicability to digital high heels at all. They are little pixels that have no effect on her leg shape or gait. It is purely fetishizing footwear, and imaginary footwear at that.

I need to work out how this affects my intuitions. We are primates, poorly adapted to virtual worlds. But until everyone else engages in introspection, we must also deal with all the primates who think that the digital high heels are sexy or marginalizing. The whole point of cosmetics is to affect perceptions, and those perceptions will drive players to or from your game.

: Zubon