Category: General

General

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1000 Bloom, 900 Wither

The phrase appearing most in my IMGDC notes, although no one actually said it, is “let a thousand flowers bloom.” Whatever fun or crazy idea you have, make that game. Independent studios have the freedom to try things that are too risky or quirky for big producers. Barriers to entry have never been lower, with improved middleware and distribution channels. Everyone on the forums who thinks he can do better has a chance to prove it.

Of course, Sturgeon’s law applies. Most of them are going to be crap. Have you been to a flash games portal? There are a dozen decent games of each type, followed by a couple hundred horrors. That is fine though, because players will tend towards the few quality games, followed by a long tail of niche games with implementations that appeal to a small number of people. Many attempts at low cost will produce a few gems, which can then receive greater attention.

By greater attention, I mean being bought by a larger company, unless your indie has the business framework to work with a million customers. That is a good problem to have, but it probably means you should cash out and use that money to fund your dream project. If you are not part of the crap 90%, you might have a sustainable niche game, and a select few will be bought out by EA, Sony, etc.

Or maybe they will just take your idea and run with it. I have not noticed Blizzard making payments to Games Workshop or the estates of Gary Gygax and JRR Tolkien, nor did Richard Bartle drive away in a gold-plated limousine.

: Zubon

What we say // What we mean

“Hi everyone” // “Why do I even bother? Half the guild never replies”
“After thinking it long and hard…” // “I really-really thought about it for five minutes while I was having lunch, but it had been festering for a while”
“…I’ve decided this isn’t really the guild for me.” // “I’ve decided that 40% of the guild are retards, the other 40% are useless and the remaining 20% are people that I have no beef with. For now.”
“I guess the guild changed from what it used to be, and while change is good…” // “I’m not getting my way anymore”
“… for some of us it can take some effort to adapt” // “I can’t be bothered”

Continue reading What we say // What we mean

Great Concepts

I will be posting about things from IMGDC for a while, but first I must take a page from Nerfbat. If you want your game to succeed, you must have a more awesome concept than Attack of the Mutant Camels, in which you battle giant, fireball-spewing camels. This is a concept so awesome that it not only spawned a sequel involving bipedal goats with guns, but someone else used the same name for a later game. It looks like someone made an updated version, but you can still play the original.

I proposed a panel on “fire-breathing camels and your indie game.” They turned me down.

: Zubon

Virtual materialism

We’ve all heard grumbling here and there about the latest WoW patch’s new high-end loot. The new loot can be obtained much more easily than before the patch, when you had to complete high-end raids to get gear of this caliber. The grumbling generally revolves around the idea that it’s unfair and demoralizing to raiders who obtained similar gear when it was more difficult to do so.

My feeling on this is, so what? The change is not massive, and there are good reasons for it — it will help more people see high-end content before the expansion comes out. But more importantly, there’s more to WoW than gear. What about the experience of learning to work as a team? What about the satisfaction of overcoming a really tough boss fight? What about the aesthetic beauty of seeing a new dungeon? What about meeting new people and making new friends as you play together?

Being overly-focused on gear is simply materialism brought to the virtual world. It’s not a very fulfilling path. I’m not saying gear is bad, or material goods are bad, just that treating them with the proper priority is an important part of having a fulfilling life in a virtual world as well as the physical one.

Behavioral Economics in MMOs, Part 1

Lately, I’ve been reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, a book on the relatively new science of behavioral economics. Classical economics states that, given all necessary information, people and therefore markets will behave rationally and in their own best interests. However, behavioral economics states that people will very often behave irrationally, and that we must modify economic theory based on that irrationality. The most interesting point, to me, and the one that the book takes its name from, is that, while people may behave irrationally in regards to economic choices, they do so in a predictable fashion. Okay, it’s interesting, but what does it have to do with MMOs? A lot, as it turns out.
Continue reading Behavioral Economics in MMOs, Part 1

The depth behind ARGs and MMO’s

I poked my nose into The Lost Ring on Thursday night, and man, did I get sucked in. The Lost Ring is a very large-scale ARG designed by Jane McGonigal, one of the designers behind I Love Bees. It’s tied in with the 2008 Olympics and they’re really making it a global event — the game characters all speak/blog/write different languages, the clues are all in Esperanto, and objects are scattered all over the world.

Anyway, as I finally pulled myself out of the rabbit hole this evening, it’s occurred to me that there’s an important similarity between ARGs and MMO’s that tends to make them powerful experiences for those involved, and that is that both types of games are a lot closer to real life than other types of games. I’m not talking about sensory things, like graphics and sound (ARGs are especially good at those!). I’m talking about higher-level gameplay mechanics like relationship building and teamwork. In the case of MMO’s, you also have things like economics and sometimes ecologies.

Compared to mechanics like maneuvering tactics or aiming in an FPS, these are a lot more interesting than. They involve more parts of ourselves — more of our brain, and more of our heart. And they’re usually more relevant to the rest of our lives, as well.

One of Raph Koster’s claims in A Theory of Fun (wow, $150 for a copy now? Time for a reprint, Raph) is that fact that much of the emotional feeling of “fun” is actually our brain’s reaction to learning something. I think it’s true, and I also think there’s potential for a deeper, more meaningful sort of fun when the things we are learning reach deeper into us and have greater relevance to our overall lives.

Prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse

We have blasted through malls and ghost towns full of zombies, but are you ready for the zombie apocalypse? No, seriously. After all the humorous books and online quizzes about survival, someone has been taking a real world approach for the past five years:

Zombie Squad realizes that it is quite possible for someone to live their entire lives without encountering the undead nuisance. However, we hold fast to the belief that if you are prepared for a scenario where the walking corpses of your family and neighbors are trying to eat you alive, you will be prepared for almost anything.

Have you even backed up your computer? The Red Cross has some guidance on how to prepare in case of fire, flood, or terrorist attack. You have already learned the critical lesson of looking up for aliens on the ceiling. Check your smoke alarms while you are at it.

: Zubon

Fidelity

Champions Online will be almost as similar to Champions as Dungeons and Dragons Online is to Dungeons and Dragons. Which is to say, they are keeping the names and using an entirely different set of mechanics.

To compare this system to others, there is no such thing as a “Dark Blast” or an “Ice Blast” in the HERO System. Mechanically, everything is just an Energy Blast, but with different advantages and even limitations applied. … We are using systems that are essentially the same, but fit the MMORPG genre somewhat better. In Champions Online, we will have Dark Blast, Ice Blast, etc.

: Zubon