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[TT] Pack & Stack

Pack & Stack is a game of loading trucks. Every round, you get a random assortment of boxes in different sizes, pick a truck from a random set flipped over, and try to get everything on the truck with as little empty space as possible. You lose points from an initial pool for unpacked boxes and empty space; highest score when someone counts down to 0 wins. The game makes good use of components and simultaneous play, has minimal interactivity, and is strongly subject to randomization. Potentially good for younger players or people who like luck-based games.

The components are good: boxes of five different sizes of colors, dice of corresponding colors with unusual numbers of pips per side, and solid truck boards. In many games, I go with the old idea of having a set of good components to use with many games, rather than whatever cheap pawns, money, etc. come with this box to justify its cost. (I have been using these coins for Seven Wonders, although I think I will be switching all my games’ money to Tech’s new coins.) The components here are essential to the game, well conceived, and of good quality.

Pack & Stack encourages simultaneous play, and if it had more dice, everything could be done simultaneously. You each roll to get your packages one at a time, then all flip trucks simultaneously, then all pack trucks simultaneously, and you can also score losses simultaneously if you trust everyone’s math and honesty. The only interactivity is the dash for trucks, and even then nothing is contested unless two players rolled similar stacks of boxes. Contrast games with no interaction that still officially have everyone acting in play order, or Seven Wonders with simultaneous play and some interaction.

Pack & Stack is mostly a luck-based game. Assuming that you have basic spatial relations skills and can perform single-digit arithmetic, you have all the skills needed for mastery, which you will achieve within five minutes. The one meaningful decision you make each round is which truck to pick, and unless the perfect truck is randomly available, your decision is arithmetic plus least bad choice. If you are on board with my contention that interesting decisions are the fun of gaming, this is not for you. If you like slot machines, this will be an exciting step up in your gaming; you even start with a pool of points and try to be the furthest from zero at the end, so it is like sitting next to your friends at the slots, pulling the bar to see how much you lose this time, and continuing until someone runs out of money and you leave. But you get to arrange little boxes on a truck, which is somewhat more fun than watching the game play itself.

Obviously not something I’m going to play again, but it has a few good uses of rules and could be attractive to some audiences. Its rules fit on a page, not in a book, and the game is not language-dependent, hence my thinking “good for kids?” (old enough not to try to swallow Legos).

: Zubon

Crowfall and Buy-2-Play Collecting

Crowfall with it’s constant drip of small bits of information has released their pricing FAQ. This has raised my interest meter to “high”. There’s small bits of stuff like “PLEX” and a cash shop based on skins, but not stuff that affects the in-game economy. The most important thing is obviously that the game is going to be Buy-2-Play, meaning you buy the box and get the game.

Why does this matter almost the most at this point? One of my favorite devs, Jeff Strain, wrote way back in 2007 some of the most important words for MMO creators, in my humble pundit opinion. Unfortunately, ArenaNet took his speech down since Strain moved on to create Undead Labs, but thankfully it appears archived here.

Decide on your business model first, and then build your game around it.

So simple. Anecdotally, this is why I had such a tough time with Wildstar‘s pre-launch hype because they were holding their cards way too close.

Anyway, since Crowfall is eager to share their business model so soon, and my favorite one to boot, I am on board. I was already on board since I’ve been wanting a non-spaceship EVE for some time. I am a early backer to Camelot Unchained as well, which is subscription based.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against subscriptions. I feel they can definitely work and have worth as as business model that a customer would want. EVE, once again, being the shining star, in my opinion, for how a subscription game should work. The subscription+expansion model of World of Warcraft, I do not as much appreciate.

I think the main thing with Buy-2-Play is it hits that feeling of my Steam library. This is both good and bad for the MMO dev. Good because it gives them money they might not otherwise get, such as the case of Elder Scrolls Online getting my money in a month for going Buy-2-Play. Bad because the business model in itself does not create “stickiness” or “community”.

That’s the thing, if I subscribe, I feel like I have to use that service. If I own it, say in the case of the excellent The Secret World, I am fine “getting around to it”. Clearly I belong to no true community in The Secret World, and I mostly play it to muck around with friends or go solo through the story.

Guild Wars 2, which is Buy-2-Play, is clearly aiming a lot of it’s content and updates at people who are lightly part of the community. Weekend warriors, perhaps. With WvW and PvP, it offers more, in that sense, but both are still easy to get in to for said weekend warriors.

This is why Crowfall is verrrrry interesting. They are creating a game that appears to have community investment of some sort, at least more than Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, and the like, but they are using a business model driven towards people that want to accumulate. I am both pleased (put me in the sure-buy category) and worried.

Anyway, I’ve been following it ever since they started their countdown, which is probably going to be their Kickstarter. They have interesting ideas, which deserve some punditry.

–Ravious

Another Open Letter

A supplemental response to Penny Arcade’s response to Ice Weasel X’s Open Letter Parents of League of Legends Players.

Dear Ice Weasel X (and most players signing on to the open letter),

You aren’t a parent. This is pretty clear from your letter. If you are a parent, apologies, but you come across like those childless friends who seem to think they know how to parent by giving seemingly simple and reasonable solutions. The delivery is therefore akin to a pre-pubescent child in VOIP trying to tell you strats for LoL. Ask any parent the worth of a childless person’s advice.

There are events every decent parent understands called “Teachable Moments”. If you are not a teacher or don’t have children you might not recognize this idea. A dependent child overplaying his or her time on the computer when there are other responsibilities is one such Teachable Moment.

It is good that you correlate the effect on the parent’s punishment to the 9 other players. However, as a parent having faced similar Teachable Moments I would tell you that I could not care less about those 9 human beings enjoyment of a luxury (i.e., video game). My only care in that event is for my child.

I would pull the plug. I would use the moment to teach my child how they affected those 9 human beings with their poor responsibility. I would discuss potential fallout from their lack of responsibility. I would discuss how to approach the event next time it could occur.

Letting my child finish the game and then grounding him is a poor way to teach the child, which is why again I assume you are childless. If the occurrence became repetitive taking away luxuries is definitely on the table, but doing it without creating a Teaching Moment is just a waste. I find that with my children creating preemptive groundings where they can make a decision is much better than reactive groundings (e.g., “next time this happens you won’t get screen time for the weekend”).

The best thing is for a parent of a young video gamer to understand the games their child is playing, especially online games where my child can be affected by other people, and vice-versa. A parent with such knowledge would understand how to illuminate the possible pitfalls of a child’s allotted play time. I can then illustrate that my child “probably has only time for one match before dinner”, etc.

I then create an understanding between me and my child. The match might go overlong, but the deal was struck. I let my child play because I said “one match”. It works both ways in a good relationship with a child, which is why I slightly disagree with Penny Arcade’s response. My word is law in my household, but I definitely want my child to have decisions to make within it.

I will tell you, Ice Weasel X, that if a parent does not care enough about his or her child to do this much: to create Teachable Moments, to understand and learn about a child’s hobbies, to learn how a child is affected by / can affect other people in online activities… they certainly don’t give a shit about you.

–Ravious

Summarizing F2P

“There might be a first rush, and then the contributions wind down.”
— Tobold

Starting monetization schemes has been exceedingly profitable, such as the money that flooded into Team Fortress 2 when its item shop opened, LotRO’s huge surge when it went F2P (even subscriptions went up),or many sites, games, and causes that make an initial appeal for money. If this is your first time being given the opportunity to pay for something you like and support, many people will. If it is no longer an “opportunity” but an attempt to build on ongoing revenue stream, that pent up demand reaches a much lower level quickly.

: Zubon

MMO “Journalism” Middle-Ground

Syp writes a pretty good bit on the similarities and differences on bloggers and journalists. This comes in the wake of Massively’s death and the phoenix rise of Massively OP (Kickstarter 100%+ funded!) when many are asking do we even need MMO journalists? Syp writes:

So I see press as being more focused on delivering news and opinion content and being as inclusive as possible with the genre, while also having a higher standard of quality and editorial oversight.  However, there is one even greater reason why press is important, which is that it aids in giving the MMO industry/games industry legitimacy.

I think this is pretty correct on average. Bloggers are often times just musing. They often shoot from the hip (‘cus cowboys). But then, I’ve seen blog posts that are so hyperfocused that an MMO professional journalist simply wouldn’t have the time or knowledge for. Syp himself plays a half-dozen MMOs at a time. Continue reading MMO “Journalism” Middle-Ground

Making Money

I have been quiet on the blogging front, so I should appreciate Tobold picking up the “business of games” beat I have favored. He has recent posts explaining that someone has to pay for games and more money attracts more investment. While you personally might prefer to get more game for less money, the MMO gaming niche only gets increased resources when investors see money to be made there. For-profit games need to show a profit.

We have previously discussed the business model Tobold discusses under “Keeping the Lights On.” Players (and consumers generally) are more sensitive to changes in price than in quality or quantity, so over time you get less game in your game and more add-ons, and wow was the Elder Scrolls IV horse armor imbroglio nine years ago already? I actively dislike the nickel-and-dime model and avoid rewarding it, but I have more money now than when I started gaming and I understand why it happens on both the supply and demand sides.

I want good value. I want to reward it. Sometime, we need to sit down and work out how to make sure we are assigning more of our time and money to their best valued uses. I liked Orcs Must Die! more than Dungeon Defenders, but I spent more time on the latter due to the game structures and internal incentives. My Settlers of Catan board was a much better investment than my LotRO lifetime account.

: Zubon

Good Decisions, Good Outcomes

We have discussed repeatedly over the past year that fun games let you make meaningful decisions. David Henderson comments on a recent football game and the distinction between decisions and outcomes.

Usually, the best choice is the one with the highest expected value (probability of outcome times value of outcome). People frequently look at solely the outcome and then attribute it to the decision, whether or not the outcome was a likely result of that decision. Winning the lottery is a good outcome for you, but playing the lottery is almost never a good decision because the cost of a ticket is more than (odds of winning) times (value from winning); depending on how you estimate taxes, inflation, and the chance of splitting the prize, the Powerball even-odds point is around $1 billion.

I have mixed feelings about games where you make good decisions and lose. This is not the case of single-player games scripted to be perverse, where what looks like the right choice is a trap or all choices are traps. I am thinking of multiplayer games that are anything less than 100% strategy with all information known in advance. We want some unknowns, and making decisions in the face of unknowns means occasionally things come down against you. When the odds are 50-50 and you lose a coin flip, yeah, that happens all the time. When you win unless you lose 5 coin flips in a row, that still happens 3% of the time. I like to think of myself as comfortable with probability and true randomness, but having a 97% chance to win and still losing through no fault of your own is really frustrating. It is absolutely necessary that players lose 3% of 97% chances, but it is still really frustrating.

It is frustrating on another level when people celebrate those 3%s as great victories, rather than blind luck. Don’t get me wrong, if you are in a position where your only chance to win is five coin flips in a row and playing conservatively guarantees a safe loss, take that chance. High variance solutions can be your friend, and even if you lose that game (as you most likely will), it was the right decision. But if you started with equal odds and fell into a situation where you needed five-in-a-row to win, you probably made some bad decisions along the way. And if you are that guy who immediately set up a five-in-a-row situation to win immediately or quit immediately, you are what is wrong with online gaming.

Celebrate your victories, but also celebrate good decisions, whether or not they lead to victory in that particular case.

: Zubon

[GW2] Creeping HoT – Maps and Masteries

Creep is a dirty MMO word. Yes, there are creeps who should be reported for saying things that would make any mother smack the scheisse out of them, but this is different. This is when a developer tries to make things more awesome and toes outside the earlier line of power, content, etc. and leaves the priors behind.

Creep in its worst sense is an erosion of the importance of earlier content. The most notable creep is power creep. In updating an MMO will add more levels or more gear tiers thereby lowering the importance of earlier accomplishments.  Another might be feature creep that gives people the new ability (with expansion purchase) to fly anywhere.

I feel ArenaNet’s expansion is going to be one of the lowest amounts of creep we can possibly see for an MMO expansion. The reason: compartmentalization. Continue reading [GW2] Creeping HoT – Maps and Masteries