Random Ramblings #8

You thought it was gone didn't you? You honestly thought that I'd forgotten about them. Well folks... THE RANDOM RAMBLINGS ARE BACK! This week I talk betas, Warframe and a WoW update.

Beta Updates

Since the last post about Hearthstone there has been no actual posts from Blizzard regarding an exact date for the open beta, unfortunate news for those out there who are still without a key to the closed beta. There is some speculation that it will drop later this month as announced at Blizzcon, but I still hold some reservations about this. There are still some stability issues in the game (I have have several lockups for a minute or so and the occasional crash to desktop).

I also finally got a key for DC's Infinite Crisis, their take on the MOBA scene. I'm sure it will be fun, but will reserve judgement when I see how it compares to the other more established games such as LoL or DotA2. Actually judging it is going to be hard... I'm a huge DC fan (Batman and Green Arrow are my two favorite comic heroes), and seeing past my bias could be a little hard. Needless to say you can expect some words here when I have spent some time playing it.

Warframe

I've been playing Warframe a little lately. Messing around in the game is a lot of fun, especially speedrunning it. It's almost like they made the game to run fast. You have a lot of mobility, some parkour inspired skills and are basically a super soldier. Knowing the weaknesses of the various enemies helps too as some are super weak close up, while others require a more ranged approach. It features drop in and out co-op, with some areas basically requiring you to have two people or be really blinged out with weapons. If you like third person shooters at all, give it a go. It's free to play, and doesn't really seem pay to win.

WoW Update

When I last wrote about WoW, I lamented that I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to the game at the moment. That's changed a little with work getting a little quieter. I've been leveling a Draenei Shaman, and have to say they deal a bunch more damage than Hunters, but have the disadvantage of needing to take hits in solo situations. Its taken me a little over two weeks to hit level 70 (played time of 1 day 23 hours). Playing Alliance side is... interesting. I really don't like the story as much on the Alliance side, but it is completely different to the Horde leveling in most cases. I'm sure as I get more into the Cata and Mists content that will change though. All in all, the last twoish weeks in WoW have been fun, and getting a high level shaman out of it will be a great reward, even if I do end up having to faction change him down the track.

And that concludes the Random Ramblings. Stay tuned as I get more time over the holiday break to play things and then write about them!

As always,

GAME ON!

Spell Mage Hearthstone Deck

I thought I'd take some time to go through a deck I've been playing with in Hearthstone that I've found very successful. In card games I've always preferred control decks that remove the enemy minions and then use powerful minions or spells to deal the damage. This deck is built around that and has won around 70% of games. The list is as follows:

2 x Arcane Missiles
2 x Arcane Explosion
1 x Frost Nova
1 x Amani Berserker
1 x Ironbeak Owl
1 x Kobold Geomancer
2 x Dalaran Mage
2 x Ironfur Grizzly
2 x Fireball
2 x Polymorph
2 x Chillwind Yeti
1 x Azure Drake
1 x Booty Bay Bodyguard
2 x Darkscale Healer
2 x Archmage
1 x Gelbin Mekkatorque
1 x Lord of the Arena
2 x Flamestrike
1 x Deathwing
1 x Sea Giant

There are several things that are completely optional. First is the two legendary cards in the deck. Gelbin Mekkatorque and Deathwing are the only two legendary cards I have, and I am considering taking Mekkatorque out as he can help the enemy as well as you with his random inventions. Deathwing can be swapped for another heavy hitter, but I like the removal he provides.

My basic strategy depends on the first hand I am dealt. Ideally you want either Arcane Missiles or Arcane Explosions and the Kobold Geomancer. Should you not get that however, any small minions that can be used to delay play (Ironfur Grizzlys are particularly good). Then it is simply a matter of surviving until you have enough spell damage to use Fireballs to damage the enemy hero or throw the Sea Giant or Deathwing out to swing for fatal.

As an example of just how effective this deck is at the moment, I faced a hunter who was using the Chanman style of play (small creatures being buffed by Unleash the Hounds). Fortunately I was able to use my Booty Bay Bodyguard and Lord of the Arena minions to stay alive for another turn. I top decked my Sea Giant who ended up only costing 2 mana due to all the minions on the board. Throwing him out, I then used Flamestrike to clear the board and win the game on the next turn.

Most games end up going somewhat along this path, with you holding on with less than 10 health (my craziest game I was matched up against another mage and won with 2 health), and swinging for fatal with either the Sea Giant, Deathwing or a Fireball.

Hopefully when the open beta comes around, this will help you to win some games.

As always,

GAME ON!

The Bottom Line: a Tetris life update.

Wow, it's been a crazy few months for me in my real life. I work a seasonal job in reticulation and this summer has started hard and fast for us. This has resulted in two things. First, I am working weekends. I get a day off through the week, and I use that to catch up on what I would normally do on the weekend. Second, I am extremely behind on my gaming.

Hearthstone's beta has been a godsend, allowing me to play a couple of games for sessions of ten to thirty minutes at a time as I have the chance. Minecraft has taken up the bulk of my remaining gaming time, with myself and a friend playing our creative world and building some sweet structures for some fun. Any other time has been spent playing a few games I've picked up from the Humble Bundles that recently came up - LoTR: War in the North and F.E.A.R.

F.E.A.R has always been one of those games that I have wanted to play, but never got the chance. It came out around the same time as Battlefield 2 and that game dominated my gaming at the time. The game has aged well, with the gameplay holding up too. War in the North is fun, if a little flawed. There could have been so much more done with the game, but it seems like most licensed games they either ran out of time or money had to drop some features.

I haven't logged into Eve at all. Ever since the Somer fiasco I just haven't wanted to deal with the entitled idiots in game who have ruined it a little for me. WoW isn't much better, with the player base complaining about the announcement that they might delay flying for Warlords of Draenor. I wish people were less aggressive about their complaining.

Hopefully soon, I can pick up a copy of X Rebirth. There are no fancy words I can use to describe just how excited I am for that game, but I need to have a sizable chuck of time to dedicate to it, and I just don't have the time right now. I've described X to my friends as Eve Offline, with joystick controls. It's not entirely accurate, but it does convey the general idea of X as a game.

As always ladies and gents,

GAME ON! Especially when you actually can GAME ON!

Hearthstone

Wow. That's all I can say about Hearthstone. No really, this post is over, go away.

Still here hey? Ok, I suppose I should write some more about it. First of all, I would like to give a massive shout out to Garret, Dills and Jocelyn from the Angry Chicken Podcast for the beta key. Not only did they do a give away with over 100 keys (102 to be precise), they also have, in my opinion, the best Hearthstone podcast around right now. You can find it here, or if you can catch it live, here.

On to Hearthstone. I wasn't kidding when I said wow describes it perfectly. For a beta game it is insanely polished and everything just oozes quality. I did have some issues when I first installed the game, but it seems like that is a server side issue that Blizzard is aware of and working on. Once you get to start playing, the game drops you straight into a series of training matches, ending with you fighting against Illidan.

When the training is finished there are a few things that should be done immediately. First, unlock every class. That will grant you access to the arena, some gold, and much needed levels. Once you have done that, have a go at getting one class to level 10 for more gold and free cards. After that go forth and build your decks.

I have some experience with Magic The Gathering, and most people will compare the two for obvious reasons. There are those out there who have said that the game is a simplified version of MTG. I can see where they come from with that argument, but have to disagree. Hearthstone is different enough that I don't feel like I am playing MTG, but rather a completely new card game. The hero powers and mana crystals add to the game and help to streamline the experience. The lack of instant cards scare me a little bit, as I tended to play a lot of them in Magic, but those are something that could be added down the track if required (and to be clear I don't think they are at this stage).

Blizzard have done a fantastic job of making a simple enough experience that anyone could pick it up and have fun, but also making the game deep and complex enough to interest existing card game players. It's still in closed beta at this point, but at BlizzCon they announced that open beta could be expected in December (although perhaps later because Blizzard). If you do get into the closed beta, expect there to be some bugs and server issues. If you don't, fear not. You will get to play this game soon.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

Batman: Arkham Origins - The First Impressions

So... the wait is finally over. Batman Arkham Origins has been released around the world. For once, being an Aussie really paid off for me and I was able to unlock the game on Steam on Thursday night (as opposed to Saturday for most of the world). I've played about 3 to 4 hours of it so far, and I have to say I'm impressed.

Hello old friend.

There was some trepidation from fans of the previous two Arkham games about the change in developer. Rocksteady Studios did an absolutely fantastic job of taking a licensed product and turning it into a game, so when it was announced that it would be Warner Bros. Games Montreal developing some people were unhappy with the change. Having played it now however, those fears are almost unfounded. The gameplay feels extremely similar to Arkham City and the stand out parts of the previous games (the combat and stealth mechanics) are intact and almost untouched.

Batman is different however. As Arkham Origins is set before the previous two games, you are dealing with a younger, more inexperienced but more raw and aggressive Batman. There is also a change of costume for the caped crusader, with him using his armoured suit rather than the more sleek suit that we have become used to from the previous games. The change makes sense considering the story line of the game, with Batman taking on assassins, regular criminals and the police. Oh yeah, I might have forgot to mention: because it is set before Gordon is commissioner, Batman is still wanted by the police and some corrupt parts of the force are actively hunting him for a payoff from the criminals.

The combat is still as visceral and flows as well as the previous games. The controls on PC still make sense, with one minor issue of not being able to bind anything to my side button on my mouse (as I usually change any middle mouse button binds to this). The addition of the new martial arts expert makes for some interesting new scenarios were you have to counter then counter again to do maximum damage. The "boss" battles that I have experienced so far have all been different enough that I feel satisfied with each of them when I beat them. The stealth side of the gameplay is also just as fun. Taking a criminal down from a vent feels very satisfying and pulling off the perfect combo of downing bad guys without being seen is still as rewarding as ever.

On a slightly different note, there are a few bugs that I have encountered in the game. The first time I launched the game it got to the point where you had to click to get into the menu and the game crashed. During the stealth tutorial all sound disappeared from the game world. And finally, keeping in mind I am playing on PC, I have had the game freeze for a good 30 seconds when changing zones. If you haven't already purchased the game, I'd consider waiting until the first patch to buy it if you feel you wouldn't like to experience these.

My only other gripe is some small things about the games world. The map is fantastic, with the top island containing a lot of familiar sights from Arkham City, including the steel factory that The Joker called his own. The south island is full of high rise buildings and dark alleys that suit Gotham perfectly. However because of the lack of civilians, I find myself wondering if I am back in Arkham City again, where the world is full of either cops, criminals and a handful of victims. Also I get the Christmas theme, but did we really need snow again?

All in all I think Warner Bros. Games Montreal have done a fantastic of emulating the amazing work of Rocksteady Games with the previous two Arkham games. The fears I had about changing too much of the formula that RS had established were completely unfounded, as WB seem to have adopted an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to the development of Arkham Origins. In my opinion, if you are a Batman fan you'll already own this game. If you haven't played Arkham Asylum or Arkham City, pick up Origins as it won't ruin any of the story of the previous two games. If for some reason you aren't a fan of the Dark Knight (the character, not the movie), but still want a fun game, pick it up and see what you think. The gameplay stands up well enough on its own that you will find yourself enjoying the game regardless of who you are playing.

For now though, I have to go back to beating criminals to a pulp. As always!

Please read in Christian Bales Batman voice.

GAME ON!

Edit: Since playing 9 hours of the game, I would definitely recommend waiting for the first patch. There are parts of the game that have some bugs preventing you from continuing, specifically one of the radio towers locks you into a room with a vent you can climb up to but not enter. That being said, the game is still very good and the end of the main story is not what I expected, but perfect.

Edit #2: The patch to fix the issues with the radio tower has been released for PC.

Random Ramblings #7

In the distance, there is a sound... It's moving quickly, and is heading toward us. Oh my goodness IT'S THE RANDOM RAMBLINGS! This time around a rapper loses it, Activision Blizzard gets moving and someone makes me sad.

Rapper wants GTAV Recalled

A rapper by the name of Daz Dillinger wants GTAV recalled due to the fact that Rockstar included two of his tracks in the game without permission. Allegedly the developer put the tracks C-Walk and Nothin' but the Cavi Hit despite him not giving them permission to use the tracks in the game. Daz responded by giving Rockstar 14 days to reply to his request to have all copies of GTAV recalled and destroyed, or to make him an offer to use the music. There isn't much more information on exactly how Rockstar tried to get permission at this stage, but Daz was offered $4,271 for the use of them, an offer he turned down as "offensive." Hopefully some more information will come to light from Rockstar as to how exactly they got rights to use the music before this gets out of hand.

Problems with Activision Blizzard's Seperation

Activision Blizzard had announced back in July that it was breaking away from parent company Vivendi for a deal to the tune of 8.17 billion dollars. Then in September it was announced that a shareholder in the company had filed a complaint against the company for a: 

"breach of fiduciary duties, waste of corporate assets and unjust enrichment" and that ASAC II (the investor group owned by Bobby Kotick) will "score an immediate paper windfall of $664 million."

However the Delaware Supreme court lifted the decision earlier this week and Activision Blizzard announced yesterday that the acquisition had been successfully completed. Hopefully this means that Blizzard can continue to make fantastic games as they have been for the last 22 years.

Delayed PC Releases - Piracy to Blame

Someone finally asked the question to a developer about why PC game releases are delayed. The answer? Piracy. Now while this answer is off the record, it is not unsurprising. PC games are usually the most pirated due to how easy it is to crack them compared to having to chip a console to pirate games.

I am the first to admit, I have pirated games in the past. I downloaded the pirate version of Game Dev Tycoon to see the message that popped up for myself. When I was living at home and couldn't afford games I would pirate them. Even now, even though I have the money to buy any game I desire, every now and then I will pirate a game to see if I like it or if it is worth dropping money on it. If I had known that actions like this had led to this fear for developers to the point where PC games are delayed to help with figures, I honestly believe I wouldn't have pirated any games at all.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

The story of my guild in WoW

So it's been an interesting couple of months for me in WoW. My real life work started to finally get busy last month, so I haven't had much time to play the game itself. However between 5.4 dropping hard, gaining almost 30 item levels in around 5 hours of play in the Timeless Isle, and farming ghost iron ore to try and get my hands on the new Sky Golem mount, I've been busy with what little time I have had to play.

Soon..........

But the truth is, it hasn't been the game that has made my recent WoW time interesting, it's something that has happened with the guild I am/was in. I say am because I am still there, and I say was because in around 10 minutes I'm going to be typing /gquit into my chat window. Why? Pull up a chair children it's story time.

The guild that I have been part of basically since I started playing the game is the guild a real life friend of mine was a member of, and his housemate is the GM of said guild. Let's call him Stab. At some point in the last couple of months Stab was automatically flagged and account banned for botting (or at least that is what we thought he was banned for, but more on that later). His response was basically to say, "Well I've had a good run, I'm gonna quit and you guys can take over the guild."

As it turns out however, when I submitted a ticket to support with regards to removing my items from the guild bank, they game back with a strange response:

As the guild itself was apart of our investigation and was associated with an account that participated in illegal activities in game, we decided to remove access to the guild bank and to the guild leadership to anyone in the guild as we were unable to determine what was and was not illegally gained. I apologize. But we will not be able to recover anything from the guild.

Hmmm, not exactly the response we were expecting. As it turns out and with tickets submitted by both my friend and Stab, we were finally able to find out that Blizzard essentially thought that the Guild was being used for real money transactions (or RMT), and that Stab's actions on the auction house (he was basically owning the gem market on our server, and the guild bank was being used to store his wealth) had flagged him as some sort of gold farmer. He has written three emails about this to an email address the support line gave him with no response from Blizzard in the last month. Will we ever get a response? Who knows.

The whole ordeal has made me wary of trying to play the WoW auction house like I do the markets in Eve. If they suspect someone like Stab who was, granted, spending a lot of time updating his buy and sell orders on the auction house, how would they view someone like myself who spends far too much time farming mats and playing around on the markets compared to "normal gameplay". I have no idea how Blizzard would respond to a player like myself. The big problem with this is that it has made me less inclined to play over this last month, as crafting and the generation of huge sums of money is one of the main reasons I like MMOs such as WoW and Eve.

So as I sit in a dead guild pondering the story of the rise and fall of some fun times right at the beginning of my WoW journey, I wonder if my next guild will be as interesting. Chances are, I will never go through what I have with this guild, and I'm not entirely sure it was a bad thing to go through it now, rather than in a years time when I have amassed some more wealth. In any case, it's time to type that magic command and /gquit my way out of a piece of my WoW history.

As always my gaming brothers and sisters:

GAME ON!

The Effect of Mining in Eve

A certain well known (some would say infamous) blogger posted something recently about how miners like to say the game couldn't function without them, and how people how pay for PLEX with isk like to say they are paying for the game. His post was along the lines of how if all the miners left the game tomorrow then CCP could put another source of ore in the game, and how people playing with PLEX could all leave and those buying PLEX could sell to an NPC. I want to say I have respect for this person, even if I disagree with a lot of what he says with regards to the community in Eve, and the player interactions that he so obviously despises. His wallet says all I need to know about how he plays the game. At the same time however, I cannot let this one go by without some comment.

I am a miner. By my own admission, both here and on the Eve forums I call myself a carebear in the industrialist meaning of the word. My ore goes into building ships, weapons and ammunition to fuel the PVP that other players enjoy. My ideal night of Eve involves logging in just after downtime (thanks Western Australian time zone) and shooting asteroids with lasers until my hold is full, while chatting with members of my corp and alliance. I go and shoot reds, but I'm not going to lie and say its what I look for every single time I log into Eve.

A lot of people who suicide gank or bump miners are under the impression that we are doing it because we aspire to be some kind of bot, that we deserve to be treated as though we were botting. While I'm sure there are people out there who literally mine for hours, even days because they just want to sell it to make isk, the majority of miners I talk to do so because they like it. Personally I don't have the time to invest into a large scale null alliance that would be required of me, so I get involved with my corp by mining, producing ships and talking with them.

Replacing me with an NPC that sells minerals, or heck if you are going so far as to do that why not straight up ships, does two things. First, it loses CCP a subscriber. If I cannot do something like mining, I don't particularly have the time to dedicate to getting involved in PVP beyond somewhere like RvB. Eve becomes pointless for me to play. Some of you would say that nothing of value is lost, but I have been a part of this game for years, and so have many of the industry people I have spoken to in the game. Second, Eve loses something that captures people. When I tell friends that the Revenant lost by PL earlier this year was assembled by players, with materials gathered by players, they all look at me like that's the most insane thing they have ever heard. The fact that nearly every item in the game is player made is a major draw in this era of theme park MMOs.

As for the PLEX thing, CCP still gets the money either way, and a large transfer of ISK happens at the point of sale. Selling directly to an NPC would introduce more isk with no loss to the buyer (as the NPC would have infinite isk). That's not good for any economy, as there always needs to be sinks for the isk to go into. I think the blogger in question needs to temper his disdain for people (as it really comes across that he wants Eve to be a single player game), with a realistic outlook on what is good for the game in the long run.

As always folks:

GAME ON!

Random Ramblings #6

Ladies... Gentlemen... It's that show you've all been waiting for... THE RANDOM RAMBLINGS ARE BACK! This time, we have a real spread of news to go through, so let's jump right into it.

Werster's Pokemon Yellow World Record

I happened to be in the stream for Werster's new Pokemon Yellow world record run. The tension toward the end was amazing to feel, and the stream chat was awesome to be a part of. His new record is 1 hour 55 minutes with a pretty average start. The RNG toward the end of the run was amazing, along with one particular moment where Werster looks at his notes and says I'm going to be on 3hp and it happened. Absolutely amazing run Werster. You deserve it.

As a small side note, if you watch the WR run on YouTube, there is a part where Werster says "OH TETRIS!" That was me subscribing to his channel. I did not expect that reaction from him haha.

GTA 5

And damn. The hype got me hard with this one. I got a copy of GTA V for my 360, and have been playing it a fair bit. The game is amazing, and truth be told I'm actually liking the story so far in this one. Most GTA games are pretty story heavy, but it's usually not that gripping and you can literally blast through the cut scenes without feeling like you missed that much. In this one however, I am actually wanting to watch the story unfold.

The world itself is awesome, and the idea to have a section of rugged mountain landscape has me just looking for ways to do tricks and fun things there. There are a few things that bug me, but they are minor and purely just because of my background with dirt bikes (the dirt bike handles nothing like a dirt bike when on dirt). The gun play is pretty good, and customizing weapons adds a nice touch. The fact that I can add suppressors to the guns makes me happy, as I can stealth around if the urge takes me.

And that concludes this edition of Random Ramblings. As always folks:

GAME ON!

[Insert Game Here] is Dying!

What a crazy week it's been in the Eve world. CCP recently changed their ToS agreement and the entire player base went crazy. Essentially a small change seemed to outlaw nearly all scamming in the game, spurred on by a particularly well thought out scam involving EVElopedia (specifically the Chribba page). But this isn't what I want to write about today. I'm more interested in the fallout from it, particularly the crowd of people who always scream "EVE IS DYING" whenever something like this comes up.

Whenever an MMO receives a change, there is always a small, very vocal but misguided group who assume the worst and shout to the hills that the game is dying; that the change is the signal of the end of the game. As Eve is the MMO I have spent the most time on, I have gotten used to the Eve is dying cries once every six months or so (usually in between expansions). Recently it became apparent to me that despite it's amazing successes, even WoW isn't immune to such claims.

It's no secret that WoW has been bleeding subscriptions for a while now. They recently announced that they had lost 5 million subscribers since Wrath of the Lich King, more than most MMO's have ever had. But rather than assuming that WoW is dying, look at it from another perspective. When WoW was released, I was in school. Almost all of my friends in school played it. However now they are all working full time jobs, have families and responsibilities. The circumstances that allowed them to play WoW have changed and many have had to quit the game. Still others that I know who played, were invested in the Warcraft story line. With Arthus dead, they see no reason to continue, as the bad guy they knew from WCIII has been dealt with. WoW also had the draw of friends playing together. If one or two of that group quits and they want to continue to play together, they are all going to move on to another game. As it stands WoW is still the most successful MMO ever made, and MoP has brought new players into the game (like me).

Eve on the other hand has been growing slowly for ten years. This year it hit 500,000 subscribers, a far shot from WoW's record of 12 million subscribers, but Eve inspires a loyalty among its players that has to be experienced to believe. Also looking at the stats for Eve's peak concurrent users shows that Eve is growing slowly with the number of people online. If anything, Eve isn't dying, its growing.

So why do people constantly jump on the "X is dying" bandwagon? In my opinion, it's all about resistance to change. People see something that they aren't used to, or expecting, and they immediately want to shout about it. When LFR was announced, there were people shouting about how Blizzard was catering to casuals and this would be the death of WoW. The reality? LFR didn't affect anyone who was already raiding in a normal or heroic group. Sure it can be full of people going AFK, but you will get that in any unorganized group in any game. When Eve's safety system was implemented, people assumed this would signal the death of highsec ganking. This hasn't happened yet.

Perhaps one day the gaming community will grow up enough to actually accept change without screaming immediately that the game is dying (unless it actually is, and they can present hard evidence of this). Until then, when you see someone crying that a game is dying, ask them to prove it. I guarantee watching them struggle to find how they can prove it will be entertaining, if nothing else.

As always guys,

GAME ON! And to the idiots who think Eve is dying, can I have your stuff?

Random Ramblings #5

Hmm... I think I feel something... What could it be? Oh right! THE RANDOM RAMBLINGS ARE BACK! Brace yourselves folks. This one could get messy.

Iran Bans Female LoL Champs

Where to begin with this one? It was revealed on Reddit earlier this week that the Iranian branch of the World Cyber Games have banned almost all female champions in the upcoming League of Legends tournament, with Annie being the only exception. There is a small caveat with Annie though, the volume of the headphones must be lowered.

What?! So as Redditor Paydrum explains, these decisions have been made to comply with laws enforced by the Ministry of Ershad. In order to obtain the permits to run the tournament, the organisers made the changes to "jump through their hoops". Regardless of the fact that this has to be one of stupidest rules I've seen in my time of following E-sports, they have even banned Anivia a character who is a giant blue bird. I can understand the more scantily clad women in LoL being banned to comply with the social and political setting of the region, but a bird who happens to have a female voice?

Boy Shoots Grandmother: "Video Game to Blame"

On to something equally as depressing, an 8 year old boy in Louisiana shot and killed his grandmother. Immediately the news was broken that police had found that the child was playing Grand Theft Auto IV prior to the shooting, leading the media to blame the game for the violent act.

Let's look at this objectively though. The boy was left under his grandmothers care, had access to both a game CLEARLY aimed at adults and a loaded firearm. Who is to blame here? Video games or poor parenting? I personally am sick of the media trying to find any way to blame anyone other than parents for a child's actions. If those parents had of taken a slight interest in their child, he would not have been playing the game for starters (as that game is definitely not the sort of thing a child should be playing), and he would have been educated about firearms or even better, not had access to the loaded weapon in the first place. This was clearly not a video game causing a tragic act, this was poor parenting.

And that concludes this edition of the Random Ramblings. Sorry for it being both short and mildly depressing.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

Hearthstone Beta

So unless you live under a rock or somewhere equally without internet (in which case how are you reading this, you wizard?), you probably know about Hearthstone, Blizzards new completely virtual card game. It was released in closed beta two weeks ago to widespread fanfare and excitement virtually everywhere. Fast forward to today, when a tweet from Blizzard says that the opt-in wave of Beta keys has finished.

I am one of the people who has been looking forward to Hearthstone since the announcement of it. The beta release hyped me a little more than it should have, as I tend to not get overly hyped about betas of games. If I get into a beta, then I play it, but certainly don't make it all I play. However, looking at the thread on the Hearthstone sub-reddit, you would think that Blizzard has killed someones hopes and dreams in life. Let's take a look shall we:

Fuck hearthstone

Whoa! Chill out dude. You were so hyped about this game 2 weeks ago, and now you are angry because you missed out on an invite to a closed beta? Talk about entitled.

Fuck the people who brand us as "entitled", if Blizzard knew what the fuck they were doing, they'd make the beta open. 

I'm sorry to have to be the one to break it to you man, but you are acting pretty damn entitled. You expect to be in a closed beta, despite the fact that you are no more entitled to it than me.

Apparently being a long-time Blizzard veteran means nothing to them, however every single mediocre streamer and their grandma gets to play the game because marketing.

I've played every single Blizzard game since Warcraft 2. Does that mean that I am any more entitled to get into the beta than someone who has played every Blizzard game since Warcraft 3? Starcraft 2? Get off your high horse and deal with the fact that you aren't some special snowflake. And of course Blizzard is going to market the game. That's what it's all about.

In short, chill out guys. You'll get your chance to play this game. It's not going to kill you to wait till open release.

Video Game Classification in Australia

It's something every single gamer in Australia dreads. You are excited about a new game coming out in the near future, when you see somewhere that it has been denied classification by the ACRB. There have been some changes to our classification system recently, and also some controversy about those changes. However let's examine the history of video game classification in Australia.

Since an article published by Hyper in 1993, it became known that video games were not allowed the R18+ rating, meaning that any games that could not be rated MA15+ would be refused classification and not available for sale in Australia. During this time games that failed were able to edit their content to attempt to pass a second time. Wikipedia has a sizable list of games that were initially refused classification, along with the final result of that game.

It was at the beginning of 2013 that the R18+ rating finally took effect, twenty years after the original article by Hyper. Why did it take so long to implement? One of the major blocks came from the governments perception that video games were for children only. It comes as no surprise to those of us who are gamers that the average age for a gamer is around 30, and has been playing games for 10+ years. Despite this, many of those against the implementation of an R18+ rating for video games made their voice known with cries of "Think of the children!"

One of those people was Michael Atkinson the former Attorney-General of South Australia from 2003 to 2010. During his time, he blocked each and every attempt to have a R18+ rating introduced in Australia. How? To get the law passed, it required the agreement of each of the Attorney-Generals; there could be no opposition. By opposing it, Atkinson single-handedly stopped any progress on the R18+ rating. His reasons?

I don't support the introduction of an R18+ rating for electronic games, chiefly because it will greatly increase the risk of children and vulnerable adults being exposed to damaging images and messages.

Also in the same exclusive with Gamespot, Atkinson also mentions that his three sons play video games:

I have three sons who regularly play computer games at home--the eldest is now 22. I see my children become physically and emotionally obsessed with games, and it is difficult to drag them away from the gaming console. 

Because of his personal experiences with and single minded view of gaming, Atkinson continued to refuse to support the introduction of the R18+ rating. Finally, when Atkinson stepped down as Attorney-General, progress was made as John Rau was shown to be more reasonable and supportive of introducing the R18+ rating. The final vote was passed in 2012, with the finalised guidelines coming into effect on January 1st 2013.

It's been a rocky road for the R18+ rating in Australia, and with the recent controversy surrounding Saints Row IV, there may still be some ways to go before we get the R18+ rating we deserve, but for now we do have something at least. As a small aside, I would highly recommend that you read this 2010 article from Youth Studies Australia for very impartial, seemingly unbiased report on both sides of the debate.

But for now, and as always:

GAME ON!

Random Ramblings #4

It's that time again: the Random Ramblings are back!

Minecraft and Tekkit

Had a LAN night with a friend on the weekend, and we played some Minecraft survival. While playing, we talked a lot about our first experiences in the game. He brought up that he had noticed a lot of people felt the people working on Minecraft had "ruined the game". Having had a few days to think about it, there is some truth to that from my point of view. Minecraft was always about building incredible things for me, not finding dungeons and killing mobs. Those experiences came from trying to get materials to build my incredible things. Redstone, pistons and rails gave me near endless enjoyment. The enchanting and "The End" never really made sense to me. The game certainly isn't ruined however, as you can completely ignore those parts of the game if you wish, but I can't help but wonder if it was the direction Notch had intended to take Minecraft.

Tekkit on the other hand, is exactly what I love about the Minecraft style of game. Building crazy machine setups, coming up with solutions to problems that you face and nuclear freaking reactors. Sign me up for more of that.

Saints Row IV... again

Sigh... so in the last Random Ramblings I pointed out that Saints Row IV seems to be well on its way to being the most controversial Aussie release of 2013. Since then, it's been banned... again. That document simply says it was banned due to real drugs being depicted as rewards and incentives. Yet again the Australian Classification Review Board shows just how little they understand video gamers. We aren't children. I'm 24 and most of my gaming friends are in their twenties, although I have a few who are older than that. We are responsible adults who make informed choices about our entertainment.

The whole point of having a restricted rating is to prevent children from accessing the material. These games are no longer to be aimed at children. So, if I can watch someone get killed by someone who is under the influence of drugs on television (I'm looking at you Underbelly), why is it that I cannot play a game that is decidedly tongue in cheek? Because the game has "alien narcotics"? That's as hypocritical as you can get there ACRB. Not that I should be surprised.

EDIT: So it seems that the aforementioned Low Violence Version of SR4 is still up on Steam. I'll keep you posted on what has changed as I find information on it. Also GTA5 has passed the ACRB... hypocritical as it seems, the drug use in the game has been deemed ok.

EDIT 2: The low violence version has passed, with the mission containing the alien narcotics taken out. The downside to this is that SR4 cannot be played in co-op with anyone outside of Australia. Oh well, good with the bad I guess.

The Mighty Quest for Failed Monetization

On to happier news, Ubisoft, the developer of The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, have announced that a whole bunch of changes to the in game store will be rolled back. What was the issue? Essentially any item in the game could be bought for either the in game currency gold, or Blings purchased for real money. How did this affect the game? In TMQfEP you build your own dungeon that can be raided by other players, and then you can go and raid another players dungeon. If someone with a lot of real world cash wanted, they could simply buy the best items for their dungeon, skewing the power of the game to those who were willing to drop real world money (the very definition of Pay to Win). Many complaints were made, with a major part being played by this video by TotalBiscuit. All in all, at least Ubisoft knows when to stop fighting a losing battle.

And that's all this week folks. As always:

GAME ON!

Random Ramblings #3

Its back! Join me for some more Random Ramblings!

Steam Summer Sale

That picture pretty much describes every Steam sale for me. Valve just knows how to make money out of us PC gamers. This sale has been pretty good for me so far. I picked up some games I've been meaning to get like Dishonored's DLC, Civilization V and FTL.

Saints Row IV

Looks like this years "most controversial Australian release award" has to go to Saints Row IV. First of all it was banned, despite the R18+ rating now being a thing here in Aus. Then a "Low Violence" version made its way onto Steam for preorder in Australia. Finally it seems Deep Silver Volition want some more money, as they have already announced the first DLC pack for the game... which isn't even out yet. Really Volition? I mean sure it's not day one DLC, but is day 45 DLC any better?

Homeworld Remakes

Hear that? That's the sound of thousands of Homeworld fanboys all screaming in delight. Gearbox software recently announced that they would be remaking Relic classics Homeworld and Homeworld 2 in HD. HW2 has been one of my favorite games for years and if the number of modders still working on the game is anything to go by, it's a community favorite too.

However, it's not all roses and exploding ships. Gearbox, who are responsible for the hit Borderlands series, were also involved with the colossal failures Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever. For a fan of Homeworld, it's scary to hear that a franchise you love is being taken over by someone who has butchered other loved franchises in the past. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Eve Online

Not a whole lot of news from me about Eve at the moment. The Alliance Tournament is going on now, and RvB won their match. That's really all I care about from the tournament at this stage.

There was a funny post on the forums where someone tried to call out Malcanis for telling someone they are bad. Malcanis was telling someone to stop whining about being caught out by the very well known Market Trading scam. A little lesson for you. When you are playing a game that uses a marketing tagline of "Be the villain" then trying to white knight for someone probably won't go down particularly well with the community. Then to cap off an already funny thread, Frying Doom dropped in to add his trademark skewed logic to the discussion about the whitepaper. That's right. Doom is back. Missed you buddy, and don't disappear for so long next time.

And that's all the news and random comments I have at the moment. As always folks.

GAME ON!

EDIT: Just as a small aside, you should all totally go and watch the Alliance Tournament at http://www.twitch.tv/ccp

World of Warcraft

So... yeah...

After years of resistance and like a teen at a party, I finally caved to peer pressure. But it wasn't drugs or alcohol I succumbed to. It was World of Warcraft. Blizzard recently reduced the price from $70 down to $30 and I just had to take them up on the deal.

I've mentioned WoW here before, in my post about Sandbox vs Themepark MMOs and I wasn't particularly kind about the grind in the game. However there is something that I didn't count on to hold me in. Lore. Last time I tried WoW, I took no notice of the lore in the quests. I was simply going to a spot, killing x amount of enemies, getting x amount of items, killing a boss and then repeating. This time however, I've dove headfirst into the lore of Warcraft. I loved the Warcraft RTS games as a kid, and Blizzard has done an astounding job of taking someone like me, putting hooks into my flesh and dragging me back into that universe.

It's taken me 2 and half weeks to get to 90, which I found reasonably easy to do. There have been some moments where I thought I might never make it, but there was always something to keep me entertained. A few of my friends have been playing pretty much since WoWs release back in 2004, and talking to them while running the old raids and dungeons has shown me just how much WoW has changed.

All in all, my initial thoughts about WoW have changed drastically (as most uninformed views tend to). It's no Eve in terms of gameplay, but there is more than enough content to keep me interested for a while at least. Soloing old raids has really gripped my interest, especially Molten Core. I really don't know what it is about that place, but I actually look forward to being able to go back there each week. Perhaps that too will change in time, and I will need new and more exciting things to do. But for now, its time to try and get my hands on Sulfuras... again...

As always,

GAME ON!

SWTOR in Australia

At the beginning of this month, BioWare announced that they would be turning off the Asia Pacific servers for Star Wars The Old Republic, and giving all those who play on those servers a free transfer to a North American server of their choice. It's been a long time coming, and seems to indicate that BioWare is trying to cut the costs of running servers for a game that has been slowly losing interest among the MMO community. So for all of us Australian gamers, what went wrong?

To start with TOR was delayed for release in Australia by BioWare. The rest of the world got the game on December 20 2011, over 3 months before Australians got the chance to purchase the game (1 March 2012). As we have seen with Microsoft's recent 180 with the XB1 (you can now game offline and it is region free), fans of a certain thing hate to get it released later than anyone else. Add to this the idea that gamers often have friends overseas who they play with and you have a recipe for disgruntled gamers who can't join mates on launch day, leaving them to play catch up. Throw in the fact that TOR was one of the most hyped releases of 2011 and you have downright rage from some fans.

Then there was the end game content. I don't think BioWare truly understood just how fast some people reach end game in MMOs. I personally have always been one of the type to take the time to see the sights in a game, levelling slowly, but I have a certain friend (you know who you are) who usually hits max level in games a heck of a lot faster than I ever could. His reports of the early end game? Bland, boredom and lack of any real content. As BioWare had chosen to completely voice act everything in the MMO, they also needed time to add more end game content, something that they struggled to do at first.

A report in April 2012 revealed that the MMO had likely dropped from 1.7 million subs to 1.25 million, as people were hitting the end game and finding a distinct lack of things to do. A few days later, and BioWare deployed the Rakghoul Plague event in an attempt to keep players logging in as peak concurrent user numbers dropped.

Finally there was the announcement of TOR going free to play in late July 2012. Usually a move that sets alarm bells off in my head, going free to play signaled that BioWare wasn't happy with how many people had remained subscribed and wanted to entice more people to play the game. Interestingly they didn't restrict the most highly rated part of the game, the fully voice acted story line of the character you play, opting to rely on cosmetic item sales and an optional subscription.

It has been an extremely rocky path for SWTOR, going from one of the most hyped games of 2011 to one of the fastest to lose subscriber numbers, culminating in going to free to play. Let's hope that other MMO developers learn from the mistakes of SWTOR, especially in the Australian market.

As always,
GAME ON!

Star Wars: Battlefront

So at E3 this video was shown:

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to dance around like a fanboy.

GAME ON!

Random Ramblings #2

That's right folks, its time for another Random Ramblings! To start off today, we have something to do with Eve.

Eve's New Gatejump Animation

Eve Online's latest expansion Odyssey was released this week and one of the changes included was a very slick new gatejump animation. It completely removed the black screen and loading bar that we have had for the last ten years, replacing it with something that looks like the animation used in Stargate. Well as with any changes to Eve, some people got mad about it and a forum thread was made. Actually several forum threads, with complaints ranging from the obvious motion sickness, to the ridiculous lagging when multiboxing complaint. I can only feel for the devs at CCP for this one, as I was one of the people cheering in my room watching the fanfest stream when they announced it. Actually it reminds me of this:

xkcd Comic. Written and illustrated Randall Monroe

Yep no matter the change, there is always going to be someone demanding that you turn back on a redundant option.

Receiver

I had seen a couple of videos about this little game by Wolfire Games, so I picked it up on Steam. As someone who has always liked firearms in real life and constantly had arguments with less informed people who think games teach you how to operate them, I might have to eat my words after this game has come out. There are 3 guns at this point: the Glock 17, Colt M1911, and a revolver of some sort, all well designed and pretty close to their real life counterparts. 

As far as gameplay goes, the actual operation of the guns is almost perfect. Simple things like manipulating the slide to see how many bullets are inside, or to empty the clip without firing, feel just like the real thing. If you have any interest in firearms, I'd recommend picking it up to see what operating a handgun is really like. If you play Call of Duty or Battlefield, definitely give it a go to see what you would actually have to do to get those pistol kills in game. Plus for $5, you can experience some storytelling that I found very unique.

X-Box One

So I am going to break my normal focus on PC games to talk a little about the X-Box One. As I have mentioned in the past, I do play games from time to time on my 360, usually just single player games that I don't need to really focus on. Part of this means that I don't have it hooked up to the internet. Microsoft recently released this article to highlight the online features of the XB1. In particular something that we kind of already knew was highlighted.

With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection, but you can still watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies. 

So there it is... We now need to "phone home" every 24 hours to keep gaming, otherwise the console becomes a very expensive Blue-Ray player or TV decoder. Now I realise that this is all part of Microsofts new online media hub vision for the One, but is this really necessary? Why couldn't it be once a week, or even once a month?

Part of the reason that I don't want to be always online with this device is the way they handle the Skype integration. If I am at the PC then I am more than willing to be social, but when I am playing on my console, I don't want to be interrupted by friends or family. I want to play a game on my own, or with the friend who is sitting next to me.

Another worrying thing is an article where Microsoft clearly state they won't be focusing on "traditional desktop PC games." So does this mean that we might not be seeing anything actually new from the Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, Halo (for PC) and Gears of Wars (also for PC) franchises anytime soon? At this point things aren't looking good, but only time will tell.

And that concludes the second Random Ramblings. As always:

GAME ON!

Entitlement in Gaming

Eve was down over the weekend. Not CCP's fault; they were the victims of a DDOS attack by a currently unknown group. CCP also found a vulnerability that that allowed the person access to some back end functions of the server, which they confirmed had no connection to any of the personal information of players.

Many of us had an Odyssey outside on the weekend.

Soon after the website services were restored, the forums were ablaze with people doing one of two things: demanding something from CCP to compensate for the downtime, or encouraging CCP to not give the players anything (the logic being that maybe people will try to DDOS the server more often so as to get free stuff). I personally didn't care, and the additional 50,000 skill points we were eventually given were used immediately to save some time on Marketing V. But during the time I spent of the forums, I saw the word "entitlement" being thrown around a lot.

Entitlement gets thrown around an awful lot in the gaming industry, by players, developers and publishers. Unfortunately it seems to have become somewhat of a meme response when someone is complaining about anything at all in a game. But the truth is, the meaning of the word has been lost because of this usage as a derogatory term. The dictionary definition of entitlement is a guarantee that you will get benefits based on a contract or law. There is also a sense of entitlement that involves believing that you deserve a benefit without a law or principle to back your stand up.

Gamer entitlement is something that developers like to throw around a lot to describe any discontent or complaints about their game. The Mass Effect 3 ending rage showed that certain people within the industry are very disconnected from what gamers expect from developers regarding promises. When BioWare touted that their game would feature a storyline where choices the player made would influence the ending, but actually involved an A, B or C choice, they showed just how much they didn't care about what people thought. Then when players complained, they threw the "Oh you're just entitled" argument back at them.

It's not entitlement to ask for a certain level of quality from a developer in a game. If a car company released a car that was faulty from factory, it's certainly wouldn't be called entitlement to demand that it is repaired at no cost. So why is it that developers and publishers seem to think that it's fine to do this? Perhaps they are trying to lessen the backlash they get for day 1 DLC. Or maybe they simply don't like criticism of their games.

Then you come to the more prevalent type of entitlement among gamers, particularly MMO players. The entitlement where they say, "I am paying for this game, so my character or class should be buffed, the content should be easier, rewards better, etc." In my opinion, this is the type of entitlement that has slowly crept into Eve, where you will see two different players arguing completely opposite points because they play in different areas. Miners demanding that they be able to mine without fear of ganks, and gankers demanding that they be able to gank. In these cases developers have to walk a fine line. I can only imagine how hard it is to find that balance between easy and hard, with the right rewards for each.

In conclusion, if you feel that you deserve something in a game, run it through a filter first. Ask yourself exactly why you want this, and how it would affect the rest of the game. If it passes all the checks, then post/petition/email and see what others think. But posting a rage post is a good way for people like me to come and shut you down. I will always listen to a well reasoned and constructed argument and usually accept whatever they have to say, and then post constructively. Whine and rage, and most people like me will tell you where to go with your idea.

As always,

GAME ON!

Gameplay

I was having a conversation with a friend who I haven't talked to for a while. As usually happens when gaming buddies talk, we eventually got to what games we had been playing recently. My list went something like this: Eve, Kerbal Space Program, Minecraft, Game Dev Tycoon, and Farcry 3. I have played a little bit of Guild Wars 2 and other games, but those games are the ones I spent the most time on. He asked me why I was spending so much time on games with, and I quote, "Terrible graphics?" My answer came down to one thing: Gameplay.

With the exception of Eve, all of those games have good concepts for gameplay. Game Dev Tycoon is probably the weakest of the lot, but the concept is strong and with some work it could be an amazing game. You already know what I think about Kerbal Space Program (I LOVE IT!). Minecraft has been a favorite of mine since beta 1.2, and the Tekkit mod pack for it absolutely rekindled my love for it last year. And as the only AAA high graphical fidelity game on the list, Farcry 3 just has some of the best gun play of any shooter that I have played.

The truth is I have always preferred games with good gameplay over the latest and greatest in graphics. That's why the only games in the Call of Duty series I have ever owned are CoD4 and MW3, and I refuse to play Battlefield 3. They simply haven't made any huge in roads on the gameplay. Games like AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, League of Legends and FTL just interest me way more. They make me want to keep playing them, regardless of what they look like.

Minecraft is the poster child for this. From a technical standpoint, the game looks terrible. However from an aesthetic standpoint, Minecraft nails it. The gameplay is interesting, but not overly complicated. It gives you options in how you want to play. With the addition of hardcore mode, Minecraft also got a way to make loss matter (and that's a draw to anyone who plays a game like Eve). If the gameplay in Minecraft was terrible, it wouldn't be half as successful as it is and Notch wouldn't be a millionaire.

At the end of the day, if a game has good gameplay it fast becomes a classic. It becomes something we will talk about as being one of the defining games of this time, much like Pacman, Mario, Sonic, Metroid, Doom, Wolfenstein, Command and Conquer, Age of Empires and countless others have been in the past. I just hope that more and more developers will realise this and continue to focus on the meat of a game: gameplay.

As always:

GAME ON!

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Last weekend I picked up a copy of Injustice: Gods Among Us, a fighting game set in the DC Comics universe. I had been excited about the game for a while, as I am a huge fan of the DC characters and the last DC vs Mortal Combat game was fantastic. Now this games single player has a short storyline and the following impressions of the game (not a review) will contain spoilers. If you are worried about the story in this game, this post won't be for you.

The story line for the game takes place in an alternate reality, with the majority of the game set here. Superman is driven mad with rage after the Joker tricks him into killing Lois Lane, along with their unborn child. He flat out murders the Joker in front of Batman. Fast forward and Superman has taken over the world, strong arming the other heroes and some villains into following him with a mixture of fear and bribes. Only Batman has remained, and he is leading the resistance against Superman, while being constantly hunted. There are parts of the story that I found truly interesting, and one scene where Superman flat out murders Captain Marvel in front of the rest of the 'heroes' gave me goosebumps. However as this is a fighting game, the story takes a backseat to the game play.

Injustice nails the game play for the most part. Combos are fun to pull off and knocking people around the levels can be very satisfying. The one biggest flaw I can see is the super move combos literally involve pulling the two triggers at the same time. There is no massive combo to actually pull it off which can leave them feeling a bit cheap at times. In multiplayer the use of moves that knock you around can spell the end of a game, and facing someone who knows how to chain properly can mean you are just watching your character get slapped all around the level.

If you like the DC comics universe then Injustice is a no brainer, as you will enjoy seeing and playing with all of the characters. If you aren't a fan of the comics then the game itself is a fun fighter, that has its flaws in places, but overall a solid experience.

Random Ramblings

Some pretty cool stuff has happened in gaming and technology this week and so I wanted to write a little about some of the things that interested me.

Greenheart Games Piracy Story

Unless you live under a rock or don't pay attention, you've heard about Game Dev Tycoon by now. The story itself has already been all over the place, but the general idea of it is that the developers of the game uploaded a "cracked" copy of the game to a well known torrent site at the same time that they released the game. They were tracking the downloads of it and at the time of the stories hitting over 93% of the copies out there were the pirated copies.

What those who pirated the game didn't know was this version was slightly different to the actual bought version. You could play the game until a point where a message popped up that looked like this:

Irony... Sweet sweet irony. Credit to Edge Online

That's right, the pirated game made the games you made get pirated (ouch my head). Soon after threads on many forums popped up filled with so much irony that it really hurts to read. Some selections below:

"Guys, I reached some point where if I make a decent game with a score 9-10, it gets pirated and I can't make any profit ... is there some way to avoid that? ... There's no point inventing a new engine because the revolutionary game made out of it will get pirated and I will not be able to cover my expenses,"

"Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me! ... not fair."

 Some other pirates asked if they were able to "research DRM" to protect their games. And all of this over an $8 game. There is no excuse for not paying less than a meal at McDonalds to play a good game. At the end of the day however, I can see this helping Greenheart Games with sales and publicity of their game. I will be buying it, and all because of some piracy within piracy.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

Made by Tharanon

The latest Steam survey popped up for me today and I was very interested to see the results. It seems that nVidia still has the majority share in video cards with 52% of the market. ATI cards make up 33% of the market with the rest being Intel. Something that I sort of always knew but didn't realise was just how much of the processor market Intel holds (73%). The rest of it is pretty standard, but worth a look.

Anyway that ends the Random Ramblings, I'll probably be doing this style of post a little more.

GAME ON!

Pokemon (LOL!)

Sometimes I hate to admit it but I absolutely love Pokemon. In gamer circles this isn't uncommon as a lot of us grew up with the Pokemon games, however outside of those circles it's usually looked at like a kids game and that we should have left that behind in primary school. Try as I might however, I cannot give them up. I stop playing for long, long periods of time and then the bug bites again and I load up a game and start playing.

My most recent relapse has seen me playing the remake of Pokemon Red: Pokemon FireRed. It's been a fantastic nostalgia trip to go back and re-experience the wonders that the original games brought. From picking Charmander as my starter and then struggling with the first two gym leaders, to finally defeating the Elite Four and then pounding Blue's face into the dirt, it has gotten me thinking about what makes those games so good.

So far the only things besides nostalgia I can think of is the sense of adventure the original games gave you. You were going out on a journey that you were in total control over. You get to see and interact with amazing creatures, then deal with conflicts all along the way. The other major pull to the game (and this is something I only realised when I started getting interested in truly complex games) is the freedom to build your team of Pokemon how you choose. If you want to have all of one type, you can. If you want to focus on one single Pokemon and have him become the strongest you possibly can get him to, you can. Or if you want to build a team of well balanced and complementary Pokemon, you can.

Pokemon was a good beginning into the world of choice based games, where the choice you make about how you are going to face something can majorly hurt or benefit you down the line. Back when I was first playing Pokemon Blue I actually used to play the game much the same way that the current world record speed run holder for Pokemon Blue does. I would pick Squirtle and just level him completely. No other Pokemon were caught except for HM 'Slaves' who would only be used to teach the HM moves. I didn't do it anywhere near as fast as him (1 hour 57minutes - really? What the heck dude?) but the idea was the same: get to the end ASAP! To everyone else that was playing at the time it was a terrible idea to do that, and they all spent hours on end training their Pokemon up.

The thought that a game released back in 1998 gave so much freedom of choice, when a fair chunk of games  released today might as well be on rails shooters from the arcade boggles my mind. So to all the game devs out there, take a look at Pokemon and maybe learn a lesson from it. If a game that is fifteen years old can give me choices why can't yours?

As always, GAME ON!

The Carebear Mentality

Over the weekend, Burn Jita 2 has been in full swing in Eve with the current reported figures sitting at 128 freighters, 12 jump freighters and over 520 billion isk in assets destroyed. There have been the usual threads on the forums about how Goonswarm is ruining the game, that they are bad and general rage about the situation. But in my time on the forums this weekend, one thread popped up that caught my eye.

The thread was called A letter to CCP - Please proof read and make any suggestions.
Go and read the original post right up until the part where he starts listing responses. I'll wait...

Ok back? Welcome back.

This thread represents everything wrong with the so called 'carebear' mentality. The reason I throw in the word mentality in there is because it is possible to do everything that Asith does without feeling that losing something in high sec is wrong. How do I know that is possible? Because what Asith does is almost exactly what I do in the game.

I am what the average null sec player would call a 'carebear'. I rarely leave highsec space, I make almost all of my ISK trading, I don't PVP that often and my killboard has more losses than kills. Asith and I share the same profession of flying big freighters (although I wouldn't buy a Rhea for highsec). I have lost ships in highsec full of gear to suicide gankers.

Where Asith and I are different however, is the reaction to what happened and our viewpoint on the game. When I lost a Badger with almost a billion isk worth of faction ammo to sell, I logged out of the game for an hour to calm my nerves and make sure I didn't do anything rash. I then logged back in, convo'd the pilot who killed me and asked what I did wrong. Asith did lose considerably more than me, but he still rage posted a thread about how CCP's game mechanics are flawed.

His reasoning is that the cap in Jita is there because the server cannot handle demand. He is right of course. The cap is to prevent Jita from crashing out, as it is the highest populated system of any in the game. But how did he get stuck on the gate? He auto piloted. He put 8 billion isk worth on auto pilot and left the computer to go and make dinner. Even if burn Jita wasn't on at the time, he was running a risk of being ganked anyway.

He then tries to say that the fault lies with CCP because if Jita was full it must be their fault. However he shows that he knows nothing about Burn Jita happening by saying that Goonswarm and TEST took advantage of the cap. When it is pointed out to him that it is common knowledge that Burn Jita is on he says that he doesn't come onto the forums. Which is fine. I mean the majority of the player base doesn't come on the forums. But even my little corp and alliance sent out mails to all members saying that Burn Jita was happening. If I didn't know before that, then I was informed by my corp. He says his main isn't involved in high sec, so what corp is it that didn't even bother to warn their members?

However my favorite part of this post is where he completely fails to understand what CONCORD is there to do. He says that they don't kill criminal fleets (which they don't, that's faction police) in 1.0 space and that he thinks that makes no sense based on the story of Eve. Well Asith that's a little wrong. In the Eve lore CONCORD are there to allow the different empires to work out their differences peacefully. They have slowly added more and more regulations that everyone must abide by, but they do not do anything until a regulation is breached.

But story aside, the CONCORD mechanics for suicide ganking are pretty easy. If you attack another player you get killed by CONCORD. If you can kill the other player before CONCORD kills you, good job you got a kill. Asith was killed by 113 people all of whom died at CONCORD's hand. That is the mechanic working as intended.

Asith's mentality is what people dislike about carebears so much. To him it makes sense that highsec should be perfectly safe and that he should be reimbursed for his loss. But to me I see another person who was uninformed, and therefore unprepared for what was ahead. I see a person who was never cut out for Eve, despite the fact that he has been playing since 2006. I see someone who has the carebear mentality.

GAME ON.

Australian Gamers vs Australian Game Prices

If you live in Australia, that title probably just struck a nerve. For as long as I have taken an interest in gaming around the world, it has surprised me that Australia gets gouged constantly on pricing for games. When I started buying games myself (not when I would beg my parents to buy them for me) it wasn't uncommon to pay AU$110 for a new release title. Now the price gap has dropped ever so slightly, however it is still there. To give an example, let's look at the price of recent AAA title Bioshock Infinite (referred to from here on as BI).

Sometimes it feels cheaper to just burn all the money...
Maybe the Joker had it right.

On Amazon.com you can buy BI for $US59.96. At the exchange rate at the time of writing this would be around AU$57. Gamestop as a brick and mortar retailer has it at US$59.99 Now lets look at the major brick and mortar retailers here in Australia. EB Games (who for all intents are purposes are Gamestop Australia) are selling BI for AU$78, or around US$82. JB Hi-Fi aren't any better (AU$79). Steam is the best value for Australians (but of course only on PC, if you use a console you are pretty much having to pay Australian retail not matter what), with it listed at the same price as Amazon and Gamestop in US$. That isn't uncommon with Steam as Valve tends to treat Australia to the same prices as the US, unless the games publisher chooses otherwise.

It seems that for boxed copies of the games, Australians are always going to be paying higher prices. However even when certain companies release digital versions of their games they may still jack up the price for Australia. To give a recent example, SimCity was released across the world on EA's Origin service as a purely digital product. No postage or shipping costs. Just click buy and download, no matter where you are in the world. This link is for the US, and this link is for Australia. In both the standard and 'digital deluxe' versions, the prices are jacked up an additional $20 for the Australian version. Why does this happen to Australian gamers? The costs to EA for the product have not increased simply because the download is going to an Australian IP address. It's not like they need to pay to ship a CD to Australia for the customer to play. The same files are up on Origin servers for the US customers as the Australian ones. There is no reason for this to happen.

While doing my research for this post, I came across this Kotaku article where the Australian Government has summonsed major IT companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Adobe to have them explain why their prices here in Australia are, according to the article, "up to 60% higher than in the US." This may not be about video games directly but it is part of the issue.

“While television and computer prices fell 14 per cent according the to the latest Consumer Price Index Figures, there’s still a long way to go – with some estimates suggesting that Australian prices are up to 60 per cent higher than the US.

“Given the widespread use of IT across businesses and the community, the prices paid for hardware and software can have a major commercial and economic impact.

But how is it that game publishers can get away with the pricing here in Australia to begin with? A simple idea called Parallel Import Restrictions (PIR). Essentially this is supposed to protect IP owners from people who buy items cheaper overseas and importing them for sale in Australia (Parallel Importing). A good non video game example of this is books. Brick and mortar retailers of books are usually more expensive than online retailers such as Amazon.com. The restrictions don't apply to someone buying the book for themselves, but it does for people who want to then on sell them in a store. A retailer must buy from the IP owner or legal wholesaler.

In the games industry this means that publishers can legally raise prices in Australia to our wholesalers, and they cannot go elsewhere to source the games, even though the price they may be getting charged is the same as, say US retail price. Indeed in my time working for an electrical store that sold games, our cost price from a wholesaler was usually a few dollars more than US retail which would support this theory. Selling a game at $60 may well be selling at cost for most, if not all brick and mortar establishments in Australia. There is also the issue of local taxes, such as GST for Australia, the higher base employment costs and the costs of getting a game rated here in Australia (particularly before we got our R18+ rating). These are taxes, employment laws and rating laws that the local publishers have to comply with, regardless of where the product was produced.

 

Judge used legal speak. It's SUPER EFFECTIVE!
"Yes! Take that gamers!"

To conclude, while this is a complex issue, I truly believe that in the case of brick and mortar retailers there is nothing they can do unless the publishers reduce the local costs of games. However in the case of digital distribution in cases like SimCity on Origin, there is absolutely no reason for the price increase. Digital products aren't subject to PIR laws when going to the end user. They don't have any of the local taxes applied to them and certainly they would only in rare cases have local employment costs added on. It is my opinion that these services shouldn't be supported until the prices are the same for Australia as the US. There is no reason for the inequality here.

If you did get to the end of this without a headache, I salute you, and as always GAME ON!