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!

Sandbox vs Themepark

So recently I've lost a fair bit of time playing Guild Wars 2. And when I say lost, I mean the 'I have no idea where the previous 5 hours went' kind of lost. As far as MMOs go it's got to be my second favorite behind Eve. I think the biggest reason for this isn't so much the game, it's more to do with the fact that my real life friends are playing it. In truth this is the first so called Themepark MMO that I have ever played to max level (and on two characters no less), and the first one that has captured my interests for more than a week. I played World of Warcraft for a little bit, but found the grind so boring that I had to quit very quickly.

However Eve has been a fixture in my life since 2009, and although I have let my account subscription lapse for a time due to real life things, I don't see it going away in my life any time soon. The reason? Well as far I am concerned, it's choice that keeps me coming back. Games like WoW and to some extent GW2 say go here and do this that way. Games like Eve say you can go here, here or here, you can do this, this or that and you can do any mixture in between. It is a true sandbox.

The point of Sandbox MMOs is the so called emergent gameplay. This is gameplay that is not scripted and completely player driven. Eve is essentially all about emergent gameplay as even a short look at some of the stories coming from the Eve news sites (Eve News 24 and TheMittani.com). Almost everything that is worth reporting has happened between players, or corporations and alliances of players. There might be one or two articles that are on the page about events (such as the recent Battle for Caldari Prime event) but the overwhelming majority is about some form of player emergent gameplay.

From a personal viewpoint the sandbox works well for me as I enjoy setting my own goal in a game and working toward it. I don't like being told this is the optimum way to do something so you have to do it that way. Guild Wars 2 handles this well by allowing you to level by crafting, exploration, questing or even just straight PVP. Eve basically sets the bar for freedom by throwing you into a cold harsh world and saying good luck, go and survive.

I personally don't want my hand held by a game, I want to create my own path and write my own story in that universe. It makes sense to me that people like The Mittani and James 315 polarize communities like Eve, as that is the backbone of player driven emergent gameplay. They create conflict something every healthy sandbox needs. They are the content creators in these games.

Anyway, thats enough for the time being. Time to go back to getting that GW2 map to 100%.