In perspective: Steam Early Access
What you’ve heard
So now we are supposed to pay FULL PRICE for games that are not even finished yet and test buggy beta builds for free? You would have to be the stupidest person alive to fall for this! It’s obviously just Steam trying to grab a quick buck on projects that are so doomed to fail they can’t even afford to finish the development cycle. What a joke! Who would EVER do this? Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go pre-purchase INJUSTICE and fund a project on Kickstarter.
In Reality
It’s not really a great time to be a gamer. In the good old days we had a very simple system where we could give publishers money for a cartridge that sat on the store shelf, and you went home and popped it in your system to play. Then one day GameStop decided it was sick of Wal-Mart making money off video games while Activision decided it was sick of people not buying its shitty games. A brilliant plan was launched: pre-order a few choice Activision games before anyone knew they were shitty, and get beta access to Call of Duty as “a pre-order bonus” ... but only if you bought it at GameStop. Although this likely wasn’t the first ever example of this, it was one of the game changers, and from this point on every major release became a game of one-upmanship with Wal-Mart and GameStop securing deals for exclusive in-game bonuses if you pre-order the game before its release at their location. Still, pre-orders were not a horrible system for the gamer. They were small, generally $10 to $20, and they could be refunded. Things didn’t totally go to hell until Amazon came along and did what Amazon does; ruin everything for everyone.
Amazon has a vested interest in you not wanting a boxed game, as shipping is not cheap. They started attaching pre-order bonuses exclusively with digital copies of the game. Your digital pre-order wasn’t refundable, so Amazon quickly moved to a system of pre-purchase; give us the FULL selling price today and buy the digital copy, which will unlock when the game is released. Amazingly Wal-Mart and GameStop followed suit, offering the option to fully pay for your physical game before it was released (although still offering the more traditional pre-order option as well). Today, this practice is the standard, offered by EA through Origin, Steam, Ubisoft through Uplay, and by all major retailers.
By the time we got Kickstarter, we just didn’t know any better. We were already so used to paying for games before they came out that we didn’t notice that Kickstarter wasn’t even asking us to pay for something; it was asking us to give people money in the hopes there might be something to buy one day. Kickstarter offers no guarantee of a finished project and even when sold as “for $20, you get a copy of this game when it is released” the guys making that game are in no way obligated to release it. As anyone who backed “Haunts: The Manse Macabre” can tell you, sometimes all you get for your money is the developer telling you they were stupid to try and make the game in the first place. No refunds.
We are already paying for games before we get them and have been for years.
So what’s the deal?
Hey, even when everyone is already getting screwed, it’s disappointing to see someone jump on the screwing us band wagon, so the Steam Early Access announcement is getting a lot of negative press. However, it really shouldn't be, if for no other reason than that Steam has been doing pre-purchase for years. If you believe Gabe (and you have no reason not to, seeing as the man has always been true to his word) he’s using it to try and pressure developers who are already getting your money long before the game is released to give you something for that money right away. This isn’t new; the pre-order bonus for Fable 3 and Bioshock 3 both included mini-games that could be played immediately and were extremely successful. This isn’t altruism obviously; Steam has a vested interest in people being online playing Steam games seeing as they use the service to advertise upcoming releases and sales, and the first time a developer misses a release window with a game that the masses pre-purchased you can bet Steam will be the only poor suckers offering anyone refunds. (Oh wait, that already happened with “Stick of Truth.”). If the players already have a build to play, next time this happens they can get away from being asked for refunds.
Early Access is currently only supporting a small number of independent developers who would agree to the terms, and the games you’re going to find in the program are hardly beta quality. They are fully playable games missing the last bits of refinement that go into video games (traditionally menus, GUI, and sound). I would encourage anyone to check it out.
Monday 25 March 2013
Friday 22 March 2013
Should be Playing - Neverwinter Nights
With the second beta weekend for Neverwinter coming up (well, the 3rd … but the second I have an invite to and that’s all that counts) I’m going to spend the next two weeks talking about this game which, as a licensed D&D property, should be near and dear to all our hearts. We start with the game’s colorful history.
Neverwinter Nights is arguably the first ever graphical MMORPG, with the only real argument against coming from saying that no one thought to call it that at the time so it doesn’t count. Its debut on AOL in 1991 predated Sierra's release of “the Realm”, widely considered the first graphical MMO and the game that coined the phrase “massively multiplayer”, by 5 years. The game was re-released in 2002 by Bioware, got a sequel in 2006 from Obsidian, and a side-quel in 2008 in the form of the Storms of Zehir. SOZ was marketed as an expansion but used a completely new engine and updated game play and was sold as a standalone game because Wizards of the Coast would not allow a new game to be published using the 3rd edition rule sets, but had already agreed to up to 3 expansions to NW2. This point becomes important! Each game released to critical and commercial success and it was clear there was more to come.
Obsidian is a top tier studio who are used to getting the projects they want, so when approached to do a 3rd installment they refused unless given creative control of the project, which included the latitude to ignore the 4th edition rule set and make the game in the player preferred 3.5 edition. This isn’t due to some D&D loyalty and was explained by the studios as 4.0 simply lacking the charter customization and options that are the hallmark of Obsidian games. Bioware had no interest as they were involved in a extremely high profile licensed MMO already (which we later discovered to be SW:TOR). Although most of the information from this point on is sketchy at best, the time line that can be best pieced together is something like this:
Obsidian got the green light for the project as a 3.5 edition game in 2008, around the time of 4th edition's less than stellar release. Work on the project was halted around 2009 when Wizards of the Coast R&D started working on 5th edition, presumably because 5th edition very closely resembled 3.5 and would allow for the customization Obsidian was looking for and release a game on a edition now twice removed was not a great idea. This is about the time the world’s economy went to hell. With Wizards hard up for cash the release window for 5.0 was moved from 2011 to 2014, and the idea of funding a game that wouldn’t be released for years was no longer attractive. Obsidian’s involvement was ended, and the game was passed to Cryptic Studios, the developer that brought us City of Heroes. The game was officially announced in August 2010 as “Neverwinter” and quickly disappeared completely until it was shown in a surprisingly late stage of development at E3 2012. We learned it was in fact an MMO, had been in limited beta for almost a year, and was getting a 2013 release.
My first impressions of the game are positive, although it’s not going to be a blockbuster. What’s most exciting to me is the game's focus on the D&D feel and the focus on the story of the world's transition from 3rd edition to 4th edition, the only part of 4th edition that didn’t suck (and was in fact some of the best D&D stories written to date). From petitioning your god for extra xp and loot if you are following their philosophy correctly, to one of the first adventures sending you to a pub followed by a sewer, to the detail put into recreating the sword coast, this game simply feels D&D in spite of the very un-D&D 4th edition rules set. With the day event, I’ll only really have time to play again on Sunday, but look forward to a lot more details next week.
Part 2 - Updated March 29
NeverWinter allows players to create their own content using a toolset called the Foundry. Players can run this custom content whenever they want, with loot and experience generated by the system based on the difficulty of the content. The Foundry is an extremely refined toolset, already used in City of Heroes and Star Trek Online, and allows for complex scenarios, triggered events, variable win conditions, and conversation trees. To me, this is the defining feature of NeverWinter ... I'm more than willing to put up with imperfect game play to be a GM, or experience content that my friends produce for me. This is the core of the D&D system, and the fact that it will be preserved is extremely exciting. More so, given that NeverWinter is completely free to play, I can invite my friends on the adventures I create without them needing to make a financial commitment.
The combat and systems in NeverWinter are great. Combat is enjoyable and fast paced, you feel powerful as combat uses the same "epic combat" system of SW:TOR, pitting you against multiple opponents in each encounter rather than the one on one MMO standard. Exploration is rewarded in the way of hidden chests or experience even in the most linear of adventures, a point lost to the modern MMO. The loot system uses the traditional D&D on "pluses", with +1 items being rare, +2 being more rare, and so on. It's a great touch!
Common to Cryptic games there are events and interactive stories abound. Every few hours a global message will inform players they will reserve bonus xp for joining in a PVE raid encounter, PVP, or doing a given set of story missions, sometimes unique to that event. This helps the game feel alive in a way I haven't felt in an MMO for a while.
On the negative side, NeverWinter looks like it should have been released in 2008, graphics wise (because...it should have been released in 2008). I'm amazed a new set of paint hasn't been tossed on by Cryptic, but at least the art style is amazing. They do everything they can to get as much as possible out of the low polygon count and grey/brown palette ... but there is only so much they can do. My biggest gripe about the game however is the lack of player customization and options. Currently there are only 5 playable classes and almost no way to make them your own. This doesn't represent D&D and is going to be a turn off to a large part of the target audience.
All and all, this is a game you need to try, or at least install so that when I start posting Raven themed adventures to the Foundry you'll be able to play them ;)
Neverwinter Nights is arguably the first ever graphical MMORPG, with the only real argument against coming from saying that no one thought to call it that at the time so it doesn’t count. Its debut on AOL in 1991 predated Sierra's release of “the Realm”, widely considered the first graphical MMO and the game that coined the phrase “massively multiplayer”, by 5 years. The game was re-released in 2002 by Bioware, got a sequel in 2006 from Obsidian, and a side-quel in 2008 in the form of the Storms of Zehir. SOZ was marketed as an expansion but used a completely new engine and updated game play and was sold as a standalone game because Wizards of the Coast would not allow a new game to be published using the 3rd edition rule sets, but had already agreed to up to 3 expansions to NW2. This point becomes important! Each game released to critical and commercial success and it was clear there was more to come.
Obsidian is a top tier studio who are used to getting the projects they want, so when approached to do a 3rd installment they refused unless given creative control of the project, which included the latitude to ignore the 4th edition rule set and make the game in the player preferred 3.5 edition. This isn’t due to some D&D loyalty and was explained by the studios as 4.0 simply lacking the charter customization and options that are the hallmark of Obsidian games. Bioware had no interest as they were involved in a extremely high profile licensed MMO already (which we later discovered to be SW:TOR). Although most of the information from this point on is sketchy at best, the time line that can be best pieced together is something like this:
Obsidian got the green light for the project as a 3.5 edition game in 2008, around the time of 4th edition's less than stellar release. Work on the project was halted around 2009 when Wizards of the Coast R&D started working on 5th edition, presumably because 5th edition very closely resembled 3.5 and would allow for the customization Obsidian was looking for and release a game on a edition now twice removed was not a great idea. This is about the time the world’s economy went to hell. With Wizards hard up for cash the release window for 5.0 was moved from 2011 to 2014, and the idea of funding a game that wouldn’t be released for years was no longer attractive. Obsidian’s involvement was ended, and the game was passed to Cryptic Studios, the developer that brought us City of Heroes. The game was officially announced in August 2010 as “Neverwinter” and quickly disappeared completely until it was shown in a surprisingly late stage of development at E3 2012. We learned it was in fact an MMO, had been in limited beta for almost a year, and was getting a 2013 release.
My first impressions of the game are positive, although it’s not going to be a blockbuster. What’s most exciting to me is the game's focus on the D&D feel and the focus on the story of the world's transition from 3rd edition to 4th edition, the only part of 4th edition that didn’t suck (and was in fact some of the best D&D stories written to date). From petitioning your god for extra xp and loot if you are following their philosophy correctly, to one of the first adventures sending you to a pub followed by a sewer, to the detail put into recreating the sword coast, this game simply feels D&D in spite of the very un-D&D 4th edition rules set. With the day event, I’ll only really have time to play again on Sunday, but look forward to a lot more details next week.
Part 2 - Updated March 29
NeverWinter allows players to create their own content using a toolset called the Foundry. Players can run this custom content whenever they want, with loot and experience generated by the system based on the difficulty of the content. The Foundry is an extremely refined toolset, already used in City of Heroes and Star Trek Online, and allows for complex scenarios, triggered events, variable win conditions, and conversation trees. To me, this is the defining feature of NeverWinter ... I'm more than willing to put up with imperfect game play to be a GM, or experience content that my friends produce for me. This is the core of the D&D system, and the fact that it will be preserved is extremely exciting. More so, given that NeverWinter is completely free to play, I can invite my friends on the adventures I create without them needing to make a financial commitment.
The combat and systems in NeverWinter are great. Combat is enjoyable and fast paced, you feel powerful as combat uses the same "epic combat" system of SW:TOR, pitting you against multiple opponents in each encounter rather than the one on one MMO standard. Exploration is rewarded in the way of hidden chests or experience even in the most linear of adventures, a point lost to the modern MMO. The loot system uses the traditional D&D on "pluses", with +1 items being rare, +2 being more rare, and so on. It's a great touch!
Common to Cryptic games there are events and interactive stories abound. Every few hours a global message will inform players they will reserve bonus xp for joining in a PVE raid encounter, PVP, or doing a given set of story missions, sometimes unique to that event. This helps the game feel alive in a way I haven't felt in an MMO for a while.
On the negative side, NeverWinter looks like it should have been released in 2008, graphics wise (because...it should have been released in 2008). I'm amazed a new set of paint hasn't been tossed on by Cryptic, but at least the art style is amazing. They do everything they can to get as much as possible out of the low polygon count and grey/brown palette ... but there is only so much they can do. My biggest gripe about the game however is the lack of player customization and options. Currently there are only 5 playable classes and almost no way to make them your own. This doesn't represent D&D and is going to be a turn off to a large part of the target audience.
All and all, this is a game you need to try, or at least install so that when I start posting Raven themed adventures to the Foundry you'll be able to play them ;)
Monday 18 March 2013
In Perspective: Endgame
"endgame"
What you’ve heard
This new MMO is the most disappointing thing to happen to the internet since Emma Watson didn’t do porn immediately upon hitting 18. No one should play it and anyone who does is obviously suffering from some sort of mental illness. There is no ENDGAME! Once you get max level, explore all the areas, do all the quests, collect all the collectibles, do all the dungeons in normal mode, hard mode, and challenge mode, collect the best gear, and unlock all the customizing options there is nothing else do to! This game is a failure!
Except
Let’s take a quick trip over to metacritic to see what games the internet likes the most. We see the top user rated games of all time including titles like Half Life 2, Balder’s gate 2, GTA, and Okami. One thing all these games have in common is an ending, with nothing at all to do once the game has been completed. Half Life 2 and Okami barely have 12 hours of game play between them before you’re at the final credits with no new modes or challenges waiting for you at the start screen. No one seems to have a problem with that. It’s almost like it’s an expected thing that a video game should entertain you for some time and then you should be done with it, moving on to something else.
The best selling game of all time, Call of Duty Black Ops is often heralded for its “infinite replayability” as the main reason it was so successful. In this case infinite means you can grind out the same 8 multiplayer maps over and over again, or play one of 3 zombie maps over and over in a never changing loop. Level advancement was unlocking some new guns and abilities, and when you hit max level you were given the option to start over and do the whole grind again. And although the number of maps went up if you bought map packs for $20 each, this is all the variation the game needed to bring to the table to be seen as something you could play forever.
The modern MMO brings hundreds if not thousands of quests to the table. Using Star Wars the Old Republic, a game that was absolutely shunned by the online community for not having an end game, leveling a character from 1 to 50 takes about 40 to 80 solid hours of game play depending on how much time you spend doing side missions. Star Wars offers 8 completely unique classes to level up with different stories and game play, making the total amount of play time you can milk out of it without having to repeat things in up in the 600 hour range. For free. Guild Wars 2, another game under fire for lack of end game offers a leveling experience that takes about 40 hours, 10 dungeons to explore with 32 levels of variation, and meaningful exploration that more the doubles the amount of time it’s going to take you to fully experience the game. You’ll find the same trend in every modern MMO, 40 to 100 hours of game play in the core experience, and plenty of side missions to keep you going after that. If these were single player games critics and users alike would be praising the exceptional value they offer before moving on to the next game, but because they are MMOs the internet says forget about them because there is nothing to do.
So what’s the deal?
There are two things going on here. First, the “blockbuster” MMO started with EverQuest and moved onto World of Warcraft, two games that did nothing at all to make the leveling experience engaging or entertaining. It was a means to an end, and that end was the endgame grind. It wasn’t until you had max level that you even begin to experience the game in full, and everything was gated by gear and lesser achievements. You had to pull the right levers a given number of times before you were allowed to pull even bigger levers in a never ending cycle. By the time most people were done with a set of levers, the game would release new ones. A decade later, people are still playing these games and at their peak the player bases they had were enormous. They made millions of dollars a month for years on end.
The modern MMO isn't trying to do that. They made the leveling experience as enjoyable as possible and are trying to shift that to the core experience. For many games the idea of a single player spending years and years in the game is not only not a goal but undesirable. Free to play games don’t benefit from people logging on unless they are going to spend money, and most of that money is spent on items like xp boosts or character unlocks that are only useful in the core leveling experience. They don’t profit from end game the way subscription games do, so they have had to shift focus. They want people to try the game, spend $20 to $60, play for 10 to 60 hours, then leave and never come back - just like we do with every other game we ever buy that isn't an MMO. They are not trying to make a million dollars a month, they are trying to make one dollar more than it costs to pay everyone’s salary and the electricity bill. A lot of players will not accept this and regardless of how much fun there is to be had in the leveling up, they still see it as just the means to an end; an end that isn’t there anymore, and see any game that isn't a mega blockbuster hit as a failure.
This leads to the second point. To the old school MMO player this isn't just a shift in market strategy, it’s an assault on his way of life. No one played WoW for 8 years because it was a fun and rewarding game experience, they played it out of the drive to achieve. Endgame progress is the benchmark by which they measure personal success and in an unhealthy but large segment of that population it’s also how they measure personal worth. If today’s gamer isn't exposed to a meaningful endgame after a grueling and undesirable leveling grind, how are they ever going to understand how awesome the old school MMO player is because he woke the sleeper as a global first? This has given birth to a new type of gamer who moves from new MMO to new MMO with no goal other than to spam on the forum and in common chat about how much harder, better, and more meaningful the MMO where they achieved things is, and how anyone happy with THIS game is stupid.
It’s the “in my day we walked to school barefoot and we LIKED it” of our generation, and it’s not going away any time soon. Thankfully, the video game industry isn't listening and slowly but surely nether are video game players. In fact, just the opposite; games like WOW and Everquest have gone back and completely redesigned the leveling process so it's quicker, easier and more enjoyable. They understand now that people have seen a better way, very few people are going to chose the old grind.
What you’ve heard
This new MMO is the most disappointing thing to happen to the internet since Emma Watson didn’t do porn immediately upon hitting 18. No one should play it and anyone who does is obviously suffering from some sort of mental illness. There is no ENDGAME! Once you get max level, explore all the areas, do all the quests, collect all the collectibles, do all the dungeons in normal mode, hard mode, and challenge mode, collect the best gear, and unlock all the customizing options there is nothing else do to! This game is a failure!
Except
Let’s take a quick trip over to metacritic to see what games the internet likes the most. We see the top user rated games of all time including titles like Half Life 2, Balder’s gate 2, GTA, and Okami. One thing all these games have in common is an ending, with nothing at all to do once the game has been completed. Half Life 2 and Okami barely have 12 hours of game play between them before you’re at the final credits with no new modes or challenges waiting for you at the start screen. No one seems to have a problem with that. It’s almost like it’s an expected thing that a video game should entertain you for some time and then you should be done with it, moving on to something else.
The best selling game of all time, Call of Duty Black Ops is often heralded for its “infinite replayability” as the main reason it was so successful. In this case infinite means you can grind out the same 8 multiplayer maps over and over again, or play one of 3 zombie maps over and over in a never changing loop. Level advancement was unlocking some new guns and abilities, and when you hit max level you were given the option to start over and do the whole grind again. And although the number of maps went up if you bought map packs for $20 each, this is all the variation the game needed to bring to the table to be seen as something you could play forever.
The modern MMO brings hundreds if not thousands of quests to the table. Using Star Wars the Old Republic, a game that was absolutely shunned by the online community for not having an end game, leveling a character from 1 to 50 takes about 40 to 80 solid hours of game play depending on how much time you spend doing side missions. Star Wars offers 8 completely unique classes to level up with different stories and game play, making the total amount of play time you can milk out of it without having to repeat things in up in the 600 hour range. For free. Guild Wars 2, another game under fire for lack of end game offers a leveling experience that takes about 40 hours, 10 dungeons to explore with 32 levels of variation, and meaningful exploration that more the doubles the amount of time it’s going to take you to fully experience the game. You’ll find the same trend in every modern MMO, 40 to 100 hours of game play in the core experience, and plenty of side missions to keep you going after that. If these were single player games critics and users alike would be praising the exceptional value they offer before moving on to the next game, but because they are MMOs the internet says forget about them because there is nothing to do.
So what’s the deal?
There are two things going on here. First, the “blockbuster” MMO started with EverQuest and moved onto World of Warcraft, two games that did nothing at all to make the leveling experience engaging or entertaining. It was a means to an end, and that end was the endgame grind. It wasn’t until you had max level that you even begin to experience the game in full, and everything was gated by gear and lesser achievements. You had to pull the right levers a given number of times before you were allowed to pull even bigger levers in a never ending cycle. By the time most people were done with a set of levers, the game would release new ones. A decade later, people are still playing these games and at their peak the player bases they had were enormous. They made millions of dollars a month for years on end.
The modern MMO isn't trying to do that. They made the leveling experience as enjoyable as possible and are trying to shift that to the core experience. For many games the idea of a single player spending years and years in the game is not only not a goal but undesirable. Free to play games don’t benefit from people logging on unless they are going to spend money, and most of that money is spent on items like xp boosts or character unlocks that are only useful in the core leveling experience. They don’t profit from end game the way subscription games do, so they have had to shift focus. They want people to try the game, spend $20 to $60, play for 10 to 60 hours, then leave and never come back - just like we do with every other game we ever buy that isn't an MMO. They are not trying to make a million dollars a month, they are trying to make one dollar more than it costs to pay everyone’s salary and the electricity bill. A lot of players will not accept this and regardless of how much fun there is to be had in the leveling up, they still see it as just the means to an end; an end that isn’t there anymore, and see any game that isn't a mega blockbuster hit as a failure.
This leads to the second point. To the old school MMO player this isn't just a shift in market strategy, it’s an assault on his way of life. No one played WoW for 8 years because it was a fun and rewarding game experience, they played it out of the drive to achieve. Endgame progress is the benchmark by which they measure personal success and in an unhealthy but large segment of that population it’s also how they measure personal worth. If today’s gamer isn't exposed to a meaningful endgame after a grueling and undesirable leveling grind, how are they ever going to understand how awesome the old school MMO player is because he woke the sleeper as a global first? This has given birth to a new type of gamer who moves from new MMO to new MMO with no goal other than to spam on the forum and in common chat about how much harder, better, and more meaningful the MMO where they achieved things is, and how anyone happy with THIS game is stupid.
It’s the “in my day we walked to school barefoot and we LIKED it” of our generation, and it’s not going away any time soon. Thankfully, the video game industry isn't listening and slowly but surely nether are video game players. In fact, just the opposite; games like WOW and Everquest have gone back and completely redesigned the leveling process so it's quicker, easier and more enjoyable. They understand now that people have seen a better way, very few people are going to chose the old grind.
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