Costume Quest is a rare gem of a game. It’s simple, just addictive enough, and just long enough to allow for attachment without overstaying its welcome. You play as a young boy or girl attempting to rescue your brother or sister from the monster that kidnapped him or her on Halloween. You fight using costumes you construct using a variety of items scavenged around maps, with classics like paper tube swords and tin foil robots. Every fight begins with a wonderfully charming transformation sequence, and the combat itself has a surprising amount of depth without getting overwhelming or distracting from what the game is trying to be: a mindless diversion. There are collectibles if that’s your sort of thing, and an upgrade and level system to give a light RPG feel.
Although not voice acted, the script tries to be light hearted, campy, and funny, and it hits more often than it misses. It has the feel of the old Animaniacs TV show; that perfect balance between kids humour and adult undertones. It’s not laugh out loud funny, but that’s a good thing; even the humour of the game backs off before you take it too seriously.
As someone who plays games as art and generally over-analyzes things, it’s great to have a game you can just play though like a child playing with a ball on a string, even though I generally hate anything casual. The fact that I liked this game at all speaks to just how much it needed to get right. It’s often on Steam for 75% off, and the next time this happens I would encourage you to pick it up.
Friday, 5 April 2013
Monday, 1 April 2013
In Perspective: Violence in Video Games
Violence in Video Games
What you've heard
You want to know why the world is going to the non-denominational negative afterlife? Video games. Today’s games are a showcase of ultraviolence that not only desensitises children to violence, it promotes violent fantasies. Kids today play these games and emulate what they see in the real world, resulting in the violent mass killings that are becoming all too commonplace in the world today. Lower violence in video games, lower violence in real life.
Except
First and foremost, kids don’t play violent games. For the 3rd year in a row, the FTC found that M rated video games are the hardest age-inappropriate product to buy, from a list that includes movie tickets, DVDs, books, and CDs, with a shocking 87% compliance rate. There are studies by child protection groups showing that buying an M rated video game as a minor is harder than buying cigarettes and alcohol. Both the Xbox and the Wii lock out M-rated games for children if the parents take 30 seconds to set up parental controls, a step that receives free tech support from both companies, and most major retailers will offer to set up professionally for a fee (around $40). The Xbox allows you to monitor your Xbox usage and what games are being played with real time alerts to your computer, while the Wii allows this feature on the console itself (minus the real time alerts). If a child is playing an M-rated game it is the result of a parent who honestly doesn’t give a damn, and that’s likely bringing its own set of problems to the table.
It’s also important to note that the average age of a mass shooter in the US over the last 10 years is 35, so if childhood video games are to blame we need to take a long hard look at exactly what about “Super Mario Brothers 3”, “Dr. Mario”, “Final Fantasy”, “Commander Keen”, “Ultima VI: The False Prophet” and “Wing Commander” is causing these people to lose it, because that’s what they would have been playing as children.
So what’s the deal?
We (North American society) suffer from child worship. It is the social dysfunction that defines our generation and what history classes will be teaching as the fall of western civilization 50 years from now. Simply saying something could be harmful to children is the most effective way to get whatever the hell unreasonable agenda you want pushed into legitimacy, and it works with unprecedented success. The conservative party in Canada recently tried to say we, as a country, should not consider ending discrimination on an estimated 350,000 transgendered Canadians because a child might see a dong in the rest room. I really wish I was making that up, but I’m simply not that creative! It successfully derailed almost a year of debate on what should have been a meaningful and important reflection on our cultural identity to one side saying “we should probably protect the rights of all people, and find a way to preserve our values while moving forward in a changing world” and the other screaming back “YOU WANT TO LET PEOPLE RAPE CHILDREN”.
The US government knows that violence in video games isn’t doing any harm. They have studies going back to the 1700s, when they were first asked to research if provocative dancing led to provocative behaviour. They have gone though the whole violence thing with theatre, books, radio, music and TV already and they already know the answer: there is no correlation. There is a huge vested interest in keeping fear alive however, and no one wants to give up this incredible tool for pushing the envelope on control. Now that the government has seen they can get people to sign away basic rights and freedoms (and give them millions of dollars) just by saying the welfare of children is at stake, they are never going to give that up. How bad is it? Just like gun control the CDC (Center for Disease Control) is under direct orders NEVER to research this subject directly or officially rather than risk an official report saying all this fear mongering is pointless.
More so, if you wondering why video games are so damn good at keeping children from playing them, check out the cost of getting a game rated by the ESRB, multiply by the number of games that come out a year, and quickly realise that they are making more money off video games then most publishers and pretty much every developer. They have plenty to spend on enforcement and education and have a vested interest in doing so. They also have a vested interest in making sure you feel that ESRB rating are essential, and should a child ever pick up a M-rated game he will immediately bash his mother’s skull in with it ... it’s HOW THEY MAKE (a stupidly large amount of) MONEY.
Still not convinced? Let’s head over to Japan. Not literally, that costs a lot of money. I’m just going to talk about Japan. You might have noticed that Xbox has fantastic parental controls while Sony has exactly zero, with Nintendo in-between. That’s not neglect on the part of Sony, it’s Microsoft and Sony reacting to their clients. Japan doesn’t suffer from the same child worship we do, so no one is crying to protect the children from the horrors of video games. Sony PS, while a popular system in the US and EU, is without question marketed for Japan where such features are simply not desired. For Nintendo, which is more of an even split between the two markets, the parental controls are tacked on for sale outside of Japan. So how is Japan’s horrible neglect of its children playing out? Well let’s compare the number of US mass shooting deaths last year to the number in Japan last year and get you a percentage...
Oh I can’t do that. Divide by zero error. Last 5 years. No? Ten?
Oh here we go ... 8 people were killed in 2001 in a mass sho ... HE USED A KNIFE? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?
I’m out.
Monday, 25 March 2013
In perspective: Steam Early Access
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
In Perspective
Anyone who follows the gaming world knows that the “leaders” in game reporting are wrong just about 100% of the time and even when they are right they play on fears and ignorance to make the news as controversial as possible, showing only the most negative spin. This is a good thing! It means video game news is getting treated just like normal news.
Thankfully for the gaming world, I am here to serve as the level headed voice of reason and put some of the biggest news stories in gaming into perspective.
Wii U sales
By the time I’ve finished writing this, Nintendo will be out of business and Satoru Iwata will have committed ritual suicide due to the horrible, unthinkably failure that is the launch of the Wii U. It’s the worst thing that ever happened and hints to the death of the console game market as a whole.
Except
The Wii U sold 1.3 million units in 30 days. Compare that to the xbox 360 which sold around 1.1 million units in 30 days. Sony was extremely tight lipped on early PS3 sales (as they were horrible), but they are widely accepted to be between 300,000 to 400,000 in the first 30 days. It was over a year before Sony had reached the million sales milestone. The 360 sold just fewer than 4 million units in its first year, while the Wii U is on target for 4.4 million in sales by year’s end.
This makes the Wii U the second most successful console launch of all time, surpassed only by the Wii.
So what’s the deal?
There are two groups of investors; early adopts and late additions. You can see that as the people who get on board before the big thing and the people who get on board after. Or, put another way, the people who make a lot of money because they are smart and the people who lose money because they are stupid.
Obviously the majority of investors banking on the Wii U are the second group , having already missed the big thing that was the Wii, and not being all too bright they were looking for Nintendo to somehow repeat the success of that console. This was never possible. The Wii was the perfect storm of gaming; Sony and MS had just confirmed they would not be putting out anything new until at least 2012 (4 years from the Wii’s launch in 2008), motion control was a great gimmick, and the price was lower than the current hardware. So what we get is a knee jerk reaction to a product not living up to expectations that should never have been there to begin with.
This has become a common phenomena is business reporting where not living up to the hype is equated with failure. This just isn't how business works. The install base of the Wii U will be more than enough to get games made for it, and sales and attach rate numbers show Nintendo made a boat load of money last quarter off its launch. The fact that some people were expecting two boat loads doesn't lessen that achievement.
The death of the handheld market
Hand held gaming? Bitch PLEASE. I have a phone, I have all the gaming on the go I need. Zanga made 11 million dollars off Farmville and EA’s most profitable game is SIMs 3, obviously the casual market is where it’s at. So why would anyone, least of all the causal gamer, pay $250 for a system then $40 for a game when they can play angry birds for $1 on the system they already own? While mobile gaming sales drop, app sales have qur-doubled-trip-dupaled. Handheld gaming is deader than dead, right?
Except
Except everything. First the assumption that more people are playing mobile games on phones then gaming platforms is extremely suspect. There are almost 200 million DS units (including DS lite, DSi, 3DS, and the XLs of each), 80 million PSPs, and I think a few dozen people even bought the vita (ok, it’s like 10 million, but I can’t pass up a vita joke). So with 290 million handhelds out there, the install base is not too shabby … about double the home casual market.
Software sales are extremely strong as well with Nintendo pumping out a respectable billion units between its platforms, working out to about 200 million a year while Sony sold just under than 9 million units last year (with similar numbers for the last 6). I guess that’s why Sony is a bit less forthcoming then Nintendo with sales figures. Still, with an average sale price around $30, the 6 billion dollar a year industry that is the handheld market kicks the living piss out of the 2.1 billion dollar industry which is the application market (apple app store, Google play, Nokia and BB included). I don’t know where the idea this market is declining even comes from; sales of mobile games increased by almost 9% in 2012 while the rest of the video game market dropped like a stone.
On the hardware front, everyone talks about global markets and total units. Unfortunately, the “global market” for the PS3 and Vita is the UK, Japan, and North America (the only places you can buy one) while the global market for phones is actually global . So where 400 million smart phones were sold last year, the number that is going to people who have the option of using a handheld to game is much lower. This means the assumption that a dollar spent on a phone game is a dollar not spent on a mobile game is way off, and not supported by reality of software sales.
On the software side, only about 70% of smart phones are ever used to buy an app, and 30% to 40% of all apps ever bought are used once and never again. This number includes both games and productivity software, as I can’t find anyone who reports the numbers separately. The argument that people are even buying games on phones is hard to substantiate. The top 10 games on the apple app store and 8 of the top 10 on Google play as of the writing of this article are all ad supported free games. The argument simply doesn't work unless people are PAYING for games on phones, not simply playing them. Are people honestly trying to say that someone with $30 to spend on gods of death and dismemberment of the PSP or happy fun bunny play time for 3DS downloads a free game and decides to put that money in an RRSP instead? Unless someone else is taking that $30, he’s still going to spend it on the game.
So what’s the deal?
Phones are great and you can game on them. A lot of phones are selling. People are playing games on phones. All of this is true, but boring news that’s not going to get you on a gaming site. So they started spinning the story, equating money spent on phone games to money not spent on mobile games. When that got old, they started equating money spent on phones themselves to money not spent on mobile gaming consuls because they have kind of the same function. Like how no one in the world would consider buying a car if they already knew how to walk. It’s called sensationalism and it’s the bedrock of the modern media.
What do you think?
Thankfully for the gaming world, I am here to serve as the level headed voice of reason and put some of the biggest news stories in gaming into perspective.
Wii U sales
By the time I’ve finished writing this, Nintendo will be out of business and Satoru Iwata will have committed ritual suicide due to the horrible, unthinkably failure that is the launch of the Wii U. It’s the worst thing that ever happened and hints to the death of the console game market as a whole.
Except
The Wii U sold 1.3 million units in 30 days. Compare that to the xbox 360 which sold around 1.1 million units in 30 days. Sony was extremely tight lipped on early PS3 sales (as they were horrible), but they are widely accepted to be between 300,000 to 400,000 in the first 30 days. It was over a year before Sony had reached the million sales milestone. The 360 sold just fewer than 4 million units in its first year, while the Wii U is on target for 4.4 million in sales by year’s end.
This makes the Wii U the second most successful console launch of all time, surpassed only by the Wii.
So what’s the deal?
There are two groups of investors; early adopts and late additions. You can see that as the people who get on board before the big thing and the people who get on board after. Or, put another way, the people who make a lot of money because they are smart and the people who lose money because they are stupid.
Obviously the majority of investors banking on the Wii U are the second group , having already missed the big thing that was the Wii, and not being all too bright they were looking for Nintendo to somehow repeat the success of that console. This was never possible. The Wii was the perfect storm of gaming; Sony and MS had just confirmed they would not be putting out anything new until at least 2012 (4 years from the Wii’s launch in 2008), motion control was a great gimmick, and the price was lower than the current hardware. So what we get is a knee jerk reaction to a product not living up to expectations that should never have been there to begin with.
This has become a common phenomena is business reporting where not living up to the hype is equated with failure. This just isn't how business works. The install base of the Wii U will be more than enough to get games made for it, and sales and attach rate numbers show Nintendo made a boat load of money last quarter off its launch. The fact that some people were expecting two boat loads doesn't lessen that achievement.
The death of the handheld market
Hand held gaming? Bitch PLEASE. I have a phone, I have all the gaming on the go I need. Zanga made 11 million dollars off Farmville and EA’s most profitable game is SIMs 3, obviously the casual market is where it’s at. So why would anyone, least of all the causal gamer, pay $250 for a system then $40 for a game when they can play angry birds for $1 on the system they already own? While mobile gaming sales drop, app sales have qur-doubled-trip-dupaled. Handheld gaming is deader than dead, right?
Except
Except everything. First the assumption that more people are playing mobile games on phones then gaming platforms is extremely suspect. There are almost 200 million DS units (including DS lite, DSi, 3DS, and the XLs of each), 80 million PSPs, and I think a few dozen people even bought the vita (ok, it’s like 10 million, but I can’t pass up a vita joke). So with 290 million handhelds out there, the install base is not too shabby … about double the home casual market.
Software sales are extremely strong as well with Nintendo pumping out a respectable billion units between its platforms, working out to about 200 million a year while Sony sold just under than 9 million units last year (with similar numbers for the last 6). I guess that’s why Sony is a bit less forthcoming then Nintendo with sales figures. Still, with an average sale price around $30, the 6 billion dollar a year industry that is the handheld market kicks the living piss out of the 2.1 billion dollar industry which is the application market (apple app store, Google play, Nokia and BB included). I don’t know where the idea this market is declining even comes from; sales of mobile games increased by almost 9% in 2012 while the rest of the video game market dropped like a stone.
On the hardware front, everyone talks about global markets and total units. Unfortunately, the “global market” for the PS3 and Vita is the UK, Japan, and North America (the only places you can buy one) while the global market for phones is actually global . So where 400 million smart phones were sold last year, the number that is going to people who have the option of using a handheld to game is much lower. This means the assumption that a dollar spent on a phone game is a dollar not spent on a mobile game is way off, and not supported by reality of software sales.
On the software side, only about 70% of smart phones are ever used to buy an app, and 30% to 40% of all apps ever bought are used once and never again. This number includes both games and productivity software, as I can’t find anyone who reports the numbers separately. The argument that people are even buying games on phones is hard to substantiate. The top 10 games on the apple app store and 8 of the top 10 on Google play as of the writing of this article are all ad supported free games. The argument simply doesn't work unless people are PAYING for games on phones, not simply playing them. Are people honestly trying to say that someone with $30 to spend on gods of death and dismemberment of the PSP or happy fun bunny play time for 3DS downloads a free game and decides to put that money in an RRSP instead? Unless someone else is taking that $30, he’s still going to spend it on the game.
So what’s the deal?
Phones are great and you can game on them. A lot of phones are selling. People are playing games on phones. All of this is true, but boring news that’s not going to get you on a gaming site. So they started spinning the story, equating money spent on phone games to money not spent on mobile games. When that got old, they started equating money spent on phones themselves to money not spent on mobile gaming consuls because they have kind of the same function. Like how no one in the world would consider buying a car if they already knew how to walk. It’s called sensationalism and it’s the bedrock of the modern media.
What do you think?
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
2013 Gaming News Predictions
I’m going to start with a list of out there, but not too far fetched predictions of what we are going to see in 2013, which I can already tell is going to be the biggest year in gaming since 2012.
The PS4 isn’t coming out
Sony’s party line has always been “10 years of PS3”, and although it’s not like they are ones to keep their word (last guardian anyone?) I don’t see any reason why they wouldn't stick to a 2014 launch for the PS4. The PS3 is finally catching up with XBOX in terms of sales, and is a very nice unit at the price. Forgetting games, it has blue ray and a huge hard drive, making it fantastic unit for people looking for a net TV. They also have about 11 exclusives scheduled for this year; some very late this year. More importantly, I think Sony understands that the gaming market, although it feel slower and is recovering faster than most, is not recovering fast enough to deal with the fact that …
The PS4 will be an ungodly nightmare of features
Nintendo is Nintendo plus it has the game pad. Microsoft is able to build on the huge PC influence and create a new xbox that will have plenty of gimmicks. Sony, just like last generation, has nothing to draw on but raw power. The PS4 is going to have native support for EHD, 3D, and sound and video formats we don’t even know about yet. It will have a SSD by default. It will support 802.11AC, blue tooth, and every other standard there is. In short, it will be a repeat of the PS3 … absolutely top of the line with a price tag to match. The base model will be $400+, with at least one option in the $600 range. A bad starting point, seeing it will need to compete with …
The new xbox (which will be called simply xbox) will run windows RT and direct x11.1
Microsoft is one of the smartest and most resilient corporations in the world. They know when they are beat and know when to shift direction, and they understand what’s going on with the PC market. They are focusing on mobile technology and are not going to pass up the chance to turn the xbox into a product that motivates you to buy a PC, a tablet, and a windows phone. The focus will be integration and ease of use, while shearing functionally. They will move to alienate people from other operating systems. Is your 9 year old still going to want an iPad when the xbox he’s been playing for years runs the same OS as the surface? Microsoft is going to bet all-in on no. Direct x11.1 support will allow for continued momentum in the PC gaming market as ports will be even easier than they are today. Which is important, given …
Source 2.0 will not support direct x
Steam is huge, but most forget that it’s not Gabe’s real license to print money; that would be valve. Sure, they don’t release a lot, but you can find every single game they have ever released on the first page of meta-critics list of best games of all time. How big is half-life? Steam is what it is today because half-life 2 required it. It didn't just set the sales record at the time, it redefined what PC sales could mean. It sold more then doom was stolen. Not to mention COD is nothing more than an updated counter strike. Gabe has been working on 3 things in secret; the “steam box” (a self contained gaming PC with a custom OS), source 2.0, and porting games to Linux. He’s also been pretty public about how much he hates windows 8. Add that all together and you get the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in gaming; why hasn't half life 3 been released when it is guaranteed to make tons of money? Half-life 3 will be the first game using the new source 2 engine, which will forgo direct x compatibility in favor of optimization for Linux. The steam box will dual boot into a custom Linux shell for everyone looking for a way to run Linux without having to deal with the inherent difficulties. Basically what I'm trying to say here is that ...
Half life 3 will be a Linux exclusive.
That is why we are waiting so long. Hell, the game could be excessive to the dreamcast and it's still going to make money, but Gabe is waiting for a time when Linux is accessible enough that Half Life 3 is the "killer app" that has people installing it on PCs. That's going to be made a lot easier when ...
Steam will start publishing and writing Linux drivers.
Why can steam update my video drivers faster and more reliability then ATI? Why is steam gathering data on what type of hardware its users run? Why did steam just start selling apps? Why is valve porting everything they have to Linux? Simple; steam wants to be the only application you need to play games on a PC, but as a means to an end. That ends being an OS. Once they have gained the trust of the average user, they will start delivering drivers and driver bundles for a custom Linux build. Steam will be able to determine your compatibility while you are logged in though windows or Mac, and if you qualify, you’ll have a one button install. A novelty at first, with only valve and a few other publishers offering Linux titles, it won’t stay a novelty for long. If Wal-Mart told WB it wouldn't carry its DVDs unless it also included a beta-max copy, we would see a format revival instantly. And when you can't sell windows games on steam unless you releases them for Lunix ... that's going to change everything. Current estimates put steam at around 80% of the digital and 50% of the PC market … making them much bigger then Wal-Mart. Once steam moves from being a application to an operating system, their power will be unstoppable (but still insignificant when compared to the power of the force). And they will have a great position on the market once ...
EA gives up
EA finishing behind Ubisoft AND activation this year is akin to PepsiCo and … I don’t even know … Royal crown? both out selling Coke products. It should never have happened. It’s pretty obviously the reason … focusing on buying up every developer or unfinished game worth mentioning, they forget to release anything that wasn't horrible. It wasn't simple fan reaction to destroying Bioware or releasing a FIFA that didn’t even bother to update the menus from last year; they simply had nothing to offer. On a management level, they have made more wrong choices then should be possible. EA said no to publishing XCOM because it was too niche, then it went on to sell millions and win GOTY with most PC exclusive sites. They refused to publish a point and click game, motivating the developer to instead go to Kick Starter where he raised almost 4 million dollars. I’m not saying EA is going away, or will stop being a driving force in video games, but they are going to give up on being EA … no more buying up everything in sight, no more 100 million dollar games.
What do you think we are going to see in 2013? What do you think I got wrong or got totally wrong? I would love to hear it!
The PS4 isn’t coming out
Sony’s party line has always been “10 years of PS3”, and although it’s not like they are ones to keep their word (last guardian anyone?) I don’t see any reason why they wouldn't stick to a 2014 launch for the PS4. The PS3 is finally catching up with XBOX in terms of sales, and is a very nice unit at the price. Forgetting games, it has blue ray and a huge hard drive, making it fantastic unit for people looking for a net TV. They also have about 11 exclusives scheduled for this year; some very late this year. More importantly, I think Sony understands that the gaming market, although it feel slower and is recovering faster than most, is not recovering fast enough to deal with the fact that …
The PS4 will be an ungodly nightmare of features
Nintendo is Nintendo plus it has the game pad. Microsoft is able to build on the huge PC influence and create a new xbox that will have plenty of gimmicks. Sony, just like last generation, has nothing to draw on but raw power. The PS4 is going to have native support for EHD, 3D, and sound and video formats we don’t even know about yet. It will have a SSD by default. It will support 802.11AC, blue tooth, and every other standard there is. In short, it will be a repeat of the PS3 … absolutely top of the line with a price tag to match. The base model will be $400+, with at least one option in the $600 range. A bad starting point, seeing it will need to compete with …
The new xbox (which will be called simply xbox) will run windows RT and direct x11.1
Microsoft is one of the smartest and most resilient corporations in the world. They know when they are beat and know when to shift direction, and they understand what’s going on with the PC market. They are focusing on mobile technology and are not going to pass up the chance to turn the xbox into a product that motivates you to buy a PC, a tablet, and a windows phone. The focus will be integration and ease of use, while shearing functionally. They will move to alienate people from other operating systems. Is your 9 year old still going to want an iPad when the xbox he’s been playing for years runs the same OS as the surface? Microsoft is going to bet all-in on no. Direct x11.1 support will allow for continued momentum in the PC gaming market as ports will be even easier than they are today. Which is important, given …
Source 2.0 will not support direct x
Steam is huge, but most forget that it’s not Gabe’s real license to print money; that would be valve. Sure, they don’t release a lot, but you can find every single game they have ever released on the first page of meta-critics list of best games of all time. How big is half-life? Steam is what it is today because half-life 2 required it. It didn't just set the sales record at the time, it redefined what PC sales could mean. It sold more then doom was stolen. Not to mention COD is nothing more than an updated counter strike. Gabe has been working on 3 things in secret; the “steam box” (a self contained gaming PC with a custom OS), source 2.0, and porting games to Linux. He’s also been pretty public about how much he hates windows 8. Add that all together and you get the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in gaming; why hasn't half life 3 been released when it is guaranteed to make tons of money? Half-life 3 will be the first game using the new source 2 engine, which will forgo direct x compatibility in favor of optimization for Linux. The steam box will dual boot into a custom Linux shell for everyone looking for a way to run Linux without having to deal with the inherent difficulties. Basically what I'm trying to say here is that ...
Half life 3 will be a Linux exclusive.
That is why we are waiting so long. Hell, the game could be excessive to the dreamcast and it's still going to make money, but Gabe is waiting for a time when Linux is accessible enough that Half Life 3 is the "killer app" that has people installing it on PCs. That's going to be made a lot easier when ...
Steam will start publishing and writing Linux drivers.
Why can steam update my video drivers faster and more reliability then ATI? Why is steam gathering data on what type of hardware its users run? Why did steam just start selling apps? Why is valve porting everything they have to Linux? Simple; steam wants to be the only application you need to play games on a PC, but as a means to an end. That ends being an OS. Once they have gained the trust of the average user, they will start delivering drivers and driver bundles for a custom Linux build. Steam will be able to determine your compatibility while you are logged in though windows or Mac, and if you qualify, you’ll have a one button install. A novelty at first, with only valve and a few other publishers offering Linux titles, it won’t stay a novelty for long. If Wal-Mart told WB it wouldn't carry its DVDs unless it also included a beta-max copy, we would see a format revival instantly. And when you can't sell windows games on steam unless you releases them for Lunix ... that's going to change everything. Current estimates put steam at around 80% of the digital and 50% of the PC market … making them much bigger then Wal-Mart. Once steam moves from being a application to an operating system, their power will be unstoppable (but still insignificant when compared to the power of the force). And they will have a great position on the market once ...
EA gives up
EA finishing behind Ubisoft AND activation this year is akin to PepsiCo and … I don’t even know … Royal crown? both out selling Coke products. It should never have happened. It’s pretty obviously the reason … focusing on buying up every developer or unfinished game worth mentioning, they forget to release anything that wasn't horrible. It wasn't simple fan reaction to destroying Bioware or releasing a FIFA that didn’t even bother to update the menus from last year; they simply had nothing to offer. On a management level, they have made more wrong choices then should be possible. EA said no to publishing XCOM because it was too niche, then it went on to sell millions and win GOTY with most PC exclusive sites. They refused to publish a point and click game, motivating the developer to instead go to Kick Starter where he raised almost 4 million dollars. I’m not saying EA is going away, or will stop being a driving force in video games, but they are going to give up on being EA … no more buying up everything in sight, no more 100 million dollar games.
What do you think we are going to see in 2013? What do you think I got wrong or got totally wrong? I would love to hear it!
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