Church of Pangoria

Summoner's Quest by 4x4 Game Studio

2011-12-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

First of all I'd like to introduce the team I was a part of during the making of Summoner's Quest. 4x4 Game Studio was one of 4 teams formed in December for Design Project I at Full Sail University. My teammates were Russell Currer, Joseph Madden, Daniel Rodebaugh. Before getting to the game, I want to talk about the history of the design of the game, which is still in beta right now.

The game started off with us listing off certain aspects of games we liked, which were Tabletop RPGs, TCGs, and Console-style RPGs. We thought of making a game that took a typical board game concept, and added in aspects of more complicated systems to allow the game to be accessible and fun for a novice, while allowing for the expansion of concepts into more complicated games, such as Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.

The other thing we wanted was to make sure the game would end. One of the biggest issues with games such as Monopoly is that it takes entirely too long (3+ hours) while we wanted a game that could end as early as an hour in. We knew that the game would still take time, but there was no reason to let it take forever. We wanted players to not only fight each other, but to be fighting for a goal within the game as well.

At first we had the game require the destruction of 4 bosses. The meant that we would have to complicate the combat rules, which we wanted to keep simple. So we then took the game to another place, which would be to have the players use Mana to unlock these temples, which would then have a way of allowing them to win the game. We still couldn't quite get it to work, because it negated the other aspect of the game: combat and summoning.

We focused on thinking of a way to make the game about combat only, but we ran into the issue of players dropping from the game, and having to wait until the end before they could play again. We did not want people to just be sitting there. Instead we wanted the point where the game starts to end, to be a point where the game finishes quickly thereafter.

We went back to the Mana Temple, and changed them into a gate that would allow access to the center of the board. The game at this point becomes a king of the hill game, where the winner stays in the middle for 3 rounds. The benefits of this is that it gets the game focuses on one point, forces combat and gets the game to a point of finishing rather quickly.

The change of the cards as well, as we started balancing the combat so that the summoner tokens were powerful yet dangerous to use in combat, while allowing summoned creatures to be useful and have a purpose for being summoned. Summoning monsters requires mana, which in turn is also needed to unlock the Mana Gate. Though a game can be played without going into a Mana Gate, it is the least optimal path towards winning the match.

Within the first incarnation of the game, we had 3 types of spaces a Summoner could land on: Focus Points (where they can draw a card), Teleport Points (to move them across the board faster) and Mana Temples (which reduces the cost of certain cards). When we finally decided to add the Mana Gates, we eventually connected them to the Mana Temples, since it made more sense to do so.

One of the last things we added to the game, was the concept of making the summons to relate to folklore from around the world. We focused on 4 folklore/myth sources: Nordic, Japanese/Modern, Greek and Amazonian/Brazillian.

The board's basic properties have remained the same for most of the design of the game, 8 spaces per section (6 focus points, a teleport point and a Mana Temple). We were using generic tokens for most of the game, at least until we decided on the theme of the game, at which point we created specific summoner tokens.

There are certain aspects of the game I'd still like to develop further, such as the combat (especially the combat). Though that could be brainstormed and thought of later. The following is straight from our Game Design Document:

Game Components

Game board with 32 spaces and 13 spaces in the center.
4 Summoner tokens
Monster Damage Counters (20 White Counters)
40 Summon, 20 Spell, 20 Equip, and 20 Trap cards
Life Counters (40 Red Counters, 10 for each player)
Mana Counters (48 Blue Counters, 6 for each player at start and a pool to add from)

Rules

Objective
The objective of the game is to become the most powerful summoner. Each player tries to destroy all other players and their minions, with the ultimate goal of trying to become powerful enough to enter the Halls of Myth and attain unlimited power. Victory is achieved by either being the last summoner standing or by entering the Chamber of Victory and remaining their for three consecutive turns.

Setup
Each player rolls a six sided die (d6). The player with the highest roll goes first, the player with the second highest roll goes second and so forth. If two or more players tie, they roll to break the tie amongst them, while still remaining within the same turn as they originally rolled. Each player chooses a starting space at one of the Mana Temples and places their summoner token on there. Each player gets 10 life stones and 6 mana stones. Play starts when the first player rolls two six-sided dice (2d6) and moves that number of spaces.

Summoning
When a player acquires a Summon card, they may expend the designated number of Mana points to place the card on the board at their location, after that, they control the Summoned card similarly to how they control their own token. A player may not cast a summon if there is another player or summon on the same square as their player token.

Cards (Your Hand)
The player can hold up to 5 cards in their hand. If they have 5 cards and want to draw a card, they must first discard a card so that they have, at most, 5 cards in their hand.

Discarding Cards
Cards may be discarded for any number of reasons. Certain cards, like spell cards, are one-time use items. Once they are used they must be removed from play by means of the discard pile. The discard pile may not be interacted with until all cards have been drawn. Once there are no more cards in play the discard pile must be shuffled and used as the new drawing deck. Once the deck is shuffled, a new discard pile is formed.

Mana Temple (Start Point)
Every player starts at their own Mana Temple. Whenever a summoner token lands on the Mana Temple space, they are able to use cards from their hands at a minus 1 Mana cost, to a minimum of 1 Mana cost. When a summoner token crosses over the Mana Temple space that they started from, they gain two additional Mana Stone. If at any point, a power or ability causes the player to go backwards past a starting point and they go through it again, they only gain additional Mana Stones while going in a clock-wise direction.

Focus Point
There are six focus points per side of the board. When a summoner token lands on the space, they draw a card unless they have 5 cards in their hand (see Cards above). Drawing cards occurs as a Space Effect, and therefore occurs after equipment, traps and combat effects (see Order of Operations below).

Portals
There are four portals on the game board. Portals are used to move to the next portal when a Summoner token or a summon lands onto a portal. If you land on a portal you have the potion of using it or not, but must move in a clockwise direction to the next portal if you decide to use it.

Mana Gate
Mana gates are unique type of space on the board. There are four of them, attached to the portal spaces and are essential to one of the two victory conditions. If a player wishes to open a gate, they must spend 10 mana points to open a single gate. Once a gate is open, any and all players or summons may cross through the gate freely. Each one of the spaces counts as one movement space.

Halls of Myth and Chamber of Victory
The halls of myth are the spaces directly past, and including, the mana gates. Each space counts as a single move space. This is a one-way path and may not be backtracked unless under the effect of a spell, trap, or ability that reverses movement direction. The chamber of victory is a single, large space that must be held for 3 turns, starting at the beginning of the following turn. Once on the space, the player, or any residing summon, may not leave that space unless evicted. If a player or summon loses a session of combat while occupying the victory space, but not the halls of myth, are evicted from the chamber of victory and placed back to the portal just outside of the gate that the player who initiated combat entered from. If a player in the victory space has a monster with them and the monster loses, the attacker moves one space outside of the victory space. On the next turn, the attacking monster may reenter but the defending player stays in the victory space. Players must still roll for movement for their summon if they have any outside of the chamber of victory. If evicted by any means, the amount of turns that they must hold the victory square is reset and they must hold the center for an additional 3 turns.

Movement
Movement is determined by the roll of 2d6 dice. The player has a few options when deciding to move. The player moves the full roll of the die when moving only the Summoner token or a summoner. If a Summoner token and a summon that player owns is on the same space, the player has the option of halving their roll and moving the Summoner token and their summon at the same time. Round down when halving the roll (if an 11 move 5). Summons have the option of moving backwards instead.

Combat (Attacking)
A player attacks when they move their token or summon onto a space occupied by the token or summon of another player. In the event that the contested space contains multiple player tokens or summons, the attacker chooses which one to attack, unless the defending player chooses to use a summon to defend their Summoner token (see “Combat (Defending)”, below). To resolve combat, each player involved rolls a d6; the one with the higher roll wins the combat and deals damage. If the attacker is a summon card, the damage dealt is specified by the “Attack” entry on the card. If the attacker is a Summoner token, the damage dealt is a base of 2 plus any modifiers from spells or equipment. If a Summoner token attacks a summon card, they deal damage equal to their current number of life stones, instead.

Combat (Defending)
A player defends when another player moves their token or summon onto a space occupied by the token or summon of the defending player. If the defending player’s Summoner token is being attacked and they have a summon in the same space, the defender may choose to defend using their summon, forcing the attacker to attack the summon instead of the Summoner. Combat then proceeds as stated in “Combat (Attacking)”, above.

Post Combat
If the attacker loses combat, they must move back one space from where they initially landed and initiated combat, and then can activate the space effect on the space they are pushed back to, as specified by the “The Order of Operations”, below . If the attacker wins, the defending summoner token or summon is moved backwards one space, but it does not activate space effects.

Summon Abilities
Most summons have a unique ability along with their base stats. In most cases these abilities require mana to cast. The cost of the ability is noted on the card. The effect of an ability is clearly denoted in its description as well as its range and damage. If for some reason, an ability has an effect that would affect another player or a summon and it does not have a denoted range then it is assumed that the ability must be used on a summon within the same space or must be used during combat. All abilities must be activated prior to rolling the dice to determine a winner in combat.

Traps
Traps cost no mana to place on the field and can be placed on any space on the field. When placed on the field, they can be tripped by anyone, even the player that placed it. When a Summoner token or summon lands on a trap, that player must roll a die which decides if the trap is activated or destroyed. The roll required to successfully negate a trap is depicted on the card. In many cases the roll is depicted as a greater-than-or-equal-to statement. Therefore, a requirement of 3+ means that the player must roll a 3 or higher on the 6 sided die to negate a trap’s effect. If a player is traveling with a summon and they land on a trap they may choose which one of them is to receive the effects of the traps. Some traps effect summons differently than they would a summoner.

Casting Spells
Spells are “at-will” cards that may be used before or after movement. They have a specific mana cost and a set range at which they may operate. A number in the range section denotes how many spaces away, starting at the edge of the occupied space, that the spell may affect or reach into. If a spell affects only a single target as opposed to the whole space it will say so in the description. Cards without a range or a range of 0 may only affect those in the same space that is occupied by the player who is casting the spell. Once the spell has been cast, the card is expended and is sent to the discard pile.

Equipping and Using Items
Equipment follows a unique set of rules. Each item has the potential for unique effects that are depicted in the card’s description. Each equipment card has a required cost to use. Some are expended upon their use and take effect immediately while others are perpetual. A player may choose to equip an equipment card before or after their move. The abilities that a card bestows (such as Mjolnir’s lightning bolt) may also be used before or after a move. Only one equipment’s “at-will” ability may be used per turn, but does not prevent circumstantial effects (such as evading one trap) from activating. After an equipment card is expended, destroyed, or the player simply wishes to remove their currently equipped item it is sent to the discard pile. Equipping a monster requires the summoner token to be at least within one space of the monster.

Mana Stones
Players start with 6 Mana Stones. Whenever they use mana for any reason, they take mana from their active pile and move it to a used mana pile. At the beginning of a player’s turn they recover two mana stones from the used pile into their active pile. Whenever a player’s summoner token crosses over their starting space they gain two additional mana to their maximum mana count into their active pile.

Life Stones
Players start with 10 Life Stones. Whenever they lose life they can discard that many life stones. Life stones can not be gained past 10. The player can recover life through card affects or summon abilities, but in no other way can you regain lost life.

Monster Damage Stones
When a summon takes damage, put a white counter on the card for each point of damage received. When the number of counters reaches the amount of life of a summon, that summon is destroyed.

Equipment
A player may only equip up to 3 items at any one time. In order to equip a new item once a player currently has 3 equipped, 1 item must either be destroyed by an opponent, or discarded by the player.

Status Effects
Status effects may be accumulated by spells, traps, or monster abilities. A player may only be affected by up to 3 effects at once. Once an effect has ended, a new effect may be applied up to the maximum of 3 at any one time. Monsters may only be affected by one effect. Any new effect will override a previous effect on a monster.

The Order of Operations
Events play out in a specific order as a player moves. The order of operations is as follows: Equipment Effects, traps, combat, and space effects. This is the set order of operations to ensure that equipment will first negate traps, combat, or other circumstances if it can. Traps are then sprung as though any residing creature is lying in wait. Combat then resolves after traps are sprung or equipment is activated. Once the summoner resides on a space the benefit may be experienced.

Also here is the card list of possible cards to draw.

Summoner's Quest by Russell Currer, Etelberto Gomes-Montarroyos, Joseph Madden, Daniel Rodebaugh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaNoWriMo Failed; other stuff

2011-11-26T23:30:00.001-08:00

Quite frankly, I think that I have too much on my plate right now. So this month was a 5k word exercise in failure. Which is quite okay, because one of the reasons I had trouble writing was because I wasn't happy with the story. On the other hand, I've written more on the novel I've been trying to write all year, which is good.

I've been checking with myself, and quite frankly, I don't have the ability to do school work, regular work during the busiest time of year, and be a father while writing. So instead, I'll continue things at my snail pace until I get to January, where regular work will slow down.

Speaking of January, I'm making plans to attend the LA GGJ, so if you're going to be there, introduce yourself! I'll be introducing myself as Pangoria. GGJ or Global Game Jam, is a 48 hour lockdown of game making. I'm really excited for it. One cool thing is that this month's class, Design Project, is a culmination of this year's classes. The goal is to make a board game as a team. We've had three meetings so far at about 2 hours to 3 hours each, and I must say, I'm loving the progress we are making.

I went out tonight and bought some materials, and I'll probably spend tomorrow working on a practical board for the game. Though we have a game mat that we could easily use for the game, I want to experiment with different design patterns. To do this, I got a foam board, and some sticky notes. I use the notes to arrange the "tiles" on the board. In this way, I can easily try different layouts.

This will be the second board game that I'll be making since I started Fullsail, and considering the team I'm working with, it is quite a bit more ambitious than Milk Money, my first board game. We don't exactly have a name for the game yet, since we want to finalize more features and game mechanics before we start in on it.

There is quite a bit of news that came out during November, and I'm sure you have all been reading and keeping up on it. I'll instead focus on any news that comes out lately, and if there is something really interesting to talk about from it, though some subjects that came up would be interesting to explore in more depth, it would be old news by the time I get around to writing about it.

Week 4 - Wrap-up and Result Dissonance

2011-11-19T11:19:00.001-08:00

Well, I've managed to complete about 10% of my novel so far. I have to wrap up for my assignment, which means looking at what I've done so far. Some key things about the novel is that I was exploring the idea of paradigm-shifts, cognitive dissonance, and how people express their feelings.

So far in the story, we have seen the sister's actions not match her thoughts, the difference in how she and her brother view the world, their reactions to suddenly finding themselves in each other's bodies, their in ability to let go of the fact that someone else is in their body, and I focus repeatedly on how each interprets the other's expressions, instead of saying what the other person is thinking.

Facial expressions is one of those things that I often tend to misread. Because of this, shows like Lie To Me are really interesting. I've tried to study other people's facial expressions, but I tend to only understand the faces of people I've been around a while with. I took an Empathy Quotient test over at Glenrowe.net and scored an 18 (people with Asperger Syndrome and high functioning Autism score and average of 20). As a counter to that, I actually scored lower on my Systemizing Quotient with a 14. I'm not sure if this says more about me, or about the quizzes. This really confused me since EQ and SQ tend to be opposites. Either way, it means that I think rather equally with both sides of my brain and that in both cases, I just don't do so very well.

Part of what I'm trying to explore with this story is not only how to write expressions and reactions, but also to learn and understand them a bit more myself. Also, the story is about two kinds of people that I've never been myself. In this sense I'm trying to create the lives of an outgoing person and a highly emotional person, and trying to find a way to make the imitation not only into reality but as a way of understanding why people like them behave the way they do.

As for how organized I've been with this project, I must say that I really wish I had less demands on my time. Even the one week I had less work to do at school, I ended up having over-time at work. So even then, I could not have the time I felt I needed. Instead my writing was gorilla style, typing in hundreds of words when I could. In the end I've probably only spent a few hours actually writing, when I had wanted to spend tens of hours.

At the rate I'm writing I would probably need another 27 weeks to finish my novel. Regardless, I'm planning to use this weekend, and next weekend to get as close to the end as I can. If I can beat last year's word count of 30,000 words, I will be very happy.

I'll be posting up my word counts, including my word counts of today and tomorrow, by tomorrow evening, and I'll post a final wrap up at the end of the month.

Week 3 - Time Management and Self-Accountability

2011-11-15T21:39:00.001-08:00

Wow, three weeks have passed already. In fact, I am on the home stretch for my school project, but... I am far behind in my writing. I have a graph of all the work I have done. Four days worth. That is one day out of every week, where I have worked on this project. That is a literal definition of 20% (or close enough to it). The thing is, that it is nowhere near enough to be done with the novel by the 20th. Doesn't mean I won't keep writing even after the class is over. I still have until the end of the month. Instead the issue is whether I spent the appropriate amount of time on my project.

My goal to write a novel this month is not something that I could accomplish with 20% effort. In fact, 20% effort would get me to about 10,000 words, which is about what I will write by the end of the month at my current pace. Most of my work for this class is done, and I've spent every night writing. I must say that my very hands are tired from the exertion.

I tackled the weekly, time sensitive material first. Even this blog post, which is part of my project, took priority over the actual act of my 20% effort. Which is why I'm typing this over the novel currently. Lucky for me, all I have left is this week of writing, and a concluding post this weekend, as well as an analysis of the whole concept.

In that case, my focus has been accurate. Thought I may or may not complete NaNoWriMo this month, it will not stop me from continuing to write throughout the year. It also will not prevent me from trying to finish the project after the due date.

One issue I have is Self-Accountability. I seem to be more productive when I'm accountable to other people. When I work by myself, it becomes almost guaranteed that I will goof off instead.

Part of the question is, whether I'm happy with how the story is going or whether I think that it is any good. Quite honestly, though this is based on an idea that I had, the execution is altering the concept repeatedly. Part of it comes from writing for writings sake. At some point the story gets lost in babble.

Quite honestly, this project has helped me focus on things about myself that I thought I understood, but that in the end was only a surface understanding. I still believe that I can write a novel, but I'm not sure that I can do so in such short a time.

Part of it is also how I'm thinking about the novel. Thinking in word count can make it difficult to focus. Instead, I want to be able to focus on 2k blocks of story. Short stories that tie into a overall narrative might make it easier for me to write. I will try to apply that concept to this final week to see if I'm able to observe any difference.

Week 2 - Continued Low Self Efficacy

2011-11-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

I started this writing project with a high sense of self efficacy. I believed I could write 50,000 words in one month. After 2 weeks, and only being 1k words into the project, I'm quaking in fear. Though I may have 25 days in NaNoWriMo, I have only 14 days to finish up this project. That is 3,500 words a day. Between work and school work, this feels entirely impossible.

Part of the problem is my own fault. Every time I feel I should write, I play instead. I am sabotaging myself. I'm not exactly sure why. Either way, my current self-efficacy is low for completing NaNoWriMo this month.

I'm currently experiencing cognitive dissonance. I'm trying to justify it somehow, but all I have, is that my own actions were poorly chosen, and that I have placed more work and stress on myself instead. This made it even harder for me to tackle the issue. Instead, what I did to reduce the dissonance, is to accept that I have a larger workload, and plan to schedule harder set times to write.

Week 1 - Terrible Failure

2011-10-31T09:55:00.000-07:00

Arrgh! It's like everyone I know is against me actually sitting down to write. So I'm 9000 words behind my goal. This in and of itself isn't too horrible, since the idea of 2000 words a day is supposed to be an attainable goal. One of the reasons I'm so frustrated right now, is because I know I can write 2000 words a day. Not doing so is creating a cognitive dissonance to my self-efficacy of writing a word count each day.

Now there are several things I can do at this point. I can justify that other people took me away from writing, or I can say that I was too busy with other things, and that I'll just have to work harder. But none of these things will allow me to accomplish my goals. Instead I have to explore a way to set up time and talk to my loved ones about my goals. Support and open communication are the keys to setting myself up to succeed after failing.

So while we have established that the story is about a paradigm shift that will occur from a brother knowing more about his sister's life, and experiencing a different life, the actual reasons that he dislikes his sister is because she has strengths that he does not (and vice versa). As a matter of fact, his sister is a representation of his shadow (Jungian Shadow). To explore this, part of the shift is to take part of what his sister does differently that he is weak at, and strengthen it. By the end of the story, he will not hate that aspect of his sister, and will understand it better because of how his paradigm has changed.

How exactly this is to occur is still being worked out and is probably on the level of a Freaky Friday or Parent Trap type scenario.

Breaking apart a Novel

2011-10-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

My starting point, a story concept that I previously came up with, is from one of my random, quick write it down, locations. I have 4 choices that I think would be appropriate. I labeled them each 1-4 and rolled a d4. The roll of 2 means that I will writing the following:

Brother and sister switch bodies, and learn to get along better. A Modern (present day), Humor, Slice of life, Sex story. The main problem facing the protagonist will be: The brother needs to find a way back to his body before his reputation is ruined and continue living the life of the sister, which has several complications such as friends, boyfriends, homework, and using the bathroom. Possible settings of the story would be: High school, downtown, house party, home.

The protagonist would be the brother. The antagonist would possibly be the sister, as she tries to ruin his life, as she imagines he is ruining hers. She could do things like fail tests that he is taking (he would be good at school), get him cornered by her boyfriend, and make him become ostracized for being gay in high school.

The other thing is that I have less than 30 days to write all of this. Which means that I'm aiming to finish in 25 days. That means, 2000 words each day of writing. No ifs, ands or buts. The goal is to reach 50,000 words. Regardless of whether the story has typos or inaccuracies. The only thing I have to do is give it a beginning, a middle and an end by the 50,000+ word mark.

I'll be giving myself 1 day to research and prepare, 1 day to put the project together, and 1 day to relax or as a buffer.

Ciro (short for Cirocco, ancient Egyptian wind) and Cerise (French for cherry) are the brother and sister. The sister has a boyfriend named Jacob (supplanter). The Mom and Dad will mostly be out of it to keep characters down. Ciro will be a loner, while Cerise will have a friend, in this case Jamie (also supplanter) who will want the brother.

Small Basic Hollywood Style Guide:
Opening Scene - The theme of the story
Setting Up the Story
Inciting Incident
Big Decision
Into the Wide Unknown
Getting to Know the Character
Midpoint - At this point the story has reached the midpoint, but that does not mean I'll be at 25,000 words.
Antagonist Returns
Low Point
Ah ha! Moment
Final Push

If I still need more:
Character Reactions to Plot and/or subplots
Relationship Black Moment
Character Revises Life Goals
Possible Re-emergence of conflict or opposition

One Long Month

2011-10-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

It has been one very hectic and busy month. Between work and my school assignments, I was kept busier than a busy bee. I was getting 4 hours of sleep per day. I was to the point of not functioning. Needless to say none of my side projects got done.

An interesting thing is happening for my current class, something that I felt like taking advantage of anyways. It just so happens that my next class's final is a 20% project. This is the concept from Google, where each employee was encouraged to take 20% of their time to come up with new products or ideas for the company. As part of my final grade I need to create something that is measurable, shows where I am at in the beginning, and shows how far I got at the end.

Though the class started today, it will also end in 4 weeks, which is essentially 1 month. This following month is November. November is also known as National Novel Writing Month. I've never written a 50,000 word story. I've done half of that though. So that means that this month, my goal is to write a novel. I'm starting at 0 words in the novel. Blank slate. The one thing I'm going to do is dip into my archive of story ideas, and choose one.

So while I'm doing other assignments and working, I'll be writing a novel. The other good thing, is that this means that I'm going to be using not only this blog as a measuring device, but as a way of exploring the concepts that I'm learning as I apply them to my project.

So this will be a month all about writing! You might even get pictures or a vlog post!

Chaos Game Design

2011-09-24T10:58:00.001-07:00

Started a Tumblr page to keep track of changes and prototypes created for the Chaos Game.

Star Wars already has 8 Million Registered Users

2011-09-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

Just announced today, Star Wars MMO has already surpassed 8 million registered users. John Smedley said the company was thrilled with the success of the game when it originally got to one million users. Smedley said, "LucasArts continues to be an excellent partner, giving our team unprecedented access so that we can continue to create a virtual world that expands beyond the storylines ... in fun and creative ways."

He said that the company was happy and said that he "looks forward to seeing our community and games continue to grow..."

Read more over on Gamasutra.

Punishment in Videogames

2011-09-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

At some point in many videogames you either no longer feel threatened or the punishment for death becomes meaningless. In Super Mario Bros. it was when you were able to generate near infinite lives. In Final Fantasy X it’s when you unlock each character’s ultimate weapon, and can finish the last boss in one hit. In Grand Theft Auto, it’s when you turn the game into a sandbox by cheating.

At these points, when the game crosses the threshold of no longer having consequences, a few things tend to happen. Some players use this as a time to feel liberated. They have fun being able to run around, explore, and generally not worry about “running out”. To use an MMO example, this is a level 85 tanking all of Scarlet Monastery for a lowbie friend. It is an exultation of power. By itself though it can become boring very quickly.

This boredom sometimes comes first until the player figures out how to have fun with it. Essentially the game is now a sandbox. This means that players can simply practice, explore, or make up their own challenges. Another way to reach this point is through mastery, as mastery can result in similar situations and feelings as becoming overpowered.

The other side of games becoming too easy is games that become too challenging. In this case, the player may end up simply quiting the game. If they do keep playing, they may or may not increase in skill to get to the next level of mastery to surpass the challenge and continue play. At the same time, there are games that are essentially about punishment (rogue-a-likes) and at that point the game is about player versus designer, where good players begin to be able to predict the designer’s horrible evil plot to kill them.

With all that in mind, what are the positives of punishment in games?

1) It adds risk to gameplay. This means is essential to taking a concept from learning to mastery. Things like complicated wall jumps over spike pits, dangerous enemy combinations or bosses that require use of the player’s different skills are examples of this.

2) It adds value to certain resources. Risk makes safe zones, health kits and super mushrooms things that the player seeks out. Suddenly using a health kit is can be an interesting choice, especially if part of the heal will be wasted if you use it too soon.

3) It makes victory feel more fulfilling. Especially if the game is in a high flow state where the player is meeting the challenges and struggling just enough. The risk of dying or of losing a large combo multiplier versus the risk of not successfully accomplishing a goal is an example of this.

On the other hand, punishment in games can easily be overdone. Probably more easily than many other design choices the game maker decides on. It can make players give up at one extreme and it can make players too cautious and averse to exploration on another.

In one of the Fable games, the game would scar the player if they lost. This can lead to quick game resets, where players would rather lose part of what they have done rather than suffer the punishment of scarring their avatar. Punishment can devalue a player’s actions and choices, making the game less satisfying. This makes it more likely for all players to follow a guide rather than explore the game themselves. For example, in WoW, they player’s punishment of not doing enough damage happens when they do not follow predetermined “correct” gearing and talent choices.

One of the greatest forms of punishment, is shaming. This is why in Fable 2 players would reset their game, and why in WoW certain players will do anything to not be called a noob. I remember in Ridge Racer Evolution on the Playstation, the announcer would insult the player the moment they started doing poorly. At the age of 14 that game left me in tears of rage and shame.

Punishment can be used to control player economies, by creating money sinks (I’m looking at you armor repair cost). Resource depletion is one of the most common forms of punishment. This includes ammo in FPS games, or lives in quarter-cruncher style games. Games where there are a time limit, the punishment is often loss of time. For example in Mario Kart, the Lakitu takes a while to reset the player back on the track.

In games where lives are no longer an issue, the punishment is in the form of lost time, or prevention from continuing. In these cases, light shame punishments (You Lose) may be required to create tension for the player.

With all this in mind, the main thing that makes punishment more of a fun thing as opposed to a negative in games is control. The player must not only be able to prevent the punishment, but they must be able to understand why it is happening.

This is one of the major issues players have in PVP against stealth opponents. They feel that they have no control over the attacks. This is where skill shot based attacks do better than target attacks (the difference between casting a Blizzard spell and a Fireball spell in WoW). The skill shot allows for the player to predict the location of the hidden opponent and hit them. The more control the player has, the better they feel when when they lose. Because then it is something they can fix or improve, rather than the game simply being unfair to them.

Cardboard Box Assembler Review

2011-09-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

My son is usually a source of what is fun for me. That said, he has a way of finding interesting flash games online. One of them that I fell in love with, and would love to see expanded upon is Cardboard Box Assembler (distributed by Adult Swim Games). I played the game through the Armour Games online portal.

CBA (Cardboard Box Assembler), is a game where you play a guy running around the outside of a box. The game is a kinetic puzzler to get all the items necessary to open the portal and head through the exit. Movement is fluid. Jumping and running feel visceral, and has weight to it.

New concepts are introduced simply and by themselves before being combined with other aspects of the game. As you run around, you can see the other side of the box, which sometimes can hint at how to get where you need to go.

With that in mind, there is no hint system. If you are stuck, all you can do is skip the level. With that in mind, there are simply not enough levels in the game. The game would require more levels to be a full release to a console or portable device. It also feels that the character should be able to do more. Despite looking agile, the character can not wall jump, or do any other agile movements other than jump and run.

The 3D box effect is what first drew me into the game. It is amazing for a flash game, and reminded me of an old Atari game called Rubick’s cube. The storyline is throw away, and should be ignored, vigorously. I was trying to find out who made the game, and the best I could come up with was that it used to be called Cubesome. I suppose that adding the story is what made it an Adult Swim game, but honestly it would have done better to have chosen a better storyline.

There’s a lot of directions this game could go in, and I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about it expanding beyond a flash game. It is an amazingly fun little flash game that could easily become something more. Especially as a downloadable game on the 3DS or PSP Vita. The game could do more, like having more movement choices for the character, more levels, and more complicated structures (other than just cubes). The storyline is a severe issue though and should be dumped and recreated before release (as it manages to be both not funny and stupid).

4 Role Class System

2011-09-08T07:26:00.000-07:00

To begin, the goal of this system is for the player to choose the roles they want to participate in, and from there give them a list of classes that fit that role, either strongly, or weakly. I understand that this is similar to what Rift did, but the concept here is that you are actually encompassing two roles directly, and the variety of possible classes allowed covers the entire spectrum of primary roles.

Secondly, I’m a strong advocate of leveling up multiple classes and allowing the player to mix certain abilities from each. In this sense, I’m thinking more of Final Fantasy Tactics or Final Fantasy 5. The idea is that each class provides certain abilities, and the player can choose to include one of those abilities in their build.

For now, we simply focus on the classes and not their abilities (as such things are more likely to change depending on the kind of game that is made). Roles were generated from the D&D4e Player’s Manual. They are Defender, Controller, Leader and Striker.

While Defender’s are often seen as meat shields, the better ones are almost never hit by on level enemies, meaning that they require little to no healing in normal combat situations. Defender’s role is to punish enemies that don’t attack them. They often lead combat and do better the more mobile they can become.

Controllers function best as damage prevention and improving positioning. They help by forcing enemies to scatter, since their attacks are often AoE. Scattered enemies are less likely to be able to focus on any one particular target, easing the incoming damage that everyone is receiving.

Leaders are a bit like healers, but they also act as a buffer/debuffer. Leaders also focus on team positioning, and can help move players into better situations.

Strikers are the epitome of what it means to be dps. The purpose of a striker is to do as much damage as possible, and finish targets off quickly.

Part of this requires a bit more AI from the enemies. They need to react to damage similarly to how players do. They need to get out of the fire. They need to fear crossing a wall of fire. This also implies a slower game.

From the origin of the roles, we can establish certain parallels and changes to fit a more active game type. One thing to note is that the Defender and Controller play very similar roles. This increases the amount of tank like roles in the game, as Defender/defender, Defender/controller, and Controller/Controller all fit similar functions.

The biggest change to fit an MMO is getting Leaders something that is not moving players around. While its okay to move enemies around, the current situation would allow for too much griefing. One solution is give movement buffs, shields and temporary protection from damage zones.

Combining roles would involve a primary and a secondary choice. Before locking the player in, they would be able to view all possible classes they could become with the choices they made. Unlike the Rift soul system, they would not be switching roles (dps cleric, or a tank rogue), but instead they would always function as, for example, a Defender/Controller, regardless of the class they choose. Though some classes would be a Controller/Defender the result would essentially be the same.

Some of the classes would also be just aspects of a class (like Defender/Leader getting access to the Death Knight tanking tree and the Paladin Tanking Tree, to use WoW as an example). Some combinations would also be more limited, (Striker/Striker or any choice where both roles are the same). This is scenario A.

Another way to take this is to allow for the player to choose a class, and then pick a sub role to perform, which works closer to how WoW works. This is scenario B.

Another way is to allow the player to switch how their roles fit, which in turn opens up a specific smaller set of classes. This is scenario C.

No matter the approach, the important function is that if a player is a Leader/Striker, or a Striker/Leader, they are enough to heal the team. This is another aspect of the game that needs to change from the typical MMO combat situation. It makes no sense for all enemies to focus just the tank. It also makes no sense for every swing to hit.

Essentially the proposal works better the further you get away from the WoW model, and the closer you get to the turn based model. Also, the closer skill shots matter, the better. This means that random hitting would have to be reduced, or accuracy would have to apply to spells and abilities that cause a scattered effect, therefore focusing more of the damage where it counts, versus scattering to points that don’t matter.

As for the actual class results, the changes can be made to fit different genres, but essentially would fit certain class type/styles.

Primary Defenders: Fighter, Paladin, Mage Knight
Primary Leaders: Priest, Shaman, Bard
Primary Controllers: Wizard, Ninja, Psion
Primary Strikers: Ranger, Monk, Rogue

Each primary role, then diversifies depending on what the secondary role is. For example choosing Controller/Leader would result in: Abjurer (Wizard) or Telepath (Psion). The reverse, Leader/Controller would be: Invoker (Priest) or Minstrel (Bard).

So in the A scenario, the player would choose Leader/Controller or Controller/Leader and they would be able to pick from all four classes. In the B scenario the player would choose the Wizard, and have access to the Controller/Leader role of Abjurer, but also be able to switch to the Controller/Striker version of the Evoker, or the Controller/Controller Acranist. In the C scenario they would choose the Leader/Controller and choose between the Priest or the Bard versions, they would later on be able to choose different role combinations to gain access to different classes.

In the end, there are 12 classes, or 36 depending on how it is handled. Furthermore, the ability of the player to choose their function is diversified depending on the how it is handled. I believe that scenario A would be best, as it helps focus the selection, while still providing variety. The main thing is that the focus would allow for the player to be less likely to mess up on a build. At the same time, scenario C allows for the most diversity, and also allows for the player to invest in the one character instead of having to constantly make new characters.

Other possibilities, choosing a role and having access to any class that has that role. Scenario D would mean that a Defender would have 15 classes to choose from. This may have the best of both worlds between A and C scenarios, while functioning similarly to the B scenario. The issue here is that it would result in the Rift system, and therefore cause issues in which the role has no common ground, and every level results in a different combination that plays completely different. From what I’ve read, this is one of the downfalls of the soul system, where the character does not feel owned by the player.

The strength of the 4 Role system is that it allows for a great deal of diversity and as shown can accommodate both the WoW and the Rift versions of classes. It can also become highly specialized or completely diverse. From it all class combinations and roles can be derived.

Using Wisdom in a Video Game

2011-09-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

If we count Wisdom as knowledge we have, and Intelligence as application of knowledge, then we can easily quantify these traits in a videogame. The gears that need to be in place is a format in which gathering in game knowledge has a benefit to the player. The side effect of this process is to get lore into the player’s mind, and allow them to earn their character interactions.
Now I the idea behind this goes as such: Information has a rating attached to it. Passing a certain threshold of intelligence, the character gains the possibility of gaining this information. With enough Wisdom that information can be strung together to form a conclusion. Lacking Wisdom means that the string is shorter, which means it may not be enough to actually accomplish a goal, and may just piss people off.
Does this mean that people would all play with intelligence and wisdom maxed out? The issue become with generating altering paths. The other aspects (such as Muscle and Strength for intimidation, Beauty and Charm for seduction, Chi and Spirit for Spiritual Guidance, etc) lead to different paths as well. The idea is that instead of having only one end game threat, you can instead cause an end of the world scenario through a combination of events. The player then creates their own path to an end, and by solving certain issues they can trigger a point where the world is not completely destroyed, or even most saved.
End game is then generated by recovery efforts in the parts of the world that were affected by disaster. Perhaps that might god coming down from the sky only destroyed one continent, the dwarves and merfolk warring destroyed another part of the world, and the ancient serpent underground is slowly eating through another. Thankfully you stopped the meteorite containing the demon prince from landing in your home continent. And you made peace between the amazons and the barbarians. Also you did stop the merfolk from also melting the north pole and flooding the surface world.
Now there are still problems in the world, but the disasters you stopped and the ones that made it through were based on your decisions, your stats, and what you tried to figure out. The option of failing at something now becomes possible. Perhaps as a designer I would make sure that no matter what at least one thing would go wrong. Or by allowing no disaster to happen, the player instead allows for an evil that would have been killed by the disaster to grow in power. An evil empire can being growing, and the player starts to begin hearing whisperings of war.
The power of a single player game to allow for the player to create their own story is incredible. But what about an MMO? How can you have so many people on a server and still allow a disaster to occur? What if different servers have different disasters? Suddenly the game is different for each server. People might switch just to experience the Cataclysm versus the Armageddon.
But back to the stats influencing the character decisions: It would be important to disambiguate the stats from the class. Instead of forcing warriors to focus on strength and muscle/beauty, we can allow them to derive power from chi. This is something that I liked about Champions Online. Though some powers are obviously improved by certain stats, the character can choose two stats that empower their dps. This way a brick can pick up survivability stats that in turn strengthen their dps.
The MMO would allow for players to arrive at certain conclusions based on their stats, and therefore their choices would affect the story that they experience. We could even allow an in game method for players to talk to each other, and pass information. Imagine a group of players exploring a mansion where a murder has occurred. Suddenly the defender’s intimidation is used to interrogate a suspect. The mage is piecing clues together, the cleric is talking to spirits. A dynamic instance is generated, and the information is shared and pieced together to solve the mystery.
Exploring the world can also lead to such fonts of knowledge. Global events can be solved, clues can be found, and then posted in a public board in game. As players attempt to solve the mystery, the goal is suddenly made clear. A way to find the tunneling worm is found, and a new instance is formed. The goal is to stick by the decision to allow servers to be different. The biggest issue I have with this is that the game is essentially being splintered into several games, each requiring its own team.
Perhaps that is the cost of creating a truly meaningful PVE MMO.

Chaos Stats and Elements

2011-09-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

Chaos has a unique stat system. Each Element is tied to a super stat, a sort of overview stat that is the summation of all stats underneath it. The super stats are Mind (Air), Body(Earth), Soul (Water) and Style (Fire). Each super stat is broken down into four stats: Mind has Reflex, Mana, Intelligence and Technique; Body has Fortitude, Initiative, Strength and Agility; Soul has Willpower, Chi, Wisdom and Spirit; and Fire has Coolness, Charm, Muscle and Beauty.

Originally, players would roll 1d6 for each stat, and the combined result would go to the super stat, which would translate to what element they were part of. In the original the highest stats would also become the player’s class, or possible classes if they chose to multiclass at level up.

Now each super stat has a defense stat (Coolness, Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower), a resource stat (Charm, Initiative, Mana and Chi), and two descriptive stats (Muscle, Beauty, Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Technique, Wisdom and Spirit).

A quick aside to Coolness as a defense. When facing off against a Vampire trying to charm her, one player successfully defended against it. Was it willpower? No, she was simply too cool to be taken in by him.

Defensive stats are often used creatively, but can be standardized to deal with certain types of attacks. To do this, each attack type would attack against a defense type (vs. Fortitude, vs. Reflex, vs. Willpower). We could make certain abilities less effective by having Coolness reduce the effect. For example, an enemy casts a Fire spell on you, your Fortitude is what would resist catching on fire in the first place, while your Coolness would reduce damage and how long you’re on fire (because Cool people don’t catch on fire).

In the pen and paper, defense was an active thing. An incoming attack would be followed by shouts of, “block it,” and, “dodge to the side!”. To me this means that each defense needs a button or way of activating it (timed button press for fortitude, hold and move for reflex, timed tapping for willpower).

Resources are somewhat complex. They represented how much you could do, with initiative being how often you could attack (well it controlled how often you could attack). Since initiative could be staved off to wait for something to happen, I considered it a resource. It could also be saved up to double up on actions (any more than that resulted in waste).

This sort of thing works in Turn based games, but imagining a real time game with it might be interesting. Perhaps stacking spell casts, so that spells can be used twice in a row is a possibility. But you would also have to stack active dodges and what not.

Quick aside: Though I still used the term HP, I went with the concept that HP was a combination of actual physical resistance and ego/determination.

Descriptive stats would sometimes affect character appearance. Muscle would increase how muscular the character would appear. Beauty could counter how much the muscle attribute affected the players muscularity. Agility would give the character a more lithe appearance. High Spirit would give the player a glow. This does not necessarily need to translate to a computer game (except to maybe do random characters that made sense).

Muscle and Beauty affected HP (physical and ego portions respectively). Strength and Agility affected damage. Intelligence affected spell power, and Technique affected accuracy and critical hits. Wisdom affected how much the player needed to remember versus what the character needed to keep track of (as in they could keep X number of pages of notes). Spirit was a borderline resource, as it affected how in tune with the supernatural the player was.

Some of these would change depending what kind of game they are being added to, but for the most part should be functional (especially Wisdom would need to see a change).

The stats also presented roleplaying opportunities. Things like charming an enemy with your Coolness, strength, muscles, beauty or intelligence. Sometimes you could get NPCs to join you, depending what they were impressed by. Charm spells in video games are usually temporary and for the location/fight that the player is in. To properly mimic the pen and paper system, the result would function more like Neutral Monster recruitment in Ogre Battle, or catching a Pokemon in the wild.

The stats combined with the elements can affect how people create skills (Fire is tied to Coolness, so setting yourself on fire could reduce how long negative effects stay on you). Not only that, but Ice is Water and Air, so Ice Elements could have high Spirit and Intelligence, letting them wield summon Ice Spirits of amazing power. Blaze Elements could have high Muscle and Intelligence, making them effective mage tanks. The possibilities and effects of the Elements and Stats are exponential. Adding to the variety are the possible classes/role combos that would be included in the game, meaning that a player could meet 35 other Fire Elements and not have a repeat of any class (this would be a low chance, but you get the idea).

Before exploring this further, I think I’ll talk about the 4 Role System. I’ll tackle that on another post.

Quick Guide:
Fire = Style = Defense: Coolness = Resource: Charm = Muscle = Beauty
Earth = Body = Defense: Fortitude = Resource: Initiative = Strength = Agility
Air = Mind = Defense: Reflex = Resource: Mana = Intelligence = Technique
Water = Soul = Defense: Willpower = Resource: Chi = Wisdom = Spirit

How I do Elements

2011-08-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

Magicka did something that few games have done before: it brought elements to the forefront of gameplay. We’ve seen games play RPS with elements, and we’ve seen counter elements, but rarely have we seen games properly combine elements. Usually very little thought is put into what elements to include in a game. By default people flock to Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. Sometimes they have Wood or Metal. Furthermore they will grab Holy and Unholy as elements, regardless of the fact that they are not part of the natural order (since gods are usually part of the super natural order).

I’ve been working on creating an element system for my own games for awhile. It started as a pen and paper endeavor to help better define characters in a game that I had entitled Chaos. The point of Chaos was that the player would randomly roll up their character to roll play, pick some other initial stats, and go on from there. They could learn any ability at level up as long as it made sense with the class, race, or element they chose.

This allowed some players to be Blast Predator Rangers and Gem Zombie Warriors. They would then play through a combat scenario and attempt to survive it with the characters they created. It was very much a Rogue a like scenario, but in pen and paper.

The elements therefore were created to fit the stat system of the game, which can be included or ignored with how the elements function with each other. Personally I think that the combination has more potential for interesting choices and interactions. For now though, I’d like to focus on what elements are in the element system, how they combine and interact, and how this could possibly be ported into a game.

Like other people, I did start with the four basic elements, if anything, it is good to start people with what they are familiar with: Air, Earth, Water and Fire. The concept is that each person is born with these elements. If one dominates over all others, than their element is that base element. If two elements are in balance with-in the person, than they are of a combined element: Ice, Lighting, Smoke and Magma.

Ice is the combination of Air and Water. Lightning is a combination of Air and Earth (yes I know it is usually attuned with Fire). Magma is a combination of Earth and Fire. Smoke is a combination of Fire and Water. At this level is also where two weaker elements are made, Blaze (Fire + Air) and Mud (Earth + Water). These weaker elements work out well in a game of survival, as it is a challenge to overcome.

The next tier up are elements generated by the combination of three elements. These are Light, Blast, Gem and Shadow. Light is a combination of Fire, Earth, and Air (or more simply, Lightning and Magma). Blast is Air, Water, and Earth (Lightning and Ice). Gem is Air, Water and Fire (Ice and Smoke). Shadow is Fire, Water and Earth (Smoke and Magma). It makes more sense to think of it as a combination of two tier 2 elements rather than 3 base elements.

Finally, there are those that have equal ability in all elements. Those have the power of Wood, which I call Creation. The idea is that they can create anything.

Unlike in pen and paper games, there need to be ways of deciding how to use these elements. This is where Magicka was absolutely brilliant. They had Normal Use, Area of Effect, Self Cast and Imbue. These modifiers allow the creation of spells to grow exponentially and saves on what the player would need to combine to create an effect. We can take cues from what Magicka did when implementing the elements from the Chaos game into a video game environment.

Magicka also had certain effect combinations by how the elements were combined: Fissures, Walls, Storms, Sprays, Bombs, Beams, Projectiles etc.). Though these could also be done with the Chaos game, it is better to create other concepts and ideas based instead of the casting options (which are of more universal use anyways), instead of stealing specific recipes from a game that did so much so well.

I’m not going to specifically break down every spell possibility right now, but the seed of the idea exists. Perhaps as I approach the concept of the stats for Chaos. Perhaps a more robust element system could change the game of elements the same way that Lizard and Spock changed Rock, Paper, Scissors.

League of Legends - Cost of F2P

2011-08-26T02:19:00.000-07:00

Last December I started playing League of Legends. It has been 8 months since I started. In that time they have released 8 new champions at about $10 each (I have not bought all 8 champions), they have announced a player base of 15 million accounts (that includes abandoned, multi or smurf account, etc), they have declared the creation of a new game type (Unreal Tournament is calling, you know, from the 90s), and they have updated the client to let you know how much money you have spent with them.

Now, as I play, I've found that after playing games with RMT as a revenue source, it becomes easier to spend money again on it, and on other games as well. My journey started with Gaia Online, where I spent a small amount to buy an outfit for my anime style avatar. It was just because I could, and I wanted to look nice. But that small $5 transaction somehow allowed me to understand RMT and microtransactions.

In League of Legends, I have spent $140. With those $140 I have bought: 17 champions (most were on sale), 18 skins (again most on sale), and 3 bundles (that is 3 champions and 5 skins). At the same time out of the 64 champions I have purchased, only 1/3 have been with real money. The rest I bought with IP (influence points) which is earned by playing the game.

At no point do I feel swindled by Riot for this. Considering the idea that I'm spending $20 a month for 7 months (I didn't buy RP for August), and that I don't have to ever spend money again for the game, and that I never had to spend this money, I'm not unsatisfied. I paid $15 a month to Blizzard for 4 years and that was with purchasing expansions, and now I can't even play my Shaman. There is a lot to be said for F2P, and Riot is showing how F2P done right can make a customer feel proud of having spent money on the game.

There is a lot of ways a game can make money on the F2P model, but the best bet is to make a good game, sell non-power items, and respect your customers. To be fair, the first and the last are really hard.

Terraria - Review

2011-08-23T11:45:00.001-07:00

Though there may be several similarities between Terraria and Minecraft, there are enough differences that I am able to call them different games. While some differences are rather obvious (2D vs 3D), others can be more subtle.

Terraria is a game about exploring the map and defeating boss monsters. Though there is no plot, it has the start of a plot on its way. What this means is that currently Terraria is more likely to transform into an adventure/sandbox game than Minecraft. Though this may not be what everyone would like, it is most likely the best direction for the game to go.

Terraria has a simple crafting interface. This makes it easy for first time players to discover how to craft things, but it also makes discovering new items a kind of accident, by simply holding items in your inventory.

There are a variety of enemies in Terraria, as well as invasions that can occur later on. Sometimes an event will occur, such as the Blood Moon rising, which will cause a mass of zombies to attack your home. Some enemies such as worms also have unique sounds they make before they attack.

Creating homes in Terraria have certain requirements, and allow NPCs to move in. Placing blocks is easy and the player has a range around them in which they can place things. Also working together with someone can be fun, and the players can join the same team so they can see their distance from the other.

With that in mind, multiplayer is easily griefed. Someone can go into a play session with a pocket full of dynamite and cause players to constantly fall into everlasting doom. Bosses will also sometimes randomly attack, which can cause a waste of resources if you think you can fight it, or a waste of time if you get killed.

There’s not much guidance in the game as to what to do next. This is in part due to the limits of what can be done. The Guide NPC can at least help the player figure out how to get other NPCs to show up, but beyond that there is nothing else to do in the game other than explore, fight and build. The issue is that those activities feel pointless without some sort of endgame goal.

The music is rather forgettable ambient sounds. The graphics feel like 16-bit SNES style graphics, and there are no mods to the game that I am aware of. The game does still get updates, so it is far from over.

With that in mind, there are probably more items, monsters, and NPCs coming. It would be nice if there was the ability to learn spells for the game, to give more purpose to the mana that you can collect. A quest system might also give a reason to do certain things in the game. One of my favorite aspects of Terraria is making a village. It would be exciting to have more NPCs.

In the end, Terrara is more than just a 2D Minecraft. It is fun, and worth checking out if you like 2D sidescrolling action adventure games.

Legend of Mana

2011-08-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

Crafting first entered into my brain while playing Legend of Mana for the PS1. It was an interesting idea, to get a recipe for an item and then simply making the same item but with different material (Minecrafters are staring at me right now). Thing is in 2000, this was rather new to me. Before then most games simply had a get material make a special weapon, at most. Crafting was an amazing concept for me.

I like the idea of LoM’s crafting, it used different things such as elemental influences, materials, and some random things to define the power of the item made. Furthermore, the game allowed for reforging, which was a way of adding power to the weapons.

Comparing LoM’s crafting to World of Warcraft, where each piece of armor is its own unique recipe, I would rather use LoM’s. In a sense, you could tier armor and weapons by effect or functionality and then allow the player to modify it through material and elements. All together allowing for a complicated set of items that possess unique features based on the choices of the creator.

When looking at design, I would focus on crafting as a major aspect of gameplay, and find ways to make it interesting and fun. Simply just having the materials and clicking craft is not enough to make the mechanic fun.

Warcraft 2

2011-08-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

Warcraft 2 was a game that I loved when I first played it over 15 years ago. I was playing it through single player, and having a blast. Then one day, I found out a friend also played it. So we set up to play together.

That first match devastated me. I have no idea how he get to me so fast. It was over in less than 7 minutes. My matches with the computer usually lasted 15 to 20 minutes. We tried again, and again I lost. The total defeat soured me from online multiplayer. I went back to playing single player, and I began reading how to play multiplayer. There were some sites back then with strategies, but I could never quite pull it off compared to other people.

What drew me into Warcraft 2 and as a game that highly influence me has almost nothing to do with the game that Blizzard made. Instead, it was the game mods and special map editors that had me enthralled to the game. I would explore Total Conversions of Warcraft 2, and I would replace art assets with my own. I would modify unit behavior, and spell strength, and balance.

I would play with different tilesets. Warcraft 2 showed me the power of user created mods, that I’ve seen and experienced through other games as well: Unreal Tournament, World of Warcraft, Diablo 2, Minecraft and more. Sometimes these mods are encouraged by the company. Other times the company fights against the modders. In the end, I believe that designing the game around allowing for user mods is better than not.

It adds to the game, and gives players other things to play with in the world you’ve created. At the same time, I can understand the frustration that can occur through what is essentially cheat system.

For example in Team Fortress 2, I went to a server that was running a custom map. I was trying to figure out why so many people were showing up to play on this little deathmatch map that had no strategy and simply resulted in players dying continuously. I then realized that it was an achievement farm map. Needless to say, I left (after I got 3 achievements trying to figure out what was going on). Similarly, many mods for Diablo 2 were used for cheating and gaining power faster or easier.

So the more sandbox the game experience, the more likely that allowing for mods will improve the game. On the other hand, the more the game focuses on requiring balance, and fairness for all (classes, champions, lifestyle choices, etc), the the more likely that the game should not include mods, or only allow mods with certain limitations on how it can affect the game. As Raph Koster says, “Never put anything on the client. The client is in the hands of the enemy. Never ever ever forget this.”
This of course makes sense when dealing with any kind of persistent world. Especially when it requires fairness to maintain a sense of community. This includes games with PVP, MMOs, MOBAs and any game with RMT.

This limits the kinds of games or the kinds of modding that the game designer could allow for the game. Things like GUI mods, or reskins (unless your revenue model is based on such things). Come to think of it, despite how awesome modding is, it has almost no place in any game that wishes to be an esport or to support itself through subscription or RMT.

Bloons TD 4

2011-08-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

Bloons Tower Defense 4 is one of those tower defense games that everyone and their mother has been making. What stands out to me about the game is how the different towers evolve and level up, the way the mobs work, and the options available to the player in-case they mess up during the stage.

Bloons TD4 has you placing monkeys down beside a path to shoot down colored balloons that are trying to kill you. The monkeys come in different varieties and cover a different range of needs such as range, speed, power and special powers (such as slow, enhance, and poison). The options of how to upgrade the monkeys allow the player to choose certain aspects to focus on first over others, such as getting longer range before added power, or getting a poison effect. This may seem typical, but many Tower Defense games simply have the towers upgrade up, and there’s not much choice happening moment to moment other than upgrade or not.

The balloons themselves come in increasing variety, with a balloon within a balloon. The monkey’s have to pop through all the layers of balloons to destroy the mob, giving a vibrant visual queue to the player as to the health the the balloons. Some balloons later on have different abilities and require different strategies: camouflage balloons that require the ability to see hidden enemies (or a monkey that will attack the spot anyways, or sometimes in a pinch, a bed of nails), armored balloons that require enough power to punch through it first, balloons that burst into several smaller balloons after it pops requiring AOE to take care of the aftermath, and boss balloons (blimps).

This variety or balloons requires some planning ahead with the placement of monkeys, but can also be handles in different ways including using some of the one time use abilities such as placing nails or sticky glue on the path. Though these are priced cheaply, their effect to cost ratio is slanted towards it being an ineffective use of money, unless you really need it. One example is setting down the glue when balloons are traveling faster than expected, or using a pile of nails to pop a camo balloon allowing your monkeys to destroy the others.

Other aspects of Bloons TD4 that influence my ideas are things like the ability to assign towers to target different kinds of enemies (First, Last, Strong, Weak) which can help set up the monkeys to handle certain situations that just attacking the First enemy in range would: a Glue gun monkey that is always hitting the strongest balloons so that the other monkeys can deal more damage to it for example.

Bloons TD4 is one of the best tower defense games I’ve played, and though it is far from perfect, it offers a great deal of good design for other tower defense games to iterate on. Tower defense games are not the most engaging for the player on a moment to moment level, but Bloons TD4 manages to create gameplay from a drag and drop game.

Rygar (and Bionic Commando)

2011-08-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

Rygar is one of the first RPGs I played. Much like Final Fantasy 3 did later in life, Rygar provided a huge shift in what games were for me. Unlike FF3, Rygar was a side-scrolling action RPG with more similarities to Zelda II than Final Fantasy. There was a power gain, as marked via experience gain. This is why I can categorize Rygar as an RPG to begin with.

Though Rygar provided an interesting plot, an unlocking ever expanding world (much like metroid), and an almost free-roaming gameplay experience; it did not have a save function. Which meant to reach completion, the player would have to be there the entire time, from start to finish. Looking back, another game that had a similar feel was Bionic Commando, which also had no save function.

The shift of view I experienced was the concept of character growth. Again this was also in Bionic Commando, and I’m starting to think I should credit both games for this development, considering that I played them at almost the same time.

For me though, while Rygar made sense, Bionic Commando was difficult to interact with as a child. Moving across the map, choosing the right weapons, and deciphering the uses of the communication devices at the age of 7 was difficult for me.

On the other hand, Rygar just let you run around and explore, much the same way Metroid did, which at the time was a much easier concept than maps and equipment. It is interesting then that we left RPG elements from our games for so long, when we had games from the late 80s already incorporating RPG into other genres.

It is this kind of integration that I’m interested in, and that I want to bring to games. Even if the increase is small or only provides health, it can help ease the curve of challenge in games so that it better fits an individual’s playstyle.

Killer Instinct

2011-08-01T12:23:00.001-07:00

Killer Instinct is a bit of a different genre from my usual choices of influential games. I could have picked Street Fighter 2, but Killer Instinct was really the first game that brought the idea of combos to the forefront of my mind.

The idea of overkill was another Killer Instinct moment for me, though I’m sure people will want to point to Mortal Kombat, what I’m referring to is the Ultra Combos from Killer Instinct. They were part finishing move, part super move. It required enough skill to combo up to a certain point, without having your combo broken, while at the same time, not killing the opponent until the input was complete.

Killer Instinct had games and challenges within its fighting, that challenged players to not only fight well, but to fight while trying to puzzle out combos and breakers.

Later games that continued this sort of interplay were BlazBlue, Street Fighter IV, Dead or Alive, and more, though they may not think to point to Killer Instinct. Killer Instinct had more influence on fighting games than Mortal Kombat.

Aside from the mechanics, Killer Instinct brought Unreal Tournament style exclamations (Ultra!!!! [echo][echo][echo][fade]), interesting fighters that were just shy of generic and appeared to be part of a superhero universe. Not to mention that at the time, the graphics were amazing, the gameplay was fluid, the controls were responsive and you had nothing short of an excellent game.

What lost Killer Instinct was the sequel. I remember going from the original to the sequel and remembering that there was something off. Not being able to revisit the sequel, I’m not exactly sure what it was that felt wrong with it.

Killer Instinct is a game that could make a comeback, and it has a great deal it can learn from its modern progeny. There are aspects of Killer Instinct that can be put into use in any number of games.

Parts can be seen in World of Warcraft focusing on ability synergy, but we can also add this sort of combo to console style RPGs. Like in Chrono Trigger, how one ability weakens the foe to other types of attacks. Generating a game that allows for faster paced combos, or a different type of attack interface, where enemies and players can chain attacks, and disrupt chains, instead of passively sitting back and getting hit.

Study Imitates Life

2011-06-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

Next course at Full Sail University began today, and immediately, I am shocked that I have been studying it all along. They point me to read psychochild.org, which is on my blog roll! They tell me to do in depth analysis of different games, and I do! They tell me to do a bug report, which I have no idea how to do.

So there are some things in there that are new and scary, while at the same time, I feel that the things I normally do have an increased workload. In the end though, it makes me feel more confident in having made the right decision. I knew that I was a game designer at heart. I know that I can make great games. What I didn't know, is exactly what I don't know. So going to this course at Full Sail is of great benefit to me. Essentially I want to gain knowledge in what I don't know, and improve what I do know.

Furthermore, I want to know what I didn't know I was supposed to know.

It sounds silly typing it out as such, but I really feel good about what I've learned so far. I'll be posting more later on my top 10 influential games, the delay is that I've gotten back to work. I'm trying to establish my schedule so that I can work, study, spend time with my son and do my online cooldowns like this blog.

Final Fantasy III

2011-06-19T04:02:00.001-07:00

Final Fantasy III was the first RPG that I had ever played. It was really the first time I saw a fantasy story told in such a way. I was really big into fantasy/sci-fi novels at the time and FFIII let me scratch the itch, while playing a game. The thing that struck me most powerfully from FFIII was the storyline. Some of it was told in exposition and flashback. A great deal happened during fights. One interesting bit that stuck with me, was fighting an undead monstrosity for Strago’s storyline, and being able to defeat it like all other undead.

Gameplay wise, there were some interesting things happening in FFIII. Heroes had secret ultimate attacks when they were on critical health. Everyone could learn spells. Unique combinations of items allowed for amazing effects. Each hero had a “class” that they were, and those classes brought unique and interesting abilities.

Interestingly, FFVII brought all these gameplay ideas as well, but personally, I disliked the storyline (which felt more fragmented and inconclusive). FFIII was instead a perfect storm of gameplay ideas for me. A well done RPG, with a few tricks thrown in, like group battles, well done maps, interesting characters, and an amazing storyline.

It is rare to find a game that covers so much ground (Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest IX come to mind), and so FFIII remains a highly influential game to me.

Legend of Zelda

2011-06-09T22:26:00.001-07:00

Legend of Zelda is known for its dungeon puzzles. It is strongly formulaic, yet unlike Mega Man, you really get the prize of the dungeon while exploring it. Once you have it, then you can better face off against the boss, or get to the next challenge.

Zelda also does a good job with scaling difficulty. Dungeons build and add to what happened before. There is also the over world which adds an interesting layer to the game. The secret passages, the tools, powering up, gaining in strength, puzzles and mysteries are all things that made Zelda and games like it amazing.

Its amazing, to think that Zelda has not influenced someone who has played it. It is a standard that adventure games are held up against, similar to how God of War carved its place in the current generation (also God of War borrowed from Zelda). Adventure is usually reserved for point and click games, but it is the main focus of Zelda. I could call it an action adventure game, which also fits, but in the end, the game is about finding items and using them creatively in different situations.

This I find important in games. Perhaps a weapon’s main purpose beyond damage could instead be to knock things around. So while yes, you can hit things with it, its true power comes when facing Demon Turtles that need to be flipped over to deal damage. Perhaps that nifty fire arrow bow is great for killing enemies, but can it also be used to set a rope on fire? What else can you do with a weapon? These questions should be asked while making anything in an adventure game. Zelda helped me understand that.

Kirby Super Star

2011-06-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

Kirby Super Star carries a great deal from other games that I love and have influenced me, but it brought to the table something that I rarely experience in other games: a mix of game play. Kirby Super Star is more of a collection of games all themed around Kirby. From Sci-fi to Fantasy to Modern, the game has a variety of settings and play styles.

RPGs used this often to help break up game play from just pressing confirm. Some adventure games used it to diverge from the just find the thing to click on this screen type of game play. And recently (as in with in the last few expansions) World of Warcraft has seen the light, and started actively inserting this into their game.

As I’ve said before, variety is important. Why just leave the puzzle to be worked out with the standard UI of the game. You can create custom experiences within a massive $50 game to add to people’s experience. Zombie mode in games has become rather popular, but I’m also talking about snowboarding in Final Fantasy VII, or Mortal Kombat Kart Racing.

So even though the contribution is small, Kirby Super Star is what gets me thinking about adding other mini-games and play styles to games.

Mega Man

2011-06-01T00:23:00.001-07:00

Mega Man was the first game that let me choose which stage I wanted to do. I suppose I could include Bionic Commando in this list as well. Yet, Mega Man brought more than just stage selection to how I view game design. It brought reward for defeating a difficult boss, and it brought a sense of purpose to the powers you got. Sometimes an ability was not powerful, but useful. Mega Man X added a sense of the hidden. Suddenly, not only was I going through a stage, but there were hidden areas that also boosted your power.

The biggest thing that Mega Man X brought to me was the importance of movement. The way you move in a game is so important, that any game like it, with bad movement, immediately is not only worse, but bad.

Now, Mega Man to me is about learning a pattern and executing a counter pattern. You find a weakness and you attack it. Some enemies you avoid, others you attack. There is more than one way to face a scenario.

In game design, I feel it is important, especially when creating a puzzle, that there be more than one solution. This may feel counter intuitive to certain puzzles (and it is), but quite often, a solution that stares a designer in the face, is completely lost on the player.

With Mega Man, you can try weapons until one works. Often you find a weapon you think works, but is simply more effective than the regular shot. Many times, you can guess which weapon to use. So Mega Man to me was about variety and choice as well.

So putting it all together, a good game to me has variety, choice and a proper reward for handling a difficult situation or for exploring. Now most people who look at game design, will say, “No, duh!”, but I learned all this from Mega Man.

Chrono Trigger

2011-05-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

Chrono Trigger was one of the few RPGs I played upon its release (instead of several years later). I was fresh off of playing Final Fantasy III (more on that later), and I was already used to the Active Time Battle System. Chrono Trigger instead evolved combat for me. Though others probably experienced this with other games, (Final Fantasy Tactics, StarCraft, D&D, Advanced Wars) Chrono Trigger was the first game to really bring such things as proximity, area of effect and other tactical considerations.

So why is it, that with so many choices, I would focus on Chrono Trigger? Aside from it being my first tactical experience, Chrono Trigger was a genuinely good game. The story was good, the combat was cool and finally, the gear was interesting.

Chrono Trigger, unlike my previous experiences, really wanted you to dress for success. Most tactical experiences have a very linear gear progression. You get better armor, and you simply have that armor until something better comes along. In CT it was very difficult to get rid of some items, because you simply didn’t know when you would need it.

The story line in Chrono Trigger was very good. It follows the Monomyth, and the Departure has a decent call to adventure in going to rescue a new friend, a refusal (by simply trying to go back home instead of continuing exploration), supernatural aide in the form of the Gate Keys, and they even cross the first threshold when they go to 2300 AD and see what the future holds if they don’t do something about it. When they find out Lavos is to blame, they have reached the Belly of the Whale.

The tactical aspect of Chrono Trigger is rather simple compared to most other tactical games, but there were several considerations during battle. Some enemies were strong against physical or other types of damage. Meaning you would have to fight around those handicaps. Character position would affect some attacks. Other attacks would affect damage only in a line. Because of this, some attacks through stronger, would be a worse choice. One popular tactic was to “knock out” the defense of an enemy. Casting a water spell on a sand monster would make him easier to damage.

Chrono Trigger is simply a very good game, that opened my eyes up to different combat possibilities. Though the biggest thing that Chrono Trigger brought to RPGs at the time was combining special moves, I personally feel that it was only an expansion of the tactical combat that I mentioned earlier. Chrono Trigger is not only one of my favorite games, but a game that influences design decisions that I make.

10 Games that have influenced me

2011-05-30T04:53:00.000-07:00

I suppose that sometimes these things chain out into the world, snagging blogger after blogger. With that in mind, there are some games that as a game designer I feel has influenced what kind of games I want to make. So here are 10 games that have influenced me:

10: Chrono Trigger
9: Mega Man (classic and X)
8: Kirby Super Star
7: Legend of Zelda (8-bit and Snes versions)
6: Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan)
5: Killer Instinct
4: Rygar (and bionic Commando)
3: Bloons Tower Defense 4
2: Warcraft II
1: Legend of Mana

Now, this list has no particular order, and I simply started with the ones that jumped out at me and made my way down through 10. Notice that World of Warcraft is not in there (though if I made a top 20 list it would be included).

The above games are deeply within my psyche. I see the world through a lens that contains these games. I always think about them, and what they did that was wonderful, when I think of making games. I'll go through these one at a time in other posts so that I can properly break down why each game influences me.

Tribunal in Action

2011-05-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

The following is from an e-mail I received today:

Greetings PangoriaFallstar!
We are pleased to inform you that the rest of the Tribunal has affirmed your judgment on 5 cases today! As compensation for your service to the League, your account has been credited 25 Influence Points.
The League of Legends thanks you for your service on the Tribunal, Summoner! Remember that you will be eligible to judge 10 tomorrow! May justice be swift!

The Tribunal so far...

2011-05-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

I have not seen any results from the Tribunal in League of Legends yet. I have been going on it every day, or every other day, and so far, I have yet to see a situation where I was on the fence about someone.

Let me elaborate, when you look at a single game, you have a tendency to be more forgiving, but usually, by the time they are at the Tribunal, they have 8-12 games worth of complaints from several people each game, you start getting a good picture of what is happening with this player.

Still, since they force you to wait before passing judgement, it forces you to at least take a peek at what is happening. I do look at the games, to see if their behavior is consistent within each. In the end, I do it because I want the game's experience to be improved.

If you've had any experience with the Tribunal, let me know in the comments.

League of Legends - Tribunal

2011-05-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

League of Legends recently debuted their Tribunal. Essentially a player run court system, where abuse cases are presented. Short of a replay of the game, all the information is provided. In game chat, the reported character’s stats for the game, all other games where they have been reported (for this case, imagine all offenses being stacked). If the majority of judges say punish, then the player will be punished, otherwise, they will be pardoned for that set of offenses.

Now each day, you can do 3 cases: you get more if you seem to choose the proper responses for each case, or less if you seem to contradict what the majority agree to. We’ll see if this has any effect on player behavior, but it is impressive none the less.

Although, hard to imagine someone being reported for verbal abuse by someone who is verbally abusive (pictured). Amazing.

Ability Resources and their Economy

2011-05-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

A good story is about interesting people, making interesting decisions in interesting situations. Likewise, good gameplay is about you making interesting choices in interesting situations. Now, what each person finds interesting is different, and so therefore, some games are more fun than others to different people. With all that aside, the idea of mana is to allow the player to make interesting choices in an interesting situation. Frankly that means that mana only serves a purpose in battle. If you are in no danger, then mana should not be an issue. In theory, we could replace mana with anything, including cooldowns and make the game interesting. So why mana?

At first, magic users could only cast spells a certain amount of times per day. This meant that they had to focus on not wasting spells. The problem with this situation is that players would oftentimes not ever cast a spell, in fear of not having it when needed.

When mana was introduced, it essentially allowed for the same functionalities as before, but now, the player could replenish the resource, and continue to cast spells. At this point though, mana does not replenish on its own, and instead the player must use items (that are often expensive) to replenish the mana.

Mana replenishment soon becomes standard in games, and we now see times where players would stand still in a safe area for years (hyperbole) before they had enough mana to move on exploring the game. With mana replenishment now common, mana potions became cheaper.

Now, the idea of players sitting around for a few lifetimes was seen as boring, so what came next was mana regeneration boosters. This was either having the character eat or drink something, or sit in a certain way. This allowed the downtime to be reduced, but still allowed for mana to be scarce during combat.

The next step from mana was energy. Though energy was interesting that it works side by side with mana (certain units use energy and others use mana). Energy usually has a hard cap, and abilities work in conjunction with cooldowns to limit use. Energy recovers extremely quickly, and often proper use of energy is about timing ability use, rather than spamming. This is an important distinction, since at this point mana allows for spell spamming.

Moving further away from mana and energy are cooldown only abilities. These require only the time resource. This leads back to the original issue, of certain abilities (with longer cooldowns) not being used in fear of not being able to use it when needed.

The next step was already taken in WoW, when they created Death Knights. DKs opened up the doors to really combining resources to make decisions more interesting. Since then Paladins and Warlocks have had similar alterations made.

So looking at resources, we have Charges (which are replenished over time, or have a replenishment mechanic), Mana (which replenishes over time at varying degrees and can grow to insurmountable amounts), Energy (which tends to be static, and therefore the same throughout gameplay), Cooldowns (these require no other resource and so are often treated as “free”), and Building Power (for example Runic Power, Rage, Holy Power). Most anything else currently available works similarly to one of these 5 ways.

Now, aside from simply combining these different functions to make gameplay more interesting, the mana has to be fixed or else it will still cause problems, even in spite the the other functions.

So why use mana at all, if other combinations of resources could result in more fun gameplay? Well for one, it has become how we view a magic user. Mana defines the magic they use. But what if we simply broke away from Mana? What if we reduced ability resources to 4 in combination until we found a way to fix mana? Is mana fixable at all? If so, how do we easily define a magic user from a Rogue or Fighter?

Questing revisited

2011-05-19T01:08:00.000-07:00

Now, I’ve covered this idea a bit before, but we need to take a look at Public Quests as well as the idea of completely revamping the quest system. Tobold recently pointed out that either we improve the quest system or we replace it.

So aside from separating quests into different categories so that we can reclaim the true concept of a quest, what else can we add to the game? I suggest player generated Item requests (with rewards generated by the system), and a rework to public quests.

Some ideas are already in existence in different MMOs, and most exist already, but are all labeled quests or missions instead of being properly identified.

So lets break down the player’s Agenda: Errands, Item Buy Mission, Shared Missions, Public Missions, Missions, and Quests.

Errands: Quick one off events, mostly used to guide the player from one location to another. These would be the usual skip the text events. Rewards would be based on distance from origin, and would include unlocking Missions, small monetary reward and a small experience gain.

Item Buy Mission: This is a player generated request for materials. They pay an amount of money to place the quest. Anyone who accepts will have their chance to get the item increased by 40% until they finish the mission (canceling the mission causes them to lose the items). This is also a just check the map and go hack type event. The player will get a choice of items equal to the difficulty of the items requested based on number of items needed and the level of the enemies needed to get the items.

Shared Missions: This is much like crossover missions in Champions Online. The idea here is that if a friend can’t yet get a mission or has already completed a mission you can share the mission you are working on with them, so that you can work together. Doesn’t work with Errands, Item Buy Missions, Public Missions or Quests. Only standard Missions can be shared.

Public Missions: Unfortunately, in this area I feel a bit ignorant. I never played Warhammer Online, and Champions’ PQ doesn’t work very well due to scale (you need a minimum of X people to successfully accomplish the PQ and it just goes on a cycle instead of being triggered). Finally, I haven’t had a chance to try Rifts (I missed the free weekend). So, ultimately I’m unsure of what to change other than improve scaling and timing (if no one is present it should have an idle situation that can lead to a trigger instead). So we are talking about two states, an active state, and an idle state. There is no reason to cycle through if no one is there to experience it. As another step, it is important for Public Quests to have several pass/fail states, so that successful progression continues to change the area that the PQ is in, and failures set it back.

Missions: All missions (except Item Buy Missions) would have actively progressing objectives, some objectives would be open-ended or could present different options depending on how the player RPs his character (paladins/priests might choose to not kill a bunch of kobolds who were attacking only due to demonic possesion).

Quests: This is where things get interesting. The idea of a quest log holding hints that you choose to memorize. As you piece clues together you realize what your goal could be. You go to explore the area that is hinted at. You find something for you. You discover details, more hints. You go talk to someone. You get history. You get clues. I’m thinking along the lines of the girl who lost her dolly in Darrowshire for people who are newer, and how quests work in older single player RPGs.

Though this is only one aspect of the leveling gameplay, this level of improvement could really improve how people view quests.

Gone for a Lifetime (membership)

2011-05-17T03:22:00.000-07:00

I think the most disappointing thing for me is that even playing F2P games, I can't seem to get my friends to play. They would rather be doing something else, in a game they have to pay for. Oh well. So I keep trying to play some of these games, but my motivation goes away every time I try.

Champions Online specifically is more fun, and nicer on the eyes. The menus are especially improved. I'm not sure if I'll ever explore a different MMO unless I know I'll have friends playing. I refuse to invest time if I can't have my friends there.

League of Legends is a great deal of fun, but I'm getting to the point where I need to have someone to team up with. I dipped my toe into rated solo matches, only to realize that bad players are there too.

I tried some solo games for my schooling: namely Sid Meier's Pirates!, Tropico 3, and Age of Empires II. I really am not interested in these kind of sim games. I can see where learning them can benefit how I do things in other games though.

Going through my stats, I found that my number 1 post is for Blood Elf Porn, followed by my WoW in decline post and finally my A Small Voice post where I stated that I was done with Blizzard (I got Warcraft 3 for Christmas last year, so I have been playing that, but to be fair I'm not bothering with forums, and it doesn't seem to be part of the new Battle.net).

I must say that Full Sail University is fun. I'm trying to connect with my classmates, which is hard in an online only environment. I kind of wish I was attending the campus classes. I have a great deal of ideas about games floating in my head, and I'm working hard to find a way to put it on paper in such a way that I could communicate it with others. A great deal of what I'm learning, I already knew, from self study (and reading blogs like Tobold's, Greedy Goblin, and PvD), and others are hitting me hard in the head (leaving me wishing I had a live teacher).

So that's what I've been up to. If you've been waiting for me to come back, then say hello, otherwise, I'll catch you guys later!

Riot helps Tsunami Victims

2011-03-21T21:37:00.000-07:00

So currently League of Legends (a free to play MOBA [Multiplayer Online Battle Arena] game), is providing a special sale, where every purchase of the champion Akali, or of her Nurse Uniform costume will be given to Red Cross for supporting Tsunami recovery efforts in Japan. This is only up until March 27th.

I'm posting this here because I both support LoL for being an awesome game, and Riot for opening this opportunity for gamers to help out another society. So here is a link to the article about it.

And here is a sign up link for anyone who wants to try out League of Legends (I get 'credit' for the sign up which eventually adds up to tangible rewards for me).

Yogcast Rift Interview

2011-02-28T12:53:00.001-08:00

A Deluge of Choices

2011-01-07T21:37:00.000-08:00

I'm still playing League of Legends: daily. I've also been playing a x-mas present for my DS, called Dragon Warrior IX, which is really good. Champions Online has been on and off, since finding consistent friends for it has been difficult. I'm hoping that F2P transition fixes that. I got a board game over the holidays as well, Market of Alturien. The directions were horrible, and it took an hour to set up a game that should only take a few minutes to set up (the second play's set up was better).

All in all, there are several games I'm playing, and I really don't have any need to seek out other games right now. Regardless of that, there are several more games I plan to try in the near future. So, if anyone else reads this, if there is a F2P game you want me to join up and play with you, for Windows or Mac, just let me know, in the comments section.

League of Legends

2010-12-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

I suppose I'm late to the party. I kept putting off playing LoL because I kept hearing reports much like the linked blog. Belligerent players, hard to learn, not enough information. Well, one year after that post of the Beta of League of Legends, and the information is rampant online. Champions are tiered for high level effectiveness, Totalbiscuit is making videos on youtube about it. His video does an excellent sum-up of what is going on in League of Legends.

So why play League of Legends? Well, the game does an excellent job of presenting you how to play. Without visiting the forums I learned the basics of the gameplay, the win/lose conditions, and how to navigate the interface. The game's tutorial is very thorough, and well worth it for a first time player. While learning, the game also allows you to play against the computer until you learn what is going on. The game recommends items for you to purchase for your champion during gameplay. These items are only sometimes a good choice, but usually you'll want to explore other items to find something that will work with your playstyle.

Now none of these tutorials or guides are really good enough for helping you compete against better players. That's why playing versus the computer is so important. Until you are really comfortable with a champion, it is best to hold off on playing it against live players. For the details of gameplay though, you really need to look outside of the game. But here as well, Riot games does a good job of promoting their website and forums. Though I'm sure it is full of trolls, I have easily been able to find useful guides and information without having to interact with the trolls.

Furthermore, there is a plethora of information available through google. So for the last few days, I've been having a ton of fun and frustration playing LoL. Frustration? I thought I was writing a positive look at the game...

Yes, frustration. I'm not quite sure if its because they're summoner level is higher than mine or they are simply that much better than me in the game, but some opponents just simply murder me in seconds flat. Also, there are times where I don't stop and turn back, regardless of how often I click to go back. This has led to quite a few deaths. This level of frustration varies from game to game, and more often than not, I'm having a lot of fun with the game.

Honesty aside, since the game is free to play, and they have an interesting referral system, I decided to put a referral link here: http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4d1270e83657f237550083

Warcraft Cataclysm has only 3 million subscribers?

2010-12-13T18:00:00.000-08:00

WoW only sold 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours. Burning Crusade sold 2.4 million in its first 24 hours. WoW claims and extra .5 million subscribers, which is only a bit less than the difference in sales of these two expansions.

Could the reality be that WoW has less then 12 million subscribers? Are there currently players out there stuck at 60? Or worse, never having made it to 60, are there players who are experiencing the shattering, and not able to appreciate even the differences in Thousand Needles, due to never having leveled that far?

How is is that a game with over 10 million subscribers only has an adoption rate of 25% for the expansion? Does that mean that only 25% of players are at level cap and/or want to play as Worgen/Goblin?

All I seem to be able to find online is day one sales. Frankly, that hardly matters to me. What about month 2 sales? One year sales? I understand that Cataclysm is only a week old, but Burning Crusade sales numbers would help us understand how many people will buy Cataclysm.

But, perhaps we should look at the numbers another way. Cataclysm has already raked in over $132 million dollars in sales.

Video games train you to Perform in Real Life

2010-12-13T07:13:00.000-08:00

With examples of Flight Simulations and Racing Simulators being effective ways to train people, and with the Army having their own video game, it is not surprising that so many people are afraid of games being murder simulators. The issue of course is the necessary conversion and physical conditioning necessary to convert the video game/simulation experience into real life ability.

So, those kids who shot up schools and other kids, who claimed "video games" made them do it, would not be able to do what they did without real world training. They practiced firing real weapons first. Otherwise, the recoil would most likely have resulted in them hurting themselves as well. Just like a pilot or driver must train to resist the G-forces of actual flight and racing to not pass out or throw up.

With that in mind, what kind of games do I let my 6 year old play? Gardening games, reading games, math games, shape games, puzzle solving games, racing games, action platform games (the most violent games he plays). I also sit and play games with him, and ask him questions. He counts everything. I read to him, and make sure he reads a book every day.

I wish more parents took responsibility for their kids, and stopped trying to blame video games for the violence in schools. GTA: San Andreas has sold over 21 million copies (pdf), and we do not see 21 million school shootings since 2005. In fact according to infoplease.com, they have 19 school shootings from 2005 to 2009. The wikipedia article has 32 shootings from 2005 to 2009. So regardless of how many people have played a violent video game such as GTA, the number of school shootings is low compared to the number of sales. If there was ANY causal effect, we would see gun violence in schools up in the millions per year. Instead, we have less than 40 in 4 years. Though that number can be considered high because of the destruction of human lives, it is low compared to the number of violent video game sales.

With everyone talking about how video games can be used for learning, and how effect games can be to helping children learn, it is interesting to note how violent video games is NOT leading to healthy kids becoming deranged. Instead, we see kids that had other problems who liked playing violent video games. If it wasn't video games, they'd blame a porno, or a movie.

Gating is Necessary for a Nascent MMO

2010-12-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

We've seen it happen quite a few times in MMOs, some group gets their entire WoW guild to invest in a game, and they rush to the end. After reaching level cap before then end of the first month, they declare the game boring, as there is nothing to do at level cap. An MMO has more challenges than just creating a fun world to play in: they need to engage the player at the onset of the adventure, allow enough activity for them to survive the mid-level doldrums and they need to have an end-game worth investing time into.

In all three cases, the main ingredient is allowing the player to feel progress. Each level must have meaning, and each piece of gear must allow the player to differentiate himself from who he used to be. Though each level need not have the same rewards, it is important to have something there. With this being the case, perhaps there are other progression systems that can be made available throughout a game, so that there is always some ethereal goal to attain.

World of Warcraft does this in several ways. First there is the leveling game: this is the easiest to implement and most straight forward advancement possible. Next there is a gear's ilvl: at some point you will need to reach a certain threshold of gear to progress, and each piece of gear adds to your survivability or damage throughput. Next is faction advancement: this is currently the more ethereal concept, but the idea has been slowly advancing to commit to factions to gain gear. What is missing from the faction advancement is an alternative reward not tied to the ilvl advancement. WoW also has skill advancement: primary and secondary professions show a sort of advancement as well.

Of course, the problem is that all these systems are finite, and at some point you will reach a point where there is nothing else to do. WoW of course then added achievements, and rated PvP. These choices are slightly similar and different from ilvl and faction advancement, but they serve as a functional extension to those who enjoy them.

Of course, WoW is a six year old MMO, with quite a bit of history and expansion under its belt. So a new MMO surely does not have the amount of content to compete with WoW, even if they manage to squeeze over six different forms of character advancement into their game. If that's the case, what can a game do to slow down progress of level-cap rushing players, and still allow the game to give a feeling of progress? We saw the reaction given by the player base to Final Fantasy's concept of limiting player experience gains. We also have heard how people hated having to get keyed for raid access in WoW. Gating is very much a no go for gamers. The oldest form of gating would be grinding, and that is also something that is looked down upon by a majority of people.

The thing is anything that requires repetition is now a grind. The key is instead making the grind fun. I mean, stomping on goombas is a grind, yet people still have fun doing so (to be fair, koopas are more fun). So since a new MMO doesn't want people at level cap by the first five hours, it is important to find ways to extend game play without making the player feel like they are being held back, and instead make it feel like they are being pushed along.

SWTOR: Crew Skills

2010-12-12T04:43:00.000-08:00

PC Games - E3 2011 - Star Wars: The Old Republic

Why "Me Too" Game Design?

2010-12-10T21:42:00.000-08:00

Over the years I've noticed something in products, from chips to movies, if someone else does it, you can do it cheaper and make money. Is the big movie company selling Alice in Wonderland for too much? Pay $5 and get Alicia in Wunderlund instead. Snakes on a Plane? Try Snakes on a Train. Kool-aid drink mix costs too much? Buy the cheap store brand.

This goes on to Tablets, dish soap, and all other things. Including video games. But in the case of video games, no one wants to pay for a bad game. Where a bad movie can have a certain appeal (there are people who only watch B movies), someone who plays only B games (60 on a metacritic score or lower), would instead be depriving themselves of quality and fun (unless the game happens to be niche).

So with game design, you can't necessarily think, I'll make a game that is less fun, and still make money. Unfortunately, people imitate another game, and all you have is the same game with perhaps less graphics, or missing that one really cool mechanic. Usually, you are disappointed, and realize you should have just spent the extra $15 on getting the good game.

Perhaps, if a game follows the idea of investing less graphics, or less sound quality (music, sound effects, etc.) they can make a game that is equal in fun or perhaps even more fun. In this case, they need word of mouth for people to go, hey, this game is cheap and more fun. I'll invest in that!

But to drag someone away from the heavier investment though, amazingly takes more work. That person's social graph needs to be following the cheaper, less impressive looking, but more fun game, to get to them. Don't forget they have time and money invested in the more expensive but slightly less fun product.

What if a company invests more money into their "me too" game? So that graphics, sound, and fun are in greater proportions, and they make the game equal in price or even higher. Don't forget, up to a point, people perceive price as a measure of quality. Although people want things cheap, they will invest into something that seems of better quality.

In this case, most people who are still happy with the first game, wait to see the results of this new game. Did people like it? Was there a bunch of bugs? Is it worth their time? Are their friends playing it?

People think that once a product reaches a certain point, then there is no way to dislodge it. But, at some point, you need competition. In the case of iPhone and iPad, the Android is creating serious competition. In the case of Google search, the competition has 40% of the remainder (meaning that though Google is on top, they are not the only search engine). The same is true for World of Warcraft. For years their numbers have remained about the same. Yet only 10% of all accounts make it past level 10. That means that 90% quit. 11.5 million is only 10% of all people who have tried WoW. Either that, or gold sellers have made 90 million WoW accounts.

So far, "me too" game design has not worked on gaining market share against WoW. Its competitors have had to switch to a different model. Perhaps, they were not different enough. Much like dealing with Facebook, some sort of revolution in the social graph would be required to take people from WoW. Failing to do so, everyone else should instead, look to working around WoW, and compete in that F2P micro-transaction area.

Enter the Rift

2010-12-06T08:16:00.001-08:00

Playing Single Player WoW for Free

2010-12-05T18:43:00.000-08:00

For the last month, I've been playing World of Warcraft for free. Unfortunately, this means that I have to play it as a single player game. There are other limits, most of which come with the single player play, but there are other limits: I can't level past 20.

If anyone is still guessing, I'm talking about the World of Warcraft free trial. In this sense, I am experiencing The Shattering, and playing the original races up to level 20, experiencing a good chunk of the changes that WoW 4.0 brings.

Since these trial accounts are throw-away accounts, I've been using a web service called Mailinator. Mailinator is a temporary e-mail service. Their slogan is, "Let them eat spam." Essentially the service saves a step in creating a rubbish Battle.net account.

As I register for Battle.net, I set an e-mail, such as Doodlybits1234567@mailinator.com. I proceed to set a password that I would never use, and put in false information. The confirmation e-mail is sent to Mailinator, where I (and actually, anyone else) can get to it, and click on the link to activate the Battle.net account. I then log-in, and ask for a WoW trial. After that, I'm able to immediately start playing WoW. All I have to do is copy my previous WTF/Account folder into the new WTF/Account folder, and I don't even have to worry about resetting key bindings.

I now have 10 days to level through as many starting zones and secondary starting zones as I can. When I get to level 15, I can choose to try out several instances, using the dungeon finder. On average, the 1-20 journey is about 10 hours, at the end of which I usually have a mount, since just questing gives more than enough gold for everything I would need.

So here are a few questions:

1) I am playing WoW for free. Is what I am doing wrong or am I simply playing within the confines of the Free Trial rules.

2) Morally (not technically), is there any difference between what I am doing, and playing on a Private Server?

3) Either way, I am not paying Blizzard, and will not do so for a while, does that change anything?

The Multi-game

2010-12-02T22:40:00.000-08:00

The idea of multiple games affecting each other is something that EVE creators CCP are experimenting with in Dust 514. For a long time I had been thinking of a Mega Game. A game that was persistent and had everything in it. MMOs covered part of it, and FreeRealms kind of did what I wanted. I haven't tried Lego Universe yet, but it seems to have a nice variety of activity in it.

No, a Mega Game is about being all games tied to a single Avatar. You would make your Avatar, and control him in a persistent world. This world would have adventure and hi-jinks. With this same character, with the stats and choices you make, you can then switch over to racing, fighting, puzzle combat, crafting, etc etc. Your choices in appearance, and stats would affect the other aspects of the game. So high agility or intelligence would give you faster acceleration in the racing game or strength and intelligence would give you a better top speed. Your car would look a certain way based on your gear and appearance choices (details were never figured out).

The other idea I've been hoping to see (or later on create) is a true Multi-game. Where I could release a city building Sim to casual players, which in turn becomes cities used in a strategy game. The cities layout would be used for when a unit invades an occupied city. The game would then become a Tower Defense style game.

OnLive, $9.99 plan

2010-12-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

OnLive is rolling out a plan for unlimited gameplay for only $9.99 a month. The thing is, that not all games will be in the plan. Instead you get a selection of games that may or may not be available on the free/pay-as-you-go-plan. This also goes the other way around, where the newest games will not appear on the $9.99 plan. Go here to see what games are available on the subscription plan. They promise more to come, but expect it to be older games.

Gold Members get $5 free

2010-11-22T21:04:00.000-08:00

Champions Online appended their matrix to include that Gold members get a 400 point stipend. That's $5 real world value. This brings it inline with other F2P games that also have a monthly option. Lifetime members get this stipend since they are Gold Members.

How long until that $5 pays you back? 60 months or 5 years. Not too shabby...

Champions Online, F2P Changes, continued

2010-11-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

Some more F2P changes, posted 10 days ago on the forums, sorry I'm late with this info, but I've been busy with school.

Passive abilities are getting changed to scale with your Super Stats. The difference here is that certain passives before, required a specific stat. This meant that if you wanted to use Invulnerability, you would have to have really high strength to make it useful. Now you can have the stats you usually use as your Super Stats (two stats that increase the functionality of your powers). This means that builds can actually be more consistent throughout.

Holds are being changed. I'd explain how holds worked before, but it was all rubbish and difficult to understand. Now hold strength is a consistent thing, and hold resistance will apply a direct reduction to a hold (12 seconds to 6 seconds to 3 seconds) on each subsequent cast, and then full resistance for awhile.

Also some new powers:
"Archery: Gas Arrow: Creates a Gas Cloud at your targets location, causing AoE Toxic damage over time to targets in the cloud.
- Darkness: Void Horror: Summons a single controllable pet made of shadow energy.
- Darkness: Summon Shadows: Creates 3 beings of shadow energy that fight your foes for a short while.
- Darkness: Void Shift: Blink out of existence for a moment and lunge at your target.
- Fire: Fire Shield: Fire now has access to a block power of its own! This block can apply Clinging Flames to nearby attackers.

- Ice: Avalanche: You rain down large chunks of ice on your foes.
- Munitions: Steady Shot: An additional Energy Builder for the Munitions Framework, Steady Shot utilizes a well-aimed single pistol to attack your foes.
- Sorcery: Pillar of Poz: Creates a column of magical energy, knocking your foes away from you.
- Sorcery: Hex of Suffering: Your target pulses with magical energy, taking damage and dealing damage to foes near your target.
- Sorcery: Vala's Breath: Heals friends in an area around your target.

- Telekinesis: Ego Blade: A melee Energy Builder that utilizes Ego/Id blades.
- Electricity: Lightning Storm: You repeatedly bring down lightning strikes upon your enemies.
- Force: Force Snap: Creates a burst of Force energy just behind your target, Knocking them toward you.
- Force: Force Geyser: You create a geyser of Force energy under your target, Knocking them up into the air.
- Force: Crushing Wave: A maintained 50 foot cone attack that repels your enemies.

While all of these are subject to change pending testing, these powers should all make it to the Live servers come Free to Play launch."

Life Time Subscriptions Return!

2010-11-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

Champions Online is giving access to their life-time subscription service. This can be bought now, and will translate to the Free to Play change the same way current Life-Time subscribers will be. This also allows access to Life-time only costume pieces, an exclusive pet and title. Furthermore, you get a special color on your Forum Posts name.

More details will be made available later. This costs $299 and includes the price of the game (since the game will be free soon enough). This means that a new lifer, can simply purchase the life-time sub from Cryptic now, and not have to go to the store to get the game first.

I wonder how many people will prefer to have a life time gold membership, instead of purchasing things a la carte for their Silver Membership? In the long run, if you want to have everything, the Life-Time Subscription would be best.

The future of Online Gaming

2010-11-08T13:11:00.000-08:00

East vs. West

2010-11-02T17:12:00.000-07:00

Keiji Inafune, the creator of Megaman, recently quit Capcom in a high risk attempt to change it. His thoughts (link to Gamasutra verified interview that had been translated and posted to a message board) are that with the life-time employment that Japanese companies offer, the employees have less reason to try to be competitive. Producers get no credit if the game does well, but take all the blame if the game fails. Designers like him have less reason to risk failure with a new idea. Instead they have stagnated, while in the West, games are thriving.

But, all I keep reading about in the west is how companies lay-off employees at the end of game cycles, resulting in 1/3 of all game designers being unemployed. Inafune though, points out that these designers are instead making their own studios and following the Indie route. This path apparently, is almost non-existent in Japan.

In the West, Indie developers can make downloadable games for X-box360, Playstation 3, Wii, DSi, iPhone, Andriod, Steam and other platforms (upcoming Ubuntu Download Center, and the Mac App store for the MacOSX).

So, will Capcom fail, or will their structure remain intact for the duration of the downturn? Will they be forced to restructure, resulting in up to 300 employee layoffs (estimates by Inafune)?

Update: They are taking a third route, restructuring while trying to keep all employees. Looks like his voice just took time to take effect? Or perhaps the very public interview he did, got to them.

Upcoming Supreme Court Case

2010-10-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

Champions Online: Consolidated Q & A

2010-10-27T17:01:00.000-07:00

Over here to check it out. One of the key answers that I read was that Gold members are distinguished from Silver by how much they can customize. I think I stated this in my last post, but most of the fun in Champions Online is from making your ideal super hero.

Still, many people make similar power choices, and archetypes are repeatedly stated as not being all from the same power set (though early ones will be predominantly of one power set).

If anything, I think they will get more people playing. It might also give them the incentive to pump out more adventure packs and power sets. Both of these are "free" to Gold members, and paid for by Silver members. This can cause Silver members to pay, and Gold members to keep their accounts active.

Champions Online: State of the Game

2010-10-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

Well Tobold pointed out real quick that Champions Online is going F2P. But they are also pushing through several improvements to the game. I'll try to go over all the benefits of being either Silver (free) or Gold (paid) member.

First of all, if you are a lifetime subscriber you get Gold for free. Essentially, you are in the same boat you are in now, and perhaps a bit better off. If you are paying a monthly fee, you can keep paying and play the game the same way. If you are not paying for Champions Online, playing F2P will be best for you. I think some people who are Gold will switch to Silver, as the restrictions would not be enough to keep them from enjoying the game.

So with those claims made, lets review what the main difference is for not paying a monthly fee.

As Silver your main limitations (or perhaps advantages) are:

no customized power sets: You get Basic Archetypes (8), and purchasable Gold Archetypes (coming later, these are automatically available to Gold Members, it is more cost effective to do one time purchases for these). These are predetermined power sets. You can only customize where you spend your advantages. The Archetype examples they gave were "The Blade" or "The Brute". Since choosing if you are a Brick or a Striker is based on what advantages you choose, it is not exactly like picking a class.
Only 2 character slots: You can purchase more. Gold members start with 8 and can not only purchase more, they can EARN (having a Gold account for over 200 days, and 1 for each character that reaches 40) more, which Silver members cannot.
Need to pay for Adventure Packs: although like other F2P games, it might be better to be able to do the one time purchase. This will depend on the cost of the adventure packs.
Not all costumes available at start: There are over 3,000 costume pieces available. There are then Gold Costumes that Silver will have to purchase, as well as Premium Costumes that both have to purchase. Again, it might be better to just be a Silver player and purchase these costume pieces as you need them.
No Bonus Costume Slots: Except for the Super Group bonus, Silver members must pay for additional Costumes. Gold Members earn costumes at 15, 30, SuperGroup and by being a Gold member for 300 days (as well as purchasable).
Only 1 bag slot: 3 more purchasable. This may end up being cheaper as a one time purchase.
Not all Travel Powers Accessible: They have Basic and Gold Travel powers, this is once again a situation where the one time purchase is better.
No Power tinting: Only Gold Members can change the colors of their powers. Not purchasable.
Auction House limited: Silver members can only post 5 items at a time. Gold can post 10 at a time. The ability to post more at a time is available to both Silver and Gold members.
Temporary Limitations for Chat, Mail and SuperGroup CREATION: for the first 20 hours there are some chats and mail can not be done and the rate (or amount) you can send is limited, and SG creation is not available for the first 20 hours of Silver Accounts.
Forum limitations: Silver members can read all forums, but can only post in certain areas.
Customer Service: Silver members only get Knowledge base type help. Gold Members get live support (they say free, but you are paying $15 a month for it).
No priority Login: Only Gold members get priority login.

So looking over the above bullet points, it will be better for most people to switch to a Silver account, and purchase things as they need or want them. Silver members will have access to all base zones, and all levels. Silver members would have to purchase 2 character slot packs (comes with 4 slots each) character slots for $30, 1 costume slot pack (which gives 2 additional costume slots) for $5, 3 bag slots (price unknown), adventure packs (unknown prices), gold archetypes (unknown prices), gold costumes (400 of them at an unknown price) to come as close to a Gold Membership without having to pay a monthly fee.

They are reworking the opening tutorial, and the progress and narrative of the first 10 levels or so into a more streamlined experience (their claim, I'll post about it when it happens). The other question is, if you still need to buy the game to start playing it (and if you get a free month of Gold). I posted the question in the forums, and I'll let you guys know if I get a response.

Are all these changes final? Actually no, they are going to start a F2P beta in November, and this isn't slotted to come out until the first quarter of 2011. Some things might still change, regardless of all that, is that as it is right now, if you don't care about changing the color of your powers, priority login and or making a customized power set, then Silver will be your best choice.

Edit:
Got my answer pretty quick:

Hey Pangoria,
When Champions Free-to-Play launches, a retail copy will not be required. Players can download the client for free.

Because physical retail copies are still in circulation and digital clients will continued to be offered at places like Steam and D2D, we're going to try and price that client at $14.99. It will also still include 30-days of free gameplay, which will functionally become 30-days of Gold Membership. So, if you buy the box or a digital client when Champions Free-to-Play launches, you pay the same price as one month of Gold Membership and you get one month of Gold Membership out of it. That seemed like the most elegant solution.

To reiterate, a box will not be necessary. You can still download the free client and either play as a Silver Player free of charge or elect to subscribe and become a Gold Member.

I hope that answers your question.

Quiet but not Silent

2010-10-14T18:20:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy, so its been awhile since I've updated. Posting is fun, so lets see what I can talk about today. Social gaming comes to mind as a topic that is on many peoples lips.

What I keep reading is that Social games are going against the entrapping stages, and the best Social games of the future will be closer to true casual games. So what are differences that must happen for a Social game to become a Casual game with social structures installed.

Gaining skills, and mastering them: This means the player has to get a sense of getting better. In the case of puzzle games, they will start getting a higher score. If you create a level system, then there should be a significant difference between levels so that they can feel like they have improved.
Allow the player to have choices. Choices (especially if its beyond a binary choice) give players a sense of power. Allow them to see and know all the things they can do (too much can also be overwhelming so its good to have some limits).
Allow the players to feel that what they are doing matters to the game world (Farmville, for example, has plants die if you don't water them and harvest them on time).
Don't just throw rewards at the player. Larisa recently pointed out how dissatisfying that can be.
As a social game you want to allow the player to interact with his friends, but avoid anything that spams. Everyone hates spam.
Allow for parallel competition with others. This is a social game, and it is good to be able to compare levels or restaurant size. Raid progress and sitting by a flight master with your drakes is similar to this.
Make the game fun! This should really be number 1. This means to give tools and then challenge the player into using those tools. Everyone once in a while you up the challenge. Keep the player learning new things, and they will keep having fun.
Have a long term goal. Why should the player keep playing? What is all this learning skill for?
If you are going to make players use RMT, then make it worth their while. It shouldn't allow for someone to "cheat" their way to the top, but it should have a use, and it should be more than a minute one. (Amazingly enough, color changing is worth the investment, as the player gets to control the look of their avatar, and that has quite a bit of importance).

Well, what do you think? Would these changes to Social games make them true casual games, and lead the absorption of many "non-gamers" into real gaming?

Slow Down

2010-10-09T23:15:00.000-07:00

Blogs are slowing down. MMOs are getting delayed. Even my blogging is taking a dip: school work is at the forefront of my priorities. There's not much to talk about.

WoW hits 12 million

2010-10-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

12 Million.... took almost 2 years to get the last .5 million.... news over here.

Recent Items of Interest

2010-10-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update, I have to get back to school work. I've had a headache for the last few days, and am a bit behind on getting my assignments done.

I recently received an e-mail from OnLive about their service going to a free model (sort of). I was able to log in, and essentially everything up to actually playing the full version of the game is free (free demos etc). OnLive is now more of a rental service. You can do a long term rental (up until ~~2014~~ 2013) last time I checked) for the full price of the game, or you can do a temporary 3day or 5day rental, depending on the game. This is great, if you have the weekend off and just want to play through Batman. Not every game has this feature though, which really annoyed me. I was hooked up to my wi-fi and tried the wi-fi beta they had available. It works beautifully, exactly as advertised. If there was lag, I did not notice it. If you are in the US, I suggest you try OnLive's demos. Especially with it being free now, it is totally worth it.

Champions Online is doing another October event. This one is pretty cool in that it is actually different from what happened last year. Its another adventure pack, which will help with those leveling from 11-40. Recently I finished quite a few missions in the Desert area (though I haven't done all the public missions). I'll be heading over to Canada next, which personally has the most confusing layout of all the zones so far.

It's going to be a Cataclysm.

2010-10-04T21:49:00.000-07:00

I love Nyhm's music videos... this isn't a video, but a very timely release of a song. Enjoy!

Cataclysm on December 7th?

2010-10-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

Maybe.

Edit: Confirmed.

Rifts: Planes of Telara

2010-09-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to put this up for anyone who may of missed it. Rifts looks really interesting, and their game play idea has me intrigued.

A few points of interest:

Two factions, both going after a common goal of brining balance back to the world. They didn't specifically say PVP, which to me, makes it sound like a PVE style of conflict. Could be interesting.
What players do affect the world. Other planes (Fire, Life, Death, etc) are constantly breaking through the barrier of reality, and if not beat back, could overrun a server. Because so much of the world is based on player actions, no two servers would be alike.
As you progress in the game you gather 'souls'. These allow you to play as different classes. Yet, that is a bit of a misnomer. From the footage, a 'soul' is like a Talent Tree. The more you have, the more options you have in how to customize your character.

So, after watching the video... is anyone else interested?

Lego MMO - interview

2010-09-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

Interesting interview over at Gamasutra.

My favorite points:

Lego Pieces often have twice the polygons of a WoW Model.

Sharing your custom built area with the public requires human approval.

And this quote, "You should be able to hop in, have fun, play on your property for a while, build something, oh maybe you don't have enough bricks for the idea you have, so you'll play the game some more, get some leaderboard stuff going with some of the minigames with your friends, a little bit of fun, indirect competition going on, do a little co-op, go back to your property, build some stuff, go to your friends property, give them some models to help them build their property up -- that's more of the loop we're going for. Your own creativity is driving the depth you will get out of the game."

Check out the interview. Very awesome.

APB reimbursments

2010-09-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

EA is offering a free game from their download store. Read more about it here. Go to their Customer Support to start the process.

The Eastern MMO Saturation

2010-09-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

On MMORPG.com, they have 393 MMOs listed. This is an amazing number of MMOs considering that WoW has about 60% of the MMO market (oh, that was in 2008, the latest number is 54%).

From there, we extrapolate how many MMOs are in the East (China and Korea mostly), and how they are almost all F2P with Item Stores. Also, Piracy in China is thought to be massively rampant (I know some people who read Tobold's Blog who would feel at home there!). Interestingly, despite predicted growth of up to 9.2 billion dollars by 2014 in China for the MMO market, the Chinese are switching from MMOs, to Social Games.

Zynga (the company that has probably the most facebook games in existence, and what most people think of when Social Gaming is mentioned) reports 1 petabyte per day. They are expanding with 1000 new servers per week.

PopCap (makers of Bejeweled, and Plants vs. Zombies) did an interview recently of how they have been modifying their games to the Eastern Market. Shortly after that interview, they talked about how awesome they are compared to Zynga.

Now we have been eyeing Farmville for awhile now, and are mostly very much against it being considered as a game. On the other hand, Plants vs. Zombies is not only a good game, but is now being included in WoW.

So, we are seeing that in China, there are too many MMOs and they are switching from those to Social Games. In the US., Social Games and MMOs are two completely different markets, but... is it possible to switch it the other way? Will we see more people going from the Social market into the Casual MMO market? Or will they simply progress to PopCap games?

Writers Repeat Themselves (Game Designers should too)

2010-09-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

Quite often as I read through a book, I will notice that each paragraph will describe the exact same thing three different ways. As time has gone by, and I have read more and more books, I have noticed this repeating pattern. I believe the first time I noticed this was while reading Shakespeare.

Iago:
O, sir, content you;
I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly follow'd. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass,
For nought but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd:
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are
Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them and when they have lined
their coats
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;
And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,
It is as sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Iago here, talks about how not all servants are loyal, and that he is not loyal. How he, like those servants who only pretend, is simply waiting for his chance to no longer be a servant.

Now in concept, we could simply leave this idea as is. We could simply follow the concept and apply three variations of phrasing to everything we write, and hope that imitation is good enough to make our writing seem adequate or, dare we say, even good.

For the most part, that would work out, but we need to capture the why of the action, or we'll be like those girls who never understand why to apply make-up a certain way, and end up looking like clowns instead.

So, is it important to use this tripling repetition all the time in writing? Or only during key moments, or important events? How about in a mystery, where you want the clue to exist, but to be forgotten until mentioned later? How about in instructions and directions?

I'm not sure if writing an entire novel in constantly repeating yet different sentences is a good idea. I've read a story like that, and about half way through I was frustrated and skipping the extra two sentences of information. Which after getting in the habit of doing, caused me to miss some scattered bit of info the author was trying to convey. So perhaps in such events, it might be better to only use the three step sentence when information is important.

What about in a mystery? By putting emphasis on something else, and having a single throwaway sentence for something of import, you may succeed in causing the reader to forget about the important item, and focus on what they thought was important.

How can this be used in games? How about in quest text? Quite often, people skip the quest text, as it is often pointless, and simply read the what the goal of the quest is. How about simply writing the goal where the quest text is. Followed by having the goal in the objectives section. Finally, you have it on the players HUD of active quests. This of course means that you have tell your story in a different way (I've seen videos of Cataclysm, where a few times, Blizzard has succeeded in changing quests to this form). This can make it difficult, as telling a story through gameplay is something that is not yet completely common.

So is there a way to use the repeating text concept in game design, to tell a story, where most people skip the reading? Are there games that have told a story without words or with few words?

Perhaps, you start with a simple quest, and you don't read the quest text and just do things. But, if those quests really do serve a purpose, you start seeing a pattern in what you are doing, even without reading the quest text. Just from the quest objectives you can start figuring out that hey, something is going on here. This means that you would have to have most quests NOT be kill 10 rats. You have to add another element, or even better, two more elements into the quest.

How about this: "Rats have been coming up from the cellar. There used to be an underground passage which was used during the occupation of the tyrannical orcs a while back. Looks like something new has moved into the passage ways. Perhaps, you would help me solve this problem? I'll make sure to reward you... appropriately."

First of all, the quest text itself mentions passage way and cellar and essentially going underground. Second, you would have updating or chain quests that would lead from one to the other. Is there more we can do?

In this case, we need to look at cut-scenes or things "like" a cut-scene to help tell the story. This would be the third step of telling a story three different ways.

So we can the quest to go into the cellar, where the quest updates to killing rats and we kill an arbitrary 10 rats. Once we kill the rats, we see one escape into another passage (the "cut-scene"). We follow, and see the passage ways that the quest giver was talking about. Now, we go deeper and explore. Now even without reading the quest text, we knew to go to the cellar, and because our objectives window is auto-updating, and we are seeing the rats escape down a passage, we follow and proceed with the quest.

Now, would you do this with every mission? Or only with important missions?

I would imagine that a developer would tier the significance of of their quests, so that as you go up in importance you have these additional steps taking place, to show the importance of these events. Perhaps even for the same reason that you would for writing.

;heroicsit

2010-09-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

Showing a possible costume, and emote from Champions Online. This is Moonlight, and the emote is Heroic Sitting. There are also more dances available that you can switch between. Of course, you can browse the Rate My Hero database, and see all the different heroes people have made.

Free Champions Online Giveaway!

2010-09-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

MMOSanctuary is doing a Champions Online giveaway. Here is the contest page. Why not give it a try and get a free Champions Online game! Open to anyone, anywhere in the world! (or so they say!)

All you have to do is register, then go back to their contest page. You start off with enough points after registering to enter the contest. If you are already a member and have additional points, you can register more times!

Now, there is only 5 entrants right now (I'm one of them), I figured, why not have MORE people signing up for a free copy! So go for it! Especially if you've been on the fence about this game, give it a free go! Contest ends late October (details on their page).

A possible solution to E-Peen

2010-09-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

Larisa recently had a question of how to resolve the phobia of inefficiency (which is a quote from Ghostcrawler apparently). Not long after reading that I came across an article in Gamasutra, which may have some promising ideas.

The article talks about priming. The idea being that if you set people up to not worry about gearscore, they are more likely to not worry about gear score. Of course, Blizzard is actually priming players for using gearscore. What I mean by that is that, to enter heroics, you need to be at or mostly at a particular gearscore minimum.

But, is it possible, that using the loading screen tips, that Blizzard might be able to undo the society of fear they have created? Did their tips about taking a break and meeting your friends outside of WoW work?

How about everytime you use the LFD tool you get a message saying things like, "Everyone who is selected for your team is qualified for the dungeon, there's not reason to kick them out if their gear is low."

That's also very blatant though. Perhaps it needs to be more subtle. How about, every time you go to vote kick, it asks you, "What would Thrall do?" or "Everytime a member gets kicks, Arthas eats a baby."

There are different ways to possibly undo what has happened, but the question is, how far will GC and Blizzard have to push to change the player base?

Casual Gaming: Converting Non-Believers

2010-09-22T18:02:00.000-07:00

Video games, like religion, have those who know its rules, and those who are uninformed. Similar to religions, it wishes to convert those who do not understand it, into loyal followers. The idea of going door to door passing the "good news" can be shared by both (I submit exhibit A).

Casual games (note I am not talking about Social Games, which is currently a pejorative) are a leading off point to hardcore games. They start as simple, approachable games, where the rules are easy, or even intuitive. They take a simple concept, like clicking on an object to highlight it, and instill a codified gaming idea into the minds of its users (note that they are not necessarily gamers at this point).

Step by step a casual game leads the player into deeper interactions. Depending on the game, it might only go into the shallow waters, wading on the surf. At the end, it gives the player a reason to seek a similar game. That game, may be as casual, or may be designed with the idea that the person played a game like it before. Suddenly, new concepts enter the language of the user, and step by step, game by game, the user becomes a gamer.

For so long, we have had A for okay, and B for cancel, that even the X-box follows this convention (and further expand on the concept by making A green for go, and B red for stop). The Playstation, realized how ingrained button layouts were for gamers, that they made the O and X buttons to match the locations of the A and B buttons on the Super Nintendo controller. These are interface mechanics that codify into a players mind.

These general gaming ideas, are designed to make it simpler for a gamer to master interactions with the game. This effort, to make hardcore controls easier to grasp is for attracting newer players, but can also aid those gamers who have not yet mastered a game's interactions.

Tony Ventrice over at Gamasutra says that there are 6 things that makes a game hardcore, and it is those 6 things that need to have incremental steps in order to draw the casual gamer into the hardcore space.

Having No Personality

2010-09-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

Blogging in a way that is tied to people you know, causes several things to happen. First of all, I do my best to not be a complete jerk. This is important, since friends and family potentially read this blog, and I like most of them enough to not want to hurt them.

Second of all, this blog is a bit of a face to what I think. Because of this, I've been rethinking some of my actions and decisions, of which, I will discuss later in this blog post. Unlike anonymous forums, this account is linked to my e-mail, my Facebook, and has my name attached directly to it.

Now, my friends who are closest to me, realize that my personality is different depending on the company. I may be more liberal in my views around certain company, or I may be conservative with others. I believe that this is true for everyone, but what is unique about this in a public facing blog, is that all my circles of friends can view my actions simultaneously.

Partly because of this, I tend to find my writing lacking a certain edge, that others like, Gevlon for example, seem to delight in. Furthermore, even others like Tobold, are able to take a opposing point of view to make a point, without confusing those in his circles (other than his readers at times).

When I think about how present myself in this blog, I feel similarly to when I am at work. I am constantly attempting to not hurt other people's feelings, and though I may make a strong stand against something, I do attempt to not be too childish about it.

So here goes my decision reversal. A while ago, there was a confluence negative feelings towards social media. Part of this was due to Blizzard announcing the use of real names in forums. Because of this I made a bold claim, no more posts about Blizzard games, and I would not be purchasing any of the games either.

Upon reflection, I have gained two points from this, A: It did not work for Tobold to not mention Darkfall, so why would it work for me? B: It turns out to be really childish, and results in posts that sound too edited.

So I am recalling my ban on mentioning Blizzard games on the blog, mostly to make things easier for myself. As for the not buying the games, lets be honest, I probably wouldn't have bought it on release anyways. I played WoW over a year after release. I didn't start playing Diablo 2 until a year or so after the expansion came out, and I bought StarCraft back in the day, and hated it immensely. Even Warcraft 2 was purchased a year later.

So will I buy Diablo 3, a year or two years after it comes out? Honestly, I do not know. What I do know, is that my public face is irrevocably linked to video games. So do I personally have a problem with my name being out there in forums? Not at all. But I still have an issue with how Blizzard had been trying to implement it. But for now, that is behind us.

Knights of the Old Republic

2010-09-19T01:10:00.000-07:00

High off my recent acceptance to Uni, I decided to get myself a treat on Steam, and that treat presented itself deliciously, for only $2.50. Steam recently had a limited run daily sale. So what drove me to get this old game?

Well, I have played it before, but never to completion. Also, I wanted to spend some time in the Old Republic world, as a type of psych up, to help conceptualize how SWToR will play. Finally, the price was simply perfect.

Now, this game is pretty old, and perhaps playing Mass Effect 2, might give a better concept of how SWToR will actually play, but having played the demo of Mass Effect 2, I can easily re-imagine the dialogs in "wheel" format. What KotoR shows is the "world" of the Old Republic, such as races, city structures, plot elements (Mandalorians, Assassin Droids), and things that could help, visualize how they might make things matter in a story driven MMO.

Amazingly, what drew me to [unmentionable MMO], was how similarly auto combat looks between the games. In the end, if any game has a chance of equaling the top MMO, I think SWToR would be it.

Pricing Models

2010-09-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

Amazon has a deal for writers who decide to put their books up for sale in their e-books store. The concept is, that you get everything formated and ready to go on your own, and put it up for sale.

To do this, you choose a price point. If you sell between $2.99 to $9.99 you get 60%, but if you go over $9.99 you only get 30% of the sale, which means you need to sell it for over $20 to get an equal amount of money from the $9.99 sale.

To me, the over $20 sales would only go to technical books, that teach some programming language or other useful skills. That means, for fiction writers you would be deciding between a $3 or a $10 book to sell. The usual paperbacks, sell for $5.99+ if its been out for awhile, or $17.99+ if it is more recent. To compete, you'd have to go under that, so practically, you would be selling your books for $2.99-$4.99.

That means per sale, you're netting about $2 average per sale. For me, with both me and my wife working, I'd want to be bringing in, $1000 per month, which means selling 500 books a month.

With that in mind, an independently published book is considered "a hit" if it sells 2000 copies. Extrapolating from that, I would be a successful independent writer if I completed (wrote, revised, put together, and published) a book every 4 months, or 3 books a year (and that's if it was a success each time).

Graduating Despite the Odds

2010-09-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

High School for me was akin to a type of nightmare. I had a few good friends, most of who ended up treating me like crap by the end of high school, one who never spoke to me again, and two who are still a close and dear friends. I was friends more with teachers than with students, and even then, some teachers simply hated me.

My Junior year, I was accused of threatening to shoot students, and was expelled for the semester (final judgment came down to, "We can't say you did it, but since you were accused, we are kicking you out anyways"). I kept on studying, and came back for Senior year and finished off High School.

Looking at my HS Transcript, I remembered all the dark times I had at that high school, but... more excitingly, I remembered all the good times I had with my friends (while they were friends). Now even though I'm doing my best to be accepted into Full Sail, and go back to school (even on an online course), I'm excited. I'm really getting excited about this.

So while Larisa has her eyes on Cataclysm, I have my eyes on Full Sail. Yet I believe that both our eyes are covered with rosy spectacles, that color the future in a bright tint. Will our expectations be met, or even exceeded? I can't wait to find out.

David, Trek and Ami Finale

2010-09-12T00:45:00.000-07:00

Last panel.

David, Trek and Ami part 12

2010-09-11T02:45:00.000-07:00

Looking back at the Champions Online Anniversary

2010-09-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

Found an excellent article on Massively about CO. Thought I'd share it.

David, Trek and Ami part 11

2010-09-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

We finally get Trek, who was a goblin alchemist at the time (who knew that over 12 years later, a game would be available where you could be a goblin alchemist?). This ride is almost over, two more to go.

David, Trek and Ami part 10

2010-09-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Ten entire comics setting up for this one joke. Did you see it coming? I'm kind of hoping that you were expecting this joke to occur.

Naming your Champion

2010-09-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

All over, people seem to misunderstand how account names work in Champions Online, and I've tried to comment on their posts, but I'd like to clear things up in one spot, that everyone can point to and say, "there you go."

When you create a Cryptic account, you are asked for a few things: An Account name that is used to log-in, your e-mail, a password (to be used in conjunction with your account name), and a Handle (which is what most people out there are calling the @accountname), your birthday, and verification of humanity (captcha).

So, when I tell people that my Champions Online account name is @Pangoria, I'm actually talking about my Handle. So lets get our naming suggestions cleared up, and actually call it @Handle from now on (I'm as guilty of furthering this misconception as others).

David, Trek and Ami part 9

2010-09-08T00:50:00.000-07:00

The story continues... chekov's gun coming up.

A step towards Destiny

2010-09-07T18:10:00.000-07:00

I filled out an application for an online course with Full Sail University. Paid the $75 application fee, filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and talked to someone there about what the next steps will be.

There's some really good things about Full Sail, that really drew me to selecting them over other Universities, and online programs. The courses were first and foremost. Very interesting selection, with exactly the kind of things I wanted to study, for exactly the fields I wanted to enter.

Like other Universities, by the end of the course, I'm going to have lead a small group to completing a project. In this case though, I'll be doing so online. I also get to revisit the course in the future at no charge, even if the course changes to accommodate new technologies. Finally, I get to study on my time, and they start fresh each month, meaning that at anytime that you want to start course work, you can apply.

But that's not all. 13 of their graduates worked on Red Dead Redemption. 3 of them worked on Modern Warfare 2.

Everyone around me has been telling me to get back to educating myself, and to get a degree. Somehow, I see this decision as a better guarantee of future success than playing the lottery every day.

I'll find out more tomorrow, as FAFSA information, and other things carry on. I still need to get my High School Transcript, and look for grants. I'm pretty sure I can do this. I just hope that everyone who told me to go back to school will support me as I go after a fifteen year old dream.

David, Trek and Ami part 8

2010-09-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

This was done back in 1998, so Final Fantasy 7 was big in my head at the time. The sprites are from Final Fantasy 5, which at the time had never been released in the US, and the only exposure I had to it, was a gag translation, which involved several jokes about ocular fornications (as well as nasal). Essentially, humor you would find on halolz, or 4chan.

Champions Online, Anniversary and Supergroup

2010-09-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

Joined a supergroup called The Sorcerer's Circle. Made a SG costume for it, very big and demony (I'm on the right side of the image.

The anniversary has been good fun, and a few people according to the chats are planning on purchasing the game based on the experience of playing it during the free period.

According to Tobold, Direct2Drive is going to be selling CO for $6. I do encourage people to pick this game up, the creativity of costumes is boundless, and costume sets are often as cheap as $3.

David, Trek and Ami part 7

2010-09-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

I think RPG World was doing something similar to this, where one character understood the game world, and the other was confused as to why the world functioned as strangely as it did.

David, Trek and Ami part 6

2010-09-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

As a note I used to use the name Maxim Mizukinkai when I was a teenage making these comics. This was of course, WAY before Naruto and the Mizukage thing. I wonder if any of our internet blogger buddies, who we read every week, used to have other aliases when they were younger, or if they have kept the same alias all these years.

David, Trek and Ami part 5

2010-09-04T01:51:00.000-07:00

This one was actually more a commentary of the time, and how many times webcomics wouldn't "make" their deadline (actually, it STILL happens). For me, I think, if you want to succeed and you say, you're going to do Mon-Wed-Fri, then your stuff better be out, Mon-Wed-Fri.

European Blogger Mafia

2010-09-03T21:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure about the time line here, but there are certain interconnections that I noticed, and a certain separation between them and US (if you know what I mean). Tobold, Larisa and Gevlon are the head of a blogger network that stretches its control world wide, like a web or net, entrapping readers in an endless loop.

Time and time again, world of warcraft players are European. Ever heard of Totalbiscuit? How about Athene (the self proclaimed greatest paladin in the world).

Who are the American Bloggers? I can't even tell anymore, as American Bloggers continuously make themselves "appear" foreign. Is Ixobelle American, Japanese or European? Half the time, I'm not even sure "HE" is even human!

No, we have Rohan, and Mr. Green, and of course myself. I'm wondering how many are willing to add their name to the American Blogger Militia (A BM), and help combat the (E BM).

(All names used are for demonstration purposes only without their owners permission, and are not officially affiliated with any terrorist organizations, virtual or otherwise.)

David, Trek and Ami part 4

2010-09-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

Originally, the title of each page gave a hint of what was going on. In this case, this comic was a flashback as to why Ami, who is a black mage, would agree to help kill black mages.

David, Trek and Ami part 3

2010-09-02T02:45:00.000-07:00

After these comics, I had done a couple of hand-drawn comics about a boy and his dog, who were being chased by the BPIA (baggy pants inspection agency). I never got too far with it, since my drawings were crappy, so getting a good enough image took forever.

David, Trek, and Ami part 2

2010-09-01T03:28:00.000-07:00

Continued upload of DTA. Looking back on this comic, I still find it "cute" instead of humorous. The typos are really annoying too. I would love to work on a real comic, but my artistic capabilities have always held me back. What I need is a Gabe and Tycho set up, where I write, and the other person draws, and we feed back and bounce ideas off each other.

David, Trek, and Ami part 1

2010-08-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

A long time ago (I'd say about 12 or so years), I was making sprite comics on a geocities website, to leave my mark on the internet. As I've recently found my old sprite comics, I decided to upload them (13 or so total), here for posterity, and as a back up as well. Forgive my indulgence.