Rift: Free 2 Play

So Steam did this big splash screen about having Rift Free to Play. So I decided this is the perfect time to try the game. No start up cost, just jump in and play. I played the game for about 6 hours then uninstalled.

Not because it was a bad game, but because I started seeing potential issues with the game, and didn't want to invest deeply into it. For one thing, I played it for six hours straight. I can't even pull off doing that with League of Legends. This was mostly due to discovery and experiencing a new game, but there was a feeling of constant activity in the game.

The final 2 hours were spent in this sort of random group questing, where you are piled together with several other people, and just rampaging across the countryside finishing off quests. I'm not even sure where the quests were coming from, just that I went from killing spiders to plants to boars without batting an eye. Rewards in this were fast, and I didn't feel like I had earned it.

The Rift system is interesting, but at one point there were 30 guys just bashing some rock or something. Again, rewards were easy to get in this. Because of the easy rewards system, I was able to get pretty good pants and weapon for my level (7 dps jumping up to 14 or 21 or something, can't remember the exact numbers).

I didn't get deep enough into the soul system, but I was annoyed at the auto-leveling that it tries to trick you into (I thought pressing the pop up would let me go set the points, but it automatically places the points).

Questing was a brain dead endeavor, where you don't read anything and just follow the mini-map (very much like WoW). Which really put me on edge with the game. I did like the everyone has a pet kind of thing (my Teleporting Rogue had a pig from the hunter tree, and my warrior had a pet cat).

The other negative was that the races just felt like different flavored humans. The only MMOs I have played where I enjoyed the race selections where EQ2 and WoW.

So, if you want to try out a F2P MMO, Rift is very decent. I never felt forced to pay, though they do a good job of letting you know you can (I didn't play long enough to need more bagslots btw, but that would be one reason to pay). The RMT in the game seems reasonable, though it does the one thing I dislike, which is converting real money to their play money. Though that seems to be the standard, so there's not much to do about that.

This is a recommend to check out, though in the end it wasn't for me, because I can't afford to lose myself for such long periods of time.

Reminder to Self: When Youtube stops working on Chrome

If youtube.com has stopped working on chrome go to:

chrome:plug-ins

one of the top plugins... perhaps hidden away, is the flash plug-in. It may be disabled. If it is, enable it, and youtube should start working again.

Semantics, Heuristics and Communication

Communication is one of the hardest things that humanity accomplishes on a daily basis, and more often than not, there is a bit of loss when you translate thought to words and back to thought in someone else's brain.

In game design, quite often you have to start somewhere, such as, "This game will be like Zelda: OoT but with biblical mythology and a modern setting."

Such shortcuts allow for fast absorption of the key data, and can allow for discussion of the actual game development to begin earlier and at a faster pace.

But even using the above heuristic shortcut, some data can be misinterpreted, or flat out misunderstood. For example, does the Zelda aspect mean dungeons, a main weapon and different sub weapons? Does it mean heart containers are found? What is biblical mythology? Is it the parts in the bible? Or is it the parts that people make up as they interpret it? And by modern... do you mean now, within the last 20 years, or 20 minutes into the future?

Yes there will be questions and clarifications, but it sure is a lot faster than detailing it all at first, and pictures already begin forming in people's minds as the question and answer goes on. Collective brainstorming occurs, and a game gets designed.

This can often be seen as a "sales pitch" of the game, but this type of thinking and communication clearly shows what you want to do, and how it will be different from the current offering available.

"This is a MegaMan game where you're a an unemployed teenager and have to train and get jobs."

"Its like Bionic Commando, except sci-fi, 3-D and the mechanized arm is your wife."

So to everyone who has to work with other people on cross disciplinary projects, the greater your breadth of knowledge, the easier it will be to communicate. So read a book you don't like, play a game that sucks and has a low metacritic score, and finally, experience life. Good luck, have fun.

White Privilege

It's strange talking to people about things they have, and emotions they experience, when they feel that they are just and fair, and don't have those reactions and emotions themselves.

White privilege is a topic that brings up anger in people, who feel that they don't have it, and that it is unfair to accuse them of such. They are not part of the "conspiracy" to keep other ethnicities down. They have no problems with minorities. They are not the white privilege.

Yet, they proceed to talk about, how they are not getting a job because under qualified women and minorities are being hired due to affirmative action. They can't see that their view point is exactly the result of their white privilege.

But white privilege is just the definition of something that happens to all ethnicities. All ethnicities listen to their own, protect their own, and have a sort of fear of the other. They can tell the differences among themselves, and often have great divides amongst themselves.

That is to say, not every hispanic, asian, white and black is the same. But of course, there are common factors which tie each person together, and there are new global cultures springing up around the internet and video games, that can tie disparate nations together.

Its easy for me to communicate with people who use the internet. Doesn't matter what the color of their skin, or what country they are from. Things like that, are to me, why the internet is so important. It is a shared culture.

So as a white male, I wish to say to other white men and women out there:

You are privileged. You expect people to listen to you, and you expect to be treated a certain way. You don't think anything is wrong because nobody bothers you about it. You are not stopped and searched. You are not assumed to be a criminal. You are a special little snowflake. And when you notice this happening, you need to speak up. You need to correct the injustice that is occurring to your brothers and sisters. You need to stop the apathy towards others.

Kill your Darlings

Sometimes you can feel that something is wrong with a design, concept or story, without knowing what it is. On some gut level you feel that what you are doing is not beneficial. But how do you transition from gut feeling to productivity?

You see, when your gut is telling you that something is off, it can be difficult to work. Authors refer to it as writer's block. It is a conundrum that has to be resolved so that the work can be the best it can be. Sometimes it will require rework or scrapping a project, but the sooner you realize what is wrong, the sooner you can fix it.

How this May Progress:

Procrastination -

Perhaps the one that can be the hardest to identify. If you procrastinate already, it can be difficult to identify your normal procrastination from that resulting from a problem. This procrastination occurs because you have no solution for the problem, yet you do not quite understand that the reason you're doing this is because of that lack of solution.

Solving Easier Problems -

That is to say, that instead of tackling the big mess, you spend time clearing out your inbox, responding to twitter, etc etc.

Essentially, you do not want to tackle the problem, you are aware of it, and so you fill your time with other things that "have to be done", but are of lesser priority.

Writing or Talking about the fact that you are Procrastinating or Solving Easier Problems -
You are now addressing the issue that there is a problem. You are talking to other people in an effort to find a way to save that problem, or to finally come to the conclusion, that it has to be resolved some how.

Solving the Problem, or Killing It -

And here it is, the whole point of this mess. If you can't solve the problem, then you have to come to terms with killing it off.

How to Kill:

Combine it with something else -

Maybe the character is a bit redundant, maybe their role can be merged with another. Perhaps the mechanic is just not interesting enough by itself. It could be that you don't need jumping in the game, so you can just put any jumping with the other Quick Time events in the game. Have it be context sensitive like other interaction points in the game instead.

Remove it entirely -

Is the scene causing more trouble than its worth? Sometimes, going back and rewriting, or recreating a room is better than trying to shove something where it doesn't belong. The best authors have every scene progressing multiple things at once (character, story, setting up a Chekov's gun). Similarly every area of a game, should be exploring the game world narrative, the character narrative, and the player narrative.

When thinking of moving from controls to touch gameplay, I wondered if I should keep the character icon, or if I could remove it entirely instead of animating it for touch. Sometimes, its better to not waste time on additional animations, while other times, the investment allows the game to feel more "juicy". Think it through and make the decision.

Change its location -

Sometimes a scene doesn't work because it hasn't been set up. Maybe make the scene take place later on, and have the current moment set up that payoff. In a game, you may need to have a room or two where the player can safely play with a new mechanic. You may feel that you have to rush it, because the level is already built, but you should evaluate the space, and attempt to script around this, or simply move the challenge to a later spot.

In the end:

Solutions vary based on why you have to kill your darling. Hopefully, this will at least get you back on track to solving your problem. Good luck!