covert.creations

There are three titles that may appear with great frequency as one meanders the gaming news these days. Each are certainly worth discussing on their own, simply on the merits of having such attention bestowed upon them. However, there is a common thread to be pulled from these stories in particular. These companies, and their gaming products, are faced with tremendous obtacles. The bigger and better they become, the harder it is to grow beyond . In essence, their fight is a fight against themselves. Success can be a cruel instructor. Read on to see what I mean.

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As mentioned in my previous article, gamers expect a community from the game publisher. In a sense, this demonstrates the unique position of videogames in the landscape of entertainment. Consequentially, feedback and community become a cost of doing business.

I believe we’re quickly reaching the point where publisher-run communities no longer serve their purpose. The communities are too vast. Moreover, the gamers themselves have evolved toward a deeper level of sophistication. Gamers are the reason we’ve come this far, and we simply demand more.

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The nature of things

When online gaming was getting started, there was a certain novelty in spending vast swathes of time with the same people on the same game servers, night after night. It seemed inevitable that we’d eventually all team up. And team up we did. Forming groups is the most basic of human qualities, and is certainly no less true in virtual worlds.

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Quiz. What do these three things have in common?

a) Hockey
b) Artillery
c) MMORPG Design

Give up?

The answer : it’s where you aim your shot.

In the immediacy of hockey, players don’t pass to where their teammate is, but where they’ll be in the next 0.5 seconds. In artillery, shots follow a ballistic trajectory. In sum, the game isn’t won by playing the current game. It’s won by anticipation.

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A big congratulations goes out to Neardeath Studios on the 10th year of Meridian 59. What a fantastic accomplishment. M59 is the first, the longest-running, and most respected MMORPG of them all.

This article is in response to M59 co-creator Brian “Psychochild” Green’s post, “Why middleware will not save us“. He hits pretty hard, and sets his sights on the “middleware market” in the MMORPG space. I’ll say I agree with the bulk of it. Yet, some of the specifics cause me trouble. Thus this post.

His argument noted two levels of the MMORPG industry, the indies and the AAAs (”the blockbuster games”). The gist of his article is that, as a technological cure-all, MMORPG middleware companies fail in their promise. They will make little impact on game development in MMORPG games. A gross-oversimplification on my part, so I’d encourage you go read Psychochild’s post.

First off, how does one define middleware?

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Via conceptart.org:

AreaNet’s artist team posted some samples of their sketchbook for ‘Guild Wars : Factions’. If you’re interested, there’s more available from the Guild Wars homepage.

I am entranced.

Guild Wars, concept art

TerraNova highlighted it, I watched it, and ‘iCoke’ blazes a trail for World of Warcraft into China. The ad is actually somewhat old, but combine it with this :

With 7 million subscribers, WoW is now in the list of the world’s top 100 most populous countries.1 2

It easily exceeds the population of Lebanon or Israel. It will likely surpass them both put together. Think of how all those Wow players could represent a significant force for massive social change, if only the damned Horde would stop getting in the way!

Priorities, priorities.

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Like the Hollywood fare that inspires them, typical tie-in games for movies usually follow the same tired formula. A reskinned Quake clone where you follow the plot along as the protaganist (with suitable cut-scenes to prop up the story, ugh), and you uh, jump…and shoot stuff. Or possibly a themed RTS set in the movie’s universe, where you… destroy stuff.

Games based on movie franchises are NEVER as successful (monetarily or aesthetically) ones based on original IP.

Enter James Cameron, finally resurfacing from being underwater for like the last 20 years. Cameron intends on taking the classic movie-game concept and turning it on its end. This ambition is currently called, Project 880, and he essentially wants to make a multiplayer game and movie simultaneously, and then release the game first. The idea is that players will explore the universe and become familiar with it (addicted?), then go watch the movie to experience one thread within the gameworld’s narrative.

Hmmmmm. Is this a transparent marketing play, or a legitimate exploration in game-movie interactivity? Remember, the story I linked is in Business Week.

Cameron is not stupid, and this has never been done before. Lucky for him, this fact alone might make game and movie sell magnificently. Clever marketing, indeed. Risky, too! What if the game turns out like The Matrix Online? Yek.

Yet, as a seasoned optimist, I couldn’t help but race the possibilities around in my mind. The project seems interesting, but only when you start to think about it.

Lets assume that Cameron doesn’t care about marketing or money. Lets pretend, for a moment, that all he cares about are games.

Lets also believe that the game is so full of awesome, that you quit your job, your family and bowling club in order to fully experience everything it has to offer.

So what would a game-vie look like? Which compliments the other? In this perfect universe of gamedom, which entity benefits more? The movie? Or the game?

• Consider that the fictional universe is fully realised and documented within peoples’ heads before the movie starts. In this case, the movie gets the benefit here, as the setting has been established, allowing it to concentrate on other things… like plot!
• The movie’s subtext is readily understood. Here, the movie benefits again, as it inherits from a significant base of knowledge for the viewer. This provides Cameron an opportunity for more content within the film without having to explain its presence. That is, making nods and homages toward the game’s setting and characters in an effort to make it more entertaining. (Moviegoer : “Wow, those characters got ganked in the exact same spot I did!”)
• The visual imagery and effects are incredible. This notion boosts the game, without question. With a Cameron budget, the game can only help to inherit the rigourous production calibur of a blockbuster film. In this, the game will most likely look fantastic, as the design and attention of an excellent production studio will be devoted to it.
• Great performances and top-notch acting talent. The hype of a Cameron film, and the budget that he’ll undoubtably command, will attract high quality talent. This will obviously benefit both, but here’s a chance to make a game that actually has good voiceover work.
• Story. I’m having a hard time imagining how the game may help the movie’s story, or vice versa. Perhaps when the player returns to the game after having seen the movie, they may discover another dimension to the game experience.

In the end, this isn’t quite as exciting as I had thought, as this seems more of a vehicle for the movie. Its hard to see it for much more than that. Yes, the setting and the imagery will likely be incredibly compelling, but the game has to be innovative and fun in order to justify this unique and directed combination.

Now, what if the outcome of the gameworld influenced the outcome of the movie? Now that’s exciting, and would make me want to play it (if only to witness the influencing elements firsthand). Sadly, with the extreme scheduling of the film business, this would probably never be possible.

How about you? If this mythical awesome-filled game were to appear tomorrow and offer you a chance to “direct” the plot of the movie, would you play it?

After a long and undeniable fade, I finally uninstalled WoW and cancelled my account. Many months have gone by where I have not touched the game, for a variety of reasons. The strongest of these, hurridly scrawled below :

Despite my contention that its a complete design, a perfectly overflowing package with busy little treats for everyone, the game is essentially dead for me. Getting to 60, the current maximum level, was “mostly harmless” fun. Despite fits of sheer boredom, peppered with many instances of reading magazines during combat, I finally did it and by mid-summer dinged 60. Surprising yes, but a promise was made, and I always try to do what I say I will do. I was glad to have my compatriots with me while I did that : Iolo, Dorgrim, Thorgar, Davina, Iara, Gropp, Kali… the many nights of fun we had is undeniable.

Everything in the game is there because Blizzard chose it to be. If you look closely, you see the design and technical decision points all over. For the good and bad, it is what it is. I won’t fault Blizzard for the “why’s” of what they did, but I will fault them for the “because” – that is, the result of their decisions :

The end-game for WoW
As meticulous a design it is, did not appeal to me. I strongly feel that they really did a fantastic job with the game as a whole, and the effects of what they have wrought shall be felt throughout gamedom for a very long time. Yet there is so much missing from what could have been a “funner” game. The prerequisite for large group instances included a party of absolutely correct composition, but this manifested a direct barrier to actually playing and enjoying the game! If you couldn’t find the right healer or tank, you did not play. Why pay for a game that you cannot play?

The objective is fighting, yet combat is dull
The prevailing mode of point-and-click combat is hopelessly deterministic, thus removing the visceral pleasure one should have when vanquishing an opponent. A joyless exercise to be sure. And complete ignorance of the five-second rule.

The story? What story!
This is a huge world, filled with peoples and places and legends and history. Yet I challenge anyone to tell me five story threads from the top of their head. The God Hakkar did what, exactly? What did Overmaster Pyron do to deserve repeated assasination? ETC.

The warped and cartoon-like visual design
It fills the world from each end with a lovely, contiguous language making each corner different yet predictable. The work of a consistent hand. A god. But the lack of photorealism and the cutesy elements lead me astray from immersion. If they were to drop an entire new continent into the game (and they will), it would actually appear far too similar to what appeared before it, and no matter what they were attempting to render for us. One may argue, but the visuals actually get tedious.

The characters
By the characteres I mean the design. Not compelling and far too similar. Yes, they create ownership and uniqueness as a game reward (ie. time spent in procuring new “looks” in the form of weapons and armour), but too often I would meet another night-elf rogue that looked identical to me. My opinion (and you may disagree) is that this should not happen. And looking at my character’s face, right from the start, caused me to curl my lip in slight disgust.

Inertness
If you drop a sword in the forest, does it make a sound? Not in WoW. The world is a backdrop to a player’s interactions with a database. You cannot interact with the world in any way, nor can you drop items, move objects, build things, destroy them, or do anyhting to change or disturb this lovingly crafted universe in any way shape or form. This breaks immersion (at least for me). It makes the world less interesting to spend time in.

And thats it. I recall grinding my way through Azeroth’s Silithus region for a rare item, doing it for several hours, and decided to listen in on my guild Ventrilo server for the whole voyage, partaking in the conversation. Three hours of nothing but discussion of particular pieces of armour and weapons. “Those gloves are nice.” “Yeah if I combine them with this and this, that will complete the set I’ll need to do that and that.” “Fantastic”. I am not joking, this was a three hour non-stop discussion for two enthusiastic players. I will not fault them at all – its the game that they are playing, and they enjoy it as they have every right to. In my humble opinion, three-hour discussions about gloves and boots do not a game make.

For what it is, the game is great. But at this point, time-based games just aren’t for me.

From Terranova, I saw a recent post from Dr. Richard Bartle detailing a new game engine and MMO platform called Multiverse.

Its essentially a “do it yourself” toolchest for online game development. Their idea is to have multiple, singular MMO’s essentially linked to each other by a central registry. This is a serious foray into a distributed model of online games.

Aside from their bluster about “revolutions” in MMO development, its quite interesting. They give you the engine, some pre-canned assets, the server code, and an editor. Create the world you want and voila! Instant MMO. They even host it for you. They make their money by charging you a percentage of your game’s subscription fees.

The DIY aspect isn’t new. Bioware’s Neverwinter provided a dev toolchest with charge-for-use content and they seem to be very successful with it.

Yet, there does seem to be a lot of buzz around Multiverse. Bartle wants it for his research. I think others might like the challenge of making something fun with it. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I’d like to see what the engine’s capabilities are. Check it.

In other news, I looked at the trial edition of Irth Online, just out of curiousity. Its a brand-new fantasy-themed MMORPG made by a smaller developer in Boston. I would be very tempted to call it an indie MMO, for a variety of reasons. It had almost no press or advertising, which struck me as odd for a brand-new commercial MMO. After looking at the game, I’m not surprised.

Its a complete clone of what we’ve seen already in that genre. Although they’ve obviously worked very hard on it, the most irritating aspects are that its very clunky, confusing and non-innovative. Damn. Every aspect of a typical MMO appears within Irth as if its merely fulfilling a checklist of what an MMO should have, all very hurriedly slapped together.

I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand, but there are quite a few problems with it. Generally, I find it very instructive to look at bad games as well as the good ones. In this case, I’ll suffer through the experience even if its merely to answer the question : is “Irth” an elaborate experiment or a true commercial product?