He is one of my favorite Star Trek Villains. He’s the man that everyone loves to hate – none other than the man himself, Khan.  Most people who read this site and listen to our show will remember the moment when the Shakespeare quoting villain says “Revenge is a dish best served cold, and it is very cold in space.”

For those of you who Richard Garriott aka Lord British aka Admiral British, the man who brought us Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa, was issued stock options valid through May 30, 2011 as part of his tenure at NCSoft. When Richard took a leave of absence from NCSoft, someone at the company that brought us Aion thought they would pull a Slick Willy…

NCsoft waited until Garriott’s post flight quarantine after his famous trip about the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and canned him.  The problem is, they told the world that he had quit voluntarily, that activating a clause in his contract that caused his stock options to expire in the event Garriott left NCSoft of his own accord.

Now Richard Garriott has had his day in court, and the courts agreed.

Lord British is now 28 million dollars richer (o.k. he will be when NCSoft pays up).  Let’s hope this means that Lord British will consider exercising that tremendous talent of his and bring us something other than a poker game from his new company Portalarium. And yes, before you ask, I still long for the good old days of Ultima Online.  One of the biggest disappointments was when the UO2 project was cancelled.

See you online

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

Just this afternoon an article came across our news feed from Kotaku.com talking about a recent post by CCP developer Zymurgist soliciting support for Eve Online at the European Games Awards:

“The European Games Award is the first award exclusively for European games and is now looking for votes from gamers for the best European video and computer games. EVE Online has been nominated for best Online Game but needs your vote to win the competition. Check out what games are being nominated for here and then cast your vote for EVE Online for best online game!” – CCP Zymurgist, via Kotaku.com

The response on the forums is a reported 27 pages long and demanded that CCP fix their game before soliciting support for an award, chief among the problems being lag.  A letter to Kotaku.com cited in the article is typical of the players we know who are in Zero security space:

“The fact is: in December 2009, the game could support 1000 players in a single battle. In the winter 2009 expansion, performance decreased because of new features involving fleet organization. However they never rolled back the changes and instead of kept going forward with more new features that layer new problems on top of old. This cycle is to continue for the next 18 months while CCP works through their planned new feature pipeline.” – via Kotaku.com

Mom used to talk about giving people the moon and having them demand the sun and the stars to go with it. If, on the other hand, you are going to promise people the sun the moon and the stars to begin with you had best be able to deliver on at least part of the promise. Take one look at some of the CCP trailers for their latest release and you will see hundreds of spaceships screaming across the reaches of virtual space. In reality nothing close to that is possible at this point, though there was a time when it was.

Back when gasoline was cheap and engines where big, Sister Julie owned a Cadillac. We called it “the chocolate brown god” (small G please).  It was a marvelous car with an enormous engine. The luxuries did everything but tuck you in at night.  But just like the proverbial horse shoe nail, when water pump broke it didn’t matter how luxurious the car was unless you wanted to park it in the driveway and use it for a planter.

No, the customer isn’t always right. 

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. But if it IS broken don’t tell players you are working on it while you go merrily about your way worrying about being the first company to link a console game (Dust 514) and an MMO (Eve Online).  There are some things we can be patient about and some things that rub us the wrong way so fast that it would set new land speed records – poor customer service is one of them.  Not listening to your customers or dismissing what they say is the other. Unlike the common myth, size doesn’t matter.  The best customer service in the business comes from the biggest company in the business: Blizzard Entertainment.  And when it comes to listening to your customers, after the Blizzard gorilla got a good swift kick in the gnad’s over real ID, even they have learned that sometimes at least, the customer is right.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

It’s seems that CCP developers and publishers of Eve Online just don’t give a damn about their customers any more – certainly not in this case. 

My grandfather used to say that he never waited in line to spend his money.  With the age of the internet there is even less reason to stand in line. But stand in line is exactly what I have been doing all day now; and it is CCP’s line I have been standing in.

We live in an age where our computers are constantly under attack.  The office where I work has firewall software that would but the proverbial “great firewall of China” to shame.  We have safety percautions so stringent that they even ticked off President Obama when his staff moved into the Whitehouse.  And so it is that we have long passwords (very long) that constantly rotate and always have to be remembered. This I understand.

So occassionally with all these passwords to be remembered and changed one needs to be recovered.

I haven’t played Lotro in a while – Turbine recovered the password in less than a minute

I haven’t played Star Trek Online in a while – Cryptic Studios Took about a minute and a half.

I have Eve Online in a while – I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR OVER ALL DAY AND INTO THE NIGHT and their password recovery system still has yet to respond once. The spam filters, blockers, and virus checkers did not stop their replay. They news letter comes to me just fine.

So why then is it that a company with a triple A mmo tries to tell us they care about their customer base when something as simple as password recovery is useless?

Not only have I been “waiting in line” but the money has already been taken and CCP doesn’t seem to care to render any services in return.   The suggestion was made by the Corporate CEO to simply block their payments – and it looks like CCP cares so little about their client base that this is what will ultimately transpire.

Even if this situation ultimately resolves itself the fact of the matter is that CCP cares so little about thier customers that there is no other option but to hang on the line like a lonely teenager waiting for the boyfriend to call.

And that, my friends is EPIC FAIL.

 

That sound you hear are the dominoes that keep falling, the latest to hit the hallowed free 2 play/premium service ground is Everquest 2.

There’s a twist. Where the other freemium games let subscribers and freeloaders mingle, EQ2 will be setting up a walled garden with the subscribers in their vast playgrounds, and the freeloaders in their ghetto.” – Tipa from West Karana

It’s interesting that SOE is giving their reason for the “beta/extended” servers as, “Extended is an accessible game purposely developed to grow the gaming community through new players. The free adventure service allows new players to experience more quality content and increased participation than the previously offered 14-day trial.” Yet they have built the equivalent of the Great Fire Wall of China to keep the “Alpha” players (what they call the subscribed servers) separate from the new wave of players they are trying to attract. Don’t tell me you actually had visions of gaming with your long time EQ2 friends? Not if John Smedley can help it.

It seems that the only way new blood will get into the game with the Roman Citizens…er….subscription players are for the pleebs who are persona non-grata to find a way to hurl their characters over the wall to the servers that are free of freeloaders. But that may just be a bit hard to do in some cases with your spells limited to the adept level. For those of our readers who have never played EQ or EQ2 think of this as strapping a ball and chain around Frodo’s ankles and THEN letting him loose on the Dark Lord.

So lets mix a few metaphors and talk about the two bandwagons that have come pulling up to the gates of our little mmo kingdom. The first are Facebook games intent on telling us that “social” is defined as getting spammed by people you have never met before with virtual gifts of sheep and plants along with requests to tend the same. The second bandwagon is redefining the word “free” for us. What was it my grandmother called it? Oh yes, “being nickel and dimed to death”.

Yes look to the horizon and see the waves crashing on our shores like a mighty tsunami. That’s Mickey Mouse telling us how much fun we are going to have tending HIS sheep, and growing HIS potatoes now that they many Facebook developers that Playdom has been acquiring are about to take up residence in the Magic Kingdom. See the many game publishers waving all the glittery pretty ponies in our faces yelling FREE, FREE, FREE…no really.

The opposite side of this particular coin, is that if you really can contain your excitement and resist the temptation to buy the magic potions of level capping, the elixer that will make you level quicker, and don’t mind staring over the mighty wall that the players who AREN’T persona non grata you can still have a bit of fun…yes, for free.

Thank you we will still keep our Eve Online and World of Warcraft subscriptions firmly in place.

See you online (in Azeroth and somewhere in Caldari space)

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

Welcome to the Fi, Fi, Fo, Fum issue

They’re big enough, they’re scary enough…

update: No closed deal (yet) but there has been an announcement of terms: $562.2 million plus “performance liked earn out of up to $200 million. (source) So it looks like its full speed ahead for Disney version of Facebook games. Are we in for treats like “Down on Mickey’s Farm”, “Duck Wars”, and “Minnie’s happy little aquarium”? Get out your barf bags ladies and gentlemen it promises to be a bumpy ride.

No word as of yet if Disney has actually gone through with the purchase of Playdom and it’s ever growing portfolio of Facebook game developers for a reported $500 million plus. But that isn’t the only merger/acquisition in the news today. Senator Al Franken, the man who fought tooth and nail to get the job as senator in the first place, was addressing the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas this last Sunday, as reported by TheWrap.com. Calling Net Neutrality “The first Amendment issue of our time” Senator Franken had the following to say about the proposed Comcast/NBC merger:

“If Comcast merges with NBC, how long do you think it will take for Verizon and AT&T to start looking at CBS-Viacom and ABC-Disney”

“Imagine if what is happening with television, the senator went on to say, where an independent producer can’t get a show uon the air unless a network owns a piece of it, where to happen to the internet. There would be no next Youtube or Twitter. There would only be what the R&D departments at the few megaconglomerates could invent and profit from.”

If you don’t think the Senator is right, consider the following:

Vivendi SA (formerly Vivendi Universal) divisions are Vivendi Entertainment, that in turn owns the Canal+Group (a French film and television studio), Universal Music Group, ACTIVISION BLIZZARD, Global Village Telecom, Maroc Telecom, SFR (a French mobile telephone company), and a 20 percent interest in NBC universal (the remainder is owned by General Electric)

But wait, we’re just getting warmed up here.

NBC Universal in turn has the following divisions: NBC, Universal Studios, NBC Universal Television Group, NBC News, USA Network, SYFY (the Sci-Fi Channel), CNBC, MSNBC, NBC.com, MSNBC.com, IVillage, Bravo, qubo, Telemundo Television Studios, The Weather Channel, Hulu and the A&E Television Networks.

If you add Comcast into the mix that includes five more networks (source: Arstecnica as well as The Philadelphia Flyers, The Philadelphia 76ers, the Global Spectrum Management company, Front Row (a marketing firm), as well as non-controlling interests in In Demand, TV One, MGM, Sportsnet, New England Cable News, and the Pittsburgh Cable News Channel

When you are all done chewing on that you can go watch the following movies on Netflix (while Comcast still allows it to run) – The Running Man, Robocop, and one of our personal favorites, the John Cusack movie called War Inc. The common theme with all three is, of course, “egaconcongomoerate” corporations run amok vie to control the world (or destroy it).

Is the senator from Minnesota being alarmist? We tend to think not, and if he is, a large portion of the Federal Government is being alarmist right along with him. If nothing else you have to like an actor from Saturday Night Live who fought hard to be a senator; and as the Senator’s Stuart Smalley character used to say, he’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doog done it, people like him. Just like California, Minnesota may have an actor for a senator, and had a professional wrestler for a governor (Jesse Ventura) but none of the governors are, to my knowledge, wearing prison uniforms – and that’s something that we here in Illinois won’t be able to say for some time to come.

　

Another one bites the dust?

You had to see Warhammer Online Free 2 play coming from a mile away. It certainly didn’t take a telescope to spot Dungeons and Dragons Online coming up the Free 2 play street either. Lotro was a bit of a shock – we will certainly hand you that. Now in a move that we will claim you could have seen with a blindfold on (never mind that hind sight is always 20-20) Everquest 2 is going free 2 play [http://everquest2.com/free_to_play/extended_faq] with what they are calling Everquest II Extended. Now there are many of our listeners who will, of course, remember Paul Barnett speaking of such matters on a previous show shouting “I TOLD YOU THE SUN WOULD FINALLY EXPLODE.” We will let you look up exactly how much is “free” in Free 2 Play, after all no matter what anyone said our grandmothers were right…there is no such thing as a free lunch. Does this mean that I will be able to get out my gnome and get back the key to my enormous mansion and 1 Antonia Bayle? I sort of doubt it. If the past is in any way precedent I sort of doubt it. John Smedley once said that he considered a game a success if the profits paid to keep the servers open and pay the bills; lets hope the new business model does at least that.

No reviews for you

Today is the day that Blizzard finally takes the chains off that giant of industry IP’s Starcraft 2. As we all know by now, Blizzard would not allow reviews ahead of time. Our first thought was to consider movie Studios like Paramount that refused “professional” reviewers into advance showings of some of their movies after they had been blasted one to many times by reviewers, who later ended up with a few dozen eggs on their face after the same movies where hits at the box office. Still, a comment on one of our regular must reads claimed that Blizzard could defecate in a box, slap the words “Starcraft 2” on the box and still sell it (or words to that effect) and we tend to agree.

What struck us about the release was not the game itself . No, as usual Blizzard doesn’t release anything unless it is polished to the point where it could be used as the mirror in a refracting telescope. Just as striking are the CGI trailers that Blizzard released about the game. Mind you these are not all that uncommon in the mmo industry. But it is not the quality of the trailer that we find lacking – it is the fact that in most cases they are not at all representative of the game. For a game that, as we understand it, is mostly an isometric (albeit highly detailed) view the trailers seem more akin to the hype we see in movie theaters for movies that are big on special effects but low on script quality – rarely do they represent the actual movie. In fact in such cases, if you have seen the trailer you have seen the best parts of the movie with boring filler in between. Mind you in this particular case Starcraft 2 is obviously a “killer game”. Still a bit more of a pragmatic approach, and a lot more honesty in depicting what the gamer is actually getting would be honest and no doubt more productive in the end.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

 

[Authors note: What do you do when all the mmos that promise to be the bright shining center of gamedom are all in the future? What do you do whan Fallout New Vegas is yet to come? Well the answer is you investigate some of the stand alone games you have been avoiding. This short story is the result of a recent outing in Sims 3 where I stuck Bellatrix LeStrange in the middle at an abandoned Rest Stop with no wand and no magic]

Hot dogs roasting on an open fire and sleeping under the stars are great when you are camping out – not so when that is accompanied by the smell of burning tires, and your home is an abandoned rest stop.  Bellatrix watched the hotdogs roasting on an ancient grill corroded with rust and a black char so thick it would take a stick of dynamite to clean the grill. “Oh how the mighty have fallen” she thought to herself as she turned over wieners that were so cheap that meat last on the list of ingredients preceded by a length list of inorganic elements with names so long a Harvard Chemistry professor would find them a tongue twister. Voldemort, Dumbledore and that turncoat Snape; where were they all now? Dead and gone that’s where. 

Bella lifted the hot dogs off the grill with a fork with three bent prongs and a missing fourth. She shook each off onto the Frisbee that served as a plate (and even that she had to wrestle away from the dog across the street).  She plodded her way across dead grass and patches of dry dirt to the rickety picnic table that rocked like a top heavy sailboat caught in a hurricane.  She eased her thin frame, which had been accomplished only through lack of proper nourishment, between bench and tabletop, settling herself before what as a feast by recent standards.  Spearing the first frank as though she were driving a stake through the heart of that miserable Harry Potter she took the first bite and chewed absent mindedly.  Her mind stretched back to that battle at Hogwarts, and the intrepid heroes who came charging downhill as she stood near her mentor and master Lord Voldemort.  She heard the words screamed by that fat cow Molly Weasley as she aimed at Voldemort and missed…

Avada Cadaver

Not only could that Weasley Woman find her back end with both hands, she was such a poor orator she couldn’t even pronounce the spell properly.  Anyone with half a wit (and that Weasley woman certainly was a half wit) would have gone through the field of the “dead” making sure the final act had been accomplished.  And so here she sat, both wand and spirit broken, riding a Harley Davidson fat boy instead of a broom, making her home where she can. She considered herself lucky to find someplace that came with something other than leaves for toilet paper (she still itched whenever she thought of the poison ivy episode). 

She looked down at her makeshift, now empty, plate, her reverie broken by a distant and unfamiliar sound.  She slide herself out between bench and table and made her way to what had become her bathroom, shower, dressing room and only shelter from storms.  The door to the old bathroom sounded like a scream as the decades old hinges complained at being used after so long.  She pushed her way into the small room, the door slamming shut behind her – pulled by a rusted spring she belied it’s age by still working (one of the few things in the abandoned rest stop that still did).  Rounding the cracked toilet she knocked into the bucket which stood between her and sink which also served as her bathtub. Water splashed onto the floor as it sloshed over the edge.  Bella hissed a silent curse, not wanting to fill the bucket yet again.  The bucket (which she always had to fill from a nearby lake), like the mini-fridge (both stolen from a nearby farm), where the only two new things she possessed…other than her motorcycle of course.  She poured water into the sink to wash her dish and fork, smiling (something which she rarely did these days) as she thought of the source of the motorcycle.  Stealing the cherished American motorcycle was her way of spitting in the face of that fat oaf Hagrid one last time.  More is the pity that she no longer had a way to make the thing fly.

When you have next to nothing, all your possessions by necessity fitting on your back or the back of a bike, it’s easy to take care of – so it didn’t take her long to take a “bath” in what was left of the clean water and make her way to the hammock which served as her bed.  She stuffed her dress into the carryon luggage that served as her dresser – Wearing a different set of clothes to bed was a conceit at best and dangerous at worst, seeing as her “bedroom” consisted of the two adjoining dead trees between which the hammock was stretched.

She fell asleep muttering the words struggle like a muggle.

At two o’clock in the morning, something which she could tell only from the sound of the early morning redeye flight nearly scraping the tree tops overhead, she found herself shivering in her hammock. The night was cold and the fire was starting to burn down.  She threw herself to one side, like a cat rolling off a shelf and shuffled blearily to the back of the lot. There behind lot’s only building was a large pile of bald tires she had stolen of gas stations and junk yards.  Stringing the tire over her wrist like a giant bracelet she grabbed it by the outside rim. She lugged it over to the fire (being quite unused to any sort of manual labor even after all this time without magic) and tossed it on the smoldering fire.  Immediately the fire sprang to life, spewing dark black smoke downwind of the small lot….

…and into the face of someone just clearing the hedge at the back of the lot.

The newcomer was a woman about five foot eight, 20 something years old, and had the reddest hair Bella had ever seen. The woman waved her hand in her face, in a vain attempt to clear the smoke.   Dodging under the column of smoke, she came up on up on the up wind side, just short of the fire and the bleary eyed Bella.

“What in Samhain’s name is going on?!” scream the woman through choking and gasps for air.

There was a brief pause as Bella struggled for the words to some witty repartee and came up short.  All she managed to mutter was something about “cold”, “too late”.  Turning she shuffled back to her hammock.

“Will you PLEASE put out your pile of burning tires,” said the newcomer, the word please stressed more to reinforce the idea that the request was not really meant to be a polite one. Whether or not the request was meant to be polite, the response was curt enough…

“No”

Not to be thwarted by what was the cursory and expected response, the woman began taking out her fury on the tires, attempting to somehow kick out the fire. Now the thing about trying to burn tires, is not only do they let out billows of burning smoke that stinks like a herd of pigs on a hot August day, but getting the fire started in the first place is not exactly an easy task – but once you do get the fire started it is just as hard to put out. As a result all the fiery red head managed to do was take a single column of smoke and turn it into many smaller columns of smoke.  This went on like this for some time; the newcomer failing to put out the fire, and Bella laughing all the harder as she failed to do so.

The average person would have given up much sooner than the red head did, but eventually even she realized the futility of the task.  When she did she turned on Bella…

“Bitch” she yelled.

“Throwback” Bella returned.

Not knowing how to reply, the redhead simply said, “What?”

“As I see it, Bella continued more calmly than would have been expected of another person, even with accounting for a stubborn attitude, most people wouldn’t have tried to put out the fire that way for quite so long. In fact, MOST people wouldn’t have tried to put out the fire that way at all. Considering all that, I would say that the intelligence you demonstrate tells me that you are probably the first generation in your family down out of the trees.”

The quizzical look on the face of the newcomer turned back to one of fury as she quickly scanned the small lot, looking for the proverbial “blunt instrument” so often described in police reports.  Bella’s reaction, which went quite unnoticed, but would have been familiar to the Red head had she seen it, was to reach for something at her hip that wasn’t there – an instinct that hadn’t diminished with time. A moment later Bella’s hand found her own blunt instrument; a tire iron she kept near the her hammock for just such an occasion.  It was an occasion that had repeated itself quite often, predicated as it was her penchant for burning tires.  She didn’t do it for the warmth of course. After all there were far easier ways to keep warm and much easier things to burn.  Bella supposed she went out of her way to find old tires to burn and set an ungodly stench to any neighborhood she briefly occupied as her way of spitting in the face of humanity.  If I have to suffer, she told herself, everyone else will suffer right along with me.

It was, of course, suffering that could be overcome by the simple process of shutting a window. Usually the suffering was overcome by the local gendarmes that encouraged her to move on; most of the encouraging being done with a night stick. The original reason she had to keep moving was to avoid retribution.  The reason she continued to find herself in need of new, albeit improvised, living quarters, was her hell bent attitude of self destruction, and her determination to bring as much of the world with her.

Spotting the tire iron, the redhead stopped her frantic search.  If only a fool brings a knife to a gun fight, only someone who is insane goes unarmed to a tire iron fight.  While the would be fire marshal might seem a few cards short of a deck, thought Bella, at least she had a modicum of sense.

“Look, its late, said Bella, whoever you are just turn around, go back home, and wait for the wind to change.”

“Rose” was the unexpected reply.

Now it was Bella’s turn to say “What?”

“Whoever I am…Rose. That’s who I am” replied the redhead.

“Okay…” started Bella.

“What’s your problem anyway?” Rose shot back.

“You are, said Bella without thinking. It was her standard reply to what had become an oft asked question.  As simply as it was it was dead on, especially when it was followed by, “…and everyone like you.”

“And how do you, know what or who I am like” said Rose, sneering her accusation.

“Come on, said Bella, that’s a silk night gown you’re wearing tucked into what are very expensive jeans.  Those are the sort of clothes pre-stressed brand name pants that over privileged women wear to achieve the look that homeless like me are forced to wear.”

“Really, said Rose, shifting with the thick black smoke. And why do you live like you do? Certainly it isn’t because you depend on the kindness of strangers.”

“I live, Bella answered, by depending on the stupidity of strangers. I live by taking what I want.”

After a pause, more for emphasis than anything else, Rose sat down at the picnic table. Looking around her she said, “It strikes me that either you don’t want too much, or you are a really lousy thief. “

Ten years ago Bella would have answered the insult with lethal force. But time and the turn of events in a person’s life change them, and sometimes drastically. Now she wasn’t sure what to say.

“No one’s ever offered to help” was all that came out.

“Maybe, Rose replied calmly, no one has ever offered because you have always been too proud to ask. That, she said pausing and throwing a glance at the scattered smoldering tires, or they haven’t been able to get near you because of the stench.”

Rose was right of course. Perhaps what bothered Bella all the more was the reason she was right.  There was a time when she was famous; or more appropriately infamous.  And now? Now, not only was no one scared of her, the simple fact was that no one cared any more. That hurt her more than the missing magic that had once been the driving force behind her mayhem.  Bella didn’t know what to say.

Rose did.

“Why don’t you me put these tires out so you don’t burn the woods down and asphyxiate the neighborhood in the process. Then you can come back to our over privileged home and get something to eat and we can find you a more privileged pace to stay.”

Rose got up and turned to walk away, motioning for Bella to follow. She stuck her hand out, hoping for a handshake and not a fist in the face.

“Rose is my name, she said, Rose Weasley.”

It was like being slapped in the face.  Suddenly Bella knew why Rose had seemed so familiar right from the first. She looked just like the woman who had nearly killed her so long ago – Molly Weasley.  “And who are you”, she heard Rose ask as she turned to follow her.

“Bella, she heard herself reply as if from far away, just Bella.”

“Well Bella, come with me an in the morning we can find you someplace to stay. Then pausing Rose added, “Just so long as it is upwind eh? Laughing, she continued, I will just bet it must have been a long strange road that led you here.”

“Stranger than I ever thought,” Bella replied, “stranger than I ever thought.”

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

“Their reasoning made sense, until Richard Garriott announced he was going to be making an Online Poker Game. Geez oh man, the last time I saw a career switch that crazy, Michael Jordan was trying to snag fly balls out in center field.” – Vercarrion

Not so open arms

Just this morning we received a lengthy missive by a reader (and perhaps listener) who goes by the name Vercarrion. You can read the entire letter here which was posted as a response to our article One Big Bandwagon. Vercarrion, it seems, has been “huffing and puffing like a grampus” (a line from the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead), distraught over the ever growing spate of social games.  Some of the issues that are raised by this distraught, old school gamer, are interesting in themselves, revealing much about those among us who are not quite happy about this new direction the industry seems to be taking.

“Is it no longer just about making great games? Isn’t that supposed to be what its all about? I realize traditional MMOs take boat loads of money and countless hours to make, but at the end of the day, wouldn’t Richard Garriott be better off designing a rich world like Ultima Online than rehashing Ultimate Poker? Does he really believe this is the exciting future he was destined for?  Along those lines, do you think Disney makes this genre viable in the long term? If so, how would it impact your passion and/or interest for the genre?” – Vercarrion

Anti-social butterfly

Like it, love it or hate it, the social game fad seems to have become a tsunami gaining strength as it heads up the beach toward what developers and publishers alike seem to feel are the waiting arms (and wallets) of adoring customers. Ironically, as anyone knows who has played both MMOs and Facebook games, saying Facebook games are “social” makes as much sense as claiming a prisoner in solitary confinement has an active social life because he sees a pair of hands slide his meal to him through a slot in bottom of the door three times a day.  Play Mafia Wars and the only contact you have with other players is a perusal of the aftermath of an attack by another player done when you log back on. There is also the possibility that Facebook fans consider the avalanche of “gifts” from other players, often for games they don’t play, a form of socialization.  The comparison that strikes me is that this would be like looking forward to dealing with the spam that inundates our website on an hourly basis. Color me callous if you will, but this doesn’t exactly strike me as being the epitome of all that goes in to the making of a social butterfly.

Work Hard – Strike Oil

“No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or ‘get rich’ in business by being a conformist.” – J. Paul Getty

Two quotes spring to mind at this point. The first is by J. Paul Getty, famous oil billionaire of days gone by (back before companies with initials like B.P. started destroying the fishing industry and the environment wholesale). The bandwagon may be big enough to hold the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with plenty of room to spare, but that doesn’t mean that it’s headed in the right direction.  The song that starts playing in my mind at times like these is Smuggler’s Blues, by Glen Frey…
“There’s lots of shady characters, lots of dirty deals. Every name’s an alias in case somebody squeals. It’s the lure of easy money; it’s got a very strong appeal.” – Smuggler’s Blues, by Glen Frey

One of the standard plot devices in literature (and usually a trite one) is the character with a get rich scheme. Ralph Kramden was in constant pursuit of the easy dollar on the Honeymooners , Oscar from Shark Tales  announces his scheme when he exclaims “bottled water” (which apparently fish aren’t short on). Real world equivalents exist of course (I know at least one such individual) – but they would not persist unless every now and then someone, somewhere really was in the right place at just the right time.  J. Paul Getty offered this advice for success…

“Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” – J. Paul Getty

Open the newspaper (or news feed) on any day and you will find a story of someone who actually has caught the carrot they were chasing after, causing everyone else to run all the faster. It may simply be that those making the decisions, the people with their fingers on the dollars and their ass on the line, don’t want to be left behind. Such is the fear represented by Richard Garriott’s quote…“either participate and lead in this journey or get left behind.” It might be tempting to see Richard Garriott, one of the founders of the mmo industry, as being a Michael Jordan trying to break into break into baseball.  Many people, myself included, would love to see what this man could come up with if one of the determinants of success wasn’t being able to pay the bills, while ensuring that the ink used for the bottom line is black and not red.  The last time out that Mr. Garriott took a try at the brass ring was Tabula Rasa and that didn’t turn out so well.

The different drummer

 

At this point I haven’t checked the news feeds so I don’t know if Disney’s deal with Playdom has gone through.  Whether it has or hasn’t, it is still cause to cry “viva la difference” – and what a difference it is.  While I am indeed a fan of the mighty mouse, he isn’t necessarily King Midas. But whether the magic mouse touch turns into gold or camel dung doesn’t matter.  Media moguls can tell me what they feel I should be enjoying all they want but that doesn’t make it matter. But there are plenty of people to whom it does matter.   By way of example, to me techno music has its place on the dance floor or the back beat of a movie scene – but that’s it.  If the music industry suddenly refuses to produce anything but techno music that doesn’t mean I have to delete all my ZZtop, Aerosmith and Rolling Stones mp3 files. Call it marching to a different drummer but I endorse what I enjoy, and until the media moguls are paying my bills it doesn’t matter what they think.

Money to burn

 

We have all seen players (usually those who break land speed records reaching level caps) come crashing on the shores of any new game like a mighty tsunami – only to leave the developer and publishers high and dry a month or two later.  And while we can see a comparison to the race between the tortoise and the hare in the success of any mmo, with social games there is another factor involved.  In fact Scott Hartsman talked about this issue back on show 42 .  The difference between the way the media moguls at Disney  have chosen to get involved in social gaming and long time industry insiders like Richard Garriott and Brad McQuaid is found in one word…

Overhead.

If Mr. McQuaid and Mr. Hartsman develop a social game and find it isn’t popular, the development cost will be so low that it won’t matter.  But at this point both Playdom and the mighty Disney mouse have invested millions. What is worse, they are dealing in a product that is the pinnacle of luxury items.  Think of it this way – free to play/social games are so prevalent that they are like cow patties; you can’t walk through the pasture without hitting one. Publishers of social games are counting on the willingness of players (or parents of players) to spend real dollars for virtual dollars. In the case of Disney that pile of dollars would have to scrape the sky before the ink on the bottom line goes into the black.

 As the old adage goes, the bigger they are, the harder the fall and at this point the Disney has a long, long way to fall when they hit the ground – I can only assume they have money to burn.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Ps. Hi to Vercarrion from everyone at the NPNM team

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

One BIG bandwagon

Social games (read Facebook applications if you must ) are one of those aspects of life of which no one seems to have no opinion.  Many in the mmo community, like myself, would rather crawl a mile over broken glass and hot coals than spend any appreciable time with them.  When Scott Hartsman was on the No Prisoners, No Mercy s Show we were interested… then we let it pass like thoughts of last week’s dinner.   When Richard Garriott announced his Portalarium Company with the umpteenth iteration of virtual poker many of us rolled our eyes.  When Brad McQuaid announced his intention to start down the same path we were all sure he was simply hopping on the Zynga Bandwagon as it faded into the distance.  Now we here at NPNM find ourselves taking another good hard look at the words of Richard Garriott we quoted in our article And I shall call it the wheel .

Recently Steve Jobs announced a future bereft of PCs and cast upon a sea of mobile applications (and he is in a position to “make it so”) – and the Wall Street Journal took him seriously.

“So, I believe the casual gamer and the social gaming platform represent the largest ever yet seen emergence or change within the gaming industry. And all of us in the development community have a choice to either participate and lead in this journey or get left behind.” – Richard Garriott

 

While I was pondering those words, and the fact that even one of my favorite pastimes, The Sims, has gone mobile, word crossed our news feed, via Techcrunch  that Disney is set to acquire Playdom.

Playdom has been acquiring social gaming developers like they were giving them away free  -Metaplace,  Green Patch and Trippert labs , Three Melons , Acclaim, Hive7.com , and  Offbeat Creations . Now Playdom is on the verge of being acquired by The Walt Disney Company who in turn owns, Miramax Films, ABC, DiC entertainment, Fox, Saban Entertainment, Pixar Animation, New Horizon Interactive, Marvel Entertainment, ESPN, Tapulous, and Club Penguin.

My initial hope was that someone at Playdom knew a guy who knows a guy with lots of money who really, really hates Facebook games and wants to corner the market in order to rid the world of these canker sores on the butt of the universe.  In a move that epitomizes the concept of “there is always a bigger fish”, the mighty mouse is set to become The Godfather of Facebook games.  And while the ownership of Facebook is in dispute in the New York State Supreme Court, the number of users aren’t – that figure just hit 500 million users.  So if all these people are indeed “hopping on the band wagon” that is one hell of a big bandwagon. And now we know who will be driving that wagon.  None other than the mouse that roared, that mighty Disney Marvel who is set to make Playdom an offer they can’t refuse.

This doesn’t, of course, mean that anyone here at No Prisoners, No Mercy has to be happy with the prevalence of social games that are usually so sickly sweet that playing one game is enough to give a glucose overload to population of a major city.  Yes, we have played them (so we know whereof we speak) but not of our own accord. In my case my Facebook page (long since abandoned) was shanghaied by a friend who introduced me to The Sims and Farmville.  I owe her a debt for the former, and I still speak to her despite the latter.

So it seems that Facebook games are, sadly, here to stay – I guess I need to find a new hobby.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

“Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He’s fired rockets at the Moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor… except crime!” – Gert Frobe as Auric Goldfinger

Many fields of endeavor have their defining moments. Even if you aren’t old enough, most people know about the first time Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.  Recently U.S. politics had a defining moment when the first African American president took office.  Film has defining moments as well – In Casablanca when Rick delivers those famous lines to Ingrid Bergman, “If you don’t get on the plane you’ll be sorry; maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”

The September issue of PC Gamer* has a regular feature entitled “Dev Man Talking”. This month features Andy Schatz  discussing his concept of the “first great game”.  His main points are that the first great game will be “short and dense”, “will be on the PC”, and “won’t ask us to pretend to be someone else.”

“…The First Great Game will be about a theme, an idea or a world in which the player does not exist.”

He goes on to say the following:

“SimCity and The Sims may be the best examples we’ve seen so far of games that make us care about a world in which we, as the player, do not ostensibly exist.”

When we used this as a jumping off point in a recent discussion on the No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) show my co-hosts first reaction was “bullshit”. Still, let’s take a look at how Kotaku.com described the paragon of all that is right with at least one game mechanic:

One Woman Show

 

“Players act as an omnipotent being that can micromanage every aspect of a sim life, or just leave them to rot and die in a puddle of their own urine. The structure of the game is an open world with no narrative and no ending. So – like a dollhouse, only your dolls can die.”- Kotaku.com

One of our regular reads on our news feed comes from Escapistmagazine.com, which recently featured an article by Troy Goodfellow Entitled Multiple Roleplaying Disorder.

“In many ways, The Sims is true roleplaying even if you don’t consider it a roleplaying game. The Sims was originally pitched as a dollhouse game and the comparison is obvious…But moving dolls is the simplest thing you do. You also weigh their desires and their needs. You postpone the present joys for future glory. Or indulge in immediate opportunity and say “To hell with tomorrow. All the while, other personalities may intrude, compete for attention, and clamor for your care. It’s bigger than a dollhouse; the player is like an only child in the backyard who must play every part of the action movie in his head, the Sims player has to create or embrace motivations of a myriad of characters.” – Troy Goodfellow, Escapist Magazine

 

The Sims is a lot like a one woman show where each character is portrayed by one person.  But the player is one removed in this particular case – And there, as the great bard once said, lays the rub.  In most mmos the player character, the avatar controlled by the person behind the pixels, is unable to move autonomously. Take your hands off the keyboard and your gnome, dwarf or troll just stands there; with the rare exception of some programmed idle movements in mmos like World of Wacraft (WoW).  While WoW characters have no capability of autonomous behavior, what they do have in common with Sims are abilities with which they have been endowed – the same subject that Desslock discusses in the September issue of PC Gamer:

“If you consider using honed mouse fu and manual dexterity to thwart the pursuit of a gaggle of orcs nipping at your heels to be a roleplaying zenith, you are a genre boor. Real-time RPGs inherently compromise roleplaying depth because success in them is at least partly dependent upon player skill.” – Desslock

The point that author Desslock is making is that turn based RPG brings more depth to the table because the outcome is determined by the abilities of the character, not the manual dexterity of the player. This is also something that is a prevalent game mechanic in The Sims. By way of example, if you chose a criminal career path for a Sims 3 character, but do not include or develop athletic ability, the character will spend more time in the slammer than out – and it doesn’t matter how fast you can click a mouse.

The eye of the gamer

 

Through a labyrinthine stretch of logic that would make Spock weep we can perhaps extrapolate a concept of what makes great roleplaying, if not a great game.  After all, that is where the entire premise made by Mr.Schatz falls apart. A great game is like great art (unless you are Roger Ebert).

 In the lobby of a building in Chicago’s Loop stands a sculpture entitled “Town Ho” (see picture at right). The name plate on the sculpture was quickly removed, for obvious reasons. Now, if you hang around the sculpture long enough, you will eventually hear someone exclaim “I may not know art but I know what I like.”  Any attempt to define a “great game” will fail for the same reason as an attempt to define great art – what makes anything great is subjective.  In the end, greatness will always be in the eye of the gamer.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[Posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

*Wow the September issue in July right? Next month’s magazine ironically featuring last month’s news about Lotro going free to play.

Tiger has Tanked

 

Those of you who are old enough will remember the commercial from the 60’s that touted the slogan “put a tiger in your tank”. Now it seems the Tiger has indeed tanked but this time its Tiger Woods.  It was just late last year that Howard Rubenstein,   Chairman of the famed public relations firm Rubenstein Communications, inc.  was quoted by ABC news as saying, “He [Tiger Woods] is beyond PR redemption. He is in public relations hell right now. There is not a PR man on Earth who can restore his image,” said public relations maven Howard Rubenstein.

And so what?

Activision has the Modern Warfare series, Nintendo has that famous plumber Mario, Electronic Arts has Madden, FIFA and the Sims series.  What is missing from the list? The series based on he of the self destructing reputation – Tiger Woods.  Who knew that the “family man” whose reputation was once as pure as the driven snow was only as thin as siding made from onion skin paper? It seems that in the first two quarters of 2010 fans have spoken. Fans have been teed off at the Tiger, who has smacked his ball, seemingly irrevocably, in to the rough. Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz  is quoted in Edge  discussing the June release of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 and it’s 68 percent decline in the first month since last year’s version. “The 86 per cent decline on the Wii was particularly catastrophic,” said Creutz. I wonder how long it will be before we the famed golf series being given out as free prizes with every box of Wheaties cereal.  It just goes to prove the sage advice of my grandmother who pointed out that “there are times when it is best to keep your genes in your jeans.”

Climbing out of the tank

 

Remember the commercial slogan “only her hairdresser knows for sure”?   This is a case of only the CEO knows for sure.  It seems that EA is selling off its 15% stake in French game publisher Ubisoft.  Is it a case of Electronic Arts climbing out of the dip in earnings that the Tiger’s tanking has caused? Perhaps EA knows (or suspects) something about Ubisoft that the rest of us don’t.  Either way, Ubisoft sounds a bit like a jilted lover to me when they said, “we feel that this transaction is in Ubisoft’s best interest”. 

Getting out of Dodge

 

One of the movements we here at No Prisoners, No Mercy have been following closely is the fiasco going on between the U.S. Broadband providers intent on charging American consumers out the wazoo for their services and the FCC (see The Digital Stream becomes a Trickle ). With Google and Skype on the other side (and Steve Jobs oddly enough fighting for deregulation) it seems that Netflix has taken steps to get away from the foul odor that has been blowing in the wind.  Like many American households we had out cable provider pull their cable out; shortly after which we switch internet providers.  More than a few homes across the U.S. must be following in suit if broadband providers are attempting to take up the slack by hiking the rates like a field goal kicked over the moon.  Netflix is “getting out of dodge” and is moving its movies and television shows in an expansion to our neighbors to the north – Canada. So far it seems to just be a matter of expansion in to other markets, but I can tell you that if we here at NPNM can’t get our streaming we will be screaming.

 

Blowing in the solar wind

 

The artwork formerly known as walking in station…

…now known as Incarna has reared its head once more. Eve’s new Senior Producer CCP Zulu (the dev formerly known as Zulupark) has been discussing playing walking on stations and fighting on planets in the latest devBlog .  Be it known that as of August 17^th CCP will have 90 developers working on making sure players can one day walk in stations, and that friend, is a lot of manpower (and presumably womanpower).  Apparently CCP is serious about Incarna and here is the reason that CCP Zulu gives:

 

“To achieve our goal of EVE being a complete sci-fi experience we must have full body avatars. When we talk to people who like the concept of science fiction games but aren’t attracted to EVE, it becomes obvious that there is a need gap that can best be filled by having a character to associate with rather than a spaceship, and I would venture there are many existing players who want this option as well.” – CCP Zulu

Personally I have been hoping for this for a long time…a long, long time. So long, in fact that I have given up on it and simply considered if vaporware; relegating it to the same category as the little boy who yelled wolf a few thousand times.  But word around the blogosphere is that many of the zero security players would be happy if it never came out – one website insisting that CCP would never pay the pvpers any mind at all.  There may be more grouse out there than a bird sanctuary amongst some of the players out there, but this is something that the rest of us who help pay CCP bills have been looking forward to since we first set virtual foot on a frigate.

Who’s on first?

Apparently CCP is on first – or at least they intend to be.  As all Eve players know, CCP recently launched their planetary interaction in preparation for linking Eve Online with their impending console game, Dust 514.  Even though the good folks at CCP have already stated they don’t expect Dust 514 to do well they are committed to quality over quantity – that and being the first developer to link a console game to a mmo. Here is what CCP Zulu had to say:

“Let that sink in for a minute. CCP is the first company in the world to do something like this. First. Ever. The „resource cost” on the EVE side for that is a team continuing on development of the Planetary Interaction feature (the primary link between the two) for the next three releases, delivering immediate, meaningful value into EVE Online and making game development history while they‘re at it.” – CCP

Planetary Inaction

When I was a youngster the toy stores all sported these large rings of plastic hanging in racks called “hula hoops”. The concept was to put it around your waist and gyrate in such a manner as to keep it aloft through the use of centrifugal force…this was called fun you see. The problem was, even as a child with a vivid imagination (of which I had in abundance) it was fun for about a minute and a half. Then it was just a boring pain the ass. 

When planetary interaction was first introduced with slick trailers that would make even Paramount motion pictures proud I bought into the hype.  Like many others I had images of claiming my own planet. It was a misconception which CCP purposefully encouraged amongst players, even to the point of calling it a “land rush”.  I bought into the hype with great hope; certain I could pull isk out of the planets much like I could asteroids.  In the end, nothing was further from the truth. The money I could pull out of a colony in one week was less than what I could profit from one wreck in a level 3 mission. The profit margin was such that it would take me about a decade of real time just to break even. And normally there might not be anything wrong with that, if process of planetary interaction was fun.  Oh it was fascinating at first to be true. But then, much like the hula-hoop it got old fast – it didn’t make any money, and quickly became a pain to manage.  While it was nice to get the limited edition planetary interaction ship, as all regular Eve Players know, no matter how well the execute the design of a limited edition ship of that sort, it is a waste of hanger space.  All they end up being is a target for players who just want to make their day by ruining someone else’s. At this point if a Dust514 player wants my Eve Colony they are welcome to it.

Early re-adopters

Early re-adopters is not my phrase to be sure, it was coined (as far as I know) by Dr. Richard Bartle. To be sure CCP is the first to link a console game and an mmo.  It may be that, like Zynga, they are one of the first developers/publishers to say “wouldn’t it be great if…” and that is what they seem to be banking on.  Certainly they know their own market. I am overjoyed they want to address the desires of that sector of the market that, “like the concept of science fiction games but aren’t attracted to EVE.”

World first or not, it seems you would want to fix what you have before you attempt to pull in players from a new market. And if CCP does players from new markets then things are going to have to change.  When I consider “who gives a rat’s ass” attitude toward new players victimized by suicide gankers, the words of the Ancient Gaming Noob come to mind:

“And you can take the cliché attitudes that people throw around in EVE.  Don’t fly what you cannot afford to lose.  Don’t ever assume you are safe outside of a station.  Don’t AFK.  EVE is about PvP.  Sandbox, landmines, blah blah blah. But all that amounts to is throwing a teaspoon of kitty litter over the steaming cow turd that is the loophole in the way things work in EVE Online.” – The Ancient Gaming Noob

Walking around in stations just might pull in a new breed of player for a “look see” but it will never keep them there. The first time a player ventures over from Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and finds themselves the victims of a suicide gank, or a swindle that is “just part of the game” said new player will leave the game so fast it will set new land speed records.

So why do I stay around? Why pay a parking fee and the training game? Well the fact of the matter is that it runs in cycles. The last time out I worked a player up until I could mine in tech 2 ships.  This time out I have worked my way up the training scale until I can zoom around the universe in tech 2 ships at 6,000 m/sec. But it is starting to look like I am reaching the end of another cycle. I find myself logging in less and less in what has become a summer mmo doldrum. In the end I think the only reason I keep coming back is that one day CCP just might engender comments like “Gee I wish I had paid more attention to that ‘Jobs’ kid back when he was working in his garage.”

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]