Recently I have been taking a look at some of the sim games offered out there.  No not the money-sucking behemoth that represents the Electronic Arts Sims games.   In this particular case I have found a game called “Evochron Mercenary” – an indie game that is the effort of a single individual.   The particular itch that this game promises to scratch (and I hope it will) are the bygone days of plying the spaceways of Eve Online building industry.

Along the way, however, I came upon an article in a P.C. Gamer that was thrust upon me by a well meaning sister (my subscription to the magazine having been long ago deposited in the proverbial circular file).  One of the columns I almost never read (even when I did care what the magazine had to say) was “In Simulation” by Andy Mahood.  This time, as I leafed through the magazine in an effort to find the article about Star Wars the Old Republic (the reason for the gift of the magazinein the first place) Andy Mahood’s article caught my eye.

From circular track to circular file…and back again – Back in the day when play stations had no number after the initials “PS” I used to play racing games. In fact I played them so often I reached a saturation point – I never played them again.  The play station went the way of all things – the garbage can.    What attracted me to this particular racing game was not the game itself but how it is being developed and published…

With no game publisher.

It seems that Slightly Mad Sudios (Need for Speed:Shift) has a project they have dubbed World of Mass Development.   The first game entitled “Community Assisted Racing Simulation” (it spells out cars…cute isn’t it?) is perhaps the ultimate in community participation.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

“$14 (about ten eruos) buys you a Junior membership with acccess to monthly builds, project-specific forum threads, and meeting minutes; a $33 Team members hp gets you weekly builds and lets you create forum threads; a #133 Senior buy-in lets you watch developer meetings live; a $1,334 manager can physically attend meetings, directly PM the developers and access game scripts; while a $33,340 Senior Manger membership (designed for companies) provides all of that plus direct control of a project-specific sub-forum.” – Andy Mahood

What is interesting about this (providing it actually works) is that the costs of development will not come from a “hands on” publisher.  What is more, apparently some of the “team member” will be given a share of the profits.

…but let me digress a bit.

sim sala bim – I am not usually a fan of simulation games.  I purchases one called “X3″ and it languishes on my Steam account with only a few hours played.  Recently I have rekindled my interest in single player games – I have attempted to find stand alone pc games that approximate my varied interests in MMOs.  The one qualifier is that they must be able to be played on a laptop for easy portability.  For my interest in roleplaying games like World of Warcraft there is Dragon Age Origins (sadly at 2.1 ghz with a nvida 8400 card I doubt the laptop will play Skyrim).  For my interest in Fallen Earth there is, of course, the Fallout Series by Bethesda.  My interest  in Star Wars the Old Republic is filled in off hours by the exploits of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series.  But what of Eve Online? That game I loved to hate until I finally had enough of devs who tell me to “harden the fuck up”?  For that I have discovered a game called “Evochron Mercenary” produced, as I understand it, by a one man development team.

The Lord willing and the creek don’t rise – an old expression my grandmother used on occasion that may see more than just a grain of truth.    Last winter found ourselves literally buried in snow ; back in 2007 we found ourselves without power for a week in the midst of a presidential disaster area (I have reprinted the article below). What gives me pause to consider the imperfect nature of nature itself is the weather outside.  It is sunny, warm, the grass is turning green, the animals have lost their winter coats and the birds are coming back.  What’s wrong with that?  Nothing if it was springtime.  But it isn’t.  It’s the suburbs of Chicago at the height of winter.  All you have to do is take one look at the article entitled “Snow Day” to see what the weather was like this time last year.

What’s love (of games) got to do with it? -  After the events of 9/11 and the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma  city I have come to the realization that each day I am probably at ground zero in the event of warfare on American soil.  There was a time I used to worry about it but as grandmother used to say you could worry yourself sick if you kept it up.  But with the weather being what it is I am more worried about the events depicted in movie 2012. Still, instead of just mentally measuring up my chances for survival I ask myself if I would want to survive?

The good old days – I once read the words of an elder who, when asked if he wanted to go back to “the good old days” replied “hell no! Do you think I want to go back to living on a tee-pee on the plains?”  Whether he was in the minority or not I can’t begin to tell you.  Still, I did grow up in the days before the internet and having been dragged along to a trip to a small country town I now say “I spent a year one week in that town”. And so, as I peruse the offerings on the shelves both virtual and retail, I ask myself  “what games would you take with if you where stranded on an island?”

Chances are the day might come.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Disaster Area by Julie Whitefeather
Aug 29, 2007 00:57:15

There have been many firsts for me since I have been involved in the MMO market. But this has been a first among firsts. This has been the first time I have ever played WOW in a disaster area.

Last week, about 3:00 pm in the afternoon the area of the state I live in was issued tornado warnings by the U.S. Weather Service. Shortly thereafter a microburst whipped through the communities I live in. I happened in the course of a few minutes. The winds were so strong that trees were ripped out of the ground by their roots and thrown into streets and houses. One of the trees on our property was sheered in half – the top half nearly missing the building.

Shortly thereafter the flooding started. The power went out not long after that.

Fortunately, some time ago a flood gate was installed between us and the sewer systems – or we would have flooded as well. You know it’s bad when the estimation of restoring power by ComEd is simply “many days”.

My first thought was how will we run the oxygen maker (we do elder care).

By the time I came home form work I found power lines running through the hallways. Not only was my first thought “how will we run the oxygen maker” it was our neighbors first thought as well. He proceeded to connect our home to his generator – and four other homes in the area as well.

This was enough for the basic necessities – the oxygen maker and the refrigerator.

The rain continued for days, as well as the power outage. Then came the weekend, and my birthday. We still were not able to use the water for fear of flooding. But the rain had stopped and things had settled down. It promised to be a long weekend of waiting for water to recede and power to be restored – a long BORING weekend. That was when I asked for a bit of divine providence. “It sure would be a nice birthday present to have some power to get online” I said aloud. Within FIVE MINUTES, my friends, the same neighbor who had hooked up our oxygen machine to his generator came to the back door. He told us his neighbor on the other side had bought his own generator and we could hook up anything we wanted to the power line now.

Yes – ANYTHING WE WANTED – including WOW. I shouted “wooo hoooo” and everyone looked at me like I was nuts. Everyone that is, except Mother Superior, who also plays WOW.

The waters receded. We got out power back on after five days. And in the mean time, we had a small MMO island in the middle of a disaster area.

See you online,

- Julie Whitefeather

It is February first and Star Wars the Old Republic (SWtOR) has been out for over a month. Now that the honeymoon with Bioware’s latest game is over with, and the Pr has settled, its time to take a look around the internet at some of the reactions.  This time out we also talk about S.O.P.A., P.I.P.A. and B.Y.O.B.

Above:

There are few famous guitars in the world and it is rare to be able to recognize one on sight.  Anyone who has ever listened to Willie Nelson will instantly recognize his guitar named “Trigger” – it is signed by friends of the great singer/composer has known over the years.  When Willie had problems with the IRS some time back he had to hide Trigger in his managers house (or so the story goes) for fear that the IRS would try and take it.   Having seen first hand an instance where the IRS has tried repeatedly to tax someone who has been dead for years I believe it.

The reason for the guitar is simple.  One of the reasons for the many and varied musical mash-up/segues is musical education – yours and ours.  Recently we were introduced to the works of Robert Johnson.  The more we learned the more we found the many musicians that Robert Johnson influenced with his work after it was rediscovered in 1961….not just blues musicians but musicians of all types.

Subjects:

1. I told you the Sun would finally explode
2. Indie Game the Movie
3. One woman’s heaping pile of dingo dung
4. Star Wars is not a 57 Chevy
5. The Single Player Game Viewpoint
6. Illum – who is at fault?
7. Winning an MMO
8. Who is this Robert Johnson guy?

Articles Cited:

http://ardwulfslair.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/wow-killer-my-ass/
http://ardwulfslair.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/wow-killer-my-ass/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/11/activision-ceo-star-wars-the-old-republic-may-not-make-ea-any-money.ars
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2012/01/doomcasting-swtor.html
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012/01/an-indie-game-movie-will-make-you-cry.ars
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2012/01/star-wars-the-dead-republic.html
http://noprisonersnomercy.com/2010/04/zen-and-the-art-of-asteriod-mining/
http://www.gamebynight.com/?p=3298
http://spinksville.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/swtor-in-which-bioware-finally-nail-single-player-gameplay/
http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2012/QBlog090112A.html

George:  Hey Steve. I met the perfect woman!

Steve: Really? What’s she like?

George:  She’s a real looker to begin with but that’s not all – not only is she beautiful, but she is intelligent as well. On top of that she’s funny, fun to be with, loves to cook and she’s willing to support us both and pay all the bills!

Steve: She sounds just awful.

George:  Are you insane? She’s everything I’ve always wanted in a woman in more. Your just jealous because your wife left you last year.

Steve: Well….

George:  But I will admit she has one small fault.

Steve: Which is?

George: She snores.

Steve: Really?

George:  Yes.

Steve: How loud??

George: Like a back hoe.

Steve:  Kill her.

Most criticisms I have read about Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR) run close to the same as the imaginary conversation above between George and Steve.  Realizing that one woman’s treasure is another woman’s steaming heap of dung, it is interesting to note that the object of one of the most common complaints about SWTOR is also one of the most common praises – the interactive cut scenes that has made Bioware famous for games like its Mass Effect Series. Some members of the vocal minority are complaining that the cut scenes are like movies with press buttons. To others, myself included, this is one of the most immersive elements of their single player roleplaying  games and one of the most important innovations to mmo gaming in a long time.  The difference seems to be accountable by a factor I have read (and I apologize for not being able to remember where) that veteran gamers who long for what they see as “the good old days” of gaming* can’t seem to adjust to change.

Perhaps some of the more unusual comments on SWTOR come from Terra Nova where author Castranova spends time complaining that SWTOR is not a single player sandbox game like Skyrim, or Fallout 3 and he is absolutely correct…it’s also not a 57 Chevy, a casaba melon or a watermelon falling from a great height.   As one of the readers put it, “These games are entirely different and are predicated on entirely different things. To ask that SWTOR effects the whole world as a whole is darn near impossible when you have thousands of people playing at any given time.” The oddest extension of the comparison above concerns  the ability to have your NPC crew do your crafting – complaining that the market feels dead because “… net monetary proceeds from doing crafting are near zero (labor theory of value works here – zero labor input implies zero profit on sales of things labor produces).” The whole thing falls apart with the fact that the only labor involved in any videogame is button pushing and the ability to put up with mind numbing boredom. That, and the fact I am already making a tidy profit with the same system.

Still, to each his own and anyone who does long for the mind numbing crafting that more established games can offer need look no further than Eve Online.  Players are able to spend hours upon  hours staring at screen doing little more than waiting for their virtual ore hold to fill.  In fact an article I wrote about it earlier, called Zen and the Art of Asteroid Mining can be found here. And for those players who long for games where NPCs stand by mutely while players read a wall of text…well that’s  just about every mmo out there.

The Single Gamer and the MMO

One of the more  unique views of Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR)  I have read comes from Game by Night noting that “SWTOR makes a poor single player game.  Apparently the author feels there is a connection between what he perceives as an outbreak of R. Asshaticus among players and a drop in EA stock. The unique part comes when Chris goes on to explain what typifies the attitude of a devotee of single player games when introduced to the world of mmos…

“As all of these single player gamers’ sign up and take on the world without ever once grouping, they start to realize that damn, this is a really long game. At about 60 hours, it’s become, damn, I’m just skipping this other crap and listening to my class story. Fast forward to 100 hours and, damn… why am I even doing this anymore? I’m not even level 40… and this story is so SLOW.  The experience of playing through those hours varies from class to class, as does the scenery, but the repetitive nature of the side quests is static.” – Game by Night, Chris

Complaining about too much content seems a bit like going to a smorgasbord and complaining there is too much to eat; but it is not the first time I have heard this.  As far as the nature of side quests is concerned, there is only so many ways to uniquely tell players to kill ten womp rats.  However, Bioware’s unique interactive storytelling and environment triggered comments are so involving I rarely notice whether a side quest is repetitive or not.  It should be noted that Chris gives readers some very important advice at the end of his article…

“So this is my advice to help you prevent burnout: Step out of your comfort-zone and  invite people to groups yourself. Get in there and experience the group content. It will remind you that this is an MMO and that people who call the game an sRPG have only been telling half the story.” – Game by Night, Chris

But not every player agrees with the above – Spinks felt that Bioware has “nailed” the single player element of SWTOR.  I found his comment on the difficulty of the mission, versus the importance of the story especially interesting…

“And what’s more, I’m finding that the difficulty supports the storytelling. Not in every case for sure, but the way the single player class quests balance increasing difficulty with increasing story importance has worked really well to draw me in.” – Spinks, In which Bioware finally nails single player gameplay

The date face comes off

But like any other significant other, once the date face is off, and the honeymoon period is over we find ourselves getting acquainted with the real game – The most recent of which is a patch that broke PvP in Illum. Interestingly, while we surely can’t absolve Bioware from any blame in the matter, no one thinks to fault the players who were exploiting SWTOR game mechanics in the first place – the reason for the need to patch pvp at all.

“After Game Update 1.1 went live, we discovered that the Open World PvP area on Ilum was not working as our PvP design team intended. As many of you know, large groups of players began capturing the Ilum control points, then ‘camping’ at the enemy’s base. This led to a very frustrating experience for a number of players who were unable to leave their base and fight back against their attackers. It was not a fair gameplay experience. In addition, some players on the attacking side gained more Valor points than designed for the time they spent in PvP.” – Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer – Live Services

The Beginning of the End

The question remains is what Bioware will do in the long run to keep players involved. Will SWTOR become a “system of inventory management” for which Richard Garriott faulted Blizzard?  SWTOR is also the only mmo of which I am aware, that actually has an “ending” of sorts. In fact Dr. Richard Bartle discusses this at the end of a recent post on SWTOR which can be found here. (excerpt below).

“To cut to the chase, it comes down to this: self-actualization occurs when you accept that the game accepts that you’ve won. In most modern MMOs, the game never admits that you’ve “won” because the developers believe that if it did, players would stop playing and go off to some other MMO instead. Their preference is to keep players around for long enough that an expansion can be built to move the finishing line further away. Players either self-actualize through their own strength of will, or they get increasingly frustrated and drift away, or they become trapped at an earlier stage (typically that of planner/achiever) and keep going until they burn out….Well, SW:TOR has only gone ahead and done it: it’s told players that at the end of their class quest line their story is over. There are other stories, but your main one has come to an end. Congratulations, you’ve won. The question is, then, what will players do next?” – Dr. Richard Bartle

The Fourth Pillar of Gaming

As for me, I have been too busy enjoying what Bioware calls the “fourth pillar” of gaming – Storytelling (the other three being exploration, combat, and progression) and having fun to notice any problems.  And even if the player can’t make a difference in the world, they can change their place in that world…

“And absolutely, we have story arcs, and we have real storytelling with beginnings, and ends, and places to say, ‘Hey, that was great, and time has passed, and things have changed. By the way, here’s that quest that happened twenty hours ago where you totally forgot you screwed that guy, coming back to bite you in the butt, now how are you going to deal with that?’” -  Daniel Erikson, Lead Designer for Star Wars The Old Republic

 

*(for an excellent discussion on the “good old days” of gameing see a recent addition by Syp on Biobreak here.

“We’re not betting the company on Star Wars,” said Frank Gibeau, president of EA Labels , which oversees the Star Wars game. “While it’s a major undertaking, it’s one aspect of a larger strategy to transform EA from a company that sells discs to one that derives the bulk of its revenue from digital games and services.” –Los Angeles Times, Business

If the internet had existed in Abraham Lincoln’s day one of his famous quotes might have gone quite differently…

“You can please  some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but if you want to piss off all the people all the time just try and make an mmo that pleases everyone.”

There was a time I used to think that gamers are a fickle lot. No longer. The truth of the matter is that taken collectively, gamers to whom any variation of an mmo is a hobby are  the most capricious of the lot.  Like virtual junkies whose body builds up a resistance to any drug we take, after 30 days we keep searching for a new fix…a fix which public relations specialists from game publishers are always eager to provide.  But like the story of the elephant and the three blind men what each gamer sees as the outcome will be entirely different.  Ask a million gamers what their perfect game is and you will get a million different answers.  Even an MMO that has a perfect launch (something I believe has yet to occur since Meridian 59 went live) someone will always  be displeased.

The Big Gamble

Around the internet, Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR) has been called Electronic Arts’ “big gamble”.   And while no one outside of EA’s upper echelons truly knows how much SWTOR costs, there is little doubt that there is a lot riding on this particular horse.  Last fall John Smedley  said SWTOR was going to be the last subscription based MMO –  “In my opinion, this is going to be the last large scale MMO to use the traditional subscription business model.” If EA does lose its proverbial shirt by publishing SWTOR, they may not shutter their doors, but it will no doubt have a drastic affect on the video game industry.

What will happen if EA fails at their attempt to turn their company into “one that derives the bulk of its revenue from digital games and services”? What if their new digital download service, Origin, finds that the slingshot they have aimed at that digital giant Steam can’t bring it down? It has only been since September 2009  when Turbine took Dungeons and Dragons online Free-2-play and a year later since Lord of the Rings Online went free-2-play.  Since then game publishers have hopped on the same band wagon, hoping for the same lightning Turbine got to strike twice will strike a third time for them. Will the free-2-play business model be a success? Or will it be a repeat of the rapid rise and even more rapid decline of the “dot com” businesses in the 1990s?

The gamers, the mmo, and the bathwater.

What if happens if the gamble that EA has taken on SWTOR fails? Will the industry follow suit and turn away from service based games and concentrate on the console market?  What happens if the MMO industry finds that it cannot repeat the success of Turbine and Zynga in the long term?  Could the two combine to form a perfect storm? 

Perhaps in our haste to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater every time a new mmo doesn’t meet our exacting expectations we will one day find that there are no mmos to be had – period.

See you online.

Julie Whitefeather

SIDE NOTE

One of my recent favorite quotes from SWTOR:

“If we encounter a Duke or a Countess what do we do? Bow? Curtsey? Wink knowingly?” – Corso Riggs

Ms. Sand Woman,

Bring me a dream,

Make it a planet like Tatooine

Give it some Jawas and droids that are older,

and Cantinas with pilots and soldiers.

Having seen the sights of Tatooine in Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) I can testify to the truth of the assessment of the place by Blaine Christine above.   Who can not have grown up with Han Solo, Luke, Obi-Wan and Chewbaca blasting their way out of Docking Bay 94 and not looked forward to trodding the same sacred sand as Han and Chewie?  And, of course, I had to make sure I did it at least once with my smuggler and big fuzball sidekick, Bowdar.  Having played through Tatooine twice – once on the Empire side and once and the Republic side – I was delighted to find that the experience was different each time.

Between the cantina’s playing my favorite Star Wars tune “Average Brown Wookie” and the intrigue it never disappointed.  One thing I missed was pod racing; and while there are presently no racing pods in the game there ARE swoops. Perhaps in the future we will see swoop racing at least; if nothing else as emergent game play.  The other thing I really was hoping to see was that wretched hive of scum and villainy ,Mos Eisley spaceport.  There were similar settlements and Anchorhead space port.

This area alone made the game worth while for me.  What is more anyone who claims that SWTOR does not have large land masses has never been to Tatooine – it puts the “H” in HUGE.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

“I told you the sun would finally explode” – Paul  Barnett on the No Prisoners No Mercy Show

It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who leap out of the blogosphere’s woodwork screaming at unsuspecting passers-by that whatever particular game is popular with an all too fickle market that it is doomed to fail…and do so at the first hint of any anything they don’t consider optimal performance.  More than once we have been told by Ardwulf  that Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR) is doomed to fail with the odd presumption that in order for it to be a success it must be a “wow killer”.   Remarkably, in a feat that would have turned Nostradamus green  with envy, the first time Ardwulf predicted the ultimate demise of SWTOR was nearly a year before the game hit the shelves,  and without, presumably, so much as access to Bioware’s profit and loss statements.

If a constantly volatile stock market that reacts more to newspaper headlines than quarterly reports sees a slight dip in a game publishers stock, somehow they are once again doomed to failure.  Nearly a year ago Ardwulf assured us all about his predictions of doom for SWTOR, stating “This is not my opinion. This is math.”

But numbers don’t lie…or do they?

Certainly numbers lie, especially when you don’t have all of them.  The practice of making sure they do is called “cooking the books”.  The fact that numbers can easily be made to lie, and do so quite well, is why forensic accountants exist in the first place.  In fact I spend a good portion of my time reviewing “the numbers” that auditors use to see if they are lying in the first place.  The simple fact of the matter is that without access to Bioware’s financial statements including balance sheets, profit and loss/statement of account, and cash flow statements it is not possible to tell if something will or will not be a success.  Yet here we are, less than a month into full release of SWTOR not even three weeks into the first quarter of the year and somehow sectors of the blogosphere seem to feel they  know more about the success of SWTOR than Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello.

Mind you I could care less whether or not Ardwulf’s ass is a wow killer or not, the real danger is that some sector of the gaming public would take as fact what is nothing more than conjecture.  So before you listen to an “armchair ceo” (whoever they might be) assure you any game will be a failure before they have even seen a quarterly report, it is probably best to tell them to stick to predicting that the sun will explode. After all, at least that way they will eventually be correct.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Oh Boy! Star Wars 3d.  Not just the new version of Star Wars where Darth Vader says “nooo!” (ableit muffled), not just blue ray Star Wars, STAR WARS 3D!

Now I can die happy.

Welcome to Show 101!

This week we spend time contrasting Star Wars the Old Republic and World of Warcraft.  After that we discuss evil versus good in SWTOR.  This week we also revisit the subject started by Dr. Richard Bartle in Show 101 freedom to be yourself in virtual worlds.  We finish up the show with a brief discussion on yellow journalism.

1. A day late and 26.95 shorter – Returning to World of Warcraft
2. Cut Scenes in WoW and SWTOR
3. Story in SWTOR and WoW
4. Linear Questing In WoW and Star Wars the Old Republic
5. A very Grinch Christmas in Azeroth
6. It’s my party and I’ll leave when I want to
7. Evil is as evil does -  Evil versus good in SWTOR  (The return of Good Nun/Bad Nun)
8. The freedom to be yourself in virtual worlds (revisited)
9. What is a “Sith” anyway?
10. Yellow Journalism

 Articles Cited:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/13/raph-koster-immersion-is-not-a-core-game-virtue/

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-30-lucasarts-to-take-around-35-percent-of-old-republic-revenue-report

http://pc.ign.com/articles/114/1147536p1.html

http://n4g.com/news/907301/physical-copies-of-star-wars-the-old-republic-sold-out-on-origin
via Forbes.com

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/news/gameId/367/showArticle/23086

http://www.mmocrunch.com/2012/01/03/swtor-uk-sales-plummet-after-one-week/

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2012/01/swtor-sold-out.html

http://torwars.com/2012/01/10/lies-damn-lies-and-statistics-swtor-sales-in-the-uk/

Matt Uleman brought us all some of the best music that has ever graced World of Warcraft before or since the release of The Burning Crusade.  Peter Mcconnell wrote the song “Average Brown Wookie” – the theme that kicks in at 40 seconds is the sort of thing that belongs on stage with the gents from Average White Band and Pick Up Pieces (especially at 2:12 into the song).

The music of people like Mark Griskey, Gordy Haab, Lennie Moore, Will Roget who composed the music for Star Wars the Old Republic (see Gamespot Interview below) immerse that player and evoke emotions like never before.  It has us all turning up the music on the game again.

 In the end, I think one of the composers, Will Roget, said it best…

“It’s more about the experience, the emotiont that I want the players to feel, that the setting will give them.” – Will Roget, composer, Star Wars the Old Republic