As regular listeners and readers know, the entire No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) are members of a group called “The Older Gamers” – this is the “TOG” that we talk about on our show so much. Yes, the next time you think that all gamers are created equal stop over at The Older Gamers and you will find a home for over 14,000 of us who are all over 25.  So it is that we have a chance to meet gamers from all over the world.

Not that long ago, a guild member announced that he could not participate in a planned event.  Not that this is unusual mind you.  What did spark our interest is his reason…it seems that he had gone over the limit set by his internet provider so he was forced to go to “his dialup backup account.”  Sadder still is that we have a backup account as well.

Sherman set the Wayback Machine for 2003 when CNET carried an article entitled Putting a Lid on Broadband Use describing a Comcast customer who was sent a notice telling him he could avoid being suspended if he cut his internet usage in half – the problem is Comcast wouldn’t tell him what the limit is.  But not every internet provider has problem setting strict limits.  If your provider is Cox Communications, make sure you don’t get the “value” package if you like to watch movies. If you watch 2 movies a day on the internet you can easily exceed the 50 GB per month limit. Fortunately not ever internet provider sets limits.

The good

 

The net neutrality talks recently ground to a screeching halt as the deal that Google and Verizon brokered between themselves drove a stake through the heart of the talks. The good news is that the talks have reopened as of yesterday at the D.C. of ITI (Information Technology Industry Council). Present where Cisco, Microsoft, and Skype, who are ITI members, as well as AT&T, Verizon and NCTA.

The Bad

 

Poltiico.com is reporting that those notably absent were Google, The Open Internet Coalition, which represents companies like Amazon and eBay (also members if ITI). It appears that the public interest community, which supports OIC, is steaming about not being invited to the talks. As for us here at NPNM we wonder with the OIC and the FCC what is the point? Aside, perhaps, of making sure interests of the public are not represented.

The Hopeful

 

We have our own unofficial “you da’ man” list that includes people such as Rob Pardo, R.W. Harper and now we can add Senator Al Franken. Today Senator Franken will join commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn at a forum entitled “Future of the Internet” in Minneapolis, hosted by Free Press. All we can add is “Go get ‘em senator”.

Help me Obie Wan

 

Help me Obie Wan you’re my only hope. Or perhaps we should say “help me ArenaNet”.  What has us hoping and hopping for the raging success of Guildwars 2 is their business model.  Buy the game and that’s it.  Our reason is simple – we figure we will need that extra $15 dollars per month to pay for the internet.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

“Street [Greg ‘Ghostcrawler’ Street, lead systems designer for WoW] identifies three main reasons for bringing the apocalypse to Azeroth. First, shock value was a crucial component. Deathwing’s awakening is an explosive event for Azeroth. “We were trying to stage an apocalypse here,” he says, “and we wanted some crazy things to happen and we knew there were sacred cows that might shock or upset players a bit.” Many players will certainly be upset to see Stormwind ruined and Thousand Needles flooded, not because they were poorly designed but because Blizzard simply wanted to show the extent of the cataclysm’s impact. As Street says, “Life will never be the same there.” – from This is the way the world ends, by Steve Butts in The Escapist

There is a point in the movie Dogma in which the character Rufus (Chris Rock) is given a note by Christ, shortly before his crucifixion and resurrection, that says see you in two years. “It sort of took the mystery out of the whole thing” complains the character. If you had the ability to see your whole life laid out before you, would you do it?  Or would you rather experience it?  If you knew exactly what was going to happen it would be like opening a mystery novel and reading the last chapter.

Yet that is what usually happens before the impending release of any highly anticipated new mmo or expansion.

The second the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) is lifted the mmo community is flooded with all the details – so much so, in fact, that it often reaches the point where you know exactly what is going to happen before the game hits the shelves (or the release page on Steam).  In the case of Cataclysm, the announcement that the closed beta NDA had been lifted was almost always followed by “we hadn’t expected it so soon.”

It’s always nice to see a few screenshots of course. Maybe even get a few details later on such as what are the new races? What are some of the new classes?  But that is rarely where it stops.  The community becomes like a little kid, determined to find out exactly what is in a present ahead of time, not realizing the truth related by the immortal bard…

“You may find that having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting. This is not logical, but it is often true”

The “bard” in this case is not Shakespeare, but whoever it is that wrote the lines for Spock in “Amok Time”.  Yet, each time a new World of Warcraft expansion is released there is a rush that rivals the last lap of the Indy 500 to see who will be the first to hit the new level cap – the first player to reach level 70 took 28 hours , the first player to reach level 80 took 27 hours .  Of course the reason for the rush is to try and grab a bit of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame.  Still, the race seems representative of race through content each time a new mmo or expansion comes out, followed closely by a clamoring for something new like Oliver Twist on crack pleading for more.

In my case the Wrath of the Lich King was released way back in November of 2008 and I still haven’t burned through all the content. Yes, I will admit to being driven away by the asshatery in pugs (pick up groups)  but  Fran and I have found good ways to deal with it (see technique demonstrated by Pharthing above). To me there is nothing like that new mmo smell, that old beta magic .  There is nothing like the excitement and the mystery of those first steps into a virtual world, wondering what is just beyond the next horizon.

Ghostcrawler tells us all about that life will never be the same in Azeroth. Just like the old song, everything old is new again. In the mean time I will try my best to avoid the deluge of Cataclysm news so I can enjoy that new MMO smell.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

“Seriously, where do we go from here? WoW 5.0: The Really Really Dark Portal that Leads to the Hecka Burning Crusade (this time it’s personal, and this time you REALLY aren’t prepared)?” – Ixobelle, The Pink Pigtail Inn

 

Those of you who listened to NPNM show 67  heard Fran and I discuss a funny, but thought provoking piece about World of Warcraft (WoW) over at The Pink Pigtail Inn. Doubtless there will never be a time when there is a complete server wipe. But still, as the quote from her post suggests, for me at least, this time my journey though Outland is personal – and Fran has agreed to go along for the ride.

For Fran WoW is indeed about the journey and not the destination – she has 3 level 80 characters to chose from, but instead she is accompanying my gnome warrior, Pharthing through the classic world, to Outland and beyond. Fran has her choice or roles when it comes to endgame, whether it be DPS, healing or tanking.  Not so with me; I can choose hunter or I can choose hunter. Now the time was when beast master hunters where all the rage and we owned the top of the charts. Now, however we have been nerfed but good. Where it not for a great guild on the Proudmore server I would continue to feel like Blizzard dug a hole, told my hunter to hop in, kicked the dirt in on top of me. Back in the day when Alterac Valley was the king of the PvP Battlegrounds, and endgame consisted mostly of Molten Core, pvp with my hunter character was fun. I loved standing on top of ledges and behind hills, plunking away at unsuspecting alliance characters.

Ah but times have changed.

 

As much as Fran tried to convince me that “paladins are all the rage” I had been subject to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” or far too long while playing my holy warrior to believe it. And so there languishes my Blood Elf (formerly Dwarven) paladin, forever at level 72. As for my hunter, whether it was being called a “huntard” one too many times, or tiring of running instances, there reached a time when I swore off WoW forever, and my cursor hovered over “delete”.

Yet now I am back.

 

I am not sure what it is that brought me back. Perhaps the promise of the Cataclysm expansion in the not too distant future…It could be the doldrums that setting in between the release of those bright shiny new mmos and even single player games like Fallout: New Vegas.

This time it is personal.

 

When I first played WoW I was fresh from Ultima Online (U.O). As anyone who has played UO knows, there was no endgame in this enormous sandbox  of a game.  If it were for the fact that the player community to which I belonged flew apart like a shattered fly wheel I would still be there.  So it was when I started WoW and Everquest I had no idea what endgame was for either.  In fashion that can best be described as “hell I don’t know” I chose a dwarven paladin. I wish I could say I never regretted my decision, but that is not the case. The second I hit level 60 (the level cap at the time) I was relegated to the back row as a “buff bot/alternate healer”. When I protested the guild leader magnanimously agreed to let me fight “the trash mobs” but not on the bosses that “really counted”. It was shortly after that I decided to go horde, and discovered what I thought was the truth…”once you role horde you never get bored.”

But the truth is the grass is always greener on the other side so this time I came back to the game forewarned and forearmed.  Fran can fit any role in an instance. Instead of looking for healer, looking for tank, all you need is to look for one of Fran’s characters. Me? I know what I don’t like. I don’t like healing; I tried it on my priest named Vashj. I have tried characters like druids, mages, warlocks and even, in what I can only believe was a moment of insanity, a rogue.

So this time I decided to create a character I knew would excel at the type of endgame that I enjoyed the most – PvP. Not the “OMG I LOST IT ALL” Eve online type of Pvp. I am talking about the pvp where I can do it just for the enjoyment of the game play…without being a rogue.

So it was that my co-host and I decided to travel the highways and byways of the alliance ways together, beginning with two of my alts that had been years cast by the wayside, stuck forever in the level 30 to 40 range. Recently we both reached level 60 and so earned our wings.  Fran learned to shape shift into a bird, and I built my gyrocopter, and shortly thereafter my tankatronic goggles . In the case of the epic goggles that are also plate armor for the head, it was not without the use of what I call suicide mining. This consists of mining in an area where the mobs far exceed your ability to do anything but stun them just long enough to mine the ore.

And the best thing about the arrangement is, no matter how mean the pugs can get, we never have to worry about the healer or the tank quitting…because that’s us.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

Picture credit: Stevyn Colgan

Disney purchased Club Penguin ($350 million), Playdom ($763.2 million) and once you throw in Tapulous  (makers of Iphone games) that is more than just a passing interest in social free to play and mobile games. Robert Iger (CEO Disney) said social games are a “way to reach consumers in a fragmented media landscape”.  He has also gone on record as saying, “Social networks are real, here to stay”.  Realtime Worlds, creators of the newly released All Points Bulletin (APB), have already begun “Major layoffs”  and rumors of APB being put up for sale are spreading around the internet like wildfire. Earth Eternal, even though free to play, is closing . We could go on but eventually we would run out of bandwidth.

Suffice it to say, that no matter how one may feel about social games, and free 2 play games the handwriting is on the wall. Yes, all you have to do is point in the direction of Star Wars: The Old Republic by Mythic/Bioware and say MMOs aren’t going anywhere – we hope you are right.  Still, we will admit that the thought of any more triple-A mmos failing gives us a serious case of the “willies”.  This is why we get more than just a bit jumpy when a developer comes along with  “We do not want to build the same mmo that everyone else is building… it’s your story, You affect things around you in a very permanent way.”  But not because we want ArenaNet to fail – we want them to succeed.

All this is also why  when J. Todd Coleman, VP and creative director KingsIsle, developers of Wizard 101 speaks we made sure we listened – especially when he spoke about social games and their affect on his free to play mmo.

Wizard 101, which our own Julie will admit to playing, is not knocking at the door of the Blizzard gorilla – they have opened it and gone inside.  Each game has about the same player base. But if you ask J.T.Coleman how many of their players are paying players you will find that even he isn’t allowed to divulge that information. What he did tell Gamasutra was this:

“I can’t give a specific percentage; it’s one of the things I’m not allowed to say. But I can say that a significant portion of our players have been on both sides of the fence. We see ourselves at a really interesting spot, from a market standpoint. The Facebook social media games are hitting a very large market, but the games tend to be very shallow; there is not a lot of content, not a lot of depth and few hours of gameplay. “ – J. Todd Coleman

 

You and I may look at WoW and see a mass market; but he sees something different altogether.

“And on the other side, you’ve got the subscription hardcore games like World of Warcraft that don’t really have a mass market; they’ve got a huge market, but it’s primarily still hardcore gamers. We sit in between those two and we offer the content and the depth of gameplay and the sophistication that you would see more typically out of a WoW style game but we’re hitting the casual mass market. “ -  J. Todd Coleman

 

What was even more interesting was what he had to say about the big triple A  mmos going to free to play.

“At a high level, I agree with him that it is a good thing; one thing I like about it is it levels the playing field to some degree. We’re a relatively small company that no one had ever heard of before, and we are out competing with big organizations like Sony and Microsoft who have tremendous reach, resources, and presence from a PR standpoint. To know that we can go up against guys like that and come out on top is pretty cool. The free-to-play model is a large reason for that, because it breaks those traditional lines of distribution down. “- J. Todd Coleman

 
Mr. Coleman talks about the days of worrying about “getting on the shelves” being a thing of the past. Digital downloads are, or course, firmly entrenched in the market place.  When Paul Barnett was a guest on our show he spoke of his son being perplexed why his father would by anything without buying it online.

Perhaps Disney feels that social games will allow them to dive into a lake of cash (how else will they earn sufficient return to justify over a billion dollars) – It doesn’t matter to us.  You can tell us that like King Belshazzar, we are refusing to see the writing on the wall as the doom of mmos.   No matter how much the free to play/pay to play hybrids may irritate us, we think they may be what saves the industry…

SO LONG AS THEY ARE DONE RIGHT

…And being done right means taking actions like tearing down the Great Wall of SOE and letting players co-mingle.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

Welcome to the back page for Friday, August 14, 2010

 

Yes, I said August 14th … Yes, I do know what the date really is, and it’s not that I’m superstitious or anything (knock wood). Still,  you can never be careful. O.K. so its Friday (fill in the date) during the month of August 2010.

The Man, The Legend

 

O.K. so Dr. Bartle is due to receive the first Online Game Legend award from the Game Developers Choice Online Awards .  Dr. Bartle co-authored the original MUD () with Roy Trubshaw . Aside from numerous articles, and being a professor at the University of Essex, he is also the author of Designing Virtual Worlds and Artificial Intelligence and Computer Games. So it’s safe to say that when it comes to designing virtual worlds, not only did Dr. Bartle write the book, he pioneered the subject it was written about.  We are pleased that Dr. Bartle is receiving the award, he is truly a legend. Don’t forget to take a look at Dr. Bartles Q’Blog about his legendary status.

Hearing Voices

 

What do Michael Dorn (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Blade II), Rene Auberjonois (Boston Legal, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Kris Kristofferson (The Blade Trilogy), Matthew Perry (Friends) and Wayne “Mr. LasVegas” Newton all have in common? They are all scheduled as voice actors in the next edition of our favorite game series – Fallout New Vegas. One of our favorite features in Fallout 3 was the Three Dog character who was the radio D.J. in post apocalyptic Washington D.C.  It turns out that New Vegas will have its own radio D.J. as well, voiced by none other than Wayne Newton:

“That his essence endures such desolation suggests Newton’s spirit “could almost survive anything,” says the entertainer, 68, a Vegas fixture for more than 40 years, whose show goes to the MGM Grand this fall.” – Wayne Newton, in USA Today

We aren’t hearing voices in our heads – yet.  Starting on October 19th we will be.

Just Shocking

 

O.K. we will admit it. No one on staff here has ever played a game in the Bioshock series. There we said it. But what we DO love is steam punk and the latest edition in the Bioshock series by Irrational, Bioshock Infinite is described as “a cross between steam punk and Star Wars Bespin Cloud City”.  One look at this trailer and we were hooked.

News of the release first came to us by way of Edge Online .  A quick search told us Bioshock Infinite is set in the air-city of Columbia in 1912.  As you can see in the trailer, the city is suspended 30,000 feet above ground by giant blimps and balloons.  Here is a description from Techland.com :

“In Bioshock Infinite‘s story, Columbia embodies a hugely public example of American ingenuity and democracy, something for the average U.S. citizen to be proud of. But, Columbia also harbors a secret. After an international incident yet to be detailed, it get revealed that Columbia’s essentially a turn-of-century Death Star, weaponized to a degree that no one was expecting. But rather than try and subjugate the country or the world, Columbia lift so high into the sky that no naked eye can see it and disappears into the clouds. Some time after Columbia’s disappearance is when the game’s story starts. Players will be controlling Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton agent. DeWitt’s a rough-and-tumble fixer, a man who prowled the seedy docks of New York City and busted up strikes. He gets things done for the right price. A new client needs him to find a woman named Elizabeth, who’s been imprisoned for 15 years. “ – Techland.com

 

Mind you we aren’t big on first person shooters (we still prefer the over the shoulder view thank you). Still we don’t care if it’s first person or not – we love the setting so much we will play the Bioshock Infinite even if the gameplay stinks like last weeks fish.

The Great Communicator

 

No, we aren’t talking about the late President Ronald Regan (that was one of his nicknames). What we are talking about is the way things would be if everyone followed the advice of Craig Morrison  in his latest edition to his Feeling Strangely Fine web site. He discusses forums and what we have always called “The unsilent minority”, and “Play the game, play some more, and then play some more…” The last, as he points out, is something that developers are often accused of not doing, but as listeners hear Mr. Shannon Posniewski (executive producer, Cryptic Studios) tell our listeners on Show 59 that just isn’t so.

There is a balancing point here however.  In any business good marketing is making your product meet the needs of the consumer, no matter who those consumers are. We can see what happens when a developer tries to force their community to play the game the way the developer wants – just think about Warhammer Online and the whole RvR lakes/Scenarios situation. But trying to be all things to all people doesn’t work either.  As Glen “Famine” Swan told us on Show number 55 if they gave their community everything they asked for there would be spaceships in Age of Conan.  Still, as we have all seen with World of Warcraft, simply having a game with a medieval setting doesn’t necessary preclude spaceships in the game.

La Traviata Revisited?

 

We love Star Trek – the entire No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) team.  In fact Julie has a lifetime subscription to Star Trek Online.   This is perhaps why, when Fran and Julie were watching The Big Bang Theory recently and the show opened on the main characters playing Klingon Boggle it was a bit too close for comfort. Mind you we don’t speak Klingon, but if YOU do and will be in The Hague, Amsterdam on September 9-12 you might want to stop by the Zeebelt Theater.

According to an article that crossed our news desk recently a group called The Klingon Terran Research Ensemble will be presenting a Klingon Opera entitled “U”.   Considering the nature of Klingon we hear in the movies the whole thing has the possibility of turning out to be “La Traviata”    – but let’s hope for the best.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

Few people can predict the future with any degree of certainly.  Every now and then someone comes along like Steve Jobs who predicts that the future is mobile application and has the power to help make it true.  As for myself, the only thing I am sure about (other than death and taxes) is the old adage – you can please some of the some of the time, but the only thing you can do all the time is piss some people off.

If you ask Disney’s CEP Bob Iger about the future of gaming he will no doubt tell you Social Gaming (read Facebook games) are here to stay. In fact he recently told Seeking Alpha (via Worlds in Motion) that Disney is shifting their assets from console games to social games.

“So, we’re going to continue to console games. They will primarily be Disney-branded, not all Disney-branded, and they will in most cases be derivative of product that’s been made for other segments of the company, like our motion pictures. So I guess, as you look at our strategy, you’d see a blend of investment and some reallocation of investment from the console side to basically this multifaceted side. Also, it became pretty clear to us that game playing and social networks is real, here to stay.” – Bob Iger, Disney CEO

Now we are certain that it has nothing to do with the fact that Disney spent over three quarters of a  billion dollars on Playdom (“563.2 million, plus performance-based earn outs of up to $200 million”)

There is no doubt, no matter what kind of games we end up playing, they will reach us through digital downloads. Even Ubisoft, infamous for their “always connected” DRM (if you disconnect from the internet while playing the game it quits) is using Steam for their release of the movie Tie-In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (maybe they have seen the hand writing on the wall but we doubt it). Will Wright (the man who created Electronic Arts’ 800 ton single player gaming Sims series) not only agrees, but believes retail used game sales is their ticket to oblivion:

“To some extent, as the retailers come up with policies like used games, they’re actually putting their foot on the gas pedal to oblivion. And that ultimately is going to make the game industry digital about as fast as it could possibly be,” he added.” – Will Wright, gamesindustry.biz via gamespolitics.com

Mr. Wright also feels the industry is in for some evolutionary changes…

“I think we’re in the Cambrian explosion of games, where all these weird new life forms are popping out for the very first time and filling these niches that are appearing dramatically,” Says Wright. “And of course a lot of the old, established things are going to be dying off pretty rapidly, even the major life forms. But more than anything else, I see this being the healthiest thing that could happen in the industry.” – Will Wright, gamesindustry.biz via gamespolitics.com

After we interviewed Dr. Richard Bartle on No Prisoners, No Mercy Show 46 we were left with the impression that the truly innovative advances in gaming will come from the smaller studios. One look at the video below will have you believing that the future will come from a company that is now part of NCSoft – ArenaNet. Listen to the trailer below you will hear the following words:

“We founded Arena Net to Innovate, so Guild Wars 2 is our opportunity to question everything; to make a game that defies existing conventions. If you love mmos you’ll want to check out Guild Wars 2, and if you hate mmos you really want to check out Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 takes everything you loved about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world that’s got more active combat, a fully branching personalized storyline, a new event system to get people playing together and still no monthly fees.”

 

What? Can it be true? All that and no monthly fees? Not even microtransactions? It sounds fantastic until it reaches the following words:

“As a structure the mmo has lost the ability to make a player feel like a hero. Everything around you is doing the same thing you are doing. The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”

“We do not want to build the same mmo that everyone else is building. In Guild wars 2 it’s your world, it’s your story. You affect things around you in a very permanent way.”

Wait. Did the woman on that video say PERMANENT? You bet she did.  The first thing I thought about is the first thing Keen from Keen and Graevs’ Gaming Blog pointed out  and that is the very structure of Guild wars 1, where the entire world is instanced except for the cities.   It is this very characteristic that dulled the appeal of Guild Wars for me.  At first I doubted their ability to do all the trailer promises and still not be instanced. Then I thought about the phased technology that Blizzard used in Northrend. This is the technology that allows the same persistent world appear different to two players depending on where they are in a story line. Will Guild wars 2 make use of a similar technology?

We here at NPNM really want to give ArenaNet the benefit of the doubt. 

Then I remember that ArenaNet is a studio that is owned by NCSoft. Suddenly names like Auto Assault (closed 2007), Tabula Rasa (closed 2009), and Dungeon Runners (closed 2010) comes to mind. This is the same company that was sued by Richard Garriott for $28 million dollars because they waited until he was in quarantine after his space flight to wrongfully terminate him. 

Then I read this article by Gordon over at We Fly Spitfires. When I got part way through the article, this paragraph grabbed my attention:

“Unfortunately I’ve seen and heard a lot of these sorts of claims before. Funcom was going to revolutionize combat and we got a couple of combo buttons. Sigil was going to revolutionize factions and diplomacy and we got an in-built card game. Blizzard was going to revolutionize questing and we got floating exclamation marks. Mythic was going to revolutionize PvP and we got battlegrounds queueable from anywhere. Not that any of these mechanics aren’t fun or good in their own right, it’s just they’re hardly turning the entire genre on its head. It’s evolution through tiny footsteps, not giant leaps.” – Gordon, We Fly Spitfires

Nobody is saying that Guild wars 2 will fail.  If ArenaNet can deliver on their promises they really can set the industry on its ear.  Still I can’t help reminiscing on all the wonders of gaming that Paul Barnett promised us when he was the front man for Warhammer Online – yes it is still there but not exactly going strong is it? If ArenaNet doesn’t deliver, these are the words that will come back to haunt them:

“…and puts it into a persistent world”

But if they do deliver…yes dear readers if they DO deliver, then there is little doubt that we will all be looking back on the days when we USED to play mmos the old fashioned way, and Guild Wars 2 will be up there with the rare air.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

update:

Our own Sister Julie had questions about ArenaNet’s Dynamic Events System vs. Public Quests as we all saw in Warhammer Online.  It seems Randomessa has done a detailed examination of the public quest issue here. I don’t have a ruler to wave around but it is a detailed analysis of claims versus performance to be sure.

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

Earlier today Arstechica released the following quote from The Entertainment Software Association report entitled Video Games in the 21^st Century for 2010:

“The real annual growth rate of the US computer and video game software industry was 10.6 percent for the period 2005-2009 and 16.7 percent for the period 2005-2008,” the report states. “During the same periods, real growth for the U.S. economy as a whole was 1.4 percent for 2005-09 and 2.8 percent for 2005-08.” – The Entertainment Software Association, via Arstechica.com

If the industry is doing so well why do we see announcements like this one  announcing the closure of Earth Eternal, and the ever more common announcements such as Icarus’ Studios (developer/publisher of Fallen Earth) staff reductions by 70 percent? Perhaps as we discussed here and on Show 66 Senator Al Franken is right – perhaps it is a matter of mega conglomerate mergers such as Comcast/NBC that crushes independent development.

Just five days ago, we read an article by Ben Kuchera entitled Starcraft 2: Help us mourn the death of content freedom, over at Arstechnica that contained the following:

By shutting down dedicated servers and not releasing any modding tools, Infinity Ward stopped modding dead in its tracks with Modern Warfare 2. Even if someone was able to create a map or a modification, there would be no way to play it online. That’s the way publishers like it; Activision Blizzard recently announced that it has sold 20 million map packs for the various Call of Duty releases. Why allow users to create something just to give it away when there’s so much money to be made? – Arstechnica

 

This is, of course, something that had been rattling around the internet for some time now. The point of the article was to discuss (or perhaps bemoan, and rightfully so) the lack of local storage for Starcraft 2 mods, necessitating an upload to battle.net and thus control by Blizzard.  As it stands now there is no monthly fee, for those players who bought the full retail version of Starcraft 2, to use Battlenet (We understand players in Russia are not that lucky).

Charging for expansion packs on single player games isn’t new of course – in fact we think it is a great idea.  Does a publisher place itself in a penny wise but pound foolish position when it publishes a game without access to modding tools? Activision is obviously making some serious cash by selling maps for its games. Still, consider the path that Bethesda has taken with its games.  Not only have they published modding tools but they have included video tutorials on YouTube explaining their use. There is even a database that explains things in even greater detail.  Doing all this has extended the shelf life of their game beyond what it would have been, even with the release of “Game of the Year” editions.

Electronic Arts (EA) has followed suit to a degree with world and pattern creator tools for the latest edition of the 800 pound gorilla of single player gamers, Sims 3.  They also have expansions in the form of World Adventures which expands the game to great extents. But you will also find the single player game version of a cash shop, charging Sims points, purchased for cold hard cash, for virtual items, piece by piece – this is in addition to their “stuff packs” (collections of virtual items).

Where they also follow the trend set by Blizzard (or does Blizzard follow them?) is by incorporating the ideas already in place by the modding community.  Blizzard simply incorporates them into World of Warcraft and we are fine with that.  Where we draw the line, however, is with EA’s release of “stuff packs” that charge for work that has already been released for free by web sites such as Mod the Sims . If you want fast cars Electronic Arts will point you in the direction of their upcoming “Fast Lane Stuff” expansion. We will point you to the amazing work of Fresh Prince over at Mod the Sims that can be had for free.

But perhaps you have avoided all that by steering clear of single player games?

If that is the case then you, dear reader, are in luck. Now that Disney has spent a total of three quarters of a billion dollars on Playdom, advertisements screaming the wonders of “Minnie’s Happy Aquarium” and “Mickey’s Sheep” can’t be far behind for those who still log on to Facebook and fire up those “social games”.  But if single player games and social games aren’t your style there is still plenty of competition for your “macro dollars” in the form of micro transactions by publishers hoping to ride the ever growing wave games that redefine the word “free” by stuffing it in front of “…to play.”

There are, of course, markets where free to play is the word of the day, and what is expected by players; this is why players in South Korea get Age of Conan that is “free to play” while the game is still supported by a subscription fee in North America.  Now what started with the likes of Habbo Hotel, and Lineage II eventually saw Runescape and Wizard 101.  Soon the ripple became a wave with Dungeons and Dragon Online, Lord of the Rings Online and Everquest II.

Companies like Zynga have made their fortune by nickels and dimes, and Disney hopes to follow suit.  The Sims series is easily the single player equivalent of the Blizzard Gorilla, and there is little doubt that nickel and time transactions or no, even a stake driven through its heart wouldn’t kill it any time soon. Where the jury is still out, at least in the long run, is whether the mmo community is as willing to accept a subscription game converted to free to play as publishers believe we are.  The difference, of course, is that games like Runescape were designed as free 2 play where converting a subscription based game and turning it into Everquest II: Extended seems a bit like taking a Ford 150 and trying to make it run on batteries.

Still, if you can manage to keep your nickels and dimes in your pockets, at least for the time being, there promises to be some new roads to trod for free while you are waiting for your next greatest world changing mmo – something that has always seemed to be a bit like chasing after the gaming equivalent of the Holy Grail.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

Photo credit: Mother superior first introduced me to this calendar series available here.

First a word from the deep end of the pool…

 

When Brian “Psychochild” Green speaks we listen – even if it’s a comment on another blog. So that’s why we didn’t want anyone to miss his comment on the issue that has stirred up the proverbial hornets’ here, but made over at The Ancient Gaming Noob (another of our must reads) you can read the entire article here. Most important is comment 23 by Brian Green.

And now…

 

Hello from the shallow end of the pool.  Anyone who knows me will knows the next entry on our page will carry the title it does when a reader says, “Perhaps next time, you could drop the pretense of making a substantive point and just stay in the shallow end of the pool.”

So hello from the shallow end of the pool.

 

This reminds me of two lines from the National Lampoon parody Deteriorata  by Les Crane:

“Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet.”

 

So let me cast adrift my two graduate degrees and wade into the shallow end of the pool that is remarkably empty – for all the accusations we here at No Prisoner’s No Mercy hear flying around the internet you would think it would be jam packed with people.

Just this last weekend Fran and I were talking to someone she is helping with a web site. When it came to the subject of generating traffic I said, “That’s easy, just insult Eve Online.”  The same holds true for just about any mmo of course. Then again, that is only to be expected. After all, when is the last time you saw “the happy fun time good news report” instead of the mayhem that usually fills the pages of any news source (including news papers if you are still living in the Stone Age). Whether it is the tone or escalating number of responses regarding any given issue, it is usually true that hell hath no fury like someone who’s (fill in name of game, sports team or politician here) has been scorned. If you fail to agree with someone’s point of view you will usually find yourself in the midst of some version of the dozens – each party struggling to have the last word as they attempt to paint who they see as their opponent in a light that would make even the Mona Lisa look heinous by comparison.

When the taunts are between players you will usually find them to be something along the lines of “if you don’t like (fill in the name of a game mechanic here) then go play (fill in the name of a game that said “taunter” despises).  Ah but when the taunts involve players and developers things reach a whole new level.  Usually taunts of this type are precipitated by an event that is so obvious that you would have to find isolated cultures living above the snow line somewhere in the Himalayas to find someone who couldn’t foretell the event.  It is then that taunts are bandied about such my favorite, given as an example, by Paul Barnett when he was a guest on the show:

“I TOLD YOU THE SUN WOULD FINALLY EXPLODE” – Paul Barnett

There are two interesting aspects of all this.  The first is something my grandmother once related to me. She told me that she could say anything she wanted about Hal (my grandfather) but no one, and she meant no one, had better let her catch them saying anything bad about him. The same is true for (fill in name of political party, politician, game, or sports team).  Even more interesting is the other facet of this phenomenon.  In any given conversation, on any subject, if you just listen and nod your head in agreement the person who began the conversation will come away telling themselves how intelligent you are because you agree with their opinion. Unfortunately, there is one more important aspect of all this…

It would make for one the most boring web sites and podcasts ever attempted.

What is more, we have found that professional developers would only take such a podcast or website seriously if they were desperate for the attention of the gaming community.  Grand dad would have put it this way…

“Right or wrong, say it loud and stick to your guns.”

This of course must be tempered with the last half of one of our favorite W.C. Fields Quotes, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again – Then quit…” (here comes the important part)

Don’t be a damn fool about it.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[Posted by The Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather]

 *Edit by The Webmaster* For those who wish to follow the discussion on the forums (we use Eve Search) the discussion is up to 18 pages and growing and can be found here.

“My simple child reaction of what you did is that you are not funny. Funnier than you is even Stuart Schlossman, who is my friend, and is eleven, and puts walnuts in his mouth and makes noises. What is not funny is to call us names, and what is mostly not funny is how sad you are, and I’d feel sorry for you if it wasn’t for how dull you are. And those are the worst-tasting potato chips that I’ve ever tasted. And that’s my opinion from the blue, blue sky.” – Nick, A Thousand Clowns

 

If you are old enough, or are fans of old movies, you will remember a comedian name Buster Keaton, master of slapstick comedy. Move forward a few years and you will find a spiritual successor in the person of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in A Shot in the Dark, exemplified by the classic “billiard table scene ” But what if the pratfall, so common in physical comedy, results in a death?  Some will still find it fascinating and even amusing just so long as the misfortune isn’t theirs.

The buzz this morning around our corner of the internet is the Eve Online player who was flying a kestrel out of Jita loaded down with 74 plex worth of one thousand dollars U.S.  and had it blown out from under him – destroying the plex in the process.  The tendency by many players in Eve is to immediately start a round of laughter and touting such well and over used lines as “what a noob”. 

My co-host and sister, Fran, and I discussed the events outline above over breakfast this morning.  Her initial thoughts concerned the issues of ownership of virtual property and whether or not that property has real world value.  In this particular case there is no doubt at all whether or not the items destroyed have real world value and how much.  But when the issue becomes who owns the virtual property it becomes a lot less certain than people think.  Fran is of the opinion that whether or not the gankers where playing within the allowed parameters of the game that they stole something worth over $1,000 dollars from someone else and should do real jail time for it.  She likens the matter to someone who robbed a bank and in the process of making their escape lost the money they stole.  Doubtless that would never hold up in a court of law. However…

It is easy to point to the EULA and say CCP owns all the items and dismiss the whole matter offhanded remarks as are often heard…

“Eve is a dangerous place”

“Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose”

 

Yet while the gankers in Eve are done braying like a jackass at the fate of the player who lost all that plex there are legal implications to be considered that go beyond even the consideration of whether or not virtual items have real world value. Say the words with me friends, and remember them:

Implied Warrantee of Merchantability

 

I will not claim to be a lawyer, and I don’t play one on television – and I am certainly not giving out legal advice.  There was a time, however, that I got paid for being the military equivalent of a paralegal (71D MOS for all you ex-military types out there).  In class one day the instructor pointed out that you can’t waive your own liability. This means, of course, that all those signs that read “we are not responsible for” in restaurants are not worth the paper they are printed on.  More important is the legal principle that says anything sold has to be fit to be used for the purpose for which it was meant to be used.  A merchant can sell a used refrigerator and put an “as is” sign on it all they want.  But when the customer gets home that refrigerator had better keep food cold or they will have to take it back regardless.
So the plex that CCP sold as something in game that can be convertible to game time must be able to be used for that purpose.  But CCP created the circumstances which meant the plex can no longer be used for game time.  Is it sufficient to say the player was warned?  Does that amount to attempting to waive your own liability? It will be interesting to see how far this goes.  Certainly there have already been emails to and from CCP about the situation.  Will CCP simply say “Eve Online is a cold and dangerous place?”  Will they restore the plex? Will this cause CCP to reexamine their traditional “that’s the way it goes” attitude toward high security/suicide ganking?

Unlike other circumstances someone (or several some ones) bank account will be short over $1,000 real world cash.  And before you are quick to point out that once they were sold in game (if that was even the case here) that the plex were already put to the use for which they were intended, consider the following from the source cited above. As you read it, imagine the in game seller of the plex as the farmer selling the horse feed.

“There is rarely any question as to whether the seller is the merchant of the goods sold. Nevertheless, in Huprich v. Bitto, 667 So.2d 685 (Ala. 1995), a farmer who sold defective horse feed was found not to be a merchant of horse feed. The court stated that the farmer did not hold himself out as having knowledge or skill peculiar to the sale of corn as horse feed, and therefore was not a merchant of horse feed for purposes of determining a breach of implied warranty of merchantability.” – legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com

So what, you may ask yourself, does the quote from A Thousand Clowns have to do with the situation. Well friends and readers (and I am sure this doesn’t apply to any of you) the following is directed at all those who simply brayed like a jackass and said “What a noob”…

“What is not funny is to call us names, and what is mostly not funny is how sad you are, and I’d feel sorry for you if it wasn’t for how dull you are.” – Nick, A Thousand Clowns

Further update:

Here is a bit more detail on what happened:

Jita, The Forge – On 112.08.07, a Kestrel frigate carrying 74 Pilot’s License Extensions [PLEX] worth about 22 billion ISK, was blown up just outside of the Jita 4-4 station.

The frigate, piloted by Aystra of SpaceMonkey’s Alliance, was destroyed by slickdog and Viktor Vegas of The 0rphanage Alliance as part of a CONCORD sanctioned war between the two entities. It remains unclear why the frigate pilot took the risk to move such a valuable cargo during an active war.

According to wilbongbe of the SpaceMonkey’s Alliance, we might never know the reasons behind the attempted move, as the weight of the tremendous ISK loss pushed Aystra to immediately put an end to her capsuleering days.

The attacking pilots were unaware of the precious cargo and they immediately eliminated the wreck to deny any theft by scavenger pilots.

“I would probably be kicked out [of the alliance] if [PLEX] were to drop… I was the one that killed the wreck,” concluded slickdog.

source:

 Update:

If you don’t read The Ancient Gaming Noob you should. The reason we are pointing it out this time, however, is for one of the comment made by Brian Green.  I am surprised he hasn’t put it on his own site as an article (it should be).  For those of you who don’t have access to that site here is the comment in full:

Saithir wrote:
@Psychochild – why should CCP compensate anything?

Because if they don’t, they open up a whole lot of uncomfortable issues, as others have pointed out. The difference between PLEX and ISK is that you buy PLEX directly with money, so it has an actual monetary value. ISK cannot directly be bought with money and (much more importantly) a player is not allowed to transfer ISK back into cash. (Turning PLEX into cash is a more complex issue, but at the very least one could request a chargeback from their credit card company if they decide they didn’t want the PLEX; this might lead to CCP punishing you for what could be considered fraud.)

When I was running Meridian 59, we had a rule that you were solely responsible for your own account security. “Being hacked” was always your own fault and we would take no responsibility for any losses. Did this mean we never helped people out who were “hacked”? No. But, it meant we had the ultimate escape clause in case we thought something fishy was going on, because the rules said we weren’t obligated. I suspect this is the same thing as what CCP has.

The other issue at work here is the law, as Julie Whitefeather points out. Although one can argue that PLEX are purely an in-game item, I don’t think you can say that exactly. They deal with an issue external to the game, paying for the game service. This sets it aside from other “virtual items” like in-game mounts that only deal with aspects in game. I think one of the big worries is that the courts won’t see this distinction, and complicate “virtual items” for everyone.

It’s also important to know that there are a lot of laws that exist for “cash equivalent” type items. In California, there are some specific rules concerning gift cards, such as they (generally) can’t expire, can’t have inactivity fees, etc. There are even laws concerning frequent flyer miles as well since they can be used to buy something of value. I think it’s entirely reasonable to consider that governments might start considering laws for virtual items that have an obvious cash equivalent such as PLEX. But, as I said above, it might be a bit more harmful if the governments decide to apply this to a wider class of virtual items; I don’t think that’s in anyone’s best interest except in corner cases.

However, the more I think about this the more I wonder if this isn’t a setup by CCP. Seems funny someone would carry so many PLEX in one go and would have that many without taking EVERY reasonable precaution. It makes sense that CCP might stage something like this to get some more PR for their game. It seems people really love schadenfreude type stories coming from EVE.

 

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]

There is a definition of chutzpa that is as old as the hills – a man who is arrested for killing both his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.

The problem with Chutzpa and companies that develop what we here at NPNM call “The 800 pound gorilla attitude” is that no matter how big you are, no matter how tough you think you are, eventually there will be a David to your Goliath and kick you right in the gnads.  Those who read this web site and have listened to show 65  have been privy to our conversations sparked by this  interesting read over at We Fly Spitfires.  The real id fiasco (poorly thought out garbage if ever there was such) will no doubt one day be the first big “mistake” by Blizzard.  As for the Activision side of the house, if Kotick et al lose their day in court against Infinity Ward that will certainly be their first….

Or so I thought.

This  came across our news desk this morning via gamepolitics.com (another of our MUST reads).

 

While speaking to GamesRadar about his forthcoming title, Greg Hastings talked a bit about his time spent with Activision, and they are not fond memories. “I had to fire Activision for doing such a poor job,” said Hastings.

He continued, “Within 24 hours of me shipping my PlayStation 2 game, Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball Max’d, they sent me a letter and they said, ‘We feel you’ve abandoned your franchise, and we’re going to commence making games called Greg Hastings Paintball without Greg Hastings.’ – Via Gamepolitics.com

I had to read that last line several times before I believed that any business executive anywhere would be brave enough to pen the words without sufficient legal standing to back them up…

“…and we’re going to commence making games called Greg Hastings Paintball without Greg Hastings.”

 

Wow. Just Wow. Talk about colossal arrogance. Uttering such claims with nothing to back them up is like a gun slinger in the old west who is using a cap gun. This, dear readers, is a pile of chutpa that would make the mighty Mount Everest pale into insignificance.

Fortunately Mr. Hastings won his day in court stating “A Billion-dollar company tried to steal my identify, and I was able to fight and regain my identity. That’s why I’m on cloud nine; I was able to fight the giant and I am a success story against Activision.”

Between Mr. Kotick’s recent loss in court as reported by Gamepolitics.com (which did not involve Activision) as part of a sexual harassment law suit, Infinity Ward, and now this, Activision’s reputation for honest dealing might just end up sinking like the Titanic.