Posts Tagged ‘Icarus Studios’

Tis’ the season for the Seasonal Arctic Network of Toy-based Altruism (S.A.N.T.A.) to band together and reinstate the age old tradition of gift giving in post apocalyptic Arizona.  S.A.N.T.A. have loaded up their all-terrain sleighs at North Poland and travelled across the globe to distribute presents. (I haven’t quite figure out why North Poland yet – except perhaps some dev from Icarus Stuidos “hails” from there as they say).

This, of course, is only possible with the help of the Emissaries Leaving Free Stuff (E.L.F.S.) acting as a “special ops team ensuring proper protocols for supply distribution”.  I know this is all true for I have it all straight from the mouth of Corporal Claus.

While the military faction (The Enforcers) is busy bringing toys in “Operation Nice” the scientific faction (The Techs) have been figuring out how to build a snowman in the middle of an irradiated desert. I must say I like their solution. Icarus studios rocks on… I give you the rock man (see image above)

Now there are plenty of seasonal goodies to be had, but just in time for Christmas the devs at Icarus Studios have brought us all some permanent presents that are now in full swing…camp sites and bunker bars.

My first stop, of course, was the “construction zone” (a street corner in New Flagstaff was the one nearest me) where I learned how to build camping equipment…

  Read the rest of this entry »

I had considered calling this article “everyone has buttons” and you will soon see why. Read on…

You might recognize the desert that this particular troll is standing in – it is the post apocalyptic Arizona desert, about 150 years from the current date.  Now why, you might ask yourself, does a troll standing in a desert “push my buttons”? Well lets be a bit less obtuse about it then…

One of my “buttons” in this case are players who, having decided they don’t like a game also decide that no one else should like a game as well. Not long ago I read a forum troll for one of the newer games on the shelf that started as follows:

“Am I the only one who doesn’t feel like logging in any more?”

My immediate thought was, of course, “Yes, you are the only one. The game has just come out and some of us are actually enjoying the game.”  Fortunately, many of the games today are solo friendly and the solution for those who rushed to the level cap and have no guild mates to play with is easy: Re-roll a new character and solo it through the content again…put another way, go play with yourself and leave the rest of us alone.

Now there are some of our long time readers who at this point will remember the phrase I am wont to use, and that is “Hell hath no fury like a gamer whose game has been scorned.”  Yes, in this case, the phrase does especially apply to yours truly. But why get so defensive about it?

Well it might be that the folks at Icarus studios are some of the nicest most considerate game developers we here at No Prisoners No Mercy (NPNM) have ever had the pleasure of meeting…but that isn’t it.  It might be that, as an independent developer we  here at NPNM wholeheartedly agree with the discussion we had with Dr. Richard Bartle not long ago when he was a guest on our show – that even if you don’t like a game, if it accomplishes something new that it is worthy of praise.  After all, no matter what anyone thinks (including the imbecile we read on the Internet who thought that Fallen Earth was copied from Star Wars Galaxies) Fallen Earth has given players a new game world, with alot of virtual world thrown in, that breaks the same tired old fantasy world mold.

But none of that is the “it” in question.

There are some causes that just strike a nerve, push a button, or hit home if you will, and one of those causes is independent game developers.  It’s just in my nature, and trying to champion a cause doesn’t always mean the members of a given community wish to have anything to do with me.  There was a time in my not too distant past when I belonged to a social action organization that simply tolerated me to have the membership dues. More is the pity, because of all the members I was (for reasons upon which I will not expound) in a better position than any to get changes made for the given social issue.  Still, that doesn’t stop me from taking a particular issue to heart; from feeling defensive about the matter.  There is even an old tale that explains why I feel compelled to champion the cause of independant game developers: It’s in my nature.

One day, a scorpion and a frog met by the side of a river.

The scorpion wished to cross the river, but it was too wide and swift for him to do so. Not being able to cross the river himself, he decided to enlist the aide of the frog:

“Mr. Frog!” said the scorpion, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”

“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.

“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”

“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”

“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.

“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.

“I could not help myself. It’s in my nature.”

(source of this version of the tale)

If all else fails, so the old adage goes, read the instructions.  Yet ask yourselves, of all the times  you bought an mmo off the shelf (remember when the only way you could buy one was in an actual box?) how many of you even cracked open the instruction booklet?  As for me, I occasionally peruse the instructions… usually when the mmo takes a long time to patch. After all, isn’t that what tutorials are for?

It’s interesting…all the comments I have read about tutorials over the years – everything from “it’s too good” to “it sucks a pile of dead dingo dung.”  With each new game developers face multiple challenges with just the starting area:  How do you make it convey how to play the game but not make it boring? How do you make it good, but not so good it overshadows the rest of the game? (Age of Conan anyone?)  How do you do all that but make it interesting enough so players won’t say “OMG not again!” when they go through the same starting area for the third time.

Yet no matter how good a starting area is, there is no way a developer can convey all the nuances and myriad rules in the short time it takes to complete the tutorial. And there, as the immortal bard once said, “lays the rub”.  Had I had the opportunity to talk to whoever designed the crafting in Fallen Earth this weekend it might have gone like this:

Me:  “My armor crafting seems to be stuck at 28 – no matter how much I craft these stupid t-shirts my score won’t rise.”

FE Dev: “That’s because you are capped out for your level…”

Me: “WHAT! I’VE BEEN AT THIS ALL AFTERNOON! WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘LEVEL’?”

FE Dev: “We mean that the cap on your current craft skill by area is tied to your intelligence and perception scores.”

(long pause while I think)

Me: “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”

FE Dev.: “We did…”

Me:  “No you didn’t.”

FE Dev: “Didn’t we send you that wonderful autographed box?”

Me: “Well…yes.”

FE Dev: “Did you spend all your time gawking at the signatures or did you read the instruction book that came with it?”

Me: “Well…I never read those things.”

FE Dev: “We suspected as much. That’s why there is this really nice npc standing right by the exit where you start the game that answers all the questions you have.”

Me: “Oh that guy…I just sort of ignored him.”

FE Dev: “We thought you might. That’s why we sent you to the NPC to teach you about crafting and have her guide you through the process. Did you read everything in the NPC’s dialogue?”

Me: “Well…no.”

FE Dev: “Well then any time you wasted is your own fault.”

Me: “How so?”

FE Dev: “Back in college we failed ‘Mind Reading 101.’”

Whoever designs crafting in any game has an enormous challenge. Make it too easy and it will seem like it was tacked on to the game as an afterthought. Make it too hard and the player will get bored. If crafting is both hard and an integral part of the game it will make the player feel like an animal in a trap – willing to chew off a limb just to get out of it.

Even when a developer hits the proverbial nail on the head when crafting is added to the mmo, the interest of the player is still dependant on both ability and willingness to perceive how the process is done – like reading instructions.  Fortunately, when part of that equation fails those who are fortunate (like me) have a great clan LIKE THE OLDER GAMERS who are willing to help out.

See you online

Julie Whitefeather

Side Notes

 

This last weekend I had a chance to hear a performance on taiko drums.  There may be those of you who don’t know what taiko drums are – for those unenlightened few they are, in brief, REALLY BIG REALLY LOUD DRUMS.  Now it so happens I have heard taiko drums played quite a bit.  Keep in mind that taiko drums are usually not accompanied by other musical instruments, as drums so often are in western music.

Now if I have heard my share of taiko drums, I have heard A LOT of bagpipe music.  The reason for this is simply that there is more than one hard drinking Scotsman in my family tree. That said, taiko drums and bagpipes have at least one thing in common, and that one thing is that it takes a trained ear to really appreciate a performance with either instrument. Otherwise, after the novelty of the performance wears off, reactions start to go like this:

Neophyte audience: “Hey…look…great big drums!  This is really different!”

(Drumming starts)

THUMPA, THUMPA, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP

(15 minutes later)

Taiko Drum Master: “And now ‘Tea for two’ on the taiko drums”

THUMPA, THUMPA, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP

Like drums, there are some songs that just shouldn’t be played on bagpipes.  Two that come immediately to mind that I have heard played on bagpipes are “Jesus Christ Superstar” and  “Stairway to Heaven”. As moving as I occasionally find the bag pipes, like taiko drums, they are best taken in moderation.  Otherwise, like our penguin friend above I find myself looking at the piper and saying, “Maybe if you quit biting it’s tail it will quit screaming”

And I used to be in a bagpipe band.

Quote of the day: This quote is from one of our “must reads” here at No Prisoners, No Mercy – Killed in a Smiling accident. This quote is from “When Once the Forms of Civility are Violated, there Remains Little Hope of Return to Kindness or Civility” by Melmoth (and is available here) The title alone is nearly an article in itself but the post is a good read. We recommend both the article and the web site.

 “Well you could do that, but nobody will want to group with you.” A phrase wrapped in wilful condescension so thick that if you spread some patronization between a couple of slices of it you’d have the world’s most bitter doorstop sandwich.” – Melmoth, on “Killed in a Smiling Accident”

The subject of the article is not DDO so much as some of the players who inhabit that virtual realm.  I must say, as a player of DDO from back when it came in a thin little book that said “chain mail” on the outside I agree whole heartedly with the following quote by the same author, from the same article:

“…every MMO has their class of players who think that they are above and beyond the plebeians who don’t play the game the way that they do.” – Melmost, ibid

The article even coins a new word that I just love, describing players who fault others for not squeezing the virtual nickel until the buffalo farts (my comparison not his, so fault me) or ensuring they have squeezed out the last .01 dps. Melmost calls them “Maxminati”. You just have to love the term.

A bit later than usual today dear readers…believe it or not I actually went outside today.  It seems that it was the perfect day for sucking a yard full of leaves. It reached the point where the neighbors called and said, “Gee you seem to have all the leaves from the neighborhood on your lawn!”   And in case you haven’t guessed, that is “neighborese” for “When are you going to rake the leaves?” However it was a good day for it – after all it was Caucasian summer…I mean “Indian summer”…I mean a warm fall day.

So if you saw the title on your reader and expected to find an article about a Cole Porter song you are, as you can tell from the picture above, mistaken.   Instead this is about a time in the not too distant future (150 years to be exact) as a rough character named “Auntie Maim” rides across a plateau somewhere in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon (that’s a great big hole in the ground in the south west area of the U.S. for all of you  out of the country readers).

So why the night and day title?

Quite simply I have had the pleasure of sampling Fallen Earth since early closed beta thanks to the kind folks at Icarus Studios. Yes, I will be the first to admit that some of the early days were rough.  But things have changed since then, and even since the opening days of the game.  And as the title of the article suggests I have found it to be a change of “night and day” by comparison. 

Lag?

Not a bit of it – and we are running it on a desk top that is a far cry from being a “top end” machine.  Even when I rode in to town with all the other post apocolyptic residents of Depot 66 around me there wasn’t so much as a sputter.

What about that tutorial?

One of the regulars that writes in the our little corner of the blogosphere (no names please – except to say it isn’t anyone from the Virgin Worlds collective) faulted Fallen Earth’s tutorial.  They said that they felt dumped out into the world by a tutorial that had no resemblance to the rest of the game.   Before the changes to the new player experience I still thought that it was a great way to introduce the game mechanics to the players.   I always appreciate devs who try and make the new player experience interesting and involve me in a story right from the get go. After all, consider the alternative from some of the games that have been around awhile – in those “other” games a dwarf hands you a rusty axe and tells you to go kill ten wolves.  Exciting eh?

Even though all that was added to the tutorial was a series of optional quests once you hit your first town (where you first appear in the game after the tutorial and you have selected your starting town) they made a big difference.  Before I still felt a bit lost after the tutorial but not this time.  The beginning quests showed me around town, introduced me to how the various systems work like crafting and combat. I even ended up with a horse from square one, rather than having to take half of forever to earn the darn thing in those “other” games.  O.K. so the horse was an “old nag” but by the end of the second play session, as you can see above I sat astride a much higher priced model.

And speaking of horses…

One of the things I am sure you all heard us talk about  with Keen on show number 47 was games that have a bit more “virtual world” in their “game world” (for a difference between the two see our earlier articles about our discussions with Dr. Richard Bartle).  One of those nice touches that really impressed me was the fact that horses don’t “disappear” like the mounts in so many other games.  In every other game I have ever played you get off your horse, turn around and say “who the heck stole my horse”?  In this game you get off your horse, walk into the local store, and when you come out your horse is still waiting there. (no worries, no one can steal it),

So when I am online the rest of the weekend, most of it will be riding across the plateau of post apocalyptic Arizona.

If you see Auntie Maim say hello!

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Among the many jobs I have worked at, one of them was in a factory. There is an old expression that stuck with me from those days – no matter how tired you are, come quitting time on Friday, everyone has energy.  It’s Friday, welcome to the road to the weekend edition.

The Road to the Stars…

If you haven’t read the running conversation under this week’s “Game You Wish You Could Love” article, it’s all about Eve Online. But there is one game that we here at No Prisoners, No Mercy love even before it hits the shelves: Star Trek Online. Now mind you, these days we take anything that comes out of Eurogamer with about a truckload of salt. They are reporting, however, that Cryptic Studios has announced the official release date for Star Trek Online, which they are saying is February 5, 2010. Now mind you we are well aware that if there is anywhere that Murphy’s Law rears its ugly head it is producing games; and so that date may not be set in stone. However, at the risk of jumping the gun (for even in the world of interviews things change) we have the perfect source to ask…

Mr. Bill Roper who has kindly agreed to an interview about one of our favorite games  – Champions Online. The accompanying article prepared by our own Fran has been completed but we are going to make you wait until the audio portion is recorded.  While Fran and I are busy winging (or in my case teleporting) our way across the skies of Millennium City it occurred to us that while CCP is still talking about “walking in stations” everything we have seen from Star Trek Online so far (and that is only what we read) tells us that players in Star Trek are already footloose and fancy free instead of floating around in a pod full of primordial goo.  We only have one question left…

Who do we have to bribe to get a beta code (we missed out on the lifetime offer for Champions Online)

Dragons Age…

Dragon Age Origins has finally arrived and with it, an article over at arstechnica.com entitled “Dragon Age Launch Fails” (available here). If the article is to be believed, there are problems – here is a quote:

 “The problem? EA and Bioware require you to sign into their own websites, with their own accounts and login information, to allow you to access the bonus content from your purchase. That process, it seems, is broken for many users.” – Ben Kuchera, Arstechnica.com

I am not sure why the good folks at Arstechnica are having problems but no one at the modding group I belong to called “The Engineering Guild” (available here)  seems to be troubled at all. In fact everyone at The Engineering Guild has been planning their mods for Dragon Age Origins since long before the game came out.  And one thing is for sure, no one can say the devs at Bioware are not on the ball where the modding community is concerned – the tool set was released with the game and is available here.

Getting Hammered…

It was not that long ago that my goblin shaman finally retired from Warhammer Online for good…but maybe someone might follow in his place. Why? Here’s why..

Werit had an article this week  (and if you don’t read Werits blog why not? It’s good.) reporting that the new 10 day trial for Warhammer Online has been extended – indefinitely. In other words, while players are still limited to Tier one they can now play longer than 10 days. In fact they can play as long as they want.  Here is the article. Let’s hope that this is not only true, but that those who participate will max out at the top of the Tier One levels. After all, Tier One is where I had the most fun; especially in the Empire RvR lake. Either way, another one of our favorite sites, The Ancient Gaming Noob, has an interesting post this week about the possible consequences of the new trial (available here) entitled “a mass of Tier One Twinks”

Meanwhile back at the (post apocalyptic) corral:

Meanwhile the Wandering Goblin is reporting that Interplay and Bethesda (makers of Fallout 3, one of my favorite stand alone games) are still fighting it out in court for the rights to produce a Fallout MMO (which I read is set to expire this month for Interplay). The article is available here.  So while Interplay and Bethesda have been busy playing dueling lawyers I have been busy in the post apocalyptic world of FALLEN EARTH.  And if you want to know a bit more about how things have been going for the dev team over at Icarus there is nothing like hearing it straight from the “horses mouth” as it were – or in this case the project managers mouth.  Yes, Mr. Colin Dwan, project manager for Fallen Earth was kind enough to share some time with us earlier this week. The interview has been through the editing process and will be the top half of show number 48.

The folks over at Wizard 101 have been asking the No Prisoners No Mercy team to come back and play in their world again. As for me, I will be spending time buzzing through the skies of Millennium City faster than a speeding pullet and learning my way around the post apocalyptic Fallen Earth. However, I will not be playing any more Aion Online. For me I believe it is finally time to hang up my wings. I will be in good company, however as Werit appears to being hanging up a similar pair of wings and talks about it in an article here called Farewell Aion.

The last straw…

Werit’s article touched on a couple of points that, for me, were the last straw. Here are the quotes:

“Abyss.  The Abyss sounded interesting on paper, but in reality it was one big gank fest.  Allowing ranks 25 through 50 to fight in the same space, without a bolster, just was not fun.” – Werit

 ”Leveling.  It’s a long way to the top if you want to PvP.  I am a big fan of PvP leveling and Aion just does support that style of gameplay.” – Werit

“Guild.  There are quite a few CoW’s [presumably his guild] who play Aion and I will miss grouping with them.” – Werit

Pvp is  one place that place that Warhammer did it right and NCSoft  still hasn’t learned. If you are going to make a game where the focus is primarily on pvp make sure you can easily level with pvp. The interesting thing about pvp is that everyone talks about balance but what most people really mean is they want the scales tipped in their favor.  As far as balance is concerned I still like the approach Warhammer took (every class is strong against some and weak against others) as opposed to World of Warcraft’s approach (Micromanage all the classes until you manage to tick off just about everyone but rogues). And while Werit said he will miss some of his guild mates, the best thing about organizations that cross multiple games like The Older Gamers is that you will still see the same people in other games.

Stinking out loud…

There is little doubt that anyone who surfs the waves of the blogsphere has not heard about the ‘Blizzard Cash Shop” by now. Earlier this week Fran wrote about this at the end of her “Homey doesn’t like pugs” article.  John Woods echoes our (that’s the royal we) opinion in his article over at www.mmorpg.com.

“By raising a gigantic stink about this particular move on Blizzard’spart, the only thing that is going to happen is that next time, when a company actually does do something offensive like charge a subscription and offer game-enhancing items within a store, is that no one is going to listen to the horde of people that are crying foul.

By reacting and over-reacting negatively every time even the slightest thing is done that might possibly be controversial, the voices of the fans get easier and easier for game companies to ignore. This, my friends, is not good for our genre and opens the door to truly unscrupulous actions by others.” – John Wood, MMORPG.com ( available here )

Now on to the next section…

Lets start with a bit of fiction about Fallen Earth Lore.  Enjoy the story. See you on the other side of Friday.

- The No Prisoners No Mercy team

Most people have memories of their past: playing with childhood friends (or a lack thereof), parents, perhaps a sister or two. People often look back on times spent with families (and not necessarily fondly).  Her memories didn’t extend past the last half hour. In fact the only thing she could remember was her name, and that was only because it was tattooed across her upper left arm, that and a mass of Celtic scroll work. A similar tattoo adorned her right forearm, with two matching tattoos on each of her right and left leg, that went all the way up to her thigh.

Read the rest of this entry »

If it isn’t incredibly obvious at this point we (and in this case thats the “everyone who helps out with No Prisoners No Mercy we”) are big supporters of independent game developers.  As we discussed with Dr. Bartle on an earlier show, even if we don’t personally fancy the genre the fact that independent game developers are out there trying new things deserves a thunderous round of applause.  That said, while Interplay and Bethesda continue to fight it out in court as to who has Fallout MMO rights another developer has stepped in to fill the mmo gap in what is my favorite genre…post apocalyptic.  If it weren’t so I wouldn’t spend so many endless hours modding a post apocalyptic game.  So any dev of any sort that is both an independent developer and has developed a game in my favorite genre deserves not only a thunderous round of applause but shouting it from the rooftops (as I have been doing for some time now).

I am talking about…of course…none other than Icarus Studios.

Twice now it has been our extreme pleasure to have their project manager, Mr. Colin Dwan, as a guest on the show. His second appearance is in the editing process now.  That said, in the interest of full disclosure, and since it is our understanding that it is now required by law in the U.S. anyway, we wanted to share the wonderful gift that the Fallen Earth team sent along to us – signed by the whole team and suitable for framing (believe me that’s exactly whats going to happen it).

Don’t get us wrong, this isn’t about some silly bank sitting “nah, nah, nah see what we have and you don’t” garbage. Far from it.  Why this is important to us is that, after the years of writing  about games and more than a year of podcasting (all told) this is one of the first tangible “atagirls” we have received.

Now what, you may ask yourself, is an “atagirl”? 

I had an NCO (non-commissioned officer in charge) in the military who would look at soldiers and say “atagirl” [that's a girl] when ever you did something right as an acknowledgement. He would then follow up with, “but remember one ‘aw crap’ wipes out a thousand ‘atagirls’”.

And so this is our first “atagirl” if you will (or even if you won’t) from a developer. So thank you from us here at No Prisoners No Mercy to the entire Fallen Earth team for what is possibly the biggest warm fuzzy in a long time.

See you online

Julie Whitefeather

Update:  When budgetary constraints forced us to make a few decisions and cut back on a few expenses one of the expenses to go was Fallen Earth. Now the kind people at Icarus Studios  have solved that problem by giving us a press account – and so we will be able to continue to bring you news from Fallen Earth. And yes, we think of that as another, very large, “Atagirl”.

 

It has been one month since Aion Online has hit the shelves and about the same for Champions Online.   This is right about the time where a gamers mind turns to “virtual tourism”  – the end of the first free month. The following was in the recent release of the “October Community Address” from Aion Community Team:

“You’ve told us that it’s difficult to advance within certain level ranges. To address this issue, we’re planning to raise quest experience, in addition to reevaluating the experience rewards characters gain for individual kills. We understand how frustrating it can be to repetitively kill enemies. Our goal is to limit the need to mindlessly ‘grind.’” – The Aion Community Team (full address is here)

Both gamers and those who make the games expect potential customers to come and take a tour of the new game world. And it is certainly expected that not all those who arrive in that first free month of a games life cycle will make the virtual world one of their new homes.  The question still arises, however, what happens when a game fails to turn a “virtual tourist” into a new “virtual resident”.

This was one of the questions that My Co-host Fran, and I will be discussing with Tipa from West Karana and JMO from MMO Voices on an upcoming No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) show.

When Paul Barnett discussed the matter with us, he likened the process to someone who leaves a girlfriend, hoping to find someone better, but always ends up yearning for the “love of their life” – whatever that first game or mmo happened to be.  There certainly must be something to that; for the “first love” of many players is World of Warcraft (WoW) and that is the game against which all others seem measured. Yet while investors and “triple AAA” developers alike hesitate to do anything other than what is expected, that can be one root causes of virtual  tourism.

What exactly do games “expect”?

Take 1 million gamers and ask them what they are looking for in a game and you are likely to get one million different answers. In the end analysis, no doubt the gamers themselves aren’t sure what they are looking for but will merely know it when they find it.  If the product you create is “approachable” as Scott Hartsman told us on an earlier there will be any one of a number of players who view themselves as the “core” of your customers and say “its too easy” (as happened in WoW after the Northrend expansion).  If it takes too long to level, for whatever reason (see Aion Online comments above) there will be yet another sector of gamers that will react as if you shot their dog. To paraphrase the great U.S. President Lincoln…

You can’t please all of the people some of the time so you had best please a few of the people most of the time.

As you will hear TIPA point out on a future show, many players take a tour of a new game world hoping to find something different and end up finding the same game they just left.  After all, who needs another WoW when you still have the WoW icon on your desktop? Mythic Entertainment started with a tabletop game named Warhammer where a great battle will often find three armies pitted against another, the survor always ready to pounce on the weakened victor. What they gave us (all considerations of art style aside) was  a game with one side pitted against the other…more of the same game mechanics used in just about every game that hits the shelves.

Aion Online, on the other hand, can’t seem to decide what it is. Yes, they have called it a PvPvE game.  An interesting approach but it is still a two sided game because the third side is controlled by the AI (the “E” in PvPvE).  If a gamer, such as myself, joins looking forward to new and innovative pvp I end up dieing on the vine as I try and wade through 25 levels until I get to pvp (Yes, I know about rifts but that isn’t pvp, that’s a slaughter).

This is why I will always applaud the independent game developer who dares to do something different.  There may be those in the gaming community who, in their ignorance, will sneer and call such games  a “niche of a niche”. What such games present to the mmo community are something that is desperately needed – someone who marches to the beat of a different drummer.  When a developer finally breaks out of the mold of game mechanics that are tried and true, we can finally go out looking for something different and find it.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather*

*Brought to  you from a bed in a convent, somewhere in Illinois.

There isn’t alot that I will put my faith in “right off the bat” – sight unseen (well, not unseen in the case), without being “tried and true.”   Anyone who knows me knows that I am the sort of woman who would make someone from Missouri, the “show me state”, prove the issue in question even after their doubts had been satisfied.

I don’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster (there is more than one heavy drinkin’ Scotsman in my family tree)

I don’t believe in bigfoot (unless of course you are referring to the size of the gunboats I wear)

I do, however, believe in Fallen Earth and Icarus Studios.

Now I am not about to sit here and tell you that anyone else in the  mmo community that happens to disagree agree with me has somehow suddenly and magically lost their mind the second they sat down to write about this issue. (On the other hand, there were those writers in the  mmo community who where out of their collective minds to start with – it has nothing to do with Fallen Earth).   I am also not about to tell you to “ignore that man behind the curtain” – that patches to the game mean nothing. 

But lets face a few realities here shall we friends?

As we spoke about earlier in the week, the success of companies like Activision/Blizzard often has an adverse affect on the industry as a whole, especially where bean counting executives, who have never played a game that didn’t involve a deck of cards or set of ball and jacks are concerned.  Not every studio (Thank God) has a slave driver at the helm who pinches the nickle until the buffalo farts and demands a profit margin that would pay off the national debt.  Couple the fact that there are a goodly number of such bean counting, buffalo farting executives out there with a downturned economy and you have an extremely competitive market.

And an extremely competitive market means that fewer people with their hands on the money are willing to put said money into something that is not tried and true. Fewer people are willing to go where no game developer has gone before. We are in an era when most games are busy telling us to take out our wands, spread our wings, or dance around with bunnies hurling toilet paper hither – thither – and yon. Few developers these days (unless you count Bethesda and Interplay who are still busy duking it out in court) seem to want to address those of us who simply want to whip out grenade launcher and put one up the next persons nose over the remaining acre of earth that is not irradiated with nuclear fallout.

“Wow is that woman a nun?”

Such are the comments that I often get here at No Prisoners, No Mercy, whether written to the podcast, the site or whispered to one another in game.  But the fact is I enjoy a bit of post apocalyptic mayhem as well as the next person and I get a bit tired of waving wands around. I get tired of cutsie graphics (as our readers can tell from my opinions on Teletubbies). And I get REALLY, REALLY tired of the same old garbage pumped out at the mmo community because some bean counter somewhere said this is what everyone wants.

Toady-like yes man X:  “So what game shall we work on this year sir?”

Bean Counting Slave Driver X:“Give them more swords and wands – if it works for Bobby Kotick it will work for us.”

(Toady-Like Yes Man X looks nervous)

Toady-Like Yes Man X: “But, um…ah…sir. Begging sir’s pardon, but if everyone else in the market is busy doing the same thing shouldn’t we at least consider the remote possibility that we should be addressing a sector of the market that isn’t already being addressed…I mean…maybe?”

Bean Counting Slave Driver X:“Are you INSANE? Stack those fantasy genre games high man! I want to see a stack so high it would take a team of climbers and sherpa guides 15 weeks to scale to the summit. Let ‘er rip man!”

Toady-Like Yes Man X:  “YES SIR!!!”

Do I believe in Icarus Studios? You bet, I am more than willing to give a smaller studio a bigger break. Lets face it friends, these days games are released early with more bugs than an Orkin-Man and if a game has a glitch or two that’s par for the course.  Do I believe in the post apocalyptic genre? You bet. Despite the fact that Heartless Gamer left me a comment calling  it a “niche of a niche” that is still ONE HELL OF A BIG NICHE.

So yes, I believe in Fallen Earth.

I believe in Icarus Studios.

Why? That one is easy to answer. For once a game developer is doing something different. For once someone is breaking the mold and trying to bring us something that would have been brought to us earlier if we were able to magically get rid of World of Warcraft. And that, my friends, is something worth believing in.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather