The “Big Indie” RPGs — Upgraded
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 15, 2015
A bunch of the “big indie” RPGs, all crowdfunded, are undergoing some major revisions. This means a lot of different things. Now, one could complain that they were all released too soon, due to the pressures of promised release dates and clearly limited budgets. That’d not be entirely wrong. But in all of these cases, the updates are completely free to backers. So… I guess fortune favors the people who are a little slow. 🙂
In some cases, they are accompanying a console port, and some of the enhancements may not be very useful for dedicated PC gamers. Even though I have come to appreciate the coolness of playing Frayed Knights 2 with an XBox 360 controller, that doesn’t mean it is my preferred mode of playing RPGs. Not even close.
I think a big part of it is simply fixing problems on such a level that it generates a newsworthy event, some buzz that will probably lead to more sales. Especially when there’s a console release — it makes perfect sense to release an updated PC version as well and ride the buzz for the console launch and generate a bumper crop of PC sales at the same time.
Whatever the case – these are pretty big deals for fans who haven’t played the games yet.
Divinity: Original Sin – Enhanced Edition
Just announced, this update is actually going to be a stand-alone independent title, because it so fundamentally overhauls the quests and storyline of the original game and is not saved-game compatible. Coinciding with the console release, it will also include more professional voices, new build options, controller support, split-screen support, and lots of new content. This was just recently announced and is still many months away from release.
Swen Vincke commented on his blog, “Given how much we put in there, I suspect that what we call an Enhanced Edition goes a lot further than what others call an Enhanced Edition. Chances are of course that all those changes don’t make much economic sense but then again, maybe they will. We’ll find out soon enough and for what it’s worth, I’m quite happy about having been able to make all these changes so that we could craft what’s essentially a new and more complete experience.”
A MAJOR enhancement of the Zombie survival RPG Dead State, the “Reanimated” update includes serious combat rebalancing, several improvements to enemy AI, new locations, new sounds, new combat animations… basically a big “refresh” on the whole experience.
The update also includes some stability improvements (something that bit me a couple of times) and a whole mess of bug fixes… and it’s available now. Yay!
Wasteland 2 – Game of the Year Edition
Announced several weeks ago, this is also an update that coincides with the console release, and should be a free update for backers sometime this summer. A lot of the updates are related to the upgrade to Unity 5 and some significant cosmetic changes, but they’ll be announcing the new game features and content as the release date gets closer. In an interview at Eurogamer.net, one area of discussion was on combat – how cover and enemy AI will be significantly larger factors than they were in the original release.
This latest update to v. 1.05 is a big one, and there’s already a new one planned. While this wasn’t quite as big of a facelift as its cousins, the game has made some substantial strides since its original release. A ton of the changes (lately) have been game-balance adjustments. I’m not sure how I feel about that, because (as I’m still playing) I’ve come to rely on some of those “imbalanced” abilities… it feels like the only way anything I do makes a difference in some fights. Ah, well…
So will these changes make the games worthy of a second playthrough?
I dunno – I’m kept so busy right now even getting a single full playthrough to the end is challenging. Although at least in the case of Divinity: Original Sin, which was already kinda replayable, it sounds a little like two distinct but similar games.
Your mileage may vary on whether all this sounds like good news or bad news to you. But I’m calling it all a good thing. I like that the devs are willing to put in the time and effort to make good things better, even if it’s not a clear marketing win.
Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
Are Game Consoles in Decline?
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 14, 2015
There was a bit of buzz last year about the decline of gaming consoles. The buzz itself has gone into decline. I think it was in part this conjecture (building up over years) that led to the creation of microconsoles. The logic was sound, if the premise was correct and the conditions had been unchanged: The console era blossomed at a time when “gaming PCs” were very expensive and became obsolete very quickly. Consoles were a significantly less expensive, significantly more convenient alternative.
However, things aren’t the same as the were in 1990.
For one thing, game-capable PCs are a lot cheaper today than they used to be. While many of the AAA games still demand top-of-the-line hardware to run well, the vast majority of games have far more lightweight requirements. These days, if you don’t need a new monitor, you can get a PC capable of a reasonable amount of gaming for not much more than the price of a new game console. And if you wait two or three years into the console generation, the new PC will probably be more powerful.
The bad ol’ DOS days were painful for gamers, and we had to do weird things like configure our sound drivers for every game. Nowadays, that’s not nearly as much of a problem. So while consoles are still more convenient, it’s not quite the gulf that it was in the heyday of the consoles.
But if you want to talk convenience, hand-held devices still pretty much take the cake, unless you are already sitting at your computer with your mouse hovering over a game icon. For short, quick gaming experiences, tablets and phones really are winning. And having pre-installed games really beats inserting a disk on a console.
While the microconsoles are really cheap, they don’t offer much beyond the capabilities of mobile devices aside from the controllers, and are still feel pretty underpowered. They aren’t quite as convenient as a mobile device. And there’s a chicken-and-egg problem that keeps them niche… they can’t escape the niche without some killer exclusive content, and they can’t get that killer exclusive content without breaking out of their niche (or pouring out tons of money that they don’t have).
And so we’re back to the big consoles that once ruled the world. After some serious launch disappointments, the new-gen consoles are at least mustering what seems to be acceptable sales. While a lack of a stellar launch can be considered a decline… and I think I probably do… it sounds like more of a “correction.” It seems reasonable.
So I don’t think the big consoles are going anywhere. I think they may have hit a soft ceiling in terms of AAA budgets and perceived quality of the experience, but that’s more a limit on future growth, which may lead to a contraction but not a major decline. Sadly, I don’t think the microconsoles are going anywhere good, for now, although I would love to see it differently. And PC… well, PC seems to be doing what it keeps on doing. I keep hearing rumors of the death of the PC and PC gaming, which always seems to precede a banner year for PC games for a year or two. Long live PC gaming!
What do you think? Are we experiencing the beginning of the end of the classic gaming console, or are things just reverting to a more even distribution of popularity after a period of console dominance? Or something else? Or will VR goggles eat everybody else’s lunch?
Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 8 Comments to Read
Insight into the mind of a programmer
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 13, 2015
Ever try to count a large number of things, and have someone walk up to you, see what you are doing, and then say random numbers at you to make you screw up?
After three decades of computer programming (two of ’em professionally), I finally realized that this is a great analogy for the mind of a programmer dealing with interruptions.
Or at least my mind as a programmer dealing with interruptions, when I’m in “the zone” or at least a neighboring zip code to “the zone.” When I’m on a roll, I’ve got a half-dozen connections all in my head. To implement something and to make sure it all works, I need to make multiple changes and additions in three or four different places that all have to work together in coordination for stuff to, you know, work. As long as I can hold it all in my mind – and I usually can – I hit all my marks, make all the changes, and sometimes things will even work more-or-less correctly on the first try.
But if I lose it, I’m going to miss steps, forget what I was doing, and have to backtrack – sometimes a good distance – to remember where I was, what I was doing, and to get the correct picture in my head and the process of everything as it was supposed to connect.
For simple, minor interruptions, it’s no biggie. If people don’t mind me being a little distracted and seeming to be only half-paying attention, it’s all good. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I can keep all the little pieces of thread from getting tangled up for a couple of minutes. But for bigger, deeper conversations… well, there’s a good chance I’m gonna lose my last half-hour if I’m not careful. Please forgive me for being a little terse.
Of course, given the role that I currently hold, I’m about as likely to be the one causing the interruptions as receiving them. So I am my own worst enemy. But when a programmer is kind of terse and distracted with me, I know better than to take it personally.
Filed Under: Programming - Comments: 2 Comments to Read
The Void – a Virtual Reality Theme Park?
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 12, 2015
When I was a kid, I read the science fiction novel “Dream Park” by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. This was after Dungeons & Dragons had become something of a cult hit. The story followed sort of a live-action role-playing experience inside a virtual reality amusement park.
As life imitates art (which imitated life…), people started trying to make their own live-action role-playing (LARP) experiences to imitate the possibilities of the book (amusingly riffed on by Phil Foglio at the time in a What’s New comic in Dragon Magazine – Page 1 and Page 2). LARPing existed prior to the book, but I think the novel helped the idea catch on. I believe that was, in part, the inspiration for True Dungeon, a popular event at Gen Con.
Amusingly, as the series continued, the technology grew more realistic. In the first book, it was all wild holograms and stuff, more like the Holodeck from Star Trek. By the third book (the last one I read – I only recently learned there’d been a new addition to the series a few years ago), the players were wearing stuff similar to Microsoft’s prototype Hololens which provided them with a kind of “augmented reality.”
And now… well, it looks like it might finally become reality, here in Utah. It’s called “The Void.” They use a combination of Virtual Reality gear with real props, sets, and actors to create a fully immersive, interactive experience. When I first heard about it, it was because it was a (temporary?) replacement for the adventure / theme park Evermore. But from what I have heard, the technology works, and so if they can get everything else behaving properly for a commercial audience… well, it may be the closest thing we’ll see to a Star Trek holodeck or Dream Park.
Or it could go the way of the old Battletech Centers and virtual reality centers of the 1990s. I don’t know.
Now, Tracy Hickman’s son is one the developers, so expect some proud fatherly praise here, but in a recent blog post he said:
I reached out and in a perfectly natural motion, grasped the two handles of the gun. It was solid in my hands and I naturally slipped my finger through the trigger guard.
The gun moved in front of me in perfect synchronization with my every move.
“Step through the door,” said the ghostly voice of my son.
To my right a door slid open and I stepped into a room that looked for all the world like I was standing on the ‘Nostromo’ in ‘Alien.’ I sat down on the bench in awe.
And realized that I was actually SITTING on a bench in a virtual room.
I’ve stood before the alien containment tube, felt it break in front of me as the alien escaped. I pulled the trigger on my gun, felt it jump in my hands and watched the bolts fly outward, pocking the glass between me and a HUGE landing bay beyond. I’ve walked down that corridor in the video. More than that, I’ve stood at the top of a cliff, blasting away with that same gun and, despite the urging of my ghostly son behind me, could not bring myself to step to the edge of the platform. Even though I knew this was a virtual reality, my mind would not accept that what I was experiencing was NOT real.
Assuming this really happens and is within at least some reasonable fraction of coolness as it’s being billed… I think this could be a lot of fun. I’m just glad it’ll be only a 15 minute drive away when it (hopefully) opens in about a year. If it really takes off, though, these places may be found all over someday. We’ll see. And hey, they are using Unity!
For now, though… we can all just watch the video and imagine what it could be like…. someday…
(And hey, guys… if you are looking for some local game developer-types to help test or provide feedback… CALL ME!!!! 🙂 )
Filed Under: Books, Geek Life - Comments: Comments are off for this article
Cyberpunk Now! Upcoming and Recent Cyberpunk Computer RPGs
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 11, 2015
Back in the early 90s, I got into the science fiction subgenre called “Cyberpunk.” My gateway drug was primarily a tabletop role-playing game by the same name, by Mike Pondsmith through his label R. Talsorian Games. The rulebooks were full of drawings in a style reminiscent of Patrick Nagel, but with critical differences – particularly with cybernetics. For some reason, I was attracted to the genre particularly for this vision of the setting – casual high-tech consumerism turned into a distopia.
To grok the setting and idea better, I started reading. Naturally, I started with the book that started it all – William Gibson’s Neuromancer. From there, I read plenty more – Pat Cadigan, Walter Jon Williams (who actually had a supplement for the game for his world), George Alec Effinger, Bruce Sterling, and others. Great stuff.
But for me, the roots were still in the RPG. I played a couple others (though, ironically, not the most popular one… the hybrid Cyberpunk / Fantasy system Shadowrun), but I really loved the way Cyberpunk (and its sequel, Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0) dealt with rules and the setting. And since that time, there have been a number of Cyberpunk-themed games – from Interplay’s Neuromancer, the not-too-serious adventure game with RPG elements based on the novel, through the excellent Deus Ex series.
It seems that as we’re finding the world changing beneath our feet along the very lines conjectured in cyberpunk, with social networks, our lives on our personal phones, drones, spying and surveillance, 3D printing, and so much more, maybe the genre is getting a bit of resurgence. It’s certainly looking that way with a bunch of recent and upcoming computer role-playing games making their way through development right now.
I thought I’d take a look at a few of them:
Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red): This is the game based on the tabletop RPG that got me started. It’s by the makers of The Witcher series, which to me suggests high quality and no shying away from adult content. But if that wasn’t enough to convince me, their teaser video from a couple of years back remains an indicator that they get it. This little video nails it for me in terms of maintaining the look and feel of the R. Talsorian dice-and-paper game. They’ve also enlisted the original author, Mike Pondsmith, as a consultant, which should help. The details have been minimal, but once The Witcher 3 has been out a few months and is no longer dominating their PR, I expect information to start trickling in.
Rain of Reflections (Lion Bite): This game, from Indie Studio Lion Bite, should be coming in 2016. It sounds like they are doing some very interesting, experimental stuff to mix gameplay and mechanics, and tell the story through three different protagonists.
Technomancer (Spiders): A Semi-Sequel to Mars: War Logs, this is advertised as a cyberpunk RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world (huh, sounds familiar). It will be available on PC as well as major consoles.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director’s Cut (Harebrained Schemes): Recently released as a stand-alone title, this was a major improvement over the original Shadowrun Returns (which I found enjoyable but kinda empty).
Shadowrun: Hong Kong (Harebrained Schemes): Recently successful in Kickstarter fundraising (to the tune of $1.2 million), Shadowrun: Hong Kong promises more of what made the other two games a success. This time, the game takes place in – surprise – Hong Kong, with a different culture, style, and enemies.
Ama’s Lulliby: A Survival CRPG set in a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world.
Transistor (Supergiant): Another semi-recent release. This is a nice, weird, futuristic action-RPG (which I felt was more RPG-esque than their previous hit, Bastion).
Dex (Dreadlocks): This is a 2D RPG currently in early access.
Satellite Reign (5 Lives Studios): By one of the creators of Syndicate Wars, this is a real-time strategy / RPG set in an open-world Cyberpunk city. The big emphasis is on a living, dynamic simulated city going on behind the scenes. Could be pretty cool.
Reborn (Elemental-Labs): This was a failed Kickstarter project. But there are signs that it might be getting…. um…. reborn?
Deus Ex – The Fall (Eidos Montreal): Well, let’s not make too many jokes about the appropriateness of the subtitle. A somewhat recent action-RPG release to the PC ported from iOS.
Honorable Mention: System Crash. It’s not an RPG, but it’s by a friend. A digital CCG (Collectable Card Game) set in a very cyberpunk setting.
Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
Game Dev Quote of the Week: Story vs. Gameplay Edition
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 8, 2015
Story vs. Gameplay – the never-ending debate. This interview with Brenda Romero circa 1998 (with a different surname) regarding the “balance” in RPGs… specifically, at the time, Wizardry 8… reveals an interesting approach that probably makes more sense in hindsight:
“This is weird because I’ve never really thought of it that way. With Wizardry, it’s known for its story, and a good one is vital to the game, so it’s never been a question of one or the other for us. They are so intricately tied to each other. For instance, if you take five different groups of people, races, with very strong traditions and beliefs, inevitably, something will conflict. That conflict will lead to others. Then, it might lead to sabotage. Get that whole ball of wax going, and you show up as a group of six characters. Of course, you want to win. So do others. People hide things. Keep secrets to themselves. You have to be smarter and faster. In a nutshell, that’s how a story gets solid, starts conflict and gives rise to game play. Game play without a story, well, I guess that’s something like solitaire or on the really fun end, DOOM or Quake. If you want complete immersion like you get in a role-playing game, you have to make the player care about something, his characters, and keep him caring enough to believe the goals you set. A story is the only thing that can do that. Like I said, I don’t think we ever think in terms of story vs. game play or of achieving a balance between the two. Around our design table, the two are so intricately tied that they’re hard to separate. Everything else, combat, magic and the like, they are almost separate games in their own right. I still remember great role-playing battles both on and off the computer [traditional pencil & paper games], but I don’t remember exactly what the circumstances were that surrounded it. They’re all so tied together, though. The reason that combat is so great, so intense, is because you care about your characters and you want them to live because you have things to do. What you have to do, of course, is the story.”
I say in hindsight because of course I apply this to myself. I can’t say I’ve got the kind of faction system and details found in Wizardry 7 and 8, but you do end up thinking of things pretty differently as a developer than as a gamer. And – even more interestingly – developers don’t all think of it alike.
We’ll leave off, for the moment, that this was a promotional interview for Wizardry 8 which may have colored the comments a little.
I personally do think about gameplay / story balance, but not in those terms, or the kinds of terms I would use as a gamer. It’s probably worth a whole ‘nother post that would detract from what she’s saying here, but I agree that the point is you don’t want actions to feel meaningless. You need that context, those goals, or even the best fights and all other tasks get repetitive and boring. (Or, as in a roguelike, they just kill you dead, a lot). A good story can keep me in a mediocre RPG.
Filed Under: Quote of the Week - Comments: 3 Comments to Read
Impressions: Ready Player One
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 7, 2015
Somehow, the book Ready Player One
And then I had trouble putting it down.
Is it a masterwork of storytelling? Maybe not. But it is a confluence of 1980s pop culture, Massively Multiplayer Gaming, Cyberpunk, and classic arcade games, all meshed into one wild science fiction storyline. The skill of the storytelling comes in making that incredibly delicious set of ingredients all work together in a coherent plot and setting. It does work, so if you are into all or most of these things, the book is a rollercoaster ride of fun.
So here’s the gist of the setup: A whole bunch of doomsday scenarios have come to pass about thirty years from right now. Climate change, peak oil, overpopulation – it’s all there. Living in the real world sucks. So most people escape into the world of OASIS – a virtual reality MMO that has in many ways replaced the more general Internet and other forms of entertainment. To deal with overcrowded schools, even some public education now takes place online for better students.
The original creator of OASIS was a child of the 80s, and became the richest guy in the world – and has majority stakeholdings in the company behind OASIS, which is by far the biggest and most successful company in the world. When he dies, he offers the ultimate challenge: everything he has is willed to whomever can find his hidden “Easter Egg” buried inside this virtual universe. Some clues are given, and they are all related to his love of the 1980s and video games. And so, for a few years, there’s a massive resurgence of 80s pop-culture, and everyone dreams of being the winner of the contest and inheritor of the largest fortune in human history.
But when some egg hunters (or “gunters”) finally obtain the first piece of the multi-stage puzzle, they learn that there are those who will stop at nothing – including real-world murder – to obtain that kind of fortune and control over the world’s most successful corporation. And so the race begins in earnest, requiring creative gamesmanship in the virtual world and desperate cunning in the real world to win – or even to survive.
If you have absolutely no love for the 1980s or old-school video games, this might not be the book for you. But if you grow nostalgic at the names Atari 2600, John Hughes, Zork, Duran Duran, and Pac-Man, or if you’ve ever spent a bunch of time in an MMORPG and imagined what it would be like “living” there with serious virtual reality technology, then you may geek out on this book.
Or you can wait for the movie… I understand Steven Spielberg has signed on to direct it. But… maybe read the book first. There’s no way they can fit all that nostalgic goodness into one film… 🙂
Filed Under: Books, Impressions - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
SnarfQuest Tales on Greenlight
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 6, 2015
In spite of the voice acting… I’m so there. It’s frickin’ –==SnarfQuest==– !
SnarfQuest Tales on Steam Greenlight
Okay, now I get that some of you MAY be wondering, “What the heck is SnarfQuest?” You may even wonder, “Who is Larry Elmore?” For this, I shall have to leave you with your own Google-Fu skills. But for us old-school tabletop D&D fans, Snarf is the main character from an amusing, genre-bending comic strip from the pages of Dragon Magazine.
The game isn’t done, but a demo is available at their website if you are willing to sign up for their mailing list. Yes, they are planning on a crowdfunding campaign in a couple of months. No, I am not sure who they are (beyond association with Larry Elmore). But I’m interested, and it looks like they’ve made some decent progress.
That is all.
Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 2 Comments to Read
How to Deal With The Game Backlog
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 5, 2015
In a very good year, I’d get maybe 12 – 13 new games. That was back in the 1990s, and I’d end up paying full price or maybe a 25% or 50% discount for something older. Every once in a while I’d score a major bargain and pick up an old title like The Magic Candle games or V for Victory: Velikiya Luki for less than $10, or even closer to $5. But on a tight budget, a new game once a month was pretty much my limit. That was about as fast as I could play them.
Now I get nearly that many games in a single bundle.
Last week I commented to a friend that I “paid for” a full game, but bought about 20. Between bundles and sales, I think I spent about $60. And I got what would have been two years’ worth of games.
I’ve talked about surviving the game glut as a developer. I’m mostly speculating and referencing people who know more than me about that. But what about as a gamer? What do I do when I have 600 games and nothing to play?
Taking a page from Tish Tosh Tesh, I periodically purge my system. I have a 2 TB drive devoted to games. That can’t hold half of my library. So I’ve tried to take the attitude of trying to nuke any game that’s taking up over 1 GB in space. So… if it’s over a gig, and I don’t expect to play it more in the next 12 months, I want to delete it off the drive. Maybe even if it’s less than a gig, but I have more tolerance for little tiny indie games taking up 0.003% of my hard drive space.
I have to fight this completionist programming I have in my head (not to mention a scarcity mindset), where I have to play a game to completion to “finish” it. Sometimes, sure – if it’s good. But I’m trying to cultivate an attitude of “play to nuke.” Realizing how many frickin’ games I have, combined with how little time I honestly have to play games, I try to consider just how worthwhile it is to really pursue completion (or playing past completion). Have I played it “enough,” considering how much more I have yet to play? Last night, I finally pulled the plug on Dead Island. I’d been keeping it on my hard drive for two years, periodically playing it for 15 more minutes, under the belief that maybe, someday, it’ll finally become fun and engaging.
I try to devote 30 minutes a night to just *playing* a game. Sometimes this becomes an hour every couple of nights (not including Rocksmith 2014, which I consider practice time rather than gaming time). It’s weird trying to devote time to gaming where I used to just play all night – but between writing, game development, and all the other activities of life, I really do need to carve out the time sometimes. (The trick of it is – just like writing and game development – that once I get into the “zone” I follow Newton’s Law of Inertia and tend to stick with the same activity far longer than expected). As a game developer, I feel strongly that I should be *playing* games, not just making them.
Another thing I want to do more of is leaving reviews at the distribution sites (Steam, Desura, etc.) for other players. It doesn’t help my backlog much, but maybe it can help others navigate the glut of games out there. I’m not a harsh critic. Not even of AAA games. But if something rises above the average, or descends significantly below the average for some reason, I figure it’s helpful to let other people know it. Especially for indies. It’s hard to get noticed, so I like giving a solid, fun game an extra thumbs-up so it can get a smidgen more attention.
Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 5 Comments to Read
“More Is Better” Game Jam – and More (is better?) at Itch.io
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 4, 2015
Okay – first things first, there’s a game jam this week hosted by Sophie Houlden, the “More is Better” jam. It’s basically about cranking out as many games as possible, quality be damned. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that, but if the goal is to work on your rapid prototyping skills, maybe this is the jam for you. Emphasis on the rapid basic development skills rather than the iteration / refinement stuff. It’s all about quantity.
But this throws some of itch.io‘s changes lately. And I’m impressed. It is no secret that I’ve been a fan of underdog Desura for a long time. For the longest time, that was my go-to site for discovering weird, off-beat, and often rough indie games. Now that the massive backlog in Steam’s greenlight process is finally cleared, a lot of decent indie games are now available just as easily on Steam, making Desura a little less relevant.
Itch.io is doing some really interesting things, however, to take aim at not just being an alternative distribution source for indie games, but actually a major node of indie activity. They started as more of a “pay what you want” site, but continue to expand. Whether or not it succeeds remains to be seen, but they have some interesting opportunities available, besides handling payment processing and distribution.
First of all – as mentioned above – they now facilitate game jam hosting. There’s a calendar of game jams and everything. Just looking at this month, it looks like there are about a half-dozen jams happening at any time during the month of May.
They’ve got more standard and pay-what-you-want models available (that’s been true for a while), and support multiple platforms. What’s really interesting is that they’ve got a “pay what you want” model for revenue sharing with the site. So not only is “pay what you want” supported for customers, but sellers can set their own terms for how much itch.io takes in as a percentage of sales revenue.
A big recent development is bundling options – developers can band together to offer their games as part of a lower-priced bundle with a revenue split. That’s a pretty cool possibility right there.
I’m curious if they’ll support things like microtransactions or DLC. It’s not super-important because you can always do that in-game with your own payment processing, and you can work within what they’ve got for DLC (kinda), but it’d be interesting if they do go more in that direction. (Handling DLC for games is historically a weakness in Desura as well).
So while itch.io is still a tiny player in the big scheme of things (then again, in the indie game world, even Amazon is a tiny player), it may be worth keeping an eye on them.
Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: Read the First Comment
Killing aliens by my daughter’s crib
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 1, 2015
When my daughter was an infant, I played X-Com.
That’s a weird way to phrase it. I’d graduated from college around six months earlier, and had just started my career as a game developer. My wife and I had worked out a schedule that unfortunately didn’t leave us much time to see each other during the work-week. We slept in shifts, kind of. She’d go to bed around eight, I’d go to bed around midnight (usually a little after). From eight until midnight, if the baby woke up (and she did), she was my responsibility. After that, my wife took care of her while I slept.
I had to wake up around six AM and get ready for work. We had only one car, so my wife would drive me to the bus stop to catch the “express” bus to Salt Lake City in the morning. The bus took about an hour and a half to get there (it wasn’t very “express”).
On a good morning, I’d catch about an extra hour of light, snoozy sleep on the way to work. I’d joke that I slept more on the bus than I did at home with the baby. I had a little inflatable pillow I took with me, and if I was able to grab a window seat, I was in business.
If I could leave work on time, I’d get home around six at night. My wife and I would have dinner and talk. We’d spend time with the baby together. It wasn’t ideal, but having kids is never easy. Then my wife would go to bed, and I’d be on baby duty. We tried to get her on a schedule as early as possible, though it meant some rough evenings getting there. A lot of that was my job, on the first “shift” of baby duty. We’d let her cry for a while, and then I’d go comfort her, sometimes check her if she had a different cry to see if she needed food or to be changed, but try to get her on a schedule.
(Note: It worked, both our kids were on decent sleep schedules pretty young).
So during that 4+ block of time, I was “on call.” Whatever I was doing had to be easily interruptable. Fortunately, this was before the era of massively multiplayer games, so hitting the “pause” button on a movie or game wasn’t a big deal. X-Com wasn’t a new game by then, but it was turn-based and easy to interrupt when the baby required it.
I don’t remember too much about what I did during those evenings – what movies I watched, what books I read. But I do remember playing X-Com. I had to play with the volume turned way down so it wouldn’t wake the baby with sudden, scary noises. I remember the quiet, pulsing soundtrack playing in the background. I killed aliens a few feet away from my daughter’s crib.
Although it is less true nowadays, but I look over my life and I mark eras by the games I was playing at the time. How’s that for a geek thing? Now, when I look at screenshots of the original X-Com, that’s what I think of. That tiny old rental in Provo, the challenges of being fresh out of school and in the “workforce” with a new career, the fears and stress of being a parent for the first time, and my baby daughter sleeping peacefully (well, sometimes…) near me.
Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: Comments are off for this article
Classic Video Games… In Your Browser
Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 30, 2015
This is old news, but I’m not sure I mentioned it yet. Anyway, apparently some of these can also be played inside of a tweet now, too. So… cool. As if you really needed something else to nuke your free time in your browser!
MS-DOS Games. Arcade games. Classic consoles. If you are old enough, you can relive your childhood without leaving your comfy chair. Oh, and other apps too, though I’m not sure what apps would really be considered useful today.
The Internet Archive Software Collection
The coolest part? You can now share the game directly by tweet, or … embed. You may still need to view it directly at the site to get sound to work, though. I’m not sure.
Have fun.
Filed Under: General - Comments: 5 Comments to Read
OUYA Is For Sale
Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 29, 2015
This does not bode well for the first “microconsole” : Gaming startup OUYA needs to find a buyer quickly
This will come as a surprise to almost nobody. The crowdfunding campaign was stellar, the concept sounded awesome, the excitement was trend-setting, the actual hardware was… well, problematic and less than amazing, but still cool. I still enjoy my system and we have a blast playing a few games on it.
And of course, I like rooting for the underdog. I’m still an indie evangelist at heart, and the idea of a reasonably powerful console (comparable to the PS2 and Dreamcast) in everyone’s price range with no major barriers to entry sounded fantastic.
But it felt like nobody outside of the initial kickstarter campaign had heard of it, and it didn’t sell that many systems outside of the original backer release. This meant that the store, which was supposed to be the backbone of their profit, never really took off. When the best-selling title on the platform only generates 7,000 sales, you’ve got problems, and you aren’t going to get any console-selling exclusives.
Recently, OUYA has been working to make the game service available to a couple other gaming platforms. Makes sense. I was kinda looking forward to an OUYA 2 with more powerful hardware. And I suppose that could still happen, depending upon the buyer. I still want to keep the dream alive, but I’m not sure how I’d make a good business case for it.
Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 5 Comments to Read
Fictional Firearms: Ten Pet Peeves
Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 28, 2015
I finally got around to reading Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International
That’s not always the case in books, and especially not in movies or television. Games – well, games that even attempt to treat firearms realistically are kind of the exception, so I tend to cheer when they get things right. Not that I’m an expert on firearms by any stretch – I expect Larry Correia has forgotten more than I’ve ever known. But I do shoot, taught my daughters to shoot (and, most importantly, to handle guns safely). I figured I did okay when my girls started getting alarmed when they were watching TV shows or movies and saw guns being handled incorrectly. “She’s got her finger on the trigger!” they’d yell. Yep. Way to go!
Anyway, while I know the subject has been handled before (and probably better), I thought I’d note my top ten peeves about the way firearms are handled in entertainment (and “realistic” games). Again, it seems that TV and movies are the worst offenders – probably because in books, an author who is not familiar enough with firearms can gloss over the details, but on the big or small screens, the actors have hold and pretend to shoot their guns.
#1 – (Lack of) Trigger Discipline: In a modern setting, anybody who has supposed to have been well-trained in firearms will have had trigger discipline drilled into their head HARD. That is: Finger off the trigger until you are aiming at your target and ready to shoot. Because it doesn’t take much for a squeeze to happen, and you could end up with Pulp Fiction blowing across your rear window. If a character puts their finger on the trigger at any other time, it means they are a dangerous noob. Or, more likely, the actor / director / writer didn’t know what they were doing. Trigger discipline wasn’t always taught, so if a story takes place in the 1960s or before, having a well-trained gun-wielder keeping their finger on the trigger when “ready” might be historically reasonable, if something that will send a modern shooter’s teeth on edge.
#2 – (Lack of) Muzzle Discipline: This is even more important than trigger discipline, but it is a less common offender in film & TV (and because it’s more of an error of omission, I haven’t ever seen it in a literature, though I could imagine it being put there deliberately to show that a character is an idiot). Basically – someone with even a minimum of training will always be conscious of where they are pointing the gun, and always keep it pointed in either a safe direction, or at a target they are prepared to destroy. Or again, you may get a Pulp Fiction “I shot Marvin the Face!” situation.
#3 – Bullets Aren’t Freight Trains: Newtonian physics apply to guns. There’s really no such thing as “knockdown power” in a bullet – the shooter and the target get hit with exactly the same force on both ends; it’s just that for the target, the force is concentrated into projectile. So if it doesn’t send the shooter flying backwards, it can’t send the target (of similar weight) flying backwards. And if a young girl can fire a Barret .50 without flying backwards twenty feet, then a bad guy on the receiving end won’t either.
#4 – Bullets Aren’t Magical Death Rays, Either: This is rarely a problem in games, where it’s usually the opposite – people absorb an incredible amount of gunfire before the health bar drops to zero. Even a lethal injury may not immediately stop someone from fighting. Once or twice isn’t a big deal, but when an action TV series has bad guys constantly insta-dying from single handgun rounds (whereas the heroes keep getting ‘grazed in the arm’), it gets weird. In a similar vein — guns aren’t magically accurate, either. I remember the first time I tried shooting at a paper target with a handgun. I was only about five yards away. I expected a lot of bullseyes. In five shots, I missed *the whole sheet of paper* twice. Yeah. I’ve gotten a lot better, but it was surprising how easy it was to miss an unmoving, large target at point blank range. Combine these two factors together (not insta-death, not easy to even hit), and a newbie with a pistol in their shaking hands is unlikely to be a major factor in a firefight.
#5 – Racking the Slide: Back when it was all revolvers, films and TV would often show a character cocking the hammer on the gun when they were proving they meant business. That kind of made sense – for a single-action firearm, you have to cock it first, and for a double-action, this made the trigger easier to pull. But with a hammerless design (like the Glock), they’ve now taken to racking the slide (or pumping a pump-action shotgun) to show that the character is serious… even if they’ve been “ready” for the last five minutes (or worse, already shooting…) All that really says to an experienced shooter is, “That fool’s been threatening with an unloaded gun this whole time! HAR, HAR!” (Just once, I’d like to see them rack the slide – and have a round pop out and onto the floor. Ya wasted a round just to ‘make sure’).
#6 – The Never-Ending Magazine / Cylinder: Yes, this is an old joke. Still holds true. Now, with a full-sized Glock 17, that’s a pretty decent supply of ammo in a single mag. But if somebody’s praying-and-spraying with a fully auto weapon, a basic 30-round magazine will last for somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 seconds before running dry. Well-trained “operators” and competition shooters can reload amazingly fast, but reloading must happen, and all those extra rounds weigh significantly more than nothing.
#7 – External Safeties: Not all guns have safeties. It depends on the manufacturers and designs. But if a character gets handed a Glock or a revolver and fails to shoot because he forgot to take off the safety… it’s gonna cause some eyebrows to raise and people to wonder what weird bolted-on safety mechanism had been added to the weapon.
#8 – Words Matter: “Semi-Automatic” is not a synonym for “fully automatic.” Semi-automatic means one trigger pull will fire one round, while fully automatic means multiple “bangs” per trigger pull. Also, “Assault Rifle” is an actual thing defined by the military which means a rifle capable of both semi-automatic and automatic fire. “Assault weapon” is a made-up term by journalists and politicians that doesn’t really have an iron-clad definition, but is used to describe a scary-looking firearm to make them sound even scarier.
#9 – That Gun Didn’t Fire: With semi-automatic handguns, when the gun fires, there’s this whole sequence that occurs with the slide blowing back to eject the spent cartridge and reload a new one. With rifles, that system happens internally, but it still has to eject the casing and load a new one. Yet in some really low-budget shows, they add muzzle flash and sound effects in post-production (possibly because they are using prop or Airsoft guns instead of real ones) and call it good. It’s only a hair better than having the actors say, “Bang, bang!” or “pew, pew!” as they shoot, and seems just as silly. If a gun needs to shoot and you can’t use a real gun, hide it or make it shoot off-screen. (When the bad guys use a “silencer”, this is frequently the case…)
#10 – The “Silencer”. Suppressors are really cool, from what I’ve seen. Never used them. They are both cooler and not as cool as the common kind featured in film and TV. But instead of making that cool muffled “pew” noise, they do something else entirely. When the bad guys shoot multiple rounds with a suppressor on TV, I keep waiting to hear the sound of the spent casing landing on the floor next to them and rolling away…
Filed Under: Books, Movies - Comments: 6 Comments to Read
A Tale of Two RPG Reviews
Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 27, 2015
I am still not far enough to really comment, *BUT* I find the difference between two reviews by hardcore, old-school sites pretty intriguing for Pillars of Eternity:
RPGWatch gives it a 4/5. Two other reviewers chime in and offer commentary at the end, apparently holding a more positive review of the game. But while David “Corwin” Yarwood gushes over much of the game… the same things I’ve gushed over (so far), he brings up some pretty fair problems that can drag the game down, especially later in the adventure.
RPG Codex holds a much less positive view of the game. Again, I’m not far enough along to really offer any kind of judgment here. The real-time-with-pause and inspiration from D&D 4th edition (with deliberate attempts to avoid imitation) didn’t seem to win many points with reviewer Darth Roxor, but he does offer concrete reasons (in pretty exhaustive detail) why the game seems to merit little more than a “Meh!”
While there’s no numerical rating for the RPG Codex review, he states, “I don’t know if I could call Pillars of Eternity an outright ‘bad’ game. It’s just painfully generic, with nothing that ever stands out, but I would also say that any sufficiently mediocre game is indistinguishable from a bad one.”
And then there have been some pretty stellar reviews of the game, although I tend to weight the ones from these two sites devoted to classic and modern PC role-playing games a bit heavier than everything else. Although in part, this could tell me that Obsidian has managed to “open up” the game to larger audiences – although possibly at the expense of the hardest-of-the-hardcore.
And this is why I will not mourn the death-of-relevance of aggregate reviews.
Sure, it’s nice being able to find links to all the various reviews in one place. But an aggregate review score is meaningless. And while I do prefer the “Rotten Tomatoes” method of aggregation, the more useful ratio of positive vs. negative reviews, I still find that it’s accuracy is only so-so. Sometimes I find that a certain group of critics panning a movie (or game) is a good indicator that I’ll enjoy it.
On top of that – and I’m not sure how much of this is still true – but in the past there was a pressure on a reviewer to avoid being an “outlier.” You didn’t want your review to be too much higher or lower than the “average” or you’ll lose credibility. That seems bass-akwards to me. You want to establish greater credibility by modifying your true opinion until it blends in with the herd?
It’s not that the RPG Codex is an outlier, so much as that this reviewer looks for different things that constitute a great game… and finds it wanting. And he explains this in detail. Maybe too much detail. And maybe he gives short shrift to some aspects that I, as a consumer, value. Maybe for me, the crafting system in an RPG is the be-all, end-all of the gaming experience (hint: it’s not), and so I’d weight that far heavier than everything else. It’s be weird, but legitimate. And as a consumer, I’d gravitate towards a reviewer who does likewise.
The problem here is in actually getting to know a single reviewer that well, and truly “feeling out” their preferences. Back in the old days, if you read the same magazine month after month, with a review by one reviewer appearing regularly for a review or two each month, you’d get a pretty good idea of where they stand by the time… well, sometimes by the time they quit reviewing games. These days, on websites, it seems less consistent, although at least in the case of the two sites I mentioned above, the reviewers have been around a while and probably aren’t going anywhere soon.
So the point is… do I have a point? Yes. Point. Pay attention to individual reviews. Be wary of sites that hide the reviewer’s identity. And as always, have fun!
Filed Under: General - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
Dungeon Crawling: Ten Ways It Is More Than “Hack & Slash”
Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 24, 2015
I saw an article not long ago that was equating “Dungeon Crawlers” to more action-heavy, monster-bashing RPGs. It’s what we used to call “hack & slash.” The article maintained that this was the essence of old-school D&D.
I disagree. Vehemently.
I have no doubt that some people played D&D that way back in the day. I’ve played in those games. The term “hack & slash” was, IIRC, coined back in that era as a way to describe “those kinds” of games. Gamers back then considered it an inferior (and, ultimately, boring) way to play the game, but frequently how the newbies did it because they didn’t know better, and running combat with dice was a novelty. Very few people kept playing that way, because they grew bored and either quit the game, or played the game more as it was … ahem… intended.
If you go over those old modules that epitomized old-school dice & paper “Dungeon Crawling,” you’ll find that at while combat opportunities about, at least in the better-known modules, many of those encounters depart from straight-up fisticuffs. And if you look at one of the best-known (and deadliest) adventures of the 1st edition era, Tomb of Horrors, there is something like a grand total of two combat encounters – and neither are straightforward.
What did they have instead? What did the rest of the classic modules have in spades that defines the “Dungeon Crawling” experience for me, which is very much removed from “Hack & Slash”? This is pretty much my list of “what elements make a CRPG awesome”, but here goes (with some examples):
#1 – Tactical challenges: Combats with exceptions to them to make things interesting. Usually this involved geography that played to the advantage of the monster being fought. Like the fire giant encounter with narrow walkways along a river of fire – the giant would hurl boulders at party members to knock them off the path and into the flames. Or the demons in Queen of the Demonweb Pits setting high on a perch who would use their telekinetic abilities to lift characters high into the air to engage them – splitting the party and introducing the problem that if you kill the thing that’s keeping you up 150′ in the air… you may still not survive the encounter.
To get an idea just how nasty these kinds of tactical challenges the players could face when fighting monsters in their home turf, read Roger E. Moore’s editorial about Tucker’s Kobolds. In fact, you want the essence of a good dungeon-crawling, old-school adventure, that’s a fantastic place to begin.
#2 – Role-playing encounters: Theoretically, any encounter was a potential role-playing encounter. But many times, the modules encouraged players to negotiate their way through an encounter – even to the point of making allies in the “dungeon.” And there were some encounters that were likely to end badly if the party opted for the brute-force approach, encouraging stealth, negotiation, or trickery.
#3 – Puzzles! Yep, lots of puzzles. From characters or statues asking riddles, to head-scratching devices that were not only difficult to solve, but difficult to figure why the wizard who built the dungeon would put something like that in his lair.
#4 – Exploration and Secrets: If you look at the Gary Gygax-penned modules, half the treasure (which was worth most of the XP back then — the main source of XP was supposed to be from obtaining treasure, an early form of objective “quest XP”, NOT combat as is commonly and mistakenly believed) was hidden, disguised, or had some other “trick” to obtain it. Or in some cases, hidden in plain view but likely to be disregarded by the players. There were things like a magical sword hanging on a wall that had an illusion cast on it to appear like a torch (I think that one was in The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, but there were other situations like that), secret panels that could only be opened by the players discovering the trigger, etc.
#5 – Traps – Many of the traps were intended to be discovered and disarmed by role-playing rather than rolls. While entertaining, it did kind of undermine a thief’s major role in the party. But still… it could be lots of fun figuring out how to disarm, avoid, or subvert a complex trap. While I guess modern Diablo-like players might hate the idea, but I loved how the threat of an ambush or trap or other danger around any corner or through any portal paced the game at a more thoughtful level.
#6 – Resource Management – that was a large part of what the old D&D games were about. You didn’t “clear a level” (let alone a full dungeon) in a single push. Your resources would deplete – health, magic, potions, even food and light sources. You’d make repeated forays into the dungeon, and it was always a case of having to juggle the advantages of pushing ahead with making sure you had enough to safely exit. Which brings us to the next one…
#7 – Reactive, Dynamic Dungeons – the monsters weren’t intended to just sit on their keisters waiting for the party’s next attack. Between forays, the denizens of the dungeon were expected to make changes and mount a better defense the next time around. That required some DM creativity (which could be hard to provide on-the-fly, granted). Monsters would have patrols (or at least there’d be “random encounters” to simulate the same). The monsters were expected to gather or hire reinforcements to assist them the next time around. In very old-school D&D, the dungeons almost had a mind of their own, with rules for doors
#8 – Physical Challenges – there was a standing joke about all the different swimming rules for D&D, because lacking an ‘official’ method at the time some of these modules came out, each designer created their own rule system as one of the challenges in the module. But there was often one or more areas where players needed to either try their luck (and adapt when they failed) climbing / swimming / diving / balancing / jumping / breaking / forcing / racing / dodging / resisting / dancing / whatever, or they needed to figure out a clever way to circumvent or reduce the risk of the challenge.
#9 – Open-Ended Problem Solving: This is a tough one in CRPGs, and many players (and, sadly, DMs of the era) have a tough time wrapping their heads around the idea that you could attempt anything to resolve problems or stack the deck. We think of it as “cheating,” but back then it was simply good playing (within reason). Challenges weren’t necessarily set up to be “fair,” and the spells and abilities weren’t rigidly “balanced” either. You took advantage of what you head. Like the Tucker’s Kobolds story… instead of taking the stairs or elevators you use spikes and ropes to descend an air shaft? Sure. You disintegrate a trapped door rather than deal with the consequences of facing both the trap AND what’s on the other side? Okay. Collapse the ceiling on the hydra rather than fight it? Sure, but it will alert the rest of the dungeon and make collecting the treasure (and the bulk of the XP for the encounter) more challenging.
#10 – Weird, bizarre situations: They’d happen. They made things interesting. They really defied logic and physics even in a magic-rich world sometimes. They broke the “rules.” If overused, they’d get annoying. But once or twice, they were interesting. Things like anti-magic zones, anti-gravity zones, statues that would grant one wish (or the reverse of your wish), “wild magic” areas where anything could happen and spellcasting could be very risky, dimensional gateways, bizarre area illusions, mirrors that would create evil opposites of the party, technology or ideas appropriated from popular movies or books with the barest of rewrites to make them vaguely “fit” in the fantasy setting, that kind of thing.
All this is what I think of when I think “Dungeon crawling.” And yeah, “crawling” is right – the pace was of necessity slower and more methodical. Except when it wasn’t. And sure, it had its share of straight-up battles that wouldn’t be out of place in a Diablo-like. They were great fun, in moderation. But a true, old-school style Dungeon Crawl was, and should be, so much more than that.
Filed Under: Design - Comments: 2 Comments to Read
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