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One Quote That Summarizes The Majority of The Mainstream Videogame Industry

And it comes by way of The Telegraph:

We are working on a fix for this and your breasts should be back to normal soon.

Funcom, in reference to a patch that reduced the size of the gigantic breasts on the female character models in Age of Conan.

Quatchi’s Shootout Shutout

One of the things that has kept me super busy over the last month has just launched: Quatchi’s Shootout Shutout. A small flash game for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics’ “Meet the Mascots” page. I’ve liked the Meomi designed characters ever since they were revealed last winter, so it was a joy and privilege to be able to work with them.

The game was produced by zinc Roe Design, who recently launched their own weblog. All Flash coding by me. PS. try to break 3000 points.

Games to Discard

The arrival of June marks my last month of living in Toronto before my extended escape to Europe. The month will be full of decisions regarding what I do with all my stuff. I have to choose what to sell, what to store, what to lend and what to discard. One of the goals of this process is to detach myself of as many material possessions as I can; I’ve certainly accumulated my share of crap over the years. Amongst all that junk is a well-sized game library.

Of course, there’s no way I’m getting rid of all of the stuff there. Not even half. I might be going away but I shall remain a gamer nerd. Hell, I’m certain that the PSP and/or DS will come along with me. However, there are numerous games that I don’t touch anymore and don’t really care for and many more still unopened sitting there. If I haven’t touched them in years, I’m never going to touch them. These are the titles I can get rid of.

Anybody want them?

(No, they aren’t all crap. There are some gems in there, like Gitaroo Man, a few Nippon Ichi games and even current-gen Wii and XBox 360 titles. Yes, I am serious with the offer. I’ll give them away, for free, to a loving home. Some conditions might apply!)

Judgy Gaming

Here’s a Metafilter thread about how WiiFit is calling kids “fat.” I am of no opinion on the matter. I can not speak for the balance board’s accuracy–I do not have one–and I can not comment on the emotional trauma a kid would experience when a videogame calls him or her fat, no matter whether the kid is or isn’t fat. All I know is that if I were to get a balance board I would expect it to call me fat because I am fat. I’m also an adult; I can handle it.

Anyway, what stood out in that thread was this specific comment and the parts about the failure response in such games:

The thing is, though, nearly all of the Wii games are a bit judgy — it’s not like when you lose at tennis or golf or something it says, “Try again next time!” in a cheery font. It says YOU LOSE!!!, and your poor little Mii looks all dejected and defeated. That has been something we’ve had to manage with the kids from the beginning, especially because they are right at that sweet-spot for elementary-school age-based competitiveness and the-world-revolves-around-me sensitivity.

Judgy? I’m of two minds on this. From one perspective, I wonder if the mainstreaming of videogames warrants a re-evaluation of the failure responses they generate. Should games with a broad appeal scale the response to the user upon failure? Many titles already scale the difficulty based on how the user plays and adjust the end appropriately (eg. you get congratulations when you finish Guitar Hero on a low difficulty but you also get pushed to do the next, higher difficulty.) but very few adjust how they communicate with the player based on how skilled they are.

The likes of Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden will “reward” constant failure with the option to switch to a lower difficulty. However, considering the obvious meant for established gamers design those titles have it comes across as nothing more than a taunt. A spurious hand out to a weak gamer. I’m thinking of something more broad: adjusting the UI and messaging to the player just as much as enemy health and AI and patterns are changed with differing difficulty levels.

I’m thinking of games like Ikaruga. For a high end player, the most important part of that game is keeping the combo going and building a high score. Emphasize that. But for a casual player, one not used to that level of sadism, just surviving the first stage is a goal. The score and combo is irrelevant to them. Why show it? Start things of simple and friendly but as the player improves start placing more focus on the combos and the score.

Not many, if any, games do this. I think there’s something there. An idea that could be fleshed out some more.

On the other hand, I’m thinking:

Man Up, by Goopy

They have to be managed so that they can handle losing at a videogame? The words over-protected and over-coddled come to mind. Failure, as a kid, is the whole point of growing up. It’s how we learn. Videogames might be a minuscule portion of the whole childhood experience but protecting your kids from them shows signs of a larger pattern.The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids and The Secret to Raising Smart Kids come to mind.

In my day, the games were designed to make us fail. That’s how they made their money. We persevered through them, we mastered them and we entered “ASS” and “FUK” on their leaderboards. We turned out fine. Mostly.

Revisionist Gaming History

I like this illustration showing the (incomplete) history of videogame console controllers. It’s part of MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit and it does a decent job of documenting console user input evolution. There are some understandable gaps in the history (where’s the TurboGrafx-16, with its two buttons and totally useless turbo switches? Or that Atari Jaguar monstrosity?) and some odd errors (the analog nub on the PSP is omitted) but the thing that stands out for me is how he’s holding the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Master System controllers. From a historical context, he’s doing it wrong.

From personal experience, and I have corroboration, no one held the controller that way. In those days of square controllers it wasn’t ergonomic to place the index fingers on the top. There was no reason for it; shoulder buttons were a generation away. They were held with the thumbs over the d-pad and buttons and the index fingers behind the controller for support (as he holds the Gameboy.) This was standard.

It was only after the introduction of shoulder buttons did the fingers start venturing up there. For some people it was an awkward adjustment but most of us were young and we adapted easily. After that it felt weird to hold a controller any other way. I remember the time when I ventured back to the NES after months and months of SNES familiarity. Having been comfortable with the shoulder buttons, I grabbed the old NES square, placed my index fingers on top and was momentarily confused: I don’t remember these being this awkward to hold. In those 8-bit days we didn’t know better.

So while it’s a nice illustration of the evolution of the controller, the illustrator, Damien Lopez, clearly shows that he’s not of the NES era. In my day we didn’t care about ergonomics. We had our Nintendo thumb and we liked it.

Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend

The Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend is nearing its end. I downloaded the game and played for an hour and a half on Friday evening. I do have The Orange Box, which contains Team Fortress 2, on the 360 but I never felt compelled to play it there. Partly because there were some serious lag issues when it first launched.

I like the game — it’s a very well made shooter — and I love its art direction and design but I don’t know if I’m willing to buy it for a second time. Things are different on the PC. During my third match, on Friday, some loser connected to the server I was on and started blasting, through the voice chat, Haddaway’s “What is Love?” and other shitty 90s pop tunes. He was instantly muted.

That kind of experience reminded me why I don’t like playing games like this on the PC. Sure, there are many douchebags on XBox Live too but being on a more closed system their griefing abilities are limited. On the PC, which is far more open to hacks and exploits, this kind of annoying bullshit is so much more aggravating and so much more common. It all makes the price of entry, even when it’s free, not worth it.

Sins of a Solar Empire’s UI Designer

As a long time web user it really bugs me when games have really poor user interface design and architecture. It’s one thing when it’s in-game, with all the engine and graphical and game data considerations, but when the menu interface is broken and/or archaic it’s downright annoying. Sins of a Solar Empire is one such title. I like the game — played a three-plus hour battle online yesterday — but my experience, on the whole, is lukewarm because of an irritating registration process.

But before I get to registration I’m going to backtrack to the installation process: it didn’t work. Every time I would try I would get an error on the progress bar. It was a pop-up alert box that told me, in very informative terms, “Error” and nothing else. The message was blank, the font was messed up and the OK button closed the entire installer. Thanks Stardock!

A quick search revealed the problem: I had the audacity to have the demo installed. Removing that fixed everything and, after a brief installation, I was ready to play, once again cursing at the dreaded PC-Gamer experience (and dreading the future of consoles.) But before I could play I wanted to set up my Iron Clad Online account.

1. I load the game and see the splash screen. There is an “update serial” button. I click it and a text input prompt comes up. I type the 30 character CD-key. Error.
2. Apparently I missed a character. No big deal. I hit the “update serial” button again. I expected to have what I entered still there so that I can easily fix the typo. It wasn’t. I type the 30 character CD-key. It goes through but there’s no confirmation. I don’t know if it worked.
3. I start the game and skip the opening cinematics. I get to the main menu and hit the “multiplayer - iron clad online” button. I am greeted with a login screen.
4. I hit the “Create Account” button and get a standard username, password, retype password, CD-key form. I type the 30 character CD-key. Error
5. After I typed everything out, the game tells me that I have the wrong version of Iron Clad Online. I quit out and hit the update button. It takes me to the Sins of a Solar Empire web page and a login screen. You need to have an account to download updates.
6. I go to create an account, type in a username, password, my email address. I type the 30 character CD-key. I hit submit and wait for my confirmation email. It doesn’t come.
7. Ten minutes later I have the email and my account is confirmed. I download the update, run it, restart the game and go to create an account again. I type the 30 character CD-key. Error.
8. It tells me that my username is already in use. I assume that the registration from the first time went through so I go to login and type my username and password. Invalid. Retype my password. Invalid. I try every combination I thought I signed up with. Invalid. Maybe it didn’t go through the first time and maybe someone else has that username.
9. I go through the registration again, this time with a different username. I type the 30 character CD-key. Error. CD-Key already in use.
10. So I’m registered but I don’t know what my username/password combination is. I’d like to reset the password or get a reminder, but no such option exists.
11. I go online and find a support email address. I email them. An hour later I get a message asking me for my CD-key and the username I signed up with. I type the 30 character CD-key. Hit send.
12. 17 hours later, Josie sends me an email with my username and password. In plain text. Apparently, from typing in my CD-Key so often I inadvertently left the caps lock on. My login finally works.

The process speaks for itself.

Not great.

What concerns me the most is that, in the end, this whole ordeal has revealed that Iron Clad stores user’s password in a human retrievable and readable format. This, obviously, worries me about security. It stresses the point that you should never use the same password for multiple web services. Moreover, the fact that a user can’t manually reset or retrieve their own password, without having to wait for some tech support person to send it to them in plain text through email, shows a serious oversight in UI design. This is functionality that is standard on the most basic of websites made by the most amateur of web developers. I’d expect similar functionality from a company that can put together epic, real-time battles involving hundreds of ships in a full 3D environment. Those are awesome. The interface is not.

Great

Kudos to Microsoft

It’s back.

I’ve bitched about the reliability of XBox hardware before. I’ve complained about the lousy call centre experience I had last time my XBox 360 died and the time it took to get my console fixed. This week, however, Microsoft has done right; I received my replacement 360 Friday afternoon. That’s a turn-around of six days. System broke and reported on Saturday, I received the box Monday afternoon, sent it Tuesday and I was delivered a replacement on Friday. That is mighty nice.

It’s a far cry from my previous experience last spring which, all told, took over five weeks, part of which was due to a total address butchering at the hands of the call centre. Of course, one reason why there was such a drastic difference is likely due to my mentioning that this is the second time the console has failed. Rather than take the chance on refurbishing that console, they sent me a new altogether. I think they have stocks of these in warehouses waiting for failures. All part of the billion dollar warranty upgrade, I’m sure.

But, regardless, it was a very positive experience and I was back online in no time, spending too much money buying new Call of Duty 4 maps. I’d fill in their feedback form and rate the whole ordeal as “excellent” but postage is free if mailed within the United States. Oh well.

April Blues

April is the time of the year when all the huge mounds of snow on the sidewalk start to melt leaving, in their wake, huge mounds of cigarette butts, grime and dog shit. All the filth that accumulated in the winter months is now in full display for the spring. It’s a wonderful time.

Now that the days are getting longer and warmer it’s best to start heading outside. It’s time to leave the shelter of home, turn off those video games and enjoy some fresh spring air. It’s the best time for it, before the stale summer smog hits. Perhaps, then, I should be thankful that my second XBox 360 has died.

But I’m not. I’m annoyed, as a consumer, that I’ve had more XBox 360s fail on me in two years than all the other consoles I’ve ever owned over twenty-two years. Only one other console has ever failed me: a GameBoy. And only because water was spilled into its cartridge slot. And it still kinda worked if you didn’t mind the fucked up display. Here I am dealing with shoddy Microsoft hardware and while I await a replacement, I wonder: why the hell don’t I have a Playstation 3? When the huge multi-platform release of the season, Grand Theft Auto IV, is released later in April, why should I risk getting the version for the system that might inevitably fail me yet again?

It’s about time I purchase a Playstation 3, but first I think I’ll go outside and enjoy the spring.

Probably Promotion

If Duke Nukem Forever is released in 2008, everyone who comments on this post* will get a free, RETAIL game from me.

I’m not sure what the buzzword for this type of advertising is but it seems to be coming up more and more. It all basically follows the same formula: if event X (outside of the company’s control) then free (or discounted) Y. In the above example, if Guns N’ Roses releases Chinese Democracy this year, Dr. Pepper will give away free drinks. During last year’s World Series, Taco Bell offered a free taco to everyone if a base was stolen. This wasn’t the first time they used such a promotion. In a more localized setting, Pizza Pizza offers every ticket holder at a Raptors game a free pizza slice if they score 100 points. This has caused some odd reactions during some blowout games.

In some ways, these kinds of promotions can be regarded as gambling: there’s a prize and it’s dependent on chance. I wonder if there are any legal implications? The payoff for the marketer, of course, is that if the chance event doesn’t happen the company gets free advertising. On the flip side, if it does happen I’m sure numerous statisticians were employed to crunch the numbers to ensure that the possible risk is still worth the benefit. So even if they have to pay, the cost is minimized by the advertising and side-purchases it brought them (a single taco isn’t going to fill you up. Want a drink and fries with that?) I’m also sure that numerous lawyers were used to ensure there were appropriate outs and loopholes to ease the potential damage. There’s always a catch.

That said, I figure I’m not above self promotion. I can get in on the act. If Duke Nukem Forever is released in 2008, everyone who comments on this post* will get a free, RETAIL game from me. Make sure you leave your email address (will not be shown.)

• * Before the comments are closed, which is usually about 30 days or at my own discretion.

SimCity

I’ve been playing SimCity lately. The Super Nintendo version. On the Wii. I don’t know why I was compelled to pay eight bucks for this when the original PC game is now open-sourced and available for free. More to the point, I don’t know why I was compelled to pay for a game I already own. Granted, it’s boxed up, along with the Super Nintendo, somewhere in my parents’ house, but if I ever felt the desire to play it I could have easily picked it up over a weekend. I wonder if that battery save still works. I had a Megalopolis on there!

The PC version has the added benefit of mouse control and full keyboard support, yet I’d rather kludge around with a d-pad because I’ve always had a soft spot for the SNES version. It had a certain charm that the PC version lacked; a bit of that old Nintendo polish. It was more polished, the graphics were far clearer and distinct, the music was pleasant and everything felt livelier. The PC version, by comparison, felt really flat.

The thing that motivated me to play this classic game was Dubai: the what the fuck? new capital of the architectural world. More specifically, it was details of Dubai’s waterfront plans, with its ridiculous Deathstar building, that reminded me of SimCity. This diagram in particular:

It compelled me to build a city. A city that is designed not for living but for the sake of getting a high score. A city that exploits all the nuances of the system for its own benefit, like rails (instead of roads) everywhere, high-density donut blocks and mile long stretches without intersections, stacked zones built on top of half demolished buildings and an emphasis on waterfront development even if it means non-linking intersections on bridges in the middle of the river. And the thing is, no matter how goofy of a city I construct (so long as I do it with the goal of getting a large population), it will never match the ridiculousness of the real thing in Dubai: a tasteless because-we-can money pit of urban planning built with a high score in mind (tallest this, biggest that).