[GameRatty] tag: issue

Bears, bears, bears

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:49:00 +0000

Paul Barnett is a highly intelligent guy with boundless enthusiasm. The combination makes for great stand-up comedy, and one of his best performances is the famous "bears, bears, bears" video, part of a Mythic production video podcast on quests (#7). In the video Paul explains why it is stupid for a quest giver to not know that you already killed lots of bears, just because you didn't have the quest yet, or because you didn't find the bear paws. He promised the kill collectors, NPCs that will reward you for any mob you kill. Quote: "If you wander along and see a lot of monsters and you're not so sure whether you should harvest them, remember somebody, somewhere wants them dangling on a chain."

I found the idea very interesting. So after making my first character, a dwarf, and doing the first couple of quests, I made a second character, another dwarf. I knew what monsters I had to kill for the first couple of quests, so I didn't take the starting quests, I just went and killed 4 squigs first, going to the quest giver later. Big disappointment: The quest giver completely ignored what I had already killed, and asked me to go and kill 4 squigs. Only much later did I stumble upon my first kill collector quest NPC. They exist, and they will give you some xp reward per mob you killed, but only for some very specific mob type. I haven't seen more than 1 kill collector per zone yet, and they only reward you for one type of mob, and it usually isn't the mob you were likely to kill anyway. The video made me think the whole game would work like that, every quest would allow "reverse questing", where you kill the mob first and get the quest later. But that is not the case. Kill collectors are in the game, but they are a minor feature, not a complete reversal of how quests work.

Meanwhile I had mentioned Paul in a blog entry somewhere, and called him Paul "Bears, bears, bears" Barnett. And Paul saw that, laughed, and wrote me an e-mail. That was just after my interview with J. Allen Brack from Blizzard, so Paul told me he wasn't hiding either, which ultimately lead to me having the opportunity to interview Paul Barnett. But my first response to him was that I would have to revoke his "bears, bears, bears" nickname, as the feature wasn't really in the game. As this was during closed beta, I couldn't write about it at the time, but now the NDA dropped, and we enter open beta today.

Paul explained me that he personally would have liked the kill collector feature to work for every quest. Warhammer Online already memorizes all your kills in the Tome of Knowledge, so rewarding you after the deed even if you didn't have the quest would have been technically possible. So he has "been running a one man campaign to get this feature into the game". Due to other things being more urgent (like the pathing issue, now more or less resolved), the feature didn't make it into the game for launch. But "it is scheduled for post launch and is on the white board for Paul's big moans".

Note that the actuall kill collector quest NPCs work somewhat different: They reward you for every single mob you killed of a certain type. In the closed beta some of these rewards were too high, and for mobs that were too frequent, like the dark elf kill collector in the starting area giving you extra xp for every high elf you killed, with nearly every other quest asking you to kill high elves anyway. Huge amounts of extra xp, while other races only got a kill collector quest for some rather rare spiders. You basically doubled the xp for everything you were doing anyway. That made me somewhat critical of the kill collector feature. But I think what Paul wants isn't that unlimited extra xp for every kill thing, he just wants reverse questing. If you meet a troll on your way and slay him, and meet a quest NPC later who asks you to kill 3 trolls, you'd already have one of them done. If you had killed hundreds of trolls, you would get the whole quest reward, but wouldn't be rewarded any more than if you just had killed 3. If you were rewarded extra for every kill, people would start looking up third-party database sites to find where the kill collector for the mob they just killed hundreds of were. But if it's limited to getting quests done before you receive them, it's just a nice extra feature so you don't have to kill things twice. I hope that makes it into the game one day.

Meanwhile Jeff Hickman and Josh Drescher gave a very interesting interview on Game Focus, where they answered a question about what the biggest challenges were with "making good on all the promises we've been making, especially those Paul has made". :) So, we might still see that bears, bears, bears feature working for every single quest sometimes later in the game, but not for launch.

Is Spore the Mother of all Video Games?

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:52:16 +0000

Electronic Arts Inc. is set to release one of the most highly anticipated video games ever: Spore. Spore is the brainchild of videogame designer extraordinaire Will Wright, and has been in production since 2005. Electronic Arts is betting big on the game, which is described as a completely original concept in video gaming that includes robust social networking features, and the ability to create virtual universes from the amoeba level up.

The company is most famous for their series of sports games, such As John Madden Football, but has recently encountered strong criticism for their strategy of developing sequels to pre-existing games, rather than innovating new titles. EA is hoping that the release of Spore will shush the critics once and for all, and turn around the company’s lackluster profit outlook.

Although Electronic Arts will not reveal any exact numbers, analysts suggest that the company has spent upwards of $50 million developing the new game. With marketing and distribution costs included, the total price tag to bring Spore to the marketplace will be around $75 million. Obviously, that is a pretty hefty break-even point for EA, and accordingly, they have launched a massive marketing and PR campaign to introduce the new game to the public.

But one of the biggest problems in promoting Spore is explaining exactly what it is, and what it does. The videogame industry thrives on originality, but too much originality can be a marketing nightmare. If the game is too far “outside the box,” it can be difficult to simply explain to gamers what it is, or to find reference points to compare it to. This could be a serious issue with Spore, a game purportedly so original (and some say groundbreaking) that it almost defies description.

In a very very basic sense, Spore enables players to create and oversee entire galaxies, from the most basic single celled organisms, to massive planets and solar systems. In effect, the user becomes “God” over a virtual world, with the ability to create and shape the destiny of all life forms and structures within it.

But it gets even more advanced than that; Spore is also a highly social game, and utilizes social networking technology in several unique ways. For one, players can create new and unique lifeforms to populate their virtual universe. Those original lifeforms then become features of other users environments as well, creating a type of shared collective consciousness amongst players.

If this sounds confusing so far, just imagine how difficult it is for EA’s marketing team to effectively promote Spore! While the game itself sounds unique and strangely wonderful, the real question is, can EA succeed in making Spore accessible to the general public? With so many video games simply rehashing the same old tired formulas, let’s hope that Spore catches on big and shakes up the stagnant videogame world.

Reggie: We never said the Wii storage solution is a hard drive

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:28:35 +0000

In the latest issue of Club Nintendo - a Spanish Nintendo magazine - Reggie Fils-Aime and Shigeru Miyamoto shed light on some interesting questions. First, and perhaps most importantly, Fils-Aime reaffirmed Nintendo's commitment to investigating a storage solution. However, Fils-Aime confirmed that it isn't necessarily a hard drive.

SI Radio hooks up with CoX's Back Alley Brawler

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Interviews

With the initial wave of discussion following the announcement of City of Heroes Issue 13: Architect beginning to die down, SI Radio pokes the fire with an interview from PAX. In the spotlight is Back Alley Brawler, aka CoX Senior Animator Christopher Bruce. The interview's not all that long, but fortunately interviewer Chris 'Chaotica' Carkner is on the ball and asks pertinent questions.

BaB ends forum speculation by explaining what Pain Domination will entail. This set, the villainous counterpart of the heroes' Empathy, is being tailored specifically in order to offer parallel benefits in zone PvP to what Empathy offers. It has long been a complaint of villains that they don't have anything comparable to Empathy's buffs when fighting in the level 20-30 PvP zone Siren's Call. Since it's received wisdom in some quarters that the developers not only hate PvP but hate Villains, we wonder what impact this latest announcement will have.

Continue reading SI Radio hooks up with CoX's Back Alley Brawler

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Issues with Super Mario RPG

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:03:19 +0000

A few of you guys have emailed me with some save file issues related to Super Mario RPG. Just tonight, reader Roconer snapped a pic of his corrupted save file.

Like I said, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this related to Super Mario RPG. How many of you guys are having the same issue?

COLUMN: 'The Aberrant Gamer - What Women Want'

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:00:22 +0000

[Back after a few months' hiatus, The Aberrant Gamer is happy to return as a biweekly, sometimes NSFW column by Leigh Alexander, dedicated to the kinks and quirks we gamers tend to keep under our hats – those predilections and peccadilloes less commonly discussed in conventional media.]
“Why don’t women like the big console games?” Someone asked me recently.

As a female game journalist, I’m one of the few and the proud, although as a female gamer I’m not nearly as unique as the population of internet forums would probably suggest. Still, I’m often asked questions like these, about “what women like” and what they don’t.

And I usually get a little bit miffed, to tell you the truth. I tend to reject assertions that there must exist a uniquely female palate for video games. I feel that my preferences and aversions as far as video games have more to do with my personal taste and less to do with my gender, and my position is generally that it’s the same for most women.

Is it really?

It’s a touchy area. In order to parse out what people enjoy about games, after all, it makes sense to first pick out what their needs are, and then identify those games that have elements that address those needs. And while it’s generally acceptable to make a few safe assumptions on what males enjoy in games, the evolving role of women in society over the past several decades makes it somewhat easier to offend us as we wrestle with how – or whether -- to identify ourselves by gender.

Take, for example, the following statement: “Men like to play powerful characters that make them feel strong.” Assert that, and we women will generally reply, “what, you don’t think women like to feel strong, too?” Say: “Men are more likely than women to identify with a protagonist who’s a 400-pound space marine,” and you might be right – but some women will say, “are you calling me fat?”

Right now, some of you already have your mouse hovered on the comment link, ready to excoriate me for generalizing. Just hang on one second, will you?

We've Got History

Yes, yes, everyone is different, I know. You don’t need to tell me there are plenty of women who like blowing things up; I love blowing things up. You don’t need to cite any of the numerous PopCap surveys that find the average gamer is a female in her 30s or older (without mentioning that like my fifty-plus Mom, she only plays Snood all day).

We generally perceive that gaming has been a historically male-dominated industry – we know, at least, that the majority of game design professionals are male, and many companies are making concerted efforts to induct more women into the professional fold. More still are making concerted efforts to diversify their consumer base by “targeting” female consumers.

More female design professionals and more female gamers is definitely a positive goal. But how can we achieve it if we’re so afraid to differentiate “female tastes” versus “male tastes?” So egalitarian are we that I think we might be losing an opportunity to broaden our audience by analyzing people.

The Boys' Club

With exceptions, myself included, it’s generally boys who like the big console blockbusters, one finger on the left trigger and one on the right. I’ve been asked by a few people recently why I think this might be – is there some innate principle of the game design that is not oriented for so-called “female brains?” Or is it the premises – Sci-fi, lots of explosions, women with big boobs and space soldiers doing the fist-bump – that turn them (turn us) off?

Those same PopCap surveys I highlighted were most likely conducted with the aim of proving that company’s favorable market positioning in the casual games biz. Casual gaming, which generally spans anything from sparkly browser-based puzzlers to The Sims, has appeared to find more traction among adult women than modern console games have. And Nintendo’s DS has done well among women of all ages too, a success generally credited to the accessibility offered by pet simulators and brain trainers.

But even though this column is proposing we embrace the differences between male and female preferences – or at least, embrace the possibility that such differences may exist – we ought to be hard-pressed to embrace the conclusion that men like intense, complex experiences and women like quick, shallow ones.

I was recently pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had playing EA and Pandemic’s new Mercenaries 2. And then I wondered why the pleasure surprised me. Part of it is that I’m overwhelmed by the fast pace at which large new releases hit the shelves, and occasionally long to just play something (relatively) smaller and more familiar, like Symphony of the Night, for the umpteenth time. But when I really thought about it, I couldn’t deny the prevailing reason. Mercs 2 is a game for boys.

How do I know this? Because you can choose either one of two big muscle men or one hot girl to play as? Nope. I played as the girl and didn’t mind being hot. Then, is it because it thrives on gunplay and explosive mayhem, instead of training, raising and nurturing, like the vaguely feminine Harvest Moon? Nope, not that either – it turns out that the explosions and tanks were my favorite part of Mercs 2 (and I know a good quantity of male Harvest Moon fans too, by the by).

In other words, I’d be hard pressed to identify any one aspect of Mercs 2’s design, gameplay or appearance that is explicitly “for boys.” That is, except for the packaging and marketing of both the software itself and the consoles you can play it on – and the way such games are positioned inside both gamer culture and society at large.

It's The Package

The perception of a “boys club” around certain kinds of games is either intimidating or offensive to most women I know. I’ve got galpals who play Rock Band and even various Mario games, but if I try to cajole them to take a shot at the latest complex console epic, they balk – even with a game like Mercs 2, whose controls are extremely streamlined alongside pacing that introduces the player gradually into their use.

The best guess, then, is that the real reason more women don’t get “into” video games is because, from a distance, it doesn’t feel like it’s “for them.” And if it’s a perception issue, not even a 50/50 ratio on the development side, nor less masculine titles and packaging will help. None of my female friends and family members have ever heard of Portal, for example, even though it was widely received as a "feminist" title.

And while having more feminine perspectives behind games will surely take us far, this long-running, self-perpetuating paradigm won’t be easily shaken up. To do that, we need more titles that can serve as a true gateway to help a larger audience of women feel as though games are something in which they can see themselves. And to create those, we find ourselves confronted with a question so large that society’s made a bit of humor out of it: What do women want?

If there were an easy answer to the broader question, we’d have quite a lot more happy men on earth than we presently do. But it’s possible to find out what women want in games – and to do that, we’ve got to ditch the politically-correct pussyfooting and stop pretending we’ve already got the level playing field we ultimately desire.

Some women may like Metal Gear Solid just as much, if not more, as they like Katamari Damacy and The Sims (ahem). But we are the exception – come on, let’s admit it – and while ultimately I still believe game preferences come primarily down to personality and not gender, maybe if we look closely at what the average female likes to play on the console, or is attracted to at retail, we might be able to pick out a rule or two we can learn from -- besides "make it pink."

Sigh. All right. Now you may run to the comments section and talk about how you’re a girl who likes Gears of War, or how your sister is better at Army of Two than you are, or you and your galpals play Halo competitively.

Just remember – just because women aren’t excluded doesn’t mean they feel welcome in a widespread way, and that’s definitely something it’s possible to change. And without being unafraid to look more closely at the issue and entertain the idea that men and women just might have different needs, we’ll never really know precisely where to start.

[Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, freelances and reviews often for a variety of outlets including Variety and Paste, and maintains her gaming blog, Sexy Videogameland. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]

Fighting Obesity With Video Games

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:41:42 +0000

Is your child gaining too much weight? Then buy him video games! But hold your horses, we have to qualify what kind of video games you have to buy. According to a team of researchers from Hong Kong, obese children can benefit from video games which urge them to move.

Of course the first thing that entered my mind when I read this was the Wii. However, there are other video games out there that provide similar benefits. One India reports:

“A recent active gaming concept that allows players to experience various activities (e.g., bowling, fishing, tennis, golf) in a virtual world is the XaviX gaming system (SSD Company Ltd., Shiga, Japan),” the authors said.

“In addition to the exercise gaming modalities, the XaviX system includes a gaming mat (XaviX J-Mat) that allows participants to travel the streets of Hong Kong at a walk or a run, avoiding obstacles and stamping out ninjas,” they added.

Robin R. Mellecker, B.Sc., and Alison M. McManus, Ph.D., of the Institute of Human Performance, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, measured heart rate and energy (calorie) expenditure in 18 children age 6 to 12 (average age 9.6) during a 25 minute gaming protocol.

“Our data demonstrate that the two active gaming formats result in meaningful increases in energy expenditure compared with the seated screen environment. The next step is to test whether active gaming interventions can provide sustainable increases in childhood physical activity,” the authors said. The study is published in the September issue of Archives of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Not bad, eh? I think the Wii is still the king when it comes to these kinds of things but I am also thinking that more and more in the industry will follow suit.

PW+ Updates (Day 1)

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:13:08 +0000

You can find the 4.1 patch notes in a million different places, so I’ll spare you the mass scrolling. Instead, here are some quick updates from my first few hours in PW+…

Server lag and FPS issues are almost non-existent
Pet pathing works pretty darn good, although my Squig still does funny things sometimes
Textures and environment are way better
Destruction is Full on many server, but only a few more servers where Order is also Full
Our server (Chrace) is showing Destruction Full (2-15 minute queues) and Order High pop
The Gates of Ekrund scenario queue is popping about once every 20 minutes for me
Open-world RvR in T1 Greenskin vs. Dwarf is absolutely dead atm
Almost everyone seems to be doing open world RvR in Empire vs. Chaos (/facepalm Mythic?)
There are still a few annoying bugs like mobs that are unattackable and the odd crash to desktop
I’ve decided to push my guild to roll Open-RvR…

Most of those stand on their own, but I’ll give a bit more detail on three:

First, population seems to be fairly balanced with Destruction having a slight lead. When I first logged into the game client, I was asked if I would like to join Server X as Order because they need more recruits. The realm queues seem to be working really well, in terms of hitting your realm caps, however, I’m not sure if they are enforcing any kind of balance yet. Then again, I haven’t seen any servers show one side Full and the other side Low, so maybe the enforced realm balance is working.

Second, in yet another beta phase, Empire vs. Chaos is scooping up all the people who want to do open-world RvR (on my server anyway). Mythic explicitly said that just because EvC had the only two capital cities at launch, they don’t think people will focus a higher proportion of their time in those zones. Well, the gamers are proving you wrong. It must be said that they have done the best they can to fix this by requiring you to control two of the three fortresses to unlock city siege, but there just doesn’t seem to be much incentive to do so in the earlier tiers, especially in the early phases of the game. Maybe there will be more incentive once the real servers launch and people are more invested in the ultimate goal… That’s what I’m hoping for anyway.

And third, I just got ganked. It was really lame. If I was on an Open-RvR ruleset server, it wouldn’t have happened… Here’s the story. Syp and I were running around the GvD tier 1 RvR lake and couldn’t find a soul in the entire region. We decided to loop back to the War camp though the PvE zones because it was a change of scenery (blame me, I was leading!). The mobs in this area were 3-4 levels higher than us. We fought a few of them without issue and then came upon a Dwarf Runepriest. We were level 5 (SH and BO) and he was level 8. He wasn’t flagged so we couldn’t touch him. We jumped a few times, gave a blank stare for a few moments, and then ran off. He followed. Right around the corner (curse me for not panning properly), we were jumped by three high level squig mobs. The RP waited for Syp to hit 50% health and then started nuking him. We both focused on him now that he was flagged for RvR but it was futile. He could heal any damage we dealt and we dropped very quickly with three highbie squigs on us. Tres cool, monsieur stunty. That pretty much seals the deal for me wanting to play Open-RvR.

According to the patch notes, the only drawback of Open-RvR servers is that you will be chickenized when entering a lower tier. This mainly prevents you from unlocking any missed tome unlocks or fully experiencing the the entire tier before you outlevel it, but those things matter about as much to me as a… let’s just say they don’t matter to me at all. I could completely care less. The ToK is a metagame that I am only mildly interested in and I definitely won’t trade off bashing stupid ganking stunties for it, that’s for sure!

I feel bad for saying that knowing how much work has gone into the ToK, but I’m not really that much of an achiever. Don’t get me wrong, I love to achieve in a game… but the ToK is waaaaaaaaay overkill for me. I prefer da killinz.

GoW Creator Defends Calling Sarah Palin a MILF

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:58:36 +0000

GamePolitics: The other day I called out God of War creator David Jaffe for a vlog in which he referred to Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin as "the perfect definition of a MILF." (see: God of War Designer David Jaffe Reduces Sarah Palin Candidacy to Lowest Common Denominator).

Apparently, Jaffe took notice - and took the heat. He has posted a new video which addresses the MILF issue.

I certainly don't think he's a bad guy - far from it. But Jaffe needs to realize that the level of candor which may be acceptable in a frat house or local pub doesn't play quite so well when delivered as public, on-the-Net-forever commentary. As the head of a respected game design studio, Jaffe has employees (some of whom may be women) who could be offended. He has key business relationships with corporate types who by nature are not eager to hand a ready-made issue to special-interest groups. Is that politically correct? To an extent, sure. But that's the nature of business today.

Beyond that, however, there's just something wrong about reducing a woman to the sum of her body parts.

On the other side: why devs pressure journalists for good game reviews - and why it's right for them to do so

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:56:44 +0000

When Jeff Gerstmann was fired from GameSpot for giving a less than raving review (to put it lightly) of Eidos Interactive's Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC), the gaming industry went abuzz. A lot of speculation came out that he was fired because his review basically antagonized a major advertiser of the site (who conveniently was Eidos, advertising the very game he butchered in the review).

Opinions were thrown left and right, and the effects have been far-reaching. Gerstmann's superior was fired, a domino effect happened with other reviewers of the site resigning, and Gerstmann - well, he was pretty much considered to be the gaming journalist's hero for not buckling down from the intense political pressure of those in the suits just to rate the game a good score.

However, that's only one example (and probably the most highlighted) of the things that game reviewers go through. And truth is, that's only one side of the coin. Today we found a very interesting article that allows us a peek at the other side of the fence when it comes to game reviews - particularly why publishers put pressure on game journalists, and more intriguingly, why they are entitled to do so.

Sore Thumbs Blog posted the article coming from a certain "Anonymous Guy from Big Publisher". According to the site, Anonymous Guy wrote to them to show the PR and marketing perspectives on the whole business of elbowing their way to get a good review.

But some of the points Anonymous Guy raised was how the developers "kill themselves" to finish a game, and how that game is treated rather unfairly by so-called reviewers who only play two hours out of a 30-hour game. Then there's also the issue on specialized coverage. Sometimes a reviewer who's actually an FPS gamer would be given a sim racing game to review, and so the appreciation and treatment of the review is not as holistic and objective as it could have been had the reviewer been given an FPS title.

The most interesting bit, however, is how Anonymous Guy observes that there is no "real" journalism in the gaming industry for a long time now. He says:

The industry has been crying out for real journalism for a long time now. What this means to me is not harsher reviews, but thoughtful analysis about games, real knowledge of game development, and a deep history of playing games. And ultimately, gauging who the game would be fun for, and scoring it accordingly. I think today it requires a specialty if you are a hardcore RTS players, look at only those kinds of games. If you are an editor-in-chief, find the right journalists and manage them properly. But no one expects this to happen any times soon there is no journalism school for videogames, and the Internet will breed more and more amateurs. So the battles will rage on!

And we do fully expect the battle to be fired up once more with this post. How about you guys? What do you think? Is there ever an excuse for PR and marketing folks to pressure game journalists into giving what they would deem "fair and reasonable" reviews (in other words, good scores for them)? Share your thoughts below.

If you want to check out the whole post (and we're sure you do) just follow the source link below.