Henroid

In different business news, Ubisoft is volunteering to be the first company to apply freemium models to single player games. Only you still have to buy the game in the first place. I know that EA has sold cheat codes before, but do note the difference here is that you pay for store points, which are spent on... well, read on. It's silly and dumb.

I had heard about a Denis Dyack meltdown regarding NeoGAF but I never bothered to investigate the specifics. So this is the first I'm seeing of that and man is that guy silly as shit. It is funny to see a guy say that a community is going to collapse because... he's the target of negativity from that community. That actually sounds like unity to me. But yeah, the guy is just butthurt and... ugh. His ego is just screaming all over the place and that Kotaku article just ups its ante on how true it actually is with its sources.

I've never really been able to qualify what will scare me in video games, because some concepts or executions of things will happen in two games, but only one of them will have that fear effect on me. Silent Hill got me with a combination of its abruptness, unexplained nature, and the aesthetic of things. Plus the audio - in which there was none whenever you were inside of places. (Aside: Silence freaks me out in real life, I mean true silence; even the hum of power calms me) Then there's things where I'm scared to play a game because of the consequences a character faces. I didn't even touch Resident Evil 4. I was watched a roomie pick up on the game, starting to play through... and then chainsaw guy happened. I felt the blood leave my face and I had to leave the room.

I hate that I have to say this, but kudos to Activision for pulling the trigger and following through with the publishing agreement. "You promised us this game within this time frame, we're letting people know because it's time for press." Denis Dyack - if the things in the article are true (and I see no reason why they aren't) - is a pretty huge tool. Even if the game turned out okay, the fact that he would remove names from the credits is childish. He's clearly a man who didn't get told "no" when growing up.

Someone just linked us this article from Gamasutra, 2007. It's relevant. And sobering. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/129966/pr_and_the_game_media_how_pr_.php

I disagree with him saying to investigate the "system" and not the people. The system isn't some arbitrary monster machine that doles out these activities. The people are the ones engaging in it with each other. That's a hell of a dodge he's making.

Fuck me, I read the original article and am going through the timeline of events (from the sources) and now I'm all worked up and ready to go on a warpath. Keighley isn't the problem here. From what I can see, he's an unwilling participant in something that's been going on for way too long in the realm of video game journalism. Advertising and PR dictate the terms of the writing or commentary. It's a fair thing to look at. People like Lauren Wainwright writing it off isn't them providing their stance in the conversation to be had, it's them walking away from that conversation. Here's how it went: Florance: "Is there a problem in video games journalism of conflict of interest between reviewing and PR fluffing reviewers or blocking them out when they don't get the results they want?" Wainwright: "Ugh, whatever." And she walks away. She's not the only one by the way: Back to Lauren, that doesn't prove her point. It doesn't even state her position. It only conflates the problem; she may realize she's has zero integrity. Not to mention she actually does have Square listed as an employer for promotion of Tomb Raider. So the claims of "no evidence" are full of shit. But I'm also mad at Florance, the article writer, because he didn't stand up for himself nor call out his employer, Eurogamer, on bullshit. I want to know what the motives for Eurogamer and Florance were in their reactions. It couldn't have been lawsuit; again, there is an actual trail of information to base the article's writing on (Wainwright is, again, mad because she got caught with her hand in the cookie jar). Part of this whole thing is that people think the internet can make them into superstars. They want that Twitter or YouTube fame. So when they face adversity or get caught in bad positions, they flail like children. I don't mean to pick exclusively on Wainwright, though she is important in this scenario - there are many, many people who get caught up in this fucking frenzy of providing positive feedback because 1) it'll reward them with goodies or 2) they get to have access to content to review. The latter is total horse shit, by the way, and it's been documented as having happened before. For anyone interest, N'Gai Croal is trying to have this conversation via Twitter. Unfortunately, as you'll see below, people who should be a part of the conversation are writing it off with snark.

This kicked up a bit of a storm over in a thread on the forum there, and while I haven't fully invested myself in the conversation, here's what I picked up from it: - There was no actual threat of libel lawsuit - England's laws regarding libel / slander are sensitive compared to America - The parts removed from the article weren't libelous at all; there was actual facts backing up anything noted An associate of mine in England commented that he's been brought up on lawsuit 3 times for articles he's written, but all cases were dismissed because there was an actual trail of facts he sourced (rather than just writing a bunch of malarkey). He's kind of outraged at Eurogamer because instead of standing by their writing and editing staff, they bowed down to pressure that wasn't even necessary in the first place. But again, I haven't fully involved myself in this story. Edit - Let me quote him, just one particular note:

I'm so glad that Sean is comfortable with his fandom of DOTA 2 and its competitive scene. The turmoil he was going through when it first started was making me sad.

It really matters how it is used and when. And if it's a choice they give the player it has to exist at every turn in the game. In an open-ended, do-as-you-will game, every choice you're given to do things shouldn't result in game-over. But if a specific narrative is in motion, I guess provide game-overs, but don't just make it random "Hey can I kill this guy? Oh, I guess I can and I lose." Rather the character should be involved in something where you might kill them on accident, making it part of the challenge (which then requires balancing against the already existing danger). I see the fun in it but I think the frustration is too much a risk. If I'm playing a game out of obligation and I encounter something like that, screw it.

This episode was pretty great from start to finish, one of the best.

The guy in the video or Master Chief?

"I am so excited for these products. Can't you tell." God that is so awkward. Still pretty frustrating to see that you can buy ranks apparently. What the fuck. Anyway, this all remembered one of my favorite comics when this Mountain Dew + Halo crap first started:

I mentioned in the difficulty thread that foresight is a means of circumventing difficulty (though not in an unfair manner). Randomness in video game designs prevents foresight to some extent or another, so it keeps things relatively fresh.

Oh crud, I guess I didn't specify... I'd prefer non-fiction but I'll take fiction too. Tell me more about Sprawl though. Dune I know of but know nothing about; I didn't know it had any posthumanism in it though. It's about time I look into that, I may start there with all this. The singularity is something that actually terrifies me as a concept, because individuality is important to me.

So, I have a really weird question. I mean, weird for me, because I am very much not a person who reads. But I do it once in a while when I am super passionate about something or another. At the moment, I crave the topic posthumanism (whether it be transhumanism or antihumanism, etc). The problem is, I wouldn't know where to begin, and I wouldn't necessarily know who to trust on the topic since people are given to write in favor of their biases and it's not as though that's something you see at face value. And I'm not a philosophy student at all. So basically, I need baby books to start me off on this. Does anyone have any good leads?

Wow, Remo may be consistent on the video games vs. puzzles thing. Idle Thumbs Episode 34, starting at 4 minutes 20 seconds regarding Klax: "It's basically a match 3 falling blocks puzzle."

I wanna do a little comparison between what's been revealed, in general terms sadly, about TOR going free to play vs. City of Heroes, which was nearly the most harsh free to play system I've seen. It certainly has the most complex system. There were two point values associated with CoH being freemium; tokens and Paragon Points. Paragon Points were the things your cash actually converted into, and things you bought in the store cost Paragon Points - costume pieces (NEW costume pieces, not existing ones), new power sets, enhancements for powers (enhancements are... think of them as items, but applied directly to powers), that sorta thing. The tokens were the complex part, used to unlock some aspects of the gameplay and other rewards similar to the Paragon Points. Tokens were earned for the following: - Making a new account (or registering your existing account to the new freemium system; it was forced) - Becoming a "premium" account, which means you've subscribed for at least a single month - Purchasing Paragon Points for the first time - Applying a retail box code to your account (if you purchased the game prior to the freemium model) - Every purchase of at least 1200 Paragon Points (I forget the dollar amount) earns a token; cumulative; larger quantities in a single purchase earn bonus tokens - Every month you subscribe (not retroactive, see below) You basically could get 3 coins pretty easily just by making an account and buying a pack of 1200 PP. 4 coins if you bought the game prior, effortlessly. And you get a 5th for subscribing for the first time. This unlocks a substantial amount (see below). Note: They did something for people who subscribed to the game already, where every 3 months converted to a token, and every 12th month awarded a bonus token. So basically every full year subscribed to the game prior to it going freemium got you 5 tokens. Okay. Now to explain what all these goddamn tokens means. There were 9 Tiers of rewards on the token graph. Each Tier had slots for tokens - the higher the Tier, the more token slots. The slots themselves would unlock content (inventory slots of varying amounts, exp bonuses, costume pieces, that sort of thing) and filling a tier completely would unlock more rewards. Below is a list of just the first few tiers, and I'm only listing the benefits of the Tier bonuses (not slots) - and I'm only listing the unlocks to the basic functions standard to an MMO, ignoring the CoH specific rewards (since I'd have to explain those). Mind you, having a subscription allowed access to all the Tier rewards (not slot rewards) regardless of how many tokens you actually had. It's complex, and yeah you had to pay for access to basic functions and core pieces of an MMO, but the way CoH did it was at least less evil than the TOR approach. For starters, the token rewards were just benefit to you buying other things that freemium or DLC usually sells. Like I never squatted on Paragon Points just so that I could have the tokens associated with it, because there was a lot to buy and it was permanent unlocks all around. I spend money to unlock the Laser Rifle powerset, and now I have a token or two as well. That's actually more or less the point; CoH was permanently unlocking things fairly rapidly. So when I see what is going to be held hostage in TOR, and that there's merely the one currency (the store points), it makes me worry about what you get for your dollars. $30 on freemium CoH would bring you shy of the auction house being permanently unlocked. That's not bad, you're paying the price of a DS game for an MMO and almost having the full experience. But with TOR, what if that $30 is only getting you a couple of standard features? I'm sure this all reads as jargon for people who have never been involved with freemium games at any level. It's just a little more perspective to have on freemium, and on how bad TOR may or may not be. Hopefully their cost of unlocking functions is cheap. From what I can see, $15 (subscription free) will get you 200 to 250 of their point system? ugh, that's an aside I want to make by the way - the most obnoxious thing about freemium games is their varying currency values. Edit - By the way, TOR having a charge for character customization is the actual evil aspect of all this. Unless they're designing new choices and making you pay for those. But even then it's shady because customization only goes so far. But if they're locking out existing options, fuck EA so, so much.

I play free-to-play games quite a bit. City of Heroes had something of a very stupid rewards program, though I was a subscriber for a time before it went F2P so I had plenty of content unlocked already. And it was easy and cheap to unlock things permanently, relatively speaking. That chart of what's available and what's not for TOR is demonstrating to me that EA is trying to milk every dime possible for every little thing, and it's wrong to do so and misses the point of the concept of free to play. The game wasn't designed to be F2P so they had to make shit up. But rather than develop new content or new kinds of content, they're just locking down everything in the game? Fuck, man. $15 better pay for a lot of those cartel coins, and those coins, in turn, better permanently unlock a lot of stuff, because that is ridiculous. Weekly passes for content is already a super bad move. And character creation choices are going to be limited too. I assign the blame of this to EA rather than Bioware.

On the "what is game?" discussion right at the start of the barfed ruination: I tried write some big elaborate post and it was coming out poorly, so let me take some notes while listening back on what triggered this thought, and then write the thought down. video games are reactive environments video game game is keeping you from succeeding video game wants you to get to the end puzzle vs. game enforced rules of the world Okay, so here it is: Solitaire. Solitaire is very much an interaction with rules and it involves no other agency aside from your choices. Is it a puzzle you're solving, or a game? I lean toward it being a puzzle, but the moment you try to time yourself or play for least deck flipping (or without resetting the deck at all) or keeping score somehow, it becomes a game right? Playing chess against an AI doesn't fall into this realm because the computer is mimicking any action that would be taken with a given rule set. It knows what it is allowed to do, and god knows who programs any sort of priority against other units and what kind of value is assigned. That's actually an important point too, because the AI is only as capable as the programmer(s) allowed. But ultimately you guys were right; it's something worth discussing with the original idea birther (horf, what a phrase) present to fully explain his point. I was going to say there is no right or wrong to this, but really Jake is right. The academic side of this discussion is interesting to have but it solves nothing in figuring out. It's all about perspective, the eye of the beholder.

Probably. But his comment is more of just a flippant joke. At most Apple's letter should have said, "Hey man, don't be a dick," and leave it at that. They backpeddled as soon as the thing became public. Not that it's a huge thing - as was said, it's just silly.

Holy smokes, big news. Newscorp is selling IGN. Or more specifically, they've been trying to sell it, and now have it up for auction. They're asking for $100 million, starting. They acquired IGN back in 2006 for $650 million. Not exactly a great investment return.

That's hysterical. It's also awful that he can't make his commentary that hurts somebody's butt at Apple.

I'd like to go on the record as never hearing about this game ever. I've seen "pay to win" used to describe City of Heroes (side note: fuck off NCSoft), Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Dungeons & Dragons Online (just to cite some examples), but the phrase has been used and actively pursued as accurate merely because these games use freemium models (or will in the case of TOR). The closest any of these get to that concept, however, is DDO, which you buy actual dungeons to unlock permanently. You certainly don't have to buy that content, but it keeps the game from being a stagnant, same-shit-over-and-over grind. The rewards of that content are no better or worse than the freely provided content slices though.

This kinda touches up on "pay to win," which I want to ask you guys: Can you cite specific examples of this? Both so that I can see what qualifies and also how much it actually happens. New freemium games' discussions usually begin with people going, "PAY TO WIN" blindly. I've certainly seen circumstances of paying for content or bonuses existing, but I've never seen it overshadow the free players immensely. There was this game, Shattered Galaxy, that had some pay to win associated with it; your character's stats were capped in free mode at 100, but with money you could surpass it to 120 (if I remember right). Plus, the shop to upgrade your units had special forms of items that were slightly better but cost real money. But you know, because it was an RTS (MMO) there was still skill involved it was possible to shame those players who paid money into it. Well, they mean from the perspective that the game is up and running and that the company has incentive to continue running the game. Which you did address with the ad point, but I wanted to clarify that anyway since I saw the truth in it (despite it being so poorly worded). You know, that reminds me of some freakish behavior I see sometimes when people are discussing any given game since the MMO market boom the last ten years. There are people who seek out those manipulative design practices and dislike games (to some degree or another) that don't make use of those schemes. It's like a scary video game Stockholm Syndrome. I'll get to more points in this discussion later, just glad to see it rolling along.