Web-based MMOG Imagineering
i’ve been doing a lot of imagineering (man, i love that word) lately when it comes to web-based mmogs. lots of stuff running the gamut from super-secret ideas i can’t tell anyone about right now to general wonderings and observations.
i’ve been doing a lot of imagineering (man, i love that word) lately when it comes to web-based mmogs. lots of stuff running the gamut from super-secret ideas i can’t tell anyone about right now to general wonderings and observations.
well. i think i’ll just dump some of them out right here so i have them collected somewhere.
subscription fees are choice inhibiting.
paying those subscription fees certainly add up. i know you can say “well, just pay them for the 3 months you play and then get rid of them.”
no. it doesn’t work like that.
the thing with a subscription fee is that it represents commitment. there’s a high switching cost involved. and, since not very many people can afford to pay subscriptions for, oh, 15 games over the course of two years, you tend not to move on to those newer games. we basically have the wow effect where everyone is really only in a few games.
it really moves buying games into parallel with buying cars. you really like different models and styles, but, you have to make an informed decision about one — and only one — you’ll enjoy and use enough to make its acquisition worth it.
with non-subscription games, they are more like traditional media. more like movies or music. you just pop it in and play it whenever you want. you know that from purchase so there is no “will i use this in the future?” or “will i like this better than everquest?” or “will something better come along?” the only factor is the “now” factor. how does buying it impact you right now?
non-subscription games are very much more pickup-putdown with no real switching cost. that lets you consume more game media.
web servers are more conducive to a persistent online world.
this one is tricky and i’m not going to try not to get too awful web-geeky on it.
the gist is that, for example, myspace.com has millions of concurrent users — all of whom can be on the exact same page at the exact same time. that is absolutely no different performance-wise than all of those million people being on a million separate pages.
not only performance, but the web is better at information dissemination than a graphical, high-visual client.
for example, if these million players were all in one place on a wow server (assuming of course the server wouldn’t go chernobyl on the situation) you wouldn’t really be able to pick out any one particular player to attack or inspect or what-have-you. with something like the singular, you can just ask them how many users per page you want to see?
i mean, has anyone ever seen how many google results come up for the word “page?”
oh sure, you say, but there’s an immersive, graphical richness that can’t be achieved with this silly text and lightweight graphical environment called the web. to that, i say, use the best-of-breed parts of both. use the data layout of a web page and the graphically rich aspects of flash for your deeper spatial relation needs.
the future of mmogs is going to be about ajax-enabled rest applications.
event-based feedback consumable in sub-5 minute increments.
as you may know, signing on and logging into wow may take you a while. hell, it takes 5 minutes on a good day to get logged into something you can actually “play.”
contrast that with 3 or 4 seconds to get to a play screen with travian. your login credentials are cached so all you really need is a bookmark to your village overview.
now, with that same 5 minutes you’re logging into wow, i can check guild messages, send appropriate reinforcements, build a new building, train some additional troops and send out a spy mission — and still have time left over.
that’s a lot of gameplay compacted into a short amount of time.
and, that’s the kind of stuff you just can’t do in a 3d world.
by the time you wander over to the auction house, i’ve already hit the marketplace, scanned the available trades, accepted a trade, sent merchants and moved on to planning my next action. and that’s only if you happen to be close to the auction house when we start.
now that we’ve decided that gameplay interaction is faster with a web-based mmog, what can we do with it?
well. what makes gameplay addictive? incremental goals and achieving them, right? well. now, we can have more. more incremental goals and they can be closer together. it’s called instant gratification and it’s a goddamn drug.
and, what quality makes a game permeate throughout your life? being able to get in and get out of the world instantly. how easy is it to check your inbox for new messages? how easy is it to check the box score of the game last night? how easy is it to check what google’s stock closed at today? how easy is it to see if your reinforcements got attacked in your alliance?
answer: super-easy. mere seconds even.
that turns playing a game into a “walk-by” experience. busy working around the house? on an excel document? writing an email? tv commercialing?
multi-task gaming. pop-in. pop-out. top of mind.
and, we haven’t even touched the portability aspect. connected to the same game on your treo 650? yep, you sure are.
the web is the single most efficient content distribution channel in history. mmogs, at their core, are just specialized, interactive content distribution in need of a super-efficient channel.
Menopause FTW!
no. i’m not menopausal. it’s bookworm adventures. i just beat the final boss battle in book 2 with “menopause.” thought it was pretty damn funny.
if you haven’t played bookworm adventures yet, you’re missing out. something fierce. it’s completely cool to beat down badguys with words like “bodacious” or with a gemmed-up “aviary.”
my favorite tho? smacking an enemy who is overly susceptible to color words with my hammer that does extra damage on metal words with “bronze.”
hell. yeah.
and, yes. i’ve even seen the rare diamond tile — holy badass, batman.
you MUST play this game. riddling sphinxes. raging boss battles. snappy dialog. is absolutely necessitates your attention.
especially when you one-hit a 29-heart badguy with “temperatures” and a fistful of gems.
UPDATE: ha! i just found this: dungeon scroll. it looks like bookworm adventures is a total and complete ripoff. funny. i’ll check out dungeon scroll and see how it plays.
MarbleBlast Ultra: Like Warm Butter
i bought marbleblast ultra and it’s a riot.
so. i’d been avoiding it since i downloaded the demo and devoured the half a dozen or so levels that ship with it.
i bought marbleblast ultra and it’s a riot.
the controls are super responsive, but have enough play in them that is just ‘feels right.’ it reminds me a lot of when mario 64 first came out. simply maneuvering mario around that world was most of the fun of the game.
it has that gentle balance between inertia and weight that is so much fun in driving games when you swing the ass-end of your porsche around a tight corner as you power-slide through the curve.
yeah. it’s like that.
i powered through both the entire set of beginner levels and the intermediate levels, making par times or better on all of them. that’s 40 straight levels of love, folks. all of it good. (a few of them, i was even ranked in the top 1000 — woot!) and, i still have the whole set of 20 advanced levels to go.
then, i fired up the multiplayer mode for a bit of ball-on-ball action. it’s a total kick in the pants.
where the single player levels are more like precision highwire acts, the multiplayer levels are more like a skatepark-come-moshpit. you roll around, bouncing off of each other as you chase ‘gems’ around the ‘park’ for points. the one with the most points in the time limit wins.
you’ll find yourself bounce-blasting off ridges and screeching around corners in a balls-out (pun intended) race to the next grouping of gems.
i can see why the guys at penny-arcade love it.
speaking of multiplayer, tho, there’s something incredible that needs to be pointed out. i’ve seen a couple of articles on how xbox live and achievements are bringing back the old arcade ‘high score’ love from decades past.
this is different.
instead of one monolithic score (you have one of those too) times and scores and rankings are broken out by level. so, basically, it comes down to who performed best in that 2 minutes of gameplay — one level at a time.
it’s leaderboards for each individual level. between you and your friends (or those top-page crazies who complete a level in 3.5 seconds that takes me 1:30? how? email me with how!), who can complete the level faster. there were several instances where i’d completed a level under par, but went back just to dust my buddy trizity’s times. heh. talk about replayability.
when did casual games get so competitive?
it raises the bar and redefines multiplayer gaming in a casual game setting. simply a fantastic game burrowing down to the very essence that is ‘gaming.’
Reporting vs. Blogging on Games: A Half-Assed Manifesto
i am not really sure if there’s actually a ‘war brewing’ or not. that sounds pretty dramatic tho, so, let’s call it that. there’s a war a’ brewin’!
this fake war is happening right now between game ‘journalists’ and game ‘bloggers.’ lemme explain.
i don’t really read much of gamespot, ign etc. anymore. i like reading the bloggers who write about games for a more honest, unbeholden-to-sponsors opinion. if i wanted paraphrased marketing spin, i’d just read the actual press releases.
that’s not to say those sites or magazines don’t have original content. they really do. a lot of the time, it’s even almost interesting. sort of in the only way those sites can be interesting. top 10 lists or game reviews. the narrow space where they can be critical of a game — by comparing them to other games. any mention of a company or any specific developers, tho, is always watered down. ‘this could be my opinion or that could be. objective journalism doesn’t let me pick tho. you have to guess!’
heh. even game reviews only float between 6.0 and 9.5. what’s the point of having 3’s or 4’s or 5’s if you never use them? shouldn’t 5 be average? according to a bell curve, shouldn’t the bulk of games be 5’s? personally, my rating system consists of one of three options: good games. mediocre games. and bad games. good, bad or indifferent. that’s the correct order of the universe.
but, i digress.
the problem is that traditional journalism is about unbiased facts. video game journalism is, however, subjective. therefore, not even technically journalism.
i want opinion. i want to be part of the meta-conversation about games. i don’t just want to consume industry marketing messaging. i want critical thinking done by these guys. i don’t want their half-assed attempt at portraying ‘the other side.’
i don’t think anyone like gamespot (i hate to pick on them in particular. feel free to insert your favorite ‘news’ site instead.) can really call sony out for being stupid. why would sony give them marketing co-op money in exchange for calling them dumb? what you end up with is a lot of tied-hands and flat, uninteresting ‘reporting.’
that’s where this whole ‘new games journalism’ crap comes in.
heh. in case you couldn’t tell by my tone, i don’t really buy into the pretentious nonsense that is ‘ngj.’ it’s not about who can wax most esoteric regarding the minutiae of this love we call ‘interactive entertainment.’
no. just tell us what you thought. give us an honest opinion. that’s really all we want. if a game is crap, let us know. if it is simply average — despite it’s heritage — call it out. bring pain down upon those who dare to destroy our beloved icons! be interesting, not effusive. we don’t want to read poetry about some shitty game, man.
in other words, do what bloggers do.
we’re slanted. we’re opinionated. we’re jaded. that’s the beauty of it. collectively, all of the blogging voices make up a fairly balanced opinion.
no. seriously. hear me out.
for every blogger that loves some particular game or style of game, there’s another one who despises it. both are equally loud. both froth and spit bile about the opposing side. (well. the interesting ones anyway. the passionate ones.) if you are interested in balanced opinions, as a reader, you can review both opinions and make your own decision. the difference is that instead of a single writer trying to whitewash both sides in a single article. you have two blazing icons shouting the merits of their independent, even more diametrically opposed opinions. we’re loud and proud, baby.
the best part about video game bloggers? find someone you agree with and play what he plays. if your preferred flavors of games are entirely alike, then, they’ll never steer you wrong.
traditional game journalism, however, can’t do that. somebody out there thinks metal gear solid is a good game. i sure as hell don’t. holy boring, batman. if i wanted to watch a stealth/intrigue movie, i’d rent one. last time i checked, i was trying to play a game. not trying to figure out how to skip cutscenes.
i can say mgs sucked. traditional game journos can’t. because, for some gamers who are into that, well, it was a great game.
how do you rate that?
how do you give a concrete value to a subjective medium that will be equally applied to all your readers’ varied interests? that’s why movie reviewers are individual reviewers. the review is their opinion — not the magazine’s opinion. as an organization, the magazine is responsible for assessing games for someone who likes rts and someone who hates them. me? i think they are work, not fun. if the magazine says total annihilation is a 9.0 out of 10, does that mean i’ll like it? hell no.
movies are a similar thing. find a reviewer who tends to agree with you and go with it. who the hell cares what roeper (talk about an arrogant prick…. wow.) thinks when you always agree with ebert. (he is the absolute best movie reviewer of our time.)
you can do that with bloggers. they represent no one but themselves. bloggers are beholden, not to the conflict-of-interest inspiring advertisers on their site, but to their own integrity and pride of workmanship.
what am i saying? i guess i have no idea.
something along the lines of look to traditional game journalism for regurgitation. new game journalism for pretension. independent bloggers for honest opinion.
video game journalism is about opinion dammit!
i mean, c’mon! can’t we all just get along?
Game Design Brief: Warbinder
Binders are greater lords who bind together teams of warriors, train them, and then enter them into deadly combat with other Binders’ teams to fight for the ultimate title of Warbinder.
INTRODUCTION:
Binders are greater lords who bind together teams of warriors, train them, and then enter them into deadly combat with other Binders’ teams to fight for the ultimate title of Warbinder. Will you be the next Warbinder?
DESCRIPTION:
You start as a fledgling Binder with only 8 lowly warriors under your control. Each individual Bound has a multitude of differing strengths and abilities. From here, you have a few options for building a well integrated team of mighty gladiators whose skills supplement and balance each other.
CAPTURE:
You can get out and scour the world capturing, bribing or persuading fighters to join your cause. The method of capture you should choose will depend on the nature of the particular Bound you are trying to bring under your control. Some are more aggressive. Some are more crafty.
TRADE:
Logging into the secure web site or through the game interface will allow Binders to connect and trade Bound with other Binders. Since the warriors have fixed cost values and variable training levels, the trade combinations are limitless. Perhaps you have trained your lowly Umglot to an amazing level, but he doesn’t fit well into the firearms team you are building. Trade him for a vastly more powerful, but not as well trained Nitarian Flame Sniper.
PURCHASE:
Through secure online transactions, you can purchase groups of warriors outright. These “booster packs” will include a variety of untrained Bound based on rarity and point values.
Once you have built up your force, train your warriors well for soon it will be time to enter the coliseum for your first training battle. Carefully command your Bound during series after series of single player action against Binder configurable training Bots. Use the Bot control panel to tune the Bot’s combat abilities anywhere from a particular fighting style to general melee and train your Bound how to defeat them. Teach them combat formations and individual skills to counter any foe. The more you train, the better your Bound will be in live combat.
Then, log in, find a worthy adversary and put it all on the line for the title of Warbinder.
The huge metal doors hum and then slam shut behind your team of 5 well trained Bound. O’Keefe is your wolfman bristling with electro-static knives. Shahara begins to glow with armor made of light as she begins to cast a protection spell. Kongar, a monstrous barbarian, steps forward with his dual, humming battle axes. H’rathsis hovers near by as he readies the stinging spikes along his manta ray shaped body. And finally, Jake steps forward and racks his over and under double-barreled shotgun. He clenches his teeth, puts on his shades and says grimly, “Let’s get it on.”
On the far side, as your opponents enter the ring, you offer up a prayer that you have taught your team enough about teamwork – that you have taught them enough about each other – that you have taught them enough about themselves to not only come out alive, but to win. And then, someday, that they will make you a Warbinder.
GENRE:
The game takes place in a world of techno-sorcery. Sweeping, flaming swords carve through concrete walls and mighty sorcerers battle against armored troops carrying shock rifles. Search far and wide for your future Bound. Trek through rolling hillsides and forests, in over populated hi-tech megacities or hike the deserts and canyons of the world of Galtaar. Home of the most powerful beings in the cosmos – Warbinders.
KEY FEATURES:
- 100 different races and styles of warriors with different abilities.
- Build complimentary teams based around strategic combinations of individual powers.
- Train your Bound to a higher skill level to become more powerful.
- Advanced learning AI.
- Many different skills for characters to learn.
- Shift characters around to build different teams.
- Find, purchase or trade to acquire different characters.
- Trade characters in the game environment or on the web site.
- Research, inspect and arrange your team in game, on the web site or even on your PDA
