Games on Sale

So, I've been a busy guy for the last couple of days, with the nice weather we have been having in the city and all. I spent most of the day Sunday wandering around Manhattan's Best Buy stores, hoping to spike (acquire) some of the $10 Xbox 360 games that are on sale this week. I found most of what I got, but Soul Calibur was an early morning affair, I am told. I still managed to snag a copy of Pure and Unreal Tournament III, as well as a copy of Operation Darkness, which by all accounts is pretty sub-par but intrigued me enough to waste $10 on it.

All of this has gotten me thinking: Is it just me, or are games going on sale an awful lot lately? Ever since Steam started really upping the number of games it has on sale at any one time, and has started publishing numbers on the dramatic week on week sales increases this causes, everyone seems to be following suit. It makes perfect sense--many games only sell very well during their first few months--and gamers tend to be cheap, for whatever reason. (I myself am definitely in that category, no denigration intended).

In fact, for about the past year, but moreso in the past month or two, almost all of the non must-have games for me have been purchased because they were on sale: Prince of Persia, Braid, Armored Core 4 (I loved the original), Band of Brothers Hell's Highway, FarCry 2, and Burnout Paradise are all firmly in that category.

Is this something we are going to see more of? I daresay it seems to have been working so far. There was an article a few weeks ago about how Steam's free weekend of Unreal Tournament III single-handedly rejuvinated the multiplayer interest in that game.

As for my take on things, it's certainly not something that you want to do if your game is highly successful. I would never reccomend that Blizzard does something like that (actually I would love it if they did). Its just not needed in my opinion. However, if done well, like through the free weekend program, or the 1 year after launch sale that is well advertised, I think it can be fairly profitable. Games are always a low variable cost proposition, and especially with the trend towards online multiplayer, active player count is always essential to keeping interest in the game up.

Have you been buying games on sale? Have you found anything that you wouldn't have found otherwise? What games would you seriously consider buying if they were on sale, that you wouldn't otherwise consider?

-Jon

Demigod is not DotA

So, I've spent the last few days playing Demigod online. Just played my first online match this morning.

I'm not sure I'll ever get around to reviewing the game, but I felt it was worth my time to comment on it at this point.

First of all, this game is NOT that similar to DotA, or Death of the Ancients, a popular Warcraft III custom map/mod. This game is really more similar to the Aeon of Strife games that came before it. For starters, there are many more units on screen in a typical game of Demigod than in a typical game of DotA, and there are more than just melee and archer creeps. There are also angels, which are basically flying creeps, siege weapons (and they appear every wave as opposed to every 3 or 4), and healing creeps. In addition, like in the AoS lines of games (there were quite a few variations), you can upgrade your creeps, adding extra unit types and making them stronger. Like in AoS, these upgrades are essential to winning the game.

In addition, the emphasis in this game seems to be much more on the right click abilities than the left click abilities. What I mean by this is that when you are fighting against other heroes in this game, a higher percentage of your damage comes from white damage (your regular attacks) than spells, which is a pretty significant change. In addition, movement is much slower in this game. It takes forever for your unit to cross the screen (but a screen is a much bigger portion of the map in this game too.

The last thing that makes this game like AoS rather than DotA is the item system. To this point, I haven't seen a single recipe in this game, nor have I seen items with really crazy use effects (like hex staff or wind stick, or even Aghanim's Scepter aka Ult Staff).

When all is said and done, I think that this game is probably less skill intensive overall than DotA. The item system isn't as intricate, the heroes are a little bit blander (but much more customizeable), and the pacing of the game is a little bit slower overall.

That's not to say I haven't been having fun with the game. The graphics are very good, and I did really enjoy the various AoS mods in their heyday. The four "Generals" in this game can be quite challenging to use effectively, though I prefer the four "Assasins", particularly Regulus, aka Sniper. See the screenshot above for more information on how much I like him (In the screenshot, I am JohnnyJohstneft).

In short, if you like DotA but haven't played AoS, played AoS and liked it, or just want to try something new, this game can be quite a bit of fun. The online multiplayer still seems to be a little laggy, but the state of the game has improved substantially in the last few days.

-Jon

Demigod and Customer Service

So, one of the games that I have been looking forward to playing recently is an Action RPG/RTS Lite game called Demigod. At this point, I have not actually played the game (I should be getting a copy of the game in the mail in the next day or two), but issues surrounding the release are certainly worth commenting on.

Demigod has been plagued with a number of launch-day related issues, ranging from Gamestop selling copies early to mass pirating of the game, server instability, and much more. The reviews of the game vary wildly, as many review sites are hammering it for its launch day issues, and different reviewers have different levels of experience with the mod it seems to be based on (Death of the Ancients is a Warcraft III mod that is perhaps some of the best player-created gaming content of all time), and even ARPGs in general.

Through it all, Gas Powered Games and its publisher, Stardock, have been very upfront with the community regarding proposed solutions and their long-term view for the game. See the latest community update here.

This is something that I touched upon yesterday in my Braid review, and would like to talk about in the future using Burnout Paradise, but there has been a recent (am I correct, or does it just seem that way) trend in the industry towards being upfront and honest with the end user. This is awesome.

First, there is an implicit recognition that both parties in this relationship, the developer (or publisher, distributor, etc.) and the consumer, are both human. Take it from me, but there is nothing a game designer/developer wants to see more than people genuinely enjoying his game. Lost in the anti-EA threads and the over-commercialization arguments et al. is the concept that there are real people trying to make an honest living designing games, to go along with the fact that the consumer isn't someone that should be taken advantage with crappy sequels, shovelware, and shoddy games.

So if you enjoy playing a game, take the time to tell your friends about it, participate in forum banter, add positively to the community (no intelligent, mature person wants to read Guild Wars vs. WoW flame fests), or even write a letter to the developer letting them know how much you enjoy their game. I think it is fantastic that fans have been mailing Stardock fan art and even cookies.

In the meantime, I will be eagerly awaiting my copy of Demigod in the mail. I'll give you my impressions on it soon.

-Jon

Braid Review

Braid - Player of Game Review
Innovation: 9.5/10
Mastery: 10/10
Greatness: 9.5/10

So, it has been awhile since I've posted a formal review. My roommate and I have spent a good deal of time playing this game which you have probably heard of called Braid. While Braid appears at first to be a run of the mill side-scroller, don't let first impressions fool you. Braid may just be one of the most fulfilling gaming experiences that I've had the pleasure of playing. From beginning to end, Braid is one of the most finely crafted, innovative, and polished games on the market today, if not the most, ever.

Simply put, Braid is a side-scrolling puzzle game that plays with the concept of time in fascinating, dynamic and non-intuitive ways. Braid presents a relatively simple story--that of a boy/man/prince trying to find his princess, who is always, as a friendly walrus will frequently remind you, in another castle. To find his love, the protagonist plays his way through a series of worlds, each of which forces you to play with the flow of time in a unique way. There is the introductory world, a shadow world, a world in which movement affects time, a world with an object that slows time, and more. Each world is made up of several stages, in which there are several puzzle pieces to find. By obtaining all of the puzzle pieces from each world, players finish a picture of that world, and by finishing pictures in all of the worlds, proceeds to the final world in which the plot is resolved(?).

Braid is so unique from a game design perspective that it is easy to stop there and forget some of the other things that its creator, Jonathan Blow, has done.

First, Braid has an elegantly crafted and ultimately mind-blowing story. While it might not be that gripping at first--trust me--just keep reading the books as you go along. At some point in your experience, there will be a complete 180 degree shift in your understanding of the story. When that moment occurs, it's hard not to sit back and gaze in awe at how well you are led through the game, then violently shaken and forced to accept a second reality. In addition, there is at least one entirely different and revolutionary interpretation to the story which was brought to my attention by my roomate. It is crazy, and the more that I hear about this "alternate" understanding, the more I believe that it may be intentional. The plot, while not initially promising, should not be dismissed as one of Braid's strongest aspects.

Visually, the game is artistically profound and, again, well designed. Kudos to David Hellman, the lead (only?) artist, for creating such an impressive work. While technically, the graphics will not astound you, the visuals are fantastically crafted, and fit in with the game's storybook setting perfectly.

The sounds and music in Braid are outstanding as well. The music in particular, really brings out the somber, lost, and confused element of the game, and draws you in to Braid's fantastical world and sets the tone for the game. The sound design is strong as well, though there are few sound effects that really stand out (the ones that will always do it for me are the bunny/cat sound effects).

Puzzles are mind-bending and complex, but rarely too difficult to figure out after a long period of time. Many of them have multiple solutions. Most importantly, however, none of them are rehashes of other puzzles. Though some of them put you in similar situations (the boss battles come to mind), each of them has a different execution strategy. Moreover, the solution that you find first to a puzzle is rarely the best, as my roommate proved to me during his speed run (although I'm sure some of you have done better, I was more than impressed with his 39 minute completion time). All of them are elegantly designed, and force you to really tinker with your understanding of the flow of time in relation to the game world you are currently progressing through.

All of this would make for an outstanding recommendation, but the final piece of the puzzle to me lies in the fact that Braid's designers and developers seem to be truly wonderful people. Jonathan has given several speeches at gaming conventions, David has released the game assets for public consumption, and the music is available online. Braid has now been ported to the PC and Mac, where players can even create their own masterpieces using Braid's new level editor.

While Braid isn't exactly the only game you'll find yourself playing this year, I highly encourage you to go download a copy yourself. Regarding the statement that video games can indeed be art, I would submit Braid as exhibit number one in its defense. Braid is so phenomenally designed and executed on so many levels that it is hard to label it anything but a masterpiece.

My Brute

I usually don't do two posts in one day, but with tax season behind me, I have some time to do a little extra posting, and this article ties in pretty well with some of the complexity posts I have recently written.

I found a simple flash game the other day thanks to one of my coworkers, who commented that it was a cute little game. Another coworker of mine and me both signed up, just to see what it was like.

Character creation is fairly simple. Simply select a name for your character, and then click the change appearance button (it's not actually labeled, but its to the bottom-left of your avatar) until you find something you like. Then click the recolor button (just below your avatar to the right, looks like a bunch of splotches of paint) until you find something that looks acceptable to you. Click validate, and you're done!

Whatever you do, don't customize your avatar and then choose your name. Every time you type a letter, it changes your avatar completely. Don't ask me why. It's completely mind-numbing why they would do this, and I wasted a few minutes trying to find another avatar I liked.

Once you're in the game, there's nothing to do except find an opponent to battle. Simple and clean. Just select your opponent from a list of six, or type in a friend's character's name to initiate a battle against them. If you win, you will get two experience, if you lose you will only get one. You have three battles a day (though you get 5 on the first day).

The battles look great. The battles are simple and fun to watch, with cute characters holding a variety of weapons fighting to the death in a large room. As the battles play out, you get a good feel for what each of the abilities and weapons do, which is very nice, in my opinion.

All of this so far is great. But that's it. Those among you may have noticed that you don't actually do any configuring of your character in the game--that's right, you don't get to customize your avatar any way except for cosmetically. When you begin playing, you are given some stats, abilities, and weapons at random. When you level, you receive another stat, level, or ability at random. There's no equipment, no talents, nothing for you to do.

Why would you "play" a "game" like this, you might ask? I have no clue.

Look, I'm all for simplicity in games, but I still require that there is actually a game to play. I don't want to simply roll random characters and battle those characters against other players.

That's not to say that no-one will like the game. The coworker of mine that played the game ended up playing it for a few days because he liked watching the battles play out. I could totally see players getting a good character and playing the game daily just to watch their characters win battles. But I can't imagine anyone playing this game for such a long time.

It's so disappointing to see a game that initially appealed to me so much be so utterly worthless. All it would have taken is a little more weapon balance and giving players the ability to level up their characters or equip them with weapons and armor.

Sadly, this is not the game as-delivered. Maybe some day someone will make something better.

Civony (Renamed to Evony as of 5/12/09)

So I have been playing a bit of this new game, Civony, over the past few games. Civony is a browser-based nation simulation, but instead of limiting the number of things you do a day, encourages you to play it for a minute or so every 15 minutes, and encourages you to spend about an hour or so a day doing dedicated gaming. I've played a number of these games before, all the way back to Earth 2050 in my high school days, but I found this game in particular interesting because you are constantly doing things, and receive continual feedback from the game.

The beginning of the game is also fairly beginner-friendly thanks to a series of quests at the beginning of the game that allow you to chain up development until you are about ready to go conquer a neighboring plot of land. This is markedly different from other games in the genre, which generally require you to figure the system out before you can actually be a productive member of society. In most other games of this sort, half of the reason to join an alliance is so that you can figure out how to keep even a basic country afloat.

At the same time, this game is fairly complex, and extremely time demanding. I apparently joined this game on opening day, and got into a very good alliance (I totally lucked out, we just happened to get pretty good recruits). In the process of trying to understand the game's economy, I got my civilization (is that what you call it) into the top 100 for about a day.

However, the novelty of the game has begun to wear off as I realize just how much of a time commitment this game requires. Generally speaking, in order to act relatively efficiently, you need to log in two or three times a day and spend a good deal of time doing actions. However, you are never actually "playing" in the traditional sense. Instead, you are simply queuing things to build and research in each of your cities, allowing each action to work until completion, at which point you take a new action.

The game's economic model also seems to need work. Because of the way that beginner quests reward players for completing objectives, some resources were much scarcer than they should have been on opening day, while others were far too plentiful. This likely has to do with the intended long term balance of the game, in which technology factors largely into success, but at this time, causes players to be frustrated with the game, as everyone seems to be always trying to trade their items for gold.

Still, the game appears to be phenomenally successful thusfar. According to people I spoke with in-game, Civony's first server went live only a week before the second server, and the second server had only been up for a little over a day before Civony launched a third. It will be interesting to see how much revenue can be driven off the game, but it certainly has an incredibly strong userbase for this point in it's life cycle.

As for me, my time with Civony has probably come to a close. Although I found its economic model to be interesting, and I liked that it rewarded active participation on my part, it is consuming too much of my time for something that I am not finding to be rewarding. You can certainly accuse me of not giving the game a fair shake (the 7-day beginner's protection period has almost expired), but the other cities in my immediate area's power pales in comparison to my own (many of them have never even played, it appears), and I have no doubt that steamrolling them would simply require me to exert the effort.

I encourage all of you to check this out (unlike most of the free online games I have tried, this game was actually something I could see myself playing over the long haul if I wasn't constantly trying to find new games). I could certainly see many of my friends become absorbed into this game world. You can find it at http://www.civony.com/

If anyone tries it, let me know how it goes.

The Last Remnant

I'm not going to do a full-on review, because I haven't finished the game yet, but I've been playing quite a bit of the Square Enix game The Last Remnant, which was recently released on the PC. I've been on an anti-complexity kick lately, and this game gave me a bit of an opportunity to talk about when complexity reduction can go too far.

Now I'm sure noone would actually accuse Square Enix of crafting a game that is altogether too simple. The game's steep learning curve is noted in almost every review I've read of it. But I think they made some decisions with specific mechanics that aren't quite right in terms of rewarding players for understanding the implications of some of their game systems.

The Last Remnant is a somewhat traditional JRPG which eschews a traditional combat system for a system like the one in ogre battle, with a significantly less complicated tactical map. Players control several groups of units, each of which can be assigned general commands, rather than specific commands. Which specific moves each group uses is determined by the game's AI, though with many commands players will see what actions the units will take when they assign the command.

Personally, I think the combat system works very well overall. For the most part, the game's AI makes good decisions, although sometimes I find myself wishing that my healer took the heal action instead of the high damage character which acted right before the healer. I feel like this specific instance happens alot, but other than that, the AI is pretty good about taking actions for units.

Outside of combat, however, I feel that the game is unnecessarily complex, given that players have so little control of their units' progression. Throughout the game, the only unit that you get to really have full control of is the main character. Your other units' skills and equipment selection are fully automated, though you can prevent your units from using certain skills in combat.

All of this would seem okay to me, if it wasn't for the fact that the item system in the game is so unnecessarily complex. You can create and modify your own items using items that enemies drop in battle. However, it is almost never worth doing this, because I always find myself looking for at least 1 necessary component to improve my weapons, and whenever I find a new weapon that I can finally craft, a better one has become available in one of the game's many shops. On top of that, since these items still cost some gold to create, I generally find that trying to collect and build items isn't really worth my time and effort. While this may change as I progress further in the game, the item system, because of its complexity, really isn't worth bothering with. In other words, there is no tangible benefit to trying to understand the system.

On top of that, since you only control the equipment of your one character, and that character only has five item slots, all of this crafting information is largely useless. The only character that you can improve through active item crafting is the main character, and by the end of the game, he is only one of thirty active units in your army at any one time. Your other units will take items from you to improve their equipment from time to time, and will sometimes ask you to take them to acquire an item, but this requires no actual understanding of the item system to do, and only requires you to look around for mobs that drop the particular item they are looking for.

All of this is frustrating to someone who enjoys complexity as I do. But still, if Square was looking to create a beginner friendly game, they should have just made all of the equipment purchasable in the store without forcing players to acquire specific components for all of it. If they were looking to create an exciting, highly complex system for players like me, they should have allowed me to customize the equipment of all of my units, and perhaps given me the option of auto-managing the equipment of other units. The system that is in place in the Last Remnant has the downsides of both, and the upside of neither.

In short, if game companies are worried about a game's item management system being too complex, just add in an auto-manage feature, or leave it out of the game entirely. It is such a shame that such an interesting item system isn't worth experimenting with.

-Jon

Complexity in Games

I've been thinking a lot about complexity in games, specifically board games, recently. Several individuals that I have been speaking to (and whose opinions I value) on the matter are of the opinion that all of the best games can be explained in a sentence or less, and that all of them have shallow learning curves.

Now, call me a masochist if you will, but nearly all of my favorite games have steep learning curves. This may be the economist in me, who is a fan of all sorts of modeling and game theory, but there is just something special about sitting down for an hour with a game and figuring it all out. Many of my games, not surprisingly, fall into the simulation and puzzle categories.

I specifically take issue with the idea that people love rolling dice. There is something interesting about leaving your fortune in the hands of lady luck, but I find that it is always overshadowed by frustration when your carefully laid out strategy is demolished in a heartbeat due to a few bad rolls of the dice.

Not that I prefer games that are all strategy. Players should be able to balance off of each other (this is why I prefer 4 player games to 2 player games). Players should be able to walk away from every game session with a sense of accomplishment (I may have lost the game, but man, I laid the smack down on Mike when he tried to invade Africa!). And luck can have a proper role in games. I think that Catan and Vegas Showdown are two games which handle their luck elements very well.

-Jon

Monopoly vs. Catan

Wired had an excellent article two weeks ago on German styled board games.

Follow the link:
Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre

The article focuses on Settlers of Catan, a fine game that is mechanically more dynamic than traditional American board games like Monopoly and Risk. While still a relatively simple game when compared to other German board games such as Puerto Rico or even Power Grid, Settlers is a game that seems to walk the fine line between simple and complex.

When I was a kid, I was sure that by the time I was an adult, board games would be a thing of the past, and that people would be looking primarily to video games as a stay at home social activity. While the second half of that is probably true, the first half is certainly not (or at least that is my experience).

The truth is, I don't think that most popular American board games are any good. Risk is far too simple (though I will confess to being a fan of the 2210 variant and I haven't played the updated board game), Monopoly is just a dice-fest with little to no strategy, and Scrabble's game board is so agonizingly painful to play on that my friends and I replace the double and triple word tiles with additional double and triple letter tiles (Word games should encourage you to build long words that open up additional playing opportunities for other players, not limit your vocabulary to words that don't open up double and triple word tiles for your opponents).

I'm glad to see that some more complex board games are making the transition to mass market. As a game designer, it means that more and more people may be interested in the kooky and crazy games that I would like to develop. As a gamer, it means that I might actually be able to find other players for more challenging and fun games such as Power Grid or Race for the Galaxy (take it from me, don't try and teach your parents that one).

If you've just tried Settlers of Catan, or another more complicated board game for the first time, feel free to comment on your experience, and I encourage you to continue trying newer and more complicated games. As time goes on, I will be posting more and more recommended board games to this blog, but if you are looking for a recommendation right this second, I will simply point you to http://www.boardgamegeek.com.

Jon

Update

I'd like to think of the past two months as a bit of a hiatus, but that would be lying.

I'd sort of fallen off of the horse--I'll chalk it up to a mix of getting a few new wonderful games (Braid, Empire: Total War, Warhammer 40K DOW2, among others), and being preoccupied with work and other developments in my personal life. Regardless, I think it's time to revisit this blog and continue developing content for it. I'm still excited about getting this off the ground, so I'll begin by posting some things that I've been thinking about in the last few days.