Rather Infrequent Open Thread
It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these, and my inbox is getting full of emails-to-self containing links to interesting stories. As such…open thread!
Need a little more wi-fi range? Have a beer!”
And then follow the directions at the link above to turn the can into a surprisingly effective DIY parabolic reflector.
The Good News: Syndicate is coming back!
The bad news: Starbreeze has reincarneted the franchise as a first-person shooter. Bah!
Is the PC re-emerging as a gaming platform?
A better question might be whether or not the PC ever vanished or died out as a gaming platform. But if the word of a World of Warcraft developer means anything to any of you, it is his opinion that the PC is coming back into its own from a gaming perspective.
This is the Blizzard, though, that makes a point of sidestepping being labeled a “PC developer”, however.
Do you feel that people try to take advantage of you?
It should surprise nobody that Canadians and Americans tend to be fairly trusting people who expect that others have the best of intentions:
The interesting result, I think, is India. It would seem that just under 2/3rds of the Indian population tend to be highly distrustful of others, while the remaining third tend to be highly trusting of same. There is basically no middle ground to be found; Indians (it seems) will either completely trust you, or completely distrust you, and that’s that.
Kind of cool: A web-based iPad 2 simulator.
Skyrim developers will keep the “fun bugs” in the game.
“We try to solve most of it, we’re sensitive to a lot of it,” said producer Todd Howard. “There is a subset of that where we say ‘Well, that’s what can happen.’ If there’s entertainment value in that, whatever it is, we’ll leave a lot of it. If it’s gonna break the game, or unbalance the game in some way, we do try to solve it.
“If the solution is gonna make the game less fun … well, hey, leave it in. It’s their game.”
This is hardly a precedent, of course — one thinks of the weird graphical effects of eating mushrooms in Ultima Underworld, which was actually a glitch that the programmers opted to deliberately trigger in a special in-game case — but it’s rather heartening to hear, I think.
Do read the whole article; Howard also comments on MMORPGs and how Bethesda knows when big “is big enough” for a game.
I don’t know how many of you are Unity3D developers…
…but I’ve been toying around with that particular middleware for the last month or two, and I found this feature piece from Gamasutra to be a fairly interesting read.
You can play as a vampire in Skyrim!
The catch is that you need to catch the vampirism malady first, however.
A handful of Mass Effect 3 screenshots from PAX.
The game looks great, and I am honestly impressed with how well BioWare has been keeping a lid on details. It’s a bizarre thing about me, but I’m actually impressed that I’m starting to lose just a bit of interest in the game. Oh, not a lot; I still very much want it to come out, very much want to play it, and very much want to play it again after that. But, well…I’m a spoiler junkie; I love leaked details, and I tend to find that those are what thrill me the most during the run-up to a game or movie release.
And…well…there just haven’t been that many leaks where ME3 is concerned. None, really, that I can think of, apart from what few details BioWare has handed out. Kudos to them for that, even if I am disappointed by it.
Skyrim looks awesome, of course.
No, as in: really, really awesome.
Okay, here…twenty-odd minutes of Skyrim action. Are you happy now?
Part the First!
Part the Second!
Part the Third!
Tonight’s post brought to you by what if?:
The DLC concept is open to being abused.
Re: vampirism in Skyrim, that’s how it works in all Elder Scrolls games (well, Morrowind at least).
It opens up an entirely new game for you – those vampires that used to attack you are now NPCs you can talk to. But regular people might attack you if they notice that your eyes look weird…
Starbreeze has nothing to do with it. The article says that the decision for Syndicate to be a FPS is that of EA’s.
Interesting attitude towards bugs there too, Todd. Personally, I’d fix *all* the bugs in a game, “fun” or not – you never know which “fun” bug could be symptomatic of a more serious error.
I disagree, sslaxx. The “polish uber alles” attitude has taken out a lot of the fun of modern games.
A good example of a “fun bug” is what’s known as “bunny-hopping” in certain old first person shooter games. Or “conc jumping” in the classic Team Fortress games.
I just don’t get why they feel to ressurection old IP as FPS games. First XCome now Syndicate .
Syndicate (and even X-Com) is an IP that for the modern gamers won’t mean a thing, so it’s pretty much a blank state and a new IP for the people this game is obviously aiming at.
And for people who DO remember the original games – this will do nothing except piss them off.
So I just don’t get this because there is really no point in bringing back the Syndicate IP for this.
Now this might actually be a good game – I thought both Riddick and the Darkness (Starbreeze’s previouses works) were very good and enjoyable. But this feels nonsense to me. When EA actually annouced a few years ago they had signed Starbreeze to ressurect an old IP my first thought was “They’re doing a new System Shock” (which be right at home with the kind of design philosophy Starbreeze has been following) and instead we get this.
Just odd.
There was vampirism in Oblivion as well, but as I recall there wasn’t anything cool about it like NPCs reacting differently to you. Occasionally an NPC would ask you if you felt okay because you looked pale. Functionally, all it meant was that you would take damage during the day (super annoying, that) if you hadn’t fed the night before, and you got a few magic super powers to use (a charm spell and probably some other stuff).
What the dev is talking about are a class of “bugs” called emergent gameplay. It’s unexpected gameplay mechanics which arise out of the complexity of the game. An example is in Ultima VI when you could put a bag on the ground, push one of your party members onto (into) it, pick up the bag, then throw it through a window into a locked room. You could then press the number of that party member on the keyboard to assume explicit control and exit the bag inside the locked room.
Some of these bugs fuck up the game, others are quite nice. It’s a simplistic reflection of reality, where experimenting with fundamental laws of nature result in unexpected results. I’m really glad that he feels that way about it, as that’s what makes sandbox games really fun.
What’s interesting to me is that the new TES game seems to be all about killing and looting, much like Diablo or any other old game. No way to design a ship? No redirection of trade routes? I would have been happy just to have a cannon on the roof top to blast the dragon, but no such luck. Oh well.
Also, since this is the RIOT, I got “bulletproof networking” working and thoroughly tested tonight. No transactions are lost, ever, and they’re always processed in sequence even if received out of sequence. That goes for all clients and the server. I control the timeout, of course. Yay for a fundamental building block of an MMO being so damn solidly implemented. 🙂 Next is server persistence, which consists of approving/denying all client requests and permanently committing them to the game state (data files). Go me.
sergorn: “So I just don’t get this because there is really no point in bringing back the Syndicate IP for this.”
I agree with you that it will piss some off, but EA knows that bringing back old IP that had a following will get the press interested, and when they bring back old IP, well that’s IP that they aren’t having to pay any licensing for, and that is easier to draw upon and expand than reinvent.
I read an interview where the head of EA Games said they were going to revive old IP because it was cheaper and easier. From their POV, it can be effective. There is a naturally built-in fanbase and an automatic press following that would be expensive to build up for a new game, and it’s cheaper to take something already in existence and have somebody add to it rather than invent a whole new game universe for it.
They are reviving Syndicate, possible Wing Commander, definitely Ultima, and I’ve heard rumblings of a few others.
When Crusader hit GOG.com, I was half expecting to start hearing rumors that EA would try and revive it as a FPS, perhaps as some kind of competitor to chase Halo or Gears of War fans.