Category: General Gaming

Pre-Purchase for Beta

Posted on by Gazimoff

Let me be frank: I’m nervous as hell about the pre-purchase trend emerging within MMOs. While it’s understandable that publishers want to recoup earlier some of the oceans of money they sink into these games, I can’t help but feel that there’s a big potential for problems later on. The latest offer of Beta with Everything can, I think, compound the issue.

I’ll start off with the issues around pre-purchasing. In the UK at least, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Within the space of three years we’ve gone from a free preorder system, to paying a nominal deposit, to paying full price for a pre-purchase. Sure, I can choose to wait until the game launches and the previews are our so that I feel more confident in my purchase, but then I might miss out on getting a spot on the same server as my friends or not getting the character name I wanted. Add to that special pre-purchase bonuses like early access and in-game items, and delaying that purchase can seem like a bad idea.

As Spinks  and Ravious points out, this could be the start of a worrying trend.  As more bonuses get added to pre-purchase sales, the the pressure increases on us to take the plunge and sign up.

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Likes, Dislikes and Opinions

Posted on by Gazimoff

Videogaming is experiencing something of a golden age at the moment. We have largely mainstream acceptance for our hobby, while the creative medium outstrips any other in most metrics. We’re also very fortunate to have open communication with those that create our games, from social mediums such as Twitter through to forums and even large-scale events.

The problem is, we’re crap at providing feedback. Sure, we’ve mastered the art of shouting “This is crap” or “This is good” as loud as possible by as many people as possible. But let’s be honest, humans mastered the art of shouting loudly thousands of years ago. We’ve kind of moved beyond the idea of yelling “Fire!” or “Look, Mammoth!”. We’re dealing with PCs and consoles now, not rocks and spears. Last I heard, your iRock didn’t hook you up with Reddit.

So what gives? In this age of free and frank exchange of ideas, how can we improve the chances of getting the kind of games we want to play? And just as importantly, how can we ensure that when developers and publishers get it wrong that we don’t bludgeon them into silence with noisesome complaints? We want to be heard, but we also want them to take risks and come up with fresh ideas, right?

Right?

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Ending The Saga: Mass Effect 3’s Mistake

Posted on by Gazimoff

In case you’ve missed it, last week saw the release of Mass Effect 3. The launch saw most of the internet fall quiet as fans rapidly devoured a game almost universally praised by critics. But as players across the globe slowly emerged from an intense period of gaming, the first notes of discord started to emerge.

What started as a few quiet murmurs rapidly snowballed into an online campaign: fans were not satisfied with the game ending and started to demand that BioWare change it. Seasoned video games journalists called the movement “idiotic” and “angry”. Harsh words indeed.

But is this response from the video gaming press justified, or do the fans have a point? Have BioWare produced an ending suitable for the game, or should they go back to the drawing board? More fundamentally, can a studio enduring a difficult relationship with its fans still have a meaningful dialogue?

I’ll try to answer all these questions and more, but be warned: Here Be Spoilers.

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Is this GAME Over?

Posted on by Gazimoff

Nearly two years ago I wrote an article about GAME group, the leading video game retailer in the UK. The firm had just announced that profits had slumped by a third, swiftly followed by the departure of the CEO and COO. Facing pressure from all angles, GAME needed to work quickly to turn the business around.

In the intervening two years little has changed. A plan to put the business back on track failed to make significant changes, with at most 60 stores being closed. Suppliers are deserting the business out of fear that they’re not going to be repaid, while a rent bill due later in March may bring things to a final conclusion. For many, the failure to stock big releases such as Mass Effect 3 signal the end of the chain.

So where did it all go wrong. Are GAME’s ongoing issues symptomatic of wider high street woes and a depressed economy, or is the company itself largely to blame? Will there be a future on the high street for all our entertainment, or will this hasten the shift to online-only sales?

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How Beer Prevents the Zombie Apocalypse

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been thinking recently about zombies and beer. You might think that the two are unrelated to each other, but I think there’s more about it than you’d think at first glance. You see, I think that we can avoid the upcoming zombie apocalypse through the careful and in-depth study of beer. Allow me a moment to explain.

There’s a lot said about the upcoming zombie apocalypse, and I’m fast coming to the conclusion that most people have it wrong. There won’t be a mysterious plague or infectious bite that will spread from person to person. There won’t be a secret mutagenic compound that will be leaked into the water supply. I don’t even think we’ll have rage-infested simians to deal with.

No, I reckon that the zombie apocalypse will be brought on by the devolution of our own intellect. By continually offloading our need to think, to make decisions, to experiment, we’ll become our own zombies. Devioid of any ability or desire to reason or argue, our precious grey matter will start to atrophy until the cranium containing it begins to collapse inward. Our thoughts and opinions will be based on what we’re told to have.

Go eat Brain. Brain taste good. BrainCo deep-fried medulla oblongata with major sauce taste best. Only ten credits. Nom now, nom often!

How would beer protect us from such a devastating end? Simple.

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The Declining MMO Market

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s been a couple of great articles recently about the situation at CCP, publishers of EVE Online. The theory is that the company hasn’t been doing as well as it hoped following the White Wolf Publishing acquisition and has been losing both staff and subscribers ever since. I’d suggest reading Tobold’s summary of the situation if you’d like to know more there.

The question it creates is where this leaves MMO gaming as a whole. The general feeling is that we should be set for a decline in the popularity of the genre. Studios may end up closing doors and games may end up being taken offline. It’s a bit of a grim scenario.

There’s a question that I have to ask though – how much of this is to do with players getting tired of a particular game? If the universe you’ve been playing in hasn’t changed much in the past few years then wouldn’t you get bored and move on? Likewise, has the developer looked at chasing new customers to replace the ones that have left?

Ultimately there’s a known truth – players will only try your game for so long before they get bored or tired of it and move on. You need to have alternatives out there that players can easily switch to when that happens, otherwise they’re likely to become someone else’s customers.

You can see Blizzard do this with Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and Titan – a range of game styles for people to switch between. It’s also been the strategy of Perfect World, NCSoft and others. This is where CCP has been stuck. As EVE becomes less popular they have no alternatives to offer. World of Darkness was supposed to be that, but it’s been kicked into the long grass.

I do agree with Tobold to an extent. The MMO market is due for a shake-up. But while I think that some games may change fundamentally, I don’t think that we’ll see any switch off completely. There’s always a way to to keep an old game running.

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Review: Razer Naga Molten

Posted on by Gazimoff

Last week I took the plunge and decided to order a new mouse. My trusty Logitech mx518 just wasn’t up to the challenge and I’d been eyeing up a rival for months – the Razer Naga. I’d been on the fence about purchasing one, mainly because I wasn’t a fan of the blue colour scheme. All that changed when the Razer Naga Molten Special Edition was announced.

Let’s be honest, I’m not the first person to review this mouse. The first one I noticed was back in 2009, brimming with potential about how the mouse could be used. Even the Razer Naga Molten was announced a year ago. So why the big deal about some two year old tech?

The answer is that I wanted to tackle two questions: is the Naga still relevant to the current crop of MMOs and the current way we play our games, and will it adapt to the way we’re likely to be playing MMOs in the future?

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What Is Skill?

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s an argument kicking round at the moment that MMOs require no skill in order to play them. This statement is both completely correct and utterly wrong. How can a statement contradict itself? Let me try to explain.

If I take a carving knife to an MMO then the prime rump is usually the levelling game. It’s the part that we all go through as we develop and prepare our characters for endgame content, learn how the various abilities work and what our role might be as part of a group.

It’s also incredibly easy for anyone that’s played an MMO before. And that’s deliberate.

Think about it. If you’re a developer publishing a single player game you don’t really care if someone quits halfway through your game. They already have your money – it doesn’t matter to them if you don’t reach the end of the game.

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Google Cannot Make Good MMOs

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been mulling over a question for a few days about how we choose which MMOs to play. What draws us to one game world over another, how some attributes are more important to each of us than others. I’m going to be writing more about it towards the end of the week, but I wanted to share a bit of a prelude today.

You see, today I finally added my name to the list of people who have deleted their Googe+ account. I’d grown weary and tired of the constant non-arguments about why they want to prevent pseudonymity. A ZDNet article made it fairly clear – Google+ is an identity service first and a social network second. Now things make sense. I don’t need another identity management service, so I nuked my account.

I can already hear you wondering “But Gaz, what does this have to do with MMOs or gaming at all?”

An MMO at its most basic is a single player role playing game with a multiplayer chatbox. Slightly more advanced games invoke more social network features – friends lists, guilds and so on. Games developers realised early on is that it doesn’t matter how gamers identify themselves to each other that matters – it’s what they experience while playing the game that’s important.

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