Category: General Gaming

Getting the Most out of Game Time

Posted on by Gazimoff

I find being a gamer these days is pretty tough. There are a ton of good quality titles out there that I’m desperate to try out. I want to get my teeth into every single one of them and wring them dry of every single droplet of Fun Essence. I want to be able to talk about the phases of the game – how they start out, what the endgame or finish is like and so on. I want to both have my cake and devour it in a noisy, icing-shrapnel inducing manner.

Do I have time? In a word, no.

I’ve become one of those “mature gamers” you hear about these days – people who read Edge and Retro Gamer and talk about how good games were in the good old days. The kind of gamer who holds down a full time job and a family, trying to fit gaming around everything else. Add to that running a blog, doing podcasts and everything else and it’s easy to see time vanish. Apparently I have twenty minutes a week to play Warcraft, and that’s during server maintenance.

I needed a plan. Something to help me manage what time I have available to make sure I get the most out of the time I have. It’s not perfect but it’s useful to me in helping me work out what’s important.

Why share all this now? A while back, Windsoar asked me this very question at her A-Muse-ment Party:

I know you recently started playing and blogging about your time in Rift. How do you balance your time between two games? What, if anything, have your experiences in WoW/Rift helped you with or made you wish was different in the other? How has being involved in multiple game worlds affected your in-game goals and expectations when embarking on a new MMO?

I’ll be honest with you – this isn’t the first time I’ve been playing two games. I’ve had Warcraft running while playing Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Age of Conan, Aion and more, as well as a handful of betas and single player RPGs. How do I manage that balance? Let me explain.

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A Thoroughly European Convention

Posted on by Gazimoff


Besides keeping an eye on new releases, there are traditionally a handful of important dates in the gaming calendar. The season starts with the Game Developers Conference in early March, sweeps through to E3 in June. You then get a cluster of them up to September with PAX, Gamescom and the Tokyo Games Show. You’ll even find video games spilling over into the San Diego Comic Con and Gen Con.

Over in the UK we’re blessed with a single visit from the game industry. The Eurogamer Expo lands in London towards the end of September, being one of the last stops for the year. It’s a rare chance for British gamers to try out some of the upcoming releases. On Saturday 24th September I’ll be there, soaking up the atmosphere in Earls Court.

There’s two main reasons I’m attending: Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m keen to get a look at both games since they’re the two hottest MMOs that are talked about at the moment, plus it’s going to be interesting to play them off against each other. I’m also interested to see if people are planning an MMO “flight path” from Warcraft to Rift to The Old Republic to Guild Wars 2, instead of betting on a game for months or years.

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Storybricks: Questions & Answers

Posted on by Gazimoff

Following on from my recent first look at StoryBricks, I also got the chance to put some questions directly to Phil Carlisle, Namaste’s AI CTO. Phil’s probably best known for his work on the classic Worms series.

Read on to find out more about what kind of game the team are looking to create with the technology, and be sure to check out my first look at StoryBricks for more background info!

MO: What was the spark that ignited the idea? When did StoryBricks start – was it playing a game and thinking “Hang on a minute, this could be so much better”, or was it based on feedback you were hearing from other players?

Phil: It really came from Rodolfo Rosini the CEO, getting tired of the same old gameplay in World of Warcraft. He felt like there was something missing. He felt like what was missing was probably something to do with the characters in the game and how you interacted with them. He went out and found a team that felt the same way and here we all are today.

MO: What is it you’re trying to build with StoryBricks? Is it a game – an end of itself, or is it likely to become a toolset that you embed in other games or offer to other developers? What would you like to see it become?

Phil: StoryBricks is really a toolset to let us all explore the potential for characters and stories in games. If you make a game, it might be a hit or a miss. If you make a toolset, then it isn’t just one person’s view of what might be possible. But in order to prove that the toolset is at least capable of making something worthwhile, we have to make something worthwhile with the tools. So in essence it is a bit of both. Fundamentally though, we want everyone to come with us on a journey as we all figure out what it means to have these living story worlds that we can create and play together.

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Storybricks: A First Look

Posted on by Gazimoff

I remember the early promise of MMOs. Looking back it feels like I was almost miss-sold them. “Become a Hero” they’d loudly proclaim, as if you were the only one who could rid the world of the evil dragon and save the kingdom.

Fast forward ten years and I’ve slain countless dragons, liches, evil kings and so on. And yet I’m just as heroic as the thousands of other players who’ve done the same thing. We’ve all spoken to the same NPCs, picked up the same quests, killed the same dragons and got the same loot. There’s one path that we all follow and one mechanic that we all follow – gathering big enough numbers so that our stats and skill are enough to defeat our foes.

Hang on a minute though – wasn’t I supposed to be playing a role here? At least, that’s what I thought. But the contrast between a tabletop role-playing game where all options are open-ended and the PC-based RPG which is much more linear is huge. Sure you might have some fantastic voice acting instead of listening to your GM’s cheese-grater falsetto and a dynamic orchestral score instead of Celtic Hits Vol III in the CD player, but is the story delivered any better? More importantly, do we feel any more involved in how that story plays out?

It’s this line of thought that’s behind Storybricks, Namaste Entertainment’s latest creation. I recently got the opportunity to catch up with Kelly Heckman (officially their “Cat Herder”) and their AI CTO Phil Carlisle. During the session I got a chance to see Storybricks in action, and find out how the technology had been developed. I also learned how they’re planning to use the technology in their games and why they’re so keen on getting the community involved.

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Playing DPS: From Good to Great

Posted on by Gazimoff

It’s been a while since I wrote about actually playing MMOs, rather than just hypothesising about trends, changes and so on. It’s about time I talked about my favourite pastime.

You might think that as long as you’re top of the damage charts that you can rest easy. You’re pouring out the pain in your preferred manner and bosses are falling over with ease. Job done, surely?

Alas, no.

The thing that separates good DPS from great DPS is being able to dish out damage while doing a multitude of other things as well. It’s not just about mashing your primary nuke button until your finger goes through the keyboard, through the desk and starts playing staccato on your kneecap. Read on and I’ll explain.

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If Not You, Who Else?

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’m beginning to feel like there’s a crunch brewing. It’s almost like the shocks that happen before the earthquake, where you know something is going to happen but you can’t quite put your finger on what.

It started off with the comments I’d spot on Twitter from players saying they were hanging up their Warcraft boots and going to Rift. Not because Rift was the hot new game (that’s supposed to be Star Wars: The Old Republic) but because they were just fed up. Fed up of the repetition of daily quests (and let’s be fair, the Molten Front daily grind is by far a huge one) or fed up of the raiding content.

Then there was the news that Warcraft had lost 300 thousand subscribers. This, after Blizzard gave every North American veteran player a free 2nd copy and they opened up trial accounts to be infinite in duration. If I were an analyst on the Activision-Blizzard investor calls I would seriously be asking what their churn rate is.

So what gives? Where’s everyone going? At this point I could only do what any self-respecting blogger would – ask people.

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A House of Cards

Posted on by Gazimoff

If you’ve played World of Warcraft for any reasonable length of time you’ll have seen people riding around on giant chickens or single seater rockets. You may even have seen someone mounted on a translucent tiger, proudly showing off in the middle of Stormwind or Orgrimaar.

Ask where any of these come from and the same enigmatic response comes back. “TCG Loot”.

Like many people I dabbled in picking up a few of the Warcraft Trading Card Game packs when they first came out in a search for rare and exclusive items. Alas, my search yielded only the simplest of items. A limitless supply of paper gyrocopters and a small barbecue grill were pretty much my only rewards, apart from the huge stack of cards I was left with.

The funny thing was, I never actually played the game. I just packed away the cards, promising I’d get around to doing something with them at some stage.

That time finally came around. I was invited to a “taster session” at Rules of Play in Cardiff, where I’d get the chance to learn how to play the game part of the TCG. I’d finally find out what the non-loot cards were actually used for.

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Tired of MMOs?

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s been a discussion kicking around Twitter for the past week or so, which seemed to end up with a single question. I think it was probably best said by Wolfshead: “is there anything left to say about today’s MMOs that hasn’t already been said?”

If we’re talking about the current crop of MMORPG games then no, there probably isn’t anything more that can be said about them. While our experiences playing those games is as varied and unique as our daily lives, the core mechanics used are almost identical. No wonder we’re all getting so jaded!

So why do we keep playing (and writing about) these games when there seems to be diminishing returns? When you’re comparing Dishwashing Online and Washing Up World, you’re still virtually washing dishes. Surely there’s only so much you can say?

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Karma As A Mechanic

Posted on by Gazimoff

Eurogamer recently did an interview of Will Wright, which I’d have missed completely if it wasn’t for a gem pointed out by Rock Paper Shotgun. It turns out that he’s working on a game with a strong karmic theme, using smartphones, tablets and Facebook as the platform.

The concept of the game is based on a short story called Maneki Neko by Bruce Stirling. Here’s what Wright had to share about Stirling’s concept:

He describes a karmic computer that’s keeping a balance of payments between different people, and causing them to interact with each other in interesting ways, to improve their lives even though they’re strangers. They earn karmic points that are redeemed by having somebody else help them.

This is all very interesting, but why is Wright’s latest facebook game so important?

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PC Gaming Is Dead

Posted on by Gazimoff

Looking at the PC section of my local video games store is a depressing sight. The shelves that were once pride of place are now consigned to the back, flanked by preowned console games. The content of these shelves isn’t much better – it’s full of “safe” titles. Sequels, sure-fire hits and money spinners.

When did the PC lose its lustre and sparkle? When did it become the third choice for developers? Why are only a few genres – strategy and MMO – still PC centric?

But most importantly, if anyone can make games for the PC then when did it become so boring?
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