T w e n t y S i d e d

Never before has greed and misanthropy been so gosh-darn adorable.

This week we do some quests in the Shire, and even dabble in crafting a bit.

I will say that I like the farming in LOTRO, even though I can’t figure out why. (My main is a Master Supreme Farmer.) It’s not really a game. There’s no strategy or skill involved. It’s just busywork. This should be something I hate. If a developer had shown me the design document for the farming gameplay I would have rolled it up and swatted them on the nose with it. But in the end it’s probably the most interesting crafting system I’ve tried. I still think there’s lots of room for improvement, but whatever they’re doing here, it’s a step in the right direction.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I have crafted another one of those web-comic dealies, and I offer it here for your perusal.

It’s not often I get genuinely excited about a sequel. I am excited about Portal. To my shame, my enthusiasm comes from screenshot preview hype mag Game Informer, which I usually regard as little more than a catalog. Please understand that I usually know better than to be swayed by anything the magazine has to say. I mean, they hand it out for free. At Gamestop. This is not a place you should turn if you want a clear-headed critical opinion on a game. Or anything else.

But the Portal 2 article found a gap in my armor of distrust and cynicism. I read it all the way through. On purpose, and without irony. And now I want the game.

It’s going to be a long year.

(Right here is a good place for a paragraph asking about Half-Life 2: Episode 3, but I just don’t have it in me today.)

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

In this one I talk about the automated matchmaking in the upcoming Starcraft 2. Well, actually, I’m using SC2 as a launching point for talking about this trend of automated matchmaking in general that has been pervasive on consoles and is becoming increasingly common on the PC. I don’t know if it will make any sense at all to people who haven’t played games like Team Fortress 2 where community Balkanization is an emergent feature.

And I expect the thread for this one will be a little rough, because for a certain segment of the fanbase, You Are Not Allowed to imply that SC2 will not be perfection. This is odd, because nobody seems to care if you denigrate the original. It’s usually the other way around: The original is sacred, and the sequels are fair targets.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Hopefully I managed to play this one right. I’m making fun of the F.A.G.S. controversy, and a misfire could mean I’d repeat Infinity Ward’s error instead of lampooning it.

The other story is more serious, as I think it’s a lot more likely to be harmful to Activision employees and possibly the industry as a whole. Last month Activision president Bobby Kotick complained that perhaps his reputation as an industry villain was unfair. But this is the same Activision that tried to stop the release of Brutal Legend. Then we have him suing his golden goose in a very public display of power over some very vague charges, the side effect of which will be that his company isn’t going to be paying bonuses to Infinity Ward for the biggest selling game, ever. And then he promises to lower employee morale (although he phrases it differently) because, I suppose, there are still some people in the world who don’t completely hate the sight of him?

I don’t know Bob. Why are people so eager to see you as the villain? You tell me.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.