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In the comments of the previous strip, I said, “In hindsight, the ideal thing would have been to cast Aragorn as a dumb, distracted stoner. He spends about half of the movie blinking very, very slowly. I can come up with a shot of him looking baked or mouth-open stoopid in just about any scene. I should make a “I am so high” montage out of all these shots.“
The amount of screen time he spends in a vacant stare or a prolonged blink is sort of alarming. I’ve come to think of him as Stareagorn.
Jay has a post titled, Are Graphics Really Killing Gameplay? He talks about how interesting gameplay elements like climbing walls and vaulting over things are often left out of games simply because of the expense of depicting them in 3d. (An odd aside, I have a post with almost the same title in the queue planned for next week, but mine focuses on the way 3d hardware evolution is screwing up graphics evolution.)
This reminds me of how the game Fallout handled this. Your character had many skills they could use in the game: Heal, hack computers, repair things, tie ropes, pick locks, etc. Rather than making animations for all of these activities, the designers just had this animation of your character leaning forward and sort of moving their hands around at the target object. To my eye it looked like you were tickling it. This was really funny, watching my character “tickle” a door open. However, once I got used to it I stopped thinking about it. The fact that I could do those things was way more important to me than how I looked while I was doing it.
This article looks like an excellent launching point for talking about what I think is one of the major drawbacks of Massively Multiplayer games. I am by no means a veteran of MMO games, but I’ve played a few. Every few years I pick one up and put a few weeks into it. I started with The Realm way back in 1996, and in 2002 I played Dark Age of Camelot. One thing I’ve noticed about the games I’ve played is that they all more or less require players to work together. (Note, I understand World of Warcraft eases this requirement, so that solo play is less painful. I haven’t tried WoW yet, so I can’t say.) This requirement makes sense at first. What’s the point in having a multiplayer game if everyone goes off in their own corner and does their own thing? But this cuts the other way, because it makes the player dependent on others to take part in their gaming experience. It’s usually exceedingly difficult to play these games alone. I’m not a big fan of this dynamic, and I think there are better ways to encourage people to play together without punishing them for not doing so.
But before I get started: I’m not sold on the idea that people need to fight together – or against each other – to make the game “multiplayer”. A lot of the multiplayer appeal comes simply from having others around so that you can trade, share tips, chat, or show off your avatar.
The typical MMO expects – and is designed around – certain behaviors. Players are encouraged to form groups of (about) four people of varying classes or skills. You’ll need the “caster” (someone who can deal tremendous damage but who is themselves pretty fragile) a “healer” (someone who can restore hitpoints during a fight) and a couple of “tanks” (people who are very durable, who can protect the others). The more a player strays from this expected ideal, the harder the game gets for them.
But all we’ve accomplished here is to take the basic single-player gameplay (kill monsters, earn XP and loot) and add a certain level of unrewarding busywork that must be done beforehand. The problem here is the inherent hassle of getting a group together with the right mix. They all have to be near the same level, of the right character types, interested in the same sort of fighting, and available for the same period of time. They need to find each other, agree on a leader, and pick a place to play. This is tricky for a bunch of strangers to pull off in a world where everyone is constantly coming and going. Suddenly you have a great recipe for wasting everyone’s time. (I’ll also throw in that not all of us are attention-starved extroverts. After a few hours of MMO gaming I’ve really had my fill of meeting new people. Some thrive on that, but some of us would rather make a small group of friends and otherwise keep to ourselves.)
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Roundtable:
MMO Games & Social Busywork”
I mentioned recently that my wife and I just celebrated our 10-year anniversary. The music during the ceremony was performed by a string quartet. Looking back, this was probably my favorite aspect of the entire ceremony. (Except for the, you know, wife part.) I’ve never been much for wedding music, but I really enjoyed this. Pachelbel Canon in D was our wedding march, so I found this to be very funny:
The guy in the video above is complaining about the cello part of the piece, which I guess is quite dull to play. Our cellist was my cousin, who now works at Red Hat. I mention this because I know some readers here are familiar with him and I thought that would be an interesting bit of trivia.
A further note is that our violinist went on to be part of Shania Twain‘s band, and performed on the Tonight Show a few years later. It was kind of strange seeing someone on TV and thinking, “Wow. He performed at my wedding.”
I can’t say enough good things about the string quartet. If you find yourself getting married and don’t want to go with organ music, I think this is a great way to go.
Oh yeah: Happy Valentine’s Day
In a comment on my tirade on Steam, I think SteveDJ has the right idea:
Now, a day later, you take that unopened copy back to the store and return it for a refund.
Normally I take a dim view of return-policy shenanigans. If I get the short end of the stick, I’ll take the loss but also carry a grudge.
But when it comes to something like Steam I would classify the exploitation of return-policy loopholes as basic self-defense. They took advantage of me first, and I would have liked to be able to escape the deal without taking a loss. The fact that they would take a loss (the opened package is now considered damaged goods) is their problem. They are the ones with the pushy software and the senseless return policy.
If I’d thought of this, I would have done it.
I glanced at my Technorati page today. I always wondered if I could make the top 10,000. Well, this is as close as you can cut it.
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Yes, I know. This is only interesting because we use base ten. Actually, I’d have been even more excited if I was ranked# 16,384.
Sorry for dorking out on you, there. I’m extra short on sleep today and I’m feeling sort of giddy right now.
A reader expressed their irritation with the IMVU ads that have been running in the sidebar recently. I was actually glad to see I wasn’t the only one. They have a trashy, lowest-common-denominator feel to them. Kind of a “Welcome to Hoochie World” vibe. The ad has been running for over a month, and I’ve never seen a picture of a single male avatar. It’s either the quasi-jailbait in a bikini, or a couple of skanks in a pseudosapphic embrace. Using a pretty girl to sell your stuff is perfectly reasonable, but doing it with such a lack of class gets on my nerves. I’ve never used the software, but the ads make me think their chat software is a world inhabited by l337-speaking teenage boys that would make the average FARK thread sound like the Mclaughlin Group by comparison.
This reminds me of the comments Georgina Bensley made about “Girl” games a while back. These ads, by trying to create an image of a world that is wall-to-wall with girls, is actually doing almost nothing to attract them. It might even be alienating them.
All of this, coupled with the fact that we’ve all been looking at the same 3 images for over a month now, has finally persuaded me to “block” the IMVU ads in the Google adsense controls. Although I notice they are still showing up. Maybe it takes a while to kick in? I dunno.
LATER: I’m at a loss, here. The block has been in place for six hours and I’m still seeing these ads. This is starting to annoy me.
LATER LATER: All gone now. Yay.
Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.
Be careful what you learn with your muscle-memory, because it will be very hard to un-learn it.
I write a program to simulate different strategies in Starcraft 2, to see how they compare.
This series explores the troubled history of VR and the strange lawsuit between Zenimax publishing and Facebook.
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
A big chunk of the internet went down in October of 2016. What happened? Was it a hack?
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
T w e n t y S i d e d
