Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Thursday Apr 26, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 130 comments

 Alan Wake EP2:Finnish My ManuscriptPrevious Post

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That “The Shining” moment is a great illustration of how this game sets up something smart and then immediately blows it. In The Shining, the axe-through-the-door moment was one of terror and screaming. But here we have Alan Wake talking to us in his soothing voice as he points out the very obvious reference. How can I get emotionally invested in this scene, when the protagonist himself is so detached? Alan is just talking about what he’s seeing, which is like carefully explaining a joke before you deliver the punchline. It suddenly feels like the game designer is talking to me, and that he doesn’t think I’m very bright.

On the other hand, I think the narration works for the “adventure game” stuff. When we’re hanging around in town and talking to people it helps us get to know Alan. I actually really look forward to these sections.

Anyway, sorry for apologizing so much Mumbles. Including this one. No, that’s not true. I don’t apologize for this one. You’re just going to have to suck it up and deal with this apology. Sorry.

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.

 Alan Wake EP2:Finnish My ManuscriptPrevious Post

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Alan Wake EP2:Finnish My Manuscript

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Apr 25, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 259 comments

 Alan Wake EP1: Hey, Listen!Previous Post

Next PostAlan Wake EP3:Stop Apologizing! 

Link (YouTube)

Geeze Alan. I hope you write better than you drive. Okay, so the manuscript pages are kind of stilted and awkward. Is this because:

Developer Remedy wanted to show that Alan is a bit of a crap writer.
The pages needed to fit in bite-sized portions on a TV screen, so there wasn’t enough room to make some vivid prose.
The writers at Remedy are actually a bit crap themselves.
The writers at Remedy are okay, but the prose was probably mangled in the translation from Finnish to English.
Actually, I thought the pages were fine.
James Portnow is holding a lemon, your argument is invalid.

Discuss.

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.

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Alan Wake EP1: Hey, Listen!

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Apr 24, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 268 comments

 Josh Plays Shogun 2 Part 18: Anno DominiPrevious Post

Next PostAlan Wake EP2:Finnish My Manuscript 

Link (YouTube)

In our meandering conversation, I took away this: This game was either intending to be scary and generally failed, or it created expectations of scary-ness that it never intended to fulfill.

One of the biggest sources of tension in Silent Hill 2 was that you never knew what to expect. The uncertainty creates doubt, which leads to a certain degree of suspense. It left you to figure things out for yourself. This flashlight explanation was not needed. Or if it was, it could have been reduced to a little text message like “aim the flashlight at the attacker”. I’m usually in favor of easing players into a game as carefully as possible, because learning under stress can lead to frustration. But this is one case where a little bit of confusion would have been fine.

The Ball of Light even greets you warmly. He’s friendly. He takes the time to say goodbye and lets you know you can have your dream back now, instead of just vanishing without explanation. He’s basically Alan Wake’s own personal Navi.

I like a lot of things about this game, but this opening is a major problem with regards to the tone it’s trying to set.

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.

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SWTOR “Free” Weekend

By Shamus Posted Monday Apr 23, 2012

Filed under: Rants 183 comments

 Supplying Demands for More DemandPrevious Post

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A few weeks ago I created a SWTOR account, planning to take advantage of the free weekend. But then Mass Effect 3 came out and I played that instead. I didn’t even realize that I’d missed the free weekend until Mass Effect 3 was over. I think it was Tuesday when I finally noticed the SWTOR icon on my desktop.

So then another free weekend came along and I tried to get in. But it wouldn’t let me, because the free weekend was for “new accounts only”. I complained in Twitter, and the TOR twitter minder told me to email support and they would fix me right up.

I sent an email explaining the problem: I have never logged in. I never used the free weekend promotion. I want to try the game, but the free weekend is only for “new” accounts. I was detailed and specific. Two days later (after the free weekend ended) they sent me a reply that just moronically repeated back exactly what I told them. “The free weekend is for new accounts only.” Thank you. You have correctly identified the stupid policy I was asking you to fix / reconsider / adjust. (More sensible policy: One free weekend per account.)

I had someone try the invite-a-friend program on me. Same result. You can’t get into the game unless the account is “new”. (New? Like, what? In days? They don’t tell you.)

I suppose I could create another new account. I’m not crazy about this idea. Making a new account is a massive pain in the ass. I’m talking about filing-your-taxes level of hassle, here. They make you set up multiple secret questions, and were very, very picky about what my password needed to look like, so much so that I was forced to break from my password-generating system. (They INSIST you use a special character.) Worse, my now-useless SWTOR account is inextricably linked to my EA / Origin account. So, if I created a new account for the free weekend I would never be able to join that with my existing EA account. I’d have to go through registration again, using a different email, and then maintain a different set of credentials just for SWTOR, and why am I even contemplating this?

While I’m annoyed at having my time wasted (downloading the client takes a LONG time, on top of the account-creation paperwork, plus the time wasted trying to idiot-proof my support email) I’m more mad at the sheer single-minded stupidity of the company. On one hand, they are running advertisements and sending out mass emails. Free weekend for new players! Free weekend for existing players! Account extensions! Invite-a-friend! They’re begging people to come play this thing. But then I show up with a very minor problem and nobody can do anything about it.

Isn’t this supposed to be a promotion? Like, to attract new people to the game? I do not feel very attracted by this point. I feel like BioWare owes me for the time I wasted jumping through their hoops.

The result? I’m playing a lot of Tera and Firefall. Have you heard about Firefall? I missed it two years in a row at PAX. Then I saw this look at the game from Extra Credits:

Link (YouTube)

So that’s exciting.

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.

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PAXCast 2012 TRANSCRIPT, Part 2

By Shamus Posted Sunday Apr 22, 2012

Filed under: Video Games 65 comments

 PAXCast 2012 TRANSCRIPT, Part 1Previous Post

Next PostJohn Carmack 2012 Keynote Annotated:
Part 1 

Interesting fact: It took Josh and I about three hours to record this hour-and-a-half conversation. Then I split it into to parts, and it took about an hour to edit each half. Then it took Gale some unknown interval of time to listen and make a transcript of the whole thing. Then it took another hour and a half (per segment) to gather up the screenshots and links for the final post.

The upshot is, these two posts combined represent about eleven hours of work, plus whatever Gale put in. I mention this because Josh and I had a conversation about how doing a podcast would be the easiest way to cover PAX.

Man, everything is easy until you do it. Anyway. Here is part 2. Thanks again to Gale for this transcript.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “PAXCast 2012 TRANSCRIPT, Part 2”

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.

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Part 1 

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Experienced Points:The Half-Naked Elf Problem

By Shamus Posted Friday Apr 20, 2012

Filed under: Column 289 comments

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Earlier this week, Captain Maybe commented on the stripperific outfits in Tera. This week’s column has some of my thoughts on the matter.

This issue generates way more heat than it needs to. You can’t bring this subject up without someone throwing the word “prude” back in your face, as if you were calling for everyone to dress like monks.

I can imagine a game where the women all have normal looking armor, and the men prance around in loincloths. As a guy, your combat taunts are all sex based. (Like, clench a rose in your teeth and make some super-lame innuendo.) You can see how that would be…

Okay, I’m undercutting my point here, because that sounds hilarious. But only because it would be so novel. But if all games did this? If in every game women were “regular” people, and the men were all half-naked, wouldn’t that feel… goofy?

I’m not saying that women shouldn’t have revealing avatars in a fantasy setting. I’m just saying people should get some choice in the matter. If we all choose freely how to dress, and the world ends up looking like this:

Then so be it. Mammal’s gonna be mammalian. But as long as this look is imposed on players by developers, then the developers are going to take the heat for it from everyone who would prefer to make some other choice.

And if you’re going to make a world obviously crafted exclusively for the 18-24 males demo, then when you start complaining about how hard it is to attract players to your world then I really don’t know what else to say.

In short, I’m not asking you to put pants on. I’m just asking to be allowed to wear some myself.

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.

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PAXCast 2012 TRANSCRIPT, Part 1

By Shamus Posted Friday Apr 20, 2012

Filed under: Video Games 34 comments

 PAXCast 2012, Part 2Previous Post

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Gale was nice enough to make a transcript again for us this year, for those of you who aren’t down with the whole podcast thing. Here is part one. Note that I have added links and images, so even if you listened to the podcast you might want to scroll through here and look at the stuff.

S: Hey everybody, I’m Shamus.

J: And I’m Josh. We are here talking about PAX East 2012, which is a convention which none of you have heard of, and we didn’t go to.

S: It’s obscure.

J: Yeah.

S: Let’s dive in, we saw stuff this year, we really focused on the show floor in a way that I didn’t last year, so we’ve got a whole bunch of games we want to talk about. We’re just gonna go plough through this list, and talk about all the stuff that we saw.

J: Yeah, these won’t really be in order, ‘cuz we had the most haphazard schedule that you could possibly have while doing this, and I don’t actually remember when we saw any given game.

S: I know, I lost the chronology here so bad, I have no idea.

J: Yeah, it’s all run together in my head by now. All I remember is, we spent two 14-hour days at the convention centre, and I never want to do that again. [Chuckles]

S: Well, mostly that was because the panels I was on were at the very end of the day, so you couldn’t just leave…

J: All the good panels were at the end of the day, yeah. The LoadingReadyRun, the Giant Bomb, and the Escapist panel.

S: I know, just when everybody is like, “OK, I’ve had enough PAX, I need to go home and pass out.” No, that’s when the best stuff is.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “PAXCast 2012 TRANSCRIPT, Part 1”

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.

 PAXCast 2012, Part 2Previous Post

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