what D&D character am i?

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Cleric (3rd Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-16
Constitution-13
Intelligence-15
Wisdom-14
Charisma-13

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)


I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed at being human. =/

I wish more games would present clerics similar to those of the first Neverwinter Nights. A cleric would select so many spells of each level from a wide variety of options, then would select two "domains" of magic to customize his spellbook with. So one cleric might specialize in Death magic and Animal magic while another might specialize in Water magic and Sun magic. I really despise most MMO class skill systems for making players so similar to one another.

reviews vs trailers

Honestly, I don't think reviews have ever been as influential as developers make them out to be. The fact that good reviews correlate with good sales doesn't mean good reviews cause good sales. I think it's more likely that consumers can spy a good game on their own through screenshots, FAQs, trailers, and (most importantly) speaking with gamers and salespeople.

Regardless of how influential reviews are now, I think they're starting to lose influence to the power of trailers.

Most movie-goers don't read reviews. They attract viewers almost entirely through trailers and word-of-mouth. Only now are video game commercials on TV becoming normal. As the airwaves become increasingly saturated by trailers, I think game trailers will become more important. Afterall, most viewing of game trailers now occurs among hardcore and veteran gamers, the only people who frequent gaming news sites and official game sites. When trailers are placed on TV and in movie theaters, then they're truly reaching a mass audience and mainstream gamers.

Undoubtedly, reviews make more sense for games than films. A review for a linear story can't offer much objective information without giving the plot away. Something like Spore or Command & Conquer, on the other hand, can explain exactly how gameplay occurs without ruining the game. But just because reviews are a good resource for gamers doesn't mean gamers will be any more likely to seek reviews than movie-goers are.

Anyway, expect to see more emphasis on trailers from marketing departments in the next 5-10 years.

a natural slow-down for graphics tech?

Tipa said something interesting in this thread about PC gaming and graphics, as inspired by Tim Sweeney's ridiculous comments.

"Games requiring high-end graphics demand high-end gamers keep upgrading their systems, spurring the need for even better graphics cards, which means more games must take advantage of them in order to return the investment; and more processor is needed, requiring more development in processors and the supporting software to make them work.

High end games DRIVE THE ENTIRE PERSONAL COMPUTER INDUSTRY."

She's absolutely right that gaming has long been the driving force behind most PC hardware innovation. Without gaming, PCs would have developed akin to calculators, simple and small machines that perform just a handful of tasks and remain basically the same from decade to decade. Major advances would have been seen in laboratories, not in households.

But I'm wondering...

Last week, I watched a great video interview with Dennis Dyack of Silicon Knights. He spoke about the basic premise of Too Human, the moral and pragmatic questions surrounding technology, and mentioned how we in the post-industrial era place technology on such a high pedestal. We put tremendous faith in it as a solution to our problems and desires.

Perhaps, in our admiration for computing technology in the past 20-30 years, we've mistaken the rate of progress we're used to as sustainable. Perhaps Moore's Law is actually just the steep beginning of a curve which is soon to level out. The computer industry might still be only in its infancy, and the next stage of slower growth is nearing.

Or maybe we're nearing something similar to the Uncanny Valley, a point at which equal innovation produces less thrilling results. The jump from Halo graphics to Crysis graphics is not nearly as impressive as the jump from 2-D to 3-D environments.

We've been thinking that hardware progress will continue as it has forever, but we will eventually find ourselves in a situation where the systems we have are so adequate for our needs that progress is no longer a priority. Eventually, more people will be interested in fully exploring utilization of our present resources than expanding our resources.

My thoughts on this aren't clear in my own mind, so it's come out muddled. But can you see what I'm essentially getting at?

Spielberg "gets people"

According to Louis Castle, "More than anything he [Steven Spielberg] gets people. I have made a lot of games, more than a hundred and I am quite accomplished in this field, even I don't have that kind of instinct."

It's a surprisingly simple characteristic that explains so much about his mastery of film-making, right? He gets people. And because he understands them so well, he's remarkable apt at tapping into universal themes, desires, and habits, and letting those insights guide his craft.

I can't help but think that's the core characteristic of a master game designer, too. They get people.

Think of Will Wright, when he's explaining how human beings learn through experimentation, and love learning. Think of Peter Molyneux, when he proposes that Fable 2 will touch gamers' hearts... not through romance, but through an unshakeable companion (a dog) and unconditional love.

If you need a demographic chart to know what people want, then you don't really "get people".

anonymity gets the boot

Wow. Well, this one's a doozy! A Congressman's proposing a bill that would outlaw anonymous posting on the internet. You'd have to register your name with wherever you post and your full name would show alongside every post you make.

Once again, I find myself on the opposite side of the aisle as my fellow bloggers and gamers. No, I haven't read any rants about it yet. But, let's face it, the online gaming and game development community is a predictable bunch. I'll be very surprised if I hear as many as five people supporting this move online.

Anyway, I don't have a problem with the proposed bill, from what details that article provides.

The "right to privacy" is a modern invention, a legal "right" only... and even that invented imagined by a judge, rather than legislators. Those of us who were fortunate enough to grow up without it realize how unnecessary it is. The only act that has almost always been private cross-culturally is marital sex, and not even that at times. Christians once confessed their sins on the front steps of church, acknowledging that our every failure is a public failure. There is no private act without public relevance. And there is no righteous act that needs to be hidden (even if "no good deed goes unpunished").

One change I would make to the law, though, is that an IP tag should be included with the name, as well as middle names. There were three Aaron Miller's just in my one middle-school! I'd rather not catch hell for their stupidity again. =/

Let's face it... Killing anonymity on the internet wouldn't stop idiotic ranting, nor the mindless insults and "bullying" this Congressional bill is supposed to hinder, but it would inject just enough responsibility to make many folks a little more thoughtful and considerate online.

the non-gamer problem

As Weekend Gamer points out, the "easy to play, difficult to master" description so often used by professional reviewers doesn't mean the same thing to non-gamers as it does to veteran gamers like us.

Veteran gamers typically have no idea just how much our gaming experience has trained us for present games. I know people who were gaming addicts for many years, and a mere 3-5 years away from gaming crippled their familiarity with gaming controls and goals. They can skillfully play an RTS and a sports game because the control scheme's closely match games they've played before. But something unfamiliar, like controlling character movement and camera movement independently in Halo 3, is beyond frustrating.

People who didn't play video games as children have an even harder time. A good eye-opener is when a game says "Press Start" and you have to show the non-gamer where the Start button is (that small, camouflaged button in the middle, with "Start" written in camouflaged print so tiny that most 40+ folks probably have trouble reading it without glasses and optimal light).

Anyway, there are obviously many implications to this, most of which have been discussed many times before. But one I'd like to point out is that I bet this is a major reason for the popularity of Flash gaming and similarly simple internet games. People don't get stupid with age. Old folks can learn complex new systems, like boardgames. But learning control schemes and unfamiliar concepts (video game goals and strategies are not perceived like boardgame goals and strategies) is different and difficult.

Flash games are the door through which a lot of non-gamers are currently passing to enter the world of gaming. I don't think they're lesser games. I'm just saying I think a lot of non-gamers perceive them as an undaunting way to familiarize themselves with this still-new passtime called video games. A person's first game has to be dirt simple, because the mere concept of interactive entertainment through a monitor or TV screen and controller is foreign to them. There's more to learning Pac-Man than "up, down, left, right", eating the dots, and avoiding the ghosts. The medium itself must be learned.

could Spore help Metaplace modelers?

I've mused before about collective assets in the upcoming community of Metaplace designers. Now, I'm wondering if Maxis would be willing to join that community, and if there's any financial reason they couldn't.

Spore seems to have a load of impressive editors. Its gamers will soon be designing animals, plants, buildings, transports, military vessels, spaceships, music, and who knows what else. And, just as Wright said he hoped, it all appears to be Pixar-quality.

All of those assets will be shared between Spore players through highly-compressed but detailed files. Well, what about sharing with non-Sporedians?

Just think of how useful those editors could be to Metaplace designers! Designing art, like designing anything else, can be much easier when shaping some pre-existing thing and receiving real-time feedback than when having to imagine somehing new from a blank slate. I think Spore could greatly empower the Metaplace design community. All that's needed is Maxis and EA's permission, and a tool that could convert Spore item files into 3-D models that could be imported to a Metaplace game.

Do Maxis or EA have any incentive to prevent the sharing of Spore players' creations outside of the Spore community?

If they do, it's not obvious to me. I don't see how their choice to share could hinder Spore's popularity or act as direct competition. If anything, it would direct more attention to Spore.

I hope Wright, Maxis, and EA will consider the possibility of creating or allowing a program that transfigures Spore item files into non-Spore files. It would be greatly appreciated by hundreds of gamers and designers.

why most reviews get higher scores?

This GDC panel dicussion raised a very interesting point. A review score can dissuade people from actually reading the review. I would think a low score is the most likely to make a reader skip the actual article, with a medium-high score being the most inviting.

What this means is that game reviewers have an incentive to score games a particular way, aside from developer/publisher pressures. If they score a game too low (or too high?), their articles will be read by fewer people and thereby make less advertising money.

I'm not being accusative... just laying it out there for everyone to chew on.

where might RPGs go?

Toward the end of an article on RPGs that I read, Peter Molyneux muses, "... I predict that the RPGs we’ll be playing in five years time will be radically different from the RPGs that we are playing today".

That got me wondering: What paths have RPGs yet to try?

Roleplay has already been combined with every genre, and efforts of inclusion continue. Take Tom Clancy's Endwar, for example... an RTS that is recording voices for each individual soldier in an attempt to humanize the gameplay of giving them orders in combat.


FRAGILE
The first idea that popped into my mind is something like The Sims in first-person. "Fragile" is what I thought to title the game.

The player selects, rather than creates, a character to play. The selection is made from a large group of characters, all of whom will act in the game as NPCs if not selected for the player's direct use. The player then plays with that character just as one might in a game like Fable 2 or Oblivion. The tricky part is that the character is "fragile" in the sense that permadeath is a close and constant possibility. No, that's not the innovation.

The fresh idea is that the player then selects one of the other NPCs to take control of. The consequences of the first character's life, and that character's reputation, remain active in this second character's life. When the second character dies, the player takes control of a third character; and, again, the new character must witness and live through the effects of the previous character's life. This situation continues through several characters -- characters of the same generation, but different personalities and circumstances.

This basic scenario could set the stage for tons of replayability and some powerful player-directed drama.

The prince and the pauper
For example, let's say one character is a prince and another is a pauper. If you play as the pauper first, you might decide that your character is bitter about his circumstances and blames the aristocracy. In an act of revenge, he kills one of the royals (and is quickly slain by the guards). When you later play the prince, you must decide how to respond to the situation you set up. Does the murder of the prince's sister send him into a rage, and all the city's peasants must pay the price? Does the murder direct his attention to the poverty around him, so you guide him into charitable acts that help the city's unfortunate? Or is the murder meaningless to him? Does he ignore it entirely or use the absence of a fellow royal to consolidate his own power?

On the other hand, you might first play as the prince. If the prince makes it his duty to aid the poor, then your later experience as the pauper might begin in very different circumstances (such as beginning in public housing, rather than sleeping in the street; or being able to rely on a few gold coins from the queen, rather than a few coppers from the baker at church). If the prince decides to outlaw beggars, your pauper might not even be allowed in the city, but instead have to survive in the woods.

That's just two characters. Now imagine continuing through another ten characters. The possible ways the overall story could play out are incalculable.

The fragile part
Apart from the more obvoius meaning of the title "Fragile" (permadeath), what it's really about is a Montessori-like learning experience... the sort of learning brilliant designers like Will Wright and Peter Molyneux are always talking about with their games. The game would be an intuitive and player-guided lesson in how precious time is and how monumental even the simplest actions can be.

For example, it would be possible for the prince to have no effect whatsoever on the pauper. If he spends most of his time hunting and partying with the aristocrats of other cities, the beggars of his own city might never see him or be affected in any way. But if he gives a few gold coins to the pauper just once, the player's pauper will begin with those coins and have a chance to change his life with them (such as by purchasing a bow and arrows, thereby becoming capable of acquiring food without stealing). Or the pauper might spend those first few coins on booze... attracts attention while drunk, and gets stabbed during the altercation (and dies). The simple act of giving or withholding a few coins, spending those coins wisely or foolishly, can result in huge consequences. Players learn a thousand ways in which the smallest of actions can change a life.

And it would not be difficult to be killed in this game. That sounds harsh, but I would make it so for one reason: true sacrifice is only possible through the possibility of true loss. The surest way for the player to prolong any character's life would be to "play it safe", to live with reservation and fear. Molyneux said he wants Fable 2 players to experience that living a good life is difficult. Likewise, I would want Fragile players to experience that goodness often requires making oneself vulnerable. The greatest, most memorable deeds require great risk. The more players are willing to risk, the more their characters would be remembered by surviving NPCs.


I'm fully aware that there are a number of difficult problems in that basic design, and that plenty of gamers would hear "permadeath" and not care about any qualifying circumstances. I'm just trying to offer an example of something RPGs haven't done before (to my knowledge).

What else haven't RPGs done before?

my gaming setup

A few people have posted pictures of their gaming setups. Well, someone asked to see mine today, so here it is. This is my desk, as seen from my webcam as far back as it would go (I don't have a camera).



What you might get a sense of is that my desk is a 6' x 3' hardwood monstrosity. I could jump on it and it wouldn't even creak; not bad for a $50 garage sale item. On the left is my 360 and the old CRT TV I have it hooked up to. Sadly, a TV upgrade is probably years down the line. The computer's a Dell Dimension 4800 (at least 3 years old... and acting like it, too) with a 3+ GHz Pentium 4 HT, 1G of RAM (DDR?), a Radeon 9800 Pro, and a nice 20" LCD. Instead of an HD-TV, I'll probably buy a new computer with one of those nice wrap-around widescreen monitors.

I couldn't get a clear picture of the games, but they are...

360: Crackdown, Culdcept Saga, Overlord, NCAA Football '08, Halo 3, Saints Row, Assassin's Creed, Oblivion, Fight Night, and Medal of Honor: Airborne.

PC: Sid Meier's Pirates, Hellgate: London, LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth 2: RotWK, both Star Wars: Battlefront games, Titan Quest, Diablo 2, Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and two games being shipped here right now (The Sims 2 and Fable: The Lost Chapters).

There are plenty of PC games that I wish I had kept over the years, like Black & White and Command & Conquer: Generals, but I obviously have more than enough at the moment. I've traded in more than a few 360 games too now, including Mass Effect and Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

PC gaming is never dead

Spurred by this and a half-dozen other articles, I'd like to explain why I think PC gaming is not dead, dying, or even dogpaddling in the kiddie pool and screaming that it can't swim.


A market will always be there.
As long as PCs are capable of gaming, people will be playing games on them, and other people will be making those games. Desktop PCs might very well disappear in the next 20 years, perhaps to be replaced by a non-centralized interface and AI that follows you from wall to wall to ceiling to countertop to oven to dashboard to [any flat surface you can think of], like a dog you cuddled too much as a puppy and now just won't go away. That is, afterall, the ultimate goal of Microsoft's LiveAnywhere project. When that day comes, there will be games for that platform. But until then, millions of people will play games on their PCs every day... and often when they're supposed to be working.


Modes of profit and delivery can and will adapt.
In fact, they already are adapting. As the first linked article mentions, companies are already experimenting with the use of advertisements to fund games. Some games will integrate advertising seamlessly and invisibly, but don't think the annoyance other games cause will prevent advertising from catching on. The first TV commercial wasn't three frogs croaking "Bud... Weis... Er!" -- it was probably three jerks, obviously high on Mountain Dew, yelling at the screen how Dapper Dan's hair gel could change our lives. Yet, despite our almost-constant loathing, we've come to the point where roughly a third of primetime television is commercials.

If you doubt this development for a second, consider that Battlefield: Heroes (which looks like a fun game, incidentally) will place its advertisements at the loading screen between levels/battles... just like TV commercials between plot events. Hopefully, the additional profit scheme, undisruptive microtransactions for things like appearance, will stave off greed long enough that we won't see 5-minute loading screens for another 10-20 years.

And let's not forget franchising -- the new industry buzzword. Even if Spore is pirated left and right, Maxis will recoup those losses from custom trading cards, creature models, and any number of other peripherals. On top of that, they'll be providing a number of online services which strongly reward connection to official (key-accessed) EA servers, thereby making pirated copies of the game weak and shabby by comparison. A thief hidden in anonymity is much more likely to respond to positive incentives than to threats, because he ain't scared of you.

Far from being on the decline or soon to be replaced by Asian business models, I bet we've only seen the beginning of subscription gaming. Prices and plans will vary greatly, largely because savvy developers will realize that they can start publishing content within six months or less if they simply abandon the nonsense that is the traditional MMORPG world. Start with less, expand more often -- made possible by increased dynamics and decreased emphasis on power and balance. Of course, that's only one of many development styles that will take advantage of subscriptions.


Games will be better
The quality of games matters. The PC platform, like console platforms, will occasionally have a bad series of years on the development side. The original Xbox was the victim of poor development throughout its life. Aside from the Halo games, few other games released on that console were worth a damn. Today, the 360 is the most profitable console out there -- selling more games per console than the Wii --because it hosts so many quality games. In fact, 9 times out of 10 when I hear someone raving about the Wii, they're raving about Wii Sports... which comes with the console (I hope to own a Wii eventually, so don't take this as an attack). When PC game sales slump, a major factor is probably the abscence of quality-focused and reasonably limited game design on that platform.

"Reasonably limited?" I mean games, like WoW, that don't spit on owners of older PCs through insane processing requirements. I mean developers thinking about what they could do with a fraction of the funding and team size that has become the norm, rather than automatically accepting any resources available to them. I don't mean designing the next great solitaire game for Flash, cellphones, and a 5-year-old's Etch-a-Sketch. Games don't have to be quick, easy, or shallow to appeal to millions.

What sort of PC games are selling best? Of the top 40 best-selling PC games of 2007, nearly all are open-ended. MMOs, Sim games, RTS games, Oblivion, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Diablo (yes, still!) ... almost every one is a game with months or even years of gameplay, most with a strong social component. Even on consoles, what are the most anticipated games of this year? The ones with dynamics and replayability: GTA IV, Fable 2, MarioKart, etc.

open-ended gameplay + simple but smooth graphics and a limited scope = lower costs, greater revenues


But then, I'm not a dev, so why listen to me?

Speaking of open-ended games:

reverting to saved games

In games like Mass Effect and Deus Ex, the player can keep the game saved at many points. So it's possible to save before doing anything with a permanent effect (like choosing a skill or dialogue route) and returning to the save later to try a different route.

You can return in theory, anyway. In actuality, you've often progressed so far from the saved moment to the game's end that returning is a jarring experience. It's like watching a 2-hour film all the through, then being dropped back to the 30-minute mark to view a different course. Dropping back just 5 or 10 minutes, ala the ending of the movie Clue, is alright. But dropping back over an hour is begging for confusion and only a shallow immersion in events.

So, is there an alternative? Is there a way for a player to return to a much earlier point in his game experience without it feeling shallow or awkward?

TV series sometimes refresh their viewers memories with clips of the previous show. That helps avoid confusion, though it still requires that immersion be built up from scratch again. Would something like that work with a game? If skills or the complexity of the control scheme or item hoard changes significantly through the game, then the player would need to be refreshed on more than just the story.

Can much be done about this problem?

drama in games vs film

Over at Weekend Gamer, I posted some thoughts about permanent consequences in games. Toward the end, I got to thinking about how open gamers in general really are to negative emotions:

... . Designers like to talk about games that will make us sad and angry the way movies do, but gamers in general don't want that sort of stuff in games (at least, not in the sort of games we're already familiar with). Unsettling movies and unsettling games are fundamentally different. The saddened or angered movie viewer must only continue to watch further events. The saddened or angered gamer must continue to participate in events. Therefore, negative emotions require more patience from gamers than from movie-viewers.

What do you think? Am I right that there are more barriers to including the full spectrum of emotions in games than just people respecting games as a dramatic medium, like films?

mini-maps are shit

I love this quote from Peter Molyneux at the GDC: ""Mini-maps are shit. They're shit because you make these multimillion-dollar games, and people play them staring at these little dots."

The last game I had that problem with was Saints Row. Learning streets and landmarks takes time, while the mini-map provided instant knowledge, so I spent nearly all of my time looking at the mini-map while driving to missions and shops around the city. Whenever I didn't watch the mini-map, I was able to appreciate and enjoy the city itself. The mini-map effectively placed a big chunk of the game into shadow.

Of course, avoiding mini-maps can be difficult, as Molyneux's upcoming Fable 2 clearly demonstrates. I'm sure developing the AI to make that game's dog into a guide has been no easy feat. Still, any designer should at least begin with a determination to replace such an obviously flawed mechanism.

What other features are common yet obviously distractions from core gameplay?

For example, could the need for inventory screens, which remove players from focus on the gameworld, be largely negated by letting the player sort the desirability of equipment elements? In other words, could choosing equipment preferences be a simple one-shot decision at the beginning of the game, like character class? At character creation (revisable at any time thereafter), I prioritize damage-dealing (1), fire-wielding (2), cold-resistance (3) ----> blunt protection (18). And so the game automatically switches or does not switch out my character's gear based on how well an item's stats match up with my chosen priorities (damage-dealing over protection, fire damage over cold damage, etc). Is that clear at all? The question at the heart of all that is whether or not the need for inventory management can be minimized.

Another possible example is directing a player toward a major quest by designing minor quests to nudge the player in that direction. Depending on the quest, environmental indicators might also be possible. For example: if there's more ash and destruction to the west, then the bad guy probably went that way.

Anyway, back to my question: What features are common yet obviously distractions from core gameplay?

know thy enemy

Sometime tomorrow, I'll pick up my pre-order of Culdcept Saga. One interesting feature of that board-card game is that you're able to see your opponent's cards. You know every card they draw and even get a glimpse of their entire hand each turn.

Some reviewers complained about this, because it definitely goes against expectations. But it's an interesting twist, I enjoy it in the CS demo, and I've been thinking how it might open up a new style of gameplay for many genres.

RTS games, for example. Imagine knowing at all times what your enemy is doing. What would it be like if the element of surprise was not present?

It's a little more common in mono-a-mono games. If an enemy spell takes 3 seconds to cast, the player might be able to recognize it in the first second and cast a 2-second counterspell. In Sid Meier's Pirates!, the same is possible in dueling.

Anyway, how do y'all feel about some games including complete transparency?

game politics

This is a repost of my response to Julian's post here:

The reason so many politicians take wild stances against video games is because they're never offered a tempered, realistic view from anybody. Nearly everyone takes an extreme viewpoint, meaning that those politicians never hear real sense. Politicians will back off from condemning all games when gamers and game developers are willing to recognize that some games really do merit censorship.

The recent Fox News - Mass Effect debacle is a great example. I admire Geoff Keighley, and I think he showed patient restraint in that roundtable. But he said exactly what they knew he'd say. Regardless of whether Mass Effect was innocent of the network's charge or not, of course a game journalist was going to claim it was harmless, right? They might have actually listened to him if he said something to the effect of, "Look, I realize there are games out there that are sensationalist and problematic, but Mass Effect isn't one of those games."

It's the lack of a middle ground in such discussions that keeps everyone yelling at each other from the far sides of the field. If someone reasonable and well-placed like Geoff would just step into that territory, a civil and realistic discussion could begin between gamers and politicians.

the future of podcasting

Brent posted show #100 of VirginWorlds. Congratulations, Brent!

During the show, he asked about the future of podcasting. I have a couple thoughts on that.

First, I agree with Craig that video podcasting will become more common, and some audiences will prefer that while others will prefer the audio podcasts. Audio podcasts allow the listener to browse the internet or do something else on his computer while listening. That's great for many, but some of us can't pay close attention to the podcast dialogue if we're doing other things. And, of course, video podcasts can offer elements which audio podcasts cannot.

Second, I bet changes in technology will be a major factor in the growth and nature of podcasting. This is only the beginning.

The explosion of wireless internet applications we're seeing now will continue over the next five or ten years. In the foreseeable future, though i'm not sure when, automobiles will regularly include advanced, built-in mp3 players and comprehensive web browsers with satellite internet connectivity. First, we'll see more people using USB drives and such to transfer files quickly and easily between their home computers and their cars. Next, we'll see people downloading shows like VirginWorlds directly to their vehicles. Those vehicle media interfaces will even have the equivalent of RSS feeds, automatically loading your favorite shows to your car's hard drive whenever a new episode is released.

Podcasts are already common and employed by mainstream media networks (and not just the big gaming networks). But in ten years... look out!

By the way, Brent and Darren... If you think podcasts are difficult to put together now, just wait until listening to them in cars becomes the norm and panning becomes more important with the 4+ speakers. =P

action games and football

MACRO
In football, if you lose a game, that usually doesn't prevent you from progressing to the next game (the next level). Your record stays with you, but it only determines whether or not you make it to the playoffs (extra levels). Football allows the player to experience nearly all content regardless of performance.

That seems to be a model that could be transferred to FPS games and Action RPGs.

Perform poorly against most of the foes of one level, and you can still progress to the next level. Doing well in most levels will unlock some extra areas, while winning all levels will unlock an epic encounter or something similar, but the game generally moves forward regardless. And, like a football season, level order is not static. The player might face the swamp level first, last, or anywhere in between.

MICRO
Applying this concept of "progression independent of achievement" seems easy enough on the macro level, but I wonder if it could also be applied to individual encounters.

In (American) football, if countless plays in a game go badly, that doesn't prevent you from progressing to the next play (the next encounter). Winning plays affects the circumstances of future plays (such as field position) and the role one must take in the next play (offense/defense), but poor achievement does not negate progression entirely.

The last quality is what might be difficult to translate into games other than turn-based games. How do you encourage skillful play of individual encounters without punishing failure by ending progression?

NCAA Football '08 does this largely through a system of momentum. Perform poorly and your enemy gets the momentum, making progression harder but still inevitable (not merely possible). This system increases the opponent(s)' attributes and skills -- something easily translatable to other genres.

Like field position in football, it would be great to see the FPS/RPG player's actions in individual encounters affect the setting of the next encounter. An enemy might be blocking a slowly closing pathway; meaning the player can sneak past the enemy or fight through (not necessarily killing) to the opening, but must otherwise take an alternate route. Or actions in one encounter might affect the availability of environmental objects in other encounters.

Anyway, just the random thoughts of the day.

Usage-based internet fees and online gaming

That's right, Time Warner is testing the possibility of charging internet users for service based on individual bandwidth consumption. And listen to this:

The company believes the billing system will impact only heavy users, who account for around 5 percent of all customers but typically use more than half of the total network bandwidth, according to a company spokesman.

Do online gamers fall into that 5 percent?

If most internet users would save money from this new model and like it, and online gamers do fall into that small percentage, then online gaming's runaway growth could be slowed to crawl. Not only MMOs, but online console services could suffer.

I tend to avoid predictions of doom and gloom. Disasters do happen, but they're rare. But is there good reason to be afraid with this? It seems developers and gamers alike should keep an eye on this one.


Sorry about the long hiatus. I've just felt like I have nothing to say lately. Hopefully, I'll be posting regularly again soon.

strategy-only football

College football is finally over. I wish they would end the season on New Year's, like they used to do. Anyway, it's good to see an SEC team take the title once again. I was born in Louisiana, so LSU's probably my second favorite, after Bama (family tradition - a lot of my family's from the Mobile-Daphne area).

Over the past few days, I've wondered why I've never seen a strategy-only football game before. It might exist, but I've never heard of one. By strategy-only, I mean a video game in which you play as the coaching staff and have no direct control of the action.

Every football fan is an armchair quarterback. We love to criticize play-calls and suggest what should have been done. But not every football fan is an action gamer. Some didn't grow up with video games and don't have the training with console controls to play Madden '08. Others could play such action games, but prefer player-paced games. And still others are only interested in strategy.

So the absence of a football video game that is based entirely around coaching seems glaring to me. For the player to watch the action unfold in a realistic manner requires some deep AI, so perhaps we're only now ready for that sort of game. But, regardless of whether or not such a game could have been adequately presented in the past, EA or someone else needs to hop on this opportunity.

I know plenty of non-gamers who would quickly become gaming addicts if they could play Armchair Quarterback '09. =)