It's amazing how people first react to change (badly, weirdly), and then get used to the new existing set of circumstances that it would feel funny if it went missing.
It is not new news that our CEO has changed. This new one has steadily developed a habit in us - a pretty sneaky training. Every week, he writes a personal reflection/story thingmajig and emails it out to all staff.
As you may expect, when the first stories hit our inbox, the overall reaction ranged from bewilderment ("what is this? am I supposed to do anything with this?") to gossip ("so weird, so unusual, dunno what he is up to, etc.")
I am quite a sucker for stories myself, so having the equivalent of Louis Schmier land in my inbox with regularity was a fairly welcome affair.
Just today, I found myself looking for, reading, and avidly re-reading this week's posting.
Then I stopped and marveled at how it had sneakily coalesced into a habitual action.
That is not to say that is a bad kind of sneaky. Some habits can be good (for the soul or otherwise.) It was just pretty amazing.
Now how many other people would stop and think about what they are doing and come to that conclusion, I don't know. More on that in the next post.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Real Life Microtransactions
I have been wanting to write about this for a while.
Recently we found ourselves in the Singapore Zoo and started marveling at the more obvious changes. The one thing I primarily noticed is the high cost of everything and what could be possibly perceived as rampant commercialisation or more meanly, nickel-and-diming.
The zoo ticket costs a certain amount, which is already priced pretty highly.
Next to the ticket counter are a bunch of restaurants with mildly overpriced food - though admittedly good-looking, temptingly tasty, overpriced food, which conceivably tourists and locals who are in a touristy mood may want to go eat for the "holiday" experience.
There are souvenir shops all over, a kind of Disneyland experience where you can spend more money buying plushies or other kitschy remembrances of your trip there. Also concession stands and snack outlets and so on placed at cunningly strategic locations (while waiting for a show to start in the amphitheatre, fer example) where you can load up on cool drinks to relieve the heat, popcorn, and other crunchy things. For a price, of course.
Furthermore, if you happen to have kids who don't want to walk - or if you yourself don't want to walk the full length of the zoo, you have options. There is the tram ride. For $5, you can have unlimited tram rides. Rent a baby stroller? $9.
You can also pay $15 for a "Tiny Xplorer" buggy/pushcart thingmajig in which your little ones sit and you get to haul them around pulling on a big handle like a horse hitched to a cart. (I know, I stared at the poster for a while wondering which parents would be foolish enough to pay money for the privilege of dragging their kids around instead of making them walk. I guess it beats carrying them as deadweight in your arms.)
If you're not attracted by the manual options, because they involve actual physical work, well, you can throw money at the problem to get it to go away. Choose the nice motorised scooter option at $25 or $35 (depending on the size, I assume.)
Wheelchairs are free. See how nice we are? Of course, Singaporean grandpeople being what they are, few of them would be caught dead (or alive) in a wheelchair, since the disability stigma is so strongly inculcated into their small brains. They would much rather go for the motorised scooter, thank you.
Speaking of other rides, there are elephants and pony carts and carousels and things! All for the price of a ticket, f'course. Disneyland style. Pay to enter the park. Queue up in a million lines to pay for a ride ticket. Queue up again to go for the ride. Rinse and repeat.
And when you're tired and want to unleash the kids on the playground, there is a nice KFC and Ben and Jerrys nearby and so on.
Wow.
The other thing I'm struggling with is a serious deadly attraction to the iWhatevers. It's been 3-4+ years of staunch resistance and holding out, but goddamn Apple is everywhere.
Something in their design has a terrible gravitic allure, similar to fads like World of Warcraft or Tamagotchi or Bubble Tea. The smoothness of the shiny touchscreen. The seeming ease by which you see other people navigate their iPhones. The tempting (if expensive) connectivity of a 3G Internet connection coupled with a display screen that does it justice.
And the millions of apps, which are in essence a whole bunch of iWhatever toys in a virtual store that can be bought... and then crisis of all crises, shown off to other people. Creating emotions such as envy and lust and pure geek "it must be mine"ness a la Igor from Dork Tower.
I had one of these close encounters the other day. A work colleague and I were waiting for our respective rides. In the interests of maintaining social interaction, small talk ensued. (Mostly they talked and I murmured appropriate expressions of feigned interest with some polite questions interspersed to encourage them to continue.)
Somehow the conversation boiled down to the colleague's iPhone. Which, they were naturally playing with, in the manner of all iWhatever junkies out there. Just as naturally, they started flipping through their millions of apps to proudly show off in a mainstream impressed fashion what newfangled wonder the shiny rectacular cuboid was capable of.
And that particular app was indeed pretty goshdarned cool in a pretty goshdarned "I wish it weren't so" fashion. It was a night sky thing. Using GPS, it pinpointed your location and displayed what the night sky would look like. As you rotated the iPhone, it picked up however it was tilted and moved the stars around to match.
At the time, it just seemed pretty darn impressive, though logically thinking about it, the amount of utility you'd get out of it is dubious - Singapore's sky being as overcast and light polluted as it is, and how often do you wonder where the constellations are anyway. (Now our org using it for education is another matter, of course.)
Caveat: this was a work colleague I liked, so I was in a pretty receptive mood. If it were someone obnoxious, no doubt the same behavior would have been perceived significantly differently.
And then the colleague mentioned in passing something that gave me pause, even if they didn't quite realise it. "Pretty cute, huh? I thought it was quite fun. Anyway, it didn't cost very much in the store, so what the heck." was the general sentiment, even if I didn't quite paraphrase that correctly.
A tiny little red blinking light went on in my head and went, hey look, MORE microtransactions.
This digital store thing is everywhere now. The PS3 in my house has a PS3 store. No doubt Microsoft Xbox360 has their own. Second Life does it. RPGnow/DriveThruRPG (and its spinoff variants of comics, books and wargames). Steam. Amazon. LOTRO. DDO. GW. More MMO acronyms. And of course, the Apple Store.
Even Singapore has a spin off on this model on our roads. ERP. Beep, goes the gantries. Beep, go the parking lot entries and exits.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's altogether bad. That would make me not a Luddite, but a freaking hypocrite, since I am pretty much a Steam and Amazon sellout. (And I throw hissy fits when Amazon says they cannot deliver digital content to me because of my geographical location.)
I'm just...rather amazed when I sit back and take it all in. Consumer habits are changing. No longer do you need to go to a brick-and-mortar retail location, browse among real physical shelves and choose your product, and pull out physical cash or a physical card representing digital (but real) money and take it home with you.
Now the store is with you as and when you need or want to browse through an entire catalog, choosing your product. And all it takes is the card number to transfer digital (but real) money to someone else, and make the product "yours" to utilize.
And alas, the bloody iPad is still quite shiny.
Despite all the supposed contenders that have just raced onto the market. *waffles around with great uncertainty*
Recently we found ourselves in the Singapore Zoo and started marveling at the more obvious changes. The one thing I primarily noticed is the high cost of everything and what could be possibly perceived as rampant commercialisation or more meanly, nickel-and-diming.
The zoo ticket costs a certain amount, which is already priced pretty highly.
Next to the ticket counter are a bunch of restaurants with mildly overpriced food - though admittedly good-looking, temptingly tasty, overpriced food, which conceivably tourists and locals who are in a touristy mood may want to go eat for the "holiday" experience.
There are souvenir shops all over, a kind of Disneyland experience where you can spend more money buying plushies or other kitschy remembrances of your trip there. Also concession stands and snack outlets and so on placed at cunningly strategic locations (while waiting for a show to start in the amphitheatre, fer example) where you can load up on cool drinks to relieve the heat, popcorn, and other crunchy things. For a price, of course.
Furthermore, if you happen to have kids who don't want to walk - or if you yourself don't want to walk the full length of the zoo, you have options. There is the tram ride. For $5, you can have unlimited tram rides. Rent a baby stroller? $9.
You can also pay $15 for a "Tiny Xplorer" buggy/pushcart thingmajig in which your little ones sit and you get to haul them around pulling on a big handle like a horse hitched to a cart. (I know, I stared at the poster for a while wondering which parents would be foolish enough to pay money for the privilege of dragging their kids around instead of making them walk. I guess it beats carrying them as deadweight in your arms.)
If you're not attracted by the manual options, because they involve actual physical work, well, you can throw money at the problem to get it to go away. Choose the nice motorised scooter option at $25 or $35 (depending on the size, I assume.)
Wheelchairs are free. See how nice we are? Of course, Singaporean grandpeople being what they are, few of them would be caught dead (or alive) in a wheelchair, since the disability stigma is so strongly inculcated into their small brains. They would much rather go for the motorised scooter, thank you.
Speaking of other rides, there are elephants and pony carts and carousels and things! All for the price of a ticket, f'course. Disneyland style. Pay to enter the park. Queue up in a million lines to pay for a ride ticket. Queue up again to go for the ride. Rinse and repeat.
And when you're tired and want to unleash the kids on the playground, there is a nice KFC and Ben and Jerrys nearby and so on.
Wow.
The other thing I'm struggling with is a serious deadly attraction to the iWhatevers. It's been 3-4+ years of staunch resistance and holding out, but goddamn Apple is everywhere.
Something in their design has a terrible gravitic allure, similar to fads like World of Warcraft or Tamagotchi or Bubble Tea. The smoothness of the shiny touchscreen. The seeming ease by which you see other people navigate their iPhones. The tempting (if expensive) connectivity of a 3G Internet connection coupled with a display screen that does it justice.
And the millions of apps, which are in essence a whole bunch of iWhatever toys in a virtual store that can be bought... and then crisis of all crises, shown off to other people. Creating emotions such as envy and lust and pure geek "it must be mine"ness a la Igor from Dork Tower.
I had one of these close encounters the other day. A work colleague and I were waiting for our respective rides. In the interests of maintaining social interaction, small talk ensued. (Mostly they talked and I murmured appropriate expressions of feigned interest with some polite questions interspersed to encourage them to continue.)
Somehow the conversation boiled down to the colleague's iPhone. Which, they were naturally playing with, in the manner of all iWhatever junkies out there. Just as naturally, they started flipping through their millions of apps to proudly show off in a mainstream impressed fashion what newfangled wonder the shiny rectacular cuboid was capable of.
And that particular app was indeed pretty goshdarned cool in a pretty goshdarned "I wish it weren't so" fashion. It was a night sky thing. Using GPS, it pinpointed your location and displayed what the night sky would look like. As you rotated the iPhone, it picked up however it was tilted and moved the stars around to match.
At the time, it just seemed pretty darn impressive, though logically thinking about it, the amount of utility you'd get out of it is dubious - Singapore's sky being as overcast and light polluted as it is, and how often do you wonder where the constellations are anyway. (Now our org using it for education is another matter, of course.)
Caveat: this was a work colleague I liked, so I was in a pretty receptive mood. If it were someone obnoxious, no doubt the same behavior would have been perceived significantly differently.
And then the colleague mentioned in passing something that gave me pause, even if they didn't quite realise it. "Pretty cute, huh? I thought it was quite fun. Anyway, it didn't cost very much in the store, so what the heck." was the general sentiment, even if I didn't quite paraphrase that correctly.
A tiny little red blinking light went on in my head and went, hey look, MORE microtransactions.
This digital store thing is everywhere now. The PS3 in my house has a PS3 store. No doubt Microsoft Xbox360 has their own. Second Life does it. RPGnow/DriveThruRPG (and its spinoff variants of comics, books and wargames). Steam. Amazon. LOTRO. DDO. GW. More MMO acronyms. And of course, the Apple Store.
Even Singapore has a spin off on this model on our roads. ERP. Beep, goes the gantries. Beep, go the parking lot entries and exits.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's altogether bad. That would make me not a Luddite, but a freaking hypocrite, since I am pretty much a Steam and Amazon sellout. (And I throw hissy fits when Amazon says they cannot deliver digital content to me because of my geographical location.)
I'm just...rather amazed when I sit back and take it all in. Consumer habits are changing. No longer do you need to go to a brick-and-mortar retail location, browse among real physical shelves and choose your product, and pull out physical cash or a physical card representing digital (but real) money and take it home with you.
Now the store is with you as and when you need or want to browse through an entire catalog, choosing your product. And all it takes is the card number to transfer digital (but real) money to someone else, and make the product "yours" to utilize.
And alas, the bloody iPad is still quite shiny.
Despite all the supposed contenders that have just raced onto the market. *waffles around with great uncertainty*
Saturday, October 23, 2010
All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go
Imagine if Arena.net released some text about the Hall of Monuments rewards on their website, containing a non-interactive list of items for which one might score some points. Akin to a Gamefaq style walkthrough. Something like:
Instead of the interactive and highly polished Hall of Monuments Reward Calculator that is ostensibly still a beta version.
Would we still see as many folks racing into Guild Wars in an attempt to score points? I seriously doubt it. Part of its glitter is to provide ample and visible feedback of "progress" towards a particular goal.
In retrospect, I'm darkly amused that so many gamers are working so hard for a future reward. Just think, none of us are getting any virtual shinies yet, we are in fact slaving and grinding away for an at-present nonexistent potential reward.
What HoM does seem to provide at-present is the ability to a) show off to the world what you've "achieved" in Guild Wars 1, and b) compare yourself to other people playing Guild Wars 1, thus validating one's sense of ego or raising one's prestige or what-have-you.
I am not immune to this either, having greeted the dawn of the calculator with a miserable 6 points. At least the heritage armor was mine. Or would be mine. (In the future, that is.)
Releasing my inner achiever to run amok for a time, I promptly made plans to snatch at any and all low-hanging fruit off the HoM tree.
The details of which are somewhat uninteresting, but suffice to say I took a romp through my miniature collection, unearthing unplayed characters back in Old Ascalon, worked my way through Factions on my Nightfall paragon to cap off a few almost-achieved campaign titles, and made myself figure out the process of upgrading hero armor - which was less intimidating than feared, certainly one random drop off a hero henchable challenge mission was far easier to swallow than trying to buy my own prestige armor set.
Now that nearly all the low-hanging fruit has now been plucked, I am sitting on the halfway point of 15 (assuming 30 being the final goal) with an ever increasing exponential curve ahead of me. This is roughly the point where I back out and shut down, except that Halloween is upon us.
I've always liked the decorations of GW's Halloween, though I only attended the complete Mad King Thorn appearance once or twice (my scarecrow hat says 2007). This year, I have discovered something moderately addicting. The Costume Brawl.
A random arena of 5 vs 5, with already preset, premade skill bars, and a bunch of control points to capture (thus taking some of the immediate focus away from annihilating each other).
The preset bars guarantee that there are no evil uber builds (though I've had one guy call me and a ritualist a noob for using our classes, because our skillbars are apparently crap), and they force a random team reset each game (finally implemented this year, thank god) to stop the guild teams syncing up with each other, or even random teams that were winning streaks (I got into one of those before the update and while it was fun for us, it certainly wasn't nice to the teams we opposed).
PvP like this makes me wish that I could actually find a guild in Guild Wars and try some real GvG PvP or even just team-based PvP. Alas, I will have to settle for random festival PvP and maybe, just maybe poke my head into random arena when I think my build is presentable enough.
- 1 rare miniature - 1 point
- 1 unique miniature - 1 point
- 10 miniatures - 1 point
- 20 miniatures - 1 point
- 30 miniature - 1 point
Instead of the interactive and highly polished Hall of Monuments Reward Calculator that is ostensibly still a beta version.
Would we still see as many folks racing into Guild Wars in an attempt to score points? I seriously doubt it. Part of its glitter is to provide ample and visible feedback of "progress" towards a particular goal.
In retrospect, I'm darkly amused that so many gamers are working so hard for a future reward. Just think, none of us are getting any virtual shinies yet, we are in fact slaving and grinding away for an at-present nonexistent potential reward.
What HoM does seem to provide at-present is the ability to a) show off to the world what you've "achieved" in Guild Wars 1, and b) compare yourself to other people playing Guild Wars 1, thus validating one's sense of ego or raising one's prestige or what-have-you.
I am not immune to this either, having greeted the dawn of the calculator with a miserable 6 points. At least the heritage armor was mine. Or would be mine. (In the future, that is.)
Releasing my inner achiever to run amok for a time, I promptly made plans to snatch at any and all low-hanging fruit off the HoM tree.
The details of which are somewhat uninteresting, but suffice to say I took a romp through my miniature collection, unearthing unplayed characters back in Old Ascalon, worked my way through Factions on my Nightfall paragon to cap off a few almost-achieved campaign titles, and made myself figure out the process of upgrading hero armor - which was less intimidating than feared, certainly one random drop off a hero henchable challenge mission was far easier to swallow than trying to buy my own prestige armor set.
Now that nearly all the low-hanging fruit has now been plucked, I am sitting on the halfway point of 15 (assuming 30 being the final goal) with an ever increasing exponential curve ahead of me. This is roughly the point where I back out and shut down, except that Halloween is upon us.
I've always liked the decorations of GW's Halloween, though I only attended the complete Mad King Thorn appearance once or twice (my scarecrow hat says 2007). This year, I have discovered something moderately addicting. The Costume Brawl.
A random arena of 5 vs 5, with already preset, premade skill bars, and a bunch of control points to capture (thus taking some of the immediate focus away from annihilating each other).
The preset bars guarantee that there are no evil uber builds (though I've had one guy call me and a ritualist a noob for using our classes, because our skillbars are apparently crap), and they force a random team reset each game (finally implemented this year, thank god) to stop the guild teams syncing up with each other, or even random teams that were winning streaks (I got into one of those before the update and while it was fun for us, it certainly wasn't nice to the teams we opposed).
PvP like this makes me wish that I could actually find a guild in Guild Wars and try some real GvG PvP or even just team-based PvP. Alas, I will have to settle for random festival PvP and maybe, just maybe poke my head into random arena when I think my build is presentable enough.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
A Promiscuous Industry
Having been reminded tonight of Christopher Bruce aka "Back Alley Brawler" and the Paragon Layoff "Saga", I got to doing some digging with my favorite tools, social networking sites + Google.
In this case, LinkedIn is the partner in crime of Google in dancing on the ethical line between public and private information.
Theoretically, all this information is available on a person's resume, should they choose to post it online - though I'm not sure that it would make a person comfortable to know that random Joes from half the globe away can follow them along like a celebrity on a reality TV show on their career paths... and then discuss it on blogs and forums, etc.
Wanna know the confirmed "death" toll of October 7, 2010 at Paragon Studios?
Christopher Bruce - Senior Animator/VFX
Paul Gunn - World Designer
Don Pham - Environment Artist
David Yoon - Dev QA
Michael Chock - Senior Software Engineer
Graham West - Senior Programmer (? - this one is a "maybe")
I can't trace the other missing three as yet. They may have been dead wood not worth speaking about, or they are very private individuals.
I managed to trace the above six by the slew of LinkedIn recommendations they have been writing about each other, plus a few other apparently-still-hired-by-Paragon-or-not-yet-updated-resume people. All dated somewhen between Oct 7-Oct 11, speaking in the past tense about how so-and-so was a pleasure to work with. Some fancy googling of keywords in their profiles, crosschecking with the LinkedIn profile for Paragon Studios and confirming that they've updated their resumes as no longer working at Paragon Studios nails them as the ones. We'll see if the resumes of the others change after some time.
I also did find out that people have been revolving in and out of Paragon Studios much earlier, with nary a sound or an announcement. Such as:
Carolina Tello - Concept Artist / Senior Concept Artist (August 2010)
Ken Morse - Art Director (June 2010)
Bruce Harlick - Lead Designer (January 2010)
In studying all the profiles of people working at Paragon Studios, one thing struck me. A ton of them work a couple years in a place, and bounce from famous studio to studio. There are quite a number of people who have traversed between Paragon Studios/NCsoft and LucasArts, the one coming after the other.
And that is the reason for my heavy use of quotation marks with regards to all the dramatic words earlier. Turnover happens. Folks seems to stay in one place 2-4 years on average, 5-6+ year stints are outliers.
Sometimes the folks whom you don't want to see leave the most decide that it's time to move on. Positive or negative push or pull can factor into that decision.
Sometimes they are laid off (with some kind of compensation) because the budget can no longer support it. (Personally, based on the rapidly plunging US dollar... I just googled it, omg, it's dropped to 1 usd = 1.29 sgd... their economy is in dire shape.)
And sometimes they suck (but you can't say that, so it's "we wish them all the best in their future endeavours" instead) or they got the wrong end of the politicking stick (leaving more and more crap in the company until it collapses).
But we'll never know unless the company does crash and burn, and I wouldn't wish that fate on any game company. *moment of silence for Realtime Worlds* Just certain game developers. *coughGarriottEmmertcough*
Back on topic though, I recall David "Zeb" Cook aka LordRecluse being around for City of Villains and then poofing without a sound or trace after it was launched. I'm sure there were, are, and would be other people revolving in and out. I don't think this is a new thing for Paragon Studios (or Cryptic when they were Cryptic) or NCsoft.
It just became news because there was some anonymous leak. MMORPG.com - the infamous tabloid of the MMO feed world - was crass enough to spin it as news. Then Eliot Lefebvre jumped on it as a news and CoH correspondent for Massively, and put it on a big central stomping ground for MMO players.
One more thing makes it news. Back Alley Brawler's celebrity status. It just so happens that the community is very fond of BaB because he was such a dedicated developer with a fantastic sense of humour, (RUN FASTER! - and yes, I was there, rawr) who wasn't afraid to spend time with the game's players and share his opinions over geeky topics like comics and other games. And yes, it is a loss to the closeness of the CoH community that we won't have his zany comments decorating the forums anymore.
Yet I can't help but think that a tiny team of 15 people would be bound to function quite differently from a company of 50-60 odd employees. It may be that there are tradeoffs to either situation.(And you have to ask, how did they get down to fifteen people? Surely layoffs must have happened then? Way more drastically than this one too.)
So yeah, turnover happens. The only constant is change. And there's no need to panic just yet.
In this case, LinkedIn is the partner in crime of Google in dancing on the ethical line between public and private information.
Theoretically, all this information is available on a person's resume, should they choose to post it online - though I'm not sure that it would make a person comfortable to know that random Joes from half the globe away can follow them along like a celebrity on a reality TV show on their career paths... and then discuss it on blogs and forums, etc.
Wanna know the confirmed "death" toll of October 7, 2010 at Paragon Studios?
Christopher Bruce - Senior Animator/VFX
Paul Gunn - World Designer
Don Pham - Environment Artist
David Yoon - Dev QA
Michael Chock - Senior Software Engineer
Graham West - Senior Programmer (? - this one is a "maybe")
I can't trace the other missing three as yet. They may have been dead wood not worth speaking about, or they are very private individuals.
I managed to trace the above six by the slew of LinkedIn recommendations they have been writing about each other, plus a few other apparently-still-hired-by-Paragon-or-not-yet-updated-resume people. All dated somewhen between Oct 7-Oct 11, speaking in the past tense about how so-and-so was a pleasure to work with. Some fancy googling of keywords in their profiles, crosschecking with the LinkedIn profile for Paragon Studios and confirming that they've updated their resumes as no longer working at Paragon Studios nails them as the ones. We'll see if the resumes of the others change after some time.
I also did find out that people have been revolving in and out of Paragon Studios much earlier, with nary a sound or an announcement. Such as:
Carolina Tello - Concept Artist / Senior Concept Artist (August 2010)
Ken Morse - Art Director (June 2010)
Bruce Harlick - Lead Designer (January 2010)
In studying all the profiles of people working at Paragon Studios, one thing struck me. A ton of them work a couple years in a place, and bounce from famous studio to studio. There are quite a number of people who have traversed between Paragon Studios/NCsoft and LucasArts, the one coming after the other.
And that is the reason for my heavy use of quotation marks with regards to all the dramatic words earlier. Turnover happens. Folks seems to stay in one place 2-4 years on average, 5-6+ year stints are outliers.
Sometimes the folks whom you don't want to see leave the most decide that it's time to move on. Positive or negative push or pull can factor into that decision.
Sometimes they are laid off (with some kind of compensation) because the budget can no longer support it. (Personally, based on the rapidly plunging US dollar... I just googled it, omg, it's dropped to 1 usd = 1.29 sgd... their economy is in dire shape.)
And sometimes they suck (but you can't say that, so it's "we wish them all the best in their future endeavours" instead) or they got the wrong end of the politicking stick (leaving more and more crap in the company until it collapses).
But we'll never know unless the company does crash and burn, and I wouldn't wish that fate on any game company. *moment of silence for Realtime Worlds* Just certain game developers. *coughGarriottEmmertcough*
Back on topic though, I recall David "Zeb" Cook aka LordRecluse being around for City of Villains and then poofing without a sound or trace after it was launched. I'm sure there were, are, and would be other people revolving in and out. I don't think this is a new thing for Paragon Studios (or Cryptic when they were Cryptic) or NCsoft.
It just became news because there was some anonymous leak. MMORPG.com - the infamous tabloid of the MMO feed world - was crass enough to spin it as news. Then Eliot Lefebvre jumped on it as a news and CoH correspondent for Massively, and put it on a big central stomping ground for MMO players.
One more thing makes it news. Back Alley Brawler's celebrity status. It just so happens that the community is very fond of BaB because he was such a dedicated developer with a fantastic sense of humour, (RUN FASTER! - and yes, I was there, rawr) who wasn't afraid to spend time with the game's players and share his opinions over geeky topics like comics and other games. And yes, it is a loss to the closeness of the CoH community that we won't have his zany comments decorating the forums anymore.
Yet I can't help but think that a tiny team of 15 people would be bound to function quite differently from a company of 50-60 odd employees. It may be that there are tradeoffs to either situation.(And you have to ask, how did they get down to fifteen people? Surely layoffs must have happened then? Way more drastically than this one too.)
So yeah, turnover happens. The only constant is change. And there's no need to panic just yet.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Itemization
i·tem·ize (
t
-mz
)
t-mz)v. i·tem·ized, i·tem·iz·ing, i·tem·iz·es
v.tr.
1. To place or include on a list of items: itemized her expenses on the proper form.
2. To list the items of: itemized the expense account.
v.intr.
To list deductions from taxable income on a tax return: This benefit is available only to taxpayers who itemize.
Just like the word "mob" has come to mean something completely different in computer gaming than in standard English (one thing vs many), the word "itemization" has developed into something that doesn't jive with normal English usage.
It drives me pretty much bonkers trying to work out the computer game meaning of "itemization," unlike the word "mob," possibly because I run into "mob"(s) a lot more often and understand the logical origin of the term (aka the MUD mobile object.)
Itemization, on the other hand, is weird.
In blogs and forums, the word is often used as a complaint. As in PLEASE FIX itemization NAO. Or the Itemization Sucks Balls.
It is used to refer to a very specific issue, in which the arrangement of the attributes or stats on a particular item is not consistent with an expectation of the item as a loot reward. Commonly, the expectation demands increasingly superlative, specific class-appropriate attributes in order for RPG-like character improvement and perceived worth to kick in.
This assumption annoys me to hell and back.
Take this paragraph from a Warcry Network article suggesting reasons why players should return to Age of Conan:
Probably the single biggest change suggested and championed by players has been itemization. The game is now more item-centric with everything receiving improvement along with revamping item stats. Before redesign, items might have a 20-30% effect. Now, for example, items carry a 50-60% effect. Armor and weapons can carry protections against magic or melee, rating system enhancements, magical immunities or resists and more.
Well. You've just made Age of Conan into WoW or Diablo, I guess. Excusing me the lapse into hysterical hyperbole - I really don't think AoC is at all like the above two Blizzard games, itemized or not, and who's to say that copying a formula that players are accustomed to will not attract a larger audience who like that sort of item-focused game? - I think the toothgrinding nature of the word is that this common usage blinds people to other sorts of non-linearly exponential ways to create items (and items as rewards.)
On the other hand, there can be a broader definition of itemization with reference to a computer game. This guy from Gamasutra takes a stab at defining it as "the process of defining what an item does." I disagree with some of the other blanket statements he posits on his blog, such as the purpose of items, but this definition is agreeable enough to me.
Here's another guy who viciously attacks World of Warcraft as having borked itemization, a stance that I would be inclined to agree with, and would conversely cause perhaps 12 million other people to want to make voodoo dolls of both of us because the itemization suits their /lowbrow/ desires just fine. (I slipped the highlighted word in there because I can be bitchier and more subjective on my own personal blog.)
I've been playing two rather different-from-standard-MMO games lately.
Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers hails from a long proud generation of games based squarely on the Magic style of gameplay. This fellow gives us a brief look at the difference, standard MMO itemization is just not -interesting- to him. Whole articles that I haven't read in detail yet exist on the Wizards website discussing the design and philosophy of different Magic cards to appeal to different types of Magic players.
The core of Magic, of course, is what Guild Wars got in terms of their itemization of skills. Or would that be skillization, to describe assigning attributes and stats to skills. Fairness is mostly fixed after the fact when things become too "imba" and counter-counter strategies have not managed to develop. Skill synergies are an important part of the game of skill selection. In doing so, they turned skills into collectable pieces of loot, or items, almost. GW equipment by contrast is quite standard at max-level, only offering visual customization options for prestige, and limited stat customization by picking the few kinds of bonus you like and applying inscriptions and prefixes and suffixes in the forms of hafts and hilts.
Sol Survivor meanwhile is a Tower Defence type of game, a little slicker in style than Defense Grid: The Awakening (but both are very good if you like the genre.) Itemization there is again handled a lot differently than standard MMO style. You get to pick different heroes, who can place different sorts of towers. The towers can be ranked up to 3 levels of increasing power.
(I suppose you could argue that the heroes are classes, who then have a different selection of skills to fire off. Except these skills stick around, are positioned in one place and continually fire. Which give them more an "item" quality from their persistence. Except there's no inventory...
...This leads to one of those chicken and egg or semantic questions, I'm guessing. If there is no inventory to sort objects around in, can something be considered an item?
Consider games like Minecraft or other FPSes... do they have items? You may carry a gun, but is it an item? TF2 inarguably has items. And an inventory. And an item store.)
And yet more food for thought. Defence of the Ancients (DOTA) and League of Legends (LOL) games have itemization. So says Google. Guessing from context, itemization in those games means the proper selection (and thus, equipping) of items with appropriate attributes for maximum competitive efficiency.
However did this infuriating word evolve so many meanings and forms?
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Saving Stone
This one's much better than the first.
Slicker, with less repeats that make me think someone was trying to cheat his way past Nanowrimo's 50,000 word limit, and more internal world consistency. Free and downloadable, no excuse not to read it.
Not to mention, laugh out loud funny.
Slicker, with less repeats that make me think someone was trying to cheat his way past Nanowrimo's 50,000 word limit, and more internal world consistency. Free and downloadable, no excuse not to read it.
Not to mention, laugh out loud funny.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Game Night with The Gods
Six Gods sit down to spend an evening roleplaying. Really badly.
I picked this up in pdf form from RPGNow while shopping for Dragon Warriors stuff, before realizing that it's available for free on the EN Worlds forums page.
Oh well. It's a much easier read in black text on white background anyway, and it is quite funny.
(It has also occurred to me that if I buy digital pdfs for under $5-7usd, it is feeding my reading habits far more economically than buying second-hand books from SAN bookshop for $15-17 sgd. The only problem is I can't cart digital novels around to read while eating or in the loo, hem.)
I picked this up in pdf form from RPGNow while shopping for Dragon Warriors stuff, before realizing that it's available for free on the EN Worlds forums page.
Oh well. It's a much easier read in black text on white background anyway, and it is quite funny.
(It has also occurred to me that if I buy digital pdfs for under $5-7usd, it is feeding my reading habits far more economically than buying second-hand books from SAN bookshop for $15-17 sgd. The only problem is I can't cart digital novels around to read while eating or in the loo, hem.)
Saturday, October 09, 2010
A Western Hikikomori's Tale
On The First Day
Being a diary and record of the teachings of Wilford Sinner, reborn as Christ Our Saviour, as spoken unto him by the Lord God Himself.
In the beginning, there was the crucifix. I close my eyes and I can see the three crosses upon the hill of Golgotha, a beatific vision granted unto me by the Lord God Himself. He tells me that I will eventually die upon the centre one, and in the same breath, I am asked not to lose faith, for death is transient and the Kingdom of Heaven awaits for my immortal soul.
Alas, I am weak, I am unworthy, I feel the Devil's fear himself shake me like a wolf shakes its prey at the prospect of my inevitable fate. I close my eyes, I speak the Lord's Prayer, but deep in the valley of the shadow of death, *RAP RAP* there is a dreadful knock upon my door.
I open my eyes and my front door buzzer sounds once more. What kind of fiend would seek to interrupt my communion with the Exalted One? Surely a temptation by the Devil himself. Slowly, unsteadily, but inexorable, my hand creeps toward the door handle. Temptations are inescapable. Oh why will the buzzer not stop ringing? I should get it over with.
Caroline stands upon the doorsteps. Nay, it is not her, I must remember, it is a succubus sent by Satan who seeks to distract me from God's work. The deceiver asks me to leave the house, to travel to the market with her and shop. "Whore!" I scream, "Thing of Satan, money is the root of all evil, you shall not move me!"
And the creature looks at me with wide eyes, mouth flaring apart in some hideous parody of sexual excitement. No, it is intolerable! I make the sign of the cross and recite the Rite of Exorcism, each Latin word flows through my limbs charging me with power. Before I get to the second sentence, the thing wearing Caroline's guise has fled. Never to return, now that I have passed this trial, I hope. I sprinkle some holy water against the door frame just to be safe.
As I straighten from my task, the frame blurs out of vision, and I see the beams and crossbars of a gallows. I know what God is telling me. I cannot escape my fate. Obediently, I noose myself. Abraham was told to sacrifice his son in the land of Moriah and he squirmed not nor denied the Lord his due. It was an angel who saved the boy, and it was an angel who loosed the knot and kicked me gasping to the floor, having learnt a lesson carved by rope into flesh.
Do not fight Him. And He was not done with me yet.
On the Second Day
As the day dawned, I looked out the window and it all made sense. There were three trees in my front yard arranged at the exact distances from each other as the crosses on the hill. There was spare lumber to be had in the woods of my back yard.
I got out the ladder and the chainsaw and set to work. All the branches had to come down. Deep in concentration, it was past noon and I'd trimmed off the centre tree into a majestic post and was halfway through working on its right neighbor.
"Whatcha doing there, neighbor?" says a voice. It is John, one of them what lives further down the street, he's a reporter, or writes for the local paper, or something like that.
I tell him of the vision God sent me. That this world is filled with evil and a thousand injustices. It could do with a reminder of the day Jesus died for our sins, and that's why these trees had to go and the crosses built in their place.
He cocks his head and he chuckles. "Huh. Alright, neighbor, if you say so. Mind if I take a picture?"
Eh? He wants a picture of me? Up on the ladder by the unfinished crosses? He's going to write about me in the papers, about my appointed task... I hesitate. And then it hits me that he is MY prophet, sent to me by He who is always watching over us. Why shouldn't he spread the word?
So John gets his photo and goes on his way. It is sunset when I finish, the three posts silhouetted against the orange sky. Tomorrow, the crossbars. I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling until sleep takes me.
On the Third Day
I read about myself in the papers that morning. A later day prophet cum artist, John calls me, making a statement to the world. That's right. So correct. He missed making the link that I was the Second Coming of Jesus, and I was too modest to tell him outright, but that's okay, humility is a virtue. The world will figure it out. There is time.
The rest of the day passes uneventfully. I head into the forest to find the other part of the crosses, waiting for the vision to blink across my mind when I see the proper tree. I mark each one. I forgot the chainsaw, so I make a second trip to fell them. Cutting all the branches off them is methodical work. The forest' leaves rustle in chorus. I hum a hymn. The chainsaw sings its paen. All is right with the world, all is as it should be.
On the Fourth Day
It is difficult going. I have not the strength to pull the fallen logs, stripped as they are, back to the yard entirely. It is a failing. I am unworthy. Did Christ not bear the weight of the tree that was to slay him throughout the city of Jerusalem? Through mighty effort, I drag them within sight of the house, laying them together before collapsing into a faint.
When I wake, it is nearly evening. I drive myself in a frenzy to continue through the night, but unused muscles scream from the pain, and I collapse twitching again.
A rage overtakes me. I scream. I tear branches off the saplings and bushes, breaking off the excess leaves and twigs, and by the time I stagger into my front yard where the three posts await, the sky is the colour of blood and a pile of long sticks in my hand, a fresh made birch.
I howl invective and prayer into the night, cursing the Devil and begging the Lord for His Forgiveness, laying strokes across my back. Dimly, I am aware that John is watching over the fence, I hear the click of a shutter, but he says nothing to me and I say nothing to him, for nothing should break the trance of flagellation.
Gradually, through the red haze, I am aware of a warm rush through my body, my back, my limbs. The pain subsides. God has answered, and numbed the hurt. He still has plans for me. Blood cradles me. I fall to the ground, helpless as a newborn babe, and I know that I am loved.
On the Fifth Day
The slap of the newspaper against my front stoop rouses me from my stupor. The newspaper boy watches me with wide eyes, then runs away the moment I sit fully upright. Some pages in, I see myself staring back at me, a wild prophet of the ancient times. It is gratifying. Some pundits in the forums express mis-aimed concern regarding the creation of the crosses, and others retort that it is not their business to pry into a man's private affairs. They are all mistaken, all labouring under their own misapprehensions. Noah was ridiculed even as he constructed his ark.
With renewed vigour, painful twinges in my limbs telling me I am still alive, I tackle my own appointed task. Time flies, the logs arrive where they should be, they are raised, the last of the construction is finished. And on the evening of the fifth day, I look at the vision of the three crosses upon Golgotha, recreated in reality, and it was good.
On the Sixth Day
There are angels standing beside the crosses. I saw them when I woke. My work is done. I await a sign from God. I wander about the house. The yard. The angels say nothing. There is blood everywhere. Even upon this book wherein I pen my thoughts. The silence is maddening. Why won't He speak to me? This is a test. I know it is a test. Not even the Devil says a word. I could fight if he showed up. But nothing. empty. void. This scares me. What do I do now?
Later: Oh, glory is the Lord! Blessed is His Name. Stigmata have appeared. In the very places where Jesus suffered His wounds. I ran about the front yard showing the world this wonder. No one except John came by. He asked if I faked them. What a heathen question. I told him stiffly that I have no recollection of inflicting them. They are miraculous in origin.
The angels by the cross are still watching.
On the Seventh Day
This is it. The angels beckon. A halo glows around THE cross this morning. I can scarcely contain my glee.
Goodbye, cruel world.
Lol. So what was that all about?
In one of my more lucid nostalgia fits, I typed in "solo roleplaying" into Google and managed to find a wealth of resources. I think this new pasttime has started to take off lately, ever since the Mythic GM emulator came onto the scene and busy folk who loved tabletop roleplaying but couldn't find the time or people with time to join them jumped onto it like a thirsty man snatches at a drink of water.
Besides finding out that a ton of Dave Morris' and Oliver Johnson's stuff (my heroes who wrote the Blood Sword gamebook series and Legend, the fantastic world it was set in) has now made its way to digital download on RPGnow... I will probably give them money at some point, I loved that world... I found Dave Morris' blog, I found a bunch of groups dedicated to the books they wrote - Fabled Lands is set in Legend, I've never heard of the series until now, only Dragon Warriors and Blood Sword.
I got to bittorrenting the old Home of the Underdogs Gamebook archive too, since I can't remember if I downloaded anything more than Blood Sword 5 when HoTU was still up. (Now that was a mythical quest come to an end. I searched for the greater part of 15 years or so, in every secondhand or junk bookstore, Amazon and friends, in an attempt to locate that. Ironically, I still haven't read it fully nor played it seriously. I was just so excited to finally hold the Holy Grail in my hands, virtually speaking.)
And somewhere along the hyperlinks, I stumbled into the lists of BoardGameGeeks which contained a whole bunch of solitaire games, mostly print-and-play ones, and some RPGs. (I had always laboured under the misapprehension that the site was about BOARD GAMES, those tabletop space-taking things with cards or dice and wooden tokens and flat pieces of cardboard.)
One of the 24 hour RPGs (itself a spin-off from Nanowrimo) on that list was a solo RPG called Hikikomori.
It more or less fit the bill with what I was looking for. Games which involved writing, so I could put blog posts up about it, and a whole bunch of random dice rolling to create surprises for myself. And short. Short enough to stop thinking about maybe starting to play an RPG and actually buckle down and do it.
So there you go. Rolled up a random name that piqued my interest. A slightly cleaned up battle report" is included below. It involves assigning attributes a dice pool, and a whole bunch of contested actions.
Name: Wilford Sinner
Starting Hope: 19 (3d10)
Starting Traits:
1) Suicidal Thoughts: 28 (3d10)
2) Coaxing Rescuer: 22 (3d10)
3) Messianic Delusion: 20 (4d10)
Day 1
Day 2
Hope: 2d10
1) Messianic Delusion 6d10 - 40
2) Suicidal Thoughts: 3d10 - 13
Day 3
Hope 2d10
1) MD 8d10 - 34
2) ST 3d10 - 7
Day 4
Hope 2d10
1) MD 9d10 - 54
2) ST 3d10 - 10
Day 5
Hope 2d10
1) MD 10d10
2) ST 3d10
Hope 8 vs MD 42, ditto, MD 11d10
Do nothing, nothing happens
Hope 11 vs ST 18, suicide attempt, hope roll 11, means to kill yourself ready but don't actually do it
cheer up, hope 8, ST 11, blah blah
Day 6
Hope 2d10
1) MD 11d10
2) ST 3d10
Hope 15 vs MD 65, ditto, MD 12d10
Do nothing, nothing happens
Hope 6 vs ST 16, suicide attempt, hope roll 9, hurt yourself but don't actually die
cheer up, hope 20 vs ST 23, blah blah
(Comment: Day 5 and 6 boiled down to the same thing. The Messianic Delusion just kept on expanding out of control. There wasn't much to do but do nothing in the hope of gaining some other interesting Trait. I hadn't lost that much Hope stat, so it kept contesting with Suicidal Thoughts causing either some or no suicide attempt. Hope was still strong, so on a suicide attempt, never quite followed through kept resulting, and I was wondering if I'd make it past the seven days. Then kept trying to cheer up and gain more hope.)
Day 7
Hope 2d10
1) MD 12d10
2) ST 3d10
we know MD wins by now, 13d10
Do nothing, nothing happens
Hope 14, ST 15, suicide attempt, hope roll 4, go through it and the game is over, wheee
(Comment: Go figure. On the mythical seventh day, past which I would have survived to roll the concluding End Game roll, the guy finally succeeds in his suicide attempt. Oh well.)
Then there was nothing left but to type out the diary entries like I was supposed to, and try and make sense of the rolls. The last name of Sinner got me thinking religious, the Messianic Delusion solidified the hunch that this guy was a religious nutjob, and stuff developed from there.
Haha. I was quite surprised how much damn Christianity references I'd picked up over time, just off the top of my head. If there are any erratas, I will blame it on Wilford being in the grips of his own delusion anyway!
Being a diary and record of the teachings of Wilford Sinner, reborn as Christ Our Saviour, as spoken unto him by the Lord God Himself.
In the beginning, there was the crucifix. I close my eyes and I can see the three crosses upon the hill of Golgotha, a beatific vision granted unto me by the Lord God Himself. He tells me that I will eventually die upon the centre one, and in the same breath, I am asked not to lose faith, for death is transient and the Kingdom of Heaven awaits for my immortal soul.
Alas, I am weak, I am unworthy, I feel the Devil's fear himself shake me like a wolf shakes its prey at the prospect of my inevitable fate. I close my eyes, I speak the Lord's Prayer, but deep in the valley of the shadow of death, *RAP RAP* there is a dreadful knock upon my door.
I open my eyes and my front door buzzer sounds once more. What kind of fiend would seek to interrupt my communion with the Exalted One? Surely a temptation by the Devil himself. Slowly, unsteadily, but inexorable, my hand creeps toward the door handle. Temptations are inescapable. Oh why will the buzzer not stop ringing? I should get it over with.
Caroline stands upon the doorsteps. Nay, it is not her, I must remember, it is a succubus sent by Satan who seeks to distract me from God's work. The deceiver asks me to leave the house, to travel to the market with her and shop. "Whore!" I scream, "Thing of Satan, money is the root of all evil, you shall not move me!"
And the creature looks at me with wide eyes, mouth flaring apart in some hideous parody of sexual excitement. No, it is intolerable! I make the sign of the cross and recite the Rite of Exorcism, each Latin word flows through my limbs charging me with power. Before I get to the second sentence, the thing wearing Caroline's guise has fled. Never to return, now that I have passed this trial, I hope. I sprinkle some holy water against the door frame just to be safe.
As I straighten from my task, the frame blurs out of vision, and I see the beams and crossbars of a gallows. I know what God is telling me. I cannot escape my fate. Obediently, I noose myself. Abraham was told to sacrifice his son in the land of Moriah and he squirmed not nor denied the Lord his due. It was an angel who saved the boy, and it was an angel who loosed the knot and kicked me gasping to the floor, having learnt a lesson carved by rope into flesh.
Do not fight Him. And He was not done with me yet.
On the Second Day
As the day dawned, I looked out the window and it all made sense. There were three trees in my front yard arranged at the exact distances from each other as the crosses on the hill. There was spare lumber to be had in the woods of my back yard.
I got out the ladder and the chainsaw and set to work. All the branches had to come down. Deep in concentration, it was past noon and I'd trimmed off the centre tree into a majestic post and was halfway through working on its right neighbor.
"Whatcha doing there, neighbor?" says a voice. It is John, one of them what lives further down the street, he's a reporter, or writes for the local paper, or something like that.
I tell him of the vision God sent me. That this world is filled with evil and a thousand injustices. It could do with a reminder of the day Jesus died for our sins, and that's why these trees had to go and the crosses built in their place.
He cocks his head and he chuckles. "Huh. Alright, neighbor, if you say so. Mind if I take a picture?"
Eh? He wants a picture of me? Up on the ladder by the unfinished crosses? He's going to write about me in the papers, about my appointed task... I hesitate. And then it hits me that he is MY prophet, sent to me by He who is always watching over us. Why shouldn't he spread the word?
So John gets his photo and goes on his way. It is sunset when I finish, the three posts silhouetted against the orange sky. Tomorrow, the crossbars. I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling until sleep takes me.
On the Third Day
I read about myself in the papers that morning. A later day prophet cum artist, John calls me, making a statement to the world. That's right. So correct. He missed making the link that I was the Second Coming of Jesus, and I was too modest to tell him outright, but that's okay, humility is a virtue. The world will figure it out. There is time.
The rest of the day passes uneventfully. I head into the forest to find the other part of the crosses, waiting for the vision to blink across my mind when I see the proper tree. I mark each one. I forgot the chainsaw, so I make a second trip to fell them. Cutting all the branches off them is methodical work. The forest' leaves rustle in chorus. I hum a hymn. The chainsaw sings its paen. All is right with the world, all is as it should be.
On the Fourth Day
It is difficult going. I have not the strength to pull the fallen logs, stripped as they are, back to the yard entirely. It is a failing. I am unworthy. Did Christ not bear the weight of the tree that was to slay him throughout the city of Jerusalem? Through mighty effort, I drag them within sight of the house, laying them together before collapsing into a faint.
When I wake, it is nearly evening. I drive myself in a frenzy to continue through the night, but unused muscles scream from the pain, and I collapse twitching again.
A rage overtakes me. I scream. I tear branches off the saplings and bushes, breaking off the excess leaves and twigs, and by the time I stagger into my front yard where the three posts await, the sky is the colour of blood and a pile of long sticks in my hand, a fresh made birch.
I howl invective and prayer into the night, cursing the Devil and begging the Lord for His Forgiveness, laying strokes across my back. Dimly, I am aware that John is watching over the fence, I hear the click of a shutter, but he says nothing to me and I say nothing to him, for nothing should break the trance of flagellation.
Gradually, through the red haze, I am aware of a warm rush through my body, my back, my limbs. The pain subsides. God has answered, and numbed the hurt. He still has plans for me. Blood cradles me. I fall to the ground, helpless as a newborn babe, and I know that I am loved.
On the Fifth Day
The slap of the newspaper against my front stoop rouses me from my stupor. The newspaper boy watches me with wide eyes, then runs away the moment I sit fully upright. Some pages in, I see myself staring back at me, a wild prophet of the ancient times. It is gratifying. Some pundits in the forums express mis-aimed concern regarding the creation of the crosses, and others retort that it is not their business to pry into a man's private affairs. They are all mistaken, all labouring under their own misapprehensions. Noah was ridiculed even as he constructed his ark.
With renewed vigour, painful twinges in my limbs telling me I am still alive, I tackle my own appointed task. Time flies, the logs arrive where they should be, they are raised, the last of the construction is finished. And on the evening of the fifth day, I look at the vision of the three crosses upon Golgotha, recreated in reality, and it was good.
On the Sixth Day
There are angels standing beside the crosses. I saw them when I woke. My work is done. I await a sign from God. I wander about the house. The yard. The angels say nothing. There is blood everywhere. Even upon this book wherein I pen my thoughts. The silence is maddening. Why won't He speak to me? This is a test. I know it is a test. Not even the Devil says a word. I could fight if he showed up. But nothing. empty. void. This scares me. What do I do now?
Later: Oh, glory is the Lord! Blessed is His Name. Stigmata have appeared. In the very places where Jesus suffered His wounds. I ran about the front yard showing the world this wonder. No one except John came by. He asked if I faked them. What a heathen question. I told him stiffly that I have no recollection of inflicting them. They are miraculous in origin.
The angels by the cross are still watching.
On the Seventh Day
This is it. The angels beckon. A halo glows around THE cross this morning. I can scarcely contain my glee.
Goodbye, cruel world.
Lol. So what was that all about?
In one of my more lucid nostalgia fits, I typed in "solo roleplaying" into Google and managed to find a wealth of resources. I think this new pasttime has started to take off lately, ever since the Mythic GM emulator came onto the scene and busy folk who loved tabletop roleplaying but couldn't find the time or people with time to join them jumped onto it like a thirsty man snatches at a drink of water.
Besides finding out that a ton of Dave Morris' and Oliver Johnson's stuff (my heroes who wrote the Blood Sword gamebook series and Legend, the fantastic world it was set in) has now made its way to digital download on RPGnow... I will probably give them money at some point, I loved that world... I found Dave Morris' blog, I found a bunch of groups dedicated to the books they wrote - Fabled Lands is set in Legend, I've never heard of the series until now, only Dragon Warriors and Blood Sword.
I got to bittorrenting the old Home of the Underdogs Gamebook archive too, since I can't remember if I downloaded anything more than Blood Sword 5 when HoTU was still up. (Now that was a mythical quest come to an end. I searched for the greater part of 15 years or so, in every secondhand or junk bookstore, Amazon and friends, in an attempt to locate that. Ironically, I still haven't read it fully nor played it seriously. I was just so excited to finally hold the Holy Grail in my hands, virtually speaking.)
And somewhere along the hyperlinks, I stumbled into the lists of BoardGameGeeks which contained a whole bunch of solitaire games, mostly print-and-play ones, and some RPGs. (I had always laboured under the misapprehension that the site was about BOARD GAMES, those tabletop space-taking things with cards or dice and wooden tokens and flat pieces of cardboard.)
One of the 24 hour RPGs (itself a spin-off from Nanowrimo) on that list was a solo RPG called Hikikomori.
It more or less fit the bill with what I was looking for. Games which involved writing, so I could put blog posts up about it, and a whole bunch of random dice rolling to create surprises for myself. And short. Short enough to stop thinking about maybe starting to play an RPG and actually buckle down and do it.
So there you go. Rolled up a random name that piqued my interest. A slightly cleaned up battle report" is included below. It involves assigning attributes a dice pool, and a whole bunch of contested actions.
Name: Wilford Sinner
Starting Hope: 19 (3d10)
Starting Traits:
1) Suicidal Thoughts: 28 (3d10)
2) Coaxing Rescuer: 22 (3d10)
3) Messianic Delusion: 20 (4d10)
Day 1
- Write down possible method of suicide
- Trait Action - Suicide Attempt: ST 4 vs Hope 10.
- Player Action - Cheer up: ST 20 vs Hope 9.
- Trait Action - Rescuer: Hope 3 + Rescuer 12 = 15
- Player Action - Scare Away: MD 25 vs Rescuer 10
- Trait Action - Messianic Delusion: Hope 10 vs MD 32
- Player Action - Suicide Attempt: Hope 6 (Comment: That was me trying to end it quickly.)
Day 2
Hope: 2d10
1) Messianic Delusion 6d10 - 40
2) Suicidal Thoughts: 3d10 - 13
- Trait Action - Messianic Delusion: Hope 6 vs MD 36
- Player Action - Attempt to Overcome Delusion: Hope 15 vs MD 28,
- Trait Action - Suicide Attempt: Hope 10 vs ST 19, suicide attempt
- Player Action - Go outside. Insufficient hope to make it outside.
- Player Action - Do nothing, nothing happens.
Day 3
Hope 2d10
1) MD 8d10 - 34
2) ST 3d10 - 7
- Trait Action - Messianic Delusion: Hope 14 vs MD 49
- Player Action - Do nothing, nothing happens. (Comment: I was too freaked out, the MD dice pool was so strong, there was pretty much no way to fight the delusion any more.)
- Trait Action - Suicidal Thoughts: Hope 16 vs ST 14
- Player Action - Cheer Up: Hope 9 vs ST 16
- Player Action - Waste time: Hope 16
Day 4
Hope 2d10
1) MD 9d10 - 54
2) ST 3d10 - 10
- Trait Action: MD: Hope 12 vs MD 57, ditto, MD 10d10. (Comment: Using short form, the Messianic Delusion is just runaway predictable by now.)
- Trait Action: Suicidal Thoughts: Hope 10 vs ST 18
- Player Action: Suicide Attempt.
- Player Action: Cheer up, 10 and 17.
Day 5
Hope 2d10
1) MD 10d10
2) ST 3d10
Hope 8 vs MD 42, ditto, MD 11d10
Do nothing, nothing happens
Hope 11 vs ST 18, suicide attempt, hope roll 11, means to kill yourself ready but don't actually do it
cheer up, hope 8, ST 11, blah blah
Day 6
Hope 2d10
1) MD 11d10
2) ST 3d10
Hope 15 vs MD 65, ditto, MD 12d10
Do nothing, nothing happens
Hope 6 vs ST 16, suicide attempt, hope roll 9, hurt yourself but don't actually die
cheer up, hope 20 vs ST 23, blah blah
(Comment: Day 5 and 6 boiled down to the same thing. The Messianic Delusion just kept on expanding out of control. There wasn't much to do but do nothing in the hope of gaining some other interesting Trait. I hadn't lost that much Hope stat, so it kept contesting with Suicidal Thoughts causing either some or no suicide attempt. Hope was still strong, so on a suicide attempt, never quite followed through kept resulting, and I was wondering if I'd make it past the seven days. Then kept trying to cheer up and gain more hope.)
Day 7
Hope 2d10
1) MD 12d10
2) ST 3d10
we know MD wins by now, 13d10
Do nothing, nothing happens
Hope 14, ST 15, suicide attempt, hope roll 4, go through it and the game is over, wheee
(Comment: Go figure. On the mythical seventh day, past which I would have survived to roll the concluding End Game roll, the guy finally succeeds in his suicide attempt. Oh well.)
Then there was nothing left but to type out the diary entries like I was supposed to, and try and make sense of the rolls. The last name of Sinner got me thinking religious, the Messianic Delusion solidified the hunch that this guy was a religious nutjob, and stuff developed from there.
Haha. I was quite surprised how much damn Christianity references I'd picked up over time, just off the top of my head. If there are any erratas, I will blame it on Wilford being in the grips of his own delusion anyway!
Thursday, October 07, 2010
A Roundabout Praise of Free-2-Play
So what have I been up to lately?
Not MMO'ing.
Seems to be some kind of lull before the coming storm in the blogosphere. Cataclysm release date is set for Dec 7, quite a while away, and truth be told, I can't get up any excitement for it. Warcraft lore still leaves me cold. There is a huge discussion over why WoW vets are seemingly so intolerant of the "lesser-abled," be they n00b or newb. And I can't bring myself to get roflstomped while reading up tomes of six-year-old website info in an attempt to learn and catch up and bridge the gap - far better not to play the game - which is a personal outlook or character flaw which also applies to participate in FFA PvP games in which the vets have a massive leg up on the newbies. My ego is not so cement-strong as to expose it like that over and over in what-was-meant-to-be-a-game.
If I am ever bored enough, I can buy another WoW timecard and mess around for 2 months. It's about $50 sgd though, the price of a singleplayer game. I'm not sure I can keep the focus going for 60 days.
(Lately, I have come to hate the monthly subscription model. It sets a clock going in the back of your head asking you to keep evaluating if it's worth it.)
This is also the same problem I'm having with ATITD. I'm actually still paying for 3 characters, but barely logging on. Truth be told, I could give up the original shard, except I'm not sure I want to cut off all ties with my friends/acquaintances there. The other 2 characters are on Bastet, and while nothing ever happens in Bastet, I kind of like it being there.
And maybe I might want to start again a month or two later. I don't mind one or two months of lying fallow and paying for the priviledge of not starting from scratch (aka maintaining the sub so I don't lose my stuff). It's just that I can't predict when I will get renewed interest in the game. And the sub keeps asking, oi, wanna come back now, wanna play this now, like an irritating itch. Taking a complete break, it's not.
On the other hand, I have games like Lord of the Rings Online and Global Agenda just sitting in my back pocket. It's a one-time deal. Paid for. Done. Log in, play it whenever. We may come out with an expansion you'll have to pay for now and again, but you decide then whether you're still interested in our game to pay for it then.
This mechanism is also what drives Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers, which I've been playing for a good 50% of my free gaming time lately. Short card bouts, relaxing and still a challenge at the same time, with a sense of progression as you win games and unlock new cards. And it's fun to learn an entirely new game system.
The rest of the time has been spent experimenting with other games.
I tried the Medal of Honor Open Beta. The graphics are spectacular. The sound is nice. The gameplay is shit. The lethality factor is very high, a bullet or two puts you on the ground - sort of a nod to the realism of its setting. Unfortunately, two other factors come into play. Cover is scarce, or rather, there are still many open firing lanes on the map I played. All the models are light-colored and realistic in camo, so it's really difficult to identify friend from foe from the snowed-in scenery. The most effective class appears to be the sniper. You can zoom from a distance further away than the other two classes and take potshots while still being in 50%-75% cover yourself. And the way they've depicted the sniper's battle rifle is crazy powerful (if realistic). Most every other sniping game brings your scope down after a shot as you reload. Your scope stays up in this one, and you have 13 bullets before you need to reload. 1-3 of which will kill a person depending on how good or crap your aim is. My aim sucks and I could still kill people by just aligning the crosshairs and pumping out 3-4 bullets.
This results in a whole bunch of people huddled behind rocks, peeking out every so often to take potshots at other people who exposed themselves out of cover. Mostly, these are the people who run out because a) there is ostensibly an objective of attacking/defending, b) they are bored and want to score some kills. Realistic, perhaps, but bloody boring gameplay. The immersion also breaks about the 11th time you get killed with one bullet and respawn.
The Maw is cute. I bought the lot when it was on Steam offer, and finally got around to installing it last night. The premise of indie games are always quite different from the norm. You control a cute alien who walks around his alien Maw buddy like a dog on a leash. The Maw eats stuff. Lots of stuff. In so doing, it takes on characteristics of the stuff it eats. And between the two of you doing stuff, you solve puzzles that get you to the next level. For the first few levels at least, it looks elegant and polished - step-by-step you get taught relevant controls as you need them and then are asked to put them into practice to get by obstacles. It looks a bit short. Portal short. The kind of beginning, middle, end complete game-kind of short. It's not a bad short per se. It's a "we might leave you wanting more" sort of short.
Which brings me to Monkey Island 2. I have worse memories of this game than the first one. Mostly due to the crap ending that poked out of the blue from nowhere. I bought the special edition only when it was on offer, to complete my collection, rather than from any real nostalgia. On replaying it, and listening to the developers' commentary, it solidifies my opinion that Monkey 1 was the better game. How so?
The devs mentioned that Monkey 1 was considered a short game by the community, so they purposefully set out to make Monkey 2 a longer game. 40 hours worth of play, supposedly. Mostly, this led to puzzles that were crafted out on a whiteboard to necessitate visiting all three different islands (click on Dread's ship, click on island in the map shown, run from screen to screen until you get to the place you need to go) to collect the required items to solve the puzzle. That is a LOT of agonizing back and forth running.
The jokes in Monkey 2 are a lot more pop culture-centric, rather than timeless or pirate-themed like in Monkey 1. I saw a lot of Indiana Jones references, the entire ending is a Star Wars reference ("Guybrush...I am your... brother!"). There are more lame gags. Generally, while Monkey 1 respects the world and the lore, Monkey 2 attempts to break it wherever it possibly can. (eg. the ship crate that pops up out of nowhere once Wally is kidnapped, you hop in, it sounds like it's full of snakes (remember, Indy hates snakes), and some cargo moving guys randomly appear to move it to LeChuck's fortress in the middle of nowhere.)
I might play Minecraft again when the mood hits me, but I'm on hiatus for a bit. The update is that I went back after my lava bath and managed to spelunk more successfully, rescuing a couple diamonds, some gold, and enough steel/iron to craft an entire suit of steel and have leftovers for other things. I'm nursing the idea of a really big project, like an underground tree farm, or a big castle or a Great Wall of Unnamed Continent, but haven't gotten around to that yet.
I've been reading. Or re-reading, rather. The latest bite-sized series is an old-forgotten-author space opera type called Star Commandoes by P.M. Griffin, full of somewhat purple prose and lots of humorous domestic scenes of people who like each other squabbling and overfeeding a cute pet, interspersed with chapters of random shooty action/violence. Sort of a tomboy's romance series, I guess. Ed Greenwood is another good author for this sort of fantasy escapist nonsense. It's a nice enough break from the grim dark millenium of WH40K novels that have been my only fiction staple lately.
Nonfiction is easier, if more expensive. A lot of interesting perspectives and revelations by people who have or probably should be invited to TED conferences get talked about around the self-improvement blogosphere. And Amazon.com leverages the networking effect by promoting books that other readers who looked at this book also bought. So an hour's casual surfing in Amazon leaves a shopping cart with a shipping fee that seems enough to hire a personal plane, and results in a lot of hurried "transfer to wish list" button pressing to narrow it down to a reasonable selection. Good thing the USD exchange rate is now about 1.3-ish. More on that when the books actually get here to be read. And yes, I do the library thing, but I read at such a slow pace that I often incur fines, which boils down to me renting books. :)
I keep getting the nagging feeling that I should go back to my roots of RPGs (the tabletop kind) and writing original stories. It's been years since I did a successful Nanowrimo. It's just so hard to think up stories these days. I stumbled across Mongoose Publishing and their magazine series Signs and Portents, and have the website sitting tabbed in Firefox just waiting, waiting for me to have time to download and read them.
Just haven't got around to that either. My entertainment has to come in such bite-sized pieces these days.
Bleh.
Not MMO'ing.
Seems to be some kind of lull before the coming storm in the blogosphere. Cataclysm release date is set for Dec 7, quite a while away, and truth be told, I can't get up any excitement for it. Warcraft lore still leaves me cold. There is a huge discussion over why WoW vets are seemingly so intolerant of the "lesser-abled," be they n00b or newb. And I can't bring myself to get roflstomped while reading up tomes of six-year-old website info in an attempt to learn and catch up and bridge the gap - far better not to play the game - which is a personal outlook or character flaw which also applies to participate in FFA PvP games in which the vets have a massive leg up on the newbies. My ego is not so cement-strong as to expose it like that over and over in what-was-meant-to-be-a-game.
If I am ever bored enough, I can buy another WoW timecard and mess around for 2 months. It's about $50 sgd though, the price of a singleplayer game. I'm not sure I can keep the focus going for 60 days.
(Lately, I have come to hate the monthly subscription model. It sets a clock going in the back of your head asking you to keep evaluating if it's worth it.)
This is also the same problem I'm having with ATITD. I'm actually still paying for 3 characters, but barely logging on. Truth be told, I could give up the original shard, except I'm not sure I want to cut off all ties with my friends/acquaintances there. The other 2 characters are on Bastet, and while nothing ever happens in Bastet, I kind of like it being there.
And maybe I might want to start again a month or two later. I don't mind one or two months of lying fallow and paying for the priviledge of not starting from scratch (aka maintaining the sub so I don't lose my stuff). It's just that I can't predict when I will get renewed interest in the game. And the sub keeps asking, oi, wanna come back now, wanna play this now, like an irritating itch. Taking a complete break, it's not.
On the other hand, I have games like Lord of the Rings Online and Global Agenda just sitting in my back pocket. It's a one-time deal. Paid for. Done. Log in, play it whenever. We may come out with an expansion you'll have to pay for now and again, but you decide then whether you're still interested in our game to pay for it then.
This mechanism is also what drives Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers, which I've been playing for a good 50% of my free gaming time lately. Short card bouts, relaxing and still a challenge at the same time, with a sense of progression as you win games and unlock new cards. And it's fun to learn an entirely new game system.
The rest of the time has been spent experimenting with other games.
I tried the Medal of Honor Open Beta. The graphics are spectacular. The sound is nice. The gameplay is shit. The lethality factor is very high, a bullet or two puts you on the ground - sort of a nod to the realism of its setting. Unfortunately, two other factors come into play. Cover is scarce, or rather, there are still many open firing lanes on the map I played. All the models are light-colored and realistic in camo, so it's really difficult to identify friend from foe from the snowed-in scenery. The most effective class appears to be the sniper. You can zoom from a distance further away than the other two classes and take potshots while still being in 50%-75% cover yourself. And the way they've depicted the sniper's battle rifle is crazy powerful (if realistic). Most every other sniping game brings your scope down after a shot as you reload. Your scope stays up in this one, and you have 13 bullets before you need to reload. 1-3 of which will kill a person depending on how good or crap your aim is. My aim sucks and I could still kill people by just aligning the crosshairs and pumping out 3-4 bullets.
This results in a whole bunch of people huddled behind rocks, peeking out every so often to take potshots at other people who exposed themselves out of cover. Mostly, these are the people who run out because a) there is ostensibly an objective of attacking/defending, b) they are bored and want to score some kills. Realistic, perhaps, but bloody boring gameplay. The immersion also breaks about the 11th time you get killed with one bullet and respawn.
The Maw is cute. I bought the lot when it was on Steam offer, and finally got around to installing it last night. The premise of indie games are always quite different from the norm. You control a cute alien who walks around his alien Maw buddy like a dog on a leash. The Maw eats stuff. Lots of stuff. In so doing, it takes on characteristics of the stuff it eats. And between the two of you doing stuff, you solve puzzles that get you to the next level. For the first few levels at least, it looks elegant and polished - step-by-step you get taught relevant controls as you need them and then are asked to put them into practice to get by obstacles. It looks a bit short. Portal short. The kind of beginning, middle, end complete game-kind of short. It's not a bad short per se. It's a "we might leave you wanting more" sort of short.
Which brings me to Monkey Island 2. I have worse memories of this game than the first one. Mostly due to the crap ending that poked out of the blue from nowhere. I bought the special edition only when it was on offer, to complete my collection, rather than from any real nostalgia. On replaying it, and listening to the developers' commentary, it solidifies my opinion that Monkey 1 was the better game. How so?
The devs mentioned that Monkey 1 was considered a short game by the community, so they purposefully set out to make Monkey 2 a longer game. 40 hours worth of play, supposedly. Mostly, this led to puzzles that were crafted out on a whiteboard to necessitate visiting all three different islands (click on Dread's ship, click on island in the map shown, run from screen to screen until you get to the place you need to go) to collect the required items to solve the puzzle. That is a LOT of agonizing back and forth running.
The jokes in Monkey 2 are a lot more pop culture-centric, rather than timeless or pirate-themed like in Monkey 1. I saw a lot of Indiana Jones references, the entire ending is a Star Wars reference ("Guybrush...I am your... brother!"). There are more lame gags. Generally, while Monkey 1 respects the world and the lore, Monkey 2 attempts to break it wherever it possibly can. (eg. the ship crate that pops up out of nowhere once Wally is kidnapped, you hop in, it sounds like it's full of snakes (remember, Indy hates snakes), and some cargo moving guys randomly appear to move it to LeChuck's fortress in the middle of nowhere.)
I might play Minecraft again when the mood hits me, but I'm on hiatus for a bit. The update is that I went back after my lava bath and managed to spelunk more successfully, rescuing a couple diamonds, some gold, and enough steel/iron to craft an entire suit of steel and have leftovers for other things. I'm nursing the idea of a really big project, like an underground tree farm, or a big castle or a Great Wall of Unnamed Continent, but haven't gotten around to that yet.
I've been reading. Or re-reading, rather. The latest bite-sized series is an old-forgotten-author space opera type called Star Commandoes by P.M. Griffin, full of somewhat purple prose and lots of humorous domestic scenes of people who like each other squabbling and overfeeding a cute pet, interspersed with chapters of random shooty action/violence. Sort of a tomboy's romance series, I guess. Ed Greenwood is another good author for this sort of fantasy escapist nonsense. It's a nice enough break from the grim dark millenium of WH40K novels that have been my only fiction staple lately.
Nonfiction is easier, if more expensive. A lot of interesting perspectives and revelations by people who have or probably should be invited to TED conferences get talked about around the self-improvement blogosphere. And Amazon.com leverages the networking effect by promoting books that other readers who looked at this book also bought. So an hour's casual surfing in Amazon leaves a shopping cart with a shipping fee that seems enough to hire a personal plane, and results in a lot of hurried "transfer to wish list" button pressing to narrow it down to a reasonable selection. Good thing the USD exchange rate is now about 1.3-ish. More on that when the books actually get here to be read. And yes, I do the library thing, but I read at such a slow pace that I often incur fines, which boils down to me renting books. :)
I keep getting the nagging feeling that I should go back to my roots of RPGs (the tabletop kind) and writing original stories. It's been years since I did a successful Nanowrimo. It's just so hard to think up stories these days. I stumbled across Mongoose Publishing and their magazine series Signs and Portents, and have the website sitting tabbed in Firefox just waiting, waiting for me to have time to download and read them.
Just haven't got around to that either. My entertainment has to come in such bite-sized pieces these days.
Bleh.
Friday, October 01, 2010
A Minecraft Fable
There is probably some kind of pithy moral to spending a good hour underground in Minecraft digging methodical lateral mines in the vain search for iron ore, hitting small minor iron and coal nodes from time to time, hitting a motherlode of a cave system that yielded way too much coal, more redstone than I have ever seen in any other game, my first gold ore and diamond + monsters that I was battling warily, having so much cobblestone that I was throwing them out by the 64s in order to pick up the good stuff, getting the vague suspicion I should really haul ass and find my way back up to my lair, but inching along a great cavern full of lava pools, looking up avariciously at one more vein of gold a little beyond my reach, trying to build a cobblestone bridge and mine stone out of the way, and somehow slipping and falling off the stone ledge I was on into a great big honking pool of lava...
Nope.
No phrases come to mind.
Spent the next 5 minutes punching herds of innocent cows and pigs to death, trying to console myself by thinking it's a great big world and there must be more iron, gold, redstone and diamond veins -somewhere- that didn't melt to slag on contact with lava.
Nope.
No phrases come to mind.
Spent the next 5 minutes punching herds of innocent cows and pigs to death, trying to console myself by thinking it's a great big world and there must be more iron, gold, redstone and diamond veins -somewhere- that didn't melt to slag on contact with lava.