Derek Smart is OK

I'm just going to come out and say it: I've always liked Derek Smart. And after reading the comments over at Rock Paper Shotgun last week about his upcoming All Aspects Warfare, I like him even more.

I have a lot of respect for the authors over at Rock Paper Shotgun, who are covering PC gaming better than any other media property -- online, offline, commercial, magazine, whatever -- and the community that sprouted around them has evolved into a surprisingly good-natured and funny lot. But somehow the mention of Derek Smart turned many of them into a bunch of (I'm trying to think of something suitably derisive... aha, I have it:) console gamers.

Look at some choice snippets here:

"I grew tired of Derek Smart in the 90s. I didn’t realize he was still pimping his crap."

"Derek Smart is fueled by the souls of the damned!"

"Wow! Sometimes, you think something flames out so hard it won’t be back, ever."

"Did Derek Smart purposely make a game that looked that ugly so he could browbeat people who complained how ugly it looks?"

And so on. To be fair, there are posts that comment on the game videos, but until Derek himself makes an appearance in the thread to defend himself, the general sentiment seemed to be two steps away from pitchforks and torches.

I don't see Smart as being antagonistic, I see someone who just doesn't take shit. And gamers are so disappointingly comfortable dishing out shit that they could almost have their own entry in the DSM. Sure, I've seen him be abusive and insulting to people, and he certainly doesn't handle situations in a way that I would, but his goal is to identify like-minded people and make games for them. That's it. Smart sums it up in his comment in the thread:

"You guys can make fun of me and my games all you like but the fact is, unlike most, I still get to make the games that I want to make, regardless of who thinks, says or does what."

All I see is a slightly neurotic, and sometimes aggressive, man trying to bring people into his world -- rather than the other way around -- and he's extraordinarily selective about who he lets in. The games themselves are the first barrier, but if you then come into Smart's house and start complaining, or can't be bothered to read the FAQ, or (bravely) start at him with some flaming hot ad hominem, you're gone. And I don't see anything wrong with that. I delete posts made by dickheads on Trembling Hand without even thinking, and if Smart's tolerance of dickheads is lower than mine, then fair enough.

So, Smart, I tip my hat to you. I find your games utterly impenetrable, but I wouldn't have you any other way.

Why Bloggers Aren't Journalists

Here's a nice, ripe example of why bloggers tend to fall well short of doing actual journalism: Mike, over at MMOCrunch has just done a sterling job of saying a titanic bugger-all in his DC Universe Online versus Champions Online piece.

And I quote:

From what I’ve read and heard about this MMO it’s sounding pretty good, but there’s still not enough information out there for me to get really excited.

I do know that I’d much rather be fighting a real person then [sic] NPCs all day.

After watching the gameplay and interview with Design Director Bill Roper on G4, I was not very impressed by the game.

The fact is I knew very little about either game before researching for this post.

Doesn't really inspire confidence, does it? Hardly coming across like an authority on the subject. Not to mention Mike's tenuous grasp of English - mate, it's "than" not "then".

Makes me wonder what Mike was trying to achieve with this post. Were the post titled "Why I Like DCU More Then [sic] Champions", well, fair enough. That's what bloggers do; they present their personal take on something. But it wasn't pitched that way. It was pitched like an objective article comparing the relative features in two competing products, i.e. journalism.

And were this written by a (good) journalist, you can be sure you'd see a hell of a lot more information, backed up by thorough research and quotes from primary sources rather than the apparent 15 minutes Mike spent watching gameplay videos and reading other people's interviews.

Blogs are great for bringing a personal - hopefully specialist, or at least informed - perspective to the events of the day. They allow individuals to vent their opinions and do so outside of normal media boundaries. But blogs are not journalism, nor will they ever replace journalism.

My parting advice to Mike: don't stop blogging. Don't stop getting your opinions and perspective out there. Just don't guss it up as journalism unless you're willing to do the requisite hard work to make it such.

Left4Dead and Thermodynamics

Left4Dead is an exceptionally high point in gaming. It sits quite easily on my list of favourite games, joining other stonking titles like Quake 3 Arena, Dwarf Fortress, Speedball 2, Zelda: Link to the Past, and Planescape: Torment. Games like Left4Dead don't come along very often, at least not to my mind, and apparently others seem to think it's the bee's knees too.

So, why did L4D make my list? This is a good question, and it's one that I've struggled to answer. I've played plenty of great games, but they haven't made The List. Further, I can pinpoint quite easily why other games are on the list. For example, Q3A embodied the concept of the 'arena', and did so in the cleanest, and most visceral way; Planescape: Torment demonstrated how sophisticated computer RPGs could be, and there hasn't been a single RPG since that comes close -- not even one. Every game on the list is there because I can think of some kind of transcendental aspect that sits above its particular qualities.

What about L4D? It certainly has excellent qualities: the AI Director is clever, the co-op mechanic is elegant, the level design is intricate and thoughtful, and the atmosphere is just frightening. But these qualities alone aren't enough to put a game on my list.

I struggled with L4D's amazingness for a while before it finally came to me. I was in the Dead Air finale, with two survivors down, and no health packs left. I was standing on the fuel tanker, back-to-back with the single remaining survivor. The plane had a long way to go before it filled up, and a horde was screaming towards us. Suddenly, a Smoker yanked my friend off the tanker, into the rushing horde, tripling the difficulty of an already impossible task. As he was being dragged away, he sighed and said 'it's like we're just meant to die'. And then it hit me.

'Of course!' I said to my frustrated, soon-to-be-dead companion who I was accidentally peppering with bullets in a lame attempt to help him. 'It's thermodynamics!'

An Ice Cube in the Sun

(Note: I'm about to butcher the Second Law of Thermodynamics more violently than a creationist, but just roll with it.) 

Many games can be viewed in the context of entropy. Think of the game as the environment (like a hot day), and the player's presence as something highly disruptive to the normal state of things (like an ice cube). The game will try to restore equilibrium by making you inert (increasing entropy), and you're using energy/resources/actions to stop it (decreasing entropy). Essentially, the game is trying to kill you, and you're trying not to die. 

An RTS is a classic example. You're constantly under attack, which whittles away your base and units, and you must use diminishing or limited resources to stay alive. Dwarf Fortress is another good example. The environment, enemies, even the damn interface, exert a constant pressure on the player, making it hard to just survive the winter. I think it's this entropic threat that leads people to use words like 'punishing', rather than just 'difficult', when describing these kinds of games.

Coming back to L4D, I think Valve has perfected this idea of entropy. Ammo is limited, health is very limited, and there's only one win condition: survive. There are no moments of safety (set pieces notwithstanding), and the AI Director punishes you with wailing hordes, whether you're moving or not, and unleashes Specials that cause grief whether you're spread apart or huddled together. Unlike other games, L4D brings this entropy to the surface -- there's a palpable feeling of dread throughout, as if the world is relentlessly and mercilessly trying to turn you into a red mist as fast as possible. 

L4D's Versus mode is also interesting in this context. The vulnerable Infected players aren't built to make standalone kills, but that's not their jobs. Infected players should cause chaos, run amok, chip away, and ultimately open the door for the environment to come in and tear the survivors apart. If we go back to our first analogy, you can think of a good Infected player as one who holds a magnifying glass between the sun and ice cube -- in other words, they increase entropy in the game, not just make kills.

I think this is what makes L4D Important-with-a-capital-I. It's not just the AI Director, co-op gameplay, or Mike Patton's zombie squeals -- it's how it all comes together to produce a sense of universal threat. It's the unwavering, unintelligent menace of the laws of physics that I'm feeling when I play, and there aren't many games that can do that.

Ten Ways to Fix MMOs

MMOs are borked. At least according to games journo Tom Chick. Oh, and that's right, me too.

In fact, if you're a regular of this blog, you'll know that myself (being a regular MMO gamer) and Dave (who isn't) are both regularly critical of the state of MMOs today. Not to say we're against the genre, just that the present offerings haven't advanced the game significantly, and are ultimately based on outdated and, for many, flawed gameplay mechanisms; things like grinding, level progression, theme parks, long travel times etc. Not that upcoming offerings are much different.

So it doesn't surprise me that others are starting to cry out. It's time for a change. So, instead of firing another salvo against MMOs today, I'm going to offer some constructive suggestions to improve them.

1) Make the worlds more engaging

MMOs tend to come in one of two flavours: theme park or sandbox. But theme parks, like WoW, have come to the fore in recent years, probably because of the grand success of its exemplar. However, theme parks must be done well in order to be convincing, and WoW does do it well. Others don't.

In fact, Warhamme Online is an interesting case in point. You'd think Warhammer would have the ideal pretext for a theme park: a world that doesn't need to change significantly because it's always in a state of war, and no one side can win outright. But it fails, with many on the forums (myself included) finding the static nature of the world to be hollow and unfulfilling - it doesn't take long before you really feel as though your character can make virtually no impact on the world. Which is odd, because in WoW you also know you can't make much impact on the world, but the illusion that you can is more convincing.

However, theme parks aren't the only way to roll. Sandboxes work. Not for everyone, but there's definitely a substantial population who want to be a part of a world, influencing it and changing it by their actions. Or just living in it.

That said, theme parks and sandboxes are not exhaustive of the possibilities for an MMO. 'MMO' is less of a genre than a technical feature. All an MMO is is a massively multiplayer game. That could strictly speaking be just about anything. You could have an MMO that is basically a lobby for a series of Counter-Strike matches or WWII battles that each feed into a greater strategic plot. You could have a combat game where you fight through a dungeon or labyrinth, and doing so unlocks new options or classes for the next time you run through. An MMO doesn't need to be an MMORPG, if you get my drift.

2) Ditch classes and levels

This one is a part of a multi-tier rejection of the Dungeons & Dragons mechanic, which somehow has become the gold standard in MMOs. But just pause for a moment and reflect on how ludicrous it is to just stand there taking turns whacking a mob until one of you fall over. It's not like all MMOs need to be like the Battle of the Somme...

So the first step is to ditch classes. You don't need to ditch roles, just classes. You also don't need to ditch character specialisation, just classes.

Classes were a convenient way of describing a role in early wargames and role playing games. In Gary Gygax's original Chainmail you'd have light foot or heavy foot, which were useful abstractions for distinguishing between a javelin and shield skirmisher and a mailed man at arms. But by having classes like tank, ranged DPS, melee DPS just railroads players into a very narrow path of gameplay. Not all MMOs do this, but most do.

So, allow players to develop a character along mulitple lines. This could be a skills based mechanic, or a customisable power mechanic. And you needn't lock them in to just one skill set at any one time. Or force them through hoops to respec their abilities. As you can see, there are already MMOs breaking free of the classes thing, but too many perpetuate it (AoC, WAR, I'm looking at you).

And don't make the game so hard that players need to overspecialise and play their role flawlessly if they're to survive. Sure, have a hardcore mode for those who want the challenge, but don't necessititate it.

Finally, don't make items more important than skills. Certainly items should be important - but more for the extra abilities or specialisations they lend rather than the core stats. Or don't have items at all. City of Heroes doesn't, and you don't hear anyone complaining.

3) Make combat smarter

As mentioned above: stand, whack, fall over is not good enough. Compare Quake to Counter-Strike (or its precursor, Action Quake). In the former the only way to make an enemy more threatening was to up the hit points. But what made the latter so compelling was the sense of danger you had whenever you rounded a corner or entered a room. A single head shot was potentially lethal, which inspired caution - and tension.

Yet in MMOs, you uniformly blast away multiple times to take something down. That's the Doom mechanic. It's time for the Counter-Strike mechanic to hit MMOs.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying all MMOs need be twitch games, just that they aren't battles of attrition. One example mechanic might be reacting to the enemy moves - so when they attack a symbol flashes on screen, and if you click when the symbol appears, you successfully block - or conversely, a symbol appears when there's an opening in their defences, allowing you to strike for a critical blow. This needn't be adversely affected by lag, and it can still have skills contributing to your performance, such as by increasing the window when you can click for a heavier blow. And heck, that's just one mechanic off the top of my head - there must be hundreds more that aren't swing-swing-swing-dead.

4) Don't make me grind

Just don't. I know some people enjoy it. But most of us don't.

As a point of clarification, challenging, enjoyable combat isn't a grind. It's a grind when I'm motivated more by the end result (xp, loot etc) than the experience of the combat.

So, either make the combat more intrinsically entertaining or give me the end result sooner so I don't have to grind.

I know MMOs want people to play for as long as possible, but making me grind is just lazy. Give me content, or give me entertaining gameplay, or don't release your game.

5) Make mobs smarter

I can't beleive I even need to point this out. Mobs in MMOs are bloody idiots. Have we really not progressed one jot in mob AI since Ghosts 'n Goblins? Yet we've becomed so acustomed to seeing a mob 20 metres away in broad daylight and not having it notice us. Or the old chestnut of killing one and having its nearby mates not notice. It's got to stop.

Make mobs smart. Make them work as a team. Make them unpredictable. Give them special abilities. Make them a challenge.

Just imagine: you turn a corner in the dark dungeon and in the gloom ahead you surprise an orc exiting a side door. For a moment you both pause, staring at each other, waiting for one to make a move. The orc looks at you, looks back in the door from which he came, then makes a break for the room, shouting to rouse his buddies. When you enter the room, they've overturned two beds to use for cover while they pelt you with javelins, stones, plates, whatever they can get their hands on. Meanwhile two brutes advance on you, while the more gaunt leader shouts orders from the rear. After a short but vicious battle, the brutes are down and the leader felled by an arrow. At this point the remaining orcs make a break for the door, knocking you down and running for their lives.

That's not far from Half-Life AI. Why can't we have that in an MMO?

6) Encourage grouping

There should be absolutely no reason not to group. Groups should earn more xp, get more loot, fight more mobs, have bigger challenges etc. When a group completes one person's quest, everyone should get the reward as if it was theirs.

In theme parks, this hasn't worked so well to date, because you might have to run someone else's quest before you can get to yours. Or you'll be running every which where to achieve everyone's objectives. So people tend to solo becasue it's more efficient xp/min. So I declare fail to that model.

Another way to encourage grouping is give every class a group buff. It could be complementary or contrasting to the role. So tanks could give an auto damage buff or a resistance buff to everyone in the group etc. A group should be more powerful than the sum of its parts - and the mobs should scale to suit. Everybody wins.

7) Quality of life

Don't make me run for five minutes, let alone 15 minutes - especially over well trodden ground - to get to a quest location/giver. Give me fast transport no more than 10 minutes after I start the game.

Give me a fully flexible and customisable UI with multiple chat windows and quest trackers.

Give me a LFG and an LFM window.

Make the game mechanic transparent. Give me access to the real numbers going on under the hood - don't hide them away (unless there's a good reason to keep them secret).

Have everyone auto sidekick to the highest level person in a team or to the team leader.

Let me move servers to play with my buddies. Let me change my name. Let me change my appearance as often as I like. Don't restrict me doing these things unless you have a very good reason.

Allow me to download the client rather than install from disc. And, for the love of crap, don't make me have the disc in the drive to play.

8) Make subscriptions cheaper

MMOs are all about critical mass. You want as many people playing as possible. Yet at $15 a month (which becomes $22.50 in Australian dollars), most people will only subscribe to one MMO, maybe two. So, have a low subscription price, and you'll potentially pick up all those casual players or those who like to play something different from their other MMOs from time to time. As a bonus, your server populations will be higher. And for many of us, teaming is what makes MMOs fun.

9) Listen to, and engage with, players

There are a lot of fanboys and dickheads in the world, and a disproportionate number of them play MMOs, it seems. But developers who foster healthy two way communication with their players will only benefit.

There are pitfalls, to be sure. There'll always be a vocal minority, and they may not represent the interests of the majority of players. But there'll also be a lot of keen insights and helpful suggestions on how to improve the game. Listen to them. Given them what they want.

I've been struck by the changes to City of Heroes since Cryptic handed it over to NCSoft. It seems the new team have basically decided to give the players what they ask for. So several classes and powersets have received buffs (with very few receiving nerfs), xp gain has been increased, travel powers made more easily acquired at low levels, there's more customisability and flexibility over powers, and the list goes on. And the game is better for it.

10) Launch when it's finished

I shouldn't even have to say this. But an unfinished game should not be launched. If that means developers have to pare back the features to a managable level, do so. But don't release if it's not done. Period.

Mount and Bad Writing

It's not uncommon that I come across a piece of writing that makes me cringe. But it's rare that I find something that makes me want to stop reading - even when it's about a subject dear to my heart and from a very reputable outlet. This comes to mind as one example. But even more troubling is this.

I don't know who Peter Parish is - and I see he's written for several games and music sites as well as the odd piece of fiction - but his coverage of the divine Mount & Blade is a paragon example of appallingly bad writing.

And I quote:

As every stereotypical young girl knows, horses are fascinating.

That's his opener. This is how he hooks the reader. Bam. But it gets better:

Of course, it's not possible for players to do entirely as they please. No matter how much they may wish to, players cannot take an entire village hostage and threaten to kill the inhabitants off one by one until the local lord agrees to a gigantic ransom pay-off.

First sentence: irrelevant. Is there a game where it's possible for the players to do entirely as they please? And the second sentence: besides being irrelevant and not in the least droll, it's painting a negative picture to side step into a positive about mod making. Why not frame the positive without citing an irrelevant negative?

And then he closes his three-page piece with this:

Peter Parrish is a freelance writer. He would like to mount and blade you.

Maybe I have higher standards than many online readers (those who left comments apparently loved the piece). Maybe I've been tainted by years of trying to hone my own work into being half decent. Maybe I've been burned by editing too many passages of leaden prose that strain too hard to be amusing. Maybe I'm just old.

But this kind of writing - stuff that tries to be offbeat, tries to be poke-in-the-ribs-aye-aye funny - just shits me. And it's all too common in the gaming media.

Games aren't only for prepubescent males. Games aren't only banal distractions. Games are an entertainment medium as broad, as diverse and as significant to culture as any other. And writing about games should respect that. Doesn't mean it can't be humorous, but it certainly shouldn't be purile.

Or maybe it's just me.

PS - buy Mount & Blade!

Darkfall is One Ugly MMO

MMOCrunch has an interesting analysis of prospective Darkfall players from the EU Darkfall community. Give it a read for its take on which races people intend to play, and their attitudes towards PvP.

One thing that shines through for me is that people care about how their avatar looks. Not everyone, mind... I've seen too many Random button units in City of Heroes to know that for some looks don't matter a damn over min-maxing powers. But for many of us (myself included), I need to like looking at my avatar (or at least its back).

And when you look at Darkfall, there's some shockingly ugly fare on offer. I don't know who did the 3D modelling for Darkfall, but they have discovered a remarkable hybrid between realism and cartoon that makes the avatars look appaling.

That's the thing about realism - you either go all the way and make it photorealistic, or you go the other way and make it clearly unreal. You don't just make a hodge podge human face, then stretch it between the eyes and mouth to make an elf, or compress it to make a dwarf...

I mean, compare and contrast these orcs. You tell me which one you'd rather be. Crikey...

Eve Online: Is Anyone Noticing?

So, Eve Online just broke another record -- 45,000+ simultaneous players, which is no small feat considering these players are flying around the same damn world. Also, it's (finally?) going retail, and as a celebration of sorts, CCP is releasing a heftier-than-usual expansion to go along with it, which introduces massive new techs, areas, and epic single-player story arcs. 

Sure, I don't enjoy it, but I admire it, and I hope other MMO devs are actually looking at this ridiculous, hard, tortuous MMO that's fucking gaining ground where others are dying and taking notes.