Death to Online

Two interesting things happened this week. First, Ubisoft is promoting free premium versions of its upcoming games!

Here's how it works. New Ubisoft games will require you to be connected to the internet to play, while granting the following bonuses: you can upload your savegames, you can probably store your profile, and presumably host your unlocks and achievement cookies in the Ubicloud. I'm not actually sure on the bonuses -- I stopped reading after the first part, because this is the kind of game an idiot would buy. And because this is the kind of game an idiot would buy, I can only imagine Ubisoft want people to get the full, unencumbered, premium version from their favourite piracy site at no cost. Why else would they encourage them not buy their games?

Frankly, I don't have anything else to say about the matter, except that Ubisoft is clearly allergic to money and that Gamespy is what happens when games journalism dies. Then again, I'm always surprised by the deep, deep depths that gamers will sink to in order to have game publishers fuck them over, so perhaps the Ubidemon is making a genius move. Prove me wrong.

On a slightly related note, Monte Cristo is de-MMO-fying Cities XL after only three months. I like to think of Cities XL as single-player city-builder game wrapped up in social layer -- you built your city on your own, but you could trade with other cities and chat to other builders. It was like sitting in a sandbox with a bunch of other kids, where everyone natters away while building their little castles, occasionally swapping a spade for a bucket.

But although it was going in the right direction, it was taking the wrong path. This social layer was warm and kind of elegant (in principle), but it just wasn't anything like an MMO. Even though Monte Cristo were lovely guys that just wanted to make everyone happy, the subscription felt like a rort, especially when the game was buggy as hell and clearly incomplete.

I say this is 'slightly related' to the Ubidiot affair because they both represent a kind of misguided approach to online. In Ubi's case, it assumes people will be happy with just an online login and some half-interesting cloud 'features' but will overlook the fact that they can't leave the cloud. Monte Cristo thought they could just bolt on some online-ness -- something, anything, as long as it was online -- but it was rejected so strongly that it makes you wonder how it got to that stage in the first place.

Ultimately, online just isn't an automatic win. It doesn't guarantee fun, and it doesn't mean people will sell their souls. It's 2010 -- how can we still not get this?

Game Dev Actually Cites Game Theory

We need more of this: a game developer referencing not only game theory, but the Prisoner's Dilemma, when talking about the design of his game.

I mean, seriously, it's called game theory, for crissake. Game designers should know it by heart.

As I've intoned before, if I was stuck on a desert island with only three theories to keep me warm and explain complex phenomena, it'd be natural selection, chaos and game theory. It's that good. (This is excepting, however, the Super Ultimate Theory, to which all other theories reduce, namely: There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.)

And you can see game theory at play all throughout Vic Davis' opus, Solium Infernum, a diabolically clever turn-based strategy game based in Hell. Awesome.

If you haven't read about it, or played it, and you even half care about strategy games, then you should do yourself a favour and buy a copy, and get in to the game.

Adding Flesh to STO's Bones

Syp asks what features should be added to Star Trek Online were it to be delayed for a few months before release. Good question.

Not that it'll inspire a delay or the addition of the features, but it might serve as a useful tool for Cryptic when they're performing their post-mortem on their second flagging MMO in 12 months time.

For mine, here are the features I'd wish for:

• Klingon PvE content - let players play Klingon instead of Federation if they want. I won't, but I'm sure many would like to.
  
  
• A third faction with full PvE and PvP - my vote would be for the Romulans. They're a Star Trek staple since the original series, and they make an interesting counterpoint to the lobster heads. A third faction would make for an interesting PvP game of sector control, and it could stay relatively self-balancing as the two weaker factions could gang up on the stronger.
  
  
• A fourth faction with PvE - independents. Let people run as a free trader, or as an explorer, or privateer, or the representatives of a non-aligned world. They could fly between the various factions, running missions, smuggling, trading etc. Perhaps at some point, they could join a faction. Or others could leave their faction and go independent.
  
  
• Make low-level ships useful - I don't yet know what combat at high level in STO will be like, but my concern is that there will be a clear path of bigger-is-better. So all high level players will field the biggest capital ship they can with no smaller ships to be seen. I think EVE got this right with the mix of small and large ships, with each having a valuable role to play at all skill levels. To follow EVE's approach, larger ships would have more difficulty hitting smaller, faster ships (which is true today to some extend, with manoeuvring speeds) but doing more damage. And smaller ships could be specialised into certain roles, like debuffing, sniping etc.
  
  
• More non-combat content - exploration, diplomatic missions, trading, problem solving, science missions. There is a lot of potential for innovative gameplay here, but Cryptic seems allergic to innovating these days, and instead is sticking firmly to MMO conventions and making tiny incremental innovations within these restrictive bounds.
  
  
• Improve performance - that's just a given.

I know many of the above would require more than a couple of months delay, but these are some of the things I would have needed to become enthused about STO. If anything, I reckon the game needs 12 months more development, not just two or three.

Do You Care Who Publishes the Game You're Playing?

I don't give the blunt end of a rat who publishes the game I'm playing. There, I've said it.

I care who developed it. Kinda. Even then I mainly care before I buy the game, as knowing who the developer is can give you a hint as to how the game might play.

But the publisher? EA, or Ubisoft, or Atari etc? I don't care.

Yet the publishers seem to think I care. I know this because when I install a game, it fills my hard drive and Start menu with folders brandishing their name. So, instead of placing the game in a logical folder, I have to guess which publisher was responsible for the game I just installed. Irritating.

Even more irritating is that I inevitably have to delete their folders and move the actual game folders in to a little directory I created for myself, cunningly called "Games". Why the games industry hasn't divined this solution as the install directory for all their games is one of the great mysteries of the universe. I believe the Large Hadron Collider is hoping to reveal some insights in to it once they fix that broken lightbulb on sub-level 9b - or whatever it is that keeps grinding it to a halt.

But that's not all. I also have to sit through their artsy little ID video every time I fire up the game - or even worse, every time I watch a demo video online. I mean, these megabytes of publisher ID they're making me download aren't free, you know. Heck, my time isn't free - at least, I'm not willing to give it away to them to waste.

So, how about you? Do you give a rats who publishes the game you're playing? Does knowing it's Atari rather than Wiley Willy's Games make you sleep better? Do you also wish ill upon those random folders they scatter throughout your hard drive? I know venting won't change anything - but it sure makes me feel better!