Author Archive

Silicon Alley Insider is attempting to rank the most valuable private web companies in the world. The list is of note to this blog largely because it contains a number of entries that are MMO/Virtual World-based. (of course, please note that as these are private companies and as Silicon Alley Insider has no privileged access to their financials valuing these companies is really nothing more than a somewhat educated guess).

Facebook tops the list, of course (though at $9 billion rather than the $15 billion valuation Microsoft invested in), but Webkinz is #7, Habbo is #9, Linden Lab is #11, and Stardoll is #17. Bafflingly missing is Runescape/Jagex, which it seems to me should be somewhere around where Habbo is.

Ok, maybe not  the best (I put freerice  in the top slot as it actually accomplishes something) but I think September 12th is one the best so-called ’serious’ games I’ve played, despite its claim that it’s not a game. The mechanics are dead-simple and the game doesn’t need a bunch of explanation to illustrate the point its making. Good stuff.

I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by explaining any further. Just check it out! (It’ll only take a minute of your time or so.)

Looks like Three Rings’s Whirled launched very recently. Congrats to Dan and his piratey crew (including you too Par!)

We (Sparkplay Media) are looking for someone for an office manager and assistant to me, basically. What I want is someone who is really enthusiastic about games, who has general administrative experience and wants to spend a couple years working as part of the team, keeping the office functioning generally and helping to remove administrative work from my plate.

You’ll get a chance to involve yourself in game development as far as your abilities go and time allows, and if you’re relatively untrained we’ll help you learn how to help. Once we think you’re ready, you can train a replacement and move full-time into whatever aspect of game development you showed the most promise at if that’s what you’d like. No game development experience is necessary for this position (though having it is certainly not a negative).

This would, obviously, be an on-site position at our offices in North Beach, in San Francisco. Pay would depend on what experience and skills you bring to the table, but will be reasonably competitive.

The important thing to us is that whoever fills this position is just a very multi-functional person capable of being reliable and who is self-motivated. We want you to look for responsibility to take on and stretch yourself, and, of course, be a cheerleader for Sparkplay.

I’m posting it here rather than on our website first as there may be people out there who vaguely know me through the blog that are interested. Please feel free to refer anyone you think is a good fit too.

Responsibilities:

• Provide administrative support to the CEO (me) and others as needed, ranging from scheduling travel to booking meetings to light market research to putting together Powerpoint presentations.
• Keep the physical office running – order office supplies as needed, coordinate deliveries and repairmen, etc
• Handle general administrative duties – faxing, filing, organizing, and so on.
• Assist in the processing of hiring, benefits and termination packets.
• Answer the phone.
• Help out with whatever game development you can as a secondary priority.
• Just generally do what you can to help the entire team that you’re part of kick some butt.

Requirements:

• 2+ years experience administrative work (office manager, administrative assistant, etc)
• High school diploma or G.E.D.; BA degree preferred.
• Excellent skills in Word, Excel, Powerpoint. Ability and willingness to learn new software packages.
• General knowledge of office equipment.
• Record of stable employment. At least two years in your previous position.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Good judgment; ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Bonus: Better-than-novice Dreamweaver skills (so you can do some very light website updates)
• Bonus: Game development experience (either amateur or professional)

You need to be legally qualified to work in the US for this position.

If you’re interested send me an email directly to matt (-at-) sparkplaymedia (-dot-) com. To show you’re paying attention, include the word “platypus” in the subject line!

This cracks me up.

Antigua, a small Caribbean country, is threatening to make piracy of IP owned by US-based owners legal, and it apparently has WTO backing to do so. The US, in impressive hypocrisy, outlawed international online gambling, while keeping domestic online horse race betting legal. The WTO ruled that this kind of naked protectionism was illegal and Antigua claims it will make moves towards turning piracy into legal sharing in the case of US IP.

I’m not sure this sort of situation (which could lead to very accessible servers full of movies, music, etc that couldn’t be shut down by the US government without resorting to force) is inevitable but I’m a fan of the little guy telling the bully on the block to go stick it. The consequences of that situation arising really highlights the importance of providing a service (far more expensive/difficult to duplicate than IP is) rather than just a product, though of course anyone making MUDs/MMOs or any other game with a critical server component already knew that.

Update: A commenter points out that the WTO ruling caps the amount of damage Antigua can do at $21 million, which makes for a far less interesting situation.

(Via PlayNoEvil)

Sparkplay is hiring. (For Senior Designer, Senior Software Engineer, and Software Engineer. More positions coming later.)

JOKING! (and who got put on what card was mainly random)

But still, kind of funny: (bottom, second from the right is me). I guess if I had to be a card and couldn’t be the Ace of Spades or one of the Jokers, King of Hearts isn’t too bad. I feel a bit bad for those who got stuck on the threes and fours.

Woot! Just finished it, and it only took a month and a half, with a recorded play time of about 19 hours (probably 25-50% more if you consider all the dying I did in the early to mid stages of the game).

One of the best games I’ve played in a long time. Minireview: Loved the story, loved the conversation mechanic, loved the ‘world’ backstory, enjoyed the combat, hated the inventory management. 9.4/10

I don’t know him well enough to call him a friend, but Scott Jennings and I certainly share a similar enough outlook on many parts of life for me to consider him a friend-in-waiting. His blog, of course, is at www.brokentoys.org.

Scott’s got a problem currently. He lives in America, and has been operating under the understandable assumption that freedom of speech lives on, for the most part. Sadly, not everyone feels that way.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that GDC time of the year again, and for those interested, I’m running roundtables on virtual goods with Dan James again, like the last two years, and will be on a panel about raising venture financing with a bunch of good folks. You can find a link to the descriptions of the roundtables and panel here. Hope to see some familiar faces and some new faces!

We (Sparkplay Media) announced today that we closed on a $4.25 million Series A round from Redpoint Ventures and Prism Ventureworks.

Closing this investment round has been both exciting and, to be frank, a bit scary. There was definitely a bit of giddiness on my part when I first saw the money hit our ban account, supplanted within 12 hours by a sense of crushing responsibility. I’ve certainly never seen that much money in one place before, much less under my control.

I’m not going to talk in detail about the process but three things about raising VC money stuck out to me:

1. Everybody warned me that raising a Series A would be a full-time job. They’re dirty liars. It’s two or three full-time jobs, encompassing every single waking moment for months straight. Endless meetings, endless documentation/presentation re-writes. I’m sure it’s easier if you’ve done it before and are a known quantity, or if you have a major league reputation, but I don’t fall into either of those categories.
2. Before deciding to raise VC money, my view of them generally was along the “vulture capital” line. I was prepared to really be put through the ringer and find myself getting screwed at every turn. These are guys who control immense amounts of investment money and I was expecting that a lot of VCs would be cynical, dismissive people whom I had to kind of hold my nose to deal with. The reality was literally the opposite. I think out of all the VCs we met, there was only one that I actively didn’t like. Almost all of the ones I met with (which is probably not a representative slice, as we took a fairly targeted approach to fundraising) were very sharp, genuinely interested in what we were doing, and showed no sign of trying to force us into any kind of deal that was untoward or bad for us. I really liked almost every VC I met, which makes sense I suppose: Their job is to attract good entrepreneurs and they’d quickly cease to do so if they acted like the jackasses some people make them out to be.
3. Our plans morphed a fair amount between deciding to raise VC money and actually doing so. These guys are really good at forcing you to think through exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Even VCs we didn’t end up taking money from contributed in this way.

It came down to choosing between two deals for us (each with a syndicate of two VC firms), which was a great position to be in, though it was much harder than I had anticipated to turn investors down. By the time you’re offered a term sheet, you’ve probably gotten to know your potential investors a bit and feel a bit of a personal bond with them (at least I did).

We’re extremely happy to have chosen the investors we did (there were no bad choices between the two deals on the table at the end of the process…only a great deal and a slightly greater deal). As a bonus, one of our board members (Fouad ElNaggar from Redpoint) is a Rock Band god. His band, “the Red Stained Lips” is currently ranked in the top 10 worldwide (though has been as high as #2 I believe). Serious gaming cred!

(In case they are reading this, so that they don’t feel left out, I want to thank Scott Raney@Redpoint, and Will Kohler and Bong Koh from Prism as well. You guys rock, just not as literally as Fouad!)

Imre Jerle, the content boss for Jagex (developer of the massive hit Runescape), tells us, in an interview with Eurogamer, that engaging in RMT (buying in-game currency like gold with real money) is the equivalent of hiring prostitutes. In his words, “It’s not necessarily the prostitution which is a problem, although you might have moral problems with it. The real problem is the organised crime that’s built around prostitution; the human trafficking, the drugs, etc.”

He’s completely right, just not in the way he believes. It is indeed all of the crime that surrounds prostitution that’s the problem with it, but the reason that the crime in question exists is because prostitution is illegal. Similarly, RMT is only a problem when the game company bans it. How do I know? Iron Realms has had legalized RMT for a decade, with in-game systems to facilitate it. Its MUDs have had exactly none of the problems associated with RMT in games where the operator has banned it. How about Puzzle Pirates (which also has legalized RMT and in-game systems to facilitate it). Any RMT problems there? Nope.

The problem isn’t RMT, the problem is trying to outlaw an activity people want to do. You can, of course, object to the activity itself (as some people do with both prostitution and RMT) but the “crime” surrounding the activity is entirely a result of trying to dam the flow of demand. Permit me to engage in an analogy:

You build a dam, and the water builds up but the dam is only so high. Since you believe that absolutely no water should be let through the dam based on some sort of weird moral objection, you dogmatically refuse to try and channel the water, believing that you can simply stop it from flowing forever. Of course, you cannot, and eventually either the dam explodes or the water finds other ways out of the reservoir. The trouble is that you’ve just lost control of the water and thousands of poor farming folk in nearby farming villages have perished as a result. If only you had acted responsibly and channeled the water rather than simply pretending you could dam the river forever, Farmer Joe and his seven kids would still be alive.

This is possibly inappropriate for my blog “about games”, but that’s never stopped me before. I wrote about my dad in a post about the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution against the Soviets a bit over a year ago. It’s perhaps a small thing by some people’s standards but it makes me proud to see my dad’s local newspaper write an article about a medal he recently received from the Hungarian service for his selfless service in the cause of freedom from Soviet oppression during the Revolution. Article is here.

Fuck tyrants, no matter what flag or god they cloak themselves with.

I wrote a guest post for Jeremy Liew (a really sharp venture capitalist) over on his blog about using dual currencies to unlock the demand of non-paying players in a virtual goods business model. Check it out. (His blog is worth reading and I’ve finally updated my blogroll to include his.)

Three people have pointed me at this article on Techcrunch today.

It’s about a “passively” multiplayer game played on the web’s network of sites and links between them, called PMOG (in closed alpha as of this posting). In it, users create missions/quests for each other involving going to certain websites and can leave mines for each other on specific sites. So, for instance, I might leave a mine for you on Google and if you point your browser there you get hit. Details are a bit sparse, but the root of the idea is to use the web as a map on which to anchor gameplay mechanics, and to use navigating from site to site as the verb that drives everything.

I’ve had more than one conversation in the past about ideas that use the web’s topology to drive gameplay but I was unable to come up with anything that felt really compelling. I think that there’s a potential in the core idea to create something incredibly viral and sublime, but the details of that idea have always remained on the tip of my tongue, so to speak. I’m greatly looking forward to seeing what Justin Hall and his team does with PMOG. If they can make this work I think they’re in danger of defining an entirely new genre of game. I hope they nail it.

Last night I had a dream. I was throwing a ball around with some people in a swimming pool and someone suggested we play a game of water polo (I’m half Hungarian, so it’s in my blood…weird that a land-locked country would have such a history of obsession with water polo). An argument thus arose over whether imposition of rules would detract from the fun we were having or not.

In my dream, we decided to continue with the unstructured play rather than transition into a game with formal rules. That’s what we explicitly decided on, at least. In my dream-reality, however, what I realized (in retrospect) we decided on was to simply keep the status quo in terms of our understanding of the implicit rules in what we were doing. For instance, clearly it’d be against the implicit rules of behavior we were operating under to just toss the ball in the air repeatedly (playing catch with yourself). We’d be annoyed if someone violated that rule.

In other words, it wasn’t a choice between structured and unstructured play: There is no such thing as unstructured play. There’s always a structure involved in play, whether it’s pretending that you’re a fireman rescuing people from certain death or a kid playing catch with his dad.

I read a post this morning by Brian Green talking about casual vs. hardcore games on Facebook. I suppose this could have been a comment on his blog but I felt the urge to respond here.

Brian wrote:

I had dinner recently with someone that is doing a startup that wants to do smaller-scale games. He did an AJAX implementation of a social space, but that project had it’s own special challenges. His most recent foray is to make some games for the Facebook platform. His company built two games: one a more casual game that deals with throwing parties, and a hard-core game that has a men-in-tights theme and zero-sum PvP type mechanics. Guess which one did better.

If you said, “Obviously the hardcore one!” you have learned to anticipate my sense of irony. Well, that and it’d be a boring post if I just validated most people’s assumptions.

So, why does the hard-core game beat out the casual game on a pretty broad platform like Facebook?

Well, first, I don’t think that any lessons at all can be drawn from a single game beating another single game. Second, casual games win, flat-out, on Facebook. Maybe that will change but it’s not the case currently. Here are the top 10 games on Facebook right now, in order of active, engaged players (meaning someone who touched the game at least once in the last 24 hours).

1. Scrabulous (casual). Scrabble, online. 569k daily active users
2. Texas HoldEm Poker (casual). 392k daily active users
3. Speed Racer (casual). 289k daily active users
4. fluff(Friends) (casual). 277k daily active users
5. Quizzes (casual). 273k daily active users
6. Jetman (casual). 258k daily active users
7. Mesmo (casual). 250k daily active users
8. Vampires (casual despite the vampire theme). 250k daily active users
9. Mindjolt Games (a collection of casual games via a flash client). 159k daily active users
10. Zombies (reskinning of Vampires. Casual). 154k daily active users

No hardcore games in the top 10. The top hardcore game on Facebook is Warbook, with 104k daily active users.

Now, it’s not quite as clear-cut as the above. The way Facebook measures engagement is way too simplistic and binary. Either you are counted as a daily active user or you’re not. There’s no scalar measurement of HOW engaged you are. I would bet a lot of money that the average active user on Warbook, for instance, spends a lot more time (ie is more engaged) on Warbook than the average Vampires user spends on that app.

It’s completely unsurprising that casual games dominate Facebook, but what’s interesting to watch are the medium-term dynamics surrounding active users vs. users w/ your app installed (some of the apps above have millions of users but daily active user rates ranging from ~3% to ~15% of their total users). The games that initially dominated Facebook (Vampires, Zombies, Slayers, Werewolves…they’re all exactly the same game, reskinned) were extremely light and barely games at all. They’re at least as much a way to just ‘poke’ someone, which says, “I’m thinking about you,” as they are games. Those early, very light games now have very very low engagement rates of 3-4%.

Now look at the top two game apps on Facebook (Scrabulous and Texas HoldEm). Both are big steps up in complexity from the Vampires apps, and have increased levels of engagement. Texas HoldEm has approximately twice the engagement (7%) while Scrabulous has an astounding 25% engagement rate. Typically, the only apps that get engagement that high are very new apps (which naturally have a higher engagement rate), but Scrabulous has held onto a high engagement rate consistently for awhile now. Why? Well, there’s depth there that isn’t there in Vampires. Once you’ve bitten a few people, engaged in a few (basically random) battles, the average user is done. On the other hand, you can actually get better at Scrabulous, and the possibility space is a lot larger. There’s skill involved, just like in Texas HoldEm.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the fairly complicated Warbook. It’s got a high engagement rate (13%) but hasn’t managed to achieve the level of popularity that the more casual apps have, despite doing pretty well. It’s probably a little on the heavy/hardcore side for the platform it’s on, though I’m sure its owners aren’t complaining. I’ve heard it generates hundreds of millions of pageviews a month.

So what’s the right level of depth to offer on Facebook? Will more hardcore games enter into the ranks of the popular Facebook apps or is Warbook (60th most popular app currently) an aberration? I’m sure we’re going to see other hardcore games gaining users on FB but the way in which people interact with FB (less than 20 minutes/day on average, etc) does not lend itself well to traditional hardcore games. Further, good games on FB are as much about communication and/or self-expression as they are about gameplay.

We (Sparkplay) are going to be launching our first Facebook game in a few weeks, and the design process is interesting when compared to what I’m used to working on (MUDs/MMOs). The biggest difference is that we just don’t care about cheating or exploits that are possible by creating multiple accounts nearly as much because as I said above, it’s as much about communicating with your friends and expressing yourself as it is about “winning.” Going to be fun to see what we learn from our first app. No better way to learn than by doing it!

This is pretty damn sweet.

Season #5 of what is probably the greatest drama ever broadcast on American television begins tonight, as HBO’s The Wire returns. There’s never been a series with the sheer level of consistent brilliance that the Wire shows in its writing, its directing, and its acting.

The Wire is the story of the decay of America as witnessed through the eyes of the city of Baltimore. David Simon, the creator, lead writer, and exec producer of The Wire, is from Baltimore and knows it intimately. He worked for the Baltimore Sun (their primary newspaper) for twelve years, and wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets in 1991 about his experience shadowing members of the Baltimore Police Dept Homicide force. That, of course, was the foundation for the tv series Homicide: Life on the Streets, which Simon worked on as both producer and writer.

The Wire’s first four seasons are intricately layered broad story arcs focusing on different aspects of Baltimore. In Season 1, Simon showed us life in the ghetto and introduced us both to the street-level dealers and the behind-the-scenes local drug bosses, who would figure prominently in the series until the end of Season 3. It also introduced us to the cops who drift in and out of prominence throughout the series.

Season 1 got horrible ratings. Why? It was incredible from literally the first scene in the first episode of the first season. It is, however, difficult. The Wire does not coddle its viewers and it expects them to commit to taking the time and care necessary to fully appreciate every aspect of its excellence. In a country where brainless tv like “Deal or No Deal” dominates the ratings, it’s unsurprising that The Wire didn’t do well I guess.

In Season 2, Simon and HBO ignored the public reaction and went for it. Although the story arcs from season 1 continued, they were backgrounded and the focus shifted to a set of new characters who represented the decline of the working class, as represented by the docks at the Port of Baltimore, and the people who work there. I love Simon for this. I mean, switching about 70% of your character focus takes balls, and it worked in spades.

In Season 3, Simon switched the focus away from the docks and into the political arena. Issues of race have been prevalent throughout seasons 1 and 2 but here they come to more of a forefront as a white councilman challenges the black mayor (in a city whose politics are fairly racially divisive apparently). The story arc that began in season 1 involving two behind-the-scenes drug lords comes to a conclusion in this season.

Season 4 switches to the schools and here Simon is continuing to show that no matter the best efforts of a few, the whole system is set up to encourage failure. It’s pretty soul-crushing to watch some of the kids and their almost inevitable downward spiral.

Season 5 is moving the focus to the media, specifically the Baltimore Sun where Simon worked for twelve years. The previews of this season that I’ve read suggest that it is nothing but awesome, provided you don’t actually work for or empathize with the Sun.

It’s going to be the saddest day in my tv watching history when this season of The Wire ends. I love HBO for being willing to fund this series (which cannot possibly have been a direct commercial success) thus far and hope that the buzz around season 5 is sufficient to let them see a win on at least this last season.

Go rent or buy season 1 on DVD if you’ve never watched The Wire. Even if you don’t like police dramas (I do not, as a general rule), The Wire will blow you away if you invest the time/energy into appreciating it.

George W. would never have been President if he wasn’t the son of a previous President. Hilary would not be a Senator or a Presidential Candidate had she not been the wife of a President.

What does it say about America today that there is a realistic chance that we could see 28 consecutive years of executive rule by two families? Sounds like some 3rd world country that labels its government “The People’s Republic” and is anything but to me.

I’d love to see a woman President. Just not one who is there because she was married to a previous President. Dynasties do not fit into the scheme of democracy. Keep that in mind today, Iowa.

I’ve not been blogging much lately as you’ve no doubt noticed. Sorry about that. Work has become a bit all-consuming. As it doesn’t require much thought or time I figured I’d throw up a list of my favorite games of 2007. Here it is in all its not-quite-glory! The games are listed in no particular order as I couldn’t really tell you whether I enjoyed playing Puzzle Quest 6 months ago more than I’m enjoying Rock Band today, for instance.

• Supreme Commander - Greatest RTS ever made. PC.
• Mario Galaxy - It’s the reason you buy a Wii. Two-player mode (aka ‘girlfriend mode’) is awesome for playing with one’s less-of-a-gamer significant other. Wii.
• Rock Band - Because Ronnie James Dio would want you to play it. And because if you ever want a job with us, you better be able to play one of the instruments on ‘Hard’ or ‘Expert.’ Remember that “sucking at Rock Band” is not yet a protected category when it comes to discrimination in the hiring process. Xbox 360.
• Puzzle Quest - I hate match-three games, and yet I loved Puzzle Quest. Played it on the DS.
• Portal - I still feel bad about murdering my Companion Cube. Had I known that a birthday party with Companion Cube in attendance was a possibility, I probably wouldn’t have murdered it. Played it on the 360.
• Halo 3 - The best multiplayer action game ever made as far as I’m concerned, though I have never really been into PC-based shooters so I recognize I’ve got a huge blind spot here. 360.
• Settlers of Catan - I played a lot of Settlers on Xbox Live. My girlfriend, on the other hand, continues to be addicted to it and takes every opportunity possible to “get her Catan on.” 360 - Xbox Live.

Rock Band….rocks. The major downside is that the equipment they ship with the game is quite poorly-made for the most part. For instance, one of my drumsticks has already broken, as has the strummer on the guitar. Apparently more than a few people are having problems with the strummer though to their credit EA has made it easy to return the guitar and get a new one.

A couple friends have seen their bass pedal break already and I’m sure mine will as well, as it’s very cheaply manufactured. Luckily, some enterprising fellow is selling an aluminum plate you can screw onto your pedal, thus saving it from your perhaps slightly over-zealous rocking. I played on a reinforced pedal last night and it was delightful. Just ordered one for myself, and I suggest that anyone else who aspires to to Neil Peart status pick one up as well.

Why Rock Band? Why? Why do you not alert me, in big letters that I cannot miss, that there’s new downloaded content (ie new songs) available for purchase? I know new songs come out every Tuesday but I bet most RB users have no idea. As someone who is keenly interested in seeing Rock Band become a platform for new music, I beg you to please shove the downloadable content (DLC) in front of your users. They will not resent it. They’ll be thrilled to know you’re offering them new songs. But listen: If you don’t let them know the DLC is there, can you expect them to go buy it and validate your platform as an ongoing concern in a way that Guitar Hero has failed at aside from releasing sequels? (Guitar Hero always teased us with the promise of lots of downloadable content but they always reneged nearly immediately.)

Communicate what you have to offer to your users more effectively!

Jeremy Liew has an interesting post up today about fantasy sports as asynchronous MMOs, which was itself spawned by an article in early November by Charles Hudson about fantasy football as casual games for men. I’m not a fan of watching sports and don’t play fantasy sports but I get some of the appeal, and while I wouldn’t classify fantasy sports as an MMO (I’m a traditionalist - if there’s no world representation, it’s not an MMO) I think Jeremy and Charles are right insofar as they serve the same purpose and have a great deal of similarity.

Charles talks about a few of the game mechanics that make fantasy football work so well for men (it’s a multi-billion dollar industry as well):

• Simple game mechanics - If you understand how the NFL works, you can play fantasy football.
• There is a good combination of luck, skill, and strategy. Skill comes in working the waiver wire, doing your homework before the draft, and staying on top of who’s emerging during the course of the season… However, there’s a lot of luck involved - you can’t control who gets injured and how long they’re out.
• The time commitment is manageable (unlike other fantasy sports) - You can basically manage a fantasy football team in a few hours a week… The beauty of fantasy football is that almost all of the action takes place in about 24 hours per week.
• Fantasy football is a social experience - Go to any sports bar on Sunday and make an offhand comment about one of the players on your team. Guaranteed you’ll get at least a few other folks at the bar who have a rooting interest in one player or team. Because the rules for fantasy football are fairly universal, two players in separate leagues can often have a good conversation around fantasy football in general.

He’s bang-on, I think, but he leaves out one huge factor: story. Whenever people tell me they don’t understand the appeal of spectator sports I sum it up for them that single word. Though they’re not for me, people who are really wrapped up in a particular sport and, usually, a particular team are very into ongoing stories that evolve from the activity in and around the sport.

When I think of the sports moments that stick in my mind they are all wrapped in a very strong story. For instance, the 1980 US victory over the heavily-favored Soviet ice hockey team in the game called “the Miracle on Ice.” I’m sure it was dramatic based on the play alone but I don’t remember any of that. I remember feeling, at 8 years old, like this game represented the forces of good against evil (one is allowed to indulge in over-simplification when one is that age), and that somehow a defeat for the Soviets was some kind of tangible payback for the evil they’d done my father.

Think of other monumental sports moments: Jesse Owens embarassing Hitler at the ‘36 Olympics, Jackie Robinson signing with the Dodgers, Michael Jordan’s entire career, virtually every big fight Muhammed Ali fought in (Cassius Clay vs. Sonny Liston and Ali vs. Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle” come to mind), and so on. They’re all powerful because of the stories that back them.

My point is that sports contain, to those who keep abreast of what’s happening, an astonishing myriad of stories, and your hardcore sports fan is, in effect, watching a soap opera with a cast of thousands, spanning decades. Further, they’re not just watching them. They’re participating through retelling the stories and discussing them with friends or strangers at the bar, by playing sports video games, and of course, by playing fantasy sports.

It all makes for a massive, coherent (if uninstantiated) world with rules, players, guilds/teams, and plenty of story. MMO players would be wetting their pants with joy if the stories in their favorite games evolved at the same pace they do in sports.

Gamebunny has a Q&A up about Earth Eternal. I am my usual feisty and blunt self.

I realized that although we announced Sparkplay Media a couple of weeks ago, I neglected to reference it here.

Briefly, we (Iron Realms) have spun off Earth Eternal and future graphical products into a separate company called Sparkplay Media. We’ve got some pretty interesting plans that go well beyond EE but they’re going to have to remain under cover for now.

We announced the first member of our Board of Advisors recently, and it’s fair to say that his mainstream media history speaks to our long-term ambitions. We have very definite ideas on how online gaming in general (from MMOs to casual) will evolve and we think what we’re planning strongly addresses that future. I’m looking forward to talking about what we’re up to, and in any case my strong suspicion is that we’re going to see a lot of groups planning similar strategies in the next 6-12 months, because our plans do not require a leap of genius to get to. It’s just a natural evolution for the industry, whether we’re the ones to execute first on it or not.

Rock Band Rules!

(”The King is Dead, Long Live the King!“)

Rock Band is out. I have purchased it, which is a given if you know me or read this blog regularly. As I realize there are some people who read this who don’t know what Rock Band is, I’ll explain: Guitar Hero was a game that let you play (by hitting 5 buttons on the neck) a 2/3-sized guitar along to mainly cover versions of guitar-driven songs. It was fantastic. Truly. Rock Band, on the other hand, is nothing short of revelatory. Not only can you play the guitar, but you can play drums (it comes with a 4 pad electronic drum set) and sing (comes with a microphone).

Unfortunately I only had time to play two songs tonight, which is killing me. Eileen (girlfriend) played drums and I sung. We chose that combo because it’s going to be challenging for both of us. She’s never drummed (I was one of those drummer band geeks in high school) and I can’t sing. Imagine a wounded panther bellowing its death screams as it sinks in an eternal pit of Jello pudding and you have the idea. Under normal circumstances I spare my fellow man the horror of my voice lifted in song but Rock Band kicks so much ass that I don’t feel bad about inflicting my cracking cry upon Eileen and Nixon (dog).

Guitar Hero transformed the experience of hitting buttons rhythmically (something I’m fairly good at) into the feeling of being Eddie Van Halen or Stevie Vai. Rock Band goes you one better. Not only can pretend to be Eddie or Stevie, but you can actually be Neal Peart (drummer for Rush) or Kurt Cobain (lead singer for Nirvana). While the guitar parts are purely game-like (insofar as they are nothing like really playing the guitar), the drumming and singing are, on the harder levels, virtually exactly like really doing those things.

Rock Band is the greatest educational game ever created. Guitar Hero is dead to me. Long Live Rock Band!

This is…I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s….well, just watch it. Prepare to creeped out somewhere between a little and a lot.

I’ve made precious few posts lately as I just don’t have time but I wanted to write briefly about some games I’ve played recently. (The great thing about working in games is that you legitimately have to make time to play games.)

Halo 3
I wrote about my first impressions a few weeks ago here. I haven’t had a chance to finish the campaign yet but the multiplayer continues to be flat-out awesome. Whether it’s a 16 man big team battle complete with ground and air vehicles or an every-man-for-himself deathmatch the game is polished to an incredible level. The machinima capabilities are amazing as well. The highly-polished ability to watch every match from any angle, follow any player around, etc is unprecedented in console gaming. I will be playing Halo 3 a few hours a week for a long time to come no doubt.

Portal
Great little game. At 3 hours I got a chance to actually finish it. The humor is exceptionally well-done (possibly the funniest game I recall playing) and I could have messed with the core ‘portaling’ gameplay for many hours more. I would love to see their core gameplay extended into a multiplayer FPS.

Guitar Hero 3
An awesome track list composed mostly of original master tracks (rather than covers as in the previous GH games) sold me on this. I hadn’t been planning on buying it since Rock Band comes out later this month but I couldn’t resist the song list. There’s nothing innovative here (which is fine. Innovation is overrated when it comes to fun.) but there is a feature so annoying that I quit playing career mode in disgust. In essence, you have to suffer a ‘boss battle’ every now and then in career mode. In battle mode, you and your opponent don’t gain star power, but instead gain the ability to ruin the game for the other person. Switch the notes so that they’re displaying as if for a left-handed guitar, breaking a ’string’ on your guitar, make the screen blur and shake, etc.

I had tried the battle mode against a friend and we quit after about 30 seconds as it’s got absolutely nothing to do with what makes Guitar Hero great. I am a GH fan because it lets me feel like I’m a, well, guitar hero. When I’m rocking out on ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ I am Slash. It’s fantasy fulfillment. The thing is, breaking your opponent’s strings or flipping his guitar around to make him play lefty has nothing to do with rocking out. It’s just completely unrelated to the wish fulfillment that makes Guitar Hero the greatest fantasy fulfillment game in the history of man, at least until Rock Band is released in a couple weeks. Worse: the battle mode bullshit isn’t just irrelevant, it actively destroys the experience by taking you out of the ‘flow’ of the game like a frying pan to the face.

So here I am, the biggest Guitar Hero fan among my friends, and I had to resort to using a cheat code to unlock all the songs since I simply refuse to play through the game on career mode (required to unlock the full track list) if I’m going to be forced to engage in battle mode during it. I am pleased to note that Damion has equally strong feelings about the crapness of boss battles.

Upcoming Games I’m Greatly Anticipating

• Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) I really hope this becomes the first game for the Wii that I like. So far, the Wii is a complete disappointment to me. I can’t even get into Zelda or Metroid, which saddens me. Everything I’ve read about SM Galaxy tells me I’m going to love it but disappointment and video games are frequent companions in my world.
• Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance (PC) I was completely addicted to Supreme Commander for about 5 months earlier this year and I cannot wait to pick this up this weekend (it’s already out). It’s the finest RTS (real-time strategy) game I’ve played and the expansion looks to simply, well, expand upon the goodness. The only problem here is that my favorite Supcom games are with 4 people on large maps. That setup tends to require 1.5-3 hours to finish a game and it’s hard to find that much consecutive time to play.
• Rock Band (360) Duh.
• Mass Effect (360) It’s Bioware, it’s in space, and it looks awesome.
• Assassin’s Creed (360) I don’t know if I’ll actually play this or not (depends on the reviews) but I will be pleased to be able to stop hearing about it and about its attractive female producer, Jade Raymond. It is a sad, sad comment on our industry when the simple fact that an attractive female is involved in a non-HR/marketing role is cause for publicity. I’m forced to conclude that the same embarassing nerds who used to wet themselves in excitement while getting a picture of themselves with a semi-attractive ‘booth babe’ draped over them at E3 are driving the Jade Raymond fan bus.

I really do try not to bring politics into this blog too often but I cannot help myself sometimes and am likely to give in more often with the primaries coming up. I think all the major candidates on both sides of the aisle suck but Rudy Giuliani scares the hell out of me. He was recently asked if he thought waterboarding constituted torture. His reply:

“It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it.”

What I think Rudy is implying here is that if the Iranians were to use waterboarding on a captured American, it’d be torture, but if the Americans were to use waterboarding on a captured Iranian, it’d be “aggressive questioning” or some other euphemism.

This kind of double standard (along with, for instance, America telling Turkey that it shouldn’t strike at the Kurdish terrorists sitting across its border when America went across the world to invade a country that did not contain terrorists striking at the US) exemplifies why America has lost its role as the moral leader of the free world. It is indefensible to decide that behavior A is evil if done by actor Y but fine if done by actor Z. We are defined by our actions, not the other way around.

Raph has a great post about the way in which virtual worlds are likely to continue to enter the mainstream. In short, he points out that chat is not enough. Purely social virtual worlds are destined to stay out of the mainstream as socializing-only will not keep people around. What does? Unsurprisingly, gamey virtual worlds, which account for probably 99% of virtual world users (something the media seems to forget quite often). Why unsurprisingly? Well, as with so many things in this space, one just has to look at the venerable text MUD market. The social worlds (MOOs, MUCKs, etc) are dwarfed in popularity and number by the gamey worlds. There’s no reason to expect that’s going to change just because you write a 3d client for a world.

What it comes down to is that games are one of the best way we know to engage users. Games are often some of the most engaging experiences available. For instance, Runescape is the most engaging website for UK users - they spend more time on it per user than any other site. AdventureQuest is also in the top 7 in the UK, though neither of these are in the top 50 sites in terms of page views.

If we look at the platform du jour - Facebook - we find that of the top 25 apps in terms of daily active users, games account for about 15 of them. The most popular tv broadcasts? Games (Superbowl, World Cup, etc).

Games are mainstream. Virtual worlds are not yet but the gamey ones are the only ones that come close to it. Second Life might get namechecked frequently in the media but the frequency of that is completely unrelated to how many people actually use it. I feel like saying this is stating the obvious but there’s such a bubble around social virtual worlds that I’m unsure how distorted ‘obvious’ has become to those in the bubble.

(What Would Don Draper Do?)

If you’re not watching AMC’s Mad Men, I feel sorry for you. Season 1 finished last week (though I’m just watching it now thanks to Tivo). Go get it on iTunes.
That is all.

This is pretty cool. The NFL is creating its own virtual world, with an area for each team. Looks like somewhat customizable avatars w/ minigames. The style they’ve chosen is interesting. I am not the target demographic of this world (in as far as I don’t like watching sports) and upon showing this to one of my football-obsessed friends I am wondering who they are targetting. My friend (in my highly scientific survey of one person) thought it looked ridiculous and embodied absolutely nothing that he loves about football, but he’s got to be among the hardest of the hardcore (brags that he hasn’t missed watching a Bears game since 1985 or something).

This looks to me like a play to get kids interested in football and the NFL brand at a younger age than many do currently rather than a play to extend the NFL experience into virtual worlds for adult fans. This kind of brand-strengthening play is, I think, going to be the dominant form of virtual world going forward (think MTV’s various virtual worlds, Barbie Virtual World, etc) though I wonder how many we’re going to see that aren’t targeted at tweens/teens until the generation that has grown up with somewhat mainstream virtual worlds gets older.

On a related note, though there’s no CSI virtual world, this week’s much-hyped CSI tie-in with Second Life is squarely aimed at adults, and I think it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of adoption SL gets from this brand tie-in.

About a year ago I wrote about the idea of using split-testing to refine the user experience in online games (it’s not really suitable for stand-alone retail games). Today I caught a brief article on Redline China talking about how the Chinese online game giant Zhengtu is using a very simple version of split-testing for its newest online game - Juren. (For those who aren’t familiar, Zhengtu’s biggest game - Zhengtu Online - is, I believe, the #2 MMO in China, behind Fantasy Westward Journey. Don’t feel too bad if you’re a Westerner and haven’t heard of them.)

Zhengtu is running two version of Juren during its beta test, and will launch the game with the more popular one, along with selected favorite features from the other version. It’s the most basic, single-pass implementation of split-testing that one could implement but it’s an interesting step in the right direction. What I’d love to see would be a multi-step process, since split-testing works best when you can fairly quickly pick a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’ among two options, and then take the winner and put it up against another version, rinse, and repeat.

Figuring out how to do multi-stage split-testing in games is kind of a holy grail in terms of user acquisition I feel like. It’s hard, because it requires real, live users and because altering games to set up new cases for split-testing is a lot more work than doing so with ad copy (where split-testing originated), but think of the potential for tuning your newbie experience when you can, in a matter of a day, objectively measure what is the stickier experience, then take the winning experience and pit it against a new variation, etc. It’s actually kind of ideally suited for text MUDs given the relatively low content creation costs except for the fact that text MUD populations are not big enough to split in half without major social costs (though one could possibly separate off the newbie experience and then route people into “the game” once they’re done with the newbie stage).

No-chance-in-hell-but-sports-a-hot-wife Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has opened an official HQ in Second Life. I’m unsure how significant this really is though. The director of multimedia for the campaign, Chad Ely, had this to say, “We do them all,” said Ely. “Any and all ways we can get out to the people and let them know about Dennis Kucinich. That’s all we have to do. He’s got all the other candidates beat on the issues, so his stand on the issues will do the job for us.”

I certainly agree with Mr. Ely regarding Kucinich having all the other candidates beat on the issues but it won’t make a bit of difference in the election. He has zero realistic chance of winning, which is why he can afford to get into Second Life. He doesn’t have to worry about tarring himself with SL’s image problems, so I’m not sure whether this represents a vote of confidence in Second Life or just effectively checking off a box on a list of any and all social networking opportunities they can think of.

I have an interesting dilemma. We have 16 player races for Earth Eternal, but the world is not black and white like, say, WoW’s (where either you are on the Horde side or the Alliance side, and what race you pick completely determines that. There is no real possibility within their story/world/game rules for a human (Alliance side) to decide that the Tauren are noble creatures worth allying with and effectively switching sides as a result. This certainly simplifies things in some ways as you’re able to, 100% of the time, easily identify an enemy or a potential friend by just glancing at his/her race.

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And in equally timely news, Next-Gen Biz writes that a new report out from consulting firm the Yankee Group says that Second Life is overhyped.

The report’s conclusions are fairly silly though, at least from the quotes in Next Gen, which writes, “Yankee Group said that the lack of growth may be attributed to the fact that people are opting to go mobile instead of sitting in front of a PC.” They quoted Yankee Group as saying, “Despite near-continuous coverage in the popular and business press, metaverses like Second Life are experiencing slowing growth and limited impact because of the tethered nature of their virtual world experience.”

Second Life isn’t stagnating because it’s not got a mobile client or because it requires a PC to use. It’s a niche product and it’s captured about as much of its niche as it looks likely to capture.

MPOGD has an interview with me today about Earth Eternal. I talk a bit about the character customization we’re going to allow, address the “furry issue” briefly, and expose my megalomania.

I intend on writing a more complete review later but I wanted to add some comments while my first experience with Halo 3 is fresh in my mind. To provide a little personal context, I loved the first Halo. I played the campaign all the way through three times, mainly on split-screen co-op, and different individual parts of it many more than three. I’ve never played a campaign mode in any game all the way through more than once, much less three times. Beyond that, since there was no online play my friend Rodney used to drag his Xbox over a lot and we’d play 1v1 on system link, on two TVs, taking somewhat extreme measures to ensure we didn’t get any audio clues from each other’s games (we had the tvs in the same room): I wore headphones with the volume turned way up and we had an industrial fan going to create enough white noise that we could guarantee neither one of us was getting an unfair advantage by hearing what his opponent was up to.

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There is absolutely no point to this post other than to celebrate my excitement over the imminent release of Halo 3 tonight at midnight. We don’t take the day off for silly American holidays like Columbus Day, but you bet your ass we’re taking the day off for Halo 3.

Most exciting feature: 4 player co-op play.

Biggest Fear: Getting the red ring of death just as I fire up Master Chiefy goodness tomorrow morning.

Metaplace (the product from Areae) just launched at TechCrunch 40. Good luck Raph!

I don’t much care for social networks. I use LinkedIn (profile here if you’re interested) very lightly, and not at all for ’social’ reasons. There’s little value for me in MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, or any of the other countless platforms as I am simply not interested in the collecting “friends” mechanic on a personal level. Obviously, there’s no disputing that millions of people find social networks very useful. I’m just not one of them. I also dislike cell phones and rarely carry mine (of course, I also work from a home office, making it less useful than it might otherwise be) because I’m not a fan of feeling like I’m always on a leash that anyone can yank. I often leave my IM status set to ‘away’ for the same reason, as people don’t get offended when I ignore non-essential IMs that way.

Today though, a friend pointed me at a new network focused on being unsocial called NOSO. From their FAQ:

“NOSO is a real-world platform for temporary disengagement from social networking environments. The NOSO experience offers a unique opportunity to create NO Connections by scheduling NO Events with other NO Friends.

These “NO” events, called NOSOs, take place in designated cafes, parks, libraries, bookstores, and other public spaces. Participants - whose identities remain unknown to one another - agree to arrive at an assigned time and remain alone, quiet and un-connected, while at the same time knowing that another “Friend” is present in the space.

NOSOs are scheduled by users through the NOSO website. They last for a duration of 1 - 30 minutes, after which participants disperse and return to their regular activities.”

It is like they read my mind. I am all for participating in social events in which I don’t have to even acknowledge the presence of the other participants barring those I show up with (such as Eileen and, if it is a dog-friendly unsocial event, Nixon).

Here is a handy YouTube video-less video that will tell you more. It’s an interview with CBC up in the frozen north. I did create a profile on NOSO but I feel it’s most appropriate if I don’t provide anyone a link to it and if I never visit it again.

It’s a bit of a developers’ cliche that players will consume content faster than you imagined was reasonably possible. I bet that when the good folks at Blizzard were developing the Burning Crusade expansion for WoW they intended to create new content that would last months for your average player. Indeed, it probably does take months for your average player to get through it.

It must be annoying to then discover that someone has burned through the expansion in less than 24 hours.

On September 9, 1997, Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands, the first game from what would become Iron Realms Entertainment was launched (same month as Ultima Online!). We weren’t ready by any means but I opened it to the public because I was tired of working without player feedback.

People at the time told me I was crazy for opening a commercial MUD just as the first major graphical MMO was due to launch, but 10 years down the road I feel like I can convincingly say that those who felt text MUDs were going to fall over and die just because someone created a game with a graphical UI were very wrong. We’ve managed 10 consecutive years of double-digit growth in a medium that so many people were convinced was an absolute commercial dead-end.

A friend opined to me the other day that one of his big problems in his approach was that he wouldn’t let go of an idea. He felt it was in his nature to keep at an idea well past the point where other people might call it quits. I can see where he’s coming from, I suppose, but I’ve always viewed tenacity as a net positive. It may be cliche but the willingness to simply push on is what got me, at least, through the early and very lean years.

The teams running each of our text MUDs have been running events for the previous month, ramping up to tons of events this weekend. I logged onto Achaea tonight to be part of the festivities as the hour approached midnight GMT and was taken aback by the outpouring of more-than-just-friendly communication from players whom hadn’t seen me in the two years since I passed over direct control of Achaea to others.

It’s hard to describe what I feel about Achaea at this point. It’s a creative endeavor I worked on full-time from 1995 to 2005 and poured my soul into. It was difficult to pass on and it is a little painful to log in now and realize that the game-world has passed me by. I don’t know the details of the intricate plots going on any more and I don’t have my finger so directly on the pulse of the community, but I still feel incredibly connected to it. I essentially lived in Achaea for 8 or 9 years.

I’m extraordinarily grateful to a huge number of people at this point. All the players over the last ten years, the volunteers, and all the formal members of Iron Realms. Thank you. Let’s make the next 10 years as great as the last ten.

Incidentally, it is pronounced ah-KAY-ah. ‘Achaeans’ was the generic term for the Greeks that fought against Troy in the Trojan War, and there was an ‘Achaean League’ in real/more established ancient Grecian history as well. The Aetolian League defeated the Achaean League at one point.

Fun liveblog of the AGC panel on where the biggest opportunities in games are over at Virtual World News. Raph Koster, Erik Bethke, Mark Jacobs, and John Smedley go at it in a debate that basically turns into subscriptions vs. microtransactions and RMT.

Madeleine L’Engle has died at the age of 88.

I have nothing but great memories of the four books in her Time series, “A Wrinkle in Time“, “A Wind in the Door“, “A Swiftly Tilting Planet,” and “Many Waters.” I suppose technically they’re children’s books but Minae, the producer for Achaea, just re-read them and said they hold up quite well. I’ve just ordered them from Amazon. What I remember about her books were the fairly metaphysical (not that I understood this at the time I first read them) themes running through them. They are very ‘adult’ children’s books if one wants to consider them children’s books. I think they may have been the first fantasy/sci-fi books I ever read, though I kind of hesitate to call them either. Go read them if you haven’t. Easy, short reads but well worth it.

I live in terror these days. Sheer, heart-stopping panic, unmitigated by reason. What, you ask, could terrify me so aside from the obvious (landsharks)?

The Red Ring of Death.

Those around me fall like wheat before the scythe, as a fourth close friend experienced the red ring of death that signals complete system failure for an Xbox 360. I don’t call too many people close friends so it is disturbing enough to know that the Reaper is stalking us. Still, I’m possessed of powerful Warranty Magic so the Reaper alone cannot chill my heart with this kind of foreboding.

Nay. The grim hand of dread that has gripped my soul this morning derives from the realization that were I to experience the foul Ring now, as did my CTO Chris last night, I would likely not get my console back until after September 25th. My god, just writing that has turned my muscles to jelly and is that a bit of wetness I feel dripping down my left leg?

Poor Chris (who went through four of the original Xboxs) has already resolved that he’ll need to purchase a new 360 because, “I will NOT wait to blast some motherfuckers with a Spartan Laser!”

So please, pray for me my friends. If there’s an ounce of humanity in you, pray that I am not marked by the red ring before the 25th. Pray to any God that will listen. (Try Hephaestus. His forges turn out quality stuff.)

And now, I am off to a local farm. There’ll be lamb’s blood on all the doors to stay the Reaper’s hand, and tonight Mr. Gates shall sup on a burnt offering of the finest organic, sustainably-raised Sonoma lamb.

This post has nothing to do with virtual worlds, games, or anything related so feel free to skip it.

(Little lesson on America’s electoral college system that is, I sincerely hope, only of benefit to citizens of other countries.) In 2000, George W. Bush won the Presidency by getting less votes than Al Gore (the first time this had officially happened since 1888. There is an argument to be made it happened in 1960 as well). On the other hand, because the US employs a system in which your vote for President simply does not count if you don’t vote for the winning candidate in your state, George W. Bush still won the election (granted, the courts had to get involved but that is how the legal system works and it worked properly, arguably). In 48 out of the 50 states, our system is “winner takes all.”

So, imagine that a state has, for the sake of argument, 1 million actual voters and there are only two candidates on the ballot for President. Candidate A gets 500,000 votes. Candidate B gets 499,999 votes. Since America always pitches itself as a democracy, one would think that this might mean that Candidate A just gained a whopping 1 vote advantage in the election. But no! What it actually means, effectively, is that Candidate A just gained all 1 million votes (in all states but Nebraska and Maine, both of which are very small and don’t have many votes to send anyway). I’m simplifying a bit insofar as what Candidate A actually gets is 100% of the electoral college votes from our hypothetical state, and the electoral college votes determine who becomes President. Though it’s never yet happened the system actually makes it possible for candidate A to win by an absolute landslide in terms of how many people voted for him/her, but still lose the election because candidate B got a plurality of votes in a few of the biggest states.

Seems a little absurd doesn’t it? Almost a little, dare I say, undemocratic? There are historical reasons why America does things this way, as well as legitimate-sounding arguments to keep the system as is, but I strongly believe that most Americans, if given a choice between 1:1 representation and the current system would overwhelmingly choose 1:1 representation (since that is actually the spirit of what we’re taught is the essence of democracy)…right up until it was explained that this might, short-term, lead to defeat for the political party they favor.

After the 2000 election, there was lots of muttering on the Democratic side about the unfairness of the electoral college system and how if it was actually “fair” Gore would have been President since a plurality of the country voted for him. I completely agree. America is no longer a collection of disparate States joining together for a common purpose (I am willing to bet that far more people self-identify as American before “Idahoan” or “Wisconsonian” or what have you). It is a State with small, less important states within it.

A serious debate has begun in California about reforming our system here to allow for somewhat proportional representation. It’s not a perfect proposal insofar as what it does is move the system in California down to the Congressional district level (so winner-take-all per district rather than true 1:1 representation) but it’s a hell of a lot better than what we have now.

Of course, since California has been voting Democratic for President lately, it is the Republicans pushing for this change. They know darn well that this change will result in a better chance of putting a Republican in the White House. Everybody sees this. It’s also a blatantly politically-timed move in an attempt to pass a bill before the ‘08 elections.

But so what? Shouldn’t conforming to the essence of what we tell our children democracy is outweigh “supporting the team”? The electoral college could use some reforming when it helps the Democrats, but not when it helps the Republicans? That is fundamentally corrupt thinking.

Principle should come before party and neither of those parties will ever get my vote, at least, until and unless they stop behaving as if winning the game rather than consistently sticking to principle is what matters. Not only is this unlikely but the winner-takes-all electoral college system makes it fundamentally very difficult for a third party to win or even make a showing since you get no electoral votes without winning a plurality in a state.

“One person one vote” is fair and democratic. The current system is not.

Warning: If you don’t want to read spoilers, don’t read this post!

I finished Bioshock this evening. I don’t finish too many games but this this one was pretty short overall. I’m not sure how long it took but it couldn’t have been more than 12 hours, which is fine with me. Took me 2 weeks to get those 12 hours in as it was.

The day I got the game, I wrote a very excited post about how much I was looking forward to playing through it after having logged a couple hours of play time. Unfortunately, my interest in the game declined pretty much linearly from that moment on. I simply do not understand why this game has been reviewed so well unless the reviewers only played the first hour or two of the game.

The pluses:

• A pretty game. Very, very nicely-done art in an attractive art deco-ish style. Not too many games use art deco, so that was refreshing. In fact, I think it was one of the things that initially suckered me into believing this was anything but a standard FPS wrapped in a huge hype ribbon.
• The writing was not offensively bad. That’s a big step up over most games (probably including my own). Compared to most games the writing was excellent, in fact, but that’s not a very high bar to leap over.
• Bug-free. Though I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience, mine was mercifully 100% free of bugs…just like all console games should be. Patching console games is lame. Still, this is the single 360 game I’ve played thus far for any length of time in which I didn’t notice any bugs.
• The first 2 minutes. Possibly the best opening I’ve ever seen in any video game in any format.

The minuses:

• The hype machine. I came into this with huge expectations. There was going to be this great storyline. There were going to be innovative gameplay mechanics. There were going to be real moral choices to make. All hype. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is still a great game. It’s just not an awesome one, to my taste.
• The story. I don’t tend to enjoy first person shooters, and pretty much the only way I’ll typically play one is if it allows for co-op play. Bioshock was pitched as having this engrossing story that shows games are art, blah blah blah, but if that’s art then pardon me, but big fucking deal. I mean the climax of the game is an absolutely standard battle against this larger-than-life guy who can throw fire, ice, and electricity. Call him a wizard or a super-villain and there are probably well over a 1000 games that culminated in essentially exactly this way. Big let-down.The other big letdown is that the story is almost entirely communicated to you by listening to tape recorders. Very little of what you actually do has any bearing whatsoever on the story. What you spend 99% of the game doing is shooting what amount to zombies, some of which throw fireballs, some of which leap at you, but all of which look more or less the same.
• The gameplay. In your right hand you wield a weapon (various types of guns/projectile weapons) to attack things with. It has limited ammo, aside from the basic melee weapon (a wrench). In your left hand you wield ‘plasmids’ which are flat-out D&D-type spells. Fireball, lightning bolt, etc etc. Then, you walk around shooting things. That is the extent of the gameplay barring a minigame that is used for everything from opening safes to disabling attacking security bots to hacking into security cameras. By the end of the game I truly loathed that stupid minigame, which feels very awkwardly stuffed into the game to me. The most valuable thing in the game for me ended up being auto-hacking tools since they allowed me to mainly avoid the minigame.
• The supposed moral choices. There was exactly one really meaningful choice to make in Bioshock, though you repeated that choice multiple times (perhaps 15 in all?). The choice is between killing these freakish little girls and getting X of a resource called ‘Adam’ (used to buy new spells or “plasmids” if you prefer) or not killing them and only getting X/2 of the resources. Of course, in the latter case you’re compensated after every 3 girls you rescue with gifts that more or less make up for what you lost. So in fact, the moral choice doesn’t even have any meaningful consequences for you, which makes it a trivial choice at best.
• The “social commentary.” Sorry, but criticizing objectivism (Ayn Rand’s economic/moral psuedo-philosophy) is like criticizing Scientology. Satire, not criticism, is where it’s at for ideas that are just patently not worth taking seriously. Bioshock took itself very seriously and I occasionally got the impression that the developers felt they were really making a philosophical statement by incorporating some of the basics of Rand’s “philosophy” into the ostensible bad guy.

I suspect that had I rented this rather than bought it (definitely does not pass my ‘buy’ test in retrospect) and had I not been seeing ratings like 9.9 out of 10 and 5/5, and had I not read all sorts of people putting forth the notion that Bioshock is a credible comeback to Ebert’s assertion that games are not art, I would have been reasonably positive about it. On the other hand, there’s an equal chance that after the first hour or two I would have just gotten bored and turned it off. Had I known what was in store for me, that’s exactly what I would have done. I just kept holding out for the payoff (like with Fable) that never came and when I was done I was mostly just glad to be done forever with it.

I don’t like to get involved in the “Are games art” debate in public because my opinions may offend my fellow developers, but I’ll say this: If you hold Bioshock up as an example of the best art that the games industry produces, then you’re essentially saying, to my ears, is, “Dawn of the Dead is the pinnacle of film.” (And that’s unfair to Dawn of the Dead, which is a pretty well-done satire on something very real: rampant consumerism.)

I don’t mean to criticize Irrational/2k Boston (the devs) either, or damn them with faint praise. Bioshock is absolutely one of the most polished game experiences I’ve had in awhile. I just felt quite misled by the hype preceding the game’s release as well as the first minute of the game (which is awesome and literally bears no relationship to the rest of the game).

Overall, I’d give Bioshock, say, a 9.1 rather than the 9.9s its been getting.

Auto Assault, a vehicle-based MMO that never really took off, will be shut down tonight at midnight.

MMOs have been shutting down for 20+ years so this is hardly new but it’s still a bit sad in the same way that I find it sad to see a dilapidated, run-down house. That house was once someone’s pride and joy and it was the scene for for lots of memories, both good and not-so-good.

R.I.P Auto Assault.

Virtually Blind has a very readable interview up with Jason Archinaco, Marc Bragg’s lawyer in the case. For those unsure about the details of the case, I’ve covered it before here and then here.

Not much to comment on from the interview. Bragg’s lawyer says what you’d expect him to say, just as no doubt Linden’s lawyer would say what you’d expect him to say. I find Bragg’s arguments in general to be fairly compelling though. Linden Labs and Philip Rosedale (its CEO) pretty clearly (to my mind at least) misled consumers by repeatedly assuring the public that what you buy in Second Life is, in fact, your property, while now they’ve decided that it’s actually still Linden’s property after all and that they can take it back from you at any time. That the idea of “land” in Second Life as an object to be owned rather than a server to be accessed is fallacious to begin with doesn’t matter much to my not-a-lawyer eyes, especially when Linden made 10s of millions of dollars selling this land until radically false pretenses.

Thus, I find this line of reasoning by Mr. Archinaco to be fairly compelling. He writes, in the interview:

“Let’s say you just assume Bragg’s a bad guy. I don’t think he is, of course, but let’s just assume he is. Who cares? If somebody steals from Wal-mart, can Wal-mart’s security guys come to his house and repossess everything else he bought from them over the years? Of course not. If you have an investment account with Vanguard and there’s a mismarked stock – which happens – where you know it’s worth $50 but it’s listed at $1 and you buy all you can, they’re not going to honor the buys, but they aren’t going to say, “Yeah, we’ll keep that, and we’ll take this other $100,000 you’ve deposited with us too. See you, thanks!” For Linden Lab to point to the Terms of Service and say “Look, we have a forfeiture clause,” well, that clause is outright unlawful.”

In other words, I’m certainly willing to be convinced that Bragg has no right to the land that he “purchased” from Linden using an…unorthodox…method, but Linden seized the rest of his in-game assets as well, and since Linden had been loudly proclaiming to the world for years that what you buy in Second Life is yours I think it’s fairly outrageous for Linden to seize Bragg’s other assets.

I haven’t posted much about Earth Eternal here lately (ok, I haven’t posted all that much lately period) as I don’t want my blog to turn into a promotional device but I think the occasional post is alright. So in that spirit, I wanted to note that we released screenshots of males and females for all our 16 player races late last week.

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