Category Archives: The Android’s Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO), The Android's Red Flag (Quasi-political ramblings)

Goodnight, Sweet Prince pt. 2

I only just heard the news now, but apparently the word came down from on high at NCSoft last week – City of Heroes is being shut down.

Now I’ve really got two separate but related topics in mind here, the first of which is City of Heroes itself and the second of which is gaming companies and their attitudes, so this post might be a little longer than usual as I delve into both. I do apologize to those who prefer snappier posts but I only have so much control over my sesquipedalian loquaciousness.

Long ago, I played City of Heroes back when it was very new. Before the first ‘Issue’ (as they call their patch-expansions) even came out. It wasn’t a perfect game by any means but it was a great deal of fun, with an obviously massive amount of care and love put into it. Along with FFXI it was my first MMO, and it’s one that’s stuck with me since even if I haven’t played in a good long time. It still has an active community today (Though not for much longer, obviously) and it’s pretty sad to see how surprised and shocked everyone was by this news. It really came from nowhere and I’d hate to think about a community I’ve been part of for years just being unplugged.

My visage upon hearing of this news.

When I say people were shocked and surprised, it should be noted that this seems to have included the actual devs at Paragon as well. One day things were fine, they were excitedly discussing the next issue and their plans for the future, and the next they got a phone call saying to wrap it up, the show is over. There was no forewarning, no discussion, not even a hint of anything like this coming until NCSoft made the call. NCSoft have had a terrible year so far, in large part because they were banking on Guild Wars 2 being a success (and by all accounts it, monetarily at least, is). They’re also insisting on keeping Aion limping along even though who the hell plays Aion. But City of Heroes, a steady game with an active fanbase, and in the green? It gets cut. Apparently NCSoft don’t see as much of the money from CoH as they do from other games, presumably because of something in the arrangement when they handed it from Cryptic over to Paragon, and this warrants ending the game and closing the studio.

I don’t want to get into a big ol’ anarcho-syndicalist rant here (actually yes I do but) but it seems to me like certain people, both within gaming and without, could stand to take a longer-term look at their income sources. Something doesn’t have to beat a Hollywood blockbuster to be worthwhile; look at Paradox Interactive. Their games are never going to outsell Halo and they know it, but they’re not dumping their core franchises for this. They’re carrying on, making investments some of which work out (Darkest Hour) and some of which don’t (Magna Mundi), but they’re not sacrificing beloved games like Europa Universalis in order to try and beat Modern Warfare 4 to market. City of Heroes was still making money, and even if the projections suggest that will stop, they could have at least had the decency to A) give the devs some forewarning and B) give them time to put out a final issue to wrap up loose ends. Give both Paragon and the game’s players some respect, in short.

Of course we all know that gaming is not a business to get into, even if you love games. It’s a long, hard job with absolutely stupid hours, atrocious pay, filled with nepotism and hierarchies, and with companies run by either college kids who happened to get lucky in the 80s and never learned proper business, or by businessmen who don’t know the first thing about videogames. Except Valve. Valve is actually a great place to work, apparently – and it shows.

The Android's Aural Receptors (Music/Sound), The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

Goodnight, sweet prince.

2 Comments

As you may have recently heard, SCE Liverpool – formerly known as Psygnosis – is being shut down. To anyone who grew up playing the games I did this is a moment for reflection and, yes, perhaps a little bit of mourning.

Psygnosis was founded in the early 80s in Liverpool, UK. It didn’t take long for them to get noticed because of games like Shadow of the Beast, but they really started to shine in 1991 when they displayed some seriously canny foresight by publishing DMA Designs’ Lemmings. DMA Designs, you may or may not know, went on to change their name to Rockstar. In 1993 Psygnosis was acquired by Sony, though they would keep the name for eight further years, and it was here under Sony that they made their real gems.

Wipeout was the flagship title for the Playstation One, and the then-impossible level of graphics and the cool use of contemporary music to race holy shit flying race cars certainly sold the console to me, and to a few of my friends. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before. It was also hard as hell, which was pretty great. They complimented this by retaining their publishing acumen to help games like Destruction Derby, and made the little-known but extremely silly and enjoyable giant mech game, Krazy Ivan. Later was Wipeout 2097, the best iteration of the franchise and an extraordinary game still worth playing today.

When I was a kid their owl logo gave me nightmares.

But it would be another year or two, in 1997, that Psygnosis put out the two games for which I will always remember them, despite the brilliance of Wipeout. Colony Wars and later in the year G-Police were both superb, amazing sci-fi games, the first set in space (and with a wonderful, narrated in-game encyclopedia) and the second on Jupiter’s moon Callisto. Both featured all the things you could wish for in such games; dystopia, violence, futuristic weapons and vehicles, and “The Tsar and his battle fleet saw everything… knew everything… punished everything“. That same year also saw the release of their weird, experimental game Sentient, which was one of the most unique games I’ve ever played.

When the 90s closed the spark seemed to have gone out of the company, and despite the great sequels to G-Police and Colony Wars they fell back on Wipeout games and on their Formula 1 line, all very solid but somehow never as impressive as taking chances on Lemmings or the Discworld point’n’click games. Still, they will be missed, and not soon forgotten, by those of us from that era who grew up with all these amazing games thanks to Psygnosis.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Grand Strategy and 4X

We got a question yesterday via twitter from reader Fuggle/Math asking how we would describe the difference between 4X games and Grand Strat games. Well, the reply would take longer than 140 characters so here we are~

Now, these two genres are pretty closely linked for obvious reasons. Both tend to involve the control of countries on a quest for dominance, be it local, global, or galactic. Both tend to involve building up your infrastructure and military and pushing large groups of units around. And if you play both then it’s hardly surprising that you’d end up trying to figure out what the difference is supposed to be. But let’s dig into it a little deeper and see if we can tease some answers out.

Let’s define 4X first, for anyone not sure of what it means. It should be 4E actually, because it stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. But X is the coolest letter, so there we are. Anyway the idea of a 4X game is to do exactly that; to begin from a single settlement (be it a city or a planet) and first discover everything around you, then move in to occupy and make use of it, and then to annihilate everything else you meet.

So far, so strategic. How does this differ from Grand Strategy? Well, a Grand Strategy game has a couple of key differences. You still Expand and Exploit, but the Exploration and Extermination aspects tend to play second fiddle. This is not to say that they are absent or that no GS game cares for them – EU3 has a strong exploration aspect for example, whilst almost all of them involve SOME degree of Extermination. But you tend to be able to win without needing to conquer everyone. Indeed that may be perfectly possible, as in Hearts of Iron, but it may also be fairly tricky, as in Victoria 2.

And in some cases it is the categorical imperative of those workers who have already set themselves free.

Perhaps the other big difference is that 4X games are almost invariably turn-based, whilst Grand Strategy tend to be Real Time With Pause. Both encourage you to take your time and think about things, but GS still leans towards being a bit more fast-paced thanks to this. GS generally tries to implement the diplomacy side of things with more rigor and depth than 4X, as well – though the extent to which any given game succeeds in this is, of course, up for debate.

The much, much quicker way to tell is by asking “Was this game made by Paradox Interactive?” If yes, it’s a Grand Strategy. If no, it’s not. Unless it is, but who buys anything made by Matrix Games at those prices?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

World of Warcraft on Your Resume

4 Comments

So Europa Universalis IV has been announced, which is something that we’ll no doubt be talking about in greater detail within the next few days, but for today’s Friday post I want to share a video I found the other night.  Basically it’s a guy talking about how an MMO guild or raid leader is probably better equipped for a leadership position than someone who has just gone to school and has no other experience, and how the guild/raid model could be applied to businesses.  In other words, he’s reiterating stuff any MMO player has already known for years.  It’s kind of nice to see other people realize it, though.  Now if only we could clone this guy and put him in charge of employment around the world, right?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Gamer? Hardcore? Enthusiast? Buff?

3 Comments

Today’s topic is about how we see ourselves, in terms of being gamers. Obviously (really REALLY obviously) everybody’s identity is a unique and complex thing, and the things important to one person might be incidental to another. To some extent this is, I suspect, where the hostility of “in-groups” like hardcore gamers or early adopters of new bands to newcomers stems from, but that’s a tangential topic so we’ll put it aside for now.

Pike and I both identify as “Gamers”, in the sense that we play a lot of videogames, think about them a lot, talk about them, and read about them both on and offline. Oh and I guess we write about them too! We’re at the far end of the spectrum, where it’s not just another thing we do for fun but an important, perhaps even central aspect of our identity. Just as a lover of books like my mom spends a huge amount of time reading, collects books, and has filled every room in her house with stuffed shelves and numerous stacks of books on the floor, Pike and myself are the same with games. But the terms surrounding this identity are strange and nebulous things with some very different connotations to different people. It would be absurd for someone to call themselves a “reader”, but we would accept a “connoisseur” of books much more readily. Everyone watches movies, but a “movie buff” is a different creature.

Pinkie Pie is a connoisseur. Of you.

So does “Gamer” really work as a label? Sure we play games, but so do enormous numbers of other people. “Hardcore”? It’s probably a bit closer, and we are indeed both tremendous neckbeards and deeply cynical of the direction the industry is going in, but it’s not like I don’t love a good round of Plants vs. Zombies and Pike does little else besides play Angry Birds these days. [Editor’s Note: I DO NOT I PLAYED IT LIKE ONCE IN MY LIFE. ~Pike] “Connoisseur”? Perhaps that fits a bit better in that we are, after all, interested in gaming as a whole medium and are fascinated with it beyond just playing the things. It was easier when we could just insult the people playing the other side’s console because SEGA was far better than Nintendon’t.

So, time to open up the comments! What sorts of terms do you readers use in this regard?

The Android's Casting Magic Missile (RPG), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), Uncategorized

The Art of the Story-Driven Game

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been playing through Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic lately.  Playing through a good RPG is always an interesting experience for me in particular, because the storytelling method is so far removed from that of the strategy games that I’m usually playing.  Something like a strategy game is very open-ended and sandboxy; the story comes entirely out of what you are doing.  RPGs and other story-driven games, on the other hand, are more limited.  There are a set, finite number of stories to be told, even when you’re presented with a multitude of options and endings in classic Bioware style.

SPOILER: Twilight is Darth Revan.

But this isn’t a bad thing.  Rather, it’s a very interesting narrative device.  It’s akin to a movie or book or TV series, but separate from all three.

A movie tends to be just a couple of hours long, for example, whereas the main storyline of a game can easily go on for 30+ hours.  So a video game’s storytelling is more in line with the lengthy tales of a book or TV series, but then you have the interactivity and the subsequent bond you develop with it because of that, and the result is a truly fascinating way to tell a story.

It will be interesting to see where games go from here in terms of being a narrative device.  While I personally believe that features like interactivity and gameplay are of paramount importance in games– that is why games are games, after all– the idea that a game might be considered a great piece of literature some day is a really fantastic one.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), Uncategorized

Watching and Reading Let’s Plays

5 Comments

One of my pleasures related to gaming is to read Let’s Plays, so I thought I might cook up a little blog post about the topic and then open the comments for suggestions! If you’re at a loss for something to occupy your Sunday then you might consider seeking out a LP and reading it with a nice cool refreshing soda/nice soothing hot chocolate, depending on local weather conditions!

A Let’s Play is essentially a player taking the viewers/readers through a game, or series of games, by writing about them, showing screenshots, or providing videos with commentary. LPs come in several flavors but the general principle is to show the reader/viewer the mechanics of the game, examples of artwork, music and FMVs, all that sort of thing. Where relevant you’ll see plot exposition, and very commonly people will show secrets, Easter eggs, perform feats of skill, or abuse game mechanics to show how utterly broken some games can become. Some are serious, some are humorous, usually though the idea is to show the game off, whether it’s to encourage everyone to play something really great or to explore the mendacious depths of a truly turgid turd.

Somewhat related to LPs, but often with a greater focus on storytelling or the like, are After Action Reports (AARs), which I’ve written a short example of for this very site. If you have a quick look at that you’ll see what I mean, I’m not talking about mechanics but rather interpreting what happened in a narrative sense, giving it meaning and context – something strategy games like Darkest Hour are very open to.

And some scenarios defy explanation.

A good LP is a great thing; one of the most famous, and one you’ve most probably heard of already, is Boatmurdered. It is an uncommonly hilarious and deeply enjoyable account of a Dwarf Fortress even more doomed than the usual. The fame of Boatmurdered does more than show off the comedic skills of a bunch of goons though; it also had a fairly significant impact on the fame of the game on which it was based, and for an indie game made by a two-man team who rely entirely on donations, this is a fairly big deal.

So as part of gaming’s culture and milieu I think LPs are a great thing, and I really enjoy going through them. Sometimes I read one for a game I thought I knew completely and learn many new things. Sometimes I read one of a game I would never play, and see what others see in it. Sometimes I just find myself tremendously amused.

If you want to find a whole treasure trove of Let’s Plays then the LP Archive is a great place to start. You can also search YouTube and find a vast store of video-based LPs, and various forums have their own sections from Something Awful’s dedicated and vast Let’s Play subforum to Paradox Interactive’s many AAR forums.

Are there any LPs you would recommend to people, any that you’ve found particularly funny, or any that have sparked interest in a game where you had none before? Tell us all about it in the comments below!

The Android's Horn-Rimmed Glasses (Indie), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

A Kick in the Pants

3 Comments

As I’m sure many of you fine folks will be aware, there’s a website called Kickstarter out there which has become rather popular of late. If you are indeed uninitiated, the essential idea is that you posit a creative project, set a monetary goal to fund said project, and then people can pledge dosh to support it. If you don’t make the goal nobody pays, but if you meet or exceed it, voila – you’ve got your cash. I can see the logic here as it means committing to a project only costs you if loads of other people support it too – so it’s security for your pledges, helps ensure dosh for the prospective producer, and is in and of itself a good source of advertising for projects.

What does this mean for games? Well it looks pretty promising so far. Now with something like a book, a one-person operation you can do in your own time, you get it out there and THEN try to sell it, at least with current e-publishing taking off. A videogame, even an indie one, is of course a much bigger investment. It takes time, and even if you’re working with a really small team you might need to bring in, say, a music guy for awhile. All of this of course costs money in a variety of ways, from wages to licensing to Thai ladyboy prostitutes. Games, in short, cost money to make. And the men in suits who fund them are aware of nothing except that. All they want is to get Call of Duty’s sales figures. Kickstarter offers a striking alternative to this which I think really needs to be highlighted; it’s the democratization of funding, insofar as you believe capitalism can be democratic. (Worker solidarity! Syndicalists unite!)

For mother Equestria!

Take a look at FTL. It’s a great idea, and I’m wholly behind it. Take a look at those numbers though; these guys figured they needed $10,000 to get their project finished, and they ended up with $200,000. Twenty times more than they asked for. Even if we assume a bigger company had looked at their idea and what they had so far and said “Yeah, I can see this working out.”, would they have gained that much funding? And if they had, would it have been so free of strings and meddling?

Of course not every Kickstarter works out. I’m surprised at how little Kenshi got, for example. It’s going to take some time for people to figure out how this whole thing works and how to get their names out there successfully; and we don’t have enough money to fund all the projects (because we’re not a global federation of anarcho-Syndicalist communes, no doubt), but nonetheless this field seems to me to be an exciting development. Even moreso if we look at how Kickstarter can be combined with Amplitude’s model of letting beta players vote on features and the Minecraft-led idea of letting people buy in alpha/beta. It’s hard to discern what shape this will all take, and of course there’s no end-state here, there’s going to be new developments that change the playing field if not the whole ball game again. But maybe, if we’re lucky, this will lead to an increase in player input and more importantly still the ability for developers to be in charge over publishers and executives.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

Diablo, Lord of Error.

7 Comments

Whilst visiting Pike her brother generously donated a guest pass for Diablo III, letting me play until the Skeleton King in Act I. Back in England I gave it a try yesterday, and found it a fairly enjoyable game that seemed to lack something that D2 had which was so compelling, though I hadn’t yet identified what that was.

But this post is not about that. No, this post is about what just happened. I figured “I’ll play it for a couple of hours, see how it goes; the Cathedral was definitely better than the outdoors, maybe it continues improving.” so I fired it up. Logged in. Got this.

More like WHYablo

I was trying to play single player. Indeed, I was not yet at the point where you decide whether you’re playing solo or multi; this is just what you get. Yeahhh… no. We’re not having any of that. I’ve not spent one penny here and I am outraged at this. How people who spend LODS OF EMONE on the thing have failed to riot and burn down Blizz/Activision HQ is beyond me, but they are clearly exercising the saintly virtues that Diablo and his brothers seek to extinguish.

There is no reasonable basis for this. If you are going to make people connect to play in single-player, then you best have a reliable freaking service. Taking the servers down for regular maint does not constitute reliable. It’s fine with an MMO; heck it’s fine with any game in fact, but you best believe people should be allowed to play their single-player game in single-player mode when they want to, not when you permit them to.

In short I just uninstalled D3, I will not be buying it at any point in the foreseeable future (Blizz did me a favor actually because I have no money), and I’d urge anyone on the fence whether they want to support insane policies like this one with their patronage.

The Android can't be arsed with a real topic (Weekend), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Okay guys!

4 Comments

Pike here!  Mister Adequate has made it all the way over here to the colonies and we’re busy gathering up some games to play.  We went to GameStop the other day and picked up several classics for cheap, including TimeSplitters and Shadow of the Colossus, and then we went to another GameStop and… were promptly turned away because apparently we don’t look like we’re over seventeen and Mister Adequate didn’t have his passport with him.

Our face was similar to this.

I mean, maybe it’s good that we look young, but anyways.  We’ll go back today with proper ID and scoop those games up.  In the mean time we played some Metal Slug and Crazy Taxi and an arcade.  Anyways, we do apologize for the lull in blogging, but we’ve been… well… preoccupied.  Ahem.