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The Soapbox: It doesn't have to be for you
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. It's a natural problem: MMOs are all about making you feel invested in your character and your playstyle. The best games let you choose your style, your preferred content, the way you want to level, the times you want to play, and so forth. And so it's only natural that you'll gradually start to think of the way you like to play as the one part of the game that actually matters. Sure, you aren't going to say it out loud, but you still think in your heart that PvP or raiding or small-group content or roleplaying or dancing naked on a mailbox is the real core of the game. Or you think that free-for-all PvP or crafting sandboxes or directed themeparks or whatever are the real kind of MMOs and everything else is a pale imitation. And that's a shame because even if you like those sorts of things, not everyone does.
Jon Bon Jovi accuses Steve Jobs of putting a shot through the heart of music
Steve Jobs, according to musical legend Jon Bon Jovi, is "personally responsible for killing the music business." This strident (and economically false) accusation comes from an interview he conducted with Britain's Sunday Times, where he candidly sets out his dismay at this century's move away from music distribution on physical media and toward ubiquitous download portals. Bon Jovi's nostalgia shines through in his detailed account of the "magical" experience of picking up records and enjoying their sweet touch and soothing analog tones -- though we're not sure how he missed out on the fact that CDs, not downloads, were the first to stab a dagger of digital convenience through the hole in his record collection. Still, Bon Jovi thinks Apple's iTunes success is to blame for the loss of our collective innocence and bright-eyed enthusiasm for music. What do you think?
Critical feedback on the road to RIFT's launch
Criticism, even well-meaning constructive criticism, is never easy to take. "Dealing with constant, live feedback is not always easy. Sometimes it can be a morale hit when people are overly critical of a feature," Trion Worlds' Russ Brown admits. In a new dev diary over on ZAM, Brown explains just how important feedback is to the development process, and how Trion is handling it as the team fine-tunes RIFT for launch. According to Brown, working on an MMO is different from working on a single-player title because one encounters -- and invites -- a lot more feedback on an ongoing basis. This turns out to be a double-edged sword: It can be disruptive to the team's schedule and require a lot of extra work in response to concerns and issues, but the feedback can also result in a much better product all around. Ultimately, Brown feels as though the team is actually paying attention to the players: "There have been times when I've come into the office in the morning to find work done by an entire group of developers staying late the night before to fix an instance or invasion. Not because some stuffed shirt told them to, but because they care, and just like the players in our alpha/beta, they want to make the best damn product possible. The only way to do that is to listen to your customers and react."
Officers' Quarters: Impending doom
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. As the dawn of the Cataclysm era looms, new guilds have been springing up on every realm, hoping to tackle the expansion's challenges. Founding a guild is no easy task -- it requires dedication, patience, and hard work. How can you be sure it's all going to work out? Well, you never can. However, if you can identify signs of trouble early on, then you stand a much better chance of heading off some major problems later. This week's email is from a guild leader who's already sensing divisions in his fledgling community. Scott, I have been playing WoW for some time now. I had joined a guild last year and made several friends in it. However, we had several differences we felt over what we wanted and the direction the guild was going. So we parted ways with the guild, leaving behind many friends. We started a new guild and are starting to recruit, establish guild rules and goals, etc. However, I am worried that differences among guild members and especially officers may become a problem. We have several very kind and patient officers and others who are less so. How does one manage the two groups (i.e., still get things done in a kind and patient manor and keep those with shorter fuses from turning off new members or current officers)?
CE-Oh no he didn't!: IBM's Palmisano says HP 'used to be' an inventive company
The finest putdowns are usually the simplest. To wit, check out IBM's Chief Executive Trashtalker, Samuel Palmisano, whose elegant use of the past tense relegates HP's current status to that of a mere has-been innovator. Now, says Sam, HP is forced to acquire new companies just to keep up, thanks in part to Mark Hurd's slashing of investment in research and development. Speaking of Hurd, Palmisano also thinks HP failed its investors by handing him a fat severance package as he promptly jumped ship to Larry Ellison's Oracle loveboat. Another reason why Palmisano isn't worried about HP is that he sees the PC era as already over, describing IBM's sale of its PC business to Lenovo as an act of foresight, and adding that he "couldn't give it away today." Clearly they don't mince their words over at International Business Machines.
Officers' Quarters: Destructive criticism, part 2
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. Last week, I began addressing what is one of the most complex and difficult duties an officer or raid leader must occasionally perform: giving out unsolicited constructive criticism. As the email that sparked this discussion proved, such conversations can be volatile. With the wrong approach, you can destroy friendships and lose guildmates. Let's continue to examine the right approach. To recap, here are the first two steps from part 1: Consider your guild's criticism culture and adapt your approach accordingly. Plant the seed of taking personal initiative to research and improve play. At this point, you have to be a little bit patient. If your guild is on the brink of collapse over performance issues, you can't always afford to let this situation play out. However, the safest bet is to give the underperforming player another week of raids to show an improvement. Keep a close eye on him during this week. Examine his spec and gear to see if he's made any adjustments. Record a combat log to see if he's using the appropriate class abilities. Watch him during boss encounters to see if he is following instructions and executing the fight properly.
Officers' Quarters: Destructive criticism
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. In the day-to-day duties of an officer and a raid leader, few endeavors are more fraught with the potential for drama than doling out performance advice to your players. Constructive criticism, no matter how well-meaning, can become destructive in the blink of an eye if it's not approached delicately. After scaring off a healer, the officer who wrote this week's email is looking for a better way to deal with these situations. Scott, As an officer in my guild, I take care of several things, but the big three are raid leading our second 10-man group (which is not easy as a healer, by any stretch of the imagination), making sure our priests are doing what they are supposed to be doing both as dps and healers, and any extra healers, making sure they're doing their job right. The first two are interesting enough, especially since there's very little consistency with our group, and our number of priests waxes and wanes with the seasons. But the big problem here is when I have to "fix" a healer. Now, I know no one likes to receive constructive criticism, and officers like even less to give the constructive criticism for fear of running off the guild member. Recently, I've had to talk to two different healers to try to help them out with their healing, one was a holy priest, the other a restoration shaman. Now, I have some pretty hefty experience with both classes as healers (I have two max level priests, and a max level shaman, and I've healed in raids on all of them), so I find myself at least somewhat knowledgeable about the classes, but by no means do I consider myself an expert. I'll leave that to Elitist Jerks. At any rate, the two healers, after speaking with them separately in tells, I found that the priest was more willing to work with the suggestions I'd made, and there was a huge improvement the following night in our raid. The shaman, however, was very adverse to my suggestions. Here's where the meat of the problem comes in.
Gartner: Symbian is 're-arranging the deck chairs,' losing buoyancy fast
We all know that Symbian is still holding the fort as the globe's most widely used mobile OS, but anyone interested in criticizing it nowadays will have to get into a queue. Nick Jones from Gartner is latest to launch a broadside against the apparently complacent market leader, opining that its user experience has been surpassed by iOS and Android, and arguing that future iterations do not promise enough innovation to make the platform stand out. He underpins these observations with his firm's latest estimates, which indicate Symbian's decline in share is accelerating, before positing the idea that the Foundation sets aside some talent for skunkworks projects in order to give itself fallback options should Symbian^4 not be blindingly marvelous. Nick might be going a little overboard with the bleakness of his outlook, but there's no questioning his "Android iceberg" analogy -- if Symbian doesn't find the right course soon, Google might well end up collecting a big chunk of its exasperated users.
World Cup ball gets NASA's official mark of disapproval
If you've been following World Cup tourneys through the noughties, you'll have noticed that criticizing the official tournament ball has turned into something of an unspoken tradition. The latest offender of football purists' stringent standards is the Adidas Jabulani ball, which was introduced especially for World Cup 2010. That wouldn't be notable in itself, but this time it's apparently gotten bad enough for NASA to pipe up and drop some science on the subject. The aerodynamics experts (at least we hope they're experts) of the American space agency have said that the 440-gram ball becomes unpredictable when propelled at over 44mph, resulting in the unnatural swerves and deviations that have been plaguing footballers this year. So there you have it, England, Italy and France: a rock solid excuse to pin your lackadaisical exhibitions of mediocrity this year -- it was the ball's fault.
Microsoft responds to Dick Brass: 'We measure our work by its broad impact'
You had to know Microsoft would respond to former VP Dick Brass saying the company didn't have "a true system for innovation" in the New York Times this morning, and it looks like Redmond's VP of corporate communications Frank Shaw is on the move: he's just posted up a reply on The Official Microsoft Blog. Frank says that what matters is "innovation at scale, not just innovation at speed," and that "it is not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact." Frank also points to OneNote in response to Dick's claim that Tablet PC was doomed because the Office team refused to make a version of Office designed around stylus input, and then refers to the Xbox 360 as an example of Microsoft's leadership -- and says Project Natal is a "magical experience" that'll keep the trend alive. That's pretty much exactly how we would respond, although we'd also argue that Dick's individual criticisms are less important than his larger thesis about systematic innovation -- and we'd love to hear what Frank has to say about that. P.S.- Can we all please stop calling everything "magical" for a minute, though? Thanks. [Image from Robert Scoble]
Violent game-opposed National Institute on Media and the Family shuts down
If you've ever read a story we've written where some organization touts a piece of research "proving" the overwhelmingly negative effects video games have on youngsters, you've probably heard about the National Institute on Media and the Family. They're infamous for issuing typically low-scoring report cards to the ESRB and other entities in the gaming industry, and for propagating the values of the group's founder, psychologist David Walsh. However, it seems NIMF has executed its final evaluation -- according to the St. Paul-based Star Tribune, the organization will shutter its doors on Dec. 31. We bet some of you are overjoyed that the immeasurably critical group is shutting down -- however, without their constant panning, we expect violence in video games to grow unchecked within the next few months. Soon, every title, from Peggle to Viva Piñata, will be bogged down by excessive amounts of gore. All games will be federally required to contain guns. Titles from previous console generations which don't adhere to this rule will be destroyed, Fahrenheit 451 style. The industry will crash like a sack of lead bricks -- all because NIMF wasn't there to keep it in line. To quote Joni Mitchell, "Don't it always seem to go/ That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone."
British MP Watson leading charge against Modern Warfare 2 media controversy
Tom Watson, a member of British Parliament, has developed a sort of folk hero status among European gamers this morning. After his fellow MP, Keith Vaz, promised to decry the violence depicted in Modern Warfare 2 (specifically in that one scene) in the next session of Parliament, Watson publicly defended the game on Facebook and Twitter. He then kicked it up a notch and started a pressure group called Gamers' Voice on Facebook. The group's mission statement explains that its members will discuss "how UK video gamers can find their voice in newspapers and government." It was a wise, pre-emptive move on Watson's part -- as promised, Vaz brought up the game during today's Parliament session, explaining that it's so violent that "even the manufacturers have put in warnings within the game telling people how they can skip particular scenes." He inquired how the government was planning on "protecting our children." Watson stepped in and dropped the timeless observation that the UK already has a game rating system which restricts the game's sale to minors, and that it's more important to protect the gaming industry than it is to "create moral panic" in the media. If you want to stay informed of Watson's other heroic, industry-defending activities, you might want to join the Gamers' Voice group. (We hear that shortly after that Parliament session, he doused a burning orphanage, then ate an entire maple tree for breakfast. Seriously!)
Anti-Aliased: A few reasons to cage the nerdrage
There's so much anger in the consumer market these days. It seems like when a new product comes up, there has to be this bandwagon of people who roll in and start nerdraging over the product. Oh, APB isn't up your alley? Better nerdrage about that! You don't like Warhammer Online? Rev that nerdrage engine nice and loud so your neighbors can hear it.Everyone's a critic and gaming consumers are far from an exception. Some of the comments around these parts are some of the most spiteful sentences that could be constructed. You have console hate, game hate, genre hate, even particular MMO genre hate. But, honestly, why? It obviously doesn't help anyone except maybe the person doing it. A catharsis, perhaps?So what's this Anti-Aliased about? Honestly, I need rant article that's all about ranting. A hate article on game hate. Do two hates make a happy? I dunno, but I'm interested enough to try it out. So here's a few reasons why you should cage the hate and think twice before you open your trap on the forums you love so much.
Anti-Aliased: A few reasons to cage the nerdrage pt. 2
3. Because almost every game has a silver lining This is a sentence that I abide by in almost everything I do. Even in games I don't like, I can usually find something that really wows me and makes me appreciate the developer's work. I know Darkfall is one of those games that many people just really don't like. I'm the same way -- I don't care for the way the game handles itself. But where it failed in game design, it didn't fail on unique vistas and sharp combat. Sure, the graphics aren't top notch, but there are still areas in the game where you just have to go, "Wow, that's an incredible sight." Plus, it's real time combat in a MMO. That's really, really hard to do and kudos to an independent developer for pulling it off. "You've heard that everyone's a critic, yes? Well everyone's also apparently a game designer." Even when you completely hate a game, I urge you to look back at it and consider your experiences. You wouldn't have played it for a while unless there was something that made you enjoy the experience even a little bit. Then again, maybe you hate it all. But if you do, see the piece of advice above before you begin nerd vomiting all over forum threads.Although... there certainly are gaming exceptions to this rule...2. Because it doesn't help anybodyThis is the part where people seem to totally and completely miss the boat. And when I say miss the boat I mean that the boat as totally pulled away from the dock, is 500 feet away, and people still run off the dock and jump into the sea holding their suitcases.Nobody benefits from aimless criticism that amounts of nothing more than the screaming of biased opinions. You get to look like an inconsiderate idiot, the community gets irritated at your groundless claims, and the developers learn nothing about how to improve their game. Bad criticism isn't bad as long as it's appropriately constructive. It's actually some of the best stuff you can possibly get in regards to your product. Positive feedback means you're going the right way, but constructive feedback shows exactly what's going wrong with your current design and where you can improve. "If you think making any game is easy, then I challenge you to sit down and start making your own pen and paper roleplaying game, or a board game, or a card game." My favorite comment in this regard was made by a Bungie developer during the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. A journalist asked him, "What did you learn from this beta test?" and I recall the developer responding that all he got from the bug reports was that the level sucked. He didn't know why the levels sucked because everyone just wrote that they sucked.1. Because you may not know what it's like to make a gameYou've heard that everyone's a critic, yes? Well everyone's also apparently a game designer. Everyone knows what's best for a game, how to balance the design, and how to make it so "X class doesn't suck."I think that many people think it's super easy to make a game. Slap some abilities in, render a few areas, get a server, and you have an MMO, right? Heck no! You have programming bugs, design bugs, art asset bugs, pathing to worry about, scripts to run, a whole set of connections between servers to worry about, and much, much more. So here's my challenge. If you think making any game is easy, then I challenge you to sit down and start making your own pen and paper roleplaying game, or a board game, or a card game. Share it with your friends and see what they say. But, above all, see how long it takes you to make a "simple" game. Include with that the testing you do with your friends, the fine tuning you may make to the rules. You'll find it's more work than you probably through it was. Believe me, I know, I'm doing it. So next time before you rocket fire your hate mail out onto the intarwebz, think about a couple of these things before you trash someone's game. You might just find yourself holding back, just because you understand a little bit more about gaming and a little bit more about how frivolous it is to hold such pointless grudges. Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who hates aimless hate. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's rambling on his personal blog, The Experience Curve. If you want to message him, send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com. You can also follow him on Twitter through Massively, or through his personal feed.
Varying perspectives on EVE Online's new player experience
The sci-fi massively multiplayer online game EVE Online has long been known for its harsh setting but also for its (almost) equally unforgiving learning curve. That is, until the Apocrypha expansion launched, bringing EVE's New Player Experience (NPE) with it. CCP Games aims to slowly ease new players into what is a rather complex game, giving them a feel for what they can already do and what they want to do in New Eden over time. So how well does the New Player Experience for EVE Online tackle the difficulties of learning how to play one of the most complex MMOs on the market? Writing for Eurogamer, both Jim Rossignol and Oli Welsh write about the New Player Experience. Rossignol, from the viewpoint of a veteran player, and Welsh from the fresh perspective of a rookie. The end result is an overview of how EVE has changed, including a revamped tutorial and Neural Remapping (attribute respecs), as well as Epic Mission Arcs that allow players to make choices in how EVE's mission storylines progress.
Pulitzer Prize winning author says GTA IV ain't art
Who knew that Pulitzer Prize winning authors were taking their hard-earned awards and combining it with writing skill to... play Grand Theft Auto IV? It's not like they can be accused of slacking, having won a Pulitzer and all. Junot Diaz who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao spent some quality time ripping off cars and robbing his fellow Liberty City denizens, but in the end he says the game isn't worthy of the praise that's being spoon-fed to the masses.
Player vs. Everything: Choking on graphics
I managed to get my hands on an Age of Conan beta key this morning, so off I went to excitedly download the client. I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard's original pulps, and I've been looking forward to the grim and gritty world of Hyboria for a while now. Most of what I've read about it so far has been very positive (with a few notable exceptions due to some of the design choices). Our own write-up of the overall beta experience from Michael Zenke was very encouraging with regard to the combat, gameplay, and feel of the world. Overall, it seems like there's a lot to be excited about. There's just one glaring issue that everyone seems to be having: the graphics are choking their machines. This isn't a new phenomenon. It seems like every new game on the market in the last few years wants to beat our poor, 1-3 year old computers into lifeless heaps of rubbish with their outlandish and ridiculous system requirements. Even World of Warcraft, a game celebrated for its accessibility and ability to be run on older machines, wasn't that way at launch (though it was substantially better than its major competitors at the time, EverQuest 2 and City of Heroes). However, this strategy of supercharged visuals has made things hard for a number of games. Vanguard in particular suffered a lot of criticism for having ridiculous system requirements when it launched, and that's just one example. Given that people would like to actually be able to play these games, why on earth do game designers insist on shoving next-gen graphics down our throats when the vast majority of us have last-gen machines (or worse)?
Spiritual Guidance: Thirteen dos and don'ts of a raiding holy priest
Our Priest column is back! Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus, and this week he has compiled a list that raiding holy priests may find beneficial whether they consider themselves new or veterans. I've raided for a long time on my priest. My first real raid started with Zul'Gurub before I graduated to Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. Unfortunately, I started late in the game to the point where I never really appreciated AQ 40 or Naxxramas. Years later, I am now working my way towards Illidan after mopping the floor with Archimonde. It's difficult for a holy priest to begin raiding. The learning curve can be steep at times because there are so many options available. That being said, there are a few lessons I've learned from raiding that have proven universal. They had as much application back then as they do now and I wanted to pass them on to any new budding raid priests. Check out all thirteen tips, from reagents to situation awareness, right after the break.
Are games Art? It doesn't matter
Something I keep hearing and reading in my favorite gaming podcasts and blogs is the notion that our beloved industry will finally have 'arrived' when games are taken seriously as works of Art. That somehow, the media will stop vilifying our favorite pastime and welcome us with open arms and hearts if only we could justify our hobby by making it more palatable to the public, under the imprimatur of Art. Jim Preston at Gamasutra takes this idea on by suggesting that the 21st Century's idea of what Art is is so disparate and devalued that the term itself bears no particular cachet. It's a great piece and deserves your eyeballs, but I'd take it even farther: Not only is it unimportant for games to be considered Art, but that the concept that Art is something that should be valued for its own sake is completely meaningless.
Mass Effect 'virtual orgasmic rape' columnist apologizes
Following his inflammatory and just-plain-wrong criticism of Mass Effect, "conservative" columnist Kevin McCullough has apologized "to the gaming universe." McCullough says he still finds the material he had umbrage with before offensive and that it should be kept out of the hands of children -- if parents and retailers are doing their jobs regarding the M-rated Mass Effect then McCullough will get his wish.The next time some columnist wants to level criticism against a game it'd be nice if they at least play the game first, which McCullough admitted he had not done and only perused some clips of the Mass Effect sex scenes on the internet. Now that we've gotten that futile dream out of the way: Bring on the next nut job![Via GamePolitics]
