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EVE Evolved: Odyssey 1.1 and PvP balance
It's been just under three months since EVE Online's exploration-focused Odyssey expansion went live, bringing in a new hacking minigame and significantly buffing the underused tier 1 and tier 2 battleships. With a complete rebalancing all of the tech 1 sub-capital ships now complete, CCP has turned its attention to some of the oldest tech 2 ships in the game: Heavy Assault Ships and Command Ships. Developers have been testing out changes to these ships on the test server and hitting up players for feedback since Odyssey went live, and the results are finally ready to deploy. Odyssey 1.1 will go live in two days time on September 3rd and contains some pretty big changes that are sure to shake up the PvP landscape. Medium-sized long-range weapons have been buffed beyond all recognition, and a buff to active tanking may soon make it viable in PvP. Heavy Assault Ships and Command Ships have been beefed up, the Dominix is getting a small nerf following its absolute dominance in the Alliance Tournament, and the Nosferatu energy vampire module may be about to make a return to PvP setups. In this week's EVE Evolved, I analyse the upcoming Odyssey 1.1 patch and what the new ship balance changes mean for the average player.
Community Manager Zarhym on game design vs. story development
It's always interesting seeing the blue team's thoughts on World of Warcraft, whether on the community, or the development of the game itself. Community Manager Zarhym had some profound words to share this week regarding the interviews we've been seeing for patch 5.4, and the challenges of setting up community interviews with the different developers. There's been a big, ongoing debate amongst players regarding story development this expansion -- in particular, faction story development. Players feel that the Alliance story has been somewhat left behind this expansion, to say the very least. Zarhym decided to chime in and comment not only on this topic, but on the topic of interviews in general, and how hard the story development team works on the story behind the game we love to play. Given that we've done several interviews with various developers over the course of Mists of Pandaria, it was nice to see Zarhym's thoughts on the matter. Read on for his post in full.
The Soapbox: On your deathbed, you will not regret gaming
In last week's edition of The Soapbox, Mike Foster reminded us that the grim specter of death comes to us all and asserted that when your time comes, "you will not wish you had spent more time gaming." Mike took the stance that gaming provides temporary joys that can't replace real-life experiences and that it's our inherent responsibility as human beings with finite lifespans to seek out those experiences. He argued that "gaming is a hobby and not a replacement for a life well-lived" and that it's not our gaming achievements but our real life ones that we'll proudly tell our grandchildren. I think we can all agree that it's important to have offline hobbies and interests that help you keep active, but I take exception to the notion that we might regret time spent gaming on our deathbeds. Published data on the top five regrets of the dying actually seems to directly refute this idea, and my life experiences have shown the exact opposite of some of the points Mike makes. MMOs have given me some experiences that I'll probably treasure for a lifetime, and gaming as a hobby has provided me with much more than just temporary joys and escapism; it's helped me discover talents I didn't know I possessed, given me the push I needed to get a good education, led me to employment, and put me in contact with lifelong friends. On my deathbed, I'll probably wish I'd spent more time gaming rather than less. In this opinion piece, I look at evidence that suggests we won't regret gaming on our deathbeds and make the case that gaming can be just as worthwhile as offline pursuits.
Red 5's Mark Kern discusses wasted space in MMO development
A recent article by Mark Kern of Red 5 Studios is all about the idea that most of an MMO is wasted space. Not travel space that doesn't need to be there; no, Kern is talking about the huge amount of low-level content that gets played and discarded at a dizzying pace as players move past it. According to Kern, anywhere between 80-90% of the content in a given MMO is both expensive to craft and more or less irrelevant to the game after six months. Kern stresses that the primary problem is that the cost of developing an MMO is raising while the time spent on content doesn't change, resulting in a neverending rush to produce more high-level content at a rate that's simply not realistic. He advocates more dynamic content, more scaling, and more flexibility in progression to help make development costs feel less like money flung into a pit for low-level content. If you're interested in the industry as a whole, it's worth a read. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
World of Darkness development shown at EVE Fanfest 2013
When the World of Darkness MMO was first announced in November 2006, it was just an idea and we knew that it wouldn't be released any time soon. The chance to play a sandbox game set in the Vampire: The Masquerade universe nevertheless made fans of the series go nuts, but now over six years later we haven't seen much progress on the game. At EVE Fanfest 2013 today, CCP laid the current state of development bare for all to see and showed some plans for the coming year. There are now 70 people on the WoD team, and they've spent the past week working on everything from art tools and server infrastructure to vampire powers and social options. "You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt." Development plans for 2013 include working on out-of-game web-based social tools, clothing systems, and PvE game environments. There are also plans to work on item creation, but direct crafting is probably not on the cards. As the presenter put it, "You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt." Though the game is still in the pre-production stage, CCP was keen to show off the tools it's made to speed up the development process. "Some of these videos are a bit dry and technical," joked the presenter, but it came across as more real and honest than another trailer or musings on theoretical gameplay.
Blizzard developers discuss patch 5.2 and more
Last week was a flurry of preparation for patch 5.2's launch, including a whole host of developer interviews. WoW Insider had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak, but there were plenty more interviews to be had as the week progressed. And just in case you happened to miss any of that developer excitement, we've put together a roundup of all the fan site interviews in one handy spot. Battlecraft quizzes Cory Stockton on 5.2 content (Italian/English) Blizzplanet talks game development with Tom Chilton Epic Podcast chats 5.2 story and content with Dave Kosak and Cory Stockton Gamebreaker TV talks trailer lore with Dave Kosak Legendary digs into design with Greg Street and Ion Hazzikostas GuildOx talks raiding and group content with Ion Hazzikostas The Instance talks 5.2, Twitter and more with Greg Street JudgeHype chats with Tom Chilton about game development and 5.2 (French/English) Totemspot discusses class balance and more with Greg Street Twizzcast digs into running MMOs with Tom Chilton Vanion chats 5.2 content with Dave Kosak (German/English) WoW Insider discusses lore, dailies and more with Dave Kosak Warcraft Pets talks pet battles and more with Cory Stockton Wowhead chats about group content, encounters and 5.2 with Ion Hazzikostas While the same developers may have done multiple interviews, each interview offers a different look at what's in store for patch 5.2 and beyond. It's certainly nice to see the developers out and about in the community and talking content -- and one thing's for certain, everyone is pumped for patch 5.2's release. Be sure to check out all of the interviews for the most in-depth look at patch 5.2 you can get.
Massively Exclusive: A dinner with Final Fantasy XIV's Naoki Yoshida
Having a conversation with Naoki Yoshida can be a very intimidating exercise. It's not because of his demeanor; he's friendly, genial, and has an obvious sense of humor. No, it's because there's an unmistakable level of energy to him, a huge amount of passion and ambition that drives everything he talks about. He's exactly the sort of person who would try something completely insane like remaking a game from the ground up after burning the first version to the ground, for example. I had the opportunity to sit down for a one-on-one dinner with Yoshida at the Final Fantasy XIV preview event, during which we talked a great deal both about the upcoming relaunch of the game as well as his own experiences in remaking everything. For those of us who play Final Fantasy XIV, it's obviously an exciting time, but for Yoshida, what's happening now is the culmination of work that started only a month after he took over control of a game that he had to revitalize after a horrible flop on launch.
EVE Evolved: Bring on the big expansions!
I don't normally jump out of my seat shouting "hell yes!" to an EVE Online dev blog, but this week's announcement on the direction of future expansions has me a little bit excited. In two somewhat dry and lengthy posts, Executive Producer Jon Lander and Senior Producer CCP Seagull detailed the approach they intend to take to ongoing development in 2013. Instead of announcing any big headline features or making vague promises, the developers looked back at the success of 2009's blockbuster Apocrypha expansion. Apocrypha was hands-down the best expansion EVE has ever had, adding 2500 hidden solar systems accessible only through shifting unstable wormholes. We saw a renaissance of exploration, collaborative research, and colonisation efforts that defied EVE's war-like reputation, and moreover, we saw a rebirth of small-scale PvP. The magic sauce that made Apocrypha work was lateral design: Rather than add one massive vertical feature, the expansion offered a little something for everyone. Apocrypha was EVE at its best, and hearing that developers are going back to that style of expansion honestly makes me a little giddy! In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the future for EVE's expansions, why the Apocrypha model works, and why I'm optimistic for 2013 and beyond.
Game Blocks offers free, open-source game creation for novices
Sheldon Pacotti, writer of the original Deus Ex games and indie developer in his own right, created Game Blocks, an open-source library for making games, for the students in his video game writing course at the University of Texas. Game Blocks is designed to help novice developers craft their stories, animations and physics effects with a simple, snap-to interface, as demonstrated above.Game Blocks is able to compile platformers, adventure games, simulation games and arcade shooters for PC and Mac, and makes it easy to organize dialogue and story. Best of all, it's completely free. Anyone interested in messing around with game design or interactive storytelling, download Game Blocks directly from Pacotti's New Life Interactive.
Chillingo explains why devs need them
Chillingo COO Ed Rumley had a chat with GamesIndustry, and said that the iOS publisher (which is owned by EA) is more needed than ever by developers. Yes, he admits it's easier than ever for anyone to make and publish a game on the App Store, but the hard part comes after that. "We always remind people there is a huge difference between self-publishing a game and self-distribution," said Rumley. "The role of a publisher like Chillingo is to do far more than just upload a game onto an App Store. Today's market is extremely competitive, there are dozens or hundreds of games launching every day whether it's on iOS or Android or Windows. Our role is to help navigate this minefield." Rumley also said that more indie devs are coming to Chillingo than ever to get that help polishing and marketing their games, and I can attest, as a player, that it's been working for them. There is definitely a consistent level of quality in the games Chillingo's putting out, partly because of who they're choosing to work with, and partly because their experience on the App Store is so substantial at this point (don't forget, this is the company that published both Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, so they kind of know what they're doing by now). While obviously every game is different, Rumley did say that Chillingo is still getting heavily involved in app development, probably more so than a lot of traditional publishers out there. "Half of our role is getting a game ready for market. By that I mean making sure the balance is there, making sure the game is fun and making sure the monetization is correctly implemented. If you don't get that right, you're not going to have success acquiring consumers in the first place." Rumley added that the future of Chillingo isn't necessarily in publishing more games, it's in publishing on more platforms. The company has been making a push on Android recently, and Rumley says that the quality of iOS games as compared to the last few years has been getting better and better. But he also added that means the bar is raising higher and higher, even as he recommends that indie developers put an extra month of polish into their titles, then another month (and maybe more) on top of that. "It's a ruthless platform," said Rumley, "and there's just no room for anything except perfection."
EVE Evolved: How would you build a sandbox?
Themepark MMOs and single-player games have long dominated the gaming landscape, a trend that currently seems to be giving way to a resurgence of sandbox titles. Though games like Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series have always championed sandbox gameplay, very few publishers seem willing to throw their weight behind open-world sci-fi games. Space simulator Elite was arguably the first open-world game in 1984, and EVE Online is currently closing in on a decade of runaway success, yet the gaming public's obsession with space exploration has remained relatively unsatisfied for years. Crowdsourced funding now allows gamers to cut the publishers out of the picture and fund game development directly. Space sandbox game Star Citizen is due to close up its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter tomorrow night, adding over $1.6 million US to its privately crowdfunded $2.7 million. The creator of Elite has also launched his own campaign to fund a sequel, and even the practically vapourware sandbox MMO Infinity has announced plans to launch a campaign. While not all of these games will be MMOs, it may not be long before EVE Online has some serious competition. EVE can't really change much of its fundamental gameplay, but these new games are being built from scratch and can change all the rules. If you were making a new sandbox MMO from the ground up and could change anything at all, what would you do? In this week's EVE Evolved, I consider how I'd build a sandbox MMO from the ground up, what I'd take from EVE Online, and what I would change.
Unity and Nintendo partner to bring Unity Engine, and its 1.2 million devs, to Wii U
Unity Engine is best known for supporting mobile and digital games, but Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason sees his company's game development engine as more flexible than that. Nintendo apparently does as well, partnering with Unity on a worldwide licensing agreement that offers first- and third-party developers Pro level engine access to Unity's tools for Wii U development. The partnership also grandfathers in the existing 1.2 million Unity licensees to the Wii U platform, which Helgason tells us is, "extremely easy" to port to -- Unity's calling the partnership an "excellent opportunity" to port existing Unity games from "thousands of studios currently developing mobile and social games." The partnership's effects aren't immediate, however, as Unity Engine's Wii U support won't go live until 2013, which tells us that we won't see any fruit from the collaboration until some point in 2013 at the earliest. When pushed, Helgason wouldn't out any potential games headed to the Wii U via Unity, nor would he offer up names of studios interested in working with Nintendo's next console. It's not hard to imagine big Unity games like Slender and Rochard ending up ported to the Wii U, of course, but it sounds like we'll have to wait a bit longer before we hear which games will benefit from the partnership first.
EVE Evolved: Has EVE Online boxed itself in?
When I was first introduced to EVE Online in 2004, it was an empty shell of a game. There were only three classes of ship, no alliances or starbases, and neither exploration complexes nor level 4 missions existed yet. EVE consisted of 5,000 systems of almost completely empty space populated by less than 50,000 players. The user interface was an order of magnitude worse than it is today (if you can imagine that), and the tutorial just dropped you in the middle of space with the ship equivalent of a pea shooter and a less-than-enthusiastic "good luck!" Though much of the game was empty, it sat before players like a blank galactic canvas. Not only could players paint their own stories into the game world, but EVE's highly active development team was updating the game at lightning speed. Players instinctively filled the voids in the game with their hopes and dreams, projecting all the things that EVE could be into the gaps. People shared ideas on the forum directly with the developers, and practically anything was possible. Things aren't quite the same today, as new ideas have to be compatible with over nine years' worth of updates, and developer CCP Games really can't afford to rock the boat and potentially lose subscriptions. In this week's EVE Evolved, I consider whether the past nine years of development has boxed EVE in, forcing the gameplay down an ever-narrowing branch of choices.
Every state in the US now has a school for game development
Those living in the United States and seeking a career in the games industry have more avenues to take that first step than ever before. According to a news release from the Entertainment Software Association, there are now colleges with video game development, programming and design programs in all 50 states.Of the 381 schools in the country, 70 are located in California, which leads the rest of the US by a sizable margin. Texas is second with 24 programs devoted to game development. A full list of every school can be found on the ESA's site.
The inside story of the making of Warcraft on Kotaku
Ever wondered about the beginning of Warcraft? Not World of Warcraft, the game you're playing right now -- no, I'm talking about the Warcraft franchise. It all started with a game called Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, released way back in November of 1994. Warcraft was originally developed as a real-time strategy game, nothing at all like the MMO monstrosity it has evolved to today. But the story of WoW has its roots firmly entrenched in Warcraft's history, and WoW would not exist if we never had Orcs and Humans. Kotaku has begun posting a series of fascinating interviews with Patrick Wyatt, game developer, former Blizzard executive, and producer as well as lead programmer on the original Warcraft game. Part one talks about the sources and inspiration for Warcraft along with the early development of features that are standard with games these days, and it explores the unique formation of a team of developers that would eventually leave an indelible mark on gaming history as we know it. Part one is good enough on its own, but the next in the series promises to shed even more light on the development of game. Head over to Kotaku and check out the full interview. It's definitely worth the read, and keep an eye out for the next installment.
Microsoft axes Flight development, cuts 35 jobs at Vancouver games studio
Microsoft is laying off staff at its Vancouver studio after it halted development on Flight and "Project Columbia," a Kinect-based virtual storybook for children. A representative speaking to Joystiq said that the 35 people affected would receive help to find new roles within the company, and that it remains invested in the city's industry. In a statement to Kotaku, included after the break, it added that it would continue to support the free title, which was itself a revival of the doomed MS Flight Simulator, and that it would remain available for download.
The Smart Kids -- or, why Cataclysm failed to impress
I was a smart kid. You remember those kids from school who were always the first to turn a test in and the ones to get the best grades? The ones who never seemed to put any effort into studying but always managed to get an A? That was me. You'd think that being a smart kid would make life incredibly easy, but it did exactly the opposite. Of course you had the endless students who hated you or made fun of you because you were smart, but there was something much harder to deal with than that. See, in public schools (in America, at least), teachers generally teach at the speed of the slowest kid in class. This is absolutely appropriate, because you don't want anyone to fall behind. For the slowest kid, this meant that subjects were presented in a way that they could understand, and they'd learn the lessons even if it took a little extra time. But for the smartest kid in the class, it meant that classrooms were places of exquisite torture where information flowed at a snail's pace, and most of the information presented were things the smart kid already knew. It made school an excruciatingly boring place to be.
The Soapbox: League of Legends is the new World of Warcraft
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. Every now and then, a game comes out of nowhere with such incredible financial success that it causes the games industry to completely lose perspective. All it takes is one game to start raking in the millions for developers, publishers and investors to stumble around with dollar signs in their eyes for years to come. Innovation grinds to a halt and everyone starts blindly copying whichever game just hit the jackpot. It's like some huge industry-wide superstition takes over and convinces people that if they do the same dance the same way, it'll rain again. World of Warcraft has consistently had this effect since shortly after its launch in 2004. To this day, several studios per year excitedly announce yet another fantasy MMO that lifts its entire feature set and every gameplay mechanic wholesale from World of Warcraft as if it were a model for automatic success. The same thing is happening again in online gaming today, not from MMOs but from MOBAs, a new genre based on the competitive gaming classic DotA. Developers are still chasing the massive money made by yet another hugely successful game, and this time it's League of Legends.
EVE Evolved: Lessons from 38 Studios
This week we heard the news that Kingdoms of Amalur developer 38 Studios shut down and let go all 379 full-time staff. It's always a tragedy when good developers are made jobless, especially if the job losses come out of nowhere and hit people who have only recently been hired. 38 Studios was still hiring people shortly before it collapsed, and some of those recent hires were ex-CCP developers who were part of the 20% of staff fired at the end of last year. The shutdown of 38 Studios is a sobering reminder of the problems in EVE Online's development that led to monoclegate. Both studios were mismanaged, with the jobs of hundreds of developers gambled on the outcome of poorly researched business decisions. EVE Online thankfully survived CCP's failed microtransaction gamble, but 38 Studios' Project Copernicus may never see the light of day. In this week's EVE Evolved opinion piece, I look into the similar circumstances that forced CCP Games and 38 Studios to fire staff, and draw some lessons from them for which I believe the industry should take heed.
Activision hires Team 17 founder to start new UK mobile studio
While EA has been bullish as all get out on its mobile and iOS properties, we haven't seen the other big dog in game publishing, Activision, act on the same impulses, despite a few hits with the Call of Duty Zombies games. But here's a first indication that Bobby Kotick and company do have a mobile strategy: They've hired former Team 17 (of Worms fame) Martyn Brown to put together a mobile studio in the UK. There's no word on the studio's name yet, or what they're going to be working on (though presumably, it'll be iOS titles at least, with other mobile platforms on tap in the future). The move is being seen as a vote of confidence by Activision for UK game development, especially since in the past few years that company hasn't been very friendly to its UK game studios, closing them down left and right. I'm very curious to see how this works out -- hopefully, Activision has realized along with EA that iOS development is one of the best parts of the game industry to be in right now.
