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GDC 2010: Interview with Faraway's Steph Thirion
Steph Thirion is a game designer who's been releasing some of the most inventive games I've seen on the iPhone. He started out with Eliss a little while back, and he recently announced Faraway, which I got to play at GDC. The night after I played the game (it was at a party called Gamma IV), I sat down with him to chat about developing for the iPhone, why Eliss wasn't bigger, and his biggest inspiration for the more casual gameplay of Faraway. Read on for the full interview.
EVE Evolved: Playing casually or just killing time
MMOs are a popular hobby for hardcore and casual players alike. While some people love getting firmly embedded in their favourite MMO every night, a growing number of players prefer to log in occasionally and just kill a few hours at a time. EVE Online is no exception, with a mix of both casual and hardcore players. Taking part in things like alliance warfare, starbase industry or corporate management may require that a player log in every night but most other avenues of gameplay don't. A lot of EVE's gameplay can be picked up for a few hours and set back down with no added responsibility. In fact, player demographic data shows that most players prefer to live in the more casual environment of high security space. So what kind of things can you do if you just fancy playing internet spaceships for a few hours? In this opinion piece, I look at five of my favourite ways to kill a few hours in the name of EVE. What's your favourite way to spend a few hours?
Pitchford attributes Borderlands success to targeting the 'current gamer'
If you haven't been paying attention to the end-of-year NPD reports, it may surprise you to learn that Gearbox's multiplayer shooter slash RPG, Borderlands, performed quite well in the gruesome 2009 gaming sales arena. How did it manage this feat? Well, we'd attribute it to the game's massive stockpile of collectible weaponry, which we found to be black tar heroin-esque in its addictiveness. However, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford chalks it up to choosing hardcore gamers as the title's target audience. "Perhaps Borderlands can be a lesson for all of us -- that when making a videogame, we should not be afraid to identify gamers as the audience," Pitchford said in a recent interview with IGN. "I wonder if too frequently publishers and developers are so caught up with going after new, untapped audiences that they can forget to care for the largest, most loyal and reliable audience there is -- the current gamer," he added. Well, there go our hopes for a Facebook-based Borderlands gem-swapping casual puzzler.
Sega 'probably not' making more hardcore Wii games
Sega gave it the old college try in 2009, reaching out to "mature" gamers with the likes of MadWorld, The Conduit and House of the Dead: Overkill. But after none of those made much of an NPDent, it would seem the publisher may be abandoning the practice. While speaking on the performance of those games during the 4 Guys 1UP podcast, Sega of America studio director Constantine Hantzopoulos said, "That begets the question, you know, are we gonna do more mature titles for the Wii and it's like ... probably not." Hantzopoulos then pointed to the poor performance of Dead Space: Extraction on the Wii, saying he had been using it as a litmus test for the potential of mature titles on the platform. In other news, Sega has apparently decided on "be a little more arrogant" as its New Year's resolution.
15 Minutes of Fame: Retirement home
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. Is there such a thing as retirement guilds for burned-out players? When Sharaya and Boltac of Vanguard of Norrath spotted that innocuous question on the Blackwater Raiders realm forums, they recognized a familiar face: their very own guild. A collection of former hardcore gamers from the EverQuest era, VoN has become home base for a more casual approach. "We've all done the hardcore raiding thing, which comes with wanting to see everything and do everything in a high-content mass online game," explains VoN officer Sharaya. "We all have had our stints with guilds sporting the usual raid schedules, leveling needs, gear requirements and members constantly preening about scores from tertiary web sites with convoluted ranking systems. In the beginning, we all did this as a choice. It let us see everything, and let's face it -- it was fun. "But as in most games with such demands, many good players get burnout," he continues. "They don't tire of the game; they tire of the routine. They tire of 'having' to log in to make events or risk /gkick. They tire of the constant fighting over drops and arguing about who gets invited to what. The game ceases to be a game and becomes a chore. It truly is a 'daily.' What we realized is this is not a fault of the game; it's a fault of the guild you're in." So they created Vanguard of Norrath to offer a refuge from the grind, a place to indulge what Sharaya calls "the ability and know-how to blitz most anything we wanted but ... on our schedule, at our pace and without any pressure." The big surprise? How many other players have been attracted to VoN for exactly the same reasons.
Jeff Kaplan on WoW development: "We debate like crazy"
Our buddy Phil Kollar of Game Informer (who was on the podcast recently) got a chance to talk to Jeff Kaplan about the World of Warcraft, and while Kaplan repeats a lot of what he's said before, the interview is worth a read for a look inside Blizzard's design process. What's probably most interesting is that it's very fluid and very dynamic -- just as much as we're arguing on this site and on the forums about how Blizzard should do things, they're also arguing and going back and forth behind the scenes. He does talk specifically about cutscenes, saying that the Wrathgate scene was an experiment that paid off well, and we should expect some more of that kind of storytelling even as soon as in patch 3.3 (you may have seen it before if you're checking spoilers). And he does talk about raiding sizes and accessibility -- Blizzard has always wanted to do smaller raids, both for the feel of them and for the tuning, but it apparently took them a while to bring 40 down to 25 and then down to 10 correctly. Finally, he doesn't reveal anything about the new MMO, but he does say that singleplayer gaming will always have a place at Blizzard's core -- even when you're playing a multiplayer game, the singleplayer experience should still feel right. True enough, good interview.
Sell Darkfall to your friends, get paid and get more n00bs to shank
You ever wish that you could get paid for recommending games to your friends? Well, if you're a Darkfall fan with an active subscription, now you can with the Darkfall Community Publishing Program.How does this new program work, you ask? Simple, my awkwardly insultingly named hardcore PvP friend! Go over to the Darkfall community forums (AKA, ForumFall), read the instructions, and sign up using the NA or EU server links. They'll give you a special link to the Darkfall store that will give you credit when a game is sold.For each game client sold, you'll make 20% of the sale in commission. Right now, as the Darkfall box is still going for 50 dollars, so that means you'll get 10 dollars every time you sell a copy of Darkfall. High selling users will be offered better commission rates and may be invited to work with the Darkfall publishing team.Is this anything new? Well, it is if you haven't seen EVE Online's affiliate program. However, it is certainly a smart use of the very passionate and eager Darkfall fan base.
Drama Mamas: Elitists and exits
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.This Drama Mama is in a bit of a pre-BlizzCon frenzy, what with preparations and announcements. But drama waits for no mama and we have two more questions to answer this week. First, we hear from a player who is frustrated with condescending guildies and seeks help in dealing with them. Next, a player who is paranoid about joining guilds after a bad exit wants to know a better way to leave.But enough with the introductions! Let's get to the drama.
The Daily Grind: Are you a raider?
One of the things that people love about MMOs is that there is often a lot of choice as to how they spend their time in-game. Some like to PvP, some like leveling a whole platoon of alt characters and others enjoy crafting. Then there is raiding. For some folks, an MMO just isn't complete without a fulfilling raiding experience built in, with the promise of some of the best shinies in the game to reward them for their effort.The raiding game isn't for everyone though. Though this isn't always the case, raiding often requires quite a lot of commitment to a game (and probably a guild too); having to be online and available at a certain period of time for a minimum number of hours is just too much for a game to ask for many people. But for the devoted raiders, the fun and rewards that are had when finally beating a hellishly difficult encounter are worth the extra effort. So we ask you readers, are you a regular raider? Hardcore, or keeping it more casual? Is raiding content one of the first things you look into when searching for a new game to play?
The Daze of Darkfall week 2: AFK your way to fame and fortune pt. 2
Battles abound and a city under siegeOut in the wilderness with my clan, we wreaked havoc on newbie towns. Oddly enough, an unarmored newbie weapon carrying player is no match for four people in chain armor wielding crafted weapons. Who would have thought? Also, if you're AFK and auto-harvesting something, you suck at PvP. Just letting you know.In all of this madness, however, my party was lucky enough to stumble upon a person farming herbs. She too was AFK and felt our wrath, but what made this encounter so absolutely hilarious was the presence of a steedgrass on her person. One steedgrass lets you call a mount, so we effectively denied her a mount. Whoops.If that's not painful enough, another one of my colleagues reported that he had killed an AFK newbie, only to find a deed to a cottage on their corpse. He had just stolen a house from someone AFK. A house. I bet you never stole an entire house before.Later on that night though, I got my first real taste of PvP action. One of our members yelled that he spied an incoming force of about 15-20 people to our city, causing everyone to quickly rally. Of course, when I say "rally" I mean everyone stripped their armor and pulled out their staves. (Yes, I too feel as if I live in bizarro world.)As they ran up the side of our city, we began pummeling them with magic missles. I have to admit, the sight was pretty awesome to behold. 25-30 people all casting magic missiles at the enemy as they rode towards us on mounts was pretty fun. I can only imagine what it was like from their perspective, looking up to see this wave of blue bubbles flying at their mounts.Once they reached the city, however, everyone did what they could... while naked... to defend what we had. It wasn't a serious defense, as they didn't have a challenge against us for the city, so many deaths while naked were had. If we had been out somewhere, sure, we would have been wearing armor. But when someone comes in to our city trying to get stuff from our bodies, why give them the pleasure?It's at this point that I'd like to say we drove the enemy away with the stalwart defense of our territory, but it really came down to them getting bored killing naked people. Who can blame them, especially when we killed one or two of their people. We lost nothing (except our pride) but we gained everything (and by everything I mean two sets of armor and weaponry.) What lies in wait for next week? Things are starting to get heated in the clan. The generals want everyone combat ready, including the crafters. Plans are being created, swords are being sharpened, and our evil scowling practice is really coming to fruition. (No one can deny that the evil scowl is absolutely essential in battle.) This week looks like it's going to be a week of blood, and I'll make sure to report all of the lost limbs to you faithful readers next week.No time to go searching? Check out week 1 and week 3 without digging through the category!
Parents don't read Joystiq
Or, you know, any other review outlet for that matter. That's a criminally oversimplified version of the point that John Davison is making over at What They Play today. Davison says that, by-and-large, review sites aren't giving a fair shake to kids' games. Which is just as well, because parents aren't really reading them, relying instead on consumer reviews like those found at Amazon.com.We at Joystiq would be tempted to laugh it off, but, as we learned in Back to the Future: Part 2, by 2013, every game played with the hands will be considered a "baby game," which is going to make reaching parents desperately important to us.
Online gamers are logging more hours, but spending less money
Interactive marketing firm Future Ads revealed a very telling survey from Gamevance today, showing that casual gamers were playing games for longer, yet were spending less money on them overall. Other notable sections of the survey showed a declining gender gap in the gaming population, a melding of the "casual" and "hardcore" gamer markets, and a decline in purchases made for video game consoles.Gamevance's survey revealed that 61% of the 8,000 "casual" gamers who responded said they were playing games for longer periods of time than they were a year ago. However, 80% of those same gamers reported that they were cutting back on console game purchases while 77% of the 8,000 stated that the biggest drawback to console gaming was that it was too expensive.Pair this with the rising Free Realms, Wizard 101, and FusionFall populations, as well as the proliferation of free online gaming sites, and you have a very noticable switch to cheaper gaming alternatives. Will this recession be the rise of the free to play gaming model in America, or will this die off once the economy stabilizes?[Via GigaOm]
A WoW player's guide to Free Realms
Our good friends at Massively have written up a post just for you WoW players about the new hotness in MMOs lately, a game called Free Realms. I haven't gotten a chance to play it, but it's all the team over there can talk about, and the game itself just hit a whopping three million players. It's a free-to-play game (with more premium memberships getting more features -- the minimum is about $5 a month) put out by Sony Online Entertainment that aims towards a more casual audience, with extra content placed in for more hardcore gamers. The questing and leveling itself is very forgiving -- you have a dotted green line leading you to quest targets, and combat only takes place in instanced areas. But the crafting and other various minigames (in order to do mining, you actually play a Bejewelled-style matching game, and there's even a "Kart Driver" profession) can get pretty hard. Just like WoW, those who want to collect pets or build skills can do that, while those who are more interested in dungeon crawling have that option as well.I've been meaning to pick up the game and check it out (on the free level, of course -- with my WoW subscription running, I'm not made of MMO money), and Massively's guide is an excellent first overview to how the game relates to our favorite MMO. If you're getting a little bored in Azeroth waiting for the next expansion announcement and are looking for something else to try, Free Realms might just be it.
WoW, Casually: What is casual?
Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.Turtlehead wrote in wanting to know "what the heck casual is." This is a good question, but the answer seems to change according to the context. I learned long ago to explain how I'm defining casual for a particular article, or else face the wrath of my readers. When I write Wow, Casually, I define casual as a player with limited playtime and address my content accordingly. But there are many other kinds of players that could be called casual and we use the word to describe any or all of them. So, is it possible to define the word to please everybody? Probably not, but I'm going to try.
[1.Local]: Shoved into the deep end
Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.Yeah, we know you've already got Algalon on farm -- WoW.com readers are just uber that way. But for the rare handful of you still playing at a somewhat less stratospheric progression point ... How about those patches? Is the flow of new content keeping pace with your playstyle and interest?"The pace of new content is fine – ooh, shiny :)," wrote Julie. "What worries me is the rate at which old content becomes obsolete (which is way too fast). For example, I'm glad Ulduar and Emalon are out. I hate the fact you can't do Archavon without doing Emalon. I also hate the fact that there's no reason to go into Naxx (Pro-Drake, badges, etc.) or heroic five-mans, for that matter. Basically I'm ok with the new content coming out; not ok with being forced to move to the new content the moment it does, however. There should be some balanced incentives to keep doing older content."Is your guild working patiently through the existing content at its own rate, or has the addition of new content shoved you out into the deep end before you were ready?
Ready Check: I'm more hardcore than you
Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.Firstly, dedicated followers of this column (hi, Mum) will have noticed a new addition - Michael Gray's working his magic to make Ready Check not just weekly, but twice-weekly! Is that more than enough Ready Check to keep anyone happy? I think so.Today's column is inspired by a question we've been discussing internally: is WoW a sport? Specifically, as so many of the externally validated goals in-game relate to raiding, how does raiding stand up to other, more traditional sports? We're not talking eSports, but good old fashioned team games. How do the attitudes in raiding differ from those you'd find in the sporting-as-a-hobby world?
Forum post of the day: The end of big guilds
Oldmaveric of Azgalor posed the question on the General Discussion Forum: are Big guilds on their way out due to easy WoW? He suggested that easier content on 10 man raids and regular content nerfs has led to the breakdown of some of the top guilds and caused players to quit the game.Savvage of Spinebreaker quickly responded that big guilds have their place, but "People can now play in closer more tightly-knit groups..." For many players, raiding offers sufficient challenge while being more enjoyable than it once was. The raiding experience is not only more accessible, but also more fun. Smaller guilds can afford to be more selective of the online personalities of their membership, while still being able to to make progress.
The Daily Grind: What's your preference of difficulty?
Some people like it when the game challenges them for months on end, stopping them at the same battle over and over again until a group comes together and cooperates in a way that yields progression.Other people like to be able to sit down at a game, play it for a few hours, and feel like they've made some progress and accomplishments. They enjoy feeling rewarded after a small play session, instead of dedicating hours of work and thinking to their games.And still others would rather find extreme progress in less than an hour, being highly rewarded for very little challenge. It's not fun if it's hard, right?So today's grind question is as follows: what is your preference of difficulty? Are you the person who likes to be stumped for weeks on end, or are you more of the type who wants to get the maximum reward for the smallest effort? Speak forth into thy comment box, and let thy voice be heard! And hopefully you won't use a silly accent like us, but you can if you'd like to.
Some players feeling burnout in Darkfall already?
Syncaine has another interesting Darkfall post up on his blog discussing why he thinks some players have started experiencing burnout so soon after release. He feels some of the issues are a result of how the game world has been playing out, while others are attributed to individual play style.Game specific issues include large alliances that have been forming up in Agon and that some people feel they must keep up with the Joneses. Being in an über-alliance means that nearly (if not) all your neighbours are friendly and that you must travel far and wide to find any PvP. Perhaps due to exploitation methods in the past (e.g., being able to skill up on invincible mobs), some players feel they need to grind before they can be truly effective in the game.Play style specific issues include trying to play a sandbox game with an "on rails" mentality and that some people simply can't handle the notion that for every triumphant gaming session, they will probably encounter an equally disastrous one. While some people think they crave a wide open, hardcore PvP experience, they refuse to accept that it may not actually be their style.
GDC09: Interview with The Secret World's creator, Ragnar Tørnquist pt. 2
So, with expansions, you said that you'll be starting out with New York, London, and Seoul, right? Yes. Those will be the first cities, the hub cities, available at the start of the game. Now, the gameplay takes you beyond that, yes? Oh yeah, absolutely. We're not doing all New York, or all of London, or all of Seoul. We are actually doing very tight and very constrained neighborhoods there. That's where you'll start your gameplay, but they won't be the large, huge open zones where you have tons of gameplay or tons of monsters. That will be left to areas like Egypt and New England, which will be more expansive and include more open-world mechanics and other things that we're not revealing quite yet. We will also be including more instanced and team-based areas as well. Regarding expansion packs, yeah, we're going to expand beyond what we already will include. It's not like we're going to run out of content, the world is a big place. Yes, I was going to ask if it will expand into more locations and cities throughout the world. Yes, it certainly will, but it won't be limited to just that. We have more interesting locations but they won't be limited to just our world. We will be including locations throughout time and space itself. I want to emphasize that this won't be something like Grand Theft Auto with magic, with a focus on huge, huge open cities. They are reasonably small places where you will start out and take the adventure from there. But one very important thing to note is that this sounds like a very fragmented world. London, New York, Seoul, those cities are a long way away from each other. But we are creating, or at least trying to create, a pretty seamless world. This means there are ways of getting from London to New York very quickly, and we are focusing on that. You won't be just walking up to a plane, clicking on it, and getting a red line that quickly points to where you're going and boom, you're there. You will be moving in real-time from London to New York, just a lot quicker. There's alot of traditional MMO components that are around now. We're kinda in a new generation of MMO, and people are tired of World of Warcraft model and they're looking for something new. This is certainly in that realm. Are you guys trying to get away from traditional models, like crafting, and moving to something new? Ah, I can't really talk about crafting right now. What I can say is that while combat is a core focus, we really want other non-combat stuff in the game. We're just not going to be talking about them as of yet. But there will be gameplay that isn't all about fighting monsters or exploring. There will be other things that you will be able to do. Like you said earlier, like mysteries? That, yes, that also and there will be other ways for people to play in the game, to participate in the game, that isn't about traveling around the world. Exactly what that is, I can't say as of yet. Now, will there be a player driven economy? Well, I can't speak much about that now, but there will be ways for players to take part in the economy. Sorry for being so cryptic, but trying to keep this very focused and very narrow for now. And player guilds? Ah, we are going to have cabals, yes. There will be a point to making cabals, and it will play a very large role in the game, but exactly what that is I'm not going to say as of now. We are a game and we are focusing on the social aspects of the game. We are, in some aspects, a story driven game and alot of it you can play solo, but we really want to emphasize that it is an MMO. There will be stuff that will require you to team up with people in small groups and also in larger teams, without me going into deeper detail. I hate having to keep saying I can't talk about this stuff. Oh, so what about in-game factions? ...and I can't talk about that. *laughs* Ok, so what about the range between hardcore and casual? Yeah, well, we always say we're going to cover all of it, but the fact is that you can't the game for everybody. So I think we're leaning towards... *sighs* I wouldn't say the casual, because when you talk about MMOs and casual you usually end up at Club Penguin or something like that, and we're really not there. We're somewhere between halfway, I think. There's tons of stuff for the hardcore MMO players, like the whole skill based system and the tweaking that you do to those types of systems with numbers and all the items we'll have, and that will be a hardcore player's dream. But I think in terms of time investment and what's required of you, we're leaning towards the middle ground. It will be fun for MMO players, but it will be equally fun for someone who just likes the idea of a world that has a bunch of other people in it, is completely open, you can play it online, and you can chat, but doesn't feel so unfriendly and unwelcoming as other MMOs. So, would your target audience be someone who has played MMOs? I think a large part of our target audience is who are playing or have played MMOs. We want it to be different enough for them to come back or a game that is different enough to have them come to play it with their friends. In addition to action/adventure gamers who play games like Fable 2 for the Xbox 360 and just want to try their hand at something that's online and not feel completely eliminated and have something that's recognizable to them.We'd like to thank Ragnar for meeting with us at the GDC, and we're looking forward to more information on The Secret World!
