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Massively's Third Annual Frindie Awards
It's time once again for me to throw out my awards for the best of free-to-play, indie, and oddball MMOs, a real niche-within-a-niche. It might seem that I am assigned many of these titles as though I were some modern day Mikey, but the truth is that I get a huge thrill out of finding a new game but get even more of a thrill when I realize that no one is covering it. I had to really think hard about the criteria for the awards this year, mainly because "indie" is quickly becoming one of those often hard-to-define words, alongside "MMORPG" and "free-to-play." Fortunately, I think I know it when I see it. I kept my choices to games that I have actually played this year. I wanted to avoid games that appear to be really cool. If you want a more broad batch of prizes, check out Massively's best of awards. (Side note: I voted for Defiance as my game of the year.) These awards are for games that are being created on a shoestring or independent of massive budgets. Some of them are connected to some money, of course, but instead of trying to define "indie," I will only repeat: You'll know it when you see it.
MMObility: Fifteen fun free MMORPGs for your tablet or smartphone
Mobile MMORPGs are still hard to come by. Sure, there are a ton of pseudo-MMOs and developers who claim to have created an MMO, but the fact is that persistence -- a key to defining what an MMO is -- is often gone from many of these games. I want to be able to log out of the game while the rest of the digital world goes on without me. Or better yet, and in the case of most MMORTS titles, I want to log out of the game and continue to have an effect on the world through trades, wars, or the fallout of diplomacy. Even though the market is often bare, there are still quite a few MMOs out there. Many of them are fun as well! I know, I know, I am making it seem as though the smartphone or tablet MMO market is empty of all content, but the truth is that for its age, it's doing very well. There are more and more coming out all of the time, and hopefully I'll be there to cover them. In the meanwhile, enjoy a list of the specific titles that rest on my Nexus 7 3G tablet, just waiting to be played anywhere and any time!
MMObility: Google's Ingress shines light on the good and bad of ARGs
If you're turned on by augmented reality gaming or games that occur at least in some part within the real world, then you have probably heard about Google's latest experiment, Ingress. Google has been in the MMO game before. Years ago the company created a sort of social sandbox called Google Lively. It was a very interesting project, but its disappearance did not exactly fill me with confidence that Google could pull off another one. Still, this is one of the country's largest experimentation-driven companies with some of the smartest people and greatest access to information, so an ARG might just be the perfect fit. I was just given access to the current stage of the game; be aware that everything I talk about or show you is most likely going to change over time.
MMObility: The Chromebook 'All In One' project - Ten standard MMOs
It's time for another installment of my month-long look at the Samsung Chromebook, the newest in the line of all-in-one devices brought to us by Google. Everything has worked pretty well so far, but the light notebook does have its issues. I'm so used to using my Google Nexus 7 tablet for reading emails and now reading articles and magazines that I am having a hard time without the pinch-to-zoom. I love the instant zooming; it's much easier when I am reading or surfing the net. (Wait, do we still say "surfing the net"?) In fact, the main issue with the Samsung Chromebook is its size. I have to hit ctrl-+ to zoom in pages often. Other than the smaller fonts, few other issues have cropped up -- I've found gaming has been really fun on this little guy. I've noticed that everyone who reads of gaming on the device is sort of perplexed. Why would I want to game on such a non-gaming machine? It's simple, really. As the title says, this is another attempt of mine to find the perfect device for doing all that I do using only the browser: writing, gaming, gaming, writing, watching videos, writing, and playing games. This week, I have 10 "standard" MMOs for you. These are games that act more like a common, client-based MMOs than the MMORTS titles I covered last week, but with some exceptions. The desktop browser can handle amazing, 3-D graphics, but a Chromebook does not allow downloads like Unity or Java. Keep that in mind.
MMObility: A look at the location based MMO Life is Magic
I've been looking forward to checking out Life is Magic since I first took a peek at it during GDC Online 2012. The art style, slick presentation, and location-based gameplay drew me in, but I've had it for only a short while since then. I've now been able to snag enough time to get a great idea about what the game holds for players, and so far I can say that there's definitely a polish to the game that I haven't found in many mobile MMOs. So what is so special about this one, especially compared to other location-based MMOs like Fleck or Parallel Kingdom? There are several differences, most of them focused on the art style, unique world map, and cool collectible card game-ish system that ends up being the best part of the game. %Gallery-173874%
Free for All: Casual is as hardcore does and the daily gaming list
It's always a lot of fun to compare casual players to hardcore players. We've all seen many articles and had our own discussions on the topic and it never seems to stop being entertaining. After all, how much or how intensely a player plays an MMO can help predict how that player might react to market changes or to new titles, so we can easily see how developers will always be interested in the information even when we tire of it. For me, personally, I would rather skip the whole discussion and just talk about how I play casually. I can list hours played and titles accessed, but I think it would be a better idea to sketch out a rough but typical day or week in my household to illustrate just how someone who considers himself casual is actually quite committed. Does that mean I am hardcore in certain cases? I don't care anymore, frankly. What I care about is seeing if how I play is completely alien or if there are other players out there who love to do what I do. Let's call it a cry for help... or at least information.
MMObility: Find yourself in this updated list of location-based MMOs
Location-based MMOs have a long way to go. I can only imagine how the genre will appear in 10 or 15 years and how common it will be to load up a virtual world on our mobile devices. Even with the advances that still need to be made, location-based gaming is pretty darned impressive. Think about it: These are games that use the real world as a playing field. While most do not employ the literal square mileage of the Earth in exact scale, most of these games can boast a very large map. These titles can also utilize the weather and other events that happen on it at any given time, blending them with our real world so that it appears there is a secret, veiled world right beside us. I wanted to recap some of my favorite location-based MMOs for those who might need some advice on which ones to try. My favorites are marked with a "latest update" marker, but all of them are worth checking out. So pull out your phone or tablet and get to it!
Free for All: Free-to-play and mobile at GDC Online, part 1
GDC Online was fantastic this year. Really, it's great every year, but I found more bits of goodness this time around than ever before. It's simply my favorite convention, possibly because it's aimed more at press and devs than at fans. There's a wonderful lack of loudspeakers booming dance music and only a handful of booth babes. In other words, GDC Online is quieter, smaller and more professional than a typical fan convention. For a grumpy old gamer like yours truly, it's heaven. I can actually talk to developers without having to scream over music. What did I find, and what excited me this year? A lot. We've already written up or recorded many interviews so far, but I wanted to take this week's Free for All and MMObility to recap the stuff that truly got me excited. Let's get to it... there's simply too much to see!
MMObility: Data caps, throttled signals, and blocked sites
One of the main reasons I enjoy covering mobile MMOs is the fact that many gamers have access to a poor connection at best, and my articles might offer these fellow geeks a selection of games to play. I often take some of the things in my life for granted, like my healthy dogs or the one cup of coffee I have in the morning, but I never take my internet connection for granted, especially when I'm reminded every time I pay the bill just how much it costs me. It's an awesome 150/65 Mb/s, and I tend to get speeds pretty close to that. I often tell people that because my wife works at home with me, our internet connection is our "work vehicle." But many of my friends complain about having a really bad connection to the internet. Some of it is the result of location, but a lot is because companies can actually throttle the signal, providing unlimited yet barely workable internet. While there are several titles out there that are playable on almost any connection, throttling can kill gaming for many of us. So just how bad is it?
Indie dev PerBlue makes millions, sees Android dominating iOS
Justin Beck launched PerBlue while finishing college in 2008. He got to work on the company's first title, Parallel Kingdom, with his co-founder and a staff of seven in Madison, Wisconsin, surviving on $20,000 of savings from a stint at Microsoft. Today, PerBlue generates $3 million a year, supports 35 employees and has successfully launched three free-to-play MMOs in the Parallel universe on Android and iOS.PerBlue's Parallel Mafia and Parallel Zombies both hit mobile devices in 2012, but during his talk at GDC Europe, Beck discussed the specific finances of Parallel Kingdom, which has been live since 2008.Parallel Kingdom doesn't have a massive number of players, hype or notoriety in the wider gaming world, but it proves that when managed efficiently, a mobile game can provide huge profit for a small developer. Parallel Kingdom has 1.5 million registered accounts, but only 15,000 daily active users, which Beck admits is "not that big." These users, however, represent $0.40 - $0.50 per user, per day for PerBlue. Extrapolated to 50,000 monthly active users, that's more than $200,000 each month in microtransactions from one title alone.
MMObility: Parallel Zombies is PerBlue's best game yet
I have to be honest: I'm sick of zombies. I know, I know, it's the cool genre that's sweeping even the evening news, but I'm as excited about new zombie games as I am about a pop in the nose. It's probably just a light case of burnout, though, because there are still some frightening (and fun!) zombie games, movies and stories cropping up occasionally. I will always reference my Western example: In a movie set in the old West, you can expect to see some guns, a few horses, and possibly a large hat or three. These common props do not always distract us from a good story. Zombies are props too. What the writer or developer does with the story or game is really what matters. PerBlue, maker of Parallel Kingdom, Parallel Mafia, and now Parallel Zombies, has steadily increased the production value of each one of its titles. This new one takes the design in an entirely unique direction, combining standard location-based gameplay with non-stop action.
MMObility: Fourteen MMOs that you can play anywhere
I thought it'd be fun to make a list of go-anywhere MMOs this week. It's not really hard to find portable MMOs that run on laptops or netbooks. The real issue is locating MMOs that can be played on your desktop while you're at work (while the boss isn't looking, of course!), then on your phone at lunch, and then on your laptop while you sit in bed later that night. The technology to make constantly accessible MMOs is there, namely in the form of HTML5. Adobe recently announced that not only is it moving away from Flash for mobile devices, but it is also specifically targeting Android Jelly Bean. There is a new wave of web technologies coming that will hopefully, once and for all, put an end to the need for special lists like this one. Not all of my choices are HTML5-based, but I tried to keep all of them open for all devices. If you notice any oddities while playing them on a certain device, let me know in the comments section so I can note it. I get a lot of requests for lists like this, so I want to keep things tight. In the meanwhile, enjoy the list. There are others out there, but I wanted to pick out some that give pretty much the same result across whichever device you use.
MMObility: Developments in Gaikai, OnLive shine light on streaming future
Video game streaming software and systems is a hot topic. I've mentioned more than once that I think browser-based gaming (specifically MMOs) will be the main way we get our MMO fix within five years. Browser-based gaming is already responsible for a massive chunk of our MMO gaming. All it takes is one look at the number of players of games like RuneScape, Club Penguin, Travian, Spacetime Studio's collection, War of Dragons, Glitch, Evony (and its "nearly 30 million customers worldwide"), Grepolis, Bigpoint's stable, and many, many others to see that the number of us who play MMOs through our browsers is pretty staggering. Streaming content is next. TERA recently invited players to try out the game using a streaming client that is hosted by Gaikai, a streaming service that was recently bought out by Sony for a cool $380 million. While it does not yet stream MMOs, OnLive has been adding games to its collection for quite a while, embedding itself into televisions, tablets, and PCs and now offering a mobile desktop that gives iPad users access to a virtual PC desktop. I have successfully played many browser-based MMOs through that virtual desktop's browser. Big Fish games, a non-MMO developer that produces "a new game ever day," announced that it too will offer a streaming service this summer. I squealed out loud when I heard that one. Does this mean streaming content is closer to mainstream than I previously thought?
MMObility: Parallel Zombies, Glitch's new butlers, and a new space MMO
It's been a great week for mobile MMOs. That's a wonderful thing to type up, especially considering how few mobile MMOs are released when compared to standard browser- or client-based games. This week, I found myself logging in quite a bit of time with a few titles, but I still want a lot more time to explore some of these games. One you can't play yet, another you have played probably quite a bit already, and the last one promises to suck up a lot of your time in between meetings. It's neat to see another iOS MMO. iOS doesn't seem to get as many MMOs popping up in its market as with Android, but things are slowly evening out. The imbalance right now might be due to the fact that Android phones feature larger screens and sometimes more power than the latest iOS phones, something that is simply appealing to gamers. I wonder whether we'll see a larger iPhone screen anytime soon? Probably so -- and that would mean more MMOs!
MMObility: Dark Legends' cash shop, Thinix, and Parallel Mafia's launch
I know this is not what you want to hear if you are a fan of Spacetime Studios and were really excited about it new title, Dark Legends, but here goes: The energy mechanic that seems to have so many players upset is really not that bad at all. See, at some point many games decided to use a limited amount of energy to fuel character actions, and once it runs out, it seems like game over. It has always been the case (ever since Farmville first made the mechanic so popular that misguided gamers thought Zynga had somehow invented it) that energy in these sorts of games refills naturally, over time, for free. I played through Dark Legends on launch night and was able to complete an entire campaign with some energy left over. Sure, I had to pause once to refill a couple of bars (they take five minutes each to refill), but other than that, I had no issues with it. If the energy becomes an issue at later levels, I do not know. Let's not confuse things here: The energy mechanic in Dark Legends is nothing new, it's not a scam, and it does not force players to do anything. Allow me to explain, then we're moving on to other mobile MMO news.
MMObility: Real-life location games for your daily walks
I've been having a lot of fun with Parallel Kingdom lately. It's a location-based MMO brought to us by PerBlue, one that offers a layer of reality thanks to the fact that it is built on top of the real-world map. You can claim your real-life block, help other members of your city, and trade with other players from all over the world. It's actually a pretty simple design, but it helps to give the game a sense of realism. Parallel Kingdom isn't the only location-based game out there, though. I thought it might be cool to take a look at some of the other titles to see what the competition has to offer. So far I have only found a few that are stepping up in quality. Read on to see what I think of the rest!
Free for All: From realistic dragons to a dragon icon
Ah, graphics. If ever there was a deciding factor for most gamers, it would be graphics. How does a game look? How do the graphics make you feel as a player? I'm as guilty as anyone else who might consider himself to be a graphics snob of sorts, but I lean more in the opposite direction. For whatever reason, I am not as easily impressed as I once was and tend to go for more representational graphics. I'm not quite at the stage where my MMO gaming has been reduced to a blob of text on my screen, but I definitely enjoy simplicity. The problem is that many MMOs do not provide that precise formula to hit my graphics sweet spot, or as in the more common scenario, there are parts of certain titles that I would adore if only they hadn't been packaged with the rest of the game. Ryzom, for example, is one of my favorite freemium titles. To this day, it packs more graphical punch and originality than games a quarter of its age. Now I find myself leaning more toward very basic graphics delivered smartly through my browser. I've even gone through an Anime obsession! Yes, it's been one of those years.
Previously On MVTV: The week of March 17th
Ah, livestreaming: the greatest thing we do here at Massively. Well, in my opinion at least. Playing video games live for others to watch is not just about virtual glory or showing off just how tough our rigs are (Jeremy wins, anyway), but they can act as instructional guides, introductions to new games, and special glimpses of content that has never before been seen. It's sort of a sad fact that some of these livestreams can do the work of entire columns. Pictures might be worth a thousand words, but animated pictures are worth much more. This week we have a lot of variety as well as some old favorites for you. Be sure to check out and bookmark our MVTV Guide so that you know what is coming up and when to set your alarm clock. Once you're in the chat room, you can ask questions, point out errors (we love that), and jump into the game with the streamers! In this week's roundup, Blake starts off with some Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Richie follows up with a bit of Guild Wars action. Next we have Mike returning to EVE Online and then popping into RIFT for some more exploration of the initial free 20 levels. I then take the time to add some animations to my otherwise-bland character in Second Life and then show off a bit of Parallel Kingdom, a browser-based MMO that is layered on top of the real-world map! Jeremy rounds things out with more Atlantica Online, showing off the Tactical Battle System that acts a lot like a boardgame within the game.
Free for All: Becoming a mediocre trader in several free titles
I often find myself achieving little things in many different games while other gamer buddies of mine are busily conquering actual gods or dragons within one or two particular titles. Sure, I would love to join a group of battleworn adventurers as they took down one of the final bosses in almost any game, but I rarely find the time to work a character into the ranks of the ascended. OK, so I have time, but not if I wanted to do what I do here. That is to say, I am not dedicated to one game because it is my job to tell you readers about several games. About every game. About as many games as possible. I can't do that while maintaining a high DPS score. It's a give and take, but I love to explore, fortunately. Let me tell you about how I love to trade or craft in some of my favorite titles and why it's important to me.
MMObility: Parallel Mafia is not a typical Mafia game
If you have played Parallel Kingdom by PerBlue before, then a lot of what I am going to describe might sound familiar. If not, then it might sound very unique and exciting. The truth is that I have been attempting to get into Parallel Kingdom for a while but always found myself a bit overwhelmed, so I was excited to be invited to check out PerBlue's new title Parallel Mafia. I hoped that I might squeeze in some questions about Parallel Kingdom while I had the team on the line. Sure enough, I not only got introduced to the new title but left the interview knowing a lot more about Parallel Kingdom. I have been playing heavily since then. As I compare the two titles, I can see a lot of similarities, but there are some nice differences as well. Both titles are location-based MMORPGs. I have always wanted more options in the genre, but I imagine it's a tough one to develop in. What's the point of the real-life connection? Why would players want to play in a game that is basically spawned on top of Google Maps?
