Nerd-World Country

UAT a love hate relationship

2011-09-20T12:10:00.001-04:00

Today my post is going to be short, because I'm trying to get through some UAT testing. This is a really important part of the project, but it is tedious.

UAT stands for user acceptance testing. It is the last step before code is pushed to production. What this means is you get to see all the new stuff before it comes out. You get to play with it, because it is in a separate environment. It should be fun, but there are strings attached.

When you do UAT you need to document everything, even before you go in you need to document scenarios, while you are testing scenarios you need to document, when you finish a scenario you need to document. Then, if it passes you need forest different variations, but it is not as bad as if it fails. If it fails you need todo all that, but you also need to try workarounds, see if it is a show stopper, etc. The problem is not the doing, it's the tedious documentation of everything you are doing.

As I think about it, many jobs work this way. The doing is fun, but the paperwork is not. Do you have one? What is it?

Now for me, back to work.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Minecraft 1.8

2011-09-16T11:25:00.001-04:00

Notch has done it again.

Earlier this week, this new release, "The Adventure Patch", came out and it has ignited my imagination all over again. This world of randomly generating terrain and randomly spawning creatures is strangely now begging for lore.

When the server came up I spawned on top of a tree, which was a little weird, but I was in the canopy of a dense forest. A little ways away I could see a small clearing. The clearing had a couple pools of lava. The setting was amazing. The edge of the forest ended on one side with an ocean, with islands way off in the distance. On the other side the forest thinned and became a vast desert.

Steve, Amy and I started a mine and then a lighthouse near the lava pools. This became our early safe house. We needed food, with the new hunger system, so we started a farm, which had to be pretty to support us.

Then night came. I saw my first Enderman. The creature was about 4 meters tall, jet black with large eyes. It walked slowly on spidery long limbs. It tore the trunk out of one of the nearby trees, carrying the chunk of wood for a while. It then put it down and used it to climb to a higher place. I will not be walking around at night if I can help it.

Once we were settled it became time to explore. Just off the desert was a deep hole with a cave in the bottom. After climbing down there I found a huge cave system, but that is not all. I wasn't the first one there. In the bowels of the earth were the ruins of an ancient people, now taken over be zombies and poisonous spiders. I couldn't explore it all, but I did explore enough to find a chest with a diamond and some gold. It was several levels, but I didn't time to see more than one.

Now, I sit here at work unable to focus. There are new vistas to explore. I can't wait to get back.

The Clockwork Man

2011-09-09T14:36:00.001-04:00

The world looks different to the clockwork man as he peers from his place by the sea. He can hear the buzzing of his gears and the thumping of his pistons over the sound of the surf. The sand outside dials into focus through telescopic eyes. He can't smell the salt and fish in the air. His skin has worn away exposing the steel and wiring once underneath. The silver plates of his chest are riveted over the remaining heart of flesh, trapped where it can't be seen or heard. The clockwork man is wound, but still.

He remembered a time when his arms were made of flesh. Wrapped with nerves and feeling. A time before the choice. When his lips could hold the skin of an apple and his teeth were not a grinding machine. Before the pain he had a name, but that was long ago. Now he is just the clockwork man. A contraption. A toy. A memorial.

The pain had come first to his hands. It burned like invisible fire. It felt like it was consuming him, but left the meat to flare again. A hot brand he couldn't release. Pain like that should be hard to forget, but the numb digits the doctors gave him as replacements cooled his memory.

The clockwork man opened the intricate replacement he'd had since then and tried to remember. He felt nothing but loss.

It had been the skin of his cheeks and then his whole face that came next. The same staggeringly painful embers held to him, but this time blinding him with white hot heat. The choice was easier this time. He sacrificed his flesh to loose the pain. His eyes were sharper, but they seemed to miss more subtle things. At least the pain was gone.

After that it was a succession of creeping pain and replacement surgeries. The price had been paid to free himself from the pain. He became the clockwork man.

The story of his transformation ticked through his processor as he watched the tide pull back revealing her gifts. Sticks and shells, seaweed and foam colored the beige coast. A couple walked together from the hotel next door. They laughed and hugged and held hands. They're missing some of the best shells, he thought, and they are inefficient with their stride. They could be improved so much. The clockwork man kept watching and judging these people of flesh. He considered the servos and armor he would use to better the couple.

It was then, with one awkward misstep, the girl stepped on a razor edge of coral. Instantly she crumpled and grasped he injured foot. With a whirring, the clockwork man rose to his feet, ready to act. The ticking and buzzing echoed off the glass he had been watching through.

The boy of flesh knelt beside the girl, who now had some blood on her hands. He looked at her foot. "How could he help?" thought the clockwork man, "He'll fail without the right parts." Then, not even knowing he was being watched from behind glass, the boy kissed the injured girl's forehead and lifted her from the sand. He wasn't much bigger then her. He struggled with the weight and his feet sank deeper into the sand. Slowly, Step by step, without any assistance, he carried the girl to help.

The clockwork man stayed standing for a long time. He zoomed in on the speckles of blood drying on the beach, but his thoughts were elsewhere. The idea of replacement parts for the couple seemed silly to him now. There was something to them, a subtlety he'd missed, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. They weren't perfect, but he couldn't imagine how he could make them any better.

The clockwork man returned to his chair. His buzzing and ticking quieted. He could hear an unfamiliar thumping getting louder. For the first time, in a long time, he could hear his heart beat.

Reading Again

2011-09-07T13:16:00.001-04:00

For a long time my reading was reduced to a few gaming magazine articles, Bible study and Internet news. Virtually no fiction. Much of my life I wanted to make a living telling stories, so this is a weird place to be. I'm not sure how I got here.

All through school and up through college I was a pretty active reader. I would not be uncommon for me to have the latest Stephen King in hand and have a Spider Robinson waiting to be started. This was my filler through the day and my relaxation time at night. I loved reading and how it fired your imagination. It filled this place in my life.

Then it was gone. The books I had, had been read. I went from being reader, to having been a reader. I didn't really miss it.

Two things changed all that. The first is my daughters have been eating up the Percy Jackson series of books and it became clear that in order to talk to them about them, I would need to read them. Good books, by the way, fairly easy reads with characters you care about and a decent story. This did in fact become a bridge for us. Secondly, I've been trying to write more, and it has really been drilled home that if you want to grow as a writer, you need to read other writer's writing. This let's you see how they fold words together, paint images and fill the white with entertaining word. I am a reader again.

Today, though, I am struck by a thought. Why did I not miss this? How is it I don't even remember how this changed? It seems so much of who I am again, it is hard to reconcile that gap. Additionally, does this mean there may be other things I stopped doing that would greatly enjoy if I went back to them? What are they? If my mind can hide things I love from me, how will I ever find them?

Am I the only one with this experience? I would love to hear if any of you have rediscovered a lost love, or think you know why we just stop doing things sometimes. Lastly, if you have any book recommendations, I would love to hear them.

Jaded

2011-08-30T12:59:00.001-04:00

I love shows like Scare Tactics. When the radioactive rat-man scurries out of the hole of the abandoned lab and the effeminate man let's loose a scream, I laugh. Hard. There is something about the psychological torture they put the victims through that is bottled joy to me.

I am concerned, though. We living a society that is ever more jaded and harder to fool. If you doubt me, go back and watch a show you used to love. I tried The Incredible Hulk, the one from the 80's. Remember how sweet and terrifying those transitions to a green beast were? Well, keep those in your memory cause if you go back and watch them, you will be wrecked.

There is a part of me that thinks, how did you watch this? How did you think this was good? You have no taste. But there as another, louder part of me that screams like the newly formed Vader. Noooooooooooo! Because this may be the end of shows like Scare Tactics. No more joy.

I see a future where the van lurches to a stop just as the Vampire bikers catch up to the girls on a lonely stretch of road and rather then them clinging to each other prepared to meet certain death, they hop out and say "Really?". The innocence, terror and joy all gone.

This is not the fault of TV and movies. It is the fault of us and our desire to have ever more real entertainment so we don't need to suspend our disbelieve.

So, if just for me, please stop being jaded. Overlook bad make-up and believe in alien's with big green heads just a little bit longer. Thank you.

Zero Event

2011-08-24T16:59:00.001-04:00

Today, I was listening to one of those This American Life episodes that just fires my imagination. It was called Game. The reason it really got to me was this section on "the Book". "The Book" is what is known, so you know how to take the best possible action, or so you know what the expected outcome will be. Some complete games fit into "The Book" like tic-tac-toe or checkers, meaning you can play game after game perfectly, never leaving the known. Other games are so big with so much variation that the complete game will never be in "The Book". This mean the game will start in "the book" and probably stay there for the first few turns, you know every response has a set response, but at some point it leaves "The Book".

This is the moment we wait for.

They called it I think a zero event. I imagine it like that moment when a spaceship is struggling against the gravity of the planet, it is trying to escape, always in the verge of losing power and dropping back, then it is free the bonds shaken off and all of space is available.

The events engage our brains, makes us tingle, make us see a world with fresh eyes. Suddenly, outside of the book, we want to know what will happen next, what can happen next. We are explorers or inventors.

Zero event isn't really about leaving "The Book". More importantly, it is about the ability to write you own book once you are out there.

I'm not telling you to break all the rules. I'm also not telling you that you get to decide right from wrong. What I am telling you is this, you live a life of patterns, which causes you to add bunches of silly rules into your life, things that may have made sense at the time, but are now just holding you back. Play with them. Remove or change the restrictions you have put on yourself and see how it works out. Give up something you don't need. Add a hobby you always wanted to try. Read a book you said you wouldn't. Be the first to apologize.

See what happens what you awaken your mind with change.

My challenge is this, leave the book and start writing your own. You might make some mistakes, but you will be alive in a way you have missed.

Found Thing

2011-08-15T16:45:00.002-04:00

When I step into the heat of my garage, I can't help but let corners of my mouth pull into a smile. Maybe a smirk. I tell my wife that we need get everything out the the garage. And the basement. And the rooms. And the junk drawer. In short, we have too much junk. And, while that is true, there is an advantage to having boxes in the garage.

To understand this, it might help know about a few things I have at arms length as I sit at my desk. I have an English to German dictionary. It is from my college days. It brings back the work I had to do for what would be my toughest classes, but it is not nearly as useful as the information you can find on-line. I also have a 2nd edition Dungeon Master's Guide, which was my chief source of entertainment all through high school. I don't need it anymore, but it reminds me of weekends on Sill's floor with half a dozen or more of my friends weaving stories of dragons and vampires. The nostalgia on these things is a treasure, but I don't know what to do with the items themselves. I don't want to get rid of them, but I can't figure out how to make them useful.

The boxes in the garage fuel my mind with hopes of a new object a new dose of nostalgia. Additionally, you have the quest, the act of working toward a find. The one thing better than finding, is looking. I love the quest. Every box is a quest waiting to happen. Sometimes you get a dictionary or a roleplaying book, but most of the time you just get the quest.

The little quirk of mine has lead me to some interesting places, with some interesting finds. The most interesting for me, my favorite quests are people finding. I do this for a hobby as often as I can. I love the research the moves, the court records, every clue to narrow down where someone has made it to. If a book is laced with nostalgia, that a person is like the straight shot. They can fill in all the gaps, they can talk about the things they remember. It is almost perfect.

I have loved the searches for people lost in the fog of time. It's like I have recovered a little bit of myself. From the girl who lived across the street in elementary school, to the high school friend who got lost after a rough couple years. When you get them, you want to hold on, want to pick up where you left off, you want the joy you remember.

It never works exactly that way, though. At some point you realize the person looking, isn't the person who lost them. I didn't stop changing when circumstances took them out of my life. They aren't they same people either. The taste is bittersweet.

What to do then? What do you do once you have found this person you have spent days or weeks looking for? Now you sit staring at an e-mail written by a stranger, to a stranger with only old history binding them together. The desire for something, but the realization that it is too far gone puts a lump in my throat.

It may be foolish, but I like being able to reach over and touch the books I have no use for anymore. I can flip through the pages and let the memories wash over me. That is enough.

Ezekiel Humour

2011-08-01T12:24:00.001-04:00

Tonight I'm starting a new Star Wars games with several of my friends, and I thought I would share a little about the character I've developed and some of the ways I develop characters.

The first thing I ask when developing a character is what does the party need, or what unique talent can I bring to the table. In this case I choose a medic, something our party was not going to have, and a role kind of unique in the version of Star Wars we are playing. For me, this means I want to gear his skills to do this well and I need him to have a reason to be a medic. The skills for a good medic are easiest to get to if you have some Soldier and some Scoundrel levels. My reason for him becoming a medic, a tragedy, specifically his wife died, which could have been avoided if he had had the training.

The next thing I consider is personality, usually I draw from books or TV for inspiration. I have a medic with a tragic past, so the natural templates for this are characters like Bones or Dr. House. Which means I probably have a arrogant cranky doctor who survives on his skill as opposed to bedside manner. In the end he won't play exactly like these guys, but it helps you flesh out who this guy is.

Once I've got my core skills and core personality down, I'm looking for the twist. In the case of Ezekiel I get my twist from the fact he's got some scoundrel levels. Usually my twists are some weakness the GM can use, in this case I chose gambling. My medic has a major problem, he can't keep money because he gambles it away and has a tendency to rack up debts. So, I take a couple skills that go with an experienced gambler and hider, and on paper he is mostly built.

The last thing I need is some hooks that link me to the story and maybe other characters. I know we are together because we are in the employ of a Senator. This works perfect, I got my medical training while in the military and moved from being a combat medic to the Senator's personal physician. Probably not long, because my mouth hasn't gotten me sent back to the field yet. The second hook has to do with a character, who it turns out explains why Ezekiel was never charged for my medical school. This benefactor has links to the doctor's family and helped him by paying for school. As a result, Ezekiel does some free work for him in his spare time.

All in all, this should be a character I can really sink my teeth into. I'm going to try to not over play the gambling addiction, try to get a few saying that are unique to him and develop relationships with the rest of the party. I'm also looking for those spots where I hate that I have to help, which is what makes these kind of characters really work.

What do you do to make a character you want to play? What situation would you like to see a character like this get caught it?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Conspiracy Theory

2011-07-29T14:31:00.001-04:00

I don't know what it is about these things, but I love conspiracy theories. I realize most of them are half baked, a blend of weak evidence and paranoia. When one is discussed though I'm very curious as to the truth. Sure, I might not believe the X organization is plotting to take over the world, but that doesn't mean they are not plotting, and if they are plotting, what is it they are plotting about? There is a sudden fascination because of the unknown.

Does the US have aliens in a warehouse in New Mexico? Are the super rich looking to reduce the world population? Was the president born in Kenya? Do the Mason's have a storehouse of ancient treasure they use to buy presidential seats? All of these things have some reason people believe them, so good and others not so good.

The most interesting question of all is this, have any of these conspiracies bore fruit? It is one thing to make an unfounded declaration, it is another thing altogether to reveal a true conspiracy.

What are your favorite conspiracies? Do you know of any that have been shown to be true? How much proof do you need before you will buy in?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The personality of weapons

2011-07-11T19:08:00.001-04:00

If you could choose one fantasy or sci-fi weapon to own, what you you choose? And then, what does it say about you?

I know for some of you this is a hard choice, but think about it for a minute. There are a few very good candidates: a functioning light saber, a star trek phaser, Sting (Frodo's sword from Lord of the rings). There are so many things to consider, would get one that looks cool, or is really about nostalgia, do you want it to be functional, or the flash enough, will it be one that has to stay at home, or can you slip it in you pocket, choices, choices.

Before you go on, pick yours.

The following are a few I've thought of and what I think they say about the person who would select them.

1. The Death Star. In short you are a world destroying megalomaniac. and it would probably be better if you didn't get into a position of power. Your also a bit showboat, the kind of person that once you've won you want to flaunt it, perhaps by making the princess watch the destruction of her world at your hands.

2. Noisy Cricket. You are quiet and like to fly under the radar. You can slip into the crowd of earthlings, who have no idea they have just one day to live, unnoticed. All of this changes when the giant bug wearing an Edgar suit shows his face, and then you explode with a surprising amount of force.

3. Excalibur. You are all about the signs of noble leadership, probably a leader from birth. Although you may not have known it until a sign, like a fulfilled prophesy, at which point you life change. Being the king means acting like the king and going above and beyond. Be warned, your friends are loyal to you, but they may hurt you by not living up to your standards.

4. Light Saber. Even though you can see the steadily eroding civility in the world, you are a person from a time passed, a more civil time. You may or may not hide the power you wield, but you are always considerate of the time and place to use your power. You so thoughtful and strategic that you recognize there is a time to stand down, even if it means your defeat, and a time to fight, because you can't be beaten. You will never rampage like a chess playing Wookie, but when you need to you can change the direction of an entire war.

5. Vera. You may not be the most well reasoned person, but most people aren't going to call you on it. Your best friends are probably as emotionally challenged as you are and there is a reasonable chance when they see you caressing a huge gun they'll think you are going to kill them. Don't worry, this will have little impact on the relationship. In fact, you can say pretty much anything and it won't change the relationship much. You probably don't see the world as it really is, but who cares you've got a sweet gun.

Attempting a Reboot

2011-07-09T17:38:00.001-04:00

Over the next few weeks and months I will be looking to increase the amount of time I am writing. One of the ways I will be doing this is writing in this blog. This post is here to serve two purposes. First, I want those that either have worked on this blog in the past or have read this blog to be aware of the expected increase in activity. Secondly, I wanted to try a few of the tools I'll be using.

Tired of Sylar?

2009-04-20T23:13:00.004-04:00

Heroes always fools you into thinking that they are about to start somthing solid. Then they pull the rug out from under you with episodes like I Am Sylar. Sylar's internal conflict just isn't interesting to me anymore. None of the turmoil produces durable change to the character. The subject of the angst never seems to change. The character is a permanent villian, so there is never a possibility he will be defeated. These problems are symptomatic of the problems the show's writing has had for since the beginning.

First he is Sylar the Enigmatic, a serial killer on the loose and a threat to everyone. Then he becomes Sylar the Impotent: he can't access his abilities and must rely on the good will of others to get back to the US. Then he becomes Sylar the White: he learns a new power through empathy and wants to turn over a new leaf. You might even take him on a mission or two if you are a Company man. Dare I say, take him home for dinner? Then he becomes Sylar the Faceless Stranger: he wanders from place to place, gather powers as he goes, all in a journey of self discovery. None of these experiences seems to have a lasting impact on the character. They only seem to be hats Sylar wears for the sake of the seasonal story arc.

At the core of it all, the guy cannot seem to shake his mommy issues. Mom just didn't tell him he was special enough. I'm I got a red bike instead of a blue bike for Christmas in 1987, for there but by the grace of God go I....well, if I had the powers, that is...

Anyway, he proves to be a sucker for manipulation of the parental lobe of the brain. Over and over again. Only now in I am Sylar, we get to see him act out the part of mom, all Norman Bates style. When does any of this ever get resolved to one degree or another? When will Sylar actually develop as a character instead of as the reinvented villian of the volume?

You know he's not going anywhere. The part is Zachary Quinto's for as long as he wants it. Sylar won't be defeated by the Justice League's combined powers. He's doomed to walk the face of the Earth as the terribly dangerous villian with only a Diet Coke taste for evil, and serious issues with mommy love. If the character can't die, how can his story have any tension?

Don't get me wrong on this. I love Zachary Quinto, and I think he does the best he can with the story he must act out. I'm just disappointed to see a bad guy with so much story potential be written for so poorly.

Star Trek: Enterprise

2009-04-13T11:21:00.009-04:00

I never wanted to like Enterprise (or Star Trek: Enterprise, if you like). I wanted to watch the exploits of Captain Pike or maybe even Captain April, who supposedly preceded him. I also knew that the writers were going to retcon old minutae of the early days of Human space travel. Lastly, I hated that cheesy theme song.

To my credit, I was mostly right.

I am a fan of Scott Bakula. I grew to like Captain Archer pretty well with one exception. Sadly, he is pretty much Sam Beckett commanding an Enterprise. I can sum up this homogeny by pointing out that they are both unflinching moral idealists in the face of their pioneering fields; space travel and time travel, respectively. Their hands remain remarkably clean out on the ragged edge of technology. Something one would not expect that in the real world. Of course, neither Enterprise, nor Quantum Leap were really about the reality of our existence. Both are heavily dosed with optimism about humanity and our past/future. More on that later.

I had been hoping to see a gritty pioneer out in the newfound folds of space, confronting, and often failing at handling the moral dilemnas that our first steps into deep space would provide. Someone like my picture of who Cpt. Robert April would be. Instead, I got a likeable would-be predecessor who was already far more squeaky clean than I had imagined.

To be fair, I think my expectation was not fair. Grit is is not really what Star Trek is about. Star Trek has never apologized for being optimistic about humanity and our ability to overcome ourselves.

Even if Enterprise had been gritty, it is not really fair to hold Paramount accountable for my imaginings about things spoken of but previously unseen. I also happen to think that I could have devised much better stories for the prequel Star Wars movies. Epics more true to the dialogue from the first three movies. However, what that really means is that I could have come up with plotlines that more closely matched MY impression of the events only described in Star Wars 4,5 and 6. My stories would have made me very happy, but probably would not have fared any better with the public than Lucas'.

The retcon job done to the list races that humans had encountered by the time of the NCC 1701 was pretty brutal. We find out that humans had in fact encountered the Romulans, the Ferengi, and even the Borg (hellz yeah, Borg!) long before the first five year mission of the Enterprise of Spock and Kirk. The devices that are used to keep the record of past dialogue factual are a bit thin. They cause me to wonder if the writers were really just lost without these old saws of the Star Trek world. At least the Borg plot lines tied back to Star Trek: First Contact (hellz yeah, First Contact!), making them somewhat more congruous.

Where My Heart Will Take Me. Man, I hated that song when i first heard it. It sounded like something that should be played at a '90s Primerica sales convention. It was so syrupy, with that awful Rod Stewart clone voice.

I will tip my hand here and say that I have this song. It is on my iPod. I do listen to it from time to time. I find the message of the lyrics combined with the instant visual memory of the opening of the show a little inspirational. I really enjoyed seeing the moments in great human endeavor, even the ones made up for the future.

This song and the opening credits of Enterprise make me want to believe in humanity. Reality steps in and strictly forbids that optimism, however. I don't actually believe we will ever reach the utopia of humanity as depicted in the Star Trek universe.

Our ability to destroy each other with technology has grown much faster than our morality has, if it ever has. We can't even decide as a society whether digitally copying the fruit of someone else's labor against their will and distribuing it to Internet acquaintances is stealing or not. This is not a question of survival. It is one of entertainment, and we cannot decide to agree to act decently as a group. How much more vicious will we become when the question is one of survival or general properity?

I don't believe in the innate goodness of people. I see a large population that does not really care so much for right and wrong as they do for what is socially acceptable. I think that when that barrier is lifted, such as in a national crisis in which order breaks down, most people would sacrifice most any principle to ensure their survival.

I want to believe in the star Trek model of humanity. I would like to think that we could achieve and evolve to be better than we are. In those brief moments when I listen to Where My Heart Will Take Me, I allow myself to suspend that disbelief. In those moments, my neighbor would not cut my throat for a loaf of bread during a food shortage. I would not be shot for my place on the last ferry off of Manhattan during a zombie invasion.

It didn't happen all at once. I hated that song for awhile. Then I realized that I could use it to shut out the sad truth for just a little bit.

Our Music

2008-02-22T09:32:00.002-05:00

Growing up I was never a big music person. It wasn't that I hated popular music, nor that I made any effort to avoid it. I just didn't spend any money on it. I had nearly no records or cassettes. Looking back on it, I think the reason was the music wasn't mine. I never felt connected to it.

There was one notable exception. The twenty-, thirty-, forty- something year old geek probably already knows who I'm talking about. That's right Weird Al Yankovic. Many might think that the attraction to him is because he's funny, but that's really only part of it. The real attraction is he was and is writing music about Star Wars, Computers, Social Awkwardness and poking fun at popular culture. For a long time he was the bard of the geek.

He no longer stands alone. Today I was introduced to Jonathan Coylton. He got songs on Twisted Evil Mastermind Love, "Skullcrusher Mountain", US Predidents, "The Presidents", and a Chipmunks Podcaster Christmas Music, "Podsafe Christmas Song". All I can say is while the links are free, this is music worth buying. Enjoy. Comment if you know of some other geek music I should check out.

Role-Playing in a MMORPG: The Quest

2008-01-28T10:32:00.000-05:00

Not everything in an MMORPG lends itself to good storytelling. These are my thoughts on how to integrate events in an MMO into a good story, while leaving the rest behind.

Little can be done in an MMO world that has not been done before. Even fewer are the opportunities to accomplish something that can permanently change the virtual world or even the server you play on.

While talking to a quest-giver, it is not hard to think that this quest you are performing has been done thousands of times before by thousands of other players. So how can I make a difference doing something that everyone and their brother has done before?

The answer is to own the quest for yourself. To do this, you must place your character and his personality in the situation presented.

First, you must suspend disbelief and act as though you are the only person in the world to be charged with this task. Your job is vital and must be finished as soon as possible.

Example: Grelin Whitebeard has asked Lorich Flatiron to explore the southern caves of Coldridge Valley and thin out the troll infestation. There is no other group of adventurers who came along before or will come after. There is only Lorich and the trolls.

Second, you must ask yourself how your character feels about his task. Does the task seem like menial work to him? Does he think he can accomplish what he is setting out to do? Will any part of the job involve something that violates his beliefs or triggers a phobia?

Example: Carrying a report to Ironforge about the troll situation will take Lorich through the tunnel to Kharanos. The tunnel is held by troggs. The mountaineer at the mouth doesn't want to let him go until he hears that Lorich is on official business. Not very reassuring. Lorich experiences a feeling of dread as he gazes beyond the last lit fire and into the blackness of the tunnel.

Third, each moment, each kill is a potential opportunity to develop something about the character. React to the first time he kills someone. Celebrate even the small victories. Relish the praise from the leaders of your nation.

Example: The champion of Stormwind has rewarded you handsomely for your presentation of the head of Onyxia to him. His regard for you is announced in all the city and each citizen present is is stirred to greater heroism. This is not a daily turn-in that will be forgotten tomorrow, this is a milestone in your character's career. In a good story, Onyxia will not respawn on Tuesday for you or another band of heroes to kill again next week.

Last, if you are inclined in any way, write down your experience. In particluar, pay attention to the details that pertain only to you. I've not read anywhere an account of the starting quests in Coldridge. Were I to journal it, I may be the first and it would be mine. Surely, you can find a quest among thousands to make your own.

Performance Reviews in a Game

2008-01-15T09:07:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've taken a job. It doesn't pay. I'm likely to have people get upset with me and it takes precious time from my life. The job is being a guild officer, specifically the guild officer responsible for player ranking.

Why would I do this, you ask? The answer is simple, really. I want the guild to improve. I want them to see every dungeon before the next expansion is released. This level of guild performance requires a high level of individual performance. A high level of individual performance requires a lot of work and attention to detail. A heavy workload requires some kind of payment, or likely it won't be done. The payment is rank, and ultimately ability to get cutting edge content. So, if I want the guild to drop Illidan before the release of Wrath of the Lich King, I need to play players by evaluating there performance.

This is a bit like walking a tightrope. Solid performance reviews are tough performance reviews. They are honest, but critical. They should always point out ways to improve. The issue is, people don't play a game to be nitpicked. So, a good player performance review is honest, is critical, but is also encouraging. It's not written to drive players from the guild, rather it's written to make them feel like they can get to the next level of performance.

Perhaps I should rewrite that first paragraph. Recently, I've taken a job. It pays in opportunity and entertainment. It allows me to spend time investing the abilities of others and growing in my knowledge of a fun past time. The job is being the guild officer responsible for player ranking.

Why do we enjoy certain roles?

2007-12-13T10:25:00.001-05:00

(I'm done with finals, so I should be back on schedule to contribute regularly)

I like to tank. I like to DPS. I've had somewhat limited exposure to healing, but I've liked that so far as well. I like the overall dynamic of the game and could easily explain how each individual role can be absolutely pivotal to success (when done well). One of the biggest mistakes I hear other players make is to simply assume that because they don't enjoy something, there must be a fundamental flaw. Not everyone enjoys the different aspects of the game and I'd like to undertake a brief attempt to figure out why.

The first part of the answer is fairly obvious. There is a clear tendency among the general population towards the DPS roles. Players enjoy being the guy doing the actual killing of the enemy. Perhaps it makes them feel powerful, in control or heroic. I certainly enjoy watching the damage I'm doing to my enemies scroll by and the prestige that doing it well brings.

The second part is a little bit fuzzier, but I still think it plays a role. Tanking and healing are harder to do than DPS. A small exception going to the top 5% of DPS players. This is largely due to volume, you will often only have 1-4 tanks, 5-8 healers and 13-19 DPS. It is easier to blend in as an apathetic DPS, where a tank or healer often are performing roles they are directly accountable for. Healer C didn't heal Tank B sufficiently, he dies and the raid wipes. Tank A doesn't generate sufficient aggro on Mob B, healers go OOM and the raid wipes. That sort of direct accountability rarely falls on the DPS. Healing/Tanking success or failure is often a binary answer. This is somewhat controllable through good leadership, but good leadership can't change the fundamental difference in difficulty.

The third part is fuzzier still, performance assessment. At the end of our Gruul raid last night, there was a clear DPS winner for anyone with a damage meter installed. I could immediately see who beat me and while there may have been reasons, the outcome was clear none the less. Healing is a little more difficult to assess, raw healing done doesn't give you a good answer. The healing meters are very class dependent, where a good Resto druid will beat every other healer every time. Even within a class, specific assignments play a significant role in healing meter outcome. There is also no easy measurement available for "clutch instinct" which is probably the most important skill for any player. Tanking is equally difficult to assess, where a tank is often judged on an anecdotal composite of ease of healing, leadership and threat. Part of this is because there are very few encounters that foster any sort of competition between tanks and when there are, the mechanics of the game heavily favor an early leader. Players who excel in their roles tend to be competitive by nature and when they don't find that in healing or tanking, they may gravitate towards DPS.

The flip side of each of those points is that a player who sees the "big picture" can directly correlate their performance as a tank/healer to overall raid performance. I'd even venture to say that the best players I know enjoy each of the roles in the game, perhaps because that big picture view allows them to excel in each role. They know that despite the damage meters getting linked at the end of most fights, they probably played a key role in allowing those top performers to succeed. I enjoy tanking because of its difficulty and because a good tank is so valuable. I appreciate that though it is hard to measure, the mark of a good tank or healer is often how in how in demand they are.

One last factor that I personally believe to contribute is the reasons people play the game in the first place. I believe that the more social players end up performing roles that are naturally more social like tanking and healing. Where as more anti social players prefer roles that don't necessitate

My Extra Life

2007-12-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

Over the last few weeks I've started using an RSS, which is awesome, but is another topic for another time. Anyway, in the course of setting this up and browsing the feeds available I discovered The Instance, which is a great World of Warcraft podcast. As it turns out, The Instance is actually just a side project of a guy by the name of Scott Johnson.

I have to tell you, which is the complete reason for this post today, I love everything I've seen of Scott Johnson so far. His main Podcast, Extra Life Radio, is fantastic and chalk full of nerditity. His diary of a cartoonist, is alway full of funny random thoughts and the cartoons themselves are just great.

If you do nothing else today, get over to http://www.myextralife.com and check it out. Consider it an early Christmas present from me to you.

Building a Biome

2007-11-08T13:39:00.000-05:00

Biome - a complex biotic community characterized by distinctive plant and animal species and maintained under the climatic conditions of the region, esp. such a community that has developed to climate

I love building game worlds. I actually like it so well that I've continued working on a D&D world long after the campaign has ended. To me it's a hobby like gardening or painting, and a little like playing with Legos or keeping an ant farm. Some of this may be the nature of how I like to develop the world and some of this might just be the nature of designing a world.

I like to develop a world in layers.

I start with the basic geometry. Designing the continent, mountain ranges, rivers and lakes. These parts must be of a proper size and evoke a realistic feel. Next, I layer in the climate, deciding where it is cold or hot, dry or moist. You should note the mountains and rivers you've built in the first layer and make the weather appropriate for the landforms. To finish the fundamentals, I place plant and animal life.

If you know the climate and know the landforms you should know what kind of plants and animals to expect. This is done using couple of methods. The first method is deciding what common things are found regionally; kinds of trees and bushes, mammals and birds. The second method is deciding the unique plants and animals of specific areas. Perhaps specific locations are the only places in the world where papyrus grows or phosphorescent moss, or where dire wolves roam. All of these give you a solid base for the fundamentals of the world. The next step is defining the sentient species and their histories.

I start this by laying out a broad history of the world. After I know roughly what happened to the people of the world since their birth, I then narrow it down again and again, this can be done by race or region or timeframe. Its a little like sand paper where you use a finer and finer grain until the piece is smooth. What you end up with is cities and regions that have connected histories and industries based on the plants and animals in the region.

With a solid base of geography and history, it's time to start the real fun: deciding what is happening today. Who the current leaders are, how they have been impacted by the history that proceeded them, how they deal with the geographic issues and, most interestingly, the leaders that surround them.

What are the current things a hero can do? Are leaders good and looking to quash evil, or are they evil and the heros are rebels? Is a natural resource being destroyed causing a major problem, or is the population of a dangerous animal getting out of control?

It should clear by now that doing this engages the imagination, makes you consider "what would happen if" questions and lets you explore them through design. Ultimately, you create a world you want others to explore and discover, which makes for not only an incredibly enjoyable hobby, but ultimately solid adventure design.

Neuroeconomics and Video Game Choices

2007-11-02T13:39:00.000-04:00

I read an interesting article the other day that discussed the decision tendencies of various personality types as it related to financial investments. As I was reading I saw some interesting relationships between WoW and the article. This is partly related to my belief that WoW characters are investments in the sense that we spend a great of time with them hoping that they will continue to pay dividends in the form of enjoyment. I'll outline a couple that I felt there was a strong connection, though there were several that are less concrete. I'll note that the article gave a scale of the type of advisor that an investor would see the greatest returns through, I'm leaving that out because I'm interested in seeing how each of you perceive the ranking. I'll post the empirical findings in a couple days.

The first is the reactionary decision maker. They take the events most recently surrounding their impending decision and use those factors to determine their choice. I see this quite a bit as patches come out and certain classes get aggravated that their buffs aren't as significant as others within that patch. This type of decision maker does poorly in high stress situations, but they do much better than any other when a fast decision is better than any slow decision.

The second is the counterculture speculator. They work on the idea that the current popular trends are the result of often unfair market practices and that the latest hot investment will generally not be effective. In my never to be humble opinion, this is a huge segment of the active WoW forum posters. They truly believe in many cases that there are unfair forces at work intentionally giving one class an advantage over the other. I think the counterculture nature of the "nerd" community is obvious and it follows that some of those same fundamental assertions will influence their decisions. It is worth noting that in the investment market, these predictions occasionally come to pass even if the reason for the predictions were all accurate. This type of decision maker has an uncanny ability to avoid bursting bubbles, but also rarely makes large gains.

The third is the concrete statistician. They operate on the theory that everything can be calculated and predicted with a high degree of reliability, along with this comes the obvious assumption that the controlling decision are made on the same basis. This is the category I probably fall into, so I'm not going to comment much. I'll point out the major shortcoming of this type of investor, which is the utter inability to avoid emotional market reactions (which are always short, praise be to Allah).

The last that I'll comment on is the confident casual investor. They generally don't have any specific formula, but are hesitant to seek professional advice because they believe they can do it themselves. The obvious correlation here is the "casual" WoW player that has only an hour or two each week to play. They are often frustrated by the feeling that they don't have the time to successfully maximize their gains like a professional does. These investors do fairly well if they leave their assets in one place for a long time and they do horribly when they attempt to actively manage them.

What type of decision maker do you think you are? What other types should I have included? What type do you think the WoW developers are?

Extra Life Radio

2007-10-29T10:40:00.001-04:00

In an effort to keep you guys entertained, I thought I would share my recent addiction, Extra Life Radio. I first got to the maker of this, Scott Johnson, through The Instance and World of Warcraft Podcast. Both are actually very good, as are this guys comics and pretty much everything I've found attached to ELR.

Let me know what you think.

What Should a Game be Balanced Around?

2007-10-28T11:06:00.001-04:00

Balance isn't easy, I think my last post established that. To further muddy the waters lets talk about what a game should be balanced around. A core part of my hypothesis is that for players to want to engage in an activity the game needs to be fairly well balanced for it. Start thinking about the parts of the game you participate in and how much you want the game to be balanced around it.

Currently WoW consists of 2 primary pastimes: PvE and PvP. I'm going to entirely avoid the historical quagmire of whether PvP was tacked on in the past, suffice it to say that it is here to stay now. PvE players hate when they are nerfed for PvP sake and the opposite is true as well. Should the game be balanced exclusively around one or the other?

Further drilling down in the PvE category there are several different aspects the game could be balanced around: Solo, 5 man instances, 10 mans or larger 25 man raids. What tier of content should each of those be balanced for? What tier of content should each be balanced around?

PvP has the same essential breaks, should it be balanced around 1v1, Arenas, BG's or World PvP? What gear level should those be balanced at?

There is always the nebulous problem of balancing around perception. Could it be that Mages are thought to be OP simply because nobody likes sitting there as a sheep while the Mage winds up a PoM Pyroblast aimed at your eyeball? Go take a walk through the Wow forums and you'll see that 99% of the huge complaints are grossly overstated/unfounded. The fact remains that the game is made and broken by the opinions of individual players.

Personally I think that an honest player would admit that they participate in most aspects of the game and our preference for balance probably is fairly shortsighted around what we are doing right that minute as opposed to what we'll be doing 3 months later. While that is certainly excuseable (we are playing the game to enjoy ourselves after all) it I easy to see that it is in our long term interest to have the game balanced around all of these factors.

Now sock it to me, have I missed the mark? Forgotten the one key factor that would fix everything? Clearly and rationally explained exactly what you have been thinking?

What is Balance?

2007-10-25T14:55:00.001-04:00

What does it mean for a game to be balanced/imbalanced. I just finished reading a review that was complaining about the balance of an MMO I have never played. I have no idea how valid any of his concerns were, primarily because he cited almost no evidence other than the purely anecdotal. I've noticed this pattern in the past, so I thought I'd try and puzzle out what balance means. I'll only attempt to address how balance is perceived today.

The first problem I ran into was that different people intend different things when they use the word and though they use it in broad sweeping ways, they are almost always referring to something fairly specific. A statement like "Warriors are overpowered" may be referring to a specific specialization of Warriors competing well in certain types of PvP encounters. People very rarely have any sort of substantive argument that an entire class is just overpowered in every area of the game. Two players arguing about a particular class being overpowered almost always focusing on the particular area that most supports their claims of power/weakness. The dilemma with using the term "balance" in such a way is obvious. As an example lets look at one of the most often whined about combinations: Presence of Mind/Pyroblast. This essentially allows a mage to cast what would normally be a 6 second spell instantly once every 3 minutes dealing a significant amount of damage to his target. The problem is that it is hardly ever mentioned that a Mage is one of the most fragile classes in the game, or that a mage must spec into the talents to use that combination of abilities.

The second problem with discussions about balance is that by definition you are weighing one scenario against another. Often you will see that one classes deficiency is compared to another classes strength without regard to the other abilities of those same classes. Most often the deficiency is "balanced" by a strength in another area. This requires that a player analyzing balance issues has to be fairly well versed in both classes to make a truly fair comparison, this is very rarely the case. It also requires the difficult ability of assigning the proper value to a classes various strengths and weaknesses. You'll often hear players dismiss a class strength as not useful to them in a particular area of the game and thus it should be entirely disregarded in the conversation of balance.

The third problem is that the imbalances are often heavily gear related. A properly geared warrior and paladin both tank very well, with various advantages going to each class in various situations. When one or the other is geared poorly, this obviously throws the balance off. This goes back to our old discussions of theorycraft since some players simply don't realize they are the source of their own problems. This is further complicated since the response to their issue is "lrn2play" which many players bristle at.

The fourth problem is that the particular specialization of the class makes a huge difference in conversations about balance. Arguing about Protection Warriors having too much DPS won't be very persuasive, but change that to Fury Warriors and you have an entirely different argument. Similarly when a player is upset about how weak their class is in a particular area, it often is because they have chosen to specialize in a way that doesn't favor the area they are complaining about. Much like a couple of the other points we've discussed, this relates to unrealistic expectations on a players part.

The last problem is that WoW is an extremely complicated game. At various stages of progression the scales do tip in favor of one class or spec over another. That again requires the analyzer to look at the issues with a broad scope. You see a lot of these complaints in the "Flavor of the Month" variety. As a warrior their is a clear and apparent cycle I see players go through, it goes something like this:

1. When gear levels are low, warriors perform very poorly in comparison to similarly geared players; mostly due to the rage mechanic at their core.
2. Gear levels begin to improve and the warrior feels like he is catching up to the other classes.
3. Gear levels begin to cap out and the warrior really begins to excel. Other players see warriors doing better than they use to and attribute it to the imbalanced nature of the class.

As an anecdotal reinforcement of these points, as you see expertise in the game increase, you also see a similar reduction in the major balance issues the players have with the game, I'd suggest that this is because as a player grows familiar with all the classes they realize most perceived imbalances are a strict matter of player perception. This is also probably related to a players ability to see the mathematical equity present in most classes that a more inexperienced player may not be aware/able to calculate.

Ultimately there isn't a single right answer. Many players truly believe that there is a conspiratorial disadvantage intentionally given to their class. By practical definition that means it is difficult to prove, but they still use the point to reinforce their belief that they are disadvantaged in some capacity. Even after defining these balance factors one could easily say "I don't think X factor should even matter." That would be an entirely different conversation.

How do you analyze imbalances? Do you feel there are major ones that go ignored? Should a game be balanced on perception or on empirical fact?

Cooking up a Great Experience (Part 4)

2007-10-25T10:38:00.000-04:00

When the food is done and sat before you and you can see it's pleasing appearance on the plate, there is still one more thing to be done before you eat. Cleanse the pallet. That's right make sure that the flavor of the food isn't corrupted or changed by anything else. This is done so you can fully enjoy and experience the meal placed before you.

When it comes to entertainment the same mindset applies. Once you've done everything else, and the time to consume you entertainment arrives, clease your pallet.

To do this properly is to, with the best of your ability, clear distractions away. This may seem hard, but it actually easier than you think and can make the experience much more rewarding. Make sure the kids are handled, the phone is under control and the other people in the house understand what you are doing. Consider all the possible distractions you can get and find a way to midigate them. I assure once you see how this can be, you'll likely never want to fall back into the old traps of multi-tasking again.

As a side note, this might sometimes mean not doing those things you want to do. Because just like if you fill up on Big Macs you'll have no room for steak, if you fill up on distracted poorly prepared entertainment, you'll loose you desire for that thing.

Now that you've learned you to prepare and consume you entertainment, Bon Apatite.

Cooking up a Great Experience (Part 3)

2007-10-18T11:51:00.001-04:00

After you've made the decision to leave the land of Big Macs and have prepped the food, you need to cook and plate the food. Next steps to improving the quality of your entertainment are the same, you need to finish off those things you've prepped and arrange them in a way that improves their consumption.

In Part 2 I told you how I prepped my Monday nights, set the DVR and plan the time. The next steps are cooking and plateing. Cooking in this case means explaining to my wife, and others that will be impacted of the plan, making sure that nothing is left raw.

Plating is how you put multiple foods into a single meal. In entertainment terms this is how you put the different entertainment items you want to consume into a single evening. First, know what your plate it. On Monday nights my plate is 8:00 to 11:00, and I know the center of that plate is a 9:20 to 10:00. To fill my plate, I need to have something planned from 8:00-9:20 and something planned from 10:00 to 11:00. Most Mondays my plate looks like this. Warcraft from 8:00-9:20, 9:20 to 10:00 Heroes and 10:00 to 11:00 Auction House and Alternate Character work in Warcraft.

What would your enternatinment plate look like?

In the next segment I'll talk about making sure you are ready to actually eat the entertainment you've prepared.

Tired Star Trek Plot Cliches

2007-10-16T08:42:00.000-04:00

Here are a few things I wouldn't write into my script if I were writing for any upcoming Star Trek content.

Removable Holodeck Safeties. Why would you ever want to make the holodeck lethal? Just make them permanent. Otherwise, you are just asking for another "holodeck run amok" scenario.
The Navigational Deflector. My rudimentary understanding of it is that it moves space dust out of the way so that a small particle doesn't rip through the ship as it travels at faster than light speeds. However, in Star Trek, whenever something can't or shouldn't be phasered, tractored or torpedoed in space, the only option left is to use the navigational deflector on it. Give our beloved Swiss Army Knife of the Stars a rest. He's earned it.
Drive Plasma. I think a metric crap-ton of this stuff has vented into space over the course of 5 series and 10 movies. Sometimes it is ignited to destroy an enemy ship when other weapons are not working. Other times it's used disable another ship oil slick style that is pursuing another, clearly weaker, vessel. Then in other episodes we see our beloved crew bargaining for it. Waste not want not, I always say.
Warp Core Breach. How many times will we see an unavoidable warp core breach? We get it. It's dangerous and can blow up the ship. You can only cry wolf so many times before the silly thing just doesn't seem like that much of a threat. We may have to evacuate engineering chop-chop, but we know it will be okay in the end.
Transporter. This thing is the worst technology ever written into a television show. I understand that the original series didn't have the greatest special effects budget to show shuttles taking off and landing. I can see where something simple like a transporter is the answer. However, since the transporter can instantly solve any location based dilemnas, a new reason must be contrived each week for why it cannot be used to solve the current problem. The usual suspects are; ion storms, mineral deposits, and rebels who won't give you your pattern enhancers back. I'm guessing the writers of Enterprise wept for joy at not having to perform this most banal method of plot sidestep.

Cooking up a Great Experience (Part 2)

2007-10-12T08:54:00.001-04:00

If you've watched much of Food Network, you know that most chefs start by doing the prepwork. They get everything ready for use in their masterpiece. This is where they select their spices, perhaps start a base for a sauce, or even cut the meat down to the precise size.

A great entertainment experience needs to be handled the same way. You need to select your ingredient or ingredients and they need to be top quality. If you are watching a movie, select one you are fairly certian you will like. If it's TV don't surf, prepare in advance what you are going to watch and when. If is a big game like World of Warcraft not only do you need to know when you will play, but you should know what you are going do and with whom.

Remeber the difference between good and great can happen in these choices. Don't let the choices make themselves. Take control. Too often I have said I'm going to play WOW or watch TV and that's it. Whatever happens after that, happens. Usually resulting in me watching shows I didn't really care about or me spinning my wheels at some random task in the game. This fills my time, but doesn't leave me satisfied.

Monday nights are a little different and I get a little taste of what I'm really trying to create. At 9:20 on Monday nights my wife and I watch Heroes. This is the making of a great experience. A few reasons are: I get to look forward to it all day, it is an exact time, so I know when it is going to happen, the time has been selected so we can watch it commercial free and the show is a show we both greatly enjoy.

If you want to have a great experience, do your prepwork. This isn't about a schedule, this is about making sure you consuming the best of the best, with your limited time.

Where is the line between work and fun?

2007-10-10T17:30:00.000-04:00

We've talked previously about Theorycrafting as well as what in game accomplishments may look good on a resume. This is sort of a zombie child of those two topics.

I'll preface this by saying that this may be one of those topics that I find out I am totally out of touch with the rest of humanity on. I am extremely competitive. I generally will parse nearly every activity into either an absolutely competitive or completely non-competitive category. Once I consider something competitive, I start to really engage it to find out what it will take to excel. This applies at work, school, games and most every other facet of my life.

With that said, where do most of you draw the line between when something becomes work and stops being fun.? I'm thinking specifically about video games here. World of Warcraft starts out as a simple game that is very easy to play, by the time you have reached the maximum level for your character there is a grand canyon sized gap between a player that really knows his stuff and one that doesn't care. This is apparent particularly in a raid environment where you are up against several other players tasked with doing the same task that you are. It is often very clear who does well and how every other player compares.

Does there come a point where all of the effort it takes to be the best saps the fun from a game? How does a developer determine that line? I would suspect that most every long time gamer has liked or disliked a game based simply on its complexity of lack thereof. Ever played through a tutorial for a game that felt like reading the tax code? I'd even go so far as to suggest that the genre modifies my desires and expectations.

I personally believe WoW does a pretty good job of trying to appease both those who demand complexity and those who want simplicity. I'd also suggest that it is one of its biggest problems. Someone can level a new character from 1-70 with only a very light understanding of the mechanics of the game. They can even complete many of the small group quests and instances. As soon as they start raiding though, they stick out like a sore thumb. The things their leaders need them to know are not found anywhere in the game, they have to be sought out or taught to you by someone who has done their research. All of a sudden, the way they have played the game for the last few months changes, they now have all of these extra details to learn and correctly apply.

I'm not suggesting that the level one quests involve learning the spell damage coefficient for spells, or how +Hit and +Crit effect one another in a single roll combat table. I am suggesting that as a player advances in level, they be gradually introduced to the deeper mechanics of the game. By level 70 I don't think it would be unreasonable for a Warlock to know what his best spells for damage per mana, damage per second and how the various gear stats and talents effect those values. I think at least part of the reason a portion of the WoW population finds the "elitist raiders" abrasive is that there is such an abrupt jump they have to make from what they consider the "fun" part of the game to the raiding portion of the game, which by necessity is much more performance focused.

What games make this transition well? How does a games focus on performance change your game experience?

Cooking up a Great Experience (Part 1)

2007-10-10T09:38:00.000-04:00

Very often we "Fast Food" our entertainment. We belly up to the counter, order our value meal and leave never being quite as satisfied as we imagine. TV capitalizes on this, running less successful shows after more successful shows and MMO are chalk full of players who expect to get their gear while not doing their part. In some ways, I've caught myself doing this too and I want to change this. I want entertainment that has a deep, complex flavor. That whets my appetite by it appearance. That leaves me both satisfied and looking forward to the next time I will get to consume it.

The first step in making this change is about attitude. First I have acknowledge that, just like most people choose to eat Big Macs, most people choose simple entertainment. Meaning, making this choice is volunteering to be in the minority. Knowing that, I also have to become a smart consumer. This does not mean value buys, or buys driven by the mass media. This means truly analyzing what I'm getting entertainment from and cut back on the garbage. This isn't just a simple, "Buffy is crap, Heroes is great" evaluation. This is about the whole experience; quality of the medium, depth available, overall experience, including things that could take place before and after. The attitude goes from being served to being the chef, from passive to proactive.

When Creativity Wanes

2007-10-08T12:31:00.000-04:00

This is probably the funniest thing I've seen in a while:

http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article73.htm

Not only am I pretty sure I've fought some of those things, but I'm ashamed to admit I've used them against my players. I'd say more, but I don't want to ruin it for you.

Enjoy.

Aquiring and Retaining Customers in a Virtual World

2007-10-03T10:46:00.000-04:00

(I just had a class get cancelled, so I thought I'd throw this up since I just finished writing a long paper on this.)

Let me start out by cleansing a few notions that are commonly brought up when talking about businesses and video games. The first is that this evil thought that they are only in it to make money off their customers. Of course they are. Bungie didn't develop Halo to cure disease or elminate world poverty, they developed it because each employee would like that same summer lake house that you are working for. The 2nd notion that I hear alot of is that the company has made X billions of dollars, they can afford to give me Y for free. Stupid. Ignoring the fact that those numbers are often stated with reckless ignorance of the costs incurred by the company, nothing a company gives you is free. With those two items in mind, lets move on to the discussion of the costs and consequences of the various paths a developer of a wide scale virtual world considers in creating content.

I'm going to use World of Warcraft as an example, largely because I am most familiar with it.

Every dollar that a company makes in profit costs them money up front. A successful business will have a low cost per profit dollar. This translates to virtual worlds as the cost of developing content versus the retail box and subscription fees they charge. It is also reasonable to assume that the developers have a fixed budget associated with any single project. This ensures that the artistic aspirations of a designer don't overtake the constraints of good business. With that fixed budget, they also have an approximate period of time they want that content to keep their subscribers busy. This is where it gets complicated.

Every company has a target base of customers. They may garner others outside their target, but they should remain focused on the segment of their customers that generates the most profit for them. While we don't know which segment that is from the outside, we can be sure that the company tracks and understands who they are interested in retaining and who they are not going to focus on. I'm not going to get into which segment that is (at least not today), but it can likely be deduced by watching which audience is catered to. It is also worth saying that it isn't always black and white, the most profitable segment may not cost much to retain and a less profitable (but still profitable) segment may cost more. This pertains to our discussion because it is an important foundation to how a developer decides what to put their money into. One last unknown is how long different types of content take to develop, while we can make general observations, without some level of expertise it will be difficult to accurately value.

The software driven goal of World of Warcraft is gear. The most difficult encounters drop the best pieces of gear. There may be external goals that the software allows and facilitates, but gear is the only guranteed reward for effort put in. As the developers create content, they try to delicately balance difficulty (which allows for stratification of achievement) while maximizing enjoyment and longevity. They want players to continue enjoying and playing the game until they release new content. As a natural extension of this they want to also balance the social logistics of large group activities with the higher reward the extra effort deserves.

The bottom line is that it is easier to organize 5 people than it is to organize 40. Similarly, it is easier to get tactically coordinate 5 people then 40. I've seen this anecdotally confirmed in the guild I belong to. With a handpicked group of our 5 best players, we have completed almost all of the 5 man content in the game. I'm confident that we could complete every last piece of it relatively easier if we chose to, instead we've focused on the larger raids. This stays true with the 10 man content, an A List of our guilds players can walk through the toughest 10 man content in the game and further extends to 25 man content. We only start to have difficulty when that perfect group of players isn't available.

I'm going to postulate that developing content for 5 people vs. 10, 15, 25 or 40 people takes roughly the same amount of design time. Certainly it scales up somewhat with a larger number, but I don't think it is porportional to the raw increase in numbers. The question then for Blizzard is whether to design smaller group content that elite players can blaze through, or scale it up slightly to allow content to last longer, thereby increasing their net profits. This doesn't scale forever, at some point they would make it logisitically difficult enough that it wouldn't be worth it and people would stop playing. We already saw that Blizzard tracks this with their move from 40 man to 25 man raids. Blizzards goal is to scale it to the optimal point where their cost per profit dollar is ideal for their customer base, maximizing their net profit.

Do you think Blizzard is on the right track? What do they need to change?

Does Video Game Experience Belong on a Resume?

2007-10-02T14:47:00.000-04:00

(Sorry for my recent absence, I'm in my last year of school and as usual I've piled my plate a little higher than is intelligent.)

I have seen this question addressed in a few different mediums, some very serious and in depth and some laughably poor. The problem with the question is that it is often motivated by the desire to justify the time we spend in a game. So set aside what you may have read before and lets think about this from the ground up.

Employers have a difficult job when hiring a new applicant. Based on 1-3 pages of submitted tex and a couple interviews, they have to determine whether the canidate in front of them is worth hiring. The average US Employer spends $4,500 training a new employee. Depending on the job, they have to assess a variety of skills, determine what your market value is and potentially convince you to work for them. As a hiring manager should I care that you can no scope the other guy across the map in Halo 3? Not really. Might I care if you lead a world first clear of Black Temple? Yes I would. Where is that line?

The basic point comes when we ask if there is a real world translation of the skills manifested in the game. Shooting a sniper rifle from the hip while jumping out of speeding 4 wheeler isn't a terribly useful skill. Organizing a group of 50+ people and accomplishing highly tactical and logistical goals is a little more useful.

Of course none of this even goes to how your employer may view video games, let alone you claiming that they have taught you something useful. The way you present this may make a big difference and it never hurts to show them something on paper demonstrating how you think your skills apply. So quit school and go log onto WoW, your Netherdrake will net you a job!

Orcs in the Boardroom

2007-10-02T12:22:00.000-04:00

So, I've had this idea for a game milling around in my head for some time. The premise is that you are member of a fantasy race in a corporate world. It combines the humor of office life with that of fantasy steriotypes in a screw your neighbor type card game. The goal is to be the next CEO of Magic Works Corporation. The problem is, everyone else playing wants to be the CEO too.

Every race has a strength and a weakness. Orcs are feared, but are stupid. In addition, each position you occupy on the corprate ladder has strengths and weakness. Managers can "Streamline Operation", but may have "Get my Coffee." played on them by the director.

Each player has a pool of influence in from of them, but they will need to spend that influence to get promotions and play certain cards.

When all is said and done, one player (hopefully not the self righteous elf) will be the CEO and the rest will be demoted to the mail room.

What to Play?

2007-09-19T13:40:00.000-04:00

It looks like in October I have a opportunity to start a couples Pen and Paper Role-Playing Game group. When this idea we discussed my mind instantly went to D&D. I could see My wife and I and the other couple there slaying the dragon. This was sort of molding the group into my image and, perhaps, a little faulty in design.

The reason this is faulty is for a few reasons. First, the guys in this group would know the rules, but the ladies would have to learn them. Also, while I know I like D&D, this would be a great chance to try somthing new, perhaps something already of interest to the other players.

October 14th will likely be our first day and now I've got a whole new question. What are we going to play? What would everyone like? What genre is preferred? Can we get this "new" game for a reasonable price?

Just a few of the ideas that have crossed my mind are: Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D (different setting), World of Darkness, Savage Worlds, and more. What would you recommend?

Obligation vs. Opportunity

2007-09-12T12:48:00.000-04:00

When it comes to my entertainment. What I want to do is sometimes overshadowed by what I feel obligated to do. I'm the guy to set something up, get people involved, and keep doing it until everyone else has lost interest. Not because I want to, but because I don't want to let everyone else playing down.

This force has driven my Saturday nights for few years. Don't get me wrong, I've liked the things we've played, but I've played them to the point of burnout. In some cases, I've played in spite of opportunities to do something more fun.

Don't get me wrong. A sense of duty is a good thing, but it needs to be balanced.

Where this balance is, is changing drastically as my wife becomes interested in the things I am interested in. My wife recently get involded in World of Warcraft and has expressed potential interest in being part of a Dungeons and Dragons group. For me, this is where opportunity outweighs obligation. Now, I can not only play a multi-player game on-line I can do it with my wife. I can not only play a D&D game, but I can do it with my wife.

While I recognize the personal obligations I might have to break, they in no way outweigh the opportunity this moment in my life presents to me. It feels a little like having my cake and eating it too.

Bag Maintenance

2007-09-06T12:39:00.000-04:00

Bag Maintenance. Say this to just about anyone who plays World of Warcraft and they will know what you are talking about. When you first start out, it's not a big deal. One backpack with 16 slots doesn't need much maintenance. Four 14 slot bags and a 16 slot backpack is a totally different story. If you do not maintain your storage space, you will waste valuable time looking for where your quest items ended up. There is a truth here about the way we live.

Not long ago my friends were people I saw and my social responsabilities were pretty limited. Currently, in addition to this blog, I run or add content to Dust and Echoes, which has a forum, the Pondaera setting wiki, and its forum. Many of these have multiple place where content needs to be written and updated. These are additional connections to my friends. I'm now a four bag and a backpack guy, so I'd better make time to do a little maintenance.

Like anything that isn't maintained well, some of these things came into existence, changed what they were and lost their original purpose. By the way, for those of you who have read from the beginning, this also happened to my HALO group.

So, here is the plan. I'm going to change the Dust and Echoes Website back into being HALO focused. I'm going to remove the unrealted stuff and acknowledge that it is a gathering for HALO players. The forum will be the same. I'm going to archive the old forum, and start a new one with a focus on HALO. This blog and the D&D wiki, will pretty much stay as they are, but I will try to make sure they don't move from their intended purpose. The D&amp;amp;D forum will be reoganized and all D&D conversations will be driven to it but it will keep it's focus.

What about the other stuff? This is the same problem you have at the end of bag maintenance. When my shard bag is full and my food bag is cleaned, what do I do with all the other stuff? I like this trinket, but where does it belong? This is the big question for me. What do I do with the stuff that doesn't fit into these other things? Life isn't always as "clean" as Warcraft.

Mad Men

2007-09-04T10:45:00.000-04:00

I've been catching up on a show that started in July called Mad Men.
It is a fictional drama, set in the early 1960's, about the goings-on in a Madison Ave ad agency called Sterling Cooper.

The plot is good, if a bit soap opera-like. I really enjoy the character development. People seem real enough that it's hard to decide who you like, since each person is a mixed bag.

What I am really curious about is if the portrayal of the time period is accurate. I realize that the 60's were far more racist and sexist than our culture is willing to accept today, but was it really as common as shown? Were women truly treated that shabbily? Was it OK to be so openly anti-semitic? Did everyone drink and smoke like chimneys throughout the day?

I ask because I know that's how we see the past. And since we see it that way, it must be tempting to overdo it a little. I'm not sure that's how it actually was. I acknowledge that carseats, no smoking offices and required use of seatbelts were not the norm in that day. However, I cannot picture my grandmother being treated like property.

Am I wrong here?

Lost but not forgotten

2007-08-30T10:47:00.001-04:00

Do you ever find a site that just fuels your imagination? I just did and I don't know what to say. I can tell you that the page layout is not great, but the hundreds of photos of abandoned buildings in nearly every state is captivating. I look at page after page and questions, stories and plotlines just ooze out of each image.

Share in my enjoyment here.

Feasting on Asphalt

2007-08-29T11:10:00.000-04:00

When I was younger I remember thinking about the clear delineation between what was cool and what was not. I was not. I wanted to be at first, but at some point I became satisfied with who I was and accepted the uncool, nerdy me. I embraced what I enjoyed, cool or not.

A couple nights ago I was watching Feasting on Asphalt and something occurred to me. Alton Brown, the host of the show, is not only a nerd (sort of the Bill Nye of the food network), but he is so universally entertaining that has grown from a single show to four and seems to have ever escalating popularity. That’s right this nerd has not only gotten acceptance, by he’s getting fans.

He’s not the only one.

It seems something has happened from the days when I was divided from the cool kids, and to be honest I’m not sure what. Either nerds are new cool kids, or there are just so many of us now that we determine what is popular. Whatever it is I’m pleased, because it means I can watch Star Trek everyday (If I choose), learn to cook from Alton Brown, watch shows about cities under cities and play Warcraft with my wife, her sister, cousin and a whole mess of friends.

What I'm playing now

2007-08-28T18:15:00.000-04:00

So, I'm all geeked up for Halo 3. It's not due for weeks. Ghost, what are you doing in the meantime?

Well, I'm playing alot of Halo 2. What's really got my attention though are two internet based games Inselkampf and Ogame (inselkampf.com and ogame.org). Each of these games are real time strategy games that run 24/7. I was first introduced to these games by 2old2play members that were interested in building a clan.

First, Inselkampf. This is a strategy game of ruling your island, building an army and navy, and then taking over others islands. Your island starts simply as a rock with spots for a gold mine, stone mine, and lumber yard. You are given a main house and some supplies to start. Each time you choose to upgrade a facility, it costs a certain amount of your resources, so building up your resource and mines is a good place to start. Each upgrade delivers more resource, but costs more, and takes more time to develop. After that, you can build your house, get a tech center and barracks, and finally a harbor from which you can pillage the land and colonize others islands. The game is fun, doesn't take a huge time investment (I spend likely about 30 minutes a day total), but moves very slowly. All in all, this is a good little game if you'd like something that develops, but you don't have alot of time to put in.

Ogame. This is a great game. It works much the same as inselkampf, but is set around the space genre. You start with a planet, you build your energy and resources, get tech, and finally build a wide range of spacecraft for pillaging those lower ranked than you. This game, however, moves much faster. The build times are much faster than inselkampf and you will never feel resource strapped in this game. You've always got to be watching your fleet for other greedy players looking to make you a snack. I'm finding it does take a good time investment (I'm playing about 2 hours per day I would guess) and you always have to be online looking for the next big score. The game is running even when you are not there. The strategy makes it immensely fun to play, but at the cost of time.

If you are interest in playing either game, just go to the website and register. In Inselkampf, I'm in world 2 and Ogame I'm in galaxy 31. My tag is ghost92 in both games. Send me a PM and I'll help you on your way to world dominance.

Rintor's Recruitment Posters: A Legio Fidelis Treasure

2007-08-28T10:09:00.000-04:00

A little over a year ago, it became apparent that our guild, Legio Fidelis-Scarlet Crusade, wanted to raid endgame content. At the time, Molten Core was the natural place to start.

It is important to note that we did not have the required numbers to get 40 people in a dungeon every Tuesday and Wednesday night.

We arranged to work with The Templar Conclave in a guild alliance to get Molten Core done. The Knights of the Blue Rose were already in a similar relationship with them.

The leadership of Legio Fidelis realized that if we did not actively swell our ranks, that we would likely be absorbed by the larger guild. And so we set to work.

By "we" I mostly mean Rintor and Annorah. Both spent vast amounts of time recruiting by broadcasting in the General channel(there was no Guild Recruitment channel at that time). Rintor also made the first of a series of recruitment posters for the official Scarlet Crusade realm forums.

Above is the first of those posters.

Why Halo 3 Will Be an Awesome FPS (part 3)

2007-08-22T14:23:00.000-04:00

Let me start by saying, this was going to be a pretty simple update. A talk about some things that are new to finalize my point. Then, new information comes out. Then, even more. I'm so excited now that I wish I would have titled this blog entry:

Why Halo 3 Will Be the Best FPS EVER
or
Why Halo 3 May Sell 1M Xbox 360's by Itself.

Considering what Bungie has been working on, but keeping under wraps until now, I really think that one of these titles may be more correct. Here we go:

Equipment

This is now somewhat of a bland topic, even though it is still great. Equipment is an item on the field that has a specific use. It's like the overshield or active camo, as there is typically only 1 on any given map. However, with equipment, you can hold and use it whenever you like. If you die with it, it's dropped like a weapon for the victor to take. You can only hold one.

The list as of now is;

bubble shield - generates a shield around the deployer that can't be shot into or out of, but you can move through
power drainer - drains all shield from any in the radius
grav lift - creates a lift whereever you drop it
radar jammer - creates false radar signals in a zone around it
trip mine - a mine
regenerator - like the shield drainer, only in reverse
flare - drop it and it blinds and partially stuns everyone local.

Equipment has great strategic value. While I've only played with a few, I've seen a bubble shield used to protect flag carriers, power drainers used as a blocker to prevent people from entering a base to disarm a bomb, and the trip mine as a launchable device to blow up a banshee. Want to read more? Go here.

Vehicles

I've read that there are now 11 different vehicles to use in the game. Probably the best I've seen is the new elephant. The elephant is capable of carrying an entire team, a scorpion tank, a warthog, and 2 mongooses. In CTF modes, your flag and the flag capture spot will be in the vehicle. I can only imagine how dynamic that will make games.

Saved Films (and stuff)

Most fans know by now that each and every game you play in H3 is stored as a file when you are done. You can rewatch it from your point of view, anyone elses point of view, or anywhere in space. You can save pictures from cool kills and use them as wallpaper.

Had a great game? Each and every player gets 6 slots of storage and 25 MB of data (a big game takes 3MB of storage). You can save and share these with anyone.

It gets even better.

Make a custom game, file share it and others have it. People play your custom game, they automatically have it on their Xbox and can immediately save it. Make a new map and anyone can play it. Which leades me to the next section: Forge. Read more here.

FORGE!!!

Forge is Bungie's answer to online maps. It's too long to describe how giddy I am about this. Basically, any of the maps provided in the game are your canvas. You can place weapons, spawn points, vehicles, make your own power ups, make your own game types (Frankie says you can make a race game in like 5 minutes with all way points and everything).

Is there more? YES, I say.

You can do this IN GAME. When teammate spawns, you can go to him and give him the weapon he wants. Spawn a tank, then jump in and drive. Teammate pinned down? Drop some crates and make an escape route for him. The possiblities are endless. Worried about people dropping endless tanks? Bungie has come up with some sort of spending limit. Each item has a value and each map has a maximum spend. Come up with a new good map layout? Save it in the file share and give it to the world!

I don't even know how many hours I could see myself in here playing with this. Read more here.

Playtesting

I read an article a couple days ago. I was floored that Bungie/MS has actually employed a social psychologist to playtest H3. He was also employed to do H2, but only at the very end as an afterthought. Anyway, I'll let you read the article yourself and make your own judgements. My nerdy engineer opinion: when you've got tools like this and data like this that nobody has had before, you're going to do some really outstanding things with it. Read more here.

I'm out of time (and space, I think) and I haven't even covered 4 player co-op story mode, the endless amount of game options, or the new weapons including the flamethrower. So, if you haven't reserved your copy yet, I think now would be a great time to go do so. This game is going to rock.

Choice and Consequence

2007-08-22T11:09:00.000-04:00

Choices are something most people want more of. We like freedom and the ability to determine our destiny. Some of the most revolutionary games were huge simply because of the amount of freedom they gave players to choose what they wanted to do.
Go read some period reviews of GTA 3, everyone of them will rave about the amount of freedom the game gives player. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind received similar accolades as well as the Knights of the Old Republic games.

These choices are great and as gamers we are starting to demand them, but what about the natural result of all choice: consequence?

What if the first time you were arrested after a killing spree in GTA, you were thrown in jail for 6 consecutive life sentences? Not fun.

What if that Daedra lord you decided to fight at level 6 permanently crippled you? Not fun.

What if the first time you died in WoW was the last time? Very few would make it past level 20.

Certainly there is something to be said for the fact that they are just games and we don't want an experience that mimics real life, but from a game design standpoint our desire for choice can make designing a compelling game difficult.

Think about your favorite heroic tale. Did the hero's choices impact where he ended up? Weren't some of the greatest moments caused by the consequences of a difficult choice?

A trip to any forum talking about the lore of Warcraft will quickly unearth complaints that players roles in that lore end up being passing with little ability to feel that they are impacting the world. Could that be at least partially because the game has almost no penalty for personal choice? Would you play an MMO if the first person/group to kill Illidan made them a permanent fixture in the lore and meant that those who followed wouldn't have the same challenge?

One of the elements I enjoy about D&D is the vast amount of freedom, but that freedom is accompanied by a vast amount of consequence. Overcoming a challenge is much more meaningful when failure actually means something more than a corpse run and repair bill.

Barry Bonds uses Hank Aaron's Corked Bat

2007-08-17T10:32:00.000-04:00

OK. I've got a vice. I love The Smoking Gun. Up until now, I've pretty much decided to keep it to myself, because, well, it's very ...hmmmm tabloid. I don't mean aliens voted for Bush tabloid, I mean it has a lot of celebrity dirt.

This change today when I read this article on a lawsuit filed against Barry Bond, Bud Selig and Hank Aaron's Bat. At that point I figured, while this might be scraping the bottom of the Internet, this is just too good not to share.

I love a good conspiracy theory. After reading this article, as it turns out, I love a bad one too.

Liberal Paladins & Tanking Capitalism

2007-08-16T12:23:00.000-04:00

Through the Maintankadin Forums I came across someone's blog about raiding paladins. As I went through the archives, I found this post that hit the nail on the head for me.
It's pretty cool when you find someone writing on two topics that are linked, but most people refuse to acknowledge impact one another.

"By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good." - Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776

The Anecdote

2007-08-15T10:55:00.000-04:00

As a tangential thought on the theorycrafting article I did earlier, I want to discuss the role that another player's experiences play in our decision making. This is probably a topic better discussed by a sociologist, but I see the effect in WoW all the time and would like to figure out how to adjust for it.

"My friend is specced Holy and tanks better than the Prot Paladin in our guild..."

Is it true? Probably. Is it even remotely useful in a discussion of spec choice? Not really. Yet I see people making decisions based on these sort of anecdotes all the time. Not only do they accept these stories as the gospel truth of WoW, but they will reject hard numbers in favor of an anecdote. Why? I'm not much of a human behaviorist, but I have some cobbled together ideas that I think present a reasonable thesis. I've taken ideas from economics and from game theory and melded them together to suggest a simple explanation: people don't like to feel stupid.

Game theory is the field that attempts to predict what a competitor will do, or what information they have from public information available. Game theory is useful anytime there is something to lose and both parties don't share the same resources. It is used quite a bit in business. An example is when one company has much fewer resources than a larger company, but wants to beat the larger company to market with a competitive product. Game theory suggests that the party with the smallest quantity of data will attempt to inflate the quality of the data to appear that they are on an equal footing with the other party. Game theory also suggests that the disadvantaged party will posture themselves such that the small quantity of their data is never revealed.

Economics suggests that in any exchange of resources, both parties will want to be compensated equally. In other words, the ideal transaction is zero-sum. In the public exchange of ideas, people are compensated for their expessed ideas with credibility. I believe that anyone willing to publicly share their thoughts seeks this credibility in some measure.

The earlier quote about a Holy Paladin Tank really serves as a good example. No matter what I may cite as reasons why a Holy Paladin tank would be sub-optimal, the conveyer of the anecdote may refuse to accept that the math falls in favor of a Prot spec. At its core I think it is a manifestation of the 2 principles cited above.

First, he is concerned that he may look foolish using such a flimsy example from which to base his decision. So he begins to defend the idea.

Second, he will begin to add invented details to the story in an effort to disguise the scarcity of usable data.

Third, he wants to insure he retains credibility with his piers.

Unfortunately for him another economic law is set against him, because his information can be qualitatively valued. The cheapness of his information is readily apparent to the other party with a higher quantity of data. This is considered in game theory, but in this case the disadvantaged party is unaware of how to disguise the quality of his information. The only course for him is to stay stubborn and continue to appear foolish, or accept intellectual defeat and accept the stronger parties data.

I'd be interested in what your thoughts are on this topic, particularly the part I haven't addressed, which is how to convince them that your information is qualitatively more valuable.

Why Halo 3 Will Be an Awesome FPS: Part 2

2007-08-14T00:39:00.000-04:00

Last article I covered some of the drawbacks to H2. Certainly, they are things that players can live with, but if Bungie had the chance to fix them, then the change would help make the game better.

In this article we'll discuss what's changed in H3 and how Bungie has addressed some of the weaknesses of H2. Some are easy to define, some are a little more difficult and need a longer explanation.

Note again, all my experiences are with the beta and what I've read. I've not read everything as I've been staying away from any spoilers for the single-player experience. Also, things could change from the beta, which could lead to my conclusions being wrong. I can't say for sure what Bungie will do, but I hope they see that the beta was pretty good and don't change much.

Auto-aim is turned way down. To hit people, your cursor has to be red. This was most noticeable with snipers. It is now pretty easy to avoid them, unless they are good.
Destructable vehicles are still on. However, Bungie has done two things to keep them on the field longer. First, they are definately stronger than before. It takes two or three sticky grenades to take out a Warthog. It's definately a pain to kill one now. Second, they've taken the rocket launcher from H2 and split it into two weapons. The rocket launcher is still there, but they no longer lock on. That functionality has been given to the missle pod. This weapon comes with 8 rounds and locks on to vehicles. Other than that, it is a two-handed weapon that you move very slowly with and you can't save as your secondary weapon. It is also very difficult to hit troops with this weapon. It is really the ideal solution to the H2 issues with the rocket launcher.
The maps I've seen have no weapon ammo on the field. Additionally, from what I could tell in the beta, the weapon spawn is back to the way it was in H1, meaning that you aren't at the mercy of the other team when they hold the power weapons.
I think the new weapon balance is great. The assault rifle is a well balanced mid to long range weapon. It's a well done spawn weapon. Secondly, there are now weapons all over the field. No matter where you spawn, it's not a long run to get something else if you are unhappy with the assault rifle. All weapons now have their place. If I'm playing defense in close quarters, I guarantee you I'll be hold dual SMG's, or dual spikers, and I guarantee that I will win against someone with a BR, or an AR, or anything not meant for short range combat. The energy sword now comes with a battery, granting it limited use. The plasma pistol will only lock on if the reticle is red. If you hold the charge on, it drains the battery. However, a plasma pistol charge will kill the engine in any vehicle for a short period of time. You have to know where you are going and what you are doing and pick a weapon appropriate to that task. It is a well done rock-paper-scissors approach.
The maps I've played, all had a large amount of cover. In Vallhalla, the remake for Blood Gulch, you can no longer see one base from the other. There are rocks and trees and caves and cliffs everywhere. In fact, there is so much cover that the map feels much smaller than Blook Gulch or Coagulation. It's now nearly impossible for one person to cover all routes to a base. Additionally, the spawns have gotten better. Sure, there are still issues with spawning, but now in Vallhalla for example, there is a ledge on the side of the base that you can't shoot into with the snipe or the laser or anything because of the lip around the side. You can't do anything up there, but at least your not at the mercy of someone forcing your spawn in an undefended location. I can't remember once playing the beta where I felt I was spawned in a weak postition where I was helpless.

So, these are some of the changes Bungie has made to improve on what was in H2. The beautiful thing is, this only covers what they've done to fix H2, and not what they've done to make H3 an even better overall experience. Next part, I will cover what's new (that is known right now).

Why Halo 3 Will Be An Awesome FPS: Part 1

2007-08-10T13:33:00.000-04:00

Background:

In Spider's first three posts to this blog, he covered the Dust and Echoes gaming group history. While I don't really agree with his opinions on the group, I do agree with his opinion that there are some things in Halo 2 that did make it less fun than Halo. I'm not saying that H2 is worse than H1, just different in some areas that maybe shouldn't have been changed. In it's own right, H2 is a great game, especially when its played like it was meant to be played. The great thing about H3 is that Bungie has seen the weaknesses in H2 and has done some good things to correct them.

Note, my opinions on H3 are based on playing beta and what I've read. I've personally restricted myself from some reading as there are articles that discuss single player levels and I don't want to run into any spoilers before I play the game.

As a background, here are the areas in H2 that I think are less than ideal:

Too much auto-aim. I know they did this for lag on Live, but it has made every yahoo good with a sniper rifle. In H1, there was a very limited number of people with good enough aim to be great snipers.
Destructable vehicles. Because of them, it makes it much tougher to get people out of them. So, Bungie made a rocket launcher with lock-on to balance it out. In the end, what do you get? Playing on a map with no vehicles because they've all been destroyed or the other team has all vehicles and all the power.
Ammo on the field along with no power weapon respawn. The guy with the rocket launcher never has to drop it, meaning your team may never get it.
Weapon imbalance. Random shotgun blast sucks. So does starting with an underpowered SMG, especially in the middle of a large map.
No cover and spawns. In H1 you spawned at or near a base. In H2, if the enemy is at your base, you spawn in the open field, where the sniper and vehicles know where you are, and potentially with a short range weapon. You can see how this can go bad real quick.

This may seem like a long list, but the one great thing that Bungie did do in H2 was they took out the pistol. Many, many people disagree with this statement. I don't hate the pistol, but the pistol made H1 such that one skilled player could kill 4 unskilled players by himself in one combat. Without the pistol, that is no longer possible. What does this mean in the long run? It means is that 4 average players that communicate and play as a team can beat the crap out of 4 great players who don't. It changed the game from skill to a game of skill + tactics.

Up next: What changes have been made in H3 and how I think they will have a positive impact on the experience.

Maintankadin Forums

2007-08-08T14:37:00.001-04:00

During my regular internet travels, I found a forum for paladins that tank. Many that post seem to be main tanks for their guilds.

Here's the link: Maintankadin Forum

Warcraft Claims Another Victory: My Wife

2007-08-06T09:21:00.000-04:00

Finally my wife decided to try her hand at World of Warcraft. She's in with both feet. Over the course of the weekend, she put 10 levels under her belt, picked all her professions and battled me for use of my computer (where Wow was installed). So, of course I installed a copy of it on her computer and ordered keys for both the original WoW and the Burning Crusade expansion. By Wednesday she should be able to completely feed her new addiction without keeping me from mine. I'm totally psyched about it.

My only concern now is keeping up with her on an alt as she churns out the levels. I suppose I'll just do the best I can and wait until she catches my main in Outland. These are good problems to have.

If you are interested she is a draenei Mage named Majel (yes like Majel Barrett) with Jewelcrafting and Mining.

The Art of Theorycrafting Part 3: The Final Question

2007-08-02T00:15:00.000-04:00

The end result is going to be different in each game. I'm applying some of my observations made in WoW and combining them with theories from economics and what little I know of human behavior to predict reliable results. I personally believe all of these characteristics will be present in any environment proportional to its degree of prevalent theorycrafting.

The primary result you will see is that various social classes start to form. When theorycrafting is present in a game, some will choose not to partake. In any game where skill plays a factor in the reward earned, you will see theorycrafting players become successful faster and in higher quantities than a player unwilling to theorycraft. A game that attempts to disallow this will undercut a fundamental principle of any free economy. With this sort of social stratification, some portion of the lower stratas will complain about their situation. The class war has begun.

The secondary result is related to the first. As theorycrafting players accelerate their progress, their purchasing power is higher. Items that allow free purchase will tend towards the market they suit, so the highest end item will sell for prices that the high end player can afford. This skews what tend to be already small markets in such a way that any player that isn't involved in the high end market is boxed into a market full of generally uneducated buyers and sellers. Adam Smith tells us that this is a disaster waiting to happen. Unable to climb out of the lower market without theorycrafting, they tend to make much slower progress through the game and will never be able to complete content aimed at the most serious players.

It boils down to the same factors we see controlling upwards mobility in the US. Individuals who choose to plot out what it will take to achieve the maximum possible result and then follow through will move upwards, leaving those who are more apathetic to the process stagnating or moving down. (I freely admit however that the U.S. economy is much more complex and many other factors influence the economy.)

The end question is one we see commonly debated in political and academic circles: should a society accept economic difference among its members as a natural fact of human nature, or should it regulate the roles and allowances of each member to insure that no one has more than another? Or, to place the discussion back in economic terms: should a society allow its members to choose what they value, or should they make those determinations communally? The answer surely isn't simple, but each developer and player need to confront it when faced with the question of whether they should Theorycraft or not.

Addendum: I ended up a tad more political than I originally intended, but I took the article in the direction I was compelled to write about. Hopefully you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

The Art of Theorycraft Part 2: The Developer

2007-07-31T18:09:00.000-04:00

(Sorry it took me so long to knock this out. I recently started a new job and have been relatively swamped.)

Note: I've avoided the terms "casual" and "hardcore" because the words mean much different things to different people. Instead I've tried to describe the motivations and actions of the respective groups to identify them. Feel free to mentally substitute what you believe is the appropriate term.

The question we'll start with is whether game developers should allow theorycrafting in their games and how it effects it. The general premise of those against theorycrafting is that it reduces/eliminates the mystery that makes the game fun and keeps the game from being reduced to a formula. The general premise of those for theorycrafting is that it allows someone to make wise decisions when faced with a choice in character advancement. These choices and their ability to perform at a high level is what makes the game fun for them.

A key element to the necessity of theorycrafting in my mind is that it has to be a game played in groups. That isn't going to be true for everyone. Personally, though, I haven't been a big min/maxer in single player RPGs. I like creating powerful characters in Oblivion, but I don't care much whether I could have been more powerful if I had made a specific choice. Group games are different for me. I like team sports and my goal is generally to win. This means that each member of the group should be willing and able to perform sufficiently in their role to succeed. When one or more members of the group aren't able to perform well, it reduces the entire group's ability to progress and "win".

Several games have attempted to limit theorycrafting as much as possible, giving only basic information to the player. The dilemna they have almost universally run into is that with even a little bit of information, you can reverse engineer almost everything else. WoW is really the perfect example of this. Initially they gave players very limited information about the combat engine, only letting players know how much damage they dealt and how much they damage they took (You may be thinking "What else is there?", to that I say, go read the post on Crushing Blows). Within a few months a player had developed an addon that could measure threat (A value used to determine who a mob would attack). Threat was a value Blizzard explicitly wanted to hide and went to some lengths to do so. Ultimately that means that it is an all or nothing proposition, either you are given some numerical values for your actions, or you are given none.

WoW is a good example of what happens when you attempt to conceal some portion of the information. Because the basic player doesn't realize that the deeper formulas have been discovered, their characters develop on an inferior path. They put time into gaining specific pieces of gear (the primary method of advancement once a character reaches the maximum level) that don't benefit their character as much as they believe them to. This leaves those inclined towards high end performance with all the information. They maximize their characters to the highest possible degree and end up vastly more powerful even though equal amounts of time were spent. This presents the developers with a dilemma: do they adjust the games difficulty to the basic players ability or do they balance it to the performance oriented player? Choosing the basic players for balancing means that the performance driven player will blaze through the content and complete everything available in a much shorter time then the developer intended the content to occupy them for. Alternatively, balancing the game towards the performance driven player means that those who refuse to maximize their character's potential will be unable to progress past a certain point. Certainly some middle ground can be chosen, but ultimately any content balanced for a performance driven player will exclude those who choose not to play that way. Over the history of WoW, various people have complained how the game is balanced too far in the favor of one group or another.

The second factor that makes eliminating theorycrafting difficult is that to do so, you have to dumb the game down to a level that even some basic players will not enjoy. I've met very few people who didn't like to talk about their biggest heal or critical strike. If a developer reduces all the information given to the player to a point that there is so much mystery, the players don't appreciate the advancement they are making. This often times means that gains have to be made in observationally significant ways; killing the target 2 seconds faster than you would have previously been able to as an example. You quickly reach a hard cap to this. In contrast if you can measure small gains, you'll actually notice them, whereas you wouldn't even know in a concealed system.

The ultimate conclusion to this discussion in my mind is that theorycrafting should be allowed (again, in group games), mostly because the cost of avoiding it saps too much from most products. The end result is a game that everyone can enjoy playing and can grow with a player as their understanding of the game and its mechanics increase. I certainly would have quit WoW long ago if I didn't have the theorycrafting to measure my gains and I imagine any other similar game would find the same to be true.

Nimoy/Quinto?

2007-07-31T07:42:00.000-04:00

Whenever someone is cast in role previously played by someone else, particularly a beloved character at a younger age, I am always a bit skeptical of how well that will play out for me personally. I have a higher threshold for suspension of disbelief when I watch movies. Therefore, I want my temporally displaced actors to look like they could actually be the same person at different ages.

When I saw Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan for the first time, I didn't think his face was a good match to Sir Alec Guinness'. By the end of Episode III, I was ready to accept that maybe McGregor and Guinness were the same person, separated by years.

Last week, it was announced that Zachary Quinto of Heroes fame would play a young version of Spock in an upcoming Star Trek feature film to be directed by J.J. Abrams.

I turned it over in my head for a bit. Then I saw this picture, and it was a lock in my mind. If he can get Spock's mannerisms down, this should be a convincing performance.

Finally a Player

2007-07-27T09:03:00.000-04:00

My gaming group is going to enter a new campaign for the next couple months and I am happy to say, for the first time in a long time, I get to be a player. Don't get me wrong, I love being a Dungeon Master, but I'm looking forward to quite a few things about being a player. Things I don't get to experience. At least not in the same way as a DM.

Of most interest to me will be to see how the group dynamic works when I'm in the middle of it. When the players are undecided, will I be able to spur them to action? Can I pull one over on them when I've got no more control of the world than they do? Will I succeed as a peacemaker when I need to? Will I be able to get them to trust me even after I've proved I'm untrustworthy? How can I evolve and still work within the group?

I also look forward to the story. How will the DM surprise me? What will happen to my group? How will this mold who my character is? Perhaps more interesting: how will this mold how I am as a DM again?

I anticipate being entertained and learning from Ghost, who will be the DM of this campaign. I am excited about being able to talk openly with the players, who will know just as little as I do about the events unfolding before us.

I expect, as we get into it, a few articles will develop as I make observations from the other side of the table.

Godzilla Gaming

2007-07-24T07:26:00.000-04:00

So, I went to the ENnies site to do my voting and it occured to me; I'm all out of new Fear the Boot podcasts. I'll be getting a new on on Wednesday. Then came a the revelation. Not only was Fear the Boot nominated in that catagory, but five other podcasts as well.

I could have a new Podcast today.

I did. I sent to the site of Godzilla Gaming and start listening to their collection of past podcasts. These guys are great. They are a podcast from Tokyo Japan. Each podcast has a few parts to it, each of which is different and interesting. They always spend sometime talking about what they are playing. It's a fun, ecclectic mix. They also talk about what the gaming scene is like in Japan, the difficulties in space and finding other gamers. Lastly, my favorite part, they do a game review in which they talk about specific mechanics of the game they are reviewing. As a game developer, this is awesome for me, but I would think it would be interesting for anyone who loves games.

The only problem I have with this podcast is they only produce one about once a month. This means at my current rate I'll be back at the ENnie site on Friday seeing what other Podcasts were put up for award.

Anyway, check them out. Let me know what you think.

How to Prevent "Crushing" Defeat

2007-07-21T12:44:00.000-04:00

My current project in World of Warcraft is getting my paladin tank to the point where he will not take a crushing blow from a level 73 raid boss.

Here is his present Armory profile. Sometimes I log out in 5-man instance gear, so this may or may not be the best picture of how I am geared, depending.

Any attack made by a mob against a player who is three levels or more below it will result in one of the following:

% chance to Miss
% chance to Dodge
% chance to Parry
% chance to Block
% chance to Critical Hit
% chance to Crushing Blow
% chance to Ordinary Hit

My goal is to make all the possibile results the most favorable for me. The lower items on the list will drop off the list first if the total percentage chance equals more than 100%. Knowing that, my goal is to make it so that Miss, Dodge, Parry and Block equal more than 100%.

At 490 defense skill, critical hits are reduced to nil, and I must now only deal with ordinary hits and crushing blows. Adding more defense past this point produces a diminishing return, since defense cannot reduce the critical strike chance below 0%.

At this point, it is the most efficient to start accumulating pure Dodge, Parry, and Block. Block happens to be my favorite, since each Block helps a paladin generate threat using Holy Shield. Block is the least favorable in that it is the only above result in which some damage, albeit reduced, occurs to the player.

The numbers listed below are lower than what is seen in my Armory profile, this is because the defense numbers in the Armory are calculated against a level 70 mob. In my best gear these are my stats when a level 73 raid boss attacks me:

11.48% Miss

19.36% Dodge

16.60%Parry

17.82%Block

30% Block from Holy Shield

95.26% Total avoidance.

So you can see that only 4.74% chance remains for me to be hit by a Crushing Blow. These numbers were calculated using an addon called Tank Points.

I am currently seeking enough Badges of Justice to purchase a Libram of Repentance, which will add about 5% Block to my Holy Shield ability. At that point I will be uncrushable and ready for Karazhan.

Once uncrushable, a paladin must then go on to start tackling his true nemesis: Stamina.

A great page on the one-hit table can be found here.

A good thread in the WoW forums about tanking can be found here.

The ENnie Awards

2007-07-20T09:09:00.000-04:00

A couple of my favorite things have come together and have the potential to be honored. Both Fear the Boot, an absolutly fantastic podcast and Treasure Tables, a very good resource for DMs are up for ENnie Awards.

The Gen Con EN World RPG Awards (the "ENnies") are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENnies give game designers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a peoples' choice award, and the final winners are voted upon by the gaming public at EN World. You can vote here: The ENnie Awards

If they had found a way to honor Shamus Young for DM of the Rings these awards would be perfect.

Voting is still open. So, if you don't know who to vote for head over there and vote Fear the Boot and Treasure Table for me. Both of these site are great and they deserve it.

Goblins

2007-07-19T14:37:00.000-04:00

I followed a link in one of Shamus Young's posts the other day and found a pretty funny web comic called Goblins. It pokes fun at fanatasy RPG in a way similar to DM of the Rings.

Summer Viewing

2007-07-19T14:20:00.000-04:00

I am not enjoying this summer on TV.

That should come as no surprise, given that summer has traditionally been rerun season, and all the new shows start in the fall. This paradigm is shifting, but it's a slow transition.

Traveler on ABC is a good new show, but it's last episode just aired last night. It was not as good as Lost, whose time slot it had been riding.

Doctor Who has started up again in the U.S. on the Sci-Fi channel. It's good to see the Doctor's adventures again and meet his new companion. Honestly, I'd still rather watch Battlestar Galactica, but that will have to wait until November.

I saw a commercial for Pushing Daisies, last night. It looked like something I might enjoy. I'm going to tell Tivo to record it.

Has anyone got a good show to watch? I could use a good TV fix right about now.

Oy.

WoW Patch 2.2

2007-07-19T05:53:00.000-04:00

Last week Blizzard posted the patch notes for the public test realm. These only apply to the PTR, and are subject to change before the patch is actually released.

I'm glad to see that they already have a new instance ready to roll out. I am also glad to see several recipes that were only available in AQ will now become vendor sold. Us poor mages got another nerf to polymorph in PvP, but us tankadins got a boost to threat when using Seal of Vengeance.

How do these changes affect you?

Gold-Standard DKP: A Proposal

2007-07-18T14:40:00.000-04:00

What is it?

A gold standard DKP system is one in which the items of significance that are produced in a raid are distributed by an open auction. The winner of the desired item is the player who bids the highest amount of gold. Before the item is passed to the winning bidder, the gold is collected from them. At the end of the raid, the gold is totaled up and divided among all the players. Players that did not participate for the entire raid may be assigned a partial share in the total take of gold so as not to short-change the players who participated fully, nor exclude the partial-participant from any reward at all. Any items of value that are not immediately purchased in this fashion are sent to the guild bank, where they may be purchased by any regular raid member for their market value according to auctioneer, or a percentage thereof to be determined by the leadership establishing the system.

Guiding Principles

In adopting this type of system, it is assumed that the guild that is implementing it is interested in providing a reward system that:
• Rewards every participant in a raid, even on nights when they gain no new gear.
• Does not need to have official records of unpaid reward from week to week.
• Distributes an item for a cost determined by the immediate market (the raid) for which it is available.
• Allows players to decide what loot they desire and when they will get it instead of leaving the decision to a council or a random number generator.
• Rewards players who have no more gains to be had from the raid they are participating in.
• Allows new pick-up players and out-of-guild regulars to be rewarded with no “hole” out of which to climb.

Potential Problems

In fairness, this system has the possibility of developing problems as listed below. Many of these issues have potential solutions built-in, but it is only reasonable to list the issue so that they may be addressed and solved or put to rest. Furthermore, it may be decided that the potential problems encountered may be an acceptable risk for the reward gained, or that the style of this system fits the kind of guild culture desired and that the problems encountered serve as a filter. This by no means an exhaustive list.

• This system offers no artificial protection from players who choose to bid gold in a larger proportion than their raid participation has warranted in gold.

• This system offers no artificial protection from players who are willing to spend real money to augment their personal game wealth in an effort to have more resources to spend on acquiring an in-game item over those who are not willing to do so.

• While the system offers the raid participant with gold for their time spent, it does not prevent that player from spending that gold. Therefore, this system offers no help to players who do not manage their in-game wealth wisely.

• This system does not artificially prevent players who earn gold at a faster rate than others from having more resources available for the acquisition of items than players who earn gold at a slower rate.

In closing, many of the benefits of this system can be replicated if there is a way to establish a tangible currency that cannot be bought otherwise and that can be distributed in-game at the end fo the raid. In doing so, it should be possible to eliminate all of the problems listed above.

Middle Ages: Live or Die

2007-07-17T11:56:00.000-04:00

At some point in the future I'll be doing a longer post on Shamus Young, of whose work I am a big fan. But he just did this post on the middle ages, in which he ponders how many of us would be dead, had we been born in the middle ages. Not only in the article interesting, but the additional responses of people are just as interesting.

Be sure to check it out, and let him know whether you will be on the cart or not.

The Art of Theorycraft Part 1

2007-07-16T14:36:00.000-04:00

(This is the first part in what I hope will be a 3 part series on theorycrafting and it's effect on game worlds)

Theorycraft: A term used primarily in the game World of Warcraft to represent the analysis of strategies and abilities based on the formulas that govern interaction within the game.

I have a quandry. I love Theorycraft in World of Warcraft and I hate it in Dungeons and Dragons. I decided to look at my seemingly conflicted preference and determine why I feel the way I do.

World of Warcraft at its core is a combat engine. Most everything you do in the game furthers your ability to take on bigger and more powerful enemies. The content starts with very simple group exercises where only a basic amount of coordination is needed. By the time you are conquering the highest level of content, you will have 24 of your closest friends coordinating a variety of different skills. The math behind the combat engine has been reverse engineered to the point that now you can reduce most questions of performance to an appropriately complex mathematical equation. This is what makes the game fun for me.

Dungeons and Dragons at its core is a ruleset for the creation of worlds. It attempts to provide the basic laws and guidelines for the interaction of players in those worlds. The power is placed almost entirely in the hands of the DM to determine what he will allow and what he will not. Though the rules are expertly crafted, your ability to act is so vast that almost anything is possible. Combine that with the fact that you are potentially playing with several other players who may not share your same goals or play style preferences and you have an environment that can be quite chaotic. This is what I love about Dungeons and Dragons, I love the freedom to act.

Because World of Warcraft is a far more rule bound world, it is effectively impossible to become "overpowered" (except in the tear blurred view of the WoW forum denizens). Any actions you take to make your character more powerful are actions that the ruleset explicitly allows. Those same actions are available to any who choose to pursue them. The end goal is also fixed: there is an enemy creature of significant power that you need to go defeat.

Characters within Dungeons and Dragons on the other hand can become vastly more powerful than his fellow party members, despite having taken the same actions as them. It is left entirely to the DM to police the players and ensure that the party stays relatively balanced. Perhaps at least part of the answer to my dilemna is that I've played with too many lazy DMs in the past that failed to adequately limit player power gain.

The ultimate end to this is the goal of the players. WoW gives players an effective common goal. Those who reject the built in goal are generally quite dissatisfied with the game. Dungeons and Dragons leaves that to the DM. The bottom line is probably not surprising: I need to limit the games I participate in to ensure that I'm surrounded by players who share a generally common goal.

How does Theorycraft change your game experience? Should it be allowed by designers? Is it even possible to disallow it? I'd like to hear from you and then I'll attempt to answer some of those questions in the next entry.

Bizarrchitecture: Images become game ideas

2007-07-16T07:30:00.000-04:00

Before you read this, you should google Bizarrchitecture and take a look at the images.

I just ran into this word and became fascinated by the images. Let me explain why.

As you know, I'm a DM. Part of being a good DM is having a vivid imagination and good communication skills. Every DM gets to a point where the "imagination well" starts to run a little dry. When this happens to me, one of the techniques I use is finding pictures. Let me show you how to use Bizarrchitecture.

Find a picture that would fit into your game world. Now ask youselves these questions: How did this structure get build? How old is it and what is it's history? What do the people in the area think about it? Is it a source of rumors? Who lives there now? How did they acquire this building? How do you think the players can interact with this structure an it's occupants? Now start to fill in the blanks left by the answers you've provided.

If you pull up one of these pictures and start asking these questions something will begin to happen. Before you know it you've got a story on your hands and the "imagination well" is filling again.

You should note that this isn't limited to pictures of buildings. You can do this same technique with pictures of ruins, cities, unusual animals even images drawn from popular fantasy and science fiction.

Happy Gaming.

I've been away

2007-07-14T09:38:00.000-04:00

This is just a note to let you all know I was away earlier this week on vacation, and I've spent the last couple days playing catch up. I'll be back to posting news on Monday. Also, while I'm leaving a short note, look for articles by new contributers Ghost and Gazelem. Welcome abord guys.

- Spider

Creation Science

2007-07-06T14:30:00.000-04:00

The setting that the Dust and Echoes gaming group uses for their D&D games is a homebrew started by the DM.

To collect all the information that had been created, a wiki was set up. Players may go there to read up on the various created elements of the world.

More importantly, the world is still under development. The only parts that have been created are those needed to run the game and those that players have taken an interest in themselves.

For example, I have created a human nation called the Barony of Liefen, a religious order of the god Herew called the Order of the Silver Thread, and have even written a basic mythology for the dwarves.

This world is largely a blank slate for the players and DM. The setting doesn't even have a name yet. If you'd like to participate in it's creation, send me an email, and we'll discuss what you might add our new setting.

If you are interested in joining us via Fantasy Grounds on Saturday nights, visit our forum and tell us about yourself.

World of Warcraft: Guild Dynamics

2007-07-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

Let me start by saying that I am in a great World of Warcraft guild, Legio Fidelis. Because I'm less than a year into the game, though, I'm sort of on the outside of most of what the guild does in game. They primarily focus on end game raiding. As a member, but still an outsider to some of these things, I have a very interesting perspective on some of the gripes the guild has to face. It strikes me that the guild, as a microcosm of society, has to face some of the same ridiculous expectations.

The gripes that arise in Legio Fidelis primarily fall into a few categories. Most of them I certainly didn't expect from a guild primarily made up of adults, who are married, have kids and good jobs. To generalize, I'll put these as these gripes in the following four categories: 1) the guild isn't going where I want to go, 2) the guild isn't doing enough end game stuff, 3) the guild makes too many demands on my performance and 4) there are cliques in the guild, and I don't like it. Virtually every problem I've seen has driven back to these main points.

It should be noted, that a Warcraft guild is a choice. You can enter whatever guild you want and there is no requirement for you to stay there. If the guild isn't doing what you would want, you can join another guild or even start one if you think you could do it. Those that want to gripe, though, not only over look the nature of this relationship, but also some pretty basic things about the way Legio Fidelis works.

Those that complain about the guild not going where they want to go have overlooked some major components of the game. The first is that you can go anywhere you want with anyone you want so long as you can find the group to go. That's right, if your guild is not going somewhere specifically you can go with people who aren't in your guild. Now, my guild has always tried to set time to go where the majority of the guild wanted to. Also, they have invited people to create groups to go to additional places they want to go. Right now, if I want to go somewhere the guild isn't headed all I need to do is post in their forum that I am looking for a group. Let's be honest, if I can't get the people to go with me that way, why would I expect the guild as a whole to start going there? Is sort of like demanding a Chinese restaurant serve hamburgers, simply because I like hamburgers and then complaining to the owner when they don't. I'd be better served going McDonalds or firing up my grill if that is what I really wanted.

The second two gripes kind of go hand in hand. Some portion of the guild have been unhappy that there is an expectation of how well they will perform, stating the family friendly nature of the guild. Interestingly, others say we are not getting far enough along in our end game raids. Let me state, for the record, you can't have it both ways. You can't be a completely casual guild and do the difficult end game raids, nor can you do the end game raids and make no performance demands. If you want to enter the Major Leagues don't expect you can play like an amateur. The truth is, Legio Fidelis does a great job of being friendly to both groups of people. If you want to do really tough stuff they have a forum and openly ask for you to get guild members to go with you to do that stuff. If you want to play more casually, as far as I know, they have never kicked anyone for not participating in the tough raids. The only stipulation they have is they are not going to let you destroy the groups doing the tougher things by going where you don't belong.

I'm not sure when this happened but at some point people started to get it into their heads they had the right to do what ever they wanted. Can you imagine getting on a plane which was piloted by a guy who just felt he had the right to pilot, but not really the skills? Here is my note to those in the guild with this mindset, "You do not have the right to go on any given raid, simply by being a part of the guild. If you want to do a tough instance, then step up and show you can handle it, because if you're not a pilot we don't want you in the cockpit."

The last category of complaining I'm looking at is purely social. It is the recognition that people usually do things with the same people over and over again. I'm certain these same people complaining about it have an inner circle of friend they tend to do more stuff with, but for some reason it seems they think it is wrong for the guild leadership to do that. I've seen them go so far as to say something like this, "Dear Mr. Guild Leader, I see that you are still playing with your friends and because of that I can't do the things I want. As a guild leader it is your job to help me and you are not." Guess what folks, that guild leader who you are griping at wants to play with has friends. Just like you they run with the people they want to run with. The reason you see a clique is because they can't be everyone's friend. If you joined Legio Fidelis so you wouldn't have to fend for yourself, I suggest you move on. An end game raiding guild can't be successful and also hand hold. If you can't get anyone to run with I doubt very much it is the guild leader's fault.

I can't really fault Legio Fidelis for the gripes they face, not should I look at them as some strange things. It seems that this is most likely the natural results of an evolving, richer and interdependent, population. The time when humans were self sufficient has, for the most part passed, passed. It is clear to me at some point we stopped being thankful for the great things we have and started thinking those things were our rights. There are whole segments of our population that think it is their right to be taken care of simply by virtue of the fact the are alive and American. I see this same mindset becoming the basis for many of these gripes. "I deserve to get what I want when I want from the guild by virtue of the fact I am alive an in the guild." Being in Legio Fidelis is not a right, it is a gift. They don't owe you anything. If you are unhappy with them, learn to fend for yourself and move on.

Superstition: Part of any good strategy

2007-07-05T13:29:00.000-04:00

Before you read the rest of this article, read this comic:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1223

Being people of reason and logic, we are way above any thought on superstition. Of course, it is silly non-sense. Except for my lucky green set of dice. They really are lucky. Oh yeah, and dice of all the same color work better than mixing colors, unless you rolling percentages, then that's ok. White dice role perpetually worse than any other color.

Ok. To be clear your superstitions are silly, but mine are well founded. Besides there is an element in fun in rooting for your favorite dice. Wouldn't you agree?

Dust and Echoes: My Gaming Group (Part 3)

2007-07-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

Season Two was meant to be ten weeks long. It lasted more like twenty. We did lose a few people, but the regulars stayed and we added to that number. By the end of season one we had grown to eight players, which is about the maximum of what you can handle in D&D, and had a few people who had never played with us before expressing interest. Even with technical problems and location moves and long drives, we had grown in attendance. The mutual enjoyment and endurance had returned to the group.

There was little discussion about what to do next. I thought the group would continue to flourish playing Dungeons and Dragons. I wanted to continue playing Dungeons and Dragons and that's what we did. This season would be harder, because the group wasn't playing the style of game I liked best and that would mean changing things in way that some people wouldn't like. I had already made up my mind that I needed to find people who wanted to play the kind of game I wanted to play, not take a vote and see what they decided on. So, I made the change.
As I expected, we lost people. Not as many as I thought we might, but a couple. More importantly, we added a couple almost immediately, who liked the change and we currently have a couple more on deck, who are also interesting in playing a higher Role Playing game. The endurance of the group is as strong as ever and I look forward to each week in the way I did in the Halo days. I know I'm not alone.

As for the business. Well, it still technically exists, but really doesn't do anything other than take my money periodically. There is not a mass of gaming groups sharing the D&E banner. There is no push to make that happen. The gaming group under an umbrella business suffered. It cost more, created confusion and helped lock the group into a bad pattern of play. There may be a place for D&E as a business, but I don't know what it is and currently I'm not looking. My focus is on my gaming group.

At one point in the life and evolution of Dust and Echoes, one of the members said, "At the end of the day, aren't we just a bunch of friends playing video games?" This statement fell far from the truth, but I missed it when it was said. See, when we were just a bunch of friends we couldn't have what we really wanted. It wasn't until we were first a bunch of guys that wanted to play the same game, friend or not, that we really started to taste success. As an interesting note, it was when our interest in the game waned, not our friendship, that caused success start to slip away.

Dust and Echoes: My Gaming Group (Part 2)

2007-07-01T10:59:00.000-04:00

The problem with Halo 2 was multi-layered. It wasn't the game Halo was. In many regards it was technically better, but it never captured the fun in the way the original did. Add to this it was being played by a group of people that were burned out on Halo or mystified by Dust and Echoes as a business and it's easy to understand why we didn't really grow. To compensate for this we started playing over LIVE in addition to the LAN. This brought more people and allowed those who didn't wat to travel to play, but the outsiders had no real investment in the group and didn't understand what we were doing and the experience wasn't the same for those playing from home. We kept the numbers up for quite a while, but the experience had changed. We weren't really giving the members the experience they wanted. I don't think we really knew how.

The use of LIVE and the damage to the over all experience grew when I moved to a place we couldn't play from and suddenly we had to figure out how to move the LAN to different places. Whether we knew it or not at the time, we were in rough shape. The numbers were shrinking and there was increasing dissatisfaction with Dust & Echoes. Had we stayed the course, this like would have been the last days for the group, as a gaming group.

We recognized we need to branch out into something different. We developed an idea to do seasons. Playing a game for ten weeks, then moving on to something different. I think the thought behind it was this would prevent burnout on a single game and every ten weeks interest would be renewed because of the new game we were playing. Looking back, I'm not sure this logic is sound. The group we had built was built not on the people, but the game. After we stopped being a small group of friends playing Halo, we became a group of people drawn together by Halo. Our endurance and enjoyment of what we were doing was defined by the game and the stats, not who we were playing with (so long as they weren't disruptive to the game). This season idea was to say that the group stood together because of the people and the game could fluxgate. As would bear itself out, this was faulty.

For a few weeks we messed around with a few different games deciding on what the first season. Ultimately, the group decided on Halo 2. This should have been no surprise considering how the group came to be. By the end of that first season we were down to about six people. We all wanted more people, we all knew Halo 2 wasn't the answer. The group needed to evolve, but couldn't move from the foundation that had been built. The original three friends, myself included, pushed for Dungeons and Dragons. We knew we would lose some of the Halo-only players or non-role players from the group.

Season two, Dungeons and Dragons, began and my thought on gaming groups, D&E as a business and how to find success changed.

I knew that success for a gaming group was about mutual enjoyment and endurance. I also knew that when I let this group decide they chose to play a game that continued to diminish the size of the group and made for less enjoyment for everyone. What this meant to me was democracy didn't really work in this case. The group would continue to do what they had until the last person turned off the lights. Dust and Echoes would die if left in the hands of its members. The only reason the group changed course was because a small set pushed for change while the group was small and it worked. The larger picture was this, if I wanted Dust and Echoes to be successful I needed to keep it's direction out of the hands of popular vote. Endurance would be build by drawing people of like mind, not by seeing what the individuals already there were like minded about.

Dust and Echoes: My Gaming Group (Part 1)

2007-06-29T10:58:00.001-04:00

Gaming group success is hard to define and harder to achieve. Is it a single group that plays a bunch of different games? Yes. Is it a morphing group that plays a single game? Yes. Can they be competitive or casual? Yes and Yes. So what defines success in a gaming group? Gaming groups are successful if they endure and continue to supply the gaming experience desired by their members.

Dust and Echoes is the name of my gaming group. It's existed in various forms for a little more than five years. It has evolved, struggling with concepts of identity and purpose. It has been a just friends hanging and multi tiered business. Success has come and gone.

Dust and Echoes, in the time before we had a name was just a few guys playing Halo. In those days it was just something to do when we hung out. It likely would have just been something just my friends and I did, but a few factors had big impact on how we developed. The first was Halo allowed for up to 16 players to play at once, which we wanted to experience. The second was we almost immediately started tracking stats. Invites went out and the number of friends playing grew to about six.

We recognized that we wanted something more. We were still far from that elusive 16 players, but we were never going to get there by just asking friends. We shifted gears. The stats engine was refined and we improved our teambuilding. We gave ourselves a name based on the game. We picked up a website and started advertising to people who lived close. We morphed from friends hanging out to a gaming club, joined my mutual interest. We added players, improved our endurance and continued to give the members what they wanted.

The numbers grew swiftly. We were regularly getting ten to twelve people. The three original members, the friends that first played, recognized we had stumbled into something great and wanted to reproduce our success and thought we could. We shifted Dust and Echoes into being the name of the umbrella business and declared the Halo league just one of many leagues and added the tag Adults Detroit. Many of the members of the now dubbed Dust and Echoes: Adults Detroit still just looked at themselves as just Dust and Echoes. Confusion was added by the fact that the owners of Dust and Echoes played regularly with D&E: Adults Detroit and no other club was ever really developed under that banner. Dues we added to cover the cost of the business, food, TVs, etc. It was this time the group also tried to play other games, as some of us were getting bored with Halo. By and large, these games were huge failures. We continued to endure, but the increased cost of supporting a business, the confusion that business created and the playing of some awful games damaged the experience for some members.

Bungie provided what was both Apex of our group's success and an additional element in the slow death of Dust and Echoes with its release of HALO 2. The party was awesome. We played all night. Had great food and just soaked up everything we could about HALO 2. As I look back now, the final days of HALO (pre-business/experimentation shake up) and the beginning of HALO 2 were probably some of the best for D&E as a gaming league.

Nerds Judging Nerds

2007-06-26T17:30:00.000-04:00

Have you ever been floored by the contradiction between a person's words and their actions?

I was the other day.

Someone told me that they would never play Dungeons and Dragons because it's "too nerdy." Did I mention that I only know this person because I play World of Warcraft with him?

Not only does he play World of Warcraft, he is on constantly (at least 8 hours a day), knows every pull in every instance and drools over the loot that drops in high-end raids. To further cap off this little gem, he expressed this feeling over Ventrilo.

Does this guy have the right to tell anyone they are too nerdy?

Before I sound too harsh, let me say that I am guilty of the same hypocrisy. I love to make a joke at the expense of LARP'ers. Those guys, well, they really ARE social outcasts.

When I really thought about it, I noticed that this kind of prejudice happens everywhere within the nerd community, particularly with people who like to play games. If you don't believe me, head to your local hobby shop (if you aren't too concerned with your public image). Once there, ask any customer what games are truly nerdy. I guarantee that your query will not go unanswered.

The guys who play Magic think the guys who play HeroClix are nerds. The guys who play HeroClix think the D&D guys are nerds. And all of them think the LARP guys are nerds (as well they should).

I wasn't quite sure why this was. You would think that nerds would recognize each other almost instinctively. All at once, I understood: nerds don't want to be nerds. Well, at least they don't want to admit that they are perceived that way. Thus, driven by a self-protective fear, the common nerd is apt to externalize their nerd-dom. The theory being, that if you can identify nerds externally and demonstrate how you are not like them, that makes you not a nerd.

This bizarre tendency is also fed by a chauvinism that I think is inherent in all human beings. This is not the chauvinism that we see on TV where men are beer-swilling, womanizing and arrogant. That is male chauvinism. This is traditional chauvinism that leads one to believe that the group or category to which they belong is the one most worthy of loyalty. It is the instinctive force that drives my son, though never taught this, to argue with his cousin about which holiday was better: his Chanukah or her Christmas.

I believe that once a person fully understands and acknowledges why they do something, they are no longer slave to it. It seems to me that most people in the nerd community could use a dose of reality: "you are a nerd." Knowing this, you can go about your nerdy business, far less judgmental of the activities of your fellow dork.

So, just acknowledge you are a nerd, gently tell other nerds-in-denial that they are nerds and be more tolerant of those who are "more nerdy" than you (except the LARP'ers, of course).

Urban Legend Snubbery

2007-06-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

So, I got an e-mail the other day, and as it turns out, that this was my portal to a cool $5000 from Bill Gates himself. Seems the guy is developing an e-mail tracker and he's so happy to get the assistance of me and my friends he'll give us each 5K if the whole thing works out. Nice.

Everyone knows this is crap. Well, except for the idiot who sent it to me.

This is a new version of an old segement of lore, urban legends.

I love urban legends. Come on, who doesn't like stories about free money, twisted murders, people being caught in compromising situations and the evils of Disney. One of the sites I check about every day is Snopes. I try to absorb everything I can from their site. Read every history, every story, every bogus promise. I've gained a kind of Legend-Sense. The problem is this may be more curse than superpower, and I fear I may have damaged myself.

See when people start to tell me about their cousin who knows someone who served as a sniper along side Mr. Rogers. My "Legend-Sense" tingles and I have to supress the urge to scream, "Are you an idiot? Why would you think sweater man is a sniper?" As much as I like a good urban legend I hate it when people tell me one as if they are the truth. My reaction ranges somewhere between pity and anger for the poor soul who has been suckered in by these things, and yet it's the very fact that they are believed that gives them legs.

Don't be that sucker.

If we ever meet in person, or you plan on sending me any e-mail about some revelation that sounds the least bit suspect. Do yourself a favor, look it up on Snopes first. Then rather than saying, "Did you hear ice can give you cancer?" you can look down from upon high, down to the duped masses and say, "Can you believe my cousin thinks ice can give you cancer? I mean, hasn't he heard of Snopes?"

A Change of Plans

2007-06-24T08:14:00.000-04:00

So, every Saturday my friends and I play D&D. We started playing at someone's home, but we now use a really cool set-up called Fantasy Grounds. Regardless of the situation we have played in, we always come to the table or computer expecting to play. As a DM, I was prepared this Saturday with more plot than my players would have made it through and the players that were there were ready to play. In spite of all that, I chose to cancel the game.

Now, why would a prepared Dungeon Master with a group of ready players cancel a game?

We had three players unable to attend.

We've played against the odds before, but on every occasion when more than one player was missing we've had less than stellar results. This isn't about the party running into danger short handed: I have the character sheets I can run the missing party in combat. It's actually about story.

My games lean heavily on story, and not just the one I'm telling, but the one the players tell with their character. If a player is missing I can't reveal things only they know, I can't let them struggle with their personal weakness or develop their leadership. The story has to be prodded along with a partial crew and next week the missing people have to play catch up and try to make sense of doing something their character would naver have done. The more Player Characters that are run by the Dungeon Master, the more the story gets broken.

Why was it so hard for me to cancel the night's game? I've given you the reason why it should be cancelled, so it should be no problem.

Well, the other side of the equation is this: success is built by being consistent and sticking to your plan. People and groups that change plans often and give up on consistency die. So, there is a part of me that wants to stick to the plan regardless. That part of me knows that three of the seven players were missing, but I can give these guys a side quest to do, or play those three as Non-Player Characters.

The truth is I know this doesn't work. I would bumble through it, the players would have a mediocre time and the story and plot would feel artificial. In the grand scheme of things, I would have hurt the larger campaign. In a group that is about the fun, you should never continue on a course that will hurt that, even if it means giving up consistency. The only way to be consistent and never call a game last minute is to manage attendance.

First, the group has to understand that a minimum number of participants are required to play. With that in mind, each Saturday the players can look at the numbers and know whether the night's session will be viable.

The second part has a price. If you are going to demand a certain number of players be there, you will need to have an attendance policy. At some point you have to ask people who perpetually miss to drop the group. There is line where you stop being a group of friends and become a group of friends with conditions. That is probably a topic for another time.

Japanese Obstacle Courses

2007-06-22T13:16:00.000-04:00

I am certainly not a huge fan of G4 TV. Too much of their programming has NOTHING to do with video games. Sometimes watching that channel feels as though the execs just see us video gamers as an age/sex demographic. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so obvious.

Despite my own objections, I cannot help but be fascinated by Ninja Warrior. Ninja Warrior is a game show from Japan where contestants face four stages of obstacles on their way to total victory. It is broadcast by and redubbed for G4 TV. The original program, called Sasuke, was broadcast by the Tokyo Broadcast System.

What is it about this show that keeps a fat, pasty white, exercise-averse guy like me watching for hours on end? I have no illusions that I would ever compete on the show (Olympians regularly fail). I am not especially interested in sports in general.

I will sit through a couple of half-hour episodes a day and several seasons over a week just to see how the various contestants do and how far they will get. I watch the men's competition, I watch the women compete. It doesn't matter, I like it all. I have my perennial favorite competitors; Shingo Yamamoto, Rie Komiya, Toshihiro Takeda, Ayako Miyake. I even found myself cheering them on(I'm not really a "cheering" person).

It bears further explanation that I am not enanmored with Japanese culture. I feel a pretty strong allegiance to the American culture side of the video-gaming world, if for no other reason than the Japanese are so staunch in their opposition to the video game culture we try to export to them.

To show that lightning can in fact strike twice, I also love to watch MXC, a comedic re-edit and redub of Takeshi's Castle.

So what is it with japanese gameshows? I can't explain it, so I'll just go watch.

Why Nerd World Country?

2007-06-22T11:32:00.001-04:00

Let me be honest. I'm a nerd. I play Dungeon and Dragons, World of Warcraft and love new technological gizmos. I've discussed which of the Star Trek series is my favorite and snubbed Mac Users. I'll take Mythbusters over Friends and Lost over Survivor any day of the week. The good news is... I am not alone.

The truth of the matter is the number of nerds is growing. So fast, in fact, that nearly every person I know is nerdy in someway. Chances are, like it or not, your a nerd. Get over the shock and enjoy.

This is not my first blog, nor my first forum. The others were for things like a HALO 2 league or Dungeons and Dragons players. The problem with them is they were limiting, each about their own set of topics. The truth is I wanted a panel were the nerds I know could come together and post articles about things that interested them. Anything that interested them. Things that I knew would interest me, too.

Somehow, you made it here. I hope you don't leave disappointed.

In case you are wondering about the forum that was metioned about, it is located here:
http://nerdworldcntry.proboards79.com/

Feel free to drop in there and leave us a comment, or just drop one by clicking the link below.

We Are Family

2007-06-21T20:32:00.000-04:00

Geek, Trekkie, LARP’er, Anime Fan, Hacker, Gamer

These are the phylum, genus and species of the Nerd World Order. Much like the classification of life on Earth, the debate is still raging.

I’ve heard it said that that a nerd is just a pimply outcast, while geeks rule the world by applying their brains to making money. Some respect the abilities of a hacker, but could not tolerate the presence of a LARP’er. And while folks are still sorting out all of these distinctions in our ranks, each of us knows on some level that we are all part of the same family.

Humankind has always had an imagination. Without it, we would live only the most basic of lives. Imagination has allowed us to create everything from the spear to the space shuttle. And while we used that imagination to create an unending stream of practical implements and concepts, we were never satisfied to stop there. In every time and culture were the dreamers.

The dreamers of the past could only frame their concepts in supernatural terms because they had no understanding of concepts like electricity to explain lightning or plate tectonics to understand an earthquake. Dreamers comforted the practical person with stories of spirits to explain the unexplainable and stories of demons to warn those who would step outside cultural bounds.

During the Enlightenment, we began to understand much more of our world. Things that humankind called magic before, were now comprehensible inside the framework of nature. Suddenly, we knew something that had been strange to us at one time, and with that came the certainty that we could explain much more. Our imaginations flourished to heights before inconceivable, and so the seeds of the present-day nerd were sown.

That is your heritage and why you are here.