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Time spent in relation to how well you play a game is an interesting concept. There are always people all across the spectrum – some become proficient fast, some slow. Even chess has young prodigies that can challenge older “hard-earned” grandmasters. And yet, experience itself is a huge boon even in a game where younger players can quickly catch up to older ones.

As a proponent of skill-based gaming, my stance has always been that your skill should simply be your skill, and time spent shouldn’t affect anything. Granted, time spent will always affect at least the meta-game (the aspects in a gaming environment not under your control, such as your opponents play styles and tendencies), but I’ve mostly only meant the extreme cases where games actually increase your ability to perform better through time-based activities. In an acronym: MMO’s, or massively multiplayer online games.

Although not all MMO’s have this feature, most do and it has become a cliché of the genre. You start out with a skill level of 0 in fighting, you attack and kill a rat, and you gain 1 fighting skill throughout the duration of the fight. Or 10 experience towards your next level (increasing your attributes and combat ability), or perhaps the rat drops an item that you can equip which makes you do more damage to the next rat you face. There are many methods that could be employed, but they all share the same time requirement trait. This is in direct contrast to traditional tournament games such as first person shooters, real-time strategy, or fighting games where you simply enter the match, play the match, and then leave the match with nothing of permanence affecting you in the next match (again, aside from possible meta-game aspects such as your mental state). Given this, these games are usually considered to be much fairer and thus much better competitive games as the only resources are raw knowledge and “skill” (knowing how to play the game and having the ability to do so). Of course, you have to expend a third resource to gain knowledge and skill, and that’s time.

After thinking about how many hours a lot of top tournament players will spend practicing a day in their chosen game, it seems a bit strange to keep my prejudice against the MMO system of skill gain. At the end of the day, what is the difference between a Starcraft player spending 12 hours a day practicing a match-up, versus an MMO player spending 12 hours a day to advance his character? If your character still requires out-of-game skill and knowledge to be played better in the latter system after he is “capped” (you are no longer able to expend time to advance his in-game skills), how is it any different to the former game?

Starcraft: Brood War is the most popular e-sport game currently.

Another dynamic in MMO’s that I believe I touched upon in another article is community status. Much more so than one-match-at-a-time genres, your role in an MMO community plays a huge part, as social aspects are a huge part of persistent world gameplay. One recent example of this is in EVE Online, where the group of players in Goonsquad managed to use their social presence to influence a key member in a huge rival alliance, which ended up with the total collapse of that alliance. Even though Goonsquad was enormously outnumbered, their community and social placement in the game allowed them to overcome a very large threat they may not have been able to deal with on the terms of the normal game rules (i.e. combat). In this example, the time investment leading up to this gain for the players would have been purely meta-gaming related. It had nothing to do with the players’ character skills, they all could have been freshly made and still have carried out this operation. It’s also worth mentioning that “the Goons” as they are known play many games, and have earned such a reputation that merely hearing about them coming to play your game, or on your MMO server, is enough to make some people quit or stay away from that game on that basis alone. Even when they choose to play a game that is based on time-based skill gain, their long-term gained social presence gives them an advantage in the meta-game. Ironically, EVE Online is the prime example in this regard as well: the method in which you train your character is by selecting a skill, and then the game tells you an amount of time until you get better at that skill – this time passes regardless of whether you are online or offline, thus your overall skill is directly related to your character’s age.

CCP’s EVE Online places more emphasis on community interaction than most games.

“Macroing” is yet another interesting concept the MMO genre brings to the table. This is the act of gaining character advancement in a game without necessarily having to pay attention to the game itself – basically, advancing your character “for free”. The time investment is either much slimmer (i.e. a “semi-attended” macro, where you can do something else and simply check back from time to time), to not having to invest at all (unattended macroing: your character “plays itself”, gaining skill in the process). Macros can come in many forms: from sticking a penny in your keyboard to hold down a key, all the way to a custom program made specifically to play your character with specific settings (also called a bot or script). Whether be it a macro, bot or script there is usually a fairly big time investment for the author to actually create the method employed. After he distributes it, there can still be a time requirement for the people who acquire it to learn how to use it, but it is much less given that they don’t have to actually come up with the concept and create the method by hand. In either case, there is time spent in the process of setting up your character to work on its own (saving you time in the end – spending time to make time). What’s interesting here is that while macroing is often called a form of cheating or exploiting, one cannot deny the fact that the player is using this to his advantage. Essentially, the player is becoming a prodigy – advancing in the game faster than other users. Remember also, even if the macro goes at the same pace (or less) than another user playing “legit”, the player using the macro can spend his time to strengthen his community role which, as discussed above, is certainly one way of becoming more powerful at a game.

Glider is one of the leading World of Warcraft bots used to advance characters and farm gold – the game’s currency. The program has become so controversial as to inspire lawsuits from WoW’s creators, Blizzard.

This is all relative, since in actual tournaments these things almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed. Of course, in most tournaments we do not have to worry about this – but now that the World of Warcraft Arena has become a tournament game in and of itself, it could be cause for concern that players may used some ill-gotten advantage to strengthen their avatars. Fortunately for that game, however, it’s not a very big deal to “max out” your character to a point in which he would be equal to others in tournament play, so it’s not an issue in the big picture. If a game does come along where the time investment is much higher, and it becomes competition worthy, it will be interesting to see how these cases could be handled. On the other side of the coin, the standardized “match-at-a-time” games are also starting to bring in some time-based concepts to the table: we are starting to see first person shooters where you gain experience, ranks, and access to more varied equipment based on your avatar’s skill or experience.

In the end, I think the bigger question aside from which version of time investment is superior, is what goal is the person asking the question trying to pursue. Even monetary gain can be had via both systems – tournament earnings versus playing letting bots run their characters, earning them items or money that they can sell for real world currency. It’s all relative to each person’s particular goals at the time of asking said question.

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Well, I was going to post this a couple of nights ago but it kind of got swept up in the excitement. What excitement you ask? Well…

The new version of Dystopia is out! Although 1.2 might seem like a meager decimal increase from 1.1, it actually marks a huge improvement to the game and even more importantly, the first release that I can really say I had a huge part of. My latest work on the game was creating the trailer along with the help of the team’s musician, bioxeed. Bioxeed has also recently put up a mix of all of his Dystopia music, so if you like this music style be sure to check it out.

High quality x264 download link for the trailer available here.

It’s really been a great ride. I never thought I would become a game developer but it is something I really enjoy. Even moreso, I never thought that the old Doom maps that I’d toy around with in DoomED would be the precursor to year-long projects that push every limit of a next-gen engine. Having finished two maps from scratch, picking up and finishing a partially-completed third one, and collaboratively working on a fourth with other members of the team (termi, Venciera, charlestheoaf, Spire), and creating a few dozen model props and textures, I’ve been working on the mod for over two years now. And even though Dystopia is getting to a point where I can see myself being done working on it, there is plenty more exciting things in the future in the world of game development. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to pursue an actual job in the industry (I don’t know if I could be as passionate about something that isn’t my brainchild), but I’ll certainly be continuing it as a hobby.

I’ll try and get a Game Development page up soon highlighting the work I’ve done so far with Dystopia, now that it’s all public. If you’ve got a Steam account and any source game that includes the Source SDK Base, be sure to check out Dystopia and let us know what you think on the forums.

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I usually like to stay away from blog-like posts, but I figured I should post an update given that this website has deviated a bit from its prior intended use. I was originally going to mainly post about Warhammer Online, specifically the class I played. Fortunately, I realized fairly early on (having only leveled two characters to the cap) that the game was horrible; Mythic revealed their incompetence and all in all it wasn’t that long of an affair. It’s strange that MMORPGs invoke a feeling of longevity, where you want to play for the longest – through thick and thin – to be the best (in a genre bereft of skill) and become a spokesperson for your player class, or other extravagant goals. In games that promote customizable avatars and social aspects, it is where we try hardest to stand out in a crowd. I find this a fitting contrast to FPS games where customization is usually nil, and it hardly even matters if the game records your stats (leaving a permanent footmark, which is all MMOs have going for them) – while it’s a nice touch, we are satisfied merely by on-demand skill and recognition. And of course it’s much easier to get recognition in an FPS – you just need to play well, in stark contrast to an MMO where they are usually entirely based on how much time you put into them.

That said, I’ve given up on Warhammer, and am in one of those “I’ll never play MMOs again” slumps. I kind of hope it sticks, because they really are such terrible wastes of time. That said, I am the guy who quit Everquest permanently… around a half dozen times (I even gave all of my items away each time, as if to solidify the fact – it’s interesting that I would be so sure of my decision each and every time). Still, whenever I cease playing an MMO, I tend to “wake up” as if from a bad dream, trying to understand why I would ever find myself in such a position due to the “play until you are so fed up you violently quit” aspect of the games. The same is not true of other genres, even if interest comes and goes; there are never any “hard feelings”.  MMOs almost feel manipulative, where the primary goal is to simply keep you playing for the sake of your subscription, certainly not for your satisfaction – how many times have we all continued to play an MMO even when the only discussion on Ventrilo would be is how horrible it is and how we all hope the next patch is good? It’s an amazing thing, that such games not only manage to keep players, but thrive so heavily that they have penetrated the casual market – where aspects like the above are least likely to be accepted (not to mention that MMOs actually have a fairly steep learning curve, another facet that means they should not be appealing to casual players).

In any case, as is obvious I’ve been using this website to post any rambling thoughts I may have about games, old or new, or game design in general. I’ve been playing Lock’s Quest on the DS lately quite a bit and am thinking about posting something about that as I’ve had quite a bit of inner dialogue about the game the more I play it.

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Multiplayer games and how they sustain their player population has always mystified me. Especially as a huge fan of independent games and game studios, and the common struggle to keep a low-brow indie title retaining players when it is necessary to the game’s overall health (i.e. a multiplayer game).

Being a first person shooter fan for most of my life as a gamer, this is by far and away the field I have the most experience with. When Quake came out, the hobby of hacking game files and creating maps for the older 2D FPS games had grown into something more as players started banding together to create bigger projects in the form of modifications, or mods. Quake mods encompass some of the most popular game types today, including Capture the Flag, Rocket Arena and of course Team Fortress. In those days, finding players usually wasn’t hard even if the players needed fairly advanced knowledge in order to get Quake and the mod up and running, and then configuring Quakespy, MPlayer or whatever server browser they used to find games. Still, even though they faced these technical barriers mods grew and flourished, some even surpassing the popularity of the original Quake deathmatch. Most modifications in this era were simple changes in the games rules. Although there were some “total conversions” (mods with custom artwork, audio and other assets); most fell into the more simple category, even the very popular ones. Mods are usually multiplayer as well, since they are created by people who are passionate about the game, and at this point those players are usually much more interested in the multiplayer aspect of a game.

Today, mods are better than ever, with some mods even matching retail games in both graphics and features. Mod teams often go on to pursue jobs in the game industry as a result of the skills they learn, and the mods they create are as fun, balanced and unique as ever. Accessing mods is a breeze as there are many websites that link them and mirror their files for download. Playing them is as easy as playing the game they’re a modification for. So why, then, is it so hard for mods to retain players when in the past they would retain a huge player base even when it was more underground?

One potential reason for the decline in activity – even after the rise in quality – of mods is that there simply isn’t an influx of players anymore. When Quake mods were big, Quake was big, and when Half-Life mods were bursting at the seams, Half-Life was winning awards at a staggering rate. Half-Life itself was even over-taken by one of its own mods which has since turned into a retail game: Counter-Strike. In fact, I believe it is now more responsible for the ebb and flow of mods than Half-Life itself. Now that the Counter-Strike player base has stabilized and is no longer growing at a fast rate, we have seen mods on the decline. Players are happy to stay where they are, rather than when they were new to the game and open for playing new mods. Thus, even though mods are at the highest quality the players have ever seen and much more easily accessible, it is harder than ever for them to retain players.

Mods aren’t the only multiplayer games that have seen issues, however. It has become increasingly hard for most games, aside from the few most popular, to retain multiplayer player bases. Ironically, the games that do the worst in this regard usually advertise themselves as multiplayer only – which should ensure that the multiplayer is better than other games. However, history has proven that the games that often get popular usually boast both a single player campaign as well as multiplayer, even if it means that the multiplayer will obviously suffer in some form as a result. More sales simply means more potential players, and players are much more willing to invest into a compelling single player experience than an unproven multiplayer game, even if the single player aspect of a game only lasts for the very beginning of its lifespan. Id Software even considered their multiplayer only game Quake 3 a failure, when it proved to be one of the best multiplayer FPS experiences to be had, even to the point of the Cyberathlete Professional League re-implementing it after trying other newer, more modern FPS games which all ended up failing. Of course, mods are a different story, but are also hard to include in this comparison since a healthy mod player base depends entirely upon the game it is a mod for – one could argue that Counter-Strike is a multiplayer only game and sees massive popularity, but we must remember that it started out as a mod for Half-Life, a critically acclaimed single player game.

Perhaps having single player is necessary if only to advertise the game to players, as if to say “buy me, at least you can be secure in the fact I have a single player campaign”? Although, this makes no sense as, again, the single player is simply a short storyline incursion usually halfway between a movie and a novel. A game only becomes truly long-lasting when it has a multiplayer component. So why does it seem that games need to have a single player component, and why are players so afraid to purchase multiplayer only games, even in this new age where having a computer basically assumes having an internet connection? This brings me to my next point, the MMO genre.

As if to prove everything I’ve said so far wrong, MMOGs came into existence, whose acronym says it all: Massively Multiplayer Online games. These games almost seem to ensure high player numbers simply by employing a subscription based model (even after purchasing the game box), as if to say “pay us money and we will continue to provide a multiplayer service”. While it is true that most MMOs see a much larger cost and development time (and thus should see larger player counts due to hype, advertising, etc.), the fact remains that to the untrained eye they are simply below-average games. Only very recently are we starting to see MMOs that break the mold and tell stories in compelling ways similar to single player games (however, ironically, the one that performed best in this regard, Age of Conan, was considered a failure mostly due to other issues), yet still MMORPGs have grown to having unimaginably large player bases almost without any rhyme or reason. The quality is almost a non-issue in comparison to “normal” games. The genre insists a subscription model, which many gamers claim they refuse to play on principle alone: “If I buy a game, it’s mine; I shouldn’t have to spend more money just to continue playing it”. Yet still these games manage to bring in immense numbers shadowing other genres. Even stranger still is that this genre is almost entire computer-based, when we are in an era of console domination.

Age of Conan was much friendlier to a non-MMO player, yet still failed to see great success compared to other more “ordinary” games in the genre

In almost every way it appears that the MMO genre is a complete anomaly when it comes to gaming trends, but of course there are very compelling reasons for these players to be there such as social aspects and a true sense of progression. Interestingly, FPS games are starting to implement some of these features in the form of friends list and actual rewards for playing the game for longer periods of time (such as Call of Duty’s system for unlocking new weapons and perks).

Another anomaly in multiplayer gaming that must be mentioned is a Warcraft 3 map that seems to break all of my aforementioned rules. While it’s no mystery as to why Blizzard’s RTS games retain large numbers of players, it is interesting that Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a custom map for Warcraft 3, has become a huge phenomenon. When refreshing the “custom games” browser in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne at nearly any time of day you will find an overwhelming number of DotA games populating the list. This game-in-a-game has grown so big that the playerbase devised its own set of rules and regulations (for lack of a decent set in the rather poor options playing a “custom game” gives you), even to the point of creating custom programs for this game, and the developers have even announced that they are creating an entirely new stand-alone game in the same vein as DotA. So how did this happen? While DotA was not the only interesting game type to expand and eventually grow from Blizzard’s RTS line-up (you just may have heard of a little thing called tower defense), one can’t help but wonder how it came above all others and not only survived, but flourished in the worst of conditions: unlike FPS game servers, where even they have a hard time supporting new games, Warcraft 3’s game hosting is abysmal in comparison, and DotA is a game that is very unwelcoming to new players. Yet still it has managed to flourish to the point of being a real world tournament game where players compete for money.

DotA sees commercial-like success as nothing more than a Warcraft 3 map

The mystery of what attracts players to multiplayer games is no less clear now than when I started. There are certainly some historically-proven safeguards a company can take to hopefully ensure players will play their game, which is a very important aspect when the enjoyment of said players relies on other players being online. Companies seem to be getting more in tune with what games need to support a community of players as well. Yet still, even today new communities spring up seemingly out of nowhere in the strangest of conditions where none of the modern selling points for games may be present. Some companies even seem to be harnessing this aspect of randomness, such as Valve releasing Steamworks, a new way for modifications to get more recognition via Steam. This actually works in their favor as, being that the mods are applications for Valve games, they will in turn end up getting more people to purchase the games needed to play the mods on if they rise in popularity. While on the same token, more and more multiplayer games are released still-born such as Savage 2 or Shadowrun. It will be interesting to see if this is a hurdle that can be overcome in the future or if the safe method of creating a single player game with multiplayer will continue to be the standard.

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The struggling hobby that is e-Sports has gone through a lot of ups and downs recently, so this is certainly an interesting question to pose: what does make a good e-sports game?

The first thing that will come to many gamers minds will be the type of game it is. First-person shooter fans will be quick to defend the FPS genre, along with real-time strategy fans for RTS (and of course, the sub-genres within these genres for one-versus-one or teamplay, different rule-sets and such). However, I believe this division is what is holding e-sports back from becoming truly mainstream.

There have been some leagues – albeit none taken very seriously – that have tried to cater to this division in utilizing a multi-game format approach; however these have mostly been for fun or very small cash prizes and thus not gotten a lot of coverage or interest.

The most successful e-sport currently is StarCraft, and that is largely because the playerbase has refused to deviate from this title; thus allowing spectators ample time to learn and understand the game – and for the players to become extremely skilled at a single title rather than spread their skill thin as other e-sports players have to do quite often. It will be interesting to see what StarCraft 2 does to this e-sport scene, as real sports don’t have to deal with sequels, however I think the impact will be minimal as it has grown so large as to be a part of the culture itself in the main StarCraft hub, Korea. It is in every way, shape and form an “electronic sport”.

Overall, I think the biggest thing that a good e-sport title needs is consistency, which is mostly up to the players to determine. Everyone has their favorite games, but a decision needs to be made on a lone title to use as the platform for that specific e-sport genre. As we saw with the CPL, CGS, the old cyber games and other leagues rise and fall, the reason mostly seems to be due to the inconsistency with games being played and the lack of staying power. As with any sport, it is up to e-sports to have a good fan base to generate the revenue necessary to run them. With most leagues constantly bouncing from game to game, fan interest is very hard to hold and they seem to inevitably fail. The game needs to be simple to understand, yet have a large amount of skill and depth involved. It needs to have a good level of showmanship for the all-important spectators, and there needs to be a pre-existing level of fandom for the game itself – you cannot simply make a game specifically for e-sports and expect players to embrace it.

Given all of the aforementioned attributes, and the fact that game developers rarely seem interested in e-sports, I’ll have to chalk the answer to this question up to luck. As Korea became infatuated with StarCraft (due to it being one of the first titles released internationally there), it become more and more a part of the culture to the point of where it wouldn’t be considered strange to hear two people talking about it on the street. Although it is not strange to hear people talking about videogames in other countries, they are often talking about the topic as a whole, and not a specific game. Indeed, it is rare to even find someone with the same preference in games as you in most of America and Europe. If a game becomes truly explosive in popularity in these regions, and boasts the necessary traits to become an e-sports title, we may see resurgence in this hobby in these regions. Until that day comes, whether or not you can make a living off of professional gaming, I think e-sports will still largely be considered a hobby.

Originally posted at ugame blog

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I recently read a pretty mind-opening quote from the Mortal Online webpage. Obviously there are classifications or subgenres of MMORPGs, and the sandbox genre is an age old one. I’ve never thought to call games with levels and raid bosses anything other than an Everquest derivative, but this quote has shown me what they really are: theme parks.

The overwhelming majority of MMORPG’s today belong to the Theme Park category. A Theme Park is often carefully planned and can deliver some very unique attractions. On the other hand, the attractions usually require you to be of a certain age or length to ride them, you have to stand in line, and none or minimal interaction is needed from your part. Like a real theme park it always looks the same and chances are you grow tired of the rides after 20 times or so, unless the theme park creates new exiting rides to keep the park entertaining.

In a Sandbox game you are able to create your own rides, and you interact with other players most of the time instead of NPCs. Every time you play will be a unique experience as the player interactions determine the outcome, and the world changes and reacts dynamically to their actions.

As quoted, everything in this genre of game is an attraction. You slowly become bored of the ones you’ve done over and over, since you already know what’s going to happen and when that once-interesting rollercoaster takes a sudden dive to try to scare you, you can’t help but yawn. While going on the same old rides, you are stuck waiting while the developers create new ones. After the new ones are implemented, the old ones are forever forgotten and unused.

One of the great flaws of online RPG’s is that they have character levels. You gain experience from doing certain things and artificially advance your character via these levels. This means there needs to be specialized content for certain level ranges, since the entire point of levels is to restrict what you can and can’t do and keep you playing the game to keep increasing that all-important number.

While it may sound like levels are a harmless and even novel concept, they bring to the table countless serious flaws. First is the fact that they almost always are associated with player classes: this means that when you make your character, you pick your class at the beginning of your character’s career. As you level up, your character will get stronger and ultimately change, meaning that the very first choice you make as a player and the most important one – your class selection – is ultimately a blind decision. As well, you are almost never allowed to change this decision once it is made. This means you are left to the developers’ mercy to hope that the class is balanced and plays as it is advertised (which is almost never the case, extra text is always added to spice the class descriptions up but ultimately it is a falsity). Due to levels, which are a time sink by design, if you end up with a class you dislike you have no choice but to start over from scratch.

Another tremendous flaw that may be less noticed by players is that the inclusion of levels bring an amazing amount of added development time along with them. While the actual act of implementing the leveling system itself is most likely nothing more than throwing some numbers around in the code base, these levels demand specialized content. Common themes in a game with levels are things such “newbie zones” – where players start out with very weak monsters to kill, or “group content” which are scenarios or monsters that only a group of appropriately leveled players can tackle. Thousands of quests are hand written and implemented for no purpose other than to make leveling a little more interesting.  While this content can sometimes add spice to a game, there is no point to designing a newbie area that players will only see and use for a limited time in their career. Extrapolate this into the numerous zones dedicated to nothing more than housing the monsters and quests needed to get players to level up past that zone and into the next leveling area, and you can see where the countless wasted hours upon hours of development time could be used elsewhere to much greater effect.

The other ways in which levels ruin games are numerous: any game with levels usually has them as an easily viewable statistic, and since it is almost always the single most important statistic on a character or NPC, being able to view it ensures that all encounters are boiled down to be predictable and boring. If a friend joins the game at a later date in time, you usually cannot play with one another due to level disparity unless the game implements something like a mentor system like City of Heroes did – but if levels did not exist in the first place, this unnecessary code wouldn’t have even been written. Again, levels do nothing but make development time drag on and serve as an excuse to keep players in a game rather than make the game genuinely interesting. Nearly every MMORPG that has levels is released in what most believe to be an unfinished state. And lest we forget, when has a level pattern been referred to anything other than a “grind”?

Again, referencing the quote above, if you give players an environment that they can truly interact in they will find their own fun. Theme park games have to constantly produce more and more content and better and better items, a side effect called “mudflation” (item inflation in MUD games). In a sandbox, the items can be stale as long as players can interact with them in interesting ways and keep things fresh on their own terms. An item called “a rusty sword” that you can pick up, throw on the ground, trade to another player, melt down into it’s base components to use to craft a different item, fight with until it breaks, or get a player who is a blacksmith to repair it before it does is a much more interesting item than an item called “Karlore’s Greatsword of Demon-slaying” which drops from a special monster that you can only kill once a week and once you pick it up you can’t do anything aside replace it with a better item.

Here’s hoping that the sandbox genre will rise again, as I’ve grown very weary of standing in lines. I’ve got my plastic shovel and bucket ready.

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Games with bad endings have always baffled me. Much like a novel with a bad ending, I don’t see why someone would pour so much work into the bulk of a piece of work and then botch the ending. Obviously, not all endings can be simply called “botched” – some may feel right to the author but not take off with the general public. This happens a lot with movies, and we end up with director’s cuts.

With games, it seems that most developers just don’t care about the ending. It may be a bit harsh to come out and say it like that, but I honestly can’t see the reason so many games have such terrible endings aside from simply a complete and total lack of effort. I don’t know if it’s because it’s at the end of the game, where budget or time constraint is most likely running the thinnest; or perhaps (although doubtful) it’s that once the player is done with the game their enjoyment doesn’t matter anymore to the developers, so as little time as possible is spent working on the ending. Or possibly that gaming is such an obscure, new form of entertainment that we simply haven’t found a good way to end a gaming experience, especially when it’s a good game. Afterall, in movies and books, having closure is good – but in games we often do not want the experience to end, which could feasibly impact our otherwise unbias opinion.

In either case, I think having a good ending to a game is pivotal. Games with bad endings – even ones that I thoroughly enjoyed the entire way through – will leave a bad lasting impression on me, to the point of ceasing my recommendations of the game. This happened to me with STALKER, a game I enjoyed a surprising amount while playing, but the ending was so hideously insulting that I could do nothing but go into long rants about the game after beating it. It was so bad that I started picking on faults that I would have let go otherwise.

Fallout 3 has just done the same thing to me, and as a much more “high brow” game it really surprised and disappointed me. Whereas before completing the game’s main quest I was actually anticipating finishing and starting a brand new character, now after having finished it I don’t really have the initiative to go and actually do it. I’m not sure if this actually matters or not in the grand scheme of things as it’s a single player game, although it certainly must have some kind of effect. Something about Morrowind made me play that game on and off for almost a year, and I would pretty consistently bore my friends with new tales from “that FPS RPG with crappy combat”. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be pestering them to such an extent with Fallout 3, although it almost has the potential to be there – although the game’s longevity is mostly to do with off-topic items (such as dungeon repitition, something much improved in Fallout 3 if you compare it to Oblivion), the ending remains the primary reason I’m not back in Vault 101 right now playing with facial hair options. In any case, I’ll definitely be looking forward to any Fallout 3 mods, expansion packs or sequels.

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Looks like World of Goo from 2D Boy is finally set to come out. It launches officially in a few days but they have sent out early copies to online pre-orders. It is also due out on the Wii via WiiWare. It’s a fun little physics manipulation game, I definitely recommend checking it out if they put out a demo.

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As mentioned, the class I play in Warhammer Online is the Disciple of Khaine. I’m pretty passionate about it and just finished a rather long post involving some of the faults involved in it. While minor quips at best, the post is quite long and probably hard to understand unless you play the class yourself. Read on to check it out.

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After tooling around with a few crummy web designs and trying to think of what I’d even like to do with this website (and the sullen realization that I’m pretty out of touch when it comes to the technical side of web design), I have installed WordPress. I’m not sure how often I’ll update it, but I at least plan on putting stuff about my current gaming interests here. Expect tidbits about Dystopia, the 3D Source engine project I work on, game development in general (with a focus on indie games most likely), and probably some Warhammer Online stuff. I was thinking about doing some strategy posts about the class I play, the Disciple of Khaine, so I’ll probably just toss those here if I go through with that.

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