Okay, the German Stromberg is pretty cool. The US The Office I find rather dull and silly. The BBC show rocks. Brits win.
Comments rss
TrackbackGhost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Mixture of Battlefield and Rainbow Six. “Slow”, tactical gameplay, innovative objective-based multiplayer mode. Just one map (team deathmatch and the new game mode) and mostly bad ping times, but a lot of fun already. No jumping – that feels kind of weird. Try it if you always thought Battlefield was too arcade-ish. Lots of RAM recommended.
Overlord
You are the dark ragtag Overlord trying to regain your power and dominion. Your minions do all your bidding. Hilarious characters and dialog. Super neat graphics. Reminds me of Dungeon Keeper (oh how much I used to love that game) just without the dungeons. Smite those demonic halflings, show ‘em what evil really means. Quite short, could become pretty cool.
Comments rss TrackbackIt was unbelievably hot today so I decided to finally buy a sunshade (for my balcony). I found one in my favorite supermarket and, since I was already there, I looked for more stuff I could need.
I stopped at the shelf with the convenience food, you know, these excellent “Put some ham and noodles in a pot, mix our stuff with some water, pour it over the noodles, add cheese, scallop it” things. I wanted to get one for macaroni and meat casserole. I had tried it before and it was pretty good. It’s still quite new, they offer it since April or so, and I had never had a problem getting it. Now they were all sold out. Everything else was well stocked but the macaroni, and they had obviously had three times as many as of the other stuff.
Then I remembered. Yesterday, just one night before, I had seen the new TV ad for exactly that product for the first time ever. Of course, stuff is more difficult to get when it’s new and advertised, but I had never experienced it this palpably (is that really a word, by the way?). When it wasn’t on TV, no one wanted it. Then boom, gone.
Comments rss TrackbackTime for another instalement of…
Things you already know but dont realy think about!!
——–
What is an online games’ worst enemy?
The above is not an exhaustive list but it samples some of the most popular reasons why games are considered to be “bad†or “trash†or any number of descriptive colourful metaphors used these days.
All these things contribute to a crappy game experience to be sure, and yet most of them can be overlooked by the average player so long as he (or she) is enjoying the game.
Bad/outdated graphics?
This problem is just down to corporate dynamics. If a game company believes for a second that the requires influx of cash necessary to revamp a games graphics engine will not generate increased revenue then the graphics engine will never be updated. If however it is clear that new or increased revenue can be generated then it will eventually happen. These kinds of actions however require something of a leap of faith on the part of the bean counters in charge.
These corporate dynamics are viewed by the masses as one of the many devils that plague gaming. Not so. People are looking at a side effect and believing it to be the illness. More on this later.
Poor AI?
Poor UI?
What most people judge as poor performance is more often then not down to simple bugs in the code. Finding bugs in computer code can be a very difficult task to do, more so then most people realise. For one thing you need to notice the bug exists in the first place, a task that’s more easily accomplished by people that know nothing about the code then those who wrote it, i kid you not. Once you noticed it you need to replicate it, this can be a daunting task in itself with some bugs but is essential in order to know what’s triggering it. Knowing the sequence of events the programmers then need to dig through the code in order to contain and fix the bug, hoping they didn’t just make a new one in the process. I’ve had to do this and when i say its a boring and demoralising process I’m being rather kind in my use of the English language.
This perceived problem is also nothing but a side effect of the main issue.
Lack of variety?
Limited customisation?
Lack of content?
Time and money are the key words here. Even with a full team of developers there aren’t enough hours in the day to shove content out the door fast enough to keep some of the more vocal customers happy. And you cant please 100% of the people 100% of the time at any rate.
Missing content?
More often then not this comes from familiarity with other games. You use the function so much in a different game that any other game feels like it has something missing when in fact it was never part of the original design. Some game companies have tried to add in certain functions in the past to make gamers lives easier only to be greeted with accusations of stealing ideas from other games.
Vicious little circle isn’t it ?
Unresponsive devs?
Far too responsive devs?
A developer that fails to listen to the concerns of the fan base is just as bad as a developer that acts on such concerns without taking the time to think whether the concerns are actually valid.
This one is easy to solve, just apply a good dose of common sense to the equation.
(Developer Ideas + community ramblings) / common sense = informed decision
Nerfs?
The process of rebalancing is a necessary evil in games. Make a gun or armour or class too powerfull and you kill the whole point of playing the game.
Nerfs happen, deal with it!
So now what? You read all this way and the true enemy has not revealed itself yet…what gives?
Like most riddles the answer is not as hidden as one initially believes. And i have mentioned what the true enemy of online games is on a few ocasions on the post above.
That’s right… the community!
A games most powerfull asset, and the one thing all games ever made for online play want to maximise at all costs, is a games worst enemy.
The community can make or break the game; first one then the other.
I’ve played games were the game itself had little to offer and yet the community alone kept me coming back for more and on the flip side I’ve also played games with exceptional gameplay that i would not touch with a 10 foot pole on the count of the deteriorating community.
The community is the main problem with any game, everything else is a side effect.
Companies listen to the community, the community complains and the company decides that further investment of resources in the project may not be a good idea since the game isn’t being received very well.
Devs search for ideas of what to fix, what to add or just what to focus on next and at the end of the patch all there greeted with is more hostile commentaries because everyone seems to be an expert on the subject. Devs are people too, send enough crap there way and soon enough they’ll stop caring about you completely and just do the job there paid to do rather then caring about the game they helped create.
Then we have forum trolls, the ones deemed “fanbois†versus the so called “haters†forever stuck in an endless war of wills about the state of the game. If the only options available is to either berate the devs or kiss there arse were in a sad state of affairs indeed. At the end of the day neither side wins because everyone fails to realise games are made to generate cash. Raw emotion is not part of the equation. The vocal minority will argue with a passion about games but in the end only the arguing gets noticed and the messages are lost inside some forum post in internet limbo.
Comments rss Trackback
