Tobold’s I Would be Happier with Free2Play

Spinks’ WoW Thought for the Day

Raph Koster’s F2P vs. Subs

I’ve long been a proponent of making WoW F2P and even offline or in W/JRPG format simply because subscriptions never offer me enough value for me to bother with them.

…and yet, I have a 60-day time card that I’ve had for almost a year and a half and a handful of 30-day time codes from the WoW VISA card I use for big purchases and emergencies.  I have the time codes (and one unscratched card), ready to use, already paid for, but the flubbernuggin’ time-limited monetization scheme still doesn’t feel like good value to me.  I don’t want to use those codes since I have too much going on to devote sufficient time to playing to get good value out of them.  Similarly, I have a Steam code for 30 days each of FFXI and RIFT, but I haven’t activated either of them.  They are paid for, ready to go, but I hate the idea of locking myself into a monogamous game experience just so I can squeeze the most out of it as I can before the time stops ticking.

I hate gaming on the clock.

…and on the other hand, I’ll happily sink a little time into the newly F2P Star Trek Online every morning sending my Duty Officers off on missions and maybe run a story arc mission in the evening.  The cost of activation is really low, so I go play when I feel like it.  I’m considering spending $15 or so to get a new ship that I would then be able to use whenever I darn well please for as long as the servers are live.  That’s value I’ll pay for.  That’s how I approach Wizard 101, too; I bought Crowns to unlock areas that I’ll get to someday, and in the meantime, I’ll play when I feel like it.  I’ve spent money on Puzzle Pirates for the same reason; I bought a ship that I can sail around and pirate with, but I don’t have to keep paying just to play on the occasions when I make the time for it.  I’d readily pay for a single purchase SWTOR.

Would that translate to WoW?  In my case, absolutely.  I’d log in and do a few quests here and there, and toss them money to unlock a dungeon or the ability to make a Dwarf Druid or make my own guild comprised entirely of my own characters without the need to recruit other players or some sort of service that lets me bypass some of the extremely poorly paced crafting curve.  I’m definitely not averse to giving Blizzard money, I just want to pay for things that offer me good value.  WoW is still a fun game to play, even with all its warts and weirdness.  As it stands, though, I can’t exactly send them a financial message about the parts that I care about, which is one of the weaknesses of the subscription model.

…I can, however, offer to sell my time codes.  Anyone?  Maybe trade for some titles on my Steam Wish List?  Oh, and I still have some coupons and COGS and World of Goo if anyone wants them.  Nobody took me up on the snowflake contest, so I’ll just throw them to the winds.  (Another interesting take on value, perhaps…)

First, Raph Koster’s excellent article on Narrative:

Narrative is Not a Game Mechanic

EDITED TO ADD Koster’s followup post, Narrative Isn’t Usually Content Either

Then there’s Richard Bartle’s take on SWTOR:

Bartle’s Notes

aaaand then there’s this little snippet from the WoW guys, who apparently concede that linear, heavily scripted and directed gaming might not be the best approach.

Blizzard Seems to Think That Cataclysm Was Too Linear

I’ve written about these things before.

Death Grip on the Reins

and then there’s this oldie about the business model:

SWTOR Cost?

and my old huge article on MMOs with endings:

The End of an MMO

Y’see, I consider the narrative-heavy “fourth pillar” to be a Bad Idea for MMO play.  To quote myself from Klepsacovic’s place:

Yeah, I should clarify. There’s no problem with devs telling a story, but the structure of MMOs is about playing off of other people in a persistent world (whether through direct or indirect interaction). The most interesting parts of that (the parts that drive interest and retention) are going to be the stories that players are enabled to tell because it’s a unique part of the genre. Those ephemeral moments of Awesome or Weirdness are what sell these MMO gamespaces as somewhere worth visiting.

Sure, you can get your watercooler/blog discussions about how your Smuggler handled that one moral choice in SWTOR, or how your guild downed the Lich King, but you could get much the same thing talking about an offline game. MMOs simply have the potential to *function* differently from other games, so it’s baffling to me that devs seem to want to put the experience on rails. It bothered me in WoW, it bothers me in the core design ethos of SWTOR.

It doesn’t bother me because the dev stories are bad, either (though they may be), it bothers me because they aren’t letting players *play* in these great potential playgrounds. They are just pushing them through the motions.

So when I say that MMOs *should* be about player stories, it’s because I think that’s the unique selling point and strength of the genre. That doesn’t mean devs should be forbidden to tell stories, just that they might be missing the point if they can’t let go of the reins.

Then again, this is a problem I have with game design on a larger scale; way too many devs seem to be frustrated filmmakers, not really *game* makers. It’s a different sort of entertainment, this “game” animal, and it can’t really be expected to function the same way. It’s a spectrum, though, not a binary “sandbox/theme park” dichotomy. *shrug*

There’s a place for barely interactive movies.  There’s a place for story in MMOs.  I just think that MMOs work best with greater freedom and a more malleable world, largely because it’s those crazy moments out in the game’s world that really make them unique.  That’s the legacy of tabletop RPGs that I think MMOs could be poised to inherit.  You can get great scripted narratives in something like Uncharted 3, and that works fine… but it’s not really the point of MMOs.  As Koster notes, there’s a difference between an experience and a game.

There’s a place for great narrative, grand epics and stories with endings.  I just don’t think that place is in MMOs, especially not subscription MMOs that almost of necessity need to be built around grinding and the sense of neverending play.  There’s a strong case to be made that such isn’t really what is best for games in general, but that’s how sub MMOs work, for better or worse.

I don’t want SWTOR to fail (though Scarybooster is right, some have that mean attitude), but dagnabbit, the stresses inherent in shoehorning strong narrative into the MMO mold shouldn’t have been hard to see.  It should be no surprise that players are “finishing” the game and moving on, or that the focus on the storytelling might mean a weaker effort on the “retention” schemes that makes the subscription system work (good comments over at Yeebo’s place).  This is what BioWare does, it makes single player games.  Even if SWTOR as it is might make for a stupidly grindy single player game (hattip to Chris at GameByNight)… I enjoyed Disgaea and several Final Fantasy games, so a long game doesn’t scare me.

…and yes, if they sold SWTOR as an offline game or even series of games, I’d still probably buy in, as I noted in that SWTOR Cost article from months ago.  The game might be grand as a single player game, it’s just… trying to be something it isn’t.

Oh, and incidentally, MMO Melting Pot has a good roundup of some of the commentary, too, found thisaway:

Is SWTOR Screwed?  The EA Stock Fall Edition

As near as I can tell, SOPA is a thinly veiled statist control grab, all in the name of stopping piracy.  Guess what, guys?  Piracy can’t be stopped.  And no, the varied and vehement denizens of the internet don’t trust you with power.  To echo a famous pithy quip:

“Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual”

It does strike me as odd, though, these “going dark” protests.  The problem is that the U.S. government weasels want to control the internet, possibly censoring it, and the answer is to… take your ball and go home?  Effectively self-censor?  It seems like a weird message to send, but with big ol’ sites like Google and Wikipedia in on the action, at least it’s calling attention to the stupid potential policy.  (Though curiously making it a little harder to research said policy.  Again… odd.)  I do like XKCD’s take on it, found at this convenient link.  Sam and Fuzzy’s author comments briefly on it as well thisaway.  Shamus of Twenty Sided has a good article up on it, too, and I like the Rampant Coyote’s take.

As for me, well, I’m going to go work on Zomblobs!, which will be released as a Free to Play tabletop tactical wargame.  The ruleset will be free in PDF form, but you can buy nice printouts.  The PDFs will come with units, maps and tokens you can cut out and play with, or you can go buy models from my Shapeways store or maps from The Game Crafter.  Play a fully functional if vaguely unaesthetic version for free with a little elbow grease, or upgrade a bit to a nicer version for a little cash.  Seems simple to me.

It’s evidence of my mindset; create something that’s fun to play and offers great value, create a relationship of trust and goodwill, and hope that some kind souls are willing to chip in a few bucks for the experience.  I won’t be able to make a living off of the scope of what I’ll be offering (though Three Rings does with their games, notably Puzzle Pirates, and they have a similar philosophy), but I’ll still be offering something I consider to be valuable.  Giving, not controlling, sharing, not stealing.  …and perhaps sneakily, monetizing actual, tangible stuff rather than the digital parts of the game.  Sure, my work is copyrighted, but again, pirates can’t be stopped.  I prefer the carrot approach rather than trying to find a bigger stick.

Seems to be a better way for me to conduct my business.  I’m the sole proprietor of this site, Alpha Hex and Zomblobs!, so I’m going to do what I want with them, and that’s try to get as many people playing and having fun with them as I can.  I think I’ve made some fun games, and while I’m no Raph Koster, Klaus Teuber or Wil Wright, I’m just confident enough in these games to want to put my work out there for consumption and feedback.

Rally ho!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

So lately, I’ve been wondering… how do magic spells with conditions work?

I work with computers all day long, as an artist, true, but I understand a little bit of programming.  There are programs that are constantly looking for input that is then acted on.  The computer has to constantly run routines that ask “is anything happening now?” and “how about now?” or “maybe now?”… it’s always paying attention, ready to spring into action.  This takes processing power.

How about magic?

I’ve been watching the Pirates of the Caribbean movies again lately, so I’ll use those as an example (here there be spoilers!).  In the first one, the Aztec curse is lifted when the gold is returned and the blood debt repaid.  Is there an ancient Aztec spirit checking DNA?  Maybe it’s just checking with its fellow spirits in a vast Aztec post-mortal spy network.  They are always watching, dun dun dun…  The gold would be a bit easier to explain as it’s a simple count… but how to know if they are the right coins?  Again… Aztec ghost spy network, or maybe just a ghostly assayer working with the DNA specialist.

What about the whole Davy Jones myth (in the movies)?  He was cursed because he wasn’t faithful to his ladyfriend… but how did she know?  Maybe that one is easy to explain with a bit of mindreading and/or scuttlebutt, but what of the apocryphal Will Turner variant?  According to what I’ve read online (yes, I was curious, hush), Will isn’t stuck on the Flying Dutchman at the end of the third movie because Elizabeth was faithful to him, and he to her.  Who checks on these things?  Who or what is watching, and how does one get privacy in such a world?

Perhaps magic itself has a level of sentience?  At least enough to run simple “pass/fail” monitoring checks at a low level all the time?  If so, how much does magic think?  How smart is it?  Can it be fooled?  How much power does it take to run these checks?  Are there limits to its perception, whether temporal, spatial or something else?  Can it be blinded or deafened?

And what if the rules change?  Is magic capricious?  In The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, why could Balthazar and Dave drive through their own reflection to escape a magical mirror trap, but Horvath needed external help to escape the same sort of trap?  Does one need a certain velocity to just blow out of the trap (shades of Back to the Future, where the tech may as well be magic), or some other quirky condition?

The Looking for Group webcomic is one I’ve wondered about lately in that regard as well.  The first minor arc in that comic has our central hero incinerated (into ashes!) and then revived by a local priestess, whole and healthy.  Later, that same priestess can’t revive her adopted father, merely because he had suffered some sword slashes to vital arteries.  Similarly, she couldn’t fix her uncle’s lost arm (though an artificer managed to make a perfectly functional magical metal one).  Did she lose power?  Are ashes easier to revive than a whole corpse (albeit minus some blood)?  Did magic’s function change?  Is this just the Power of Plot changing the rules in the name of Pointless Drama?

I know, this is overthinking things, but I believe there’s merit in having consistent rules that magic function by.  That sort of logical underpinning can make a world more interesting.  It need not be boiled down to a quantifiable science (though that might be interesting), but a bit of logic and consistency can go a long way in selling something as fantastic as magic, something that inherently goes against our intuition.  Even if the end player/reader/viewer doesn’t get these rules explained explicitly, just the fact that they are there and that the creators use them is a boon to the presentation.

On the other hand, capricious, chaotic, unpredictable magic has its place, too.  I just think that authors, game designers and worldbuilders should put a bit of thought into how and why magic does what it does instead of just making random stuff up and changing the rules as they go.  Maybe that’s a level of Batman-crazy preparation that we typically only see in someone like Tolkien and his linguistic and historic backgrounds of Middle Earth… but I think it’s worth it.  It seems to me that having that sort of underlying superstructure makes a magical world cleaner and more interesting, if only because it’s easier to be immersed (you’re not always asking “wait, what?” as you play along) and easier to expand (known rulesets are easier to follow, or break as occasion demands).

If nothing else, looking at how things work can provide story hooks and opportunities to delve into a fictional world and issue exposition in new and interesting ways.  It’s a good thing to have readers/players/viewers wondering “how” and “why” if the answers exist and help build up the world… and it’s a bad thing if those questions just lead to plot holes and lazy craftsmanship.

Similarly, I’ve spent a lot of time reading about tabletop tactical games like WarHammer and WarMachine, and I’m developing one of my own I’m calling Zomblobs! that may well wind up being a sister game to another one I have in mind (the sooper sekrit *redacted* project), not unlike the mesh between WarMachine and Hordes.  I have a lot of ideas for tactical games, and it’s been a blast to try to make one and see if there’s something to those ideas.

Let’s just say that I love tactical and strategic games.  They run deep in my gaming DNA.

So when I heard that the BioShock guys were making an XCOM game, at first, I thought “great, a resurrection of the fantastic tactical game by some guys who have no small amount of game prettification experience!”.  After a bit of cursory research, though, my response was pretty much the same as Shamus’ over at Twenty Sided and Jay’s over at The Rampant Coyote.  In short, it wasn’t quite the Darth Vaderish “NoOoOoOOO!”, but it was pretty close.  I had to go and play the original (I bought the whole bunch of them on sale over at Direct2Drive, also available on Steam, and conveniently on sale today), just to wash the 2K out of my brain.  Shamus later followed up with this lovely extended rant, and I found myself nodding along.  Seriously… this just bugged me so much I had to ignore it or slip into mild-mannered nerdrage.

…tangentially, I find it interesting that my flavor of nerdrage expression was to buy the original game in protest, even though I still have the CDs for the first two games in my library somewhere.  That probably borders on ineffective.  This might also be why my efforts to resurrect the Chrono series by buying ‘Trigger on all platforms and playing the OST for CT and CC every week isn’t doing so well.  Anyway…

Yesterday, it was with much happiness that I found out there is a team of intrepid indies working on a game they call Xenonauts, a little gem that looks to be nicely faithful to the original X-Com.  While I haven’t bought in yet, Minecraft is the only other game I’ve spent money on while it’s still in development, and I’m sorely tempted here.  Maybe I’ll get it after passing on a few more junk food runs (my gaming budget is what I might have spent on junk food).

Then this morning, Firaxis pulls a vaguely mean move and announces their own resurrection of the X-Com name.  I like Firaxis.  I trust them, at least for now.  I think they might actually understand X-Com and be able to bring it into the 2010s.  That sure has the potential to put the bootheel of Bigger Business on the Xenonauts team, though.

As ambivalent as I am about Firaxis maybe poaching indie efforts, both teams really are poaching the X-Com name in the first place, so I can’t get too fussy about it.  If anything, the competition between the two could be a healthy thing, making for better games.  I do hope that the Firaxis effort doesn’t destroy the livelihood of  the Xenonauts team, but mining nostalgia is a dangerous game.  (Never mind the IP legalhounds and shenanigans that come up with things like the Chrono Resurrection project.)  The squishy territory covered by tribute, homage, mimicry and plagiarism is a minefield.

May the true inheritor of the X-Com throne rise up!

…but if they both flub it, will someone else please try again?

…and I dearly hope that the 2K iteration doesn’t become the most successful one.  That would just be… sad.

UPDATED with more info at the following pair of articles,

Why Firaxis Loves X-Com

First Screens and Details

Short story long, I now have a handful of coupons and a pair of games to give away, and nobody obvious to give them to.  (I’m keeping the lumps of coal.)

Steam Stuff

For the next few hours, Terraria and the Portal games are on deep discount (and I highly recommend Portal and Portal 2), so those coupons aren’t much use at the moment, but they will be someday.

So… how to decide who to give them to?

Well, for Cogs, a great little sliding tile puzzle game with delightful steampunky overtones, how about this?  Whomever makes the gearflake that my panel of elite judges likes the most will win Cogs.  Instructions for how to make a gearflake are in my Steampunk Snowflake post from a little while back, but don’t just take that pattern, try something new, a variation on the theme of “gears and snowflake”.

For World of Goo, a fantastic puzzle/building game, I’m looking for a good practical way to make some goo of my own, for some Zomblobs! promotional experiments.  The person who finds me the best recipe for homebrew goo suited for my use will win the game.  Specifically, I’m looking for some sort of goo that’s partially translucent, mostly gelatinous, but able to hold a shape well enough that it could be used as a board game piece, about the size of a standard chess pawn.  Sort of a stronger, more durable JELL-O, nontoxic, of course.  I’ll need to be able to put it into a mold for shaping, so it will need to be mostly liquid but be able to “set” and be removed easily from a mold (so the final surface can’t be sticky, and it shouldn’t stick to a plastic or ceramic mold).

As for the coupons, as specific as they are, it’s probably best to just say that whomever speaks up first for a specific coupon will get it.

Entries for the Cogs and World of Goo contest should be sent to my contact email, tishtoshtesh in the gmail system.  If you’re the first one to speak up for a coupon (speak up here first, then if you’re first, email me), please send your Steam handle to me at that same email, and I’ll get in touch.

For all of these, it looks like I’ll need to be logged into Steam and so will you to perform the trade (really just me giving you the widget), so it may take a few days or so to get the timing right, just because of scheduling, but I’ll do what I can, again, communicating via that gmail address.

Entries for the game contests have until January 15th, but the coupons are up for grabs immediately.

Happy New Year!

2012 should be a good year.  It’s either the end of the world or the release of Zomblobs! and either should prove interesting.  (I’m still formatting the rulebook PDFs for the Zomblobs! beta.  I meant to have it done last week, but circumstances prevented it.)

I’m talking about PvP.

One of the things that bothers me most about PvP in most modern MMOs is the rather extreme power differential.  It’s absurd to have level capped characters be orders of magnitude more powerful than rookies.  Yes, PvP is all about exploiting imbalances and the whole Sun Tzu thing, but when you have a max level character who literally cannot be harmed by a newbie, and who can in return slaughter newbies by the score at whim, you’re not dealing with PvP any more, you’re dealing with bullying.  That’s what “ganking” is, pure bullying, something corrosive to a gaming community.

I actually don’t mind class imbalances or other world-based spatial tactical advantages.  That’s sort of the point of open world PvP.  It seems to me that the venerable Sun Tzu would be all for taking advantage of whatever you can find.  Still, I’m not convinced that he was imagining a world like we see in these fantasy games.

I’m not blaming players, either.  The notion of  ”fair play” is a squishy one, as is “honorable combat”.  Players play with what they are given.  No, I’m arguing that designers really should make PvP most about player skill and minimize leveling, gear and other influences as much as possible.  Or maybe, just maybe… set up equalizers.

What about guns?  According to some, they are the great equalizer out here in monkeyspace.  Sure, a brute like Mike Tyson should be a clear winner in a PvP bout with a waif supermodel, but what if she’s packing heat?  A .22 slug to the brainpan should stop even a bull like Tyson.  As the old argument goes, “an armed society is a polite society”, and that’s even possible in a merely magical world, as I noted a while back.

How might that work in a game world?  It’s not like gankers would sit back and agree to let their marks have teeth.  That’s against their design.  Maybe it has to be reactive.  Maybe outclassed victims simply get a revenge mechanic.  Bullies can be haunted by players they bother, and may be “shot” into incompetence at the most inopportune times.  Maybe this means a root/snare, maybe it’s a nudge off a cliff, maybe it’s a stun that makes the bully drop to level 1 for a while in hostile territory.  Maybe make it automatic and persistent, but victim-defined, so that the bully can’t just log out and clear it.

Maybe players always fight at the same level, no matter what.  PvP fights are always based purely on class balance, and stats are normalized.  How to do that on the fly might be tricksy, true.

…or maybe, just maybe, make your power differential smaller to start with.  That’s what I’d do, but that’s really a “ground up” design, not something to adapt to midstream.

So why do I care about all of this?  Well, if the newest WoW expansion is going to make war between factions more personal, it may well be more relevant in that game.  For better or worse, as WoW goes, so goes a significant undercurrent of the MMO genre.  PvP is a niche pursuit at best, I think, but if the goal is to get more players involved, it has to make sense and not be a frustrating mess.  Open world PvP has the potential to make the world of an MMO interesting and exciting… but if it’s just a cycle of bullying, it’s really not much fun for anyone but the bullies.  I find that… unfortunate.

Edited to add this sweet post by Shamus over at Twenty Sided from a while back, just as a tangential bit of great writing and game design philosophy:

GM Advice: Guns and Dice

I used to play with others who were better at the game than I am.  They inspired and taught me how to play better, and the most fun that I had playing was when I was learning new tricks.  Lately, just because of life’s various circumstances, I am almost always the best player in the groups I find myself in.  I’ve almost stopped learning… and the game simply isn’t as much fun any more.

Indeed, sometimes it’s flatly painful.  I see players making bad mistakes and flagrantly ignoring rules of the game.  I think of myself when I was starting, and remember that I learned to mold myself to the rules and improve my abilities within their parameters.  When I learned how to play, you could only touch the ball with parts of your body above your waist.  Period.  These days, pretty much anything goes, and you can hit the ball with any part of your body.  Many players consequently wind up with lazy footwork and presence of mind, and simply kick the ball if it moves low, leading to weaker ball control.  Similarly, serves once were faults if they touched the net.  These days, if the ball hits the net on the way over, it’s still legal. The game is much sloppier as a result, and that’s the official play (college rules).  If it’s sloppy at higher levels, it’s perfectly natural to see sloppy play at lower levels.  Core rules like carrying and double hits are routinely ignored.  It’s… disheartening.

Sure, players are still having fun, but it’s just not the same game that I grew to love.

I miss seeing players who want to get better and really exert themselves to do so.  Too many are content to just play as an excuse to socialize instead of really strive for excellence.

…sound familiar, grumpy MMO veterans?

Of course, I find myself on the lower end of the skill curve in MMOs, especially running dungeons with groups.  I’m still learning the best way to approach things.  Thing is… I am still learning, still making the effort.  (At least, when I feel like playing an MMO with other people.)  That’s why I’ve started tanking a little bit in the F2P WoW, and will try a tank in RIFT.  I’m expanding my skillset, exploring the game mechanics.  I’m simply not content to just sit back and do the same old thing all the time.  My aspirations are higher than just getting by.  This is simply part of my psychological makeup.  I can’t coast for long, I have to keep trying to be better.

Sometimes my simple lack of skill can come across as a bad attitude, but they are not the same thing.  I’m not looking to coast or be carried, I’m looking to pull my own weight and then some.  The numbers don’t always tell the whole story, though, especially when situational awareness is important.  (Say, when I’m playing as a Hunter or Mage with enemy control/disruption tactics… my damage dealing can fall off as I attend to tactical problems, but if I don’t pay attention, well, bad things happen.)

I wonder if this sort of systemic gradual decay of skill is expected in any long-running endeavor.  …but then, I see the three point line extended in the NBA, and I think there’s some push for skill at higher levels, at least in that game.  I don’t think that descent into a morass of lazy play is inevitable, at least not institutionally.  Socially, however, in order to appeal to an ever-widening playerbase, some “wussification” of the ruleset is going to happen.

So it’s not really all that surprising to see the tension in MMO design; they want to be supremely social games, living or dying on their communities… but there will always be those who want to push the envelope and actually excel at something.  The two impulses are strongly opposed… and I don’t think we’ll ever really reconcile the two.  I actually don’t think we should try, either, because that lukewarm water in the middle just doesn’t make anyone happy.  Those who just want to coast don’t function on the same wavelength as those who want to push themselves.  Whether or not that’s healthy is perhaps a sociological debate, but in the meantime, I’m convinced that a game simply can’t cater to both groups with the same content or mechanics, and there need to be better ways to get people together based on playstyle and aspiration, rather than by level, loot or some other extrinsic motivation.

I’m on record as being… unimpressed with the concept of OnLive.  I stand by my earlier reticence and my own preferences against online gaming in general.  (Yes, I play online games still.  They aren’t devoid of value, the pros just have to outweigh the cons.)  Still, one should never sniff a gift fish, so it was time to dive in and see how well this OnLive thing works out.

Turns out… well… partially fudge, partially onion, and the two don’t exactly mix.  (Apologies to the fudge-covered onion lovers out there.)

Pros:

• I got Arkham City for $1 thanks to a promotion for new accounts they were running.  Can’t argue much with that.  Probably a fluke of timing, but hey, maybe they will do that again.
• A decent selection of older games for the $9.99/month subscription plan.  For that, you can play any game on the list as long as you’re subbed.  If you’re a fan of subscription services and games, it’s probably a pretty good deal.
• Speaking of the library, A Kingdom for Keflings is part of the library as of very recently, so go check it out!  (I built many of the buildings for that game.)
• Small footprint.  The games all run on remote servers, so the client is little and fast.
• Digital library.  All the advantages and downsides of that, as with Steam and its ilk.  In a nutshell, they track and host the data for you, but your data is in their hands.
• Nice tech crutch.  You really only need a good internet connection and a screen to play on.  The hard parts of staying on the cutting edge of gaming, the expensive hardware rigs, are covered by the OnLive guys.  This is a pretty cool idea.

Cons:

• You need a really good internet connection.  As in, 3mbps minimum and low ping of 25ms or so.  Those are somewhat pricey beasts, and if you’re in a remote area with third rate ISPs, you’re just out of luck.  If you’re getting one just for gaming, the cost/value ratio changes a bit.
• You need a HDTV-capable display.  I use my computer monitor since I don’t have a HDTV, and since it’s a plain old 4:3 screen, the widescreen HDTV content is bordered by black on top and bottom.  (The bars don’t actually bother me, but they might bug some players.)  Maybe you already have a spiffy HDTV, but if not, those are pricey beasts, too.
• Because it really needs another bullet point, you need a really good internet connection.  Lagspikes will kill your gaming.  Low speeds will kill your gaming.  ISPs that are interruptable by phone calls will kill your gaming if anyone uses the phone.
• Demos only last 30 minutes, but they are time-limited, not content limited, if you’re into that sort of thing.  I’m not, as I’ve noted before, so I list this as a con, tempered by the realization that you can play the demo over and over, it just resets your play.
• Somewhat underwhelming library.  I suppose this will get better over time, so I can’t count this too harshly, but at the moment, they don’t seem to have a huge selection of games.  It’s decent, but it’s not comprehensive.

Other:

I got Dirt3 with my gift coupon.  It’s a solid, fun rally racing game, but about the only other one on the service that I even partially cared about.  OK, Bastion is on there, and I will get that someday, but I prefer to get it on the XBox, ditto with the LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean.  The library of games they offer isn’t very big at the moment, but I imagine it will get bigger.  Since I don’t buy or play M-rated games, that naturally cut me off from a quarter or so of what they offer, too, but that’s a limitation on my end, not theirs.

…but what about the performance?  How does it play?

Well… it’s geared to make the play more important than the visuals.  As in, if the lagmonster strikes and you lose some speed on your internet connection, the visuals degrade instead of the play response, at least, as much as possible.  You’ll see artifacting that you’d see in a JPG still frame or MPEG videos; blocky, blurry, smudgy visuals.  This will be flatly intolerable for some players, but I actually didn’t mind it as much as I thought I would.  This is partially because of how I play and the two games I have.

Y’see, Batman’s Arkham City is a grungy, dystopic place, beautiful in its decay in a terrible sort of way, not unlike the photos of Detroit’s urban decay that I noted a while back.  It’s great to just look at… but a lot of the gameplay of Arkham City is about moving from place to place and beating up thugs.  A fair chunk of it is played in “Detective Vision” as well.  As such, when I want to take a look at the scenery, I just stop and look.  The system doesn’t need as much processing or communication power when you’re stationary in the world, so the visuals improve when you stop to look around… which is a nice confluence of circumstances.  When I’m fighting, the important part is seeing the motion and UI cues for counters, and those are perfectly serviceable, even if the overall visuals degrade a bit.  When I’m soaring around town looking for stuff, I’m sure I’m missing some details, but for the most part, the sense of motion is key, and that translates pretty well unless there’s a very strong and/or protracted lagspike.

Dirt3 has similar quirks.  As in, the bulk of the play is in the middle third of the screen, and there’s a speed blur effect around the perimeter anyway.  It’s all about control, and as long as that stays tight, the game plays really well.  On the longer Rally races, you have a couple of assists in driving anyway, like automatic gearshifting, a radio caller to tell you what turns are coming up, and a ghostly green “optimal race line” overlaid on the track to follow.  Of course, these are optional, and I’m playing in Easy mode, so I’m not sure how well a purist hardcore gearhead (I use that term affectionately, not derogatorily) would like it.  For me, though, it plays about as smooth as slightly sugary butter, which is a key component of fudge, so I’m happy with it.  When I’ve missed a turn or botched a move, it always feels like my fault, not the game lagging on me.  (I’m still not really good at dirt track racing, and the Gymkhana thing, heavy on the drifting and precision control, is very cool, but beyond me at the moment.  It’s like trying to steer a cinder block on ice with turbo-powered hamster wheels.)

So… color me at least partially impressed with what the OnLive people have been able to do with the tech.  I do still think that the high speed internet requirement will make it a niche product, but with luck, as the tech gets better, it will be more useful to more people.  It’s not a perfect system, but it really is playable, which is more than I expected initially.

And hey, I’m playing a sweet driving game, Dirt3, and the so-far-phenomenal Arkham City, and I’ve only spent $1, not counting the computer or internet costs (I’m not using the miniconsole, though, without a HDTV… maybe I’ll come back and review that someday).  I can’t complain much about that, either.  Yes, there’s still that blasted internet tether, but for the price, I’m pretty happy.

I actually wish MMOs would take a page from the OnLive pipeline, too.  I don’t mind if the visuals compress a little bit as long as the play stays at peak.  I know, the tech is different, but I can’t help but wish that there were a similar on-the-fly tradeoff in MMOs to allow play to stay sharp, even if the data transfer rate isn’t constantly snappy.

… in a late-breaking bit of news, apparently OnLive works on tablets and smartphones.  At least, some of them.  That’s an interesting extension of the technology, though I’m not sure I’d want to play Arkham City with touch controls.  Dirt3 might work fine, and our A Kingdom for Keflings PC port was designed for single click use (so it should translate to touch nicely) but not every game can be converted well to the touch interface.  (Random plug for a pair of great articles that enumerates many reasons I don’t like touch tech… A Brief Rant and Jobs’ Legacy)

Steampunk Snowflake 1.0

I wasn’t sure that it would work… and I could do a lot more detail with a laser cutter… but for an experiment, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  I’m obviously cheating on the spans, and I’ll make one with better meshing teeth later.  It really should get the brass and grunge treatment, but the shape is what’s important for this initial test.  I’d really love to make one with working gears via Shapeways… maybe once I can carve out a bit more time.

Happy holidays!

Edited to add:  Now, with more sense!  This version of the Gearflake has one more gear at the center, and the shape is entirely gears, no support struts like the first one.  Way too much fun to make these, I tell you.  The great part is that they don’t need any weird laser cutting tools, you can do these just with paper and scissors.  All the cuts come in from the sides of the snowflake seed.  (I’ve got a picture around here somewhere of the folded/cut versions of these…)  Sure, the gears aren’t machine precise, and there are errors thanks to the paper folding thickness… but still, these are great to see take shape.

Gearflake 2.0

This is the pattern to make the Gearflake 2.0.  Once you have the snowflake seed wedge, you take this pattern (maybe fudging the teeth if you want it a little more precise) and cut out the dark parts.  Leave the blue-grey parts.

Thanks for stopping by, especially if you’re here from epbot.com.  Many thanks for the link!

Gearflake 2.0 Pattern

…aaand here’s version 3.0.  Each iteration comes with another layer of gears.  I’m running into cutting resolution issues and slight warping (though that can be cleaned up with iteration), so I’m not sure if I can go a layer deeper.  I guess we’ll find out.  The basics are simple enough, alternating sides for each successive gear arc when plotting them out on the ‘seed, as you might note on the 2.0 pattern.  I’m sure I could use Illustrator or even Photoshop to nail down some more precise gearwork… these have been just arcs I’m guesstimating by hand.

This is probably way more fun than it should be.  It’s just papercutting after all… but it’s also math, art and a little bit of whimsy.  I love playing in that space.  It’s a somewhat eclectic Venn intersection, but it’s satisfying to see things come together.  Left brain-right brain combinations and all that.

Gearflake 3.0