CCP Stakes Claim to a Kilimanjaro

CCP developers Solomon, Diagoras, and Punkturis were also not willing to let themselves be kept down. Just they were looking to fight back against gravity by climbing to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is the highest point in the African continent. Frankly, anyone who climbs a mountain with a name that sounds like “Kill-a-man” deserves an awful lot of props.

This is, honestly, quite a feat. That is even more true more so considering that most game developers I know won’t even go out to parties during GDC much less scale a mountain. Still, there are always those occasional few that break the mold and show the world that us geeks can be out-going and althetic (even if it isn’t most of us) by practicing aviation, playing rugby, climbing a mountain, or even going (back?) into space. CCP themselves seem like a fairly adventurous company at that. While out at the Game Developers Conference this year, I noticed they had a photo album on one of their tables that showed off one of CCP’s company trips. The destination? Morocco.

That and free beer. I checked that out, too.

I stuck with WarCry for a good while and became a news reporter for them. I covered something like 10 or 11 MMOs, and quite a few major ones at that. I also picked up a column that revolved around game design and online communities. Technically, it was similar to what I did on the Vanguard and EVE sites overall, save I didn’t have to worry about managing forums, drawing in new readers, holding contests, etc… etc… It was less responsibilities, but also a much, much broader scope. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, too. While I didn’t enjoy my stint as a game reviewer over at MMORPG.com very much – not because of the site, but simply because it drained the enjoyment out of playing games – it was still nice to get back into game media. That was even more true, given the fairly dull day-job that I had at the time.

I’ve found that game journalism has a strange sort of appeal to me, and before I joined on with Bigfoot Networks, I was actually considering trying to make a full career of it. While I love being a Community Manager, and I actually prefer it, I think game journalism will always have that draw in it. I really liked covering news for a wide variety of games. I also really liked attending conferences and tradeshows, and holding interviews with game studios and developers. It was a blast.

In a way, it is actually why I have such a hard time keeping the blog updated with new posts. What I find myself really wanting to post about is… well, game news, but I don’t really want this site to focus on that. There are plenty of great places to go if you just want to find out about what’s new in gaming already, after all.

… And no, there was really no point to this article. Thank you for wasting five minutes of your life here. Please do so again!

GDC is now something akin to a marker for me. While the first industry event I ever attended was E3, it was at GDC that I feel I found my true calling. I knew I wanted to get into the industry, but I just didn’t know where it was that I fit. I didn’t like programming overly much, I wasn’t a great artist, and design wasn’t something you just waltzed into – nor was I sure I wanted to dance that dance. However, I attended a few panels on community management and social gaming, and everything became clear.

Since that time I graduated from college and actually got myself a career in community management and social media. During the first year of this job, I found myself back at where I felt it all started: at GDC. This time though, I wasn’t learning about what I wanted to do with my life, but instead I was actually living my dream. That was an accomplishment that felt like none other.

This year I wasn’t attending any actual sessions, but instead I ran a booth. Considering I’ve been to E3 as media and GDC as a student, actually working the show and running a booth was a totally different experience. Instead of holding interviews, I was the one answering questions. Instead of learning about every company I could find (well, I had plenty of time to walk the expo floor, so I did that too), I was doing the informing. It was different, and it was an awful lot of fun. I met a ton of very cool people and I am absolutely looking forward to the next show.

What do I mean by contradictory? Well, here are just a few examples:

I want large, open, living, breathing worlds that lets me set my own goals.

But I guess I don’t. I like having some sort of a goal to work towards, as much as I’d really like to say that the journey is what I find fun. And, really, I think that is a very truthful statement, but without some sort of a goal, I seem to be unwilling to go out and have fun for the sake of having fun. Yet, if I’m allowed to choose my own goals, I have a very difficult time doing so. That’s why I never enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies much, because I could never figure out what I wanted to do.

I want players to be the ones that I’m working with and against to change the world, and share a dynamic setting that is far from dull and static.

But I guess not. EVE Online is a fantastic game that I highly recommend, and as much as I love the basic idea of the game, it has real issues for me. One of the biggest is the ‘atmosphere’ of the game. It is set in cold, harsh, uncompromising, and uncaring space: exactly like the game itself. Even when I am teamed up with with other players, there is always the fear of betrayal, and there is always the constant undefined conflicts. While it is very interesting, I know deep down I prefer a more cooperative environment.

Playing off both of those combined, I would like to see PvP that is more realistic and open, instead of artificial scenarios.

But I know that isn’t true. On some intellectual level, yes, I love the idea of open PvP. Yet, similar to the reasons above, I prefer a more cooperative environment. More importantly, it is extremely rare for any open world PvP fight to be anything remotely fair. I prefer my fights to be fair and fun, and not one-sided.

I want to have a high level of interactivity and dependency on other players.

But I guess not to the extent I use to think, at the very least. I like soloing often enough, simply because I like to play much more casually these days. I love grouping all the same, but I actually have never cared for raids. Yet, if I’m mostly concerned with playing in small (although frequently changing) groups of people, I almost question why I play MMOs to begin with. Ultimately, I guess what I mostly want is to have some sort of meta-game-esque thing that I’m working on with other players. For example, building a city in Star Wars Galaxies was pretty cool.

I would like to see MMOs incorporate more story into them.

Which… yeah, that one is pretty much true. Yet, it seems like most MMOs that try to do that do it very wrong. I don’t want to be the lone hero – because I know that a few thousand other people also just rescued the princess and defeated the big-bad-dude. Ultimately, I want a story that makes me feel like I am among the heroes, and the other heroes are the players – and I don’t want to feel like every accomplishment I make in the game is what everyone else has done as well, as near-impossible a it is to avoid that. Basically, I don’t want to be the lone hero, but I don’t want to be just some other random person.

Ultimately…

I want a game that is a themepark, so it can give me some sort of a goal, but is also an open world, and gives me the freedom to go out and do what I want. It should have open and more realistic PvP, but PvP that isn’t one-sided and unfair. I want to be heavily tied into playing with other people and have what they do affect me in a way that makes me feel like I am playing a game with thousands of people instead of a single-player game – but I should be able to do things on my own as much as I want. I would like to see an MMO with a real story, but one that doesn’t revolve around just me. It should make me feel like I am participating in it with many people, and in a way that still makes me feel like I am impacting things.

So, basically, I want something similar to this:

All styles of games, be they sandbox, themepark, open pvp, battlegrounds, or whatever, they all have problems. I idealize open, sandbox worlds, but I’ve never played one that I actually liked. Again, I love EVE on an intellectual level, but I know it isn’t for me. I think themepark worlds are pretty dull and far from an ideal, but I’ve spent more time playing them than sandboxes, and I’ve enjoyed some of them quite a bit. However, I always get bored with them rather quickly.

I imagine I’m not all that alone in my desire for this game of great contradiction, but I also don’t think that it is really feasible to create something like it. The only contradictory part that I think could really be fixed is the story one, and maybe the player interaction one. Neither would be easy to do.

When it comes down to it, many Free-to-Play games are not well designed for the consumer. You can probably see that in games like Allods, which despite apparently being a very solid MMO, has been taking a lot of flack because of their microtransactions. I think this isn’t because people aren’t unwilling to pay, but rather because people aren’t willing to pay for certain things.

Don’t charge for small things that people don’t value beyond the fact that they make the game more convenient, playable, or are considered required by the player-base.

Ultimately, a lot of Free-to-Play games charge for the wrong things. That is to say, they charge for things that the player-base considers to be ‘required’ to play the game, such as the ability to get rid of massive stat-loss from death or extra bag space in Allods (sorry to keep picking on you guys, but you’re timely!).

Bags usually aren't awesome enough to charge for.

Honestly, I don’t think a bag is worth ten cents. It is just a bag. Heck, I have a hard time spending money on a bag in real life, much less a virtual one. That isn’t something that people value. It also isn’t something that adds to the game experience. Rather, it is something that they feel they need to buy to keep playing. It is a requirement to buy, not a fun thing that enhances their experience.

While many games that have items like these in their cash shops, they do tend to provide ways to get these items using in-game means. The in-game means are often gruelingly difficult to actually do. I understand why that is the case, of course. If it is just as easy to grab the item in-game as it would be to pay for it, then certainly no one would pay for it. But this highlights the other flaw:

The purpose behind games are for them to be fun and enjoyable. Your core game, without any add-ons, needs to be that. If your game is free-to-play, I shouldn’t have to engage in microtrasactions to enjoy it.

That might seem extremely unfair to the developer – and it is! A lot of work goes into creating a very polished, good, and fun game. However, I’m only going to drop money down on a game that I actually like and find enjoyable. If I have to keep shelling out real cash for upgrades that keep my character viable, I am probably not going to have fun with the core game, so I am less likely to keep playing.

I do think that there are ways to implement microtransactions correctly. While I haven’t spent overly long playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, and while there are flaws, I think part of their cash shop is a good example of Doing It Right. While they still have items that you can buy which buff your character somehow, generally speaking, their core game experience is playable and fairly fun.

While players shouldn’t have to pay to enjoy your game, they should pay for things that extend and broaden their enjoyment of the game.

Dungeons and Dragons Online provides a decent core experience. You have a character that can be all but two of the available classes and races. The things you cant be aren’t really overpowered. You can play through a fairly decent amount of quests and adventures that are supplied to you, free of charge, when you first install the game. You can, if you want, live off of that content and nothing else – although you will probably repeat dungeons often enough for lack of content, but they are, in theory, designed to be fun enough that you can repeat them. That’s fine, and I can live with that.

Wait, why would I want to pay to be like this guy?

However, if I’m a little bored of the content, I can buy a new module. A new module features new quest lines, new things to fight, new traps to work past, and new puzzles to solve. It is, effectively, a mini-expansion at a mini-price. I already pay for expansions to subscription-based MMOs, and I have a hard time saying that extra content isn’t worth money. It is obvious to me that someone took the time to craft dungeons and write plots, and it gives me a few more hours of fun times in the game. A “+5 Longsword of Ass Kicking” on the other hand may sound cool, but it doesn’t give me anything new to experience after I’ve worn out the content of the game. Why would I waste money on that?

Players need to be able to decide when they want to spend their cash on their own terms. You shouldn’t be deciding that for them. Let the players have as much control as possible.

You know it sounds like an epic adventure.

When I reach level 20 I don’t want to feel required to buy the “Bag of Carrying More Worthless Junk”, because more things drop from mobs at that level, and I’m expected to carry around a boat-load more stuff than I did a few levels before. However, I’m totally cool with purchasing the “Adventure Through the Grue Infested Caves of Darkness” adventure pack because I like the sound of it and I’d rather like to play through it. I don’t have to, but it sounds, well, fun. That’s the point of gaming after all, right? The freedom to decide when to drop my cash is important to me. Sometimes I can afford it, and other times I can’t. I also like the ability to choose what content I want to buy, and what content I don’t want to buy. I can tailor the game to my needs – which is actually really unique to Free-to-Play models.

The things you sell should encourage you to keep providing new content to your players.

It takes no time at all to create that “+5 Longsword of Ass Kicking” but it does take a while to create a new set of dungeons and quests. When you’re selling the latter, you’ll be encouraged to invest the time and effort to actually create new content for the community. When you’re doing the former, you have much less motivation to do so. Heck, I’ve played a ton of MMOs with subscription fees – which partly exist to fund live teams to keep producing new content – only to get nothing out of them until a $30 or $40 expansion comes around.

While I’m certain this isn’t a complete list, these are certainly key things that I would like to see future Free-to-Play MMOs work to implement. Also, this isn’t to suggest that Allods is a bad game, or that DDO is some sort of gaming Messiah (it isn’t). Rather, the former is just one of many games that I don’t think handle microtransactions correctly, while the latter is an example of a game that partly does it right – and partly does the same stuff that every other game seems to.

Serving up new adventure packs isn’t necessarily the end-all-be-all, but is rather one idea that I think works pretty well. What are some other ideas? Well, I’ll worry about coming up with them if someone pays me to do so. But I like being a community manager, so you’ll have to figure that out yourselves!

You may recognize the name Gods and Heroes from a few years back. It was a game being developed by Perpetual Entertainment, the studio that was also developing Star Trek Online before they closed their doors. Whenever a studio closes, it is always a sad. Developers find themselves out of work, and the games that they were making are often lost to the void. Of course, Star Trek Online was saved from oblivion by Crytpic, and now it appears that Gods and Heroes, a game that was literally weeks away from going live when the company folded, has been revived by a local Austin studio, Heatwave Interactive.

Gods and Heroes in action

Gods and Heroes was a pretty interesting sounding game, and it had more than a few eyes of potential players locked onto it. While its return from the dead may indicate it, it actually had nothing to do with the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, but instead was a game set in ancient Rome that blended both historical enemies and mythological creatures. It was also interesting in that it focused on the players not just controlling their own characters, but also up to four ‘minions’ as well, which is similar to what we see in Star Trek Online now.

Of course, Gods and Heroes likely had some technical issues that Heatwave will have to work out, and there will also be the question of how much they will decide to change the game to better meet the current market, such as providing a graphics update, or other changes. Interestingly enough though, they’ve actually gotten hold of the license, as well as all of the work done on the game so far, so it is possible they may not stray too far.

While there were plenty of jokes about how Perpetual Entertainment didn’t exactly live up to its name when it folded, I find myself starting to disagree. While the studio may have closed, both projects have managed to live on now. It will be interesting to see how this one develops, and it is also just nice to see another MMO being worked on out here in Austin.

(Also, I respect anyone who gets the reference in the title of this post.)

As much as I’d hate for it to seem like I’m coming out of blargging-retirement just to talk about how Stargate: Resistance and Stargate Worlds developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is filing for Chapter 11, and it really is more of a coincidence than anything, I practically feel required to talk about this one.

I’ve been skeptical about Stargate Worlds ever since I first heard about it. I enjoy Stargate. It was a fun movie, followed by a very fun show, and then followed by two other shows of varying quality. By no means have I wanted to see the game fail, but I’ve never really felt that Stargate had the right set up for an MMO. When Cheyenne Mountain reportedly ceased paying their employees, I became even more skeptical. Then there was the whole lawsuit thing over unpaid bills, and… well, CME’s history hasn’t been smooth so far.

Now it appears that they are filing for bankruptcy, which is usually not a good sign. That said, the company has stated that they are restructuring and the development of both of their games will not halt.

That means we might have a chance to step through the gate in spite of this.

Maybe.

The Bigfoot Networks' Guild Partners Program Launches!

While I normally don’t make a point of posting up actual work-related stuff – then again, I’ve not made much of a point to post up anything lately, sorry! – I am definitely making an exception for this one. I’m pretty happy to say that our new Guild Partners program, my little pet project, is officially launched!

Bigfoot Networks has been sponsoring professional eSports teams for quite a while now. If you aren’t familiar with eSports, they’re basically professional gaming teams that often make a living just by gaming in major tournaments as professional players (or athletes if you will). However, most gamers aren’t actually part of an eSports team – in fact, a very, very small amount are. So, I wanted to do something that would allow us to interact with more with gamers of a wider variety – ie: people who are in guilds and clans for a variety of online games.

The program basically has us advertising the teams that partner up with us on our site in a variety of ways, as well as getting them involved in some events as well. The idea is to help get the teams more well known, draw in new recruits, as well as to have a lot of fun. Of course, it does also help us get our name out better as well.

The program officially launched this past Friday, but I’ve already received a number of applications – and from some pretty large groups, too. I’m excited to see how this goes.

Granted, none of my pictures really have anything to do with the main point of this blog, but it is a hobby I enjoy and I’m trying to do more of, and I think getting them up here will help. Plus, I still think the site looks pretty plain, and more stuff like this might help.

First off, I should probably come clean: Meebo doesn’t really suck. Actually, it is a very useful tool. However, the problem is that I can’t see it, or similar services, as anything more than a simple tool. Meebo is very useful if you are on a computer that you can’t install applications on – or would feel rude to install applications on, like if you are using a friend’s computer. Beyond that though, I see no reason to use it.

Meebo suffers from a major problem that I feel is pretty common among web-based applications: they’re trying to be … normal applications as opposed to taking advantage of what the web could provide. Meebo doesn’t reside on my desktop and should darn well act like it persists on a separate server.

Right now I am running a desktop application that does everything that Meebo does, plus extra features on top of that. It is no more difficult to use, with the exception that it does need to be installed – which isn’t a big deal, given that installing new programs is a pretty common thing for most computer users. Heck,  it even saves what services I use, login information, and what settings I have across any computer I use.

But what if, just maybe, when I closed my browser on a web-based IM application it just set me to ‘away’ but kept me logged in? What would happen if I were able to open the service on another machine, in another browser, and still have every conversation that was opened still open – with new messages that people sent me while I was away? Suddenly, web-based IM services would have a leg-up on desktop applications.

Admittedly, that would turn Meebo into a light version of Google Wave – which does exactly what I was referring to, and effectively hybridizes (casual) e-mail and IMing – but with the ability to easily connect to networks that people actually use.

So, that is my request for web-based applications: Make more use out of the web, don’t pretend you’re a desktop application, and just because I close the window you’re in doesn’t mean that I want you to stop functioning.