Grammar Crisis

I came across the following link, and now have a minor crisis because while the sentences in question are certainly meh, I don't understand how the diagrams prove in more explicit terms their mehness. This is a crisis because there are elements of those sentences which makes sense to me and I am afraid that this means I'm a terrible writer.

http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/post/2068786394

Cataclysm: Second Impressions

I've had more time with the expansion, a full week in fact, and some of my initial concerns have smoothed over significantly.

Since my previous entry on the subject I have come across a number of cases of simply good music which, though it wasn't always zone/area type specific, were memorable. While I feel a number of pieces remain below standards I'm much more willing to give them some grace as they constitute a lesser proportion of the game's music than I previously thought. It still stands that even though there is more good music than I supposed not all of it catches you in the moment the same way previous expansions have.

Archaeology as a profession is both mindless and addicting. My only frustrations with it so far have come from game glitches which have prevented me from pursuing it to my fullest abilities.

The greatest improvement and crowning achievement of the expansion, however, is that thus far the dungeon encounters have learned from all of the mistakes made in Wrath of the Lich King and offered an experience which is difficult in a way which rewards more than bigger numbers and optimizing spreadsheets.

The subtle difference in Cataclysm is that the challenges often require you to spend most of your time trying to squeeze your primary role in between other important actions. There are also a few straightforward numbers checks, but those are fine when they aren't the majority of encounters. Having to think on your feet, make decisions on priorities, and trust your own skills is extremely refreshing after two years of largely brainless play where failure means you should just come back later with different equipment.

We'll see if this bears out in the larger scale raids, but I'm very hopeful and optimistic.

Raging in a Civilized Fashion

So one of my favorite games, League of Legends, was patched today and the community is reacting. That doesn't bother me; people will always have an immediate, visceral impression when encountering new information or changes to old information. What does bother me is:

"If it kills jungling its 100% terrible patch the game seems incomplete without jungle serving a real purpose. + All the warding and map awareness crisis control etc that a jungler brings."

I'm not sure this can be called language. Even if I inform you that "jungling" is a style of play within the game deciphering those two(?) sentences is mind bending.

Communicating an idea is easier when it doesn't require your audience to have repeated cranial encounters with a hard surface.

Cataclysm: Launch and Initial Impressions

Cataclysm launched yesterday, an event I stayed home for. Both of the previous expansions drew me out of my hermetic cocoon to local video game emporiums in the dead of night. This latest installment offered a digital presale, allowing one to download the expansion ahead of time and be ready to play the moment it was all enabled at 12:01 PST on the 7th.

Well, in theory anyway. In actuality digital download combined with Blizzard's plan to delay the activation of Cataclysm content on all servers until 12:01 PST meant that rather than hourly waves of players shuffling in as their ability to race home from stores in their respective time zones allowed, the entire playerbase attempted to log on simultaneously.

The end result invites a host of titular puns relating to Blizzard's beleaguered login servers.

My first impression of Cataclysm is that the leveling experience is less immersive than was the case in Wrath of the Lich King. This impression is deeply colored as my first 24 hours of Cataclysm play all came in the first 24 hours of Cataclysm, whereas it took nearly a month for me to put a similar amount of time into its predecessor. Still, I can't shake the feeling that the Wrath of the Lich King leveling experience was more polished.

Oddly, I think geography is a major culprit. In previous expansions the high level zones were segregated from the old zones on a new continent. This empty slate made it easy to learn the new geography and feel a sense of progress as one essentially explored the uncharted land from end to end. It's an effortless process that happens naturally for everyone except those truly gifted at getting lost.

Cataclysm's content is completely different, scattered around the old world seemingly at random. At the same time, the expansion revamped old areas and essentially redrew the geographic map. The effect is essentially akin to dramatically altering the system of roads around your house and at the same time moving all the notable landmarks around, all overnight. It's a cartographic nightmare that creates the constant, inescapable feeling of being lost despite knowing exactly where you are.

That and trying to compete with a thousand other players for quest objectives makes it significantly harder to immerse oneself into a game.

As a final note, and pun, I'm less impressed with Cataclysm's music thus far compared to the previous expansions. The music in both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King set tones and themes for each zone very effectively, with signature sounds for each. You could often tell simply by the music what zone you were in. Cataclysm has sadly been far more hit and miss, with the majority of music being at best nondescript.

Just so you don't get the wrong impression, it's been definitively enjoyable thus far. These are just the matters which stood out most in my mind initially.

Cataclysm Comes

Less than 24 hours until the next soul-sucking release from Blizzard.

Grey Matter

Megamind is worth seeing. It's not particularly revolutionary, but it's funny, mildly inspiring, and well done. If your kids are very young there are definitely a number of scary moments.

That's my "yes I'm still alive, really" moment of the month.

Observations

A few things that have caught my attention lately:

1. I'm not really all that excited about new game releases. There's been a new Mario Galaxy, a new Dead Rising, and more in recent months, but the only games that have excited me are expansions on games I'm already playing. I suspect this is because I have a large back catalog of single player games I haven't finished, and it's tough for me to justify buying anything new when I have all these excellent games yet to play.

2. On that same note, I need to bring my Wii with me the next time I am out of town on business. I have yet to find a hotel that doesn't have chronic internet problems. Bonus points for only having wireless connections available, for said wireless connections to crap out every five minutes for forty seconds. For the love of Zelda just either provide internet that is reliable or just don't bother, you'd save me the heartbreak of constantly trying to get it to work and I could just go to sleep or drive in circles or something more productive than wrangling with a network as stable as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

3. I really don't mind losing games to mistakes I make, or even to mistakes other make. Yeah, it's not ideal and some would say it sucks, but that's how competitive games go, and how challenging single player/cooperative games should be. I really, utterly, and completely despise losing games to lag or other technical failures. It feels analogous to someone flipping a board game in your face, only you don't have an actual person to lecture on sportsmanship or blame for it. There's just this powerless feeling of futility to comfort you as you inwardly rage and boil.

Communication Fail

How hard is X > Y > Z to understand? Someone tell me, because I used that exact format to try to communicate a concept on a forum, almost exactly as you see it there. Somehow I keep getting responses akin to:

"So basically X is the largest, then Y, then Z? What about if we're doing subtraction instead of addition?"

"Okay, so if I want to subtract one of these numbers from another of these numbers and get a negative number, which numbers do I subtract from each other?"

"Which is bigger, X or Z?"

Those are just the posts which seem to have bothered to read my maxim. I am going to cry myself to sleep tonight if I see one more person post who doesn't understand the concept of the "greater than" symbol.

Better than Christmas Presents

Blizzcon in two weeks. My head shall asplode.

Surprise

Here's a surprise!

Original Source: Time Killer

It can be a little hard to see what's going on since my blog is all black, but use arrow keys and space for fun and humor.

Behind the Times

One of the odd things about living alone is that I no longer feel terribly inclined to play single player video games. When I'm playing, I want to be playing with people because I have plenty of time to be alone later.

The consequences of this are a giant backlog of games I haven't finished, and a strange indifference to new releases. Dead Rising 2 and another Front Mission game launch today, and the only reason I know is because someone posted a picture of a giant stuffed bear with an automatic weapon duct taped to it.

James Brown

I've started exercising every morning 6:30-7:00 PDT, followed by a shower. I've gone nine consecutive days so far. The real test, however, will be whether I am able to keep this pattern going during travel/sickness etc.

In the meantime, I feel good.

Still Alive

Duke Nukem Forever is actually being released. My mind has exploded.

I'm having random flashbacks to my childhood education. I think I can trace my obsession with logic to losing an argument over whether something costing a quarter in a penny store is expensive back in first grade.

Blizzcon in a little over a month. Bliss.

Omelas

If you haven't read this short story, I suggest you do. It's a really good philosophical story with any number of potential angles to discuss it from.

StarCraft II: Launch

Briefly, my experience so far has been awesome. That said, I need to point out something hilarious:

There's basically a war going on at Amazon.com over whether StarCraft II should be rated 1 or 5 stars. People are posting reviews essentially to counter the other group, and both groups are uprating their own reviews while downrating their mortal foes'.

Personally, if a repulsive man makes a beautiful work of art in a blameless way, I can still dislike the man without such feelings affecting the appraisal of the art itself.

Movies: Knight and Day

The Bourne Trilogy of spy thrillers rank among my favorite films. It is probably their influence which makes Knight and Day, a romantic comedy/spy thriller hybrid, so amazing.

Knight and Day has all of the elements of an excellent spy thriller. There's the dashing secret agent, resourceful and clever, fighting against larger forces by himself. There are car chases, massive gun fights, intrigue, betrayals, and double crosses. Then, just to totally mess with the formula, instead of throwing in a femme fatale they inject a fairly normal woman who is totally unprepared for anything that is about to happen to her in the movie.

The twist on the formula not only works, it's simultaneously hilarious and engaging. While almost everything in the film can be mapped to various cliches from both genres, the combination of the two reminds me of such films as To Catch a Thief or How to Steal a Million. Knight and Day catches that classic up to the present day beautifully and seamlessly.

I highly recommend this film. It's only PG-13, it's over the top, and it's absolutely enjoyable.

Grace

Some time go Roger Ebert, the acclaimed movie reviewer, wrote a piece stating his opinion that video games were not, and could not be, art. As one might expect, video game enthusiasts came out in droves to dispute this assertion.

More recently, Ebert wrote a follow up in which he had the incredible grace to concede two very important points, and essentially the entire debate. Having not played any video game his opinion, by his own admission, was effectively irrelevant. Moreover, because he had not and was not interested or willing to play video games, he could not make an informed argument against them being, or eventually becoming, art. In our modern age of stubbornly holding to opinions as though they were immutable and informed absolutes, this public declaration of ignorance stands as a beacon of refreshing honesty.

The honesty of this article comes in many forms and facets. It's not a matter of the article being forthright or factually correct, but the manner in which Ebert engages the discussion and, by extension, himself. He takes an honest look at the counter arguments, he takes an honest look at his own mistakes, and with honesty and humility admits the irrelevancy of his own opinion yet also acknowledges that it is still his honest opinion. This response is faultless, and a shining example of how to gracefully engage a debate.

Sadly, in today's world this careful, thoughtful and introspective approach is misunderstood. Many comments on this follow up from gamers indicate the exact type of predetermined observational bias which they decried as Ebert's error. Rather than reading and attempting to understand, they have read and attempted to directly translate.

It's an odd comparison, but I think it apt. Translators, at their best, are not concerned so much with wording as they are with communicating the meaning of one language and culture into another. That requires, above all else, understanding of both one and the other. A direct translation, however, is only concerned with running the words or text through a set of preexisting rules. The result of this second process is warped and alien, bent to the preconceptions or ignorance inherent in the rules themselves.

I find it odd that these comments even bother to declare that Ebert is a jerk, or that he's still a stuck up old fart or any other silly insults. The man admitted, as we had wanted him to from the moment the debate started, that he is not an authority on video games, that he can't declare them to not be art, and that he can not know whether they are or will become art. What more do we want? Is he to prostrate himself before the gates of E3, kiss the feet of Nolan Bushnell 7 times, and swear to never defile the sacred wakka wakka wakka ever again?

Gamers have in this article a great victory. Don't ruin it by being exactly the type of person we complained Ebert was.

In Disguise

Transformice may be the single most amazing Flash game to ever be created. Why you ask? Watch:

Philanthropy Kills Kittens

At least, that's what you'd assume if you read the comments about this amazing article. Seriously, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are pledging to give at least half their respective net worths to charity over their lifetimes, and are encouraging others to do the same. Somehow this warrants comments like (comment quoted verbatim):

"This is typical of billionaires with absolutely no vision for the future. This is the easy way out, they don't have to work they set up these organizations and write checks and reap the tax benefits. WHy don't these so called brilliant people set up an organization with billions to provide funds for entrepreneurs and small businessman to start companies, or grow their companies to hire people, create jobs and new product so we won't need charities and end this entitlement mentality. They can set up charities for those who really need it.

Yes, obviously Bill Gates and his wife shouldn't be lazy and just throw money at charities. They should set up their own organization that will provide new jobs. I have an idea, they can call it the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They should get right on that.

More poignantly, I understand that there's an entitlement mentality in the United States that many people find abhorrent (I do too!). I don't understand why this goes hand in hand with being oblivious to the many, many circumstances in which people simply need financial or meaningful support to lift them out of crushing poverty and other terrible situations. If everything was as easy as standing up on our own two feet, we wouldn't need parents past age 3.

Game Design: Choice, Options

Choice is an important concept in game design. I would go so far to say that choice is the essential difference between movies and games; choice puts the audience in control.

There is a lot I could say philosophically about choice, its impact on gameplay, and how developers both use and abuse it. However, today I'm going to zero my focus on a very specific and limited aspect of choice, options.

Options are generally overlooked as an aspect of game design. Who cares about the player's ability to tweak graphical, audio, and controller settings when there's a game to be made? Yet, options define the player's experience almost as much as any other aspect of the game.

For example, a bad mapping of actions to the buttons/analog sticks on a controller can make a game unplayable. Despite this, with surprising frequency many games only implement the bare minimum for controller settings. In such cases you might find one or two preset button layouts with a single toggle for inverted look on the analog sticks. If a player does not find these preset layouts comfortable, intuitive, or enjoyable the game is ruined.

It is therefore critical to allow players to customize these types of user interface issues to their specifications. Just as a movie must be in focus, and a book must be printed legibly, a game needs to have a user interface that does not separate the audience from the medium. Options go a long way in attending to the huge diversity that exists in personal preferences.

So, let's examine a few examples of options whose presence or lack thereof added to or detracted from a game.

Case 1: Tetris

An interesting aspect of Tetris is the options it had available. At the time very few games had options, and those that did were fairly limited. Tetris, however, had options for changing music, adding a handicap, and even starting at a more difficult level. All of these helped the replayability of the game immensely. As spiffy as the music was, being able to turn it off helped preserve sanity after several hours of play. Once you got very good, being able to up the ante early on erased the slow, early part of the game. Tetris, and a few other pioneering games, redefined what it meant to have options.

Case 2: Smash Brothers

Smash Brothers is a game renowned for its customizability, with one exception. While all other items and settings have always been ridiculously thorough and deep to the point of insanity, each game in the series has overlooked adding an option to select which Pokemon will come out of the pokeballs.

This is a very, very small detail, and detracts only a little from the series, but has nonetheless remained a very obvious opportunity that remains overlooked. Two of the games even feature challenge modes where the developers restrict Pokemon themselves, tormenting players who with to have that power.

Case 3: Battle.net 2.0

Battle.net 2.0, and specifically RealID, is the catalyst for this entry. RealID is the ability to "friend" other players on a first-name (rather than anonymized codename) basis, allowing you to see them as online no matter what game they are playing. The ability to track good friends and relatives in this manner while you're playing games is a neat feature.

The problem with RealID is in its options. RealID is an all or nothing feature-set. You can't friend someone through RealID and not have them appear in your list of friends with their full name followed by their account name. You can't choose not to have your list of RealID friends visible to all your RealID friends. You either add friends through RealID and subject yourself to all the features you like and all the features you don't like, or you opt out entirely.

This failure to break RealID down into separate, optional features has been a major sticking point for many players. In fact, it has been such a problem during testing that the developers had to intentionally break other options in order to force players to test the RealID system. RealID simply wasn't something the testers wanted to use because they couldn't turn off the features they didn't like.


The thread which joins these cases together is a simple principle: options should allow a player to do something they want. Tetris players will often want to get to the exciting fast-paced portion of the game, and so giving them an option to skip to that portion makes sense. Battle.net 2.0 users may not want to identify their friends by their full names, or for their friends list to be readily visible, and so failing to provide an option to disable these features is a critical oversight. Players that can mold the game to their needs will always be happier than players who are forced into specific implementations.

So when deciding on options, be very careful when making assumptions about player needs. Considering everything individually, and whether it makes sense for certain things to be immutable or joined together. If a deadline is your reason to avoid implementing an option, so be it, but make certain that you have at least that as a reason rather than nothing at all.