First things first, I know I haven't updated in ages. I've been in Germany and I'm also on the job hunt!
In my down time I recently rented Alan Wake, a game I at least enjoyed the story to, but coupled with my rental of Dante's Inferno before my trip I think I've been served a very large dosing of game design decisions I think we need to start doing away with:
Collectibles
I'm not at all against the idea of collectibles in a game when a main theme of the game is exploration. I loved the bobble heads in Fallout 3, not to mention each one was hidden in a very interesting location that was fun to explore and revealed an interesting story. However, in a game where exploration is either not facilitated well by the level design, controls, pacing or story it really blocks the flow of the game.
Alan Wake really pushed this too far, there are 100 coffee cans to find, 25 signs to read, 106 manuscript pages to find, 25 can stacks to shoot over and 14 television shows to watch and 15 supply crates to find. WHY the hell is there so much shit in this game? I can let the manuscript pages slide as they are absolutely integral to the story and I always enjoyed when I found one as they tell a small story. However, all the rest leads to immensely stupid situations.
A game like Alan Wake that has such a strong story really just makes the player want to focus his or her energy on experiencing that. When Alan is in a hurry to get to a location, wouldn't it make sense that he just drives like a bat out of hell with his headlights searing the darkness to his next objective? Why yes it would, but I would love to read the story where Alan stops at every house along the way to see if they have one of the 100 coffee thermoses he's trying to collect.
This is just bullshit, tedious busy work and there's always that "Oh god maybe I missed one" thought that creeps into my head. It becomes frustrating when 9/10 times I wander off and find nothing, but damn that 10th time I found a fucking thermos ensuring I scour the entire game for this garbage. The kicker is, what do they do? As far as I can tell, not a damn thing. If you find them all you get an achievement but besides that... nothing! At least the Fallout 3 bobble heads gave your character permanent buffs.
I mean really, these things to not NEED to be in the game. I'd rather finish a game and be done with it instead of thinking "Oh I could go back and collect this or that." Really though, unless you LOVED a game, who the hell does this anyways? I have no desire to return to Alan Wake. I know the story, it's told and done. Why would I replay to collect pointless crap that gives me nothing? If you beat Assassin's Creed, do you really feel the burning urge to run around and collect flags for hours and hours? No, because it's not fun. It wasn't fun the first time and it won't be fun now, so lets just take things out of games that make them tedious and frustrating and just keep the shit that makes them fun
This is the kind of tripe hate and it is absolutely padding your game for length. A scene that would normally take 5 minutes can now take 10 or 15 as the player has to scour every edge and corner of the god damn map if they want to find all their shiny objects. If it's not padding the game then it's...
Pointless Achievements
God do I hate these. One has to ask themselves, if it weren't for achievements would Alan Wake have had the coffee thermoses? My bet is no, Remedy is much better than that. Did Assassin's Creed really need the hundreds and hundreds of flags all over the fucking place? NO It didn't, just focus on working the achievements into the game and not working your game into the achievement system.
Again, if these were all relevant and pertinent to the game then I like them. It is nice to get recognition of we beat a boss fight without taking damage or complete a section very quickly, but rewarding people for doing stupid shit like "travel 1,000,000 kilometers" or whatever it was in Tales of Vesperia is just so utterly axillary to the game it's a just idiotic to include. The kicker is unless you essentially tape your move stick down once you get the airship (furthering my theory that every JRPG must have an airship) for about 6 hours you probably aren't going to get this achievement. There is no reason you would ever need to normally move this far and on the flipside, it is not something to be commended as there is nothing impressive about it. Though, at least it didn't have...
Jumps in Games That Just Shouldn't Have Them
Again, another thing Alan Wake is guilty of. Face it, if your character's jump animation is just awkward and strange it is immensely cruel to put jumping situations into the game. I'll admit that Alan Wake was fairly good about this, safe for a few select parts but can we PLEASE stop doing this?
This also goes hand in hand with the "really hard jump" situation I find in games all the time. Now for me, Dante's Inferno had way, way too many of these. I fucking swear that every other jump was one of those jumps that you have to perfectly time your double jump while traveling at the right angle away from the surely stupidly positioned camera in a location you can't change. Again, if your game is a platformer than obviously jumping is a must. If you are sort of an exploration type game (metroid, castlevania, etc.) then hell yes, let's jump away because I KNOW the jump mechanics will be solid in these games.
Again back to Dante's Inferno, I died in pitfalls in that game about 95% of the time. So much so that a screen came up "You can adjust the difficulty in the options menu, would you like to?" NO! Go fuck yourself game. Is putting the game on easy suddenly going to alter the geometry of the map so that the ledges are closer together? Of course not, go to hell. At the very least the game LET you change the difficulty because I hate
Not Being Able to Change the Difficulty
Now, not many old games had this at all and it's a pretty modern idea in gaming. However, it's one that I think makes a lot of sense. Especially with the trend of games seeming to become easier and easier, "hard" is almost like the new "medium". The problem is, when you get a difficult game and assume you can handle it on hard and then an hour in when things really kick off the game decides it's going to stomp your ass to the moon because your on hard. Should the player really need to start a new game on "medium" and lose their progress because of something they really couldn't have ever known? They didn't know how hard "hard" is and had no way of knowing. Though on a related topic I also dislike...
Locked Difficulties
Don't do this bullshit. Alan Wake was a huge offender in this regard. Not only because it locked Nightmare difficulty until you beat the game on medium or hard, but because it also only dropped certain manuscript pages in Nightmare difficulty. The manuscript pages provided a lot of back story and motivation into the characters, which in my opinion makes having some of them as hidden collectibles a very strange choice. But come on, locking out back story because I'm not playing on the hardest mode which is ALSO locked from me? Get over yourself, game.
Padding games out
Maybe you had your funding cut, maybe the publisher wants the game to be longer. Whatever the reason, padding a game out just leads to tedious situations.
No, actually, I do not want to fight every boss monster in the game in some ridiculously contrived "gauntlet" at the end of the game. Nor do I want to play through all the levels again but in reverse. Nor do I really relish yet ANOTHER "suddenly the room collapses and this door is blocked, go walk for 40 minutes the long way around." A game should be as long as it needs to be, and not longer.
Stuff That Isn't Your Fault
An alternative title to this could just be "Other Bullshit" but I felt that was less descriptive. I mean parts in games where you just yell at the screen "Oh, come on!" I think I'll just list a bunch of stuff here.
Enemies that can stunlock you to death or near death. This is just classic cheesy "make the game hard" garbage. If an enemy can combo me to death you may as well just do away with the health meter so we can stop pretending I have more than one hit.
Shit that happens that you can't react to. like an enemy just spawning behind you and then one shotting you, thanks game.
Characters that just don't seem to DO what you tell them to. When I say switch weapon, do it NOW; don't take all damn day. Likewise when playing an RTS, when I damn well tell you to use an ability you USE it.
Having little enemy/environment variation. This is important enough to probably warrant it's own section, but really it's a very simple concept. People get bored doing the same thing again and again and seeing the same thing again and again. If you mix this up your game becomes much more interesting and gives more breathing room for extended combat sections.
Finally...
Bad Endings
Now, I don't really know why this is such a problem with a lot of games. I realize you all want to keep the bling bling sequel opportunities open and we of course HAVE to make room for the piles of inevitably shitty DLC to come out, but does all this really mean the game we all purchase needs to have such a terrible ending?
I want things to feel concluded, or at the very least concluded for the time being. A good metaphor would be to close a door, but open a window. We want the door (ie, the main story) to be finished but leave a hook (ie, opening the window) for the story to continue should sales be good enough. Movies and novels do this all the time when sequel potential is there so I don't know why we gamers get the hardcore shaft on things. Sometimes it doesn't even seem like we make it into the house that even HAS the door or the window.
Let's look at say.... Unreal 2. At the end of the game your main space ship blows up and every character on it but yourself dies in a horrible laser beam. Your stuck on the planet and then the game ends, see ya.
What the fuck is this? NOTHING is concluded, NOTHING is even finished. It's not even a cliffhanger, it's just kind of... a dead end. It's like the game just goes "Well that's all for you, we're done here - see ya!"
This kind of abrupt ending is not entirely common in games, but we don't need all the cliffhangers and ambiguous bullshit endings that happen all the time. Perhaps I'm just a prude, but I don't like endings where I need to "assume" things via sheer guesswork. If the main character dies just tell me so, don't make it so he might be dead or might not be because we don't know if we can afford a sequel. And hell, you know what?
Don't Retcon
I'm looking at YOU Starcraft 2!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Deus Ex: Sepia Revolution
In case you didn't see it there is a new Deus Ex "gameplay" trailer out. While it actually simply looks like a cinematic trailer rendered in engine, I guess some of it could be gameplay. For your consideration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNQR0spE_s&feature=player_embedded
Now, why in the hell is it so yellow?
I thought we got over this desaturated ultra bloom thing in video games. Though, I guess this isn't really desaturated as it is just make everything yellow and orange.
This looks really stupid. Why in the hell can't we simply have COLOURS in games anymore? Does making your game with less colours make it more hardcore? I would love to hear Edios Montreal's reasoning for this, as I'm quite positive it must be monumentally absurd.
Really, that's the thing to keep in mind. Someone or even a group of people collectively chose to make the game look like this. Why? What possible reason is there? Such a bland colour choice just makes the whole damn game look bland. Gears of War started to bore the hell of me with it's washed out testosterone fueled bullet circus and I have no doubt the boring world in Deus Ex is going to start to grate on me as well.
You know, in REAL LIFE colours exist. Even in metropolis like cities. For your viewing pleasure I've mocked up some comparisons for you all below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNQR0spE_s&feature=player_embedded
Now, why in the hell is it so yellow?
I thought we got over this desaturated ultra bloom thing in video games. Though, I guess this isn't really desaturated as it is just make everything yellow and orange.
This looks really stupid. Why in the hell can't we simply have COLOURS in games anymore? Does making your game with less colours make it more hardcore? I would love to hear Edios Montreal's reasoning for this, as I'm quite positive it must be monumentally absurd.
Really, that's the thing to keep in mind. Someone or even a group of people collectively chose to make the game look like this. Why? What possible reason is there? Such a bland colour choice just makes the whole damn game look bland. Gears of War started to bore the hell of me with it's washed out testosterone fueled bullet circus and I have no doubt the boring world in Deus Ex is going to start to grate on me as well.
You know, in REAL LIFE colours exist. Even in metropolis like cities. For your viewing pleasure I've mocked up some comparisons for you all below.
Toronto Regularly
Toronto in the Deus Ex World
There, doesn't that look MUCH more realistic?
No, of course it doesn't because real life is full of vibrant colours. I want to feel like I'm in an actual world in video games, and these disgusting and moronic colour pallets do nothing but put a huge barrier directly in the way of this goal.
Just bring back colours, the gamers miss them!
No, of course it doesn't because real life is full of vibrant colours. I want to feel like I'm in an actual world in video games, and these disgusting and moronic colour pallets do nothing but put a huge barrier directly in the way of this goal.
Just bring back colours, the gamers miss them!
Monday, July 12, 2010
Check out my Let's Plays!
Hi everyone, just a quick update. Incase you didn't know (which you probably didn't) I have a "let's play" channel up now. If you don't know, a Let's Play is basically you watching me play a game. As boring as that sounds and may be, I've recorded audio simultaneously as I play of me giving my commentary on the game.
Right now is just an hour of dead space up. Check it out below if you're interested!
http://www.livestream.com/weaverschannel
Right now is just an hour of dead space up. Check it out below if you're interested!
http://www.livestream.com/weaverschannel
The T word
With blizzard now revoking their plans to force realID on the forums, I thought I'd do a short piece on the word on everyone's lips these days "Troll" and how it's overuse is REALLY pissing me off.
I remember way, way back in the mid to late 90s someone who was "trolling" a forum/nesgroup referred to someone who was what in modern times you would call a lurker. Back then a troll was someone who was ALWAYS on the boards and always watching everything that happened, just as a troll watches everything that passes over their bridge. How the term came to mean what it means now; someone who posts inflammatory remarks for the sheer purpose of getting a reaction out of someone, is beyond me. But hey, if that's what the word means now then so be it.
The problem now though, is that EVERYONE with a fucking opinion is a troll. This is not what a troll is and I want the people of the internet to stop throwing this fucking word around like confetti. Allow me to share with you an example:
Let's say the following posts ensues
Hi everyone, I just saw popular movie of the week and I really don't see what all the hype was about. I thought the acting was sub par, there was plot hole X in the second act. I still thought the effects were good and the action decent, but I don't see why everyone is going crazy about this movie; what did you like or dislike about this movie? Maybe I missed something!
In the current state of the internet I've seen people reply to posts like this and say:
"OP, stop trolling, the acting was great and this movie is awesome".
NO! WRONG! BAD! You stupid shit, the original poster is NOT a Troll, he or she is someone who simply holds an unpopular opinion about something. The original post contained no HINT of wanting to offend and get people worked up. In fact, the only troll in the thread is the SECOND poster who is calling OP a troll. His remarks are inflammatory and opinionated.
Thus, let us lay down the SINGLE law of troll detection:
JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE VOICES A DIFFERENT OPINION FROM YOUR OWN DOES NOT MAKE THEM A TROLL.
I've seen this happen so much on the internet I can't fucking believe people roll with it. I've seen people called trolls because they point out some of the flaws in Halo with well reasoned and structured arguments, whereas the people who call them trolls get internet high-fives from their like minded friends.
This doesn't mean trolls don't exist, going back to Halo just because I do not like the game, even I would agree someone posting "Halo is an AWFUL game, I can't believe you all like it" is a troll through and through. There is no structure or logic to the argument beyond sheer opinion and is clearly designed to attack people who old the opposite opinion. Since opinions are subjective it's arguing nothing and is designed to get people in a flame war.
If there is one thing you should take away from this, always remember the law of troll detection!
I remember way, way back in the mid to late 90s someone who was "trolling" a forum/nesgroup referred to someone who was what in modern times you would call a lurker. Back then a troll was someone who was ALWAYS on the boards and always watching everything that happened, just as a troll watches everything that passes over their bridge. How the term came to mean what it means now; someone who posts inflammatory remarks for the sheer purpose of getting a reaction out of someone, is beyond me. But hey, if that's what the word means now then so be it.
The problem now though, is that EVERYONE with a fucking opinion is a troll. This is not what a troll is and I want the people of the internet to stop throwing this fucking word around like confetti. Allow me to share with you an example:
Let's say the following posts ensues
Hi everyone, I just saw popular movie of the week and I really don't see what all the hype was about. I thought the acting was sub par, there was plot hole X in the second act. I still thought the effects were good and the action decent, but I don't see why everyone is going crazy about this movie; what did you like or dislike about this movie? Maybe I missed something!
In the current state of the internet I've seen people reply to posts like this and say:
"OP, stop trolling, the acting was great and this movie is awesome".
NO! WRONG! BAD! You stupid shit, the original poster is NOT a Troll, he or she is someone who simply holds an unpopular opinion about something. The original post contained no HINT of wanting to offend and get people worked up. In fact, the only troll in the thread is the SECOND poster who is calling OP a troll. His remarks are inflammatory and opinionated.
Thus, let us lay down the SINGLE law of troll detection:
JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE VOICES A DIFFERENT OPINION FROM YOUR OWN DOES NOT MAKE THEM A TROLL.
I've seen this happen so much on the internet I can't fucking believe people roll with it. I've seen people called trolls because they point out some of the flaws in Halo with well reasoned and structured arguments, whereas the people who call them trolls get internet high-fives from their like minded friends.
This doesn't mean trolls don't exist, going back to Halo just because I do not like the game, even I would agree someone posting "Halo is an AWFUL game, I can't believe you all like it" is a troll through and through. There is no structure or logic to the argument beyond sheer opinion and is clearly designed to attack people who old the opposite opinion. Since opinions are subjective it's arguing nothing and is designed to get people in a flame war.
If there is one thing you should take away from this, always remember the law of troll detection!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Blizzard has gone FUCKING INSANE
This post refers to the recent blizz announcement:
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041
Just a quick summary if you don't want to read the whole thing (it's not that long). Basically, for billing information you provide blizzard with your name and address, this information is now being instituted as what is known as a realid. Realid will be familiar with those in the Starcraft 2 beta. If you had an IRL or otherwise trustworthy friend, you could give them your realid and in game your actual name would appear in messages, notifications, etc. and not your online alias.
This was kind of a cool feature, not that I gave blizzard my real name at all (and I live on 123 fakestreet). However, soon blizzard is going to implement mandatory realid usage in their forums. This is INSANE. What this means is that whenever you post on the blizzard forums (I believe only WoW and SC2 will be affected) you have to use your real name, first and last.
as a bit of an aside, I'll let you in on a secret that I never really PLAN out blog posts. All of them are written from scratch in one go whenever I feel like it. I mention this because I have a TON of things to say about this. Normally, I can get in my head the general flow of the argument - but this time I really can't so I do apologize if this post is very jumbled, but I'll try my best to edit afterward.
WHERE I'M COMING FROM
Now, let's get a bit ethical so you can see where I'm coming from. I firmly believe that your information is yours. If you give it to a company I think it's wrong for them to just give it away - with few exceptions a company does not NEED to store your personal information. Government agencies are exempt from this but I think as they need to maintain birth records and citizenship information this really isn't an issue with most people. The bottom line here is that your information is yours.
REASONS WHY THIS IS BAD
1) Some people have unique names
As someone who has a unique name I'll admit my bias on this topic, but surely others can see the concern? When you can literally just google a name and find information about that person as their name is unique how in the fuck does Blizzard think slapping their name all over the forums is a good idea? What if thier name is in a public registry. WOOPS, now someone has their address and phone number. If someone finds and attacks another player via the WoW forums Blizzard had BETTER face a class action lawsuit for careless distribution of information.
I'll admit my knowledge of security/privacy is limited to one CS course I took, but even people uneducated in the field should notice the giant red flags with this. A solution could be to k-anonymize names. Keeping things layman, this means names which are uncommon become truncated. For example, if your name was Dan Xeeflux or something absurd like that, it would be truncated to something like Dan X. The amount of truncation refers to how many matches Dan X brings up. For example, Dan Xeeflu would bring up just as many as his full name, same with say Dan Xeefl. Eventually, you want to have over k matches, where k is a variable to determine the truncation amount.
HOW exactly Blizzard would accomplish this is beyond me, but it's not my ass in hot water when someone gets physically confronted in real life.
2) This could cost you a potential job
This post is slightly more speculation but hear me out, I think it's a good point. Employers are now using the internet to check out potential employees before they commit to a hire. You can google this if you really don't believe me but I've worked at a company that checked facebook for their applicant's names to see if they could dig up some not so nice habits like pictures of them using drugs or what have you and weigh it in their decision to even put them on the interview list. To be fair, we never found anything.
However, now when someone googles your name, maybe they'll run into your WoW account. Hell, maybe they'll google your name + WoW. WoW has a growing reputation as a massive time sink and for destroying lives, etc. You've heard all this before, and IMO it's no worse than any other MMO - but the stigma for WoW players is out there. If a company wants you to be work focused, they may feel WoW is a liability to your productivity and job dedication. If they believe you'll stay up till 4am raiding every night and show up to work haggard these are not points in your favor.
Again, having a more specific name hurts here, however what if your interviewer doesn't want to take any chances? Say you have a common name, they search it and find it on the WoW forums and figure "hell, let's not take any chances, that could be this candidate!" and just take you off the interview list? This is perhaps stretching plausibility, but i feel it's well in the realm of possibility.
3) This could affect your CURRENT job
This was something I hadn't even considered until I just read a few pages of comments on the topic. What if someone finds out you play WoW, but you're in a position of authority? My main concern is being a teacher or the like and having your students find out you play WoW. They could then find you in game and potentially harass you. Furthermore, it may lessen the air of authority a teacher should (imo at least) generally carry. If your students see you as a buddy buddy WoW player this may compromise your authority. Maybe they'll feel superior to you since they're higher level or have better gear? Do they not have a right to keep their online and real lives separate?
4) This game is about escapism and you're bringing it to real life
This sort of ties in with the last point, why is it so wrong for people to want to keep their online and real lives separate? The IDEA of WoW is to create an Avatar and be someone you aren't. To grow them and make friends in an online and safe environment. Blizzard is removing this and the two worlds are going to collide together in an ugly way.
5) This is illegal under Candian Law
Being Canadian I'm pretty familiar with our privacy laws. This seems to be in direct violation with Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Now I'm no lawyer, but one of the main ideas with PIPEDA is that "The law requires organizations to supply an individual with a product or a service even if they refuse consent for the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information unless that information is essential to the transaction"
Is disclosing my personal information essential to the service? No, it's not. Blizzard must then, at least for Canadians, give us the option of non disclosure. If they do not, I hope they see class action lawsuits.
6) Under certain situations this is illegal under US law as well.
What if someone is under witness protection? It is illegal for Blizzard to disclose ANY information about the name or whereabouts of this person in any fashion. This is probably a fairly rare situation, but with 11 million players could a few of them be under witness protection? A quick romp in the blizzard forums and I was actually very quickly rewarded by the first damn post in this thread:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1&pageNo=1
Never say it can't happen!
WHY THIS IS HAPPENING
I think this is really the kicker of the whole argument. ALL of this, all the risk, the shady dealings, the potential ILLEGAL nature of this whole damn thing is done for one reason, or at least under the guise of "combating forum trolls and stopping flame wars".
Oh yeah guys, this is a just cause here. Fuck your privacy rights, fuck your LAWS - our moderators are too lazy to clean up the forums themselves and we can't have people get hurt feelings on the internet - we'd rather players track them down in real life and MURDER THEM.
That's probably a bit extreme, but there is literally no REASON to do this. Now I hear you argue "the forums are OPTIONAL, they aren't required to play the game". Fair point. However, what if my game breaks or I run into bugs? Blizzard's job is to provide me with technical support, and to do that guess where I have to go? The forums. To do that I need to disclose my name.
I can also hear people argue that the threat of having your name out there is probably exaggerated. However, you can't deny that it doesn't at least INCREASE risk where risk need not be increased? Blizzard, I assume accounts are currently linked to in game characters, if you start putting IN GAME punishments, like block WoW access for 24 hours for forum infringements, I think people would get the message.
I can also hear people argue, and I would disagree, that there simply IS no risk at all in putting your name out there. Besides being utter bullshit, your logic also points to Blizzard's use of real names being pointless:
If there were no risk at all in having your real name on their forums, then how in the hell would that stop trolling and flaming? If people weren't scared of real world repercussions then the flaming and trolling won't stop. On the flipside, if Blizzard is adamant that it WILL reduce flaming and trolling they are flat out admitting that they're putting you at a direct security and privacy risk as that's the only reason I can think of someone would stop trolling and flaming.
NOTHING GOOD CAN COME OF THIS. If anyone at Blizzard is reading, I beseech you STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING!
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041
Just a quick summary if you don't want to read the whole thing (it's not that long). Basically, for billing information you provide blizzard with your name and address, this information is now being instituted as what is known as a realid. Realid will be familiar with those in the Starcraft 2 beta. If you had an IRL or otherwise trustworthy friend, you could give them your realid and in game your actual name would appear in messages, notifications, etc. and not your online alias.
This was kind of a cool feature, not that I gave blizzard my real name at all (and I live on 123 fakestreet). However, soon blizzard is going to implement mandatory realid usage in their forums. This is INSANE. What this means is that whenever you post on the blizzard forums (I believe only WoW and SC2 will be affected) you have to use your real name, first and last.
as a bit of an aside, I'll let you in on a secret that I never really PLAN out blog posts. All of them are written from scratch in one go whenever I feel like it. I mention this because I have a TON of things to say about this. Normally, I can get in my head the general flow of the argument - but this time I really can't so I do apologize if this post is very jumbled, but I'll try my best to edit afterward.
WHERE I'M COMING FROM
Now, let's get a bit ethical so you can see where I'm coming from. I firmly believe that your information is yours. If you give it to a company I think it's wrong for them to just give it away - with few exceptions a company does not NEED to store your personal information. Government agencies are exempt from this but I think as they need to maintain birth records and citizenship information this really isn't an issue with most people. The bottom line here is that your information is yours.
REASONS WHY THIS IS BAD
1) Some people have unique names
As someone who has a unique name I'll admit my bias on this topic, but surely others can see the concern? When you can literally just google a name and find information about that person as their name is unique how in the fuck does Blizzard think slapping their name all over the forums is a good idea? What if thier name is in a public registry. WOOPS, now someone has their address and phone number. If someone finds and attacks another player via the WoW forums Blizzard had BETTER face a class action lawsuit for careless distribution of information.
I'll admit my knowledge of security/privacy is limited to one CS course I took, but even people uneducated in the field should notice the giant red flags with this. A solution could be to k-anonymize names. Keeping things layman, this means names which are uncommon become truncated. For example, if your name was Dan Xeeflux or something absurd like that, it would be truncated to something like Dan X. The amount of truncation refers to how many matches Dan X brings up. For example, Dan Xeeflu would bring up just as many as his full name, same with say Dan Xeefl. Eventually, you want to have over k matches, where k is a variable to determine the truncation amount.
HOW exactly Blizzard would accomplish this is beyond me, but it's not my ass in hot water when someone gets physically confronted in real life.
2) This could cost you a potential job
This post is slightly more speculation but hear me out, I think it's a good point. Employers are now using the internet to check out potential employees before they commit to a hire. You can google this if you really don't believe me but I've worked at a company that checked facebook for their applicant's names to see if they could dig up some not so nice habits like pictures of them using drugs or what have you and weigh it in their decision to even put them on the interview list. To be fair, we never found anything.
However, now when someone googles your name, maybe they'll run into your WoW account. Hell, maybe they'll google your name + WoW. WoW has a growing reputation as a massive time sink and for destroying lives, etc. You've heard all this before, and IMO it's no worse than any other MMO - but the stigma for WoW players is out there. If a company wants you to be work focused, they may feel WoW is a liability to your productivity and job dedication. If they believe you'll stay up till 4am raiding every night and show up to work haggard these are not points in your favor.
Again, having a more specific name hurts here, however what if your interviewer doesn't want to take any chances? Say you have a common name, they search it and find it on the WoW forums and figure "hell, let's not take any chances, that could be this candidate!" and just take you off the interview list? This is perhaps stretching plausibility, but i feel it's well in the realm of possibility.
3) This could affect your CURRENT job
This was something I hadn't even considered until I just read a few pages of comments on the topic. What if someone finds out you play WoW, but you're in a position of authority? My main concern is being a teacher or the like and having your students find out you play WoW. They could then find you in game and potentially harass you. Furthermore, it may lessen the air of authority a teacher should (imo at least) generally carry. If your students see you as a buddy buddy WoW player this may compromise your authority. Maybe they'll feel superior to you since they're higher level or have better gear? Do they not have a right to keep their online and real lives separate?
4) This game is about escapism and you're bringing it to real life
This sort of ties in with the last point, why is it so wrong for people to want to keep their online and real lives separate? The IDEA of WoW is to create an Avatar and be someone you aren't. To grow them and make friends in an online and safe environment. Blizzard is removing this and the two worlds are going to collide together in an ugly way.
5) This is illegal under Candian Law
Being Canadian I'm pretty familiar with our privacy laws. This seems to be in direct violation with Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Now I'm no lawyer, but one of the main ideas with PIPEDA is that "The law requires organizations to supply an individual with a product or a service even if they refuse consent for the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information unless that information is essential to the transaction"
Is disclosing my personal information essential to the service? No, it's not. Blizzard must then, at least for Canadians, give us the option of non disclosure. If they do not, I hope they see class action lawsuits.
6) Under certain situations this is illegal under US law as well.
What if someone is under witness protection? It is illegal for Blizzard to disclose ANY information about the name or whereabouts of this person in any fashion. This is probably a fairly rare situation, but with 11 million players could a few of them be under witness protection? A quick romp in the blizzard forums and I was actually very quickly rewarded by the first damn post in this thread:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1&pageNo=1
Never say it can't happen!
WHY THIS IS HAPPENING
I think this is really the kicker of the whole argument. ALL of this, all the risk, the shady dealings, the potential ILLEGAL nature of this whole damn thing is done for one reason, or at least under the guise of "combating forum trolls and stopping flame wars".
Oh yeah guys, this is a just cause here. Fuck your privacy rights, fuck your LAWS - our moderators are too lazy to clean up the forums themselves and we can't have people get hurt feelings on the internet - we'd rather players track them down in real life and MURDER THEM.
That's probably a bit extreme, but there is literally no REASON to do this. Now I hear you argue "the forums are OPTIONAL, they aren't required to play the game". Fair point. However, what if my game breaks or I run into bugs? Blizzard's job is to provide me with technical support, and to do that guess where I have to go? The forums. To do that I need to disclose my name.
I can also hear people argue that the threat of having your name out there is probably exaggerated. However, you can't deny that it doesn't at least INCREASE risk where risk need not be increased? Blizzard, I assume accounts are currently linked to in game characters, if you start putting IN GAME punishments, like block WoW access for 24 hours for forum infringements, I think people would get the message.
I can also hear people argue, and I would disagree, that there simply IS no risk at all in putting your name out there. Besides being utter bullshit, your logic also points to Blizzard's use of real names being pointless:
If there were no risk at all in having your real name on their forums, then how in the hell would that stop trolling and flaming? If people weren't scared of real world repercussions then the flaming and trolling won't stop. On the flipside, if Blizzard is adamant that it WILL reduce flaming and trolling they are flat out admitting that they're putting you at a direct security and privacy risk as that's the only reason I can think of someone would stop trolling and flaming.
NOTHING GOOD CAN COME OF THIS. If anyone at Blizzard is reading, I beseech you STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sorry for lack of updates
Hi everyone!
I SWEAR I've been trying to update. I have about 5 unfinished articles that about some way through writing them just figured my argumentation for various things was not good enough so I just iced them. They still exist and I'll try to salvage bits from them, but just call it a case of writers block.
I'll hopefully have something up soon!
I SWEAR I've been trying to update. I have about 5 unfinished articles that about some way through writing them just figured my argumentation for various things was not good enough so I just iced them. They still exist and I'll try to salvage bits from them, but just call it a case of writers block.
I'll hopefully have something up soon!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
So, you're making a PC game!
For those of you who don't know me that well, first a little background on myself. I am a programmer by profession and I've recently obtained my full degree in Computer Science (in fact, convocation is this Friday). I just want you to know that the claims I make about programming are not coming from an unaccredited hack. I also want to warn you that while I'm going to try to keep things as high level as I can, I may get a bit carried away.
So, you're making a PC game! Congratulations! The PC is, by far, my favorite platform. In my opinion, it is unparalleled in flexibility and potential. It has lead the technological advances in gaming for nearly the entirety of our beloved hobby, only perhaps now being "beaten" by motion controls on the consoles if you really care about that kind of thing.
However, there are many things developers do poorly in the PC field and - in true rant style - you're going to hear about what are, to me, the biggest mistakes one can make when developing and especially porting a title to the PC.
1) Porting games late and expecting an avalanche of sales
If a game is ported to the PC 8 months after they're released with no care at all I don't want to hear "BAWWW I ONLY MADE 50 MILLION DOLLARS ON THE PC VERSION, WHY DIDN'T IT SELL?!?" Do you want to know why it didn't sell? Well I'll tell you why!
2) Assuming I ONLY play on PC
There seems to be this myth in the gaming industry that every market is entirely isolated. That there are PC gamers, 360 gamers, PS3 gamers, Wii gamers, DS gamers... etc. I don't really know if companies just like to do this for simplicities sake or whatever - but this is a dirty, filthy lie.
I am the proud owner of every current gen console, a great PC and tons of older consoles. Not everyone, of course, has such financial flexibility but you know who is the MOST likely to be a multi-platform gamer? PC gamers. My reasoning is fairly simple; if you have enough money to spend on a $2000 gaming PC then a $300 console is really not out of the question. Also considering all new monitors have HDMI ports in them a PC gamer, already comfortable in his or her domain, wouldn't need a ginormous TV for HD capable graphics.
So what am I getting at with all this? Well, when your PC port comes out months after your console release and you didn't even tell me a PC version was in development, the odds are if I wanted to play your game I already have. And, call me what you will, but I'm not buying it again - end of story. Thus, it is infinitely infuriating for me to read when a developer flips out when their PC games don't sell very well even though it's a port of a game that's a year old that I already own on the 360 (I'm looking at you EPIC with Gears of War). But that doesn't get to me as when it's combined with the next fatal error:
3) Your port is just terrible: Rebinding Keys
Maybe if you took care to port it, and I didn't already own it on one of the several consoles I own I would buy it. I'm sure PC gamers reading this are far too well aware of awful ports ruining our day. This, in fact, happens so damn often it's made us into the stereotypical jaded asshole who hates everything ever. Surely I can't be the only one whose erupted into an internet nerd rage when some gamer makes an insolent comment online and unleashed a thunderstorm of nostalgia and game history. Beware PC gamers, they're forged with fury and tempered with the hate of 1,000 bad ports, which is exactly what I want to talk about (the bad port part that is).
So WHAT makes a bad port? Surprisingly, it's exactly what makes any PC game bad. Let's take, for example, BLUR on the PC. You can't rebind your controls in that game.
Yes, you read that correctly. It's 2010 and You can't do something as TRIVIAL is rebinding controls. As a game developer and programmer by profession I can tell you this is an immensely simple thing to do unless your game engine is an architectural nightmare. In that case, you have WAY bigger problems.
It always boggled me, why are the standards of console games so low? Rebinding a controller is just as easy on a console, yet barely any console games do this. To the other console gamers out there, have you never played a game where you thought "Man, I wish the shoulder buttons were switched" or whatever? Wouldn't you love to be able to make the controller work exactly like you wanted to? I know I'd, personally, love this in some games I own.
4) Your port is just terrible: Field of View in FPS Games
5) Your port is just terrible: Screen Resolution
This is directly related to our frustum friend above. You see the X and you see the Y in the above picture? That is what will reflect your screen resolution, and just like field of view it is very simple to alter. I will admit, you can "squash" your view if you don't also play with the FOV when changing aspect ratios. It is easy to fix by adjusting the horizontal and vertical FOV correctly for your aspect ratio.
There is absolutely no excuse, at all, to not be able to run your game at any resolution unless it is a 2D game (as scaling sprites looks like crap). That was kind of one of the big deals about going to 3D, wasn't it? If you, like I do from time to time, boot up Unreal Tournament 99 to this very day, it detects every resolution your PC is possible of and adjust it's view frustum correctly.
That's right, I can play Unreal Tournament 1999 on my 1080p monitor at 1920x1080 and it's fantastic. It doesn't flake out because it's 16:9 resolution, it doesn't put black bars at the edges of the screen, it doesn't fuck up at all.
THIS GAME IS 11 GOD DAMN YEARS OLD. If your game can't properly adjust to a ratio, you have a LOT of problems and it is perhaps time to dig out those old linear algebra notes, as an 11 year old game engine has surpassed yours - this should not be happening. Poll the PC for what resolutions it's capable of and use those. Don't hard code in a list that's "good enough".
6) Your port is just terrible: User Interfaces
This is really the cream of the crop here. Maybe we can crack open the config files and change our keys manually. Maybe we can find whatever key the resolution is stored in and change that. Maybe even the FOV or we can just live with a low one - but we can't rewrite your UI. And if we can, we really don't want to.
Without going ultra UI theory here the Joystick is a relative positioning device and the mouse is generally a clutched positioning device. Keeping this simple, as I really can't teach an entire UI course in this blog post, developers should know what UI techniques work with a mouse and what work well with a joystick. Since every UI needs to fit a different purpose, allow me to just throw out a few generally good ideas.
Use drag and drop techniques when you can
Think of an inventory system in an RPG. On the console, if you wanted to swap two items how I generally see this done is you select one item, navigate to another with the joystick, and again press the button again to confirm the swap. On the PC I don't want to click the mouse button, go to my new item, then click again to swap them. This feels very wrong. Instead, how about I simply press down the button, fling the cursor over to the one I want to swap with then let it go? Drag and drop can make your UI 10x more intuitive when done correctly.
Remember, the mouse has more than one button
If a secondary, but quite common action can be bound to the right mouse button you should probably do that.
If the game doesn't use the mouse, your UI shouldn't either
I bet a lot of people will disagree with me on this. But, for instance, when I'm playing the racing game using just a keyboard, it's awkward to shift my playing position to use the mouse to navigate your user interface. I have no qualms with ALSO using the mouse, but it shouldn't be manditory.
Get those damn Xbox 360 Icons off my screen
I don't mind if I have a 360 controller plugged into my PC, but NOTHING says "this game is a cheap port" then when the main menu says "press
to continue" and to continue I press enter.
Well, that's about it for today! I hope you've learned something and it would bring me nothing to joy to see higher quality PC games in the future! Remember, we're not dead yet!
So, you're making a PC game! Congratulations! The PC is, by far, my favorite platform. In my opinion, it is unparalleled in flexibility and potential. It has lead the technological advances in gaming for nearly the entirety of our beloved hobby, only perhaps now being "beaten" by motion controls on the consoles if you really care about that kind of thing.
However, there are many things developers do poorly in the PC field and - in true rant style - you're going to hear about what are, to me, the biggest mistakes one can make when developing and especially porting a title to the PC.
1) Porting games late and expecting an avalanche of sales
If a game is ported to the PC 8 months after they're released with no care at all I don't want to hear "BAWWW I ONLY MADE 50 MILLION DOLLARS ON THE PC VERSION, WHY DIDN'T IT SELL?!?" Do you want to know why it didn't sell? Well I'll tell you why!
2) Assuming I ONLY play on PC
There seems to be this myth in the gaming industry that every market is entirely isolated. That there are PC gamers, 360 gamers, PS3 gamers, Wii gamers, DS gamers... etc. I don't really know if companies just like to do this for simplicities sake or whatever - but this is a dirty, filthy lie.
I am the proud owner of every current gen console, a great PC and tons of older consoles. Not everyone, of course, has such financial flexibility but you know who is the MOST likely to be a multi-platform gamer? PC gamers. My reasoning is fairly simple; if you have enough money to spend on a $2000 gaming PC then a $300 console is really not out of the question. Also considering all new monitors have HDMI ports in them a PC gamer, already comfortable in his or her domain, wouldn't need a ginormous TV for HD capable graphics.
So what am I getting at with all this? Well, when your PC port comes out months after your console release and you didn't even tell me a PC version was in development, the odds are if I wanted to play your game I already have. And, call me what you will, but I'm not buying it again - end of story. Thus, it is infinitely infuriating for me to read when a developer flips out when their PC games don't sell very well even though it's a port of a game that's a year old that I already own on the 360 (I'm looking at you EPIC with Gears of War). But that doesn't get to me as when it's combined with the next fatal error:
3) Your port is just terrible: Rebinding Keys
Maybe if you took care to port it, and I didn't already own it on one of the several consoles I own I would buy it. I'm sure PC gamers reading this are far too well aware of awful ports ruining our day. This, in fact, happens so damn often it's made us into the stereotypical jaded asshole who hates everything ever. Surely I can't be the only one whose erupted into an internet nerd rage when some gamer makes an insolent comment online and unleashed a thunderstorm of nostalgia and game history. Beware PC gamers, they're forged with fury and tempered with the hate of 1,000 bad ports, which is exactly what I want to talk about (the bad port part that is).
So WHAT makes a bad port? Surprisingly, it's exactly what makes any PC game bad. Let's take, for example, BLUR on the PC. You can't rebind your controls in that game.
Yes, you read that correctly. It's 2010 and You can't do something as TRIVIAL is rebinding controls. As a game developer and programmer by profession I can tell you this is an immensely simple thing to do unless your game engine is an architectural nightmare. In that case, you have WAY bigger problems.
It always boggled me, why are the standards of console games so low? Rebinding a controller is just as easy on a console, yet barely any console games do this. To the other console gamers out there, have you never played a game where you thought "Man, I wish the shoulder buttons were switched" or whatever? Wouldn't you love to be able to make the controller work exactly like you wanted to? I know I'd, personally, love this in some games I own.
4) Your port is just terrible: Field of View in FPS Games
Another thing that FPS games in particular are guilty of - low field of views on console ports. This comes from the fact that the eye is more comfortable with a lower field of view when playing the game from a couch to TV distance. When playing closely at a monitor though, the eye is much more comfortable with a higher FOV. These aren't changed - why?
If you can't change your FOV in engine, then the FIRST incarnation of the Quake and UT engines were, in my opinion (which is what you're here to read by the way), much more advanced than whatever you are using. Altering a frustum is simple - OpenGL and DirectX have them fucking built it, it will take 5 minutes + compile time to fix these.
Since you were just about to google what a frustum is, here's a picture of one.5) Your port is just terrible: Screen Resolution
This is directly related to our frustum friend above. You see the X and you see the Y in the above picture? That is what will reflect your screen resolution, and just like field of view it is very simple to alter. I will admit, you can "squash" your view if you don't also play with the FOV when changing aspect ratios. It is easy to fix by adjusting the horizontal and vertical FOV correctly for your aspect ratio.
There is absolutely no excuse, at all, to not be able to run your game at any resolution unless it is a 2D game (as scaling sprites looks like crap). That was kind of one of the big deals about going to 3D, wasn't it? If you, like I do from time to time, boot up Unreal Tournament 99 to this very day, it detects every resolution your PC is possible of and adjust it's view frustum correctly.
That's right, I can play Unreal Tournament 1999 on my 1080p monitor at 1920x1080 and it's fantastic. It doesn't flake out because it's 16:9 resolution, it doesn't put black bars at the edges of the screen, it doesn't fuck up at all.
THIS GAME IS 11 GOD DAMN YEARS OLD. If your game can't properly adjust to a ratio, you have a LOT of problems and it is perhaps time to dig out those old linear algebra notes, as an 11 year old game engine has surpassed yours - this should not be happening. Poll the PC for what resolutions it's capable of and use those. Don't hard code in a list that's "good enough".
6) Your port is just terrible: User Interfaces
This is really the cream of the crop here. Maybe we can crack open the config files and change our keys manually. Maybe we can find whatever key the resolution is stored in and change that. Maybe even the FOV or we can just live with a low one - but we can't rewrite your UI. And if we can, we really don't want to.
Without going ultra UI theory here the Joystick is a relative positioning device and the mouse is generally a clutched positioning device. Keeping this simple, as I really can't teach an entire UI course in this blog post, developers should know what UI techniques work with a mouse and what work well with a joystick. Since every UI needs to fit a different purpose, allow me to just throw out a few generally good ideas.
Use drag and drop techniques when you can
Think of an inventory system in an RPG. On the console, if you wanted to swap two items how I generally see this done is you select one item, navigate to another with the joystick, and again press the button again to confirm the swap. On the PC I don't want to click the mouse button, go to my new item, then click again to swap them. This feels very wrong. Instead, how about I simply press down the button, fling the cursor over to the one I want to swap with then let it go? Drag and drop can make your UI 10x more intuitive when done correctly.
Remember, the mouse has more than one button
If a secondary, but quite common action can be bound to the right mouse button you should probably do that.
If the game doesn't use the mouse, your UI shouldn't either
I bet a lot of people will disagree with me on this. But, for instance, when I'm playing the racing game using just a keyboard, it's awkward to shift my playing position to use the mouse to navigate your user interface. I have no qualms with ALSO using the mouse, but it shouldn't be manditory.
Get those damn Xbox 360 Icons off my screen
I don't mind if I have a 360 controller plugged into my PC, but NOTHING says "this game is a cheap port" then when the main menu says "press
to continue" and to continue I press enter.Well, that's about it for today! I hope you've learned something and it would bring me nothing to joy to see higher quality PC games in the future! Remember, we're not dead yet!
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