Timely and Responsive Patching!? Not in my Game Industry!

These days a game can often go on for weeks or months in a "broken" state in which exists some serious imbalance. Planetside 2 players right now would probably agree that aircraft are in an especially bad place right now, but SOE has no plans to fix them until the next major patch. Developers seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place; letting the imbalances sit can drive away players that are affected by them, but knee-jerk patching and repairing could cause even more problems.

Marvel Heroes - 10 Hour Review

Just a few days ago Marvel Heroes, a new free-to-play Action RPG in the style of Diablo, released on Steam. Marvel Heroes is being put out there by Gazillion Entertainment, most notable for being lead by David Brevik, one of the three founders of Blizzard North of Diablo fame. While it's release was rocky (though I have yet to see a game have a smooth one) and marred by crashed servers and client issues, at this point it seems to be fairly stable (in my time of playing I have not encountered any problems).

Lessons from Games (SMITE) #1: All Goddesses wore heels

Apparently I am on a bit of a feminist kick but the topic was too good to pass up. Today's lesson comes from SMITE, Hi-Rez's (of Global Agenda and Tribes: Ascend fame) foray into the MOBA genre. For this they decided to use various gods, spirits, and heroes from religions worldwide (though not from Judeo-Christian religions, we wouldn't want to offend anyone....that we might know). Unflapped by the potential risk of offending the billions of Hindus, Taoists, or Greek polytheists (and others) out there, Hi-Rez has given its art department the monumental task of making every single female god a "10/10, would bang". I've mocked League of Legends before, but I admit, even Riot is making improvements (reworking Sejuani, adding Quinn, etc)...while Hi-Rez is setting new lows.

The Goblin fixed sexism!

Obviously the title is meant facetiously. While I have a respect for the knowledge of everyone's favorite goblin with regards to making money in games, I fear this time he's let his ego pull him unprepared into a new arena he is unfamiliar with. Here is the link to his post, and here are the links to the Tropes vs. Women videos he refers to.

Trigger warning: Mentions of rape jokes. Murder. War

Be warned, the post below is quite long, and sadly does not lend itself to a tl;dr any better than what I said above.

Cheapness, Part 2

"That move is cheap!"

I said it before, you've said it before, we've all been there...bested by some tactic or move we couldn't get around. To some players, there is no such thing; so long as the player can do it, then it's fair. I take a different stance. There are "cheap" things, but the claim is often a knee-jerk reaction to not understanding what someone just did. Cheap tactics usually fall within the rules of the game, but are often of the type that most players do not want to engage in for one reason or another. Some players attest that nothing is cheap, that so long as it is within the rules that everything is allowed. In a literal sense, this might be true, but that doesn't mean that the accused act should be within the rules.

Lets apply this to video games, being as its my main focus here. Video games are a special kind of beast; where developers can, at will, change the rules.

If there is no such thing as cheap in video games, then what is the purpose of a balance patch? If you think about it, all a balance patch really is, is a list of admissions by the developers of the things that are "cheap". They are abilities, units, moves, depending on the game, that are cheap or otherwise over-performing. Sometimes, things are broken, sometimes moves are being abused. We don't even need to be able to perfectly define something to consider it cheap; we have referees in sports who make determinations based on evidence, we can have them in e-sports.

The gist, the moral, if you will, is that things CAN be cheap.

How do we tell? Are a disproportionate number of players using this item/move/ability/class/character? Is it basically mandatory at the higher end of player? Is there adequate counter-play with similar risk-reward profiles? These questions are not exhaustive, but should give you the idea that the main question is whether the risk/reward of whatever is in question is out of sync with the rest of the game.

Viewers of all competition love risk/reward; we love seeing poker players go all in on a bluff, of watching a football team throw a Hail Mary on a 4th and long, a designer trying a new and different image...the situation can be found anywhere. As players, this should be our same emphasis, we want to gauge risk, and reap rewards as appropriate.

As a result, I think it is important to be able to differentiate between the knee-jerk "That's cheap!" and genuine criticism, and it's never easy, but not good for a community or game to outright dismiss it.

Emergent Gameplay, Cheapness, and Bugs, Part 1

“That move is cheap,” we all said this at some point in our life, probably when we were young, playing with a friend and that friend had just discovered Ryu’s fireball or E.Honda’s slap and basically just chained it repeatedly to victory (oh memories of Street Fighter 2 Turbo…). I was once that child, and I recall that my hating was because it felt as though there was no counter, I was too young to understand or discover the mechanics beneath or how to beat it.

Emergent gameplay, for better or worse, is responsible for some of the mechanics and gameplay that has elevated games towards competitive interest…not all of them, but some.

Posting Hiatus

As is clear, I have no posted for a while; sadly finals have rolled around in Law School so I am mostly preoccupied studying patents and corporate law (sounds fun right?). So in the meantime I am afraid I will probably not post until after they conclude, but I do have some ideas...in what free time I have I've gotten back into GW2 and Planetside 2 (clearly no one in the industry can count to three..). So hopefully some content regarding them!