Tattered Page

A friend sent this link on Crysis’ release sales. Of note:

Crysis sold just 86,633 units last month, following its release on November 13.

Those disappointing numbers don’t surprise me. I’m surprised so many people expected so much more, but I’ve been ranting on skyrocketing system-spec requirements for quite some time. Sometimes it seems that developers are saying “we expect to capture 10% of our market- the 10% that has uber video cards” instead of saying “we expect to capture 10% of the 10% that have uber video cards” and thus getting some rather ambitious projections.

Sure, the numbers are disappointing. The game’s got rather solid reviews, I’m told (my gaming rig won’t support it, so I haven’t paid very close attention) and you’d like to see a success for something that so many people have poured so much blood, sweat, and tears into to work out.

I’m just not sure if the real business agenda was riding on sales of the game.  I mean- someone with much more business savvy than me should be guiding things there… if I was concerned over the platform requirements, someone else should have been… unless there are other reasons to put yourself so far on the bleeding edge that you get cut. Like Licensing

Crytek always planned to license their engine- a platform that DOES seem to be living up to the hype. Based on the reviews, they’ve got a VERY solid product for that market. Crysis may not sell many boxes, but its an excellent technology demonstrator. By the time those licenses are ready for release, the market will have matured to more closely meet the required system specs.

Crysis might fail to meet the market numbercount but still succeed in establishing the engine in the forefront of DirectX10 engines.

Zubon’s got a good writeup on the Carnival of Shadows- a Villain group in the City of Heroes universe. I agree with much, but wanted to challenge enough of it that I killed the reply-box before I remembered that longer replies could go to my oft-neglected blog here.

Go ahead and read it, then this will make a bit more sense. You can also read the history of the Carnival at the official site, but warning- much of this is “spoiler” information that you discover in the story arcs.

My comments after the break.

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Jason over at probablynot is talking about mini-games for crafting. There’s a weird sense of déjà-vu for both of us, as we both recall talking about this topic somewhere at some time, but can’t find it anywhere.

For you non-MMO-playing readers, “crafting” is just what it sounds like. While some heroes may slay dragons or explore the far reaches of the wilderness, others make the armor that deflects that deadly blow or that sword that slices a new path through the wilderness. Crafting across different games comes in many forms, but almost all of them have one thing in common:

They’re incredibly boring.

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Ok, maybe not cubicle hell, but while I’m sitting in my monochromatic 8×8 cell (desk included) I’ll be thinking of these guys at Three Rings Design. 

I knew I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

I mean, really… WHY?

From the Cryptic Studios Blog:

What if life were a video game? I know I’d want some cheat codes. Here’s what other people at Cryptic said they would want:

It comes complete with an image of a whiteboard scrawled with ideas. Some of my favorites:

• Ctrl Alt Del
• Mario coin blocks (that’s gonna cause some nasty head injuries)
• Hookers restore health
• Double XP weekends
• Hot Coffee Mod
• Doughy 40-something guys can look like supermodels.

Me?  I can’t find a single thing to add…. as long as they make sure jiggle physics are still included.

Kill Ten Rats has a great writeup on the “myth” of the “unpredictable PvP foe.” It’s a good read, and echos something from way back in my military days.

See, the same is often true for real life military tactics. We had “Standard Operating Procedures” for virtually everything- how to react to an ambush, how to breach a building, how to secure an operations post. When the platoon leader was going on a recon, he left a “5 point contingency plan” to those left behind. 13 years later, I still remember it.

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Well, I got my prizes from the Comic Book Contest.  I figured that, with City of Heroes’ Issue 10 on the way, I’d give the new software a run doing a comic book based “guide” to the issue.

My goal was to mix a brief overview of the features with a little humor.  I hoped to make it target the casual City of Heroes player- no hard numbers or DPS stats- but also make it understandable to the curious outsider… maybe enough for them to want to give it a trial run.

Anyway, it’s currently available through hypercomics as well as .pdf here.  Let me know what you think.

Nerfbat’s posted “MMO Development Lesson #16” and while I agree with the overall message, I don’t like the way the introduction feels. “Don’t be different for the sake of being different. Be different for the sake of being better.”

It is a good cautionary message- too many new developers want to come in, challenge all conventions, assume that everything in the past was somehow flawed or lacking vision and run headlong into the same obstacles that the MMO pioneers met. Still, as I peek into the betas of more MMO’s, I wonder if perhaps some developers aren’t clinging a bit too tighly to that philosophy to avoid any substantial change. “Different” is the “better” that we’re desperately missing.

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Thomas Malby over at TerraNova has got a got a good writeup on ganking, or more specifically, why “ganking” isn’t just “emergent play that some folk don’t like.”  Raph managed to post a very nice and rather lengthy response quickly… (I’m beginning to think the man has access to a review copy or has a whole library in the queue for just such an occasion.)

(For those unaware of MMO terminology, ganking is essentially a very very powerful character going around and killing much weaker characters that offer no challenge and no reward.)

Two elements in Raph’s writeup that I’d like to build on:

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As I mentioned, I temporarily lost sanity and returned to that Galaxy Far, Far Away.  I took the Star Wars Galaxies trial.  It was a different game than when I left- but I’ll leave my critique of THAT for another time and focus on one observation. 

I made three new characters on three servers.  I tried this at odd hours that really weren’t “peak.”  All three times, I found Mos Eisley comfortably alive with a great deal of the characters displaying the “roleplay” flag.  There were many, many more roleplayers than I used to encounter just passing through.  It was a welcome feeling.

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I’m still here.  Work cranked up a bit and some of my “big idea” posts are in heavy re-editing.  It’s amazing how the art of just writing a “really cool” idea down can reveal exactly how full of holes the whole thing is.

Aside from that, last week I did something I swore I’d never do.  As I prepared to try EQ2’s Echoes of Faydwer trial, I noticed that my SOE account had listed a “free trial” for SWG.  I left shortly after the NGE, but the temptation was too much.  I had to climb the mountains in Correllia one more time and take my rusting Y-wing through one more mission.

I’d figured that the visit would make a few easy blog entries.  As it is, they remain half-written as I still try to figure out where I stand about that galaxy far… far… away.   I’ll give em time to brew…

We haven’t heard many public figures stand up in support of gaming, so we’ve come to expect the worst… particularly from someone that you’d expect to claim moral authority and judgment, as many see the Pope.  On January 24th, BENEDICTUS XVI released his message for the 41st “World Communications Day” and it briefly alluded to violent video games.

I’m a bit amazed to discover that anyone reading this document can come away thinking the Pope ”Dislikes Games”  like Scott did over at Broken Toys.  Then GU Comics runs their own rather defensive comment.  

Are we reading the same document? 

I think, if you’ll look again, you’ll find the game industry has an ally here.

I resisted the urge to buy Neverwinter Nights 2 on release, but over the holidays I had an extra incentive- a co-worker bought it only to find it too demanding for his system.  Unwilling to upgrade his PC for one title and unable to return an opened game, he let it go cheap. 

First impressions….  Despite many great marks for excellence, I will never finish this game and will likely keep playing my library of mods for the original NWN.

It was a headlong dive into the Uncanny Valley. 

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Although I’ve grown comfortable in my little Paragon City residence, I’ve been thinking of doing some MMO tourism starting sometime in February- hop a bit around the different gamescape out there. I’ll still be active in Cities of Heroes and Villains, but this is a chance to gain a fresh perspective on done, what’s being done, and what’s changed since launch.  If I want to intelligently write about the field, figure I’d better keep up with the changes. I’m avoiding the queues of WoW for a while… EQ2’s expansion piqued my interest, so maybe I’ll start there.

This is all still in the planning stages, though.

I just figured I’d toss out a notice- and an open invitation:  if you’d like to explore along with me, have a suggestion on where to go or what to see, or want to show off some of the worlds you call home, let me know.

I just finished reading the Escapist’s interview with Curt Schilling (thanks for the heads-up, Ryan). If the company and game philosophy plays out as well as he pitches it here, count me as an early fan. Here’s hoping they deliver.

One of the lines there serves as a lead-in to something I’d been mulling over:

The three most branded franchises in the history of the MMOG space were Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and, to me, Blizzard. Lord of the Rings had a century to brand their IP, Star Wars had three decades and Blizzard has had a decade of branding and franchise in the world of Warcraft. And they’ve done it so impeccably well, but at the end of the day, the thing that sticks out amongst those three is Blizzard stayed truer to their visions than anyone else, and fans got what they wanted.

I’m left wondering if maybe WoW had it a bit easier. They not only were the original source of the franchise, but it was built from the start to accommodate gaming.

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