Play - Think - Write

Googleoids... I'm #3. And other stuff.

2010-09-18T22:13:00.000-07:00

So, I've been playing some more Droid games lately. And Googleoids caught my attention. I love word and anagram games and loved the idea of the game: 8 letter anagrams, each letter is encapsulated within a google image search result of each of the letters. The letter/image capsule float around the screen as you drag them into slots at the bottom, trying to figure out the 8 letter word or submitting smaller words for lesser scores.

As you can see from the screen shot, I (as Jackalshorns -- an anagram of my name) am currently #3 on the leader board.

This was exciting the first time I saw it, but then I noticed a few things that made me less excited: The leader board wasn't all that well populated (not many folks play the game and submit their scores), and there were only a handful of 8 letter words in the game's database.

Kudos for the concept, but as with most games (or movies, books, songs, etc) the execution is critical in order to get a great payoff. I certainly hope that someone takes this game to the next level.

I'm not sure how hard it would be to get a nice mix of 8 letter anagrams that vary in difficulty/rarity in order to come up with a more compelling word list for competitive play, but certainly this would make leader boards much more interesting to competitive players.

Other Stuff

I sincerely hope to start writing more frequently, especially since I'm about to enter a phase of playing lots more games... From Facebook to Droid to PC and Console games now that the holiday season is upon us.

I'll start crafting some lists soon. Mostly I assume I'll try to get my hands on the blockbuster console releases (e.g., newest Halo, Dead Rising, Ratchet & Clank, Call of Duty, etc). But then I also need to think about the next wave of motion controller (or controller-less controller) games, too.

And, of course, I need to keep up with the games here: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/ for work and such.

But wait, there's more... Now that OpenFeint is available on Droid there are lots more quality games that I can play from my phone.

Damn it feels good to be a gamer right now.

Other random krag...

2010-08-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

I'm always on the lookout for interesting examples/tidbits of user experience failures. Mostly I feel like I should have some interesting examples to use when I give talks.

Here are some I've stumbled across in the past month or so. Not much analysis, just want to post them for my own notes.

The Name Game

What's in a name? What is the link between name and online identity? Users can have many goals behind their choice of "name" they use as their online handle/moniker. Do they want authenticity? Authority? Anonymity? Odds are they have different names for different goals. That's why getting the player's name right is important.

And getting it wrong can be a costly mistake...

Social/Casual Games and Popups

Games are all about players making decisions -- and then getting feedback on their decisions. Lather, rinse, repeat. Some games make it unduly hard for players to simply make a choice.

Not enough primary and secondary buttons here, are there... First I feel the pain in my eyes, then my brain, then back in my eyes again.

Let's Give Away Money -- People Should Love That

My wife's aunt posted this, but I'm sure she wasn't the only one:

She's a pretty typical FarmVille player. I wonder how many CS tickets have the title "user doesn't understand how to use FB Credits". I'll bet that the typical user doesn't know whether to contact Zynga or Facebook to solve the problem which can lead to further frustration if you end up contacting the wrong CS support (and add extra cost to the non-responsible party).

Anyhow, back to work!

Blizzard Boofdown? It can happen...

2010-08-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

Was trying to figure out a way to kill a few hours and remembered that I'd tried the StarCraft II beta and figured I should pick up the retail version. I'm not a competitive RTS player, but I fondly remember the single player campaign from the original and have been looking forward to doing some PC gaming after messing around with the Lego Universe MMO a bit a week or so ago.

I figured that the easiest way to purchase StarCraft II would be to simply launch my beta version... The game would present me with an upsell message and I'd start downloading the diff'd files via some sort of cool patching system.

Nope.

I got this informative message instead:

Huh. Big missed opportunity for an easy sale here.

Then I figured I'd just go to Battle.net and sadly, I got the following screen when I clicked "Digital Download":

I'm assuming that a few customer service tickets are being generated here...

To be fair, the site was entirely down -- there was no way to authenticate me as a user and have the website "intelligently" notice my purchase intention and ask me whether I wanted to be emailed/text messaged/etc when the site went back up so I could continue with my purchase.

However, such a bland and generic message is really disheartening to a user. Sure, the fact that the site is down means that some catastrophic error has occurred making it impossible to provide useful information like a time estimate as to when the site will be back online.

However, a simple time and date stamp -- with a notification of when the next update will occur (I imagine something like 15-30 mins) would go a lot further than this bland admonition.

Moreover, if you can post a page, you can certainly post some interesting links to other working content. Why not drive all this traffic somewhere useful where you can provide interesting distractions, build customer loyalty, and maybe even turn it into an opportunity for monetization.

Anyhow, criticizing Blizzard is like criticizing Valve... They've got a pretty sweet setup, a fanatically loyal paying customer base, and can afford missed opportunities like these as people will step over their ailing grandmothers to get their hands on new content. Just seems like a shame.

What I learned about Facebook games from my Mother-in-Law

2010-07-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

So, I have a new job. I'm a Senior User Researcher at Zynga Game Network.

I'll still continue to play a wide range of console, pc, indie, AAA, student, free, casual, and social games. But I'll just be restricting my actual work to games we're creating at Zynga.

I'd been doing a bunch of consulting and contracting at Zynga before we decided to formalize the relationship -- and I really couldn't be happier with my new job.

Anyhow, enough about me. Let me tell you a bit about Anita, my mother-in-law. We both use Facebook to keep up with friends and family from both near and far. We also both enjoy several different Facebook games. Sometimes we even play the same game. Either way, I can expect to hear complaints from Anita when there's a bug or something exceptionally frustrating or confusing about a game.

One thing that really caught my attention the other day was her comment that she had completed a game of Cube Crash (from MindJolt games) by wiping out all of the cubes... and she never got any kind of bonus reward.

She mentioned several types of award that she would have considered appropriate:

Some sort of "victory" animation and sound FX that congratulated her on her achievement (wiping the screen is actually not that easy to do in the game).
A chance to share her accomplishment by bragging to her friends who also played the game.

She had to resort to calling me on the phone to brag -- and to complain about the above points.

I just love, love, love the fact that we can talk about games together -- and that something as "hard core" as achievements and social bragging are now wide spread and cross the generational gap.

Can't wait to have kids and have to tell them to be sure to "gift drills to grandma" to thank her for their birthday presents :)

Green Zone & Career Update

2010-07-19T05:43:00.000-07:00

I just watched the movie Green Zone last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Something that emerged early on was a feeling that it was playing out like a cool mashup between a Bioware RPG and an Infinity Ward shooter.

There were key factions, all introducing themselves and seeking to influence and direct the main protagonist (Chief Miller). One after another they would approach him, give him a key piece of evidence designed to force a moral decision, and then send him on his way.

At several key plot points in the movie, Chief Miller's decision could have gone in any number of directions (well, about 3 -- perfect for a dialog tree...) and the results of his actions brought about interesting consequences that pushed the story along.

Throw in a bunch of cool, scripted, current day/near future firefight opportunities (cue Infinity Ward) and wow. You've got the makings of a great videogame.

... Spoiler Alert ...

What if Miller decided to side with Army brass instead of the CIA? What if he decided to kill Freddy to save the general? Maybe he could have fallen in love with the sexy reporter and helped her fake evidence so her reputation would have been saved...

... End Spoiler ...

Oh, and in other news I'm going to be announcing a career update later on today.

Word Spasm -- It's no Griddle, but it'll mostly do for now

2010-06-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a look at some game portals on Facebook recently and all complaints aside, I've managed to discover a game or two here and there that has captured my attention.

MindJolt brings us Word Spasm. It's like Boggle in a number of ways, and the leader board takes me back (almost) the the incredibly fun times that were Griddle before it got yanked.

Word Spasm is like a mash up between Boggle, Bookworm Tiles, and a gem matching game (forget the name, but it might be Jewel Quest) where you have to fill in a certain number of board tiles before you can move to the next level.

On the plus side:

Games are quick, so spoiled/sub par turns don't feel that painful (and there are easy ways to fail as I'll note below).
Keyboard accelerator is present. I'm amazed that there are still word games out there that do not let you type words in.
Leader boards are reasonably well designed to encourage both social play with known friends, and to provide "stranger" top scores to inspire the more hard core competitor (like me).

On the minus side:

The keyboard accelerator is suboptimal when it comes time to choosing a particular letter path. Unlike in Boggle where you just need to submit valid words (doesn't matter which 'L' tile you use if there are 2 or 3 valid ones), this game sometimes makes you care which tile you use when there are multiple options because you need to make sure that a certain percentage of tiles are used at least once. There is an option to Tab through various valid permutations, but this is frustrating and inefficient -- especially when time is running down.
When time starts running out, the game just gets plain unplayable. A huge countdown timer displays over the playing surface. Although it is translucent, it is RED AND SCARY and completely distracts me. It effectively means that I hit the Game Over point when there's 10 seconds left because I can't play at all during that time.
Although the basic rules are fairly simple to learn, there's no good way to uncover some of the scoring rules either officially or through embedded forums and discussion groups. Certainly I can try to optimize my score by trying different strategies, but I'd rather have a few hints or be able to chat with fellow players to collectively discuss the scoring system as opposed to having to break it down systematically.
The lack of forums and discussion groups also highlights the real lack of community features here. I became completely addicted to Griddle precisely because there was always a group of people playing and we could briefly chat and congratulate each other between each round as we were checking the results of the previous round.
More of an annoyance: The "gratz" messages the game displays each time you complete a level have spelling and grammatical errors. Kind of ironic for a word game :)

Red Dead Redemption, FB Game Portals... In Brief.

2010-06-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

They did it. Finally Rockstar invented a car that handles in a way that I like to drive and doesn't totally make me feel like an idiot. This car, of course, is a horse (of course, of course...). I'm obviously talking about Red Dead Redemption which I'm currently pretty much loving.

It makes me think of riding my horse around Oblivion but with enjoyable combat and a set of challenges and crafting opportunities that strangely interest me, but that don't trigger an OCD behavior that Oblivion did for me. I played that game for 100+ hours and spent 90+ hours just harvesting stuff for the alchemy bench and transporting things from town to town to hide in various chests and closets. Weird and creepy.

RDR just captures (for me) the fantasy of roaming around the countryside in a way that none of the GTA games ever really captured. GTA IV appealed to me for the story and I quite enjoyed the mission progression through the first 15 or so hours. But RDR represents a place where I'll just go and hang out and relax and do missions if I please.

Are there problems? Yep. There are a number of rather jarring user experience issues I have with the game. And while they're mostly niggling in nature, they really do break me out of the relaxing and immersive experience I'm normally having.

Sometimes (but not predictably so) when I exit a cut-scene my character decides to equip the revolver instead of the item I was previously equipped with. I've shot dead a number of poor bandits that I've meant to lasso instead, which is pretty darn frustrating.
Buggy quests. Well, at least they seem buggy because I can't figure out why I failed them. I'm just mosying along, thinking I'm on track and then I get a red "quest failed" notification. This has mostly happened on random/emergent quests and Stranger quests, which makes it extra frustrating because you can't repeat those quests.
Frustrating weapon select model. I really only switch between a couple of weapons. Mostly it's between my Rifle and Lasso. Some encounters require use of more close-quarters guns, but most don't. I've been killed -- or let the target get away -- so many times when I fiddle around with the radial menu, wondering whether the weapon I selected has been equipped or not and wondering which weapon I have currently equipped. There are really a bunch of problems at work here: (a) can't tell what weapon is currently equipped when the weapon is NOT drawn; (b) hard to tell what weapon is equipped when there is a weapon in hand -- not big enough exaggeration in pose/animation/weapon model; (c) the selection wheel is too complex and doesn't have a satisfying "confirm" reinforcement sound and visual; (d) the selection wheel is too large - which makes my eye have to wander all over the screen while I'm getting shot at and losing sight of the enemy; and (d) there's no option to pause the game while switching weapon (a la Bioshock or DAO/ME2).
Change of weapon aim model 1/3rd way through the game. Dead eye starts out as an easy to use "paint" system (paint reticle across targets and highlight them to put them in a shooting queue). Then I arrive in Mexico and have to use a new "press RB to paint the target" aiming system. Is this cool as an option? Yep. But why require this for someone like me who starts on Default (normal) difficulty and is doing fine, thank you very much. I couldn't see a "revert to previous aiming model" option, so I tried the Casual aiming mode even though I feared it would make combat completely boring. Nope. No luck there either. I just lost a very cool feature that (to me) is something that could have been taught, but reserved for players who wanted to use an Expert aiming system.
Too easy to get on NPC hate lists. I don't mean to grab the wrong horse (and quickly learned never to mount a horse that I hadn't whistled for). I don't mean to knock you over when I walk by you. Yet this happens constantly and is annoying because I end up in fights that I just don't want to be in.

But enough about RDR. I'm going to still play a bunch more of it before migrating on to the newly arrived Super Mario Galaxy 2.

On to Facebook game portals. I talked about the Konami experiment a while back: http://jackalshorns.blogspot.com/2009/08/day-27-konami-play.html

Sadly, the two most recent portals I've checked out suffer from similar issues:

GameHouse

No effort is made to drive users into the “best” (i.e., most approachable, interesting, addictive, and fun) games. The user is left to choose from a multitude of options.
The home landing page feels cluttered.
The games mostly appeal to hard core gamers who like to also play casual games. For instance, I played the enviro-tower defense game (Bio Bots) offered on “easiest” (grass map) and had my ass pretty much handed to me.
They don’t handle “stranger danger” gracefully. All I see are faceless profile pictures. On the plus side, the Real Games portal does try to contextualize strangers by providing flags to indicate nationality.
They have to deal with split communities (mocha, game house, and Facebook leaderboards are all separated).

MindJolt

The landing page is cluttered and doesn't drive players into top rated content. It's too easy to get dropped into a lousy game.
There are lots of categories of games -- and most regular casual game players can sort themselves into the relevant categories -- but the link to the game category view of the game is hard to find amidst the clutter.
Unlike GameHouse, the leader boards don't actively divide the community, which is nice (you can filter by "friends" or "world").

I'm also reminded by how much cooler these portals are once they start becoming popular amongst your own social graph. I love seeing updates in my feed when someone beats my score -- and I'm much more likely to try a new game if I see that a friend is playing it and likes it enough to post a feed update.

Horse Gaga... I say "neigh!"

2010-05-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

My queue of games is stacking up, but I decided to try out Ubisoft's latest entry into the world of Facebook gaming.

The game is called Horse Gaga. I believe it is being positioned to attract female gamers who like to raise and train horses. My thoughts, of course, are based on my own experience (a non-female, non horse trainer). But I think there are still some valuable takeaways.

Boring billboard tutorial. Raising and training a horse should be fun and should be taught in an experiential way. If I want to read a lot of text and click only the things I'm told to click, I could go to wikipedia. I've complained elsewhere about the perils of frontloading a user with tons of information and then hoping that they'll process and remember it all (if, of course, they don't become so bored that they quit first).
Providing fun quests. My first post-tutorial quest was presented as follows: "Here's your first task: repeat what I just taught you and train your horse until it reaches maximum proficiency!" Task, Repeat, Train, Proficiency. Do these four words make you think "fun game?"
Help text that is approachable and not derogatory. Horse racing sounds pretty fun, even to a non-horse lover like myself. However, hovering over the horse race tab yields the following help text: "No Newbies. You need level 2 to enroll in this competition". You just called me a newbie -- a term that is derogatory to folks who know it, and that is probably not even known to a majority of casual and social game players.
Game play modes that are puzzling. I just leveled up by watering my horse and entered a race. I have no real idea how the race works (the display looks broken) but think I will know more in 30 minutes. I also wanted to breed my horse, but I have no idea what gender it is so I can't pick a mate...

I don't mean to come down so hard on this game, but really the quality bar has been set for a while in terms of what it takes to make a fun and approachable game. Moreover, stripping down the tutorial and writing quests and help text that are fun, approachable, and engaging is relatively cheap and easy to do. Racing and breeding seem like core game play components, but they are still pretty much a mystery to me after about 5-10 minutes of head scratching.

I look forward to seeing the next rev and will be on the look out for future Ubisoft social games.

The Impossible Game: A great try-before-you-buy experience

2010-04-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

Simple mechanics. Shallow learning curve. Frustratingly hard challenges.

The Impossible Game (a 360 Indie Game) is not the kind of game I expected to like. At all. I do like a good challenge, but don't like frustrating/maddening difficulty -- especially when a major source of "challenge" is poor usability of controls and/or game play feedback.

The use of compelling music, simple controls and patterns, instant respawns after failure (with no penalty in terms of loading time or excessive backtracking required) and a great "quicksave" option meant that I was quickly hooked and converted.

The game inspired me to keep taking on more and more difficult challenges in a way that few other games have done. A couple of the games I reviewed for the IGF competition shared similar characteristics -- they embraced player failure and made it a feature of the game. Failure was treated as a learning and teaching opportunity, not as a punishment that left me wanting to quit.

I highly recommend checking out the trial mode for yourself.

It was the best of gaming, it was the worst of gaming...

2010-04-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

Mild Spoiler Alert if you haven't finished Mass Effect 2.

So, I played through my favorite segment of the game so far. It felt like a send-up to Left 4 Dead in terms of both game play and use of music to heighten the suspense (especially those discordant notes used to signal the approach of big baddies).

It left me wondering whether ME3 will have co-op -- because I definitely wanted to play this mission co-op style. It also left me even more anxious to finish up the game so I can try out Borderlands (co-op shooter RPG).

It wasn't until near the end of the mission that I realized what a huge and colossal mistake I had made. I shouldn't have been there in the first place...

Let me step back. Having played many Bioware games before (and other RPGs that use the same plot progression devices) I knew that I shouldn't do one specific plot-progression mission before I had completed all of the optional side quest missions.

I thought *cough* that I was launching a side quest, but didn't realize until much later that I had erroneously selected the mission right beside the optional side quest (an issue with the Galaxy Map where the pop up text from the different worlds tend to overlap). If it had been another optional side quest it wouldn't have been that big a deal.

However, it was a big deal because it progressed me in the story before I was ready to move on. Yes, I could have reloaded an old save game once I realized the error. But what a kludge.

I also experienced a similar issue when I completed the mission and then mistakenly launched the next plot progression mission by doing something I did all the time: Access the Galaxy Map. There was no "are you SURE you want to progress? or would you rather tie up loose ends?" prompt. Just throw me into the pipeline and leave me frustrated enough to reboot the game and restart at a prior save.

The obvious fix: Don't allow the player to make a major plot-progression choice (that will shut off other interesting optional content) without specifically prompting them. Bioware games generally do a good job of this, and ME2 in specific mostly did a great job of this.

Although it's a huge shame that this kind of user experience SNAFU occurred during a major plot point in the game, I'm still quite enjoying ME2 and would probably spend even more time with it if my queue wasn't so backlogged with other titles I'm looking forward to.

Febru-what? Where did January go?

2010-02-17T14:18:00.000-08:00

Quick post, more to follow. Just need to jot down a few thoughts so that I have a writing agenda over the next few days.

I was accepted to speak at the Triangle Game Conference in April. I'm super excited about this, especially since I'm moving east to Baltimore. I need to get connected to the east coast game dev and publishing community. Also, the TGC has a nice mix of entertainment and serious games folks. I figure being located near DC and Virginia means that I should expand my practice accordingly.
I wrapped up my voting for the IGF competition and look forward to seeing who wins. I believe I'm under embargo from commenting on the games I reviewed publicly, but I'll share some thoughts when the winners were announced.
I have a pile of 2-3 articles I read recently that I'd like to comment on. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have no good way to track/remember print articles I read anymore. I figure jotting down some notes about them will help me in this regard.
Liza is playing a really cool game called: Dr. Something or Other (she can't remember the name right now). I started playing with her and I look forward to playing more and writing about it.
I finished the single player campaign for Dragon Age Origins and Modern Warfare 2. I thoroughly enjoyed both games for much different reasons.
I was also checking out Match Defense: Toy Soldiers (a Facebook game developed locally) and have some thoughts on it.
I'm about to check out Bioshock 2 in between packing boxes and doing some build reviews for clients. Of course, there's still AC2, Borderlands, God of War 3, and Mass Effect 2 waiting for me on the other end of the move. March is going to be super busy work and game-wise.

I'm super looking forward to our move next week. The house we put an offer in on goes to inspection on Friday and if that goes well then we should be in a new place the first week of March.

EDIT: We're in Maryland now. I've got a bunch of client work scheduled for the month and I'm falling ever further behind in my queue.

Darksiders
Demon's Souls
Heavy Rain

New Year: New Update. Shadow Complex, Wagons East, Dog-eared Magazine Pages, To Do List

2010-01-29T10:34:00.000-08:00

No excuses, just no posts in the past month. I'll just jump right in and get going.

Games on my "need to play" list right now:

Mass Effect 2
Assassin's Creed 2
Borderlands

Of course, while I was lamenting the fact that I'll have little time for serious gaming over the next few weeks (details below) I decided to procrastinate by picking up Shadow Complex on XBLA. It turned out to be a great choice for a variety of reasons:

The demo was great, if a little short. It quickly got me engaged in the game and sucked me into the story.
I found the controls to be pretty intuitive and really only had problems when I had multiple special items (grenades, foam, rockets, hook) to choose from. Thankfully the game seemed calibrated for this fact (suboptimal equipment switch) and really only required quick switching during one boss encounter.
I loved how the game approached "learn to play" tutorials. First, for the "must play all tutorials player" you could optionally choose to do some reasonably engaging tutorials. Each tutorial unit was short and units built on top of one another. You could quit at any point and start the campaign. Second, each time you got introduced to a new piece of equipment you were given the *option* of hitting the back button to read more about the equipment specs. The option text persisted on-screen (noticeable, but unobtrusive) so you could play around with the equipment first and even skip the "read the billboard" part if you wanted to. Third, tutorials were followed by challenges (completing tutorials unlocked the challenges). Challenges ramped up in difficulty and were tied into achievements in a sensible way. Finally, each time you started the game (after leaving) you were given the option to go to the "proving grounds" (tutorial) as a secondary option to continuing your campaign. The game recognized that some (many?) people tend to play in bite-sized chunks and this is a great way to offer a non-compulsory reminder to players who may have been away from the game for a while.
I also loved how the game incentivized hard core players by allowing them to stack the deck against themselves (go for a speed run; try to finish the game without completely powering up your character) but remained reasonably accessible to less hardcore players by letting you power up your character through additional exploration. I wasn't as interested in trying to play "tactical combat" against enemies and was glad that I got to level up my weapons to the extent that I could blow them all away with one shot. Moreover, the one shot deaths were supremely entertaining in terms of visceral feel and comedic value.
There was a nice incorporation of "social" beyond simple leaderboards. Kind of like Trials HD, this game showed you how you compared against your friends on various achievement-based stats. Bubble up stats would display when you increased a few key stat counters that would show how your stats compared against your friends'. Pretty cool.
The level of polish was quite high in terms of game play and cinematics. I actually quite enjoyed the short cut-scenes (they looked great and I'm a sucker for Nolan North after the Uncharted games). But what really caught my attention was how good it felt to engage in melee combat and how fun the final rifle upgrade felt. The team clearly worked hard on combining sound, rumble, and visuals to make combat viscerally satisfying. Melee takedowns were fun to execute and over-the-top. Ranged kills were entertaining in various ways (people screaming and falling off of things). And, as your powers increased, the physics were hammed up to comic (but immensely satisfying) levels. My wife and I shared many laughs as I mowed through my helpless enemies.
The game embraced humor through both story and game play. The writing and voice acting was entertaining (especially some of the main character's grunts and shouts -- it actually reduced the pain and frustration of getting foamed to hear him say "what the Fuh?"; and the NPC chatter was also quite good). More importantly, moment-to-moment game play supported the game's humor (e.g., the over-the-top violence and humorous death squeals and animations; the "whoah I'm out of control" exit from speed-dash).

Were there issues? Of course. But they ended up being fairly minor for the most part.

Aiming at Z axis enemies. I never quite got this right, but the game was balanced such that I didn't really have to care. I got so powerful that even if I was only half as accurate when I aimed at Z axis enemies, I survived just fine and didn't feel all that frustrated. The designers recognized that this game was a platformer and not a shooter at heart, so instead of over-solving the aiming issue they decided to de-emphasize accuracy as an important component to success in combat situations.
They encourage me to be completionist without giving me a chance to do so without going to GameFaqs.com. This complaint is similar to the issue I raised with Batman: Arkham Asylum. I loved how the game had maps that showed me explored vs. unexplored areas and included "?" icons for areas that contained secrets. However, some of the secrets have been impossible to find -- and I'm not blocked by game play (I've obtained all gear) but by a poorly executed section of the map that I've scoured for long periods of time without having any idea where the secret item can be found. It's frustrating because it makes the game feel broken -- especially when the "completionist" achievement only rewards 100% completion without smaller rewards along the way for folks who want to get "most" but can't quite get all of them.

OK. Quick change of gears. After several months of thinking about it, my wife and I are packing up and moving east. To Baltimore. I've lived there before and it's MUCH closer to our families that Seattle. My hope is to start carving out a niche for myself on the east coast and midwest and reduce the amount of coast-to-coast travel that I do. We're super excited -- and I'll try not to use the whole "we're busy packing, moving, trying to buy a house, etc" wag of excuses for not keeping current with my blog.

And another thing... As part of the cleaning up and packing I managed to discover several Game Developer and Casual Connect magazines that I had dog-eared pages on. I have no good solution for archiving information that I find interesting at time A in a way that I can browse, search, or otherwise discover at Time B. This goes for both digital and non-digital content. The digital part is more embarrassing (I stopped trying to solve this thing by being thwarted by every bookmarking applet/browser function I've ever tried) than the analog part, but I still do consume analog information and would like to keep a record of findings somehow or other.

My less than ideal solution (for now): Adding some comments about what I read in a blog post. It sucks that I can't link to the original (Game Developer does have an online version, but it's a paid subscription; Casual Connect does not have an online version) but I guess folks can dig these articles up if they want to read the source material.

That's all for now (comments re: dog-eared articles will follow in a later post).

Oh: I also cast my AIAS ballot for the various "GOTY" categories and need to schedule some play time with the finalists for the IGF competition (I'm one of the many judges).

It feels good to write again.

Sometimes geolocation can suck

2009-12-19T08:04:00.001-08:00

So normally I love the way that software applications incorporate geolocating tech. Google Maps seem to work better when they know where I am, the iPhone has several apps that provide great experiences because take into account my location (well, my wife’s location).

However, there are some edge case scenarios when geolocation can be a pain in the ass. I’m in Canada this weekend visiting family and I’ve been hosed twice because of the fact that my computer is hooked up to a Canadian run internet service provider.

Case #1: Trying to purchase a game on Steam. I tried to purchase the full version of Everyday Genius: SquareLogic after playing through the demo. Nope. Steam provided me with an error message “credit card holder address not the same country as current location”. I then had a typical Steam user experience when trying to trouble shoot: Figure out where to go on the web, create a new account for customer service purposes (no, my Steam login wasn’t enough – I needed to create a completely new account), be solicited through this account for my credit card information, and then finally 2 days later sent a new link to try in order to complete the purchase. I almost backed out and purchased the game off of the Mumbo Jumbo site using Paypal but decided to hold off as I really didn’t want to sign up for yet another ecommerce site.

I get that software developers and publishers have complex relationships with digital content providers like Steam. But this doesn’t have to translate into a frustrating user experience. There have to be more graceful ways to handle the purchase request of a loyal customer than “find forums, create new account, wait for email response”.

Case #2: Google search. My wife and I are currently researching home ownership and I had a few questions about closing costs that I wanted to research. Of course, all of my search results for “closing costs” were links to Canadian content sites. Close, but no cigar.

I’m sure if I did more research and futzed with my settings I could have tricked Google into giving me the standard search I wanted. But, again, why make it so hard for me? I am constantly logged into Google (gmail, blogger) and it should recognize that I’m traveling and might need access to my default Google experience, not the Canadian version.

Truth be told, Google’s contextualization of my search based on geolocation was a plus and minus this trip. It was very nice to use Google Maps on the wi-fi enabled MegaBus (Buffalo to Toronto) to help me triangulate my location by typing in the names of the various landmarks we passed.

Cogs demo

2009-12-16T13:58:00.001-08:00

I also downloaded the Cogs demo from Steam to try out on my SEA –> BOS flight. It was a sliding tile puzzle game (arrange the tiles to complete a pattern via a series of moving them into the empty slot) with a few additional puzzle elements.

It wasn’t nearly as approachable and usable as Everyday Genius SquarePuzzle. The player is immediately thrown into time-pressure situations while still learning the basics of the game. As it turns out, it didn’t matter if time ran out in the demo mode…. But the artificial pressure made it a much more stressful introduction to the game than was needed.

The demo also seemed to be structured more towards showing a breadth of puzzle styles which meant that I was introduced to interesting looking, but ultimately too frustrating to figure out, puzzles. My initial reaction was that “if I’m already stuck on the 5th puzzle of the demo, will I be able to solve ANY of the puzzles in the full retail version?”

Because I was a captive audience (stuck on a red-eye flight) I actually gave the game more time. And once I discovered an important rule that I missed (the sliding tile mechanic worked in a slightly looser fashion than other versions that I’ve played) and discovered how to rotate and view 3-d puzzles the game started to pick up a bit. These “eureka” moments combined with very satisfying “mission success” puzzle/object animations to reignite my interest in the game and I went back and figured out how to solve some puzzles that had previously frustrated me.

Will I buy the game? Probably not unless it is super cheap. I still fear that the puzzles will be too difficult for my liking. Although it’s true that in the free play mode I can make as many moves as I like to solve the puzzle, I find that I just don’t “grok” these kinds of tile-sliding puzzles the way I “grok” math square puzzles.

Everyday Genius SquareLogic Demo

2009-12-16T04:28:00.001-08:00

Wow. Fantastic. I got the Everyday Genius SquareLogic demo from Steam before I headed out to the airport. Being a little gun shy from my last experience (Steam made a fuss about me playing a demo while not connected to the internet) I verified that I had completed the tap dance of commands to enable offline play before leaving for the airport.

EGSL provides a wonderfully constructed demo that makes Sudoku-like math puzzles accessible to casual and hard core math puzzlers alike. I skipped the tutorial and jumped straight into game play and was not disappointed. The game presented a couple of tips as I played and I was on my way.

The first few puzzles were obvious and easy to complete so that players could focus on basic controls and learn some of the helpful decision aids that the game provided. If I do have one concern about the learn-to-play component, it’s that the game did load a few too many advanced features early on that weren’t required to solve the puzzles – thus they became forgotten by the time I would have wanted to actually use them.

Puzzles were untimed and you had unlimited moves to solve them. You could guess if you wanted, but the game encouraged you not to by insisting that each puzzle could be solved without guesswork. The game did NOT penalize you for incorrect guesses, but instead provided non-derogatory feedback that you might change your response.

After playing several puzzles I realized that there was a move counter and that if I wanted to challenge myself I could try to minimize the number of decision aids I used in order to solve the puzzle. Moreover, I soon figured out that there was a “perfect” solution to the puzzles I tried. 16 squares meant that puzzles (at least the way they’ve been constructed so far) could be solved in 16 moves.

Achievements were rendered as progress were made – some rewarded loyalty (keep playing and you get them) and others rewarded skill gains (start beating par) and still others rewarded mastery (solve more difficult puzzles gracefully).

One of the most interesting takeaways from the game was its use of gating and locking content. The designers clearly understood that some people would want a long, gradual introduction to the game. They would need to start slow and build up their confidence before being capable of solving more difficult puzzles without frustration. The default progression pattern allowed players to do exactly this, providing a fun and non-threatening challenge ramp. More complex puzzle types were unlocked after winning the “boss” challenge at the end of a long incremental chain of puzzles.

However, more advanced puzzle solvers who wanted to dive into the harder puzzles could easily do so if they were feeling bored with the current puzzle type. They could hit, essentially, the “I’m ready” (or maybe “I’m bored with the current challenge”) button and skip to the boss battle. If it looked like too much of a leap, they could go back and continue the default progression. Otherwise they could beat the boss and unlock the next set of puzzles.

This game is a shining example of how to make a game approachable to all interested players regardless of skill level. The learn-to-play components were excellent (except for the introduction of a couple of advanced decision aids too early on which led to me forgetting them) and I look forward to examining the stand alone tutorial to see what it brings to the table.

Before I knew it the 60 minutes were done. I found myself wishing I were on a wi-fi equipped flight so I could purchase the full version of the game. I’ll do so tomorrow.

Kudos!

Continuity... A fun little puzzler within a puzzler

2009-12-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

Whilst procrastinating from doing some work (and judging IGF entries) I came across Continuity via a tweet from @raphkoster. It's a student game that sucked me right in.

It's a fun puzzler within a puzzler that introduced controls and complexity in an engaging and well paced challenge. The "inner puzzler" was a standard find key, unlock door puzzle. You have a stick man and need to first grab the key and then unlock the door to escape the level. The "outer puzzler" was a manipulate the tiles game. Each "inner puzzle" was a tile. So you needed to switch between inner and outer puzzle (via the spacebar) to complete levels.

For me, it had just the right mixture of brief "this can't be right..." or "I don't understand why I can do X, but not Y" moments such that new concepts were puzzling and not frustrating.

Analyzing this game reminds me of my experience playing Braid. I loved Braid even though many of my usability professional friends hated it because it seemed to violate expectations about how people should be introduced (some would argue "spoon fed") to new puzzle mechanics. For a few moments early on in Continuity I thought I had uncovered a major usability flaw: I couldn't understand why I could move my avatar between some tiles and not between others even though there appeared to be a valid path. Because I didn't understand the logic behind the game (you can only move between tiles if ALL paths link up cleanly between tiles -- not just the path you want to traverse) my initial response was "this seems arbitrary" and therefore required better graphical affordances to let you know when you could vs. could not traverse a path (uncrossable paths should look -- well -- uncrossable).

For such a clean design, I realize that adding extra "this path is valid" affordances might clutter the visuals and over-fix the problem. Ensuring players figure out the logic could be done through a sequence of puzzles designed to illustrate the problem (which is mostly what happened in my case). That said, a simple idea worth trying might be to make the white tile walls transparent when two validly matching tiles are adjacent to each other. This will eliminate the initial confusion that exists when the player realizes that "some white walls I CAN move through, but some white walls I can NOT move through" because now clear = CAN and white = NOT.

The other thing I quite liked about the game was its similarity to the board game Zendo. The game presents you with a set of tiles that ALL look valid and useful, but you quickly figure out which is the the one truly useful tile through game play reasoning and puzzling.

Sweet stuff.

Torchlight. Oh, my.

2009-12-08T14:31:00.001-08:00

I’m hoping that December is my “YESvember” follow up to my dismal “NOvember”. I’ve been traveling and playing games, but just haven’t had the gumption to do much writing.

Let’s jump right in to Torchlight. There’s lots to love about this game. First and foremost, it required me to return to the PC for some non-casual and non-social gaming. I’m trying to remember the last FPS, RTS, or RPG I played on the PC – and it might have been Portal (trying to check out community generated content) or even Rise of Legends (a game I worked on that shipped several years ago).

Don’t get me wrong: I still purchase and play games on my PC – they just tend to be casual games.

Anyhow, Torchlight loves:

Shareable loot. I got tired of my demo character and wanted to try a new one. I dropped off all of my loot at one of the shareable loot locations and it was there for my new character to grab. Nice way to accelerate my replay through the first few hours of game play. Kudos! This is soooo much more graceful than the cheesy way I accomplished the same thing in the days of Wizardry (create lots of characters, join them to your party, strip the characters, delete them, then start off with a rich and well equipped party).
Pet that “sells all junk”. I love the “sell all junk” feature that’s making it into RPGs. But this still requires a painful return to a merchant. Not so with Torchlight. Just send your pet away for a couple of minutes and you’re done. Sweet. Not as dismissive (or gleefully silly) as the Bard’s Tale system where looted items just magically morphed into coins, but effective and in support of a great user experience.
Camera lock. The designers specifically said: We don’t want you to have to worry about the camera. We’ll design levels (and provide items-display-behind-walls tech) to ensure that you never need to care about rotating or panning or zooming the camera. Hurray.
The initial pacing and balance on Normal difficulty was perfect for me (an experienced gamer who has played most of this game’s spiritual ancestors). Varied enemies, cool loot (and great loot rate), and my character felt powerful right out of the gate. There was no poking rats with a stick for 2 hours before I got my first cool move.

Some mostly minor annoyances of course appeared:

Swapping rings was tedious and confusing. You have new ring “A”. You have rings “B” and “C” equipped. You want to replace “C” with “A”. However, you can’t visually distinguish “B” from “C” at a glance – and you don’t get mouse-over comparison text when you have “A” selected and move the pointer over “B” and “C”. So it’s a 3-step process to swap a ring.
It’s great that you don’t need to micromanage the pet. However, it took quite a while for me to discover that you could equip the pet with gear and spells.
Pet as hybrid “mule” and NPC didn’t work as well as I would have liked. I wish that pets could have had a “junk” sack and a “use me” sack. Stuff in the “junk” sack would get sold back in town. Stuff in the “use me” sack would be used by the pet when needed (scrolls, potions, etc). It made me sad that my pet couldn’t use items.
I was also sad when I realized that I didn’t always notice when my pet had picked up some loot. I mostly assumed that stuff in the pet’s inventory had been placed there by me as “junk”. This meant that I inadvertently sold off as junk some items that were not junk because I never realized that I had received them in the first place.
Although the initial Fighter/Mage/Thief choice was easy to make, I had a tough time parsing upgrade paths. Specifically, class specializations didn’t seem all that coherent or compelling to me. I mostly just purchased abilities that looked cool. I would have preferred more concretely laid out class specializations that were well differentiated and compelling. In other words, there would be 9 class archetypes (3 classes x 3 subclasses) that evolved quite differently and had easily recognizable end game build outs (e.g., “this is the hefty, shooty guy who uses grenade launchers” vs.. “this is the agile, shooty guy who uses silenced pistols”).
As always, I found it hard to parse the spreadsheets when it came to upgrading attributes and abilities. Stats were either so precise and verbose that they became confusing (which is better: Weapon A that does 27-35 dps and has “fastest” weapon speed; or Weapon B that does 27-35 dps and has “slowest” weapon speed) or so vaguely worded that I couldn’t tell if the benefits were worthwhile.
Spending attribute points felt especially like throwing coins into a wishing well. Yes, there was help text that explained generally what attributes did. However, there was no clear relationship between spending points and whether or not the associated stat modifier increased or stayed the same. I had no way of knowing whether the lack of increase in associated stats meant I was throwing attribute points away, whether I was just one point shy of getting some other bonus (that I wouldn’t figure out until I leveled again and received more points to spend) or whether those points would help in other ways.
Merchant UIs were frustrating. There was no good way to tell which items I wanted/didn’t want at a glance, mouse over text was cluttered and made it hard to select items of interest, and there were no sort or filter options. It was clear to me that there was a carefully developed multi-variate color coding system in place to denote item strength, rarity, and equipability… But I could never figure it out.
Oh yeah, one more thing about pets. I totally screwed up twice when trying to teach my pet a spell. This resulted in me “burning” the expensive scroll because it bound to my character instead of my pet.

Over time (a few days) I slowed down my Torchlight playing in favor of Dragon Age Origins (Xbox version, more on that in a subsequent post). This wasn’t for any real usability or playability reason. It was more because now I tend to associated “click-fest” games with casual games. And I tend to want my casual games to be social games. And without the social – then I need other trappings to keep the game interesting. Like story, puzzle elements, platform challenges, etc.

All-in-all it was $19.99 well spent. I enjoyed it and will I’m sure play some more. I also want to investigate the editor some more – even though I’m rather fearful after my first experience with it. My technical ability (or lack thereof) requires more of a Never Winter Nights toolset and approach where first time users can get a playable level together in a few hours. But, we’ll see. There seem to be some decent developer and community resources out there.

No(gaming)vember to remember...

2009-11-25T15:27:00.000-08:00

Actually, it wasn't "no" gaming. It was more bite-sized gaming without leaving enough time to post thoughts.

And I was on the road for over 2 weeks this month (one week working on a game that I can't talk about yet; one week on vacation in Maui which does not lend itself to sitting down and writing at my laptop).

Things I tried (and plan to write about):

Getting a "sweet move" to feel just right: Comparing the challenge of catching the perfect wave with the feel of a sweet double jump.
My silly obsession with completing all the achievements in Plants vs. Zombies (and why it makes a great bite-sized game experience).
The Torchlight demo -- and my possible return to hardcore PC gaming.
My current Facebook games: Why I continue to suck at Backgammon and why I seem to be getting worse at Scramble -- but why I still love to play them.
My crush on the official Modern Warfare 2 trailer (the one with the Eminem track that hasn't generated all kinds of controversy) and why it not only got me excited about the game, but also got my wife excited.

I'm also in the midst of doing a bunch of judging for a Serious Games competition (can't talk about it yet) and the Indie Games Festival competition. I'm done with the serious games part and am super looking forward to the Indie and student games competitions.

December is going to be a bit of a reboot month for me. I'm hoping to dive deeper into several projects I'm interested in working on and will report results here.

And, of course, the stream of retail and social/online games continues... I plan to play and write about lots more games.

Steam Offline Experience: It may not be news, but it certainly is a kick in the teeth

2009-11-06T12:35:00.001-08:00

Just pulled out the old laptop to try the Torchlight demo while on layover in SLC.

Whoops.

Double cick the icon. Get "cannot connect to Steam network" error. Huh.

Try again. Same result. Notice that I'm posting this via the internet using SLC's free wifi.

Double whoops.

Having worked on multiplayer PC games (and, of course, played them) I'm aware that firewall settings sometimes prevent the connections you need to run (or in this case, apparently, update) your games. Fair enough. This is exactly the reason why I'm mostly a console gamer and only play web-based games on my laptop. I just don't have time for that kind of frustration.

But, the best part is this: Apparently it is possible to play Steam demos and games in single player mode while offline, provided you follow this confusing set of instructions. It's a multistep process that involves testing things out along the way with your computer unhooked from the internet to ensure the process has worked correctly. Perhaps my favorite step is step #4:

Go to Settings to ensure the Do not store account information on this computer option is not selected.

Love the double negative. Love the fact that to the layperson like myself, this makes no sense whatsoever.

Mostly, I love the fact that because I'm currently unable to connect to Steam I cannot tell my game to allow me to play it offline. It's a single player demo for goodness' sake.

Bonus points: Nothing about the original "can't connect to Steam" error message let me know that (a) the game required an online connection to play; except that (b) there are options you can set to make (a) go away.

Sigh. Guess it's back to coin harvesting in Plants vs. Zombies.

Uncharted 2, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time. Yeehaw.

2009-11-03T01:37:00.000-08:00

Just a brief post. This is another month that is swamped with work and travel.

I'm also going to try a more intensive writing project: http://www.nanowrimo.org/. I had a blast trying to blog 30 in 30 days, so I decided to try to do a "half-NaNoWriMo". 25,000 words in a month and I'm already a few days behind. Heck, I did about 15-18,000 words in August, so... Well. We'll see.

Uncharted 2. Yep, it was a sequel. Nope, there wasn't all that much new in terms of game play mechanics or depth of story. That said, Round #2 was still an incredibly absorbing and entertaining romp. Even though the twists and turns were cliche, I still got incredibly attached to the characters -- and the movie finale was as emotionally satisfying as Eternal Darkness, Prince of Persia, and Beyond Good & Evil. Why? Great dialog and acting. Naughty Dog are among the elite in this area. The only games that (in my mind) have competed are GTA IV (not a fan of the game play in these games, but the fourth installment actually made me and my wife want to watch cut-scenes they were so well written and produced) and possibly Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay (not so much for the animation and physical acting, but definitely for the writing and voice talent).

Really, I kind of felt like I was playing a Joss Whedon epic in some ways. Specifically, the "Out of Gas" episode from Firefly (I actually haven't watched any of his other shows). The way that Nathan/Mal deal with adversity with humor and grit endeared both characters to me and made me care about the outcome of the game. Sure, in the back of my mind I knew that the hero of the story would "win" (i.e., kill all the bad guys and save the world). But at what cost? That of his friends and loved ones?

Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time. By my reckoning, I've given Sony over $500 of my hard earned cash and one Xbox 360 (which I traded for a PS3) because of the joy that Insomniac Games brings to me every time I get my hands on the next Ratchet & Clank installment.

My only complaint? I got stuck at the very end trying to figure out where the final boss encounter took place. It's something that I'm sure I wasn't alone in and probably was caught too late to fix. It's mainly sad, because the fix would have been pretty easy (and the issue may have, in fact, been exacerbated by a bug). Thankfully, the game is fun enough to grind around in that "being lost/unsure what to do next" wasn't really all that frustrating.

There were other minor complaints, I guess. The maps have taken a slight step backwards in terms of usefulness (hard to tell where you've been and where you have yet to explore). Flight controls felt awkward and unsatisfying. This meant that air combat needed to be nerfed so as not to block progress. The UI for inspecting, upgrading, and mapping weapons was unwieldy (I never did figure out how to map weapons to different hot spots -- but this was a minor issue because by default the game paused when I went into select mode).

But, really, none of those complaints really mattered. I was hooked from the first moment I smashed a crate and was showered by glowing, floating bolts. The feel, the look, the sound... There are few games that get this just right. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Lego Starwars, and Ratchet & Clank. I can just wander around for hours smashing things and watching bolts swirl up and around me.

In the end, the one thing that is clear to me is that the folks at Insomniac are lovers of games. Specifically, lovers of action adventure, action rpg, and platformers. Elements of Bioshock and Lego Star Wars were perfectly integrated. Sure, I didn't have the choice to either kill or save the Zonis, like in Bioshock... But it was a super nice touch to allow me to "fix" broken items (a la Lego Star Wars) when I played as Clank. Travel between worlds was a more integrated minigame like in Kingdom Hearts 2 instead of just a choice of menu selections.

In some ways, I'm left to wonder about how Insomniac goes about figuring out "what is the right amount of choice" for players. For instance, there were too many weapons for my liking (a complaint I have about previous versions of the game). I mostly grabbed them and leveled them all up because it was something to do while grinding. I would have been happier with just one wheel of weapons. That said, I totally understand the desire to present players with a wide range of entertaining and satisfying weapons (that's a big part of the franchise vision). I just find it hard to care about all of them -- at least at normal difficulty when I can level them all up via grinding so that they are powerful enough to overcome any tactical oversights.

Moreover, the game is based on a hub system, so the player almost always has choices about what to do next and can complete many segments of the game in an arbitrary order.

However, the player is never left with a moral or story choice -- either through dialog choice or game play. There are RPG elements to the game, but there is no RP. Given the difference in powers that Ratchet (he breaks things with his wrench) and Clank (he repairs things with his rod) bring to the table, I wonder whether players could have been presented with some compelling choices in terms of how to solve game play problems in ways that had an impact on the final outcome of the game.

Anyhow, much love and respect to the folks at Insomniac and Naughty Dog. Kudos on the well executed and polished games. I look forward to next iterations and new IP.

Maybe I'll even give Resistance 2 a try...

Can I just say... Why does the PS3 firmware update experience suck so hard?

2009-10-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

I use my Xbox 360 pretty much all the time. It's a no-brainer for me given my social network (mostly Xbox gamers) and desire to compile most of my achievements on one platform.

But, I do enjoy a number of Sony exclusive titles. Just finished Uncharted 2 and am about to start Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. It seems like each time I install another Sony first party game, I need to update my firmware.

The thing is, I get updates all the time when I'm using my Xbox 360. And I never really even think to complain. Downloads are small. The UI is clear, easy to read, and pretty much pain free.

PS3 updates? Not so much.

I have to do a button tap dance to even start the download process. It feels like I'm trying to enable "Big Head" mode on NHL Hitz.
Text is almost impossible to read against the dashboard background. The 360 dash does, essentially, a lightbox treatment where they bring clear focus (with no distracting background) to the updater window.
The text I can read is filled with tech and jargonistic terms... I just want a "yes to accept" option so I can complete the transaction and get into my game.

On the plus side, I just heard the PS3 reboot sting, so I think the process has completed.

Now, on to Ratchet & Clank!

Machinarium, Free Xbox Indie Game Code, and Serendipity

2009-10-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

Where to begin? There's only time for a quick mid-day post and I want to cover a few things.

Just here for a free Xbox Indie Game code? Skip to the end for details :)

First, Machinarium. I played through the demo while sitting across the table from my wife. It was nearing lunch time and I asked Liza what she was up to. She mentioned that she was "trying to get a robot across a bridge." As it turns out, we were both playing the same demo at the same time.

I had read about it during my daily RSS feed troll (I try to follow lots of indie game feeds). Liza had played a previous game by the same developer called Samorost. She liked the game so much that she joined their mailing list and found out about Machinarium that way.

I just love the fact that both of us were playing the same game at the same time without even realizing it. And without either one of us telling the other about it.

Another great thing about Machinarium: One purchase gets you the Mac, PC, and Unix versions of the game. Great for a family like ours who use multiple platforms. Looks like I'll be purchasing it for the both of us.

What might be super fun (since we like to play some games together) is to play it on the big screen. I just need to hook up a wireless mouse and keyboard and we can play the game together on our Lovesac, just like we watch movies or play console games. Sweet.

Free Game Code Details Here

On to Gum Drop Celestial Frontier and Xbox Indie Games. I blogged about this game a while back and @mechagost (creator of the game) and I had some back and forth discussions about the game. His thankyou gift was a free code for the retail version of his game. Of course, I had already purchased the game. So, I pass on the savings to you, my readers.

Want the code? Tweet me @jackalshorns. Only one code available, so first responder gets the prize.

Quick thoughts: Uncharted 2 and Delta's lame in-flight game service

2009-10-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

A couple of quick thoughts in between travel for work (doing some consulting on social games) and pleasure (Anacortes with friends, Chicago for a wedding).

Uncharted 2. This blurb appeared in a Facebook comment I wrote (a couple of friends were discussing the game -- one thought it "set the bar" the other thought "meh"). It's not really all that well considered and thought out, but is more of an initial reaction after playing a couple of hours:

So, I loved (loved loved) the first one. And I loved (loved loved) the intro to the second one -- a super treat for fans of the previous game and IP.

I've had a couple of lulls in the action through chapters 4 and 5 (getting stuck, being confused) but I'm super into it and can't wait to play more.

As far as cut-scenes go, they set the bar in v1.0. Then games like GTA IV met the bar. I think that they met the bar in this game, too. I actually WATCH all of the cut-scenes and enjoy them (PS -- I never watch cut-scenes in any other games).

Story quality-wise, so far it seems like a virtual copy of the v1.0 story. So, unless they shake it up soon my judgment is "serviceable but not great". Technically it's awesome (voice acting, mocap, direction) but the story itself is only serviceable.

In other news, while flying back to Seattle I had the "privilege" of not experiencing Delta airline's in-flight gaming options.

That is to say that I completely ignored it in disgust after being asked to pay $5 for the right to sample their game wares.

Now, $5 for 4.5 hours of entertainment is an entirely reasonable price. Heck, I'd pay more than that for a 90 minute in-flight movie. But charging for games before letting me try them out? It just doesn't make any sense.

Many of the games seemed to be versions of freely available titles already on the web. I had worries about the input device (touch screen) and have had mixed reviews trying out games on other in-flight consoles (I talked about Virgin airline's options in another post). Not having a try-before-you buy option is a non-starter for me.

But, the bigger question to me is: Why charge at all? The model that I have to believe would work better for all involved (Delta, game publishers, and the passenger) is to offer free-to-play content. Publishers would pay for access to the captive audience. Their motivation would be to provide fun addictive games to passengers to drive awareness and customer loyalty. Delta would get money from the publishers for distributing their content. Passengers would get high quality games that would endear them to both publishers and the airline.

And me -- well, I'd have a reason to request regular coach-class seating. The touch screen is too far away from my seat to reach it comfortably while sitting in an exit row.

I'm playing and working, but not thinking and writing...

2009-10-11T13:51:00.001-07:00

I've been swamped with work lately (the kind I can't blog about) and will continue to be swamped for the next week or so. Then, hopefully, I'll come back up for air and do some more posting.

What have I been playing lately?

South Park (XBLA) trial version. It's a tower defense game with some co-op components. My initial experience was "meh" but I think I want to try it co-op with Liza to see whether that is where it shines.
Defense Grid: Awakening (XBLA). I started out quite liking the game and still do enjoy playing it. It's a little hard to pick up and play after letting it sit for a couple of weeks (unit recognition and ID is difficult at default zoom; maps are getting pretty big and unwieldy given the camera limitations). But I'm going to keep going.
Lucidity (XBLA) trial version. Think Braid but with time pressure right from moment one. The initial challenge ramp is just a little too steep for me to truly enjoy the game -- and this makes me worry because if the game only gets harder it will quickly become too difficult for me to play. I like the music, mood, art direction, and style of game play. I just want to be able to relax and enjoy it a bit more.
Need for Speed: Shift demo. It actually kind of sucked me in even though I don't get into sim racers. I should actually talk a bit about why this demo was much more compelling to me than the Forza 3 demo. I should also talk a little bit about their more "casual" control options.
Lots of Scramble, Wordscraper. Some Sorority Life and Cafe Wars (for Facebook).
de Blob. This is a pretty relaxing Wii game that I'm going to spend some more time with. Some elements of Katamari Damacy with other more Nintendo like games involving cleaning and painting.
Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Clue Bender Society. It's a DS game that I've been meaning to check out. I really enjoyed one of the latest ND games (a more "casual" release) but haven't enjoyed the core PC offerings and am not really enjoying the DS game.

I've been getting a lot of use from my Raptr account. I actually need to add my Wii account to it as I almost forgot about my de Blob sessions. What I'm most excited about is that now that I'm about to descend into a mostly PS3 zone with the upcoming release of Uncharted 2 and Ratchet & Clank. I'll still be able to track and share my progress with friends -- most of whom are primarily Xbox users. Thank you, Raptr.com for integrating pretty well into my existing social network flow.

What else am I looking forward to playing, thinking, and writing about?

The "Top 20 up and coming Facebook games". I'm curious to see what these social games have going for them.
Some previous games that I've worked on. I really need to get a couple of presentations together based on the learn-to-play tutorials I've co-designed. Because these games are published I can talk about what we learned, what we did, and how to turn these learnings and doings into best practices. It will also give me a chance to play around some more with video-capture tech I've been sitting on for a while.

Tedious learn as you play + suboptimal try-before-you-buy platform experience = FAIL

2009-10-03T18:29:00.001-07:00

I tried a few Xbox Live Indie Games the other night. There were some hits and misses. I talked about Trino the other night (great game). This time I want to talk a little but about the XLIG platform and my experience with Blow.

First, the XLIG platform really needs to come up with better try before you buy options for its games. I’m tired of having some arbitrary timer expire, causing me to instantly quit out of the application back to (essentially) the desktop. It’s a suboptimal solution no matter how you slice it – and not having options means that game developers have a tough time putting their best foot forward for games that require more than a few minutes of game play.

That said, developers must operate within the constraints of the platform. As it turns out, Blow kind of missed the boat by not tailoring the try before you buy demo to the XLIG constraints. The entire time was spent in rather tedious and boring tutorials. As soon as the player was able to engage in some of the core game play, the timer expired. The tutorial was NOT optional, so it meant that even if I loaded the game again, I would have to waste most of my time repeating the same tutorial. Whoops.

The actual game seemed like it could be interesting in a kind of Impossible Machines way. But I couldn’t help but wonder “why does a game that is about something as simple and delightful as blowing bubbles require such a long and tedious tutorial?” The basic mechanics are simple (place fans, watch bubbles float, adjust fans). Feedback is straight forward (bubbles go where you want them to, or not). Instead of having multiple text-heavy billboards within one level, a nice sequence of simple boards could have brought new players up to speed in pleasant and engaging ways.

I really felt like I needed about 5-10 more minutes of free play to make a decision one way or the other, but sadly both the game (inability to skip the tutorial upon second load of the game) and the platform (outmoded demo rules that uses time instead of content to govern the trial experience) conspired against me.