GBGamesSome time ago News 4 Gamers posted a video documenting the history of water in video games. Technical and visual style have evolved hand-in-hand, and it is a great nostalgic trip to see how water has changed in 27 years.
[tags]video games, geek[/tags]
If you haven’t played Jason Rohrer’s games, do it now. They are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux, so unless you use something more exotic, there is no excuse for you not to.
I played Passage and found the concept to be quite ingenious. Rohrer explained what he was trying to do with Passage, but you should really play the game before reading that explanation. This game got high praise when it was compared to Portal at Grand Text Auto: “Portal is neat, and its design accomplishments and high polish are real. It just isn’t the true heartbreaker of this pair of games. And, of the two, it also isn’t the game I wished I had developed.” You can read that article for spoilers for either game.
I would suggest you play the games a few times for yourself. Passage takes five minutes, and Gravitation takes about eight.
*** The rest of this post will contain spoilers for Gravitation, so if you haven’t played it yet, please do so. ***
I want to concentrate on Gravitation. While the first game was straightforward in that it is a game about going through life and dealing with the choices you make and didn’t make, Gravitation was a bit more subtle. In fact, Rohrer hasn’t outright said what it is about.
I’m not going to provide an in-depth explanation for Gravitation. I’m hoping that most people will understand it as it stands. However, it involves more complex game mechanics than Passage, and it is trying to express something much more subtle. … Gravitation explores how a particular corner of my life feels, as only a game can.
And so here is my interpretation of the game: it’s about a creative person’s mood, specifically about switching between enthusiastic focus on creation and depression, about choosing to work on one project while leaving other projects to wait, and wondering if you’ve wasted your time.
To that end, the mechanics are brilliant. You can jump, and you can move left and right. Standard platforming fare, but there is also a resizing frame around your character that limits and expands your view. If you don’t do anything, that box will expand on its own. As it expands, the world becomes brighter and you see more of it. The music will change, adding more layers as more of the world is visible. You can jump higher and move faster. The viewable landscape will also shrink after a time, and as it does, the world becomes colder, the music becomes quieter and simpler, and your movement slows. Your child has a red rubber ball that he (yes, Mez is Rohrer’s son) can toss to you, and you can toss it back. The world above has projects (the stars) that you can obtain if you go after them, but then you have to return to the ground level and push them into the kiln to add them to your score. The more projects you try to push at once, however, the slower you can push them, and if any projects are on top of others, they need to be pushed first. There is a timer counting down, and when it hits 0, the game is over.
What’s amazing is that no matter what you do, these mechanics and entities all work together to let you take away a different part of Rohrer’s message each time you play.
The first things you’ll see are the kiln with the fire. As your view grows, you’ll notice your son to the left, and if you’re close enough, he’ll throw the ball to you. Each successful return of the ball increases your view faster, and eventually you’ll see the mania signified by the fire on your head. Gravity has less pull on you as your mania increases, so you can jump higher.
And so you might be inclined to do so. Jump through the hole in the ceiling, and you’ll discover a maze populated with stars/projects. Touch one, and it will fall to the bottom level, and you’ll be fired up, allowing you to continue jumping higher for a limited time.
Of course, all of those projects need to be attended to. As many as you can grab on your way up, your mania will die down, and you need to settle into work. Push those projects into the kiln. If you happen to enter into mania while doing so, however, you’ll find that projects become easier to push. It can take awhile, and your son is always there wanting to play with you.
This part is interesting. You can try to balance work and life, but you’ll likely do a poor job of either. If you work on the projects and ignore your son, you’ll get things done, but at what cost? If you exclusively focus on your son, he never leaves, but then your creative passion will burn while you miss out on opportunities. You can try to grab all the projects early on, but then when you come back to work on them, they might be stacked too high for you to get started. In fact, just getting those projects might result in depression trapping you in a well, and it isn’t until you mood lifts enough that you can leave and get to work.
Rohrer claims that every interaction is planned, and while I don’t know if there isn’t an unplanned emergent interaction, I noticed that many of the situations can be interpreted to mean something. The mechanics of playing ball with Mez have a functional purpose: you can get recharged, quickly moving out of depression to get back to mania. You might think that you can charge up, grab projects, come back, push them in the kiln, and play ball to do it all over again. And you can…for the first few minutes. Towards the end of the game, you’ll find the ball has been left behind. Mez is gone.
If you’ve ever been told by a loved one that you have taken him or her for granted, that you’ve focused too much on work and not enough on your family, then I’m sure you can understand the impact of learning that you’ve wrongly assumed someone will be there forever. “Cat’s in the Cradle” might tell the story in song form, but playing this game and experiencing that moment when you see nothing but the ball? I don’t think the impact would be nearly as deep if you watched the event unfold in a film.
Again, you could focus on Mez the entire time, but you can’t help but notice the rest of the world. It can be exciting to find ideas and projects, but you need to act on them if you are going to do anything productive! The game mimics the battle between talking about something and doing something, and it does so very well. When you’re depressed, you can’t focus on anything, and you’ll just have to pass the time until your mood changes.
What I find interesting is that working on your projects doesn’t get you out of depression faster than simply standing around. Rohrer has said that he has not actually experienced depression, and I haven’t either, but if you look at this difference between mania and depression as the difference between focused energy and being drained, then I would think that working on your projects should get you focused. Then again, if you are spending your time on the wrong priorities, I can see how they would be draining. Either way, working on the projects, pushing them into the kiln, simply results in increased productivity as evidenced by the score at the top. Your mood changes at the same rate as it would if you weren’t pushing those projects to the kiln, and I wonder why.
The projects do lose value the longer you wait to work on them, though. You can’t leave them forever, even if Mez insists on playing. Or you could, but then they’re just idle projects that you never finish.
You could also ignore Mez entirely. You could ignore your depression and your waiting projects, getting higher and higher in the maze, just trying to reach the end. The end of the level is interesting because after trying so hard to get there, you find nothing. No big payoff. No reward. You’re just alone with your thoughts, depressed or not.
If you manage to head back to the beginning, you may be surprised to find that the projects you’ve been using as excuses to search for more inspiration are so overwhelming that you can’t even start working on them because they block your way. As fun as it might be to make plans, you have to actually implement them sometime.
You can see Mez get frustrated when the ball isn’t returned. You’ll get annoyed when the projects are piled too high for you to get to the left side of them to start pushing. The music fades out during the last minute of gameplay. I am sure that there are other subtle interactions, but none of them were accidental. All of them give you a peek into what it feels like to be in a corner of Rohrer’s life.
I believe that Gravitation, like Passage, should be included in any discussion of games as art. Rohrer captured what he was feeling and managed to craft it into a game so you could experience it yourself. Gravitation is his fourth game, and Rohrer has made two before Passage that I plan on playing as well. Cultivation, a game about gardeners dealing with conflict and mutual interests, especially sounds interesting. I hope to see even more artistic games in the future.
[tags]art, video games, health[/tags]
Since a Chicago Indie Game Developer Club meetup hasn’t happened in a long time, Shawn Recinto of Immersive Realms has taken it upon himself to organize one, but he apparently got a bit overzealous. Now it’s announced as a Chicago Game Developer Gathering, and it even has its own website at http://www.cgdg.org/. Go ahead. Check it out. It’s pretty snazzy!
But this meetup isn’t just a meetup anymore! It’s a panel of indies talking to budding game developers about how they got started, what they do on their projects, and what lessons to take away from it all.
Oh, and somehow I am on the panel, along with Mike Boeh of Retro64 and Shawn Recinto. The event will be moderated by DePaul University’s Joe Linhoff.
When:
Wednesday, March 26th 2008 from 6-8pm
Where:
924 at DePaul University’s CTI, 243 South Wabash AveRegistration Ends Monday, March 17th 2008
The agenda on the website gives an overview of the topics we’ll be discussing but I have a feeling that Q&A time is going to be more interesting. Want to attend? Be sure to register soon!
[tags]indie, video games, business[/tags]
I was thinking about writing about marketing and so I naturally wanted to look at what Seth Godin was saying. Well, Jay beat me to it and wrote about the future of the music business, which links to the PDF transcript of the music industry talk that Seth Godin did recently. You should go read it as it is a good talk, and it won’t take you very long, but I’ll summarize a few points:
Godin talked about how the music industry was perfect in the past. Technology, society, marketing: they all came together to create a perfect storm.
But things have changed. Music is digital now, and digital means that copying is easy and cheap. Music is no longer the primary form of entertainment for many people. Control no longer rests in the hands of a few major players, and people can go anywhere for music.
To continue to try to keep to the old business model is silly. People can get their music anywhere, they have varied tastes, and they aren’t happy with a few choices. They don’t want what they merely like. They want what they love. Sending out blast messages in the hopes that people take notice and buy your product isn’t going to cut it anymore. Adding DRM to make digital act like analog is the opposite of adding value. Suing your fans? Yeah, that’s exactly what you thought about when you were thinking about becoming a rock star. That’s how you know you made it. That’s sarcasm, by the way.
The market has changed, and if the industry wants to play, they have to play by new rules. At this point, Godin talked about everything he has ever talked about: permission marketing, turning the funnel over, giving people stories they want, etc.
Jay notes that the music industry is similar enough to the video game industry that such discussion is important. Times are changing for video games as well:
I believe that in a lot of ways, the PC gaming scene isn’t “dying” so much as it is “evolving.” Due to proprietary technology, the consoles have a little bit more grace period left in them before their business model goes the way of the dinosaur. The PC hasn’t had that luxury, and in many ways it has been blazing the painful trail. But the music biz has been even further in the front, and there are a lot of lessons we can learn from watching that particular industry getting its butt kicked a few times.
Piracy
And both industries have claimed that the ease of copying will be their respective ruin.
GameProducer.net has written recently about piracy in Brazil, something that was covered in The Escapist’s Console Clones article back in 2005. StampOutPiracy.com is a site that claims to have been formed to help crack down on the video game piracy out there. Gamasutra had an article on Reflexive’s piracy stats, and GameSetWatch posted a follow-up, which claimed that 92% of the people playing the full version were not paying customers. Ouch.
And of course, Cliffski’s been fuming about non-paying customers who have the audacity to make support requests!
For some reason, it seems as if the World Wide Web just blew up in discussing piracy and its effect on the video game industry. Was it a major talk or round table at GDC?
In any case, everyone is talking about it, and it seems that the use of the term “piracy” in the place of copyright infringement isn’t going to go away any time soon, but that’s just a pet peeve of mine that isn’t important to this post.
What about solutions? If people are making illegal copies of games rather than paying for them, what’s an industry to do? Well, this part is familiar to those of you paying attention to the music industry. The video game industry has tried to make reality change to how things used to be, and Reflexive’s DRM stats might indicate otherwise, but I believe that fighting against reality is folly.
Reality-based Business Models
The reality of the digital world is that it is a lot easier to copy things than it is to prevent them from being copied. If you insist on trying to keep to the old business models, you’ll fight a losing battle. Before networking infrastructure made mass distribution easy, you could sell physical copies of games and expect that illegal copies won’t go far. Trying to clamp down digital distribution through the use of DRM, CD keys, and requiring online access to play an offline game are just ways to give your customers excuses to not be your customers anymore. So far, people have accepted it, and a lot of them will claim that “if it wasn’t for the pirates” they wouldn’t have to deal with it. Fair enough, but if piracy is still such a problem in spite of these measures, then you are getting inconvenienced and frustrated by methods that don’t actually do anything but inconvenience and annoy paying customers like yourself. You’re paying for the privilege of being treated as a criminal, while the real criminals get to enjoy the game they didn’t pay for all the more.
And yet more and more infrastructure is being put in place to make your computer less and less useful so that the people who write the software can pretend that they’re preventing “the few bad apples” from spoiling things for everyone else.
Perhaps the idea of selling an individual game as you would a toaster is past its prime? This argument isn’t the same as saying “People don’t like to pay for things, so let them have it for free!” If you look at the link to Cliffski’s blog above, I think it is clear that a lot of people just don’t see making a copy of a game as wrong. Why isn’t it more obvious?
Well, copying files is what you DO in this brave new world called the World Wide Web. Giving someone your copy of a book and sending a copy of your audiobook aren’t seen as two separate actions governed by different aspects of copyright law. Similarly with lending someone a vinyl record or giving someone a cheap copy of a music CD. After all, you’re simply sharing with a friend! When Microsoft or Lars Ulrich come knocking on your door with either BSA or RIAA lawyers and accuse you of piracy, well all you’ve learned is that you need to make such sharing more private. It isn’t as if you are doing anything wrong! And copyright enforcement is now tougher because so many people see copyright as a confusing mass of laws that only large companies use to make money.
So what are the options? You could fund public service announcements to warn people not to copy that floppy, and try to get them to first understand and then obey the convoluted mess that is copyright law, and make them afraid to be your customer.
Or you could start looking into different business models, models that accept the customer’s ability to make infinite copies as a fact of life. Making copies and sharing them with friends is what they want to do, so why not capitalize on it? And no, I’m not telling you that all games of the future must be MMOs or require a subscription to play. No, I’m not suggesting that all games get supported by ads. I don’t have to be the creative one that tells you what new business models you can implement, but I can say that both the music and video game industries could stand to reinvent themselves as Godin suggests.
You can look at people willingly copying your games as a problem that causes lost sales from your old business model, or you could look at it as an opportunity for your new business model.
IS PC Piracy Really the Problem? is a fascinating run through of all of the other reasons why PC games aren’t selling as well as people might like. Reasons like increased competition from other sources of entertainment, higher prices than may be justified, and hardware requirements that actually match what most people have.
New Attempts
A friend of mine informed me that Trent Reznor has been experimenting with a different business model. Actually, my friend informed me that Reznor had accounts on The Pirate Bay and similar notorious sites, and I was curious about the reasons why a musician would support the very thing that the music industry claims is ruining it.
Well, Reznor believes that the music industry is ruining itself, specifically by exploiting their customers. When asked why a Nine Inch Nails album was selling for an obscene amount of money in Australia, a suit informed him that his fans would be willing to pay any amount. “As a reward for being a ‘true fan’, you get ripped-off.” So he followed Radiohead’s lead and set out to distribute an album without the backing of a major label.
Reznor teamed up with his friend Saul Williams and released such an album: The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust. You could download the music for free, but you had the option to pay $5 to receive a higher quality download. Fewer than 1 in 5 people paid, and Reznor was shocked. You can read about his view on the lack of success of this album in Trent Reznor: Why won’t people pay $5?
You can also read Saul Williams’ take on it in Unlike Trent Reznor, Saul Williams isn’t disheartened. Williams sees an 18% conversion rate as a good thing.
I think Trent’s disappointment probably stems from being in the music business for over 20 years and remembering a time that was very different, when sales reflected something different, when there was no such thing as downloads. Trent is from another school. Even acts that prospered in the ’90s, you look at people like the Fugees or Lauren Hill selling 18 million copies. That sort of thing is unheard of today. But Trent comes from that world. So I think his disappointed stems from being heavily invested in the past. For modern times, for modern numbers we’re looking great, especially for being just two months into a project.
Anyone else remember reading about “disheartening” sales figures from people who think that a 1% conversion rate for a video game was a sign of doom? People on the Indie Gamer forums were scrambling to tell the hapless newbie that 1% was a decent conversion rate. Seemingly low conversion rates are the norm when the business model is similar to mail order catalogs. Reznor seems to have accepted such expectations since Nine Inch Nails has released Ghosts: I-IV online, this time with a multi-tiered sales model. There is still free content available, but the more you pay, the more you get. There are only 9 free tracks this time around, and $5 gives you access to all of the tracks. There are a few other options as you go up in price, and there is even a $300 option for the Ulta-Deluxe Limited Edition Package!
Currently the website has this notice in red text:
We are experiencing an extremely high volume of traffic and orders right now…
The emphasis is mine. When I clicked to download the free tracks, I found that the download site was down.
While the site is down, you can still purchase the complete Ghosts I-IV here from Amazon’s MP3 store for only $5. The MP3s are high quality and DRM-free. You can also order the deluxe and limited edition packages from Artist in Residence.
If you’re familiar with BitTorrent, you can download Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, for free, from our official upload at The Pirate Bay.
Emphasis also mine. Note how NIN is actually USING a website that has a lot of venom thrown at it from the music and software industries. Reznor isn’t crying foul and complaining about how unfair piracy is. He’s just making use of the channels people already use.
It’s heartening to see Reznor experimenting with different business models, even if the first attempt wasn’t as successful as he had hoped.
Video Games and You
I’d like to hear similar stories in the video game industry. I already anticipate that people will read this post (or maybe only part of it, as it is quite long) and get upset at the idea that piracy is ok. I’m not saying that copyright infringement is great. I’m just saying that if the reality of the marketplace is that it is easier to copy than it is to prevent copying, then why insist that those who copy are criminals? Why not change your business model and make them customers? Why not get mad about the people who won’t copy and spread your game to a larger audience? With so much competition out there, can you afford to succeed in preventing copies? Maybe in the short term, but in the long term, you’re actively slowing the spread of your game.
Snood was a cheap-looking Puzzle Bobble/Bust a Move clone that took the college world by storm. Do you believe that better copy protection would have allowed it to proliferate throughout college dorms and become the 9th most played video game in 2001?
But what can you do to spread your game if you insist on locking it down? And if you insist on locking it down, can you complain about the lack of sales and the increase in the amount of piracy?
[tags]marketing, business, music, video games [/tags]
I’ve written about my [tag]Knighthood[/tag] story and its continuing saga before. If you haven’t played it, Knighthood is a [tag]Facebook[/tag] application that seems to have taken Facebook by storm. In order to be successful at it, at least in the beginning, it is no more than a pyramid scheme. You have to recruit your friends to play. We’ve seen games like this before, but something about Facebook providing a willing audience seems to have helped Knighthood obtain a large audience very quickly.
Of course, the developers might not have expected so much population growth on the servers so quickly, so the game has been plagued with plenty of planned and unplanned downtime. It was common on the game forums to read about how a player couldn’t access his/her account while other people reported being able to play just fine. Load times would be in the minutes, which was painful when you were trying to heal your vassals while under attack from someone who seems to be able to load pages an order of magnitude faster than you.
Couple all of these issues with the usual bugs a game in Beta should be weeding out, and you had a lot of unhappy people playing a free game that they couldn’t get enough of.
And then a couple of days ago, I logged into Facebook to see that Knighthood was missing in my Applications list on the left side. My first thought: “Was I banned from Knighthood?” I couldn’t think of anything that I would have done wrong. When I checked the forums, I found that a lot of people were logging in to find Knighthood missing.
It turns out that Facebook had disabled Knighthood because it was actually causing problems with Facebook’s database. From the application’s home page:
Update 10:00pm: Knighthood was causing problems for Facebook own infrastructure and crashing their own DB (wow) We disabled most of profile updates to work with FB concerns. it will take much longer for your gold and vassal changes to be updated on profile right now.
Server temporary down message is unfortunately caused by Facebook due to abrupt shutdown of knighthood. It seems some of FB server know about app being back online, yet some servers reject knighthood requests with error message. We can only wait for all FB servers to get refreshed. If you see “temp down” message try to refresh (F5) a few times, you may get lucky and go to working FB server next time.
Update 4:30pm FB seems to be bringing it back online! We missing some of our settings and our developer list is partially erased. I’m going over settings and trying to restore the game.
Today 2/26 around 2pm PST Facebook disabled our game. We are working with Facebook to find out what happened and why application is disabled.
Wacky.
In any case, Knighthood is back online, which is bad news for me. I count myself among those who can’t seem to get enough of this game. I don’t even have to actively play it. Most of the time I’m waiting for buildings to expand or upgrade, and then I might capture vassals in some downtime in the evening.
Downtime in which I could be productive doing something else. Who am I kidding? One of the first places I go when I get access to a computer is to Facebook, specifically so I could check on my kingdom. I may give up on Knighthood eventually, but so far I’m kind of proud that I’ve only lost a vassal once and I was able to rescue him soon after. Soon the developers are going to release changes to the game which might make it compelling enough to continue wanting to play.
Also, since I last wrote about it, I’ve been promoted to Viscount. B-)
Manifesto Games co-founder Greg Costikyan wrote about the game industry’s need for [tag]game criticism[/tag] literature. He makes a point of differentiating critical thought pieces from product reviews.
While reading it, I felt that this article is another result of the great gulf that separates individual members of the video game industry from each other and their works. As another example, when Costikyan was looking for venture capital for Manifesto and getting a lot of publicity, I asked Alex Seropian during a post-mortem of Stubbs the Zombie about his opinion on Manifesto Games, and again, I emphasize that it seemed like everyone was talking about it at the time. Seropian surprised me with the answer, “Manifesto games? What’s that?”
I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that Costikyan felt a need to rant about the lack of serious literature about games, except I could have sworn I’d seen advertisements in The Escapist for Manifesto. Any time I’ve referred to The Escapist, I’ve said “It’s like Rolling Stone, but for video games.”
If you read through the list of comments on Costikyan’s blog, you’ll see even more links to websites. One is Gamers Corner, currently on its 8th issue, and the other is Action Button. There are references to Kieron Gillen and Russ Pitts, among other writers. It’s not as bad as Costikyan may think when he said that there is “virtually nothing we can point to today as ‘game criticism'”.
I do agree that we need more of it though.
[tags]video games[/tags]
The Guardian’s Lindesay Irvine expressed reservations about best-selling author James Patterson’s move into computer games. Apparently Patterson is planning on working on games that will appeal to his current audience: women and middle-aged people. Irvine just can’t fathom the idea of these people going out “to buy PlayStations and get their thumbs around the controls”. Fine, but apparently Patterson is selling his games for the PC, mobile phones, and possibly for the Wii…all things that casual players own.
Also, ugh. Middle-aged women just wouldn’t know how to play video games? It’s an outdated way of thinking.
Patterson thinks that he may be onto an untapped market. People like his books, and they may think that they don’t like video games, but they may enjoy playing video games based on his works. Lots of people don’t think they play video games, but they do play Bejeweled without a second thought. They think that they aren’t gamers since, you know, video games are for immature males who just want to shoot things. In fact, Patterson says so himself:
It strikes me that the videogame area is an incredibly lucrative niche market, one populated by a small number of boys – and grown-up boys – who like to shoot things and spend a lot of money.
I’ll first say that he isn’t saying anything that the game industry hasn’t already accepted, or at least had the opportunity to accept. Plenty has been written about the hardcore audience and how they used to be considered “mainstream” until people realized that there was an entire mainstream audience that was being ignored.
But here is Patterson, intentionally or not, slighting that audience. If you’re an adult, you’re just being a child when you play games. And if you’re a female who already plays games? You know, a member of a significant part of the market? Well, clearly Patterson needs to reach out to you since you’re not really playing games. If you were, you’d just be an immature boy. Also, there has already been a lot of money spent outside of this niche. Casual games are making, what, billions now?
Patterson should be applauded for trying to bring out the gamer in people who think they aren’t gamers, but the 80s called and it wants its video game market perception back.
As for Irvine, he doesn’t get a free pass on his outdated perceptions, either.
I wouldn’t dispute that computer games have the potential to offer something more than the joys of pretend killing. There’s room for imagination in worlds like The Sims and the strangely banal parallel universe of Second Life.
The joys of pretend killing. Roger Ebert called, and he wants his perception of video games back, although good job on knowing the name Second Life. What about games like Maniac Mansion, King’s Quest, Myst, Tetris, and any other game where the focus is not on death and destruction?
Is this a Luddite response? Should I look forward to the Iris Murdoch quest where players race to collect symbols and Jungian archetypes, and the first Martin Amis first-person shooter? To the Henry James adventure where you attempt to escape from inside 3-D versions of his sentences? The Crime and Punishment actioner where you must get away with murder; to rescue fantasies where you can save Tess or Anna Karenina?
Just because you have an inability to see what someone can do with a new medium, it doesn’t mean that others will have the same problem, Irvine. The Guardian’s Alastair Harper argues that video games are just a new medium for storytelling.
Of course, this idea isn’t a new one either, is it? Lots of game developers, past and present, have thought of video games as just another storytelling medium, and many more see story as a significant part of a game. Lorne Lanning’s Oddworld is one result. The IGDA’s special interest group for game writers is another. Of course, other people might argue that games aren’t about telling a story and aren’t ideal for doing so, just as movies aren’t ideal for showing off a live performance. They excel in different ways.
I guess if anything, I find the entire “debate” old hat, but I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people who will read about Patterson’s decision to enter the video game market and learn about this debate for the first time. A lot of these people don’t yet realize that they already play video games because they don’t think they count. After all, they aren’t acting like immature boys shooting anything that moves and spending hundreds of dollars to support the habit. They just play Peggle or Tetris. Or Myst, or Wii Bowling. But not normal video games.
Perception doesn’t change to match reality fast enough, I guess. I guess I’m a bit upset by the generalizations that go unchecked by all parties, but I’m glad that video games are becoming at least somewhat more accepted outside of the hardcore market.
I’m going to go play Homeworld now. I could read a book or watch a movie, but a lot of them are ultra violent, although I admit that sometimes you can find something good like The Great Gatsby or Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. If I were to base my opinion of an entire industry based on what the top sellers are, I’d say that the movie and book industries are just full of gore and sex for the immature audience that consumes them. Trashy romance novels and movies about fart jokes? Please. Pot, you may continue calling the kettle black as long as you want, but understand why Kettle might make fun of you for it.
The following story could be described simply. I was attacked by Viscountess Melissa twice. One attack was a failed attempt to conquer me, and another was a failed attempt to seize a vassal of mine. In return, I attempted to seize her best vassal, attacking her wall four times. I tried one more time for her second best vassal, and I was successful. Now her attack rating has dropped so she’ll leave me alone, and I get a relatively strong knight in my service once the rescue period has passed.
The next day, I received a Facebook message from a person playing as a vassal of Melissa who is apparently playing the game for her while she is away, or not. Whatever the case, I get a letter in character asking me to release the vassal I seized. I agreed, released the vassal, and received 100 gold coins as thanks.
Now, reading the above text was a rather dry telling of the tale. It mainly dealt with the mechanics of the game. Here’s how I saw it, though.
A courier entered my kingdom and presented a message from Sir Kellen, vassal of the Lady Viscountess Melissa and acting steward of the Kingdom of GodHand (OK, that part is comedy gold):
My Lord Baron Gianfranco
All the realms know of your nobility and valor. I have come to call
upon you but to ask of you one small favor on behalf of my liege the Lady
Viscountess Melissa for whom I am serving as Steward these past few
days.It has come to my attention that the gallant Sir Gordon has fallen into
your service. I know not how such a thing should have come to pass
since all know a noble as gallant as you would not stoop so low. No doubt
some rebels in your court did seize him without thine knowledge.
However it came to pass, Sir Gordon is a great ally to my Lady and a dear
dear friend to us all. Would that you could find it in your heart to
release him from your servitude know that both our kingdoms would be
eternally in your debt.Perhaps then we can talk of an alliance of our kingdoms or of at least
a mutual friendship and cease fire, my lord. Though my own holdings are
small, my Lady’s kingdom grows very strong. Though she has only been
playing for a short time, already she is ranked amongst the top 2500
nobility in all the Realms of Facebook. Rest assured her meteoric rise
shall continue in the coming weeks and with your assistance no doubt we
can see all of our kingdoms rise in glory to become the envy of all the
realms.What say you my lord? Can our kingdoms begin this today to embark upon
an era of friendship and cooperation between our peoples? Or shall we
go a darker course?I patiently await your most wise decision.
Sir Kellen
Vassal to the Lady Viscountess Melissa
Acting Steward of the Kingdom of GodHammer
Let it never be said that Baron Gianfranco has a stone for a heart! I sent the courier back to his liege with the following message:
Sir Kellen,
I am pleased to have received your message on behalf of the viscountess. It seems that perhaps a grave misunderstanding has occurred. I was under the impression that your liege had tried to conquer my kingdom, for her armies had to be dissuaded twice by my defending army. As retaliation, I sent my own forces in to take her best knight, but being that Sir Walter was too difficult to obtain without much bloodshed, I settled for Sir Gordon.
Assure the Lady Viscountess Melissa that I mean no ill will towards her or her kingdom, and that I was merely protecting my vassals from potential future attacks. Sir Gordon has been enjoying his stay in my tower in the past day, and already I can see why your liege would appreciate his return. He is a fine and loyal knight.
I do not wish to deprive such a brave soldier from the honor of serving his liege. In light of your most civil message of peace, I shall release Sir Gordon, and I hope, should our paths cross again, that we meet with tankards rather than swords.
Baron Gianfranco
Sovereign leader of the Capital of Gianfranco
I released Sir Gordon from his hold in the tower, and I presented him with the following message:
Sir Gordon,
It has come to my attention that you have mistakenly been spending the past day in my tower when you should be with your liege, the Lady Viscountess Melissa. I have released you, and you may return to serving the viscountess.
Baron Gianfranco,
Sovereign leader of the Capital of Gianfranco
Once Sir Gordon had been returned to his former liege, I was surprised to find the courier had returned with a payment of 100 gold coins as thanks from Sir Kellen. The amount wasn’t significant, but the gesture was. While I have no intention on joining into a formal alliance or swearing fealty to the viscountess, I am sure that our future interactions will be more peaceful. That is more than I could say for either Viscount Iain or Baron Nathan, each of whom are missing a major vassal as punishment for daring to attack me. Their vassals will be in my tower until their loyalty belongs to me. Lady Cami and Sir JD should make for good subjects in my kingdom. Fortunately, there is room in my tower since Knight TJ, formerly of Viscount Fred’s service, had decided that he preferred my kingdom much sooner than I expected.
And I have a feeling I would have enjoyed Ultima Online if I would have played it. B-)
Knight Corvus sent me an invitation to join him in his army, and I could not refuse. I joined him as a squire, intent on moving up through the ranks of Knighthood. Of course, I had my own castle to run, and soon enough, I had built up a formidable army of my own. The market was healthy, the workshop was busy upgrading my defenses, and the walls, palisades, and watchtowers kept it all safe. As a knight, I served as a strong arm for Knight Corvus. Once I gained the title of Baron, however, I knew it was time to leave my liege and strike out on my own.
I was sovereign now, but I was attacked by more than a few people attempting raids on my treasury. More and more of my friends joined my army at my invitation, and my castle was much more secure due to their help. Still, the raids kept coming.
Looking at the numbers, I knew that if I didn’t find a way to add more bodies to my castle, my army would be weak in comparison to other armies, especially in the face of alliances. I was continually attacked, occasionally losing money, but thankfully I never lost a vassal. I realized I needed to seize my own vassals if I was to stay ahead.
My first attempts were unsuccessful. Perhaps I was new to the kidnapping game, but I could not capture my first target. After multiple attacks on my part, I gave up. My next attempts were more fruitful. I pressed the attack on Knight Ajdin’s capital until I was to emerge victorious: Knight Chris was now my vassal. Though he is still loyal to Knight Ajdin, he has become a very productive member of my workshop. Perhaps by the end of the next day, he shall give no second thought to swearing fealty to his new liege.
Soon to join Knight Chris was Lady Lainey, formerly of Knight David’s service, and Knight Moti, who I am sure Knight Art shall miss. Then again, perhaps not. No attempts to save these vassals have come.
Knight Geoff has been somewhat more concerned about his former vassals. Knight Carl and Knight Tim are spending the next couple of days in my newly built Tower. Knight Geoff has attacked me multiple times in the past day, and though my defenses hold strong, I do not want to take any chances. There have been random attacks by other armies as well, and if fortune goes to Knight Geoff, he may find that my army has weakened before he arrives with fresh attackers.
My strategy seems to be working so far. I have not lost so much as a single piece of gold to a raiding army, and as I gain more and more vassals, I’m sure I will be able to continue to support my fortifications while also expanding my capital. Still, I fear that all of my efforts will be for naught. I do not have the heart to dedicate all of my waking hours to my castle, and in the face of strong alliances, I do not see how I can hope to become the highest ranking knight in all of the kingdoms.
For now, however, I will enjoy sleeping, knowing that Knight Geoff’s cries of anger are echoing in his streets. I left him his best knight, though, and I wish he would show a bit more gratitude at my generosity. Perhaps if our paths cross again, I will allow him to join my army as a reward for amusing me with his persistence.
About a month ago I purchased The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS. Since I don’t currently have a TV, my other consoles are useless to me, and the game sounded fun.
I came across the Isle of Frost, and it turned out that there were two races of people here. The Anoukis were apparently in control and had banished the Yooks to the more frigid areas. The more I talked to people on this island, the more I felt concerned for the Yooks. One of the Yooks had decided to take matters into his own hands and kidnap an Anouki, stole his identity, and lived in the comfort of the Anouki’s home. The Anoukis suspected that one of them was really a Yook in disguise, and you have been asked to figure it out.
After solving that puzzle, the Yook was revealed, and he left, but not before blasting me with some super breath that knocked me out of the building. When I went back to the leader of the Anouki, he thanked me for helping and then mentioned that I could go get my revenge on the Yook and also take out my aggression on any other Yooks I find. His words were dripping with hate, and the entire affair bothered me. So he asked me if I wanted to get revenge.
My options were either “Well…” or “Maybe…” Wow. Link would get squashed like a grape if he continues to be so ambivalent. Now, it turns out that it doesn’t matter what you say here, because Ciela, the fairy, decides for you:
“Hmmm….YEAH! Of course we want to get revenge!” What? No, we don’t! NO, WE DON’T! She does not speak for me!
But she does. You are sent to get revenge against the Yook who blasted you with his bad breath, and any other Yooks who get in your way. It’s all about finding the pure metal, after all, so it doesn’t matter who gets hurt.
I was sure that something would happen that would reveal the Yooks to be just as hateful of the Anouki. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this whole section would be a bit of commentary on Isreal-Palestine issue.
Oddly enough, the Yook aren’t just a different set of villagers in a different area. They’re enemies. You can’t talk to them. You just attack. And kill.
Once you do everything you set out to accomplish, it turns out that the Yooks were under some kind of mind-control. They actually prefer being where they are because their fur protects them from the cold. They apologize for trying to hurt you.
Apologize to ME? I killed a large number of you! Why aren’t you upset?
And why wasn’t I given a choice in the matter? Why did Ciela decide to take the Yook’s attack so personally and go along so easily with the Anouki leader’s call for revenge? I’m surprised I wasn’t asked to perform genocide!
It was a very strange situation, I thought. To me, the appeal of revenge and of hate was raised without a strong argument against it in the game. Why doesn’t Ciela become repentant? I don’t need a happy ending, and I felt the way the situation ended was a cop-out, but did anyone else feel a bit uneasy playing through this part of the game?