Slashdot Mirror
On Single-Player Competition
Via Ars Technica, a post on the Major League Gaming site about the return of single-player competition (ala arcade games) with the likes of Xbox Live Arcade. From the article: "Once it stops being really enjoyable and just becomes work, you move on to another game and rarely come back. But imagining myself playing Resident Evil 4 with online leaderboards showing high scores in the missionary mode or a timed 'kill as many bad guys as you can' mini-game brings a smile to my face. I know for a fact I would be playing Super Mario Sunshine every now and then to try to get the fastest time for beating a certain level if there were leaderboards that everyone could plainly see after they beat a level."
So it seems that the proof for the Speed Demos Archive lies in the video, correct?
I mean, it's a great concept but I can put an NES game on my Dreamcast and up the speed to 1.5x using NesterDC and record that.
Maybe that looks a little fishy so instead I play the game regularly on the NES and capture the video at a rate of 30 frames per second. Then I load it into Gordian Knot and just remove a frame or two for every 15, inching my time up a half minute or so overall.
How would they protect against something like this?
My work here is dung.
I'll OWN you at single player pong. I can't wait!
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Being able to filter the leaderboard by your friends is pure genius...
Highscores were a huge part of gaming in the 80's. Even later games like Mario Cart and Goldeneye made great use of fastest times. Competition is great, but some people really don't like playing online games against a bunch of obnoxious 12 year olds.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Indie games have been doing this for a LONG time. Most of their games have built-in highscore routines to sync up scores with the server. Sites like AtariAge run online competitions for high scores. Heck, even the game I linked to in my sig solicits high scores.
The biggest problem is that it's no longer an arcade rivalry. You're not fighting with that one other guy who comes into the arcade every day. You're fighting with everyone in the world. And no matter how good you are, there's almost always someone way better out there. Which means that you're already defeated before you even start. There's no way you can touch some of those high scores.
At least with the Indies, some of them develop small communities around the game, keeping the competition intense. As soon as the floodgates are open, though, there's no real point in competing.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The main issue here is that cheating is so much easier with single player. Traditionally, single player games haven't had near the cheating protections of multi-player online games. It's also easier to catch people cheating when all the action is happening live on a server, then when it's all happening on someone's personal computer and they'd just upload score info :) This idea will only work for server hosted games. Otherwise you'll have people hacking the data upload or the game itself and have scores like "13371337" all over the place.
Many timeattacks and speedruns on this site.
Read the faq if you don't know the difference between a timeattack and a speedrun =)
Probably one of the first (and best) examples of comprehensive leaderboard support was Project Gotham Racing 2 for the Xbox. When connected to Xbox Live, every event you completed was uploaded to the leaderboard. I was extremely happy to crack the top 1000 on most boards. The top 10 entries on each board had their "ghost" uploaded so that you could view their record setting run and/or race against it. While there were some issues (they should have created leaderboards for each medal class), on the whole it was extremely well done and contributed greatly to the replayability of the game.
Dan
Gaming lately has been dancing around this issue lately and it is an area no one wants to tap into in the media. Gamers tastes have not really ever changed, games and game makers have forcefed things on us with varying levels of success but the core concept of fun has remained the same.
Geometry wars I would say has sold as much or more than most launch titles for the 360. This "resurgence" in single player/leaderboard gaming. Simple, quick, easy to pick up and play games have always been the favorite, no matter the level of technology or the era. It always comes back to a simple idea, executed perfectly, and accessible to most any player.
The forced transition to 3D and the denial of 2D games is another instance. Still to this day the "sleeper" hits are always some form of 2D gameplay, yet no game maker wants to admit this and produce 2D games.
FPS and RTS games have been being pushed more and more BY THE GAME DEVELOPERS/PUBLISHERS, not by gamer demand. They are easy and cheap to produce and stick to a basic formula that has been beat to death many times over. Gamers demand new and exciting games, look at the interest in upcoming games like Spore... yet there is only 1 Spore to every 100 FPS/RTS games. The developers keep shoveling out GTA clones, FPS games, and RTS titles by the bucketful and the returns are finally diminishing. Just like MMO's the developer/publisher are the ones pushing them so hard because they are easy to produce and rake in tons of cash, but they are all still basically the same formula as EQ1 over and over with minor tweaks and changes. Sure, they sell tons.. but if you would have asked before WoW if gamers wanted yet another fantasy MMO, most would have said "NO!" But it gets hyped, and marketed, and people buy into it and no matter how many folks complain about long wait times and boredom after lvl 60 the subscription numbers keep climbing.
People really want innovative, unique, games and the cult followings that otherwise unknown games garner (like Katamari Damacy, Guitar Hero, DDR, Odama, Ikaruga, etc.) prove that true game design, gameplay, and innovation still hold the highest regard in gamers minds. Game makers would (and do) have you believe otherwise, but the proof is there.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
is nethack!
All these years, and still the only game that matters.
3d? 2d? Bah! The animation is done with ASCII, just as God meant things to be.
Of course, it does have new-fangled developments, like navigation with the arrow pads for those not bright enough to use vi instead of emacs, and the iintroduction of color is still questionable . . .
hawk
Reposting of something I wrote in response to a similar article:
Achievements and scores on the 360 are the real "next-gen" feature of the XBox 360.
Forget the graphics and the other much-touted features of the 360 - achievements and high scores take that old-school high score competitiveness from yesterday's arcades and make them relevant once again.
This is great for someone like me - a guy in his early 30's who doesn't have many gamer friends anymore and certainly none on XBL - because it brings that arcade competitiveness of yesteryear back into my living room: enhancing replayability, upping the tension factor, and generally just making the games more fun. Whoever decided to make integrated Live and Achievements mandatory for all XBox 360 games was a genius.
Speedrun, Major League Gaming, Electronic sports
You're going to break your hands getting the best score you could ever do on , then you'll go and check out the high scores of the losers who play the same game ten hours each day, only to see you're WAY, WAY behind.
Wohoo, lotsa fun!
Poor Leon...
There's a service called GameTap, an online gaming site where you download different emulators (Windows, Dreamcast, C64, MAME, Atari, etc) and can play the actual games from those systems. A lot of the games have a leader board where the top scores are stored. It gives you something to strive for when playing some of the games.
I do know that NESVideos (a similar site) only takes submissions in the form of emulator movies - basically a recorded set of inputs. They load it up with their own rom of the game (known to be good), and record the actual video from that.
So how do they distinguish traditional speed runs (one continuous recording at full speed) from tool-assisted speed runs (recorded in slow motion, with sections repeatedly re-recorded, or both)?
I'll OWN you at single player pong. I can't wait!
Wouldn't that be a primitive racquetball sim?
If you look at the top Mariokart time trial sites, they make you prove your score, either by screenshot or with video and if it still a little suspicious, you play an online game to show off your technique.
Does this only work for Mario Kart DS? The other four Mario Kart games didn't have online play. Do people who specialize in the Super NES, N64, GBA, or GameCube iterations of the franchise have to buy a Nintendo DS and become skilled at another MK title just to prove that he or she didn't do some sort of tool-assisted run?
And no matter how good you are, there's almost always someone way better out there. Which means that you're already defeated before you even start. There's no way you can touch some of those high scores.
Then have it rank players by percentile and then compare your percentile to those of other accounts on your buddy list. Even if you can't get to the 99.9 percentile, if you're at 92.6 and those on your buddy list are lower, you still have something to brag about.
Nintendo makes a side-scolling Mario game that encompasses the scope (i.e. levels and level variety) of Mario 1-Mario world.
Including the rat-bastard difficulty of Super Mario Bros. 2 (J), called Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels in other territories?
What about the revenue stream generated by high-end 3d accelerated graphics cards? I would think that the large PC video card manufacturers have reasons to encourage game producers to release 3D titles.
Even substantial 2D graphics can be handled by more modestly priced cards.
For RE4, this sort of already exists...especially for the Japanese. The site http://homepage3.nifty.com/shin3/capcom/bio4.htm tracks both the best times on the main game and high scores for the Mercenaries minigame, ranging from top 20ish to the top 64. I think he just includes the submissions for anyone that sends him videos of their performances. It also includes video downloads for the highest scoring/best time people, so you know it's legit. It even includes submissions from players from all over the world. There is a downside to it, though. I'd love to send some vids in, but I don't want to plop down $100-200 dollars for a good video capture card just so I can send recordings there and have my name on the scoreboards.
The same applies for the Speed Running community across the world. They track and display the top times for a variety of games, but if you want to submit your own speedrun(s) you have to go through the hassle of recording your work, rather than having a built in online scoreboard system. Also they tend to only display the times of the top one or two players, rather than having a top 20 or so. But, at least you get to download their runs and see how it's done!
"Uh, excuse me, sir? I was wondering if you're interested in the book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ."
"Qué carajo estás haciendo aquí? Lárgate, cabrón!"
"Sorry to bother you."
(Villager then tries to attack Leon with an axe.)
"Freeze! I said, Freeze!"
(Leon takes out the villager and gets a message on his radio.)
"Is everything okay?"
"There was a hostile local. I had no choice but to neutralize him. There are still others surrounding the area."
"Get out of there and head toward the village. Take whatever measures necessary to save the subject."
I can't wait till ALL platforms implement something similar to what MS has done with the gamerscore/gamercard system. I'm tired of telling folks and /.-ers that I'm a Japanese RPG fanatic. I'd love to point people to my gamercard and achievements. They can see that I've played most Square-Enix games, many Nippon Ichi titles, have beaten Prinny Baal in Disgaea, really close to beating DQVIII, etc. I'm not ashamed of my gaming heritage at all!
I'm sure the same goes for many other gamers. They WANT people to know that they're the top dog in most flight sims, or that you really don't want to play them in any RTS game, or that they're crazy about DDR. (And for those who don't want to display that, then give them an option to remain anonymous)
-- jchenx