I'm curious - do you have a feeling of trying to be competitive when you play? One of the hardest things to get right in an online game is the enormous difference in time between the hardcore and casual players. Every designer would like to create a world where casual players can have just as important a role as hardcore.
There are a couple of ways to do this. One way is to make games more player-skill based, instead of character-skill based. This can be frustrating for people with lots of time but not much natural ability. Fun for the smartest people, but not for the majority of players.
Another way is to create lots of "every player gets one vote" situations. This can work in games with lots of social content, but if overused just encourages mule characters. The game becomes all about who has the most RL money. Fun for the rich, not for the majority.
A third solution is to try to tweek the game rules so that advancement requires exponentially more time at higher levels. Say you need 1M experience to get from level 50->51, and 10M to get from 51->52, and 100M to get from 52->53, etc. Of course this is just a way to pretend there's not much difference between a L50 and a L53 player - it won't be long before everyone catches on that a L53 character is far "better" than a L50 character. This could be fun for casual players, but sends a terrible message to a game's most dedicated players that they're no longer wanted.
Ironically, the game without combat has permanent death. The only way to get yourself killed right now is through addiction to drug called "Speed of the Serpent."
Here's how it works: When you're not playing the game, you accumulate "offline travel time" which allows you to instantly warp places. It's as if your character had been running the whole time you were offline. This offline time is very precious, and short of logging off, the only way to get more is to ingest Speed of the Serpent.
A single dose is the equivalent of being offline for 24 hours. The only catch is that you must then drink a shot of cabbage juice at least once every 30 RL days. If you ever fail to do this (including forgetting to log in), you die. Game over, we won't bill your credit card any more:)
You can drink a 2nd shot of Speed of the Serpent a day later for an additional 24 hours of travel time, but then you'll have to drink cabbage juice every 29 days.
When I was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon in 1989, I decided it would be fun to make a game (actually a system for making platform games) as my senior project. I was really psyched about this, and figured that any professor would be honored to be my advisor on such an innovative project.
I set out looking for an advisor. I picked one of CMU's best known professors. I called his secretary, made an appointment, and described my idea. His response? "Do you know who I am? There is *no way in hell* that I am attaching my name to a video game."
Bah, his loss. I set out to find another professor to serve as advisor. I wandered around the halls until I found a professor that I had for a class once. This guy wasn't a big shot. He didn't have a secretary, and didn't have such a big office, but that was ok. I jazzed up my presentation a bit, threw in a few buzzwords of the day: "It's an 'object oriented' system for 'rapid application development' of a class of interactive entertainment, blah blah blah.
He was intrigued! "Hmm, object oriented, rapid applica... Er, wait a minute - this is a video game? No, I'm not putting my name on that."
Ok, so no cigar just yet, but I was picking up on a trend. I wandered around some more. I went deep into the lower levels of Wean Hall. I walked down a corridor carved out of solid rock - the offices here were the size of closets, and they didn't even have windows. I found someone who appeared to have just been hired, and gave my pitch, filled with as many ridiculous buzzwords as I could think up. He mulled it over "object oriented, um, rapid stuff, um, 'Oh, you mean a video game! Yeah, cool, I'll be your advisor for that!'"
So I found my advisor. He didn't get fired for putting his name of a Senior Project video game, and it came out pretty good in the end, and nobody else got embarrassed.
When you buy a *thing* you can do with it what you want. For instance, if I buy a painting, I can publicly exhibit it all I want, I can draw a moustache on it, I can lend it to a friend.
When you buy a license, you get a set of rights. So, if I buy a gym membership, I'm allowed to work out during gym hours, use a locker, swim in the pool. I'm not allowed to loan my membership card to a friend to use. If I misplace my membership card, that doesn't cancel my membership.
It seems the MPAA wants it both ways: They want to be allowed to make all sorts of restrictions as if they were selling licenses, but want to pretend it's just a physical object they're selling when it comes to media damage, theft, and format changes.
I say they play by the same rules as everyone else. Make it one or the other.
"Hire a Lawyer" has become a kneejerk reaction on Slashdot. I'd suggest, instead, to understand what you're being asked to sign, and then if a minor modification would fix it, mark up the contract, initial it, and ask them to do the same.
Contract law is much closer to the sort of logic that every programmer is familiar with, than it is to some sort of extraterrestrial language.
I've done this to plenty of contracts, both as employer and employee/contractor, and have never lost a job because of it. It's expected in business - they're used to it; you should be too.
I've wondered about this - if you put the disc in the freezer would it (significantly) extend the life? What about using one of those home-shrinkwrap machines like FoodSaver?
In ATITD we allow grief play because the whole point of the game is to see if players can build a perfect society, including formulating laws that deal with the misfits that every society has (griefers, in an online society.)
However, if I'm playing Warcraft 3, I'm not trying to "build a society" - I just want to play a game of WC3!
So for battle.net, definitely the right thing to do. Way to go Blizzard!
You have no idea how difficult it is to "just fix it." You're asking developers to write an algorithm that recognizes bad behavior; that recognizes when someone is intentionally playing badly as opposed to unsuccessfully trying to play well.
Furthermore, you're asking them to do this in a domain where writing an AI to just play the game well is an unsolved problem.
Definitely blame developers for bugs, but you're way out of your league on this one.
Filing a patent costs around $10,000 including fees, assuming you hire a decent lawyer. Defending a patent lawsuit starts at $100,000, and can run much higher, depending on how many expert witnesses you need to hire.
It doesn't matter how much prior art there is - plan to spend $100k to prove you're right.
who's not chomping at the bit for the next generation of consoles? For the last round I couldn't wait to get my hands on the GameCube, PS2, and XBox. In fact, I bought each one within a few days of release.
But this generation seems to push as many pixels as needed for pretty much all games. Games look great these days. Sound hardware has been where it needs to be since the previous generation. Networking is functional.
So what's left? HDTV support would be nice - that will soak up a bit more more pixel-pushing power. Wireless controllers by default? (Playing games on a huge front projection TV from my couch is gaming nirvana.) I can get this now though - doesn't seem to justify a whole new system.
Not sure if a non-combat game would be your cup of tea, but our game has what I believe is the highest proportion of female players of all MMORPGs. 27% if you're counting based on paid accounts, and 40% if you're counting by hours played. (Yes, women tend to play more hours than men.) Anecdotally, I find that people almost always play a character of their gender. I've talked to dozens of guys who have said "This is the first computer game my wife/girlfriend will play with me."
We have Windows and Linux clients, and it's free for 24 hours. (We don't even ask for a credit card upfront.) If you check it out, do a "/chat pharaoh" in game and let me know.
I just took the first 3 spam in my box, and 2 of them had 800 numbers - surprising. I called them and let them record for a while while I coded. One of them timed out after a few minutes and said "to replay this message, press 1". So I did that a few times also.
We designed this to be game-resistant, give the illusion of early progress, and be zero-sum. It's used in the Conflict discipline in our game, which consists of competitive two-player mini-games.
I'm convinced that it's a near-perfect replacement for ELO-like systems like those used in chess, but only when getting a high rank is the main goal. When a high percentage of the population is willing to throw games to boost a few players, then even this system breaks down.
We're now experimenting with N-elimination tournament systems. We'll know in a couple weeks how those work.
Here's a breakdown of overhead costs. But that's not most of the $14.
We have a small company - 3 artists, 2 coders. We spend pretty much all of our time saying "ah, here's a cool new challenge to add to the game." My partner and I code it, the artists do their part, and we release a new skill, or new research, or a new event or Test. This happens at least a couple times each week.
I can't imagine being able to keep the game fresh and interesting working less than full time. There is *no way* we could pay the bills based only on an initial (box) fee.
These are all since release. An account is considered a paid account if they have paid for at least one month of ATITD. Note that these are not current subscriber counts - we're arouond 1500 on that. The average length of time a player stays is a bit closer, but I'll try put those numbers together if there's interest.
So, the 15 vs 19 certainly seems meaningful - maybe there's a stats guy out there who can figure out the actual margin or error.
Also, yes - these are percentages of people who do the trial that go on to pay. We don't require any credit card info upfront, so there's no "aha, you forgot to say you DIDN'T want to continue!" factor. Also there's plenty of kids that don't have a way to pay in the first place, mixed in with those numbers. No idea what the numbers would look like if we did use a traditional GOTCHA! business model.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm curious - do you have a feeling of trying to be competitive when you play? One of the hardest things to get right in an online game is the enormous difference in time between the hardcore and casual players. Every designer would like to create a world where casual players can have just as important a role as hardcore.
There are a couple of ways to do this. One way is to make games more player-skill based, instead of character-skill based. This can be frustrating for people with lots of time but not much natural ability. Fun for the smartest people, but not for the majority of players.
Another way is to create lots of "every player gets one vote" situations. This can work in games with lots of social content, but if overused just encourages mule characters. The game becomes all about who has the most RL money. Fun for the rich, not for the majority.
A third solution is to try to tweek the game rules so that advancement requires exponentially more time at higher levels. Say you need 1M experience to get from level 50->51, and 10M to get from 51->52, and 100M to get from 52->53, etc. Of course this is just a way to pretend there's not much difference between a L50 and a L53 player - it won't be long before everyone catches on that a L53 character is far "better" than a L50 character. This could be fun for casual players, but sends a terrible message to a game's most dedicated players that they're no longer wanted.
Tough problem.
Ironically, the game without combat has permanent death. The only way to get yourself killed right now is through addiction to drug called "Speed of the Serpent."
:)
Here's how it works: When you're not playing the game, you accumulate "offline travel time" which allows you to instantly warp places. It's as if your character had been running the whole time you were offline. This offline time is very precious, and short of logging off, the only way to get more is to ingest Speed of the Serpent.
A single dose is the equivalent of being offline for 24 hours. The only catch is that you must then drink a shot of cabbage juice at least once every 30 RL days. If you ever fail to do this (including forgetting to log in), you die. Game over, we won't bill your credit card any more
You can drink a 2nd shot of Speed of the Serpent a day later for an additional 24 hours of travel time, but then you'll have to drink cabbage juice every 29 days.
So far there have been 8 deaths.
When I was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon in 1989, I decided it would be fun to make a game (actually a system for making platform games) as my senior project. I was really psyched about this, and figured that any professor would be honored to be my advisor on such an innovative project.
;)
I set out looking for an advisor. I picked one of CMU's best known professors. I called his secretary, made an appointment, and described my idea. His response? "Do you know who I am? There is *no way in hell* that I am attaching my name to a video game."
Bah, his loss. I set out to find another professor to serve as advisor. I wandered around the halls until I found a professor that I had for a class once. This guy wasn't a big shot. He didn't have a secretary, and didn't have such a big office, but that was ok. I jazzed up my presentation a bit, threw in a few buzzwords of the day: "It's an 'object oriented' system for 'rapid application development' of a class of interactive entertainment, blah blah blah.
He was intrigued! "Hmm, object oriented, rapid applica... Er, wait a minute - this is a video game? No, I'm not putting my name on that."
Ok, so no cigar just yet, but I was picking up on a trend. I wandered around some more. I went deep into the lower levels of Wean Hall. I walked down a corridor carved out of solid rock - the offices here were the size of closets, and they didn't even have windows. I found someone who appeared to have just been hired, and gave my pitch, filled with as many ridiculous buzzwords as I could think up. He mulled it over "object oriented, um, rapid stuff, um, 'Oh, you mean a video game! Yeah, cool, I'll be your advisor for that!'"
So I found my advisor. He didn't get fired for putting his name of a Senior Project video game, and it came out pretty good in the end, and nobody else got embarrassed.
BUT
Looks like I was ahead of all of them! Carnegie Mellon now touts it's Entertainment Technology Center, and proudly proclaims how they're considered the Harvard of Game Development Programs, and they've even had me back to speak on a few occasions about my latest game. They've come a long way
When you buy a *thing* you can do with it what you want. For instance, if I buy a painting, I can publicly exhibit it all I want, I can draw a moustache on it, I can lend it to a friend.
When you buy a license, you get a set of rights. So, if I buy a gym membership, I'm allowed to work out during gym hours, use a locker, swim in the pool. I'm not allowed to loan my membership card to a friend to use. If I misplace my membership card, that doesn't cancel my membership.
It seems the MPAA wants it both ways: They want to be allowed to make all sorts of restrictions as if they were selling licenses, but want to pretend it's just a physical object they're selling when it comes to media damage, theft, and format changes.
I say they play by the same rules as everyone else. Make it one or the other.
I've wondered why the car companies were so anal about this.
Taking PR advice from your lawyer is like taking financial advice from your bookie.
"Hire a Lawyer" has become a kneejerk reaction on Slashdot. I'd suggest, instead, to understand what you're being asked to sign, and then if a minor modification would fix it, mark up the contract, initial it, and ask them to do the same.
Contract law is much closer to the sort of logic that every programmer is familiar with, than it is to some sort of extraterrestrial language.
I've done this to plenty of contracts, both as employer and employee/contractor, and have never lost a job because of it. It's expected in business - they're used to it; you should be too.
I've wondered about this - if you put the disc in the freezer would it (significantly) extend the life? What about using one of those home-shrinkwrap machines like FoodSaver?
In ATITD we allow grief play because the whole point of the game is to see if players can build a perfect society, including formulating laws that deal with the misfits that every society has (griefers, in an online society.)
However, if I'm playing Warcraft 3, I'm not trying to "build a society" - I just want to play a game of WC3!
So for battle.net, definitely the right thing to do. Way to go Blizzard!
You have no idea how difficult it is to "just fix it." You're asking developers to write an algorithm that recognizes bad behavior; that recognizes when someone is intentionally playing badly as opposed to unsuccessfully trying to play well.
Furthermore, you're asking them to do this in a domain where writing an AI to just play the game well is an unsolved problem.
Definitely blame developers for bugs, but you're way out of your league on this one.
Filing a patent costs around $10,000 including fees, assuming you hire a decent lawyer. Defending a patent lawsuit starts at $100,000, and can run much higher, depending on how many expert witnesses you need to hire.
It doesn't matter how much prior art there is - plan to spend $100k to prove you're right.
This is why the patent system sucks.
Interesting that Gary Nolan has raised more money and has a higher average contribution than Dean, Edwards, Clark, and (almost) Kerry.
Yes. The best blend of fun/exercise I've experienced in a game. Much of the increased difficulty of the later opponents is due to your own exhaustion.
I see a future version of a gym which is based entirely on physically controlled video games. Does this exist yet?
"We will post the list of infringing files on our website in about two hours."
Later clarified as "43 header files."
Darl just said that the source files in question are "40 or so header files that are included by virtually all applications."
who's not chomping at the bit for the next generation of consoles? For the last round I couldn't wait to get my hands on the GameCube, PS2, and XBox. In fact, I bought each one within a few days of release.
But this generation seems to push as many pixels as needed for pretty much all games. Games look great these days. Sound hardware has been where it needs to be since the previous generation. Networking is functional.
So what's left? HDTV support would be nice - that will soak up a bit more more pixel-pushing power. Wireless controllers by default? (Playing games on a huge front projection TV from my couch is gaming nirvana.) I can get this now though - doesn't seem to justify a whole new system.
Gameplay innovation anyone??
Not sure if a non-combat game would be your cup of tea, but our game has what I believe is the highest proportion of female players of all MMORPGs. 27% if you're counting based on paid accounts, and 40% if you're counting by hours played. (Yes, women tend to play more hours than men.) Anecdotally, I find that people almost always play a character of their gender. I've talked to dozens of guys who have said "This is the first computer game my wife/girlfriend will play with me."
We have Windows and Linux clients, and it's free for 24 hours. (We don't even ask for a credit card upfront.) If you check it out, do a "/chat pharaoh" in game and let me know.
I just took the first 3 spam in my box, and 2 of them had 800 numbers - surprising. I called them and let them record for a while while I coded. One of them timed out after a few minutes and said "to replay this message, press 1". So I did that a few times also.
We designed this to be game-resistant, give the illusion of early progress, and be zero-sum. It's used in the Conflict discipline in our game, which consists of competitive two-player mini-games.
I'm convinced that it's a near-perfect replacement for ELO-like systems like those used in chess, but only when getting a high rank is the main goal. When a high percentage of the population is willing to throw games to boost a few players, then even this system breaks down.
We're now experimenting with N-elimination tournament systems. We'll know in a couple weeks how those work.
Here's a breakdown of overhead costs. But that's not most of the $14.
We have a small company - 3 artists, 2 coders. We spend pretty much all of our time saying "ah, here's a cool new challenge to add to the game." My partner and I code it, the artists do their part, and we release a new skill, or new research, or a new event or Test. This happens at least a couple times each week.
I can't imagine being able to keep the game fresh and interesting working less than full time. There is *no way* we could pay the bills based only on an initial (box) fee.
Actually, there's plenty of sample size to do meaningful statistics. Here's the total:
Trial Accounts, Total: 34317
Trial Accounts, Linux: 1309
Paid Accounts, Total: 5407
Paid Accounts, Linus: 253
These are all since release. An account is considered a paid account if they have paid for at least one month of ATITD. Note that these are not current subscriber counts - we're arouond 1500 on that. The average length of time a player stays is a bit closer, but I'll try put those numbers together if there's interest.
So, the 15 vs 19 certainly seems meaningful - maybe there's a stats guy out there who can figure out the actual margin or error.
Also, yes - these are percentages of people who do the trial that go on to pay. We don't require any credit card info upfront, so there's no "aha, you forgot to say you DIDN'T want to continue!" factor. Also there's plenty of kids that don't have a way to pay in the first place, mixed in with those numbers. No idea what the numbers would look like if we did use a traditional GOTCHA! business model.
Never get let your lawyer give you PR advice.
Can I use my voucher to support myself?
Now I'm gonna just download 2000 songs and get a rebate as well. I'd feel bad doing that to eMusic, but "Dimensional Associates LLC" ?
Screw 'em.
A Tale in the Desert. This is why I should stick to programming, not marketing.