Buzz

Dog days of summer and most of the talk is about Summer of Arcade games. Notable to me was the praise lavished on the indie game Bastion. Tried the demo on Xbox but going to check it out on PC when it is released later.

Most exciting is talk of Space Marine since the multiplayer demo is out. Very excited for this one as Im a huge Relic fan.

Playing

More Infamous. Really enjoying this game as a light super-hero experience with a decent story. Played and played and then it was finished. The ending was great and caught me by surprise. I wouldnt say I cant wait for Infamous 2 but I will enjoy more of the story.

And then I decided to address my growing pile of unfinished games.

I bought an Xbox controller for my PC and moved my PC into the TV room and hooked it up to my 54" plasma TV to play Batman: Arkham Asylum. Wowza! Since this game has Games for Windows Live (with achievements) its like a high-power Xbox in my living room. Spending some quality time this month as Batman.

Bought

Nothing bought

Finished

Finished Infamous.

Multi-player Online Battle Arena. MOBA?

I've been missing the competitive experience of playing games against other people. All the more so since Im not allowed to play basketball (I guess that is a non-eSport) until December.

In the past I've spent countless hours playing FPS games like Counterstrike and Day of Defeat but Im not not into the modern crop of FPS games. And I never really tried the RTS genre despite my love of Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2.

I never played Starcraft but I did enjoy Starcraft 2. However I wasnt won over by the multiplayer experience and didnt finish my 50 "practice" games. It was fun but not cooperative enough or compelling enough to continue.

Recently Valve has announced that they are getting into the eSports arena with DOTA2 and a new version of Counterstrike. DOTA2 is not released yet but they just had a contest with a $1M grand prize and have generated a lot of buzz which has me curious.

Unfortunately the MOBA world is a bit confusing with a ton of games that are so similar its hard to tell them apart and a reputation for brutal competition (and a lack of manners). Is this something I can enjoy casually?

As I understand it, first there was Warcraft 3. (Played it; didnt' love it.) Then there was a W3 mod called Defense of the Ancients. DOTA was a cult hit for years and spawned the MOBA genre. Years later we have Demigod, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, and two new games Rise of Immortals and DOTA2 (from Valve).

Im in the Rise of Immortals beta so I fired that up last night and... promptly lost match after match until my PC crashed. Think I will give it another try after I read the rules :) and then check out the other games.

Took a blog hiatus this summer. Here are some old posts that never went out...

Buzz

June is a HUGE month for gaming because of E3.

This year I watched the three major press conferences from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. It was quite a contrast as each company seems to be taking a very different strategy for 2011.

Sony was Sony: A premium hardware company with middling software and services. They announced new hardware in the NGP and a ton of awesome looking games. This was my favorite show but admittedly it was just more of the normal Sony strategy.

Microsoft was notable in two ways. They were only company to have female presenters, as in tons of them plus children. Lots of children. And it was notable in that every presenter talked about Kinect. With a nod to the Halo hardcore that Microsoft is known for, there was an obvious effort to rebrand the console from core-gamers (14 to 35 year old men) to family gaming (Kinect, Sesame Street, children). Time will tell if Microsoft sticks with this new strategy and how well it works. (It wont work without more Kinect software...)

Nintendo was Nintendo. Long on nostalgia and short on details. Most of their presenters were Japanese with English translators and as a non-Nintendo fan, most of it was inscrutable to me. Since I dont have any history with Nintendo, their content did not resonate with me. The Wii U was announced and shown and I was baffled by it. I had to go read articles elsewhere to even understand what it was which is not the sign of a strong product demo... Nintendo seems to be struggling to find something to do after the Wii.

E3 games that caught me eye were the Lara Croft reboot, Call of Duty 4, and the Battlefield 3. Battlefield being one of the few games to lead on the PC.

New hardware was shown. The NGP (or Vita) from Sony. Sorry, I cant stand the Vita name and will hang onto the NGP for a while. Then there was Nintendo's rather bizarre Wii U. Is it a handheld? Is it a controller? Whatever it is, I dont think its for me and I think Nintendo's success with the Wii is something even they wont be able to maintain.

Rage. iD shooter + Bethesda RPG = caught my interest. Looks pretty good so far.

Prey 2 also got my interest as it sounds like an open-ended FPS+RPG. I passed on the first Prey but this sound different and better. (So why keep the brand at all?)

Frozen Synapse is a PC game on Steam that is getting buzz this month.   

Playing

This month is all about Infamous! on my PS3. Not the best game ever but the closest thing to the fun I had in Crackdown. It makes me feel like a super hero and reminds me of City of Heroes years ago.

Im also slogging my way through Demon's Souls still. Tried some PVP matches. Other people always come into my world and wipe me out so why not bring to pain to other strangers for a change? Well I and got completely smoked in every match I did. Good grief!

Was feeling the need for some strategy so I fired up Daw of War: Dark Crusade. This game is a mix of Risk and an RTS. Got it in a Steam pack and never played it until now. Pretty good stuff. Makes me wonder why this hasn't been done more often.

Claire got me into Diner Dash on iOS. Kept me entertained for a few hours.

Bought

Thank you Sony! This month I got free copies of Infamous and Little Big Planet on the PS3. Two games I wanted to play but didnt way to pay for.

Finished

Nothing finished this month.

In high school I read "The Republic". I have forgotten most of the book but it had a big impact on my life and kernels have stayed with me.

Socrates (through his student Plato) proposed the idea of the Philosopher King. I think about that idea often at work and especially during political elections. A King is a term for a group leader and we have them all over the place.

Who do you want to be the King?

There is that guy/gal who tells everyone how much they want to be King. How much they deserve the power to make every decision, to tell everyone what to do. That person who has an easy answer for everything. That person who is always wheeling and dealing to make themselves more important.

Even two thousand years ago, Socrates was wise enough to see that that guy is the LAST person you want for a King.

No, Socrates proposed that the King we all really want is the one that does NOT want to be King at all. The person that is wise enough to know that the job totally sucks and is much harder than it looks. The person that doesnt want all that power because they know it comes with so much responsibility. The person that walks away when the election starts.

Socrates said that you want the King that you have to force to be King. The one who only takes the job because their sense of responsibility to others; the one that understands how bad it would if that guy gets the job.

Socrates was poisoned for speaking out against that guy but I still think about him.

May 2011. While we are doing house remodelling, I am feeling house-poor so I have been trying not to spend any cash on games, with some success.

Buzz

The buzz in May was dominated by the PSN outage which lasted for weeks. It started with outrage about Sony and then sort of dwindled into "can we have PSN back now?" Please!? (It wasnt really restored until June.)

The biggest game release of May was LA Noire. For several weeks that is all everyone was talking about, which seems appropriate for a game that has been in development for seven years. It doesn't sound like my kind of game but the facial technology sounds significant. Let's see what Rockstar does with it. Most games with such a long cycle are failures but this one sounds like it will be a hit.

Mortal Kombat got some attention. Clearly its a big brand with a loyal following though. I played MK back in the day in the arcades but fighting games are not my genre. Gore is really not my thang anymore either.

Brink also got a lot of attention but mostly negative. That's sad. Its a game that sounded interesting but like other multiplayer-only games will struggle to find a following given the immense sea of games out there.

With E3 at the start of June, lots of buzz about new titles. The Witcher 2 is one of those titles and folks really talked it up for both fans of the original game and a new audience. Im sure I will play it - after I finish the original Witcher. :) (Like Demon's Souls, I got bogged down in the original game because it requires actual thought and decisions. And the plot was like life; complex enough it was hard to follow.)

Other notable peeks included Dark Souls, the Demon's Souls sequel. Im excited for this simply because I think DS is such an original game from the design perspective. Instead of a huge world, it has a small world with a lot of detail in the combat. (No, I still havent finished DS.) And Crysis 2. All the talk got me curious about the original Crysis. I havent enjoyed any Crytek games but have been in the mood for some sci fi shooting...

Lots of expectation about the next system from Nintendo. The Wii 2? Expect the unexpected as they say.

Playing

To keep from buying anything new, I spent this month looking at my collection of unfinished games. My pile of shame so to speak. Now that I have a new HDD on my PC, I can fill it up with games so I did.

Kings Bounty, Sins of a Solar Empire, The Witcher, Batham: Arkham Asylum. And when Sony gets their store back up, I will finally get to play Little Big Planet and Infamous since those are now free.

For Kings Bounty I just played the "install and remember why I love Steam" game. The game installed on my Win7 x64 machine but when it runs it doesnt show the game screen, only the menus. To try to fix that I installed the 1.7 patch. After that the SecuROM DRM refuses to let the game even run. It complains that I have the wrong CD... Seem to recall that this game made me glad for Steam the first time I installed and played it. So I uninstalled it.

While I played KB a previously, it looks like if I want to finish it, it will cost me $35 to buy the game and 2 expansions on Steam... Hmmm.

To scratch my strategy itch this month, I played Sins of a Solar Empire for a week. I think the game is from 2009. I played it a while ago and got bored of it. Once again it kept my interest for a week... before I got bored of it. Just like Rome: Total War did the month before.

Most of my gaming this month was dedicated to Patapon 2 on my PSP. I love this game but cant seem to beat it! Argh. Having bought the game and the system for a trip to Mexico a few years ago, I played 15 hours or so originally. This time I was more focused, read some strategy wiki's and started over. I built up an much better army and played another 15-20 hours before getting stuck on a mission I cannot get past. Not sure if I will finish it this time either. (Man oh man I hate that Bean minigame.)

Bought

Despite my best intentions not to spend any money on games, Steam messed with my head. Curse you Steam Sales!

I picked up the original Crysis on PC for $8. I played it for a night or two. Looks great but didnt grab me. I think these games are too open-ended for me.

I also spend $20 on Men of War. An RTS that sounds great but I probably wont play because I cannot find anyone to play it with. Maybe someday. $20 to support small developers is never a bad thing.

I also looked at the demo of Shogun 2 - a remake of one of my top 10 games of all time. Pretty much the same Total War formula so I decided to pass even though it was on sale for $40. Boy it sure looks great though! Unfortunately the charm of the original game was how simple it was - this game ruins that with tons of new units and complexity. That turns these games into a job for me so I will pass for now.

I thought about reactivating my Star Trek Online subscription. Im missing sci-fi and really enjoyed the ships but I dont have the time for the MMO thing these days. I also got to thinking about the MMO formula and that cooled some of my enthusiasm.

Lastly I almost did my first pre-order ever. Steam was selling Space Marine with a free copy of Darksiders for $50. Relic is one of my favorite developers so I feel safe giving them my money and violating my "demo first" rule. I heard good things about Darksiders so I thought maybe... I would play it if I had it. I hadnt heard about SM before but after watching the videos this is my most anticipated game of 2011. The videos look insanely good! Wow, Im excited for this. After playing all of Relic's Warhammer 40K RTS games it will be interesting to play from a FPS perspective. No buzz at all about this though - that seems wrong.

Finished

Lots of great gaming this month but nothing finished... I continue to acquire games faster than I can complete them.

After years of listening to game podcasts, I have to say this is E3 2011 edition of the Bombcast one of the best conversations I have ever heard about the Xbox.

I give full credit to Indie game star Jonathan Blow for asking the questions. Why is your platform so closed? Why does your interface force me to watch advertisements? Ironically, I've only heard about Blow because of his game Braid on the Xbox but he is clearly no mindless fanboy and his insightful comments kept it real.

What makes the conversation so special is that the other guests are two Microsoft regulars, Stepto and e. This conversation is almost painful to listen to at times which illustrates how rarely anyone asks meaningful questions in the media. Blow and I seem to agree about a lot of the same things so the talk was great for me to listen to but I think it is also useful for Microsoft.

Blow's questions brought up a number of small issues that actually touch on serious/significant aspects of the company culture.

Microsoft's culture is completely corporate. You get ahead in a large company by being liked, managing risk, and avoiding uncomfortable questions. The company generally ignores or disdains anything that we dont make ourselves. Despite the fact that the Xbox division has lost money almost every year it has existed and it is not even close to reaching the market size of the PS2 or Wii, the Xbox division sees itself as a mind-blowing success. I think these factors create a dangerous mindset for a business in our world of intense competition.

On a personal level, I am a gamer who loves gaming. I currently own 6 game platforms and I want to hear people who love games tell me about games wherever they are. I want to hear the good and the bad to help me be informed and make decisions. The idea that any platform is always good is childish.

For a while I listened to Stepto and e on the Major Nelson podcast. Eventually I stopped listening because it felt like too much of an infomercial for Xbox. While the cast seemed like nice people, all they did was talk about how great Xbox is. Even multi-platform games were discussed as if they only existed on the Xbox. That wasnt the game criticism I wanted to hear so I went back to listening to game journalists.

When Blow complained about being required to have achievements, the Softies said they had to do it because "people complained". To which Blow said: "That's when you sack up and tell them no." Amen brother. When people act like children, adults say no. Do people ever complain about Apple? Does Steve Jobs ever say no, you cant have multitasking or cut and paste? Just because someone asks it doesnt mean its the best idea.

The thing is, corporations avoid saying no (except to lawsuits) because it means someone has to think about the issue and make a decision and by doing so, that person takes the risk of screwing up and getting fired. Taking a risk by making a bold decision really is the worst thing you can do at a large corporation because you might screw up; job number one for corporate survivors is avoiding that situation by hiding in a group or by trying to please everyone. Whether the feedback is from partners or customers, Microsoft's corporate culture is very strong and starts with our CEO: be everything to everyone. Picking and choosing based on our design taste or creative vision are a huge no-no.

As part of the Microsoft talk, two other companies were mentioned: Apple and Valve.

Valve is a company of gamers for gamers. While they started as a PC game company that have evolved. They understand that they provide a service not a product; they bring games to gamers wherever they are. Windows, OSX, PS3, wherever. Blow complimented Valve for making it easy for him to sell games and reach gamers. I cant say enough good things about Valve.

Apple is an even more interesting comparison. For years I have heard that CEO Steve Jobs hates buttons (hence the no-button Mighty Mouse) and games. Apple does not make any game devices. They do make the hottest new gaming platform (the iPhone and iPad) which have created an entire new genre of touch gaming yet both products ship without a single game. Not even some crap like Minesweeper or some faux-intellectual stuff like Chess.

What Apple does make is a great platform for developers (Cocoa), great hardware, and they provide a platform that makes it easy to find, purchase and use software apps. Apple doesnt do games but they made it easy for other people to make games and touch gaming exploded immediately after the iPhone launch.

Blow is correct in his assessment. Touch gaming took off because of the sheer number of developers trying to make games on an easy to use, easy to distribute, open platform. iOS is nothing like the Xbox or PS3 or anything from Nintendo.

Despite Job's reputation for disdaining games, Apple has a bone fide top class gaming platform. iOS gaming is a big threat to all gaming hardware platforms because it is so popular and games are so cheap and there is only so much time customers can spend on gaming.

It may be inside baseball but the conversation illustrates that the culture at Microsoft is one of its biggest threats. Telling yourself how great you are, trying to be everything to everyone, and trying to control the platform will make it hard for Microsoft to grow and evolve. The Xbox is a major gaming platform with dedicated customers but it could be so much more.

By all accounts, MSFT ought to be THE gaming company because it essentially created PC gaming with Direct X. Remember Games for Windows? *cough* PC gaming is a lost opportunity for the company because the culture sees gaming as a product not a service. MSFT doesnt think of providing games to gamers wherever they are; MSFT sees gaming as a single product, Xbox, and as a result it has basically killed off PC gaming and ceded that market to others like Valve. One might even argue that until this year, Microsoft saw Xbox as a single game or game type (Halo and Gears).

The Microsoft press conference showed some interesting stuff but it remains to be seen whether the company has the vision and cajone's to tie that "stuff" into a coherent environment that people want to be.

Yeah, the first hour of this conversation was great. Despite our corporate slogan about unlocking potential, there is a lot of gaming potential Microsoft has yet to capitalize on and it wont do that without more frank dialogs like this. Way to go Jonathan.