Mechanics I Dislike

  April 25, 2013 - 4:50 pm | , ,
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While out with Sam and Cliff, they reminded me that I’m on the record for having a pretty negative reaction to gambling mechanics in games.

It got me thinking, and now I have a few mechanics I’d like to talk about. For me, personally, these mechanics almost always detract from the game unnecessarily. I do give some examples of games that are exceptions to my dislike, however.

Let’s begin!

Petty Memorization

I dislike it when games instruct me to keep my victory points or other cards face-down after I’ve earned them.

I’m not talking about games where hidden information and memorization can be the entire heart of the game, like Fury of Dracula. Instead, I’m talking about games like Small World, where you earn victory points openly, but then keep the values of your tokens face-down.

Any game mechanic that can be circumvented by a notepad and a pencil is a sloppy one. I understand the reason this mechanic exists – game designers want to keep us engaged, mentally keeping track of everyone’s score, and also avoid kingmaker problems by making it unclear who’s winning.

But unless there’s some randomness and uncertainty to the hidden information, this is just petty and punishing for players who want to just play the game instead of committing everything their opponents do to memory. I like to be able to get up from a game, use the bathroom, and get a soda without needing to mentally repeat “Sam has 3, Greg has 5, Erin has 4″ over and over in my head.

A game weakened by this mechanic: Glory to Rome. In Glory to Rome, cards move around the table face-up, and get placed in different parts of your play mat for everyone to see. However, if you place a card in your Vault, it goes face-down. It’s not a secret; you have to openly announce which cards you’re putting away. But it mars the elegance and thoughtful strategy of the game to have that one piece of information hidden.

A game that overcomes this weakness: Cleopatra and the Society of Architects. The number of Corruption tokens you earn during a game is kept hidden. However, the only reason the tokens matter is that the player who has the most tokens at the end automatically loses the game. This lets me choose my involvement in the hidden information – if I don’t want to worry about it, all I have to do is make sure I am less corrupt than at least one other player. If I do want to worry about it, then it’s my choice to try to follow and track everyone’s tokens.

Deckbuilding

This is definitely personal taste, but deckbuilding in CCGs drives me crazy, and often makes it so that I can’t enjoy the game. If I play a CCG and lose, it’s because I didn’t build my deck right; if I play a CCG and win, it’s because my opponent didn’t build their deck right. Either way, I can’t take any real satisfaction in my victory.

This is why I only play Magic with pre-constructed decks.

A common thread for me is that I don’t like being forced to play one game to play another. In this instance, I don’t like being forced to play the deckbuilding game in order to play the main card-strategy game.

A game weakened by this mechanic: Android: Netrunner. Netrunner has a really interesting system involving bluffs and counterplays between the corporation and the runner. But it works best when both sides have some idea of the cards in the other player’s deck. Now that the game has seen a few expansions, we’re starting to see the degenerate combos that plague CCGs, and I find myself really wishing that the core set had been a standalone, non-expandable product.

A game that overcomes this weakness: Any drafting mechanic, where you aren’t in total control of what cards you have available, helps a lot. I have no problems with trying to make the best deck possible out of suboptimal resources. I just don’t like being asked to make the best deck possible, period.

Tacked-On Hidden Roles

I’m just going to start talking about my example, which is Bang. Bang has an interesting card play mechanic, and then some unnecessary hidden roles. You might be out to kill everyone, out to protect the sheriff, or something else.

Bang doesn’t use these hidden roles well. There’s no method built into the game to gain information on other players, and too few ways for players to distinguish themselves through their behavior. Generally, I find that my best strategy, regardless of who I’m playing, is just to turtle up, let the other players kill themselves, and hope that I happen to fulfill my victory condition.

A game which overcomes this weakness: Shadow Hunters. This game has a Hermit square, which allows you to draw a card with a question and pass it to another player. Based on whether or not the card damages them, you gain some information about their hidden role. There are other cards which force players to take damage or heal damage depending on who they are, which means that during every round of the game, I am gaining some tidbit of information about who is who.

Bidding and Gambling

I’ve never understood bidding, and I hate Poker. It feels like another instance where I am not allowed to play the game that I sat down to play. I sit down for an interesting game of card probabilities, but then I have to play this weird sub-game where I try to place a numerical value on how I feel about those probabilities.

Personally, I find that bidding is a mechanic that’s just used to cover up that Poker and other games like it just aren’t much fun without the bidding element. If your primary gameplay mechanic isn’t interesting without putting money on the line, you don’t have a game.

A game weakened by this mechanic: Poker, as mentioned above. Also, Android: Netrunner is introducing a few cards where both players bid 0, 1, or 2 credits, and I really dislike it. I play Netrunner to play “Hacker trashes the evil corporation,” not “Guess how many tokens I’m holding.”

A game that overcomes this weakness: Ra. Everyone has a set of tokens with fixed values. When you win an auction, you place your token on the board and take the token that was on the board previously, so the value of the tokens you have changes constantly. Since you only have three values to bid with, I find it much easier to judge the value of the tiles before make and make a good decision.

Shock Evolution

  April 4, 2013 - 11:17 pm |
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I just played through Bioshock, after finishing Bioshock Infinite a few days ago. I also played through System Shock 2 a long time ago, probably 15 years by now.

It’s interesting to see how the series has become tighter and more combat-focused over time, in a way that mirrors the progression of the gaming industry as a whole. System Shock 2 had a detailed character progression system, and a full inventory system with degrading weapons. Bioshock had moderate character progression – eventually allowing you to carry 18 upgrades – and three types of ammunition per weapon, but no inventory system. Bioshock Infinite reduces the upgrades to four items at a time, allows you to carry two weapons at a time, and does not have various ammo types.

You could say that this is the ‘dumbing down’ of the hobby, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing, necessarily. We’re just learning to make our game designs tighter, more focused – and by doing so, leave ourselves with more room for unique fun. The combat in Bioshock Infinite felt great. By removing ammunition types and item complexity, it allows them to introduce more scenario complexity, such as the skylines.

I’ve heard it said that a person can only really remember and manage about seven things at once. In order to add cool new features to your gameplay, you have to remove something, too.

I wonder how much further we’ll go in this direction, how much more we’ll streamline and tighten the gameplay. I feel like we might start seeing more shooters play with some of the things that shooters have taken for granted, such as limited ammunition and reloading.

Let’s take limited ammo, for example. We’ve been scrounging for bullets since Wolfenstein 3D. But does limiting our ammunition really make the game better? In a really well-tuned combat system, I should want to switch from the machine gun to the shotgun at close range, because one is more suitable than the other. I shouldn’t need to be forced into switching weapons because I ran out of ammo – nor should I be prevented from using my combat options because I don’t have the appropriate ammunition.

If we are going to have limited ammo, let’s look at Doom as an example. The weapons that use the harder-to-find ammunition are incredibly powerful, room-clearing monstrosities, including the legendary BFG-9000. In Doom, choosing which of your limited resources to use in a fight is an important choice.

In contrast, in Halo, all of the weapons have their strengths and weaknesses, and there’s no uber-weapon. It’s in the game’s best interests to promote using a variety of weapons, because variety is fun, but running out of ammo is an artificial way to force the player to use varied weapons. Instead, I’d want to see enemies who can recognize the weapon you’re using, and try to exploit its weaknesses. If the player uses nothing but the assault rifle, then enemies try to rush into close range and move quickly so the player can’t get a bead on them. The player would then switch to a close-range weapon; not because they were forced to, but because they are making an intelligent tactical decision in response to their situation.

I’m just rambling. I’m not suggesting we need to tear all of the restrictions out of all of our games – I’m just saying that there are always opportunities to reconsider the things that we take for granted in a game genre. Take Bionic Commando, for example – a platformer with no jump button.

I’ve often said that Sega Sports Tennis 2K2 is the best fighting game I’ve played, and I mean it. I’d love to see a fighting game adopt the rhythm of a good tennis rally. The strategy in a tennis game is not to keep attacking your opponent, ticking off chunks of their life bar until you knock them out. Instead, you’re manipulating them; making them spend more effort to chase down the ball that you’re expending to return it, and then forcing them into making a critical mistake that you can punish. The lack of a life bar also means that the outcome of a point is never final until the point is actually scored; a player can be taking a beating, but manage to recover and regain control of the match.

I suppose the fighting game equivalent might be for the two characters to share one life bar, more like a tug-of-war. You don’t need to do X damage to your opponent to win; you need to do X damage more than them, and push the balance of the match in your favor until you win. A match might be over in 15 seconds, or it might take 15 minutes as the players jostle back and forth, both sides getting hits in but neither one truly gaining the upper hand.

I think I went off topic! To summarize, the *shock series is great, I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with the next one.

Lunar: Harmony of Silver Star

  January 27, 2013 - 9:05 pm | ,
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13 hours, 23 minutes.

According to the game, that’s how long I played Lunar: Harmony of Silver Star before the big plot twist, when your quest truly begins. The main villain isn’t even introduced until you’ve played for twice as long as your average FPS campaign mode these days.

That might sound like a complaint, that I’m calling the game meandering and long-winded, but it’s actually a huge compliment. Lunar excels by its realistic characters, and by allowing their adventure to progress naturally. When the adventure finally does begin, it feels less like exposition, and more like a natural continuation of the events that have occurred.

At the beginning of the game, nobody comes to you and declares “You are the chosen one, you must save us all!” Instead, it’s just a friend who wants to go check out a local cave. That childhood exploration ends up sending you away from Burg, across the ocean to Meribia. The people you meet in that city lead you back to Vane, and your explorations in Vane slowly uncover secrets and conspiracies. But ultimately it all just feels like an extension of that childhood adventure, at least until that big plot twist 13 hours in.

The first Lunar game is really a one-of-a-kind experience, and that’s been recognized over the years by an unprecedented four remakes. The game has been remade completely, from the ground up, for the Sega CD, Saturn/Playstation, Game Boy Advance, and Sony PSP. Each time, the game is completely overhauled from the ground up, but the characters and story events remain the same.

For comparison, Final Fantasy 1 has been completely remade three times – for Famicom, Playstation, and PSP. (Although those three versions have been released on about a dozen different platforms.)

I’ve gotten way ahead of myself, though. What is Lunar: Harmony of Silver Star?

It’s a JRPG. Nothing fancy about it. You’ll fight monsters, use spells, equip items, and level up. Although the combat system is fast and satisfying (more on that below) it’s really just there to hold the story together.

As alluded to above, the PSP version, Lunar: Harmony of Silver Star is a remake of Lunar: Silver Star Story for Playstation, which is a remake of Lunar: The Silver Star for Sega CD. Harmony of Silver Star brings new graphics with a hand-drawn feel, where every screen seems to be custom-made instead of being built out of tiles. Animations are beautiful, with broad flourishes and a number of unique animations for each character.

Gameplay-wise, the biggest change from the Sega CD version is that your exploration and adventure are streamlined. Exploring the overworld is done by simply pointing to the location you want to travel to, rather than manually walking across the map and engaging in random encounters. Dungeons are considerably smaller, with less dead ends and difficult-to-find switches. RPG purists may decry these as the ‘dumbing down’ of the game, but there’s still plenty of combat and exploration – these changes just make sure you’re fighting and exploring, instead of getting stuck for six months in Lann because you didn’t stumble across the secret door and GameFAQs hadn’t been invented yet. (Bitter? Me? Nooo!)

Combat, as mentioned, is fast and satisfying. Lunar has always had a cool combat system. Characters and monsters start out facing each other, like in older Final Fantasies, but they can move across the battlefield and reposition themselves. You can force enemies to attack your melee fighters, and move your spellcasters further back so that your foes waste their turns trying to reach them. Ultimately, you don’t have that much control, but it’s refreshing to have positioning be important in a turn-based RPG.

The other small innovation for Harmony of Silver Star is a super meter. As each character fights, they build up a super bar, and when it’s full, they can unleash some ultimate attack or super defense. You won’t use these abilities often, so I wouldn’t say that it alters the gameplay much, but it’s nice to have a quick ‘I win’ button for when the fights start to get tedious.

Beyond that, the story points are exactly the same as Silver Star Story, with the exception of a small prologue at the start of the game wherein you play through the adventures of the previous Four Heroes. Honestly, this prologue feels a little out of place. Instead of starting the game off with meeting the main character, you’ll start with about a half-hour of speech and exposition from a boss you don’t know and four characters you don’t know.

The prologue manages to give away too much for new players (if you don’t already know the big plot twists of the game) while simultaneously not adding enough for existing players. I think it would have been better served either being accessible as a separate option from the main menu, or maybe coming in the middle of your adventure. (The group is given a memory crystal, or linked to the mind of one of the Four Heroes, or [deleted] shows you the past with his final breath, something like that.)

At this point, I’ll jump straight to the finish and say that Lunar: Harmony of Silver Star is a must-play. That’s a bold statement, but it’s simply one of the greatest stories ever told in the video game format. It’s a must-play in the sense that Macbeth is a must-read, or Citizen Kane is a must-see. It may not knock your socks off, and it may not be everyone’s favorite, but it really should be a part of our shared vocabulary of games.

If you don’t have a PSP or Vita, track down a copy for the Playstation, Saturn, Sega CD, or GBA. They’re all fairly rare, and also somewhat aged. I do think that Harmony is the way to go now: it’s attractive, modern, streamlined, but still plays it safe enough that it doesn’t betray the Lunar legacy.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

  January 4, 2013 - 4:53 pm |
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I just finished XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Rushed through it in just a few days.

It’s excellent! I still ran into some situations, though, where I felt like I was manipulating the game, rather than fighting a battle. A good example is the last fight; my whole squad got wiped out except for one man, but I still beat the final boss by running and abusing a low-damage indirect fire attack. If you know how the AI will react, you can do anything.

I took some screenshots of my stats screens. It looks like I bull-rushed the game; I finished in 249 days, compared to a worldwide average of 345.

I played on Normal Ironman. After listening to some podcasts about XCOM, and playing a lot of FTL, I think Ironman is really how it’s meant to be played. I only regretted it once, when a pathfinding bug caused my best sniper to attempt to grapple to the top of a building, swing wildly sideways, and land, through a wall, on the lower floor of another building nearby. In the midst of an alien swarm, of course.

I’m surprised I made it to victory; at one point, a disastrous assault left me with one surviving soldier and no resources. I was pretty much playing just to see what the ‘game over’ screen looked like, but over the next few missions I built my squad back up, earned some promotions, upgraded my gear, and took the fight back to them.

It’s really got a satisfying progression; going from ‘what the hell is that? My weapons barely make a dent!’ to reaction-killing those same enemies before they even get a turn. It’s sad, though – I know that I’ll never have that first playthrough again. I’ll never have that sense of wonderment, not knowing what my enemies can do, not knowing what technology I’ll unlock next.

I’m hoping that they’ll do a major DLC pack. They already have one pack with a few missions, but I want new enemies, new technologies, new paths, new unknowns. Do the Terror from the Deep – and force me to manage both my land-based efforts and the undersea threat.

 

Friends (PS Vita)

  December 30, 2012 - 1:17 am |
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If it has an icon, I plan to review it. Here’s what I think about the Friends List on the PS Vita.

Like everything else on the system, it’s an app, which means you have to deliberately select it and open the list – it’s not on the main interface, like the PS3. With the PS3, I tend to glance over at the Friends List when I start up the system, just to see if anyone is playing anything interesting. It’s not so smooth on the Vita.

The list itself is pretty nice, and strangely has much more functionality than the PS3. On the Vita, you can set a background for how you appear on the Friends List. It’s just a little piece of art, like a second avatar.

Touching someone’s name quickly brings up a screen with a nice interface. You can check out their friends list (I believe this can be set to private), view what they’ve been playing, and compare your trophies. The list also gives you a ‘gamer match’ based on Near, a sort of location-based friend-finding app for the Vita, although I’m not sure how that match is determined. (More on that when I review Near.) Finally, there’s a option to view your Shared Play History. I’m not sure what that is, so I went to the manual to learn more.

From the manual, I learned that Shared Play History keeps a record of any games you’ve played with this friend. You can also jump directly into multiplayer with a friend if they’re playing a game.

Altogether, the Vita Friends List has a lot of functionality that I’d like to see ported over to the PS3. If it were a little quicker to check if my friends are on, instead of needing to deliberately load up the Friends application, it’d be a lot more useful. I’d recommend that Vita owners check out this app and read the manual – it might be more useful to you than it first appears.

Uncharted: The Board Game

  December 22, 2012 - 9:29 pm | ,
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I’m not usually one to buy a game just because of its license, but when I heard that Uncharted had a board game – and that it wasn’t terrible – I decided to give it a try. So far, I’ve played two 2-player games with my wife and one solitaire game to get a feel for how the game works.

First off – yes, it’s a game! With licensed games, that’s not something you can take for granted. Uncharted: The Board Game has rules that work, interesting decisions to make, and a meaningful endgame. You can definitely play this game.

Rules and Gameplay

The primary mechanic of Uncharted is one that I enjoy: your cards are also your currency. In order to play a card, you must discard a number of cards from your hand. Inexpensive or defense cards may cost 0 cards, while the most expensive card is Jump, which costs 6 cards from your hand. (Jump will pay for itself quickly, though – it allows you to draw two cards each time you use it!)

Each turn, a player takes two actions. These actions could be playing a card to their play area, using a card in their play area, discarding a card directly from their hand, or attacking an enemy (which is just a fancy way to use a card in their play area). Players continue taking turns until every player has passed; at that point, the enemies on the table attack, everyone can refresh the cards they’ve used, and a new round begins.

During a turn, there’s never any shortage of decisions to be made. The real strength of Uncharted’s system is the versatility of each card: at any time, any card in your hand could be used in three ways:

  1. You could play the card to your play area, paying its cost.
  2. You could use the card as part of the cost for playing another card.
  3. You could discard the card directly from your hand to gain a bonus based on its color. For example, discarding a blue card allows you to gain two life.

Once a card is on the table, you still have a decision about what to do with it. You can use the text of a card, which causes it to ‘rest.’ It’s the same as tapping/bowing/exhausting (the card cannot be used again until the next round). When the enemies attack, however, each non-resting card you have can absorb one point of the enemy’s attack. So you may choose not to use all of your card abilities in order to gain some extra defense.

Gameplay Observations

While playing the game, I found that combos are really the order of the day, particularly cards that allow you to re-ready cards that are exhausted. The game is designed to accelerate; once a card is played down to the table, your opponents can’t destroy it, so your combo opportunities will naturally grow. In addition, most characters have a special ability that kicks in once their life drops to a certain point. (I often wished I could find a way to kill myself faster!)

The other key to the game is card advantage. There are many ways to spend your cards, but only a few ways to draw them. Getting some more cards down that allow you to draw additional cards will pay off in the long run.

The game isn’t really a take-that style game, but there are a few ways to mess with your opponents, damage them, or play cards from their hands. For the most part, I found that it’s more advantageous to aggressively play in your own area, rather than try to mess with your opponents’ areas. That might change in a 3 or 4-player game.

Theme

The theme of Uncharted is surprisingly strong in the board game. The four major pillars of Uncharted gameplay are present: gun combat (red), traversal (blue), treasure hunting (yellow), and character interaction (green). Some of the links might seem a little weak (horseback riding lets you draw a card?) but they’re consistent.

The only thing that’s really missing for me is the overall plot structure of Uncharted. The games are very formulaic: Nathan Drake goes searching for a treasure, barely stays one step ahead of a bad guy, finds the treasure, realizes that the treasure must remain buried, and defeats the bad guy who wants to unbury the treasure.

You don’t get that in the board game; there’s no concept of a cursed treasure, or fighting to prevent something from being discovered. The way I’ve been justifying it is to imagine the board game as representing the adventures that Drake and company are having between the big video games; the treasure hunts that actually work out, but only yield small rewards. From there, you can justify most of the interactions: Drake vs. Sully is a race to show off as the best treasure hunter, Tenzin vs. Elena has Tenzin trying to hide treasures while Elena tries to put them on TV, and Drake vs. Lazarevic is the plot of Uncharted 2.

Presentation

Based on the art, you can definitely tell when the game was made. The characters and enemies are all from Uncharted 2, but the box cover and some of the card art uses the marketing images from Uncharted 3. I’d happily buy an expansion that draws more from Uncharted 1, 3, and Golden Abyss.

The game feels a little cheap. It’s a subtle thing, but the cards are just a little too light (and not linen-finished), the tokens just a little too small, the rulebook’s paper just a little too cheap. The art is often still images from the games that don’t quite hold up in isolation, often with a lazy edge glow around them. Uncharted definitely has the feel of a game that’s aimed for the mass-market.

The upside of that is that it actually is cheap; you can get a copy of Uncharted: The Board Game off Amazon for less than $25.

Other Thoughts

A unique aspect of the game that I really appreciate is the number of variants offered in the rulebook. There are minor variants, such as modifying the card decks for an easier or harder game, as well as major variants such as a deathmatch mode and a survival mode. I think that it shows the designer’s confidence in the game system, that it can stretch a bit to cover different gameplay styles without breaking.

All in all, I think Uncharted: The Board Game is a solid purchase. The mechanics are fresh, neither a retheme of an existing game nor a clone of a common game mechanic. The theme is strong without being overwhelming, and uses the Uncharted license without becoming inaccessible to non-fans. There are enough cards included to provide strong replayability, with different strategies each game.

You may or may not love the game, but it’s definitely a game, and that’s more than I could have hoped for out of a mainstream-leaning board game based on a video game.

Welcome Park

  December 21, 2012 - 6:52 pm |
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The PS Vita has no shortage of interfaces, including front and rear touchscreens, front and rear cameras, tilt controls, GPS, and more. As an introduction to many of these features, Vita systems come with Welcome Park installed, a collection of simple minigames and applications designed to introduce you to the Vita.

Sound Loop

Sound Loop is a simple music sequencer. As a music track plays in the background, a circle of light expands on a 4-count beat. By touching the Vita’s screen and making a noise into the microphone, that noise will repeat every 4 beats. Record a few different sounds, and it’ll start to sound like music!

A few other sounds are available by tapping the rear touch pad or tilting the system.

Sound Loop shows a basic potential for the Vita to be used as a musical instrument. Nearly the entire surface of the device can react to touch, as well as reacting to movement, sound, or light. I don’t know if any official support for the Vita as a musical instrument exists yet, but Sound Loop doesn’t go far enough with the concept. It’ll only hold your interest for a minute or so before you’ve exhausted all it has to offer.

Skate Axis

This minigame introduces tilt. By tilting the Vita, you move a skateboarder left and right, and dodge bouncing balls. Giving the system a shake makes the skateboarder jump.

That’s pretty much it. The best thing to say about Skate Axis is that the tilt feels nice and responsive. There’s no delay between tilting the system and seeing the skateboarder move.

Snap + Slide

Using the Vita’s camera, you can take a picture, then turn that picture into a slide puzzle. There are a few different puzzle formats and difficulties.

I hate slide puzzles (why are they in every game?), but the Vita implementation is good; the camera image is sharp, and the touch controls are precise.

Hello Face

They might as well call this one ‘take a picture of a light socket.’

Theoretically, you’re supposed to take a picture of something that looks like a face. The Vita will then make that face talk to you! In practice, it’s pretty hard to find something that the Vita will accept. It doesn’t like real faces, drawings of faces, or faces in the middle of other stuff. The only thing that works reliably is taking a picture of a light socket.

It’s too bad! My friends and I love to mess around with stuff, putting eyes on staplers and making them go rawr, that kind of thing. It’d be cool if the Vita could bring those things to life, but it is not meant to be.

Digit Chase

Digit Chase includes three stages, each focusing on a different type of touch. In the first, you’ll tap on numbers in order. In the second, you’ll swipe to rotate a table, then swipe to peel numbers away. In the third, you’ll tap the rear touchpad to launch balls at numbers.

The first stage is really the standout activity of Welcome Park. Tapping on numbers in order is a good mix of mental agility and physical speed. As the game progresses, more tricks are introduced, such as needing to tap a number twice to clear it, or having to touch two or three spots at the same time. It’s fun to go as fast as you can, and see what fails first – your mind or your fingers.

Extra Stuff

Welcome Park features a few trophies for exploring the various tutorials. I’m still working on the Digit Chase trophy for finishing the entire course in one minute or less. However, I know I’m not going to finish all the trophies, because there’s no way I’m speed-solving those slide puzzles.

Additionally, the main screen itself is kind of fun. The minigames are represented as spheres, floating around a central globe. You can flick the spheres around the globe, and they crash off each other with a satisfying glass ‘tink.’ I like the little moments of interactivity like this.

 

Overall, Welcome Park is worth a minute of your time as a tech demo, but not much more than that. Check out Frobisher Says! for a more amusing way to learn about your PS Vita system.

PS Vita

  December 21, 2012 - 6:08 pm |
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Like many others, I purchased a PS Vita on Black Friday, when Amazon had their absurdly amazing deal. I’ve been very pleased with the system – everything about it ranges from elegant to mind-boggling.

As a long-time PS3 owner and PS Plus subscriber, I have a large backlog of PS Vita compatible games. Within a day of turning on the system, I loaded nearly 100 games onto the device, from PS Vita freebies to PSP games, to PS1 classics as PS Minis. Pretty much anything with a PS.

I’m going to start going through the various games, applications, and features of the Vita, and saying a few words about each. Partially this is just to force myself to look at all the stuff on the Vita – it has icons I haven’t pressed and functions I haven’t even discovered yet!

Cheapass and Trademark

  October 22, 2012 - 10:11 am |
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I’ve been worrying about trademark on my game accessories for a little while, but I was reminded of something that makes me feel a little better. Cheapass Games used to sell a game called “Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond,” but later re-released it as “James Ernest’s Totally Renamed Spy Game,” obviously after a little trademark issue.

In a way, it’s nice to see that even established companies can run afoul of trademark, and also to see that Cheapass survived and even kept publishing the game design under a different name. Not every legal conflict has to end in one side being sued into the ground.

Quick PAX Report

  September 3, 2012 - 2:41 am |
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Tues-Wed: PAX Dev

I’m not supposed to share too many details, so here’s a very quick summary of what I did.

Defense Grid 2 Kickstarter: Wow, a lot of people want to run a Kickstarter. They seem to have had a good challenge and a good outcome.

Cards Against Humanity: I played a game at lunch Wednesday, and a few times later during the convention. It never failed; I could sit down at a table and make friends instantly with CAH. Kind of like Zombie Dice two years ago, it’s great to have a game that everyone’s playing.

Creative Destruction: When working with a property, become an expert, and make sure anything you create has a clear lineage back to the canon. These guys really seem to love the property they’re working with, and it’s sad that so many games don’t take the same care

Tabletop Goes Digital: As long as the game can work in a digital space, having a digital version of a tabletop game always helps sales of both the tabletop and digital versions.

Something from Nothing: This game design workshop was nothing new for me, but more practice is always helpful. Probably the most interesting part was how quickly you’d see the microcosm of design in a short session. And that half the time spent being in a group is just getting the group to make a quick decision

Running a Successful Kickstarter: These panels on Kickstarter only really underscore all the mistakes I made while running mine, but also all the leeway I was able to get. Even with a really confusing KS, I got about 400% funding. I think the idea is still king, even when it seems like KS will give anyone big stacks of money.
Lessons from TableTop: Talked about how to make a game which would be good for the show TableTop. I think it was a little misleading; the panel was really about how to make a game with maximum fun in a reasonable play time. Probably the central point was, make your game look fun. You want a passerby (or YouTube viewer) to be interested in what’s going on.

Something from Nothing Part II: Our design crashed and burned, but I think that in doing so, we learned more than other groups. We tore out everything that didn’t work, kept the one or two things that did, then started playing with a different set of mechanics. That’s great game design work, even if it was disappointing to end up with an unplayable pile of cards at the end.

Social Games Roundtable: It was nice to talk to other developers, and share some of what I’ve learned. I found that other developers don’t really understand social games, and are eager to bandy the term about whenever possible. Chat window? Social game! Share on FB? Social game! Players can view replays? Social game! True, it’s all ‘social,’ but without a working definition, it was hard to keep a Social Games Roundtable on track.

The Secret Mechanisms: People are more predictable than we like to believe, and understanding past behavior can really give a lot of insight into how we can make people interested in our games – not by manipulating them, but by understanding what makes humans feel pleasure, and designing games that bring pleasure.

Overall: PAX Dev was a great experience. I felt like I was part of an intimate group, able to learn about everybody and have meaningful discussions that I can’t get at GDC or PAX due to their size. My only concern is, how long can it last? It might be worth flying up just for PAX Dev next year, as long as I can avoid paying for a hotel

Thursday night, I played some board games. Won a game of Power Grid, then played Cthulhu Dice and Zombie Dice. And Carcassonne, too. Really nice to talk to gamers and feel their excitement for PAX…while, at the same time, having nothing else to do, so it’s not like we felt rushed to get out and go to freeplay, or a panel, or the expo hall, or anything.

PAX Prime: Friday-Sunday

Keynote with Ted Price: Make stuff. Do stuff. Make a game. Can’t argue with that.

Hmm…attended some other panels, but nothing really new that I need to share.

Harassment and Bullying in Online Games: I spoke to the panelists afterwards, and agreed that any solution needs to start with a technical basis. At Kabam, I don’t think we had nearly enough technology or data to act and eliminate our biggest bullies.

PAX Prime was well-organized, lots of great stuff to do, but…well, I’m just feeling like I don’t really do conventions. I’ve felt this way before with other conventions. I generally don’t care about the Expo Hall*, I don’t really connect with other attendees, I know most of the information conveyed at panels, and I can understand that a community exists without needing to see it all gathered in one place.

I still attend conventions, but I’m starting to wonder why. Maybe it’s good that I’m transitioning into a gaming business; I don’t think I’d mind too much if I spent all day in the exhibit hall, letting the convention come to me instead of going to it.

I think I’d enjoy it more with a group. I’ve never gone to a convention with a group – I mean, we had 6 or 7 of us at GenCon SoCal one year, but the UFS players spent all con at those tables, so I was still wandering the halls alone

*Expo Hall Full Review:
- The games you’ve been reading about on Kotaku are still coming out.
- There are some indie games you’ve never heard of. If they’re good, you’ll hear about them soon.
- Peripheral companies like Chessex, Geek Chic, and Gunnar still exist.

Really, do you expect any surprises? Okay, I can think of one surprise: when Gearbox put together a Duke Nukem Forever booth without telling anyone. Still, that hit the internet within minutes, so it’s not like any attendees really got the cutting edge of videogame news by rushing into the expo hall.

I should look into one of these ‘online conventions.’ They might appeal to me, but I don’t know of any that really feel legitimate. An online convention needs some high-profile guests, some advertisers and product announcements, and a schedule of events, I think. Most of the ‘online conventions’ I’ve seen are more like a bunch of people agreeing to be in a chat room at the same time. (Know a good online convention? I’d love to be proven wrong!)

Android: Netrunner

  August 31, 2012 - 11:14 pm |
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I tried a demo of Android: Netrunner at Fantasy Flight Games’s room today.

The asymmetry is great. The corporation and the runner have different goals and actions, and they really do feel like they’re playing by different rules.

The biggest shortcoming I saw was that the game could use more new-player assistance. Since both sides play by different rules, I often needed to ask the corporation player for clarification on what information I had, what his cards meant, and what keywords meant. The game could use a keyword cheat sheet too, including a couple of icons that are not intuitive at all. Finally, some summary of the different strategies available would be great; for example, knowing that the corporation can punish card peeking with ambushes, or the interplay between traces and links, or the strategies involved in holding onto, revealing, and trashing cards. I felt like I worried a lot more than I needed to, just because I didn’t know what the corporation could do to me.

Overall, though, I really liked it. It had good mechanics and a good theme. I don’t think I’ll be picking it up, though, only because it’s a two-player game, and I have enough of those. If I want a two-player duel, I’ll play Memoir ’44, or any number of other games I already have. I could see a lot of fun in two players trying to streamline their corporations and counter each other’s decks, but unless you have another enthusiastic player interested in doing some hardcore deckbuilding, I don’t think the game offers enough that my current library doesn’t.

Is that a fair review? To say that it’s a great game, but it’s not a game I need to own?

PAX Dev

  August 31, 2012 - 1:14 am |
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PAX Dev was a really fun event. It only had something like 300 attendees, so it was very small and intimate. Definitely a good way to prepare for PAX, and more useful information than I usually get from GDC, I thought. I hope it continues, but I don’t want it to become much bigger; I think becoming a second GDC would be the wrong direction. Rather, I want it to be something where professionals gather to say “Yeah, we’re coming to PAX. Let’s hang out and talk shop a bit beforehand.”

I’m somewhat mixed on the number of students or hopefuls that were there. It’s like, I feel like we could have more in-depth conversations if everyone there had some industry experience. On the other hand, most of the qualifications that would excluse students would also exclude me. And it’s not like the students are a problem or anything, most of them are awesome, but…

Well, maybe it’s like PAX itself. It’s supposed to be the consumer-level show, by the gamers, for the gamers, but companies keep increasing their presence and pushing it into a bigger spectacle, like an E3. Similarly, PAX Dev is supposed to be by developers for developers, but risks becoming a networking/job-hunting event.

Oh well. I’m just rambling on about it. It was very rewarding, and I’d totally recommend it next year.

It’s also been very rewarding to have the Lyris Laser Studio pieces on me at PAX For the first time, I feel like I’m attending the show as a part of the industry, making a contribution to gaming as a whole. I feel more legitimate now than when I was a major community manager on a top-rated social game, and it’s great to have something concrete to show off. This is what I do. I make these. I’m proud of it.

Colors

  August 5, 2012 - 3:23 pm |
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When I mention ‘painting’ or ‘coloring’ for my pieces, what I’ll actually be doing is applying wood stain to them. I experimented with many different techniques, and stain gave the most vibrant color, and also the most readable.

I keep ten standard colors in stock. If you want a special color, I can do that, but you’ll have to pay a bit more to cover the extra purchase. I can use any color from the Minwax Water Based Wood Stain line. http://www.minwax.com/wood-products/stains-color-guide/

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MUSTARD Yellow

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CHINA REDRed

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT DEEP OCEANBlue

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EARLY SPRINGGreen

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BURGUNDYPurple

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CINNAMONOrange

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT AMERICAN WALNUTBrown

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SLATEGray

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ONYXBlack

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHITE WASH PICKLING STAINWhite

A Note about Smokiness (Uncolored Pieces)

The heat from the laser creates a smoky look on each piece, leaving a darker border around any cut or engraved parts. It usually looks nice, but if it ever troubles you, just polish the surface with Goof-Off or a similar stain remover, and the smokiness will vanish.

On colored pieces, the smokiness will already be covered in stain and won’t be visible.

Exalted 3rd Edition

  July 31, 2012 - 3:33 am |
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It looks like a third edition of the Exalted RPG has been announced! I’m a long-time fan of Exalted, but I’m a little skeptical.

Exalted has an incredibly broad setting, but it’s limited in time – unlike White Wolf’s metaplot-heavy games, Exalted’s default setting is a particular moment in time. What this meant for 2nd Edition was that most of the fluff and setting information was the same as 1st Edition, just rearranged. And it looks like that trend will continue with 3rd Edition; another book on items, another book about Dragon-Blooded, another book about the Realm.

But I really hope it’s good! I could use a fresh dose of the inspiration that Exalted gives me. They say they’re playtesting it heavily, and I believe them somewhat – a while back, they put some serious effort into debugging 2nd Edition, and they actually did a meaningful job…although the patches took the form of a massive document that wasn’t really feasible to use in play.

Well, I’m sure I’ll pick up the corebook, and I’ll be able to tell quickly if they’ve got their act together.

Kickstarter Post 4: Let’s do this thing

  July 26, 2012 - 9:32 pm |
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The Kickstarter just ticked over – 30 days to go. Time to start promoting this for real.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/berialpha/lyris-laser-studios-custom-cut-board-game-accessor

They say that you have the best chance for success if your Kickstarter is 30 days or less – it gives a sense of urgency. I figured I’d launch a little early, work out some of the rough spots, then start promoting when I’m 30 days out. I’m glad I waited, there were definitely some rough spots to handle.

Right now I’m making some Dominion tokens. After that, it’s time to make the rounds, line up a bunch of sites, and put my message out there.

Or at least queue up my message. I’m thinking that making my posts in the morning will get them more visibility.

Here we go!

Kickstarter: Post 3 (Pledge Levels)

  July 22, 2012 - 12:55 pm |
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1043124162/lyris-laser-studios-custom-cut-board-game-accessor

Third lesson about Kickstarter, which isn’t really a surprise: when they say you can’t modify a pledge level, they mean it. That’s important for legal reasons, but it’s been an annoyance when, say, I decide that I need to capitalize a word in my pledge levels, but I can’t change a few of them because someone has already pledged that amount.

It’d be interesting if they had some way to propose changes. Like, I change the pledge, and it sends the update to everyone who has pledged that level; if a certain number of them approve the change, it goes live.

Kickstarter: Post 2 (Checking your Mail)

  July 21, 2012 - 10:00 am |
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1043124162/lyris-laser-studios-custom-cut-board-game-accessor

One thing that’s been a surprise with my Kickstarter project has been how many message I’ve received! Reading my mail, setting up new custom pledge levels, and writing responses has taken up a good chunk of time each day.

If you’re planning on doing your KS in your free time, be ready for it; you might find that most of the time you meant to spend working on your craft is actually spent just answering messages.

Kickstarter: Post 1

  July 19, 2012 - 2:14 pm |
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I’m live on Kickstarter!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1043124162/lyris-laser-studios-custom-cut-board-game-accessor

Recently, I’ve discovered a real passion for graphic design and organization. I’ve been spending days in Illustrator making designs, and I’ve been using a laser cutter at a local machine shop to make custom, high-quality board game accessories. They’ve turned out beautifully, and now I’m trying to raise enough funds to purchase my own laser cutter and safety gear, and start a business!

While my campaign is active, I want to share some of the stuff I’ve learned.

First thing: A good picture is important. The image for my project has a custom Settlers of Catan board that I made a while back, but the board wasn’t actually one of the items I was selling at the start of the project. However, more than half the messages I’ve received so far are asking about Catan boards.

Takeaway: Your picture is the first thing people will see, so make sure it shows something you’re selling, and something people will want!

A Frustrating Day

  July 16, 2012 - 4:09 pm |
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I’m working on a Kickstarter campaign, and I got a response from them, that they didn’t like my campaign because it focused on purchasing the equipment I needed, rather than the product I’d be making.

It’s no problem to redo the project, but it got me thinking…man, Kickstarter really turned 180 from its original purpose. These microloan and crowdfunding sites were originally set up for people in exactly my situation – people who want to start a business and have a plan, but don’t have the capital they need for the initial investment.

It just seemed kind of backwards to me, to be shut down for attempting to adhere to the original purpose of the site.

 

But I’m just frustrated in general today. Nothing seems to be going well. I got into a new gaming group, but I don’t really like the game we’re playing. I tried to jump into some discussions on BoardGameGeek, and got them thrown back in my face. I’ve been working on this Kickstarter submission for a week, and it wasn’t good enough either.

I wish I could just have a community to belong to and a purpose to pursue. And I wish that just once, I could do something that was good enough.

It’s not surprising that I’ve been spending all week reorganizing Twilight Imperium. At least that’s something I can do well, and nobody will yell at me for doing it.