Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Spore. securom again…

My copy of spore isn’t here yet, but a friend has his copy, which he can’t validate on-line because the servers have died apparently. Another huge victory for DRM it seems. Apparently, there are rumoured to be pirate copies already (although that does mean they work, or are easy to get). In any case, it’s yet another example of things going badly in the whole DRM thing.

Unless you are 100% sure your DRM is flawless and convenient, you run the risk of upsetting your customers. How many frustrated spore buyers are currently whining to friends? friends who may be tempted now to warez it instead?

I hate piracy and warez, but if EA want to sell spore online for MORE than the stores, and include DRM not backed up by stable servers, they are only encouraging people to pirate. Madness. When people buy Kudos 2 (please buy it!) in a month or so, it will download, install and run with no fuss. Even I can see that this makes more sense.

Maybe a bad sign of PC Gaming Health?

Adverts.

There doesn’t seem to be much cash in advertising PC gaming any more. Rock Paper Shotguns current ads are for some university and easyjet. Blues news is pimping crisps and heroes and Sky Plus. I see a spore advert on gamespot, but not much else. Quartertothree is advertising gold farming sites.

There was a time where the latest FPS, RTS or other high profile PC game was advertised everywhere. These days, its online only, console games or casual games ads only. Is PC gaming really this sparse? At least there is a (slim) chance this means cheaper advertising slots abound?

Deciphering the good and the bad news

You can’t trust the news. News on anything is always looking for it’s ‘angle’. I hate that. I’m an intelligent 38 year old human. I can absorb data, and facts and draw upon previous knowledge to generate my opinon. Yet the news, be it global or the games industry news, is laways trying to tell me what to think.

I don’t need the commentators ‘take’ on whats happened in georgia. I want the facts. I will decide what I think about it. And when it comes to a new game, I don’t want hyperbole from some marketing drone that tells me how awesome it is. I want to know what the games about., how it plays, and what’s different about it. Anything that paints a game in a positive light in a press release is clearly pointless.

The most obvious games industry examples of all this are sales figures. For example, check out the awesome sales figures for Castle Crashers on the xbox!!! or check out the tragically disappointing sales of crysis. what a disaster!!! What we don’t have stories on is the 99% of games that sit in the middle of this range. How many copies did Sim City Societies sell? or Pirates of The Burning Sea? or Enemy Territory: Quake wars?

We don’t see headlines about them, because journalists think that unless something is extreme, and they can get an ‘angle’ on it, it’s irrelevant. They also, sensibly realise that just reporting the facts means they are pretty much out of a skilled job. Still… it bugs me. I like to know the facts behind things. I know that which facts you select introduces massive bias, but I’d be happy just with a toning down of the current obsession with having a news ‘angle’. Just throw in a bit of perspective now and then. Don’t quote me the sales figures of a game without comparing it to 3 or 4 others of the same genre and platform over the same time period. Don’t talk about a massive rise in home repossesions, if it’s gone from 0.001% to 0.0015%. Sometimes it’s not clear who the good guys are, or its not clear what to conclude from what has happened. We are adults, we can handle that.

Kudos 2 design update

I’m now firmly at the ‘play the game until you detect an imbalance, then make a note and fix it’ stage. This can be a tad dull, because you are playing to test, not to have fun. The truly great news is that despite playing the game for hours at a time

1) It never has any performance problems of any sort ever, even in debug and

2) It never crashes.

I currently have a little list of niggles to fix for tonight and tomorrow like this:

todo : check that people get bored with an event even if you didn’t show up.
if you ignore a phone ring and go to the next day, its visually still flashing.
birthday screen friend description can be blank!
dog status text runs out of room.
I need new button graphics for graph screen
muscles should degrade slower
motorbike should give you some kudos or charisma or confidence
I maybe need some alert sound if dog fights off a burglar
might be funny to slightly stretch and squash avatars with weight.
paint ball gun needs a use button, for all year round.
dogs never eat any food.

I also have just one biggish design issue. Acting jobs last forevere, and as they have no promotions, you can get into condition for the job then ‘let yourself go’. I can’t decide right now whether to make the jobs a finite length (as in kudos 2). or have you sacked if your performance (job suitability in effect) falls below a certain level. Both ideas require horrid custom coding, but I thuink they are important to making the acting career more playable.

Today I also got some more NPC artwork, and switched payment providers abck to BMT. It’s all in a good cause (getting the best deal, and the best customer service for people buying the games).