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Hiver

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Hiver

52

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145

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Well, I just got an email from Twitch saying I can get in the beta now as long as I promise to stream it. I'm not sure that I care? The monster design seems kind of dumb and I'm not sure I've seen scyfy produce anything I'd want to be associated with since MST3K.

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Hiver

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I figured I'd give this a few days, since I imagine Roku is fairly far down the priority list on the site launch. It's been a couple days, so I just want to make sure this is on the radar: The roku channel appears to be broken since Tuesday. Tuesday night the channel would open, but no videos would play. As of last night the channel won't even open.

Is this down for everyone, or just me?

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Hiver

52

Forum Posts

145

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#3  Edited By Hiver

I've been messing around with bitcoins a lot lately. I'm putting all four cores of my 570 into mining, playing blackjack with what it spits out, and stock piling that into real cash. I've been waiting for a real game to take advantage of it for a long while now.

Apparently there's a thread on the Steam forums where a bunch of people who knew nothing about bitcoins ranted about what a bad idea it'd be for Valve to accept the digital currency, but I have to differ. It would cost them a few hours of labor to implement, and then payments they get with that option would save them ~2.5% on transaction fees. It converts into meat-space dollars without much hassle. I think it'd be a mutual win for Workshop users.

There is a game out there called "Dragon's Tale" or something. It's essentially a casino with weird novelty games. While that's *an* approach, I'd like to see something closer to the MMO model.

Say the game costs ~$15USD worth of bitcoins a month to play. 25% of those bitcoins go into a kitty. Higher level the monsters have a bigger the chance to have to access that money. The amount of money the monster drops is also dependent on level. To pull some numbers out of my butt, say they have a .0025%/level chance to drop .000000001 btc/level. Odds of the game losing money is very slim, assuming the number of mobs killed per pay cycle is controlled.

Now, since vendor trash would have a real world value, you'd eliminate it. Anything a mob drops can be used for crafting. The auction house gets a standard 5% cut of all sales (additional revenue stream) and enterprising players can make real, bill paying money off of other players. I think the game's economy should be open - players can withdraw and deposit bitcoins from external sources at will.

One last twist: since MMOs aren't graphically intensive, the client could double as a mining client, and the game could double as a mining pool. This means players earn some bitcoins just from staying online. Albeit not as much as they might if they were running their PCs as dedicated miners. The bitcoins earned in this way would be stored in a separate wallet. The player could choose to pay for the game out of this wallet, deposit funds into their character's account, or transfer it into their external wallet to do whatever with. Traditionally mining pools also keep a cut for themselves, which is a third revenue stream.

The cool part about this is the game makes money while the user generates bitcoins, and the user will likely spend those bitcoins on the subscription or for in game items - creating more revenue. From the player perspective, they're playing for free (or at a discounted rate), or at least getting free loot. Since the game's economic focus will be on player-to-player trade, the game shouldn't feel too sleezey.

One thing I was worried about with this idea is rampant inflation. However, since the players are essentially using real money, they'd likely withdraw any significant piles of income to spend out side of the game (or to feed back in via subscription fees).

So we have a game that could theoretically be profitable. We have a model where some players could make money from the game, which if executed properly, would draw more players to the game. Now I just need a fun game. I have an idea for a 3 faction pvp based MMO with some novel mechanics, but I'm not a game designer. When it comes to balancing HP/Mana/damage/abilties/etc I'm hopelessly lost.

Since professional baseball money+a AAA game isn't enough to get an MMO out the door, I guess this business model is for someone with the fiscal means of shipping a game.

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Hiver

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#4  Edited By Hiver

You're a better man than I am Mr. Davis. After the immediate apology I'd shut my mouth and lapse into a shammed silence. All is forgiven here, but I wasn't personally offended to begin with. Just voicing my support for you as a person, even if you made a mistake.

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Hiver

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#5  Edited By Hiver

I tried both for a while, feel free to pm me. My profile has some of my background.

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Hiver

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#6  Edited By Hiver

I played 30-45 minutes of The Walking Dead last night. This was enough time to finish the first scene, with a suitable introduction to the main character. They’ve laid the foundation for an interesting story around the protagonist who may/may not have killed his wife before the game started. The writing is working out pretty well for me. The game feels highly cinematic, while it’s cell-shadedish textures looks a lot like a comic book. It’s a pretty interesting visual blend between the comic book and tv show. So far, the game isn’t really scary, but that isn’t the draw for this franchise.

The marketing around this game claims there are no quick time events. This is a goddamn lie. Killing zombies seems to be a process of mashing ‘q’ a few times, then ‘e.’ You know when to do this because of a prompt that appears on the screen. It looks like you want to be quick with your response, less you get zombified. If these aren’t QTEs, I don’t know what is. I didn’t play Jurassic Park, but I understand they’re trying to distance themselves from that game. So maybe this is a different style of QTE, I can’t honestly say. I took a look at a gameplay video for Jurassic Park, and I can say it looks really similar.

Assuming the $25 gets you all five episodes (roughly ten hours of game) and the quality of the game stays as high as this initial 30 minutes, The Walking Dead seems like a decent value proposition. I’m looking forward to finishing Episode One this week.

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Hiver

52

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#7  Edited By Hiver

So in addition to my full time job, my college education, my wife, d&d group, various social commitments, and new house, I have three huge games that demand my time.

My wife and I have been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic with a few friends. Getting two people to join us on any given night isn't difficult, and since we're all friends or friends of friends, we get along well. My only complaint here is that my wife has become addicted. She was playing until well after I fell asleep last night, and it's a bit bothersome to keep my characters paced with her. Especially since I have to have one character a few levels ahead, so I know what to expect when she starts asking questions about the next planet we visit.

I had a bug in Skyrim that prevented me from learning shouts. It was super frustrating, so I set the game down for several weeks. I loaded it back up and magically things worked again. I guess a patch came out that corrected the problem/messaged my save data into a workable state. I'm not really sure, but 'Meh, Bethesda.'

I've also put about two hours into Saints Row: The Third. I just finished the tutorial quest chain and I've unlocked three hideouts. One of my starting weapons? A guided missile system. That game is the most enjoyable set of nonsense I've ever seen. Listening to the Giant Bombcast spoiled some cool moments for me - those spoilers influenced my decision to buy the game, but I feel like I would have enjoyed those elements a lot more if I didn't know they were coming.

If someone could give me some more free time, I'd appreciate it. I'd say 150-200 hours should have me about caught up.

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Hiver

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#8  Edited By Hiver

"Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale is just a game about hitting monsters until treasure falls out of them."

Sometimes, that is enough. For $15, I don't really expect much more than that. That's what I paid for Torchlight, and it sounds like the same mechanic with co-op bolted on. What's wrong with that?

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Hiver

52

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#9  Edited By Hiver

Last year I took a vacation to Brazil, when I came back I wrote this (sorry if the link doesn't work when you view this, I'm attempting to move my domain to a new registrar. The link will work again shortly.) post about gaming culture in the southern hemisphere. This year I'm doing an abbreviated tour of Europe. I'll be spending the 25th-27th in Amsterdam, then it's off to Rome, New Years in Budapest, then to <random places in Italy> with a break in Prague. The point of this post isn't to rub in my globe trotting escapades, but rather to find some Amsterdammers, Italianos, Praguians, or... uh.. um.. Budapestians(?) who'd be willing to share a glimpse of their gaming culture to a monolingual American.   
 
I'm interested in learning everything/anything about my counterparts overseas. Seriously, tell me anything. Here are some seed questions: What do you do for games in your country? Who're your favorite local developers? Can you give me a tour of your game development office? What does Assassin's Creed 2/Brotherhood feel like to you? What specific places in North Holland/Italy/Czech Republic/Hungary would make a great game setting? What arcades/game cafes/table-top gaming centers a cool in your area?
 
I hope to have my experiences written up when I return in mid January. So here's your chance to represent your niche's culture in a semi-pro-am blog post that literally tens of people will read!

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Hiver

52

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#10  Edited By Hiver
@iam3green:  I tried to keep it between five hundred and a thousand words. They'd be roughly the size of a review in the back of Game Informer. I tried to give myself about three hours to actually write the review, which meant I did a bit of note taking while playing. The most labor intensive ones were when I did video reviews. Man, I do not envy video editors at all. 
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