A bit of an expansion on a theme this.

Recently I've been looking at the rise and fall of Star Wars Galaxies and discussing:-

• Why it didn't work
• What could have been done differently to make it work

• People who need an MPV don't like it because it drinks petrol and is too firm and uncomfortable to ride in.
• People who like performance cars don't like it because it looks llike an MPV and isn't very fast because it's so damn heavy

First of all to suggest SWG is dead, may be wrong.  I know a lot of servers have shut down - and merged, but I think there are still people on there trying to play it.  Following on from my last post and the one before about content I thought I'd discuss the rise and fall of Star Wars Galaxies.  I've read a lot of articles on the topic, and I have mixed feelings about it.

The Birth

SWG was an ambitious project.  The aim was to create an open ended game wich gave the player unprecedented freedom.  The economy was designed to be entirely player generated.  In some respects, you'd think it would have a chance of a great start - with developers from Ultima Online and Everquest joining the team, and a record-breaking size pre-launch community and fan-base.  It had everything an MMORPG developer could want.  However it had a difficult birth.  Factors affecting this were:-

• Incredibly ambitious core mechanics
• Spiralling development costs and fan-demand forcing an early release
• A clear issue with what sort of player SWG was for

• Balance professions
• Fix the borked professions
• Add meaningful and interesting content
• Solve all the game-breaking bugs and graphical glitches that plagued the game at the time.

• Bankrolled another 6 months development time in Beta 3 AT LEAST, possibly another 12 months.
• Ignored Jedi at release, focused on getting mounts vehicles and player cities incorporated the professions balanced.
• Not released until the game-breaking issues of getting stuck and the graphical glitches were at least RARE rather than VERY, VERY COMMON.
• Instead of wasting hours of development time on Jedi - built more content - like the Corvette mission, Deathwatch Bunker - these kind of things.
• When Jedi WAS eventually implemented, kept the method to unlock secret - and forget whether anyone unlocked or not.  Jedi was not supposed to be the main game! 
  
• Not pander to the 10 year old power gamers who wanted Jedi to be something they weren't intended to be.
• Spent the majority of development time on fixing, balancing and adding content - only the surplus of surplus on Jedi.  Jedi should never have been allowed to be considered peoples main profession.  It was supposed to be something most people would want to experience, but that the reality of the experience meant only people who actually understood the place of Jedi in the star wars universe at the time the game is set.

I've been looking forward to SWG EMU for a long time now.  I used to be a little bit involved with the project, I wrote some how-to's and trouble-shooting guides and so fourth for an early open-source version.  For the uninitiated SWG EMU is an attempt by a group of skilled developers to build servers which mimic the old Pre-CU (Combat Upgrade) Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG.

SOE really screwed everyone over big style, when they release NGE, it was possibly one of the poorest decisions in the history of video games to implement something so game-breaking, so quickly with so little feedback from a community... And it cost SOE, it cost them big.

I think part of the problem was SOE's team were being managed from above - their seniors had seen the success of WoW and asked themselves the question, Blizzard are getting over 7 million subscribers?  Why do we hover around 250,000?  The reason of course is Blizzard are actually very good at developing games, the game has to come first.  A bad game built around a great licence is still a bad game.

Now I'm not saying Pre-CU SWG was perfect, there were certain things that were really borked about it... But only certain things, and they could have fixed those in a more clever way.  The first mistake SOE made was to introduce Holocrons, the method of unlocking Jedi should have been kept secret and hidden at all costs - or we wouldn't have suddenly had the galaxy wide grind-athon.  The Village was stupid too.... The professions weren't balanced, the species were unbalanced... There was a lot that needed fixing.

The mistake SOE made was to try to copy something successful rather than build on the good aspects of a game that they already had. 

As it stands, to make a character, jump on a speeder and go off running missions again... There IS something magical about SWG, I don't know what it is, whether it's the licence, or the core mechanics... I don't know...

What I will say about it is, although it's definately a game you can solo in, it somehow... I don't know - people talk, they help each other, they 'thank' each other.  I tried playing Guild Wars again over the weekend - sure it's a great game, but over the several hours I played not a soul spoke to me.  My experience of WoW was similar....

I hooked up with a guy and had great fun hunting and running missions together...

Yes, in many ways SWG is flawed.... but it's a flawed diamond, and I'm glad to have it back!

Developing a good game is a bit like writing a monetized 'blog'.  There are no tricks, or gimmicks, if you want traffic, then you need good quality content and lots of it.  My blog here is a classic example of 'how not to blog'.

I reviewed 'The Force Unleashed' here a while ago : -

I enjoyed it on the whole, despite a few gripes... I saw the sequel at the weekend for £20 so I thought - what the hell, £20 isn't bad... I'll give it a try.

That was erm, last week not many days ago - and I have very limited time at the moment due to toddler, baby, Open University Course, work and trying to finish landscaping the house... Yet I finished it last night.  Now, I have really mixed feelings about this game.  I had several criticisms of the original, including clunky controls and lazy level design. 

I have to say the main campaign is ridiculously short.  Of course at the end you have to choose a light side or darkside ending, and then play through again to see the alternative... But really, there's little in it to warrant a second play through.  Many of my issues with the first game are addressed, the controls seem a little more functional, and the 'lazy level design' doesn't appear as prominent.  I think on balance £20 isn't bad for it, I'd have preferred to pay £15 or £10 - I got Alan Wake for £15 and that took a lot more hours to complete.  I tend to think the only thing that saves TFU2 is the starwars music and being able to duel Darth Vader and possibly the big Gorog thing.... As a complete package Wake is a clear winner - more plot, more interesting levels to explore, longer campaign, more cutscenes... It makes you think TFU2 is a simple licence exploitation. 

The issue is, that may be true to a certain degree, but I actually enjoyed playing through it, I like the characters involved and the story is well put together - if a little shallow compared to the original.  At the end of the campaign you are basically left thinking you should be about half way through, whereas you've finished it. 

I enjoyed it -  but I am VERY glad I didn't pay £39.99 for what must have been about 3 or 4 hours of gameplay.

It isn't just the length of the campaign that's cut short either, there are less cutscenes, less enemy types and the gameplay is largely a lot simpler than the previous game, except for maybe some of the bosses.  Stormtroopers you can just have a merry time with - on normal difficulty they appear unable to pose any serious threat to your health at all.  The walkers have specific and obvious tactics to destroy each different model - the same is true of the battle droids... And the Sith Acolyetes - you just use the grapple move on them so they lose their force-defence momentarily - then button bash until dead.  There's really not the need for much experimentation.  Even the climatic final battle with the darklord himself is only challenging because of the health he's got and how little damage you do him - the actual mechanics aren't all that interesting.

Part of me thinks TFU2 was a wasted oppurtunity, in someways earlier games like the Jedi Knight series, did the lightsabre combat far better - but the force powers in TFU and it's sequel are where it's at... Part of me thinks, 'It's about the starwars, that's all there is and that's all that matters.' It's kind of like playing 'Back to the Future: The Game' from tell tale (Episode 1 is free - play on MAC or PC.) It's a simple point and click adventure with some nice graphics - but  seeing the delorean, hearing the doc (original actor reprising his role) and hearing that iconic music - it brings a smile to your face.

I'm going to play through TFU2 on hard now, see if it feels any different, try and get my £20 worth... Then it's being traded in.  Enjoyable, fun and short - but ultimately dissapointing.  I aren't going to whine on at the developers for it, but I pity anyone who payed the full £39.99 for it!

What did I buy ?  Dawn of War 2: Retirbution. 
 
Well I've been playing XBOX 360 games pretty exclusively for a couple of years now - ever since my PS2 got shoved on the back burner.  I think the last game I played alot on the PC was Battlfield Middle Earth.  The thing is that is one genre that I don't think ever translated to control pad very well - yet I used to be a big player of RTS.  Before my RTS days I used to play Warhammer 40,000 a lot on the table top.  A friend of mine has been commenting about getting back into modelling and painting armies and playing again on Facebook recently.  It brought back fond memories... 
 
So first of all I start looking into what the current rules set is like - and... Ahem - things have changed somewhat. My old armies conisted of a seriously flawed Tyrannid Swarm which I did start to rectify as I was playing the last time I was playing (It had only Tyrannid Warriors, Genesteales, a Lictor a Carnifex and Hive Tyrant in it - The lack of cannon fodder to protect the powerful troops meant it was a bad army.)  The thing is I wasn't a great army builder - the thing is my selections tended to be based largely on what I could actually motivate myself to sit down, model and paint.  After a long discussion with a veteran army builder who owned all the Codex I switched to Space Wolves and we devised a high point/low model count army that might be playable.  I even finished painting the army!  It was Logan Grimnar in Terminator armour with 5 Wolfguards in Terminator armour - all with a powershield and three of them with assault cannons... Then Bjorn the Fell Handed.  Apparently that's no longer a legel army! To top it all after scrambling around in the loft for an hour I couldn't even find te bleeding models anyhow... 
 
So what next? 
 
I look at all the current Codex and think about who I could play - Space Wolves seem still a bit meh!  Eldar not my cup of tea, problems with the Tyrannids are as before, so what Dark Eldar?  Imperial Guard? Then there's the thought of sitting there for hours on end trimming, glueing painting... It's kinda fun to do a few, but when you need to do 40 models most of which are identical it can become irritating... 
 
I read the reviews for the various Warhammer games and Retribution really caught my eye.  It sounded like an online version of the tabeltop war game... 
 
So I downloaded it and had a crack...  
 
So what is it like?  Well it's good, very good... The controls are familiar to any RTS player, the models are beautifully rendered, there's a good selection of armies each with their own campaign and cut scenes.  The available armies are varied, you can choose Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tyrannids, Eldar or Orks - so something for every taste... I found it a little easy on the first few stages, I'm playing on Normal so maybe it's my decades of RTS playing paying off - I cold try a harder setting, but the levels are well designed in the campaign and interesting... I've yet to try Multiplayer - I suspect that will be the strong point of Retribution. 
 
The thing is though - despite it seeming like a great game, I find it somehow... I don't know 'soul-less' ?  It's almost undefinable, it's a great RTS, but it doesn't give you warm fuzzy feeling you get deep inside, that you get when you've superglued your fingers together, ruined the dining room table with paint and spent an entire Saturday arguing about the minutae of the rules... Or almost having a punch up because some dude basically fields an army and as his tanks are blown up the troops you'd already killed get brought onto the field as reinforcements....  
 
The table top game is great, but it's a lot of frustration, I imagine a lot of this is seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses.  I think I'll play through DoW 2 Retribution and leave my paints and glues in the loft.  Rose tinted memories are sometimes best left as that. 

Well, I had the luxury of playing for two hours last night.  My 3 year old being off and grandparents, my wife considering FFXIII to be slightly less violent than Left 4 Dead, coupled with the fact that apart from boss battles and cut-scenes - I can idly chat while playing.... Meant I got a good two hours.
 
I'm now at the Spires of Despair or whatever it's called, finished Lake Bresha - have things improved?  In a word - YES!  I am starting to warm to the game.  The introduction of the Paradigm shifts and 'techniques' has livened up combat a little - even though in reality it seems you can win most fights in the defensive paradigm and the relentless attack is just there to speed things up if you get bored.  I at least feel like I'm able to influence the outcome more than just hit attack - use a potion, rinse and repeat.  I even did the first summoning battle with the Shiva Sisters - which was sort of itneresting and a different approach again so...
 
The disconcerting fact is I still have absolutely no bloody idea what the blazes is going on.  The plot makes less sense that volunteering to have my testicles nailed to table and it's probably more painful to try and understand at this stage than having your testicles nailed to a table.... Although I can't say I have a personal experience as a comparitor... I'm getting that the writers are going for a sort of 'who dunnit' approach, where part of the objective of playing the game is figuring out WTF is going on.  At the moment I'm still deeply in the WTF stage, but I'm at least interested in knowing how all this wierd crap fits together enough to play on now.
 
Despite my criticisms though, I recognise FFXIII as a technical marvel and a very clever game.  I'm beginning to think the combat system might end up being ridiculously compliocated by the end and that's the reason everything is so slowly spoon-fed to the player, just to make sure they get it.  I've been gaming for 30 years so it seems to slow to me, but I guess a player who picked up FFXIII for their first game might appreciate the slow learning.  The visuals are awe inspiring at times too, and although I actually loathe all the characters, finding each one irritating, unrealistic, over-stereotypical or all three - visually they are very cleverly designed.  Particularly in that i don't get the feeling of being taken into the uncanny valley, yet the avatars are very realistic, and have some human qualities to them.  The high definition and realistic proportions (For an FF game at least.) combined with subtle movements - like characters blinking, their hair flapping in the breeze... They can be a joy to behold at times, even if you have no idea what's going on in their heads as the story is so baffling and you hate them because they are so irritating. 
 
What I don't get is why they don't take you into the uncanny valley.  Characters as realistic as these, I would think WOULD!  I can only imagine that a long time was spent trying to make them as real as possible, then as much time toning them down to get the balance perfect so that they steer clear of the uncanny valley.  The other possibility is that the world is so alien and baffling that this keeps your mind off it.  I do wonder if technology is part of the solution - if FFXIII had been released ten years ago - would it have caused the uncanny valley effect?  If you watch classic examples like the panned Polar Express film by Disney, then I don't know... I still find that a little uncomfortable, whereas I  had no such feeling from FFXIII.  
 
Now anyone who hasn't an interest in media psychology might be thinking 'WTF is this guy on about?  What is the uncanny valley?' Well, you can wiki it for a simple explanation.  The basics are that as artificial life be it robotic, or computer sprites - anything like that becomes more human-like we tend to feel happier with it.  We like things that mimic human behaviour and seem human.  The interesting thing is this - that it only works up to a point, then the level of realism dips a character or robot into what is known as 'The Uncanny Valley' where how comfortable people feel with characters plummets.  Even a carefully filmed video of a human that is altered so they move slightly robotically - causes this effect.  I can only describe it as how you might feel watching something hideously deformed close-up.
 
Is it a barrier to developing character graphics to their full potential?  It's cited as causing the flop of Disney's Polar Express.... I used to think so!  But playing FFXIII I don't know... It'll be interesting to see where Video Game industry created characters are in ten years time, and whether the uncanny valley has been bridged.

First of all, don't get me wrong - I consider myself a fan of the FF series.  I played the old 2D ones on the NES, I played FFVII to death on the PS1 and played through a good chunk of FFVIII too! 
 
The fact of the matter is though, I'm just not feeling the love when it comes to FFXIII, and I'm not entirely sure why.
 
I''m impressed by the visuals of FFXIII, the introductory scenes are suitably impressive and the action is exciting and fast paced.  You quickly learn that Lightning is former member of Soldier or a member of Soldier and that erm... Well, erm... To be honest that's more or less it - there's a host quirky, obviously Japanese culture inspired characters, living in this thing called 'Cocoon' and erm, there's loads of fighting with little cut-scenes...
 
Hmmmph!  This is really not going as well as I'd hoped.  The trouble is, I find the plot at this stage is completely mind-boggling, all this talk of Purges, and Fal Cie and L'Cie and god knows what else, and Cocoon and Soldier and the wierd thing where you all go off to to fight a Fal'Cie - with no real information on how everything fits together.  I can't feel any empathy for the characters, or at least hardly any - because the world which they inhabit is so wierd and obviously alien to ours.  I mean VIII with it's Garden and the two warring nations and the Empress, it sort of had that FF quirkiness, it was fun and interesting, and just a little bit odd-ball.  FFVII with Midgar and the Golden Saucer and it's Weapons and Chocobo's was the same - but FFXIII is just, well, just... I just find the whole story completely confusing.  I literally have no idea what is going on!
 
Now I'm normally quite good at following a plot, even complex, multilayered plots such as Matrix Trilogy, Incpetion, and those sort of off-the-wall stories.  But I just don't get FFXIII.  
 
The experience isn't helped by the fact that so far the most effective method of winning in combat appears to be to click auto-battle, and if I do try to use the Abilities menu there's never more than a choice of two actions anyway... The only tactical decision I'm able to make usefully is whether to use a potion or not.  They may as well have just had a 'Press A to use a potion' thingie at the bottom of the screen for this first section.  And also the variety of enemies to fight at the start is just silly, it seems so pointless having you grind your way through mountains of clone-a-likes when you can't even progress your character any.
 
I really want to like FFXIII, I'm desperate to!  So much so that I'm going to plough through it and play the whole game even if I don't enjoy it.  Who knows, maybe now my characters have become L'Cie (whatever the F&*$ that means...)  I will get more tactical decisions to make and feel like combat isn't simply a case of press attack, use a potion if your low on health... Maybe I'll even start to understand what the 'blazes' is going on in the bat-shit crazy world which the game takes place in...
 
Until then - it's going to be a bit of a grind....
 
I will re-post about my experience with it after a couple more hours, hopefully more positively!

I haven't thought about 'Flow' for a while, not since I was doing an academic course on video games some time ago.  However last night I was playing a few rounds of Left 4 Dead 2 on scavenge mode and it struck me, "I am getting into a really good, deep state of 'Flow' here."  Anyone who's studied video game culture in any way shape or form has probably encountered 'flow'.  If you play games you've encountered it - but maybe not realised that there is a term for the state of mind you get into while playing games sometimes. 
 
So what is 'flow' ?  It is the state of mind you get into, when you become so focused on the task your doing, that you lose all sense of time, awareness and self.  I used to tell me wife I'd stayed up an hour later than agreed, because I was, 'In the zone.' meaning, doing well, enjoying myself and lost track of time.  In hindsight, on these occasions I had been in 'flow'. 
 
It strikes me there are different levels of 'flow' as well as types.  I used to get flow from playing the likes of Final Fantasy 7, and in the same way I got into flow playing Red Dead Redemption.  In these cases it isn't the intensity of the gameplay that takes you into flow, but the story.  In this respect it's possible to enter flow when reading a really good book as much as playing a game.  I tend to think it's easier to get in, playing high intensity games, like Guitar Hero, Streetfighter or FPS.  I suspect this reason is part of why these genres are so popular.   I find some games can take you deeper into flow than others.  It's probably just perception, but I recognise being in a different mental state playing certain games.  Sometimes it can be an uncomfortable state, a state where because the challenge is everything in your reality - failing can be frustrating.  Far more frustrating than it ought to be. 
 
I've experienced this playing Guitar Hero and Streetfighter 2.  In Guitar Hero it tends to be playing the most difficult tracks, the likes of Jordan or Through the Fire and flames.  the fact is I'm actually no great shakes at Guitar Hero, I can get through most normal songs on expert with 3 stars, but Jordan or TTFAF I can't even get through on expert - mainly because I've never learned to double tap.   
 
With Streetfighter it tends to be playing online that get's me very deep in flow, but also mega frustrated.  I don't know whether it's me having good and bad days, or the quality of opponents at different times or lag at different times - whatever.  Something means I can have great nights playing it, and awful nights.  I've been playing Streetfighter 2 in one form or another since 1989 - I completed the original Streetfighter too - even though it's pretty awful.  I am a pretty decent player - originally I was a Dhalsim player, then a Ryu, then Vega(Claw).  I more or less settled on Claw a long time ago - but the XBOX 360 pad reinforced that.  I can do all his specials and his super easily.  If you look at my gamercard :  http://www.streetfighter.com/flash/#/sfhd/gamercards/  then type smokemare into the box and hit search.  Last time I stopped playing I was on 701 wins to 671 losses... But with 207 perfects.  Now that's the card of a decent, but not amazing player - but 207 perfects is pretty impressive. 
 
Why do I say last time I stopped playing?  Because I can't allow myself to play Super Streetfighter 2 Turbo HD Remix.  Except in tiny amounts, if I get into it - I get really frustrated and it puts me in a bad mood that lasts days - unless I happen to be having a winning streak.  It's a pity because I love the game, but I don't like hte bad moods it puts me into when I end up on the wrong side at the end of a session (More losses than wins.) 
 
You can get flow from many activities, my wife says she gets it from skiing, but she never got it from games.  I think whether you get flow from games dictates whether you are a gamer.  In some ways you can see how it's hard for newcomers to get flow from games, particularly the older players.  Controls are so complex now, young people adapt quickly and ancient gamers such as myself grew up with controls growing ever more complex.  If your old and never played before then navigating a 360 or PS3 pad is going to be a nightmare. 
I suppose this is partly why Microsoft developed Kinnect, Sony developed Move and Nintendo did the Wii, it's a way of getting people to enjoy gaming without having to learn complex controls.  Not that it's a problem for most - more than anything it's probably for the very young and those who missed the boat, (Although last night my 3 year old beat level 1 of sonic 4, becoming 'super sonic' and getting into the special level :P) 
 
My issues with the Wii and Kinnect are that I don't think the technology is there yet.  Kinnect feels very clunky, and I don't think the Wii games have the intensity to satisfy my inner gamer. I find them bland and shallow as a rule. 
 
We're in interesting times, where gaming goes in the next ten years could be fascinating.   As long as the controller lives on though - I'll be happy.  I don't think we can be too fearful of motion controls either. Anything that gives respectability and popularity to gaming has to be a good thing.  We are no longer the spotty, nerdy teenagers, with pasty white skin, sitting in the dark playing on our Commadore 64's or spectrums,... We're cool :-)

Okay, after my recent article about the likes of Modern Warfare and Battlefield and so on - I'm banging on about FPS again, so what gives?
 
Well, I was down at my sisters house picking up my manic three year old - when I managed to bag a ten minute play of Halo 3 on my nephews XBOX while the girls were out of the way.  The argument for doing this was to 'test' whether I found it gave me motion sickness in the way my sister complained it gave her.  In a word, it did, a tiny bit, but moving closer to the screen seemed to help and it was no way as bad as playing Half Life 2 on an over-spec PC or Wolfenstien 3D on a Pentium 3.
 
But what about the game?  Did I like it?  
 
Well, yeah, I suppose.... It's alright.  Nicely rendered, interesting character design and maps... From what I can tell anyhow.  At the same time though - it all seems a bit... Hmmm, how can I put this?  Bland is the best word.  The environment of Gears 1 & 2 to me was far more interesting, the characters were far more colourful too.  I didn't play Halo 3 for long enough to judge the story but... It didn't really make me want to.  Left 4 Dead and it's sequel are more interesting, more exciting - if perhaps not as polished?  Actually, Doom 3 on the PC was more gripping and tense, and interesting.
 
To sum up - Halo 3 seems like a very polished product, but I just can't get excited about it.  I genuinely don't know what the fuss is about with it.  I even had an American friend try to explain the Halo story to me in detail - but it just sound pointlessly complicated....
 
*Sigh* I guess I'll give it a go again, but it's not particularly something I'm looking forward to - unlike Gears 3 or Left 4 Dead 3...