Long dormant, I rise from my slumber...
Not really. I've just been busy doing various things other than blogging. Although I must say I've been better at this than at any diary I've ever kept. I think I work better with a keyboard than with paper. Plus, being able to get to it from anywhere helps.
The main problem is that I have either nothing to write about, or far too much. I'm not interesting in creating an E/N livejournal sort of thing, so blogging about the various events in my life holds no interest for me.
So I need a topic... and it's games. The theory and design of them, and what makes for goodness in gaming. I'm going to try to get out some of my own thoughts, and then work on reacting to some of the things I am reading on game design.
Next up: switches and dials.
Friday, August 12, 2005
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
A flurry of activity, although not here
I've been more active than usual of late on the SDMB. I'm not entirely sure why. I've actually been choosing to read and post there over playing City of Heroes, which is surprising. I think my CoH addiction may have peaked. I'm still addicted and still playing, mind you, but I think I may be past the most obsessive, must-play-all-the-time point.
Only time will tell, of course. I seem to recall going through the same kind of cycle with Diablo II, where I got away from playing it at times, only to be drawn back in by the endless cycle of leveling and acquiring new cool stuff. CoH lacks stuff, though, which makes it a bit less compelling. But it offers more skill/power choices than D2, and it's superheroes, which are the stuff of my boyhood fantasies. So it's got that going for it.
I've been doing some more actual working at work, as well. That is, more time spent doing the things I really should be doing, like longer-term strategy, instead of short-term reactive stuff. It's a nice feeling, but hard to sustain. I need uninterrupted time to focus on what I am doing, and that doesn't come easily. Now that I have my team handling most of the issues, it's starting to happen, though.
In fact, what am I doing posting here when I should be either working or going home?
Only time will tell, of course. I seem to recall going through the same kind of cycle with Diablo II, where I got away from playing it at times, only to be drawn back in by the endless cycle of leveling and acquiring new cool stuff. CoH lacks stuff, though, which makes it a bit less compelling. But it offers more skill/power choices than D2, and it's superheroes, which are the stuff of my boyhood fantasies. So it's got that going for it.
I've been doing some more actual working at work, as well. That is, more time spent doing the things I really should be doing, like longer-term strategy, instead of short-term reactive stuff. It's a nice feeling, but hard to sustain. I need uninterrupted time to focus on what I am doing, and that doesn't come easily. Now that I have my team handling most of the issues, it's starting to happen, though.
In fact, what am I doing posting here when I should be either working or going home?
Thursday, January 13, 2005
As long as I'm here... the economics of MMOs (from the consumer side)
Been rather a while. I need to set a regular time for this or something.
City of Heroes is now well past 6 months and shows no signs of abating. My "main" (the character I play most often), Thermocline, is now level 40, with just under 500 hours of playtime (I think, might be just under 400, I was tired when I was checking).
I basically have a part-time job worth of play in this game. It works out really well from a cost-per-hour perspective. For $15 a month, I get a hundred hours or so of playtime -- that's about 15 cents an hour. Compare with $8.00 for a two-hour movie, or $2.25 for a comic book that lasts perhaps 10 minutes.
Of course, to enable that low cost, I do need to have an internet connection, which has a cost. And a computer. But I used those things for other purposes. Besides, the real comparison I wanted to make was with other games. I'm getting really good value for my money comparing CoH with, say, Half-Life 2. HL2 is a great game, and will probably take me 40 hours to finish. So it'll have cost me about a buck an hour. If I replay it, or play it online, that'll be extended... but for every half-life, there is a Pirates of the Caribbean (cost, $40, actual playtime, about an hour, total time including install and reading manual maybe 90 minutes, time spent enjoying it 0 minutes). That was an expensive one.
So the point is... MMOs are a great value for the consumer, if you play them. If you don't play them, of course, then you should stop paying for them.
City of Heroes is now well past 6 months and shows no signs of abating. My "main" (the character I play most often), Thermocline, is now level 40, with just under 500 hours of playtime (I think, might be just under 400, I was tired when I was checking).
I basically have a part-time job worth of play in this game. It works out really well from a cost-per-hour perspective. For $15 a month, I get a hundred hours or so of playtime -- that's about 15 cents an hour. Compare with $8.00 for a two-hour movie, or $2.25 for a comic book that lasts perhaps 10 minutes.
Of course, to enable that low cost, I do need to have an internet connection, which has a cost. And a computer. But I used those things for other purposes. Besides, the real comparison I wanted to make was with other games. I'm getting really good value for my money comparing CoH with, say, Half-Life 2. HL2 is a great game, and will probably take me 40 hours to finish. So it'll have cost me about a buck an hour. If I replay it, or play it online, that'll be extended... but for every half-life, there is a Pirates of the Caribbean (cost, $40, actual playtime, about an hour, total time including install and reading manual maybe 90 minutes, time spent enjoying it 0 minutes). That was an expensive one.
So the point is... MMOs are a great value for the consumer, if you play them. If you don't play them, of course, then you should stop paying for them.
Firefox autocomplete
Shamelessly stolen (from someone who himself shameless stole it):
Memo to myself:
To turn on inline autocomplete in Firefox…
1. Enter about:config in the URL field
2. Right-click on the page and create a new Boolean value
3. Enter browser.urlbar.autoFill as the preference name (note, case-sensitive: ‘F’, not ‘f’)
4. Set the value to true
Saturday, September 04, 2004
Another use for blogging
Since it's not likely anyone but me reads this (at least at this point, ha ha), I can use this space for notes. Apparently Neil Gaiman does this, so I'm in good company.
Watching anime previews and kind of not paying attention, had an idea. Magical Girl anime plotline: somewhere in the world are five 9-year-old girls that are about to awaken and realize they are princesses with magical powers. Good and bad agencies are working to find the girls and either guide or control them, depending on how you look at it.
Probably been done already -- I don't really know magical girl style that well.
More notes to myself -- based on previews (often a bad idea, but hey), I should pick up Neo Tokyo and consider Chrono Cross. The latter will sell well, as it appeals to the baser instincts of the anime fan. It looks pretty formulaic, but well done formulaic.
Oh, and Dead Leaves is anything but formulaic, but it's f***ing fantastic. I want more.
Watching anime previews and kind of not paying attention, had an idea. Magical Girl anime plotline: somewhere in the world are five 9-year-old girls that are about to awaken and realize they are princesses with magical powers. Good and bad agencies are working to find the girls and either guide or control them, depending on how you look at it.
Probably been done already -- I don't really know magical girl style that well.
More notes to myself -- based on previews (often a bad idea, but hey), I should pick up Neo Tokyo and consider Chrono Cross. The latter will sell well, as it appeals to the baser instincts of the anime fan. It looks pretty formulaic, but well done formulaic.
Oh, and Dead Leaves is anything but formulaic, but it's f***ing fantastic. I want more.
Friday, August 20, 2004
Going back to school.
No, not me. My wife is going back to school, though, and so is my best friend. Both of them, it seems, have reached the point in life where one asks "what do I want to do with my life?" and both of them answered "not what I'm doing now, at any rate."
So my wife is headed back to school to be an accountant, instead of a network administrator and process analyst. I think she'll be a lot happier as an accountant, and I think she's going to enjoy school. It'll also fit with the way she wants work to fit into her life -- she doesn't really want to work 40 hours a week all year, she likes the idea of working part-time in some seasons. I think it's a great idea.
My buddy John, on the other hand, is headed back to school to add a Ph. D. on top of his MA. He's been struggling to define himself a bit for the last few years, and I think this will be really good for him. He's really cut out for academic life, and should do well. He may move away to go to school, which would make me very sad, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it. :)
I'm not going through the crisis point yet myself, I think largely because I'm pretty interested in what I am doing now. Work has gotten interesting again, at least partly. There's still far more of the corporate BS about how to convince people who do not understand what I do that it needs to be funded, but I have enough senior folks who get it that I don't have to fight most of those battles.
So my wife is headed back to school to be an accountant, instead of a network administrator and process analyst. I think she'll be a lot happier as an accountant, and I think she's going to enjoy school. It'll also fit with the way she wants work to fit into her life -- she doesn't really want to work 40 hours a week all year, she likes the idea of working part-time in some seasons. I think it's a great idea.
My buddy John, on the other hand, is headed back to school to add a Ph. D. on top of his MA. He's been struggling to define himself a bit for the last few years, and I think this will be really good for him. He's really cut out for academic life, and should do well. He may move away to go to school, which would make me very sad, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it. :)
I'm not going through the crisis point yet myself, I think largely because I'm pretty interested in what I am doing now. Work has gotten interesting again, at least partly. There's still far more of the corporate BS about how to convince people who do not understand what I do that it needs to be funded, but I have enough senior folks who get it that I don't have to fight most of those battles.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Super-grouping is lovely.
My obsession with City of Heroes continues. I've been playing almost daily for a couple of months now, and have my main character up to almost level 23. I have an alt at 15 as well, and some lower-level characters that I will come back to eventually.
I'm enjoying the game in multiple ways. First, of course, it's fun to play a superhero. I just plain enjoy flying around the city and beating up bad guys. Second, the costume tool is great fun -- the addition of a tailor and additional costume slots in the first content update was a terrific idea, since it lets you go back and change your look or create an all-new one, instead of being stuck with your original look forever. Third, the storylines of the game are rather entertaining -- you're saving the city from various menaces, or stopping bad guys, and what initially seems quite simple turns out to be more complex. I can't say much more without spoiling some of the fun, but I will say that the Clockwork automatons are not quite so purely technological as they seem. And that's just one example.
The main enjoyment I'm getting out of it, though, is the interaction with others. First of all, my wife is playing. It's been a while since we played together, and I really like it. We used to play a fair amount of Diablo II together, but since I played more than she did, we rarely had characters at the same level, which made it hard to team up effectively. City of Heroes solves that with Sidekicking, which is a great idea -- one player can "mentor" another, and as long as the two are close together, the sidekick plays as though they are just one level below the mentor. Hit points, damage, defense -- everything increases.
Second, I'm in a supergroup that's active and full of people I like chatting with and playing with. It's loosely based on the Straight Dope Message Board, so it's full of adults. It's like a small community, and I really like that feeling.
Third, I've been meeting some cool people. Not only the incidental meetings with heroes on the street, but teaming up with people who are no longer strangers to me. My wife and I have been playing with another couple, from a different superteam, who turn out to live not far from us at all -- they're in Stillwater MN, which is about half an hour from where we live in Maplewood. Small world. We wound up in a team with the other couple (Mordil and SunViolet), another married couple (Purple.Passion and Crushing Blow) and a seventh member, a woman whose husband didn't have any characters in the right level range. We were a sidekick away from having an all-married-couple team.
I'm enjoying the game in multiple ways. First, of course, it's fun to play a superhero. I just plain enjoy flying around the city and beating up bad guys. Second, the costume tool is great fun -- the addition of a tailor and additional costume slots in the first content update was a terrific idea, since it lets you go back and change your look or create an all-new one, instead of being stuck with your original look forever. Third, the storylines of the game are rather entertaining -- you're saving the city from various menaces, or stopping bad guys, and what initially seems quite simple turns out to be more complex. I can't say much more without spoiling some of the fun, but I will say that the Clockwork automatons are not quite so purely technological as they seem. And that's just one example.
The main enjoyment I'm getting out of it, though, is the interaction with others. First of all, my wife is playing. It's been a while since we played together, and I really like it. We used to play a fair amount of Diablo II together, but since I played more than she did, we rarely had characters at the same level, which made it hard to team up effectively. City of Heroes solves that with Sidekicking, which is a great idea -- one player can "mentor" another, and as long as the two are close together, the sidekick plays as though they are just one level below the mentor. Hit points, damage, defense -- everything increases.
Second, I'm in a supergroup that's active and full of people I like chatting with and playing with. It's loosely based on the Straight Dope Message Board, so it's full of adults. It's like a small community, and I really like that feeling.
Third, I've been meeting some cool people. Not only the incidental meetings with heroes on the street, but teaming up with people who are no longer strangers to me. My wife and I have been playing with another couple, from a different superteam, who turn out to live not far from us at all -- they're in Stillwater MN, which is about half an hour from where we live in Maplewood. Small world. We wound up in a team with the other couple (Mordil and SunViolet), another married couple (Purple.Passion and Crushing Blow) and a seventh member, a woman whose husband didn't have any characters in the right level range. We were a sidekick away from having an all-married-couple team.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Been a while.
I've been playing a lot of City of Heroes, as part of the C.E.C.I.L. superteam. It's a bunch of Straight Dope Message Board folks (and one or two others), and we have a fairly active forum and picture site. It's strange -- I feel like I'm finally becoming an active Internet denizen, after years of helping to make it happen in the background.
I'm starting to think about making a public blog -- that is, one linked to my name rather than my alias. I'd have to treat it a bit differently, since my work places some restrictions on what I can say. Gee, that sounds bad. It's not that my employer limits me -- rather, it's that I feel a sense of professional responsibility for what I say, if that makes sense. I am aware of my responsibility as an employee of the company (and a manager, and a stockholder) to separate my personal life from my professional life.
Things would probably be easier if I was a consultant. And I might make more money. But then I'd have to find work and bill people, and I hate doing both of those things. So I think I'll stay where I am.
More later...
I'm starting to think about making a public blog -- that is, one linked to my name rather than my alias. I'd have to treat it a bit differently, since my work places some restrictions on what I can say. Gee, that sounds bad. It's not that my employer limits me -- rather, it's that I feel a sense of professional responsibility for what I say, if that makes sense. I am aware of my responsibility as an employee of the company (and a manager, and a stockholder) to separate my personal life from my professional life.
Things would probably be easier if I was a consultant. And I might make more money. But then I'd have to find work and bill people, and I hate doing both of those things. So I think I'll stay where I am.
More later...
Friday, April 23, 2004
City of Heroes beta ended last night.
The finale was a big invasion by the Rikti, the alien bad guys whose initial invasion created the current state of the CoH world (that is, super-bad guys all over).
It was pretty cool. There were some hiccups -- a bug prevented some of the Rikti from fighting, and there were more players (I think 60,000) than the devs could handle -- but it was fun to stand with the other heroes of the city and wait for the aliens to come.
There were some very cool suggestions on some of the fora for improvements next time. One in particular that I agreed with was a change in the location of the event. The way it went was that the aliens spawned from portals around the center points of each of the zones where they invaded. This is pretty sensible. However, the suggest I rather liked was that the aliens start in some entrance point -- like coming out of the train terminals or through the gates between sections of the city or from portals located at the peripherals -- and make for the center point. That would have been fun, trying to defend areas of the city against invaders moving over the ground instead of jumping on the spawns as they came out.
I'm excited about playing for real. I'll have to see if I can find a group to hook up with. My two best superhero buddies are not playing, so I don't have built-in pals. At least, they're not playing yet. :)
It was pretty cool. There were some hiccups -- a bug prevented some of the Rikti from fighting, and there were more players (I think 60,000) than the devs could handle -- but it was fun to stand with the other heroes of the city and wait for the aliens to come.
There were some very cool suggestions on some of the fora for improvements next time. One in particular that I agreed with was a change in the location of the event. The way it went was that the aliens spawned from portals around the center points of each of the zones where they invaded. This is pretty sensible. However, the suggest I rather liked was that the aliens start in some entrance point -- like coming out of the train terminals or through the gates between sections of the city or from portals located at the peripherals -- and make for the center point. That would have been fun, trying to defend areas of the city against invaders moving over the ground instead of jumping on the spawns as they came out.
I'm excited about playing for real. I'll have to see if I can find a group to hook up with. My two best superhero buddies are not playing, so I don't have built-in pals. At least, they're not playing yet. :)
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Update on the MMORPG front.
World of Warcraft is quite addictive. It's similar to Diablo II, in that there is almost always something that you're doing that has an imminent reward. It also combines social interaction -- grouping is very helpful and fun -- and limited safe areas.
All in all, not a game you can play for five minutes or have in the background when you're doing something like folding laundry.
I've been playing with the Lounging Lurkers, a guild formed from the Lurker Lounge web site. It's a D2 analysis site, which appeals to me as both a D2 fan and a rules geek. So there's a degree of minor legend status associated with the folks in the guild, and it's quite fun to play with them.
On the other hand we have City of Heroes, the superhero MMORPG. I've been anticipating this for some time now, and since I pre-ordered, I'm guaranteed an invite to the beta by April 7th. So I'll want to be playing that.
And I can't keep up with one MMO, let alone two, what with the fulltime job and the kids and all.
Gee, nice problem to have -- which cool free game do I want to play? Of course, COH stops being free in a couple of weeks when it ships, but the first month is a sunk cost at this point.
All in all, not a game you can play for five minutes or have in the background when you're doing something like folding laundry.
I've been playing with the Lounging Lurkers, a guild formed from the Lurker Lounge web site. It's a D2 analysis site, which appeals to me as both a D2 fan and a rules geek. So there's a degree of minor legend status associated with the folks in the guild, and it's quite fun to play with them.
On the other hand we have City of Heroes, the superhero MMORPG. I've been anticipating this for some time now, and since I pre-ordered, I'm guaranteed an invite to the beta by April 7th. So I'll want to be playing that.
And I can't keep up with one MMO, let alone two, what with the fulltime job and the kids and all.
Gee, nice problem to have -- which cool free game do I want to play? Of course, COH stops being free in a couple of weeks when it ships, but the first month is a sunk cost at this point.
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