Weekend Confirmed 114 - Diablo 3, Max Payne 3, Lost Planet 3

"People"

Who are you referring to when saying, "people", "gamers", "them, they"?

One quite that is fantastically succinct by Andrea:
Well, that's the problem that (Kingdoms of Amalur) Reckoning had, right? People were still playing Skyrim and it wasn't a better game than Skyrim

I know who these people are. The same people. The gamers, the hobbyists, the hardcore; the most apt way of describing them is the people who play those types of games.

I've posted previously that the notion that similar products released around the same time get less sales is a fallacy. NPDs from 2006-2010 all proved this point when I cited it. Real quick, if you don't recall: iPhones were selling more and more and more and when a breakout game sold, it sold just as well and with whatever system it was on. Specifically, huge iPhone sales and App sales, but when Mario Kart debuted, Wii sales were insane. The same data even suggests that when a terrific game comes out, games similar sell better.

So back to the hobbyists. It is not a problem to be a hobby gamer, enthusiast gamer, what have you. I'm one, and I'm confident all lurking here and posting here are, too. We're only 1 million constant and 5-6 million periodically when out in force, purchasing games. We are a minority in the industry, and we only have so much time.

Jeff simply doesn't have enough time to play DIablo 3 and Tera. Add 6 million more people with that same problem, and bam: 6 million people playing Diablo 3 and not Tera, not Reckoning, not [insert game]. This isn't to say they won't play it eventually, but really we hobbyists tend to flock to the high-profile stuff. How do we know this? Back to the sales! The high profile "hardcore" games sell in the same range. The rest competing for our already RAVENOUSLY competitive market share get shoveled to the side like morning snow.

My interest here is information. I want you all to KNOW why X game isn't selling millions, why Y MMO isn't "succeeding". Yes, let's talk about "success". It's not as nebulous as you might think.

The goal of a business is to serve people. They get the infrastructure to serve people by making customers. Why customers? They have the money. Businesses that focus on short-changing, profit hustling, and make-or-break ventures that strive to capitalize beyond anything else fail in the end. Always. Every time. "Sustainability" is a bit of a shadow puppet thing. If you aren't generating more revenue though making new customers, you're business is dying. Why? Everything slowly gets more expensive. The electric bill in your studio building, costs of raises and bonuses to your staff to get them to make better content, the water bill, the lightbulb replacements, the internet service, EVERYTHING about the infrastructure of the process gets more expensive with time. If you want to sustain, you have to grow your market.

If you're an indi dev and just want to get out a game to please people and you bypass these traditional means of making and getting your game to customers, then any combination of these things can affect you. One of the great things about the scene is the ability to bypass some of the infrastructure problems plaguing high-profile and traditional game makers. Keep in mind, Minecraft has a general total of 9 million across all their platforms. The last 2D Mario game is staring down 50 million+.

There is a side of MMOs that Garnett and Jeff and the crew seem totally unaware of. They always talk about the questing, the loot, the encounters, the cooperative play. BLECH that is not why I play MMOs! Granted, those aspects can be fun if you are playing with your friends, but virtually any co-op game can deliver that (Diablo 3 for example).

No, the best experience MMOs can offer is mixing those tried and true RPG elements with open PvP. When you can be killed anywhere, anytime, by anyone, those meaningless fetch quests become thrilling adventures! You are dashing from tree to tree to avoid gankers. You need that new +10% stats to survive. Co-op carebear becomes brutal gang warfare. Only MMOs can deliver this and it takes two key elements: 1) Open PvP (meaning non-factional, everyone can attack everyone else) 2) High server population. PvP is not "part" of the game, PvP IS THE GAME and those other pursuits simply provide the necessary progression goals and prey to be hunted, as well as an interesting rich environment for the PvP to occur in.

Tera currently offers this, and its a blast! DaoC had/has amazing PvP servers. Conan had it, Ultima had it, EVE has it. Many successful MMOs have used this formula, yet it rarely gets talked about by the press. Instead reviewers focus on the single player PvE experience. In this model, it is OK if PvE is a meaningless grind because story and cutscenes interfere with the PvP experience. Getting ganked by a random level 50 breaks your immersion in almost any story, the elements are incompatible.

They mentioned the low server populations for TOR, this killed the game for me. As a single-player KOTOR3 it was pretty good, but not good enough to keep me playing after 100 hours. For that I needed open PvP (There was also no excuse for such a big-budget Star Wars title to have no aiming, no real space combat sim, and choppy netcode). The half-dozen PvP fights I had were a blast, but the fact that there were only a half-dozen over 100 hours tells you how abysmally low the population was, and how split the zones were between republic and empire. It was the exact same problem in WoW, and Warhammer. While there was good battleground and end-game pvp in those games, there was virtually zero PvP while leveling. What happens then is you level up in a month or two, taste all the game has to offer, and cancel.

To build player commitment an MMO world has to be incredibly dangerous and slow to explore and level and master. That way players become invested and expert in the game, and feel privileged to have seen or done something few others have. This is what makes EVE such a success. It takes years to master, there is no quick and easy path. The easier it is to level up, explore every zone, and taste everything, the quicker players will grow bored and cancel. Accessibility has been the goal of many modern MMOs, to their detriment. WoW avoided this fate by being simply better than anything else, and releasing a constant trickle of new content, but this is the expensive route only a Blizzard can take. EVE shows how you can build a dedicated playerbase in a shoestring by filling your game with PvP, a world that is unique, and lots of complex, difficult systems to master. Sure this isn't going to bring in millions of players because by definition what i'm talking about is inaccessibility, but it will slowly build a dedicated core in the 100s of thousands.

Why do people assume that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer game first? Nostalgia? Want?

Because to me when I bought the game digitally and logged in and there was general chat, the ability to jump freely in and out of people on my friends lists games and public games and the auction house I didn't see the game as a single player game with always online DRM, but as a multiplayer game that people are choosing to interact with as a single player one.

The game feels like it was designed from a multiplayer perspective, which is why I feel the other things that carry over from those games (maintenance day, latency, crowded servers are a normal part of that), much more than say Assassin's Creed 2 requiring me to be online for a game with zero multiplayer functionality.

I can log into any MMO I want and play the game without anyone else around, choosing to not interact with the multi player functionality, does that make that a single player game at that point?

So with E3 coming up I can't help but feel some of the same emotions Andrea was feeling. Don't get me wrong I am excited for see more about the titles that we already know of, but I can't help but think that the surprises that make E3 so much fun wont really be there, and here's why:

1) SONY has already shown their PS3 games, and I am excited to learn more. But I don't think there will be any excitement around them short of the Last of Us. I am holding out hope that SONY is saving some amazing stuff for Vita, but given the sales who knows.

2)I have a feeling since there will be no Durango talk at Microsoft we will get a very cookie-cutter conference from them. They will make Halo 4 the center of their show (as it should be), Treyarch will do a game play demo of COD Blops2, and then it will be about Kinect and the evolution of Metro and Skype and that avatar moto-cross game. But I think that Microsoft has it's sights set on the next Gen as far as development goes.

3)Let's face it Nintendo doesn't want us anymore. They saw the gap in gaming. They saw that it was the perfect chance to use the parents to get the next generation of gamers hooked on Nintendo. I am 32 and have always been an avid gamer but quite a few of my friends left the hobby about 10 years ago. They got married and have kids now, kids that are the age to start playing games. Nintendo very deftly used their nostalgia for Nintendo properties to make the Wii their console of choice and therefor their kids will grow up on Nintendo and the cycle goes on. The Wii-U is for the kids that grew up enough with Wii and are now ready for something a little more complicated. But it isn't for us.

The fact is I think this E3 is going to be kind of a filler year while we wait for the big reveals from Microsoft and SONY, who I think are perfectly okay with just riding the few games they have to push the end of this console cycle.

Anyone else worried that this E3 is going to be a real stinker? I think there will be a modicum of interesting things to check out- your Halo 4s and Wii-U stuff- but I've never felt so apathetic about E3 before. Hell, I found the only Internet cafe in Cuba in the early 2000s just to check out all the news. Now, I wouldn't bother.

Bah-humbug, E3!

Here's a controversial notion of you guys - and the guys on the show to mull over:

Zynga, Rovio, Apple and the other powerhouses in the mobile and social media space should have a major presence at E3.

In my mind, it has to happen eventually. Gaming is moving toward social and mobile, and even if traditional gaming is always played on a dedicated box beneath the TV (or on a PC) until the end of time as we know it, that's not going to change the fact that social games and mobile games are getting bigger, better, deeper, more interesting, and more influential in the gaming space.

Likewise, we're seeing more and more 'real' games move toward the social space with full social media integration, side-stories and prequels on those platforms, and even straight up borrowing ideas that came to prominence in that 'other' space.

SSX was built on asynchronous multiplayer, a phrase we only know of because of the way it allowed people on the go or with Facebook open in their other browser tab to play together. Look for the borrowing of more ideas on the horizon.

Like or respect their games or not, these guys are big name players in the industry, and they should be at the show.

Hey Garnett,

I don't really need you to talk about Future Soldier anymore, since I already own the game and know I love it.

I just want to say that the game only truly shines when you have a group of friends to play with through the co-op and particularly the multiplayer.

The notion of intel on the battlefield really helps establish roles for players, and using those roles together effectively is the only way to win. Engineers rarely see combat for example (if they're 'doing it right') but by marking targets with drones, grenades and whatnot, you give your team a HUGE advantage.

All of the roles are balanced really well too. You'd think the scout sniper's ability to go invisible when standing still (which snipers do 90% of the time) would be infuriating, but they're pretty much defenseless within mid-range, and an engineer can mark them for everybody on his team without even venturing out from cover thanks to his equipment.

It's a shame that the MP will get totally overlooked, but Ubisoft really didn't do a great job with the marketing (online or otherwise). That said, I think FS - like Gears of War 3 - will hold on to a moderately sized, dedicated userbase that will survive the explosions of COD and Halo 4.

Tomb Raider is definitely one of my most anticipated games for E3.

Taking a 'normal' Lara, breaking her down to her base instincts and then rebuilding her through trial by fire into a believable badass sounds awesome to me.

Seeing how far and gritty they were willing to go to make players believe Lara was a person in real danger sold me on the game huge.

Super hero Lara = Boring.

Real, vulnerable, human Lara who shows moments of fear, weakness and pain (as well as strength, ingenuity, and the will to survive) = Very interesting.

Hopefully the gameplay lives up to the concept. I know some were down on the QTE-heavy demo last year, but honestly if they break those cinematic sequences up with enough free-control stuff like the fire puzzle, and platforming like that seen in the previous Crystal Dynamics TR games, I'm all in.

Oh, so THIS is what it feels like to be in heaven.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/74028/the-witcher-dev-announces-cyberpunk

The guys who made the amazing Witcher games tackling a cyberpunk setting?! Fuck yes!

News of the year! \(^^)/

Shin Megami Tensei IV for 3DS announced!

http://andriasang.com/con173/megaten4_3ds/

And another one bites the dust.

Danny Bilson has left THQ, and been replaced by Jason Rubin.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/thq-names-jason-rubin-as-president-as-part-of-major-leadership-restructuring-2012-05-29

Now, I have no problems with Jason Rubin. Guy created two of my favorite character action game franchises, and has made some insanely good, thoughtful speeches at shows like GDC. I think he knows games and the games industry well enough to be a good fit.

The press release says Danny is choosing to leave to pursue other interests... which could be true, or PR spin for forcing him out of the company. Either way, I'm sad to see him go, because even though THQ was losing money, I felt like if they could get their spending under control, they had a good plan moving forward.

Under Bilson, THQ brought a ton of new IP to the market, and concentrated resources on ambitious projects instead of shitting out Nickelodean or Pixar licensed crap. Not all the IP turned out brilliant on the first go, but some did (Darksiders), and others laid a good foundation to build on (Homefront).

Sad to see somebody with a games-first vision for a company leave before the vision really came to fruition. Luckily, it seems Rubin is on the same page as Bilson.

Also, why wasn't this discussed?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/05/blizzard-delays-diablo-iii-real-money-auctions-indefinitely/

No online auctions due to accounts being hacked?

That always on-line security is working great so far!

I haven't commented in a long time, but I feel compelled to let you guys know that any episode with Andrea Rene as a guest immediately goes to the end up my podcast priority list, likely never to be listened to. I don't think she adds anything to the discussion and find her actively annoying. I don't expect that she will stop making appearances because I don't like her, but I figured I'd add my two cents in anway.

Andrea mentioned disappointment about games being pushed back to 2013. Personally, I *love* when games are delayed. Example: I'm thrilled that "Bioshock Infinite" isn't happening until late February 2013. The original release date was a week within "Resident Evil 6." I'm drooling for both games but want some time to savor each.

C'mon The 22nd? My surprise of the last two years and my contender for game of the year? Dragon's Dogma. It's Fudgin' amazing.

In regards to Diablo's poor launch.

Honestly, this is first world problems. It's taken what, like 10 years for this game to come out and people have to wait another 24 hours? Sure, it's not ideal, but I think terms like annoying, unfortunate or frustrating are more suitable as opposed to corruption, anti-consumer greedy and broken. Sometimes my power goes out for half a day, sometimes my internet goes down for a day, sometimes a road is closed, sometimes I lose phone service, but guess what? That's life, there's no reason to turn into a white hot ball of jaded, anti-corporate fury. The sooner people learn that not everything goes their way 100% of the time, the sooner that people learn that life isn't always fair, the better off they'll be. It's like people have completely lost the skill of dealing with disappointment. Sure there's a difference between being well and truly duped, scammed or ripped off but I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about life's little bumps. Life doesn't always go smoothly so you can either roll with the bumps or burn with righteous, self-entitled indignation every time you're inconvenienced.

Anyway, that's just what I think.

Please don't hype me on any one company leading to E3 especially Nintendo. Who remembers the Wii E3 2006 where Nintendo rattled off a stack of more mature/ "adult" 1st party titles and nothing came of them. My interest in Nintendo has steadily declined since the DS. I bought into what my wife and son wanted and got a stack of games of which Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros. only get paid. When they asked for a 3DS my first thought was "I'm not spending that much money on Mario Kart and Pokemon".

I got the Vita because I know I would enjoy the lineup. 4 games deep and I'm eager for more.

I find it interesting that you guys have been talking about MMORPGs and where they will move next and the one game / company that has been the best at evolving and updating and branching out is always left out of your discussions.

Now I don't even enjoy playing EvE: Online but those guys at CCP have crafted a Universe whole cloth and really let the player base run rampant in the confines of it. From the constant improvement and refinement of the old, along with very interesting additions and new content at regular (free expansion) elements, combating inflation and skyrocketing money by letter players buy game time in game, branching out to another console/genre to create DUST 514 to interact with the persistent world of EvE.

My problems with it stemmed from the combat generally not feeling engaging, however the system, freedom and world they have kept running for 9 years is something that I don't think can be ignored in the MMO space. When I see Old Republic and see all the ways a Star Wars game could have worked with ideas and systems EvE set up it is unbelievable to see that game turn out as it did.

I do get that crafting the game in a universe leaves a lot more room for the player base to own content and really go crazy but I always question why World Maps in video games have to be practical sizes in the first place it is a video game.

It is exactly the world I expect out of every MMO I play and am constantly let down.

There needs to be a major shift in the MMO experience from character development to world development. Players need to be able to have a major impact on their environment and on each other for MMO's to be anything more than a giant co-op rpg. Like reality, players need to be able to manipulate the world, not only physically, but also in terms of player interaction. Minecraft was the lesson on where multiplayer experiences should be moving. Give me that kind of freedom, with some loose systems to incentivise more dynamic behavior. Allow for freely evolving institutions of business and government. I want there to be room for the development of nations, religion, warfare, politics, folklore, organized crime, maybe even worldwide technological advancement. Essentially I want a game that can be as interesting as the real world.

Andrea's fine, but can you guys please not push her into doing another "I am personally not interested in...". Its really not interesting to hear someone talk about personal disinterest for 5 minutes or more. And its not all her fault. Cannata and Lee pushed her into it and kept her on the point for a while.

Just constructive criticism to please just keep quite if you don't care and jump in when you do care.

Oh my God I just laughed my ass of listening to Jeff advertise Lost Planet 3 as a New York construction worker. Bravo! Please do it more often.


PS. Having previously lived in USA for 3 years I'm not able to discern a NY accent from a New Jersy or similar regional accent so I apologize if I guessed that wrong =D

As promised, Jeff C., here are some thoughts about the design of Diablo III.

But first, consider Peggle. Yes, Peggle.

How do you play Peggle? You line up the cursor, and click to fire the ball. This is your means of interacting with the game state, right? Then, the ball hits the pegs, lighting up the pegs and making "happy" sounds - this is the game state reaction to your interaction. Finally, you are awarded points based on the success or failure of your shot (a tangible measure of your interaction with the game state), and the process repeats again.

The concept is relatively simple - press button, get shiny, repeat. When the ball physics are right, the sounds are synced with the ball contact, and you are given significant and/or particularly meaningful opportunities for big rewards, the process gets even more compelling. It's akin to Pavlov's experiments with dogs.

Now, replace ball-firing with combat, pegs with undead, and a scoreboard with loot. Diablo's combat is obviously more complicated than lining up a shot and taking it, but when you look at the abstract idea of what you're doing (short interaction, reward, repeat), you're looking at the same compulsion loop.

TL;DR - Do stuff + get shiny = fun.

RE: Co-op gameplay

Garnett, I'm totally with you when it comes to the desire to have a more flexible, "drop in drop out" multiplayer or co-op experience.

BUT...

Every game I have played that tries to realize this idea suffers because of it.

Look at the Gears 3 Campaign Co-op mode: Epic developed a very cool matchmaking system for the online co-op mode. You can select a chapter and difficultly, and the matchmaking system will find a game currently in progress and throw you in, right on the fly.

Here's the problem: It's so easy to come and go from these games that it ruins all sense of "Playing with people". I played for 4 hours straight last week, and not once did I make it through a single mission with a consistent group of 4 players. I may as well have been playing with bots. On top of that, Gears co-op suffers from the "host" problem of having the game completely shut down if the host leaves, which happens often (presumably out of frustration due to people constantly leaving their game).

Another example: Halo's "Firefight" mode. When Firefight was introduced in ODST, it was a pain in the butt to get a game together. There was no matchmaking system for it, and getting it to run properly was very dependant on all 4 players having a beefy connection. BUT, once you got a game going, it was one of the most thrilling gaming experiences I've ever had.

But now look at what Firefight has been reduced to with Halo Reach: The matchmaking system makes it far easier for people to go into Firefight "solo". This leads to match after match of people lone-wolfing their way around the map, with no teamwork or communication.

The more I think about it, the more I begin to believe that there is danger in making multiplayer gaming "too convenient". Imagin trying to play a board game where people could just get up and walk away from the table whenever they wanted, with other people showing up mid-game and just jumping in.

I'm not saying it's impossible for it to be done well, but I think the vast majority of multiplayer gaming benefits from a certain commitment level. After all, if the other "people" in your multiplayer game are just random strangers who can come and go whenever they feel like it with zero need to commit to the experience, why do we even want them to be there? Are they not WORSE than bots at that point?

Regarding the "crack" of games like Diablo. The best article on the subject that I've ever found was, incidentally, on cracked.com:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

Why was Curt Schilling's mismanagement not mentioned as a factor of 38 Studios demise?

Talking about the move to free to play is completely missing the point when you consider how much money the company received from the RI govt. and promptly squandered - except for the 4 million Schilling used to pay himself back from a loan he made.

Jeff M on Max Payne 3:

"I'm trying to compare it to a movie that's similarly dark, but similarly enjoyable..."

Uh, the game is basically Man on Fire: The Game, right down to the creative sub-title placement and acid-wash color filtering. If you haven't seen the movie, WATCH IT. It's great, and is essentially the same plot to boot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s_-O4HglGI

What happened to the MMO. Lack of creativity that's a good place to start, but it could easily be said that FarmVille is the most successful MMO since WoW. Also it could be said that FarmVille took a lot of casual non gaming audience that made WoW such a hit.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I saw WoW and the rise of the MMO and though, "Cool, that's an interesting content delivery mechanism." But, apparently publishers see WoW and think, "Gee, I gotta copy THAT game in every way. I just don't understand why publishers and developers would try to mimic WoW, rather than try to innovate and capture the essence? WoW does what it does well, but I don't think it is the only potential zenith of design decisions for the MMO experience. Cross bars are lame. Gluing your eyes to cool down timers is lame.

So, why the hell would Zenimax plop that same design philosophy onto the Elder Scrolls IP, when it is so counter to what the Elder Scrolls games are all about?

The only two answers I see are that they have a dearth of creativity and a scuzzy desire to mine the same plot of land as WoW just to get those juicy subscription charges.

I would never root for a game to fail, but I think Elder Scrolls Online will. And I think it could take Zenimax down with it, or at least severely dampen their expansion.

Seriously, I just finished the GI article on that game, and it sounds and looks like a stinking turd. Phantasy Star Online is one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. Sadly, I think MMOs are destined to be hurt for the foreseeable future by overcrowding and lack of creativity.

What the heck do you think is going to happen to save the MMO from becoming the next mini-game collection? I shudder now when I hear of a new mini-game collection announcement. I'm starting to do that for MMOs too.

There was a rumour this past week that Retro Studios are working on a Star Fox/Metroid crossover game. I'm not the biggest Nintendo fan so it doesn't excite me much, but would this be a big enough deal of a title for the Wii U to appeal to the hardcore?

A question that's even more fun: what other crazy crossover game would you like to see? I wouldn't mind a little Batman or Crackdown in my Bioshock Infinite :)

I played Skyrim with Kinect yesterday. It was a blast!

The best part was swapping between my archery/sword/dagger loadouts including switching gloves. It makes the game SO much easier. Saying the names of the dragon shouts made things SO much easier, being able to 'detect life', throw voice and sprint saved time and stopped me from constantly pausing to access the favourites menu. Also, saying 'quick map, Whiterun' was handy too.

As far as down sides go there were few. I enjoyed the Kinect functionality with Mass Effect but it felt a bit too sensitive, if my wife was having a phone conversation the next room over it would often trigger powers. With Skyrim however the Kinect seems tuned a lot better, I hardly had any interference except the one time the wife said 'sorry' which caused my Dragonborn to cast a frost spell. After playing a couple of hours I think I only needed to repeat myself about 5 times when the game didn't understand me so that's pretty good in terms of accuracy. I found that saying the shouts in the dragon language was almost impossible, the game couldn't differentiate 'fas' and 'fus' so it was much easier saying 'unrelenting force' and such.

Anyway, it was a great experience and it made the game a lot more enjoyable. Having bought the Kinect for the kids I didn't expect to use it much myself but I found the 'you are the controller' slogan gaining some traction. I didn't feel like a controller as such but I did feel like I was an extension of my controller and I felt like my voice was far more effective than any hotkey or quick select menu. It seems so intuitive bypassing half a dozen buttons in favour of saying a word. It makes me excited about the future of controllers and our bodies being peripherals or extensions, in particular with voice commands. I'm not talking just with Kinect but the concept as a whole. I'm not interested in using my body as the sole control input as I agree with the sentiments expressed on this show that a controller is suitable because it allows a great range of complex actions to be mapped to minimal button inputs. But if you reverse that philosophy and look at how complex games require lengthy input and user interface to achieve simple results like swapping a weapon, doesn't it make sense to use our body's infinite repitiore of simple gestures to bypass encumbering user interface?

It's exciting to be a gamer these days.