The Gaming Den

Game Developer's Conference 2008

So anyhow, I've been here most of the week and it's technically over. I have one more dinner to attend and it's mostly a formality, and then I get to get onto 'Birthday!' which is today.

I've had my fill of conceited presentations being made with fallacies and contextual errors and ... Well, just general conceit. Yes, dude, you weren't the first to do something. Stick that in your craw and smoke it.

But normally I'm not one to rant. Hopefully I'll be able to get some videos of the really great things like 'Stars over Half Moon Bay' or get one of you to play 'Flywrench'. I regret not getting to play the IGF more, 'cause that's usually one of the stars of the show and really what I aspire to.

Also, Dave Jones? 'Clan' and 'AK-47' and 'rocketlauncher' and 'FPS' isn't any less geeky or more chic than swords, elves, and guilds. Just because you're a twitch gamer and want to make gangwar/shadowbane with physics doesn't mean that you're any better an MMO than any other. Argh. You totally don't seem to 'get' the usefulness of a persistent game world any more than Blizzard does, you don't seem to understand - and Rob Pardo definitely does - the rule of buckets and 'critical mass'. Just because you think your dynamic matchmaking is innovative doesn't mean it really is any different than any other FPS matchmaking service.

The lesson I'd say, is: Don't reinvent the wheel. Which was really Raph's talk, although he was sorta conceited as though he were the only one attempting to make a world in that manner.

Talk later ^-^

-Crissa

Twitch gamers tend to be more socially competent.
They can think on the spot.
We strategy gamers are like .. well... treants.

If by think on the spot, you mean can talk in 'wazzup' language.

Twitch programmers, at least those that I dated, have been even more poorly socially adept.

But this was the guy who made the 3d version of Grand Theft Auto.

-Crissa

Monosyllabic language.
Because they can't afford to waste time speaking or listening to those long words.

If someone uses any 3-syllable words in a conversation, they say "Huh?" and if you don't dumb it down, they either insult you, attempt to drive you away, or just put on a stupid expression.

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1203731729[/unixtime]]Twitch gamers tend to be more socially competent.
They can think on the spot.
We strategy gamers are like .. well... treants.

You haven't been playing StarCraft much have you?

the_taken at [unixtime wrote:1203742969[/unixtime]]

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1203731729[/unixtime]]Twitch gamers tend to be more socially competent.
They can think on the spot.
We strategy gamers are like .. well... treants.

You haven't been playing StarCraft much have you?

Playing since it came out. The BroodWars disk exploded a few months ago, so I have to go buy a new one or wait until SC2....

But that has nothing to do with picking the right words in a job interview, on a date, or with a holiday dinner party.

One: Starcraft isn't really so much a strategy game as seeing how fast you can play a specific, pre-planned, strategem. There may be some strategy involved in the game, but it is not like chess in which your ability to think quickly and counter moves is rewarded - you attempt a number of strategies at once fast, mid, and slow, andsee how fast you can pull off the 'fast' strategy. If you pull it off fast enough, your opponent's attempt to do the same, fails.

It's just that in Starcraft/Warcraft as opposed to WoW the units actually have a way to stop each other from advancing, and the 'fast' strategies, if played about at the same level , counter each other while one of the slower strategies is made available to the players.

Rather like chess, except you don't have to wait for the opponent to move their pawns and queen to do the eight move gambit, because you only have a handful of pawns and a knight each up front, and the remainder of the pieces arrive faster based upon how fast you finish each move in the chess game.

At any rate, APB looks beautiful, he'll sell 5 million copies easy, and then we'll be told how won-toe-bees are hot shit and the best PvP game until they realize that the towns quickly become unbalanced wastelands or are unplayable at a certain latency because of certain design choices in customizability.

-Crissa

Hey, on that point, I would love to decompress about this stuff, I'm kinda out of people to jabber at about it; my spouse is too sick to talk about it ^-^;

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1203753545[/unixtime]]One: Starcraft isn't really so much a strategy game as seeing how fast you can play a specific, pre-planned, strategem. There may be some strategy involved in the game, but it is not like chess in which your ability to think quickly and counter moves is rewarded - you attempt a number of strategies at once fast, mid, and slow, andsee how fast you can pull off the 'fast' strategy. If you pull it off fast enough, your opponent's attempt to do the same, fails.

Starcraft (well, competitive Starcraft) is not (nor is any game like it), and never was anything resembling a strategy game. They are all a click-fest. Frankly, I never saw the point.

The funny thing about real-time strategy games is that strategy doesn't happen in real time.

Pretty much.

Now, I'm hoping that the e-game features that Rob Pardo was hinting at for World of Warcraft come true. There is something to be said for seeing such PvP third-person.

-Crissa