Gaming

Shamus Young over at The Escapist (of Shamus Plays LOTRO and now Shamus Plays Champions Online fame) has weighed in on the THQ-Penny Arcade-The Internet discussion on used games.

He agrees that buying used is "not cheating" (thanks Shamus for joining Tycho in begrudging us our legal rights, we appreciate it) but still has a few bones to pick. Personally I think many of those who spend a lot of time writing about games on the Internet, and consequently end up spending plenty of time interacting with game developers, are speaking more from a sense of sympathy with individuals and studios crying out they are in financial dire straits than any well-reasoned position on the matter... but I digress.

I think this situation is shaped by three simple facts:

• Developers and publishers want to earn a living.
• Gamers, like any consumers, want the most value for their dollar.
• GameStop has taken advantage of the fact that used games are - in a gameplay sense - indistinguishable from new copies.

Ledesma is talking about a real problem. An unknown (but obviously large) portion of the money being spent on games is ending up in the hands of retailers instead of going to where it can fund more games. But the language he's used to describe the problem is really unfortunate.

A few points in response:

"Unfortunate" is an understatement. There's a word for what the concept of "cheating" implies within a commercial transaction, and it's "theft" (not to be confused with "piracy" which is something else again). So, yes, I suppose it is "unfortunate" that in defense of revenue that Ledesma's company is in no way entitled to, he felt it necessary to accuse used game buyers of theft.

Tycho responded to some of the ideas in my post yesterday (I'm sure he received the same ideas from many, many different writers) in his newspost today. It reads in part:

People who buy used games are not pirates, by definition. Used games (used everything, really) are and will continue to be a legal and protected form of commerce. Other industries have done what they can to co-opt, destroy, or harvest those markets, but their existence is settled law. What I have said is that the end result of that purchase from a developer perspective must be indistinguishable. Isn't it? That is the question I couldn't answer. I still can't answer it. And because I couldn't, I had to change the way I invested my leisure dollar.

So the first question is, should the end result of a used purchase be the same as a new purchase, from the perspective of a developer?

My answer, you might be surprised to hear, is yes-- but this is already true.

Gabe and Tycho over at Penny Arcade have gotten a lot of responses to their post yesterday about the used game market.

Here were portions of responses they got, along with my responses to their responses:

What other customers expect a used product be be identical to a new product? Buying a used car comes with increased wear (and thus decreased function)

I actually don't object to initiatives like "Project Ten Dollar" that use DLC bundled only with new purchases to initiate a relationship with used game buyers. It's voluntary. They're not entitled to that income, but if the end user wants the content they can get it-- like any DLC. This, I think, is the appropriate way to approach a difficult problem.

However, the issue of product degradation is bogus.

I'm a big fan and longtime reader of webcomic Penny Arcade, and more times than not I find myself in agreement with Tycho's rants, which I enjoy just as much as the comic itself (if not more).

However I do find myself on the opposite side of the issue of used games, which is odd since by and large I don't buy used games. Out of all the Xbox and Xbox 360 titles I own (I'm not a PC gamer anymore, and I don't own another console) I think perhaps two or three titles I bought used out of a collection that spans some 100 games or so.

Tycho picks up some of the objections to statements by developer THQ's Cory Ledesma earlier this week, to the effect that gamers buying from the used market were "cheating". Some of these objections were phrased as "disrespectful to THQ's customers", to which Tycho responds that buyers on the used market are not THQ customers. This is wrong in a number of important ways.

Notwithstanding the significant rights granted by the doctrine of first sale, it is reasonable to believe that if it became illegal tomorrow to sell a game one had bought new, either to GameStop, another dealer, or third party individuals, the sales of new games would drop. Some people have gaming lifestyles that exceed what they are able or willing to pay for at new release prices, and subsidize their habits either by selling their own games on the used market to recoup expenses so they can buy more games, or by eschewing new releases at launch time and buying games used for discount prices.

My Xbox is a liar. I've been playing the Halo 3 Beta and Half-Life 2. Since Halo 3 is a beta and HL2 is a backwards-compatible title, neither show up.

At about 100 hours of gameplay in, I completed the main storyline of Oblivion. I had delayed it for awhile, doing side quests, finishing the Thieves' Guild quest line and getting access to Arcane University in the Mages' Guild, but finally it seemed it was time to get back to business. I found a daedric artifact I didn't like so much that I could give it away: a staff that spawns daedra to attack a target. Since I already had the Jermayne brothers following me around to help out in fights, and the last few parts of the main questline also include helpers, adding more characters didn't seem like it was that worthwhile.

Azura's Star, a soul gem you can use over and over again? Yeah, not letting that go. Far too useful. The Wabbajack, that turns things into other things? Too cool. I've got it in a display case now. The Skeleton Key, that unlocks any door and never breaks? Also far too useful.

There are still more shrines to visit and more artifacts to find, but once I had the Septim armor and this daedric staff, I found it difficult to justify putting the main plot off any further. I'd also overcome my boredom with Oblivion gates; with Umbra and Apotheosis, plus my helpers, closing gates was far less tedious. I could fight through them or just sneak or run through them, unlike with the first few I encountered. At the Kvatch gate early in the plot, the gear I had was so weak that every Clannfear and Scamp was a serious threat, to say nothing of Daedra Churls and Kynvals. I had to save after every encounter, heal, wait for magicka to regenerate, then move on.

However, the portions of the main quest after that point underscored one of the weaknesses in the game. It doesn't handle combat with a large number of participants very well. The problem seems to be that everything moves far too fast. The relation in speed between an arrow flying, a sword stroke, and a running target, is just far too low. By the time you finish a sword stroke, a target you hadn't even seen yet is in front of you. Dodging arrows is far too easy. If it takes a long time to wind up and swing a heavy sword, then targets wearing heavy armor shouldn't be zipping around like meth addicts; I don't care if they are demons from hell.

The result is an insane amount of "friendly fire" for a game that's more about swordplay than ranged weapons. During the defense of Bruma, or the final fight before Mehrunes Dagon appears, it's far too common to hear your allies accusing each other of hitting the wrong person, and even fighting amongst themselves, or attacking you. Yielding (block + talk) usually works, but that's not the point-- it shouldn't be happening. If I'm the third person in to a sword fight, the relative speed of the two combatants should not be so high that I can't be sure of who I am going to hit. It seems odd to watch two targets that are running in place at each other at full speed, sliding all over the terrain as if everything was coated in ice.

It's not merely a cosmetic problem, either. It encourages you to actually stay out of the fight, or at best, attract a target solely to you so you can fight it without risking damage to your allies.

I don't play these kinds of games for the combat; I'm more interested in the exploration. Still, it's difficult to avoid all the combat, so the combat you have to play should work well. The rest of Oblivion is so great that it makes up for the combat, and it's still a great improvement over Morrowind. Still, there are some things that are quite annoying.

That there is a restriction on you that prevents changing weapons in mid-attack is understandable. However, it's not quite understandable what Oblivion considers an "attack". For instance, healing yourself with a spell is an "attack". Attempting to change weapons before a spell animation is complete generates a "you can't change weapons while attackiing" error. That is almost surely going to delay your weapon change when you hit the button again. Being blocked or meleed also seems to delay this. Nearly all of my deaths in the latter stages of the game went like this: I cast a spell to heal myself, hit the button to change weapons (usually from a ranged weapon like a staff or bow to a sword) and then hit the trigger to attack.

The change weapon press creates a "you cannot change weapon" error. The attack button press now succeeds, but with the old weapon, which is likely either empty or ineffective. If you don't wait until that animation finishes, but just stab the "change weapon" button, you get the error again. In short, the timing that is considered critical is not timing of an attack against the enemy, but rather against Oblivion's error-checking routine. The game really needs to do something about this. Why can't the game just wait until the animation is finished, then change weapons, instead of throwing an error? If it has to throw an error, why can't it also throw out the next attack buttonpress if they were nearly-simultaneous? Either change would stop the player from getting stuck in a loop where he can't defend himself or change weapons.

In between those two relatively large-scale fights was a side trip to Camaron's Paradise, a sort of parallel universe created by Mankar Camaron, who is ushering in Mehrunes Dagon's invasion (return?) to Tamriel. This was similar to some of the earlier side quests that take place off the main map, like the magic painting and the mage's dream world-- or like Oblivion gates themselves. The problem with this one came down to the end battle with Camaron himself.

Facing him head-on, alone, didn't seem to do much good. He healed himself as fast as I could damage him, and I emptied Apotheosis before I could kill him. Making it worse were his son and daughter also attacking me, as well as the creatures they were all summoning. Interrupting his little monologue by attacking him seemed to confer no advantage, and killing his progeny to whittle down the odds is also temporary, as he simply resurrects them.

The solution turned out to be surprisingly effective but also somewhat disappointingly easy. You can hide in the upper corners of Camaron's throne room, and the game considers you to be "sneaking" and hidden, even though you are actually in plain view, and he is still speaking to you. This might have had something to do with the dark brotherhood armor and Nocturnal's Cowl, both of which I was wearing. An arrow poisoned with a Strong Poison of Silence stopped him from using any spells, in addition to doing 3x sneak damage. Three such arrows and he was defeated without my ever been seen or struck by an opponent, and Paradise evaporated around me. A bit anticlimactic.

Doing one of my regular turns around gaming news sites, I came across an interview with John Romero, of Doom and, dare I say it, Daikatana fame, now Founder/President of Slipgate Ironworks.

Clearly this Xbox 360 blogging thing isn't worth a damn when it comes to counting days played streaks; it's claimed twice now that I had a streak, but never awarded me one, claimed I didn't play a day, then awarded me a streak anyway. So I'll stop paying attention to that portion of it.

Having pretty much done with Gears' solo campaign, I'm now devoting my play time to Oblivion. And while I don't like to use the word cheat, it's been increasingly difficult to avoid the temptation to use the exhausive resources of the Oblivion Wiki to... ah... enhance my play experience.

Since there's already way too many things to do in Oblivion, I've got little interest in optimizing the way I complete quests. Often there's several ways to do each, with different consequences. So after I've completed one, for curiosity's sake, I'll check the quest page on the wiki to see what the other possible outcomes were. I don't have any intention of backtracking to do it over, since there's already too many things to do and not enough time, and the idea of replaying the game later with another character is just too far off to even consider.

However, the resource is so well linked internally that one thing led to another and soon I was getting hints about things I hadn't seen yet.

It started when I got stuck in the Unfair Competition quest, near the very end. The gravedigger supplying Thoronir the merchant with his stolen goods was waiting in a tomb for me, along with a henchman, and every time I confronted him, he killed me. I got quite annoyed, since my most recent save was just inside the tomb door, and the tomb door locks behind you. The gravedigger, Agarmir, has a magic sword, Debaser, that drains Willpower and Endurance, that made him tough to beat at my low level (I think I was about a level 7 at the time). Agarmir is always one level higher than the player, plus he's got an accomplice, and the magic sword. I thought it was really unfair and unrealistic that the door locks behind you once you enter-- Agarmir can't have locked the door himself, since you stand between him and the door, and it was open when you came in.

Since I knew the quest was almost over and I suspected I was missing something obvious, I checked out the Unfair Competition page and there saw the suggestion to pickpocket Debaser off Agarmir before the confrontation-- you have to break into his house anyway in order to find evidence of his gravedigging activities.

This turned out to be the key for me to finish that quest, since I'm heavy on stealth and not too strong on combat. It also proved to be the gateway drug for dipping into the wiki for hints. Once I had the magical stolen sword, I had to figure out how to recharge it. It's not the kind of information easily gleaned from just asking, so I had to start looking at parts of the Wiki on enchantment, soul gems, and soul trapping-- since apparently that's the only cost-effective way to recharge a magic weapon.

That led to a page on other magic weapons, where I found out about Umbra, one of the better swords in the game, carried by a character also called Umbra, in a ruin quite close to the Imperial City that I had actually visited already; it seemed to have nothing much of interest, so I forgot about it.

The page on Umbra said she was lightning fast, self-healing, and tough to beat, but her sword was really worth it, especially for low-level characters. Since monsters level up with your character, it's almost more important to upgrade your gear than to level up.

The dungeon she's in is nearly empty: sandcrabs, rats, and not much loot except for what she carries. She isn't hostile to you unless attacked or pickpocketed. Still, I knew I'd be no match for her all alone. Wiki to the rescue!

There were lots of suggestions for beating Umbra: trapping her against level geometry works, since she has no ranged attack. However, if she dies that way, the sword can fall through the level. Bad idea. You can lead her into guards, but they might attack you, plus she's insanely fast. Bad idea. You can lead her into the gas traps, but her speed and healing makes that sketchy.

Or you can bring allies. Wait, I thought... allies? Yet another quest that I hadn't heard of, originating in Chorrol, gives you two invincible allies. Long story short, you reunite long lost identical twins and clear their ancestral home of Ogres for them, then lead them there.

Except... you never take them there. They follow you everywhere. They can't be killed, only knocked unconscious temporarily. They distract other enemies, and aren't bad fighters.

So there was part of the solution. The wiki also delivered the other: a magical staff, available in Imperial City to any level player if they could scrape together the cash. I was already close to having the money, and with my new allies, we cleaned out the nearby Vilverin dungeon of bandits and loot (taking several trips to cart away a lot of the heavier armor and weapons) to raise the rest.

Four hits did Umbra in. She only attacked me once (and knocked me down) after knocking out both my allies, just as I landed the last blow. Umbra was mine.

Have I cheated? Probably. I didn't know about the twins quest without the Wiki; although I could have. I just hadn't heard the required rumor in Chorrol yet. I'd been to Umbra's dungeon, Vindasel, but hadn't seen her. I'd been to the staff shop, but hadn't really been interested because I was more interested in bows and swords. Plus, I seem to be exploiting a quest bug by not taking the twins home. They don't seem to mind, though... and if they don't, why should I?

Recently I found Patrick Curry's blog Thoughts on Game Design, where as an exercise he's promised to do a game idea every week. Already he's up to 26. He describes each idea in terms of high concept, platform, the reasons to make it, a more detailed description, and why it would be fun.

As someone who does little more for games than describe what I do or don't like about them, this idea struck me as brilliant. I'm not a 3D artist or a programmer, nor do I think it likely I'll ever be one. On the other hand, to do little more than be a critic seemed a little too facile.

So I thought I would also give it a go to come up with a few game ideas of my own. I'll be posting them here, rather than at Rampancy.net, because that's more specific to Bungie and the Xbox platform than it is to gaming in general.

Curry's ideas are all very specific, detailing setting, plot, and sometimes characters, and even what platforms are best suited to the game. I thought what I would rather do is try to come up with some of the underlying archetypes that already exist on games and find ways of putting a new spin on them.

Journeys and Escapes

Lots of story ideas, whether in literature, movies, or games, involve journeys of some kind. You create a character in a setting and then invent a reason for that character to leave that setting to go somewhere else, which provides opportunity for conflict and drama. Maybe your character has to return to a long-forgotten home. Maybe he's lost and is returning where he came from. Maybe he has to leave his home and find a new one. The journey might be to do battle or to destroy some evil object, LotR being one of the most identifiable examples of this.

One of the lesser-used variations of this journey theme is escape. Setting this up can be a little bit more complicated. It's usually easy to understand why a character has to leave a pastoral setting-- because such settings don't have the conflict and drama needed for an interesting story or interesting gameplay. All we need to do, for instance, to send Frodo packing from the Shire in Fellowship of the Ring is identify the Ring as an object of evil that evil forces will attempt to find, steal and control. As such it threatens not only the characters in the story but their entire world. It sets up the contrast between the Hobbits and their Shire and the rest of Middle Earth in general and Sauron's Mordor in specific.

Escape takes more setup and perhaps more care with the ending because it reverses the direction of the journey; you first put your characters in immediate peril and they have to find their way out. The conflict exists before the characters are set up, so your audience may not identify with them right away. It may also be necessary to explain why and how your characters got where they are. A common setting for an escape story is some kind of prison. Since the audience isn't going to automatically empathize with a prisoner, you've got to take time to create that empathy.

Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games play with this idea a bit; nearly all of them begin with the protagonist being a recently-released prisoner with no knowledge of his past. It's an interesting device, and calls to mind other games with protagonists with mysterious sides-- such as the security guard in Marathon who may, or may not, be a cyborg killing machine manufactured from the corpses of dead soldiers, and the similarly (if less gruesomely) enhanced Master Chief of the Halo series, whose face we never see in the games and of whose background prior to his abduction and training in the Spartan II program we know very little.

Matroska

I think an interesting twist to put on an Escape game would be to vary the kind of gameplay needed for each phase of a multi-stage escape.

The player would start off inside a solitary confinement cell in a high security prison. At this stage, the player has almost no resources at his disposal and no knowledge of the background story; he or she may have been drugged, injured during torture, lobotomized-- anything.

Gameplay at this stage might closely resemble the Flash-based series of "escape from the room" games, where through a combination of manipulation of objects at hand and assistance from an unknown outsider (a guard? another prisoner?) the player must find a way out.

Once outside the cell, though, the prisoner is still trapped inside the prison. Now, with more freedom of movement but still not much in the way of resources, we could have gameplay heavily based on stealth, where a premium is put on staying in shadows, being quiet, perhaps changing costumes at appropriate times in order to make your way outside of the prison.

Once outside, though, the player discovers the prison itself is just the worst part of an oppressive police state. Still there are controls on movement and material, but outside the prison the player may find allies. To what use he or she puts those allies to use will be up to them.

The key conflict here may be that now, at last, more traditional conflict-based gameplay is available; weapons and allies. However, the player may have to choose between taking this more traditional route, or taking another route to help discover why they were put in the prison to start with. It may not be what you think. The best variation of this may be to have what the reason is change depending on various other choices the player makes along the way, much as the endings of some of the Silent Hill games are similarly variable-- although I think care should be taken so that these "choices" are not as minor and arbitrary as they are in some of those games.

In the endgame, the player might choose to lead a prison break and free all the inmates, perhaps as part of a general rebellion against the police state. They might instead lead an expedition to escape from the walled city into the wilderness beyond, and leave the society behind. Or, the player might choose to eschew deploying large-scale force and instead try to unravel the mystery that led to his imprisonment at the start-- and each of these approaches may be incompatible.

The name for the idea, Matroska, I took from the famous Russian doll where inside each doll is an even smaller doll, to evoke the situation the player finds himself in at the start-- trapped inside a cell inside a prison inside a walled city inside a repressive society, with different skills and actions required to escape from each.