I’ve been having a very fun time playing Magicka. But I’m finding myself simply using the lightning spell constantly and not really using any others. I also die. A LOT. I’m not very good at the game, because it requires constant keypresses and tons of combinations.
If you’re playing Magicka, what are your favorite spell combos?
More EQ Progression Server Details
SOE released more details about the new EQ progression server. First, the details for those who don’t want to read:
- Launches February 15th
- Server is named Fippy Darkpaw
- There will be challenges that need to be defeated to unlock the next expansion, and when completed there will be a grace period before voting will begin for the next expansion. Once a vote starts, players on the server will be able to vote on whether the next expansion should be released.
- Grace period is 90 days before voting for Kunark starts, and 60 days for each expansion thereafter.
- No Defiant armor, no hotzones.
- All stat effecting Station Cash items will not be purchaseable
- Tradeskills will be limited to the recipes that are available at a current expansion
While I am excited for this server to launch, some things definitely don’t seem right about this.
First of all, the voting system sounds very risky. Couldn’t the server just stay in a perpetual state where no expansions are released because the ultra-casual players vote it that way? What kind of checks will be put in place to prevent people from starting new characters on the server just to partake and throw the vote?
In addition, 90 days stuck in EQ Classic sounds like it could be hell. There really isn’t THAT much to do in pre-Kunark EQ…I am not sure that this will hold my interest beyond the first day much less three months.
What are your thoughts? Are you going to play the Fippy Darkpaw server in two weeks?
Different worlds, same complaints: On social games and shallow design
World of Warcraft has had phenomenal success in the traditional MMO gaming space. The MMO industry and the players within it yell that WoW has dumbed down MMORPGs for the masses. They want it less casual, deeper, more open.
Zynga, Playdom, PopCap, RockYou, etc. have had phenomenal success in the social gaming space. The game industry and traditional players yell that social games have dumbed down gaming for the masses. They want it less casual, deeper, more open.
The takeaway – it’s a good thing that those in charge of businesses make their decisions based on their experience with what works and their intuition of what makes a good product.
The trend in the social gaming space is to say “Make it more social!” or “Make it deeper!” or “Make these games more like ‘real games’”. If Apple hadn’t made the iPhone so dead simple to use, so casual, so friendly to the masses – it wouldn’t be as huge as it is today. If Paypal didn’t make buying items online as simple are remembering an email address and password, it wouldn’t be the largest payment provider on the web. Simple is how you go mass market.
I’m tired of hearing people complain that social games aren’t deep enough. Sometimes, games don’t have to be deep. Some of the most popular games in history are as simple as Tic-Tac-Toe. They’re as silly as Diner Dash. They’re as shallow as Bejeweled. They’re as targeted to a specific audience as Magic the Gathering. I absolutely do not believe that the only good games are ones that are radically new concepts with entirely new mechanics. I believe there is a strong need and market out there for games that take evolutionary steps such as Ravenwood Faire, or It Girl, or FrontierVille. I don’t think these games should be discounted as simple clones, as mediocre piles of crap. There are players that love them, that pay for them, that spend hours in them.
There are social gaming companies that are going for a core gaming audience. KlickNation has had decent success with Superhero City and Age of Champions. Kabam (formerly Watercooler) also has a company strategy that focuses on the core gaming niche on Facebook. But they’re readily admitting that what they’re doing is niche. They’re going for a niche that produces less traffic and DAUs but monetizes at better than average. You might not have heard of these games, because they’re not the ones that are doing 1 million+ DAU right now. They’re out there though, and they have just as much legitimacy as social games as the extremely shallow fashion games and farming games.
The social gaming industry needs to stop hating on itself and the players within it, and instead start learning and evolving. That doesn’t mean the games will necessarily become deeper, but if they do I hope it’s because players are asking for it and not just disgruntled game designers who come from the traditional game space. My job is to manage a community of 800,000 daily active players per day and I can tell you that they don’t want complicated. They don’t care for deep experiences. They create meaningful gameplay moments simply by decorating their bakery and making recipes to sell in their bakeries. They aren’t looking for the next great experimental artistic expression via Facebook. They just want to enjoy a few simple games with their friends that allow them to express their creativity and occupy their time. These supposedly shallow and crappy games are monetizing quite well, satisfying a target demographic, and making their players happy. Just how WoW is doing for its players.
Today in social game heteronormativity: Crowdstar’s It Girl
I wrote this on Monday for The Border House. :)
Ar tonelico Qoga: Another game to skip over
A quick post I wrote for The Border House.
"We iterated rapidly, but because we were so early in development and the idea had emerged from a market-test beauty contest, the games did not have a sound ‘vision’ or solid base experience. We were most concerned about meeting the needs of the Facebook audience, whom we considered to be very different from ourselves, so we lost our internal compass about what we thought was fun — because so many popular games on FB did not seem fun to us, we didn’t trust our own judgement."
~ - Daniel James from Three Rings on their application of MVP to Facebook games. I find this quote interesting because it’s a common problem with social games. Finding people who love to play these types of games who also have the skill set to work on social games isn’t easy. Taking a group of people who weren’t built to create games on Facebook and trying to make Facebook games with them can end up disastrous. There is a constant struggle between making games that the team personally wants to play vs. making games they think the 40+ year old woman would want to play. When it comes down to it though, you have to make a fun game. If your team isn’t able to do that, you have no business trying to make a Facebook game. Facebook games have a stigma of being lightweight and shallow and therefore easy to make. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Creating a testable minimum viable product is tough for social games, especially when you don’t know how to evaluate metrics and you’re competing directly with the major players who launch feature-complete games. How can we apply the idea of “minimum viable product” to online games? - Quora
A Brief Explanation Of Why Minecraft Matters
Minecraft is still on my list of “games to try”. It’s cheap, seems fun. I don’t know much about it other than it’s sandboxy and I can build stuff out of blocks. The dedicated following of the game has me intrigued though.
I definitely need to give it a try. One of these days, when I’m done with my huge stack of games I purchased during the holiday Steam sales…
I have been playing the heck out of Mass Effect on PC. I haven’t actually played either of the Mass Effect games, and I’m making a point to play through both of them before ME3 comes out.
I held off on this series because I typically don’t care for shooters, and I also am not a sci-fi themed fan. I don’t generally like anything that takes place in outer space. However, I have a love for Bioware’s storytelling and good dialogue. Also, both games were so cheap on Steam that I couldn’t pass them by.
So far, I’m enjoying the game. I’m about 5-6 hours in and it’s a lot more awesome than I thought it would be. I can’t wait to finish 1 and move onto Mass Effect 2, as I hear it’s even better.
Welcome to my new home!
I’m relocating my gaming related blog to here. I plan to write about games, share pictures, links, screenshots, tidbits, quotes, and anything interesting about gaming that I want to share with other people.
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About Me
I write about games, and other nerdy stuff. I'm a Senior Community Manager at a social game company. I am Lead Editor for a feminist gaming website called The Border House. I write for Games.com and Inside Social Games, among other sites.
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