The Morality of Platform Exclusives

Celia WagarLeave a comment

So, I bothered you about this on twitter, and I don’t know if it interests you at all, but why do you consider exclusivity to be intrinsic to current console development? Current consoles have basically standard pc hardware, only slightly customized. Alienware could very well mass produce a pc tailored to last the next 5 or so years of games, and it would have all of the benefits of consoles (devs could optimize for specific hardware, buyers get a gaming ready product) without enforcing a closed platform. But console manufacturers benefit from a closed model, and so enforce it.

Because it costs developers money to release to each platform, to publish patches to each platform. That’s required developmental upkeep that grows with each platform released to, even if they’re identical codewise. Also this is the first time in history where the competing consoles have had identical CPU architectures and it may not stay that way. Despite that, code still needs to be changed between releases, it still costs development time.

And realistically, if you’re going to bother releasing a console at all, you’re going to want exclusives for your console, so you can have a unique brand from your competitors and compete as a brand rather than as a producer of commodity. Alienware does this. The Alienware brand allows them to overcharge for parts and rip people the fuck off in a market that would otherwise be primarily about commodities, just a matter of trying to undersell competitors pushing similar products. It doesn’t completely resemble a pure commodity market because there’s better and worse hardware, but whatever.

Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo all want their brand to be unique, so naturally they’ll pay people to be exclusive. Naturally they’ll all develop software exclusively for their platform.

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Stealth & Spotting

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How important to you in a stealth game, is the phase after you’re spotted? Do you think a stealth game should ever give you an instant game over if you’re spotted? Monaco is really the only game to satisfy me, with it’s gameplay, after you’re spotted. In other games, I prefer to restart afterwards.

Honestly, I think most stealth games should have decent checkpoints and european extreme mode as an option. I’ve come up with several ideas for alternate ways to build stealth games without the running away portion because that portion isn’t very fun in any game except Monaco, which focused its whole system around that component of the game, to great effect.

Some ideas include, a fast forward button (someone on here suggested that), a time rewind similar to Prince of Persia, with limited stocks of rewind that function as your health effectively, locking off the way(s) forward until alerts clear, or having “stealth health” that you lose every time you get directly spotted, and maybe you flash invincible for a bit, and the guards continue patrolling in investigation mode, or time could stop, allowing you to move out of their line of sight, or you could just be shunted to the side where they can’t see you. Maybe guards could have vision attacks that have differently sized vision cones and deal more stealth health damage? Obviously that last idea is pretty ridiculous in terms of theme or setting, unless you’re fighting medusa I guess, but it could be a good game dynamic. Continue reading →

How Often Should you Replay?

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How often do you play through games that you like? Do you think you need to play through various games, multiple times to get a proper grasp of their systems?

Depends on the game, depends on you.

Some games have a lot more up-front complexity. Some games have a lot of subtle details. Some games have a lot more mechanical processes to master. Determining which is which requires good judgment. Determining if you really understand it takes good judgment.

I don’t have very consistent records of how many times I’ve played through all the games I’ve played. I’ve beaten Demon’s Souls twice, Dark Souls 1 at least 7-9 times. Dark Souls 2 maybe 3-4 times. Dark Souls 3 once. I’ve beaten God Hand once, same for Bayo and Ninja Gaiden, so I haven’t played hard mode in any of these games unless it was unlocked from the start, which I know I should do, but I just haven’t had the time. I’ve beaten Mirror’s Edge maybe 15-20 times. I’ve beaten Tales of Symphonia twice or 3 times. I’ve beaten DMC3 twice. DMC4 maybe 4 times on various difficulties. Mark of the Ninja perhaps 5-6 times. DXHR perhaps 4-5 times. MGR at least 7 times. Beaten HL2 perhaps twice, HL1 once, maybe twice. Halo 1 twice, Halo 2 once. Hotline Miami at least 4 times. Crysis Warhead at least 5-6 times. Beat Dishonored at least 6-7 times. Beat Wind Waker 3 times. Beat Cave Story twice. In both Thief and Thief 2 I stopped on the last level. Super Mario Bros I beat 6 times in the same month.

I replay it if I have time, if I like it, if I feel like there’s more content, if it’s been a long time since the first time I played it, if I happen to look at it when I have time open.

I think that replaying games is ideal, I don’t always have the time for it. I think I got the gist of a lot of the games above on my first playthrough and very few of them had me actually significantly learn more across playthroughs. I also supplement my play with gleaning facts online, seeing speedruns, reading about tricks and techniques, etc. I try to limit it sometimes so I figure things out myself, it varies. If it’s a crazy action game, I tend to look up whatever advanced techniques there are. Sometimes I wait until I’ve played the game a bit before doing that. Sometimes I find games to play because I’ve seen advanced techniques from them and think it’s cool.

Replay if you can and if you feel the game deserves it.

Awkward Control Styles

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What’s wrong with “it’s scarier if you walk like you’re drunk” if the game’s built around it? It reminds me of when people call Castlevania’s jump unfair. Power IS agency, right? To be challenged, the player must have weakness. What defines “bad” control limits for a game to impose?

I think agency is the wrong word to use with regards to a video game, because unlike real life, there’s no relative scale between games as to how much “agency” they have. In real life, agency is your control over your environment. It’s very easy to compare types and measures of agency between homeless people, stock brokers, weight lifters, and programmers, but in a virtual environment none of that means anything. Do you have a high level of agency in a life simulator where you can buy a home? Do you have more agency in a city builder than a life simulator, assuming they’re of similar complexity? Do you have more Agency in Fallout New Vegas where you get all these narrative choices to do crazy things like disband factions, manipulate people, and shake up the balance of power or whatever, or do you have more agency in Devil May Cry, where you have this overwhelming fine-grain control over what the character can do? Do you have more agency in Chess or Go? What about Tetris? Continue reading →

A Random Encounter Approaches!

Celia Wagar3 Comments

What do you think of random encounters? Do you think they warrant as much hate as they get? What would you do to make them more interesting?

There’s some really easy solutions to random encounters. They’re irritating because if you’re trying to grind intentionally, they drain a ton of your time just walking around. They’re irritating because if you’re trying to get some place, they pop up and drain your time with a fight you don’t want to participate in at that moment. Continue reading →

Playing with Space

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Kay, so Position is something that can be in a lot of possible states. You have X, Y, and Z coordinates. Any object can potentially occupy any combination of these coordinates. Each of these possible coordinates is a state.

In a game oriented around combat, you have your character’s position, then each enemy’s position. So if you had an absolute possibility space lookup, the maximum number of states is every combination of X and Y coordinate between you and the enemy. That number of possible positions is really big. It gets even bigger in 3d games which use floating point math to determine object positions.

So here’s the trouble, redundancy. Realistically, you’re not using all that space. Realistically, any set of coordinates where the difference in position between you and the enemy is the same is the same state for all practical purposes. Realistically, if you and the enemy are too far apart to fight each other, then all the states are redundant until you’re close enough for there to be significant positional play. And the Z coordinate tends to be a bit constrained by gravity, so most 3d games only really play out on an X/Y plane with a bit of Z-Action within that limited height the character can jump, or have the high ground relative to an enemy. Continue reading →

May You Have An Interesting Death

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What are some interesting mechanics in videogames you can think of that involve the player dying? (Like losing your curency in the Souls series when you die too many times)

Okay, so what’s death really? Death is resetting the state of the game to a prior state. How can you change this mechanic? By changing what is persistent through the reset, or what persistent effects are created after the reset, or having something happen between the point you technically die, and the point where the reset actually happens. The other obvious thing is changing the point that is reset to. Continue reading →

For Honor and Souls-style Multiplayer

Celia WagarLeave a comment

I’ve seen a lot of people compare For Honor with fighting games recently, do you have any thoughts on the game?

It’s meh. It’s better than most AAA trash, but it’s kinda simple. Basically, hold LT to lock on and block. You’re always blocking as long as you’re locked on in one of 3 directions, controlled by the right stick. You also attack in the same zone that you’re blocking in. You have light and heavy attacks, heavy attacks are useless unless you’re punishing something with particularly long recovery. You also have a guard break, so you can block, guard break, and light attack. Attacks are slow enough that you can always react and block in the correct zone. Guard breaks are fast but you need to be close. So between these you get the standard rock paper scissors loop: Attack, Guardbreak (throw), Block. Oh, there’s a dodge too, but the dodge sucks. It’s only really useful for dodging out of range if you’re right on the edge of their attack range. Continue reading →

Nioh Post-Release Thoughts & Review

Celia Wagar3 Comments

So how’s Nioh treatin’ you my boy. Is it everything you’ve ever wanted or not? Are there any problems with it?

No issue. I thought it was getting a bit too easy, or maybe I was getting too good, or overleveled, so I decided to skip all the sub-missions for an area and only do the main missions, and that made it a lot harder.

Many of the early game areas had enemies removed to make them more easy, which is disappointing, but the difficulty is curving back up in the later game, we’ll see if it gets back to the demo levels. Continue reading →