Wet News

This is a repost and edit from a couple of years ago, you may...

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:00:46 +0100

This is a repost and edit from a couple of years ago, you may now replace WOW with farmville if you so wish. You can also replace Braid with any indie faggotry. The argument is exactly the same.

—

Braid’s marketing rubs me the wrong way, I understand why it is necessary, I understand exactly what it is. Still it makes me feel icky and regret that it’s success will push us further in this direction.

Mr blow is known for the opinion that World of Warcraft is an evil drug-like substance (Braid is presumably not an evil drug-like substance.)

However, things are not that simple. When dealing with a complex system strange results are the norm.

Warcraft has a social game, the game is “What is the fastest way of grinding?”, “What is the best way to get this super drop?”. Questions that give complex answers.

Braid also includes a social game, it is a “What the fuck is this pseudo intellectual emo fag story?”. This is intended to increase the reach of the game by encouraging discussion. Emo fags like to talk, preferably about issues that reinforce how emotelligent they are.

Braids design encourages people to look at the list of control keys and believe that they are an important secret that will unlock the meaning of the braid universe. Construct elaborate theories that fit all the “facts” perfectly and must be true. Then to launch on a religious crusade, demanding that people understand that their interpretation of an intentionally vague text is the right one and that all heretics must die.

A little extreme but braids meta game is DESIGNED to produce the start of that behavior. Once that ball is rolling it is very hard to get it to stop.

WOW on the other hand is a godless grind, a neutered game, but still focused on being a game. The meta game of WOW is comprised of building up scientific data about the underlying world and then attempting to use this data to gain a better understanding of the hidden mechanics, experimenting and learning.

This is called the scientific method.

Which puts us in an interesting place, WOW may be an evil grind but is superstition better than science?

I think not.

I believe that games which distance themselves from being games and instead smother themselves in bullshit and linear story are the evil.

Would you like to know more?

What are you doing to make your audience smarter? Guerilla...

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:00:42 +0100

What are you doing to make your audience smarter?

Guerilla ontology isn’t just two silly words placed next to each other for girlie giggles.

It is every creators responsibility to encourage anyone who will listen to switch on their brain.

Wake the fuck up.

Try thinking for a change.

And other generally unwelcome behaviour.

I’m doing my part, are you?

Would you like to know more?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_ontology

A long time ago I decided to ugrade my jamma arcade machine with...

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:00:42 +0100

A long time ago I decided to ugrade my jamma arcade machine with a console harness. To give you an idea of the time I chose a PS1 console. It worked. Things like r-type delta and the emulated williams games worked really well in a big heavy chipboard box experience. I also played a lot of the first tony hawks game in a fake arcade environment. An experience I bet no one else shared.

An arcade harness consists simply of controller input and video output. For the video output I added a scart socket and for the input I took apart and wired up some cheap PS1 controllers.

So, the arcade machine pretends to be an rgb scart monitor and a couple of PS1 controllers.

I figured that PS1 controllers would continue to exist and I would be able to swap any console into this setup simply by buying some converters to PS1 controllers.

I was right.

I was also wrong.

Although PS2 controllers look remarkably like PS1 controllers they are actually completely different. Every converter you can buy has to support PS1 and PS2 controllers. The PS2 part works, the PS1 part pretends to work.

You can still buy PS1 controller adapters for any console, unfortunately these adapters really only support PS2 controllers. Sure when you press a button that button eventually registers. Probably, half a second or so later, if you are lucky.

This sort of lag makes their use unacceptable.

I tried buying many different adapters, each of them had the same problem too much lag and even dropped buttons.

This problem isn’t very well documented, since it kinda works and many gamers simply blame themselves rather than understanding the latency issues. Mostly complaints are about dancemats since many playstation dancemats are PS1 controllers not PS2. Various forums full of people serious about dancemats complain but still don’t really understand the problem.

Eventually I had to rip out the PS1 controller harness and replace it with an XBOX one. MAMEoX FTW BTW.

Which brings me to my point. 150ms of control latency is the same as switching from playing a game at 60fps to playing a game at 6fps.

Sure it still works.

Sure many gamers will not understand what is going on and blame themselves.

Sure you can sell it as being acceptable.

Sure you can go fuck yourself because only a casual gamer could be happy playing twitchy games with that sort of control lag.

The game streaming idea sold by onlive and others looks great for secure MMO style games, a thin client is ideal and yay you can even play on netbooks.

This is all good.

But they keep promoting it as the perfect thing for twitchy FPS games.

Which just smells of bullshit.

I’m not even convinced it can work a mouse pointer.

Would you like to know more?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-onlive-lag-analysis

Polly+Morfs : Nerd is to Geek.

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 04:27:32 +0100

Polly+Morfs : Nerd is to Geek.

Death is a problem in MMOs, its a problem simply because it...

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:00:43 +0100

Death is a problem in MMOs, its a problem simply because it exists.

Death should “of course” be a penalty of somekind but neither the designers or the players really want it to be one.

What follows is a possible solution.

#1 no penalty for death, it is just an inconvenience. The main cost here is that death knocks people back and disrupts group activities. If people start dying you have to reorganise.

#2 a “death penalty” cost is applied upon entering a zone/dungeon whatever, a cost that can be quite harsh. This also helps with creating consumables in the economy.

Now, you must play to recoup the investment you have just made, the inconvenience of dying is just a mild inconvenience.

You start off having already lost and you keep playing to turn that loss into a win. Or you give up, admit this area is too hard and stop trying. In this case even recouping a small amount of your initial loss will seem like victory.

It’s risk/reward with a real cost for failure but is still close to the MMO standard of progress progress progress grind grind grind. Shifting the fail penalty to the beginning is just a mental trick to fool the loss adverse humans.

I’ve seen this partially applied but not as strongly as I’d like to try :)

Happiness for hardcore and carebears?

Who knows, I figure it may be worth a try though.

Apparently all thats important is good copy, column inches and...

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:02:00 +0100

Apparently all thats important is good copy, column inches and marketing.

Nothing else matters.

It is not important to find and promote that which is good so that there is more good in the world.

Not if you are a journalist anyway, you have conferences to attend and self promoting competitions to run.

Creators create and then they die, they do not market themselves nor should they.

People who ask creators to focus on marketing are evil.

Amanda palmer is not an example of a glorious social media future she is just a self promoting media whore. The world has no shortage of these, the limit is only on how many can actually succeed.

Marketing is about changing the names of the limited number of people or products at the top.

Social media changes nothing, it is little more than a chain letter tupperware party.

Marketing is a zero sum game and it needs to be destroyed not appeased.

I remember when I first found out that there was a craze to use...

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:00:42 +0100

I remember when I first found out that there was a craze to use radium as a cure all.

I thought it must really suck to get the cure all tonic full of radium instead of the one full of cocaine.

Behold the film that exposes all.

Would you delete a facebook game with over 1 million...

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:41:45 +0100

Would you delete a facebook game with over 1 million users?

Zynga would.

Would you delete a facebook game with over 1 million users without warning them in advance?

Zynga would.

If it is good enough for raph koster it is good enough for zynga.

Apparently social means that developers have no respect for the people playing the games.

That’s not very social.

Would you like to know more?

Hype and release is a problem, not a solution. If the hype is...

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:35:53 +0100

Hype and release is a problem, not a solution.

If the hype is with you then the content becomes irrelevant.

The people who think hype is a good idea make a living selling advertising space to hype products.

Empower the content not the hype.

Fuck you and your marketing tips.

Reviewers outraged at being asked to play a game before...

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:30:13 +0100

Reviewers outraged at being asked to play a game before reviewing it.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/17/apb-review-embargo-set-week-after-release/

If indie art games are all about the 2d platforming action. If...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:49:42 +0100

If indie art games are all about the 2d platforming action.

If cactus has more creative power in his tiny cock than all main stream developers combined can even dream of.

If it is all about the innovative game-play beating back the uncreative evil corporate drones.

Then why do nintendos slave mines have the ability to out do every single art faggy same old same old, we are so clever we make games in 4 dimensions, indie release at the drop of a hat?

Riddle me this, little indie fags.

I don’t care that you are making pretentious shite, I love plenty of pretentious things. My problem is that you insist on making shite and then claiming it must be good simply because it is pretentious.

Focus on the craft or fuck off and die already.

The advertisers dilemma. Once you have reached a certain...

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:48:42 +0100

The advertisers dilemma.

Once you have reached a certain established business size you must advertise, not to grow but simply because your competitors are advertising and if you don’t then they will steal your market share.

This is a form of the prisoners dilemma, the normal result is that everyone advertises and nobody wins. The money is wasted fighting each other to stay in more or less the same place.

In terms of the prisoners dilemma, both prisoners normally defect.

A better solution would be for nobody to advertise, millions could be saved if all the big players in an industry simply agreed not to waste money on advertising. If they agreed to cooperate.

Why if that happened then it would be the best thing ever for that industry.

The anti smoking brigaid lobbied and lobbied until the government agreed to ban smoking advertisements.

Smoking is bad mkay.

The unintended result was a huge win for the established tobacco industry who saved a fortune on advertising.

People that smart should be in charge and save the economy and everything. Why they could probably rid the world of crime using only prohibition.

When you change rules in a complex feedback system you need to have your smart hat on.

It is very easy for an obvious change, that everyone agrees is the right thing to do, to actually have the opposite effect.

Remember that the next time you demand the obvious solution.

The nightmare of dogs with hands. This was a recently popular...

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:47:42 +0100

The nightmare of dogs with hands.

This was a recently popular WetV video. Join us for the live experience at http://tv.wetgenes.com/

Did your giant robot metal death machine not come with the...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:47:04 +0100

Did your giant robot metal death machine not come with the russian marching band advertised on the box?

You tube can fix it for you.

This was a recently popular WetV video. Join us for the live experience at http://tv.wetgenes.com/

Indie is a marketing term and should be avoided by creators. The...

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:05:49 +0100

Indie is a marketing term and should be avoided by creators.

The problem is demonstrated by hippies and disney, sure hippies are always a problem but in this case there is something we can learn from them.

Hippies claimed to be the love generation, this turned out to be a mistake when the reality of control freak communes hit home.

Now free love is nothing but a joke. Silly stinky hippies.

Once upon a time disney was the plucky indie filmaker that broke the evil studio system.

Now disney is the reason copyright always seems to be extended just long enough to protect mickey mouse.

Do not claim to have something that you cannot deliver.

You cannot deliver indie.

Any indie success immediately stops being indie, therefore no indie can ever succeed.

The independent games festival is run by journalists, for journalists.

They know what they are doing, marketing to a deep vertical. Promoting the term indie empowers them not you.

Trying to redefine indie to mean friends of phil fish, does not help either.

Let me explain the fundamental meta problem of game design. The...

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:45:49 +0100

Let me explain the fundamental meta problem of game design.

The player never wants to run out of bullets, they will hoard bullets, they will demand that they can carry 100 tones of bullets, they will spend hours scrumping bullets just so they can have a 5 minute “real” play session.

Running out of bullets and then dealing with the situation is the best and most interesting thing that can happen to the player.

This is the lesson of roguelikes.

Loss is important.

Accepting loss is an important part of playing games.

The film, “War Games” teaches us that accepting loss is an important part of intelligence, even artificial intelligence.

In some ways it is the fundamental part of games. Being put in a situation where it is OK to lose is what defines a game. You play to win but it is still fun to lose and in doing so you learn.

You learn about the game but more importantly you learn about yourself.

Games should let you try and fail without real world consequences.

Games should not make it impossible to lose.

Games should not be a battle between you and your bladder.

Removing loss from a game and replacing it with a handful of story pellets is a crime unto god.

Hi, everybody! Hi, Dr. Dick! This was a recently popular WetV...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:05:51 +0100

Hi, everybody!

Hi, Dr. Dick!

This was a recently popular WetV video. Join us for the live experience at http://tv.wetgenes.com/

It’s peanut butter NANERPUS time! This was a recently...

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:05:53 +0100

It’s peanut butter NANERPUS time!

This was a recently popular WetV video. Join us for the live experience at http://tv.wetgenes.com/

OTS TOH FONOL COONT DOWN! extended version This video is posted...

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:22:49 +0100

OTS TOH FONOL COONT DOWN! extended version

This video is posted here because http://wetlogs.blogspot.com/ tells us it was recently popular video on WetV. Join us at http://tv.wetgenes.com/ for the live experience and more of the same.

When will the evil pushers responsible for this filth be brought...

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:52:00 +0100

When will the evil pushers responsible for this filth be brought to task?

When will Disney be made accountable?

This video is posted here because http://wetlogs.blogspot.com/ tells us it was a recently popular video on WetV. Join us at http://tv.wetgenes.com/ for the live experience and more of the same.