Category: Editorials

April 28, 2015

Back to the RetroStop

Well, I will admit I'm a bit surprised.

Since I wrote the article about GameStop buying older generation consoles, I've both found and received a ton of negative feedback from the community about the project.

Heck, even some of us at Twinstiq feel the same way. In Twinstiq's Podcast Episode IV: A new Drama we sat down and talked about how we felt about the subject as well as different possibilities as to why GameStop was suddenly so interested in buying back consoles.

While going through most of the web-pages that had mentioned the subject I saw hundreds to thousands of comments stretching across from gamers being completely against the idea. Of course most of these comments seem to be just a lot of slander by people jumping on the bandwagon of something to hate. Once in awhile you do get to a rant or review from someone who is older and has seen the start and finish of companies like Blockbuster who give a true opinion on the matter.

Reading through pages and pages of comments, I started seeing trends and eventually started noting the major claims against GameStop. The top claim is, "you can buy a brand new game for $60 USD from GameStop, play it and sell it back later the next day and only get offered $7 USD." Others claim that GameStop employees intentionally scratch disks after buying them back so no one can play them.

Armies of people are boycotting this old console buyback by claiming it's just easier to buy from E-bay, Amazon, or private game trade in shops because they'll get a better deal. Which in all honesty, may be the easiest and friendlier way to go about buying an older console.

Now don't get me wrong, for the past 10 years GameStop seems to have become the laughing stock of the gaming community. People would rather go to individually owned sell-back stores to make their purchases then even set foot inside GameStop.

The following are personal views of the subject:

One: GameStop is pulling out one or two major tries to gain back some of its community. What we're seeing now is a company trying to bring up their declining consumer base. Back in the 90's when we first saw GameStop hit it big with the teen crowd, they seemed almost unstoppable. There were no real trade-in places, or major game shops like there are now. This may be one of the last ditch efforts to try and gain profits back and come up to where they used to be.

Two: Another big reason behind this idea is that some parents who find these systems won't take the effort to actually look up and research pricing on something that their child has had sitting in the basement for 10 years or more. To them, they can sell it back, make a few bucks and never have to worry about it again. Not to say that GameStop isn't banking on something like this happening, but it can happen and probably already has happened at some point.

Three: Some cities do not have individually owned game shops, nor do they have repair shops, so there really is no alternative option if people do not want to keep their old systems anymore. It's either garbage it, or sell it to GameStop. Or this is a great opportunity to sell back a none working system that you've had lying around so it can get repaired and sold to someone who wants it. The nostalgia factor alone allows a generation like yourself to enjoy the classics. Also as Cody from Twinstiq mentions in the Podcast, " This is a Global business." It's true, how many people can say they visited a GameStop in America as well as Europe versus a buyback shop run by a local college student with a dream.

Four : The pricing is a huge factor. It will always be a factor. When GameStop realizes that people won't pay the top end price for the systems we'll see a change. There's no doubt in my mind about it. No one is going to pay 40-50$ USD on a system they can buy from Ebay and Amazon for about 20-30. Games on the other hand, might be a bit more difficult to come by, but there is a niche market that pertain to these needs. Swap meets are another good idea and Reddit I know for sure has boards of people looking for certain games or locations to purchase items. Most of the collector community helps one another find items, and it's easier to talk to a stranger on the internet than to a person face to face sometimes.

Overall, it seems like there's just too much push and pull to subjects like this. I know the idea behind any big company is, " Make Profit." In the end that's what makes the world go round. If you can make a profit on something that seems to be an open market why wouldn't you. I wouldn't go hating on GameStop just yet, they have a creative idea that needs a few bugs worked out.

As always.

~Tisnight

(Images Courtesy of Joystiq (Engadget))

April 26, 2015

Let Us Talk About Paid Mods

This piece is written by me, Dr. Strangethumb. It is my opinion and you are invited to share it, but it does not necessarily reflect the opinion of anyone else at Twinstiq. It contains some examples of harsh language and the prose is weak. You have been warned.

So Valve now allows you to monetize mods on Steam. Great News if you are a modder, isn’t it?

Well, maybe. Yeah, I know, you hate it and you think it’s destroying gaming, but: People work hard to make this stuff and if they are allowed to make some money with it, that’s great. Nobody is forced to sell; nobody forces you to buy it. Free mods will still be a thing in the future. But it’s never that easy, is it?

Wait, you don’t actually know what I’m talking about? Sorry, got a bit ahead of myself.

As mentioned, you can now sell mods on the Steam Workshop. At the moment it’s only Skyrim which supports it and we already see popular mods being sold for real life moolah. The prices range from 0.23€ up to 2.79€. Coinciding with this, there is also a Skyrim sale going on ($4.99/3,74€).

The community reaction to this is poor at best. People are up in arms, creating petitions, joke mods, they spam the discussion boards with slurs and some idiots even go ye olde threat route. But do they actually have a point? In part, yes.

Can you spot the serious mod?

A big part of the discussion currently revolves around the moral of selling mods. About greedy modders betraying the “community”.
I dedicate the following summoning of Dr. Rant to every single person directing their frustration towards modders:
For years these guys worked for free, giving you amazing new content, never demanding anything in return. Now that Valve and Bethesda gave them the opportunity to actually make a living from their work, they are of course trying it out. And it’s not like they stopped publishing free mods. For f’s sake, Isoku, the guy behind 2 of the paid mods (iNeed and Wet and Cold) just recently released “Wonders of Weather” on the Skyrim Nexus, again: for free. They don’t deserve the hate they are currently getting and everyone involved should feel deeply ashamed. The only change you provoke with this behavior is chasing away some of the most talented people in this scene and showing companies like Bethesda that the modding scene is a vile place to its own people and maybe not even worth the continued support.
You are not entitled to other peoples work in a capitalist system where the majority of people already struggle with making ends meet. Show your support for those that continue providing you with free mods, a “Thank You!” can go a long a way, but don’t blame those that want to continue this on a more professional level.
Still planning on continuing with the hate towards modders? Then you are a pathetic little pisspot, society’s cancer, a slimy parasite, undeserving of free mods in the first place.
I’m not going into any more detail about this, since there are enough issues to talk about.
Dr. Rant out.

Let’s start the serious discussion with the next big topic on the list:
The revenue split between Valve, Bethesda and the modders.

As it stands, 25% go to the content creator, the rest is split between Valve and Bethesda. The exact share each of those 2 parties receive isn’t yet know, but rumor has it that Valve gets 30% and Bethesda 45%. In addition to that, Dark0ne, owner of Nexus Mods, stated in a Reddit post that 5% of Valve’s share can go to a variety of other services: The Blender Foundation, the Mod Configuration Menu framework, Nexus Mods, AFK Mods and Polycount, with the mod maker being able to decide who gets access to these funds.
And just so that there are no misunderstandings: They don’t get 5% of the 100%, but instead 5% of whatever Valve gets.
The whole thing is still very much a mystery to everyone, but there are floating some rumors around that Bethesda was actually deciding the split between them and the creators (UPDATE: This is confirmed by Gabe Newell on Reddit), so if this spreads to other games, we could see a higher percentage going to the modder. If this turns out to be true, it would take some of the pressure from Valve (memo to myself: stop using pressure in the same sentence as Valve or Steam).
This leaves us at a situation, where modders get $1 for every $4 made (minus taxes of course). Sounds awful on paper and my first reaction to hearing it echoed the opinion of pretty much everyone else on the internet at this point. The person doing all the work gets the smallest cut? What an outrage. Let us however delve a bit deeper into this.

Maybe we can understand those numbers a better if we take a look at a different medium that also has a strong digital presence: Music.
If you are signed to a major record label and sell your music on iTunes, chances are you’d be happy to see 10% of the revenue generated by your song. The rest is split between Apple and your label. In exchange Apple provides the hosting and storefront, while your label provides you with some of the tools necessary to produce your song and advertisement. Now if we transfer this to mods, we exchange Apple with Valve and the label with Bethesda, who provides the modding tools and advertisement in the form of a bestselling game and an exclusive premium mod section.
30% are industry standard for digital storefronts. It’s what Valve takes from every game sold on steam, it’s what Apple takes from every song sold on iTunes, and it’s what Google takes from every app sold in the Play Store.
Do they deserve this cut? Hell no! Their customer support is piss poor in most cases and Valve is one of the biggest offenders. Circumventing European law that is there to protect customers by using dirty loopholes? Check. Offering refunds for broken games only in the most extreme of cases? Check. Taking ages to reply to any complaint in the first place? Check.
But, sadly, it’s an economic reality and it’s up to the modders if they are willing to accept this. There is however a legit way for the consumer to influence their willingness to do so: Many modders accept donations, so if you don’t want their content gated behind a pay wall and 1/3 of the profits going into the pockets of Valve, then voice it by donating.

Nexus Mods has a pretty easy to reach Donate button and some people even use Patreon to finance their work

How about Bethesda’s cut? This is where it really gets difficult, because their contribution isn’t that apparently transparent. Sure, they aren’t directly involved with the production of the mods and they don’t advertise any single paid mod specifically, but they are still the ones spending resources on the implementation of modding tools, which in turn help immensely in the creation of free mods. It is no coincidence that Bethesda develops some of, I not the most supported games by the modding community. And if you know anything about game development, you know that providing these tools is not a trivial task.
You can argue that the modding support is an integral part of the “Bethesda RPG” experience and some people are only buying those games because of it, which certainly is true, but if we take a look at the platform share, we see the PC dead last with only 14% of copies sold. Granted, the numbers seem to be from 2013 and have probably changed a bit in favor of the PC since then, thanks to Steam sales like the one right now. However: They aren’t removing the ability to produce free mods and them profiting from commercial work done with their tools is fair.
And let’s not forget that there is a very big positive hidden in all of this, one that most likely led Steam to actually implement this in the first place: Publishers are always looking for new revenue streams. This could very well mean that we see a AAA modding renaissance. Take the GTA series on PC for example. GTA 4 had a big modding community which produced some entertaining mods, despite the nonexistence of official mod tools. Now imagine the possibilities if Rockstar provided these tools. GTA 5 was again released without mod tools and workshop inclusion. The bonus revenue from this could very well mean that we get them in the future, or at least for the next installment in the GTA series.
The Steam Workshop is still in his infancy, but the easy access it offers is something that isn’t available on consoles so far. It strengthens Steam's value for the consumer and, together with this step, leads to a higher priority of modding and the PC platform for publishers.

So, how big should the publishers cut be?

We now know that the dev/publisher dictates the split between them and the modders, so this is not set in stone. Other games will most likely offer paid mods in the future and I can easily see those offering a better split in an attempt to motivate more people to develop for them. You also have to remember that the more copies a game sells, the bigger your possible audience gets. For example: Selling 3000 copies of a mod with a 25% share gets you more money than selling 10 copies of a mod with a 70% share. So the better a publisher is at marketing their game, the less the modder needs to make per sold copy.
Personally, I don’t feel that 25% are a good starting point. Skyrim isn’t really getting supported anymore from Bethesda, their decision to implement mod support wasn’t based on the expected revenue from paid mods and a better split would have led to more goodwill from the community.
Despite what my initial statement might lead you to believe, most people actually support the idea that people should get paid for their creations. Not only that, but they also believe that the creators deserve the biggest slice of the pie. I personally haven’t made my mind up about what would constitute a fair share, but I understand why people are reluctant to spend money when so little goes the person they want it to go to. And this is something that Bethesda and Steam should really consider.
Let’s not forget one thing though: Boycotting is mostly hurting the content creator who decided for himself that giving away 75% is an acceptable cost of business.

Despite all the outrage and confusion, paid mods already made $10,000. There is money changing hands and even though I can’t comment on how profitable each mod was so far, I have a feeling that at least some of those early adopters won’t be that unhappy after the dust has settled. Until we get solid numbers however, this is only speculation.

But enough with all the positives.
We are talking about Steam here and everything Steam is a huge bowl of blood and guts that only slowly gets transformed into a cute little puppy.

Be it the Steam client itself, the storefront, the inclusion of free2play, the Steam Community, Tags, Greenlight, Early Access, or whatever else they half-assed at launch.

One of the more prominently talked about problems that grace this shit canvas, is Valve’s notoriously bad customer support. Ever wanted some help from them? I hope you are less than 40 years of age, otherwise you might run into some life expectancy issues before you get a useful answer. Want a refund? Well, one is more or less guaranteed, after that you might want to look into Voodoo and get yourself an ample supply of chickens for scarification to increase your chance.
Buying a mod guarantees you a 24 hour refund period, this is supposed to give you enough time for testing out the functionality of the mod. If you are inexperienced with mods, this might sound like an actual improvement to you, but the reality is: Mods break all the time. The game gets patched and suddenly half your mods stop to work (though this shouldn’t be an issue any longer with Skyrim). Another common scenario is incompatibility between different mods. Let’s say you bought an amazing mod for $8 2 days ago and today another one for $4 gets released that’s a must have but doesn’t work together with the other one with no way of fixing the issue. Well, shit. Let’s see what Steam has to say about this topic:

If you find that mod has broken or is behaving unexpectedly, it is best to post politely on the Workshop item's page and let the mod author know the details of what you are seeing.

Welcome to Valve Customer Support. How can we penetrate your anus today?

And don’t get me started on the auto updates of the Steam Workshop. Your mods might work together when you buy them, but if there is an update that breaks your delicate house of cards, you can’t just revert to a previous version.
In short: There is no guarantee that whatever you buy works and you are shit out of luck once 24h have passed.

Grand Theft Mod, Small Theft Mod Elements and the curation issue.

Another issue that plagues the Steam Workshop since its inception, and actually the whole of steam ever since they opened the floodgates, is the curation. The community curation is a step in the right direction, but still needs work and just like the customer support issue, this only gets aggravated by adding mods into the mix. Not only is it already hard enough to find mods that might interest you, but if you then add the possibility of stolen mods, or ones that might include content from people who didn’t authorize the inclusion, this becomes a real minefield and we don’t know how this will actually affect the consumer. Will we get refunds if it turns out that a mod is actually not legit? Again, we are dealing with Valve here, so it’s unlikely.
From a creator’s perspective, the curation is a real problem. As it stands, a mod creator needs to make $100 ($400 worth of total sales) until he is paid. I foresee a future were many mods won’t reach that threshold and the modder basically gets cheated of his revenue. This might have less to do with the fact that his mod isn’t the best and more with how the Workshop is actually presenting the content. Did your mod get buried between an Ocean of joke mods made in protest of the latest controversy? Tough luck. Sure, the outstanding ones will always find an audience, but it could be hard for an upcoming talent to achieve a breakthrough.
There is a positive to this however: It will be a short term mess, but could quench the long term fear of free mods disappearing. Why sell a mod that won’t make you any money and isn’t played by anyone, when you could go for no money but people actually enjoying it? Recognition in the scene has always been one of the motivating factors in mod development. People who are only doing it for the money will either provide something that is worth it, or disappear fast.

Ok, let’s wrap this up.

Modding won’t die because of this. The community is strong and nobody got into it for money. Valve made a smart move, possibly strengthening the PC platform immensely by allowing publishers an “easy” revenue stream. Modders are now able to make their hobby a real business, which could increase the quality to a standard hardly ever seen before. This is however a revolutionary step for everyone involved and as we all know: Revolutions tend to be bloody. It will take time until this is all sorted out and between this, Greenlight and Early Access, Valve is clearly biting off more than they can chew. Only time will tell if it will succeed, but maybe we should give it a fair chance.

There is so much more to be said about this issue, but this is already TL;DR for most, so how about we continue this discussion somewhere else? First of all, there is always the comment section. For an ongoing discussion, we have the Twinstiq forum and if you want others than me sharing their opinion on this, we are also planning a podcast on this topic.
We also have an interview with one of the modders featured in the first wave of paid Skyrim mods coming up. Make sure to read it.

Enjoy your day (or what's left of it),
Dr. Strangethumb

April 23, 2015

Throwback Thursdays: Streets of Rage 2

Although I still enjoy them all, and play through them entirely at least once a year, Streets of Rage 2 rises to the top as my favorite in the series. As I am forming this article in my mind, I just want to go back and play them, even at the expense of progress in Bloodborne!

Right from the first Streets of Rage title from SEGA, this trilogy has been consistently brimming with innovation. Attention to detail and quality floods every area of the brawler. It's evident that a lot of inspiration and love went into making this one of the best brawlers in the history of video games, in and outside of the arcade.

When I first played Street Fighter II, I wished someone would put these characters in a side scrolling fighting game so I could let all of these moves rip enemies apart. A system this complex, with this many options (combos, retaliation, grabs), would easily let me decimate my enemy should I master it. Streets of Rage 2 brings the nuance of a fighting game into the brawler genre. Hints of this were in the original Streets of Rage, but the concept has been greatly elaborated upon for its sequels.

From the first Streets of Rage, you could hold up and press jump at the right moment to recover from a throw. This was something only popularized (and perhaps originated) in Street Fighter Alpha, four years later. If you were grabbed by an enemy, you could throw them over your shoulder by double-pumping the attack button, first to kick, and second to shift your center of gravity in order to propel them over your shoulder. This was more intuitive and empowering than wriggling the joystick back and forth while taking a beating like in most other brawlers, you could finally break free and turn the tables on what felt like a cheap move by your enemy.

Streets of Rage 2 lets you vault over enemies when you've grabbed them, switching sides so you can slam them to the ground with a press of the attack button, or get back in front of them to deliver body blows. There's a forward blitz move that lets you close in on an oppressor while attacking at the same time, and a back attack to hit someone directly behind you. The three characters each have multiple special attacks to master, such as headbutts, roundhouse kicks, a dragon punch of sorts, and even a fireball.

Pushing the hardware to the limits, there are tons of special effects. Reflections adorn the rippling water under the bridge, line scrolling fog fills an alien-themed funhouse, rotating backgrounds rock back and forth on the pirate ship. Tons of giant unique sprites join two players on-screen all at the same time. There's multiple scrolling layers everywhere, a lot of variation in the backgrounds and enemy types, and excellent use of the limited color palette. This would fit in well in the arcades, even compared with the much more powerful dedicated hardware in coin-ops at the time.

A fair amount of games would feature uninspired arrangements that sounded terrible on the 16-bit console's Yamaha FM chip, producing tinny mechanical warbles and chirps instead of music. FM synthesizers require a lot of care in sound design, you can't just sample instruments to generate the notes in your song. You painstakingly have to tweak an electronically generated frequency to arrive at an organic sounding tone.

SEGA contracted Yuzo Koshiro (whose sister helped design the character art on this, Ys, and ActRaiser) to work his magic on the entire Streets of Rage series. Using a PC88 as his development system, he designed his own music programming language called 'Music Love' to craft dance and techno style tunes. The incredible soundtrack makes the absolute most of the hardware. It's easy to find yourself drawn into the music and wanting to listen to it outside the game.

Streets of Rage 2 is a technical showpiece on the SEGA Genesis, and still stands as one of the best beat-em-ups of all time. If you don't own a Genesis with the original cartridge, you can play this game right now on the Virtual Console, XBLA, and PSN, but I recommend waiting for the 3DS release this July. After M2's amazing job on every 3D Classic thus far, I'm sure they will provide a faithful translation with a bevy of options to get the most out of the game, enhancing it to create a definitive version.

Check out the growing library of Throwback Thursdays articles here!

April 20, 2015

Opinion: I’m Tired Of Saving The Universe

Words by Greywolfe

I remember the first video game I ever played.

It was the summer of 1979. My father, my sister and I were heading off to get drinks of some persuasion. It was the beginning of the golden age for Coin Operated games. Essentially, you dump a quarter into the game and play as far as you can on three lives, sometimes accumulating extra lives as you bumped your score past a certain marker. Maybe you got 20,000 points and now you had an extra life. Or perhaps you found a certain token in the game and that added to your lives tally.

The games were two dimensional, but sadly, the plots were very one dimensional: You Have To Save The World!

SPACESHIP! Also, many happy hours blasting geometrical shapes in Asteroids

Technology as a limiting factor

Games technology was such that graphically, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. In the case of my first game, everything was jagged, geometric shapes. No roundness at all. No colour, either. Just two dimensional sprites on black and white.

That was Asteroids, of course. And that year, we played many rounds of it between my father and I. When we encountered Space Invaders, we played that too. And then Donkey Kong after it as well.

There was Frogger and Tapper and Pac-Man and all the while, in the background the games began to evolve, but one theme began to stick out among all of them: no matter what game you were playing, you were always saving the universe.

Gaming grew up and took root in our living rooms – there was the Atari 2600 at first, and after that market crash, the NES came along to rescue gaming as we know it. And through all of this innovation, the games never moved on.

Admittedly, in those times, there were memory constraints. Complex story wasn’t possible in a universe where 8-bit was the norm.

But the problem is, we aren’t in those times anymore. It’s 2015, we have more graphical fidelity than we know what to do with, better sound systems than we ever could have dreamed of and great control methods [like touch] that have – in some ways – changed how we game. But we’re still saving the world.

I have lamented, before, that our gaming stories aren’t varied enough and I think that’s kind of problematic. You could level some accusations at gaming as a whole about this particular issue: we’re not grown up enough, yet, to have story diversity, or we’re only telling these particular stories because they “suit gaming,” but I find both of those assertions to be problematic.

Gaming is – at a conservative estimate – forty years old – if you want to count older “concepts”, then video gaming stretches all the way back to the 60’s even. That’s fifty years. At this point, gaming is also vast. There are a lot of people making games. That we’re treadmilling on “let’s make a game where the hero saves the world” is a bit frustrating.

Likewise, nothing “suits gaming.” Gaming is a vast, vast ocean of all sorts of topics. High fantasy, Cyberpunk, the simulation of life. Within those broad arcs, there’s a lot to look into and yet...we’re always saving the world, or more problematically, always rescuing the damsel.

The Ankh. Fashion Statement Symbol of Avatars Everywhere!

Historical Games That Overcame The Technical Constraints

Looking at the history of gaming, there are a handful of stories that stand out for how very different they are. Ultima 4 is one of those – while, yes, there is a theme there of saving the world by becoming the avatar, the actual ideal of the avatar – a being that strives to live by a certain set of standards – has never been explored again, really in a video game. Some games come sort of close – Quest for Glory keeps positing that the Paladin is righteous and just, but then the game wants you to tap the left button a million times to level up your parry.

Likewise, Planescape: Torment was all about how you are immortal – and what that actually means for you as a person. There hasn’t been another game with quite that sort of story-driven scope since.

And finally, from the annals of history, we have Sanitarium – a game – literally – about a man trapped within the four walls of his own mind. Some of it is incredibly disturbing. Some of it is emotionally harrowing, but that journey has never really been replicated much [save for Psychonauts]
But these are just some standouts. And even then, they’re only a handful of games. Most old games – as with modern games – are content to let you blast away the aliens so that you can rescue the damsel in distress, but before that, you’d best kill your ten rats so you can grow amorphously stronger.

Rewinding time was an incredibly strong hook for Braid

Modern Games That Are Deeply Emotional

For the most part, our modern games are simply content to settle into the groove of the universe-rescuing trope, but a select handful have decided to embrace other ideas – more personal ideas.

One such is To The Moon. To the Moon is effective on many levels. It seems like a traditional JRPG, but it averts that trope fairly early in the game. It tells a very effective, very personal story about one man’s last, dying wish and it does so with more nuance and emotional punch than very many AAA games could ever hope to muster given their larger budgets.

Another fantastic and thought-provoking story shows up in Braid – while I don’t really care for the mechanics [sometimes, it can be a little /too/ gamey], the reveal at the end is quite shocking. Saying any more would spoil the game, but it is refreshing to see at least one writer try something different.

Finally, there is the masterpiece of Limbo – which is just about finding [what might be] your sister across a very desolate and helpless seeming landscape. There’s no real text in limbo, nor any real communication, but the way the world is set up and the situations the protagonist must steer himself through all help the player bond with the protagonist in ways that few games ever really try.

Conclusion

Frankly, I think we can do better. I think we can tell many different stories using many different devices and themes. The technology certainly exists to support these ideas, they just need to be embraced by more writers.

Images Courtesy of Pixabay:
Pixabay

April 19, 2015

Which Unique Console Feature Surprised You?

The PlayStation 4 has a feature I find hard to go without on other consoles. I'm not talking about the controller speaker, although it is cool when someone calls you on your cell in GTA V and the audio gets patched through there. It's a little gimmicky and although available to developers on the Wii for that entire generation, was still rarely well used.

I'm talking about the standard headphone/mic jack on the PlayStation 4 controller. I find myself wishing it was there when I play other consoles.

I'm not made of money, I can't afford to buy a fancy wireless headset that works on one or two consoles that I own. I can barely afford to buy a new pair of earbuds when mine break every year, no matter how careful I am with them. Besides, I'd much rather spend the price of a wireless headset on a new game.

I live in a house with other people and don't want to bother them. Sometimes my son is asleep, I've got neighbors that don't want too much noise, and sometimes I just don't want to hear anything else. My earbuds are noise canceling, they're always handy for my portable music player, tablet, or laptop, and they sound good enough. Sometimes "good enough" is all you need.

The headphone jack on the PS4 controller is right there, I can just plug them in and be immersed in the game's soundtrack without bothering anyone else. I've played games all my life through the TV speakers and it was fine, I enjoyed myself a lot, but I've noticed a lot of advantages to using my plain old $10 earbuds.

There's a magic that comes through when you don't hear anything else, naught but the game's soundtrack. The quiet moments sound appropriately quiet, you can make out the subtleties such as the rain hitting the pavement, as well as the footsteps of people walking by while they carry on in conversations. You can even make out what they're saying instead of having it drowned out by the air conditioner in your room.

The loud crescendos have much more impact when they overcome these quiet moments, like when you enter a boss's lair in Bloodborne and the orchestra swells as the fierce beast makes its appearance. Positional audio comes through brilliantly even through your average headset, allowing you to track enemies around you or find a secret beacon which transmits intermittent audio blips.

Are there any console or even handheld features that have made a notable impact on your gaming experience? Is there something that changed things enough that you have a hard time living without it? Voice commands? Chatpad? 3D effect? Portable LCD screen? What's your number one surprise feature?

April 16, 2015

Throwback Thursdays: Jumping Flash, Why I Bought a PlayStation

It was the dawn of a new console generation, the first one to focus on 3D graphics. There were almost too many options at the time: the Amiga CD-32, Atari Jaguar, the 3DO, Sega's Saturn, Sony's PlayStation, and the Nintendo 64. My various game magazines offered a lot of hype, but nothing definitive that would show one system as the clear winner. I had to rely on gut feeling and intuition.

Feeling burned by the lack of support for the Genesis CD and 32X add-ons, Sega then asked loyal fans to spend more money on a Saturn. Nintendo seemed to have a winning relationship with Silicon Graphics, but preferred to eschew the CD format and strongarm developers with their monopoly on cartridge production. The 3DO and Jaguar seemed like half steps to the next generation, releasing early, but sacrificing horsepower to do so. The Jaguar was also cartridge based, and the 3DO launched with a hefty $700 price tag. Amiga's CD-32 didn't seem to have too much in the way of third party support, and was receiving mostly ports of 2D computer games I had already played.

Even though they hadn't proven themselves in the console space, something told me to go with Sony's system. Their hardware seemed powerful on paper and they announced at a much lower price compared to competitors. Namco was on board as a partner and brought an arcade perfect port of Ridge Racer. Toshinden was a flashy 3D fighter and Rayman proved the system could do beautiful 2D. On top of that, Square had announced full fledged support, with an exclusive sequel in its flagship series Final Fantasy. Maybe I could live without Daytona, Virtua Fighter and Mario.

Image courtesy of http://www.f-lohmueller.de/ POV-Ray examples

Jumping Flash was featured in some of the first ever screenshots of any PlayStation game and its clean and well defined visuals helped convince me of the power of Sony's first ever system. The gouraud shaded primaries looked like pure eye candy compared to the flat shaded featureless polygons I had seen previously on SuperFX and even PC games. The sky texture reminded me of many professional computer graphics renders, such as those seen in the game Myst. What blew my mind: These would be moving fluidly in realtime on a home system!

Before Jumping Flash was a reality, developer Exact had pioneered something similar on the Sharp X68000 called Geograph Seal. This is where the game engine took shape, and Exact had since evolved the technology and concepts to bring a premiere 3D platformer to a next generation console. Breaking ground in first person platforming well before Metroid Prime, Jumping Flash had an exceptional control scheme for a 3D game that was released before the advent of dual analog sticks which would allow for easy camera movement.

In Metroid Prime the camera tilted down to help you judge jumps and similarly in Jumping Flash the camera would flop completely downwards to your shadow as you jumped, allowing you to pinpoint your landings. In addition to letting you adjust your downward trajectory, a triple jump capability allowed a further safety mechanism. This was necessary to help ease players into your first fully 3D game. There were some bottomless pits, fans to land on for a boost into the air, and platforms not much larger than your character that you would need to hit on target.

Taking control of Robbit, the robot rabbit, players were tasked with collecting JetPods scattered about huge levels in order to activate the goal. You could see clear across expansive stages, tilting up to view platforms above, or watching the world get smaller beneath your feet as Robbit soared up toward the stratosphere.

The worlds were festive and full of contraptions to ride on or run across to the next platform. Colorful, comical characters patrolled the area or shot at you with cannons, requiring a few repeated stomps to take them out. A burst of shots from your cannon could also do the trick and the foe would give up an additional time bonus or a special weapon to clear the screen of enemies. Boss fights would punctuate the end of each world, pitting Robbit against giant mechanical beasts in an arena surrounded by bottomless pits or lava.

Maze-like first person dungeons would pop up a couple of times during the campaign, a successful change in gameplay for the most part considering it didn't let you use the trademark jump mechanic. Instead, these levels focused on exploration and shooting, with forking paths, elevators, and doors. Memorization became crucial in order to avoid previously explored areas and nab all of the JetPods before time ran out.

To top it all off are humorous pre-rendered cutscenes between worlds, showing the game's antagonist Baron Aloha fleeing to the next area to set up a new trap for our hero. Accompanying the entire package is sometimes atmospheric, but mostly upbeat music by Takeo Miratsu. The notable composer previously worked on anime soundtracks such as The Abashiri Family, and went on to score Konami's Beatmania IIDX and SCEI's The Legend of Dragoon before his untimely death at age 46.

The highly original Jumping Flash launched two months after the PlayStation, and for me was an instant purchase. It definitely lived up to the wild dreams I had when staring at early screenshots, wondering what it would look like in action. Along with Ridge Racer, Toshinden, and the system's demo disc featuring Wipeout, I was extremely enthusiastic about the platform's future. Years later, Jumping Flash remains a favorite that I often revisit. I also recommend trying its sequel, which expands on the successful formula with even larger levels, new bosses, and new challenges.

April 14, 2015

My Dreams Have Come True

SEGA has announced its three upcoming 3D Classics, and the good news is that they're coming soon! In July, expect 3D Streets of Rage 2, with 3D Gunstar Heroes in August, and 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in September. I'm guaranteed to be picking up each of these excellent titles, how about you?

As usual, M2 will be doing the port and emulation work. For a follow up question, are there any other SEGA hits you'd like to see get the 3D treatment?

April 14, 2015

You Are Merely A Dollar Symbol: All The Sweet Things I Can Find

Words by Greywolfe

In this series, I’ve tackled the modern idea of monetization in the video games industry. We’ve talked about the problem a little and discussed the “bad side” of monetization: how games can turn into an endless money sink because of greedy publishers.

This week, I’d like to take one more look at the topic to discuss places where the market has got it “mostly right.”

Stay a while and listen! And buy packs!

The Hearthstone Model

Blizzard set up Hearthstone with a fifteen man team. It’s a fairly simple Collectible Card Game in which you use a hero avatar from a pool of nine avatars to build a deck around. Each of these has a specific little power and cards that are central to them. The priest has a theme of healing and buffing minions. The mage has a theme of control using spells. The druid has flexibility at it’s core.

Hearthstone is completely free. You can download the game and start playing right away. If you never want to pay a single cent for the game, you never have to: card packs can be bought for 100 gold a piece and gold can be earned through daily quests. Admittedly, you’re going to be earning cards very slowly if you never pay into the system, but you can earn every card in this manner [besides very specific golden cards, because these were given away as promotions. However, you can always get the regular version of the card, should you want to.]
This is arguably the best model: most of everything is earnable in-game through game play of some persuasion. Throwing money at the problem simply allows you to earn those items faster.

Guild Wars 2 had a dragon as the original antagonist. Naturally, you want to look your best when you beat up the dragon, right?

Buy some gems! Kill the dragon! Look snazzy doing it!

The Guild Wars Model

Guild Wars is an MMORPG in which you create a character and that character goes on adventures. Unlike most other games in the genre, you only ever pay for the box and the expansions. There are no game time cards and no real “subscription” services to speak of.

In the second game, Arenanet started selling a new currency in the game called gems. These gems are used on a market known as the “Black Lion Trading company.” Here, you can buy lots of cosmetic looks and various services for your character.

Gems themselves can be bought for gold through the gem exchange. So, if you find yourself flush with gold, you never need to go to a store and buy a card that grants this particular currency to your account, instead, you can simply exchange one in-game currency for another out-of-game currency.

Variants of this model have trickled into other games of various stripes: Neverwinter [the Cryptic game] has Astral Diamonds, which in turn are a refinement of a system known as Dilithium from Star Trek Online. The problem with these games is that the game itself places an artificial limit on how many of these crystals you can get in a day’s worth of playing.

Rifts, a MMORPG tasks players with finding and taking on rifts. Rifts have the ability to drop gear which can be turned into in-game currency that can be eventually exchanged for a REX token. REX tokens can the be turned into a

Earn your way to a subscription by taking on Rifts

The Rift Model

Rift is another MMORPG much like Guild Wars. The slight difference here is that Rift launched as a subscription-based game. It retained it’s subscription for about two years when it changed models and became a free-to-play game. It has retained a “kind of subscription” in that you can pony up a fixed amount every month to retain some privileges that free to play players don’t get – most notably, doing away with the amount of currency you can hold at any given time. [free to play players can hold up to 2500 platinum – this being the top-end currency.]
Naturally, time cards for Rift are now impossible to find, however, Rift has introduced a system called REX. REX comes in token form and can be redeemed to your account for game time or for coin you can spend in the Real Money store. Again, most of the time, the store sells mostly cosmetic gear and style items. But there are some pieces of armour with statistics on them that exist primarily to do away with the grind. [I have issues with this, but these issues are small in comparison with the “mostly benign” nature of the store.]

As Daft Punk would have it, you should get your games: "Around the web, around the web." Well, not quite.

The Rise Of The "Web Stores"

Finally, one of the best modern innovations in terms of buying games has undoubtedly been sites like GOG.com – these sites sell older games for far cheaper than their brick and mortar counterparts. Very often, these sites have massive sales in which they discount the games even more so that you will be inclined to buy them. This is especially good for enthusiasts who might have missed out on games from the previous generations.

If I have one problem with this, it is that some of the games do not depreciate in value over time like they should if they’re on a web-store front-end like this: take the case of TellTale’s games. Some of these date back ten years at this point and are still sitting at their original price points.

In the future, games will probably stop being one-time-purchases. To some degree, this is already the case.

Where's Michael Pachter when you need him? Ah well. I'll just do the predicting for him: "games as services" are here to stay :(

What This All Means

It means that games-as-a-service – a buzzword that publishers like a lot, because it means they can keep charging gamers for the game over and over again – could work out in the player’s favour, but only if the company that’s floating the money to make the game sees the gamer as something other than a walking wallet – a practise that few seem to aspire to in this modern day and age.

To many of the companies, the consumer is simply a fleshy meat sack that contains coins that the meat sack will trade for products which the companies – generally – don’t care about. We’ve seen Ubisoft launch turgid instalments of their Assassin’s Creed series with shoddy Quality Assurance. We’ve seen EA not really care about Battlefield [and Activision do the same with Call of Duty] rushing those games to market so that they can make quick money at Christmas. Those same companies have been making re-hash sequels of the same game over and over again in a vain hope that they will eke every last penny from the buyer.

We’ve seen some bad situations in these articles, but there is also good, of course. More publishers just need to see the good. That loyal, long-time customers are far better for their brand than short-term tourists.

Images courtesy of Pixabay:
Pixabay

April 12, 2015

Why I Keep Going Back To Proteus.

By Gaming Mill

When we talk about procedural generation today, most thoughts tend to head towards Elite: Dangerous, or the beautiful looking, upcoming (and hopefully this year) No Man's Sky. There is however one game that, to me, is the epitome of beauty and it's not really a game. Its name? Proteus. It's not a video game really – I’d describe it as an interactive video experience.

My Smoking Brother (surprisingly that is not his real name) came round to my shed last year and saw me playing it. He thought I was doing it for a joke. It was only when he realised that I was genuinely enjoying it, that he proclaimed "That looks [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted]!". The graphics do retain a palette and blockiness that seems like some weird hybrid of 80s graphics thrown in with the power of modern GPUs, which only adds to its charm. I'm yet to meet anyone that has criticised the look of Proteus and done the same to Minecraft.

So what is Proteus and why do I keep going back to it? I go back to it at least a couple of times a month, maybe for only about an hour or so but that's all I need for my fix. Proteus is a sumptuous adventure where no land is the same each time you venture there. Nothing is explained; it's for you to decide what is going on and every (and I mean every) time I visit there, I find something new, something undiscovered. You keep asking yourself questions - what are those trumpet flowers? Are they flowers? What do the Watchers mean? Who's that weird fella with wings, that hides in a giant tree and only at a certain time in the Autumn? There is so much more but I don't want to spoil it. Added to that is the wonderful soundtrack - a mix of divine melancholia background music with the world sound effects equally as odd as the landscape itself.

I urge you to buy Proteus - I doubt you'll regret it. You can find the Steam version for about UK£1 here [referral link from the author]: http://bit.ly/1FKUghM , it will be a place you'll visit a lot for so little.

Gaming Mill.

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April 9, 2015

Jimmy’s Thoughts: How Hard Is It To Make A Game?

Since the dawn of video games, gamers have longed to create their own little masterpieces, whether it be a clone of Final Fantasy, a brand new game idea, or just a mod added in to Fallout: New Vegas. Most of the time, we give up, we run out of ideas, or we just forget about it completely. For me, it's a combination of all three.

Why do we want to make games? Why do we want work with the very thing which we enjoy? I don't enjoy work, so why would I want to work on Video Games? The answers are short and sweet, but that is only the silver lining. Games are hard to make these days, but it was never always the case.

After the jump, we will delve straight into the depths of hell… I mean game development.

Have You Made A Game Before?

In my 30 years on this planet, I have managed to make 3 complete games (of which I am extremely proud of), around 30 incomplete games, hundreds of test projects and probably around a thousand pieces of paper with ideas, sketches, notes and rubbish. The earliest I can remember trying to design a game was when I was around 10 years old. I had created this weird sort of character named “Indle”’ and thus created "Indle's Adventure". Safe to say that was stupid. It was some blue squiggly bloke with a cheesy grin. He would wander around doing... uh… stuff. Actually I forget the rest. At one point after playing Goldeneye 64, I tried to create an FPS game. I designed “Boris Schneider” and drew a few levels. Looking back, that was just trash, but Boris looked awesome.

Since then, I'd tried multiple times to create games - all without a computer might I add. I got my first PC when I was about 13 years old and quickly found a game maker online. The first engine I found was a very early version of the DOS based program called OHRRPGCE (Official Hamster Republic RPG Creation Engine). With this new found program, I designed and developed a game, but as the engine wasn’t advanced enough to import assets, everything in the game had to be drawn pixel by pixel, but it didn’t take too much to put together. The final game was called The Legend of Marsden.

Before we go any further I'll quickly explain something. In High School, my Geography teacher was Mr. Marsden, he had a moustache – a very prominent moustache, and to be frank, we sort of picked on him. In the year 2000, I decided that I'd use him for my game, but he was to be the hero. I also used some of the other teachers from my school – Mr. Dempster (the villain), Mrs. Shortly (a boss) and Mr. Bannister (another boss). The game was set in and around the grounds of my school, so I went about developing the entire school in the game. Anyway to cut a long story short, the game was somewhat successful. I gave it out to my friends, who gave it to their friends, and even Mr. Marsden himself played it. Everybody was having a great time.

In 2001, I left school to go to college, and it was at this point I had finished my next "masterpiece" - The Legend of Marsden II: Moustache of Time. I'll assume at this point you've picked up on my influences for these games. In this game, Mr. Marsden sported a Hawaiian shirt and was the king in a land known as Tirmena (Yes, it was influenced by the Legend of Zelda games on the Nintendo 64). Top and bottom of it all was that this game had more RPG elements than the first, but by the time I had finished it, nobody was interested in Mr. Marsden anymore. It took me longer to make the second game due to the depth of it. Shame really, it was better than the first game in almost every way.

In 2003, I attempted to make a third one, but after multiple failed attempts, and an aging development kit, I ultimately scrapped it. It was tentatively titled The Legend of Marsden III: Moustache Mask. The two previous games were fairly easy to make but didn't look amazing, and I wanted the third to be so much better. Putting everything into perspective, it wasn’t worth my time to send Mr. Marsden on another adventure. They looked like they belonged on the NES or Master System... Games were easier to make back then.

A few years later I discovered RPG Maker XP - one of the most well-known RPG maker kits out there. After getting to grips with it I designed a massive RPG game as a tribute to Final Fantasy.

I had several ideas, and as the engine provided so many assets for commercial use, it was easy to use, but required much more time than my previous attempts. I had to use some of my own assets during the process as I eventually ran out of the given material. Anyway, time passed and I devoted myself to finishing the game.

After around two and a half years my game was nearly finished. I was very proud of the amount of content I had put into the game, and as my influence was Final Fantasy, there was plenty of hidden content in the game, mini games and side quests. In late 2007, I had it finished. It was named Beyond Eternity, and it was in the style of a SNES RPG game. It looked amazing, and a speed run of the game took me about 8 hours. I had somebody who had never seen the game before play it, and it took them 20+ hours to get through. At the time, I estimated that if you did everything in the game (the story, side quests, bonus dungeons etc.) it would take you over 40 hours.

I even attempted to sell it, and I made a little money off it and got some good feedback, but way back in 2007, I had no idea how to market a game, so that’s why you've never seen or heard of it (until now). To this day, I still have the game, data files, scripts and assets to Beyond Eternity. Maybe I will distribute it again someday.

Roll on to 2014, and in that time I've tried several times to create a new game, but everything I did failed in some way. As some of you may already know, I now run several YouTube tutorials on how to develop your own game in the Unity 3D Engine. As time has passed, I found it increasingly difficult to put together a game, so I resorted to showing people how to make games instead.

Where Is The Learning Curve?

Back in the 90's games were simple, and didn't require too much precision. It was pretty simple to put together a platform game like Mario or Sonic. As the years passed, and the 3D worlds of video games became more prominent, it took bigger and smarter teams to develop games. Compare Super Mario Bros to Mario 64. The team had to be expanded, as there were new elements in games which were not around 10 years earlier. 3D modelling had to be used more efficiently over the years, and as consoles became more powerful, the gamers demanded bigger and better games.

Think about it, one man could have created Super Mario Bros in a relatively short time, as there wouldn't have been too much programming, minimal assets and the repetition of gameplay. To create Mario 64 would have taken one man much longer - most likely several years. Skip ahead to something like Dark Souls II, could one man on his own have created this within a reasonable timeframe? I highly doubt it.

How Do Developers Get Games Out Every Year?

Yes, games are difficult to develop in this day and age because they are so demanding, but don't forget that the size of the team on some of these projects is huge! Credit rolls for games are getting longer and longer by the day. There is absolutely no way one man could make a game like Assassin's Creed Unity all on his own. In fact, when you look at it now, even a massive team is finding it too difficult to develop a game. With the amount of bugs and glitches we see in new games every day, it begs the question: Have games become too difficult to develop?

No, they haven't, but developers are becoming too ambitious too quickly. Assassin's Creed Unity was a very ambitious game, and given the time it was developed in, it clearly wasn't ready for release. Sure, every game has a glitch or bug - whether it be a little spelling mistake or a spinning head on a deformed doctor, the fact of the matter is that games are easy to develop, but hard to develop flawlessly.

Annual franchises are things we have come to expect, and these sorts of games usually fall under one of two categories: 1. They are rushed and broken, or 2. They are short and not quite as broken. I'm not going to start banging on about how short and pointless some games are, or how some games are a broken mess, just remember that they are difficult to get out each year.

What About Those One-Man Indie Developers?

Some games today are still made by just one person - Thomas Was Alone is a good example - but let's be honest, it's no Elder Scrolls is it? Indie game developers strive to create huge masterpieces, but even some of these developers struggle - and they work in teams. Several games over the years have come out from Indie Developers, but you have to sit and think just how long it took them conception to release.

Minecraft is a good example of an Indie Developer doing it right. Notch created the game, marketed it right and went on to make millions (billions maybe?). How long did it really take to make though? Think about it, all the hours he put into making that game. The simplicity of the game on the outside appeals to almost any gamer, but beneath the surface is a complex routine of programming and logic.

Conclusion: Is It Hard To Make A Game Then?

No, it's not hard to make a game, but it is very hard to create a game. The days of easy coding and easy graphics are long gone - you're around 20 years too late for that. There is nothing stopping anybody making a retro-style game on Steam Greenlight, but the future of gaming is intense for developers.

Even doing my tutorials in Unity 3D is demanding, and so many things can go wrong. For example, I had a problem with some trees behaving badly in a recent tutorial. If I were a professional developer, that was time and money wasted. Developers want to spend as little money as possible on making their games, but in doing that, they make it even harder for themselves.

Games are getting harder and harder to make each day, and it is highly doubtful that you could feasibly make an AAA game in under a year. Remember, Beyond Eternity took me over two years to make and even now I know there are one or two bugs in it – Nothing game breaking, but it still sold a few copies and I still profited a little from it. If you want a deeper look at the game, speak up in the comments.

By all means, expand your knowledge on game development. It may even land you a job in the industry. Just don't forget your old pal Jimmy when you're making Fallout 5, Resident Evil 8 or Half Life 4.

Jimmy Vegas
All images are my own creation!