Digital distribution continues its advance.

September 13, 2009 by swlerom

Digital distribution is by no means a new concept, however there are new models coming into existence to continue to widen access.

Digital distribution in video games may soon rival and surpass the “direct to DVD” Film phenomena. If you’ve ever seen a film on HBO, Showtime, or even in the video store (an archaic business model that some of you younger folks may not be aware of) and said to yourself “I never saw any ads for that movie.” – it probably never was advertised or appeared in a traditional movie theater. Some of these films are awful, and some are pretty good but obviously low budget. There has been the same movement in video games for the last 5 or so years that shows signs of maturing. The write up below is a superb example.

Although some of the prices are higher than Steam or GoG, there does seem to be a much larger library of titles I have never seen.

In the coming weeks I’m going to do more research on this company and their business model. It will also be interesting to see how the games are selected. Perhaps this could be a platform for indies.

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PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire/ — pcGAMESTORE.com announced today that it is officially live and open for business. pcGAMESTORE.com is a digital distribution store for PC games. With an ever-growing catalog of games from multiple genres including casual, core, educational, faith based and more, pcGAMESTORE.com is on track to carry the largest catalog of PC games in the world.

pcGAMESTORE.com is slated to launch over 3,500 games throughout 2009 and 2010 across several categories including: Action, Adventure, Indie, RPG, Simulation, Sports, Strategy, and many more. pcGAMESTORE.com has an international market, and players from North America to Europe will experience faster download speeds than they do at the majority of competitor stores.

To ensure high speed downloads and the best purchasing experience for customers, the pcGAMESTORE.com service is built on a robust gaming distribution network with hundreds of servers located in multiple data centers.

Features of pcGAMESTORE.com include:

Community and member-generated reviews
Detailed game overviews
Custom user profiles
Secure purchasing via both credit card and PayPal
Users of Facebook and Twitter can keep current with the latest offerings and promotions from pcGAMESTORE.com at the following links:

pcGAMESTORE Twitter

pcGAMESTORE Facebook

About pcGAMESTORE.com

The pcGAMESTORE.com mission is to provide a diverse offering of games across multiple genres to meet the demand of Core and Casual gamers worldwide. With a selection of more than 3500+ game titles slated to go live on the service by early 2010, we aim to have something for every type of gamer or casual consumer. Visit us at: www.pcgamestore.com

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Puzzle Games Are Not JUST Puzzles Anymore!

June 9, 2009 by swlerom

I’m back!

Plans always change and I don’t have an article about Bethesda’s GECK. An aging computer combined with a mysterious and dramatic drop in frames per second have diverted me to the aisle of puzzle games.

That’s right, puzzle games. In the world of game design puzzle games have traditional been thought of as challenging and yet somehow less glamorous an endeavor. Puzzle games don’t get the press coverage, they don’t get their own booth at E3, and their producers aren’t pursued by groupies. Fame is not the destiny of the puzzle producer. I can’t help but think that the creation of a good puzzle game would be a reward in its own right.

Tetris’ 25th birthday was yesterday and serves as a consultative voice from the past whispering that one secret ingredient that makes a good game live in history – fun. Tetris is still fun to me. That fun is so addictive that I have a version on every computing platform I own, and I have some pretty archaic platforms! I use Tetris to, in a sense, creatively meditate. The colors, shapes, and patterns stimulate the creative portions of my mind and the act of rotating and dropping into place helps me to organize those elements and form relationships between the elements. Puzzle games are becoming increasingly complex and mimic many of the design elements of hit puzzle, RPG, and Adventure games. One could consider Puzzle Quest to be the modern heir to the legacy of Tetris. Puzzle Quest has several pieces that fit together nicely and flow into a good narrative story. Steve Fawkner and the team did a fantastic job of putting together the elements of a good RPG, and adventure game into an addictively fun game.

The Puzzle Quest I picked up was “Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords”. Set in a fantasy world of orcs, dragons, zombies, and other mystically menacing creatures, your character must travel the roads between fortresses lending your aid to a queen and several kings and lords. Narrative comes into play with a dark evil force falling upon the lands and threatening the local power base – as well as the lives of all the peasants! Really, if we allow these creatures to continue to wander the country side, who is going to crush my grapes? This puzzle game obeys the first law of a good RPG which is character customization. In all games customization is something that most players crave. The ultimate customization is how you look, and while Puzzle Quest does not make allowances for that it makes up for it in so many other ways. In character customization you first choose your class – Mage, Warrior, and Druid. From that point on you can customize your character but purchasing equipment, researching spells, and retrieving artifacts from fallen enemies. Secondly you can customize your fortress. Building certain facilities in that fortress allows the player to contain any enemy you’ve captured, research spells based on their abilities, train mounts to be more effective combat partners, and create magical items with runes you may have found. In total you customize your mount, your gear, your spells and abilities.

The success or failure of this customization as well as your progression through the narrative is handled by a puzzle game that is similar in play to one of its predecessors, and quiet possibly the progenitor of all modern puzzle games, Bejeweled. Moving pieces to create lines of three or more of the same piece results in damage to your enemy or, in the case of a creative task, fulfills a requirement to collect a certain number of pieces. Both combat and task challenges revolve around collection. The mechanic behind combat, collecting pieces of certain color results in increased availability of one of four types of mana. This mana can be used to power certain abilities, spells, and attacks. Mana is the engine that drives the game. The objective is to increase your own mana while decreasing the mana of your opponent and taking the occasional opportunity to reduce the hit points of opponent by lining up three or more skulls in the puzzle board. Through a series of alternating turns the combatants are using spells or abilities do one time damage, or causing their opponent to loose hit points slowly draining them via bleeding, poisoning, sucking the life out of them, etc. 4 or more pieces result in an additional turn. The colors of the pieces correspond with various types of mana. Weapons, armor, and spells can attack or boost mana of specific types.

So far the elements of an RPG that have been reviewed are customization, mounts, weapons, armor, spells, abilities, monsters, fortresses and hit points. In respect to aspects of adventure games there are many elements as well. Each fortress within the land where the story takes place is ruled by a warlord. The central fortress, the largest of them all, is ruled by a benevolent queen. Initially, unless you are paying attention to the dialog, everything seems disjointed. However, follow the dialog. You’ll find that each task that you are asked to do, each villain you must defeat holds a clue to the mystery at hand. Why are undead and all manner of evil descending upon the land? Each of these tasks adds to a tapestry that is the story of why the land is in so much trouble. Your willingness to perform these quests allows you to gain favor of the warlord and in turn gain their trust and be given greater challenges with greater rewards.

All in all a fascinating game. I would also recommend any of the puzzle games distributed by Pop Cap games, Saqqarah, and Faerie Solitaire (a much more interesting game than the title suggests.) Also, for my friend Jeremy … Saqqarah is available on iPhone – something that I think will become more common as independent development tools make it easier to publish across multiple platforms. For the rest of us; after creating your first Side Scroller or FPS, the next venture could be a puzzle game or card game with elements involving RPGs, Adventure Games, Collecting Games, Pet collection games, etc. Perhaps a future article could be the fusion of traditional table top games and pen & paper RPGs in a computer game.

Hmmmm……

 

To see the games I mention I refer you to:

http://www.tetris.com/
http://www.popcap.com/
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
http://www.puzzle-quest.com/
htpp://www.saqqarahthegame.com/
htpp://faeriesolitaire.com/

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Posted in Game Design, Puzzle Games | 2 Comments »

Mini-Game vs. Meta-Game

February 12, 2009 by swlerom

It’s been a while since I wrote last and must confess that blogging is not a discipline that comes easy for me, as my blog demonstrates. We all have those things which we must continually work to improve in ourselves, this is one of mine.

I’ve been playing Fallout 3 a lot, probably more than I should. Rather than feel guilty about not working on game development I’ve turned it into an opportunity to observe elements of game design. I’ll be posting more on that later.

Today I want to focus on the definition, or rather the lack of clear and concise definitions, or the terms “Mini-Game” and “Meta-Game”. I’ve seen both terms mentioned quiet a bit lately in game design and have been confused their usage. Both terms seem to be used equally in the description of optional tasks within a game that could be described as games themselves. Theses definitions allude to the proposition that mini-games and meta-games are either meaningless or contribute to the overall goal of the game. I would like to propose the following standardization of these terms.

A mini-game shall refer to a small set of tasks or objectives that stand on their own independently of the primary game’s objectives, if contained within another game. Using Fallout 3 as an example, collecting cups, glasses, knives, forks, plates, pots, etc. could be a mini-game. As far as I’ve been able to determine so far, doing so has no useful purpose within the larger game.

A meta-game shall refer to a small set of tasks or objectives that may or may not stand on their own and contribute to the overall progress of the game’s primary plot. For instance, one could argue that the collecting of bobble-heads in Fallout 3 is a mini-game. However each bobble-head has a unique benefit to the character that possesses it. For instance a medicine bobble-head increases the medicine skill of the character thus assisting the character in their progression through the primary story.

For good game design I think both are important tools but not required. A bowling game certainly does not require a mini-game or meta-game. However granting the player a special pair of bowling shoes for making three strikes in a row that may or may not increase the probability of a strike may be a mini/meta game that keeps people interested in or draws them to your bowling game.

Food for thought…

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Posted in The Quest | 1 Comment »

The Future of Games?

December 26, 2008 by swlerom

For the last decade, game prices have continually risen.  On average, a video game title in 1998 would cost $30 compared to the rash of $59.99 titles we see today.  Total game software sales reached $9.5 billion dollars in 2007 which was a 28% increase over the previous year (http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_080131b.html).  The ESA themselves notes that in the last decade the video game industry has tripled its size. (http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp)  So, why do we hear so much whining about the cost of developing a game, used video game sales, and that piracy is killing the game industry?

I don’t know that anyone has written about that yet, or at least I can find such an article.  What is my guess?  Well this Layman, pardon the pun, would be willing to guess that many of these complaints are merely the excuse that video game executives give to shareholders, venture capitalists, and other investors.  In the last decade have you noticed that Corporate America has focused a majority of its effort in pleasing their investors?  Investors are important for inward cash flow, but there was a point in time where companies could support themselves and investors jumped on board because the long term outlook.  Now it seems that investors think on a quarterly basis rather than long term.  Growth is expected to be double digits every year and at the first sign of a slowing down, investors jump ship.  Companies have to say something to keep all the rats from jumping ship.

 

Given these assumptions, the next few years could be rough for investors and the video game companies with which they invest.  I listen to Bloomberg podcasts on a daily basis and most of the analysts say that although we will not reach depression levels, this economy will experience the deepest and longest recession since the depression.  Investors will be looking for “sure bets” and retailers have already started discounting video games.  Target recently announced its $40 game sale starting on Sunday with nearly a dozen games on sale.  These games are older titles, maybe a year old at most, but will retailers like Target and Wal-Mart start asking for lower price points?  If they do, and they get it, GameStop will follow suit.  This means either a negative growth or no growth unless the industry can find ways to sell more titles in a year.   Lowering the price of consoles is a good step, more console owners means potentially more titles sold.  Although will someone who will not own a console at a price point of greater than $200 dollars by more than three or for $60 titles in a year?  Probably not, but it seems that Microsoft has an answer for that – Xbox Live $5-15 price point online purchases. MMOs will have to find a way to keep users online.  Blizzard seems to have shown that frequent content injection is a good model, but will it continue to be a good bet?  Age of Conan has show that the alternative to massive and frequent content injection is not a profitable long term strategy.  Casual games written in flash and available online for any platform that can support a web browser seem to be a great model providing they can continue to attract advertising dollars in an economy where the consumer seems to be scaling back their consumption.

 

Perhaps we’re reverting back to the 80’s.  I think a shift to smaller games with less of an emphasis on sound and graphical effects but more emphasis on fun, accomplishments, medals/trophies, and published bragging rights will be a winning strategy.  Complexity and Glitz requires more manpower, more time, and thus more money … the rise of the publishing houses.   In an environment where such organizations become unwieldy an investors begin jumping ship, is the independent publisher the new growth area?  If so how do they keep from becoming corrupted by the dark side of capitalism?  If the independent studios begin to gain ground do we see studios divorcing themselves from the megalithic publishers and carving out their own individual niche?  Do publishers change their strategy from ownership of studios to a loose confederation of studios for a smaller cut of the pie?  Will episodic content make a comeback and individual games become platforms unto themselves and maintain the game engine / game mechanics and abandon the cycle of sequels?  This approach could resurrect the traditional IP.  Perhaps even developing these game platforms and then leasing out the rights to other studios or groups of enthusiasts who would generate additional content in exchange for a percentage.  In much the same way that the mod community has created mods for their favorite games,  individuals or groups could gain access to online tools that could create content and publish to company “proof readers” who would polish and publish this content for say $5 a pop giving the original author a $1 a pop.

 

One final note, publishers and studios would be well served to do whatever they can to create an environment where a “long tail” can evolve.  What would a possible solution be?  Stop selling only to the retail shelf.  Create your own digital distribution system or utilize existing ones such as Steam or GoG (Good old Games).  Most games seem to have a shelf life of a year or less.  After a year, put your games online at a reduced price.  Periodically reduce the price until you retire the game say five years later.  Then lease the rights to sell that title to someone else for a very low price.  Stretch the incoming revenue for each title out as long as possible.

 

The gist of all this babble is that I believe annual double digit growth is unsustainable and this economy may be what pops the bubble.  The game industry has grown quicker than most consumer industries; as a result the game industry will either have to slow its growth or speed up its evolution in order to survive.  The fallout and evolution of games and the game economy will be interesting to see.

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Posted in Game Economy | Leave a Comment »

The Quest!

December 22, 2008 by swlerom

Every quest has its beginning, only I can’t remember where and when I started.    I do know that this is a casual quest, but in the back of my mind every day.  Game Design & Development. It sounds so ominous, and yet it’s so simple a child could do it – and they often do. 

If you’ve ever watched a child play ground, whether by themselves or in groups, you’ll notice that they are the developers’ and designers’ of their own games.  Sometimes the games are borrowed, but almost always they are modified and molded.  Rules are added/removed, objects are added, renamed, hidden, or borrowed.  When playing by themselves the rules are interwoven and complex.  An outsider wanting to join in often doesn’t have access to all the rules and often doesn’t understand them.  If others are welcome, some rules disapeer others are simplified.

This is my quest to create games.  To explore that part of my imagination that peeks out from the status reports, resource conflicts, and planning sessions of my everyday life.

Follow me if you can, join me if you like, to arms!

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