Playing Sports in front of a TV/Computer Screen

Been watching Evo 2012 highlights and got really stoked about fighting games. Watching Street Fighter IV and Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and even King of Fighters was a blast, but Soul Calibur V was confusing. I realized it was because I understood the mechanics of 2D fighters better so I could better tell what was going on and with a good commentator, the match was way more exciting. Watching other games like Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne was great because they were games I played. I found FPS boring and DotA styled games too slow for my liking.

This could be why it's hard for eSorts to kick off in most places other than Korea. Non-gamers probably won't be interested in watching eSports while gamers will only be interested in games that they play and understand.

How then did Starcraft take off in Korea? My guess is Blizzard made a game that's not just fun, but very watchable as well. Two armies killing off one another isn't hard to differentiate. And while build orders might not be immediately intuitive, a good commentator will be able to draw people in.

Watching fighters is a different story even though 2 people beating each other up should be understandable. Fighters have deep mechanics and most commentators do not readily focus on the action and on what's going on, or they use too much jargon in their commenting. Games like these are difficult for the general population to watch unless the commentators make it easier to understand.

Check out the first 3 minutes for an exciting match.

Do you watch eSports? What games hype you up and why do you watch the games you do? Are there ways to make more games enjoyable by the general masses so pro-gamers can get more recognition for their abilities?

Why I'm going to actively boycott publishers/developers

This more of a personal rant than anything objective.

I've been careful to not buy games that have always-on DRM as a form of protest against this particular form of 'punishment to legitimate gamers'. Ever since I learnt of the DRM for Assasin's Creed 2 (I think), I've stopped buying Ubisoft games at full price for PC, but probably only got 1 for the Wii. I bought Command and Conquer 4 from EA, not realizing that it had the same DRM and have since been weary of buying their games. I gave Blizzard a chance because I have always liked their games even though I was upset with Diablo 3's required online access and also the Real Money Auction House. I bought Capcom's fighting games for the PS3 even though I know they had a habit of making new versions and selling them as a new game instead of providing it as DLC for the older version. Even for some of the games I boycotted, I still ended up buying it at a Steam sale or when they finally removed the offending portions of the game.

What I'm starting to realize is that you can't have your cake and eat it (duh). Partial boycott doesn't help matters. Publishers will keep putting out such crap until gamers put their foot down and hit them in their wallets. I understand that what one person does is not going to do much, but I believe more and more gamers and fighting back against publishers. Bioware changing their ending and Capcom saying they'll change their stand on on-disk-dlc shows that gamers do have the power if they stand together (though I think Capcom will still make content and then not put it on the disk, but rather make people pay for it later so I don't believe them at all).

So I'm going to totally boycott games made by EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard and Capcom, and mind you, I have games from EA, Activision, Blizzard and Capcom that I really love. I would really love to continue following the story and playing the games (Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo series) made by Blizzard, the various great games published by EA like Dead Space, and Capcom's fighting games and Resident Evil series (I love my survival horror if you haven't noticed, but those games are dying, being replaced by 'action-horror'), so this is really a painful choice for me. But it has to be done, and anyway, there will be people streaming if I'm really interested in the story. I am still interested in gaming though, and will look towards independent developers and other publishers like Paradox, THQ, CD Projekt and the like.

Big Name Distributors the death of Gaming?

"Indies are saving gaming. EA is methodically destroying it."

Minecraft creator apparently thinks so.

I've always been impressed with the creativity that independent developers are able to come up with, as compared to games published by EA, Activision and Ubisoft. Most of the big budget games from the later consists of games that are updated versions year after year after year. How many Fifa's and Call of Duty's have we seen? Granted, we do see some new intellectual properties (IPs) once in a while, meaning totally universes and back story, but those that sell well are continually milked while those who do ok, but not well enough get thrown out. Rarely do we see an IP get a second chance, and rarely do we see games that break out of the mould.

Game developers under these companies rarely get to get creative with their games as publishers are fearful that the game will not sell. In comes the indie developers. Without the restrictions set by publishers, indie developers can exercise more creativity over their games. This comes with the cost of not having monetary support, so indie games tend to be developed for handphones, or with lower graphical capabilities. Creativity comes with a risk as well, as some games turn out to be a hit, while others are so weird they are not able to find their audiences. Publishing is a problem as well, but with more and more online publishers, indie games are starting to get popular. The low cost of indie games helps them as well.

There are so many game studios that have been shut down by publishers because of poor sales. Why then do these publishers still exist? Because people like block buster games with amazing graphics and cookie cutter gameplay. People do not want to try new IP, or games with strange ideas. Year after year, people repeated buy the next 'update' for full price. In that sense, EA isn't destroying gaming; after all, they are catering to what gamers want, and they deduce what gamers want from what gamers buy. So who's destroying gaming? Us gamers.

Lessons that should have been learnt by Blizzard?

Most gamers have gotten their hands on Diablo 3 (D3) are and are spending a lot of time fighting the minions of hell. The release has been troubling, but nevertheless, the great gameplay of Blizzard games still hold up to the flaws of the DRM.

The server crashes on the first day was surprising, considering Blizzard held a stress test that worked (i.e. stressed the server enough to crash it), and that, with the number of pre-orders they received, should have given them enough information to determine how much server resources they would require. The only unknown is that of online purchases made on release day, or shortly before that.

There have been cases of hacking, and that is hardly surprising with the Real Money Auction House and character data saves been made on the Blizzard server instead of the client's machine. But interestingly, unlike World of Warcraft (WoW), when Blizzard restores your items after you report a hacking, your character is rolled back to a much earlier state, potentially losing levels and the latest acquired gear.

The last I checked, Blizzard made WoW, and like WoW, D3 has persistent online DRM, characters stored on Blizzard servers, and has gameplay that's heavily gear dependent. Also, WoW faced all the problems currently plaguing D3, like poor server stability launch-day and hacking, so why isn't Blizzard doing what WoW did?

(The later part of this post is going to devolve into a Real Money Auction House [RMAH] rant.)

The fact that we have to be always online to play is not purely for fighting piracy, but also because Blizzard needs to have the characters on their servers to prevent people from hacking to get better items. Items equals money with the RMAH, and having a surplus of items in the market will push costs down, making items not worth selling, dropping sales and thus Blizzard will earn less money from it. Players who prefer to play single player are thus forced to be online all the time.

The restoration system likely works for the same reason. You don't get back your most recent gear because they are not going to make another copy of it. The hacker has it, and giving returning to gear to the player increases the number of copies of the item. Granted, the player might not sell it immediately, but in future he may, and if Blizzard rolls back the items on the character so easily, players can easily fake a hack, passing expensive items to another account and then reporting to get more items to sell.

A lot of problems of D3 are there simply because of the RMAH, which aggravatingly, isn't even ready yet. I am against the RMAH, but very keen to see how it will affect the economy. Will gold be rendered useless? Will the gold auction house still have high quality items? It would make sense to sell it for real money if I'm honest. Of course, you could sell gold for money and then use the money to get items from the RMAH, and Blizzard will happily take a cut from both sales.

Tekken Tag 2 DLC

A couple of articles on Gamespot discusses the issues with DLCs (among others) on fighting games. In an interview with Katsuhiro Harada, producer of the Tekken series, he revealed that he thinks that dlc is fine, but "stages, characters, and moves shouldn't be added as paid DLC" because "these are necessary elements to a fighting game. Much like chess pieces to a game of chess, they shouldn't be charged for separately."

Brendan Sinclair, in an article Tekken Tag 2 a model of how to handle DLC, talked about how dlc is employed by publishers for two different reasons, 1. to discourage players from selling their games after they're done with it because there will be new content, and 2. to earn money. He notes that the problem comes when publishers try to do both and that turns players off. DLC done right, he argues, is if you want money, then make the content worthwhile and give us a "complete" product at the start. And if you want to lock up content that's already completed, it implies that your goal is to stop people from selling the game when they are done, so the content should be free. Tekken Tag 2 will give players more characters free of charge, and that shows the DLC's for reason number 2.

How do we actually tell what other motivations are behind the DLC if there's a price tag on it? As a consumer, what gamers are unhappy with is being short-changed, and if a game has DLC, cost, time of release, and whether it is already available on day-one will be a huge indicator on whether they are being exploited. It's nice to see that publishers are beginning to take note of this and taking steps to keep the consumers happy, but skeptical me says that most companies will just find ways to mask their money making schemes, while continuing to exploit and milk their fan-base.

And if you like fighting games, do support Namco Bandai with the release of Tekken Tag 2. Good business practices should be rewarded. Unless of course, they decide to pull a Capcom on us.

"Capcom revising on-disc DLC stance"

http://asia.gamespot.com/news/capcom-revising-on-disc-dlc-stance-6376788

Is this Capcom listening, or simply instead of putting the dlc on the disk, they'll still rip out content from their game and make it a day-one download?

Guess the best way to buy games now is to wait till all the dlcs are out and them but they 'game-of-the-year' or 'complete' edition. And it's fine that people buy the games when they come out immediately, cause this is the only way that the companies will continue to make dlcs or 'enhanced' editions, so those who wait can benefit.

Release day from Hell

I have Diablo 3, and I have the time, but I'm choosing not to play it, but to observe the forums and facebook and 'listen' to the complains. This is the reason why I don't support always-on DRM, and this is why I don't play games with such requirements on release day, esp those that have millions of people waiting to play. This was the case when this form of DRM first came out for Assassin's Creed 2 (http://www.geek.com/articles/games/assassins-creed-2-unplayable-as-ubisoft-drm-servers-go-down-2010037/), and then later for the various MMORPGs (which have to be always-on, but day 1 issues still isn't acceptable). But I guess it doesn't affect me as much since I don't play them on release day.

Perhaps it's the skeptic in me, but I've the feeling that Blizzard has been slowly testing the gamers and 'socializing' them to accept always-on DRM. When I look back at Starcraft II, it is obvious that always-on DRM had been subtly at work in the title. You might say 'you can play offline!' but did you really try to do that? At launch, you could only play one offline account, and your progress on the offline account could not be linked to your online account, no achievements, no saves, and I do not think you can play custom games on that. In Diablo 3, they added a way to monetize their game in addition to having players pay to access the game. I wonder what they'll do next with their next game?

At least we know Blizzard is one company that responds fast and well, so have fun guys, I'm sure the issues will be resolved soon more or less.

P.S. For those who think that people who cry about this are just making a fuss out of nothing, I hope this does not happen to you:
http://www.vg247.com/2011/09/08/the-day-i-realised-always-on-drm-moaners-have-a-point/