IGDA Casual Games Quarterly
The second issue of the IGDA Casual Games Quarterly is online now. I didn’t catch the first one during my recent hiatus, but I did find a couple of interesting bits in this one. First is some demo and price point testing iWin performed. Basically they say that (a) people are willing to spend $30 for a casual game (especially if the consumer is already willing to spend $25 for the game) and (b) shipping your game with a sixty-minute demo might not be the best route to take.
With regards to (a), I think their data is a bit skewed because they used a very well-known IP for the game they tested with (Family Feud). It’s tough to say for certain, but it would certainly be interesting if someone else could perform the same sort of testing with a popular game on one of the casual game portals and publish the results.
On (b), I think that this is a very obvious conclusion, one which you don’t really have to make a study to draw. I have seen many examples where sticking to a sixty-minute demo might not make any sense at all. The guys at Bravetree did it differently with Think Tanks, for instance, relying more on nag screens and other restrictions to impress upon the potential buyer that it would be worth it if they’d simply fork out the cash for the game.
Overall, this first article was interesting, but there was something a little annoying about it in the most general sense. It does seem at times that there are companies and people out there making all sorts of “discoveries” about game publishing on the net that actually were discovered quite a long time ago by veterans such as Thomas Warfield. Still, it’s a nice article and the more information you have at your fingertips the better.
The second tidbit in the quarterly I found mildly interesting was the stats that James Smith of Reflexive has been collecting on the RealArcade top 10 lists. James frequents the forums at Indie Gamer and is a wealth of information for indie game devs. Again, the more info you have the better, and it’s nice of James to share.
(Board) Game Day
I admit that I often long for my college days when a group of us in the dorm would gather together for an impromptu day or night of social networking of the old-school sort - board gaming. Sitting around a gaming table, eating chips, drinking soda, and talking trash for hours on end did wonders for my stressed out soul back in those days of tedious coursework, all-night study sessions, and grueling final exams. And I carry those memories with me to this day, all the while coveting them like precious jewels and wishing for those early, simpler days. Today scheduling a day-long gaming session with even one of my close friends, much less three of them, is tough, to say the least.
After much effort and gnashing of teeth, my buddies Bill and Mike, and my younger brother Mark and I finally were able to get together for a day of serious gaming that didn’t involve a computer screen or television. And it was glorious. 
The first game that we dug into was one that Bill, Mark, and I had played once before at Christmas called Ticket to Ride - Europe. The original Ticket to Ride game was a winner of the German Game of the Year award (the Spiel des Jahres), and deservedly so, as this followup game is simply well-designed and terribly fun.
The board is a map of Europe, with a good number of cities represented and potential train routes between the cities. Each route is made up of one to eight train cars and is of a particular color. In order to lay claim to a route, you must play train cards that match the color and number of the train cars that are shown on the route. Once you claim a route, you score the points for that route, and play proceeds to the next player. You can draw ticket cards during play, also, and these cards show routes which you want to lay claim to if at all possible, as the point value shown on the card will count for your total when it comes time to figuring out who won, and will count against your total if you don’t fulfill the route. There are also colorless routes, tunnels, and ferry routes with special rules, along with special train station pieces you can put in play that allow you to use your opponents track to help you fill a ticket card route. All in all, a terrific little game, and terribly inspirational for me personally as I futz around with Duello and Bethellowed.
Now, even though three of the four of us had actually played the game once, that by no means gave us an advantage over Mike. On the contrary, after we reread the rules for the game we quickly found a mistake we had made during the last gaming session which completely changed the game play. In this case the rule read that we must take one of the following four actions during any given turn, when we had read the rule to read you must take as many as possible of the following four actions during any given turn. Er…oops. I had won spectactularly the last time, and managed to lose just as spectactularly this time around. Sonofabitch. I fared much better the second time we played yesterday, however, kicking ass and taking names and winning by a fair margin. No one lays track like I do and I made sure those bastards wouldn’t forget it soon.
After a couple games of Ticket to Ride, we decided to try out a variant of Risk that my wife and I gave to my brother as a gift a couple of years ago called Risk - The Lord of the Rings - Trilogy Edition. Now, it would be easy to hear the title of the game and just dismiss it offhand as another example of “the man” slapping some intellectual property on an existing game and shipping it for a fast buck. However, we found that the game was surprisingly different from the Risk game we had grown up playing, not the least of which was the (in my opinion) considerably more interesting and strategic map that is used for the game. I just found it tougher during my admittedly limited exposure to the game to play conservatively, building up my forces until I could pounce. The addition of sea ports allowing distant forces to attack, along with cards you earn during the game that allow you really mess with your opponents, definitely spiced up the game and gave it new life.
Now, having said that, I have a confession to make. I would rather play a less-confrontational multiplayer game such as Ticket to Ride than Risk, and the reason is pretty simple: When I start getting a head of steam and feel like I’m on the verge of a breakthrough, inevitably two or more of my opponents also realize that I’m about to breakthrough and decide to form a coalition with the express intent of putting me back in my place. I know that it makes sense to do so, but that does not stop me from feeling like I’m being victimized. And yesterday’s marathon Risk game (five hours - wow) was no different.
I had managed to play conservatively for the first few turns while my three opponents managed to tear each other new one’s repeatedly. They were in disarray, and I was slowly, but surely, gathering my forces and pushing northward into elven territory. I was playing as one of the Evil players (note the capital ‘E’ and I didn’t let them forget it the whole game), and nothing we Evil players like more than seeing hobbits and elves on skewers, roasting on an open fire, I can tell you.
Between the three of us, Bill, Mark, and I had managed to pretty much decimate poor Mike’s forces. Mike was caught in the middle of a vicious ground war between Mark and Bill, and I kept picking away at his territories on the peripherary as I built up my power base. Actually, I call what Mark and Bill were engaged in a ground war, but really it was more like a pissing contest between two drunken sailors or something. Bill tore Mark up early in the game, and Mark decided from that moment on that his definition of winning the game was preventing Bill from winning the game. Nice. And so it went…until I woke up and took Mike out of the game in about two turns.
Of course, as I mentioned, this is where the inevitable happened, and Mark and Bill decided that they’d put their differences aside long enough to take me out of the game before continuing with their hostilities. Nothing more aggravating than watching your carefully-constructed defenses get taken down in one long, agonizing turn as each of your opponents tear into you with an (in my opinion) undeserved veangance. Luckily, they made the decision to attack me one turn too late in the game to save themselves, as in this variant the One Ring can end the game early by arriving at Mount Doom, and after my turn was over it decided to do just that. Whew. Because if it hadn’t ended the game right then and there, I was done.
All in all, it was a great ten hours or so of gaming, joking, drinking, and eating, and I cannot wait until the next time we can put such a session together. I love video gaming, and with the advent of voice-over-internet utilities such as Skype and TeamSpeak, it certainly makes it easier to get together for a play session with friends in far-distant lands. But nothing beats playing with your friends around a game table - nothing.
GarageGames has arrived
I remember vividly the second mention I found of GarageGames online. The first mention, a Blue’s News blurb, was largely forgettable and all I can recall from the announcement was that they had a website up or something. But the second time I saw the name, ah yes, now that I remember quite well. Just as I will remember vividly the latest comic by those insane Penny Arcade guys.
Like so many other wannabe game devs out there in the wild, I had tinkered for many years with various software libraries, including some of my own creation, in the hopes of learning how to make those most magical of creations - video games. Prior to becoming aware of GarageGames I was already of the mind that my fellow teammates and I needed to simply latch on to an existing 3D engine and make something, even if it was simply a mod of an existing game such as Unreal or Quake. So we started researching which game would be the easiest to work with and then I found that second blurb:
GarageGames was going to license out the Tribes 2 engine.
I read and reread the announcement, truly with disbelief, I kid you not. I went to GDC that year and sat face-to-face with the GarageGames founders and point-blank asked them the single most important question I had: Do we get source?
The rest is history, of course, because not only did we get source, but we got a full-fledged 3D engine, not just a software library. Gone were thoughts of using Unreal or Quake and making a mod. This was our solution and gawddamned if we weren’t the happiest bunch of wannabe game makers you ever laid your eyes on.
Flash forward, what, five years or so now? GarageGames is inching closer and closer to a goal I remember Jay Moore mentioning many moons ago - being a name known to every household. At least, I think he said something close to that. And now here they are with a title on the Xbox360 and the subject on arguably the most popular game geeks comic around. Not too shabby, and I feel very fortunate to have experienced at least some portion of this with GG.
What will happen in the next five years with GG? Personally, I hope that they reach the next level in terms of distribution, on their own terms, and in their own channel. Even so, there’s no doubt that GarageGames has arrived.
Gratz GG!
Prehistoric music to my ears
I really do love Napster. I have been using it for about a year now to stream tunes to my various locations, and it has definitely altered my listening habits. I find myself much more likely to just try some new band out, and I find their suggestions pretty useful, especially when I am listening to a band I like and they suggest other similar tuneage.
Yesterday I found a really interesting band called Mastodon. It’s a little hard for me to describe their sound. It’s sort of a mish-mash of influences, including thrash metal, punk, jazz, and a touch of southern rock thrown in for good measure. I’ve been listening to their album Leviathan over and over again. It is a sort of concept album apparently (best I can tell from the song titles), but in a good way. I find several of their songs of the sort where you just want the song to not end as they just jam away. Lotsa notes at times, and that in this case is a good thing.
