video games

Curb My Enthusiasm: TF2, Overwatch, PokemonGo, and Work

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

I should be really enthused about games right now.

TF2, which I adore, has added ranking and competition along with smooth new interfaces. Games feel they’re taken a bit more seriously now, as opposed to SwagBag420 dancing around his sentry.

Overwatch, which is amazing, is here. It’s got competitive mode and casual mode and great gameplay.  It’s got a new character coming.

PokemonGo realizes many of my ideas of augmented reality and socialized gaming.  Also it’s Pokemon and it’s highly social.

Except . . . I’m not feeling that enthusiastic about any of them. This is probably a phase, but I realized it said something about me, games, and recreation.

All of these games, for lack of a better word, involve resource and people management. TF2 may require teamwork, but Overwatch’s whole rock-paper-scissors type mechanic means teamwork is overwhelmingly important. PokemonGo is social and can involve various rival gyms and factions – and management.

And lately, busy at work, where I’d probably want to game, I find myself less enthused about two beloved games and one interesting take on the franchise. I should be interested and I’m not.  Then, I realized why.

Because these games are about what I do in real life.

I manage people. I direct resources. I’m used to charging forwad, goal-driven, with a team behind me (or me behind them). Work’s been pretty busy lately, and that in turn means the games that I like to escape with . . . seem a bit to much like what I do for a living.

This is weirder to me as I love games that play to my strengths – especially resource management and planning things. I love games with people. But when I have enough of that at work . . . I don’t want it as much in my games.

Moreso, a lot of these games feel “workish” anyway. PokemonGo has things constantly happening in the real world. Game wiht a team of friends in TF2 or Overwatch and people will inevitably want to play competitive – and TF2’s casual mode still has its leveling. The games are a bit too close to my job right now, and then a bit too workish anyway.

It’s a strange thing to feel and I’m curious to what happens to my interests anyway. I feel a bit bad as I haven’t gamed with various friends online from anywhere from a month to a week and there’s a strange sense of guilt about it. But really fun things that happen to be like my job – and like work – in all the wrong ways is a new one on me.

I assume as work calms down my mind will change.  Heck I sort of want to force myself to play. But for now I feel like I peered around a corner into some demographic issues that could be explored more.

When are fun thngs too much like other things to be fun? What does tht mean for the audience?

– Steve

No Man’s Sky: Failure To Come Together

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Sorry this is late.  Busy few weeks, but now I’m back to my pre-release analysis of No Man’s Sky.  After all I love games and i love procedural generation.

We’re counting down to No Man’s Sky’s release in August.  We’re approaching the big release, and once again I’m seeing posts on the Internet asking if it will succeed or fail.  This is not unusual, but it’s time for another round of them apparently.

I’ve speculated on this possible failure before, but often concern’s about NMS focus on this component or that.  From the possible sameness of worlds to uninteresting space travel, there’s concerns about some elements, of the game.  These concerns are legitimate, but often they miss what No Man’s Sky Is about.  There’s a larger picture here for concern.

No Man’s Sky is a game about synergy, as is fairly obvious when you step back and look at the game.  Characters mine to get resources to craft new items to let their spacecraft travel farther.  Their adventures may require them to fight enemies with spacecraft that they hijacked by developing rare hacking chips, chips whose blueprints were found exploring a ruined building.  A strange technology, found in an alien ruin, may let someone survive on a toxic world.  No Man’s Sky is all about things coming together.

This is not surprising as video games are about synergy.  Good controls bring a character to live.  Clever mechanics entice the mind that learns them and influences the game experience.  Music and graphics work together to set the mood.  Good games depend on pieces working in harmony.

For No Man’s Sky, it’s even more dependent on the synergy – that’s really it’s selling point.  Where procedural worlds and exploration and crafting and all come together, the game offers a whole of an experience.  It’s not a game with clear boundaries, which is the point – it’s a supposed seamless exploration experience.  It just happens to be a very big one based on some very, very smart use of math.

This synergy is also where it can fail.

Because No Man’s Sky relies on the parts of the game coming together, there’s several possible modes of failure that can occur.

Poor Synergy: One way the game can fail is if the different parts don’t support each other properly.  Perhaps the ability to acquire resources makes the crafting parts too hard – or too easy.  Straightforward planetary exploration might contrast with hyperkinetic space combat, creating tone shifts that are hard for players to adapt to.  If the parts of the game don’t come together correctly, the game suffers because the synergy of the promise is gone – even if the parts are good.  This may be the biggest synergy risk of NMS because a dev and even a testing team would be unlikely to catch it due to being used to the product.

The Flaw: Another way I can see NMS fail is if one part of the game is done so poorly that drags the rest of the game down.  Planetary exploration is an area I’ve worried about, and if it is poorly done or dull, that diminishes the thrill of the rest of the game.  Truly egregious resource gathering could be another fun-killer as the rest of the game depends on that.  One poor part of the game could drag the rest down – the synergy backfires when one part fails really hard.

The Drudge: NMS also has to make sure that its individual components are good enough to support the game, because though one bad component might drag the game down, so can many mediocre ones.  The game may not fail on its many fronts, but if too many are uninspired or uninteresting, the synergy of them makes the game not good, but dreadfully mediocre.  The synergy of game component’s can be a double-edged swords when many are just uninspired.  I think people may be more forgiving of a game with one big flaw and ambition than one that just kind of plots.

Though I’m sure that Hello Games has thought of this, it’s worth considering for analyzing the game once it’s out, and for analyzing future games of its type.  Synergy is the strength of the gaming art.

It’s also a place where failure can happen, even if the parts are right or mostly right.

– Steve

No Man’s Sky: Why The Delay Is Good

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

So if you’ve been following No Man’s Sky, and haven’t heard that A) the game was delayed, and B) some people had a meltdown over it, you’ve been living under an extremely insulated rock.

So anyway, the game is delayed.  Though I’d like to address some of the bizarre reactions on it (including death threats to the lead and to a reporter), as I’m focusing on the game I’d like to discuss the delay.  Also there’s only so much I can write “stop it you morons.”

So, NMS delayed.  Good.

Why do I say good?  Because that’s a sign of two things:

  1. That Hello Games knows that there’s more work to be done.
  2. That Hello Games will admit there’s work to be done and do it.

First, as noted earlier, the NMS team seems to be doing everything right to actually make the game work.  Right focus, right methods, etc.  The fact that they can outright say “no, we need more time” means they’re aware enough of what they’re doing to take more time.

Secondly, the fact they will admit this in public, for a game whose hype has become a living thing entirely separate from their own efforts, is a good sign for the final product.  Unless the problems were epic, they probably could have gotten away with a flawed game with a day 0 patch or something.  They didn’t – that speaks to an honest about getting a good product.

The delay tells me NMS is probably going to live up to the (actual, not imagined) hype.  The team can say “stop, wait” as opposed to tossing out a game that – let us be blunt – would probably get a lot of love anyway.

I’m reminded a bit of Starbound, another game that I’m looking forward to (and that sadly, I will have to play through before OR after NMS because its pure crack to me).  The team has taken extra time to work on it, but as of the last beta I played – and I played through the game 3 times Early access – it’s evolved amazingly.  Time can make a better product (ask Blizzard).

The delay may be painful for some of us, but it’s just another sign we’re going to get a good product.

– Steve