Blog Posts from "Extreme Opinion"

A lament for the PC FPS

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:15:03 -0500

'Twas a great day in gaming
When the godfathers of gib
John Carmack and Romero did hack and ad-lib.
For they gave unto PCs +mlook in Quake
and changed forever the gaming landscape.

For many a moon all had their voice:
Consoles had Mario, Sonic, and Final Fantasy IV.
If strategy and shooter were your poison of choice
what better control than mouse and keyboard?

But alas! Alak!
This Golden Age of understanding was never to last
For consoles were simply uncontent with their lot.
What started as a strategy, became action game
And but one announcement later, Halo: Combat Evolved.

"lol consoletards need aimhacks built in,"
at Microsoft's Halo did the 1337 cadre jibe
and of the graceless, unwieldy, Xbox controller
there was much diatribe.
"It's clumsy and all-thumbs lol,"
did the Half-Life players joke
"We'll pwn u n00bs, aimhack and all."

For many a year the game journos did implore
That consoles were now suitable for 'the core'
So many Xboxes and PS2s were bought,
But gaze upon what you have wrought:

Interfaces designed for controllers, mice are ignored,
Settings dumbed down for those easily bored
Server browsers, LAN games, fine-grained control
Chained to the altar of the conquering Console
"It's better this way," the new high priests assure.
"Developer consoles are a disease we must cure,
You don't need mods or LAN or any such part,"
And with a grin and a jerk they stab at the heart.

The PC First-Person Shooter is dead. Long live the Console Shooter.

Christmas Gamer of the Week

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 11:40:21 -0500

Just a quick mindless post on "Boxing Day", 2009. Saw this on Mashable today and just had to share it.

If you need an introduction to this memelet, check out the video below first, also courtesy of YouTube and Mashable:

And finally...

Elevating games to an art: Publishers, stand up for your medium!

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:17:56 -0500

In his latest video entitled "Something Worth Fighting For: Video Games and Controversy," Daniel Floyd touches on something profound. He goes beyond all the "murder simulator," Hot Coffee, Modern Warfare 2 in DC, and Mass Effect "sex simulator" scandals and challenges everyone in the gaming industry to defend those projects that stand poised to push the medium from "making toys" to an artform at the cost causing discomfort and offence.

The game at the heart of his lecture/talk/presentation is Six Days in Fallujah, which we discussed at some length before when Konami pulled out of the game earlier this year.

Rather than providing a synopsis of an 8 minute video, I would just like to highlight a quote from James Portnow (previously from Activision, now running his own studio called Divide By Zero) as delivered by Floyd:

""

I posted this here because I wanted to discuss that quote but YouTube's commenting system sucks, and I'd much rather discuss it with Hellforge than with YouTube.

As someone who draws pictures is differentiated from artist, as an average novelist is to an author that creates literature; shall there be games that blur the line between entertainment and art as opposed to games that exist for entertainment alone? Is it possible? Is it worth it?

Creative implementation of DRM in Batman: Arkham Asylum is still SecuROM

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:31:31 -0400

Once more the Blagonets is abuzz with inaccurate pro-DRM sentiment. This time it's not due to false reports that pirates were somehow responsible for bringing a game's servers to its knees (here's the real story), but rather an incorrect understanding (and incomplete reporting) of a developer's copy protection measures.

If you haven't heard about Eidos' “innovative” copy protection yet, basically pirates have found that Batman's Glide ability is deactivated at a critical point in the game and instead of gliding to safety he jumps right into a cloud of poisonous gas. Upon requesting technical support for the “bug” a pirate was given the following response:

Please note the very specific version of the game he's referring to. If you're planning on buying the game digitally (Steam, Direct2Drive) then it will make use of PA (SecuROM online activation). To be safe I'd wait for the third party guys that evaluate these things (whom I won't link to here for safety's sake) to vet the DRM when the PC disc/retail version goes on sale.

If the retail version really just uses a disc check and doesn't require online activation I might consider playing (and hence buyng) it. There's still the small matter of SecuROM's malware-like behaviour that I'd have to get over, though.

Recession finally catching up or do the new games just suck?

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:14:12 -0400

For awhile we were told video games were recession-proof. Some gamers held this up as a kind of trophy. This was good for the executives who were trying to convince their shareholders and potential investors not to pull their money out of a luxury industry during a recession. Parallels were drawn between the role of film during the great depression and the role games could play during this recession.

The predictions were proved true time and again throughout 2008 as hit game after hit game kept the monthly sales figures high. Towards the end of 2008 the analysts went over their numbers again and wondered out loud if video games had really been recession-proof at all. It turned out that while the business of video games was growing it wasn't growing as fast as it would be had it not been for slimmer wallets worldwide.

"Duh," was the overwhelming response to this revelation.

In the wake of the NPD group's July report on console gaming earlier this month a slew of reports appeared on the Internet as well as in the Wall Street Journal. 1up, a great one-stop source for all things NPD, reported that game sales in June saw the largest year-over-year drop in 9 years. The article that got me on the scent was by Tara Foulkrod at The Examiner entitled, Economy hits video game market.

Most of the articles on this topic quote the conclusions drawn by Anita Frazier (one of the analysts of the entertainment market for the NPD group): ": Neither. The recession is not affecting the video game industry proportionally any more than it did from the outset. Recent game releases are above average quality (though I agree, none of them deserve a 90% or higher average score) but aren't as good as the AAA releases from last year. I also don't think that this year's big name releases appeal to as wide an audience as say, Grand Theft Auto, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Metal Gear Solid did.

EDIT: Just found an article via reddit which says that four Ubisoft titles, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Red Steel 2, I am Alive, and Ghost Recon, have been pushed back to 2010. With BioShock 2, Singularity and Bayonetta all pushed back to 2010 it looks to be a long winter for the console stats. Perhaps the stuff that actually looks really good that's still slated for this year like Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Left 4 Dead 2 will bolster the numbers enough to keep the doom prophesying minimal. It would seem that only a runaway success on the Wii will impact sales significantly enough for that, though. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, anyone?

The forgotten land of Zeliard

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:58:33 -0400

The year is 1992 and we're visiting my mom's childhood friend. In truth, I noticed the PC in the back room the second we entered. It always took me hours to work up the courage to ask anyone hosting my parents whether I could play on their computer. Luckily these folks knew me and sent me on my merry way as soon as the greetings were over. This PC was much better than the old 8088 XT I had at home - it had a colour screen. For a moment I regretted not bringing my own game disks along. I had at least two games that required colour to even run.

The owner of the computer showed me one or two other games before firing up Zeliard. The intro was impressive, I'd never experienced a scene set in a game like that before. Most games I had told the backstory in a minute or less with some scrolling text, if at all.

By the time he had shown me how to get some start-up gold from the king, buy a rudimentary shield and slice open my first giant frog I was hooked. I wouldn't be able to play the game again until 1994 when I discovered that a friend of the brother of a friend also had the game. This time I didn't let it slip through my fingers - I got him to tell me the name of the game I had played 2 years before and I made sure I got my own copy.

To put things in perspective, games like Myst and Iron Helix were already released by this stage. It was the action platforming mechanic that hooked me, but it was the stories that kept me coming back.

In essence, Zeliard is a side-scrolling action game with fairly mild RPG mechanics. Your character doesn't have stats (other than his health bar) that can be improved. Leveling up increased your health and the amount of times you could cast the spells you had unlocked. Monsters only dropped one type of item: the Alma. Almas had to be collected and exchanged in town for gold, which you could exchange for better equipment and consumables. Not every town had the same Alma/Gold exchange rate, though.

And then there were the stories within the story. As you ran through town you could speak to the denizens which may or may not have something meaningful to add to your quest.

Relatively early in the game you are informed that Jashiin had Percel, the creator of the Ruzeria Shoes, murdered in order to steal the shoes from him. These shoes prevented the wearer from slipping on the floors of the ice caverns in the dungeon. In speaking to the townsfolk I came across Percel's widow and she made it quite clear that she didn't appreciate my presence in town. If it weren't for me then the Spirit would not have used her Percel to make the shoes which led to his inevitable death, seemed to be her line of reasoning. When you reclaim the shoes and speak to the grief-stricken widow again she apologises and extends her gratitude for honouring her husband's memory.

Of course it's nothing on the quality of narrative we've come to expect from good computer/console-based RPGs nowadays and neither was it the best example of in-game story-telling at the time. What it was was my gateway drug. After Zeliard I needed a decent story in my games before I would even consider buying it.

RickRoll'D! Scribblenauts memes it up

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:41:36 -0400

Believe it! Links or it didn't happen, I hear you exclaim?

This is according to LazyGamer, a group of fellow South African gaming bloggers, who got their information from WiiNintendo.net which credits what is widely accepted as the original source of the list (ah Internet and digital age, how you've sucked the fun out of "broken telephone"). Apparently you can type RICKROLL into Scribblenauts which will cause a reasonable facsimile of Rick Astley to be spawned in the level. He even does a little dance.

A video by GamesRadar confirms Astley's appearance (skip to about 1:10) as well as that of many other memes. His use isn't immediately apparent, but over 20 million RickRoll'D must be somewhere around the magnitude of the Power of Grayskull.

Just imagine the endless meme-chains!

You summon, not an ordinary cheeseburger, but I Can Haz Cheezburger. Unfortunately In Soviet Russia Cheezburger Can Haz YOU when you copulate with geese in the event of an emergency because you do what you want coz a pirate is free yar har deedle-dee-dee. Then, after creating Your Mom like such as in South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like, such as This is Sparta! Just please leave Britney alone. If you don't, All Your Base Are Belong To Us when Chuck Norris round-house kicks you after he started making trouble in my neighborhood, I got in one little fight and Your Mom got scared, she said, "You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air."

For once this link is completely relevant to the topic at hand.

District 9: The first high budget African science-fiction brought to the world by Halo and Peter Jackson

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:36:42 -0400

When one hears the words "South African film" uttered together one thinks Mr. Bones and Tsotsi. Perhaps Faith Like Potatoes and Hansie or even the more obscure Catch a Fire, Power of One, and The Long Run come to mind.

It seems as if it's always a comedy of errors, slapstick, or politically-charged drama. We lack proper action films, thrillers, and even crime/mystery movies, though we certainly have the local source material and local talent to pull it off. What we lack is the budget of Holly- and/or Bollywood.

Finally, it seems as if South Africa will be able to boast its own relatively unique science-fiction action/thriller movie. It's called District 9.

District 9 is based on Alive in Joburg, a short film directed by Neill Blomkamp who was born in South Africa but raised in Vancouver. While the cast are South African and the film is shot on location in Johannesburg, it is being produced under Peter Jackson's WingNut Films. The posters and trailer (above) also loudly proclaim Peter Jackson presents a film by Neill Blomkamp. I'm not sure how using Peter Jackson's name as a sales pitch will go down given the atrocities he's perpetrated on mankind in the form of the Lord of the Rings movies and his King Kong remake, but his money and effects studios surely come in handy.

Halo aficionados might know Blomkamp as the "novice" director appointed to direct the now cancelled Halo movie. One might argue that it's thanks to Halo that Blomkamp met Jackson, who was willing to give Blomkamp a shot at expanding Alive in Joburg to a full film after production on the Halo adaptation was cancelled. I think directing a non-adaptation film is a much better way for Blomkamp to make his mark in Hollywood anyway.

Looking at the prevailing themes shown in the trailer (xenophobia/racism), District 9 seems like a pretty thinly veiled allegory. Although it doesn't break away from the obviously deeply rooted need for South African film-makers to tell stories charged with socio-political commentary, it is a science fiction film that promises proper special effects. Here's hoping the narrative was scaled decently from short to feature length.

Here's the original Alive in Joburg short. It's also available for download at Internet Archive (especially for South Africans and/or Oceanians that find the idea of downloading 20+MB only to be able to view it once in the embedded player intolerable). It seems to have been licensed under the Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivatives Creative Commons license so have no fear, the download is completely legal.

Along with Peter Jackson's fancy film studio, District 9 also gets distributed by TriStar (a subsidiary of Sony Pictures) now that it's been upgraded from Alive in Joburg. This means the movie is getting a pretty decent marketing budget as is evidenced by the elaborate ARG that has been built to virally market it. Alien target posters even made it to Supanova in Australia. The official movie website is as impressive as other top-notch international releases (though not very bandwidth friendly) and there's even a good looking and fun, though simple, flash-based game. There's a bit of a stigma when it comes to games written in flash. I challenge you to load this one up (if you have the bandwidth to spare, 8-10MB ought to do it) and at least give it a look. The control isn't that great and it's quite unforgiving but it definitely raises the bar on what can be expected visually from flash games.

It's great having a film concept with local flavour picked up by a notable Hollywood studio and producer, but it's sad to see that despite the film's roots it's being treated like any other international release. According to the schedule on the official website (which should be Sony's official release schedule) South Africa gets the movie a full two weeks after its release (28 August 2009). We'll get it around the same time as Mexico, Kenya and Nigeria. The US, Australia, New Zealand, Lebanon and Argentina will see it before we do.

Man, it sucks being a minority entertainment consumer base.

World of Warcraft account cancellation nerdrage like a scene from The Exorcist

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:19:23 -0400

In the spirit of Snail's Gamer of the Week column on Limit Break I just had to share this one.

I'm certainly not claiming that "t1hs freekout's fo'r33lz, yo" but regardless of whether it is or not it's chuckleworthy, if a little disturbing.

Talk about the human cost of MMORPGs.

If everything in this video is as it seems then this kid's mother is doing him a favour by forcing him out of WoW.

Community Service: Securing Demigod's Future

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:38:21 -0400

It seems that Demigod is finally in a largely playable state and attention can be shifted from getting the game to work over the Internet to the bugs that remain as well as feature requests. At the end of his latest journal entry, "Demigod nears its second month," Frogboy/Wardell talks about the features in the release candidate of the v1.1 patch and in a later thread he discusses some of the points in greater detail.

Team concede: If it looks like you’re going to lose, your team can vote to concede and end the game so you can go to the next.
Speed debuffs have a minimum move speed now.
Better chat handling for better visibility.
When you sell a minion idol, existing units are destroyed.
Updated computer AI.
Random Demigod selection: Choose Random assassin, random general or just random demigod.
Based on player request, people finishing the game get 40 extra participation points.
Heart of life has been moved to the artifact shop and its cooldown timer has been double. The effect has been increased.
GPG and Stardock are also looking into what causes some people to just disconnect in a game as well as why in pantheon or skirmish some people still just don't connect (it's far better than it was but still not perfect).

In a previous blog, Demigod: Short-term preview, Frogboy/Wardell outlined features that they consider high priority. I'm aggregating that list with the high-priority features mentioned that didn't make it into v1.1, as well as the two friends-list features mentioned in Brad's latest blog post.

High on our list is the handling of replays
Multiple in-game channels (ETA June)
Display of a player's experience rating in connection dialog (ETA June)
Display of a player's disconnect % in connection dialog (ETA June)
Support for Group Skirmishes/Pantheon (ETA July)
We absolutely positively gotta make it a lot easier to get friends in. That is, the current people in your game should be able to be popped up with a hot key and be able to add them in (Target: within next 30 days)
We need to be able to establish groups easily ala Steam or Xfire but within Demigod. I need to be able to call out to them even if they're outside the game to see if any of them want to play a game (Target: within next 30 days)
GPG and Stardock are still discussing/debating what 2 bonus Demigods should be in terms of power and scope (ETA not known, working with GPG on this)
More maps (ETA not known, working with GPG on this)

So there are definitely two "bonus" Demigods in the pipe for those that have been clamouring for more. I'm pretty sure two aren't enough for the DotA-bunnies out there insisting there be 20 or more DGs. Those of us that understand where Demigod's depth comes from will know what it's going to take to introduce two completely unique and balanced Demigods to the game.

The Demigod community over at GameReplays.org has reported on a forum post (which they don't link to) by Frogboy/Wardell that talks about Pantheon tournaments (3 to be exact) with $1000 cash prizes. He also mentions adding clan-based tournaments and open modding but reminds whoever he was replying to that the features are dependant on Gas Powered Games' co-operation.

Refusing to rely only on the promises of features to ensure that Demigod's online player-base remains active, Stardock issued all current Demigod players (whether they play online or not) with a 20% discount coupon for the Impulse store. It seems a little counter-intuitive until you read the part where Stardock will be giving similar coupons to active Demigod players over the course of the next few months. A pity I won't really be able to partake, but I'll write about that later.

For those that are still on the fence regarding whether to get Demigod or not after all this good publicity, Gas Powered Games has given Stardock the release candidate of the Demigod demo as well. Frogboy/Wardell has stated in at least on previous journal that he wanted a multiplayer demo so that prospective players could see for themselves that the multiplayer had been fixed.

Nostalgic Rhythms: Revisiting classic video game music

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:27:41 -0400

Creating the right atmosphere is key to telling memorable stories. As a picture paints a thousand words, so music builds atmosphere in a way words simply can't. Good music can be the difference between a compelling but ultimately forgettable experience and one where a few bars gets you reminscing. The depths (or heights) to which good video game scores move us is attested to by the fact that talented musicians record themselves playing the songs and pet owners teach their Cockatiels to whistle them.

In video games it's about more than the narrative, though (well at least to some). Games have always been about playing and as such music has also been used to augment gameplay by reacting to game events. The simplest implementations are changing the music from the normal background theme to a more dramatic track when a battle is joined. Classic CRPGs like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment from Black Isle Studios and Bioware were among the first to successfully use fluid transitions between tracks depending on the situation your character finds him/herself in.

Left 4 Dead integrates the music directly with the gameplay. Anyone that's played a few campaigns will forever remember the iconic orchestral pieces associated with the coming horde, the vicious witch and the hulking tank.

For this article, however, Left 4 Dead is still to young. This is about music that makes us remember. Bethryn did an article on music in video games entitled Music To My Ears: Epic Game Soundtracks not too long ago. I hope to write something different enough to warrant its own article but I'd also like to respond to it by giving examples of some of my favourite pieces of game music.

While it's come to be expected of CRPGs to have atmospheric music, it has never been their exclusive domain. As has become a hallmark of Blizzard games, StarCraft has amazingly crafted lore. The single-player campaigns of both the original game and the expansion contain a brilliantly told story.

Rather than embedding a simple facsimile of the song, here's a fan shredding to it on his guitar. This is the most epic part of the song and reminds me of saving colonists on Mar Sara by throwing in my lot with the rebel/terrorist group, The Sons of Korhal. It also brings back memories of betraying Kerrigan.

Bethryn's already mentioned Hell March 2 so I thought I'd pay homage to the song that came before. Frank Klepacki's original Hellmarch found such favour with the fans of Red Alert that it was remastered and remixed to be included in Red Alert 2 and Red Alert 3.

There are at least two other theme songs from RTSes that evoke more nostalgia than the classic Hellmarch. Those are the themes from Activision's 1998 remake of Battlezone and the game that put Relic on the map, Homeworld. Unfortunately I couldn't find them on any service that would let me legally stream them.

The main title theme to Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

This is the song played during the baths sequence.

This is the song played during the credits. For your entertainment it is played over a montage of some of the game video.

Prince of Persia games hold a special place in my heart. Jordan Mechner's games, Karateka and the original Prince of Persia for the PC-XT were among my first steps into the hobby. I was too young to be able to analyse the game and realise how amazing Mechner's animation quality was or how well designed the levels were. It immersed me and I simply enjoyed it for what it was without wondering why.

Stuart Chatwood's flowing compositions complemented Jordan Mechner's vision for seamless acrobatic animations. His songs reminded me of a time when games were just games to me. There was no industry, no hype machine. A time before the pleasure of gaming became the business of gaming. Was there ever such a time? The period definitely existed in my head and that's all that matters in the end.

The original Diablo is synonymous with atmospheric. Everything about the game worked for the theme. Visuals, sound effects and music all contributed to an overarching sense of foreboding and horror.

I remember being truly petrified in a game for the first time (Phantasmagoria was released before Diablo but I never got to play it). I also remember direct modem-to-modem gaming.

The main theme to Planescape: Torment

Deionarra's Theme

Annah's Theme

Theme of the mortuary in Planescape: Torment

What is there to say about Planescape: Torment that those that have played it don't already know? For the benefit of those that couldn't and otherwise haven't played it...

Whenever I hear Deionarra's theme I'm filled with an overwhelming sense of loss. Not my own, but hers and The Nameless One's. Within the first few moments of the game it succeeded in making me care about the characters. The more I learnt about them, the more I cared and the more I wanted to know.

Those are the opening lines from William Wordsworth's Lines Written In Early Spring.

When I listen to the songs of my favourite bygone games I remember the late nights I was up playing. I remember good times, happy times, sad times, bad times. I remember connecting to an Internet service for the first time with a dial-up (56k) modem and playing a game with people on the other side of the world. I remember sitting back as my mind was blown, pondering on what can change the nature of a man.

Which scores make you remember? What do you remember?

Demigod multiplayer finally fixed?

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:17:52 -0400

A week after the above post, Stardock released another patch (and the latest to date, at version 1.01.106 on Impulse) which seems to have finally fixed Demigod's multiplayer. In the few games I've played since the patch I've consistently been able to get into 2v2 Skirmishes (the next Pantheon tournament only starts up sometime later today) without too long a wait.

Time will tell if Demigod's community will survive the game's false starts. Stardock and Gas Powered Games definitely seem to have their eyes on the future of the game. With Stardock's zealous marketing support and the timeous delivery of new content and features by GPG, Demigod might just have a fighting chance at being the game it set out to be, as well as becoming a tournament-viable competitive title.

Sony DADC requests interview with ReclaimYourGame community regarding SecuROM

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:43:17 -0400

Robert Hernandez from Sony DADC (the makers/owners of SecuROM) has contacted Reclaim Your Game and requested an interview for the "opportunity to answer some of the claims made on [the] site."

For those that don't want to read a whole article before finding out where they can

Only one question remains: If you could ask Sony DADC anything regarding SecuROM, what would it be?

Sony DADC requests interview with ReclaimYourGame community regarding SecuROM

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:30:21 -0400

Only one question remains: If you could ask Sony DADC anything regarding SecuROM, what would it be?

Stardock's documentary of how it rewrote Demigod's networking code in three weeks

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:02:41 -0400

Below follow parts 1 and 2 of the documentary Stardock shot while performing open heart surgery on the networking code of Demigod in an attempt to fix the multiplayer issues that prevented the game from being the launch day success it should have been.

Part 1 shows the various meetings that were held discussing the problem and deciding who to pull in on the team. Stardock pulled resources from everywhere in the company, including the Elemental (the upcoming Stardock strategy title), WinCustomize, and Impulse teams to try and make Demigod work.

Part 2 shows a batch of interviews conducted by Frogboy/Brad Wardell during the wee hours of the morning with some of the Stardock staff that were working on the new Demigod multiplayer system.

Most of the stuff said in the videos has already been covered in my previous posts on the topic, Piracy of Demigod: The Real Story and From exemplary PR to colossal disaster (and back again) - What happened to Demigod? It is interesting, and I'm sure in many cases it'll be enlightening, to see what Stardock has had to do to recover from some poor initial design and architecture decisions.

I've been waiting for this 'documentary' since Brad Wardell first mentioned it in one of his Demigod Journals. I didn't notice these videos until now since I naturally assumed he would be the one posting them. It turns out Frogboy isn't the only one posting Demigod Journals.

EDIT v0.5: Here's part 3 so long. It shows the Demigod/Impulse team trying to track down a bug that's deleting records from the database it's not supposed to. More interestingly it shows some early work on Elemental, Stardock's next game.

A Primer to Demigod Patch 1.01

Thu, 28 May 2009 20:40:48 -0400

Just some quick news while I'm in-between articles.

Frogboy/Draginol/Brad Wardell posted a log of additional fixes Gas Powered Games have submitted for Quality Assurance (QA) testing on Wednesday.

Fixed chat history and announcement text overlays interference with mouse clicks.
Switched order of data calls after hosting.
Teleportation effect failure handling.
AI
1. Adjustments to caution and hazard detection and avoidance.
2. Adjusted health level flee percentage.
3. Demigods do not use minions when fleeing, may summon minions in combat.
4. Improved teleportation.
5. Increased Demigod planning frequency.
6. Improved item usage when endangered.
7. Tower tag improved.
8. Moving targets in Ability task now properly handled (the famous “Sedna bug”)

Apparently the "Sedna" bug (more commonly known as the "Skill-activation-but-my-DG-won't-do-anything" bug) was isolated by a forumer/forumite and fan bman654. He posted his own fix on 24 May, it was picked up by GPG and rolled into the new patch. Servo, a developer from GPG, tried to explain how it was that they were unable to fix this bug since it was reported in the beta but gave credit where it was due.

Needless to say, if bman654 were to run for any office he would have the unanimous vote of the Demigod player community.

Fans got a preview of what lay ahead in the v1.01 patch on 22 May (last week Friday) with the following promised fixes. These will be included in addition to the new batch of fixes listed above.

Bandwidth used reduced by 35% (more people with marginal connections able to play). This should reduce some of the “stutter” some people run into when they play with someone with a marginal Internet connection.
Updated the way stats are submitted to make stat reporting significantly more robust.
If a player loses connection with another player (or one player with a group of players but not all) only 1 user is disconnected instead of multiple.
Demigod is better at detecting the difference between quitting and a disconnect (no connection dialogs when someone leaves).
Significantly better handling of users who have shaky connections to keep them in game without adversely affecting in game performance.
Favor Points, Achievements, Items stored on server more reliably (thanks to the updated stats system).

The skill activation fix and bandwidth use fix have me really excited. Besides the fact that the skill activation fix was really irritating, the bandwidth use optimisation will dramatically improve my game experience as there's a bunch of us with 128kbps upstream speeds. For those not technically inclined - upload speeds that slow are not even covered by the slowest ADSL spec on Wikipedia and Demigod is very dependent on upload speeds since it uses a peer-to-peer networking system.

Mr Wardell didn't want to make any promises as to when the patch will be made available but did state that it would be put through its paces this week. After releasing the details of the new fixes patch v1.01 will introduce Frogboy said they would test the patch today (Thursday, 28 May) but couldn't say for certain that it would be released today.

He did say that if it's not released on Thursday we shouldn't expect to see it this week. It would seem that releasing a patch on a Friday is hazardous to a game developer and publisher's weekends.

EDITS: Justified text. Typos and some improvements on sentences that seemed to make sense at 1 in the morning.

LAN Parties Live! Demigod Allows Unrestricted Copies on LAN with Single License

Sun, 24 May 2009 12:43:06 -0400

Those that have followed the development of Demigod or of previous Stardock titles may find this as no surprise: Stardock allows the legal piracy of Demigod.

A poorly advertised feature, though I don't know why. The magnitude of the hype you could generate is immense! Imagine telling the writhing masses that you only need one Demigod license for everyone on a LAN to play. They will be queueing up to buy copies! Or more realistically, one dude (or dudette for those that don't recognise the unisex connotation of 'dude') will buy a copy and that person's friends will just mooch off them every LAN. But we all knew that was going to happen anyway. In fact, without this liberating clause in Demigod's user manual I reckon it was more likely that everyone at said hypothetical LAN would simply play a warez copy and no-one would own a legal one.

Of course there's no such thing as legal piracy since software piracy is defined as the breaching of the clauses governing copying and distribution in End User License Agreements. But I got you reading didn't I?

Frogboy mentioned the ability to run a LAN off a single license in one of his daily updates during Demigod's multiplayer teething problems. By 'teething' I mean huge and debilitating, of course. This was on 29 April, 3 weeks after the official launch of Demigod, and in the same post where Frogboy/Draginol/Brad "declared victory in spite of (t3h) Piracy" as misreported by our more illustrious newsmongers.

Unfortunately Stardock doesn't make it particularly easy to make use of this feature. From my experimentation and reading through various threads on the Stardock forum it seems the only truly feasible way to install the game on different machines is using ImpulseAnywhere. This involves downloading a full build of the game at around 2.8GB. And you'll have to do that everytime you install a new patch in-between LANs. That's probably why Demigod's fantastic LAN licensing terms aren't advertised far and wide.

There are many that argue that piracy helps provide exposure for games (a similar argument is made for music as well) and that the PC gaming scene would see even less action than it does now if it weren't for the illegal copying and distribution of games. Here, finally, is a company that recognises that.

Rather than criminalising their customers they listen to them. They enable them (that would be you and I, the common game consumer) to enjoy their game license with their friends over LAN, and thus let their existing customer/fanbase and the game itself do marketing for them.

Now if only they had made it easier to do.

From Exemplary PR to Colossal Disaster (and back again) - What happened to Demigod?

Wed, 20 May 2009 20:16:46 -0400

It began with something game fans hadn't really experienced before. Here was a AAA title that had delivered a poor launch-day performance and the publisher stepped up to the plate, took responsibility for the problems and set about fixing them. On top of that the CEO of the publisher provided daily updates on the status of the issue(s).

The sheer excellence of the service kept the fans appeased for awhile. For quite a while, in fact. All the transparency, honesty and accountability in the world can't keep unhappy customers placated forever though. So what had to go wrong with Demigod for possibly the best PR effort in gaming history to run out of juice?

On Monday morning (EDT) Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) published a massive statement on his blog entitled, Demigod: So what the hell happened?. Kotaku picked up on it earlier yesterday (20 May 2009).

For those not in the know, a summary of the woes that befell Demigod.

Gamestop "breaks the street date" (Frogboy lingo) of Demigod by selling it on 9 April already instead of waiting until 14 April. The release-day server infrastructure isn't ready and it's Easter weekend. Staff are called back from their Easter break to help deal with the problem.
Demigod torrents are released onto trackers and by release day around 85% of players are using a warez copy (i.e. 85% of the users of Demigod pirated the game).
An innocuous HTTP request that checks for updates brings Stardock's server infrastructure to it's knees. It's so bad some people struggle to even get in the game because it sits and waits for a response from the server. Launch day is a disaster.
A patch shuffles (most) licensed users over onto a separate server infrastructure as well as disables the HTTP request at launch. This improves the situation dramatically.

It turns out, however, that there were some fundamental problems with the multiplayer matchmaking system provided by ImpulseReactor. This was compounded by bugs and perceived imbalances in Demigod itself. A particularly debilitating bug worth mentioning is the one where your Demigod will stop whatever it was doing when you activate an ability and then not return to the task when it's done casting the ability. Together with a bug that leaves a Demigod totally unresponsive until it moves, this allows another Demigod that you are busy ganking to get away while you scream at your monitor to make your mouse clicks do something.

All this started receiving mention on the Demigod forums in the first few weeks after launch, not to mention features like a replay system, a friends system that integrates better into the game, a better in-game chat system, a bettter lobby. Ke5trel on the Demigod forums put together a post that'll put any effort I make to summarise all the feature requests to shame. For four weeks (Frogboy counts three, but I count four) the multiplayer issues got all the attention.

I could find only one or two things Frogboy might have done wrong as ad-hoc community manager for the Demigod multiplayer debacle. The biggest by far is that he gave false hope by saying that the problem would be resolved by a certain date. His assessment was made with the information at hand and with the understanding of the problem that Stardock had at the time. As Stardock came to better understand the problem, what became known as the "Be-all End-all Multiplayer Fix" on the forum was delayed more and more, jading customers that had hoped on a fix by the second week after launch.

During the week leading up to the eventual major multiplayer patch which was released late on Thursday 15 May (EDT), it became evident that players were growing increasingly impatient. It felt like posts were generally more negative and that there were far more and far more vocal unhappy players posting. The unhappiest were those whose games were working before a patch and who then couldn't get into an online match after a patch.

This just goes to show that no matter how good your customer service is or how transparent you are, when you keep your customers waiting too long or if patches degrade performance even the most tolerant start getting impatient. They get to a point where they no longer want to hear promises, they want to see results.

Stardock managed to still the growing volume of the grumbles when they released the major patch in preperation of the European retail release (which didn't quite happen as advertised, as I wrote previously). There are still some very unhappy people that either still can't play the game, or were able to play online once upon a time and now no longer can. According to Wardell those players are in the 5% minority, however. If the general tone of the responses are anything to go by, Stardock has managed to turn around an increasingly negative sentiment into a positive one reminiscent of the first daily update blogs.

Digital killed the retail star

Sun, 17 May 2009 19:24:33 -0400

There's no doubt about it, Steam managed to change very entrenched game consumer paradigms. Rather than walking out of a store with a CD (yeah, games were still released on CD back then) or DVD in a crappy DVD case (the move from real boxes and manuals to plastic A5 cases and a brochure-sized sheet with the key on it was already in full swing), Valve had somehow convinced gamers that all they needed were the game files, delivered over the Internet.

Discs (and disks, once upon a time) in boxes are just a distribution mechanism after all, and people other than publishers were beginning to understand that. Or maybe Valve's relentless marketing made us understand that. It's difficult to tell who's idea it was. Was Valve responding to consumer demand or had they developed a solution and then tried to explain the problem to everyone? The fact that Valve blinded most consumers to the fact that Steam turned any normal game release into Software-as-a-Service is a topic for another rant.

Demigod's retail release date has been postponed another week in many parts of the world. The international retail release date of Demigod was set to be 15 May 2009 (this past Friday), but Atari seems to have told local distributors to only expect to release the game this coming Friday (22 May 2009). This without an official statement from either Atari or Stardock except for a brief mention in Frogboy/Draginol/Brad Wardell's Demigod Journals.

If I can't get a game off Impulse, I'm going to Steam. I like stores, but I'm really lazy.

While it turned out that video didn't kill the radio star it's difficult to envision retail surviving in an age where consumers can buy straight from the producers. Perhaps a new supply chain will emerge? After all, even the largest publishers need distributors to handle local (and localised) advertising for them. But what will the effect be on the industry globally?

Oh, and my apologies to The Buggles (even though it was the Presidents of the United States of America version playing in my head as I wrote this).

Piracy of Demigod - The Real Story™

Sun, 10 May 2009 21:01:23 -0400

Of the games that are conducive to tracking the number of pirate copies in circulation, there are precious few of their developers and/or publishers that have been willing to share their statistics. When 2D Boy reported a 90% (later amended to 82%) piracy rate of World of Goo and Stardock indicated similar numbers on Demigod a few months later it caused quite a stir.

Gamestop released Demigod the week prior to the scheduled date. Make of that what you will.

Stardock's server infrastructure that provided the multiplayer match-making system took a hammering on the first days of release (as can be expected with multiplayer-centric games). Brad Wardell (a.k.a. Frogboy a.k.a. Draginol), CEO of Stardock, reported that the effect of the sheer number of pirates connecting to their servers caught them completely by surprise. His blog post and its subsequent syndication onto various news sites generated a few general comment archetypes.

"They didn't include any DRM, what did they think was going to happen? / They had it coming."
"Thanks, pirates, for making the case for DRM."
"Piracy is killing PC gaming and this proves why."
"Thanks, pirates, for ruining the game experience for legit players."

This was a complete misunderstanding of what was happening. You could not play a multiplayer Demigod game via Stardock's servers without a valid license key. You could also not update your game via Impulse without said key.

Frogboy/Draginol summed it up well in his Day 2 Status Report:

Part of the problem is that so few of our news-mongers actually picked up the clarifications and updates on the story. Most people just ran with the post that briefly outlined the issue and then maybe they picked up on Demigod: So much for piracy.

How to get 25% off on Demigod before Monday (11 May 2009)

Fri, 08 May 2009 15:23:01 -0400

I've been thinking... (to quote Ill Niño in this case)

I was planning for my first real post to be an article on the launch and multiplayer match-making issues. You know, to set the record straight because there's still a lot of people out there that read (and sometimes write!) the articles and jump to all sorts of incorrect conclusions.

Unfortunately the news I wanted to post after said planned first post expires fairly soon, so I thought it'd be better to re-organise and crank this out first.

Now dear reader, read on!

ClayMeow at the Overclocker's Club posted a pretty good summary of Frogboy/Draginol/Brad Wardell's recent blog post on Stardock's plans to fix what is broken and improve what isn't in Demigod. ClayMeow lists the eight points concisely and I think number seven on the list (which is actually number eight, but you'll have to read the piece to understand) deserves as much exposure as it can get.

"7. Stardock is showing its appreciation for everyone's patience by providing a coupon to everyone who has bought Demigod (up to May 10th) that will let them purchase a second compy (sic) of the game for 50% off. Obviously, it is hoping that this will help players bring their friends on board, thus expanding the community even further. But I can't help to wonder if Stardock would have improved relations a little by making the coupon 50% off the next purchase of ANY Stardock game rather than limiting it to a game people already bought. Questionable tactic, but I guess it's better than nothing."

I'm probably going to come off as a fanboi now but I think "better than nothing" and "questionable tactic" are pretty cynical, pessimistic ways of looking at the concession/gesture. Yes, Brad Wardell has made it obvious that he understands that Demigod's success hinges on its multiplayer and it's also pretty obvious that the concession is meant to double as a marketing effort. But where have you heard of any game developer or publisher giving you or a friend 50% off due to the game's multiplayer match-making teething problems?

If you haven't picked up a copy yet, the coupon available up to and including 10 May is a perfect excuse if you and a buddy want to pick up a copy and split the savings. Otherwise you could always suck up to someone you know that already has a copy and try to get their coupon when they're issued.

Genesis

Fri, 08 May 2009 11:59:27 -0400

When a calf is born they don't leap from the womb steady on their feet. They stumble about, fall over, get back up and then do it all over again until they figure out how to walk. That's the image that springs to mind when I think of Demigod.

I have at least two articles in mind that I've wanted to write for a week now, and after discovering Sol's posts on the Demigod forums as well as right here on Hellforge I figured that this is the perfect place and opportunity to publish what I've wanted to write.

Stay tuned for my first real Demigod post (I don't feel this one counts). It shouldn't take too long to get it into acceptable shape for posting.