Blog

Soul Calibur 5: First Impressions

2012-02-04T23:27:58Z

I didn't follow the development of Soul Calibur 5 at all. I got the game and played it one evening so far, so I'm coming at this fresh. I thought I'd give my first impressions.

Overall, I like the game. It's fun, and it's simplified in a good way. So when I give you this long list of complaints, keep in mind I would generally recommend the game.

Button Config

Yeah, button config. Yes it matters. And it's the "wrong way." It's the bad way where you have to scroll through a list to change anything, and know the names of which buttons are which on your controller, instead of the good way where you press the button you want. This is a very real concern for running events, as it slows down events for no good reason. It's absolutely *embarrassing* that any company would release a fighting game in 2012 with the bad kind of button config. Seriously Namco, never ever do this again.

By the way, even though there are several default configs, none of them match what you'd want on the MadCatz TE stick, which is the standard. Have fun setting your kick button before every match (as you scroll through a list to do it). Letter grade on this feature: F.

Online

For some reason, it seems to default to searching for users with a good ping who in the "other" region, meaning they are NOT in North or South America, or Europe, Asia, or Japan? Wtf? I don't know, every time I start up the online I set this to North America. Another case of weirdo defaults, I guess.

After playing someone online, I think it's like only 2 clicks to get another opponent. This is great! I got an endless stream of a opponents who couldn't beat my Mitsurugi, without any clicking around in between matches.

As for the netcode, you know the thing you care tons about, it seemed great? I forgot that I wasn't playing locally, really, it all just worked. There was no

An Evening with Jane McGonigal

2012-02-01T22:39:13Z

Jane McGonigal spoke last night as part of the California Academy of Sciences lecture series in San Francisco, at the packed Herbst Theater. Come along on my journey of contempt and redemption.

Expectations

My expectations of this presentation were extremely low. I remember her GDC presentation several years ago on the top 10 findings in games that year that covered such breakthroughs as some players "playing to win" and how they actually seek an even playfield of fair competition rather than wanting to buy in-game advantages. Another involved a bunch of data showing that a huge percentage of players spend a huge percentage of time playing World of Warcraft alone. It even used the phrase "together alone" as opposed to the phrase "alone together" that I used in my infamous article. Since so much of that presentation was rehashes of my own articles from YEARS earlier, I had to wonder what Jane is really bringing to the table here.

The Format

Rather than a lecture, the format here was actually an informal interview, so the host and Dr. McGonigal sat on stage with a coffee table between them. I think this format is good, and allows information to flow more freely than in a prepared lecture. There is more room for adaptation, for tailoring answers to go with the flow the conversation, and for the speaker to let their personality come through a bit more.

The host opened by having Jane discuss her controversial statements that the world needs to spend more hours gaming. She said that currently the world spends 7 billion hours (per year? I forget) gaming, and that she thinks it should be more like 21 billion hours. This is a delicate subject because it's so easily taken out of context and misunderstood. I think Jane was only able to explain part of why she believed this in her actual answer to this question, and the rest of why she believes it wasn't clear until much later. The first clarification is that she doesn't mean people who play games now should play them more, but rather than more people should play games. She would like everyone on Earth to play an hour a day of something. She includes even playing a word game on your phone while on the bus, so this isn't all about sweating bullets in Starcraft matches, or whatever. Ok, but why should people play an hour a day?

A Waste of Time

What follows was painful and boring. There was some promise in the initial part of the answer to the above question. The answer is that gaming brings about all sorts of positive emotions. She then listed the 10 positive emotions that gaming has been shown to elicit, from gaming research. Joy, awe, wonder, love, satisfaction, and so on. At this point I would have expected some sort of support for this, like some examples so we know what she's talking about. Instead, a lot of time was spent on this terrible "massively multiplayer thumb wrestling game,"

This Week in Flash Dueling!

2012-01-24T20:47:15Z

I see the guys at Penny Arcade liked Flash Duel 2nd Edition. Gabe says "it's a rad game." Will Tycho redeem himself in a rematch though? Maybe Tycho should play as the Dragon or something, lol.

Also, Rodney at Watch It Played is doing a series on Flash Duel 2nd Edition. His first episode is up where he covers the game's Simple Mode (the tutorial mode before you get to the character abilities). He does an awesome job of covering several rules nuances and showing how it all works. Here's Episode 1:

I'm really looking forward to the rest of this! I also admire what Rodney is doing in general, by the way. Sometimes in games (both the video game kind and the board game kind) a "review" is so shallow (not the favorable reviews of my games though of course, those are well-researched and glorious!). A reviewer often doesn't have time to really get into the details and depth of a game. The Watch It Played series is going a different route, and it gives full explanations of exactly how a game works, then shows that game being played right in front of you. A "review" isn't really necessary because it becomes evident what is good about the game (or what is bad), and you'll see if those good points match your tastes. Check out other WatchItPlayed stuff on Youtube for other games, I found it very helpful personally. And I can't wait to see Flash Duel in 2v2 mode or against the Dragon on WatchItPlayed!

Oh yeah, if you wanted to comment on this on Boardgamegeek.com, here's the thread about it. And here's another thread about people's favorite characters in Flash Duel.

UI Design in Apple iBooks Author

2012-01-20T20:26:53Z

Apple recently announced a big push into education, expanding iTunes U's already awesome selection of free online University classes, and adding K-12 as well. Adding a new textbook section, with a whole bunch of features specifically for text books, such as note taking, integrated quizes, and the ability to automatically create flash card tests for yourself. These textbooks have several interactive elements: such as pictures you can zoom to take up the whole page, or swipe across to see changes over time in a diagram, custom javascript widgets right inside the book, and so on.

The thing that interested me most is the authoring tool though. There's a new program called iBooks Author that lets anyone create these books, test them on your own iPad (wow!), and put them up on iTunes for free or for sale. (Note: there was some PR fumble where people though Apple owned your content, but they don't. You are free to publish your content anywhere else too.) Anyway, pretty sweet.

The iBooks Author program was immediately accessible/understandable to me because the UI is basically the same as iWork programs such as Pages. The same buttons for inserting shapes or tables, working with text, working with graphics and so on. It has a few extra buttons for inserting widgets and publishing.

The whole reason I'm writing this is actually specifically the portrait/landscape mode feature. This is the very FIRST thing that I thought of regarding this authoring tool. How the hell are they going to handle that? Doing a layout when you know a fixed screen size/ratio is one thing, but how the hell is this authoring tool going to handle when you turn the iPad sideways? All programs/books do handle that, but this seems like a big problem. All the iBooks I've read before were just plain text, so it's only Apple's own UI that changes when you rotate a book, then the author's text gets reflowed to fit the page, no big deal. These textbooks can have very complicated page layout though, with graphics and text that have to be just in the right place to make it look right.

What's worse is that if you rotated a layout sideways, it wouldn't even fit the same number of words anymore. It would be possible for some words to get cut off when rotating due to how all the images fit in portrait vs. landscape, and now it would mess up all the rest of the layouts in the entire book. You really need to layout the entire book twice, once for portrait and once for landscape. That is decidedly un-Apple, especially if it's going to be in a consumer-level tool. Imagine if your graphic is in on page 6 of one layout, but page 7 in another, and the annoyance and frustration of laying everything out twice. What the heck are they going to do here?

I watched the official Apple video of the event where they announced this stuff. All these hassles I was puzzling about, the presenter swept aside in two sentences. He explained that sometimes you want to get right down to the text, and focus on that rather than all these extras. Viewing a book in landscape mode gives full page layout with pics, movies, and interactive elements as integrated parts of that layout. But turning the iPad sideways into portrait mode automatically changes the formatting, and extracts all those non-text elements and puts them in a labeled column to the left. You can touch any of them to make them full screen, then close them when you're done to return to rest of the book. And this view is generated automatically by the authoring tool, so book-creators only actually have to worry about designing the page layout mode (landscape). You get the portrait mode "for free."

I tried it out with one of the new texbooks on my iPad, and it works well, as promised. It makes sense. The reason I mention this is I thought it was an interesting example of lateral thinking--of solving a different problem rather than the one you're stuck on. I was imagining this whole "you have to layout every book twice, how do make a good authoring UI for that?" type of problem. But that's a sucky problem to have to solve. A simpler solution is to not have the problem in the first place.

I think that comes up in game design quite a bit. Many times I've struggled with the wording of a card in a card game where there thing it's trying to do doesn't fit so easily into the system. Sometimes we come up with a good wording. Sometimes we sort of can't and say we'll come back to it, then later realize that card should be doing a different thing entirely anyway, which just happens to be easier to write text for! So you know, if you're stuck on something, maybe come back at it from a new angle.

Flash Duel Update

2012-01-05T22:40:54Z

I just wanted to let you guys know that all ability cards in Flash Duel 2nd Edition are up in the gallery now. That's all 20 characters plus the Dragon. You can get a sneak peak at the 10 new characters in the upcoming Puzzle Strike and Yomi expansions, because all three games have the same characters.

Also, shipping costs to Canada are down slightly, so Flash Duel (from www.sirlingames.com) costs $8 shipping instead of $10. I think it was even $20 originally, so there's been a lot of progress there. Also, heavier orders to Canada that were recently $20 in shipping are down to $15.

Here's another review of the game, while we're at it.

I hope you guys are enjoying all the modes. I'm kind of curious which modes people like the most, and if it's still the 1v1 mode.

Star Wars Players Banned for Dancing

2012-01-04T20:33:42Z

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you celebrated, but not by dancing in the Star Wars MMO, as that got a lot of people banned. Doing the "group dance" command by typing /getdown apparently messes up enemies targeting you. You get to be basically invulnerable.

It's kind of mindblowing that a developer would ban people for an exploit like this. I thought we've been around the block over and over and over and over on such things. Fix the problem, and don't BAN people for taking advantage of advantageous properties in the game. I mean really. BioWare has instituted this squishy rule: "dancing is currently not permitted outside of special Dance Zones." Sounds kind of like living in a dictatorship, which I guess it is, but that's just really eerie. What are the special Dance Zones? I think it means "dont' do this in combat," but I honestly don't know. How about a hard coded rule that doesn't make me guess if I'm doing ban-worthy dancing?

If fixing the problem is some hard thing, then remove dancing entirely for a brief time, or disable the /getdown command. I'm disappointed that banning players was the response here.

UPDATE: BioWare says that the e-mails telling people they were banned were fake e-mails. If so, the fake e-mails skirt dangerously close to what seems standard practice in MMOs, but maybe BioWare is off the hook, if they just fix the dancing thing.

Puzzle Cake

2011-12-15T02:57:33Z

Ha, check this out! TheFederalist posted this on the fantasystrike.com forums. He says it goes great with a tall glass of Gemonade:

"The characters and chips are edible gumpaste and that's a chubby little sugar Setsuki (my favorite character) on top, shuriken and all. The gems are Jello squares. The custom chip she's holding is "It's My Birthday (red, fist): All players reveal their hands and you take each of their highest [gem] into your hand."

Shameless plug for the creator, for all you nerds in the NorCal vicinity:

http://dreamitcupcakes.webs.com/contactus.htm

They'll make pretty much any decoration you want, and in a delightful exotic flavor (above cake is actually vanilla almond cream)."

Flash Duel 2nd Edition Reviews Are In!

2011-12-14T19:39:55Z

Here's two reviews of Flash Duel 2nd Edition. Looks like it's a hit! First up, Tom Vasel from the Dice Tower:

Somewhere in there, Tom said there's 16 characters in the box. There's actually 20 characters plus the Dragon!

And then there' Marco Arnaudo from 2d6.org. He gives long explanation of the workings of the game, but I'll link you to the actual opinion part:

Maybe my "too much value" initiative for Flash Duel 2nd Edition is paying off, since it's getting such good reviews! It's in stock right now and ready to ship right away. You can also look for it at your local game stores. You can also discuss the game (and rate it, explain your delight, etc) at the boardgamegeek.com entry.

Tom Vasel Reviews Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack

2011-12-14T04:02:51Z

Here's what Tom Vasel has to say about the Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack:

It's in stock now, and there's still a couple weeks left of the base game being on sale for $10 off. You can also look for it at your local game stores.

Special Thanks to Long Vo for character art in the base set and Conor "BT" Town for the great 8-bit illustrations on the chip screens!

Yomi Season 2 Ends, Season 3 Begins

2011-12-08T22:05:09Z

I posted here a while ago about the Season 1 results for Yomi, and how the ranking system works. While Puzzle Strike is also available on fantasystrike.com and now has all TWENTY characters with ranked matches, this post is about Yomi's ranking stats.

Season 2 just ended, and these results are in ranked matches from June 20th to December 6th, 2011.

DeGrey	786 / 1430	55.0%
Midori	712 / 1329	53.5%
Argagarg651 / 1220	53.4%
Rook	836 / 1613	51.8%
Geiger	702 / 1405	50.0%
Grave	833 / 1672	49.8%
Lum	482 / 992	48.6%
Setsuki	1066 / 2253	47.3%
Valerie	706 / 1483	47.6%
Jaina	920 / 1986	46.3%

Again, the balance has held up remarkably well, and is closer than any known fighting game. In season 1, the surprise was that Midori was claimed to be the worst, yet he had the highest win rate in the end. DeGrey is the other character clamed to be worst, and this time he posted the highest win rate, with Midori at #2. It's important to keep some perspective though, as these are razor thin differences anyway.

Now let's look at those stats ranked by popularity instead by win-rate:

Setsuki	1066 / 2253	47.3%
Jaina	920 / 1986	46.3%
Grave	833 / 1672	49.8%
Rook		836 / 1613	51.8%
Valerie	706 / 1483	47.6%
DeGrey	786 / 1430	55.0%
Geiger	702 / 1405	50.0%
Midori	712 / 1329	53.5%
Argagarg	651 / 1220	53.4%
Lum		482 / 992	48.6%

Just like in season 1, Setsuki is the most popular and has the worst win-rate. All those noobs dragging down the stats! Jaina has the same effect. She's believed to be very strong, though she's showing the same signs, given that she's #2 in popularity yet last in win-rate. I think her last place here will surprise to a lot of people. Lum is still hard and still less popular, Midori is still strong but less popular. Characters shuffled around the win-rate list a fair bit, which is what we'd expect for a game where characters are very close in power level.

Some people correctly pointed out last time that the matchmaking system would make even really imbalanced characters appear 50-50. While that's true, it's only true for a perfect matchmaking system. Ours is so far from perfect right now, that it hardly matters. You're basically matched with whoever most of the time. Speaking of that, how about we make it a whole lot easier to get a match? Read on....

Best of 3 Matches vs. Best of 1 Matches

Season 2 was a best of 3 format, meaning when you quckmatch, you play more than one game until someone has two wins total. Season 3 will revert back to best of 1 format (just one game), because the players are asking for that change, and the data supports it.

One thing in favor of best of 3 matches is that the more games you play in a match, the more fair the result is (less swings from randomness.) During the Dreamhack Starcraft 2 tournament, they mentioned that 85% of best of 5 matches were won by the player who won the first game. I thought that was pretty interesting. Here is Yomi, we'd expect the best of 3 format to magnify any character imbalances...but it didn't. It's a tight spread either way.

Another effect we'd expect is that characters who have higher variance in their gameplay (like Makoto in Street Fighter 3s) would do "unfairly" good in a best of 1 format. Best of 3 would "fix" that by making them get lucky twice to win a match. DeGrey is such a character, and yet he managed to top the win rates in best of 3 anyway while not topping them in the best of 1 season!

Really all that stuff about fairness of best of 1 vs best of 3 doesn't add up to much. In both formats, the best players are rising to the top and the character balance is holding. But there is something that matters A LOT. And that's the length of time that a match takes. There were fewer quickmatches this season, even correcting for it being shorter than season1. Many players complained that they would use quickmatch more if only it was a shorter time commitment. Well now it is. Season 3 started last night, and it's best of 1 format. Matches are fast and quickmatch will be more popular.

Gold Testing

Quickmatches also give you "gold" now. The exact amounts are being adjusted and the gain rate is way high right now just for testing purposes. All this gold is just fake anyway and it will be completely reset when this (short) season ends when we go to an actual launch. At that point, the gold will be an option for you to buy decks without using real money. You will also be able to buy decks directly, you'll be able to subscribe to unlock all characters in all games, and there will always be two different free characters available to everyone each week.

Fantasystrike.com

The site itself has going through a lot of upgrades recently. It now has much more "real" art for headers and interface. The forums have been completely upgraded recently as well. We've added the ability to record and playback matches. There will be another round of major graphical upgrades to the "play" page--the place where you quickmatch, see lists of available matches and so on. This will also include graphical upgrades to the pre-match "versus" screen, profile pages, and various popup windows. I'm really looking forward to this, and to your continued support after our launch that will allow us to improve the site more and more, keep the games updated, and to add new games like Flash Duel and our customizable card game someday. Oh by the way, Flash Duel is now in stock and ships starting tomorrow and monday, depending on when you ordered!

Oh, and congratulations to friiik, the Yomi Season 2 winner. Note that he didn't *just* place #1 on the leaderboard, but also dominated in tournaments. Top skills!