Brad Wardell of Stardock has recently issued a “Gamer’s Bill of Rights“, and what his goals are with it and who he wants to get involved:

The Gamer’s Bill of Rights

• 1. Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.
• 2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
• 3. Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.
• 4. Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
• 5. Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.
• 6. Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.
• 7. Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
• 8. Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
• 9. Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
• 10. Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

His goal is to get publishers and developers to sign this agreement to protect those buying PC games and have the same level of quality assurance as consoles offer. We’re already a few steps there with some publishers, but we still have a way to go, and a little stamp on a box of a publisher/developer’s game would go a long way.

• 1. Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.
• 5. Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.

These two are a huge problem with PC gaming. Unfortunatly, I cannot afford a beast gaming rig, so when new games come out, the only thing I have to go by are specs, and I wish I didn’t plunk down $50 on Bioshock and Unreal Tournament 3 to find out that minimum specs mean nothing other than, “Some shit will show up on the screen.” While I disagree with gamers being able to return games that don’t work (too abusive), downloadable demos would alleviate these problems, as well as protect the gamer (slightly) from a bomb of a game.

• 2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.

I think this goes without saying. Massive games require a large budget and time, and when the publisher starts breathing down the devs neck’s, sometimes shit gets pulled. I’m lookin’ at you, MMOs.

• 3. Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.

In a world where we have downloadable live content and expansions, most games want to remain viable for months after the release. Breathing new life into a game via these methods is much more cost-effective than building a game from scratch, but to require updates after a game’s release is a bit much, unless we’re referring to “making sure the game runs on system updates.” /shrug

• 4. Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
• 6. Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.
• 8. Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.

These are the “no shit” ones, but they still happen. Paying $49.99-$59.99 for a Triple-A PC game does not ensure that you’ll have to download extra crap to play the game, and while I don’t know of any games that install controversial software without consent, that sounds like a pretty big red flag. Maybe this would happen more often once the other requirements in this list were met (like Steam, but another distribution system that required something other than a client download).
Gamers treated like pirates? There are many methods of pirate-proofing games that do nothing but to piss off people who have sunk their cash into them. It was cool to know that when I uninstalled/reinstalled my copy of Bioshock that wouldn’t run that I could only do it three more times before I lost access to my game.

• 7. Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
• 10. Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

These are both a great step in the direction towards a digital world. CDs are a thing of the past, and I feel like a fucking badass caveman with my binder of games. Steam’s service alleviates these problems, and I gotta say it’s awesome innovation in gaming distribution. Unfortunately, one of Steam’s downsides is…

9. Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.

…to have to be connected to the internet to play a single-player game. While I’m almost always connected, if I want to fire up a game of Half-Life 2, I should be able to validate my account some how to do it.

Good direction and requirements? What do you think?

Lurking on Brenda Brathwaite’s game design blog for quite sometime, I somehow missed she was writing a book! Apparently, her and Ian Schreiber’s book, Challenges for Game Designers, is now available on Amazon for a mere $16. Having over 300 game design challenges, I think this will definitely be worth investing in, as I crack out the dice and pencils and get back into some design roots. This also sounds like a fun party idea, or maybe my friends are just backseat-designer nerds awesome!

So, the World of Warcraft trailer for the expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was released a few days ago. I promptly downloaded and began to feel worthless about my skills as a 3D artist in my puddle of awe and drool.
Currently in the middle of WoW and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR), I’ve been leaning towards WAR lately after playing the open beta. But after watching the WOTLK trailer, it had me second-guessing my decision.

But wait. I always drool over Blizzard cinematics. But the feel of the game isn’t the same as these trailers; if I pick up WOTLK, it would NOT feel the same as this trailer, and neither did The Burning Crusade feel like the trailer (complete with Illidan screaming at me). Why the disconnect? For me, the Warcraft III game felt the same as the cinematics. WHY? The WAR cinematics FEEL like the Warhammer (beta). WHY? I’m just listing and brainstorming some possible reasons why there’s a disconnect between WoW trailers and game, but not Blizzard’s other games, such as WC3, and some comparisons to another high-fantasy MMO, Warhammer.

Graphics
Maybe the disconnect is with the difference in visual quality. We’ve all seen beautiful trailers that look nothing like the terrible game they’re portraying. Both WC3 and WoW have high-poly and extreme special effects, and while WoW cinematics are of “higher quality” the difference between the two for this purpose is neglible (imo), while the difference between actual in-game graphics are more significant. World of Warcraft is a much prettier game, while both using the new Blizzard style of milking the hell out of textures and particle effects for a system-cheap way of creating great in-game visuals.

So the difference between Warcraft 3’s gameplay and cinematics is greater than World of Warcraft’s gameplay and cinematics. Why is there less of a gap in how the game FEELS, though? This leads me to believe that even if the cinematics are beautiful, and significantly better than in-game visuals, it does not mean anything, really. Even having real-time gameplay that looked like a Blizzard cinematic would not promise a similar gaming experience.

Scratch off graphics.

Genre
I’ve been comparing WC3, a real-time strategy game, with World of Warcraft, the powerhouse MMO of the last four years. Maybe transfering the feelings of a cinematic into an MMO is just harder; it’s the ultimate dilemma for MMO game designers. How do you make a character feel important and allow them to change the world? How do you allow this ability for ALL players? Whereas, take WC3, and the player is in command of their entire army. The power of the entire Orcish force at your fingertips!

Above is a trailer from Warcraft III, when the fallen prince, Arthas, returns from being corrupted by the Lich King and takes the throne of Lordaeron from his father. Same guy from WOTLK trailer, actually. Both of these cinematics feature the same character, same feel, same style, and both freaking awesome. When I play WC3, I feel the same tingly, goosebumped feeling as watching this, and while goosebumped by the WOTLK trailer, playing WoW leaves me feeling something different. I WANT TO KNOW WHY.

Both of these cinematics are focusing on the player. The player feels like they’re important; I feel like I’m spying on Arthas going insane in the Northrend, or someone in the court watching the murder of King Tyrannus. I feel important and if this cinematic is made FOR me. As mentioned above, this importance can be conveyed in a RTS setting, but much harder in an MMO one. Maybe this is a reason for the disconnect?

But wait, take Mythic’s Warhammer MMO. They conveyed the same feeling, but how?

They did not take the “personal” approach that Blizzard does. While I do feel like I’m there, in the middle of this battlefield, observing and even participating in the carnage, I do not feel like this is “for” me. But this is okay; while it’s not a personal importance, it’s a team game, and I do feel like I’m rooting for my side (Chaos, obviously) in this cinematic. And, from what I gathered from my short time playing the beta, this feeling is conveyed in gameplay as well. And the whole focus of WAR is the guild. I do not feel individual importance, but I do want to wave my guild’s standard in both the cinematic and gameplay.

I conclude the genre of the game, while does need a cinematic tailored for that specific style of game, whether RTS, MMO, or team PVP oriented MMO, does not confirm a disconnect. You CAN make a cinematic for a game like World of Warcraft that conveys the gameplay, but you cannot “individualize” a cinematic while not doing it in game.

Storytelling
Storytelling in MMOs is much harder than in an RTS. Strategy games are most of the time linear, single-player narratives where the storyteller has full control over what the player experiences, and the gameplay in MMOs are most often disconnected from actual storytelling. When Illidan was screaming at me in The Burning Crusade cinematic, why do I care? I never raided enough to get to Black Temple to see him, as most players never saw him either. Sure, there’s an overarching storyline going on in WoW, but the things non-hardcore players do is neglible compared to the effect of the single-player experiencing all the story in a RTS.

I think this is the same conclusion as the genre; The cinematics have to be tailored for the gameplay.

Gameplay?
World of Warcraft feels like too much of a game. When playing Warcraft III or other MMOs such as Everquest, I never really thought I was playing a game. I was too engrossed in the virtual world, becoming my character and just be completely enveloped by the experience. I was wizard, droppin’ Ice Comets on monsters threatening Neriak. WoW, with all the add-ons, and messages popping up, telling me, “FROST NOVA COMING IN 5 SECONDS, BACK OUT”, makes me realize I’m playing a game. Everquest, on the other hand, told me nothing. I didn’t even know what half the buffs did because they hid things from me. Now I’m starting to miss it.

Maybe immersion also has an affect on this disconnect.
——-

This has been something I’ve been thinking about for awhile, and this post is pretty disjointed, but I think there are some points in there somewhere. Maybe I’ll clean it up a bit sometime; I think this has potential to be a good paper, maybe, if I was a better writer.

My point is why does a company such as Blizzard create cinematics that are so removed from the actual game? Keep the cinematics, make World of Warcraft FEEL like those cinematics! While focusing on mainly World of Warcraft’s failure in this disconnect, this can be applied to other games. Game developers, when a player watches your cinematics and trailers, transfer that same emotional response INTO the game!

What’re your thoughts? Comment!

Wow, is all I gotsta say.

Only thing I’ve heard about SC4 was that Darth Vadar and Yoda were in it, which kind of left me in a state of, “Oh, well, that’s cool, but what? Why?” I guess I approve now, since it means I can fight in a star destroyer hanging bay. Isn’t that every little boy’s dream?

And this character creator is awesome; I didn’t even know SC4 had this, most likely due to me avoiding gaming news lately to not be pressured to buy (and decide on) a Next-Gen system. But man, I guessed all those characters (minus some X-Men/DC chars) and they look awesome.

Mario scares the piss out of me.

When I played world of Warcraft, me and my roommates played on an Role-playing PVP (RPPVP) server, which means that 5% of the players are hardcore roleplayers.

The other 95% hate roleplayers and kill them.

Touching two topics briefly that will eventually get their own posts (both roleplaying and PVP), I’ll mention them  briefly in the context here. I don’t understand roleplayers, but if they can recapture the awe and immersion I’ve felt when I first touched games like EQ, EQ and even WoW through a noob-lense, great for them. And while I’m all about freedom, in an MMO setting, this usually means ganktards. I’d love the option to settle a heated score with my sworn nemesis out in an open field of battle, as our fates cross paths, leaving only one bloodied and alive. As epic as that sounds, it usually winds up being, “Oh cool, someone 35 levels higher than me and his friends just bent me over when I was killing some gnolls at half-health.” The nemesis thing also reminds me of another good post in the making (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, BILLJOHN).

Like I said, more on my ideas on RP and PVP in a later post.

Where was I? So anyways, [fuck, I'm going to give a teaser for yet another post] the girlfriend has been trying out Everquest 2 for the past few weeks and I want her to check out WoW to give that a go.. I think she’ll like it more, but we’ll see. So, I’m at Will’s house and he’s showing me his pimp warlock and I told him of my plan to make a character with the girlfriend and level it up along side her to play with her. She levels slow, as she’s a new player, enjoys doing quests, reading stories, picks flowers, etc., so I figure I can easily always catch up to her in a shorter amount of time, effectively throttling my time playing (which is a good thing right now for me).

Anyways, fuck, this post is supposed to be about THIS.

I make a character to play with her and I’m thinking of a name to use. I’ve already used the appropriate names on other characters (Sycophant, Pulse) and the other names I use just wouldn’t fit for an Orc Warlock (Niteflyx, Hypolocrian), so I come up with an awesome alternative.

Orcrobot.

Half-Orc. Half-Robot. As soon as I logged in, I knew I had created greatness. Maybe it was late, maybe it was the painkillers, maybe it was the Orc made out of entirely win, but either way, shit, it happened, and I still can’t think about it without lolin’.

I now understand roleplaying. Roleplaying as an orc who became a robot who knows no feeling, other than regret and despair. Now I gotta come up with a macro that randomly says a few quotes of his.
“run \DPS.exe -t”
“I am programmed only to destroy and regret my decisions.”
“COMMENCE(OrcCopter);”

Now I just hope I don’t get reported for being a bot. Because I’m just roleplaying as one. DON’T RUIN MY IMMERSION.

So, our senior project is still getting more publicity. It seems everytime we get another article about us somewhere, someone else reads it and wants to hop on the Lazybrain-train. Choo-choo!

For those that don’t know about what Lazybrains is, here’s a snippet from my portfolio:

For our Senior Project at Drexel University, myself and four others designed a game engine framework and a fantastical, game-like 3D environment and we explored the influence that new methods of interfacing may have on the user’s immersion in the interactive, virtual world, as well as new elements of game-play. To achieve this, we worked with the school of Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, specifically Hasan Ayaz, to bridge the neuroimaging device, the fNIR, into our development environment, essentially giving us the ability to use a player’s cognitive activity as an additional gameplay mechanism.

The week before our senior show, we were interviewed by CBS3 and they told us to expect it in the next few days. Well, we get an email this week saying it’s going to air finally, so we all gathered up at Conor’s to watch Lazybrains’ television PREMIERE.

Although both Aaron and I were taken completely out of context, it was still awesome to watch and see our neurogaming prototype on the news and get so much attention. It definitely garnered more than we would have ever expected. After this airing on CBS3, we got another request for another news publication sometime in the next week or so.

Maybe I’ll be able to work on other new-interfaces like this in the future, who knows. There was some talks about offering us the opportunity to do a dual-masters in Digital Media and Biomedical Engineering (which I’d be all about), but in order to do this, they’d need to offer me mad scholarships as well as some kind of work study thing where I get paid on the side, too. So we’ve all been in talks with the directors of both fields about this and nothing really happened when push came to shove, but Ken’s still talking with them about it, so who knows?

Master of Science in both Biomedical Engineering and Digital Media sounds good, though.

Here are the other articles written about us:
Philadelphia Inquirer
Lebanon Daily News
CBS3

I came across a game design blog I haven’t seen before, Lost Garden, with the latest post being a game design challenge. Sweet! I need more stuff to do (or an excuse to not do the stuff I already am doing). I looked through a few posts and liked what I saw; gotta read more, but until then, it’s now on my blogroll. —>

So what really caught my eye was this challenge. I may do it for a nice prototype on my portfolio, as well as proof that I can code stuff. So the basic idea of the game this: Mushrooms are planted on the 2D board and if they’re in the sun for longer than a second, they wither and die. Once the player contacts a mushroom, it uproots and follows the “rugged mushroom farmer”. Over 15 minutes, the day progresses, and thus, the shadows change. The goal is to collect as many mushrooms as you can and return it to the safe spot by the end of the day.

The author of the blog, Danc, is a game designer and he came up with this idea for Shade and sent out this challenge to anyone willing to make a prototype to see if this design concept will stick. Maybe I’ll give it a go in Blade3D, shouldn’t be that bad, mostly coding, since the art is all relatively simple. Who knows?

If you’ve been following Blizzard’s hype the last few days leading up to the Worldwide Invitational, you’ve seen their splash page slowly evolve:

Pretty cool. This stunt had pretty much the entire internet in an uproar about what Blizzard is announcing. Unfortunately for speculators, angled eyes with a furrowed brow is a common trait in several of their characters in all series. Is this Arthas, the Lich King, announcing the open beta for Wrath of the Lich King, WoW’s latest expansion, a Protoss revealing some new information of Starcraft II, or is it the face of the Lord of Terror, Diablo? Not only were all three camps fighting over what information it could possibly be, it didn’t help that the runes embedded into the ice were also from Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo.

So last night, I explain Blizzard’s stunt to my girlfriend and how everyone’s freaking out about it. She’s not familiar with Blizzard, but she’s heard of their games, so I gave her a quick background on them and their development philosophies, and told her that tomorrow they’re announcing something huge, and this splash screen will reach its conclusion and I’m really excited about it. So I close Firefox, boot up Everquest 2 for her (more on that later), and get some sleep.

I hop in the shower in the morning, preparing myself for the day of moving out of our place, meanwhile she checks her emails and Facebook and what have you. I come back into my room as she says, “Blizzard.com is doing something INSANE.” and I rush over, covered with only a towel, jaw-ajar, screaming, “WHAT?!?”

Hell yes. Oh, the sleepless nights I’ve had frost bolting my friends and learning the lessons of meleeing a lightning enchanted fiend. I look forward to you again. I sense a Diablo II night coming up.

Conor expressed dissatisfaction with their art direction, and how it’s more WoW-esque than the prequels, but after giving it a look over, I’m pretty happy with it. While it’s not as gloomy as the originals, it gives the production-flair seen in WoW and Starcraft 2 with insane particle effects and brings Diablo to life with the same techniques seen in WoW without lowering the urgency and dark matters at hand (like destroying the Lord of Terror and his brothers). This is just from the screens I’ve seen, and I’m sure Conor will disagree in a post of his own (who, to be fair, is more of a Diablo fanboy than I am. I just kinda drink the Blizz Kool-Aid).

After watching the ten-minute gameplay trailer, it reminded me of something I heard Rob Pardo, Executive VP of Game Design at Blizzard, say during a presentation at the GDC this year. This guy pretty much had a hand in designing everything that came out of Blizzard after Warcraft II, and he discussed some design challenges facing the MMO behemoth, World of Warcraft. I’m paraphrasing but, one point he brought up was:

You need to make every player feel overpowered, without actually being overpowered.

I took so many notes during that discussion, shit. But the point is, everyone wants to be a badass. After watching this trailer, the crushing sound of destruction combined with the luminous particle effects with each swing of the Barbarian’s axe just gave the illusion of complete annihilation. I’m sure this demo had weaker enemies than one will actually face in combat, but even if the player wasn’t mowing down zombies, the visual and audio feedback from each skill was enough to show the idea that this character is strong. And a badass.

Also, there was a little cutscene featuring an old friend.

Barbarian: Cain… You still live.

Deckard Cain: Ah, there you are! The writings in this place are incredible! Come.. stay awhile and–

Barbarian: It’s time for shedding our enemy’s blood. Not idle talk.

Deckard Cain: Gah… No one ever listens…

We will see what Blizzard has up their sleeve. I’m still waiting for their unannounced MMO.. which better be Universe of Starcraft.

Also announced at the WWI is that Starcraft II won’t be here this year. Sadface. :[

Three roommates have vowed to play through seven Mario games (SMB, SMB2, SMB3, SMW, SM64, Sunshine and Galaxy), back to back, until they’re all completed for charity. On their website, they have a live feed of their room with a picture-in-picture of their gaming progress and a chatroom with over 400 people in it at the time of this post. Going from 3pm eastern until whenever finished, these guys have already raised $800 some dollars in only an hour! And they’re only in world 2 of SMB3..

I’ve always loved the Child’s Play charity. I should do a Mega Man version of this.

EDIT:

Holy shit, $2616 raised at this point! And only on Mario 64, keep it up guys.

Getting a tip from FOH shows that Mega Man 9 has been announced for WiiWare! This may be the drive needed for me to play the Wii again. After doing some internet snooping, it turns out that Nintendic has the latest issue of Nintendo Power, which has a bunch of screens and the inside scoop on the latest game in the Mega Man series.

Personally, I couldn’t stand most of the GBA games. The Mega Man Zero series was confusing as hell, tried to integrate some kind of choose-your-own-adventure stories, not to mention frusteratingly difficult. The Battle Network series was okay, for some kind of Pokemon-esque RPG, but it sure as hell wasn’t a Mega Man game.

Give me something from the original Mega Man series, or from the SNES spin-off into the future Mega Man X series, where each game had 8 Robot Masters (or Maverick Hunters!), clear objective of getting to the “end of each level”, and sling yellow pellets everywhere to downright awesome music. Unfortunately, the later episodes in the X series were made on the PSX and PS2 platform and were pale shadows in comparison to the strong robot fist of X, X2 and X3, and the later games in the original series shared the same watering-down fate. So what am I expecting from Mega Man 9?

Well, apparently Mega Man 9 is being done in “retro-style”. Lead man of the game, Keiji Inafune of Capcom says this game is for the old school fans.

From Nintendic,

Inafune claims that the simple fun of a classic Mega Man game “doesn’t fit into the grandiose and expansive world that the consumer gaming industry has become, and so you have to make games that match the current expectations.”

And thus is the reason for the Virtual Console and WiiWare being a perfect fit for the latest Mega Man game. It’s about time; there hasn’t been a new game in the series since 1999. And now it’s back, with old school graphics and old school music, with new bosses, such as:

• Magma Man
• Galaxy Man
• Jewel Man
• Concrete Man
• Horney Man
• Plug Man
• Tornado Man
• Splash Woman (Wat!?)

If you know me at all, you know that I am currently going insane over this news, smashing my head against the wall, with a hand holding my cell phone high, screaming along to my Mega Man X2 ringtone. I don’t know how else to show my anticipation.

Inafune says:

“The moment you’ve been waiting for is here! We’re not just giving you Mega Man 9, we’re giving you a new NES game. This is a game that brings back the fun of the old games, and I hope you all enjoy it!”

Sweet chipset music to my ears.