US Democracy Server: Patch Day Version 44.0

If you have ever read an MMO's patch notes (like the recent released World of WarCraft Patch 3.0.8, then the US Democracy Server: Patch Day Version 44.0 release notes are hysterical, or at least me and Michael Jurewitz did. Thanks for tweeting the link Mike.

Video game saving is broken, the content is the gamers, and how to fix it

I have never designed a video game, but I have been playing games for a long time. Being a software developer, I have some strong opinions on software design, and game design in particular lately. Specifically, I think the way saving works in games has to fundamentally change. Developers have to rethink how their save systems work, and consumers deserve clear upfront information about how they can use any games' save system. Why is this important? Because knowing upfront the information about the save system can directly affect whether you enjoy the game, whether you can finish it, and whether you can access all the content. The handful of recent titles that drove me to think this through were Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on the Wii, Rock Band 2 on the Xbox 360, Half-Life 2 on the Xbox 360, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the Wii.

What is a saved game?
Wikipedia defines a saved game as:

A saved game is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a computer or video game. This saved game can be reloaded later, so the player can continue where he or she had stopped. Players usually save games to prevent the loss of progress in the game (as might happen after a game over unless the game features permadeath, in which the save file is permanently deleted), especially when interrupting or ending a game session.

While that is a perfectly serviceable definition, a saved game is really a piece of the gamers' life. A saved game then allows the gamer to retain a portion of their life that they have chosen to share with you game designer by proxy through the game. Notice I didn't say "your game" to game designers. That's because once you release the product to the public, it is now a shared creation, because the game is nothing without an audience. But a saved game is also more than that, it is the gamer's key to the content which they have already bought! Video games have been using digital rights management (DRM) for years, and no one has been talking about it. Not only to protect a game disc from being copyable, but nearly all games disallow access to all their content unless the gamer has played through the game nearly exactly as the game designer said the gamer should. If the game doesn't allow gamers to save their progress at will and provide access to all content once bought, the game is broken because you game designer aren't valuing the gamers' time, and thus their life. Sorry if that sounds too dramatic, and I know it's only entertainment, but I can't think of another way to spin it.

A word about the kind of games
I am really only concerned with home video games where the gamer is involved with either a single-player or co-op experience. Traditional multiplayer or MMOs aren't addressed with this post because as a shared public experience, there is intentionally and intrinsically, the decision by each individual gamer to participate in that kind of experience. That said, I do over one piece of advice in the solution section for MMOs.

Time is all we have
Time is the most precious commodity any person has. When you engage with any form of entertainment, you want to know if it's worth your time. To make that judgement, you seek out reviews and opinions from people you trust. If you decide that something is worth your time, video games, as far as I can tell, are the only popular mass entertainment form where the consumer isn't in control of the content and the time required to finish the product is open ended. There is no information at the time of purchase, not even an estimate, about how much time it's going to take to finish the game. Movies have running times and the viewer can skip chapters or fast forward and rewind. Songs have length, fast forward and rewind. Books have pages that the reader can randomly turn to. Even sports have a match time limit or set number of points. Concerts have expected length. Games, nothing. You literally have no idea what you are getting yourself into. How can we be 30+ years into home video game systems and still not have such a basic piece of information, duration, easily communicated to consumers? How can gamers still not be allowed to choose what parts of the game to play or not?

What's wrong with save game design?
Simply, the gamer is not in control of the experience. It seems game designers have gone to great lengths to not allow users to have control over the game since there are actually numerous different kinds of save systems employed in modern video games. I am not presuming this is an exhaustive list, but in my experience:

• Save Anytime. User can choose to save whenever they want, and that exact moment in the game is exactly where they return if they load that save game. There are actually a couple sub-variants on this.
  • Limited to a fixed number. Either through design or technical reasons (i.e. available memory)
  • Unlimited. User can save as much as they like up to the limits of storage
• Checkpoints. At fixed points in the game, user progress is automatically saved. There are also sub-variants on this kind of save game system.
  • Checkpoints can only be returned to within a level. Once you hit a checkpoint, if the character dies between checkpoints, you return to the previously saved checkpoint. If you turn off the game, you return to the beginning of the level unless the user can also choose to save wherever they want. Another anti-feature to this system is that the current checkpoint replaces the last checkpoint. This is bad because if something is broken in your current checkpoint (e.g. You are stuck on the side of a cliff you can't climb *cough* Halo 3 Highway level) then you can't step back a checkpoint, you have to restart the whole level.
  • Checkpoints can be returned to on game load. Nicer, since intra-game sessions are not snapped to level.
• Saving embedded in the game world. This is perhaps the worst save system because the game designer doles out the required resource with extreme scarcity. Worse, it makes no sense that a save mechanic is embedded in the game. It would be like you could only pause a movie at certain scenes in movies on DVD, which of course sounds insane.
  • Tokens. If you have ever played a Resident Evil game with its typewriter ribbons, you know what I am talking about.
  • In Game Save Stations. In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption the only chance for a user to save is at certain places in the game (sorry, can't remember the name)

Why are these save systems, excluding Save Anytime - Unlimited, in use today? Here are the reasons I have come up with:

• Lack of confidence. I can't help but think game designers, perhaps due to the immaturity of the form, in someway fear that players won't want to play their game unless they are in some way artificially induced to progress.
• Inability to save as a dramatic device. Game designers rely on the inability of the gamer to save progress to create tension. This is bad idea. The tension should come from the story.
• Game challenge tied to limited save availability. I can hear the argument coming. If you give gamers the ability to save anywhere, what's left of the game? It is way past time to do away with this outdated thinking. For example, in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, if I could save anywhere, it certainly wouldn't have prevented me from playing through the game. About the only thing it would have done is cut down my artificially inflated play time by about 15 minutes.
• Masochism. I don't know if gamers or game designers, or both, have enjoyed this abusive relationship, perhaps so, but I for one have had enough. I have stopped playing games that don't respect my time. The reason why Half-Life 2 triggered my thoughts on this is because it's one of the better ones in recent memory allowing you to save whenever. It automatically saves at certain times, but you are limited to a certain number of chosen saves. Also, you don't really get enough information about the save on the load screen.

Solution: Saving is entirely at user discretion and should be a platform feature
This is the way saves should work:

• Gamers should be able to save anytime, anywhere, as many times as they want. Game designers can continue to structure their games as a series of challenges, but it is up to the gamer to decide if they want to play through the challenges as designed.
• Saving can be disabled during challenges, but they can't last longer than 15 minutes. A challenge is an uninterruptible task, liking fighting a boss. But at whatever difficulty level you are playing at, those encounters can't last longer than a set period of time. Based on my experience, 15 minutes is the mark. Any more than that, and it's no longer a fun challenge, it becomes a job.
• Games should have the equivalent of chapter selection on Movies.The user should be able to randomly access any part of the game they want, even without having played through the game. Again, it's up to the user to decide if they want to play the whole game, or if they just want to show their friends a part of the game without local save files.
• All game controllers should have a Save button. Seriously, 2008, and there is not a uniform way to trigger either a save game screen, or ideally a "Quick Save" option. Also, why not normalize some buttons with DVD+DVR controls? The "start" button on the Xbox 360 should just be labeled a play/pause button. The back button could easily be replaced with a Quick Save button.
• Game system should standardize the UI for save games. No developer should have to spend time writing their own save systems. It would be like having to write the code for DVD player pause/play functionality every time you release a movie, insane.
• Save games should be backed up by the platform (e.g. Xbox Live, Playstation Network) and synched to your other consoles No reason I shouldn't be able to start playing a game on the console under my big screen TV, make progress on it at a friends house, and then finish it at home again.
• Access to game content in multiplayer modes should not be tied to progress/completion of single player content. I can't tell you how many now I buy a new game to play the multiplayer parts first, only to find it's crippled because I haven't played the single player part. Mario Kart Wii, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Wii, Rock Band 2, the list goes on and on. And sorry, unlock codes are lame, a relic of a bygone era. If the industry wants to grow up, it has to stop doing this. Also, unlocking content is not a re
• Save game files should contain information about the game at the point in time, so the gamer understands where in the game they are. Actual thumbnails from the game when you save are a must. More detailed information too, like any meters you can see on screen, you should be able to see the data about that in the save.
• Games need to auto-reload to last save on launch. What happens when you watch a movie and turn off your DVD player, or watch a video in iTunes, then stop it and start playing again? It resumes from where you left off. All games should default to this! If this isn't the 90% case when playing through a single player game, I don't know what is. But this load also needs to be cancelable on the chance that its wrong. The current way most games work is just dumb. On Xbox 360, you have to:
  
  1. Start the game
  2. Click a button to get past the obligatory landing screen after the parade of logos
  3. Select Load Game and press button
  4. Select where you save game is stored
  5. Figure out which save game you want to load
  6. Wait for load
  Loading the last user saved or system saved game should be the default in all games until the user quits the game in a different mode (e.g. multiplayer), which it should then launch into.
• Stop showing most publisher/studio/tech logos on launch. Take a cue from the iPhone, when the user or game saves progress, take a full screen snapshot of where in the game the player is. When the game is reloaded at launch, show that screenshot with a progress meter if its a long load, or just get the game running and make the content animated from that screenshot frame. You can even composite unobtrusive logos in a letterbox like fashion over top of the saved game screenshot. Animated logos with surround sound are only cute once, then despised every time after through the appearance of blocking the gamer from getting back into the actual game. I don't need to see the Havok logo anymore in a game, I get it. The equivalent would be like having to see that the filmmakers used Panavision or Kodak before the movie even starts, silly. Doesn't everyone hate having to sit through the FBI warning? That's one of the sweet things about movies from iTunes, no FBI warnings, trailers, or multiple studio banners, one on the film and one for the home video division. If you have to pay a few more dollars to get the engine credit to the end credits, please do so.
• For MMOs with challenges (e.g. Raids/Dungeons) dependent on a group, use game telemetry to provide probable time estimates. I have done my fair share of raiding in World of WarCraft. I was never able to do a lot of raiding because I never had a good idea how much time any raid or dungeon run was going to take. WoW collects a tremendous amount of data about the game, which I call telemetry, and it should be used to provide gamers estimates based on past raiding/dungeon parties similar to your own.

Wrap-up
I am sure I have missed something, or there are holes in some of my arguments. This post was already long enough, covering every possible corner case would have made it ridiculously longer. I am more than happy to answer any comments, or if you want to send me an email you can through innerexception AT mac.com

Apple acknowledges MobileMe migration issues, gives 30-day extension to subscribers

The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was, and I don't know a better way to describe this, a catastrophe. Today Apple sent out the mail below, which admits to the problems, and does right by customers by giving them a 30-day extension to their subscription for essentially a 4-6 day outage. The last service I subscribed to, World of WarCraft, provided day for day subscription extensions, even in the worst of times that were the launch period, so this feels pretty generous.

MobileMe services are now available. We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped. Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running. Another snag we have run into is our use of the word "push" in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe "cloud," changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word "push" until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too. We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks. We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC. Thank you, The MobileMe Team

On the issue of "push", I do find it amusing that my iPhone notifies me I have mail far quicker than Mail.app.

If I were going to buy a gaming PC, this might be the one...

I haven't owned a gaming PC in over 3 years, instead using my iMac, then PowerBook, and finally MacBook Pro, to play World of WarCraft (which I haven't played since May 2007), but if I was going to buy a new gaming PC, this would be it (since it looks like a BattleStar Galactica Cylon):

Courtesy of Engadget

StarCraft II !!! and Running StarCraft 1 on Mac OS X

StarCraft 2 has been announced. Blizzard pretty much rocks. I got seriously addicted to World of WarCraft, kicked the habit in Feb. 06, fell off the wagon for the Burning Crusade expansion, and time just ran out on the subscription, officially I am off the juice again on 5/18/07. I can't trash my install yet though, I tried on Thursday, but I hold out hope that an ala carte pricing model is introduced that is reasonably priced for those times when I need a fix. I just can't play WoW regularly enough to justify paying a monthly fee.

This was about StarCraft though, and I have a confession to make there. I never did finish that game. I finished I think the Terran part of the original game. I didn't get the game when it first came out, I bought the Battle Chest after playing through the original WarCraft III. With this real-time strategy games I always get stuck on a mission and lose interest. Same thing happened to me with WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne. Doesn't mean though I won't get StarCraft II the day it comes out, I do have a lot of fun with these games, even if I can't finish them.

The truly amazing thing though is that StarCraft has been updated to work on Mac OS X. This was a Mac Classic application, here are the original Mac OS requirements from the Read Me:

• Power Macintosh (or compatible).

• System 7.6.

• 16 megabytes of physical memory for a single player game. If you only have 16 megabytes of physical memory, you will need to turn on Virtual Memory. We recommend setting VM so your system’s largest unused block reports at least 27 megabytes free.

• Color display with a minimum resolution of 640x480 and 256 colors.

This is a processor architecture and major operating system revision away. This is all you have to do to get it installed on OS X:

• Download the OS X native installer.
• Run it, which worked fine for me from the disk image.
• If you have the original game and Brood War expansion set, pick to install Brood War. It will automatically install StarCraft once it needs those files. If you install StarCraft first though, and then pick Brood War, you can't upgrade, this Installer will ask you to put the whole game in a new location.
• Install the latest patch, at the time of this writing it is 1.15. You have to follow the instructions at that link, since its a copy the files yourself install.
• Run the game, the opening Blizzard logo animation will stutter for a few seconds, I imagine as Rosetta translates the PowerPC instructions to Intel, but this clears itself up very quickly and then it's smooth as silk.

According to the release notes for StarCraft on OS X, a bunch of files were updated to use Carbon, the Mac OS Classic API that is available on OS X, which Mac OS Classic developers could adjust their applications to use to quickly have a working OS X application. The games system requirements are so low and runs so well in OS X (in my limited testing) using Rosetta, I don't imagine Blizzard would ever update it to be a Universal Binary.

World of WarCraft: Cancelled

Update
I did come back to WoW for The Burning Crusade expansion, and I had a lot of fun in the first area, Hellfire Peninsula. I played the game pretty regularly until I finished all the quests in Zangermarsh, getting to about level 64.5 or so. But moving to a new area was a mental roadblock, it felt like I was going back to work, and I didn't play for close to a month. Staring at another subscription renewal, I bailed and called it a another Mother's Day present ;-), but with Halo 3 beta launching just days after my WoW subscription was to run out, it was an easy call. I don't think I will be back this time without an ala carte pricing model. Here's how it would work. I want to play some night and I pay for just that night, or maybe its a day, but the right pricing in my mind is probably $1 a day. I am holding out hope that Blizzard implements something like this, since it was one of the questions on the cancellation exit interview, since I can't bring myself to dump WoW from the hard drive.

Original Post
After 18 months of a continously active WoW subscription (and not nearly as continous play) I have cancelled my account and given my wife the best Mother's Day present she could have hoped for, my return to Real Life(tm).

I finally cancelled because the 4th guild I was in imploded, I finally hit 60 in Feb 06, and I just don't have the time to raid, so there isn't a whole lot in the game if you don't want to raid.

Plus, for my birthday in April, my wife got me the Xbox 360, and I love it, the games I have (Call of Duty 2, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and Tomb Raider: Legend) are all very entertainting, far more fun than I was having in WoW Battlegrounds or trying to grind reputation with Argent Dawn. Actually, I think the real final straw for WoW was a 3 hour Baron dungeon run that resulting in nothing after the pick-up group I was in disbanded after numerous wipes. I am just not burning that kind of time with nothing to show for it, and the risk of that happening again is high since I didn't have the energy to try and cultivate another guild relationship.

This doesn't mean I won't be back for The Burning Crusade expansion and the grind to 70, but I might not be either.

After E3, the Nintendo Wii (still don't like the name, but I have started to accept it) looks like a ton of fun, and that may occupy nearly all my time, with Spliter Cell Double Agent for the Xbox, at the end of the year.

Cancelling WoW has also been liberating for The Back-Logged Life.

WoW's Impact

The NY Times has an article up on the impact of World of WarCraft to the gaming community at large. Here is a quote from the article:

"If you're only playing WOW and you're paying every single month, what does that mean for all of the other Internet games out there that are trying to get your $10 or $12 or $15 a month?" Mr. Green said. "WOW is now the 800-pound gorilla in the room. I think it also applies to the single-player games. If some kid is paying $15 a month on top of the initial $50 investment and is devoting so many hours a week to it, are they really going to go out and buy the next Need for Speed or whatever? There is a real fear that this game, with its incredible time investment, will really cut into game-buying across the industry."

I can tell you this is exactly what has happened to me, but I am not any kid. I have bought zero games for either the computer or Xbox since WoW came out. I would have bought probably 1 a quarter before WoW came out. WoW then is actually saving me money over my normal gaming purchases.

I have bought exactly 3 PSP games this year, Lumines, Ridge Racer, and Coded Arms,  and they have all been disappointments, except maybe Ridge Racer, I would call that acceptable. I got the PSP to play on the train while going to work, but the games are just retreads of existing stuff, nothing with good story. I hold out hope for Madden 2006 when it drops on the 20th.  If I could get an Internet connection to my laptop on the train, I would eBay the PSP and play WoW on the train. It would be tough, you really need a mouse, but I would make due.

I don’t see stopping either. I have only one character, and I have only played for one faction in the game. I have so much I can do with other characters, and I can’t wait to see what comes out next.

For Mac owners, WoW is really the only MMO in town, and as a Mac WoW player, I will continue to reward Blizzard for putting the Mac OS X and Windows on equal footing. Patches come out on the same day and have all the same features. I have to believe this has some affect on the success of the game. Don’t misunderstand, this game would be extremely successful without Mac owners, but since Mac WoW players are a very captive audience, and they have both Mac and PC friends, they lobby to get as many people as they know to keep WoW, their MMO, viable. WoW was the deal maker that allowed me to dump my PC and get a Mac. From the beta, I knew I would be playing this for a long time, so I didn’t need a PC around to play games; WoW is the only one I need.

Why I haven't been blogging and the direction of this blog

I haven't been blogging a lot in the last 2 months, certainly less than since I started the blog, because I have been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. Oh, and I have been looking for a new job and moving out of California, small time sinks. So now the hunt for a house with a 1 hour commute to NYC begins in full force. Friday I spent driving around all my old neighborhoods in Middlesex County, NJ, which was great. also has everything, mass transit, shopping, good schools, and reasonable housing prices (CA housing market reality distortion field may be in effect). I am still going to be playing a lot of WoW, while hunting for a house, but I am going to make more of an effort to blog. I am a bit torn on what to blog about. My last couple posts are about my personal stuff affecting my blog, but I will eventually start blogging about tech again, especially Apple. I missed out on all the hoopla with Macworld, which was great, watched the keynote and devouring all the commentary on the Mac mini and iPod shuffle. I think I have something to add even on these topics, but latter. Seems like the most widely read blogs focus on a single topic, or cover one area, like dedicated Microsoft or Apple coverage. On the other hand, I have a lot of interests and I think what might make me stand out is this synthensis of topics, and I think I have a unifying theory of the common thread that holds a majority of my interests together.

It's Been A Long Time

I haven't posted in a long time because I have been consumed with all the capabilities of my new iMac (digital video with iMovie) and have played too much World of WarCraft. This game is all consuming and I haven't been this addicted to a game since maybe Legend of Zelda on the original NES. I tried Star Wars Galaxies, it doesn't even compare. WoW feels like a revolution in gaming, SWG was just crap by comparison, which is really hard to say for a Star Wars fanboy that relished the idea of being a character permanently in that galaxy far, far away. Now if they only had a client for the Mac, I would probably give it another try since Jump to Lightspeed finally added space combat to the game.

World of Warcraft Open Beta

I blogged about the World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta here Just checked out the beta website, www.worldofwarcraft.com, and the Open Beta is going to start soon!!! I can't wait.

World of Warcraft....WoW

MMORPG's as a genre have always intrigued me, but I could never justify paying $50 for a game that I have to pay $10-$15 a month extra for to play. The game is a total paperweight if you don't like it. That said, I tried Star Wars Galaxies because I am a huge Star Wars fan and I just couldn't resist the concept. The price was always a sticking point for me though. I played for about a month, and I just couldn't get into the game. Things didn't feel done, player cities felt busted to me since no one ever had a reason to go there, and the mission grind felt just like that, a grind. But WoW feels different. I only played the game for a couple days, but I am impressed and I am defiinitely getting the game. First the graphics, character and world, just feel polished. SWG never felt awe inspiring, occasionally that was true, but in general I was not completely impressed. WoW really stands out. In one of the early Orc cities, I climbed to the top of a structure just to look out on the landscape, it was that good. Character models are equally fantastic. But the part that really stood out in WoW was the way the newbie area leads you into missions. Everything is well laid out, and you just don't kill monsters on the landscapel, you actually get into a dungeon on like the fifth mission! Maybe other MMO's are like this, but after SWG this felt like a revelation. The friend that got me into the Stress Test got to a lot higher levels than I did, so he got to experience the PvP, and he sounded like a heroin addict that can't score another fix for a long time :)

Mac Gaming: Better Than Expected

I loaded up my first Mac only game experience this weekend. This means I never played the game on the PC, I only played it on the iBook. That would be World of Warcraft (WoW), Blizzards upcoming MMORPG. I got into the Stress Test Beta for a days from a friend at work. First off, the minimum CPU for the game is a 1 GHz G4, this iBook has a 933 MHz, so the game tells me things may not work. My first thought is, I didn't buy the iBook for gaming, so let's just give this a try. WoW launches and just like everything on the Mac, the attention to detail stands out. I am talking about the transition from Desktop to Game and Game to Desktop. On Windows, this transition is almost always seen with crazy painting problems. Explorer slowly repaints the desktop, the disk grinds for a while as apps come back into memory and repaint themselves. In a word: ugly. Not so on the Mac, transitions are nicely faded or without repaint problems. Moving out of Full Screen to Windowed mode is also seamless. In Blizzard games anyway (I don't have any others to test) the command is Apple-M. WoW itself ran pretty good once I turned down the graphical detail. The only thing that was absolutely necessary was a 2 or more button mouse. I have been using my Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical with the iBook pretty much since I got the iBook, it worked nicely in WoW. Since all the PC propoganga goes out of it's way to suggest there are no games for the Mac and that they suck anyway, I was pleasently surprised by my experience. Blizzard rocks.