The Secret World: Quickstarter

I'll be publishing my review of The Secret World on Monday.  In the meantime, here are a few things that those of you who preordered should probably know to get you on your feet more quickly.  This pre-empted what I had posted for today, given the fact that these tips will be more useful now, and would not particularly be useful after a day or two.  Here you go.

Kickstarter Feature: Clang!

Neil Stephenson is perhaps one of my favorite authors.  I'm a particular fan of his take on Cyberpunk, Snow Crash.  I was quite surprised when I saw him being the onus behind a new title on Kickstarter: Clang.  Apparently, when he's not wanting our book money, he's playing with sharp objects, and this is the result.

Shazbot!

I started playing multiplayer games more frequently after 2002, when I moved away from dial-up, and in many ways, I missed the Tribes series because of it.  Luckily, Tribes: Ascend has come out recently, and is showing me just how different a shooter can be.

Old is New: Cyberpunk

With CD Project Red's recent announcement that they would take a stab at making a CRPG set in the Cyberpunk 2020 universe, I decided to take a look at a trend I've noticed.

Kickstarter Feature: Dead State

I've got a soft spot for all the Black Isle alums.  They've made some of the most memorable gaming experiences I've had, and they promote a number of the concepts of an ideal game that I hold dear: open sandbox worlds, game-play over graphics, role-playing, and intriguing themes.  This week's Kickstarter Feature is no exception -- a kitschy little survival horror RPG called Dead State.

Follow-Up: Cheapening IP

Hot on the heels of last week's post about Steam sales cheapening IP, I should remind you -- the Steam summer sale is right around the corner.  Last year, it was around the last week of June/first week of July.  Prepare your wallets, because they're about to take all of the money by cheapening all of the IP.

And by that, I mean running a loss-leading sale to get you to buy games you were either on the fence about or weren't quite ready to buy at release.

Also, you've got a few hours left to buy Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis for three bucks.

Cheapening Intellectual Property

EA's David DeMartini, Senior Vice President of Global eCommerce and head of the Origin service, stated this about Steam sales recently:


 "I just think it cheapens your intellectual property. I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we're not trying to be Target. We're trying to be Nordstrom."

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Valve.  Aside from their wonderful games, they made perhaps the first viable digital distribution platform, tying it in with a social platform.  EA's shot across the bow flatly states that they feel that Steam's model of sales is killing intellectual property values.  While it's true that they've left me with quite a backlog of games, the fact is that I've bought games that I've had little to no interest in.  Here are five things I think are deflating the industry IP value before Steam's sales can even be considered.

Kickstarter Feature: Kings of War

In what I hope to be a regular feature on this blog, I'd like to feature a Kickstarter I've got high hopes for.  In the past, I've backed a variety of projects, including a Zombie game designed by Cool Mini or Not, a new CRPG Shadowrun game, and an interesting collaborative dice game.  Today, I'm going to talk about Kings of War.

Tiny Battles

I've been toying with making the plunge to a smaller scale (in size, not in battle size) wargame, but I've not been able to settle on one.  The concept of fitting more tanks on the field, and significantly lower prices than the 28mm vendors out there, is an extremely attractive one.  For varying reasons, there are a few that I'm considering.  Epic: Armageddon is attractive, but it's still pricey and is hard to come by, because its parent company likes hiding that it exists.  So here's what I've got on the table:

Sex and Violence: The "Demise of Guys"

The mental health profession is one with its share of quirks and oddities.  It's a field that's tried hard to analyze bias, avoid it, and generally comes out swinging hard with positive biases toward the underdog.  There are specific exceptions, and sometimes they're more evident than others.

Gaming a Zombie Apocalypse

With the events of the past month pointing toward (hopefully) silly statements about a zombie apocalypse, let's talk about how to tie them into some sort of role-playing game.

Infernal UI

We're a few weeks into Diablo III now, and the entire experience offers a few things that Blizzard could really use to pick up from this game for that other game they make.  You know, the ones with the kids and the Wars and the Craft and the sparkles and the ponies.  Here's a list of 5 major UI tweaks that Blizzard could port to make that other game to make it a lot more player-friendly.

5 Infernal Things Diablo III Should Have Done Differently

We're a few weeks into Diablo now, and despite fun, addictive, arcade-style gameplay, there are quite a few things that could have been done differently to make the game much more enjoyable.

Shaping a World

Perhaps above all else, I feel like depth is important in a setting.  I want to feel like things are well thought out, or have some sort of plan.  If I don't feel connected with a game/book setting, I find myself more frequently disengaging, which means less connection with a character and a game world.  In order to provide this for my players, I like to do extensive setting research before I'm comfortable getting to the point where I'm ready to present it.  Here are ten tools that I've found rather useful in writing a setting, given that I've primarily run historical games or games based in real-world settings (Cthulhu, Shadowrun, World of Darkness).