Really excited to hear about my former student presenting her start-up pitch at Beijing Tech Hive! My old student is, of course, the woman in front.
What The Heck Am I Going To Do With A Vegi-Magical Degree?
Another of my favorite screens from Lili. Just used this as the accompanying art for a piece on the possible definitions of indie games, because I giggled to see an indie game character wondering if her education is a good foundation for meaningful employment.
Posted in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Tagged Chapel Hill, games, Geek magazine, indie games, Lili, North Carolina
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A Design for Boring: The Freemium Model Problems
New piece talking about freemium games on DragonBlogger. Bad freemium frustrates me, although I think games have value, developers should be paid for their craft, and freemium is not automatically evil. After many rounds of editing, and many discussions with Al Jackson over at Hardcore Droid, I was finally able to clearly articulate what’s so frustrating about the pay-to-skip monetization method.
While good IAP adds value to a solid game experience, bad freemium demands players spend money to adjust the difficulty balance in order to create a more solid game experience. There’s an unappealing dishonesty in a game that’s billed as free, but requires additional purchases to make the game experience playable. Pixonic’s Robinson is free-to-play if you don’t mind waiting to acquire dozens of needed materials from a random drop that refreshes every 24 hours. I noted in an article I wrote for Hardcore Droid that Zenonia 5 is free-to-play, if you don’t need any armor or weapons from the merchants, and your character never dies in battle. Thousands of games use a painfully slow and repetitive grind as a motivator for premium purchasers, deliberately boring and annoying players into paying. There is something deeply flawed about designing gameplay so dull that it begs to be avoided.
And that’s what’s most upsetting about bad freemium content. Good games offer so much artistry to enjoy, with intriguing puzzles, engaging characters and storyline, and combat action that it’s disappointing to see games designed to bring players a boring grind, and then monetizing by asking players to pay to avoid it. It’s a disappointing trend to watch as a hobbyist. As an industry, we can all do better. With creativity, the freemium model can mean offering great additional content, and monetizing successfully on extras that add to gameplay, instead of designing to bore.
Via A Design for Boring: The Freemium Model Problems » Dragon Blogger.
Posted in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Tagged Chapel Hill, games, Hardcore Droid, North Carolina
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Dunning-Kruger Effect
I came across this photo from my game design class last spring. I shared it at iheartchaos a while ago, but I don’t think I ever shared it here.
We covered this in a discussion about cognitive biases. I really like the reminder that noticing one’s lack of knowledge in an area isn’t a disaster, it’s one of the first steps to becoming good at something new.
I also like to whisper Dunning-Kruger to myself when people around me are being useless and annoying.
Posted in Chapel Hill, New York City, North Carolina
Tagged Chapel Hill, Cognitive bias, Dunning-Kruger, game design, New York City, North Carolina
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Equals
This is the first time I’ve changed my profile photo for a Facebook cause. I usually see these as lazy slacktivism, because if you really want to support a cause, you could try donating some money or writing a letter! But I’ve recently discovered that, hey, some of my basic beliefs are not terribly common. No, the unseasonably cold weather today didn’t just disprove climate change. And yes, other people getting married is fine by me. All people in love can file their taxes together, handle joint property with more ease, and talk to doctors on each other’s behalf. Clerics needn’t perform gay weddings, (or weddings for divorcees, or for nonbelievers who think the chapel is pretty) if they don’t want to, of course, but, say, North Carolina would be required to honor a Massachusetts or New York gay marriage, just like it does an out-of-state straight marriage.
I also support the chance to call your partner “husband” or “wife” and then laugh hysterically, which is going to be freaking awesome when Harold and I get married.
It was a little strange to watch my entire Facebook feed turning into equal signs, with some friends posting status updates saying they’re into gay marriage, but not so into slacktivist memes. But isn’t Facebook really delightful at times? This morning, my high-school boyfriend redid the equal-sign image that was going around as a GIF to make it smoother and more aesthetically pleasing. A friend from college restyled it in a slightly different way to improve the look in the minimized version. And my fiance made a cover photo to coordinate with his the profile icon, because even when using an underwhelming image to state the obvious, my friends make it look nice.
These slacktivist memes are pretty cool.
Alternate Universe Screamland?
I recently got a pitch from a PR rep offering me a new book to review. The book was pitched as a quirky fantasy story about real-life movie monsters, including Dracula, the Mummy, and the Wolfman, who stop snarking about CGI and modern monster life when the Invisible Man is murdered and they must find the killer.
This sounds… really familiar.
I guess that means they’re hitting their target audience?
Recent on IGM
New short piece on my New York neighbors, Golden Ruby Games and their new Worm Run over at Indie Game Magazine. Their new game is a casual runner in which players help save space janitor Zeke Tallahassee from a space monster. This is the second game I’ve discussed for IGM in which the protagonist is a space janitor. I have a very weird type.
Worm Run is a KickStarter success story. The game was partially completed when Golden Ruby put Worm Run on KickStarter, seeking and surpassing a modest three thousand dollar goal. With awesome projects failing to find funding, and funded projects disappearing, it’s always really nice to hear about a good KickStarter success.
Also on IGM, I’ve recently reviewed My Cotton Picking Life and Depression Quest. My Cotton Picking Life is a social awareness game that asks players to take on the role of a child worker. An interesting concept, but the execution was way too successful at proving this is something no one wants to do.
But although My Cotton Picking Life succeeds at its state goal of monotony, it fails at everything else. Players click repeatedly on buttons marked “Pick Cotton” until they get bored and try the exit button. Then they’re told that child workers don’t have the luxury of quitting, and told how much money they would have made if they were actually picking cotton and not clicking “Pick Cotton”. The developers say the game was built in a day, and, with one game screen and one player action, it’s not hard to believe.
A game with terrible and boring gameplay to show that the topic is terrible and boring is an interesting thought exercise.
Depression Quest is a much more effective serious game, this time about depression. I wouldn’t call it a fun game, but a very interesting and effective one.
Depression Quest very successfully plays on this expectation by presenting a narrative passage describing the character’s experiences, and then offering several player choices, with a range of possible outcomes, but makes some of the readable choices inaccessible to the player. Players can read options like making the most of a social situation, getting a good night’s rest, and so forth, so it’s very clear that these are possible reactions to the presented narrative segment, but they just aren’t able to choose those options.The player might want to call a therapist or get out of the apartment for a change of scene, but the depressed character literally can’t.
Maybe my type is weirder than I thought.
Links:
Save A Space Janitor in ‘Worm Run’! | Indie Game Mag.
Attempts At Relevancy With ‘My Cotton-Picking Life’ IGM
Battle Depression in Depression Quest IGM
The Time Tribe
My friend Jerry wrote to tell me he’s working with a new game, and he thought it might be a good fit for me.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“It’s kind of like you guys made that whole game that for me, isn’t it?”
(They say it’s for kids, but that’s only because the 30+, female, relevant adventure gaming demographic just doesn’t get the respect it deserves.)
Posted in Game Reviews, North Carolina
Tagged Game Reviews, Harry Potter, North Carolina
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Cary Hellscape
Tonight I went to meet with some local game developers in an office complex in Cary. I was very excited to go, but not excited to drive through Cary.
Cary is a special kind of terrible. About a third of the town is made up of brand-new retail and office complexes. There is a lot of parking because you can’t walk anywhere. No, seriously, there aren’t any sidewalks, and you’d have to walk over the manicured grass and perfect planters. Speaking of manicures, every complex in Cary has to have a nail salon, otherwise it will be shut down. It’s a zoning law, I think.
Strangely, even though all the buildings and roads in these complexes are brand-new, the traffic patterns are insane, like in parts of Boston or DC that were laid out before the horseless carriage made its appearance. There are a surprising amount of blind turns and three-way intersections.
Between these brightly-lit commerce hubs are divided highways with lots of nothing on both sides. That nothing is rural backdrop for the people who live in the McMansions on cul-de-sacs to look at as they commute. If you miss your turn, or get confused about which highway by which Target you should be on, or perhaps find yourself on the right divided highway with nothing on both sides, but going on the wrong direction, do not think you can make the first right and go back. Here in Cary, you can not make four rights to return to your original location. Don’t be fooled.
See, the part of Cary that isn’t brand-new retail complexes is made up of brand-new housing developments. If you make a turn off the highway, and it’s not into a shopping center, you just turned into a brand-new housing development. These can be spotted because they have names likes Windsor Pines and Preston Fields, but by the time you can see the name, you can also see the No Outlet sign and the speedbumps. There are always speedbumps to help residents transition between the highways and the cul-de-sacs.
The whole thing is terribly depressing. There are plenty of other reasons I might have been so unhappy there — I couldn’t find a job that wasn’t waitressing, I had very few creative outlets, and I was pretty much constantly worried about money — but a lot of it was waking up every day in that sea of ugly. If I were being tortured in Room 101, it would be Cary, North Carolina. And I would immediately tell the Ministry of Love all my secrets.
The weirdest part of awful Cary is that it routinely makes lists for Best Places to Live. Year after year. Apparently people who aren’t me really love it! I hear about the great “quality of life” in that area, and I just wonder what that could possibly mean.
