Tag: games

Recommended Kickstarter

I just backed an excellent RPG Kickstarter called Lairs & Encounters by Autarch. It’s only $600 away from lift-off, so if you’re any sort of gamer, take my advice, throw in, and put them over the top.

Lairs & Encounters is the ultimate supplement for fantasy RPG sandbox campaigns. Designed for use with the Adventurer Conqueror King System™ (ACKS™), it is readily compatible with other fantasy role-playing games built on the same core rules. In Lairs & Encounters you will find:

  •     More than 135 ready-to-play monstrous lairs – that’s at least one lair listing for every possible monster lair mentioned in the Adventurer Conqueror King System. The lair listings are designed to be used both as dynamic points of interest that can be discovered while wandering through the wilderness and as obstacles to a would-be ruler’s attempt to secure land for a domain.
  •     New subsystems for sandbox play, including rules for populating 6-mile hexes with lairs based on the terrain and extent of settlements in the region, and rules for searching for lairs in the wilderness factoring in terrain density, aerial reconnaissance, splitting up to cover more ground (never split the party!), and more.
  •     Additional mechanics for monsters, including ability scores for monsters, proficiencies for monsters, and young monsters.
  •     A complete system for taming and training monsters, with details on the lifespan, roles, tricks, trained and untrained value, supply cost, training period, and the trainability modifier of every monster in the game. 
  •     A complete system for creating your own unique monsters. In the ACKS Player’s Companion we gave you mechanics to create balanced new character classes and new spells; now we bring our same rigorous attention to balance and customization to monsters.

It’s roleplaying with a wargame flavor. Reminds me a bit of fantasy Traveller.

Standing up to SJWs

Even before I was doing it, even before #GamerGate, Doug TenNapel, the creator of Earthworm Jim, was standing strong against them:

For more than a decade, the comics, cartoons, animations, and video games of Doug TenNapel have been entertaining millions. Yet a single opinion that swam against the tide of progressive opinion caused him to be subject to years of attacks from an all-too-familiar mob of online public shamers.

TenNapel has a long and accomplished career in entertainment. He’s the man behind Earthworm Jim, a 1990s smash-hit video game that spawned a cartoon series and a toy franchise. He has written an episode for the popular animated series’ Adventure Time and acted as a guest animator for Spongebob. His most recent creation is Armikrog, a point-and-click puzzle game created with stop-motion animation.

Despite his obvious talents, there’s a niggling aspect of TenNapel that continues to cause him problems: he’s a Christian Conservative. In addition to his other creations, he’s the series writer and executive producer for VeggieTales in the House, an animated series popular with Christian families. He has also designed the cover art for a number of Christian rock bands.

In the liberal, progressive world of arts and entertainment, it was only a matter of time before such an unfashionable background got him into trouble.

If you want to support Doug, his new game, Armikrog, is 50 percent off on Steam for the next two hours. VFM, if you’re on Twitter, tweet the article.

I should probably also mention that in the new year, we will have some exciting news to announce concerning Mr. TenNapel and Castalia House.

DevGame ad


I realize that most of you who are already interested in the course have already signed up, but I thought you might be interested in seeing this anyhow. And if you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so here. As those who were at the most recent Brainstorm can testify, it will be substantive and you will learn a lot about the game industry.

Brainstorm with Derek Smart

As part of the ongoing efforts to provide this blog community, and the Brainstorm members, with added value, I am hosting an impromptu Brainstorm event featuring Derek Smart, the veteran game developer and Star Citizen skeptic.

We will be discussing what caused him to go from project backer to public critic, his own development history, including the notorious Battlecruiser 3000 AD, and his latest game, Line of Defense Tactics, on Saturday, November 7th, at 7 PM EST. I’ll also be asking him about some of the controversial statements he has recently made concerning Chris Robert’s record-setting development project. You can register for the event here.

In addition to being entertaining and informative, this should also provide those interested in the upcoming DevGame course with some idea of what the guest speaker aspects of the course will entail, as well as the nature of the Q&A sessions.

Hard-core wargamers only

A rather interesting situation has presented itself. I was looking up a much-anticipated reprinting of a board-and-counters wargame that is a particular favorite of mine, and in doing so, I reached the conclusion that the publisher was a one-man operation that is desperately in need of the sort of volunteer help that has made Castalia House so successful.

In the interest of paying things forward, both Ender and I have volunteered certain of our services that are needed; we are translating the new rules into two languages and I’m planning to create a weekly blog post at CH dedicated to wargaming to which various wargamers, myself included, will contribute. This weekly post will prominently feature the publisher’s games, particularly the occasional new release. We’re also going to help proofread and playtest the game being reprinted.

I think other wargamers here will be interested in helping out in various capacities, which could even involve petty investment to help cover the initial print runs. These are the sort of hobby businesses that die on the vine without the support of the community, and unfortunately, the sort of men who are inclined to rescue the obscure heritage of the past are almost always the sort of men who have absolutely no ability to build the sort of communities that can sustain them.

If you’re an old Avalon Hill/SPI wargamer and this sounds of interest to you, email me with WARGAME in the subject. I’ll be hosting a Brainstorm concerning this soon; after I email you back, I’ll want you to think about what you might be able to bring to the table. And if we really want to get crazy, if we have the right combination of talents, we could even think about taking some of these games digital.

Something related to games

I found this exchange on Twitter to be mildly amusing.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
#GamerGate Open Source projects are the current target of SJW entryists. They use Codes of Conduct to take control.

Stonehead ‏@stonehead
@voxday Could you guys please return to your caves, doing something related to games instead of misogyny? Thanks. #GamerGate

Vox Day ‏@voxday
@stonehead In addition to the 7 games I designed this year, the 3 games I am developing, and the game dev course I teach? #GamerGate

Speaking of the game dev course, I’ve had to take the time to do some infrastructure-building, get a little further down the road with regards to the games we’re developing, and arrange to make it possible to let people outside this blog know that a modified version of the game development course I taught at the institute in Zürich is going to be available online. That’s why the course did not begin this fall, but will instead begin in January, most likely on January 9th.

In order to make it accessible to everyone from Eastern Europe to the West Coast, the ten online sessions will be on Saturdays, beginning between 12 and 2 PM until 2 to 4 PM EST. Is there a strong preference for a specific start time in that window here? The structure will be about one hour of lecture, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A, followed by 15 minutes of me interviewing an industry expert, and 15 minutes of audience Q&A with the expert.

The price of the course is $199, but VP readers will receive a $49 discount if they sign up before my partners begin offering it to the public. Two people asked if they could contribute for scholarships; to do so, simply buy a course and let me know you want it to go to someone who can’t afford it. If you would like to apply for a scholarship, don’t do so now, but wait until I announce how many are available. I will be supplying several myself. As I previously mentioned, all Annual Brainstorm members are guaranteed a free seat if they want one; I will be sending out an email concerning this later today.

There are 500 seats for this first course, but due to the Institute students as well as a partnership with a technology incubator in a European city, it is possible they will fill up faster than one might expect. (Although based on some of the numbers the city representative was throwing around, I may need to do a completely separate course just for them, which would have the effect of creating more open seats here.) 40 seats are presently reserved for the institute, as many as 50 may be taken up by the Brainstorm members, but if you are interested in taking the course you can reserve a seat now.

Some comments from the previous course participants:

  • Great job, great course – you can expect a lot of practical knowledge and a lifetime experience from inside the industry – course is definitely worth the time and money invested! Last but not Least, Theodor is a great guy, as a person and as a mentor! Appreciated his honesty and way of spreading wisdom! 
  • These presentations are really interesting. I learn a lot and the stories and examples, while a bit lengthy, are fun to listen to and show a great deal of first hand experience. It’s like getting a look behind the scenes.
  • For me the workshop gives a unique insight into areas of the game industry, which have been very elusive to me so far. Some might complain about the slightly scattered structure of the workshops, but I think that all the little anecdotes and narrated experiences are the real benefit of these sessions. They explain quite well what to expect of relevant companies, how the people interconnect and give hints where to dig deeper to solve other pending questions. Additionally I appreciate the opportunity to get a feedback on the concepts from someone from the industry, thus not on a academic scale, but well founded in the real life business.
  • Generally speaking, it was good and informative. He talked about different subjects and didn’t get stuck on one topic. It was very good that he showed examples and made interactive discussions. It would be better, if he would also show examples of games when he speaks about the history of games and their mechanics.

A development failure

This is an interesting look at an AAA development project that hit a single when a home run was needed:

To understand why Homefront had such a troubled development,
it’s important to look at how THQ was trying to change the way it
greenlit games, and the context in which it did so. Its new procedure,
which is fairly common in the game industry, was a multi-stage process
designed to keep studios at work on new games without committing THQ to
seeing them through to publication. THQ would take pitches from all its
studios, give feedback, see prototypes and then authorize continued
development. After going through this a few times, THQ would make a
final decision about moving forward on full development, or pulling the
plug on the project.

What was unusual about THQ’s greenlight process is that it occurred
at a time when every THQ studio executive knew that closures were
imminent. With the stakes so high, THQ’s new pitch process turned into a
never-ending up-sell.

“We [Kaos] were in jeopardy of dying right after Frontlines,
and [Schulman] felt that we really needed to sell to THQ,” says one
producer. “So we put forth just about every bit of effort we had into
creating one hell of a package to sell to THQ. So much so that I believe
our package was held as a metric for what other studios should do to
sell their packages. And Dave Schulman was a really good salesman at
telling THQ what we could deliver, and turning back to us to say, ‘Hey,
sky’s the limit. Just pack more features in. Make it great. Put as many
bullet points as you can on the back of the box.'”

I was meeting with some THQ executives about funding one of Chris Taylor’s projects at this time and they had sky-high expectations of Homefront. I mean, the words “CoD-killer” were bandied about; they really believed it was going to be a Battlefield-level event. I remember being dubious at the time, and later, when it was released, barely even noticing that it was out. No one I knew ever played it.

Mailvox: We didn’t destroy your dream

Remper, if your dream is destroyed, the only individual responsible will be the only one with the power to do so, Chris Roberts:

1) Don’t give a damn about Star Citizen for about 2 years
2) Poorly-written article in the Escapist appears
3) Don’t research anything or catch up on what is happening in Star Citizen right now
4) Write a post full of concerns about Star Citizen future
5) ???
6) PROFIT

Guys, Star Citizen has the most open development process ever done for a AAA-game. Everything they did so far is perfectly reasonable and what they promise is doable. No one had a single concern about game’s eventual completion before Derek Smart’s posts and the Escapist article. Not because we (backers) are stupid zealots, but because every week we are given a detailed explanation on how things are going.

Keep in mind: most of the Star Citizen backers doesn’t give a shit when the game will be released. This is the project that has to be done right. For now, we trust Chris Roberts with taking as much time as he needs to create the game we asked for. And for the last 2 years he hasn’t done anything to cast any doubt on his decisions.

What I’m really afraid of is that baseless allegations in the game press will scare potential partnerships with other companies and the constant intake from the new backers, which will make Chris to downsize the project – that would be really a shame. So until you have actual facts about Star Citizen development going south, I would kindly ask you not to generate any additional shitstorm. Don’t try to destroy our dream.

A few things. First, Star Citizen is shaping up to be the one of the most epic events in game development history one way or another. To expect professional game developers to ignore their decades of experience as well as their personal knowledge of the various parties involved and keep their mouths shut until events play out is simply not reasonable. We have observations, we have opinions, and we have platforms. Deal with it.

Second, everything they have done so far is not perfectly reasonable. Everything they are promising is not doable. Saying that “it’s done when it’s done” sounds great and all, but there is this little problem called “burn rate” that means Chris cannot take as much time as he needs. That’s precisely why Derek Smart believes Chris is going to run out of both time and money long before the dream is realized.

Third, the allegations are far from baseless. There is a considerable amount of information that has not yet been made available to the public to which many of us in the industry are privy. It’s not a massive industry and everyone is, at the very least, a friend of a friend of a friend. Unfortunately, none of it tends to indicate the Star Citizen project is in any better than the coverage by The Escapist tends to indicate.

It is important to understand that NO ONE wants to see Chris fail. That would be a bad thing for everyone, including Derek Smart. Hell, if Chris wanted my help, I would donate it pro bono. But I very much doubt that insufficient or inept design is the problem, but rather, altogether too much of it and not enough production focus.

The collapse of Star Citizen

Derek Smart contemplates the inevitable end game of a project that appears to be in severe distress:

Last week, The Escapist magazine wrote a scathing investigative report (follow-up podcast) into this project. Something that no other media outlet had done before regarding this project. As they have said, I was not
their source. In fact, only an incompetent media person would use me as
a source. Given how close I am to all of this, the fact that I could
not be regarded as an unbiased source even if I swore on a stack of
Bibles to be unbiased etc.

For the purposes of full disclosure: What I did do, as I’ve been doing since July, was made contact with some mainstream (names withheld as per legal) media sources, trying to get them to investigate this project. This was as per my July 10th blog, Interstellar Discourse
in which, right at the top, I had called for the investigation of this
project and all its creators. This was because I had already been made
aware of most of what is now coming to light as portrayed in The
Escapist article.

As part of that effort, I gave them some of my credible sources,
along with an overview of what I had uncovered and why I simply wasn’t
the one to investigate this any further, due in part by information that
I had access to and which was better off being in the hands of those
same people (the media) who helped hype this project to what it is
today.

I was wrong in making this decision and thinking that anything would come from it. They all chose to bury the story….

My question is that, with all the numerous articles out there,
interviews, visits, face time etc. Why is it that nobody wants to ask
the tough questions about this project? Primary question being, where
did ALL this money go? We have pretty much nothing to show for it – four years later.

In response to the article, Chris Roberts, in continuing the downward trend to disaster, wrote a scathing diatribe
that, on the face of it, looks like you’d have to be high to unleash
that sort of tirade into the public domain. From the CEO of a $90m+
company no less. And clearly it wasn’t vetted by legal (LOL!! that would
be Ortwin). It’s a Gold mine of actionable legal liability. And all it
did was lend credence to some of the things being said behind closed
doors about him, and which were now coming to light via these sources
talking to the media.

The gist of it was that “Derek Smart is bad, this was all his fault, and he was the puppet master”.
Oh, and GamerGate. He mentions me a total of 20 times. The author of
the article got a single mention. And I didn’t even write the damn thing.

Sound familiar? Yes, that’s the blame game.

I was concerned about Star Citizen about a year ago, but I wasn’t half as convinced that the project was on the verge of collapse by Derek Smart as I was by Chris Roberts’s disastrous and very poorly considered response to Derek’s questions. What Chris should have done, what I advise him to do, is to invite Derek to visit and see how development is going for himself. Give him a personal tour. Explain to him how well things are going and how good the game is going to be. Then do the same thing with Lizzy and anyone else The Escapist is willing to send.

This is a GOLDEN opportunity to show off and sell Star Citizen. Instead, Chris and his team have reacted if they have something radioactive to hide. They have reacted as if they are on the verge of being caught red-handed. There is absolutely no reason to react with anger, lengthy diatribes, and legal threats to someone who has doubts about how your project is going.

Whoever is advising Chris is going about it the completely wrong way. I know both Chris and David, and when I get the time I’m going to give them a call and urge them to rethink RSI’s response to critics and doubters, because this simply is not the way to reassure anyone, not even the most sincere Star Citizen supporters and true believers.

And #GamerGate? Seriously? Derek Smart isn’t #GamerGate. I am #GamerGate as are many others who wish both Chris and Star Citizen well. I don’t know what that is supposed to be, other than an ill-advised attempt to dog-whistle corrupt game journos who didn’t do their job covering Star Citizen in the first place.

Derek is correct. None of this has ANYTHING to do with him. Like him or loathe him, his opinions and his history are irrelevant. All that matters is the very relevant observations he has made and the very pertinent questions he has raised. And for RSI to engage in argumentum ad impertinens hominem is not merely self-defeating bad public relations, it tends to call their own credibility, as well as the future of Star Citizen, into serious question.

Ultimately, Star Citizen may well prove to be another painful lesson in “Beware the Awesome” ala Homefront:

Dave Schulman was a really good salesman at telling THQ what we could
deliver, and turning back to us to say, ‘Hey, sky’s the limit. Just pack
more features in. Make it great. Put as many bullet points as you can
on the back of the box.’ When Kaos turned that into a demo to show THQ, the ideas
practically sold themselves. THQ executives loved it, and gave Kaos a
green light to complete the game. “Now beyond that initial preproduction phase,” said one producer,
“then you actually have to pay your dues. You have to actually make the
thing you’ve been promising. I think that’s where Dave Schulman’s
expertise fell short. He had promised so much that there was absolutely
no way we could deliver.”

The damning phrase: “We spent about a total of eight months of our production time making a
five minute demo that was … not an actual game. It was a very nice demo.
But it was all smoke and mirrors.”

Mea culpa

Apparently one of my game design innovations is a “trend that needs to die“, as far as The Escapist is concerned:

Escort missions

Is there anything more annoying than an escort mission? You have to make sure that one NPC get from point A to point B, and you have to make sure they get there alive. Almost invariably, the NPC gets himself into trouble. Maybe he walks too slow and you’re constantly waiting on him, or he walks too fast, plunging into danger before you clear the way. Sometimes they take a path all their own, and it’s never the shortest one to your destination. In a similar vein, let’s do away with Assassin’s Creed’s eavesdropping missions as well, since they’re just escort missions wearing a Halloween disguise.

Yes, believe it or not, Rebel Moon Rising was publicly recognized by Computer Gaming World for being the first shooter to introduce escort missions. The issues the writer mentions are all legitimate, but they were obvious from the start and I believe we handled them pretty well. Other designers would not have followed in our footsteps if it hadn’t worked, but it seems not all of them have been as successful in addressing them.

Of course, the pathing is considerably easier in a 2.5D game than a 3D one, although I don’t know why escorted NPCs wouldn’t have an optimal path pre-programmed into them in the first place.

What I find a bigger problem with the escort mission is the way in which the story situation is so often handled ineptly. That first escort mission in RMR involved escorting baby aliens, who naturally wouldn’t know to run or to defend themselves if attacked by soldiers with lasers. But escort missions where armed adult warriors don’t defend themselves or even run away when attacked are just poorly designed, so it shouldn’t be a surprise if there are other problems with the implementation.