while it's a bit disappointing that she won't be releasing anything new for a while, i hope she comes back in a few years refreshed and newly inspired. there's something about her happier tunes that just make it seem like your day is going to be fantastic.
@DY357LX: you can download it from youtube, assuming you have an addon that'll pull the links out. google doesn't particularly like this, but i do it on occasion to watch things in another player at 50-60fps.
@Teran: It's not a justification based on a single thing, as you're making it seem. I'm sure it's a short list of issues that lead to the obvious decision, which they've made. Yes, they want newly rolled goblin and worgen characters to hit 85 first, but don't just take it at face value and think it's supposed to be justification in itself. The actual reasons behind it are what lead to them making that statement.
Any company that can consistently crank out quality gameplay and content while generally maintaining the integrity of the properties likely has some further insight on the issues that you aren't aware of.
Also I could be recalling this incorrectly, but I think they said they'd allow race changes about a month after release. Shouldn't be too long of a wait and there will certainly be plenty of other things to do in that time.
Any company that can consistently crank out quality gameplay and content while generally maintaining the integrity of the properties likely has some further insight on the issues that you aren't aware of.
Also I could be recalling this incorrectly, but I think they said they'd allow race changes about a month after release. Shouldn't be too long of a wait and there will certainly be plenty of other things to do in that time.
@Teran: They said a while back that the reasoning for doing this was to allow the new goblin/worgen characters to hit max level first. That should also help it feel like a much smoother more natural transition than half of your guild instantly becoming a goblin or a worgen. Plus those who actually leveled them will feel unique for a short while until the paid change is available.
It'd give that big rush impulse time to chill out, so by the time the race change is available things will have settled down a bit.
Probably would be good money if they just allowed them immediately, though MMOs aren't about the quick money that degrades the integrity of the game. It's all about the long haul. Maybe it's the kind of thing that doesn't matter to everyone, but those subtleties do matter to a lot of people who may not even realize it matters to them.
It'd give that big rush impulse time to chill out, so by the time the race change is available things will have settled down a bit.
Probably would be good money if they just allowed them immediately, though MMOs aren't about the quick money that degrades the integrity of the game. It's all about the long haul. Maybe it's the kind of thing that doesn't matter to everyone, but those subtleties do matter to a lot of people who may not even realize it matters to them.
That ending is pure gold, I couldn't stop laughing.
Really hope these help sell the PS Move, because it honestly seems like the best of both worlds between the Wiimote and Kinect. Would be good to see it succeed so we can get some more engaging motion games. Just worried the camera requirement isn't going to go over so well.
Really hope these help sell the PS Move, because it honestly seems like the best of both worlds between the Wiimote and Kinect. Would be good to see it succeed so we can get some more engaging motion games. Just worried the camera requirement isn't going to go over so well.
@PoweredByHentai: Either you ended up at the wrong link or you meant to reply to someone else. :)
Anyway, I've been playing Terran exclusively and have definitely noticed that in the lower leagues (because I'm not that great) it's very common to see Zerg and Protoss players that seem unprepared to deal with whatever a Terran has to throw at them.
Terran can flexibly wall off pretty quick, so the opponent gets no drone scouting in and don't really get any headsup about what's going on until either an overlord or observer make it there. Meanwhile, I can scan freely and plan accordingly while they have to plan for a possible reaper rush whether one is coming or not.
So long as I can eat one of their attacks or push through their defenses early enough that I don't have to worry about burrow or colossi, more often than not it's gg. I can secretly devote everything to teching out horizontally and maxing out my economy while they instead tech up to try and get early air while cranking out weaker units. By the time they have any air, it's often too little too late.
From what I've seen, the better the players are the more the seemingly large imbalances melt away into minor differences in most cases. Players that good tend to just steamroll me as I've mostly been a coop vs AI player in the past. I imagine it's pretty hard to balance the game for both professional and casual players at the same time.
That said, it's become common knowledge even amongst the pros that while the games are often close there are things that should probably be tweaked to make the games more fair. One side often has to work harder than the other for the same or slightly worse results.
As it is, SC2 has already been through a lot of balancing and making the polishing tweaks isn't as easy as you might make it sound. Starcraft has always had some cheap strategies which frustrate new people, but then you learn to counter them instead of assuming the game is broken.
Now that SC2 is out for the wider audience they really get to see how the strategies evolve and let players settle into what works. If after a reasonable amount of time they don't see that happening, I'm sure they'll at least have plenty more data to help identify what things need changing.
Certainly they have mirrored replays of every ladder match played and I bet they have some pretty cool in-house tools for analyzing the replays. There's already a freely available utility called SC2Gears that lets you see useful details about individual replays and stats across a large collection of replays.
Anyway, I've been playing Terran exclusively and have definitely noticed that in the lower leagues (because I'm not that great) it's very common to see Zerg and Protoss players that seem unprepared to deal with whatever a Terran has to throw at them.
Terran can flexibly wall off pretty quick, so the opponent gets no drone scouting in and don't really get any headsup about what's going on until either an overlord or observer make it there. Meanwhile, I can scan freely and plan accordingly while they have to plan for a possible reaper rush whether one is coming or not.
So long as I can eat one of their attacks or push through their defenses early enough that I don't have to worry about burrow or colossi, more often than not it's gg. I can secretly devote everything to teching out horizontally and maxing out my economy while they instead tech up to try and get early air while cranking out weaker units. By the time they have any air, it's often too little too late.
From what I've seen, the better the players are the more the seemingly large imbalances melt away into minor differences in most cases. Players that good tend to just steamroll me as I've mostly been a coop vs AI player in the past. I imagine it's pretty hard to balance the game for both professional and casual players at the same time.
That said, it's become common knowledge even amongst the pros that while the games are often close there are things that should probably be tweaked to make the games more fair. One side often has to work harder than the other for the same or slightly worse results.
As it is, SC2 has already been through a lot of balancing and making the polishing tweaks isn't as easy as you might make it sound. Starcraft has always had some cheap strategies which frustrate new people, but then you learn to counter them instead of assuming the game is broken.
Now that SC2 is out for the wider audience they really get to see how the strategies evolve and let players settle into what works. If after a reasonable amount of time they don't see that happening, I'm sure they'll at least have plenty more data to help identify what things need changing.
Certainly they have mirrored replays of every ladder match played and I bet they have some pretty cool in-house tools for analyzing the replays. There's already a freely available utility called SC2Gears that lets you see useful details about individual replays and stats across a large collection of replays.
@PoweredByHentai:
Blue post: [bit.ly]
They know there are some balancing issues and they aren't just saying "guess you're screwed".
Blue post: [bit.ly]
They know there are some balancing issues and they aren't just saying "guess you're screwed".
Going the digital activation route here. Have become so used to Steam that owning a boxed copy of something doesn't carry the same value it once did. If I was going for the collector's edition, it might make slightly more sense, but was unable to justify it.
From what I understand though, it isn't possible to have bought the game digitally in advance, since you can't purchase the key until release time in order to give retail a lead. 10 hour lead is pretty insignificant though for most people and in the end the only really valuable thing in the box is the key. Plus, it's nice that more of the money goes to Blizzard this way (not that they need it that badly).
Had initially pre-ordered it tax/shipping free, but cancelled to go the digital route to get it faster without needing to go pick it up.
It will be a little odd deciding whether to play multiplayer with friends first or do the campaign. The excitement surrounding both aspects of SC2 seems unique.
From what I understand though, it isn't possible to have bought the game digitally in advance, since you can't purchase the key until release time in order to give retail a lead. 10 hour lead is pretty insignificant though for most people and in the end the only really valuable thing in the box is the key. Plus, it's nice that more of the money goes to Blizzard this way (not that they need it that badly).
Had initially pre-ordered it tax/shipping free, but cancelled to go the digital route to get it faster without needing to go pick it up.
It will be a little odd deciding whether to play multiplayer with friends first or do the campaign. The excitement surrounding both aspects of SC2 seems unique.
Had a lot of fun with my EleMesmer and can't wait to burn things to the ground in exciting new ways. Just hope that the character and camera movement feel a bit less awkward this time around.
Guild Wars is 50% off on Steam at the moment and I figure the timing is not a coincidence. Still worth buying and playing with some friends.
@Sloopydrew: Sending out an early notice does cost them like $80 million or so if I remember correctly, but they do it because it will actually save a lot more than that by reducing the number of households that require follow-ups.
For what it's worth, I haven't been into any C&C game after Red Alert 1 and the C&C 4 beta may have brought me back. Currently it's limited to a single mode of the multiplayer called Domination, which is more like Dawn of War+Starcraft+World in Conflict.
It is of course almost nothing like an actual C&C game, but despite that it is very fun. I'm sure it will all blend better into the C&C universe once they release the other gameplay modes and cutscenes so it can be experienced more traditionally.
The lack of custom dedicated servers and LAN play doesn't really seem that troubling to me for certain games. You can usually still play online and you won't notice the difference unless it's a larger LAN party with a saturated connection.
It does sound like games that are moving to this style of multiplayer make an effort to keep as much traffic within the LAN as possible to prevent unnecessarily wasting bandwidth, but I suspect anything ranked/ladder related would have to be filtered through the server for anti-cheating purposes.
Obviously this still shuts out a number of legit use cases that makes these games a no-buy for some people and that's unfortunate. The vast majority of people will not care or even notice a difference if they weren't told beforehand, which makes it hard for these large companies to take the whining seriously.
The original was really great and I'm glad they've done a revamp with new graphics for a newer audience. More than anything though, this makes me want to play the old NES version again.
@Brian Crecente: There's an odd brand of nostalgia in reflecting on these timelines from my own perspective. I busted out game release date lists and started writing short bits about the greats and the disappointments, but quickly decided I don't have the energy to be that comprehensive right now.
So at a glance the stuff that positively affected me the most in the long term (in order):
- Diablo II. The story, the music and the part where you leave crowds of corpses laying behind you when you aren't running from crowds of corpses chasing after you. Coop via LAN was fun, though I never got interested in playing it online.
- Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source. Best aesthetically mastered competitive thinking man's tweak stealth tactical strategy spectator sport FPS kill fest of all time. A game of moments and pressure. The first truly social game I got into, getting to know groups of new people over extended periods of time.
- Knights of Honor: Very fond of this game though it was easy to get burned out on it playing as the wrong country (some countries are harder/frustrating to play as). This scale of strategy with a subtle Risk style combined with the great music made for a pretty memorable game.
- World of Warcraft: Some friends and I all drove down to Walmart around 2 AM on release day to pick up our copies For the Horde. I rolled a Shaman and it was really my only character until WotLK came out and I got alt happy. Most fun I had was 3-manning lowbie 5-man instances. It was like raiding without all the waiting and boring parts.
- EVE Online: The game that I wish was the game I wish it was. It made floating around in space with friends as relaxing, mind numbing and dangerous as you'd expect it to be. Unfortunately the amount of work required of you is directly proportional to the number of people you play with and I was always more into small groups (which is only viable if you're into pirating or have immeasurable patience). Despite that, it was awesome in its own way.
- Everquest 2: As ugly as this game can be, it had features and dungeon styles you only dreamed of having in other games along with a very mature playerbase making for interesting conversation. The built-in voice chat they added was second to none, making WoW's voice chat option seem like a joke. This is the only other game, next to Counter-Strike, where it felt like there weren't any barriers in the way of getting to know people on a more personal level.
- Burnout Paradise: Criterion made RenderWare which is the engine behind GTA 3, VC and SA, but GTA 3 never satisfied the desire to race in an open city. Midtown Madness was the closest thing to that and it left a lot to be desired. Beautiful solid game with cars that feel right and wrecks that almost make failing fun. The large city included all kinds of crazy shortcuts, jumps, hidden collectibles and unlockable cars. It was a full meal.
- The Last Remnant: Maybe it's not the best JRPG ever, but I enjoyed the format of the game, the experimental battle system and appreciated a decent JRPG on the PC. I think it had a lasting impact, because I hadn't played one in a long time.
Left 4 Dead 1/2, Defense Grid and AI War were all pretty impactful as well. There are other memorable games in-between, but that just about sums it up without getting too much crazier with the list.
@Impreza_AWD: Yeah, I'm impressed.
The English VOs seem passable enough to play the game with (I'm sure that's the idea) and it's nice seeing they actually bothered having the mouths sync up too.
Looking forward to this.
Screenshots look beautiful, everything is fairly consistent and they really capture that old western feel. Hopefully they hide a nod to Back to the Future somewhere.
Wouldn't mind one bit if they stepped into the Dark Ages for the next game, then perhaps something futuristic after that.
Whatever they do, they'd better include a tank in all of them to make up for the lack of one in GTA IV.
@Yossarian: Streaming pre-determined video which has almost no latency requirement is a bit different than getting a live feed to an end point without the luxury of a buffer. Your experience allows you a certain perspective on it, but I'm not sure it's as relevant as it sounds. I suspect the majority of the technical solutions OnLive had to employ are pretty far removed from traditional media streaming. It lead them to filing for 100 new patents.
I don't have anything against Evdor, but his claims were pretty extreme going so far as to compare it to the Phantom. So if you can't figure out how it will work, then by default it has to be completely impractical and fail? If OnLive was instead named Google would your opinion be different, instead giving them the benefit of the doubt? The primary difference then would be that Google would be spending their own money, so they darn well better be right or it's a big waste.
A few months ago they said their latest round of funding was their biggest ever, even more than it was supposed to be. Saying the money will be spent and then they will need more isn't exactly detailing their doom. There's no telling how long it will take them to turn a profit once they go live.
It's fine that other big named well funded companies have tried and failed before. Money and a big name doesn't immediately translate into the perfect technology. There's no doubt the challenge that OnLive chose was a tough one, but their fate isn't necessarily predetermined based on the failures of other companies. Perhaps the stories of their failures helped to provide insight for those who came after.
Sure, this technology would benefit music and movies by way of adding social features to the experience, reducing processing requirements, decreasing potential failures and replacing common encoding artifacts with a different set of artifacts. In many areas video on demand services can still be painfully buggy or have unacceptable downtimes, so this might become a vast improvement in those areas. I think Perlman even hinted at movie streaming as part of the service some day.
I think encoding the entire desktop as a video frame would be a step backward for something like a Citrix server and even if it were a mild improvement in certain scenarios I'm not sure I hear the sound of people screaming for the feature. Doing this for gaming potentially opens it up to an audience that might not have bought a gaming console or gaming PC, but wouldn't mind playing or watching a game on TV. This has the potential to turn gaming into a much more serious spectator activity here in the US, not unlike what can be seen in South Korea.
There have been some interesting game streaming technologies both within the browser and in full games. GuildWars, small handful of Steam games, FreeRealms and Flash games that load in assets from dynamic sources that can't easily be ripped to the local drive. Flash now having GPU support may be the next big place we see game streaming taking new steps, but that will take a while to get serious.
However, none of the above shoots down OnLive definitively. Sure, the majority of people using OnLive may end up playing non-HD content, but that's fine so long as they are playing games they can enjoy at SD resolutions. It has to start somewhere. The Wii has been wildly popular and even suffered severe input latency at least for motion.
Like I said, it could still fail, but I haven't yet heard a great reason why it definitely will.
@nipsen: Certainly there are people with doubts, but I have yet to hear any truly great arguments for why it should fail. There are hurdles in different areas, yes, but fortunately OnLive isn't required to serve the entire internet at once and it can cherry pick where it offers service and how many people it offers service to.
Now before I go into this, let me first state that if you go to a shell/console/command prompt and ping a server somewhere, the actual latency measurement you're getting back IS round-trip. So whatever number you see, cut that in half and that's the one-way trip latency approximation to that address. Thought it was worth specifically stating this as it's a common mistake.
80ms is the maximum worst case round trip they're talking about within a respectable range assuming a good quality network spread, not the actual latency they're experiencing during the presentation. This is why some areas are currently prime targets for this, because they're tier 1 network internet exchange points [en.wikipedia.org] . He clearly states their datacenter near the university is in Ashburn, VA so they would be hosting at one of 4 datacenters there where the EQIX-ASH - Equinix Exchange Ashburn is accessible.
So let's assume they're at this university and 250 miles away from their datacenter. 80ms round trip means they might only need 25-35ms one-way to the datacenter and at 250 miles that should be easy given the connectivity that a university should have. It wouldn't be surprising if they were getting 8-15ms one way trips or less.
I can send a packet on a 600 mile one-way trip and get a 10ms average latency if all goes well. Heck, I'm like 1300-2000 miles of fiber optic cable away from Columbia University and I can still get 28ms one-way trips which might put me around the 80ms worst case scenario at this range. OnLive's plan is to maximize the occurrence of the all-goes-well scenario. Of course they won't be able to get it perfect for everyone on every ISP within range, but there should be plenty of homes which can get acceptable service.
I suspect they're actually aiming to give people more of a 40-60ms latency experience, but you probably don't hear him say that as he's primarily talking about the limitations which defined their business and technical boundaries.
Also in the video he was referring to poor case scenario frame decoding and worst case packet vsync alignment. They might even be able to do some simple calculations on the client end to make sure the frame gets back closer to the vsync window. In any case, their priority isn't to sell to people who end up at the opposite ends of bad routes with no alternatives and old laptops.
As far as people convinced that it's impossible for them business-wise to run some datacenter full of gaming hardware... do you really think they're getting funded out the ass without an actual business plan, math to back it up, tricks up their sleaves and partners sold on making it real?
There's a list of games I'd never want to play on OnLive, but for every one of those there are at least 3 where latency wouldn't matter and that's enough to get customers at the outer edges of their suggested range.
I have to respectfully completely disagree with Evdor's assertions about OnLive. He uses the word "professionals" loosely as a way to provide momentum for his argument that nobody who qualifies as intelligent on the subject thinks any of it will work when it is absolutely untrue.
He presents the idea that investors should take extreme caution in believing anything they say as he implies they must be disingenuously fishing for money, which is incorrect as they already received their Series C funding this past September. Suggesting caution or skepticism is fine, but claiming that they are lying or hiding things behind mirrors is a low blow. There's somewhere around a zero percent chance that these people are hurting for investors or that their investors were careless in their investment.
He also skipped through the video and then was disappointed that none of his important questions were answered. To be fair at that point I'm sure he was just getting carried away and jumping the gun, so no harm done. However, one of those questions was answered in the video to an extent and the others could be reasonably filled in by reading other articles about OnLive.
Unless the CEO is an experienced actor it is clear he is legitimately excited about the service and the technology behind it, but that he does have to be careful not to be too specific on certain subjects. Yes he is a CEO, but he is not a hired talking head heavily trained in the art of karate chopping you with lies.
I apologize for disagreeing so sharply on these points, but I just felt that passionately opposed.
Yes, OnLive won't be perfect, there will be limitations. No it won't be an instant hit and I'm rather confident investors know this. It's guaranteed that at the start it will only be viable in certain areas and then slowly expand as demand and the quality of networks improve. There may even be a feature that suggests games that will play well within your latency range, as some games are less forgiving with slower reaction times. Off the top of my head I imagine competitive multiplayer games as being potentially problematic due to layered sets of latency and reaction time involved. I'm sure there will be a large selection of games that will be enjoyable via OnLive with a reasonable latency, and that's what's important. Hardcore gamers will probably harbor an aversion for a good while.
I say all this in defense of OnLive even though I'm very well aware of the potential negative impact that a service like OnLive could have on PC gaming or gaming in general, but it may take 12-20 years for those negatives to truly manifest if they do as they are heavily bound by how quickly the US networks improve. It goes without saying there are also many positive changes we could see in the industry with a service like OnLive around and I'm personally excited about its potential either way.
It could still fail, but if it does then it probably won't be due to building a house out of cards printed on toilet paper. If anyone has incredibly convincing evidence that points toward inevitable failure, I'd be interested in hearing it just in case there is something I've overlooked.
It's good that there are low end pixel art games piled in with much higher quality art, but a trend that bugs me a little is the increasing acceptance of indie game development as a small studio business model for experienced game developers and artists. It feels like they may bring an unhealthy level of established industry formulaic game design and quality into the indie space.
I'm sure a number of professionals view it as an excellent way to get free marketing and a better chance of getting distribution deals with almost no competition considering the average quality level of an indie game. That makes it very tempting.
On the one hand, it's great, because I'm sure there are many people that would like to escape the long development cycles of mainstream games to work on smaller more personal and focused projects which might normally go ignored by publishers. On the other, I'd hate to see the influx of technical/artistic talent dissuade creative developers who no longer feel they can compete if their game isn't edgey, graphically impressive or have a killer soundtrack.
It may not be a problem in the immediate future, but I get the feeling that as the expected quality of indie games increases from the player perspective, the little guys will have more trouble standing out and we'll be left with a bite-sized mainstream channel. 10 years from now new gamers might have a vastly different definition of what indie games are.
Of course the IGF will always keep some emphasis on creativity and new ideas which leaves us with hope of high quality creative new games spawning. We should really start worrying if that begins to mean "the most creative gimmick".
