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Cross-Platform Politics |wow gold

Cross-Platform Politics |wow gold

Q&A: Certain Affinity's Hoberman Talks Plunder
Texas-based indie game developer Certain Affinity has an interesting split of projects, having been formed by Bungie veterans and having first worked on add-on map packs for Halo 2.
However, the firm now has two projects in progress, since it's working with Valve and creator Turtle Rock to develop the Xbox 360 version of the upcoming zombie action title Left 4 Dead.
At the same time, Certain Affinity is preparing to release their first original title, hex-based strategy game Plunder, to be published buy wow gold by Capcom for digital download later this year.
In this in-depth interview, Gamasutra spoke to Certain World of Warcraft Gold Affinity president and Bungie vet Max Hoberman about some intriguing industry-related issues centered around both Left 4 Dead and Plunder.
Topics include the advantages of developing from scratch as opposed to using middleware, working with Valve and Capcom, and the 'messy' politics of doing cross-platform play across PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
Tell me about Certain Affinity. How did you get started?
Max Hoberman: I’m originally from Austin, Texas, and I moved up to Chicago and then out to Seattle. I went to work for Bungie and I was there for about ten years. I moved back, finally, to Austin. I missed the sun.
When I went back, I was working for Bungie remotely, but there’s only so much you can do remotely in the game development business. It’s very much collaborative, especially since I worked in multiplayer as the multiplayer online lead at Bungie. It’s just an extremely collaborative business.
WOLF, meeting with a Lamb astray wow gold from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the wow gold Lamb the Wolf's right to eat him. He thus addressed him:"Sirrah, last year wow gold wow gold you grossly insulted me." "Indeed," bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, "I was not then born." Then said the Wolf , "You feed in wow power leveling my pasture." "No, good sir," replied the Lamb, "I have not yet tasted grass." Again said the Wolf, "You drink of my well." "No," exclaimed the Lamb, "I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me." Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, "Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations." The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny. A BAT who fell upon the ground and was wow gold aion gold caught by a Weasel pleaded to be spared his life. The Weasel refused, saying that he was by nature the enemy of all birds. The Bat assured him that he was not a bird, but a mouse, and thus was set free. Shortly afterwards the Bat again fell to the ground and was caught by another Weasel, whom he likewise entreated not to eat him. The Weasel said that he had a special hostility to mice. The Bat assured him World of Warcraft Gold that he was not a mouse, but a bat, and wow gold thus a second time escaped. It is wise to turn circumstances myyqqm1106 to good account.
I wanted to go on and do bigger and better things. I met a really good group of guys and we ended up founding Certain Affinity. Austin has a lot of people with a lot of experience – some of my guys are old Origin guys, going back to the late eighties. Our lead programmer started in ’87, and was the lead programmer on some Wing Commander games. So we put together a really good initial group, and since then we’ve about tripled in size.
To what?
MH: We’re eighteen people right now, and we’re interviewing and have a number of people we’re probably going to make offers to soon, so we’ll probably go up to twenty-two or twenty-three in the near future. Yeah, we’ve got a really good group of guys, and since Halo 3 wrapped up, I’ve managed to get a couple of good friends from Bungie who moved down to Austin and are now working with us – good team.
Is the company going to be very multiplayer focused, coming from your background?
MH: It’s kind of weird. It’s kind of unavoidable for us – the common thread running through us at the company is that we all love multiplayer. I say 'multiplayer,' and then I kind of catch myself, because it’s actually cooperative multiplayer play that we like.
Multiplayer in a free-for-all setting, I don’t think it has the same kind of appeal as team-based cooperative multiplayer, whether it’s a cooperative single-player experience against the computer or against other people. It’s cooperative, team-based games that are really fun, and that’s a thread that I see going through everything we’re doing. We’re doing the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead for Valve, which is this cooperative zombie FPS, and it’s definitely a common thread for the company.
Are you doing the Xbox 360 version or the multiplayer stuff?
MH: We’re responsible for every aspect of the Xbox version, and the game is also in development so we’ve helped them out a lot with the PC version. It’s not exactly a port, it’s simultaneous development on the Xbox version and there’s a lot of back and forth with those guys. But yeah, we’re responsible for everything from the control scheme to the matchmaking, and doing some pretty cool, pretty ambitious things. I can’t talk about that too much without Valve here, but we’re doing some pretty cool stuff.





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posted by: bradley555 at 04:27 | link | comments |

what do you see as the benefits of hexes?|wow gold

what do you see as the benefits of hexes?|wow gold
Regarding Plunder, it’s hex-based, and there haven’t been a lot of hex-based games for a long time. A couple of Japanese RPGs have filled the gap since the eighties— MH: --Was there a gap? I wasn’t aware there was a gap? I haven’t seen a whole lot. MH: Yeah, I know what you mean. I actually wrote up the design doc for the very first draft and it’s changed a lot, but the very first design doc for Plunder I wrote up a couple of years back, and at the time I was playing Settlers of Catan. I was just incredibly impressed with that game. Everybody I’ve brought in to play that game has enjoyed it, whether it’s my friends, parents, wife, my siblings, everyone. I just wanted to make a game that had that same accessibility. You know, one thing I hated about it, because I’m impatient, is that it’s turn-based, so I thought I’d start with some of that, take away the turn-based, turn it into a real-time strategy and see where that leads, and we ended up with a really interesting game. It’s hex-based, but it doesn’t feel hex-based. Some of the early shots I saw of the Live Arcade version of Catan, where you can play in a 3D environment got me thinking, "Oh, wow, you can do 3D in a hex-based game really well," and I think we have. When you’re playing the game, it doesn’t feel hex-based. I think what actually happens is that you actually forget you’re playing on hexes. You think you’re in this little 3D world. Hexes are a beautiful interface for the map editor, for example. You’re laying out hexes, and that sort of thing and interface for controlling your ship and all of that. So is that the reason for the hexes – a gauge of where you are? MH: Well, the hexes provide the interface in a way, because you’re always telling your ship, go here, go to this hex, when you’re attacking an enemy two ships cannot occupy the same hex, so everything’s always based on adjacency of hexes. So really, the foundation of the control scheme and cheap wow gold the interface of the game is really based on hexes – it’s very novel. It’s not something we’ve seen before. When we did it initially, I was actually amazed, because it all came together so beautifully. I sort of had this idea on paper, and when we put it all together, and I was like, do this, do that, and when it all came together I was, ‘Holy shit,’ – can I say that? – ‘this is awesome!’ Wow, this just came together beautifully. I’ll admit I was surprised. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but what do you see as the benefits of hexes against squares or octagons? MH: Oh, we don’t have that kind of buy wow gold technology yet – octagon technology? Too far in the future. But the nice thing about hexes is the directionality of them – every hex is surrounded by this ring of hexes, and you can come at them from the bottom, from the top, from the sides, and that’s kind of the problem of doing something with squares – you don’t get that same directionality. It’s kind of a centered experience. You can go to more complex things, but you don’t really gain anything. Hexes are just the perfect in-between. It is weird when you start laying out maps and you realize one direction is going to be completely vertical, and you can go straight down this line of hexes, but for the other one you’re going to have to zig-zag as you go, but we solved all the problems inherent with that. I mean, the first time we implemented it, and you told your ship to go somewhere, AN ASS having heard some Grasshoppers chirping, was highly wow gold enchanted; and, desiring to possess the same charms of melody, demanded what sort of food they lived on to give them such beautiful voices. They replied, "The dew." The Ass resolved that he would live wow gold only upon dew, and in a short time died of hunger. A LION was awakened from sleep by a Mouse wow gold running over his face. Rising up angrily, he caught him wow power leveling and was about to kill him, when the Mouse piteously entreated, saying: "If you cheap wow gold would only spare my life, I would be sure to repay your kindness." The Lion laughed and let him go. It happened shortly after this that buy wow gold the Lion was caught by some hunters, who bound him by strong ropes to the ground. The Mouse, recognizing his roar, came and gnawed the rope with his teeth and set him free, exclaiming: "You ridiculed the idea of my ever being able to help you, expecting buy wow gold to receive from me any repayment of your favor; now you know that it is possible myyqqm1106 for even a Mouse to con benefits on a Lion." it followed this crazy path, but we got the logic in there that traverses the hexes in an intuitive fashion, and the path-finding and that sort of stuff. You actually forget that it’s hex-based after a little while. What did you use for path-finding? MH: Oh, we did everything in-house. We did all the engine -- every single thing in this game is from the ground-up. There’s nothing from a third-party. The most recent thing was we needed a particle editor, so our lead programmer locked himself in a room for a week, and that’s our particle editor, and it’s actually pretty awesome, too, and that’s from the ground-up. What do you see as the benefits of from-the-ground-up development as opposed to licensing? MH: The benefit is that you’re really doing something which is custom-designed for your game. I think there’s also some potential, just from experience now, we’d looked at some particle editors that really slowed down our performance. If I pop-up the frame-rate counter while we’re in there playing a game, you’ll really be amazed, because for a multiplayer game right now, the frame-rate is absurd. Usually our counter’s at 170, maybe 130 at the really intense times. So performance is definitely a big thing, and we’re able to fine-tune the technology and really get the performance we want. It’s got a lot of up-side in the custom-tailored technology, but it’s got a down-side too in the time it takes and the financial investment that we’ve made in this game is really huge given the scale of the game. But it is our first original title, so we wanted it to really kick ass.





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posted by: bradley555 at 04:27 | link | comments |

A Psychological Approach |wow gold

A Psychological Approach |wow gold
Some gamers are fuckwads Of all the ways I spend my free time, playing games online is the only one I would describe as "frequently barbaric". Insults of all kinds, including racist and homophobic slurs, are commonplace. The women I know who play online avoid anything that would identify them as female -- including voice communication -- in order to avoid the unwanted, and frequently negative, attention. And that's just how players are intentionally insulting -- what some people World of Warcraft Gold do while playing online can also be aggravating. Cheating, team-killing, entering a cheap wow gold game but not playing, quitting before the game is over, and more, are all relatively common. Common enough that it was deemed worthy of a Penny Arcade comic, speculating about why normal people become fuckwads online. So what? Why do I care? Some gamers might be thinking "If he's so thin-skinned that he can't take the online banter, maybe he shouldn’t play online." Unfortunately, many people do just that -- they stop playing online. Even more gamers go online a few times and then never play again. A CHARCOAL-BURNER carried on his trade in his own house. One day he met a friend, a Fuller, and entreated him to come and wow gold live with him, saying that they should wow gold be far better neighbors and that their housekeeping expenses would be lessened. The Fuller replied, "The arrangement is impossible wow gold as far as I am concerned, for whatever I should whiten, you would immediately blacken again with your charcoal." Like will draw like. A FATHER had a family of wow power leveling sons who were perpetually quarreling among themselves. When he failed World of Warcraft Gold to heal their disputes by his exhortations, he determined to give them a practical illustration of the evils of disunion; and for this World of Warcraft Gold purpose he one day told them to bring him a bundle of sticks. When they had done so, he placed the faggot into the hands of each of them in succession, and ordered them to break it in pieces. They tried with all their sell wow gold strength, and were not able to do it. He next opened the faggot, took the sticks separately, one by one, and again put them into his sons' hands, upon which they broke them easily. He then addressed them in these words: "My sons, if you are of one mind, and unite to assist each other, you will be as this faggot, uninjured by all the attempts of your enemies; but if you are divided among yourselves , you will be broken myyqqm1106 as easily as these sticks." This isn't just my personal speculation; I have seen convincing data from two different sources that the biggest problem with online gaming is the behavior of others. The biggest problem isn't the cost; it isn't connectivity issues, or even the quality of the games -- it is how people are fuckwads online. To make this concrete, here's a thought experiment for you: imagine you go to a new restaurant, and decide to try the meatloaf. A big guy at the next table overhears you, looks at you, and yells: "Meatloaf? What kinda newb are you? Hey everybody, this r-tard just ordered the meatloaf! God, I'm glad you're not at my table." Laughter breaks out at the tables around you, as they crane their heads to look at the newb. The restaurant staff is nowhere to be found, and you're not entirely certain they'd do anything anyway -- you can tell this is normal behavior at this place. How good or cheap would the food have to be to get you to go back there? Who would you bring there? The vast majority of the world population wouldn't go back there, and would warn everyone they knew to avoid it. So again, why do I care? Because the online behavior of our customers is dramatically reducing our sales, and continues to stunt the growth of our industry. Non-gamers simply don’t love games enough to put up with the crap they get online. The reason they would consider playing online is to have fun with other people -- and right now, playing games online with strangers rarely delivers that for anyone outside the hardcore demographic.





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posted by: bradley555 at 04:26 | link | comments |

Are these problems even solvable? |wow gold

Are these problems even solvable? |wow gold
Short answer: yes. Social environments and culture can be designed. Just like good game design creates fun gameplay, good social design creates fun social experiences. Unfortunately, online games seem to have allocated very few resources to designing the social environment. But honestly, I don't believe that resource constraints are the source of the buy wow gold problem -- I think that most people don’t believe that social problems can be solved. A common belief that I’ve heard used as justification cheap wow gold for not addressing the social environment of games is that "jerks will be jerks". Essentially, many people believe that: 1. Behavior is determined by personality, and 2. You can’t change people’s personality While I (mostly) agree with the second point, it is moot because the first point has been consistently contradicted by 60 years of social psychological research. Human behavior is complex and determined by many factors. Personality is certainly one factor, but it is a surprisingly small factor. A BOY was hunting for locusts. He had wow gold caught a goodly number, when he saw a Scorpion, and mistaking wow gold him for a locust, reached wow gold out his hand to take him. The Scorpion, showing his sting, said: If you had but wow power leveling touched me, my friend, you would have lost me, and all your locusts too!" A COCK, scratching for food for gold wow himself and his hens, found a precious stone and exclaimed: "If your owner gold wow had found thee, and not I, he would have taken thee up, and have set thee in thy first estate; but I have found thee for no purpose. I would rather buy wow gold have one barleycorn myyqqm1106 than all the jewels in the world." The largest determinant of behavior is the perceived social environment. This is the good news, because both the social environment and the perception of it can be controlled. But me just saying that I disagree with a belief isn’t an argument; some proof is in order. Evidence about the effect of the social environment on behavior comes from two main sources: real-world observation and academic studies from social psychology. (Although perhaps I should add "cartoonists" to those two sources. The Penny Arcade comic showing a normal person becoming a total fuckwad when in multiplayer gaming situation -- anonymous, with an audience -- was pretty accurate, if a bit simplified.)






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posted by: bradley555 at 04:26 | link | comments |

Why World of Warcraft Made It Big? |wow gold

Why World of Warcraft Made It Big? |wow gold
Massively Multiplayer Online Games are officially mainstream. A title from the genre has had an entire cartoon episode made about it, features in an advertisement starring Mr. T, and hosts some ten million players worldwide. World of Warcraft is a fundamentally important element to the MMO landscape, but more than that it's an ecology, a society all its own. We know WoW has hit it big. What we don't know -- what we don't think anyone could claim to know for certain -- is why exactly Blizzard's behemoth was the one to break loose from that nerd stigma. World of Warcraft's launch and subsequent popularity is a singular event in the history of gaming. Why this game? Why not titles that went before it, like the comic-esque title City of Heroes? Why not Star Wars Galaxies, a title with a huge buy wow gold built-in fan base? Why not WoW-launch contemporary EverQuest 2, the successor to the original MMO superpower? There's no one answer to that question, of course. There are as many theories cheap wow gold about WoW's popularity as there are MMO commentators. It's in between those theories that I think real insight can be found. As much as the venture capitalists might like to hear differently, there's no one reason why World of Warcraft has achieved the success it has. So with that in mind, let's approach Azeroth as a sociologist might: what drives people to inhabit this world? Cut the BS If you had to pin me down, and forced out of me the #1 reason for WoW's success, it would all come down to one simple word: fun. I'm not talking about some sort of elusive concept here; not the pursuit of fun or the idea of fun, but the real deal. World of Warcraft was one of the very first MMOs that you could hop right into and have fun -- right away. Ten seconds after entering the world you've got your first quest. THE BEASTS of the field and forest wow gold had a Lion as their king. He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor wow gold tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be. During his reign wow gold he made a royal proclamation for a general assembly of all wow power leveling the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for a universal league, in which aion gold the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the Tiger wow gold cheap and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in perfect peace wow gold buy and amity. The Hare said, "Oh, how I have longed to see this day, in which the weak shall take their place with myyqqm1106 impunity by the side of the strong." And after the Hare said this, he ran for his life. A minute after that you're in combat for the first time. Combat in World of Warcraft is simple, clean, and well-explained. Every step you take in your first hour of play is right down the path toward fun. There are no barriers, no insane design decisions, no hoops you have to jump through -- WoW lets you have fun, right away. This newbie experience philosophy extends all the way up to the heights of endgame play. Certainly no one is going to explain to you how to complete an end-level raid dungeon; there's no tooltip for that. But raids, guilds, groups, they're all put on the path toward the goal of fun. Endgame play is just like the newbie experience, only more so -- low barriers, constant feedback that you're making the right choice, enjoyable rewards. This all sounds like kindergarden-level obviousness, but I can't overstate how important this low-barrier approach is to World of Warcraft's success. In the original EverQuest, at launch, you spent long minutes waiting for your character's health to regenerate after every fight. Spellcasters had to meditate, essentially vulnerable to everything in the gameworld, for even longer minutes to get mana back. Star Wars Galaxies ceased having any form of direction or purpose the instant you stepped out of the tutorial. Final Fantasy XI essentially forced you into a group at level 10, and punished you with level loss if your avatar died too often. Making it easy to have fun, making almost every act of play inside the gameworld an enjoyable experience, may be WoW's greatest success.






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posted by: bradley555 at 04:26 | link | comments |

To A Mirror Finish |wow gold

To A Mirror Finish |wow gold
Fun is an elusive concept, though, right? So let's break it down a bit. The quality of World of Warcraft's design and conceptual elements - the keys that allow for that high level of fun -- comes from constant clarification and refinement. The lengthy Beta testing phase that WoW went through before it released, the dedication to great design in Blizzard's corporate culture ... it all adds up to the word polish. Polish has been taken up as the banner, the rallying cry of game cheap wow gold designers both in and out of the MMO genre. Meeting the high quality standard World of Warcraft has set requires an enormous amount of polish; so much so that WoW's success is often said to hang on the game's polish. What's fascinating about World of Warcraft, and what makes that argument such an easy one to believe, is that Blizzard has applied so many levels of polish to the game. From the Macro- to the Micro-, everything hums and clicks together like so much clockwork. Two opposing factions, both with distinctly different races, offer players two substantially different paths to follow. Before the Burning Crusade expansion, A WOLF who had a bone stuck in wow gold his throat hired a Crane, for a large sum, to put her head into his mouth and draw out the bone. When the wow gold Crane had extracted the bone and demanded the promised payment, the Wolf, grinning wow gold and grinding his teeth, exclaimed: "Why, you have surely already had a sufficient recompense, in having been permitted to draw out your head in wow power leveling safety from the mouth and jaws of a wolf." A FISHERMAN skilled in music took his flute aion gold and his nets to the seashore. Standing on a projecting rock, he played several tunes in the hope that the fish, attracted by his melody, would of their own accord gold wow dance into his net, which he had placed below. At last, having long waited in vain, he laid aside his flute, and casting his net into the sea, made an excellent haul of fish. When he saw them cheap wow gold leaping about in the net upon the rock he said: "O you most perverse creatures, when I piped you would not myyqqm1106 dance, but now that I have ceased you do so merrily." these factions also had slightly different classes -- more meaningful choices. The user interface is achingly simple and yet amazingly powerful. The yellow exclamation point above a quest-giver's head -- a blindingly obvious decision, but extraordinary in 2004 -- offers connectivity and continuity for the player. You can drill all the way down through the game to reach even the smallest level, and still find polish. The mage tower in the Human starting zone of Elwynn, for example, is peppered with memorable characters and stories; there's even a magic globe that you can use to see a far-off locale you won't reach for another dozen levels or so. The game's NPCs are peppered with clever pop culture in-jokes, Easter eggs for the observant player. Lore-addicted roleplayers can comb through hundreds of in-game books to learn more about Azeroth's history. The game is far from perfect, of course, but the sheer level of sophistication and development that World of Warcraft shows at every level is staggering. Almost intimidating. The amount of money that was spent bringing this game to market seems almost ludicrous, right up until you experience a new dawn on the docks of Southshore or witness a heated exchange between two vibrant characters in an Outland tavern.






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posted by: bradley555 at 04:25 | link | comments (1) |