The Perfect Score

Spike TV recently held their annual video game awards where The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was named Game of the Year (GotY). The other GotY nominees were Batman: Arkham City, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Portal 2, and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Now these games all have two things in common, not only are they sequels but they also have a metascore of over 90, and the reason for this is that the game review system is broken!

Let us briefly consider the 2011 Academy Awards, the award for Best Picture went to The King's Speech which has a metascore of 88, the other nominees where 127 Hours (82), Black Swan (79), The Fighter (79), Inception (74), The Kids are All Right (86), The Social Network (95), Toy Story 3 (92), True Grit (80), and Winter's Bone (90). So yes while there are movies that do receive metascores of over 90 these are not as common as they are in video games (a quick count shows around 40 90+ games released in 2011 while only 2 movies), additionally when a reviewer gives a game a score which is lower than the average they are often criticised for it. Why is this? Are games simply better polished than movies, with higher quality control or is there something else?

Firstly, the argument of higher quality control is incorrect. Skyrim has had to be patched twice since release with more on the way due to problems such as texture downscaling, dragons flying backwards, game crashes, and severe slow down for the PS3 version of the game when the save file exceeds 6 MB. The PS3 slowdown issue is still ongoing with players reporting that eventually the game becomes unplayable. Skyward Sword which won G4TV's Videogame Deathmatch also has an error where doing a specific action at a certain time makes it impossible to complete the game, Nintendo have since announced a fix for this. So how is it that two of the best games in 2011 are released with severe errors and the GotY eventually becomes unplayable on the PS3 and both still receive 90+ metascores? More often than not games are released on their publicised date with the intention being that any problems can be remedied later, and in general reviewers are quite forgiving of glitches and errors. But consider what would happen if a movie had a serious problem, such as the sound cutting out, none of the reviewers would ignore it by simply saying a version with updated sound will eventually be released. So why do game reviewers?

The thing about video gaming is that it still has the niche hobby mentality. Even with the explosion of the casual gaming market there is a large section of the gaming community who refer to themselves as 'core gamers', even the name core gamers shows the mentality of we are the real gamers and everyone else doesn't count. It is generally understood what this section of gamers like, and with most reviewers also being members of this group certain titles are almost guaranteed a 90+ metascore. Ironically it is this group who demand that games be taken seriously and be accepted by the general public, while at the same time deriding attempts to increase the accessibility of games with comments such as 'the Wii only plays kid's games'. If gaming is to be taken seriously then it needs to be viewed and reviewed by a wider audience, Roger Ebert doesn't just watch movies he knows he will like but rather he tries to see and give his opinion on as many movies as he can.

Now what would have happened if someone who usually plays PopCap or Facebook style casual games played Skyrim and had given a reveiw of 6/10 because although it was nice to look at the game was overly complicated and too dificult to know what you were supposed to be doing. The core gamers would pounce on them, complaining that they 'didn't get the game' or 'clearly this isn't your style of game', even though this is a valid review and one that needs to be out there if more people are going to become gamers. We saw a similar thing happen when Tom McShea gave Skyward Sword a 7.5 complaining about the controls and tired, outdated story line; he was heavily criticised with comments along the lines of 'IGN gave it a 10 and said the controls were perfect so you are lying to get more publicity'. Now either because of a problem with the game, his hardware, or the way he tried to play it Tom McShea experienced control difficulties and he shouldn't overlook them when writing his review just because Richard George at IGN said it was perfect. Making things worse is that most titles from the major publishers are sent to reviewers with guidelines detailing what should be the focus of the review, also in some cases reviewers are not permitted to discus certain aspects of the game until after it is released.

So how do we fix the review system? Firstly, we need to stop obsessing over metascores, the idea that only games with a 90+ rating are worth playing is nonsense, a better way is to find a reviewer with similar tastes to you and find out what they are playing (I liked the way the ScrewAttack used to rate their games Buy it, Rent it, or F' it). We also need to get rid of the reviewer guidelines and let reviewers say what they want, because if gaming is to stop simply being a hobby and become a normal form of entertainment similar to tv, movies, or music then a wider range of people need to have their opinion of the medium heard. One problem with changing the review system is that games reviewed before date X couldn't be directly compared to games reviewed after by simply looking at their metascores. But, since there is no consensus on what a review score actually means and what is required to get a 90+ score changes over time (the original Rainbow Islands had a 90+ score but the more recent releases have metascores ranging from 47 to 62) these comparisons are often pointless anyway.

Due to the upcoming holidays this is probably the last update until after the new year.

Cheating 101

Earlier this week YouTube suggested I watch a video called "Hand Quicker Than Eye", which details ways to protect yourself against dodgy dealers in the home poker game. This got me thinking about how when I first started judging Magic I spent some time learning how to cheat, and not just the obvious cheating as outlined in the penalty guidelines, but the more devious sneaky ways to bend the rules. An example of an extremely easy cheat that requires no skill and is accidentally done by a lot of new players is called the double nickel, this involves placing your lands on top of your non-land cards and then doing two five-pile table shuffles. This ensure that you get neither mana flood nor drought as the lands are now distributed throughout the deck in such a way that any stretch of seven cards will have either two or three lands.

Why am I telling you this cheat? Because many new players are told that pile shuffling is a good method to use for randomising their deck (at least until they become good at riffle shuffling) and usually they are told to use either five or seven piles, because these are prime numbers which makes them magical and extra random. The truth is that pile shuffling simply moves the cards around in a set pattern, so if the deck is stacked so is the outcome. However, pile shuffling is useful for counting the number of cards in you deck so you can make sure that you haven't lost or gained one prior to presenting it, but if you want to actually randomise the deck you must riffle shuffle.

What should you do if you just watched you opponent do this? In a casual game you explain to them what they have done wrong as you can be almost 100% certain that is was a mistake, I have the policy that if the last type of shuffle completed before the deck is presented to me is a pile then I will explain my objection and ask them to shuffle again. At a competitive event, while it might be tempting to "undo" the shuffle (the cards are in a predetermined order so you can easily move them around) never do this! Instead always call a judge and explain what happened and why you think it might be a problem, the judge will then ask both players some questions, they might also look at the order of the cards and then based on what has been said one of three things should happen, either a speech about good shuffling technique (officially this would count as an untracked caution), a tracked warning penalty for 'insufficient shuffling', or if the judge believes that the action was deliberate a disqualification for 'manipulation of game materials'. It is possible that the judge will go away briefly before delivering their ruling as the DCI (Magic's governing body) keeps track of previous penalties players have received and they might want to see if this is the first time the player has committed the offence.

What I like about the Magic penalty guidelines is that they take intent and the 'spirit of the game/rules' into account, with a slight modifier for how easy to do or difficult to spot an infraction is. For me it comes down to games are fun, one of the reasons I started judging was I disliked the serious 'unfun' attitudes exhibited by some players at high level events, and if you are going to cheat you really need to ask yourself why. I remember being young and sneaking the occasional $500 bill in a game of Monopoly, but I grew out of it as it doesn't make you better at the game nor does it make the experience better, and you run the risk of no one wanting to play with you again.

Why We Needed Waggle

The term 'waggle' has been used almost like a four letter word by many commentators and reviewers when talking about the Wii. Common complaints were that poorly implemented motion controls resulted in the gameplay simply involving wild shaking of the arm. Another complaint would be that the controls were not sensitive enough and as such the motion you attempted did not correspond to the on screen action, and as such eventually you would just give up and start waggling the Wiimote (I know that the official name is Wii Remote, but Wiimote is a better name). With the release of Wii MotionPlus there were claims that this is what the controller should always have done. However, I believe that had the Wii shipped with 1:1 motion at launch things would have been quite problematic.

The Wii introduced a new control scheme to both players and developers, and as with any innovation there is a learning period, this learning period is obvious when early games are compared with newer ones. Need for Speed: Carbon, a launch title for the Wii, had several different control schemes. The default scheme had you hold the Wiimote sideways and use it like a steering wheel; another set-up used the nunchuck to steer and the Wiimote was tilted up and down to work as an analogue accelerator/break. This second control scheme shows that developers weren't entirely sure how best to use the motion controls and was removed in later entries in the series. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance used shaking the Wii remote to replace button presses, except they most basic of shakes was the same a tapping the A button so most players just used that. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance also used tilting the nunchuck to control the camera, and any player could do this which often meant that during four player games someone would tilt their hand to the side and the camera would start to spin.

I firmly believe that had MotionPlus been included at launch the control issues would have been even greater. Developers would have been even less certain how to best control the games and could easily have resulted in third party developers simply walking away. I see this as being similar to the problem the Atari Jaguar faced at launch, being the first 64 bit machine it was different and also difficult to code for. However, inside the console was a 32-bit Motorola 68000 chip for use as a 'manager' and to handle the controller inputs, these chips had been around for a while and developers knew how to code for them, meaning that quite a few games on the Jaguar used this chip as the primary CPU and as a result the games often seemed dated.

So in future when you hear people complaining about waggle, just remember that Wii MotionPlus, Playstation Move, and Xbox Kinect all owe their success, at least in part, to this most criticised of control methods.

Rules Glorious Rules

All games have rules, and it is these rules that inform us of what we are able to do and how we go about doing them. The problem with rules is that they tend to either promote complexity or intuitive timely play, with very few games achieving both. Even the most simple of games often can have quite convoluted rule sets when you try and take them to a more competitive level, or more often they create complexity by omission, that is the designers don't include details relating to borderline cases or what to do when a conflict arises between two game actions. The other thing that can make things more troublesome and confusing is the implementation of house rules, the most well known house rule is the Free Parking square in Monopoly being used to pay some form of jackpot to players who land there (this rule is so well known that many people don't even realise that it is a house rule and not part of the official game). House rules are even more problematic when players wait until halfway through the game to mention them.

The main area where I think most games rulebooks let themselves down is around the issue of timing, if players are permitted to carry out actions outside of their own turn there needs to be clear guidelines about when and how they go about it. Is it simply a chaotic free for all, do the actions form a stack or chain with the last card played being the first to be resolved, or do all players say what they intend to do and then those actions occur in the order they were announced? If the rules do not provide a clear description of how to handle two players trying to carry out conflicting actions at the same time then eventually a disagreement will occur, Munchkin's disagreement resolution system of the person who owns the game gets the last say is cute but not exactly free from potential abuse.

Another source of conflict can be the precise measurement of distance, especially in situations where parallax can be an issue. A classic example of cheating in Warhammer was to measure from the front of the miniatures base to the back of the miniatures base during movement. When playing Pirates of the Spanish Main, which involves using small pieces of card to measure distance, I like to use the system of players measure their opponents distances which usually removes any disagreement about what is in range; as I have only played this game in a casual setting with friends I also like to point out that if two friends can't agree on what is in range and what is not then they have more problems than their lack of ability to measure. Actually as a result of the measure your opponents ranges system, I found that far more things were considered in range than I would have initially thought.

So how do games provide a fix to the issue of rules needing to be simple enough to be fun but complex enough to resolve potential conflict? Obviously if it is just a fun game between friends you can simply rely on them to sort it out, but what if you want to take the game to the next level and have a competitive game? For example in a game of Chess at what point is a players move considered final? Is it when they take their fingers off the piece they moved, when they press the clock, or when they say 'your move'? Further more, should a player be required to move the first piece they touch, even if it was by accident? Questions such as these tend to result in the creation of a second more in depth rule book. In  Magic: the Gathering the basic rule book is 34 pages long with lots of pictures, while the comprehensive rule book is 192 pages long and has no pictures.

This large rulebook means that every possible action and response that can arise through the interactions of the 12246 unique card is covered, there are even some rules that relate to events that are not currently possible. These rules also force the cards to follow strict formatting guidelines so that their abilities are only activated or triggered at the correct time, which has cause one or two problems. For example in Alpha (the first set) the card animate dead looked like this:

This seems simple enough, you take a creature from the graveyard and put it into play, except as the rules evolved the term 'Enchant Dead Creature' was no longer permitted and so in fifth edition the card was changed to:

Then the enchantment subtype Aura was created, for cards which enchant other cards, so Animate Dead had to be updated again, the modern version of the card now looks like this:

First thing you notice (after the new picture) is that there are a lot of words in the text box, also exactly what the card does is now less clear than before. Especially the part where 'if it's on the battlefield, it loses "enchant creature card in a graveyard" and gains "enchant creature put onto the battlefield with Animate Dead."', which by the way is a triggered ability so can be countered causing the card to do nothing. So why does is need to be worded this way? Consider the first printing, the line Enchant Dead Creature is no longer a supported card type, also when the creature enters the battlefield it is no longer dead so how is the card enchanting it? In the fifth edition printing the card doesn't have the correct modern subtype of Aura and also puts the card into play before changing into a creature enchantment, so there is a period of time where the card is on the battlefield with full power being targeted by animate dead, the card also uses the now obsolete term bury. So we have to use the modern wording, even if it seems like a confusing way to say put this guy into play, it is the only way to generate game states that are in accordance with the comprehensive rules and have a similar effect as the original card. It is worth noting that a card like animate dead would never be created in the modern game precisely because of the 'wordyness' of it's rules text. So while a comprehensive rules set can result in some complicated situations, it more importantly provides a way to work through all possible conflicts and makes the overall experience richer for it.

And Now by Special Request: Wargaming

Wargaming offers many different facets for people to enjoy; it involves strategic planning, collecting, painting, sculpting, social interaction, high level competitive play, and a game narrative. What players choose to take out of it is entirely up to them, for me I enjoyed the social, artistic, and collecting aspects and as such was quite happy never playing in a competitive tournament.

My most recent wargaming experience came about because I was running a campaign of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, set during Archaon's invasion of the Empire, the players were free to do what they wanted but their paths would often cross plot elements relating to the impending invasion, with their actions both directly and indirectly affecting the larger story. For the final battle I converted their characters into Warhammer: The Game of Fantasy Battles characters as I already had appropriate stat lines for Archaon and Valten and then generated an army list based on the events that had occured earlier in the campaign, for example their were no units of Greatswords as due to player inaction the Carroburg Greatswords has suffered severe casualties. The battle concluded almost exactly as it had in the original story with Archaon defeated and Valten mortally wounded.

Prior to this I had played a modern day wargame run by a local wargaming enthusiast, using the Command Decision system. He had a different philosophy towards how to approach the game than most other wargamers I had encountered, rather than having balanced sides fighting a pitched battle he preferred to have one side with an obvious advantage and see how well you players could work around this. In the game a 'peacekeeping' force attacked a town containing the rebel leader, with the goal of either capturing or killing him. The invading force was better equipped than the rebels which meant the rebel player had to use terrain and delaying tactics in an attempt to get their leader to safety. Because of the disparity in power level between the two sides at the end of the scenario he would usually play it a second time with each player now controlling the other side.

The final type of wargaming I'm going to mention are games such as Necromunda, which involve smaller forces and small skirmish battles. What makes these games interesting is that the battles do not occur in a vacuum, but rather the combatants grow in experience, gain new abilities, injuries, and need to gather enough resources to keep the squad fed. This creates a personal narrative to the game and can give a deep rewarding experience. While experience and advancement can be implemented in a game of any size, as soon as you have more than around ten unique characters to worry about things start to get rather fiddly and you are forever having to check stat lines.

Perfectly Unbalanced

During the development of every competitive multiplayer game there comes a time where the game's balance needs to be assessed. That is, what is the probability of winning provided by the different strategies/choices available to the player and are there any moves that will simply guarantee a win? I mentioned recently how chess slightly favours the white player when both players make few mistakes, while other games such as checkers will always result in a draw when played perfectly. Tic-tac-toe also always results in a draw when played correctly, however with so few moves available to the player the correct play is always obvious, making the game rather pointless. The game Anti-Monopoly claims that is has been perfectly balanced by a computer to ensure that being a monopolist or a competitor poses no disadvantage, all I know was that after six hours of playing we were nowhere near having either side win and 1/3 of the player had fallen asleep.

So how do you ensure that a game is fun, fair, and doesn't just result in endless draws. One way is to introduce a luck element, this way two people who play equally well will still obtain a result, and ideally the luck element will be small enough so that a better player will usually defeat a weaker one. You could introduce certain counter move/strategies to your game, plays that would usually be weak except in certain situations. Or you could just not worry about it and  let the players sort it out through metagaming.

Metagaming is the use of outside of game knowledge to increase your chances of winning. One simple example is that in a game involving temporary alliances player X always lies, after playing a few times people realise this and no one will ally with them, negatively affecting their chance to win. However the type of metagame I want to discuss involves game where players must decide on a strategy or move at the start of the game and stick with it. The simplest example of this type of game is rock-paper-scissors where you must decide on what hand gesture you will make and then you are stuck with the consequences, this example seems trivial as if picked randomly against a truly random opponent each choice has an equal chance of winning. But image if I told you that 60% of people choose scissors as their first move, using this extra knowledge you can greatly in crease your chance of winning by playing rock. However, what happens when you are paired against another player who also knows about this, should you switch to paper to defeat their rock? Or what if the information becomes so well known that rock starts to become the dominant starting move, suddenly the choice is much less obvious as the metagame has changed.

In games which are less balanced than rock-paper-scissors, such as a CCG or video fighting game your ability to do well in a tournament often depends on the deck/character choice made relative to the average deck/character choice. Image four different deck types A, B, C, and D. A defeats B 70% of the time, C 55% of the time, and D only 35% of the time; B defeats C 55% of the time and D 60% of the time; and C defeats D 70% of the time. The question is what deck should you play in the up coming tournament? Deck A seems to be the strongest as it has a favourable matchup against all decks except for D, which by contrast is only good against A. What your choice comes down to is what deck do you think most people will be playing, if most people own or want to play A then you should play D even though this is it's only good mathup. If however the metagame has got to the point where everyone is playing either A or D, then maybe C is the best choice as it isn't far off being even against A and usually defeats D. These choices mean that the unbalance between the individual decks is resolved by players making choices based on their analysis of the metagame.

Even with metagaming problems do still arise, the character Meta Knight was recently banned from competitive Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournaments because he has no bad matchup, meaning that even using metagaming the best decision is to simply play as Meta Knight. However, this also shows that as long is there is an active governing body with the power to take such actions mistakes such as this can be rectified.

Getting it on the Cheap

As I have recently moved, I find myself having to be a little more frugal with money. As gaming can be expensive and is a non-essential expenditure, I've been looking into ways to get my fix for less, without turning to piracy!

The first way is obvious, prioritise your wants and or wait for sales. Over the last month a large number of triple A titles have been released and of these the only one I've bought is Skyward Sword, although I did receive a free copy of Arkham City. Now I would have liked to have also gotten Skyrim and will eventually pick it up, but it will just have to wait.

If however you are the kind of person who likes to have lots of new games then you should consider supporting the indie gaming scene. The reason I say this is that not only are indie games cheaper than AAA titles, but indie developers support the community that supports them, and as such you can often find bundles of their games for sale on specialist websites. The most well known of these sites is the Humble Bundle, where you choose how much money you pay, and how it gets split between the games makers and charity. Recently a new website, Indie Royal, has started selling bundles of games with the price starting low and increasing with each bundle sold, the price can be driven down by someone paying more than the current price. These websites will usually result in you picking up the whole bundle for the price of a single indie game.

Another option is to become a retro gamer. Last generation consoles sell for about 1/10th the price of current  consoles and their games are also significantly cheaper (there are a few exceptions to this rule for example Suikoden II). The important thing to watch out for when retro gaming is resellers, these people buy the cheap copies of the games and then mark them up. I strongly recommend doing your research, otherwise you might end up paying £20 for a players choice edition of Super Mario Sunshine (I just checked ebay and there is one up there for that price) when you really shouldn't be paying much more then £5.

My final way to help keep your price of gaming down is to make some friends. Websites like Meetup let you find groups of like minded gamers and even if their are no active groups in your area you can also search for individuals. Although I have mainly focused on video games, some of these principles can also be applied to board and table top games.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Impressions)

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword recently released and has received some very positive reviews, including the claim of 'greatest Zelda game ever created' from IGN. Let me start by clarifying that this is not a review as I haven't finished the game, but rather am about 1/3 of the way through. However, as that represents about 15 hours of play time I decided that I would give my impression of how the game is shaping up.

Graphics: This game is gorgeous, the cell shaded look from Wind Waker combined with the more realistic character proportions from Twilight Princess combine to create a water colour effect which just demonstrates that good art direction doesn't depend on resolution! At no point have I ever been confused by what I'm looking at or what elements I can interact with.

Music: As soon as I first started playing I was grabbed by the music. The game features an orchestrated musical score, which incorporates leitmotifs and past melodies, and creates a very memorable musical experience. The game also includes a CD of orchestral arrangements of music from Zelda's 25 year history.

Controls: There has been some controversy regarding the controls after Tom McShea from Gamespot gave the game a 7.5 review score strongly criticising the controls. Part of what made his comments so controversial is that he didn't describe the controls correctly, claiming that the sensor bar was involved in aiming, when in fact it is all handled by the gyroscope inside the Wiimote. He was also critical of the 1:1 swordplay claiming that often his motions would miss-register. The only time I have experienced any control issues is when I have been trying to use the sword with just a flick of the wrist rather than using my whole arm (I did this quite a lot at the start as this is how most other Wii games control). Once you realise that this game controls differently to most other games you have played then the depth and immersion of the scheme is realised (I often find myself standing for boss battles). Actually my one criticism of the controls is that sometimes you are not sure if you are playing the game to experience the story or as a sort of tech demo of what can be achieved through good motion controls.

Story: The story follows the standard Zelda fare with you needing to rescue the princess and defeat evil, with a few twists that I'm not going to go into as I don't want to spoil anyone. The pacing in the game is quite slow compared to most other modern games, you seem to be almost encouraged to take your time and look around before solving the puzzles that are presented to you. For people who have played Zelda games in the past they will be use to this, however, if someone who is new to the franchise sees that the game is classified as action-adventure they might be surprised by this slower pace.

Innovations: While the game doesn't stray too much from the main Zelda formula there are some welcome changes. Firstly, there are now many more save points, and when you return to an area you can choose any of these locations as your start point. Secondly, the map you are carrying is much more detailed, after you visit someone or something it is recorded on your map, also you are able to place beacon markers to help you find what you are looking for. Thirdly, while Link and friends are still silent you are presented with multiple options during conversations, this is especially noticeable when you talk to Fi and can ask for a reminder of what you are supposed to do, a hint about how to go about it, or for rumours (each of these has a couple of sub-options). And finally, the controls but I've already mentioned them.

Nostalgia: I've played Zelda, Zelda II, A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Phantom Hourglass so for me there were many small jokes and reference that I greatly appreciated. Right at the start the game talks about how they will tell you a story that has been retold time and time again, later on you meet a character who uses the line 'it's a secret to everybody', and I'm just waiting for someone to tell me that 'it's dangerous to go alone'. Link is still his usual anti-social self breaking things and sleeping on people's beds, sometimes with them still in it, but now the town folk sort of call him on it with a side quest revolving around paying for the damage he caused. I do wonder how someone who hasn't played a Zelda game before would find Skyward Sword, as for me it was exactly what I expected and wanted, but could easily see someone being confused by the way that various things work and the more rustic game design.

Closing Comments: I am greatly enjoying Skyward Sword, it is exactly what I want in a Zelda game, with just enough innovations to prevent it from feeling like I am playing Ocarina of Time again. The game that I am most reminded of when playing is Wind Waker, and that's not due to the art style but rather the way you fly around Skyloft visiting different islands and dungeons; thankfully it's much quicker to get around than in Wind Waker. I think about the slow pacing and believe that if you changed things to provide a full warp system it would detract from the sense of adventure and trivialise a lot of the experience, maybe if they created a faster paced more action orientated game then a quick travel system would be appropriate, but then again I could just go buy Skyrim if that is what I wanted.

No One to Blame But Yourself

A couple of days ago I did something I haven't done in a long time, I played a game of chess (three to be precise). Chess is an interesting game in that there is absolutely no luck involved, both players always have all information about the game state and what moves are possible available at all times;so when you lose it is entirely your fault.

I lost both of the first two games due to a mixture of not having played for a while and also when I did last play it was against novice opponents, which meant I had gotten use to the types of moves and mistakes that these players make and as such made poor and/or risky moves expecting them to work anyway. When it came to the third game I had finally come to the realisation that I couldn't just walk it in and would actually need to pay attention and think. I'm pleased to say that doing so got me a win and also made me think about a couple of things.

The first was how you can get into the habit of playing your opponent rather than the game. I often see this in Magic the Gathering (yes another Magic story), were new players despair at being paired against top ranked played, and then the way they play comes to reflect a feeling of inevitability about the game. Sometimes a lack of experience works in a player's favour as they don't notice when their opponent is representing a threat, make an attack a more experienced player wouldn't, and end up winning as the stronger player was bluffing.

The second thing I was thinking about was whether being black or white was an advantage, as each time one of us won we were playing black. In general, the consensus is the opposite of what we observed with white being considered to have a slight advantage (usually somewhere in the vicinity of a 52-56% win rate), but this only applies to high level players who make few mistakes. This issue of a player going first or second being advantageous is found in many games. In Go black, which has the first move, is given a points penalty to balance out the advantage of playing first. While in Magic the starting player is penalised by having to skip their first draw step. Even in games of pure chance there can be an advantage to going first, for example in Snakes and Ladders if each player rolls identical numbers throughout the game (while this is unlikely the average of their die rolls will be similar) the player that went first will win.

Ultimately what I really learnt from playing chess again was that without regular practice, against players of a similar or slightly higher ability than you, your skills become rusty and your play level decreases.

Just Do Whatever!

With Minecraft due to be released tomorrow it seems like a good time to reflect on my experiences with this extremely open ended game. Minecraft is one of if not the most open ended game available; it simply drops the player without instructions, quests, or goals, into a world where they can gather resources, make tools, explore, build structures, and construct machines (I have seen videos of people who have built simple CPUs in Minecraft, so technically it would be possible to write code for these very rather slow computers and play a video game within the video game). The freedom to build whatever you feel like has seen some very impressive projects undertaken and even resulted in the invention of a new sport called Spleef.

I originally purchased Minecraft back when it was still in alpha after hearing someone in the card shop excitedly talking about having found redstone, I had heard of the game before this but hadn't been motivated enough to check it out. Before downloading the game I watched a couple of videos on YouTube so I already had a basic idea of what to do during your first day, but still decided to venture outside with painful results.

The first structure I built was a sandcastle, I had to use dirt inside to hold the roof up. In the basement of the castle was my mineshaft, furnace, workbench, and a path to an underwater observatory; later following the update to 1.2.0 I added a Nether portal. The only big problem with the sandcastle was spiders would make their way onto the roof, and in the event of a creeper explosion half the structure would cave in.

Deciding I needed something to look at from the parapets I built a small village on the other side of the water; this village had one house, a farm, a mine, and a lighthouse. I then built a nether portal and used it to get as far away from spawn as possible. At this new location I build a giant fire pit using netherrack (I ended up having to put it out as it made the game unstable) and a glass pyramid, before making the long trek back to spawn. It seems odd to admit that there was a feeling of excitement and 'I'm home' when the village lighthouse came into view.

I then started playing on an online server with some friends; in order to encourage building we started out with the game world set to peaceful. I built a small house, a shop, and a mine with a secret entrance under the town jetty. The structures being built by the other players were much more impressive, so I began to experiment with red stone circuits and pixel art. Then the sever crashed and the world corrupted.

This forced us to start a new game world, this time we included monsters. Once again I built a store, played with red stone (note blocks had now been added so music was played as people entered the main village), and did some pixel art. Unfortunately, due to forces beyond our control the server died during an earthquake induced power cut, again corrupting the world. Having learnt our lesson from the last time, we had a backup but as it was several days old we decided to once again shift to a new world.

With the move to the next world my interest in the game started to wane, I felt like I was just rebuilding the same things over and over and that eventually we would again have to shift and anything I made would be lost. However, now with the full release of Minecraft due I am once again enthused, and am looking forward to again playing in an online server.

The Rise and Fall of the JRPG

Back in the 80's and 90's the Japanese Role-playing Game (JRPG) genre was huge, at the top of which was the Final Fantasy series. Other notable JRPG games from around this time were the Dragon Quest series (published as Dragon Warrior in the US), Pokemon, Earthbound, The Secret of Mana, the Soul Blazer series, and Chrono Trigger. However, as time moved on consumer taste started to shift towards Western developed games, and although many JRPGs continued to receive positive reviews from critics they just didn't have the same sales power as they had in the past. I believe that the original popularity of the JRPG came from the depth of story and character advancement that they offered the player; most other games at this time were made in an arcade style with trying to get further than before being the main incentive to keep playing. The generally accepted consensus for the JRPG's drop in popularity is that their mechanics became old and tiresome, so let's take a look at some of these mechanics.

Random Encounters: You are walking along trying to advance to story when suddenly random monsters that you don't care about jump out and attack you! Once defeated you are free to continue on your way, that is until the next random filler monster jumps out. This is one of the most common complaints levelled at JRPGs, but when you consider the limitations of the time there was no way to script every encounter in the game. Unfortunately random encounters still make appearances in many modern games, with justifications such as they enable you to advance in level if you need to. One of the easiest way to work around random encounters and still enable additional levelling is to have the monsters visible on the map and leave it up to the player to decide if they wish to engage them.

Grinding: While character advancement is generally fun, forcing a player to fight filler monsters for no reason other than increasing their level enough to advance the story is frustrating. Sometimes people make the complaint that you can be 'over-levelled' as a result of grinding making the main story too easy. In Tales of Symphonia there is a random side quest monster that you are at least five levels to low to even have a chance of defeating the first time you encounter the area it is in, leaving the player with two options, either comeback later or grind until you can defeat it. Due to the ability to set all the characters to full auto grinding can be done with minimal input from the player, making the whole experience rather pointless.

Random Drops: The 'Old Man' wants six MacGuffins which are found on 'Monster X', sometimes. These types of quests are generally quite bland and boring and simply serve as a way to add padding to the game. Sometimes it gets even more stupid, for example in World of Warcraft only some spiders have legs and/or eyes when you try and loot them. The other way that random drops are used/abused is that sometimes a super rare item will only be found on a specific monster, for example The Sword of Kings in Earthbound is a 1:128 drop from a Starman Super.

Railroading: Generally speaking JRPGs force the player to travel through the game along a set path, some option minor quests may also beincluded but for the most part you are going to go from point A to point B. Even Chrono Trigger, famed for having multiple endings, forced the player to move through the game in a set order as going to the wrong time zone generally ends with the characters being killed by something which is too strong for them or simply not advancing the plot.

Lack of Regular Save Points: This was another limitation of the early consoles, but still some games persist in using it. I suppose that the threat of dying can add tension to a play session but losing an hour or more worth of progress is just frustrating.

Being Weird: This final complaint isn't a problem at all as it gives the games a unique Japanese feel and has helped to ensure that they continue to be played even if it is as a niche market.

What Happened to Facebook?

In addition to keeping track of friends and family, Facebook also enables users to indulge in a little casual gaming to help pass the time. Originally these games were all very simple 'click the button to get some set outcome' affairs with people who wanted to click the button more often having to pay some real world money for the privilege. Farmville was the king of these early days with its 'click the button to choose what new buttons to make and where to put them, and then get your friends to click those buttons' system having enough window dressing to make it seem like a deeper experience than it actually was. And so it was that after a brief dabble I gave up on Facebook games, that is until I saw a notification saying 'your friend is play CivWorld'.

I've always enjoyed occasionally playing the Civilisation games (while I always enjoy playing them I just can't ever seem to bring my self to play through them more than twice, the exception being the original Civilisation and Colonisation on the Amiga) and thought I'd check it out. I was pleasantly surprised, rather than running a whole nation you are given control of a single city which you decide they layout of and also which resources it will generate. While basic resource gathering is still a simple click the button experience, CivWorld manages to make that the minor part of the game. Most of your play time involves gathering additional resources through minigames, joining a nation, and taking part in votes to determine which path to victory your nation should pursue. While I did enjoy playing the game I still had the same old problem of after playing through twice I couldn't really be bothered playing it again (yes unlike most other Facebook games CivWorld has an end).

I next saw that people were playing The Sims Social and again my interest was peaked. Much like with CivWorld I was pleasantly surprised by this game. The main differences between The Sims Social and a normal Sims game is that you only control a single Sim and can only carry out a set number of actions per unit time (unless you are willing to part with real world money). In addition to the usual teach your Sim skills to get money and upgrade their house, the game sets lots of small goals to keep you playing and interested. What ultimately killed my desire to play The Sims Social was that it was too popular and I was receiving so many notifications and requests from other players that it just got annoying (I know that you can adjust how these messages are handled but they should default to off and not make me put in the extra effort to remove them).

The final game I will talk about is War Metal: Tyrant an on-line CCG. What makes Tyrant enjoyable is that it has a main quest arc which, as you play through, gives you more and better cards; in addition to this you can battle other players, form factions, and take part in tournaments that have in-game prize support. While the actual game is neither ground breaking nor revolutionary it is enjoyable enough, its biggest problem is that the game usually comes down to who can build the most momentum in the first few turns, making the second half of the match often a forgone conclusion.

I am pleased to say that the quality of games on Facebook has greatly improved over the years and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for this gaming medium. I just hope that future games are less intrusive and find a way to do away with the play limits for non-subscribers (maybe in-game product placement would fix this, although The Sims Social has both product placement and energy limits).

How to get Lucky

Have you ever noticed how some people just seem to be lucky? The reason for this is twofold, firstly the Barnum Effect (people tend to remember positive results) and secondly these 'lucky' people set them selves up to win against the odds. What I mean by this second point is that some people are good at recognising when they are no longer able to win in the conventional way and so adapt their play style to favour a much less common victory condition.

In Magic: TheGathering (yes another Magic example) we often refer to someone getting lucky and drawing the card they need as 'top decking'. People who are considered good at top decking are actually good at adapting their play style to maximise the number of cards in their deck that can win them the game. Here's an example from a game I played, I was loosing and my opponent had just declared all his creatures as attackers and while the damage that they would deal to me wouldn't make me lose it would mean that I would lose on their next turn, I had one card in hand which was a removal spell. Now you might think that I should destroy the largest of the attacking creatures, but in my view that would only mean I die in two turns instead of one, also I know that there is a creature in my deck that if drawn when they have no blocker will win me the game, so I decide to take the damage. In their second main phase my opponent casts a blocker and goes to end the turn, at this point I use my removal spell to get rid of the blocker. Now because I believe in top decking with style, I untapped my land drew the top card of my library and placed it face down on the table without looking at it, I then announced the creature that would win me the game, tapped the appropriate amount of mana and turned the card over revealing the named creature. While I didn't do very well in that tournament, my game was the only one people still remembered a month later.

So did I get lucky? Well yes and no, while the chance of me drawing the required creature was about one in twenty had I not saved the kill spell for the blocker my chance of winning was zero. It was this recognising a way to win and adapting my play style to it that actually won me the game. Let's have another example this time for Cribbage.

It is your opponents crib, they are 4 points from the end and you are 15 points away. You are dealt a hand of A, 4, 6, 6, 10, 10 (the ace and 4 are not suited) and now have to decide which two cards to discard to the crib. Because maths is fun, I can tell that the average points value for the possible hands are:

A, 4, 10, 10: 7.913

6, 6, 10, 10: 5.217

A, 4, 6, 6: 4.696

A, 4, 6, 10: 4.261

4, 6, 6, 10: 4.087

4, 6, 10, 10: 3.347

So if all we want to do is maximise the number of points we get we should keep the A, 4, 10, 10 hand. However, the most this hand could score is 12 (an A, 4, or 10 as the starter) meaning that we would have to score three points during the play to have any chance of winning, which is not very likely as we have to lead. On the other hand the 4, 6, 6, 10 has a two in twenty three chance of being worth 14 points (a five being revealed as the starter) and in this case we would only need to get one point during the pay to win. So the way I view the situation is do you want to definitely lose but keep the margin as small as possible, or take the gamble and either lose by a larger margin or win? So once again we will have had to 'get lucky', but before we can do that we have to identify that our path to victory involves keeping the hand with the second worst average return, and not the one that you would normally want to keep.

Don't Fear the Reaper

Or at least mildly inconvenienced

 Last week I wrote about how permadeath can add tension to a game. It can also add frustration and kill the replay value if you have to go through a long slow introduction period at the beginning of each new game. While permadeath is a lot less common in modern games, back in the 'good old 8bit days' where games were heavily influenced by the arcades it was the norm. Sure some games used a continue system or passwords but there was almost always some serious set back associated with dying.

Jump forward to today and most games try to minimise the inconvenience of death. Quite often they include regular check points to keep the amount of lost progress and time following death minimal; other games use a respawn, rather than reload mechanism, where you are returned to life at or near the point of death in exchange for some kind of penalty. I find looking at the different ways developers approach player death interesting, especially as it can have a major affect on the feel of a game.

In Bioshock I find that the respawn near to where you die with no penalty (and sometimes even a benefit in the form of more health or eve) to greatly weaken the experience. When I first started playing it, I found the whole game world creepy, the splicers calling out in the darkness and the boom of a Big Daddy's feet as it walks the halls gave a fantastic atmosphere. And then I died, which resulted in me promptly popping back to life in the room next door with health, eve and the damage I had inflicted still on the enemy that had killed me. So when I had my first Big Daddy fight, rather than wasting health packs and eve stims I just let him kill me, and ran back to continue the fight. This lack of penalty had turned the 'big bad' into a timid kitten and as a result I find the game most engrossing and exciting when not fighting. Borderlands has a similar respawn system except it docs some money and heals all the enemies on the map, so you can't just advance by attrition.

It's interesting to note that often 'lets players' (people who record video and commentary of themselves playing a game) often change the rules regarding death, either by making the game easier through cheat systems or harder with restrictions such as one life runs, no healing or no continues. It make me wonder what it would be like to do a permadeath lets play World of Warcraft, especially on a PvP server.

Mechanics do not Maketh the Game

The game Dragon Master Spell Caster was described by IGN as “one of the worst new WiiWare games to come to the Wii Shop in the entirety of 2009”. About a year before the game was released I met some of the game's developers from Stickmen Studios. We played some pool, had a few drinks, and they told me about a project they were working on for the Nintendo DS (at the time this was the platform they were aiming for). What they told me was that in this game you would be a wizard on a dragon and when your spells collided with another wizards spell something random would happen. I aked a few more questions but ultimately they kept coming back to ask what I thought about the magic mechanic?

It seemed odd to me that you would pitch a game by its mechanic, I mean would you describe Starcraft as a game where you click your men and then click other peoples men to make them fight? I think the problem here is someone had the good idea of 'why don't we redo the way magic is handled in video games' and then tried to work a game around it. The problem is that just like in movies where “no scene is worth a line; no movie is worth a scene”, no game is worth a mechanic.

I believe that when such ideas are hatched you should explore them, balance/tweak them a little, and then put them in your folder of things that might be useful in the future. An example of this came up when I was discussing board game design with a friend of mine, he had devised an exchange system where the best exchange rate was only achieved through helping other players, but too much cooperation would make it difficult for someone to establish a lead. A basic rules set had been devised for testing purposes, and after a couple of hours playtesting it was agreed that it was a good mechanic and it was shelved to wait for the right setting to come along.

I feel sorry for Stickmen Studios as in the right setting their combining magic mechanic could have been quite praise worthy, but the IGN reviewer didn't even so much as mention it, instead focusing on criticism of the graphics and gameplay and then the gameplay again. IGN's final summary was that “Dragon Master Spell Caster is another of the many 'learning the ropes' releases for a small studio testing the waters of Wii development - the kind of game where lots of mistakes are made, and, hopefully, lots of lessons are learned. This one had an ambitious concept, but the execution just failed miserably. And I wonder if Stickmen Studios knew that, in the end, and just allowed it to go out the door and die.” And it would seem that lessons were indeed learnt as Stickmen Studios next game, Doc Clock, has received a much warmer critical reception.

Going Rogue

I have been travelling quite a bit lately, which has meant that I've being making do with a netbook computer. So in order to still get my gaming fix, I've been playing quite a bit of the roguelike games Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) and Dungeons of Dredmor. Roguelike games are a subset of the roleplaying genre that usually use ASCII art, random dungeons, and permadeath (when a player's character dies they have to start the game again from the beginning with a new character).

Most roguelike games are quite simple and often feature only one dungeon and a randomly generated character. However, ADOM is much more complex; incorporating ten races, twenty classes, skills, talents, an overworld map linking multiple dungeons, towns, quests and an overarching story. Another interesting feature of ADOM is that it keeps track of the in game date and certain quests and the main plot depend on you achieving various feats by a certain time. The high level of complexity and the way that the different races and classes have a distinct feel, are what I consider to be ADOM's greatest strengths, since when you die and have to start over again it really doesn't feel like you are just replaying the same first hour each time.

Dungeons of Dredmor on the other hand is much simpler, with only one dungeon, one race, and thirty four skills (from which you pick seven at the start). There are also side quests but these are randomly generated and are very simple. Unlike ADOM and most other roguelikes, Dungeons of Dredmor uses real graphics instead of ASCII, although the art is limited in that your charcter looks the same regardless of what they are actually wearing. Another thing that sets Dungeons of Dredmor apart is its sense of humour, which is very European and involves movie references, eyebrow jokes, and lutefisk.

What appeals to me about roguelike games is that they take a very simple and basic concept and craft a challenging and sometimes deep experience from it. The permadeath feature adds tension to the game, since if you are not prepared and careful you will die; actually even if you are prepared and careful you will also sometimes die although cheap deaths are rare. Of the two games discussed here ADOM is my favourite, as the ASCII interface has allowed the game's designer, Thomas Biskup, to focus on plot and character advancement the complexity of which rivals and sometimes exceeds what is seen in AAA title RPG's. Dungeons of Dreadmor is still a good game that's worth a look, and it's point and click controls make it better suited for novice dungeoneers.

Close Encounters of the Cosmic Kind

Cosmic Encounter was first released in 1977 and has been republished several times since, each time by a different company. I have now played the three most recent versions of the game (Mayfair Games, 1991; Avalon Hill, 2000; and Fantasy Flight Games, 2008) and would like to reflect on my experiences of playing the various versions of the game.

When I first played Cosmic Encounter, I had no idea what it was about; it was just in a pile of games available for play. Inside the box were a reasonable number of cards and tokens, as well as several cardboard hexes that made up the game board. In the game each player controls 5 planets and up to 20 ships, players take turns sending their ships to try and establish colonies on the other players’ planets by attacking them, with the first player to have five colonies outside their own system the winner (as each player's system and ships are colour coded it often reminds me of Chinese Checkers). The system which is attacked is determined by turning over a card from the destiny deck and the attacking player then decides which planet in the system to attack and commits between one and four ships to the battle, each player then gets to appeal for help and their allies then also commit between one and four ships to the combat. Each of the two main players then place an encounter card face down in front of them, these normally have a number on them although they might say negotiate, then the cards are turned over and each side's battle score is equal to the number of ships on their side plus the value of the encounter card played with the loosing side's ships being destroyed and sent to the warp; if the card played says negotiate that side immediately loses but gets to claim compensation from the winner, if both players play a negotiate card then they have one minute to strike a deal or have three ships set to the warp each.

What really makes Cosmic Encounter fun is that in addition to having to make deals and alliances each player has an alien power, which enables then to break the rules in some way. Some of these powers are rather simple, such as each one of your ships counts as four instead of one, but you can only send one ship to a battle. While others are much more strange, such as you may complain about the cards in your hand, for example ‘I don’t have an encounter card with a value of over 30’, and another player must either give you what it is you are complaining about or else all players must discard any card they have that matches your complaint. Initially I was concerned that the powers were not balanced but I needn’t have worried as any player whose power is ‘too good’ will simply find it hard to get allies in battle and the game will once again be balanced.

The first version of the game I played was the Mayfair games edition and I thoroughly enjoyed it, there were a large number of alien powers and they made for an interesting and amusing game. When I saw that a new version had been made by Avalon Hill I immediately went out, bought a copy, and was thoroughly disappointed. The Avalon Hill version was more visually striking than the old game, but they had greatly reduced the number of alien powers and the ones that were included were all simple. So after spending several years warning people not to buy this once great game I got to play the newest edition by Fantasy Flight Games. I was immediately hopeful as there were a large number of alien power cards in the box and yes the weird and wonderful ones were back. I was thrilled; the game was restored to what I liked best about it and had been visually updated to a high standard.

One final thing about this 'game that breaks its own rules' is that it relies heavily on players being honest, as quite a number of the powers and cards in the game involve players having to discard certain types of cards from their hand with no immediate way for other players to see if this was done correctly. I've never experienced anyone cheating, but I just find it amusing that a game about 'rule breaking' relies so heavily on player honesty.

The Difficulty Slide

In most video games as the player progresses the difficulty of the game increases, this change in difficulty is known as the difficulty curve. Some of the reasons for changing a game’s difficulty are that as players gets more experienced and skilled at playing the game they require a larger challenge to keep them interested, it lets you ‘upgrade’ the player's character enabling changes and new challenges that fit the game's narrative, and by having a mixture of easy and difficult sections you can create feelings of tension and relief for the player.

The first of these reasons is the simplest to illustrate. Consider Tetris, as the player clears more lines the speed with which the new blocks drop increases, meaning that a player must develop better and faster reflexes to progress further through the game; if however the speed didn’t change, a competent player could keep playing indefinitely, or at least until they got bored. The other two reasons are tailored to the game world and usually involve equipment and skill upgrades coupled with the introduction of new more challenging situations. It is also possible and fun to have the threat introduced before the solution, meaning that a player will have to run and hide during the early sections of the game, but later on after receiving the appropriate upgrade will be able to stand and fight; of cause after letting the player feel comfortable and in control for a while a new bigger threat should be introduced.

However, there are quite a few games, primarily in the casual/mobile gaming market, that feel the need to have large amounts of game content locked at the start. This content is unlocked not by progressing the story, but by rather by collecting specific game world items that can then be exchanged for the new features or by paying some additional amount of real world money. What really makes these games different is that the upgrades are bought after you lose your current game and apply to your future games, making them easier. For example in the iOS game Mega Jump, your progression through the game depends on collecting enough coins to not fall, after the eventual falling to your doom you can then use the coins gathered to by new upgrades such as a magnet which will pull the coins towards you making it easier to collect them, easier to progress further, and easier to buy new upgrades which will again make the game easier.

There are two main reasons for this difficulty slide. Firstly, it is a way for the developers to make some extra money off the game, as some people will want all the upgrades and features available from the start. Secondly, it can increase the replay value of the game as players try to unlock all the content. While these reasons are understandable in the casual and free games market there are plenty of full price games which also use this model. For example, in the on-rails shooter House of the Dead: Overkill as you progress you can buy access to better guns, which is fine as the levels also get harder except that these better guns can also be used in any earlier level and the high score table doesn’t make a note of what weapons were used, making them rather pointless early on. Personally I think that a better way to add replay value to such a game is by simply putting the high score table online. Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is also an on-rails shooter, but the weapons you start with are the same as the weapons you finish with and the replay value comes from the games high difficulty and online leader boards.

I will finish by clarifying that I do not consider the ‘New Game +’ feature (starting the game again with all the upgrades, equipment, and abilities you had when you won it) found in some games to be the same as the difficulty slide. This feature is to enable players who have already won the game to go back and look for secrets and bonuses they may have missed the first time through.

The Game Just Hates You!

Yesterday I attended a board gaming meetup, where I played Battlestar Galactica, and Mansions of Madness. While I enjoyed playing both of these games, the most ‘epic’ game being played at the event was a seven player game of Arkham Horror with all the expansion packs; this took up a sizable amount of space and time just to set-up.

Once the game was over I talked with some of the players about what they liked and didn’t like about the game. Interestingly one comment appeared as both a like and dislike, the game's high difficulty. Some players found it frustrating that their lack of knowledge about what exactly they would be facing meant that they would sometimes be given a skill test with no way to pass, while others found that it added to the flavour and suspenseful horror feel of the game.

This discussion reminded me of Talisman, where again the game is at times just unfair. Personally this is what I love about this game and I always play with The Reaper expansion to maximise the chance of an unfair death! Talisman also has the added fun of both PvP combat and griefing being a serious strategy. I believe that where these games get into trouble is when a player doesn't know what they're getting into. Also sometimes players develop an attachment to their character or equipment making them disappointed when they die, even though plenty of Talisman games are won by replacement characters.

As a final note, while I often hear people telling stories about the time they just managed to win one of these against all odds type games, I almost never hear stories about the ‘fairer’ games.

You Sir, Play Like a Child!

Earlier this year I was visiting a friend, who had recently started playing the Call of Cthulhu living card game (a living card game is similar to a collectable card game in that there are expansions and you create your own decks but when you buy an expansion pack you get all the cards instead of a random subset). I hadn’t played the game before but am always up for playing something new, so when they offered to teach it to me I accepted. A quick summary of the rules/purpose of the game is that players place cards under their ‘domains’, which are later drained to put other cards into play, the more powerful a card the larger the domain that needs to be drained to play it; the played cards are then used to both complete stories and prevent your opponent from completing stories, with the first player to win three stories winning the game.

After we had played a few games I felt like I had a good enough grasp of the rules, timings, and card interactions to ask a few of the questions that had been nagging me. The first was why are our two decks not the same size? I had noticed this straight away and as a semi-serious Magic the Gathering player the idea of a deck being larger than the minimum size without a very good reason was irksome. The answer I was given was that when deck building my friend liked to pull out any cards that looked good or fun and put them in the deck and refine later based on deck performance. This also answered my next question, which was going to be why are there so many big monsters in the decks, so rather than asking that I instead asked if I could make a deck? I was then given a box of cards and told to go for it.

Having no real idea of what was the best strategy for this game I decided to build the deck based on three simple ideas. First removal is good, that is cards that get rid of your opponent’s creatures. No card in the deck should require a ‘domain’ with more than three cards under it to play, my friend’s decks contained cards that required domains with six cards under them to play, the logic being that I could stop putting cards under the domains after only a few turns and also lets me play my threats early. The final idea was that ‘card advantage is king’, card advantage is the concept that if one card can produce or remove two or more cards then this helps you win as you have more cards/resources to call upon than your opponent. I should also mention that my deck was the minimum size. So we played a few more games of my new deck against the old decks and each time the result was a solid victory to my deck.

After this second round of playing I rather uncharitably informed my friend that he ‘plays like a child’, by which I meant that he focused too much on the big monsters and not enough on fast efficient cards. His retort to this was that my deck wasn’t fun and completely failed to capture the flavour of game, how could I play Call of Cthulhu and not included even one Great Old One in my deck? In Magic the terms ‘Timmy, Johnny, and Spike’ are used to describe the three main types of players. Timmy likes to win with big creatures, Johnny likes to win in funny ways, and Spike just likes to win. I guess I’m a Spike while my friend is a Timmy.

We then went online to look at the decks used in tournaments and noticed that almost all of them only played cards that required a domain of three of fewer. No wanting to give in to this ‘unfun way of playing’, my friend made a new deck which I’m pleased to say was both competitive and played the Outer God, Shub-Niggurath to win, although it was snuck into play by a card requiring a domain of only three.

Sorry to Rain on the Parade

Operation Rainfall is a fan lead campaign trying to convince Nintendo of America (NOA) to release the Japanese roleplaying games Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower in North America. Despite their best efforts NOA has stated that “there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time.” Now is this good business sense or a missed opportunity?

Xenoblade Chronicles has already been localised and released in the PAL regions. Having played it I can honestly say that it is a fantastic game and deserves to sell well and have a North American release. But simply being a good game isn’t always enough to make a profit and that is what matters to NOA. Since being released Xenoblade Chronicles has sold almost 160,000 units in Japan and looks to reach the 100,000 units mark after ten weeks of sales in the PAL regions. These are not great figures and to be honest I don’t see the game selling much more than 250,000 units in North America, even though it certainly deserves to sell more! Contrast this with Final Fantasy XIII, a game in the same genre and generally considered to be inferior, which managed to sell 6.5 million units worldwide. So why is FFXIII selling but Xenobalde Chronicles not? It comes down to the power of the Final Fantasy name, which makes the decision to not release The Last Story even more bizarre.

The Last Story was directed and co-designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy. It has sold slightly better in Japan than Xenoblade Chronicles (~180,000 units) and received a higher review score in Famitsu, with two of the four reviewers giving it a perfect score. The Last Story has been announced for release in the PAL regions in 2012; with NOA saying that they will look at the sales figures there and then make a decision. Personally I believe that this game would sell around 200,000 and 350,000 units during its first ten weeks in Europe and North America respectively, with global lifetime sales of around 1 million units. These are reasonable figures and would have to make the game profitable. In my personal opinion both Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story will eventually see release in North America, but NOA is going to wait for a release date that will not distract attention and resources away from a guaranteed more profitable venture (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword), I also expect what is eventually released to be identical to the PAL version as I don’t believe it is a financially sound decision to change the voice actors from British to American.

The final game in Operation Rainfall is Pandora’s Tower and to be honest I have no idea why it’s included. The game only received average reviews and hasn’t even managed to sell 100,000 units in Japan. To me the inclusion of Pandora’s Tower seems like a random tacked on third game because people like things that come in threes and it happens to be in the same genre as the other two titles. I really wouldn’t hold my breath for this game to be released outside of Japan.

All sale figures taken from www.vgchartz.com