Archive for January, 2010
Posted by Stropp on
January 22, 2010
Regular readers will know that I periodically rant against stupid censorship laws, being a strong believer that people not only have a right to make up their own minds about what they read, watch, or play, but that they are generally capable of making those decisions being adults.
Still, sometimes one must wonder.
One of the big gaming issues in Oz at the moment is the undemocratic blocking of an R rating for games by the South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson. I’ve made a few comments about that on this blog, but that’s not what I want to rail at now.
Apparently, some in the gaming community have been sending death-threats to the AG, not only threatening him, but his family.
Are these idiots really so dense as to believe that a death-threat will make someone in a high-level government position cower in fear and change their position?
If anything this kind of stupidity only entrenches the opinion and position of your opponent. Worse still, it turns the reasonable members of society who may have been leaning towards supporting our position against us. It can only harm the cause of getting an R rating for games, and supports the position of the censorship advocates. Idiots!
The point of being anti-censorship is to support a system where everyone has the right to express themselves freely, and where everyone can choose what expressions they partake in. One of the constant features of repressive societies is the censorship of expression, often through the use of violence or the removal of individual rights.
Someone who chooses to threaten someone with violence or death in order to get his or her own way isn’t choosing the path of freedom. They’re choosing the road that dictators and censors so often like to take.
Maybe there really are some in the gaming community who should be denied access to games.
Idiots!
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
January 21, 2010
You might have noticed that I haven’t posted all that much lately.
My contract concluded at the end of November last year, and a few weeks earlier I was thinking that I’d have a ton of time to make regular updates. I’d even made a bit of a resolution to myself to try and get a post out each day.
But as they say, the best laid plans of mice.
On the Friday, the week before the contract ended I recieved a call from a friend whom I’d worked with a few years prior and with whom I’d hadn’t seen for a couple of years. He, and a couple of partners, had formed a startup business about three years ago and had just come into some government grant money, and had found a new investor. He wanted to know what I had planned, which considering the contract was running out wasn’t very much at all. I was told that the funding was going to allow them to get some outside development help for the mundane tasks that needed doing on a day to day basis, and that this would free him to take the application to the next level.
I was asked if I wanted to work for them.
The catch was that they didn’t want to take on any full-time employees due to the on-going costs, insurance, taxes, superannuation, etc; that they’d face with a limited budget. This meant that I’d have to go beyond contracting and become a freelance software guy.
I thought about it for a couple of days and told my friend that I’d be in it, with the condition that I’d be free to take on other work. He was okay with that.
A few days later, I signed the papers to create my company.
So… I’m now a businessman with a Pty Ltd (kind of like a LLC I think.)
At the same time, after years of being past the all-my-friends-are-getting-married stage of life, two of them decided to tie the knot with their respective girlfriends. Five days apart. One in Sydney, the other here in Adelaide.
So on the first of January I took off with the other groomsman and drove to Sydney via Dubbo and the Western Plains Zoo to be best man on the 5th.
That done, we drove the long way down the coast to get back to Adelaide on the 9th (for a total distance of 4000 kilometers) and another wedding the next day. And of course, I started work on the Monday and have been pretty busy since.
Of course it wasn’t all weddings and business.
I decided to take it easy in December and just play some games.
I mentioned in my last post I spent a session in STO before Christmas, but for the most part I played Everquest 2, and took my Shadowknight from level 25 to level 60 (achieved late on December 31st.)
That was pretty good because that was the goal I’d set. I was secretly hoping to get to 70, but really didn’t think was realistic. (I have no idea how Stargrace, or anyone else for that matter, can get to 80 as quick as they do.) I’m now hoping to reach 70, or even 75 before the expansion is released.
I’m not sure if that’s achievable due to the amount of work I need to do for the business, there’s so much to learn! but I’ll give it a decent try.
And of course that leads me to the major point of this rambling stream of consciousness that I’m calling a post.
That crazy little thing called life (with ap0logies to Freddy) has thrown a great opportunity my way. But it’s not one without cost.
Running a business, when it’s more than just an attempt at a work at home job, means that there’s a lot of stuff to do. I’ve been a software developer for over 25 years now and it’s something I understand (and do) pretty well. A business on the other hand means paperwork, accounting, marketing and sales, and perhaps most importantly, managing my time in order to give each their due. I’m learning now how much I don’t understand, even though I thought I had a lot of it figured out previously.
The cost I expect that I may have to pay is a severe reduction in the amount of time I have to play games, and along with that the time I have to blog about them. While I’m not quitting the game blogger scene — I’ll be squeezing in the gaming and writing whenever I have a chance — I won’t be fitting stuff in around this activity, it will be the other way around. Gaming, unfortunately, will have to be scaled back a tad.
So that one post a day resolution?
Just blame life.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
January 20, 2010
I’ve been meaning to write this article for a while now, but life decided to come by and slap me silly. (More on that shortly.)
Anyhoo. Star Trek Online. Oh, and please note this is not a review, I have spent in no way enough time in the beta to work up a review. This is simply an impressions and thoughts piece.
It sounds like the dream IP for a MMORPG developer. A huge pre-existing and completely obsessed with anything Star Trek fan base. An IP that is all about exploration, seeking out new life, and boldly going where no one has gone before. The TV series, all of them, have drama, diplomacy, puzzle-solving, space combat, ground combat, humour, and a hopeful outlook on the future.
It should be a MMORPG goldmine.
But, from what I’ve seen so far, I doubt that it will be.
Now to be fair, I haven’t spent all that much time playing the beta. I was invited to the closed beta just before Christmas and spent a single session of a game that seemed woefully incomplete. Since then I’ve patched to the open beta client and have found a much more complete version of the game. Lots of missing text and graphics is now in the game. There’s certainly been a lot of work done over the last few weeks, and a lot of improvements made.
To a certain extent, I’ve had fun playing the open beta of STO. The space combat is much more tactical than most MMORPG combat systems, except perhaps Eve.
But ultimately, Star Trek Online offers nothing of what made the television series(s) special.
There is space and ground combat to be sure, but there is no diplomacy game, the missions are all canned in that there are no real choices or consequences for the decisions you make. I haven’t seen anything that I have to figure out — do I kill that silicon lifeform rock-creature, or get Bones down to heal it? Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor not a bricklayer. — And the exploration seems inconsequential. There’s no relationship with my bridge crew, they just add stats and beam down with me on away missions.
In a nutshell, the game lacks content.
It’s odd because it feels like STO has less going for it (gameplay wise) than Tabula Rasa did at the same stage of development, and look how badly TR got caned for lack of content.
What Cryptic have with Star Trek Online is a great foundation for a MMORPG based on the Star Trek franchise. What they need to do is to take another six months for development and add in those elements that made Star Trek special.
- Choices. Jim Kirk made his own decisions based on what he encountered. So did Picard and Sisko. (Janeway just parroted the company line.) He didn’t have a bunch of mission text leading him from one step to the next with no room to improvise. And maybe that’s what ST was all about. Improvisation. Can a Star Trek game, really be a Star Trek game without improvisation?
- Real Exploration. While I’m travelling shouldn’t I come across the unexpected. A new lifeform perhaps a space jellyfish or some such thing? And it should have an associated story. See next point.
- Solving Mysteries. If I’m sent to a star system to rescue a stranded freighter, don’t give me a damn slow escort mission that’s just a timesink, give me a mystery to solve. Or evolve the scenario into something interesting. Sure, Star Trek was in a “planet of the week” format, but each episode at least attempted to have an interesting story. So far the missions I’ve seen have been not much more that the kill ten rats or escort variety. It’s worse than that, it’s boring Jim.
- Missions need to be Episodes. Following on from the previous point. Each mission really ought to be the equivalent of a weekly TV episode of ST. How many stories started with, “Starfleet has sent us to… ?”
- Klingons. Don’t make them Monster Play only, unlockable at whatever level. The Klingon’s in the TV series, TNG onwards, were interesting. They had the best parties, and the Klingons seemed to laugh more than any other species. (Except for that stick-in-the-mud, Worf.) The Klingon’s also had the best ships in the first two series. TNG started developing a rich culture for the Klingon’s that was continued by DS9. There’s a wealth of content there for STO. Use it.
- Away Team/Ground Combat. This needs to be sorted. It’s not very good and needs improvement. For one thing I have an away team, yet I can’t figure out how to operate them like a squad. I always end up leading the team into a room and get shot first. I need to be able to send my red-shirt in to danger first!
I think the real clincher for me is that when I think I should login to Star Trek Online and spend some time with it, I don’t really have much of a desire to do so. I end up opening up Everquest 2, or just sit down and read a book. It doesn’t give me any inclination to buy and subscribe to STO (let alone buy a lifetime sub — what a ripoff that is!)
From what I’ve read, Champions Online has become a virtual ghost town only a few months after release, due at least in part (in my opinion) to being released too early without enough content. I fully expect Star Trek Online to suffer the same fate. The only thing that may help is that die hard Trek fans could hang in there for a while longer than most.
My overall impression is that STO will be on life support within a year of release.
Popularity: 1% [?]
