What Would Matt Do

Updates at the bottom.

Why do PC gamers amuse me? Because they get so cranky, so easily. Or maybe I’m just getting to old to get caught up in all of the drama. Let me start at the beginning.

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I’m also jealous Tom Chick scored this interview with him. Maybe I should try to go the short route like Tom to stardom so I too can interview awesome people. And by short route I mean working in the industry for more years than I know.

Seriously it’s a very good interview.

Chick: Are you officially no longer a real-time strategy company?

Reynolds: Well, we’re no longer an exclusively real-time strategy-focused company. The announced project, the biggest thing we’re currently working on, is a role-playing game. And we have another product that’s kind of unannounced, but every now and then I see something on the Web about it. Clearly somebody knows a lot more than we’ve officially announced.

Chick: So people who loved Rise of Legends don’t necessarily have to think that Big Huge Games will never do another RTS?

Reynolds: They certainly don’t have to think that.

That kind of things makes me happy, but really, the whole interview is really good. Tom and Brian touch on Rise of Legends (honestly not my favorite, but it was all right), Rise of Nations (loved it), and even some Alpha Centauri (I still have it installed). While I don’t agree with the Rise of Legends full on spooge fest (I think it was an RTS that ended up feeling generic even though it was trying for so much more in so many ways), the whole article touched on things I didn’t know, how well each one sold relatively and a hint at future plans.

I think Tom is right about educating and expanding gamers minds with the likes of SMAC though. That game is awesome in so many ways and it really did include sci fi (and real theories about math and science) in a very approachable manner that many games miss.

More from the interview:

Chick: I sort of a see a parallel with what you did in Alpha Centauri.

Reynolds: Thank you for reminding me of that. Yes, in some sense, we went against the lesson of [our own] history: that you can sell a lot more Civ IIs than you can Alpha Centauris. One reason we did it again anyway is because we did make a good amount of money on Alpha Centauri. We just didn’t make truckloads of money like we did with Civ II. So we did it.

But it was a lot harder to explain even the most basic science fiction concepts to people than it was history. Everybody knows what a bow and arrow do. Everybody somewhere back in their genetic programming understands the possible benefits of discovering the wheel. The concept of mathematics doesn’t sound very frightening, but then when you get into nonlinear mathematics and special quantum laser gun theory, then — no matter how socially relevant the biting commentary provided by your game is — there’s still this accessibility issue. You have a lot more work to do to get people into the story.

So you could say that we should have known.

See, I’m of two minds about this. Yeah, it’s harder to sell a non-standard game to the public. But I don’t think it was the factions or the setting that killed RoL, but the way the game didn’t quite meet the goals it was striving for, imho.

What Would Matt Do: Me, I really like to work with Brian Reynolds. See what their design processes are like, see how they come up with some of the awesome simplicity they often do and see how the magic happens.

I know, it’s a simple concept. When you develop games, you like it when people buy those games, because then you get money. Maybe you’ll use that money to fund your crazy sex addiction or to move to some mystical far away land like New Zealand or heck maybe you’ll even use it to make more games. What ever you do with it, you’d like some of it.

Up until this point though, Crytek, the makers of that decidely average but beautiful Crysis game, have finally decided to make console games too. What are their reasons…?

“We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin. I believe that’s the core problem of PC gaming: PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive any more.”

Ah yes, the ever present pirates and their dastardly ways. It probably has nothing to do with the game being dependant on the hardcore PC game market, a market that is very much pro stealing. It probably has nothing to do with them requiring PCs that only the special ops guys have to run it with the effects full on. It definitely has nothing to do with the afore mentioned hardcore PC game market being a pretty damn small market. Damn pirates.

But they are coming around on the market size issue. It’s daft for a company to release a FPS as a PC exclusive these days. Utterly daft. I’m glad Crytek finally realized it, but they must be smacking themselves on the forehead could of had a v8 style.

What Would Matt Do: Were I Crytek, I’d quit blaming pirates and starting putting the blame square on my shoulders, right where it belongs. Then I’d quit playing the blame game and make a damn fine console FPS. Maybe.

Yeah, that’s right, City of Heroes/Villians is working on this potentially awesome new feature so I’ll come back…me specifically. Well, maybe for one other guy too. The idea is just too cool for it to be for one guy:

"Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialogue and any clues needed for the missions.

"When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon," added Miller.

Yeah, they just said that. And yeah, it has serious potential. But now I have to ask, what are they really saying. Developers claim all kinds of features all the time and often they either don’t deliver or at best exaggerate the features.

Here’s what I worry they are saying. You can pick a zone, pick a baddie type, and pick a baddie boss and add some dialog. And that’s it.

Here’s what I want them to be saying. You can pick a zone, pick a place in that zone, pick a time of day (if you want), pick what gang, how many, how many are strong and weak, how the quest starts, what zone it starts in (see, not just tied to one zone), full dialog options, what kind of quest it is (gather, kill x of x, kill boss, rescue, etc), what levels can do it, can the quests be linked (i.e. - you have to complete task x before you can try task y), can good rewards be picked, etc.

I want real quest creating capabilities. I want a world I can create content in and share it with others and have that be fun and easy. Whether that’s what they are talking about or not, I’ll give them this, it’s a good step. A right step.

I just hope they pull it off enough so that other MMO developers feel the need to put in their system.

Why, you ask? Because wouldn’t it be fucking wicked if you didn’t run out of good quests and you never had farm again? Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to do the oft lame quests the MMO came with, but could instead search a database of quests, all rated by millions of other users, so the cream of the crop would pop to the top.

Wouldn’t it be great if MMOs had fun quests.

One last thing…I’m not saying MMO developers can’t create good quests. They obviously can. I’ve seen it. But they get so wrapped up in other things I don’t care about (pvp in a pve game, battlegrounds type shit, etc), it would be great if players take up the slack.

What Would Matt Do: If the quest creating system is even half decent in CoX, I’ll resub.

No telling how long this will last…but I love it when a company has a sense of humor.

What Would Matt Do: Were it up to me, I’d tell them to leave Qt3 alone too.