What Would Matt Do

Indeed they do.

What Would Matt Do: Well, I guess I’d really like to play the game that they make that doesn’t require me to a good book to read…when they make that game, let me know. Until then, I’ll agree, HARDEN THE FUCK UP!

I just saw this link being passed around by Game Politics. It’s simple, short and really gets the point across:

it looks like Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has taken the boycott a step further. According to the Angry Bear blog, Wardell has announced on his Facebook page that he is now boycotting UPS because they pulled their ads from Fox. He said Stardock does "a non-trivial amount of shipping with UPS" and if they did not change their position, he was taking Stardock’s business to FedEx.

The point? Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, makers of great games like Galactic Civ, publisher of Demigod, and developer of upcoming Elemental is now supporting a seriously insane man.

The main point? I’m no longer advocating nor supporting anything Stardock is involved with. Sadly enough.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m for each to their own, but when you take it from your opinion to your company line, that changes things. For instance, I have a mechanic who I’ve been with for years now. One of the most honest, good mechanics I’ve ever met (Trust me, it’s hard to find a good mechanic) who also is a serious republican and a huge supporter of McCain. But at no point did he make me start supporting his views, donating to his charities, or stop using companies because they didn’t agree with his views.

If you can’t get have separation between your radically awful ideas and your company, then I can no longer support you or your activities. Maybe every company should be polliticially driven and advocate for their guys and their ideas…but until recently, Stardock wasn’t, even though Brad Wardell was.

That has changed and so has my opinion of the company. So, with that, I won’t be buying any more Stardock games. Plain and simple.

What Would Matt Do: I’ll stop anticipating Elemental and stop caring what else Stardock does. A very sad day in gaming.

I haven’t been posting as much, as you may or may not have noticed. That isn’t so much because I haven’t wanted to, but more because I wanted to shift the focus of the site. Mainly just from the angry tone to a more mindful one. It is what it is.

That said, fuck CCP. How dare they try to make me break my no MMOs on the console rule. Much less my general lack of interest in FPS (CoD4 and any FPS you can play coop exluded…of course) games on the console. How are they doing it? By do something not many in the industry are even aware you can do, trying something different. That’s right, they are going to attempt a new idea. They will take an FPS with RTS attributes and tie it into their already existing MMO. They claim the following:

The team-based game has the player "fighting in a massive war" on existing planets in the EVE Online universe, and is a standalone MMO title, "but is also connected to EVE," according to the CCP boss.

In fact, when Dust 514 launches, the map of EVE, currently divined only by player structures owned in the PC game, will also take into account infantry successes and failures within the console game. Players in the PC MMO can "fund mercenaries and give them goals" in the console title.

CCP’s Petursson hope that "these communities will meld over time," expecting specific Dust 514 corporations to start with, but eventually social structures that bridge across the two. He quipped of the new game and the relationship between the two titles: "While the fleet does the flying, the infantry does the dying."

As I’m reading The Prince even (four books all about the future of humans and the military exploits of one John Christian Falkenburg. It’s a history of the universe created in The Mote In God’s Eye, another must read. The Prince is a great read if you like military and sci fi. Also does a very interesting and greatly detailed look at future and social issues), so I’m already in sci-fi military mood. What a bunch of complete shits to try something so interesting, one MMO linked to another, with the second being the land battles of the first (at least in theory), that I’m going to have to pay serious attention and maybe break my own personal rules on console gaming.

God, I can’t stand these CCP bastards.

What Would Matt Do: So that better, right?

Yeah, the site is going slow these days. Maybe it’s because a giant dragon ate the staff. Maybe.

In more interesting news, Valve is looking at changing TF2 again:

Team Fortress 2 lead Robin Walker says that Valve is not entirely happy with its new method of random weapon drops, and could eliminate the unlock system entirely. "I think we’ve learned that the random drop system is only good for some types of things, like the rare cosmetic hats," said Walker to CommunityFortress

Valve’s contiinual work TF2 is highly interesting to me. No other game has its metrics, its player habits and so on tracked in such detail. I really wonder what their tech is like on the other side. Are they parsing massive text files so queries aren’t easy to run or is everything being put into a sql database and queries are done on a regular basis on the gathered information to figure what features work and what doesn’t?

Is there a massive database of every turn ever taken in every game Valve has made since HL2? Could you track it by player ID, see what turns specific players made as specific points? Can you see how often people actually save and reload? Can you we aggregate data of everyone that ever reach a specific point in the map and make design decisions based on the reaction?

If any of that is possible, Valve is way ahead of the game. MMOs can do that, I imagine. But they are already pushing and storing so much data I’m betting they don’t. Heck, I’m betting they don’t based on the ability of the average MMO to find and fix bugs.

Here’s what I’d love to see Valve do. Put up a website that shows all of the info they’ve collected on the likes of HL2. Or EP1 or whatever. Just a site where you can create simple queries by map and location and see what players actually did and how they reacted to things. Of course, Valve probably isn’t sharing that info, if they have it, any time soon. It sure would be fun to peruse though.

What Would Matt Do: I guess I’ll continue to be a data geek wishing I could run queries on real life objects. Or at least that the language to do so was simplier.

I was going to go into a whole rant a few days back when I first read about "Twixt" and his alter ego. Glad I didn’t since Lum managed to skewer him not once but twice.

In short, the guy PKed everyone using guards in the game to kill them. Which not only killed people, but got people a debt (takes longer to get xp) in a zone where you’re not supposed to get debt. And then? Complained that he wasn’t being treated nicely and blamed everyone else.

That’s both crazy and awesome. Awesome in that I didn’t know they let UO Pkers (the first group to use similar methods of destruction and reasoning as to why) be professors. Apparently universities are getting desperate. And crazy in that this guy is full of insane. He blames "static social laws" that people weren’t happy with him.

Yeah, those damn bastards, not wanting to be randomly killed by exploiting the game. And then the balls on those guys to blame the professor/twixt. He was just playing how the game allowed him, how can they be upset?

I can’t wait to see him try to apply that logic in real life.

What Would Matt Do: Laugh and laugh and laugh at this guy and Lum’s great coverage.