Left for Dead Goodness...

In a podcast delivered via shacknews a representative from valve stated that they intend to deliver more content for their hit title Left for Dead, saying "What we want to do is just deliver more content you can play at this point." Sounds like a great goal to me.

As far as what they are working on, the current focus seems to be on incorporating the Versus mode to the Dead Air and Death Toll campaigns. As of right now only Blood Harvest and No Mercy are playable in Versus.

This should be good, as the only major criticism of L4D was that it was short on content. It should be noted that through Jan 2ND almost all steam games are on sale, including Left for Dead.

Fear is coming home, and with a better story

Monolith created the first F.EA.R. game in 2005 for publisher Vivendi Games but because of a legal dispute over the F.E.A.R. title, Vivendi Games hired developer Timegate Studios to create two PC expansion packs for the original F.E.A.R (Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate). Niether expansion was as good as the original game and when Vivendi Games was absorbed into the new Activsion Blizzard, the new company gave the F.E.A.R. title rights back to Monolith and Warner Bros. Interactive.

Gof all that so far (yes we know it's confusing)? Now as Monolith prepared to release F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin in February its art lead Dave Matthews believes those Timegate expansions might have hurt the franchise. In a recent chat with Computer and Video games Matthews states, ""[TimeGate] took the story in a direction that we didn't intend. We look at Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate as an alternate universe, a 'what could have been', and because of that it doesn't necessarily diminish the story that we were trying to tell. F.E.A.R. was about Alma, F.E.A.R. 2 is about Alma, and we wanted to continue the story the way we originally intended."

Things like this happen. Im just glad its back at Monolith.

Wrath of the Lich King

Blizzard reports that following the expansion Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft now has 11.5 million subscribers. And to think their parent company was considering selling them a few years ago.

Looks like someone finally learned something

Obtained Via BigDownloads.com:

In perhaps their biggest game publisher deal yet, Valve has announced secured the rights to distribute a number of PC game titles from Electronic Arts via their Steam service. EA has previously handled downloadable PC game titles via their own EA Downloader service but now Spore, Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack, Warhammer Online, Mass Effect, FIFA Manager 09, and Need For Speed Undercover are now all available to purchase and download via Steam (sorry, rest of the world, this is for North America only).

In addition to those games, EA will also offer Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Dead Space and the upcoming PC port of Mirror's Edge via Steam in the near future. When contacted by Big Download, an EA spokesperson would not comment if any of EA's older PC games might find their way onto Steam as well. If you have been wanting to buy EA games but have been avoiding purchasing them because of EA's use of DRM in their recent titles, a message of Valve's Steam forums states that the EA games on Steam do not use third party DRM or SecuROM set-up, saying, " the only DRM it uses is Steam itself."

It looks like EA may have finally realized that there are alternatives to DRM. Personally, I don't care about most of the copy protection stuff out there, however limiting installs is BS, and the whole technology basically doesn't work. Now if EA wises up even more, they might consider making some exclusive content for the steam version, or offering a cheaper price than standard retail.

Starcraft 2 Electric Boogaloo

Blizzard Entertainment has released a video showing a multiplayer match for Starcraft 2. The narrators seems to take themselves a little too seriously, it almost sounds like a football game. Regardless it is a pretty good demonstration of how things are shaping up.

Duke Nukem Whenever...

Today 3D Realms released a new image from the game Duke Nukem Forever, to show off several of the title's monsters. However it does not appear to be in game.

How am I supposed to take this seriously?

Defense Grid

Despite what the reviews may say, Warcraft 3 was a crappy game, as was the expansion. It may have had the usual Blizzard polish, but as the saying goes there are some things you just cant polish, and unfortunately this was one of them.

One of the good things that did come out of it however was the tower defense games. In these, players have to use various defense towers to defeat a predetermined number of creatures before they can reach a point on the map.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is by far one of the best games of this type I have ever seen. The graphics but every other game in this genre to shame. I'm not sure how many levels are in the campaign, but the first 15 I played flew past pretty quick.

Available for $20 on steam and direct2drive

Problems getting the word out

When people talk about the supposed "death of PC gaming", one of the main issues that comes up is the focus in the industry with hyping up big name, flashy games with advanced graphics that either sell big or fall flat, often times taking the company with it. Unfortunately, many gaming news sites help this process along buy not devoting any time to smaller or independent games to help them gain any attention. This seems to create an endless cycle where big publishers get all the press, most of it seemingly related to expansion packs for the same franchise.

Gamespot.com is probably the best example of this, though certainly not the only one. Anyway there are other sites that give a little more even coverage, and one of my favorites at the moment is Big Downloads, which not only gives a little more fair coverage but also offers trial downloads of several games, new and old. If your bored, take a look.

This weeks A' hole

The jerk of the week at this point would seem to be Sam Zell. One year after this real estate tycoon bought Tribune for 8 billion dollars, he has just filed for bankruptcy. Why does that make him this weeks winner you ask? Well, in order to raise the money necessary to purchase Tribune, he set up a deal where he basically used the employees tax exempt stock option plan to borrow the money he needed to wrest control, contributing only 314 million of his own money. Though technically it made the employees the owners of the company, he was obviously in charge. He then cut back on employees 401k contributions in order to pay back the money he borrowed in his "tax efficient" little scheme. Only now that he is filing for bankruptcy, those stock options are probably going to be worthless, leaving the employees to bear the brunt of Tribunes 12.9 billion in debt compared to its 7.6 billion in assets. The only bright point is that because this was only going on for a year, employees wont lose as much as if they had been contributing to this for 7 or 8 years.

Thanks a lot.....dick

The Political Machine - The Next Day

I am please to report that last night running as candidate Al Gore I soundly defeated my opponent, Ulysses S Grant with a final electoral count of 411 to 127. Click on the picture to see the electoral map. I almost carried Texas.

The Political Machine

One of the nice things about digital distribution platforms like Impulse and Steam is that it allows companies to sell games that might only appeal to a niche market by maintaining higher profit margins than a standard retail release. A good example of this is The Political Machine 2008, a presidential campaign simulator from Stardock, makers of Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire. This cartoony little game basically mocks the more extreme aspects of presidential campaigns while offering a easily to learn strategy game, with optional multiplayer. It's not going to win any 10's from game sites, but for the $5 I spent on it at Best Buy, it is well worth it.

Empire Total War

One of the games I am looking forward to most of all has to be Empire: Total war. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, Creative Assembly years ago made the groundbreaking game Shogun:Total War. Featuring A.I. that was designed directly from The Art of War by Sun Tzu, this game featured a combination of turn based and real time strategy that played out on an epic scale. I never played Medieval: Total War, but Rome TW was easily one of if not the greatest strategy game ever made. The graphics and AI were so realistic the history channel actually used the game to demonstrate how real historic battles played out.

Anyway Empire: Total War looks like another leap forward in this series. Dated around what looks like the Age of Sail and moving into the American revolutionary war, this new game will also feature Naval Combat in addition to visually amazing land battles. Check these out:

Thank you EA executives

NetDragon Websoft Inc, a China-based game developer, has teamed up with publisher Electronic Arts to develop a massively-multiplayer online game based on the beloved Dungeon Keeper franchise. Coined Dungeon Keeper Online, the MMO will be NetDragon's first MMORPG.

Way to ruin a good franchise. Thanks for that.

In better news, it looks like THQ obtained the rights to Homeworld when they purchased Relic from Vivendi. Recently one of their lead designers commented on it in an interview with eurogamer:

""We're really happy the [intellectual property] has made its way home, and yeah, we're definitely looking at it. We'll see what happens in the future," Ebbert told Eurogamer. "

Oh please, please, please...

Music Videos

Perhaps the greatest music video ever made:

Trials 2 Second Edition

Every once in awhile a developer drops a little gem of a game out on the market with little fanfare. In my opinion, Trials 2 is one of those games. As a guy on his motorcycle, you use accelerating. braking, and leaning forward and backward to navigate scaffolding, stacked pallets, ramps and other random obstacles in what looks like a giant warehouse. With the goal being low times to complete tracks, there is a sense of urgency causing you to risk completing courses with speed and big air.

What makes this game shine is the relatively polished physics engine, which seems fairly realistic as you lean forward and backward to try and set up your landings. In later levels, there are even objects you need to knock over with your bike and drive over to complete the course. Adding to the fun even more is the effect of said physics when you fall, which causes your body to painfully flop on the ground when you wipe out. This will keep you entertained as you try to figure the game out.

There is a demo out, the full version is $9.99. you can pick it up through their site, but its also on steam

Here is a link to the game's site:

Trials 2 Second Edition

And a Youtube movie to boot:

Left for Dead

There is a first person shooter that was released recently called Left For Dead from Valve. At first glance it seems to be a typical zombie survival shooter, but it turns out that the main focus of the game is cooperative and versus multiplayer. My understanding is that it does have single player modes, however where it really seems to shine is scenarios where you and a group of friends can either try and survive a massive onslaught of sorta dead lumbering people, or play a versus team game where one side plays zombies with the other being humans.

With this and the brothers in arms series, I'm happy to see FPS games trying out cooperative playing more and more. It's nice because people with varying skill levels can still play together, rather than one obviously outmatched person dying over and over. Here is a link to a more thorough review at IGN PC. Ive added a gameplay video below:

Blizzard shatters sales record

Blizzard Entertainment's expansion for World of Warcraft, titled Wrath of the Lich King, has sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours. Thats insane

Hardcore Gamers not relevant? (as they used to be)

In an article written for Forbes, Chris Morris brings up an interesting point by asking how important the opinion of "hardcore" gamers is. Here is one excerpt:

"It's easy to dismiss the most avid gamers as a vocal minority. They obsess over games before they're released and then often savagely rip apart the very thing they were so eagerly anticipating. They argue passionately about the most minor of details, and they demand to be catered to by developers."

with that statement came the counter-point:

"But those same people buy multiple titles every month and can be powerful opinion makers who influence the mass market. "Grand Theft Auto," for instance, would never have become a cultural touchstone if not for the hardcore gamer's seal of approval."

With the success of games like Guitar Hero, The Sims, the Nintendo Wii console system, and most recently Spore, a game which more discerning gamers including myself disavowed due to the relative lack of challenge, it was only a matter of time before this argument started to appear.

Though it may come as a surprise to most people, I agree with the first statement far more than the second one. Hardcore gamers really don't matter, or at least not as much as they think they do. It could be argued that they are more experienced than the mas market, and can provide better feedback as to quality and potential problems. While that could be true in theory, if find the statement "They argue passionately about the most minor of details, and they demand to be catered to by developers." to be extremely accurate. Enter almost any forum for a larger game developer and what you will find over and over again is an insane group of people trying to out shout via text anyone with an opposing viewpoint. Minor flaws and disagreements are subject to an emotional and exaggerated response, and there is often written a statement which suggests that not heeding a fans "warning" will somehow lead to the immediate downfall of a company.

Epic games is a good example of this. After several successful hits involving the Unreal Tournament, they chose to primarily focus on consoles with games like Gears of War and now Gears of War 2. Now look at any forum catering to PC gamers, and you would think that Cliffy B  had snuck into these peoples homes and impregnated their sister.

Another fairly recent example would be Blizzard Entertainments Diablo 3. There has been some discussion recently amongst fans that the color palette used by Blizzard is to light, and takes away from the Macabre feel of previous games in the series. Fans even started a petition online asking Blizzard to scrap their current approach. In what possibly was one of the funniest responses to complaints I have ever seen, Blizzard's environmental artists, when learning of the petition, went into one of the darkest areas in Act I and painted rainbows across it, then releasing screen shots of it as if it were real. Furthering my statement regarding the lunacy of a "devoted" few, someone analyzed the light refraction angle, and told us why from that angle seeing a rainbow would actually be impossible. Oh yeah, and it was upside down because the colors were reversed. Don't believe me? Click here

Now it's not that more devoted gamers opinions aren't valid, its in getting that opinion to the developer in a constructive manner that the issue seems to arise. Where as in smaller niche companies such as Tilted Mill, open forums can work and there is a lot of interaction between fans and developers, companies with larger audiences are going to have to find ways of separating the few from the many in order to get a valid opinion. Methods like in game methods of submitting suggestions, questionnaires limiting the scope of someones response to the information needed, and separate forums available only to beta testers are methods that have shown merit.

In closing, I think "hardcore" gamers need to remember that taken as a whole they probably comprimise less than 5% of a games potential market. Now take the total sum of idiots flaming forums, and you have less than 1%. So where as your opinion may be valid, the success or failure of a company will most likely not depend on it.

Flow is what keeps you running, what keeps you alive

Update November 19th 2009:

It appears this game may not ben what I had hoped, and has deveolped a Love/Hate relationship amongst the people that bought it. from what I understand, the open missions are fun, though you wil have to try every level about 10-20 times before you can do it, as a misjump ends your life. Separating these are universally hated "puzzle levels, that leave your runner standing in place trying to figure out the extremely linear solution to crossing from one building to another. Check independent reviews before you buy.

So the beginning of Casino Royale featured this insane chase sequence between bond and a suspected bomber/terrorist. Along the same lines is this insane looking game called mirrors edge, which you play a "courier" who apparently transports sensitive information using insane acrobatics over an urban landscape. So anyway, this game seems to seamlessly string togethor wall leaps, vaults and other acrobatics. I believe its being released for the xbox 360, ps3 and the PC, so Id definatly keep an eye out for it.

Wrath of the Lich King

For those of you who missed it, the number of subscribers to Blizzards World of Warcraft now exceeds the population of Ohio. Anyway there new expansion comes out next week. Even if the game doesn't interest you, Blizzard always does nice Cinematics

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/intro.xml

Break from gaming

Taking a moment to address other issues. I was having a discussion with a friend of mine regarding a post on http://www.damonpayne.com/ titled "A war on excellence" Well I ended up writing a long response to it, which I have since decided to post since I put so much work into it. To be clear I consider Damon a very good friend, along with a person whose opinion is well thought out, and deserves consideration. I say this because if someone reading my blog chooses to add a comment on his site that is not done in a respectful manner, my next post will be entitled "Bashing the Douche Bag who just posted on DamonPayne.com" with that, here is my response:

His response is pretty consistent with what he believes. I understand his position on leaving banks alone, and there is some merit to the idea that thanks to the bailout people who have been irresponsible get saved at the expense of the rest of us. That's why I'm glad this money has thus far been handed out in the form of an investment, so hopefully later we can get some of it back.

Regardless of that, I think the bailout was necessary. The problem with letting banks fail is that it erodes confidence in the U.S. banking system, if that is lost, we really are in severe trouble and the economy would take years longer to recover.

As far as operating in the same Laissez Faire attitude, I think it’s interesting that even Greenspan testified last week that more regulation of the banking industry would apparently be necessary. He also said that he was "shocked" at the level of irresponsibility of executives in the financial sector, and attested it to the fact that they were given bonuses purely on quarterly results, with no incentive to protecting equity or liquidity. He testified that this method of operating had basically destroyed the notion that businesses will do what is in their best interests, an idea that had been a basis of his approach to economics for 30 years.

It's unfortunate that this happened at the end of his career, and that he has taken the lion’s share of the blame for this crisis. I really still consider him to be one of the most brilliant economic minds of our century.

As far as his complaints about taxes, what he is saying matches the same trickle down economic policies that we have seen over the past several years, and he saying it because he has been taught that if you lower taxes on "upper class", it will stimulate business growth, which will add jobs and benefit everyone. And he isn't wrong when he says that raising taxes on small business owners should result in smaller growth for their businesses, but at the same time when many people say this I believe they ignore other aspects of the economy, in order to make their statement true and scare the hell out of people. My argument is basically that a full two thirds of our economy is consumer spending, this is a fact, and it is not in dispute. So looking at that, I would argue that is you send more money towards the people who make less than 250,000 a year they will turn around and spend more, which should raise demand for the goods and services and business produce, which in turn should cause them to expand their business in order to meet demand, whether they are being taxed more or not. It also means that rather than just gaining increased revenue from lower taxes, they will have to compete more for the opportunities out there. I think we can all agree that competition still benefits everyone.

Now I'm not saying that this theory is foolproof, far from it. If the people who make less then 250,000 a year use the extra money to shore up their debt, which they should do, that isn't the same thing as putting money back into the economy, and we don't receive the benefit that is supposed to counter the negative effects of taxing small businesses more. Also as stated before many businesses are hooked on quarterly numbers, and as a knee-jerk reaction will tend to want to lay off people, which again, benefits no one. Also, like farmers depending on subsidies, business owners learn to depend on lower taxes. Following my theory, their perspective is going to have to shift towards competing more for the extra money that's entering the economy through consumer spending. This takes time, and if what I'm suggesting works there will probably be a period of added instability before anyone sees the benefits I am hoping for. This scares people.

Either way, though conservatives will point repeatedly at Jimmy Carter as an example of how Democrats handle rough economic times poorly, economic growth has historically been greater under democratic presidents. Lets all hope this is the case this time. And if not, let’s hope the people in positions of authority in this country have the poise and the wisdom to change their approach. I really do like Barack Obama. I’ve been a supporter of his since he launched his campaign is Springfield Illinois. I have also volunteered for his campaign several times. I think he has provided leadership to the Democratic Party, which resembled a failing disorganized ragtag mob in my eyes back when his campaign was launched. In my opinion John Kerry was something of an empty suit, and finally for the first time in my life I actually see a candidate that I can be proud to support.

News Flash: I am Beautiful

Thanks to what Im assuming is some type of Glitch in the system. I have temporarily been made extremly attractive. I will continue to exploit this until their IT department corrects what is most certainly a grevious error.

News Flash: Game developers play by the same rules as everyone else

Cliffy B. of Epic Games recently conveyed the following thoughts on the pc gaming industry, obtained via http://www.avault.com/news/cliffy-b-industry-blind-to-visionaries/:

Cliff Bleszinski is concerned that the game industry does not tolerate “visionaries” within its ranks. Talents like Ken Levine, Peter Molyneux, Chris Taylor or Hideo Kojima are praised and revered when they complete their games and the money rolls in, however, unlike the movie industry which gives directors a “time out” whenever their movies flop, if developers take one side step or in some cases a misstep, then it’s straight to the dog pound for them. The game industry does not support failure.

Mr. Bleszinski has been putting in overtime doing double duty working on Gears 2 and also serving as Executive producer for the up and coming Gears of War film. He’s had the distinct pleasure to see how business models work on both sides of the fence. Cliffy B notes that there is an order and structure in Hollywood that simply doesn’t exist in the gaming industry. As far as he’s concerned, it’s the Wild West in all of gamedom.

I think Cliffy B needs to remember that he is an employee for a game developer, not a rock star. I don't think anyone needs to be reminded that developing games is an expensive process with costs going into the millions of dollars. In any industry, risking that much money and failing will quickly put you on the outside.

As far as Hollywood goes, I don't necessarily agree with his analogy. Although actors and directors have screwed up and come back many times. Several have also ended their careers with one bad movie. Kevin Costner was on a roll before Waterworld.

Starcraft 2 Trilogy?

It has just been brought to my attention the Starcraft 2 is apparently going to be a trilogy, with each campaign being sold as its own game. According to Activision/Blizzard, this is to “allow the development team the opportunity to focus its energy on providing players with a deep, rich story and fully fleshed-out Starcraft universe characters for all three factions.” Personally I think that’s a load of crap, and this decision was made to bring in more money.

In their defense however, this decision does not mean that Starcraft 2 will be bad, or that the 3 games will not be worth it. By doing this, Blizzard has raised the bar. Now each campaign alone has to be good enough to justify the price tag. Well see if they can pull this off.

I also have to mention, in regards to my “death of PC gaming post” PC developers have to look for new ways to deliver their products in order to compete with consoles . It could be very possible to see more things like this in the near future.

Death of PC Gaming?

So there has been a lot of fuss over the past year over the “death" of the PC gaming industry as more and more developers, such as Epic, are moving toward consoles. Some people, mainly on the developer/publisher side blame this on piracy, while the people on the gamer/player end basically complain that their are no innovative titles anymore due to games being originally designed for consoles. So I figured I would take a moment to give my two cents on the topic.

Where as in the past PC games greatly outperformed consoles in terms of graphics/framerates, systems like the Playstation 3 and Microsoft xbox have in essence closed that gap. It can still be argued that a pc can render graphics at higher resolutions and with more frames per second, which they can, however it really doesn't matter anymore. The average customer doesn't want to benchmark their consoles performance and compare numbers, they want to be wowed with graphics and effects. Today's systems more than accomplish that.

Also adding to the difficulty of developing for PCs is the ever changing range of hardware that's available. The xbox you buy today will essentially be the same as what was available a year ago. It will use the same hard drive, the same video and sound card. On the other hand, PCs are in a constant state of flux. With just the graphics cards alone, you have ATI and Nvidia releasing a new chipset 2 or 3 times a year. Each time one is released, it is sent out to several manufacturers, each of whom designs the rest of the card and drivers to accommodate the hardware they have created. Add to that various processors, motherboards, sound cards, and other components, and you are looking at a significantly increased time in beta testing to ensure as much compatibility as possible.

So what does all this mean for developers? Well to start off lets look at how the publisher/developer relationship works. Typically when the publisher decides to sign on with a developer, they usually advance royalties to them to help cover the costs of development. After the game is released, roughly 10-15 percent of the sales for each game goes back to the people who designed it, the publisher keeps the rest. However it is important to note that the developer doesn't actually start getting paid until their advance is paid off. So if a company was advanced 2 million dollars and is receiving a 12% royalty, they have to make just over 16 million dollars in sales just to break even. At $50 a game, that would come out to about 320,000 copies.

Now take into account the extended development time, and the fact that cutting edge graphics can shrink your customer base based on how many PCs can actually run a game, and you can see how companies get into trouble. Really it just comes down to a simple matter of cash flow, which is what is responsible for most start ups going out of business. If you don't sell a million copies in the first fiscal quarter following its release, you may very well run out of money before your sales can catch up to accommodate your costs. When a developer goes bust following the release of a game, this is usually the culprit.

So is the PC gaming industry doomed? In my opinion no, but companies are going to have to adapt to their new environment, just like an other industry. Following this are some examples of changes in mentality that need to take place.

1. Graphics are secondary to gameplay ALWAYS. Players will forgive a game for not having the latest graphics and special effects if the gameplay is enjoyable. On the flip side, they will not forgive a game that is not entertaining to play, no matter how pretty it looks. Also the better the graphics, the less people that posses the hardware to play it.

2. Consider 3rd party engines when possible. Unless you have a proven team that you have the utmost confidence in that can build a games engine at cheaper cost that you would have to pay to buy it, take advantage of others proven work. even if it costs a little more, it will free up much needed time for gameplay balancing and enhancements. The Quake 3 engine is a perfect example of this, as it was used in medal of honor, call of duty and soldier of fortune 2. EALA, formerly known as Westwood, used the engine from CNC Generals to mate Battle for middle Earth.

3. Digital Distribution methods. This venue could end up being a savior for PC game developers. Take one of my favorite developers, Tilted Mill, who has currently released 2 of their games on steam for $20. Even though the price may seem to low to support a business, compare the terms to the deals involving publishers. At 12% , out of a $50 game, the company will receive about 6 dollars. Now whereas with steam, even if valve charged 25% per game sold, which they don't, you would still be looking at twice as much profit per sale. In addition, you can retain the rights to your game, rather than handing them to the publisher.

4. Actively support user created content. Releasing mission editor tools is probably the best decision game developers have made in the past decade. Dedicated fans have created hundreds of excellent maps and mods for dozens of games, at a rate no company could touch. It is important , however, that a forum be available to organize, rate, and identify exceptional work.

So to close, the PC gaming industry is not dying, however competition from consoles is only going to increase, so its up to game companies to make the most use of the strengths they possess.

Peter Molyneux, former idolized developer turned crybaby

So Peter Molyneux managed to create this miniature contraversy when he stated that the "PC gaming industry was in tatters" or more specifically:

"If you look at the gamer market on PC, I'll be quite honest with you, it's in tatters. There aren't that many releases on PC. There are some high points like Crysis and what Blizzard is doing, but other than that you are restricted to The Sims and World of Warcraft, they seem to be dominating the PC side."

To which the president of the PC gaming alliance responded:

"We respect Peter Molyneux as one of the legends in the industry, but we think he is way off-base with his assessment of the PC gaming industry.

In fact, the PC Gaming Alliance just released the findings of our Horizons research report in August and it shows that the industry is stronger than ever. An industry with 10.7 billion in revenue during 2007 is hardly in tatters.

Beyond the financial aspect of this, the PC is still the world's leading platform for gaming. There are plenty of AAA titles like Conan, Warhammer Online and Spore, as well as smaller games that appeal to people beyond the console audience. And even though there are many AAA titles in the pipeline for PC, the success of an industry can't be measured in AAA titles alone."

My take on this? Sales of Peter Molyneux's games are not low because of the Sims or WOW, they are low because his games quite honestly suck.

For those of you who have never heard of him, Peter made his career off of 3 very innovative titles. Those would be populous, dungeon keeper, and syndicate. However after he sold off Bullfrog to create Lionhead studious, his games went sharply downhill. First was Black and White, what was to be a next generation Populous that featured intelligent "pets" that could be trained to carry out your will, along with a gesture recognition technology that was designed to eliminate icons. Unfortunately, this game basically turned into a semi functioning group of features that did not work to well together. Following this was Fable, a 3rd person rpg which was released without many of the features Peter had promised in interviews. It received a 4/10 on gamespot, with similar reviews from other sites. I'm not even going to get into Black and White 2, suffice to say that if I was on that project, I would ask to have my name removed from the credits due to embarrassment.

So why were so many of his games so bad lately? In my opinion it can be summed up in one statement.

" Being Immersed in a living world"

Peter Molyneux is obsessed with being immersed in a living world. In fact, he wont shut up about it. Hes so convinced that everyone wants to be immersed in his living world that that's all he focuses on. In his mind this is the most important thing, and so impressive is this idea to him that he is convinced that players will abandon gameplay, which is secondary, just to wander around his living world doing things most games would never let you do.

Now lets look at this approach. hmm...gameplay secondary...probably not a good idea. And in my opinion, this leaves players wandering around finishing random quests with no real sense of accomplishment, after all, the designer didn't really care about the quest, so why should you. Playing Fable was like being stuck in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel after the ring was destroyed, your basically wandering around the woods staring at proverbial hobbits, and nobody cares.

Debut

So here I am, posting things here because I hate myspace and all of its ad laden pages. Also facebook walls confuse me. I never know where I'm actually writing anything. So anyway ill start posting some mediocre rant momentarily.