Pay for your impatience, then suffer the consequences

Today, ngmoco:) announced it would be shutting down a few of its early hits in the mobile freemium market, including We Rule and GodFinger. While most gamers probably just shrugged their shoulders because, hey, who cares?, these games have been massive time sucks for thousands of people, and with the servers shut down, no one’s going to rule, and no god shall be fing– uh, nevermind.

godfinger-python

There’s the old argument about digital media vs. physical media that you rent the former and own the latter. This couldn’t be more obvious in the freemium world. Not only were We Rule and GodFinger being rented, but the virtual goods were little more than a tax on impatience. Impatience that was created by the developer. On purpose. To make more money.

This isn’t to say all freemium gamers are impatient or that these developers are greedy or undeserving of money. It’s just a sobering reminder that cash paid for virtual goods, especially of the “hurry up and grow this turnip because I don’t wanna wait five hours” kind, are fleeting. You’re buying instant gratification, and even though you’re supporting a developer, remember that this is the same developer that told you you had to wait five hours for a turnip in the first place.

New Xenoblade game teased

I haven’t been very excited about the wave of next-gen consoles about to spread over our planet. Part of this is due to having less time to play games, but a bigger part is I just haven’t seen anything that grabbed my interest. A new Metroid game might tempt me to go down the Wii U route, but otherwise I’m fine sticking with a good gaming PC and handheld devices.

But then I saw the trailer below. It’s a new game from Monolith Soft whose Xenoblade Chronicles made me learn to love the JRPG again. From what little gameplay is shown, this has more of a sci-fi slant than Xenoblade Chronicles, but the huge, open worlds and massive enemies roaming around are still present. I am now officially “moderately interested” in a Wii U!

Space Love!

spacelove-bannerA quick prototype I wrote to try out Ren’py, the visual novel engine. It’s a sci-fi comedy parody of what most people think of when they think of visual novels. Four endings based on user actions, with sound effects and artwork pulled from various sources.

Features:
* Multiple endings!
* Real-time emotions!
* Not really!
* SPACE!!!!
* Possibility of robot love!

Grab it and give it a go. It’s a quick run, about 15 minutes or so:
* Space Love! – Windows/Mac/Linux

Art and music credits:
(Note that most of the artwork has been altered by me. And poorly, at that!)

Darius: http://narusailor.deviantart.com
Rachel: http://hoshianzucamillelim.deviantart.com
Evelyn: http://xsmilelucy.deviantart.com
Rob-bot: http://raindropmemory.deviantart.com/
Space station: http://davemetlesits.deviantart.com
Star background: http://aajohan.deviantart.com

Background music – Quiet Space by Brendan J. Boyd
Title music: Stream 1 by Michikawa

Retro City Rampage Game Boy mode

After a decade or so in development (anyone remember when it was called Grandtheftendo?), Retro City Rampage has finally been released. So far I’ve just been running around stomping on pedestrians and listening to the chip tune soundtrack. I’m told there are missions and stuff, but the parodies and in-jokes are good enough for me so far.

The game also comes with a few visual flavors, and I thought I would share this, because it absolutely made my day. Game Boy rocks!

Minecraft closed map experiment is eerily familiar

An interesting behavioral experiment was recently carried out on a Minecraft server, one that I think quite neatly thumbnails the whole of human history. To summarize, a server admin set up a world with a 350×350 area walled off from the rest of the map. Players were placed inside with just two rules: don’t leave the walled area, and the game doesn’t begin until everyone is online. Nobody knew there was an experiment going on, they just went about their Minecrafting business as usual. What ensued an epic grab for resources, trade agreements, wars, and an eventual stripping of the world’s resources down to the cold gray stone below.

As soon as the game began, players split into factions, each adopting its own style of play. Among them was the underground-dwelling team of “dwarves”, the merchant’s guilt that hoarded resources and engaged in complex trade agreements, and a small group of griefers who lived on a floating island and only came down to cause mischief. A few groups were beaten into non-existence, leaving their survivors to wander the land aimlessly. At the end, everyone was fighting over the last few scraps of material, including coveted patches of grass needed to grow food. You can see the ravaged landscape in the image below.


Here’s the question posed at the end of the article: if, after this event played out, the walls were lowered and players were set free, what would happen? Would everyone learn from their squabbling and work together, or would the same scenario play out over a larger canvas? I have the answer for you, in case you were wondering: the latter.

Yes, humans do have that nugget of “let’s work together and be friends” buried within, but in a game of Minecraft, it’s not like children will starve to death if you don’t get a few blocks of cobblestone. One would hope the shiny Star Trek side of humanity would come to the forefront in a virtual world, but instead we see the reality that we’re still creatures walking around the planet, not idealistic superbeings. Survival trumps all, and since we’re animals before we’re humans, I think that will always win in the end. After all, how successful can a species be if it doesn’t put its own survival first?

Perfect Strangers remix competition download!

Perfect Strangers remix competitionA very long time ago, some time around 2004-5, OneUp Studios held a remix competition that centered on a rather unusual theme: the intro to the late 80s sitcom Perfect Strangers. Artists were challenged to reinterpret the tune however they saw fit, and some genuinely strange submissions appeared as a result. Several widely-recognized names showed up to the party, including Dale North and Mustin, and while the genres and styles represented were extremely varied, a few remixes stood out as being both true to the original and really rather catchy on their own.

I’ve had these songs floating on my hard drive for years, but recently I did some investigating to make sure I had the entire collection. You know, just ’cause. Unfortunately, the world wide web barely remembers the competition took place. Nothing ever really goes away on the internet, though, so I thought I would re-host everything I had, just in case one or two random people search for it over the next few years. Why not, right?

I can’t verify if this is the complete set, but there are nine tracks in all, including the winning entry “Zelda Reflux Disorder” from Trenthian. I didn’t include my personal favorite song from the competition, Mustin’s “Perfect Ranger”, because he has the song available on YouTube as well as part of a larger collection on iTunes. Naturally, if anyone has the missing songs or knows where to find them, I’d love to check them out. And if any artists featured here would rather not be included, you know where to find me.

* Download the Perfect Strangers Remix Competition (mirror)