LootBot3000

February 20, 2009

Ch-ch-changes…

Filed under: EQ2, Life — Exeter @ 10:24 pm

I’m experimenting with themes and, of course, the name of the blog has changed.  Why?  The little inside joke in the old title “Expletive Deleted” (hint: I cuss a lot) didn’t make a whole lot of sense to people that didn’t know me and, to be honest, as witty as I thought that it was when I first started, it just comes off as lame now.  The new title, “LootBot” just seems a little more game-related and it’s still relevant to me personally as it comes from the name that my old EQ2 guild-mates gave to my impression of Ned from South Park that became a semi-regular gag in voice chat during raids and dungeon runs.

Speaking of which, I’ve renewed my subscription to EverQuest 2 this week.  Try as I might, I just can’t help but think that a part of me will always be faithful to my first MMO.  I’ve joined, left and rejoined four times now and no matter how much I try to tell myself that I want to try something else, I play another game and think “Boy, I liked this system better in EQ2″. So instead of fighting it, forcing myself to like something different for its own sake, for better or for worse, I’ve succumbed to my unhealthy affection for the game.  I’m not expecting to jump right into things like I did before when I’d spend roughly 15-20 hours per week running dungeons, grinding out quests and raiding, but I hope to experience some of what I’ve been looking for in the other games that I’ve played (AoC and LOTRO) since I last played.

That said though, this weekend is certainly not going to be spent goofing off in-game because I’m going to be slogging it out ferrying box after box of things from my apartment to the new house that my wife and I bought last month.  It’s amazing just how quickly the day has come and while I’m ridiculously excited about getting into our new home, I wish that I’d had another weekend to pack all this stuff.  A couple of weeks simply wasn’t enough.  I’m not looking forward to the 45 minute to 1 hour long commute each morning.  However, one upside to the crawl is that I’ll finally have enough time in the car to listen to all the podcasts and audio books that I’ve let pile up over the last little while.

So it’s a week of new starts and old classics.  Here’s to coming out of it with my brain intact!

Cheers!

EDIT: I should also take the chance to recognize how awesome a job my wife has done in packing practically everything we own! **You get better at being a kiss-ass 323/350**

February 19, 2009

Zoinks, Yo! “Games May Be Too Expensive”?

Filed under: Economics, Games, TL;DR — Exeter @ 1:24 pm

Before becoming another cog in the wheel of government in my home province three years ago, I helped pay my way through graduate school by taking on “sessional” positions at the local university teaching, among other things, introductory microeconomics.  For the record, I loved teaching and if it had paid enough so that the poor buggers making a living digging tetra-pack out of dumpsters didn’t give me a sympathetic look, I’d have stuck with it.  However, as sure as the Earth spins about the sun, we’d inch closer to a topic that many students dreaded more than the morning after a Jägermeister binge.

The topic?  Elasticity.  What is elasticity?  Well, I’m so glad you asked.

**RED ALERT!  SKIP AHEAD IMMEDIATELY IF YOU ARE PRONE TO BOREDOM, SUFFER FROM NOSE BLEEDS, ARE PREGNANT OR MAY BECOME PREGNANT**

Elasticity in economics is, put simply, a way to measure the responsiveness of one variable to changes in another variable.  In economics it’s most familiarly encoutered in the context measuring how the quantity of a good demanded changes when prices are altered.  Without getting into the nitty-gritty details and discarding silly academic curiosities such as Giffen goods, it boils down to three results:

  • A good is considered “elastic” if its price is decreased by some percentage and the quantity demanded by consumers increases by more than that percentage
  • We’ve got ourselves a good that is “unit elastic” if a percentage decrease in price results in a percentage increase in the quantity demanded that is of the same magnitude; and
  • The good is “inelastic” if the price is decreased by some percentage and the increase in demand is less than that percentage.

Now, like all good students, you’re probably asking yourself, “Who the hell cares?”.  Well, it’s because price elasticity has important implications for revenue and profit.  And what matters more to a business than it’s bottom line.  Amirite?

When producers of an elastic good increase price they see their revenues drop as people say “it’s too expensive” and trot off to find something else to spend their money on.  Conversely, if producers dock their price, they see revenue rise as a lot of folks that were originally saying “it’s too ’spensive” open their wallets now that the price is more in line with what they’re willing to pay.

**NERDINESS HAS SUBSIDED! RED ALERT ENDS!**

In Edge there’s a feature titled Are Games Too Expensive? where Gabe Newell, El Presidente of Valve, gives the gaming world a lesson in economics with an example of just how price elasticity of demand works on a luxury good like video games!  As it just so happens, when Steam offered holiday discounts on a whole bunch of games available through Steam, not only did the number of units sold jump through the friggin’ roof, but revenues shot up, too.  Now, there’re all kinds of things that could explain the size of the increases, such as the “holiday effect” and “hurry up and buy before they jack up the price again effect”, but they saw this same phenomenon, albeit to a lesser extent, on other occasions as well.

What does it all mean?

Well, among other things, it means that games are an elastic good (duh!) and that if the change in revenues are reaching ridiculous heights when prices are dropped, then the price point for games is all wrong!  Simply, they’re too expensive.  As long as the higher cost of meeting demand doesn’t outweigh the increased revenues generated, Valve stands to make a few extra bucks.  It’d take a bit of fiddling with prices and such, but somewhere in between what is charged now and giving it away for free, there’re additional profits to be found.  And if one of the industry’s big wigs is saying “games may be too expensive”, perhaps it’s time that pricing were given another look.

February 17, 2009

For the Sake of Science

Filed under: MMOs — Exeter @ 1:12 am

If you’ve filled out a survey, ordered movie tickets or done any banking online you’ve likely had to weigh the consequences of knowing that your name, credit card number and even favourite colour is floating around “teh internets”.  You see that little yellow lock icon somewhere on your web browser and feel that Neo himself is keeping your information safe from prying eyes.  However, how many of us take such a security conscious approach to our online conversations and interactions?  How many consider the fact that everything you do in an MMO is recorded and archived?  My guess is that not many.  That might need to change now that Sony Online Entertainment has handed complete server logs for the past four years for over 400,000 EverQuest 2 players over to researchers.

What are the eggheads doing with your data?  All kinds of things it seems.  From perfecting data-mining algorithms to deal with the sheer volume of data (over 60 TB!) to analysing purchases made, social interactions and who you’re spending your time with in-game.  Demographic information was also provided in order to flesh out a profile and the researchers have wasted no time in taking the opportunity to play Freud for the sake of a few research papers.

While I doubt that Sony is peddling credit card information, it makes me wonder if we’ve been too trusting of a company like SOE or, at the very least, that we’ve been far too open in our interactions with other players considering that there’s someone listening in.  I’m also wondering how many other companies are giving away or selling copies of their server logs.  Should we just accept this as part and parcel of living in the internet age or, even if names and financial information are kept confidential, is this a violation of a fundamental expectation of privacy?  Is this behavious ethical?  I am left considering if the possible value of the research is worth the potential impact on the social aspect of online gaming.

February 12, 2009

A Culture of Anticipation?

Filed under: MMOs — Exeter @ 7:05 pm

What do iPhones, Mats Sundin and Star Wars: Episode I (…and II…and III) have in common?  Hype.  Overblown, monumental, undeserved hype.  One moment you’re cheering for an upcoming product and eating nothing but President’s Choice ramen noodles so that you’ll have enough cash to spend on it.  The next, you’re waiting for your bus muttering “that’s it?” to a sketchy-looking dude whose scent is an interesting blend of McDonald’s and dog sh*t.

It happens all the time in music, technology and movies and for as long as I’ve been playing on my computer, it’s been a part of being a gamer, too.  Anyone else remember “The Last Thing You’ll Ever Desire” or “John Romero’s about to make you his bitch”?  More recently, we’ve seen a couple of spectacular flameouts in the MMO space with the Mount Everest Award for MMO Epic Fail, at least in my opinion, going to Brad McQuaid for his sterling job on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Let’s have a gander at the life-cycle of disappointment from an MMO player’s point of view.  A “revolutionary” title is announced, trickles of information, maybe a screenshot “leaks” from the studio, forums go wild, a glowing “hands-on preview” or three is published on gaming news sites and in print magazines, everyone goes nuts in anticipation, it’s finally released … and falls flat on its face.  Criticism starts, flame wars erupt on forums with thread titles containing the word “betrayed” and bloggers start the “I knew it” phase of gaming grief.  Yet before the blood is mopped up and the dust has had a chance to settle, another “revolutionary” title is announced along with a suspiciously well-crafted trailer *cough* Bioware *cough* and just like lemmings, we’re hopping off of cliffs in an effort be among the first to start a Facebook group, blog or tweet about how amazing this title is going to be.

For every title that pans out as hoped, there are many more that don’t.  You’d think that we’d be much more cynical, reserving judgement ’til a product is in-hand or at least in beta before singing its praises.  But we don’t.  Why do we do this to ourselves? Are we being blindly optimistic, insanely masochistic or do we simply live in a culture of anticipation always looking for the next great thing?

February 10, 2009

The Medium Matters

Filed under: Life, Nerdiness — Exeter @ 11:07 am

After renting the same apartment for nearly a decade, my wife and I are in the middle of moving to our first house.  So, needless to say, we’re busying ourselves with packing all of our stuff and I’ve got a considerable collection of DVD’s, video games, books and miniatures to move. Definining a genre is largely subjective — trying to categorize Star Wars always made for long distractions during the old pen & paper RPG nights — but I like to think that I’m a well-rounded nerd, able to enjoy them all.  However, I find that my own level of enjoyment of a particular genre is dependent on the medium in which it is presented.

Take video games as an example.  There’re no two bones about it, I’m an MMO addict.  However, no matter how much I like the idea of playing a sci-fi MMO, they don’t tickle my no-no spot.  It could be just the current offerings, but science fiction (Anarchy Online, EVE, Tabla Rasa) hasn’t translated well  into an MMO for me.  Also, despite my nostalgia for the days when a friend and I used to pool our allowance to get the most out of our comic book purchases, the superhero setting doesn’t do it for me either.  No, when it comes to getting my groove on in a virtual world, a high fantasty setting (EverQuest 2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online) is my opiate of choice.  Single-player games, on the other hand, run the gammut from shooters (Call of Duty 4) to sci-fi and fantasy RPGs (Mass Effect and Planscape: Torment) to 4X-games (Civilization 4).

When it comes to the written word, however, I find myself completely turned off by novels in the high fantasy genre.  I couldn’t get into Lord of the Rings (though I enjoyed the films and the MMO), I wince at the thought of reading anything based on Dungeons & Dragons and I daydream about suing Robert Jordan for all the time I wasted turning pages in his Wheel of Time series.  In fact, with the exception of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, I have yet to enjoy, and now make it a point to avoid, books that prominently feature magic, the supernatural or fantastic races.  When I read, I generally turn to either alternate history or historical fiction.

Film and television is a different beast entirely and with  Lord of the Rings being an exception, I find once more that I’m uninterested in fantasy as a genre. This is where the various shades of science-fiction truly shines in my opinion.  From the drama and techno-babble of Star Trek, to the gun-slinging space-cowboys of Firefly/Serenity, I’m a total junkie for all things science-fiction.  My DVD library is stuffed with geek-approved flicks like Star Wars and Alien(s) as well as seasons of Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 with scant offerings when it comes to anything involving swords or sorcery.

So while some, including friends of mine, can consume anything even the slightest bit related to science-fiction and fantasy, for me the medium definitely plays a role in shaping the nerdy aspects of my personality.  And the moral of this story? Blogging is a great way to reflect on your hobbies and a fantastic way to avoid having to actually pack it all into boxes.

February 4, 2009

The User Interface: A prime-time drama?

Filed under: MMOs — Tags: — Exeter @ 7:59 pm

While I’m a huge fan of the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) genre and love hopping around from site to site on “teh interwebz”, reading blogs dedicated to them, sometimes I’m left scratching my head. At the moment, I’m sitting here, an eyebrow arched in a way that only villains with twirly moustaches and stovepipe hats ought to do at the notion that an MMOG fails because it didn’t come up with a fancy new take on the user interface.

Am I the only one that thinks that it is asinine to yank out the “Boo! Hiss! Copycat!” card simply because the interface is adopted from another game and doesn’t have go-faster stripes on the handlebars? There’s a reason that the world hasn’t embraced the square steering wheel; version 1.0 (Project Codename: Roundie) was a success! Why? Because innovation is not the point. It serves it’s purpose and that’s that. However, some pundits would make it a sin to adopt a UI based on WoW’s hugely successful model and then constantly praise WoW’s easy to use UI as one (among many others) of the reasons that it has enjoyed so much success and become the cornerstone of the genre.

I know. Your eyebrow is twitching now too, isn’t it?

At the end of the day, a game should be judged on what it does provide, which leads to the only question that matters when it comes to reviewing a game: is it fun? Something that can’t likely be deduced in less time than it takes to make a bag of popcorn in the microwave.

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