Games * Design * Art * Culture

The Mobile Platform Wars, Part Deux

Greg Costikyan — 2004-08-12T18:40:00Z

...talking about server-side platforms here, not platform in the sense of hardware.

When I founded Unplugged Games back in 2000, J2ME was future tech and BREW had not been announced. We had faith that we'd get phones that could run apps in a bit, but at the time, what you had to work with was SMS and WAP. To do any kind of games with those technologies, you needed to have a server in the mix. And my expectation was that mobile would be like online: you've got networked devices, people are going to want to use the network to play multiplayer games.

While you can roll your own server-side code for each new game, that's inefficient; if you expect that your company is going to do a lot of multiplayer games, it makes sense to code a generalizable framework to handle issues like player authentication, player matching, keeping game states in synch, dealing with security, billing, etc., etc., etc. In short, we obviously needed to build our own server-side platform, akin to the platforms used by operations like Pogo.com and Uproar and all. Indeed, one of the first things I did was prepare a set of use cases, outlining a slew of different game styles we might want to support, to ensure that our platform was sufficiently generalized.

When we started going out for more than seed capital, I quickly had another realization: venture capitalists like to invest in technology. They do not like to invest in entertainment, because entertainment industries are viewed as too risky. (Never mind the obvious irony that VCs exist precisely to make investments viewed as too risky for other sources of capital.) When we talked about the platform, they loved it. That, we were repeatedly told, was where our real economic value lay. We'd become the sole platform provider to every wireless carrier on the planet, and the likes of Verizon would funnel us big bux, and that made a lot more sense than trying to sell stupid little games to dumb consumers.

Thus, over time, our business plan shifted from positioning us as a mobile game publisher to positioning us as a mobile platform provider (who also had to do some games to demo our nifty platform).

I didn't actually believe this, by the way--but was willing to play the game, if that's what it took to get funding. And hey, maybe the VCs were right, and that's how the game would play out.

Mirabile dictu, the same thing seemed to happen to everyone else who was going out for money in the world of mobile games at the time. Digital Bridges had their platform. Jamdat got funding on the basis of their platform. Cache-U had their platform (and they were the only one of us, I think, who actually bought into the idea). mForma had their platform.

This was a mirage, because there was absolutely no reason any wireless operator should pay us a dime, or adopt our platform exclusively. Why bother? All they needed was a link to the game from their WAP deck. Why should they care what magic happens on the serverside, so long as the player is happy? As it turned out, I was right; you need a platform to support your own multiplayer games, but there's no obvious reason that the operators should pay you for it, or adopt a single platform.

(Cingular did adopt mForma's platform, BTW--but it didn't do them any good... They trail far behind Verizon and Sprint and even AT&T in terms of consumer uptake of mobile games.)

At the time, the mobile phone manufacturers got worried about this plethora of platforms. They were afraid that it would lead to balkanization of the mobile game world,making it impossible for a T-Mobile customer to play an O2 customer or whatever, and making the job of mobile game developers a nightmare, since they'd have to optimize for a bunch of different platforms. Thus, they got together and created something called the Mobile Games Interoperability Forum, which was supposed to provide an open specification for mobile game platforms that the rest of us should, if we were good citizens, agree to support. Fine, whatever, we all said we would, and forgot about the MGIF, because industry bodies like that take forever to get anything done anyway. And as far as I know, the MGIF never did a damn thing (and has since been folded into the Open Mobile Alliance).

So then J2ME and BREW came along, and mobile game companies found out that they could make money selling dinky little soloplay games, and never mind the platform crap, which they all quietly forgot, and never mind what they'd told the VCs back when.

But today--everyone is looking at the market, and figuring that multiplayer mobile is the next big thing in the mobile games market (and never mind that, as Mitch Lasky at Jamdat put it, they cost twice as much to make and make half as much money as single-player mobile games).

So guess what's happening? The VCs are funding a bunch of new companies that claim they're going to provide =the= platform for multiplayer mobile games. Kayak Interactive is the latest.

Now--here's the thing. There's still no reason for a platform qua platform to make any money. A platform is a necessity for supporting multiplayer mobile games, but at the very best, what you're funding is a middleware play. You are not going to capture more than a tiny share of revenues generated by multiplayer mobile games this way. As so often in the games industry, VC narrow-focus on tech at the expense of content is leading them to make dumb decisions.

Don't take my word for it--download and read this excellent white paper from UK developer Macrospace (hosted on the Forum Nokia website). It goes into how and why wireless carriers, game developers, publishers, and consumers alike will do just fine in a world of competing mobile platforms without any standardization--and with the platform itself generating little or no revenue.

Still not convinced? Consider this, then.

At Java One last June, Sun and Nokia announced that SNAP, Nokia's platform, is going to be integrated directly into Sun's WTK for Java 2--both on the J2ME side and on the J2EE side. In other words, there's going to be a platform, available from Sun and already nicely integrated with the serverside technologies most mobile game developers are going to use, and part of the standard Java distro. (SNAP, incidentally, was originally developed by Sega, and was acquired by Nokia for reasons that still remain inexplicable to me.)

So am I saying SNAP wins the platform wars, and VCs looking to invest in other platform plays are nuts to even look at the space? No, not really; I agree with Macrospace. SNAP just becomes one other option, and nobody wins, and it doesn't really make sense to invest in the space for other reasons entirely. But if you disagree with me, and believe that Someone Will Win The Platform War, and that winning the platform war is worthwhile and will make someone a pile of money--well, you're betting against both Sun and Nokia. Which sounds like a bad idea to me.

Or am I missing something?

(And, of course, the inevitable disclaimer: I work for Nokia, and may be biased. Also, everything here is absotively posilutely my own personal opinion, and should in no fashion be construed as the opinion of my employer or anyone else, whether a flesh-and-blood person or a corporation, and whether from Finland or not.)

New York Waterway Censors RPGs?

Greg Costikyan — 2004-08-11T18:45:23Z

This has me rather annoyed.... Apparently a fellow carrying a White Wolf book (Exalted: The Abyssals) was hassled by security while boarding a New York Waterway ferry from Jersey to the city. Because of the Republican convention, there's heightened security in the financial district, and the guy was travelling to one of the ferry terminals down here, presumably because he works downtown. So they're searching for bombs and such as people enter the ferry. Moron security guard decided the book was "inappropriate," whatever the fuck that means.

I believe I'm going to email NY Waterway in protest. Others might want to consider doing the same.

(Thanks to Boingboing.).

Update:

Emailed them as follows:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am a downtown New York resident; a frequent ferry rider to New Jersey from downtown New York; and an award-winning designer of tabletop roleplaying games, including Paranoia, Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, and Toon (a complete ludography at www.costik.com/ludograf.html).

It has come to my attention that recently, a security guard checking the bags of customers boarding one of your ferries hassled him because, in his bag was a copy of a roleplaying book, with an illustration of a female warrior on the cover. The security guard wished to confiscate this book on the grounds that it was "inappropriate."

The complete story may be found here: http://mephron.livejournal.com/349969.html. In addition, you may wish to note that several other sites have picked up the story, including www.boingboing.net (one of the most widely read blogs on the planet), and my own blog (www.costik.com/weblog).

While everyone understands the need for heightened security in the wake of recent terrorist warnings and the upcoming Republican Convention, this remains a free nation. You and your personnel have absolutely no right whatsoever to confisctate someone else's reading material. "Security" in this contest means ensuring that people don't board your craft with weapons; it does not mean ensuring that they don't board with books that you don't like.

This issue is a particularly sore one for those of us involved with roleplaying games, since the Christian right has frequently accused roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons as being Satanic, and has tried to get roleplaying games banned from schools. We are no stranger to censorship, and take a dim view of it.

I hope and trust you will swiftly institute procedures to inform your security personnel that the reading choices of your customers are none of their damn business.

Sincerely,

Greg Costikyan

--------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the most difficult tasks people can perform,
however much others may despise it, is the invention
of good games...
-- C.G. Jung

Update:

Just spoke with people from New York Waterway, who say:

1. They're trying to track down mephron (the original poster) to get more detailed information from him--e.g., time and ferry route.

2. If the story is true, it is not only a violation of company policy, but also of martime regulations, and if it is true, they wish to correct the situation as quickly as possible.

3. Anyone with further information about it are invited to contact them directly.

Sounds sensible to me...

German Boardgames as Fraud

Greg Costikyan — 2004-08-10T21:42:45Z

Greg Aleknevicus at The Games Journal has a long piece entitled "German Boardgames Are Fraudulent," a title he acknowledges is purposefully inflammatory, in which he argues, in essence, that German boardgames (or Eurogames, to use a broader term) are bad because they graft an arbitrary set of game mechanics onto a theme.

He says:

How very like an old A-H fan (which internal evidence from the article indicates Aleknevicus is).

Most of A-H's designs grew out of a simulationist impulse, largely because many were designed by people who cut their teeth on board wargames, which are simulationist by nature. In this regard, they were quite unlike the prevailing 'mass market' boardgames published by companies like Parker, Milton Bradley, and Kenner at the time, which mostly slapped marketable themes on top of proven mechanics (the track game, pachisi variants, peg solitaire, etc.). This is, in fact, part of the reason we 70s and 80s game geeks liked the hobby boardgame style; it seemed more intellectual, more engaged with something real.

However, to use this fact to attack the common paradigm of modern German boardgames is mind-bogglingly silly. The Eurogame tradition rises out of the mass-market boardgame tradition. In the US, the mass market boardgame has become a notably uncreative and rather dull field largely, I believe, because monopoly has eliminated any need to attempt to innovate (Hasbro essentially owns the boardgame market here). In Germany, by contrast, a half-dozen or so strong game publishers compete vigorously, and as a result, the traditional mass-market boardgame has mutated over time, and the audience for such has come to appreciate systems innovation. And indeed, virtually every Eurogame has a different core mechanic (games in a series, e.g., the Catan titles, being an obvious and understandable exception).

(N.B.: "Core mechanic" is Eric Zimmerman's term, and I rather dislike it, but that's a topic for another day, and it serves well in this context.)

In short, Eurogame designers are not designing from a simulationist impulse; they design largely by looking for interesting and novel core mechanics. This is, to my mind, an entirely justifiable and reasonable approach to game design, albeit my own impulse is generally to reach for some simulationist hook to hang a game on. Aleknevicus ends by calling for some sort of synthesis of the two design traditions--he wants games with the creative mechanics of Eurogames and the simulationist approach of US hobby boardgames--and while that might be interesting, I don't think it's at all reasonable to claim that one tradition is superior to the other.

Eurogames rock. A-H published some of the finest boardgames the planet has ever seen. These are not contradictory statements.

Amazon Recommendations

Greg Costikyan — 2004-08-09T22:32:50Z

I used to think this was somewhat useful, and cool technology. I am now having my doubts.

Over the last several years, I have bought from Amazon:
1. Many books on game design and development.
2. A fair bit of science fiction--mostly either technologically edgy or British.
3. Quite a lot of books about the circus (don't ask).
4. A great deal of YA fiction intended for female readers. (Gifts for the kinder, obviously.)
5. Some manga. (Ditto.)
6. A couple of volumes of classic literature.

So, um, here are my current recommendations:

Blue Wizard Is About to Die, billed as "the first book of poetry about videogames."

Pattern Recognition, Bill Gibson.

The third Baroque Cycle book, which I will buy at Borders, thank you very much, since it will take longer for Amazon to get it to me.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next.

Kerouac's Dharma Bums.

Naked Lunch.

Fake, Sanami Matoh, "hugely popular in Japan, especially among teenage girls."

Howl and Other Poems.

Two Edmund Gorey books and three later volumes of the Fake manga.

Creepy Susie, by Angus Oblong, "Your mother never told you these stories because" you would plotz, to paraphrase. My goth-ish 12 year old would probably like this.

Kerouac's Desolation Angels

Belloc and Gorey, Cautionary Tales for Children

Charley Stross's Toast

A Vonnegut

Narrative as Virtual Reality, Marie-Laure Ryan

...This is chaos.

I have to assume they think I'm an extremely downbeat 12 year-old girl who is bizarrely otaku about the Beats, cyberpunk, Gorey, and videogames.

Internet Archive to Preserve Games

Greg Costikyan — 2004-08-07T14:01:25Z

Now this is tres cool: the Internet Archive has established a program called the Classic Software Preservation project to preserve older software, focussing on computer games.

In essence, they will take older games, get the data off the floppies or whatever, and preserve the code. This is something I've been talking about for years; magnetic media has a lifetime of only a few years, and we run the risk of losing a lot of older software, just as we've lost a lot of early movies because film decays, too.

Of course, unlike say, The Underdogs, the Internet Archive is an incorporated non-profit, and can't do anything that even arguably violates copyright. Consequently, though they'll be archiving the code, they won't be making it available for download--except in cases where they have specific waivers from the rights owners.

They're looking for donations of older games, by the way.

Ultimately, of course, what I want is for older games to be available as playable entities; it would benefit everybody if they were. Fans of retro games would enjoy them; modern designers would gain insights from the past; and academics would be able to study them. Publishers might even get ideas about what older IP is worth reviving (remember that the revised Frogger was a best-seller just a few years ago).

But this is a big step in the right direction, anyway.

Incidentally, they're also archiving game videos, which strikes me as interesting but odd. A lot of what they're archiving (e.g., Red vs. Blue) is widely available from commercial sites--but if you download it from such, you either wind up paying for access to premium servers, or sitting in a long line. It seems to me like it's clearly a lot more convenient to download it from Archive.org... They're using a system called Free Cache, but it only helps reduce bandwidth to the original hoster if other ISPs/hosters pick up and use Free Cache (and I see no particular incentive for anyone to do so.... It's going to reduce an ISP's incoming bandwidth usage, but not bandwidth to the consumer....). So the upshot is that in all likelihood, the Internet Archive will wind up picking up the cost of serving these videos, some of which may prove very popular. And videos are notorious bandwidth hogs.

Not sure this makes financial sense. But hey, whatever. Go watch the complete run of Red and Blue.

PARANOIA XP GOES GOLD

Greg Costikyan — 2004-08-05T18:52:50Z

PARANOIA XP GOES GOLD
Internet Technologies Revolutionize Roleplaying Game Development

New York/Austin/Swindon -- Aug 5, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mongoose Publishing Ltd. and the creators of Paranoia XP announced today that the new version of the classic tabletop roleplaying game had "gone gold," and would be released in time for GenCon 2004.

To a large degree, the game was developed online, in public. Fans of the game contributed enthusiastically via blog, wiki, and online forum. They wrote text, debated rules, proofread, ran statistical analyses, and even wrote a computer simulator to test the game's paper-and-pencil rules.

"Online collaboration made this edition of Paranoia the best yet," said Allen Varney (http://www.allenvarney.com), the game's designer. "We borrowed the tools and methods of open-source software development for a paper game, and it worked brilliantly. I plan to create future games the same way, and other designers should consider it too."

THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND

Paranoia is a roleplaying game set in a darkly humorous future. A well-meaning but deranged Computer desperately protects the citizens of Alpha Complex, a vast underground city, from all sorts of real and imagined enemies. Players take the role of Troubleshooters, The Computer's elite agents, their job to search out and destroy the enemies of The Computer. Each player character is, however, secretly a traitor... In short, Paranoia is a light-hearted game of terror, death, bureaucracy, mad scientists, mutants, dangerous weapons, insane robots, and technological satire that encourages players to lie, cheat, and backstab each other at every turn.

The original version of Paranoia, designed by Dan Gelber, Greg Costikyan, and Eric Goldberg, pioneered in 1983, and was an instant hit, going on to sell more than 150,000 copies worldwide.

PARANOIA XP

The popularity of the original game was in part due to society's fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and uneasiness about the new desktop computers that were starting to revolutionize working life.

Happily, today those fears are obsolete. Instead, we have terrorism, spam, viruses, trojans, malware, distributed denial of service attacks, the RIAA, cyberwarfare, identify theft, the Patriot Act, terrifying new diseases, the threat of environmental catastrophe, the grey goo scenario, and weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, Paranoia is more relevant than ever before, and Paranoia XP updates the world of Alpha Complex for all these terrors and more.

DESIGNING IN PUBLIC

In order to involve Paranoia's community of fans, the designers decided from the start to discuss the new version's development via a blog (www.costik.com/paranoia), and to invite comments, suggestions, and contributions from anyone who wished to participate. Naturally, there was a potential legal issue; there was no easy way to compensate people for their contributions, and nobody wanted to deal with the potential bookkeeping involved. The solution: a virtual inversion of the Creative Commons license. Posters were warned that anything they contributed might be used in the game, without any compensation whatsoever, and that although the creators would try to credit people whose material was used, it might slip their minds in the hurly burly of meeting deadlines. The legal "boilerplate", in a take-off of a popular Web meme, even said "All Your Rights Are Belong to Us."

The fan community soon found it wanted to debate, discuss, and contribute in a more free-ranging format--and luckily, a pre-existing fan site, Paranoia Live (http://www.paranoia-live.net) agreed to host a forum for public comment and discussion. Varney soon discovered the utility and importance of posting and participating in the forum. "There were so many good ideas worth stealing... and the enthusiasm and support of the community really kept me going in meeting a pretty brutal deadline," said Varney.

To publicize the game, Varney started a wiki at http://paranoia.allenvarney.com. Framed as a "Lexicon" game -- in which players contribute one entry per turn to an alphabetic research report on a fictitious topic -- the wiki traced the history of "the Toothpaste Disaster," a wide-ranging Alpha Complex calamity. Varney recruited almost two dozen players, in hopes of finding writers for upcoming Paranoia support products.

"The project succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. The Lexicon game produced the largest stable of talented writers Paranoia has ever enjoyed." Varney has informally organized the best Lexicon writers as the "Traitor Recycling Studio," to collaborate on the next few Paranoia supplements using -- yes -- a wiki.

"We stumbled into this," said Greg Costikyan, one of the original game's designers. "I wanted to incorporate a blog from the start, but the community's response, and Allen's embrace of them, was both startling and exciting. I think Allen is onto something here--at least for artforms that are collaborative in nature, such as games and possibly film, there's a lot to be said for tapping the collective talents of the fan base, as filtered by a professional."

MONGOOSE AND GENCON

Mongoose Publishing Ltd. (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com) of Swindon, Wilts., is one of a new breed of hobby game publishers, producing roleplaying and miniatures games for the adventure gaming market. Among its fine roleplaying products are Conan, Judge Dredd, Babylon 5, and Macho Women With Guns.

"We had... no clue what we were getting into," said an exhausted-sounding Alexander Fennell, director of Mongoose. "But the bloody thing is finally at the printers... ahh, I mean, ahh, only a traitor could fail to find this new edition of Paranoia hilarious, spiffy, and well worth your money. Paranoia is fun. Other games are not fun. Buy Paranoia."

Paranoia XP will premiere on August 19th at GenCon (http://www.gencon.com), the world's largest convention for game players and enthusiasts, held annually in Indianapolis with more than 20,000 attendees.

"When the first edition of Paranoia debuted at GenCon in 1984, it was more than just the hit of the show," said Eric Goldberg, a designer of the original game and, with Greg Costikyan, the owner of the Paranoia property. "Players were first startled and then delighted when they realized the game turned the reigning Dungeons & Dragons paradigm inside-out: instead of deadly serious co-operation, players are encouraged to find ever more entertaining ways of getting the other guy before he gets you. Our game designer peers, in addition to bestowing several awards upon the game, gleefully co-opted the edgier, more humorous tone, which in turn spawned a new generation of role-playing games." "Paranoia XP is both the 20th anniversary edition of the groundbreaking Paranoia game and a new edition for the 21st Century," Goldberg continued, "We hope that the incorporation of Internet technologies will prove every bit as revolutionary as the original game was... ah, rather, Paranoia was perfect. Paranoia XP is even more perfect. The Computer says so, and The Computer is Our Friend!"

HAPPINESS IS MANDATORY!

Failure to be happy is treason. Treason is punishable by summary execution. Have a nice day!

For more information and/or disinformation, interviews, drivel, or just for the hell of it, feel free to contact:

Greg Costikyan at gcostikyan (at) nyc (dot) rr (dot) com

Eric Goldberg at egoldberg (at) ungames (dot) com

URLS:

Paranoia Blog: http://www.costik.com/paranoia
Toothpaste Disaster" Wiki: http://paranoia.allenvarney.com
Paranoia Forum: http://www.paranoia-live.net
Mongoose Publishing: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com
To Order: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpg/detail.php?qsID=530&qsSeries=Paranoia%20XP
Allen Varney: http://www.allenvarney.com
Greg Costikyan: http://www.costik.com

Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

Paranoia Copyright © 1983, 1987, 2004 by Eric Goldberg & Greg Costikyan. Paranoia is a trademark of Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan. All rights reserved. Mongoose Publishing Ltd., Authorized User.

Sabotaged by Spam

Greg Costikyan — 2004-08-05T16:36:53Z

I suppose I shouldn't complain overmuch, given that I purposefully chose about the cheapest hosting place I could find.

Nonetheless:

1. As you may recall, some weeks ago I had a problem; I was getting 10,000 bounced emails a day to my main email address, and repeated calls to my service provider got me no where. I specifically asked them to disable the SMTP server, as I never actually send mail from it (I use my local cable provider's SMTP server)--I only use the POP server. They refused, basically claiming it wasn't a problem "as long as your password is secure..." I went and changed all the passwords, FWIW.

I sent some copies of the bounced emails to people who were bouncing them, with full headers; one advised me that it was virus-originated. I also simply killed the old email address, so I wouldn't have to download 10,000 emails a day, and set the server to bounce any mail to that address. This was at least a short-term solution.

2. Two weeks ago, -all- email to all costik.com email addresses started getting bounced, along with a message saying (sender) "is currently not permitted to relay through this server. " Now the oddness here is that this is typically a message from an SMTP server to someone trying to send mail through the server who does not have authorization to do so (often because the sender isn't in the same domain as the server). It's not a message you typically get from a POP server that's bouncing incoming mail. Whatever.

I wrote the provider saying "wassup?" essentially, and got a message saying that they were having problems with mail servers on several hosted sites, and the problem would be solved shortly. It wasn't.

I tried again, got the same message.

I called their phone support; the fellow on the other end tried several things, said he would bump it up a level, and I'd get email. I did get email, saying the problem was solved. It wasn't.

Nex thing I knew, my website was down, along with this blog. Not only that, I could no longer connect to the mail servers (I had previously been able to do so, although it was futile, since all incoming mail was getting bounced), nor could I FTP to the site. Another call to tech support; oh, you have to contact our abuse email address.

I contacted them, and was told I was a spammer, and my account would not be reinstated.

As you can imagine, this rather pissed me off. I emailed back a rather irate note, pointing out that I was no damned spammer, and if there was any spam going out of my SMTP server it was their damned fault as I'd told them to turn it off, for chrissakes.... I also cc'ed Cory Doctorow, on the grounds that if they didn't give satisfaction, maybe I could get him to blog it on Boingboing--I mean, if you can't get satisfaction, you can at least get revenge--and he wrote asking if he could post it. I asked him to hold off, since one possible response on the part of my hoster might be to get more rigid and impossible in the face of bad publicity.

Yesterday they said "Okay, we're reinstating your account." However, when I FTP to the site there were no files there... no folders... not even a "public_html" one.... Nada. I was fearful they'd simply wiped the whole damn thing. My site is backed up... The blog posts are stored on Blogger... But the comment files weren't. No backup there. Gak.

The problem was compounded by the fact that a press release for Paranoia XP has to go out soon, and I really wanted to point to the Paranoia blog, similarly caught in limbo.

Today, however, everything seems to be back, including the comments. I've backed them up, and will continue to do so regularly.

However, all email to costik.com addresses is STILL getting bounced... I have an inquiry in... sigh...

Restaurant Empire

Greg Costikyan — 2004-07-27T21:32:16Z

Sim/Tycoon games don't get a lot of respect, at least from the hardcore. They're viewed as not sufficiently cool--slower paced, not dependent on twitch mastery, and mainly for the kids. This has always struck me as odd, at least the "for the kids" part; after all, in terms of interface, algorithmic intensity, and strategic planning, these games are far more demanding to play than many other game styles. Except, of course, that they don't require you to live or die on the basis of your ability to manipulate the controls quickly.

The ur-game of this style was Meier's old Railroad Tycoon, now in its third version, and shorn of its connection to Sid. And the most successful game of its type was Chris Sawyer's Roller Coaster Tycoon, at one time the best-selling PC game, despite being coded in assembler (forsooth) and featuring retro sprite graphics that looked dowdy even in the late 90s. It had basically only one thing going for it: It was a hell of a lot of fun to play.

I still like games of this type, and Trever Chan's Enlight Software has been doing a number, most recently Restaurant Empire, which doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of attention. Being a foodie as well as a gamer, I decided to give it a try.

Here's what's good about it:

Restaurant Empire gives you a good sense of managing a restaurant. You hire and fire staff, construct a menu, place tables, decor, and kitchen equipment, and open the doors. Over the course of a day, people wander in and order. As is typical in games of this type, each customer's desires, wants, and reactions are tracked in detail, and you can click on any guest to see what he or she is thinking about (often, about the rudeness of staff or delays in their order). You can also see what peoples' main complaints are, general level of satisfaction, and so on. You try to increase the popularity of your restaurant by upgrading the menu and decor (as profits permit), adding new recipes and deleting less popular ones, learning about businesses that can provide premium ingredients, and so on.

The main game is a series of well-planned, linked 'levels,' each requring you to reach some benchmark within a period of time to 'win' (e.g., make $15,000 in profit in a single month). The level system provides a 'programmed learning' approach--that is, you're introduced to the details of game management over time--as well as a sort of backstory that provides a degree of motivation, and some characters (like your uncle, a retired restauranteur) who provide advice.

After a time, you crank up the time scale so that a day goes by more quickly (one of the game's conceits is that a 'day' is equivalent to a month--that is, you open the doors, serve lunch and dinner, and close, and the game counts up your receipts and expenses and multiplies by 30). Occasionally, you pause, or slow down the time scale, to monitor what's going on in more detail, and perhaps make a few changes to menu, staffing, seat layout, or restaurant equipment, to operate more effieciently. The actions of your staff and customers, the audio of a busy restaurant, are attractive, well done, and entertaining.

In other words, this is a very well conceived game; a priori, one might assume that a game about restaurant management would be dull, but this isn't. It helps if you've fantasized about running a restaurant, of course--a common fantasy of foodies, if not of Counter Strike players.

Here's what's iffy about the game:

Enlight, the game's developers, are located in Hong Kong. I have to assume that this is why they have chosen to translate all recipe names into English, even though you run a French restaurant at first, an Italian one later, and an American-style place last of all. I found myself puzzled by many recipes, and had to perform an awkward back-translation to figure out what they were talking about. White bean stew? Yuck... Oh! They mean cassoulet. Why didn't they say so?

Another awkwardness is the way in which you learn new recipes. Every so often, one of your customers will call you over and offer to sell you a recipe for some amount of money. If you agree, it is added to your repertoire, and you may, if you wish, add it to the restaurant's menu. Now, I don't know about you, but I suspect that David Bouley is not in the habit of buying recipes off his diners. The reality is that chefs experiment until they hit on something they find appealing. This system works, in a purely game sense, but for me it broke the fantasy a bit.

Another aspect I found less than optimal; as is typical in sim/tycoon games, you don't generally control your personnel directly. You hire them for particular jobs, and they perform them over the course of the game, but you do not direct them to perform specific tasks. I found this frustrating at times; on more than one occasion, I wanted to tell someone "Bus that table, goddamn it, dirty dishes have been sitting there forever," or for that matter, "Get downstairs to the kitchen, bitch, table six's food is getting cold." Which would indeed be within my purview as the owner/manager of a restaurant. I mean, I did understand that these actions didn't really fit into the game's overall metaphor, but it was still a bit frustrating.

Here's what's actually bad about the game:

At least on my machine, it crashes to the desktop pretty frequently. Not so frequently as to make the game unplayable, but, say, once an hour or so. I have played and enjoyed many PC games that do this--Europa Universalis being another--but it is annoying, an annoyance that is only tolerable in games that autosave frequently. Restaurant Tycoon, however, autosaves only at the end of a level, and if there's a away to set it to do so more frequently, I haven't found it. You can certainly save frequently yourself, but in the hurly burly of a busy lunch crowd, it's easy to forget.

This is, in fact, why I eventually stopped playing.

On the whole, however, I liked this game a great deal. It took some creativity to come up with the idea of a restaurant management game, and to figure out a way to make it work; the interface and basic gameplay is smooth and well implemented, the level structure works well, and I found it fun to play. It would definitely have been improved by retaining French and Italian names for French and Italian dishes, a more sensible approach to learning new dishes, and a little ability to control staff more directly (Roller Coaster Tycoon at least lets you pick up your cleaning staff and drop them directly on a pool of vomit or somesuch), but those are quibbles. The excessively frequent crashes are more of an issue; while its possible that my machine is just configured more oddly than most, I suspect that the developers must have been aware during the final stages that a number of crash bugs had not been smashed, and under the circumstances, it's somewhat mysterious why it didn't occur to them to at least allow players to autosave with greater frequency--a kluge, not a solution, but it would have made a substantial difference in terms of the ultimate player experience.