My shopping list this year included:

For Betsy:
The Hobbit/PS 2
Final Fantasy XI
Grim Fandango

For Vicky:
Sims Superstar
Mister Mosquito
Mad Maestro

For each: a Cheapass game.

The first four games were requested, Grim Fandango because it had gotten lost over the years, and Betsy wanted to play it again. Mister Mosquito and Mad Maestro were in the bargain bin at Virgin. Both are of the category of "bizarre Japanese games it's amazing anyone brought to the US market."

In Mister Mosquito, you play a mosquito, attempting to feed on the Yamada family (they get increasingly itchy, irritated, and cranky with each other as you progress from level to level). Mad Maestro is a sort of dancer, except that you're a conductor; like Space Channel Five, there's an ongoing story, with each level advancing the plot (such as it is).


posted by Greg at 2:19 PM

We can, of course, be thankful that the article in today's New York Times Magazine (free registration required) is largely positive, and not the usual hatchet-job on the industry. As so often when outsiders write about games, it's subtly wrong in a lot of places, and often irritating when it isn't wrong.

To begin with, although the writer, Jonathan Dee, apparently named the piece "Playing Mogul," since it's largely about Bruno Bonnell (CEO of Atari), the magazine editor decided to feature it on the cover under the title "Joystick Nation!". J.C. Herz must be more than a little pissed off this morning. Of course, you can't trademark the title of a book, but this is still somewhat clueless.

The third sentence of the piece refers to Atari as "founded in 1972 (and bankrupt in 1998)," which is, shall we say, a bit of a wild exaggeration. The company formerly known as Infogrames has only the most tenuous connection to the Bushnell/Warner Atari; Infogrames acquired what remained of the Atari assets, including the right to the trademark, with its takeover of Hasbro Interactive, and in fact shut down what remained of the last vestiges of the Atari studio last year. Rebranding itself as Atari was probably a smart move--Infogrames is a terrible name, and Atari has far better public recognition, thanks to gamers' (and ravers') nostalgic attachment to the name (and, I suppose, to The Ataris).

We then have some yada-yada from Bonnel about how games are similar to primitive dance, which is nonsense; the case he could, and should, be making is that play is as fundamental to humans as story, and games thus appeal to a fundamental part of what it is to be human, just as stories do. But this would, of course, sabotage the argument that games are form of storytelling--which I don't think I need to debunk again--an argument that, evidently, both Dee and Bonnel buy into.

In the next major section, Dee makes the argument that there has been a huge cultural change since 1995, when the original Playstation was introduced, with the result that Americans spend more time playing games than watching TV, etc., etc. "Has there ever been a cultural sea change as stealthy as the one represented by the rise of interactive entertainment?"

Stealthy? 1995? Please. 100% of teenagers play games today (those who don't are a rounding error)--but I doubt the percentage in, say, 1990, during the SNES/Genesis era, was all that different. And the game industry first made the claim that it was bigger than the movies in 1980 or 81, if I remember correctly--albeit revenues then were largely from the arcade cash-drop, not software sales. The point being that games have been hugely important to our culture--particularly youth culture--for two decades or more. If you want to find the point at which sea-change began, you sure don't start with 1995. You can make an argument for 1972 (when both Bushnell's Pong and Ralph Baer's Magnavox Odyssey appeared); 1962 (Steve Rusell's Space War); 1958 (Willy Higginbotham's Tennis for Two, and also Charles Roberts's Tactics); 1913 (H.G. Wells's Little Wars); 1861 (Milton Bradley's The Checkered Game of Life); or 1780 (The King's Game, by Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick). 1972 is the traditional date, although I'd argue that you can't understand the digital games revolution without understanding the wargaming, miniature, and kriegspiel traditions that predate it--not to mention classic arcade amusements, of course.

Dee maintains that Madden Football and FIFA Soccer have each earned over a billion dollars; well, no, only if you add up the revenues of all versions of those games, which are revised yearly with new player stats. Every year is a new SKU, a new development project, and a new game. It would be more accurate to say that these franchises have generated over a bill.

A bit of stuff about how MMORPGs (no understanding that not all MMGs need be RPGs) have "limitless revenue potential" (clearly not so--nor is it even obvious that if MMGs completely supplant conventional games [which won't happen] that net revenues to publishers would increase). And Bonnell telling us that MMGs won't become huge until broadband is widespread--a commonly held but, I think, rather dubious proposition. (Bandwidth is an issue only if you want to distribute clients online--or provide a game that, like Second Life streams lots of new digital content to users during play.)

"It's a gold rush...." says Dee. Well, no, it's not; a great many publishers and developers are struggling. It's still a fairly rapidly growing industry, but it is, in fact, close to maturity. Growth today comes largely from increasing penetration into the population, which is driven by age--everyone under 40 plays games, almost no one over, but in 20 years, everyone under 60 will play games, and this source of growth will end--and, of course, by population growth, which is much smaller. Barring a huge new revenue source--and both mobile and online are possibilities for such--industry growth at this point is and will remain relatively slow, and relatively predictable.

There have been gold-rush eras in the field; the last was in the mid-90s, when the console dweebs decided that "the PC is now a viable platform," as if we hadn't been doing games for PCs since the first geek soldered together his own Altair 880. In the world of PC gaming, it's a depression, if anything--and the increasing cost of console game development make it increasingly tricky to profit in the console realm.

Some stuff about how Atari has raised $200m, which they desperately needed; they've suffered for years, and while the sales of the Matrix game helped, it wasn't the huge hit they hoped for, and did not do for Atari what GTA did for Take Two. The offering certainly makes their balance sheet look a whole lot better, but if Atari is serious about taking on EA, they'd better start cranking out some more impressive product.

And some stuff from Bonnell about what he views as his competitive landscape--the major publishers, excluding, interestingly, Sony and Nintendo. That's a curious omission; sure, they make hardware, too, but they're certainly major publishers.

Dee apparently spent some time in Beverly at the old Hasbro Interactive offices. Hasbro Interactive is, in fact, somewhat indicative of the problem with Atari. Like Mattel, Hasbro plunged into digital games in the late 90s, since both companies saw that interactive toys and games were taking a big bite out of the toy market pie. Mattel's foray was a complete disaster, and Hasbro's only slightly less so. Despite owning some first-rate properties--the entire Parker Brothers and Hasbro game catalogs, Avalon Hill, TSR, and Wizards of the Coast, including both D&D and Magic--Hasbro Interactive produced mostly low-budget, unimaginative titles, and was a net drain on Hasbro. They bought Microprose, once one of the best developers in the world, and mismanaged it to the point that the talent all left for greener fields. And then they sold out to Infogrames--which, cannily, negotiated for and obtained all digital rights to Hasbro's complete non-digital games catalog as part of the deal. (Which, per rumor, was one of the main reasons that Peter Adkison left Wizards--pissed off that Hasbro had sold the digital rights to WOTC's games out from underneath him.)

But the Hasbro Interactive side of Infogrames has pretty much continued where it left off--with lower budget, relatively unimaginative titles.

Here's an interesting claim: "A game designer generally gets a flat-rate payment for a game proposal, followed by royalties, not unlike the book business." Well, no, nothing like the book business. Independent game developers typically get a royalty, but rarely see any money beyond development funding. It's more like the music industry. Game designers almost never have back-end participation--typically, they're employees either of the publisher or of the independent developer, and even when not, it's hugely rare for the designer to get any part of the royalty stream. Nor do you get a flat-rate payment for a "proposal;" for a complete design spec, perhaps.

Dee lumps in tycoon and sim games with "god games," which isn't wholly wrong; they're similar in many regards. The connotation is off, though; Civilization and Populous are god games, Roller Coaster Tycoon isn't, really. But perhaps I'm quibbling.

Some nice text on how the best-selling games aren't violent; good to see this in the national media for a change. Bonnell wants to call games "interactive entertainment": this is a common rhetorical strategy, but it always gets up my nose. As a rhetorical strategy, it has two purposes: First, to ward off the contempt of those who don't understand the virtues and importance of games ("It's not just games, those hyperviolent, repulsive, brainless little things for adolescent boys; no, no, we create interactive entertainment!"). You can see this strategy everywhere: It's gaming, not gambling. It's erotica, not porn. It's speculative fiction, not sci fi. To which the only honest response is: Bullshit.

Second, the strategy is a way of broadening the field, to potentially include "non-game interactive entertainment." As I've argued elsewhere, however, this is no such thing as non-game interactive entertainment--that is worth the powder to blow it to hell, at any rate.

And... Then we're off into Dee on how games are a story-telling medium. This despite the fact that earlier, he discussed sim/tycoon-style games--which have little or no attachment to story. He plays Max Payne (attributing it to Rockstar, when it fact it's from 3D Realms, with Rockstar merely the label), and sees that it has a story. Indeed it does, and so do many other level-based first-person games, and bully for them. But then, lots of others don't, in any meaningful sense--the backstory for Doom is a mere lacuna, the story of Counter Strike a setting but not a narrative. As so often, an outsider looking at games latches onto the familiar instead of understanding what he's seeing from the inside out.

Oh, well. Could have been a whole lot worse.
posted by Greg at 12:47 PM

So Take Two has received a "Wells notice" from the SEC recommending that "the SEC bring a civil action seeking an injunction and monetary damages against the Company alleging that the Company violated certain provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934."

According to the New York Times (free registration required), this is related to Take Two's restatement of seven quarters of financial results in 2000 and 2001. Ryan Brandt, the chairman of the company, and (according to Game Daily) another employee and two former officers of the company also received Wells notices.

The interesting aspect of this is that the SEC has reportedly been investigating several game publishers about the way they account for returns. According to Game Daily, "the SEC is also eying Take-Two's application of SFAS 48 'Revenue Recognition When Right of Return Exists.'" In other words, this action isn't about the returns issue, but specifically the restatement of earnings.

I suspect that some gamers will view this as an attempt by the SEC to target the maker of Grand Theft Auto particularly--but my guess is that this is not at all true, even though it will doubtless be popular among the would-be game censors. Take Two has long been rumored in the games industry to have less than the most stringent ethical standards, shall we say. And do keep in mind that Take Two's recent success is due largely to Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City; just a few years ago, they were hurting badly, and faced with possible delisting. Which shows the power of a single big hit, of course--but also suggests that, a few years ago, Take Two's management was under the kinds of severe pressures that do lead people to play games with the accounts.

We'll have to see how this plays out, of course.
posted by Greg at 11:15 AM

Aha! The shoe has dropped. From Digital Media Wire:

Game Developer Turbine Entertainment Raises $18 Million in First Round

Westwood, Mass. -- Nearly ten years after its founding, Turbine Entertainment Software, a developer of massively multiplayer online games, has raised $18 million in its first round of venture capital. Highland Capital Partners led the investment, which included funds from Polaris Venture Partners and existing individual investors in the company. Massachusetts-based Turbine created Microsoft's popular "Asheron's Call" online game, and is currently developing both "The Lord of the Rings: Middle-Earth Online" for Vivendi Universal Games, and an online version of the popular roleplaying game "Dungeons and Dragons," for which Turbine holds a sublicense. The company employs about 120 people.

This has been in the works, and widely rumored in the MMOG community, for months now.

On the one hand, AC2 failed miserably, and AC 1 was not a megahit. On the other hand, if you can't succeed with the LOTR and D&D licenses in the MMG market, you're a compelete dweeb. And because AC2 was a bomb, Turbine definitely needed capital to bring LOTR and D&D to market.

I think this is a good bet on the part of Highland and Polaris. I'm not 100% confident of Turbine's current management, but they really have to screw up to fail on those two titles. Wow... Come to think of it, this is the first time I've seen a VC investment in the games industry that didn't make me wonder what kind of crack they were smoking.

And... If two VC firms of the reputation of Highland and Polaris are willing to do this, it certainly gives hope to the prospects of near-term investment in other firms in the MMG space that are well managed, have positive cash flow, and have a good story to tell... Hi, Alex.


posted by Greg at 8:45 PM

So the finalists for the Independent Games Festival have been announced:

Open Category
acmi {{park}}
Anito: Defend A Land Enraged
Bontăgo
Facade
Fashion Cents
Fuzzee Teevee
Savage: The Battle for Newerth
Spartan
Starshatter
Take Command: 1861 The Civil War

Web/Downloadable
AlphaQUEUE
Beesly's Buzzwords
Billiard Boxing
Chomp! Chomp! Safari
Dr. Blob's Organism
Dungeon Scroll
Gish
Oasis
Space Station Manager
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates

I'm not familiar with most of these games, but a couple of comments spring to mind. First, I'm dubious about the inclusion of Savage; yes, it was developed without funding from an established publisher, but S2 Games is well capitalized, and has always planned on self-publishing. It was a conventional, big-budget game development project, and certainly stretches the definition of "independent game".

Dr. Blob's Organism is a zippy little arcade-style game with a gameplay style I hadn't seen before, along with the curiously organic graphics Digital Eel has used previously in Plasmaworm. This is the first time, I believe, that Zdim and Fingers have made it to the IGF, and good for them.

Oasis is from "Mahk" LeBlanc and Anrew Leker (who's been a digital game developer since the 90s, but I met as the designer of Skyrealms of Jorune, one of the most beautiful and most obscure of tabletop RPGs). It's quite addictive; it has much of the feel of a German boardgame, coupled with a curiously fluid animated combat system that is reminiscent of the "thousands of sprites" games from the Indie Games Jam 0. Of course, LeBlanc took part in that, so he might be adapting the code.

I'll have to talk about the Games Jam in more detail at a later date.
posted by Greg at 11:27 AM

Rock, Paper, Scissors is surely one of the earliest games each of us learns to play. It can be played in essentially two ways. The first way is by selecting your move entirely at random, making no effort to predict what your opponent will choose. In this case, you will win a third of the time, lose a third of the time, and draw a third of the time.

The second way to play is, if you will "in earnest:" that is, by trying to guess what move your opponent will make next, and selecting your own move in response. This can work, if your opponent is also playing in earnest, and you are smarter than he. In that case, you will win more frequently than with the random strategy.

However, if one player does indeed win more often than random selection would allow, the other player has a strong incentive to adopt a random strategy, since his win ratio will rise from less than one-third to one-third. And if either player (or both) selects a random strategy, the outcome will be random.

Thus, Rock, Paper, Scissors is what I call a degenerate game; it ultimately degenerates into a game with random outcomes, losing any element of strategy—and becomes dull. (There are other kinds of degenerate games, as I will discuss when we come to Tic Tac Toe.)

The fact that Rock, Paper, Scissors becomes a game with random outcomes is, however, interesting for another reason. Looked at externally, Rock, Paper, Scissors is a game of pure strategy and decision making; there are no dice, no cards, no random number generators, none of the elements that make for randomness (or luck, if you will) in other games. Each player makes a conscious decision each round. And yet despite the fact that it appears to be a game of strategy, it is in actuality a game of luck.

Which brings us to Richard Garfield's conception of "luck." At the Replay conference in 1999, Garfield said "If I am very lucky, I can beat Kasparov at Chess." A priori, the statement is nonsensical. Chess is a game of pure strategy, without any luck elements whatsoever. Kasparov is the world champion; I don't know how good a Chess player Garfield is, but he's clearly not anywhere near in the same league. How, then, could he win "by luck?"

Garfield's point is that there is some sequence of moves that can beat Kasparov (which we know to be true, since he has been beaten at times). If Richard were to select legal moves at random, it is possible (albeit quite unlikely) that he would hit on this sequence of moves, and win.

Naturally, Garfield would not do so; he would play as well as possible. Playing Chess well means understanding the implications of each move, trying to predict the response of your opponent to a move, and figuring out the implications of that. In other words, Chess can be thought of in terms of a decision tree. Each node on the tree corresponds to a particular gamestate, and at each gamestate, you or your opponent can make a move that results in one of a limited number of possible gamestates from this position. A player examines the current gamestate, sees which nodes can result from his next move, prunes nodes that are undesirable, and tries to see as far down the tree as possible, anticipating moves and counter-moves, to find a node that results in checkmate—or at least, the most desirable gamestate the player can anticipate from the current one.

The mark of a superior Chess player is that he can see farther down the decision tree than his opponent. Kasparov can see farther than Garfield, but Garfield will do as best he can—and, if he is lucky, will hit on one of the strategies that can, in fact, defeat Kasparov.

In other words, there are three possible contributors to "luck" in a game. The first and most obvious is a random element. The second is hidden information; Rock, Paper, Scissors is our example here, although other examples are possible—Dragon's Lair, for example. And the third is a sufficiently complicated decision tree, as with Chess.

This is, to my mind, an interesting and useful redefinition of "luck" as it pertains to games—and an indication that it is difficult, probably impossible, and probably not desirable to eschew all elements of luck in a game.

Nor is the idea, common to abstract strategy game designers, that luck is inherently bad correct. In any game where luck plays a role, players make decisions on the basis of the odds. In a military boardgame, you may roll a die to determine the outcome of an attack, but you refer to a combat results table, and can see what outcomes are possible, and what the chances of each outcome are. You make the decision to attack or not on the basis of whether or not a desirable outcome is likely to occur. In some cases, you may accept low odds of a desirable outcome, so long as that outcome would be highly favorable. In other words, it's not "pure luck"; it's intelligent heuristics.

The luck element in Chess works the same way; you try to make the best possible move, but because your ability to see down Chess's initially huge decision tree is limited, there is an element of luck involves.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, contrariwise, shows that a "pure luck" game is uninteresting, and indeed degenerate.

posted by Greg at 11:09 AM

I live a complicated life, and I divide my time between two households at present. When I'm at Karen's, I have a view out her window toward the Empire State Building, and at my apartment, I walk the dog of an evening, and see a building out in Jersey City that is also lit up. The Jersey City building has a translucent plastic pyramid at the top that changes color. After 9/11, it was: red white blue. Now it's: green red. Christmas colors. The Empire State is the same.

The Empire State building is normally only lit until midnight--except that, after 9/11, the workers at Ground Zero said that it heartened them, to see it glowing red, white and blue in the distance--and so the owners lit it up all night.

I don't know exactly when it stopped being red, white, and blue; probably about the time of the invasion of Iraq, I imagine. About the time that our Beloved Leader blew the universal national feeling of patriotism and suport, and said 'fuck you' to our Allies, to pursue an insupportable war against Iraq, which posed no danger to the United States--something he either should have known, or lied about. In either event, sufficient reason to send him packing.

A year after 9/11, in 2002, I bought an American flag, because a local group had suggested that people in the neighborhood should fly the flag to show solidarity on the anniversary. I left it out there for months--until this year's Gay Pride Day, in fact. My bisexual daughter suggested that we should fly the Gay Pride flag to show solidarity, and I agreed. The landlord--which had never objected to flying Old Glory--complained.

I don't want to lose the apartment, and so I cravenly withdrew it.

The Empire State is red and green tonight, and so is that building in Jersey. I don't object to Christmas, nor its celebration; I'm an atheist, and proud of it, but Christmas is not a Christian holiday. It's an American one, as is Thanksgiving, and Halloween. It's a celebration of family, and togetherness, and serenity, and thanks for living in a free and abundant society. Santa Claus is himself the veritable symbol of America: the product of a polyglot society, the derivative not of Anglo-Saxon tradition but of the Dutch Sinter Klaas, and of the bounties that a free market provides; and a symbol of the touching regard for childhood that only an indulgent and bounteous society can provide.

And yet... America is at war. Neither of these buildings should be green and red. They should be red, white, and blue still.

Each day, American servicemen and women die in Iraq--and in Afghanistan. The ones who die in Afghanistan, at least, I can understand; we went into this forlorn nation to destroy a clear and present danger to America, and I have no qualms about that intervention. It's a shame that they're caught in that apalling medieval monstronsity of a nation, but having obliterated the enemies of our nation there, I suppose we must resolve ourselves to suffer some casualties to build a better world. Those who die in Iraq are more tragic, because they die merely to serve the ego of a president who wishes to erase the shame of his father, who failed to remove Saddam Hussein when he had the opportunity to do so--and who had no clear, demonstrable, threat to America to remove when he went in.

But---at least if you're American--I want you to think about the alternatives faced by these men and women. The United States--to, I think, its credit--has a military that answers to civilians. The US Army has, in the last few decades, been if anything a brake on its civilian commanders--demanding that any intervention abroad be subject to large and demonstrable civilian support, that the objectives of intervention be clear, and a clear plan for when and how to withdraw in place.

I imagine that there were few itchy trigger fingers in the US military, few commanders eager to go in. And those who have spoken have made clear that they thought far more than 150,000 men and women were necessary to ensure control.

Our boys and girls are in Iraq, faced with impossible demands, and suffering casualties, because of the impossible and unwise orders of their civilian superiors. And God bless them, because it is utterly necessary for the military of a democratic society to be subject to civilian control. And god damn their current civilian superiors, and may they be replaced with all due alacrity at the next election.

I believe in the US military. I believe in a volunteer military. I support our troops abroad.

I would like the Empire State Building, and that building in Jersery, to return to the red, white, and blue. Because we are at war, even if our current idiot leadership has chosen the wrong war to fight.

And I think I will go looking for a flag I've seen on Gay Pride before--that features a blue canton and 50 stars above the multi-hued strips of Gay Pride. Because I want to fly it from the window of my apartment.

Until our boys and girls come home.
posted by Greg at 12:30 AM

Peter Lang USA, a small press, recently published a book entitled Replay: Game Design + Game Culture, edited by Amy Scholder and Eric Zimmerman. The book is, in essence, an edited version of a long online conversation I participated in, held via a web forum, that was sponsored by Eyebeam Atelier, an eccentric New York-based digital arts organization. I'm not sure I remember when the "online conference" was held--probably about five years ago, as it was one summer when I stayed at my Dad's house in the Hamptons and tried to get some writing done while the kids were at camp. Reading through the book, I'm surprised at how well it reads, and relieved that I didn't make too much of a fool of myself. Some very smart participants, including Crawford, Dr. Cat, Garfield, Garriott, Henry Jenkins, Brenda Laurel, Jessica Mulligan, and Warren Spector.

I haven't finished Eric Zimmerman & Katie Salen's Rules of Play yet--it's a big thick brick of a book--and will probably have a more detailed review when I have. As usual, Eric and I disagree on a lot of things, but still, this is something of a landmark, the real first =theoretical= work on game design since Crawford's old book--and perhaps a useful corrective to all of the schools that are nosing around "game design" as a subject of study, but want to view it in vocational rather than aesthetic terms.

I'm also reading Dungeons and Dreamers, which might be called "The Life of Lord British," at least as far as I've gotten. On the one hand, this is the first book I've seen that discusses the roots of digital games in hobby paper gaming--most acknowledge the influence of the arcade, but don't seem to think Little Wars, Tactics, or Dungeons & Dragons had anything to do with the growth of gaming. On the other hand, this is very much a book by journalists, written primarily on the basis of interviews, who themselves seem to have little understanding or sympathy for science fiction fandom, hobby gaming, or the SCA. As a result, when it discusses things I know it is, like most journalism, only about 80% right, which casts doubts on the bits I didn't know already. I'd have preferred a little less gosh-wow, a little more sympathy for the subcultures, and a more scholarly approach to fact. But hey, can't have everything, I guess.
posted by Greg at 2:56 PM

James Grimmelman has a long and thoughtful post on IP issues in MMGs, based on discussion at the State of Play conference at NY Law School a few weeks ago. It's interesting that so many people seem to think IP rights is a problem for MMGs; me, I think the real problem is community management. And coming up with something other than hack-n-slash roleplay that's still fun. (Thanks to Collin for the pointer.)

Scott Miller, one of the founders of 3D Realms (Duke Nukem, Max Payne, etc.) has recently started a blog that's first rate. Among recent posts is one admonishing independent developers to find their own source of funding, however they can, in order to retain ownership of their own IP. This is good advice as far as it goes; believe me, you'd much rather be Scott Miller and control Duke Nukem than Julian Gollop and lose control of XCom. Of course, it's also non-trivial; there are no "traditional" ways of getting project financing in the games industry other than begging bucks from publishers. Few angel investors, no "Silver Screen Partners" equivalent, and virtually no VCs willing to consider investments in games.

Trip Hawkins, co-founder of EA and 3DO, has recently founded a new mobile games company, Digital Chocolate (no URL, as far as I know). He's also recently hired John Szeder, one of the smartest mobile developers I know, which is a little bit of a pain, as Unplugged has used John on a number of projects. Ah, well. We're currently completing the beta for what is likely to be my last collaboration with John, a Space Zap-inspired game called Alien Rush. The core idea here is the need to avoid games where you must both shoot and move at the same time, since most mobile phones can't detect simultaneous key presses; in Alien Rush, you control a space station at screen center, aliens attack from the sides, and occasionally a resupply ship (which you don't want to shoot) shows up as well.

I'm currently playing with another design, tentatively titled Dwarven Kampfwagen, also designed to deal with the same issue; you can move or shoot, switching from "limbered" to "unlimbered" mode, like old-fashioned artillery, which could either be hitched to the horse or set up to fire, but not both at once.

I've also been playing a bit of Warlords IV, but I think I want to get Disciples II, and ultimately do a comparison between these two and Heroes of Might & Magic IV.



posted by Greg at 11:02 AM

On the one hand, I spent most of last weekend playing this game, so obviously I find it interesting. And I'm still playing it.

On the other hand--boy, are there some balance problems.

My first complete game, I played as Argentina. It was quite difficult to get to the point where I started to see substantial European immigration; it happened only when I'd gotten all of the social systems to reasonable levels (minimum wage, pensions, and so on). At the time, I thought, hmm, how like Swedes to develop a game that rewards a socialized society. By the end of the game, I had 35m people, some small colonial holdings in Africa, a few Chilean provinces that had defected when Chile was unable to suppress rebellion there, and ranked as the 5th Great Power--which I thought a fairly reasonable accomplishment.

The next complete game, I decided to play Uruguay, just to see whether it was possible to succeed from such a small base. Uruguay, however is a laissez-faire society--you CAN'T increase the social systems, you're stuck with no minimum wage, no safety regulations, and so on. But apparently, if you're a laissez-faire society, they don't care, so long as you grant them a free press and universal suffrage. My god, did the immigrants pour in. When Uruguay got to a population of 60 million--where do they put them all? the place must be more extensively manicured and cultivated than the Netherlands--and I'd built up the industry to the point that I was ranked #2 on the planet as an industrial power, I decided to branch out.

Southwest Africa and Congo were not yet taken by European powers, so that's where I began. I just kept going--and going--until I had virtually the whole continent. To grab some bits of the eastern coast, I had to have a brief colonial war with Oman--so just took over the whole country. Then Morocco. Then, I wanted a few coastal provinces still controlled by the Ottomans, so fought a war with them--and here's perhaps a flaw with the diplomacy system. I took the provinces I wanted, tried to make peace, and they refused. I whittled down my demands until all I was asking for was Tobruk, to give me a port on the Mediterranean, and they still refused. Then, they asked ME for peace--offering me half the damn Ottoman Empire.

Here's Uruguay in Africa. The yellow bits are me, except for a few provinces in Algeria and the Spanish Sahara (Spain is also yellow). And here's the Uruguayan possessions in Asia Minor, Thrace, and Syria.

Meanwhile, though I'd been peaceful at home, I eventually decided that the huddled masses of Uruguay needed lebensraum, so declared war on Argentina, which was stuck with a population of a few million, and a pathetic little army of three divisions. Argentina was reduced to a rump in Buenos Aires and a few provinces in the northwest, as you can see here.

I wound up winning as the most powerful nation on the planet--outpacing both Prussia (Germany was never formed) and the British Empire.

Now, I did enjoy the process--but this is pretty ridiculous, n'est-ce pas?

I abortively tried to play as Wurttemburg, figuring so ridiculous a little country would pose more of a challenge--but it was absurd. They start with no machine tools or factories, but several craftmen (factory workers). Surely they should start with at least a single machine tool to allow the construction of a winery or such? And although they have two divisions in reserve, you can't mobilize your reserves for some reason (perhaps you need a technology they don't start with)? So the first time you get unrest, you have a problem. Interestingly, when I then played Bavaria, I noticed Wurttemburg deploying its reserves to deal with unrest, which seems odd.

At present, I'm playing as Bavaria; at least I don't have the ridiculous advantage of all those immigrants. My objective at present is simply to unify Germany on Bavarian terms, which will be difficult, with all through Prussian regiments running around, and the huge bulk of Austria-Hungary to my immediate south and east. But I fancy a Germany run by Bavaria--spargel and Paulaner Weiss instead of Prussian blood and iron...

posted by Greg at 6:28 PM