[ish]

My play has dropped a bit over this period since I’ve been busy getting ready for the move to Boston. Over the past couple days, I’ve noticed my desire to play games has dwindled considerably. I’m bored with my mainstay TF2, and I am beginning to despise their achievements/weapon unlocks. Having a bunch of pyros running around gets obnoxious, and I refuse to grind achievements to try out new weapons. It seems like they are trying to bring the part I hate most about MMOs and achievements to the game. That + critical hits + boredom = going to stop playing. Even the cooler achievements (kill someone with a taunt) are outweighed by the grind achievements (do X amount of damage), and the whole concept of using achievements in multiplayer creates a lot of undesired side effects (see this article). I’m not sure who decided to tie weapon unlocks to grind-y achievements, but I really wish they hadn’t.

• Team Fortress 2 - 5
• Rock Band - 4
• Guitar Hero III - 4
• Age of Conan - 2
• Unreal Tournament 3 - 1
• Mario Kart Wii - 1

I wrapped up my AoC play, and my Guitar Hero/Rock Band time was mostly with my dad. I’m also surprised how quickly I got bored with Mario Kart Wii…I was expecting multiplayer to sustain me for longer than a week or two. I also played a little bit of UT3, but mostly because I’m messing around with UnrealScript and thinking about doing some mod work in my spare time. As far as games around the corner, I’ve suppressed the impulse to buy to Guitar Hero: On Tour, The World Ends With You, and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 so far, but I’m not sure if I will be able to hold out once I start my daily commute on the train. I did get the latest Worms game and some UMD movies for my flight. I’m guessing my playtime is going to drop to under 10 hours a week, as I get settled in my new job, work on some coding, and do something with my free time besides play games.

The Lost Garden blogger has some great articles on game design, and he brings up some interesting principles to guide conversion of any activity into a game.

It turns out that most learnable skills can be turned into a game. However, there are constraints. A skill must meet the following criteria before it can be turned into a game:

1. Decomposable into simpler skills
2. Skills can be nested
3. Skills can be arranged in a smooth learning curve
4. Skills are measurable
5. Performance can be rewarded
6. Skills are locally useful.

Read the rest of the article here.

Yeah, yeah I know it’s been WWE forever and now there’s UFC, but I’m old school. At this point, we might as well start dressing up players in skintight shorts and calling them names like Hulk, The Undertaker, or Yao the Giant. Last year, an NBA ref was indicted for betting on games he officiated. Obviously, if he bet big money on the games and passed that information to other bettors, then he also made calls to influence those games. This alone already impacts a number of regular season games and playoff games. Now the gloves are off and Donaghy is pinpointing other referees that fixed games at the beck and call of the league office. It may not be true but it’s also hard to disprove…there are definitely a healthy number of individual games and playoff series where the officiating was so bad it’s hard to blame it on honest mistakes.

Check out the interview with a highly successful NBA bettor here, a general summary here and information about the 2002 Kings-Lakers game here. Oh, and these stats and these stats show how large market cities win more in the playoffs relative to their regular season record (congrats Lakers and Celtics). I guess I know now why D’Antoni left the Suns to coach the Knicks…he wants to start winning in the playoffs. And watch these videos.

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I’m very excited to post that I got a job with Muzzy Lane Software as a Junior Production Engineer. I am sending in the acceptance letter today, and I will be moving out to Boston in a little over a week. I’ll be living in a great apartment in Cambridge near Inman Square. Woot!

‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’

$199.

I finally beat “Green Grass and High Tides” and “Day Late, Dollar Short” with drums on medium difficulty. When I start having to use all three limbs at a fast enough speed for a long enough time, I lose the ability to keep my foot going in rhythm. It took me awhile to get two limbs going consistently at different speeds, and I’m still pretty far from using three consistently. I passed both of those songs by ignoring my foot and trying to get as close to 100% of the notes I could hit with my hands.

I was stuck on those for about 4 days of playing, and I think it’s indicative of how much harder drums are than the guitar. After a few minutes of learning the game, my dad could play guitar on easy and pass most songs the first try. With less than a few hours of playing under his belt, he is probably ready for medium. On the drums, he hasn’t been able to pass a single song on easy, and he failed the tutorial.

If there is one major problem I have with Rock Band, it’s that drums are too difficult on easy and medium. My first experience with Rock Band was at parties where I would try the drum then proceed to fail, disappoint my friends, and quit playing. I also noticed the same effect for other people, and drums were reserved for the experts whereas just about anyone could jump in on the other parts. In my mind, just about anyone should be able to bang on the drums on easy and be able to at least pass the song. I think the best solution would have been to eliminate the foot pedal on easy, and then try to make medium slightly easier without making the jump from medium to hard too much. That said, I find drums the most fun by far, and I do feel like I’m learning to play a real instrument.

I’ve been pretty busy, so my overall playtime dropped a bit under my typical 20 hours per week average. I got sucked into the grind briefly with Age of Conan, but I decided the game wasn’t quite polished enough for me to the commit the time necessary to play into the higher levels. I also managed to snag Rock Band about two weeks ago for the ps2 on Amazon for 100 bucks, and I’ve been banging my head against a hi-hat trying to complete some of the drum parts. My dad sang some Bon Jovi today and got really into it…it was kind of hilarious.

• Age of Conan: 19
• Rock Band: 14
• Team Fortress 2: 6
• Guitar Hero III: 1.5
• Singstar Amped and Rock: 1
• Patapon: .5
• Everyday Shooter: .5

Looking at this list, the only thing that surprises me is how quickly my Mario Kart play stopped. Moving forward I’m expecting my play to drop some more as I get some things done. I’m done with AoC, so I’ll probably spend a little more time in Mario Kart and Rock Band over the next couple weeks. I’m hoping to get on a schedule where im playing around 10-15 hours per week, with anywhere from a third to a half of that time on the weekends.

I’m going to start compiling some top 5 lists to help me keep track of some of my favorite things…I might eventually move this over to a separate page once I have enough of them. “Fave Fives” is a tribute to the baddest, baldest baller ever–Charles Barkley. The first list is a few songs, most of which are tied to some memory. These aren’t the greatest, most critically-acclaimed songs, just a few that I think are cool.

• “The Burning Red” by Machine Head - I used to play this while driving around and feeling emo in high school. They were one of my favorite bands during my heavy metal/hard rock days, just “Edgecrusher”ing out Fear Factory. FYI, they also have a great cover of “Message in a Bottle”.
• “Rap’s MVP” by 50 Cent - I made one of my best friends, Alex, play this every time we went out for nearly an entire summer. I’ve been listening to a lot more rap and hip hop over the past couple years. Shorty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low.
• “Canon in D” by Johann Pachelbel - My favorite classical song, and one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Anytime I have to commute to work, I end up listening to a lot of classical music, and for good reason. There’s an electric guitar version up on YouTube. Reminds me of Yngwie Malmsteen.
• “Julie, Julie, Julie” by Ali Scotten - My freshmen roommate and one of my best friends from high school wrote this song because he was depressed over a girl he dated for two weeks. I banged on an empty water drum in the background, and I credit the commercial success of this song to my improvisations.
• “Shamma Lamma Ding Dong” by Mocean Worker - It’s got jazz flute and phat beats. I’ve been waiting for this song all my life.

Despite a lackluster first impression due to inconsistent framerates, annoying texture popping, and a standard me-too feel, I decided to roll a second character in Age of Conan. The Herald of Xotli ended up being more fun than the Priest of Mitra and better suited for solo play. Like most MMOs, you have to play at least into the teens to really get a feel for a class, and at that point I was impressed with the HoX.

I was impressed, but not enough to keep subscribing to the game. I’ve rarely maintained a long-term subscription to an MMO, and Guild Wars (no fee) has been my primary MMO over the past couple years. Most MMOs reserve the fun parts for those who have at least 15-20 hours a week to dedicate to a guild. My alternative is getting stuck in the leveling treadmill, soloing quest after quest. I’ve done this in WoW and other MMOs, and I always end up feeling like I just wasted my time.

For the most part, you stop learning anything once you’ve been grinding NPC mobs for a few levels. Once the learning stops, all you’re doing is feeding that little addictive part of your brain that must complete one more quest. None of these insights are news to anyone who plays or follows MMOs, but it’s still more common than not in the genre. I’m enjoying Age of Conan, but I don’t have the free time to commit to a guild. I don’t want to make a bunch of friends only to bail on them every other week. And I don’t want to get sucked into the grind.