A report on the boom in the media industry despite the worst recession in 70 years.

This was taken at 11:45 am UK time. That would be 06:45 in New York and 03:45 in California. Knowing that other people are playing your game means you’re more likely to play it. Would it be useful to include stats like this in every multiplayer game?

Let me start by saying: I love this.

It’s not the breathtaking visuals. The construction of a world extremely similar to our own yet with an ethereal, otherworldly quality. It’s the cadence and tone of the voiceover. It reminds me of the outstanding Eve of the War vocals by Richard Burton.

Every game should aspire to having this sort of visual and auditory delight.

Just before Xmas I was contacted by a PR agent for the new BT Onlive Service.

Onlive is one of the “big two” cloud gaming services and happens to be the one having received investment from BT and being bundled with some of BTs other premium services with their broadband offering. (The other cloud gaming service is Gaikai).

A few days after agreeing to post a review, I received a new Onlive Microconsole in the post. As it arrived just before Xmas day, there was much speculation on the service and how it would work. The requirements for Onlive are pretty basic:

• minimum 2 Mbps internet connection (5 Mbps recommended)

and that’s pretty much it. My internet runs at 6.5 Mbps downstream (real world about 5 Mbps) and 700 Kbps upstream (real world about 600 Kbps) and with a latency of about 40 ms. So you’d think I should be fine for this. For a good discussion of the other sources of latency – including the latency of your TV display, see Eurogamer.

But, this is from the Onlive help on Latency:

The lower the better, but if your “ping” result is much more than 25 ms, we do not recommend using it for online gaming.

Oh crap.

So I did a traceroute test:

mycomputer:~ me$ traceroute bt.com
traceroute to bt.com (62.239.237.1), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 skyrouter.home (192.168.0.1) 1.225 ms 0.689 ms 0.709 ms
2 bm5.niba-dhcp.isp.sky.com (94.9.207.62) 22.532 ms 23.585 ms 23.632 ms
3 10.245.166.241 (10.245.166.241) 22.570 ms 22.977 ms 22.726 ms
4 89.200.131.173 (89.200.131.173) 38.261 ms 39.105 ms 35.741 ms
5 linx7.ukcore.bt.net (195.66.224.56) 94.604 ms 35.891 ms 39.608 ms
...


So, really, I can’t even make it to the BT Core network without incurring over 35 ms of latency, which means my connection is too ‘laggy’ for Onlive. I checked with some friends on BT Infinity and their connections incur about 25-28 ms on BT Infinity to the BT core network. That’s much better and obviously the bulk of my latency is eaten up in the transition from the Sky network to the BT core network. I’m a bit annoyed because it is part of BT’s Wholesale ADSL offering. Bah.

Anyway.

The Microconsole requires a HDTV with a HDMI connection and there’s a client that can access the service which runs on Windows, Macintosh and Android. While there is an Onlive Viewer for the iPad, it’s not going to permit you to play games because Apple would demand 30% of any revenue. Yes, Onlive could work around it the way that Amazon has worked around the Kindle. Yes, Apple are being unreasonable. Let’s just leave it at that.

And then I was greeted by

 

You’ll note the setup is extremely simple. I have two bugbears.

1. The power socket is pretty much the same size as the hole for the sound jack. That flummoxed me for a minute. My own fault but still.
2. No WiFi built-in. What a pain in the ass. This means I have to either run CAT5 to my TV or use a PowerLine adapter. What sort of system doesn’t have WiFi?

This was followed by an email to support and this is the first real frustration; it took 24 hours to get a reply. Any enthusiasm for playing the console had completely deserted my son as soon as the initial excitement died. It took me a little troubleshooting but I figured out that my 14Mbps PowerLine adapters needed to be replaced with 200 Mbps adapters as the former weren’t transferring enough bandwidth.

So, eventually I got it running.

The selection is okay. For a family with a lot of consoles (we have PC, Mac, PS3, XBOX 350 and Wii as well as iOS devices) then the immediacy promised is an improvement over options like Steam or the XBOX Marketplace, PlayStation Store or other App Stores.

Intro - M4V video, H.264 encoded, 5 MB

Gameplay - M4V video, H.264 encoded, 11 MB

Cons:

• It eats bandwidth. Which means no Youtube for the wife when it’s running and I’d even discourage other less intensive uses of the network.
• Latency issues mean that what you see is not timed with your reactions. For games where reaction time is important (i.e. most of them), I found this maddening.
• They take payments by card but if a PIN is required, it’s not eligible. Which rules out pretty much every Debit card in the UK. Maybe they should sell cards at the checkout in Tesco?
• No login, no play. This is a worse system than the extremely draconian Steam DRM (which means you can’t play two games you own at the same time on different computers) – it just means you can’t play at all.

Pros:

• You can decide to ‘rent’ a new game like Arkham City for 3 days (for £3.99), 5 days (for £5.99) or permanently (for £34.99). That’s comparable to video game rentals and outright purchase. (Arkham City is cheaper at £29.95 from Amazon but you have to wait.)
• There are free trials available for just about every game which allow you to pay the game instantly for 30 minutes. That’s better than a demo or crippleware.
• The Playpack Bundle which provides 135 games for £6.99 a month is incredible value. You also get a 30% discount on all other games if you subscribe. It includes games like Fallout, Fallout 2, Supreme Commander, Bioshock, Borderlands.

Conclusion: it’s not really for me at the moment. I’m enough of a twitch-gamer that I need every second of latency to allow me to play the game properly. In shooters, this level of latency would just be unacceptable. Even Izaak, 10, whose reactions in games tend to be a little slower due to inexperience, found it irritating. It would, however, be an awesome service for a game publisher to tap into if you couldn’t be bothered putting out a demo level. And for gamers who don’t want to bother with downloading demos, why not try the full game for 30 minutes.

But I don’t think know if this is a permanent conclusion. I have standard BT Wholesale ADSL in the house because BT Infinity has not been rolled out to my area yet (the BT Exchange is enabled but … the doowhangle isn’t connected to the gazwhingie). Maybe Infinity has better latency? If it does, then I’d certainly re-consider.

Onlive has UK servers so if your ping latency is less than 25 ms then I think you should try Onlive with the Playpack Bundle. The console is £69.95 retail and you get free access to the Playpack for the first three months. You can also sign onto Onlive with a Mac or PC or Android tablet by just downloading a client. Give it a go and if you find the latency to be acceptable, then please let me know in the comments?

Just be aware: No Wifi so you have to run a cable. A bad connection means no games (use pingtest.net to check). Prices are not really cheaper.

Other Reviews:

• wee doors banging: Online with Onlive

“Here is a short footage on our recent work on quantum levitation. We were inspired by the game Wipe’out to do our work. With this new technology, we hope to revolutionize the world of motor transport; Maybe in a near future we could assist to a real Wipe’out race.”

Amazing stuff – this is the sort of inspired stuff that hackerspaces were invented for.

A bit more detail on each of the game ideas listed in A Brief Intro to Sonappa.

Alien Salvage

The first game, codenamed Alien Salvage, is a real-time-tactics 3d isometric third-person shooter with a investigative storyline involving a special tactics unit employed to defend against a hostile alien incursion. Multiplayer aspects will be developed for later updates and will include squad-level skirmish between human and aliens.

The player will control a small squad of special operatives whose role is to seek out and destroy a series of alien infestations. The controls will involve the movement, grouping and fire control of the squad as a whole as well as individual units. Managing the squad is handled through a small HUD which will also provide information on the health and capabilities of each unit. The player will work through a series of environments in the single-player story and encounter a variety of alien forces.

The aliens are part of a massive invasion force and the player is one of many human squads dedicated to tracking them down and removing them. The aliens vary in size and shape because they are part of a vast galaxy-spanning empire. Their technology is advanced and by capturing items of technology, the player is able to add to the human technology pool, unlocking new weapons, defences and transport. Some of these items may also be used to communicate with the alien forces, which can change expected outcomes.

In multiplayer, the conflict can be between human vs human, human vs alien or alien vs alien. All of the forces are given scores and can be compared and contrasted depending on capability. There will be multiple modes of games – deathmatch, scavenge, king of the hill for starters. The multiplayer environments will be based on the single-player maps.

Furukontakuto

The second game, codenamed Furukontakuto (j: full contact), is a 3d third-person platformer borrowing elements from fighting and shooter games and blending parkour action and a gripping results-based storyline. Multiplayer will involve speed-and attrition-based levels to provide an active combat arena.

Inspired by action movies like District 13, the idea is to blend hand-to-hand fighting and gun-play seamlessly with the speed and acrobatics of parkour (free-running), base-jumping (short parachute drops, wingsuits) and Buildering (unassisted climbing). Each character will, like Mortal Kombat or Streetfighter, have their own specialities. From a traceuse Francaise to a seasoned Qinggong master.

Unlike fighting games, this isn’t just about winning fights, it’s about moving a sequence of messages across the City. In the single-player game, the player will have the opportunity to play multiple roles as they hand the message between dead drops and traverse the whole of the city.

In multiplayer, the main goal will be to move a message from one side of a sector of the City to another while being intercepted and assisted by others. The opposing side must intercept and hinder other players from receiving the message.

Zombi

The third game, Zombi, is a real-time-tactics 3d isometric third person squad-level shooter with goal-based development and a survivalist single player plotline. Based on the RPG, Zombi, the player will have to progress through a zombi-infested post-apocalyptic city. In multi-player, players will act in concert or in competition for resources in a semi-persistent universe.

In the single-player game, this involves travelling between locations, picking up resources and staying away from the hordes of undead and, more importantly, other survivors. There is a decision tree to follow as the player tries to track down his/her missing family. With limited resources, the player must make decisions wisely.

In multiplayer, the player joins a semi-persistent world where resources are being constantly depleted by other players in the game. The player may be allied with others or alone, depending on the game mode, but will have tasks to perform, goals to achieve and limited time and resources to achieve them with. The world has reset-intervals where resources are replaced, depending on the progress within the game.

The next posting on the subject will deal with the monetization strategy. There’s also some information to be posted on the technical side – more on that when I investigate feasibility.

Making money in when making games used to be a simple equation. Make the game and then sell the game. You allow for money for people to do the mechanics, the art and the publishing and distribution but the remainder is yours. And so the world continued in peace for millennia.

Then the world changed. It didn’t start there but the largest and most noteworthy of the change was World of Warcraft from gaming stalwarts Blizzard. World of Warcraft quickly dwarfed the other Massively Multiplayer Online games in terms of scope and sheer weight of numbers, building on an audience who had succumbed to Warcraft I, Warcraft II and Starcraft. World of Warcraft adopted elements from their other successful IP, Diablo and mixed it all up into one tasty morsel which soon developed a population dwarfing several real world nations.

The players didn’t pay up front for this game, the MMO, they paid for it and the online services associated with it with a monthly subscription. Every month, small amounts of money, which amounted over the months to many magnitudes higher than they could have sold the game for, would be processed into Blizzards bank accounts.

In response to this, other MMOs would begin to compete on several levels. They would reduce prices, adopt (expensive) third party licenses to attract users and attempt other ways to differentiate themselves from the Blizzard juggernaut.

The problem was not that people would not buy games, the problem was that there’s a finite number of hours in a day and humans have a finite amount of time free from family, sleep and career with which to play the game. Getting someone to part with a small monthly subscription is just one part of the the puzzle. There’s also getting them to spend more. Blizzard also manages this with premium items (such as their sparkly rainbow pony).

So, when making a game and planning to be around long enough to make a second game, you have to think carefully about the sources of revenue you have available. Zynga has shown that it is possible to offer a game free of charge, while nickel-and-diming customers with pre-pay options and affiliate deals and make a heap of money (while at the same time screwing over early risk-taking employees).

In order to attract people to your game, especially if you’re aiming for a longer term revenue model (because, you’re not EA or Activision and can’t make $775M within a week of release), you’re going to adopt a Free 2 Play model. But if it is free to play the game, then how do you make enough money to keep your servers running never mind making enough to afford all of the sex workers and illicit drugs that your game designers are accustomed to.

Do you lock out features such as chat? Or upgrades such as the BFG? Or maybe lock out normal features like the ability to heal? Is it better to allow people with money the ability to progress quicker? Gain more experience? Heal quicker? Do they get better rewards or easier quests? Is your game a sunken investment trap (like Magic: The Gathering, or World of Warcraft)? Do you have an active secondary market for your premium items? Do you even want one?

People who don’t pay something are not just a drain on resources. You have to consider whether their presence in the game is enough to attract more people to play the game and whether paying something offers enough of a competitive advantage for players to consider it. This can be an edge against AI elements in the game or against other players in a competitive game.

Do you offer features to the player or the character? Each has a separate set of needs and wants, even though they are the same person. Selling experience points to make the character better has a different game effect to selling energy points to allow the player to pay more often.

In conclusion: when creating a game, there is a careful balance in implementing not only purchase price, in-app purchase and advertising models. And there are a dozen other ways to monetize a game. Make sure you’ve considered all of them.

Special thanks to @bkgStatus for his wisdom when compiling this blog post and to Gamasutra for their recent article on payment models.

This blog post is not about Siri, sorry.

I remember when the best way to control a games console was like this:

But over the years, controllers started to look like this:

From a single red button to a plethora of buttons, triggers, D-pads, joysticks, joysticks which act as buttons and switches, it’s no wonder that there was a bit of a “revolution” when this hit the market:

But everyone has been a little fascinated with this for the last couple of years. And not surprisingly – this is one of the interfaces that we use to control the world. It seems natural to use it for direct manipulation.

And despite the fact that the hardware is obviously capable of it, games designers haven’t been making use of one of the other obvious interfaces. One that we humans excel at.

This isn’t the same as using a headset to bark commands at team-members, but using defined commands to instruct a game element. Yes, these games exist (Shouter being one of the most well-known) but the sophistication is low.

What I’m looking for is the difference between Newton and Palm, but in terms of voice. Newton tried to recognise your handwriting while Palm made you learn a certain alphabet. For games, at this stage, we need to create a basic control set that can be easily recognised by a language processor. Whether that is in understanding actual words or whether it is mapping wave patterns – it doesn’t matter. The point is to use our voice to control games.

The instructions can be short, they can be words, they can be screams and cries. When I call “Retreat”, my units should start to retreat back to base, making a tactical withdrawal. When I order “Advance”, they should use cover and opportunity to advance upon the enemy position. And when I shout “Charge”, you get the idea.

(images not used with permission)

Not talking about my next idea hasn’t actually progressed me towards my desired destination.

So, I’ve decided to do a bit of the opposite. Over the next weeks, I’ll be posting more material as I generate it, including getting some screenshots put together after I’ve put together some basic sketches. And it’s all going up here.

I’m brought back to these videos again and again.

This first one is the unreleased Oni multiplayer version. Oni was a third-person fighter/shooter which was released for Mac/PC and Playstation 2. It was unfortunately the victim of the Myth II HD bug and ended up with Myth itself mortgaged to Take 2 Interactive. If there’s anyone reading this who knows anyone in Take 2 Interactive, I’d love to speak to them.

The second video here is the original Halo trailer. Halo seemed to be more of a squad level human vs alien 3rd person shooter. There was talk of a persistent world, of career specialisms. That was all dumbed down, which isn’t to say that Halo itself wasn’t awesome. It was.