Posts | Austin videogame writer thoughts

Hulu Plus Review-ette

Hulu Plus Sounds Useful

You know, it’s not hard to like Hulu Plus. One of the big wins for me is that Hulu Plus has a huge catalog of Criterion collection movies. These are classic arthouse movies and canonical cinema landmarks from a wide range of eras. And they have some essential TV shows that Netflix doesn’t have. But fyi…

Hulu Plus Is Currently a Dreadful Beating on the PS3

It’s no fun when you curl up with your significant other or your father’s cat and you get this message. Incessantly.

Or you don’t even get the message – just a gray loading screen while you wait for the service to respond.

And of course… the advertising is dreadful. Once you’ve seen the same ad ten or 15 times, rage starts to bubble up from your gut. This is not a feeling you want when you’re trying to relax. So my tip for today is “it ain’t ready yet.” There are rumors that Hulu Plus may someday go ad-free, albeit possibly for a higher price than Netflix. Hrm. Interesting strategy, Hulu: deliver less but charge more. Good luck with that.

Draw Something iOS Circles the Drain

Zynga Breaks Draw Something Again

I admit, I play Draw Something on my iPhone. And I often regret it. On my old 3GS, I would only play when I knew I was going to get refreshments or warm up the bathwater because that’s how long it took to load. But my friends play, and some of them (Sue Holden!) are amazing fingertip artists.

Some Zynga History, OMG!

As you may have heard, Zynga, the game’s owners, have destroyed OMGPOP, the studio that created Draw Something, even though OMGPOP offered to buy themselves back so they can continue to make games and provide jobs. Zynga turned them down. The OMGPOP website will be torched soon, although I assume that Draw Something on iOS will continue. I haven’t seen any specific mention of Draw Something v.1.

I’m not going to rail on Zynga for this because I don’t know the full story. It’s possible that they value OMGPOP higher than the studio itself does, and simply didn’t want to start a negotiation. And as some publications have speculated, Zynga would look pretty stupid if OMGPOP went on to score some major hits. It also could be embarrassing to have to valuate OMGPOP not long after buying it for a cool $200M in March 2012. No one likes to admit they overpaid, but we all know they did, and we know the OMGPOPpers weren’t going to pay that same price on the way out. Still, it’s sad to see jobs cut, lives shaken, and viable game properties turned to charcoal.

And Now Draw Something’s Broken

Recently, Sue and I both noticed that Draw Something 1 (not the new version, which we never bothered to install) is jacked, and there’s a resurgence of people complaining about this error on the ‘net. It happens in a particularly frustrating way: you finish your drawing, press send, and the game coughs up this error message: “Hey it looks like you are playing on multiple devices.” After a suggestion that you not play on multiple devices (which I don’t), you’re kicked back out and your drawing is lost forever.

This, my friends, is the difference between fun and work.

There is a post on the Zynga support site, dated August 1, that says they’re working on it. At the same time, I have to wonder: how hard would it be for a disgruntled OMGPOP employee to throw a very large virtual wrench into the works of some of Zynga’s biggest properties?

Bing Wants You To Eat a Motsu Pod

As some of you know, I do a fair amount of work in the world of Local SEO or “LSO”. That is, I help clients optimize their data so that they appear in map search engines for phrases like “Detroit florist.”

Today I was greatly amused by some of the categories Bing provided for businesses to self-categorize. (For you LSO geeks out there: they now accept a bulk feed, by the way.) You may not know what a motsu pod is, much less have a yearning to sink your teeth into one. Google doesn’t know what it is, and neither does Wikipedia. However, if you have a motsu pod restaurant, Bing has a business category just for you.

Here are some other categories that you could dominate on Bing:

Shabu shabu restaurant
Oden restaurant
Ship restaurant (is this a restaurant on a ship? a restaurant shaped like a boat? an obscure cuisine? or just a restaurant that serves planks and rigging?)
Andhra restaurant
Beef tongue restaurant.

Don’t get me wrong — I do enjoy beef tongue. It’s probably my second-favorite choice at the local burrito place. But have you ever seen a restaurant that specializes in beef tongue? What would such a restaurant be called? Cow Tongue Muscle Garden? The Cattle Lick? Bessie’s Busses?

Back Up Wordpress to Google Drive? Careful!

back up wordpress to google drive

Just a quick little rant about backing up your Wordpress blog to Google Drive.

I love this idea, but at the moment it’s an example of why you can’t always trust what you read in a quick Google search. Dig deeper, my geeks.

There are two Wordpress plugins that you’ll see scattered around in the top search results for this topic: Google Drive for Wordpress and the simplistically-named Backup. However, look a little closer at those pages on Wordpress.org that describe the plugins.

Users rated GD4WP as a 3.6 out of 5, which is by no means stellar. 0 out of 1 of the most recent support threads have been address, and if you visit the support forum, you’ll see that most of the posters are angry or confused users posting responses to other angry or confused users. Backup is even worse, rated a 3.4 with a brutal 0 out of 5 support threads resolved.

I, for one, am about to install the much-less-touted UpdraftPlus Backup, which I found simply by searching wordpress.org plugins for “google drive” and ignoring unrelated plugins and the other two plugins mentioned here. I’m optimistic; it’s rated a 4.7, 60 out of 64 support threads have been resolved lately, and it’s got tons more downloads than the other two. If you guys want an update in a few weeks, let me know in the comments.

Why I Hate Stealth Games, and More

Stealth Games and Why They Suck

Just got through playing a fair number of hours of Hitman: Absolution. It’s well-executed (ha ha) and smooth. I love how you can perform the right actions in context that you expect your hero to be capable of. But I hate stealth games.

I think we’ve all played our share of stealth games. Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Assassin’s Creed. Splinter Cell, and most recently Dishonored. These are all quality games, but stealth is just so infinitely tedious. I mean, why would I enjoy watching guards’ patrol patterns waiting for a chance to sneak by them? And there’s nothing I hate more than sitting in a closet waiting for guards to stand down from high alert.

Yeah, that’s how I want to spend my spare time: waiting for timed idiot NPCs to come off their hissy.

Why isn’t there a “skip hissy” button?!?

Stealth Games Are Like…

I think stealth games have inherited the mediocrity mantle of bad hunt-and-click adventure games. You know the ones: the games where you have to hover your mouse over every single pixel of prerendered 2D scenes, looking for the idiotic mouse tail or letter opener or whatever object you need to solve the puzzle you’re working.

Instead of hunting pixels, stealth games make you hunt locations for the perfect sniper perch, access tunnel, or sabotage opportunity. Unfortunately, unlike the hunt-and-click games, stealth games make you perform that hunt while sneaking around and avoiding swarms of hostile NPCs at the same time.

Folding@Home Leaves the PS3

In other news, we were saddened to see that Sony’s cut the ties to Stanford’s Folding@Home. It says here that 15 million users donated over 100 million computation hours to help research Alzheimer’s and cancer via the Life with Playstation app at the PS3 homescreen. What an amazing record of generosity for the Playstation community. It’s too bad it’s coming to an end, but with all the security and integrity concerns of the Sony monolith, it’s not surprising. Cheers to Playstation users everywhere.

PS3 Controller Problems

Game Industry Denizens – Not Immune to PS3 Controller Problems

My PS3 controller’s started to cause me problems lately. It’s the “random dpad button presses” problem. I’m putting along, just trying to destroy digital things in my little fantasy worlds, and suddenly my avatar is changing weapons like a dervish and insulting all of my teammates in Fat Princess. I went from “least likely to be remembered” (well, except when I capture the little tower in front of the enemy castle, hee hee) to “that guy who won’t shut up” in about 30 seconds.

Ah, but the savvy consumer knows that Youtube is the place to go with your PS3 controller woes. Thanks to playstation2bigs and a fair amount of noodling with a thin Phillips-head screwdriver, my controller’s back in action. Although there were a few cat hairs inexplicably trapped inside the casing, my PS3 controller was pretty clean. I think the main problem was just bad design. As shown in the video, the contact between the dpad and the controller’s motherboard is quite delicate: it’s made by two plastic strips with copper contacts, pressed against each other. I’m amazed that more people don’t have problems, especially in humid areas or in sweaty little hands.

I didn’t even bother with the sticky tape as depicted by playstation2bigs — I simply folded up a little piece of paper and shimmed that connection with it. Bingo.

Note that the final re-assembly is a little dodgy too. The shoulder buttons may not want to sit properly when you fit the case back together, and if you force it, your shoulder buttons won’t spring back like they should. Just jimmy with it, making sure that the buttons have full clearance before you screw it back together. Best of luck to ya!

Game of the Year? Dead Island Thoughts

Dead Island Releases Dubious Game of the Year Edition To Muffled Groans

Zombies. How many must we slay to save the world?

Unfortunately, Dead Island brought us a tropical island full of them, and if my multiple-rental of the title is any indication, putting zombies in paradise is not any substitute for fresh ideas. It’s not like Dead Island isn’t devoid of innovation. There’s a strong emphasis on melee combat, and some of the environments are really quite impressive. Open-world GTA gameplay is fun, the use of non-zombie opponents is introduced flawlessly, and there are a variety of zombies to provide you with some challenge, although they’re not as distinctive as Left 4 Dead’s. You can build and customize your own weapons, kind of like the homebrew weapons in Fallout 3… oh, there I go again, mentioning superior games in the same breath as Dead Island. Sorry.

Things Not to Dev on Your Zombie Vacation

I think a lot of my frustration with Dead Island comes from seeing the potential wasted here. The camera is janky, and there’s a common bug that destroys your weapons when you’re crafting at a workbench. Worst of all, in my opinion, is that when the game should really shine — when the combat gets tricky and zombies are piling up around you like flies around flank steak — this videogame gets balky and petty. There’s a stun effect, for example, that knocks you down when you need it least (although it does usually refrain from piling on during recovery). The auto-arm function will have you swigging booze instead of swinging death if you’re not careful. When compared with the combat in Just Cause 2, another title from the same developer, Dead Island just feels broken.

And there’s that fundamental flaw of a FPS that focuses on melee combat: It’s very difficult to judge melee weapon targeting and range. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Dead Island actually makes this even trickier by mixing up the strike area for weapons because your avatar is sometimes swinging it left and then right. Realism wins, gameplay loses.

P.S. Game Writers Are Cheap

And, you guessed it, this title is badly in need of a game writer. Individual quests rarely transcend the “FedEx” errandboy task. You’ll quickly tire of ferrying miscellaneous trinkets and killing off various spawn groups for rote rewards from uninterested and non-interactive NPCs who turn back into animated shrubbery as soon as you finish the task. The overall story arc is so slight as to be invisible: you’re somebody who wants to get off the island. Huh. When compared with the warring factions of Fallout 3 or the tightly-scripted, unique team-based missions of Left 4 Dead, you can see why it’s a pale star in the firmament.

I love what some people are saying about the game: that it failed to deliver the “emotional experience” promised in the trailers. How is it that, time after time, game studios fail to invest a little bit of time into structuring a game that packs a bit of storyline punch? Not that it would’ve been possible to do so without structural support, mind you. A bit more dialogue or a dozen more cutscenes, tacked on at the end of dev, is not sufficient. But if those cutscenes and a few missions were intelligently structured before production, well… I’d venture to say it could be done. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that this game could’ve packed that emotional punch with the same amount of developmental time and effort if it had been a priority from day one.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case.

P.S. Dead Island won their Game of the Year from Gamecritics.com, in a year that also featured Deux Ex: Human Revolution, Portal 2, and Skyrim. And they only gave out one GOTY award. Hmmm.

A Game Study and a Game Writer Question

Videogames have endured a lot of scrutiny in recent years. Games cause antisocial behavior. Games cause psychosis. Games cause incontinence!

We have some good news on the public relations front, game writing aficionados. Word from The Atlantic is that games, especially games with a physical aspect, might be an antioxidant of sorts for aging minds.

“But the benefits may extend beyond just fun and games — studies are also showing that these exergames — video games that encourage physical activity — are also proving to help with depression, sense of place and relevancy.”

So as we head into the holiday season, folks, be kind to your loved ones. Don’t bring a fruitcake home on your vacation — take your Wii, Kinect, or Playstation Move instead.

Hi! I’m not sure if you answer questions – but I’m not sure where to go. Is it okay to go back and forth between 2nd person (you/your) and 3rd person (each player) when writing a manual? I am trying to edit a manual for a friend and I have no idea. Thank you. – AlishaWe also received a game manual writing question recently and decided it might be worthwhile to share it so you can see an example of a challenge you might face if you were writing game documentation:

Here is the core of our response:

I am fairly certain this is fine. Game manuals are very utilitarian documents. The alternatives (“you and your coplayer”, “you and Player 2”, “you and your buddy”) are usually distracting and awkward.

Thanks, Alisha… we hope to see your trading card/board game on the market soon!

Newsflash: The Earth Isn’t Round

Hey, Somebody Sat On My Planet!

Kids, today we’ll talk about things astronomical, because videogame writers are such geeks.

First up, take a look at this lumpy dumpy planet we live on! I mean, I never expected Earth to be a perfect sphere, but this is an abomination. Newsflash: the earth isn’t round or square. Instead, it looks a bit like a mutant melon after a head-on encounter with a rampaging herd of bison.

I certainly expected the Andes to be tall and the Marianas Trench to be deep, but to see these elevations on a global scale is a bit disconcerting. I mean, the Pacific Rim sticks out like the world’s great schnozz.

This model was created using data from the European Space Agency’s GOCE mission. Pretty cool. You can see another version of the model on Youtube, which looks a bit more realistic but also lacks the cool angles of this video.

And of course you need to twiddle a bit with the brilliant Scale of the Universe animation. Humbling to see the sizes of everything compared on a simple slider that goes from .0000000001 yoctometers (!) to 900 Yottameters, aka the whole universe. And it’s all set to a lovely little musical score.

Can the Game Industry Ever Do 40?

The Videogame Industry and the 40 Hour Workweek

TIME Magazine has a new article up about the 40-hour workweek. Most people in the game industry find this concept quaint. “That’s for regular jobs,” they’ll say, or “Never gonna happen.” Not only are long “crunch” hours often necessary because of publisher deadlines, the dreaded holiday season shelf space rush, and the difficulty of creating bespoke software, but crunch is part of game industry lore. Crunch is a rite of passage. No one likes it, but we often accept it as a beautiful torment, like labor pains for an expectant mother.

Still, the article makes some great points. I hadn’t been aware that Ford Motor, of all organizations, had run a series of trials to determine the optimal workweek, and they concluded that forty is the magic number. The guys who invented the American assembly line decided that more hours would actually decrease productivity and increase errors. Longer hours would create sloppy work that would have to be redone.

We’ve definite seen a tremendous amount of labor wastage in the game industry. Producers or department leads chasing bad ideas down rabbit holes, rogue employees fighting fiercely for features that are clearly out of place in the game’s schedule and scope, and yes, flawed game concepts that never should have left the drawing board. Each of these wrong turns costs thousands of dollars and precious resources. However, game industry veterans could easily argue that many such missteps are made by executives who are getting plenty of sleep (and perhaps too much alcohol or other mind-altering substances).

For those of you who want to get a game industry job, make sure you know about the work-life balance in games and read up about “EA Spouse,” the infamous person who stood up to Electronic Arts (and many many other industry players) about the sacrifices it demands.