I love October.  It contains my two favorite holidays: my birthday and Halloween.  However, in the last couple of years, passing through October has also held a certain growing level of dread… November is coming, the NaNoWriMo is almost here.

Once again I’ll be attempting to participate in this annual event.  The worst thing that could possibly happen to me within the next month is for me to not find a new job and have to start juggling finances until I do.  The best thing that could possibly happen for the WriMo is for me to not find a new job and have the month to split between looking for work and writing.

We’ll just have to wait and see how this one goes…

I love the movie Joe versus the Volcano.  In fact, it is my all time favorite film.  I probably watch it at least three or four times a year.  One of my favorite parts of the films are the early scenes where Joe is working at his dead end job.  Mr. Waturi is having a conversation on the phone with someone, and he says things like “I’m not arguing that with you.” and “I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?”  His entire conversation seems to consist of variations of those two statements repeated over and over.

When, in my career, I have had the opportunity to be in on the hiring process, as I read over people’s resumes, I often think of those scenes.  Many resumes, and even interviews, paint pictures of people who can get the job, but in my experience, less than half of them actually can do the job.  I mean, really do the job, not just skating by doing passable work waiting for the next job, but doing the job well enough that I feel truly good about having hired them.

Every time I get into the hiring process from the other side, I run into the same bump.  My resume looks decent enough, and I can usually shine through the initial interview, but when it comes to the technical interview I usually wind up looking like a chump.

Here is my problem… when I have a job, I spend my time doing that job, to the best of my ability.  I will learn everything I need to know for that job and I will exceed every expectation of my employer.  However, if there is a skill not required for my job, I don’t know it.  Not even a little.  I simply have never found it beneficial to prepare myself for a job I don’t have.  Well, I can’t say “never” because clearly it would be beneficial to the interview process, but doing so would likely infringe upon my job performance or my life outside of my job.

Every job I have ever had, I was completely unqualified for on a technical level when I got the job.  In every case, I interviewed, they really liked me on a personal level, and I managed to inspire them to take a risk and hire me anyway.  Within days I always bring myself up to speed, and within months I am indispensable to the team, leading the way and cranking out the work.

The issue is that in recent years, the technical interview comes first, and I never get in the room with people to be able to personally inspire them.  I do a phone screen, which consists of technical questions, and if I pass I get to go in a room with a couple members of the team, either a PC or a white board, and be bombarded with more technical questions.  Since I spend so much effort be great at the job I do have, I don’t have much left to put in to being great at jobs I don’t have.  I fail the technical interviews every time.

I know I can do the job, but can I get the job?  So far, too often the answer is “no”.

Welcome to October 1st, and to our first installment of 30 Days of Game.  This is where I play a game for roughly a month, and then review it.

First up: Travian.  From their own page…

Travian is a browser game featuring a world with thousands of other real players. One begins the game acting as a chief of a tiny village.

To get a decent idea of what the game is like, I suggest running through the tutorial.  It only takes a minute.

Basically, you start with an empty village surrounded by resources.  You place your town hall and then get to building.  Each resource field (woodcutter, clay pit, iron mine, cropland) produces a set amount of its resource, which you can increase by building up the level of the resource.  In town, on the various plots, you can build a variety of buildings, from armories and stables to warehouses and crannies (for hiding resources from attackers).  As you construct buildings and upgrade them, you unlock new troop types and other abilities.  Eventually, you can raid and even conquer other players.  Yes, its a PvP game.

Its like a real time strategy game, only slower.  Every building, upgrade or troop training takes resources and time.  And while each building’s ability is independent (can be researching new armor, new weapons, training foot soldiers, horsemen and building siege devices all at the same time), setting your people to work on building or resource upgrades are only allowed one at a time.  So you need to plan, which buildings do you need first?  Do you go offense and raid other players for supplies or do you go defense and protect against other raiders?

You can join alliances with other players which allows you access to a private message board on the site for your alliance.  And each server is generally allowed to run for 300 days (100 for speed games) before it resets and starts over.  So, yes, this is not your traditional neverending MMO grind.  The game has a finish, and leaderboards, and enough servers that you can pretty much always guarantee that one is going to restart soon or has recently restarted, so there is less worry about jumping in and being so far behind the curve that you can’t possibly win.

The City of M`antra G`ald - My City

Now, technically, I’ve been playing for more than 30 days, because I couldn’t think of a new game to start and I was already playing this one.  However, I’m enjoying what I am now referring to as a Lazy Time Strategy game.  Early on, when build times on things were very short and didn’t cost too much, I visited many times a day to keep my peasants working.  Lately, I visit two, maybe three, times a day, trading goods with other players and kicking off my next project or sending out armies to do my bidding.  Through my alliance I have heard other players talk about getting bombarded and overrun, but I haven’t had any trouble with that just yet, and I might not before the server resets.  I am just now getting to the point where I might be able to found a second city, which took longer than it would have if I’d gone straight for it.

Travian isn’t a deeply enthralling game, but I definitely think it is one I am going to continue playing because it is enjoyable and doesn’t require a dedicated hardcore player to enjoy it, although I am sure more hardcore players could find something in this game - be it min/maxing the build orders, or just crushing your neighbors.

About a month ago, I gave my thoughts on if WAR was the WoW killer… since then, in the back of my mind, I’ve been wondering a few things, a few aspects as to why no game in the near future is going to be a WoW killer.

The number one reason… Apple.

Face it.  Apple is growing.  I’m a diehard PC, and I’ll never switch to a Mac because, 1) I hate the desktop for the Mac OS, and 2) there are no Mac exclusive softwares that I desire.  Of course, I could come to eat my words if somehow Mac manages to overtake the PC, but I really think that is unlikely.  However, Mac computers are becoming increasingly popular in a number of areas, and one of those happens to be in people who like gaming.  In fact, a number of people I’ve known through gaming over the years still have a PC they use for gaming, but they use a Mac for their day to day stuff.  Mostly Macbooks.  And the main reason is because they also have iPods and/or iPhones and those devices work more seemlessly with a Mac than with a PC.  They aren’t incompatible with PCs, but there is no doubt that Apple designs for the Mac and then ports to the PC.  Why wouldn’t they?

A set of data I would like to see are the sales figures and subscription numbers for people playing World of Warcraft on a Mac in the US and UK.  The reason I’d like to see those numbers is that right there, immediately, you have a defined set of “MMO Players” who cannot play WAR, or AOC, or LotRO.  They couldn’t play Vanguard or EverQuest II.  They could play EverQuest, but the game only went up to the Planes of Power expansion and its only minimally supported, and its on its own servers so you can’t play with your EQ PC playing friends. (Arguably, this makes the Mac version of EQ better than the PC version, because they are frozen in time at the point when, in my opinion, the game was at its best before they mudflated the game into oblivion.)  But Mac owners can play WoW, and they play on the same servers as everyone else and with all the same expansions and everything.  And realistically, its the only “successful” fantasy MMO on the Mac.

So that, basically, in a nutshell, is why I think you can’t really kill WoW.  At least, not until some other new fantasy MMO decides to support the Mac.

And yes, before anyone says anything, I realize you can dual boot the new Macs and play any MMO… but not everyone wants to dual boot, not everyone who buys a Mac wants to install Windows on their machine too.  Many of them went Mac to get away from Windows, they want support, not work arounds.

The purpose of this post is simple: If I were to design an MMO for a MechWarrior game, how would I approach it?  Please feel free to point out my flaws, add your own thoughts, or propose your own designs.

If I had to tackle this as a game designer, I don’t think I would bother trying to do any kind of class or archtype system beyond possibly giving some initial choice of a small (2-5%) bonus in certain skills.  But then, what would I do?

First off, I would completely and absolutely separate character level from character power.  As a player does things in the game, be it quests, or crafting, or combat (both PvE and PvP), they would earn experience which would go toward a “rank”.  I’d probably steal ranks from the military, and for each rank I’d have a few mini-levels inside, like to move from Private to Private First Class you might only fill the exp bar once, but going from something like Sergeant Major to Second Lieutenant you might have to fill it 5 times signifying the harder jump from Noncommissioned Officer to Commissioned Officer.  This level would largely be a measure of how much ass you have kicked, but without a real relation to the power of the character.  Meeting a Brigadier General on the field as a Colonel doesn’t mean he’s going to win, it just means he’s been doing this longer or more than you.

Second, I would tie the player’s power into sort of an “item level” system.  As a MechWarrior, you pilot a Mech (giant powered robot armor), and if you like your wrist mounted pulse lasers, the more you use them, the more experience you earn with them, and you’ll level up your wrist mounted pulse laser skill which directly would affect your accuracy with the lasers, but indirectly would allow you to use more complicated and intricate wrist mounted pulse lasers.  On the other hand, if you prefered wrist mounted welders and repair kits, you’d get similar skill levels, but with wrist mounted welders and repair kits instead of lasers.  The key here being, if you can level up both if you want to spend the time, but you can only have one equiped when you leave the garage.

In a way, this would mirror Eve Online’s system of skills and things you can attach to your ship and which ships you can drive, but without the forced delay of a strictly time based advancement system.  Think of Eve but also being able to actively grind out the skill instead of logging out one day and coming back a week later when Frigate level 5 is done training.

Anyway, as will the item skills, there would also be rig skill.  Items attach to slots on your rig, rigs come in various shapes and sizes.  As the game expands, more and different rigs could be added, new items and item groups, specialized items.

Because experience given is based on usage (you plus item used plus target of item use times the success of the usage in some formula), there would be no need formalize grouping or raid structures for the dividing of experience points, so groups would end up being just communications channels.  Then you could even add in skills and items to support “hacking” so that you can “tap in” to an enemy’s chat, and of course to monitor for taps and counter them.

I think the entirety of the game would be PvP.  The beginning focus would be on One on One gladiator style combat, expanding into Two on Two, Five on Five, 3 or more Teams, Free for All or whatever.  Then, just like they have for first person shooter and racing games (or for that matter, World of Warcraft’s Battlegrounds), you can add “mission” types.  Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Marked Man/Escort, anything you can think of.  In fact, the game might go so far as to run contests for player designed submissions for maps and rulesets.

If a “larger” game is needed for people to play, you can make a robust guild system having people swear allegience to an army and fight for them in massive battles.  The guilds/armies can build their own bases, run scrimmages for themselves or against other teams.  Blending that in with the “missions” from above, you can actually throw in leader boards and seasons to turn them from random battles into an organized sport.

Outside of the Mechs, players would have an avatar, a character, to run around “the city” in, to meet up with other people and talk.  Or not… you could also go the route of EVE Online and just have an avatar image, a picture of you, with no animation (although, even EVE is adding in stuff for people to walk around space stations).  The world outside of the combat zones becomes just a simple chatroom.  If you really wanted to get crazy, you could even drop the text and have it all be voice chat.  If you did that, and made the game playable with a controller, you might even get an MMO you could run on a console, cross platform even.

So there, in a completely un-fleshed out outline is what I would do for an MMO based around a MechWarrior style mythos.  Feel free to comment…

Having previously enjoyed David Wellington’s Monster Trilogy, and the first of his vampire books, 13 Bullets, I was eager to pick up his second vampire tale, 99 Coffins, when I managed to find one on the shelf.

Let me take an aside here and laud some praise on Borders Bookstores.  Traditionally, I’m a Barnes & Noble guy, or even a patron of Book-A-Million.  Their prices always seem to be better.  Or when something is hard to find and if I can manage free shipping, Amazon is my go to site of choice.  However, when it comes to picking up Horror books, Borders really does jump above other brick and mortar book retailers simply because they have a Horror section.  See, when you go look for Horror in most stores you have to hunt for them.  Stephen King and Dean Koontz, because they are well known, you’ll find in the Fiction section along side Tom Clancy and other novelists.  But a lesser known author is more likely to be found in the Science Fiction and Fantasy section.  It makes see what is new in Horror a difficult task.  Not so at Borders.  Walk right in and wedged between the Sci-Fi/Fantasy books and the Romance, you’ll find the Horror in a little 4 or 8 foot section all its own, and organized just like every other section… hardcovers and trades and new releases at the top with shelves of paperbacks below.  Heaven.

Anyway… 99 Coffins picks up pretty much where 13 Bullets left off.  Our intrepid vampire hunter, not feeling so spritely after the last book, calls on our heroine again.  This time, it seems so fellows digging around in Gettysburg uncovered a crypt of sorts, and inside are 99 coffins containing 99 vampire skeletons missing all 99 hearts.  But there is evidence… there might have been a 100th coffins.  Vampires are afoot at America’s Historic playground.

Of course, I love the book.  As good as the first, perhaps even a tad better.  Honestly, I was worried.  After the downward turn that Wellington’s second Monster book took in quality, I thought maybe he just might have problems with the middle acts of his trilogies, but 99 Coffins turned out quite well.

Now I just need to wait for the third book, Vampire Zero, just four short days after my birthday.  The anticipation may just do me in…

No, this has nothing to do with The Hobbit.  If that’s what you were looking for when you found this page, I’m sorry.

Instead, this is my entry for this month’s Round Table discussion:

We’re heading out of the summer movie blockbuster season and into the autumnal video game blockbuster season. What better time to take a look at the transition of intellectual property from the big screen to the little screen? From traditional media to interactive media? Why do so many movie-based video games fail to capture the spirit of their big screen counterparts? Is it because video games can’t tell stories as well? Is it due to budget issues? Scheduling issues? Or something more sinister (Hollywood moles attempting to undermine the rising influence of video games on consumer spending habits, perhaps)? What movie based games have succeeded? Why? How could they be better? This month’s Round Table invites you to explore video games based on Hollywood IP. Focus on a specific game, or a specific franchise, or the idea as a whole. Take a look at the business realities, design constraints, or marketing pressures. As always, your approach is entirely up to you.

The problem that I always have with adaptations of film or books into video games is that a book is written for you to hold in your hand and turn the pages, one after the other, from the beginning to the end; and films are made to be watched from your seat, for the 90 minutes to three hours it takes to tell the tale.  Games are not, or at least in my opinion should not be, designed for you to sit in front of your PC while the story unfolds in front of you.  Games should involve the player, actually involve them, not just emotionally, but physically.  The game can’t progress from start to finish without the player, at least in part, deciding how to get there.

When most movies are made into games, if I enjoyed the movie, then there is a 99.9% chance I will not enjoy the game.  Because the game isn’t the movie.  Its close, the narrative might be there… but when I watched the movie, the hero didn’t have to stop and play Bejewelled to unlock doors.  And if my participation in a game is limited to playing mini-games in order for the cut scenes to play, then I’m not interested.  The game play needs to support the story, the story needs to unfold in the gameplay, not around the outsides of it.

In a similar fashion, games turned into films suffer the same fate.  They take a game where the player is involved in the story, assisting to help it unfold, and then throwing the gamer out of the equation.  Now, you don’t get to help, you just get to watch.  Its even worse when a game does allow the player to mold the story, because then the movie is just one aspect of the story and is going to match only some of the players’ experiences.  Or worse, since the game won’t directly translate to film, they just go make up a bunch of stuff so that its not really the game any more but just some (usually bland) story with a flavor of the game.

And just like how the book is most often better than the movie… when a game takes 20 hours of solid play to complete, compacting that down to under 2 tends to hurt the story.  If the game came first, most often it is going to be better than the movie.

Personally, I think that games and movies should stay away from each other, except as inspiration.  At best, they should tell completely different stories, often with different characters, but inspired by the existance of the other.

But I don’t make games or movies, what do I know?  Well, I know that I almost never buy games based on movies, and rarely enjoy movies based on games.  Yeah, I said I “rarely enjoy” the movies, because I’m a sucker for films and I’ll see just about anything.

You might have noticed that since Hamlet 2 back on August 29th, there have not been any movie reviews here.  That’s because I have moved them off on to their own website, and that website isn’t ready yet.  If you are a crafty individual, you might find it, but I’m not going to officially link to it until I have finished the graphics and layouts.

So, stay tuned…

When it comes to most games, I’m a team player.  I disliked Quake Deathmatch, but I was obsessed with Team Fortress.  So, I wasn’t surprised at all when I finally picked up a Guitar Hero controller a couple of years ago that I really enjoyed playing the “second fiddle” rather than the lead guitar.  When Rock Band came out, while I did thoroughly enjoy playing guitar, the fact is that I enjoyed taking up the bass in a band on tour much more.  A little thing that makes me enjoy online play a bit more since everyone else in the world seems to want to play guitar.

Rock Band 2 came out this past Sunday, and having pre-ordered it a while back, I went and picked up my copy.  The game is great.  Its like Rock Band, only better… sort of.

The one drawback to the new game is that there is no straight tiered solo playlist.  You can’t just get in and play down the list to unlock songs.  To unlock songs you need to either have two people and do the challenges, or you play by yourself in a band on the tour mode.  Basically, its the old multiplayer tour, but playable by one person.  The drawback is that like the old multiplayer mode, you end up playing the same songs over and over in sets until you unlock more… well, unless you owned Rock Band 1 and a bunch of Down Loaded Content (DLC), because then you can choose from any previous song.  All your RB1 favorites and all the songs you paid extra for, right from day one.  Functionally, the single player mode works like the original game, but the presentation makes it feel different.

The advantage to this system, is that as a single player, I can play bass as my method of choice going through the tour and unlocking songs.  And that totally rocks.