Lens on Friday Quickies III

More quick little blurbs on some of the news of the week in MMOs and gaming

NOW I DELAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP...

Yeah, pretty lame, I know.  Three games announced delays of various importance recently.

"Neverwinter" has pushed their launch into next year.  The game was expected by the end of 2012, but they've decided to continue work on it.  This is almost always a good idea.  They could try to push for Christmas, but unless they are already close, I think waiting until Q1 is probably wise.  Hell, Q2 might not even be a bad idea.

MMOs are seldom released in a sufficiently polished state, and so I'd rather see "late" than "too early".  Neverwinter got some really good press a year ago at PAX (which is this weekend), and I'd like to see another positive bump for them, because most of what they've showed lately has been pretty generic.

"Riders of Rohan", the latest expansion for Lord of the Rings Online has been delayed for another month or so.  Again, more polish is better, so I approve of this delay.  A friend who was in the beta had positive things to say about the expansion, so that's more good news.

It was probably a good idea tactically to push back the launch as well, because dropping neatly between Guild Wars 2 and Mists of Pandaria could easily lead to them getting swallowed up.  Better to give GW2 five or six weeks, and MoP two or three, and then let slip the horses of war!

"The Secret World" has chosen to delay launching their second "issue" (content patch) for a couple of weeks.  Again, more polish is always good, and they have suffered layoffs so it makes sense.

It's unfortunate.  TSW has been successfully launched to critical and player enthusiasm...and marketplace disinterest.  TSW sold 200K copies.  GW2 sold over 1M copies and has had 400K concurrent players during the headstart.  Now certainly TSW is nowhere near as fun and involving as GW2, but it also deserves a far better fate than it is experiencing.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF A TORCHLIGHT 2 ANNOUNCEMENT!

Seriously.  Torchlight was a surprise success when it launched, a fun little Diablo-alike.  Unsurprisingly, they've been working on the sequel.

And the other day they had an announcement...that they'll announce the launch date at PAX this weekend.  Yes, they announced the announcement.

Sometimes the game business is really weird.

It will be interesting to see what the game has to offer, especially since Diablo III was an enormous financial success, while simultaneously one of the most disappointing games of all time.

Sometimes the game business is really weird.

MORE LAYOFF NEWS

This time, it's Popcap.  The makers of "Plants vs. Zombies" and "Bejewelled", having served up a bajillion downloads (and probably sold half-a-bajillion) had layoffs.

The day after PvZ 2 was announced, they laid off the lead designer for PvZ.  Really?  One day later!?

Oh, and naturally these layoffs had nothing to do with Popcap getting acquired by EA for $750M.

It amazes me how baldfaced the lying can be in today's world.  Marketers, politicians, public figures...I guess a lot of people simply don't care that they are being lied to.  And EA can lie with the best of them.

PETER MOORE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THAT HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND

More EA slagging!  Or is that "Moore EA" slagging?

Allow me to quote Peter Moore, EA's COO, from a recent interview:

"I can filter out hate, vitriol, rants, it's cool to rag on EA, it's cool to rag on Zynga, it's cool to rag on Bobby Kotick, it's cool to rag on Peter Moore,"

Actually, it's not cool.  We don't rag on you because it's cool.  We want to love you.  Believe me, gamers desperately want to love the companies that make their games.

We hate Zynga because they profited off of malware to become a successful purveyor of shitty and/or ripped-off games.

We hate Bobby Kotick because he's a smug little shit who doesn't like or even care about the games he sells.  They could be donuts for all it matters to him.

We hate EA because time after time they screw their customers in vast droves to try and leverage their business so that they can screw them better and more often in the future.

We hate Peter Moore...actually, I don't hate Peter Moore.  His statement above is ridiculous, but I don't hate him.  In fact I'd love to have a couple of cocktails with him and get into a long, empassioned debate about games.  I bet I'd actually like Peter Moore when I got done.

We love games...what we hate is that Zynga and Bobby Kotick and EA don't love games.  And we hate that they don't understand why we hate them.

SCHADENFREUDE ALERT!

And speaking of Zynga...another executive has left the company!  That's something like six execs in the last two months that have left.  What's that saying about "rats" and a "sinking ship" again?

Of course, Rat Bastard In Chief Pincus isn't going anywhere.  He's cashed out $200M in stock already, clearly demonstrating that his job security is based solely on his owning the majority of the voting shares.

Seriously, who the hell invests in a company where a single guy still controls most of the voting shares?  This guy could completely screw the company and you've got no recourse.

And now EA has unleashed a horde of flesh-eating lawyers in their lawsuit against Zynga, and that could result in a deathblow to a company that's rapidly circling the toilet as is.

And it couldn't happen to a better target.

If anyone took a job at Zynga because it was the only one they could get, I feel truly sorry for what might happen to them.

But for everybody else...if you choose to dance with the devil, don't complain about the cloven hoof marks you get on your shoes.

In short, if you went to Zynga unaware that they used malware to prop up their business early on, then stealing other people's games to become successful...you're an idiot and deserve what you get.  If you went to Zynga aware of those things and didn't care...you're a scumwad and deserve worse.

Have I ever mentioned that I don't care for Zynga?

ARENANET POINTS THE FINGER OF SHAME

Bad behavior in MMOs is as old as...well, MMOs.

Players have sufficient anonymity to feel that they can spout any kind of vulgarity, vileness, and vitriol (not to mention a lot of other things that don't start with a 'v').  Other people will complain and, occasionally, the people running the game will dish out some well-deserved discipline.

But one thing that almost never happens is that the people running the game will publicize or explain their decisions.  In fact, most go out of their way to keep any discipline well behind closed doors.

ArenaNet opened the doors up a bit the other day.  They had a thread on reddit where people could ask "Hey, why did I receive a three day suspension?" and ArenaNet would answer them.

Allow me to quote from a Forbes article on this:

"Hi, my in game name is Clouce and I was banned for inappropriate behavior. I think its because I said boner… but I am not sure.” ArenaNet let him–and all of Reddit–know that it was because Clouce wrote, “Oh I am gonna break dance on your anal intercorse.”

Poor Clouce probably thinks he got banned for misspelling "intercourse".

Thank you ArenaNet, for pulling back the curtain on some of the asstards out there, and showing them for what they are.

I'M REALLY OLD

There were a couple of articles recently about Chris Crawford and his comments on KickStarter.  His comments were interesting, but more interesting was...Chris Crawford.

There was a time where he was one of the Big Names in game design.  Seriously, this guy made important games like "Eastern Front" and "Balance of Power".  He has also made a number of important speeches and written influential books on games and design.

And I first met him (whether he remembers or not) about 35 years ago.  He was giving a presentation (I think it was on energy) to a high-school auditorium full of seniors.  Before starting, he spotted me reading a copy of "Strategy & Tactics" magazine and told me to come talk to him after his speech.

When he was done we chatted a bit about wargames and he told me about this game he had made called "KIM-Tanktics" (I just looked up the spelling), a real-time, two-player tactical tank warfare computer game, and he'd be showing it at upgaming local game conventions.

When the next convention popped up, there he was and there my friends and I were.  We tried the game and loved it.  He seemed genuinely pleased by our reactions.

Think about that...35 years ago.  Real-time, two-player tactical tank warfare computer game.  Terrain, line of sight, and so on.

How many years ahead of its time was that?