TOM FRANCIS
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PC Gamer Podcast 51: Mine, Part Mine

Oh yeah, we pod a cast. I get to talk about what playing Deus Ex 3 was like, Rich gets to talk about what reviewing Dragon Age 2 was like, we discuss Bulletstorm’s stupidity, Shogun 2’s cleverity, and Battlefield 3 possibilities.

In which game can you part-own a mine? How hard can you throw something at someone’s head before they react? Are mages getting magier or less mageful? Would Team Fortress 2 work with 3,000 players?

All these answers and no more, for the special person who Downloads/subscribes.

PC Gamer Podcast 24: Admiral Failure & General Vague

Discussers: Tim Edwards, Tom Francis, Craig Pearson and Steve Williams.

Discussees: Crayon Physics Deluxe, Saints Row 2, Mirror’s Edge, Dawn of War 2, Red Alert 3, real-time strategy’s problems, Penguins Arena, Pipe Mania, our picks for the best developer comma ever full stop, Railroads and Sins of a Solar Empire.

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PC Gamer Has Been Allowed Onto The Internet

We tried an experiment a while back, where we suddenly started putting our hearts and souls into our little corner of computerandvideogames.com to see if a) we could do it, b) people would like it, and c) people would like something more. We could and they did and they would.

This information was then fed into a much larger and darker decision-making process that I had really nothing to do with, the first stage of which acts a little like a paper shredder, but it eventually resulted in us getting a site anyway.

We have wanted this very badly for a very long time and worked very hard to get it. So, thank you to all who responded to my thinly veiled call for you to express deep dissatisfaction with our previous web presence, and welcome to our new one.

Since Tim was away at E3, I was in charge of the site launch, and Graham helmed the magazine. It’s been a frantic… Christ, one week? Feels like a month. It’s been a frantic week in which we’ve put up over a hundred and fifty articles, so I thought I’d highlight some of the stuff I’m most pleased with so far.

• Project Dust
  This was the first time I read news I did not know on our own site, and it happened to be the most surprising and interesting reveal of E3. It’s also great to see something exciting like that and not have the “But is it coming to PC?” anxiety. It’s on our site, so yes.
   
• Gaming’s best cereal-based shooter
  Evan’s wonderfully uncynical look at a piece of Americana I’d heard of but really knew nothing about, and the bizarre surrounding culture.
   
• 20 beautiful new Brink shots
  This just makes me happy because it’s just not something we could do effectively before, and it looks superb on the page. It was a personal quest of mine to ensure that whenever we showed off screenshots, you’d just have to click them to get straight to the full, high-res, clean, unwatermarked original file.
   
• Transformice
  Jaz’s post is a great statement of the kind of free game coverage I’ve always wanted. To me, “Here’s a free game that’s mildly entertaining for thirty seconds” is not news – I can see ten of those a day on sites dedicated to that stuff. If we’re talking about one in particular, I want to know why, ideally in the form of a funny story about what happened while playing it.
   
• Engineering victory in Supreme Commander 2
  After helping us out for two crucial weeks, Tom Senior surprised us all by writing his best piece (that I’ve read) on his last day. A great guide to a hilarious tactic with truly magnificent screenshots. I can always tell when someone’s writing about something they know and love, because it’s the only kind of article I can read through without wanting to change anything – the writing just clicks.
   
• Microsoft’s shameful E3 PC showing
  This is why I like having Tim as an editor. At PC Gamer we’re lucky enough to carry some authority without being an official mag beholden to anyone, so when someone screws over our platform, we can say so in no uncertain terms. No-one more so than Tim. I’ve always been proud of PC Gamer’s history of eloquent indignation: I think we do a good job of standing up for gamers without sounding whiny or getting hysterical. Rants are commonplace online, good rhetoric is not.
   

In both the UK and the US, the mag carries a six-page feature that has all the juicy information and probably the best summary of why Human Revolution is worth getting excited about. It has more screenshots and art than have been released online, and it came out well before anyone was allowed to say word one about the game on the web.

On the site, you get the full interviews it was based on, a blow-by-blow account of exactly what I saw and what I thought of it, some informal chatting about the art, and a reminder or two of what we loved about the original. It’s almost the opposite of conventional wisdom about the web versus print: the web’s supposed to be quick and brief, but I think it can be a place where people get to choose the level of depth they want. Print’s sometimes characterised as long-form and slow, but here it’s faster and punchier at presenting the juicy details.

The blow-by-blow in particular was really fun to write. It’s an attempt to address two of my most common frustrations with previews: “Stop wanking and tell me what you saw,” and “Don’t just tell me what you saw, tell me what you thought of it.” Writing it like a liveblog presented a really convenient format for getting facts and impressions side by side without a lot of structural wrangling to fit it into flowing prose.

Of the interviews, I think the one with art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletete stands up best on its own. Knowing I’d also be talking to the game design and story people separately freed me up to ask some more wide-ranging stuff, and see where the discussion went. And I really liked how honest he was when I asked about the risk of going obviously futuristic when that was so badly received in Invisible War.

Big thanks to Lewis Denby and Jaz for their help getting the interviews into electrowords.

I am now profoundly exhausted, so please be nice. The feedback so far has been amazing, but what remains to be seen is whether people who like these articles will take the time to link them on their weblogs, forumhaunts and Facetwitters. We finally have the chance to live or die by the quality of our stuff, so now we work overtime to make it as good as we can – and see who notices.

PC Gamer Blog: Greatest Videogame Weapon of All Time

Just posted this today, via the ever-brilliant Waxy.org. On my life, I haven’t laughed so long or so hard at anything since the original lolrus, and I can’t stress enough what I say in the post: this is exponentially funnier the louder you play it.

PC Gamer Blog: Five Years Of Foolishness

I celebrated April Fool’s day over at the PC Gamer blog by recounting five of my favourite games industry pranks of the last decade.

Pathfinding In Heat Signature’s Randomised, Modularly Destructible Spaceships

Updated! see bottom of post.

Heat Signature is a game about randomised space ships that you can sneak aboard. These ships have a randomly generated interior of connected rooms and corridors, and crew that patrol those rooms.

Right now, there’s no pathfinding: the crew roam randomly. At some point, though, you’ll be able to set off alarms or cause other disturbances that the crew should run to. So the problem is: how do find a route to that room? Specifically, how do they find the shortest route to that room? Continued

Paris Laptop Consciousness Drip

John didn’t come on this trip because it was a day, a little more in fact, for a page, which is presumably less than he could otherwise earn. This trip is to Paris, to see the World Of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade. The choice is easier for me: Paris, or office with terrible vending machine, the pay is the same (though not as much as for a page of freelance work, I might add). I suggested that he should come, because it was Paris, but couldn’t come up with a more articulate reason than that, and also the exact arrangements weren’t worked out.

The exact arrangements turned out to be great. The Eurostar’s at 7.30am tomorrow, so I as a Bathican am being put up in a hotel in London for the night. I failed pretty miserably to get to London in time to do anything really, and even my lame plan of going yuppie and blogging from a Starbucks on Belvedere street were foiled by closing times. Instead I’m typing this offline (the Rock Extreme laptop I’m reviewing is picking up the Thames Online wireless network, but not well enough to get net) on a bench next to a hairy old black guy playing very lonely saxophone. I call this yuppohemian.

The hotel is the County Hall Marriott, which is on the Thames, next to the London Eye and Big Ben, and is pretty difficult to believe. I actually kind of laughed when I walked into my room. Hang on, the tour guide lecturing the old Americans on the bench behind me has just told them no-one in England is named Mary because a famous one burnt so many consonants. I think he’s remembering his history and quite a lot else wrong. Okay, now the busker has wondered off sadly, quietly missing out on whatever I was half-planning to give him on my way back to the hotel. Should I pay in advance the next time I pick a bench based on the jazz? No.

I have just cracked my knuckles for the last time, perhaps ever. I will likely crack them again within the minute. I am trying to avoid it, though, on discovering just how many people it annoys and to what extent. It seems a strange thing to be annoyed by – I think it’s perceived as a conscious action, but in fact it’s as involuntary as yawning and far harder to resist. I can’t say I know what the negative side-effects of stopping woudld be, though, so I’m launching an investiagtion. I’m going cold turkey on knuckle crack. God damn it I nearly did it right then. I need a cigarette.

The whole thing – the hotel, this is – is some kind of cylinder built into an enormous courtyard within the same building as the London Eye ticket office. I’m getting the cylinder shape from the corridors – once you get onto your floor, they arc round in a huge circle. My room is vast, the bed has ten pillows, and the window is aimed at the sunset over the Thames with willful precision, igniting the whole thing in orange as soon as I opened the curtains. I am so thirsty. I’ve just discovered the tree I’m sitting under is full of blue lightbulbs. Is this the sort of thing I habitually don’t notice?

Breakfast at 6.30 tomorrow. I feel like I should have something fried to take advantage of it being free, but I also feel like I should never eat anything again. As flattering as the lowlight of the hotel bathroom is, it doesn’t disguise that my new bad habit of eating lunch every day has now begun to counteract my good habit of cycling up a formidable hill on the way home from work. I think the dude who just walked past saying “There are worse places to watch porn” was talking about me.

There are worse places to write. It’s properly night now, and windy with it, but so warm that even my T-shirt feels superfluous. I’m next to a streetlamp engulfed in a swaying tree whose leaves glow as they wave at the light, and the effect is something you wouldn’t see in Oblivion on this laptop, because you pretty much have to disable Canopy Shadows if you want a decent framerate at this things insane native resolution. Ooh, so nearly got through this trip without a Real World Graphics joke. It’s become a tradition now. Dammit! I have cracked. It feels… bad, not doing it. A vague and nameless badness. If I had to give it a name I would probably called it Arthritating, but I would also probably think about it a bit longer so it’s hard to say for sure that that’s what I’d go for, or even if it would be on the shortlist.

I sometimes miss the start of conversations. I sometimes ask people what they’re talking about, as politely as possible, but if I can I just join in not knowing what we’re talking about. The other journalist on this press trip was talking about someone’s gaming habits, specifically exploring game worlds like Far Cry, and I love mountain climbing in the places you’re not supposed to be able to get to in Far Cry. She was saying that he, who’s name might be Dan from what little I overheard of the start, likes to take the hang glider as far as possible, and use it to soar to strange places. Me too! “Who’s this?” “My dad.” Ah, Terry Pratchett then. This is the next day now. I charged my laptop on the Eurostar on the way back, and have enough juice for a few words on the night train to Bath. I’ll have to cycle with this ponderous bastard up Watery Lane, the sharp ascent back to my house, a lofty realm of such good digital reception that one nearby estate is called Freeview Road.

It turns out I’ve met Rhianna Pratchett three times, but didn’t recognise her the second time (hair colour change?), and I think I thought she was a voice actress from the way she was talking about a game’s dialogue. This time, I totally recognised her from the last time, but since I didn’t know who she was last time that wasn’t an awful lot of help. Incredibly, I managed to surmise that this person had, too, worked for Nevrax on Saga Of Ryzom and wrote for PC Zone without connecting her identity with the other very similar-looking person of whom both these things were true. They kind of cottoned on to one another in my head a while later, far too late for me to admit my confusion without embarrassment. Luckily, one of my super-powers is the ability to go from a position of astounding ignorance to perfect understanding without any external reaction at all. The cure for cancer could dawn on me without elevating an eyebrow.

Have you ever seen an orc bored? That’s not a joke set-up. Actually it could be: it’s enThralling. Anyway, that’s what I saw today. The guy wandered mopily between the chambers of the cellar at this event and couldn’t muster a snarl when photographed. I prescribe emancipation.

Pane Rustico With Fresh Rosemary And Cheddar Crust

I’ve had this recipe for Italian peasant bread bookmarked for about a year now, finally got round to trying it. Added a topping before the final lidless crusting blast. Continued

Pandora’s Checkbox

Because it ignores all social stigma and other people’s opinions, because it’s quite often right, and because I’m playing it on my speakers in the office, it’s choices are sometimes a little embarrassing. It’s like someone suddenly pointing at you and saying “Somewhere, deep down, you’d quite like the fucking Cranberries.” No matter how fast you skip it, everyone knows who that was, and that it was picked for a reason.

I fear Pandora’s ambitious experiment may be doomed by fickle human whims, though. I loathed the first song it played to me when I rediscovered it recently, and when I went to give it a thumbs down, discovered that I’d already given it a thumbs up the last time it came on. Mind you, it’s just started playing Duran Duran, and it does have the appropriate button for that.

Out Of Office Auto-Blog

I’m in America for a few more days, the end of a week-long press trip with three different companies, to see around fifteen games. Anyway, here are some photos.

Dan above the firey water feature in the LA hotel’s bar.

The X ride at Magic Mountain – the only thing in the world more extreme than a guy jumping out of a helicopter on a skateboard and the skateboard is on fire and the helicopter is exploding maybe.

I spilt my drink, and this guy pulled out that card. It was pretty surreal, but he gave us our own cards to use in the event of further accidents.

Dan and I had been to Santa Monica beach last year too, so we decided to tour it on reclining trikes this year.

A busker – or maybe just a girl playing guitar for fun – being appreciated. Drive-by photography; you don’t get the whole story.

Rollerblades are faster, but I am faster than some regular bikes on one of these. There are no gears, so you have to pedal pretty stupidly.

Mike makes movies of his trips for X-Box World’s coverdisc, but probably doesn’t use much of this footage.

Our Super Game Jam Episode Is Out

Super Game Jam is a documentary series on Steam that films two developers per episode, working together to make a game in 48 hours. It’s discounted to $15 for the whole series right now, which is 5 half-hour episodes, the 5 games that were made in them, and a bunch of extra scenes and music from Kozilek and Doseone.

Episode 5 just came out tonight, and it’s me and artist/designer Liselore Goedhart making SimAntics: Realistic Anteater Simulator. We were given the theme of ‘Simulation’ by previous jammers Cactus and Grapefrukt, and told not to make SimAnt. So we simulated an anteater instead.

You can grab it from Steam here, where there’s also a trailer. Stills below, and thoughts on the episode at the end! Continued

Our Limbs Have Been Asleep

If you’ve been dissatisfied with any of the government whales you’ve been using lately, I can recommend the Freelance Whales. When an album starts with a song like this, you know you’re in for some pretty fucking gentle glockenspiel-banjo times.

[audio:https://www.pentadact.com/temp/FreelanceWhales-GeneratorFirstFloor.mp3]

The whole album is good, I got it from here.

Open World Games: What Works And Why

It felt like last year open world games took over, and stopped being high-budget exceptions to the norm. It’s now pretty commonplace for a game’s linear story to be just the main attraction in a fairground of challenges, collectibles and distractions. ‘Go anywhere, do anything’ games have been around since the eighties, but it’s only in recent years developers have figured out the hooks, tricks and bribes to get a wider audience playing them.

Most of them kinda suck though, don’t they? Not the games themselves, necessarily, but their approaches to filling these sprawling open spaces with stuff to entertain you. They know how to make a traditional game, and they know how to make an open world, but their attempts to fit the two together amount to mashing a square peg into a round hole until it splinters.

I’m interested in whether there’s a way to take the most successful of these systems and make them work with the world, and each other. To fit with the fiction rather than jar with it, and to draw attention to the world rather than distract from it.

So ignoring how much we like them as games for a moment, what do some of the better open worlds fill their lands with, and how well does it work?

Assassin’s Creed 2:

• Series of story missions that lead you through each new city
• Scattered mini-missions that conform to one of a few templates (contracts, courier, etc)
• Informal missions like chasing any thieves you see
• Isolated unique puzzle/platform levels
• Collectibles, some of which assemble to shed light on the plot

The broad variety means there’s always something you feel like doing, and most of it is integrated into the fiction – albeit by clumsily grafting two different fictions together. The informal missions feel like fun because no-one tells you to do them, and failing is no big deal. The puzzle/platform levels are usually welcome because you know what you’re getting into when you take one on.

World of Warcraft:

• Miscellaneous quests
• Large scale co-op dungeons
• Resource nodes
• PvP arenas

It’s nice that there’s stuff to do wherever you go, but the lack of a main quest and presence of other players doing the same ones makes it hard to feel like what you’re doing matters.

Fallout 3:

• Series of story quests
• Character-driven sidequests without obvious rewards
• Occasional unique locations, people and loot (Oasis, Dogmeat, Alien Blaster)

The density of hand-scripted missions to find is enough that exploring is always appealing, and the unique stuff is rare enough to feel special, but common enough that everyone finds some of it. The main story has its moments, but your motivation for it is disastrously weak.

Far Cry 2:

• Two main story mission threads that sometimes merge
• Optional extra objectives to those missions with little reward
• Template mini-missions: convoys, assassinations
• A set of FedEx missions you have to keep doing to stay alive
• Trickily placed collectibles with a material reward

The main missions feel annoyingly disconnected from your objective, and the choice between them is illusory. The template missions are excellent because the templates themselves are compelling, but they never feel like more than that. The thoughtful placement of collectibles makes them much more fun to hunt, even if you don’t need the money.

Prototype:

• Series of story missions that change the city from peaceful to wartorn
• Fairground-style challenges
• Collectibles and destroyables that grant XP

The story missions are mostly bad, and the challenges are ridiculously divorced from the fiction. The changing city would be cool if you could make any of it yours, but instead the only influence you have is deciding which of two factions that hate you control certain bits.

Red Faction Guerilla:

• Series of story missions that conquer each area, making it safe and unlocking new one
• Template mini-missions: hostage rescues, defenses
• Fairground style challenges

The mini-missions do a good job of providing a choice of fun stuff to do without breaking fiction. The fact that the story moves on from each area, though, makes it feel less like a world and more like levels.

Just Cause:

• Series of story missions
• Scattered identical mini-missions to take over settlements
• Template mini-missions
• Collectibles

Since the mini-missions keep you in a small area and are very similar to play, they don’t offer much of a break. Neither do they or the collectibles carry an appealing reward.

It seems like the things that work best, or are most needed, are:

• Informal missions – opportunities you spot rather than jobs you’re ordered to do
• Collectibles that improve you, in places it’s fun to visit
• Categorised missions, so you can choose what kind of job you want to take on next
• Scraps of story scattered about to make your adventure feel meaningful
• Unique things you can find, take and use
• The ability to change or add to some part of the world
• Variety – at every stage you should have more than two meaningfully different options for fun things to do next

Any additions? Anything you really like in open world games in general, or a specific one? The next post will be figuring out how to cram all the good stuff into one specific open world.

One Problem With Open Game Development

In general I really like open game development – talking and writing publicly about what I’m working on – but I do have one problem. The time when I want to share what I’ve been making is when, after an exhausting amount of work, I’ve finally created something I’m happy with. But sharing it invites critique: anyone who sees a way it could be better will generally tell you about it. Continued

One Desperate Battle In FTL

The podcast I am party to, the Crate and Crowbar, now has a forum. On it, Gunpoint artist John Roberts has started a thread for tales of people’s in-game adventures, starting with a good one of his own about FTL. And someone else mentioned an old story of mine from that game. I don’t think I ever linked it here, so I will now: