Free to play MMORPGs: make em / break em – the last and final word

Hombre de Magma (AD&D Planescape) (Photo credit: Fiskal)

Apologies, for I have been away. In my defense – I’ve been away on research! In short, I’ve been playing MMORPGs like there’s no tomorrow. If the Mayans are right, at least I can die at level 30.

My last and final point is culminated across a vast number of games – but chiefly from Allods Online. Allods, at one time, had the potential to halt WoW in it’s tracks (who knows? a +10 luck roll, perhaps). An $12-million dollar budget; superb but easily understandable gameplay;

The soundtrack of Allods Online was created by Vladislav Isaev,  (Mark Morgan, the composer for the first two parts of the Fallout series and Planescape: Torment), Michael «Lind Erebros» Kostyleva, and recorded by the Central Symphony Orchestra of Russia’s Defense Ministry and the Bolshoi Choir.

That’s enough namepower to topple a small army of games.
We all know this sad story. The patches came, “fixing” what wasn’t broken, removing features that players loved, adding stuff that wasn’t worth a damn.
Players protested, and were ignored. More patches. The item shop screwed the game into the bargain, giving the richest players the sharpest edge.
Players left.
And viola: wasteland. A totally awesome game gone to ruin.

The final lesson? Damn simple. LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE. Listen to your players. If one man calls you a horse, you call him an idiot. If two men call you a horse, you hit them on the mouth. If three men call you a horse – maybe it’s time to go shopping for a saddle.

Never ignore the players, because these are the people who’ll be playing your game. Often most of them have been in MMORPGs before. They’re playing your game because they want something better. They know what works and what doesn’t – sometimes far better than you.

The developer perspective is never that of the player: never forget that. Players don’t know, or care how many hour you spent on that awesome pet summon: what they do know is that it imbalances the whole of your PvP. Pay attention. If they scream, fix it. Fast. If isn’t enough to make a good game and launch it: an MMORPG is a non-stop process of constant iteration and upgrades.

WoW lives because Blizzard listens to its playerbase; they didn’t piss players off until the Cataclysm upgrade, and even that was a minor issue about rare items. Everything else was seamless and added a ton of new things to do, all of it tuned to player expectations. Learn from Blizzard: listen to your players.

And that’s all, folks.

Good night.

F2P MMORPGs – how to make em – Part 2: starring Runes of Magic

Here I continue my voyage from the other day. Where were we? Taking design tips from the F2P MMORPG Fiesta Online., which is an example of a (relatively) dated game that does a superb job of bringing players together, despite the game’s outdated gameplay. Now let’s look at another: Runes of Magic.

Runes of Magic is repeatedly placed on top 5 lists of MMORPGs. Gamers have called  it  a WoW clone; critics have claimed that it’s gameplay is a few steps ahead of WoW (check out Runes of Magic’s reception on Wikipedia if you don’t believe me). It’s been hated on, fiercely defended, thoroughly marketed, and today it is one of the best (if not THE best) MMORPG on the free-to-play scene. 

Online gaming website Massively‘s Shawn Schuster highlighted the range of crafting abilities in the game, as well as the ability to gain proficiency in them all without penalties. “Runes of Magic has these features we see in a triple-A MMO, yet it’s a free-to-play RMT-based game.”

That speaks loads about the game. Here is something that goes toe-to-toe with the biggest and the best and comes off grinning, with a playerbase of around 5 million players, no less. RoM is proof that F2P MMORPGs can be as good as AAA titles and still work.

#recipeforsuccess?

#download

Alright, let’s take a look at what RoM offers.

                          EXPLOIT OPPORTUNITIES

No mistake: RoM raised the bar for F2P games by several notches. Not in graphics (points to Aion), but by cleverly mixing familiar gameplay with new, deeper stuff – and giving it away for free.
Consider the world. World of Warcraft has its 11.5 million paying players, but there’s millions more who don’t play WoW. Nevertheless, they’d love to get their hands on what WoW offers – except they don’t want to pay. They’re the free gamers. They burn through F2P MMORPGs and patrol the F2P publisher networks by the millions. The problem is – nothing as good as WoW is free.

Enter Runes of Magic.
On the outside, it seems pretty similar to World of Warcraft. It even looks similar. Better yet, it’s got an incredible array of quests and stuff. Hey! It’s like the free version of WoW! Let’s go download! After all, there aren’t any real alternatives other than Allods Online, with it’s dwindling player base and patches. Ugh. Runes of Magic it is, bro.
Install. Login. Play.

                                    AND THEN . . STACK ON THE GAMEPLAY

And then comes the kicker, because Runes of Magic layers gameplay like icing on that WoW-like cake. Dual class systems allow a total of around 30 class combinations. Surprisingly, you don’t get overpowered Mage/fighter combos everywhere – players actually need to use both classes carefully to survive. PvP systems that make you more potent the more kills you get – but also make you more likely to drop your items when killed. Skills. A halfway decent story that doesn’t get in the way of bashing mobs. Blah. Blah. More blah. Put together it all and you get an excellent game. The traditional Mage vs Fighter PvP complex is gone, because the dual-class system allows even glass cannons to wade into the melee.

This is incentive, pure enough. Players have the opportunity to play a game that’s actually comparable to WoW. For Free.
Once in, players realize that this game is deep enough to (virtually) die for.

The lesson: incentive. Give players incentive to come, incentive to stay, and do it via gameplay. Not graphics: the MMO world has proven that people will stick to any game as long as the gameplay is good. Having gorgeous dark elven chicks won’t help if you give players just the standard Kill 10 Rats quest. RoM settles for OK graphics and gets the job done.

Give them gameplay. Not free cash shop items, or useless events.  Integrate incentive at the core of your game. Give players good reason for playing. Give them quests; RoM launched way back with 600+ quests, which is a massive amount for an F2P gamelaunch.  It didn’t stop there: the journey continued with expansions in the form of chapters. There’s style, polish and even festivals. Incentive to keep playing.

RoM, like many games, takes a leaf out WoW’s book and give players skills, like crafting. It should be noted that WoW took them from EverQuest, and so on, but back to the point – take an existing mechanic, but don’t just copy it: make it better. RoM could have differentiated itself much, much more (perhaps with a different story) but it improved on the established mechanics well enough to make it a great game in it’s own right. As one reviewer put it at the end of his review: From my ‘brief’ experience with Runes of Magic, it was wrong of me to think of this game as just another World of Warcraft clone. 

CASH SHOPPING?

Another thing that surprised me about RoM is how well the cash shop works. RoM is not a Pay-to-Win MMORPG, like the majority of free games out there. RoM sells extras. Instead, the majority of the stuff in the cash shop are mounts (which are awesome, but not absolutely necessary) and stuff like exp-bonus potions.

RoM doesn’t offer as cosmetic a cash shop as Eden Eternal, though. Instead walks a fine balance of developer profit and player experience, often with a minimum effects to gameplay. In the case of those exp potions, if you don’t have money, you simply need to spend more time with the game – a fair trade. All the other stuff is cosmetic – for the most part.

Small benefits of the cash shop will show up around level 50 or so. By that time, you’re hooked. The good side is that these can still be ignored entirely; if you’re broke, like me, they don’t break the game. But by this time players have invested enough time, effort and are enjoying the game enough to justify these purchases. Developer win. Ultimately something has to pay for those servers.

Lesson: don’t make players HAVE to spend: make them WANT to spend.

Even then, it’s a damn good deal, and it’s still cheaper than subscribing.
Player win.

#nextgame

Free MMORPGs: how to make ‘em, how to break ‘em

Aion free to play closed beta key giveaway (Photo credit: audiovisualjunkie)

Single player campaigns are fun. At least until you finish the game and see the ending cutscene. Sure, there’s supermassive sandboxes like GTA, with their incredible action and storylines – not to mention superbly animated hookers -  but how many games have actually given us a fully social gameplay experience? A world with rivals, companions, and bystanders that you can have a full conversation with, complete with spelling mistakes, OMGs and WTFs? None. That particular sweet spot belongs to MMORPGs.

So, having little else to do, I decided to play an MMORPG.
Note:This is also not a hate review, but I mention games by name.

The first step: picking a game

Now I do NOT have a PayPal account or a credit card, or a solid income for that matter. No WoW. No Aion, no Rift. None of the big-league subscription MMORPGs. So where do I turn?  Free to Play. Now I won’t argue about the F2P model, because from my point of view it’s become a vital part of the MMORPG scene – and it’s what enables me to play. Gift horse, looky, mouth. The Freer, the Better.

OK . . . so it’s Google and MMOhuts.
Now here the problem begins. There are HUNDREDS of F2P MMORPGs. Honestly, these things must be breeding. This Online. That Online. The names themselves turn me off 90% of the time.
Straightaway there’s a “top five” that comes up after repeated Googling: Runes of Magic, a WoW-like F2P MMORPG with a few innovations on the gameplay; Lord Of the Rings Online; a few more, which I’m going to spare you. Now I’m on the verge of clicking the download button on Runes of Magic – except – ugh, the setup is 6 GB. No way: I’m on a package and 6 GB is my monthly limit.
#lookforsomethingsmaller . . .

In any MMORPG, it’s not enough to read the reviews; no matter how good the gameplay is, the game’s a wasteland without players. I found this out when I stumbled onto Fiesta Online, a cheery MMORPG that RouterHead gave me. In the first few minutes of playing, I was hooked. Not impressed – the quests and the questgivers are crap – but I was hooked by the sheer numbers of players strolling, talking, dancing, whatnot. The cute graphics got to me. I started playing. My first few monster kills were fun.

A week later: my views were turned. The game was fun, but it has turned out to be a horribly cheery grindfest with next to no class balancing. I played a Cleric. Ugh. Clerics are horribly weak, just healers; soloing is damn near cruel, what with all the grinding; class changes are linear until you get to LV 100;  and in the end Fighters and Mages rule the day thanks to spammable HP and SP potions (pots and stones).

To be competitive in the world of Fiesta, you HAVE to buy stuff from the Cash Shop – even your appearance flat-out sucks if you can’t purchase a halfway decent hairstyle. Repetive gameplay. No skill trees to speak of. Theoretically character building is open – but you get one measly stat point per level, and unless you put it in one of the optimal “builds” for your class, you can guarantee you’ll end up with a weak and screwed-up character after all that mindless grind.

Still, the game has a massive playerbase, which is frankly incredibly dedicated. The guilds are fantastic – I loved having conversations with people all over the world, virtually and in real life. And the Kingdom Quests, which are like scheduled dungeons, are sweet. The community is practically rabid in devotion. I even got a proposal. Even with all that, the game wore me down. Halfway into the 2nd month, playing became a chore. It’s awesome if you have the money for constant premium item and cosmetic purchases – horrible grinding if you don’t. I was at level 32 by the time I seriously realized this.

Back to the game. Even with all this grind, there are thousands of players that endure, and on any given day there are plenty of new players walking around. Why? One reason: the game is damn easy to get into. Simple to the point of loveableness – it’s like MMORPG 101. No depth to speak of, but in the shallows we learn to swim.

#uninstall

So: what have I learned?

                         THE GRIND VS THE GAMEPLAY

Free to Play is never really Free to Play: the objective is to get the player to spend a bit, after getting him/her committed to the game. Fiesta does this by very effectively hiding the gap between Free and Premium users until you’re sunk in – and by the time you realize it, you’ve been grinding too long to delete that character and uninstall the game.

One way to hook a player is by this grind system; however, even better would be to provide gameplay as an incentive. The more you play, the more “game” you get. However, substituting grind for gameplay is not the answer (as is done here); equally, I feel some grind is necessary for a player to get attached to his/her virtual deeds.

Equal quantities of both grind / questing and gameplay is what you need – the player has to have an investment(time) as well as incentive(gameplay). Many F2P MMORPGs, Korean ones in particular, never hit peak because they substitute grind for gameplay; likewise, one reason for quite a few Western failures is the substitution of gameplay for grind.

                                 SIMPLE …… AND STUPID?

Fiesta is ridiculously easy to get into, and that’s applaudable. While the skill / class systems have almost zero depth, the simplicity draws players in by the droves.

But as I said, you need content, and content does not mean paying for better items. A good MMORPG, F2P or no, should reward players with more game for advancing – whether they pay or no. MMORPGs need the players. A player-less MMORPG is a fail.

The game need not be stuff like skill combos: how about collectible equipment, and several choices of armor sets for a given range? In the very least, equipment that increase certain attribute points – like in Dragon Age – so players genuinely have a whole variety of builds instead of just 2:1 STR:END? That gives the free players something to do.

At the same time, the developer has to make money. Fiesta forces users to buy elite weapons and equipment. Instead, why not let players pay to play certain races? Make them pay for premium questlines, with chances for rare items drops, rare monsters, and more exp. Make them pay to access premium parts of the world. Throw the equipment at them. Make them pay for more stuff to do.

                                           BUILD A COMMUNITY

You may have the best gameplay in the world. Bully for you if you haven’t a community to match. Bully twice if what little gameplay you have doesn’t supplement your community.

Here’s an example where Fiesta shines: the community. It draws you in. It makes you forget the grind. It’s like walking on glass. You do quests just so you can hang out with the level 50ers. Joining guilds, talking shop, discussing problems, helping each other out – yelling at the Cleric who doesn’t revive you – that’s the game.

What’s great here is that Fiesta actively brings players together. Early on, the players are pushed into “Kingdom Quests” – daily, mass PvE raids where players get together to basically slay through a linear area with tough bosses and massive numbers of unique mobs.

This is probably the most fun part of the entire game. A Kingdom Quest is a rush, and depends entirely on the players working together. Level restrictions ensure that no player can take on the KQ alone. At the same time, there are weak players and there are strong players. It’s an insane timed rush that keeps you on your toes and demands a lot of player coordination, which these players have to pick up on the fly – most of your fellow players are total strangers.

When the KQ ends, you’re invariably left with a few more friends, a grievance against that stupid mage who pulled all those mobs on your head, and alternating feelings of awesomeness and “OMG, I almost died”. You’ve teamed up with total strangers and – since you’re often successful – left with a goodish amount of XP, gold and good feelings. Probably guild invites. You’ve also got to know a lot more players who are around your level, and can share your grinding problems. Some of my best online friends were people I met early on in KQs; we worked well together, and we started hanging out. Screw forums.

Thanks to this sense of community, boosted on a daily basis, Fiesta has a mass following of dedicated players. It’s not a difficult trick to pull off – throw a bunch of players, daily, into a mass PvE battle situation -  but hell: pull it off, and viola: success.

Alright, so next game . . . . next lesson!                                              
[ To be continued ]

#: Knockback

Dragon Age: Origins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the past few months I’ve been almost entirely offline. Studies. From a gaming standpoint, it was a good break. I got some time to kick back and shoot the lights out of a few enemies.
For starters —> RPGS. My love affair with RPGs began somewhere with Pokemon Red. I got hold of a Dragon Age: Origins and began playing. Sadly, Awakening is terrible, and Bioware has yet to learn how to pull off a good ending (I finished Mass Effect 3 too, by the way), but the game was a masterpiece in it’s own right. The DLC, like all of Bioware’s mismanaged efforts to make more money, were an utter fail.

 
From there onto Witcher, which is just as fantastic. Grimmer and sexier to boot. Today I had my first real play of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I reckon that’s a pretty good game, even if the controls are a mite too responsive. I picked up Skyrim – didn’t like it. The first 20 minutes were horrible. Maybe that makes me a heretic. Anyway, that goes out the window.

In the background, my ever-faithful companion (Minecraft) has been sporadically active.

During this time I’ve had some time to test an old theory – that game players make poor game developers. Not my own theory, but I diverge. It’s slightly true – weaned on a diet of DA:O and Minecraft, I lost all taste for building new games, and instead plunged into playing better creations than my own.

But now, when I take a step back and refocus, all that experience has left me with an even better understanding of what makes a game fun —> practical experience I can actually put to use. So, game developers: forget the books. Log off Gamasutra or whatever newssite you’re hooked onto and go play a few games. That’ll get the fire running in your blood.

Related articles

• Mass Effect moaners kinda get their own way as people power strikes again (engadget.com)
• Dragon Age II (gamespot.com)

The Bulldozer: AMD vs SL

Image via Wikipedia

It’s extremely depressing to hear about AMD‘s new Bulldozer CPU. For one, I’m running an aged Pentium4, and AMD systems are virtually non-existent here in Sri Lanka.  Actually, very few computer users here are actually aware of AMD – saying “I have an AMD Opteron” would immediately be met with a blank stare and “uh…is that a Pentium?”

But this is a country that measures VGA power in GB – people say “I have a 1 GB VGA, why can’t I play Crysis on full?” Ask them what their VGA is and the ysay “uh…Nvidia.” Nvidia what? “Uh….Nvidia Radeon”.
Such is the nature of life here.

I ramble. My apologies. The real tragedy is the Bulldozer. On paper, the Bulldozer is epic. It’s a radical step forward by AMD, and the recent Guinness record for overclocking [8.4 Ghz] is held by an 8-core Bulldozer CPU.

The sad fact is that it will be a long, LONG time before Bulldozer gets within a stone’s throw of Core’s popularity, and the recent benchmarks hurt Bulldozer a LOT. The casual user will look at the Bulldozer benchmark and see that it performs sadly below standard when compared with a Core i7. Few people see beyond the dotted line, which is that Windows 7 cannot take advantage of the Bulldozer CPU. Apparently we’re to wait for Windows 8.

Meanwhile everybody knows Intel is working on Ivy Bridge, their successor the Sandy Bridge CPUs. Who’s betting that Windows 8 will also be optimized for Ivy? Thus, AMD loses the edge [again] to Intel. Microsoft is partners with AMD, so there’s no telling whether we’ll start seeing better AMD support on Windows; but MS is unlikely to irk the biggest CPU manufacturer of the planet – Intel – over AMD. It’s called business.

AMD is pushing Bulldozer all the way; they’ve publicly admitted plans for third and fourth generations of the CPU.  A pity, since we’ll probably never see it here. AMD knows how to innovate, but Intel knows how to market their products.

How do they rise up / CRUNCHER

January, the 27th: 2012. The Global Game Jam kicks off today.

I’m writing this post in a state of black depression. January 27th, and no word whatsoever from Cruncher 2012, Sri Lanka‘s largest  game development “fiasco”. The winners were announced in September. Last year. And no word: no prizes, no prize money, no certificates, nothing. The so-called “Institute of Engineers, Sri Lanka” is silent. Nobody answers their phones.

4250, as a team, has also failed. For the record: henceforth, 4250 is me and me alone. My experiments with Down Under have taken me along some interesting directions; strangely enough, it’s being slowly gobbled up by a side project, which I’ll reveal later.

I once worked on a Godfather-style story for a game called Omerta. While the game didn’t get off the ground due to art issues, it brought me into contact with a thoroughly impressive engine by Chronotek called the TDS engine. Basically, it’s an advanced top-down-shooter engine that uses Game Maker and can be handled by anyone from a novice to an advanced user.

The side project was initially a small shooter with this engine. Due to my artistic limitations [I'll admit - I can draw landcapes in pencil, but I fail spectacularly at important things like player characters], I knocked up a sort of 8-bit arena shooter. This, for better or the worse, is what is merging with Down Under. The 8-bit graphics have gone, but I’ve kept the blocky effect and added a bit of shading here and there. I want to work on something colorful, something loveable, something I can have fun testing. At the same time I’m intent on preserving the fast, scripted shooter action I envisioned for Down Under.

Wow. How far an idea will take us, eh? I’ve always been a bit like this – drawing a cloud and ending up with a Pokemon, for instance. The Maze started out as a zombie arena shooter. But this was a more conscious and sudden choice than the evolution of the Maze: for once, I want to work on something light and cheerful. The world’s ugly enough as it is.

The best of both in level design?

This is something I thought up while tossing around a few plans for Down Under, the Abuse-like platform shooter I mentioned. I’m forcibly keeping myself off game development until A/Ls, but that doesn’t mean I can’t dream.

Procedural generation is not a new thing.  It’s been around almost since the first video games, when systems didn’t have enough storage space to hold that many levels. And I’m frankly obsessed with it, even though I know very little about the complex world of terrain generation algorithms.

So I was in class, sketching out a long-winded terrain generation alg. for sidescrollers [read: Down Under], thinking about how this one would play out. I had been thinking of using triggers and scripted events to maintain “a stream of mercenaries” jumping on the player, guns blazing – and I quickly realized that if I implemented this new process, out went almost all the control I was expecting over the player. It wouldn’t be a speedrun campaign anymore.
So my next question is, why not both? Consider a game where the main level, say a path from A to B, is one created personally by the level designer. Now this path, this level, has many offshoots, which are other levels spawned by a terrain generator.

And these levels, of course, are much higher-risk, higher-reward than  A-B path; this would satisfy both speedrunners, explorers, not to mention introducing a voluntary and more natural difficulty system compared to the “Easy” “Hard” “Insane” selection. It’s logical – stick to the main level if you want to pay it safe; head out and explore if you want – but on your own head it is. Here there be dragons.

#SOPAjam: stand up for your rights

If you haven’t heard of SOPA, you’ve been living under a rock. Possibly one buried all the way in the earth’s crust. The SOPA bill is, frankly, a gross violation of practically everything we’ve taken for granted on the Internet. The majority of the Internet shares my view – that those daft enough to propose it should be whacked, preferrably with a length of lead pipe. There’s a whole lot of hullabaloo surrounding the bill, and as it turns out, the bill’s author is also involved in a copyright issue. Talk about irony: clea proof that crooks run the world, or at least think they do.

Enter the #SOPAjam, the newest venture in anti-SOPA measures. What’s it about? Simple. Create an anti-SOPA game, then upload it to anywhere on the internet. I’m tapping this out in the hope that you will respond. Why SHOULDN’T you? Game developers will be among those hardest hit by SOPA; if this thing gets passed, out goes posting trailers, literals, and a whole other set of stuff.

Developers, netizens, stand up for your rights. Get on Twitter, find the #SOPAjam tag, and started game making. You’ve got till Jan 18th. And in case we fail, get those missiles ready.

Related articles

• Going dark for SOPA (hyperorg.com)
• Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian On SOPA: ‘It’s Going To Break The Internet’ (businessinsider.com)
• Boing Boing added to list of sites that will go dark on January 18th to protest SOPA / PIPA (100gf.wordpress.com)
• Awesome YouTube Video Explains Why PIPA And SOPA Are Bad For The Internet Users; You Should Be Watching (essayboard.com)

The death of time; Minecraft’s domination; and more

Image via Wikipedia

Contrary to popular belief:
1) There are only 24 hours in a day
2) There is no known cure for Minecraft addition
3) There is no known cure for gamedev addiction, either

With IndieGraph running smoothly, I’ve established the one-article-per-day credo – very rough given my time schedule, but I wanted to get good content out there; done. We’ve goot indie reviews, developer interviews, and even an article on the
biggest Minecraft clones – enough for any site to be proud of. Tick that checkbox; time to slow down, and keep ‘em coming.
I recently started playing Minecraft [unlike everyone else, I prefer to wait for 1.0 before I commit myself], and it’s truly, incredibly amazing how addictive the game is. Especially once you get the Yogbox mods up and running [had some issues with the installer, so I patched the .jar manualy]. Yesterday, for example: having recently added a balcony to my fortress // mansion-in-the-mountain, I watched the sun set [it's beautiful, even in blocks] and knocked off a creeper who fell onto my balcony; it fell a long, long distance into  the pool below.
And then, the next day, I saw a cat, chasing a red fish. The cat fell into the water. I jumped in after it, but I couldn’t get it up: the thing was mewing pitifully inside – and it died.

Image via Wikipedia

Words cannot describe how sad I felt. I trudged about aimlessly, killed all the fish in the water in anger, and went over to watch the woodcutter before returning to my fortress. It’s amazing how Minecraft – this game with its block graphics,
no real Ai to speak of, and such – has managed to affect me on such a deep, deep level. The cat died in the water; I couldn’t help it, and I felt sad. And frustrated.

How many modern games, with HD graphics and all the next–gen technology, struggle to bring out these feeling in the heart of the player? Sadness. Fear. Longing. Yet here they are, brought out perfectly in a game initially coded by one man. I got stranded one Minecraft day, and climbed some trees to be safe from the [now more deadly] Mo’ creatures mobs that haunt the night. While on the tree, I saw the light of my house in the mountainside – and I felt longing; a need to return, to shut the door and walk around in safety. Similarly, at night I climb the mountain and look out at the moon and the lights of the Guild.
It’s beautiful.
There is no other word for it. The game is beautiful, and even more so because it is almost purely a design win. Minecraft isn’t addictive because of the graphics. Or the great, epic music tracks [what epic music tracks]? Or the Kinect[tm] support and the 16-person multiplayer or the downloadable content [something modern games flog to death]. It’s addictive because of it’s gameplay.

If there is one game that we can point to when we want to prove that gameplay > graphics, it’s Minecraft. In fact, Minecraft does this so well that similar games are automatically termed Minecraft clones – in a way, it’s established monopoly over the design, inspired by Infiniminer as it is. It’s the ultimate sandbox. A Minecraft remake with HD graphics, more mobs and human-esque Ai would still be called a Minecraft clone, and people would return to the original, with all it’s flaws and pixelated beauty.

Score one for Mojang and Notch.

Related articles

• GR Pick: Fan Creates Tiny 3D ‘Minecraft’ Village (gamerant.com)
• Mojang Admits Minecraft – Pocket Edition Plans May Have Been “A Huge Mistake” (escapistmagazine.com)
• Playing Minecraft at work? Connect Github’s Hubot to your server (minefold.com)
• Like Playing Minecraft? Here are 6 Fun Games Similar to Minecraft (vikitech.com)
• The best Minecraft tools (onsoftware.en.softonic.com)

Construct 2!

If I had to vote, I’d pick Construct as one of my all-time favorite freewares. I’m not going to get into the whole Game Maker-vs-Contruct-vs-Everything Else debate; each to his own. However, while I haven’t officially made a completed game in Construct, I HAVE poked around . . . .and what I saw was an incredibly powerful game creator that’s leagues ahead of all the other freeware.

* I admit, I collect 2D game makers. People collect stamps. I collect software.

Anyway.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Construct 2 on the spiffy website Scirra has got up and running. And they’re offering the new Construct free as well. Splendid job, folks! The free version has got a few limitations, such as only 4 layers [think RMXP], but overall it’s a splendid offer for a high-level HTML5 game creation package.  Have a look for yourself:

 

Now here it gets a bit titchy.  The free version is magic: hell, it’s free. The early adopter price is a promotion offer, but even at retail price that Standard offer is a steal, especially for the money-impaired [read: poor] folks like Yours Truly. The business edition is, however, NOT that great, considering Game Maker prices its own HTML 5 tool at $99. I’m not going to run up a lengthy comparison of both these softwares; I’ve used too little of both to be qualified.

Onwards. My exploration led me to the Construct forums, where  I naturally dug around for good games to put up on Indiegraph. Not much, I’m afraid: most of it’s tech demos. They’re very powerful tech demos, but it appears to me that few developers have sat down to finish a piece of work with Construct. I’m not passing judgement: every tool has a similar phase. As least Contruct, from the day of release, has been recognized as being pretty powerful – unlike Game Maker, who’s first incarnation was cast off as a “programmer’s toy”.
Bear in mind that Scirra has already released the DX-9 based Construct [Contruct Classic] as completely free, open-source product.  Given the power of the original Construct [which came out-of-the box with features like DX9 rendering and Xbox controller support], one can quite honestly expect Construct 2 to make some serious ripples in the game development world. For certain I’m going to have a good poke around. I recommend you do, too.

And now for that download button!