OK, well it is working, the problems (bad ball bouncing, no key to escape playing and so forth) are due to the naffness of the game, rather than applet problems. Woot, that as easy. However, if you could post any problems with this below that would be most appreciated (as I have no idea how well it works on other browsers/machines etc).

UPDATE: I have now moved this onto the page marked ‘Games’ – top right hand corner of the blog – where it should not spill over the rest of the blog page.

Blizzard of fraud and abuse department “

I have been playing King Arthur the Role-playing War-game  on and off now for many months – it is an extremely long and time consuming game. Rather depressingly I have just hit a bug: one of the quests that needs to be completed to progress through the game is broken: some armies do not spawn that you need to kill, which means you cannot kill them. The specific quest is ironically called ‘The Never-ending Feast’  - ironic because it never ends. The game still continues: random quests spawn and crusader armies appear in Britain which you can beat up, but essentially the game will not progress.

The latest patch at time of writing (1.04) mentions this quest and says a bug has been fixed with it -but apparently not the this bug as I have the patch. Because I did not notice that the game had gone wrong, I do not have saves from before the quests triggered, so I cannot go back and see if the armies I need to kill will trigger if I try again.

I am guessing that I have played about forty hours so far (at a guess, it been spread over months). So say I am depressed is an understatement. Well, I was depressed, until I noticed that the company who made the game (Neocore) had released a load of downloadable content for the game just recently – at which point I just got angry. I would rather they had fixed the bug  -which I note has been reported for some time judging by the many forum posts from people in the same position as I am.

The experience is rather like buying the DVD of a film and finding the last twenty minutes are corrupted, being offered no solution, but simultaneously being offered a collector’s edition with extra features on it -which still has the end corrupted. It is just not acceptable. It is plain from the way the game progresses that a lot of late plot had a lot less attention lavished on it than the early plot –the material becomes a lot thinner later on and changes from making many small choices that add up to being significant to making one or two big choices (which, of course, is much easier to implement). Plainly, as well as less creative attention being paid to this later material, it had a lot less play testing also.

I will write something about the game in broader terms at a later date, as a lot of things about it are interesting. If you still fancy playing it, you can get it at gamersgate (my personal favourite digital game distributor). However, save often and keep permanent backup saves in case you need to go back.

Personally, though, I am giving up: I would need to start again and I just cannot bring myself to.

Anyway, one of the things they looked at  was a biscuit tin from Huntley and Palmer, made in the 1970’s in which the designer, who had just been sacked, concealed some dodgy images.

Apparently there was also a jam tin with the word ’shit’ hidden on the  lid. I wondered when this tradition of designers screwing with their employers started? Was it with Da Vinci’s Last Supper which, badly thought out conspiracy theories aside, clearly shows Jesus sitting next to a woman? It seems plain to me the tendency for games designers to hide things their publishers might not want people to see is not a new phenomenon. Has there been any game studies material written on this? If so, it has passed me by.

There is a plain lesson for the industry here though: do not piss off the gal/guy who is doing the front line work unless you remove them completely at the same time.

There is a reasonably good politcal quiz at http://www.politicalcompass.org/ which notionally tells you how ‘left’ or ‘right’ wing you are and how ‘libertarian’ or ‘authoratarian’. My Tory boy mate Steve Tierney turned me on to it. I thought it might interest some of you.

Sadly, there is no value which brands you as the ‘worst kind of liberal’, which I got called on Steve’s blog(for suggesting something as outrageous as secondary school teachers needing degrees).There should be a special box, just for me.

Anyway, click the link if you think you might find it interesting – my results are below. I’d be interested to hear what anyone else gets, or what they think of the quiz/poll in general.

The Political Compass

Economic Left/Right: -7.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.67

I decided to pick some of these, add punctuation and publish them here. Is it art? Is it not really dada because I picked some and added punctuation and a title? Is it only art because I picked some and added punctuation and a title? Is it a total waste of everybody’s time? Have I finally gone stark, staring mad? Does it just prove how much twaddle is written about art?

I do not know the answer to any of these questions, but I do find the following selection better than most of the so-called poetry one finds in the Radio Times.

Oh, I changed a few words here and there and otherwise fiddled a little now and then. I am hoping for some more off people(as well as some shouts of derision).

Hands off my buns! or Piroshky Deleted.

And gratifying
laughs with majesty umbrella impresario of elusive
miserly customer defined by piroshky

Once upon a midnight dreary

Goes to sleep, load bearing. Living with:
laughs out loud; rejoices hairy; because
rapacious chain saw

Perky Grunge

Shadows but garbage can
Sprightly nation, living with boy.
Unsightly behind!

Unsightly behind!

The mad servants of sweet Miss Clock

Lunatic hibernates about
but toward toothaches
Clock’s dissidents halfhearted
for bonbons behind

Tuskan Raiders

behind but
because burglar living with
mastodon

Cloud Computing

overwhelmingly behind girl
and and completely and
from recliner overwhelmingly cloud formation

The drive-in dentist

gypsies movie theater toothaches
related to toward accidentally lunatics
toward briar patch rejoices procrastinates

…And finally…

defined by so-called almost
because paper napkin
single-handledly

It has been a long, long day: please forgive and indulge meJ

Last night I went out(shock) and Steve and I visited the aquarium (which was pretty good) and generally bimbled around  -thus the bloggage this morning.

Yesterday featured a visit to a writer’s round table for ‘hints and tips’ on game writing. I received such pearls of wisdom as ‘use the whole environment to tell your story’ and ‘ when people write dialogue they write less than when they write text’, as well as numerous less valid comments. All well and good and comments totally suitable for any first year writing class – for professionals sharing wisdom, not so much. These people seemed mostly to be working as writers on actual game titles and were putting out Freshman comments like they were profound insights.

Ian Bogost hosted a round up of academic papers from the year that he thought had industry benefit – lots of Brit stuff here, hurrah! Included were Alison Gazzard’s paper on warps, Dan Pinchbecks one on FPS characters and Mike Molesworth achievements one. I might try and reference these properly when I get back to the UK – but probably not, as you can google them.

All week I had been looking at this session called ‘The Metaphysics of Game design’ by some called Pheadrus. I was rather naively hoping that it actually was about the metaphysics of game design, but there was  fat chance of that.  When I went to the room, I found a massive que – it was rumoured it was Will Wright under a cover name because he had been unsure if he could attend.

And it was. Apparently, he has left EA to do his own thing and he spoke for an hour or so, flitting around rapidly between topics with style and charisma. He flitted around so rapidly in fact that it was hard to spot that he had not actually explored anything in any depth, nor said anything that was not pretty obvious. He did, however, say it with a great deal of panache. And, possibly, some of those ‘obvious’ things needed saying to that audience – notably the point that technology is difficult to predict, that  a power curve and  an s curves look the same to start with and social gaming is probably the latter not the former.

If I had some more time before taking off I would find some curve diagrams, but the essential point is this: just because social gaming is booming now it does not mean it will continue booming forever and become the dominant force in games. Pretty obvious, eh? Of course, a lot of people at GDC are very excited about social gaming, wanting to cash in on the next big thing – but it is not the next big thing, but the last big thing. Not that there is not a pile of money to be made there, just not a Zynga pile. Still probably enough to wallow in though.

Out of time: I need to finish packing and then off to a retro boardgame shop with Steve and Ian for some retro pleasure.

First off, my Blizzard quest (to find Esther a plush Griffon) has failed hopelessly. Finding the Blizzard stand at the careers expo I was confronted with this:

No big yellow question mark there I am afraid. I also really do not know what was going on there ? People standing in line to give in their CVs? Weird. None of the other people hiring had such a set up, but then I guess Blizzard is a bit of a big draw.

And yes, the hotel internet has become magically faster, so expect gratuitous pictures.

Sadly, there has been a real shortage of freebies of any kind, apart from fifty pounds of advertising material in the bag they gave us all. Perhaps I have been to the wrong places. Oh, Steve got some guitar picks he was very excited about (he plays in a band. Steve Jackson. How cool is that).

So, it’s only just after lunch but I did masses today and have come back to the hotel to process it all and write a bit  -both this AND some actual full on PHD, which I have been inspired in regard to.

I am also a bit overwhelmed by capitalism right now – I have never had any objection to anyone making a pile of money, or indeed of making a pile of money myself, but the conference has a constant subliminal version of Abba’s Money, Money, Money running as its soundtrack (or perhaps Money makes the world go round, from Cabaret, but that might be a bit too ironic for GDC) which is making my head hurt. It makes me want to wear a red beret, or sing ‘keep the red flag flying here’ off key, or perhaps both of those things whilst holding  a pineapple in one hand, a lobster in sunglasses in the other and standing on a table whilst shouting ‘Art for Breakfast!” and wearing only my underpants. Underpants which, of course, should have pictures of Goebbels on them.

The final straw was when I was finding a table for some European Academics I had homed in on so we could drink coffee and eat lunch and the guy who had just vacated said table explained to me, in some detail, how he had been overcharged by British prostitutes whilst in London. He leaned in with that conspiratorial all-guys-together-away-from-home-on-a-business-bonding-trip sort of a way. I was rendered speechless, and that does not often happen. Not gaming. Not gamers. Piss off out of my life/hobby capitalism guy.

This morning, however, had a treat I was really looking forward to: Sid Meier’s keynote. I was not disappointed: he was excellent, a brilliant speaker with a lot to say who addressed all sorts of games design issues head on. As you can hopefully see from the perhaps a little blurry picture, it was just a quiet little get together, Sid and I chatting away over old times virtually one on one. It was odd at the end though: there was a mass exodus before he started taking questions, whilst in Peter Molyneux’s talk everyone stayed rooted to their seats until the last possible moment. I can honestly not say why: both are excellent speakers.

There was another interesting contrast between the two, which is a direct design issue. Sid (as I shall cheekily call him, as if we are old mates) talked about moral dilemma. His specific example went something like: when Genghis Khan has been thoroughly beaten in Civ, he still comes on to the player as if he is the great I Am, giving it attitude. Players had suggested they might want Genghis, on the verge of defeat to speak somewhat differently: rather than ‘I will crush you, weakling’ saying ‘please don’t hurt me, my last city is full of women and children *sob*’. Sid stated he still wanted Genghis to be confrontational, because in that way the player would not feel bad about beating him, but good about themselves.

Peter (as I shall also cheekily call him, but at least I have met Peter) when speaking yesterday of Fable III was celebrating moral choices, and pretty ambivalent ones at that. For instance, he suggested as King in Fable III(half the game is about becoming king, half of it about being King, apparently), you might choose to demolish a load of polluting factories that used child labour – but that if you did lots of people may starve as a result(apparently they are food factories – I am not sure how that works).

This is a pretty fundamental difference in design philosophy  -even if we take into account that they are talking about very different sorts of games. I have some thoughts on this, which is part of what I was writing up for the PHD this afternoon, but I thought it a point worth highlighting here without any real editorial comment from me.

Sid talked about many things – I have access to his talk and will make it required viewing for students, I think, as there was so much to think about – one of which was the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. Players can destroy games at any time(if only by turning them off), designer’s likewise (by making them bad games) and it is a designer’s responsibility to engineer out as much capacity for player self destructiveness as possible. This is something I have written about a fair bit (again, forthcoming with PHD), though not in those terms – I am sure Sid will sleep easier at night knowing my theory supports him.

Anyway, there follows a wholly arbitrary picture of a tram. These are turned round  -by hand on a sort of big wheel – outside the front door of my hotel.

I forgot to mention that last night I went to eat with the Paradox guys at a grill where Dashiel Hammet wrote and which is actually mentioned in the Maltese Falcon. There was a little sort of shrine to him in the lobby. Good steak, too.

First thing I caught the end of Peter Molyneux’s talk about creativity, which was of course mostly about Fable III, which he had some impressive demos of. I missed most of the presentation, as Steve was attending it and I was covering another one, which I singularly failed to find. One interesting thing he mentioned was the use of a player’s Xbox gamer score to determine the random seed for what their game weapon would look like.

The questions posed him were also very interesting, most of them being very Fanboy indeed: “will XXX be in Fable III”. One question and answer stick in my mind: a young woman asking about the appearance of female character. Apparently, in Fable II (I go by hearsay only as I did not play it that long) everyone bought some ranks in strength, which made them muscular. This player did not like that, it seems. Peter told her that in Fable III by avoiding using a mêlée weapon you would not increase your strength, so to remain ‘lithe and feminine’ you should use a gun or magic. I am sure there are female academics (or just women) who might have something to say about that, far better than I ever could.

The best thing about watching Peter present though is his sheer enthusiasm, joy and skill. He has to be better at that sort of stuff than anyone I have ever seen, certainly in the games industry and probably anywhere – including very senior politicians. I would suggest that anyone who wishes to hone their presentation skills watches videos of Peter Molyneux – or makes sure they come to his lecture at Brunel(if you are at Brunel, though anyone who wanted to come we could probably accommodate) and pay a lot of attention to both the style and substance.

There are about ten different things going on at once, and it seems at any one time 1/3^rd of them are about social gaming. I may well be exaggerating – but it is clearly a big thing and people have noticed the huge amount of money it is making (they would have had to be blind not to).

I hit the expo floor after Peter’s talk, which is now open, and started to take it all in. There really is rather a lot going on there. A lot of it is tools for developers, so I have only a causal interest. Equally a lot of universities -US ones only that I have seen – have stands. In a later discussion with the charming Chris Stewart of Kerebos, he indicated that a lot of US students come to GDC to get into the industry, and I guess some are coming to look for universities too  – the Uni stands do not seem pitched at increasing Industry contact, but more at student recruitment. There is a whole careers expo too. I will investigate a bit more.

Striking is some of the controller free stuff: videos of people sitting on their sofas pressing a fist into their palm to buzz in quiz games, or playing skating games by, er, skating on the carpet and so forth – I am going to check this out a lot more tomorrow.

Jetlag then totally hit me and I spent the afternoon back in my room sleeping. I went to the Paradox hang out again after that, and they were as lovely to me as ever – especially given they had serious PR purpose in being there and I was of no practical use to them at all. They are very keen to work with academics, though, so perhaps anyone in Sweden might want to put some sort of proposal to them.

I was lured into playing the wild west 3ps Lead and Gold they were demoing, and was struck by the battlefield design -very clever, many nooks, different routes and interesting features that enhanced the gameplay. Such design is nothing we have ever directly taught, and probably should, if time can be found. What we really need are ten year MAs and 20 year BAs. That way I would have students for their WHOLE LIFE and they would NEVER ESCAPE ME. Bwa ha ha.

It is now early evening and they are off to make appearances at three hundred parties. Me, I am going to sleep and read my book (perhaps at the same time) once I have finished this.

The first night I was here I found a copy of 1633 -a book I have failed to find in England  -the sequel(shock) to 1632. Its about a blue collar American mining town that gets thrown back in time to the middle of Germany in the 30 years war. The first book, by Eric Flint, is awesome and the second  -by Weber  -is shaping up rather well. There are about ten more after that, most of which are either pretty average or sucky.

I have not found the Blizzard stall: I keep looking for an arrow on my minimap.

The Paradox people are great and have treated my essentially pointless ass with incredibly courtesy.  They have rented a flat near GDC where they are plying people with free drinks and nibbles(the Paradox special cocktail is rather tasty, the barman skilled and charming) and demoing some games – a team 3ps set in the wild west called Lead and Gold and a co-op action rpgeseque thing called Magika by Arrowhead studios. Magika has a great ‘build your own spell’ system which rather cleverly and innovatively uses the old idea of combining different spell components (fire, air, earth etc) to make an interesting effect. I ended up having dinner with a mixture of Paradox guys and Arrowhead guys(who Paradox publish). Arrowhead are here.

Snippets from day two:

Panels which consisted of several people essentially presenting their CV to the audience and then, though it seemed they might go on to say something profound or interesting, not doing so.

A member of the audience asking a panel whether games should be taught as literature – for their own sake. I wanted to bang my head against something hard -because they are studied in this way, all the time, by many people. However, the panel (mostly academics) seemed to be unaware of this fact and the only person on that panel who mounted a strong defence of academia was from Firaxis (though he also taught -seems Firaxis has a close relationship with its local HE).

An old ‘game’ called Oracle I really should have heard of, but had not, where you ‘ask the oracle a question’ and it emails that question  -without telling you and anonymously  -to someone else playing Oracle, who then answers it for you. I really should have known about this one  -it is very old.

A whole load of presentations of ‘cutting edge’ ideas that were done five, ten or twenty years ago. Of course, that made me feel like some old fogie with a thousand yard stare muttering ‘you don’t know what it was like, man, you don’t know what is was like.’

The expo floor opens today. Blizzard are hiring, apparently: I do not know if you need to provide your own candle.