Things got a little silly with the Steam Trading Cards last night.
The thing is; Steam Trading Cards are de facto silly, right out of the (virtual) box.
For the uninitiated - lucky you - Steam is an online store that allows you to buy and download games directly to your computer. Thanks to Steam, I haven't actually bought a game physically for, I would say, at least four years.
This is fine and dandy; Steam provides a good service, keeps your games patched and up-to-date and, of course, there's the Summer Sale.
The Trading Cards, however, seem a little too odd.
Certain games allow for Card Drops, wherein if you play for a certain amount of time you'll receive a trading card. These cards form sets, and you can either sell them - for what seems to be a uniform almost 10p per card - or collect them to make a set. If you complete a set, you get three rewards; a custom emoticon for chat, a background for your profile and, currently, a trading card for the Summer Sale set.
You also get Experience Points for your profile, which increase your Steam Level.
Now, you can never get enough cards from card drops to finish a set. So you have the choice; either you can buy them from the community marketplace, or trade for them.
Last night, I got suckered in. I blame Reus for blasting my addiction centres right open; but I ended up completing the Summer Sale badge twice, the Civilization 5 badge three times and even...
... Gasp...
Made the schoolboy error of completing the Civilization 5 Foil Card set.
(Foil Cards are like normal cards, just at about 50p instead of 10p.)
So I levelled up a few times, and now have badges and a thing I can put on my profile page to make it look more unique and a few custom emoticons and backgrounds and...
It's entirely pointless. It's randomly generated flair, as in:
Oh, it was fun at the time. But I spent money on that that could have been spent on, say, Food. Even, maybe, given the sale, Games.
My profile does look kind of shiny now, though...
Thursday 18 July 2013
The Swamp Giant Is Under Attack
Thanks to that mystical unicorn of retail, the Steam Summer Sale, I picked up Reus a couple of days ago.
It is simultaneously one of the most addictive games and one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in gaming in recent years.
Quick sidebar, though; we're, what, five days into the Summer Sale? I've yet to see anything that really makes me say "Oh, let me spend money I don't have on that because it's slightly cheaper! Please!"
Maybe they're saving up big deals and bargains for later.
Anyway.
Reus is very addictive because, at the core, it's a resource management game. You use your four gods to place different types of tiles and then place resources to attract humans who, as humans will do, build villages. As these villages grow, they start projects which, if completed, produce ambassadors you can then use to upgrade your giants' abilities, and they can then go back and upgrade the resources, in theory.
So it's a slow uptick uptick uptick of resources from not great up to splendiferous, and the projects get more and more difficult along the way but, in theory, the rewards get a little better, too.
You may notice the repetition of in theory. This is because while the resource management side is fun, the resource upgrades are only unlocked if you complete a certain number of achievements - which are actually 'unlocks' in the game, no less - which give you access to the next tier.
This is fine in principle, I guess, but it means you have to go back and play through again and again and meet certain arbitrary, difficult or just annoying victory conditions in order to make the game a more rounded experience. Currently I have to create a village with six 'war markers', which means that the village has to be filled with cantankerous assholes who will declare war on, well, anybody, and win, and carry home the war marker. This isn't necessarily a problem - because the humans in Reus are cantankerous assholes anyway- but that village, as far as I understand it, then has to survive until the end of game time.
Given that to get a village up to the level that would require you'd probably have to play the 120-minute mode, this means that once they're all up and cantankerous you then have to either protect the warmongering idiots or stop them from going to war by placing either things that provoke Awe or animals that create Danger. However, after six victories, I can't really see a village suddenly backing down in the face of bears.
So I've played it for... Way too long, given that I only bought it a few days ago, and I've enjoyed the experience, but the Mandatory Replay aspect is really annoying. The only other thing I can think of is juking the system by creating a world, saving it at a certain point then going back and altering aspects to provoke the outcomes the Unlocks need, but that seems a bit... silly.
The sad thing - well, slightly sad - is that I do want to see the higher-level outcomes, and build the absolutely massive requirement-having buildings that I'm guessing you can only build with the highest level Unlocks. But the prospect of playing through, probably, at least another six hours of world-building to satisfy the absurdly specific requirements just seems like muss, fuss and bother right now.
It is simultaneously one of the most addictive games and one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in gaming in recent years.
Quick sidebar, though; we're, what, five days into the Summer Sale? I've yet to see anything that really makes me say "Oh, let me spend money I don't have on that because it's slightly cheaper! Please!"
Maybe they're saving up big deals and bargains for later.
Anyway.
Reus is very addictive because, at the core, it's a resource management game. You use your four gods to place different types of tiles and then place resources to attract humans who, as humans will do, build villages. As these villages grow, they start projects which, if completed, produce ambassadors you can then use to upgrade your giants' abilities, and they can then go back and upgrade the resources, in theory.
So it's a slow uptick uptick uptick of resources from not great up to splendiferous, and the projects get more and more difficult along the way but, in theory, the rewards get a little better, too.
You may notice the repetition of in theory. This is because while the resource management side is fun, the resource upgrades are only unlocked if you complete a certain number of achievements - which are actually 'unlocks' in the game, no less - which give you access to the next tier.
This is fine in principle, I guess, but it means you have to go back and play through again and again and meet certain arbitrary, difficult or just annoying victory conditions in order to make the game a more rounded experience. Currently I have to create a village with six 'war markers', which means that the village has to be filled with cantankerous assholes who will declare war on, well, anybody, and win, and carry home the war marker. This isn't necessarily a problem - because the humans in Reus are cantankerous assholes anyway- but that village, as far as I understand it, then has to survive until the end of game time.
Given that to get a village up to the level that would require you'd probably have to play the 120-minute mode, this means that once they're all up and cantankerous you then have to either protect the warmongering idiots or stop them from going to war by placing either things that provoke Awe or animals that create Danger. However, after six victories, I can't really see a village suddenly backing down in the face of bears.
So I've played it for... Way too long, given that I only bought it a few days ago, and I've enjoyed the experience, but the Mandatory Replay aspect is really annoying. The only other thing I can think of is juking the system by creating a world, saving it at a certain point then going back and altering aspects to provoke the outcomes the Unlocks need, but that seems a bit... silly.
The sad thing - well, slightly sad - is that I do want to see the higher-level outcomes, and build the absolutely massive requirement-having buildings that I'm guessing you can only build with the highest level Unlocks. But the prospect of playing through, probably, at least another six hours of world-building to satisfy the absurdly specific requirements just seems like muss, fuss and bother right now.
Thursday 20 June 2013
"I feel like I'm in an Eastern European Creche"
According to Steam, I've played Team Fortress 2 for one hundred and thirty-eight hours.
Imagine what you could do with that time. Build something, do something for someone, be creative, rescue kittens from trees; one hundred and thirty-eight hours is a lot of kittens.
This is the price of being a gamer, I think.
Now, don't get me wrong - that 138 hours is spread over a period of around four years, so it comes out as less than an hour a week on average - although considering that the game was uninstalled for a while there (and I only re-installed it recently because of the Steam Trading Cards hullabaloo) there's some wonky averaging going on.
I blow hot and cold when it comes to playing TF2; it tends to be either an intensely satisfying quick-play experience, or a massively frustrating fuckaround. The first of these instances comes about when you have, say, half an hour or even - gasp - a full hour to play, and you can just tool around, doing the whole boombangabang boombangabang (ooh what you do to me) thing.
The second half tends to arise from team misbalancing, which is always slightly entertaining if you're on the overpowered end of the wonk, but if you're wonky on the underpowered team you may as well stand on top of a building hitting (g) until someone shoots you.
This article's heading comes from a quote from yesterday's playing time. I have recently joined the 1990s by getting a headset with a microphone - soon, no doubt, I'll be getting really into Kazaa and Darude - and while the primary usage for this has been using Skype - because, hey, I'm all about the decade-old VOIP software - I've discovered, too, that you can talk to people on TF2 while you're playing.
The primary motivation for doing this is to annoy the friend I play with.
TF2 players are an interesting bunch, because it's very rare you find a server where people are actually using the voice-chat functionality with any kind of regularity, mainly because people tend to not want their a-killing and a-capturing spoiled by listening to random voices from the ether a-chattering.
Yesterday, however, we ended up on a server where a couple of people were back-and-forthing, and I discovered - what with my new technology and everything - that I could interject.
Now, here's a crucial tip if you plan on doing this yourself; if you talk, don't look at the replies people type, and vice-versa. It's usually insults. Maybe one in ten is someone engaging with what people are saying, but that only makes it more confusing.
Of course, people talking encourages more people talking, until suddenly it's just a humble-jumble of glottlestops and vowel sounds which, as my friend said, 'must be what going mad feels like'.
Or, as an unremembered other player typed, 'like being in an Eastern European creche' (as two of the other 'voice contributors' had wild and crazy accents).
But TF2 continues to be a source of amusement, if an occasionally frustrating one. Except now I can talk.
Tremble, world.
Imagine what you could do with that time. Build something, do something for someone, be creative, rescue kittens from trees; one hundred and thirty-eight hours is a lot of kittens.
This is the price of being a gamer, I think.
Now, don't get me wrong - that 138 hours is spread over a period of around four years, so it comes out as less than an hour a week on average - although considering that the game was uninstalled for a while there (and I only re-installed it recently because of the Steam Trading Cards hullabaloo) there's some wonky averaging going on.
I blow hot and cold when it comes to playing TF2; it tends to be either an intensely satisfying quick-play experience, or a massively frustrating fuckaround. The first of these instances comes about when you have, say, half an hour or even - gasp - a full hour to play, and you can just tool around, doing the whole boombangabang boombangabang (ooh what you do to me) thing.
The second half tends to arise from team misbalancing, which is always slightly entertaining if you're on the overpowered end of the wonk, but if you're wonky on the underpowered team you may as well stand on top of a building hitting (g) until someone shoots you.
This article's heading comes from a quote from yesterday's playing time. I have recently joined the 1990s by getting a headset with a microphone - soon, no doubt, I'll be getting really into Kazaa and Darude - and while the primary usage for this has been using Skype - because, hey, I'm all about the decade-old VOIP software - I've discovered, too, that you can talk to people on TF2 while you're playing.
The primary motivation for doing this is to annoy the friend I play with.
TF2 players are an interesting bunch, because it's very rare you find a server where people are actually using the voice-chat functionality with any kind of regularity, mainly because people tend to not want their a-killing and a-capturing spoiled by listening to random voices from the ether a-chattering.
Yesterday, however, we ended up on a server where a couple of people were back-and-forthing, and I discovered - what with my new technology and everything - that I could interject.
Now, here's a crucial tip if you plan on doing this yourself; if you talk, don't look at the replies people type, and vice-versa. It's usually insults. Maybe one in ten is someone engaging with what people are saying, but that only makes it more confusing.
Of course, people talking encourages more people talking, until suddenly it's just a humble-jumble of glottlestops and vowel sounds which, as my friend said, 'must be what going mad feels like'.
Or, as an unremembered other player typed, 'like being in an Eastern European creche' (as two of the other 'voice contributors' had wild and crazy accents).
But TF2 continues to be a source of amusement, if an occasionally frustrating one. Except now I can talk.
Tremble, world.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
I've never tried addictive narcotics. Boring, I know.
But at the moment I kind of feel like a cold-turkey withdrawal-symptom feeling person being genially taunted.
Which is why I'm glad I put some money into the Glitch soundtrack.
I miss Glitch. I know I'm not alone in this - the Facebook group is comforting, in that way - and we have, apparently, just passed the six-month 'anniversary' of the decommissioning of that exotic online experience.
When along come updates from the soundtrack, which kind of bring it all back in one handy-dandy sledgehammer between the eyes, except that it's a sledgehammer between the eyes that makes me smile.
To adopt the Julius Caesar model of public address; I come to bury Glitch, not to praise it.
This is not because praise is unwarranted, or unnecessary, or unneeded, because it would be all of those things. Better minds than mine eloquently express their grief about it regularly. And although Glitch was a singular experience - even if it was absolutely preposterous - it doesn't need any more praise, because the giants alone know I've already done my purple-prose emotional outburst on this blog alone back from the end of days.
But when I say 'bury', I should clarify; all I mean is that I think it's a shame to have this blog title registered and not to be using it, so I'm going to be writing about videah gamez here for a while.
And every now and then, I think, I'll talk about Glitch, too, because, as they say, what is not forgotten is never truly lost, don'tcha know.
But at the moment I kind of feel like a cold-turkey withdrawal-symptom feeling person being genially taunted.
Which is why I'm glad I put some money into the Glitch soundtrack.
I miss Glitch. I know I'm not alone in this - the Facebook group is comforting, in that way - and we have, apparently, just passed the six-month 'anniversary' of the decommissioning of that exotic online experience.
When along come updates from the soundtrack, which kind of bring it all back in one handy-dandy sledgehammer between the eyes, except that it's a sledgehammer between the eyes that makes me smile.
To adopt the Julius Caesar model of public address; I come to bury Glitch, not to praise it.
This is not because praise is unwarranted, or unnecessary, or unneeded, because it would be all of those things. Better minds than mine eloquently express their grief about it regularly. And although Glitch was a singular experience - even if it was absolutely preposterous - it doesn't need any more praise, because the giants alone know I've already done my purple-prose emotional outburst on this blog alone back from the end of days.
But when I say 'bury', I should clarify; all I mean is that I think it's a shame to have this blog title registered and not to be using it, so I'm going to be writing about videah gamez here for a while.
And every now and then, I think, I'll talk about Glitch, too, because, as they say, what is not forgotten is never truly lost, don'tcha know.
Wednesday 10 April 2013
Some Sad News
Firstly, sorry for the delay in making any updates.
Secondly, sorry, but it's not good news.
For a variety of reasons, I have not been able to make this project work.
FAQ
So what happened?
Firstly, I haven't had the time to devote to this project to make it what I would have liked it to be - a proper, well-made documentary with both original content and elements from the game itself, with the hope of including some humour and some player testimonials.
I was lucky in that I received a lot of correspondence from players while the topic was still fresh, but could not devote the time, energy and communication necessary to sustain that engagement for long enough to get the actual filming process off the ground. Over time, interest petered out and it would have meant simply repeatedly harassing people to get involved which, I feel, is not what Glitch was about, really. Plus, nobody likes harassment.
While I could have glomped together something in FinalCut and AfterEffects for the sake of doing something, it's my personal opinion that to do a job badly is worse than to simply admit defeat.
What about the money?
If you are one of the four people who contributed to the funding campaign via PayPal, I have refunded your contribution in full (including IndieGoGo's percentage) this very evening.
If you are one of the four people who contributed to the campaign directly using a credit card, then things become a little more complicated. The funds have not been disbursed - they are still held by IndieGoGo - and I have asked them to refund the payments directly.
I am hoping that this will be a relatively simple matter - and it should be, although experience tells me that simple matters rarely work out that way - and I will post an update when I hear back from IndieGoGo. I think that you should get your contributions back in full as IndieGoGo took their back end from the final lump sum via PayPal, rather than on each individual transaction. I hope this is the case.
Why did you take so long to make this decision?
Because I'm a starry-eyed optimist.
Because I honestly believed I could round up fifty or even a hundred people who'd talk about Glitch for a minute of their time.
Because I thought that the crafting scene alone would make for an interesting part of the documentary as a whole.
Because I wanted to think that it would all work out.
But it didn't.
C'est la vie.
To everyone who invested time or money or just interest in the project, thank you. I'm sorry it didn't work out in the end.
Secondly, sorry, but it's not good news.
For a variety of reasons, I have not been able to make this project work.
FAQ
So what happened?
Firstly, I haven't had the time to devote to this project to make it what I would have liked it to be - a proper, well-made documentary with both original content and elements from the game itself, with the hope of including some humour and some player testimonials.
I was lucky in that I received a lot of correspondence from players while the topic was still fresh, but could not devote the time, energy and communication necessary to sustain that engagement for long enough to get the actual filming process off the ground. Over time, interest petered out and it would have meant simply repeatedly harassing people to get involved which, I feel, is not what Glitch was about, really. Plus, nobody likes harassment.
While I could have glomped together something in FinalCut and AfterEffects for the sake of doing something, it's my personal opinion that to do a job badly is worse than to simply admit defeat.
What about the money?
If you are one of the four people who contributed to the funding campaign via PayPal, I have refunded your contribution in full (including IndieGoGo's percentage) this very evening.
If you are one of the four people who contributed to the campaign directly using a credit card, then things become a little more complicated. The funds have not been disbursed - they are still held by IndieGoGo - and I have asked them to refund the payments directly.
I am hoping that this will be a relatively simple matter - and it should be, although experience tells me that simple matters rarely work out that way - and I will post an update when I hear back from IndieGoGo. I think that you should get your contributions back in full as IndieGoGo took their back end from the final lump sum via PayPal, rather than on each individual transaction. I hope this is the case.
Why did you take so long to make this decision?
Because I'm a starry-eyed optimist.
Because I honestly believed I could round up fifty or even a hundred people who'd talk about Glitch for a minute of their time.
Because I thought that the crafting scene alone would make for an interesting part of the documentary as a whole.
Because I wanted to think that it would all work out.
But it didn't.
C'est la vie.
To everyone who invested time or money or just interest in the project, thank you. I'm sorry it didn't work out in the end.
Tuesday 5 February 2013
A lack of updating
Firstly, sorry about that.
Secondly, this is all still going ahead.
(No more negativity!)
Thirdly, we're still after contributors. Get in touch!
Secondly, this is all still going ahead.
(No more negativity!)
Thirdly, we're still after contributors. Get in touch!
Sunday 20 January 2013
The end of funding and the beginning of work
It's been too long between updates.
The funding campaign is over and while my original goal was wildly - wildly! - over-enthusiastic, we've raised enough to buy the necessary on-site storage for video / audio / image contributions, so it's all systems go, hopefully!
However, it's time for some honesty.
Some wonderful, creative people have come forward with interesting ideas for contributions, and we'll be taking them up on the offers (and trying to find ways to make that work!) - but I think that not only was I too enthusiastic in the idea for funding, but also in the amount of people I thought would want to get involved.
This was a fundamental mistake to make because I should have realised - being a Glitch user myself - that while a few people might want to talk about what Glitch meant to them, it was, outside of the many occasional collaborations, a unique, personal experience.
I don't want this to sound like doom-and-gloom, but what I'm basically saying is that the lack of people wanting to volunteer their experiences - coupled with the fact that, despite requests, nobody at Tiny Speck has been in touch(1) means that this isn't going to be the feature-length extravaganza I was originally envisaging.
This isn't a bad thing, though!
As I said, there are a few people with unique things to put in, and I'm going to find a way of talking about my own experiences, and, in the end, what we might hopefully end up with is a mixed documentary narrative about not only what Glitch meant, but what Glitch was - a primer for anyone who didn't get to experience it, or wants to know more now that it's closed. With any luck, it'll be a bit like a travel program crossed with an anthropological study of Ur and everything therein, in short form!
We're still open to artistic contributions of any form, though, so don't be shy!
- FF
(1) Although of course, they're most likely busy as hell right now...
The funding campaign is over and while my original goal was wildly - wildly! - over-enthusiastic, we've raised enough to buy the necessary on-site storage for video / audio / image contributions, so it's all systems go, hopefully!
However, it's time for some honesty.
Some wonderful, creative people have come forward with interesting ideas for contributions, and we'll be taking them up on the offers (and trying to find ways to make that work!) - but I think that not only was I too enthusiastic in the idea for funding, but also in the amount of people I thought would want to get involved.
This was a fundamental mistake to make because I should have realised - being a Glitch user myself - that while a few people might want to talk about what Glitch meant to them, it was, outside of the many occasional collaborations, a unique, personal experience.
I don't want this to sound like doom-and-gloom, but what I'm basically saying is that the lack of people wanting to volunteer their experiences - coupled with the fact that, despite requests, nobody at Tiny Speck has been in touch(1) means that this isn't going to be the feature-length extravaganza I was originally envisaging.
This isn't a bad thing, though!
As I said, there are a few people with unique things to put in, and I'm going to find a way of talking about my own experiences, and, in the end, what we might hopefully end up with is a mixed documentary narrative about not only what Glitch meant, but what Glitch was - a primer for anyone who didn't get to experience it, or wants to know more now that it's closed. With any luck, it'll be a bit like a travel program crossed with an anthropological study of Ur and everything therein, in short form!
We're still open to artistic contributions of any form, though, so don't be shy!
- FF
(1) Although of course, they're most likely busy as hell right now...
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