Players choose their class and wage war! The VIP (King) starts on each players ‘fortress’, marked here:

Each player attempts to capture their opponents Fortress with their VIP. If your VIP takes an enemy’s Fortress for three turns, you win.

If your VIP is checkmated, then he is placed back on your fortress (or the nearest open square of the taken VIP’s choice.)

If a VIP is checkmated by a VIP while on his Fortress, he loses.

Choose any of the classes to begin, and set up your side appropriately!
Demoman

Engineer

Medic

Pyro

Sniper

Soldier

Scout

Spy

And that’s not all! The Scout and Spy have some ’special abilities’!

Scout
The Scout can move any two pawns forward one space (or diagonally to attack) in the same turn by audibly shouting “Bonk!” If the players are not playing in real time, Vent, Skype, or some other method of audibly getting the point across is required. If the opposing player doesn’t have speakers or headphones, the Scout is screwed.

Spy
The Spy starts with the exact same setup as the Soldier, but has a very special ability. At any time the Spy can reveal that any of his pawns is in actuality the ‘VIP’! If this is done when the VIP is attacked, the attacking piece is killed! When the VIP is revealed, the VIP and pawn must switch places to reveal their true nature.

More special abilities to come in future expansions! :D

Hrm. Wonder if I could find an online chess engine that lets players define rules…

(It’s important to note that his brother posted this on the net, and said that his suicide had nothing to do with his work, and was apparently in relation to personal problems.)

Working in journalism, I understand the need to frame information in a way that allows people to understand why they should care, but I much rather would’ve had news stories refer to him in ways that people didn’t know as well. Take the moment to read his blog a bit and realize that he had a great sense of humor. Mention that he was a parent who lampooned irresponsible parents (here, “I can’t stop my little children from playing 37 hours a week of Baby-Killer 3, because I don’t understand this little letter on the box it came in!”) or even an Army Reservist.

Of course, his blog immediately got comments with people saying they hoped he burned in hell, largely because of the Star Wars thing. Thus goes gamerdom… A bunch of assholes. The additional shame there is that it’s not like he ever got to make the game he wanted to make. He was just a guy with a job.

Of course the irony is painful; he really came across as the kinda guy most gamers would have absolutely loved. Just read this, written by a guy who actually DID know him. Chances are you’ll say “Damn, I wish I had a chance to know that guy.” That’s what I’m saying right now. If he’s going to be remembered as something to do with games, then why can’t he be “the guy who solved server over-population problems with a simple blog post:” http://web.archive.org/web/20050323233508/http://mythical.blogspot.com/ (You’ll have to highlight that first post. For some reason the Internet Archive fucked up the color.) Or the guy who said (something to the effect of) “To have a good MMO, you have to start with a world that would be interesting even without players.” Why can’t he be a guy who knew that better things were possible and fought that on the front lines?

Man, gamers are assholes.

Bah. Well, here’s his blog: http://mythicalblog.com/. I’m going to see if I can find some nuggets of wisdom left behind. Y’know, I recall him saying something along the lines of “you guys are tired of me talking about my game ideas all the time” once, but I can’t find it. I completely disagreed with that statement.

Some highlights from the past few weeks of Jeff Freeman’s blog:
Freeman Fights Torture
Freeman on (the lack of) Storytelling and Story Arcs in MMOs when compared to serial TV
Freeman on ‘banning’ players.
On Journalism, Entertainment Journalism, and Game Journalism

Heh, looking at it, he was quite the aggregator of quality media, too. Man, I’m going to regret not buying that buy a beer.

Everyone scratched their heads when the game Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe was announced. Everyone thought it was pretty dumb. The question I’m asking, and hopefully answering, is ‘why’? Why did we all, myself included, look at this idea, and just turn away? When you think to ask the question, I think it’s pretty obvious, and I don’t mean “the notion of these properties crossing over is dumb,” we’ve all overlooked far stupider things in games and loved them beyond belief.

What I’m talking about is two places where the Mortal Kombat series fell apart for me. Fighting(MK5) and story(MK4.) “Worried about the story in a fighting game?! That’s insane!” Yeah, I know. I’m not trying to say that it was Dostoevsky or anything, I’m just saying that it ‘worked’. But let me tackle the fighting first.

MK5 (Deadly Alliance) was the first to give each fighter a completely different movelist. Prior to this, everyone’s punches was the same, everyone’s kicks were the same, and everyone’s movement speeds and jumping were exactly. the. same. This was wonderful.

In a typical fighting game some characters are drastically overpowered, some are inherently flawed when used against other certain characters, and some are perfectly balanced. Imagine a chess game where each player has a completely random set-up, some have rooks on the front row, some have their king there, sometimes your king is directly across from an opponent’s rook/queen and it’s almost impossible for you to win, and sometimes? Sometimes you start with three queens. It all depends on both who you choose, and wh you’re fighting. That’s a normal fighting game.

Mortal Kombat 1-4 took a far different approach that was much closer to traditional chess. All of the characters had a first row of pawns, for one. That’s to say that all of the non-special moves were exactly the same. On the back row, however, you start with (roughly) similar layouts, but with changes in location. Sure, the ocassional character is a little stronger or weaker than the rest, but it’s not so insanely disproportionate as the previous system, and it’s usually far more obvious due to lack of complexity.

So, yeah, it was limited, but it was, to me, far more fun.

The story? Well, it just seemed to grow more and more disparate and whimsical.

Typically in fighting games ’stories’ are only a combination of context and character biographies/endings. (I’m not saying that they can’t be better, but this is all gamers require to consider a fighter to ‘have a story,’ is all I mean.) Imagine a series of threads, a few overlapping in places, but conjoining into a common weave for the game’s duration, and then fraying out again with each thread being each character’s ending. That’s how the minimum writing in fighting games usually works.

For sequels the developer traditionally picks one of the ending threads, decides it’s the ‘correct’ one and fashions a new story. This means they have to bridge the initial threads of returning characters (often including elements of those characters ending threads, chosen one or not,) AND tie in new threads introduced in new characters. Then of course they also have to create new ending threads for all of the characters. The fact that each character has his own thread that weaves throughout the game series opens the possibility for mind-numbing over-complexity, and bet your ass that Midway took this chance to wreak havoc with the MK world.

I’m used to reading comics, so when a character that’s existed for forty years says that he got his powers ten years ago, despite the fact that I’ve read his book for ten years, it doesn’t bother me a bit. I ‘get it’. But why the fuck is Noob Saibot really Sub-Zero I? Why bother killing him off and creating Sub-Zero II at all if he’s going to effectively be the same guy? Why go from a kumite in MK1 to an inter-dimensional war in MK3 if all the gods that held the kumite were in on it to begin with? Just declare war from the get-go.

I understand that the large array of characters was, hell, IS a draw, but seriously, wtf. It’s not like DC comics started out with the intent to become so convoluted as to require Infinite Crisis (much less Final Crises.) But MK seems hellbent on taking minimal requirements for storytelling and making me shake my head and just walk away in disgust. In ending, they really just need to reboot the series.

*In Brett’s Footnotes fashion let me note that I fully plan to give more thought to a class-based chess game now. Also, sorry, I lied, this wasn’t about MMOs, but I do have a notion swirling around in el cabesa, it’s just not coming out yet.

EA, of all people, has absolutely no excuse for not having their own digital delivery system up and running. Shit, that medium-sized developers aren’t doing this themselves is a fucking travesty as far as I’m concerned. Valve’s given , if you’ll recall. It’d just take an extra guy to get it up and running, I’d imagine.

Recently indy dev Cliffski asked pirates why they refused to pay for games. This was his conclusion.

Thankfully he realized the problem with DRM; it only has to be cracked once, and then it’s pointless and only serves to bug legitimate users, so he’s dropping it. He also lowered some prices of his games to boot, so, win for consumers! (And hopefully this will help his longterm sales, and not just the short term because of the notoriety gained.)

But there’s an even bigger picture to look at, so let’s do that. Allow me to become a bit of a futurist here and share with you how I could see things happening…

Pirates win, content owners fail.
First, pirates win while content developers lose. That’s not hard to figure out, really. In fact, it’s starting right now as piracy becomes more and more rampant*. Content developers are realizing they can’t sue everyone and are creating better websites like Hulu to keep people from downloading and keeping them from making any money. To be frank, I firmly believe that eventually people will take the attitude that “bits should be copied freely,” and industries will soon scramble to find new ways to ensure they stay on top. They’ll fail. I expect them to go to commercial-driven content, but that’ll just piss people off when they can stream it for free from illegal sites* that will probably be far more user-friendly anyway, and media companies will be relegated to sideshow status at best.

Amateurs win, while professionals flounder.
Much like we’re seeing the beginnings of now, as Big Media struggles to find its place, actual artists (who are savvy) will thrive like never before. Musicians will spread their music freely, and sell out concerts with ease. They’ll sell audio recordings of the concert you just witnessed for cheap, and the bigger bands will even be able to sell you videos of the concert as you leave the venue. If you read this, you probably already know names like “Penny Arcade,” and “Jonathan Coulton,” but note that even Trent Reznor is giving away his music now. If Big Media can’t make this method work for them, expect to see ‘amateurs’ operate at the same level, if not bigger than ‘traditional’ artists.

New professionals win, consumers win.
Those artists, the indie ones? If ’success’ is as easy as ‘making a living at your art,’ then let’s hope it becomes the norm. (Cross your fingers.) And here we come to the root of exactly how future media could work. Everyone will get the digital files for free. Any person can download and publish any movie, song, art, game, etc. at any time. (A definite win for consumers in my book.) Sure, donations are great, but musicians/performers/actors can charge for life performances (yes, I’m predicting a resurgence of live theatre,) and traditional artists could sell their canvases/sculptures/works. In fact, anyone can sell physical products, just look at the approach of some of these artists. But, what would be the meat and potatoes of games?

Games.
If games follow suit, then what will games offer that will keep them viable in the eye of gamers? What is the true essence of ‘art’ in games that makes it a notable difference from all other arts? Interaction. Gamers will be charged subscriptions to play in a world of premier dungeon masters. With all games made of open source, bare bones tech, Game Runners will create an experience that will build up their reputations amongst gamers as good, bad, dense, or grandiose. Just like musicians and directors have their own styles, so will Game Runners.

Yeah, this is the only way to get rid of pirates… Leave nothing for them to pirate.

*More people are born with piracy being the norm, bandwidth rises, latency falls, and advanced processing allows for greater compression. Given these things, in our lifetimes I expect we’ll see very high quality games streamed with relatively little caching (and of course high quality video/audio streamed with no problem.)

After reading that 7 of 10 games lose money, I have to let you guys in on a little secret, you really don’t understand what I really Icare about in a game, and you’re wasting lots of time/money. In fact, you could even cut development costs by focusing less of things like world building. First, let me make a comparison:

A large portion of movies and shows I watch are based in either NYC or LA, and you know what? I’m okay with that. Both of these cities have been imaginarily destroyed more times than anyone wants to count. And you know what? When we’re sitting in darkened theaters, waiting for a blow-up-a-city-movie to start, and we see a trailer for another blow-up-a-city-movie? We lean to our friends and whisper “We gotta come see that!” (Remember the Cloverfield trailer before Transformers?)

Cut to video games, where more and more people are fixated on rebuilding NYC (Spidey 2+, True Crime 2, GTA:(3, LC:S, 4,) Driver, Crazy fucking Taxi, and probably more ‘open’-NYC games I can’t recall,) more times than can possibly be healthy. You’re long past the point of diminishing returns, and you larger publishers in particular need to make one NYC, and work from it. “Oh, but gamers would hate to play the same city in Spidey that they would in Crazy Taxi! They’d call us lazy!” Some will, but the rest of us, who actually play games to [i]play games[/i]? We’ll be okay. Hell, I’d call you smart because I just don’t give a shit about the city you place your game in, really. The city (the buildings and roads,) are just a location, and not characters. The ‘character’ often attributed to cities are actually NPCs, sounds, lighting, and textures that work in tandem to bring the locale to life, and changing those things changes the locale so much, that if you take out people and moving cars, and add crashed ones and zombies, then it’s a different world.

For the life of me I can not fathom why EA, Activision, or Rockstar, haven’t created high detail models of a city (or worked together on one,) to generate lower-rez iterations from as needed. For that matter, why haven’t larger cities created their own virtual models and licensed them to game developers? (Well, government’s lack of metaphorical artistic testicles/ovaries, coupled with the low artistic aim of most games actually explains that, now that I type it…)

But my main point here is that, as a gamer, I’m okay with learning the streets of NYC like a veteran cabbie. Hell, when you think about it, it almost makes sense for characters who’ve lived in NYC for any extended period of time. But even beyond that, creating large worlds is just pointless if they’re devoid of context, and so often the race to create large environments leaves those same environments empty of vibrancy that would make them memorable. Of course, this could easily work to ones advantage by taking the opportunity to fill in the blanks…

“Here is our “Lives of Liberty City” line. A new series of games centered around Liberty City, allowing you four full length video game experiences in one persistent world as you play between the games.” Sounds good, right? While playing a GTA4, imagine being able to pick up any of three other games, each focused on a single island. As you took over neighborhoods in a Mafia-esque crime/RTS, the burroughs in which Italian families come after you in GTA 4 change. As you redevelop South Bohan in a city building sim, the neighborhood becomes gentrified in GTA 4, with some of your friends being displaced. And then in the middle island, a game using the exact same geometry but with much more film noir-ish lighting, music, and music, is an action love story as you play a detective trying to save a young girl caught up in the vile world of blackmail at the hands of the United Liberty Paper Co., only to become a pawn in their twisted game yourself.

So, in closing, don’t be afraid to reuse assets and save money. Just do it well. It’s so easy… In theory, anyway.

-AmpLive’s album “Rainydayz”
Freely at: http://www.onesevensevensix.com/amplive/
I apparently missed the fan outcry that surrounded this album (you can read about it on the link,) but whatever process it took to get it hosted freely on the net, then I’m glad it happened. The remix of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, with four of the seven songs featuring hip-hop vocals, could have been horrendously bad, but AmpLive never approaches that territory, and instead keeps is surprisingly fresh all throughout. There are a few effects such as ’stuttering drums’ that you just really don’t associate with Radiohead, but you can only smirk at them, given how great the album is as a whole. Normally when a rock album is remixed by a DJ, it becomes “a rap album with rock samples and the original singer is nowhere to be found.” And to that we all typically roll our eyes, right? Right. Well, of the seven tracks on the album, four have other artists’ vocals, three don’t. Of those seven albums, Thom Yorke is noticeably sampled on six of them. Of those six, he’s the sole voice on three, and heavily featured on another. If rock albums are to ever be remixed with rappers over then, then AmpLive has just written the blueprint on how to do it. The rappers, singers, and music aren’t card board cut-outs to be glued where he sees fit, but instruments in themselves to be guided by his turntable, mixing board, and creativity, to create on cohesive song.
Best tracks: 2, 4, 7, 8

-NIN’s album “The Slip”
Freely here: http://theslip.nin.com/
The Slip is Trent Reznor’s first full album since he told his record label ‘fuck off’, and decided he wanted to do things ‘his way’. As such, he gives the exemplary NIN experience: a story within an album that reeks of personal complication and near-futile struggle, only, this is different. If The Downward Spiral was the story of a person coming apart and failing, and The Fragile was an attempted rebuilding that ended in failure and realization at the fragility of the attempt, then The Slip is the realization that it’s not strength and overpowering that gains freedom, but simply agility and speed to keep other’s hands off of you; slipping away. And that’s exactly what Reznor did when he finally got out of his contract, and with that new found freedom, this album slips into a more comfortable pair of shoes as he realizes that the opposite of the pain previously felt isn’t happiness, but absence of feeling. And it (seems to) show that he’s come to realize his role in all of this, ending strongly on Demon Seed. And it’s a comfortable one too, as it plays almost like a greatest hits album that you’ve never heard before.
Best songs: 2 (though the vocal echo is a tad annoying,) 3 (noisecore, but it grew on me,) 5, 7 (Ahhh Clara, forever with us, forever not.)

-100 dBs’s album “Aphex Twin Mashups”
Freely at: http://www.100dbs.com/mixes/aphex/
DJ 100dBs (one hundred decibels,) mixes a work of techno-rap genius. Discontent that his every-day average hip-hop-head friends can’t appreciate finer techno works of Aphex Twin, he takes to task of mixing Richard James with lyrics that we all know well (assuming you’re into hiphop.) The result isn’t a molesting of Aphex, as some may imagine, but instead hip-hop that belongs on the soundtrack for The Fifth Element, or an equally hip futuristic film. Also, he has tons of other mixes for free here: http://www.100dbs.com/mixes/
Best songs: 2, 6, 8, 10

-Harvey Danger’s album Little by Little…
Freely at: http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/
Before it was cool to do so, Harvey Danger knew that giving away their album for free would not ‘make them worthless,’ but in actually ‘get them more fans’. Seems kinda obvious now, huh? But after a few years of hiatus they were back at it in 2005 and in September they gave away Little by Little (even though a physical copy was on the shelf.) The result? According to the Wiki: “Within two months of release, the album had been downloaded 100,000 times, while the first pressing of physical copies (packaged with a disc of bonus material) had nearly sold out.”

And amazingly, if you’re the kind of person who actually read blogs, like this, I think you’ll agree that it’s really stood the test of time.
Best songs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

-DJ Z-Trip & Radar’s album Live at the Future Primitive Sound Session Vol. 2
Freely (DIRECTLY) at: http://djztrip.unknownvariable.com/audio/ztrip_fpv2.zip
From the first time I heard DJ Z-Trip I’ve been unable to pick my jaw up– No, wait, that’s not true. Not unable. UNWILLING. If history says nothing else about Z-Trip, it should be “He is the man with the golden ear.” Given any two sounds, I’ve no doubt he could figure out the way to optimally fit them together like an audial jigsaw puzzle that when completes shows a sonic picture of pure kickass. Now, this isn’t to slight Radar. DJ Radar is the turntablist who created sheet music for turntables. Yes, sheet music. He has since produced “Concerto for Turntable,” which he performed (along with an orchestra) at Carnegie Hall.

But this recording was done live, and as the liner notes say (something to the effect of (mine’s in a closet):) “Two men, five turn tables, and forty years of music.”

This is the album you want to own. Well, this and DJ Z-Trip and DJ P’s Uneasy Listening, which can also be found on DJ Z-Trip’s download page here: http://www.djztrip.com/downloads.html
Along with a remix of Mamma Said Knock You Out, Prince’s Kiss (with Murs,) Murs’ Beginning of the End Remix/Sampler, and tons more. Seriously. They’re good. They’re god damn good. They’re that good, and they’re free. And you should download them all.

I love that insane game with all of my ACII-art lovin’ heart, but I’ll be damned if the tiny window it uses doesn’t make my eyes well screaming for relief from deciphering one tiny mark from the next. The creator has said in an interview in which he talks about ‘losing’ his own project, saying: “I’m leery about third party interfaces. If a third party interface becomes popular, I think I might lose control of the project. I don’t want to be in a position where I have to accommodate and work with other people.” That’s a pretty scary notion, and one worth worrying about.

But at the same time, when my eyes hurt trying to play the game, it’s pretty hard to say that everything’s okay. I mean, I’m not saying I want 3d, or even a tileset, I just want it larger, so that I can see the stuff, y’know? Ahhh well.

But DF has something special. That thing; that “special something.” It does exactly what I want to see games do, tackle data complexity over graphical complexity. I want to be able to chop a bed up into its components, and breed war dogs, and when enemies (be they goblins or attacking wildlife,) enter your fortress, close the gates and flood the entrance with water through a system of levers that leaves your foe lying dead on the soggy ground.

Like Crysis goes to graphical extremes, and Grand Theft Auto goes to physics-interactive world exploration extremes, Dwarf Fortress juggles data like no other game out there, and it’s a shame that no one’s decided to back this guy, and hire him an additional coder to work with him (or some type of help that he’d have, anyway.) I mean, I could only imagine if a few other programmers were put under him and he was still given creative control.

I feel the need to preface this post by saying: I only have a 360 from this generation of hardware (well, a DS too,) and I eventually aim to get a PS3 and a Wii, as both either have games I want, or soon will. But I think myself a fan of games, more so than consoles. That said…

Don Reisinger put a great reality check up on Cnet today which I’ll choose to not quote, but instead paraphrase in my own words:

“Hey Sony, Microsoft, quit your bitching. Just because Nintendo cleaned your clock doesn’t mean you have to cry in the corner and whine ‘they don’t count anyway!’ They do. Now cowboy up and fight back. You”re trying to turn Nintendo into the elephant in the room no one is talking about, but it doesn’t matter, because everyone’s still giving the elephant their money, and not you.”

… Okay, so he was more nuanced, but I think I captured the sentiment well. It seemed particularly spurred forth by a comment from Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer: “I’ve played a Nintendo Wii. I don’t see it as a competitor. It’s more of an expensive niche gaming device.”

That’s hilarious; calling a cheaper competitor that’s kicked your ass in sales “expensive” and “niche.” Don’t worry Howie, I’m sure Nintendo doesn’t view you as ‘competition’ either. I mean, for that to be the case you’d have to double your hardware sales for both your console AND your handheld. Of course, you’d still be behind in both counts.

Of course, Nintendo capitalizing on their success is another thing entirely. I think they waited far too long to start believing their own hype. I really hope they’ve got some good things up their sleeve.