So, Team Fortress 2 is now free-to-play. Is this good? Bad? I say mostly good. If you're unfamiliar with Valve's model for the game, free-players only get basic item drops, can't instigate trades, and some other limits. If you're content with the default weapons or are uninterested in getting fancy hats, you might not notice what you're missing out on. By making any purchase through the in-game store, you get upgraded to a Premium account, which is the same as if you bought the game at retail. I feel slightly bad for anyone who recently paid full price (hi Maggie!), since all they get is a hat for their $20, but I'm not bitter about the game I paid for (three years ago?) becoming free.
So many of my friends are gamers, but when I consider how many of them:
...play on PC, and
.....use Steam, and
.......play TF2, it's not surprising that I've never played TF2 with any of my friends. Now that there is no financial barrier to entry, they have no excuse to not at least try it. And anyone who has gamed socially knows, games are exponentially more fun with friends. Being able to unite your R/L friends in one or two games will make their first experiences better as well, since they'll have each others' support and won't have to deal with as many jerks online, nor alone.
I will suck less. By comparison.
With the exceptions of the original Dead or Alive and Wipeout XL, I've never focused so much on one game that I become truly great at it. With a whole slew of new players who are worse than me, hopefully future matches won't be the trainwrecks of hyper-competitive players insulting their own teammates because not everyone is playing at an e-sports level of efficiency.
Be ready to do some coaching, 2Fort combat vets.
The downside to a whole slew of new players is that the absolutely larval newbies may still be learning basic strategies, like an Ubercharge on a Heavy is a bit more valuable than on a Sniper. Or even how to use Ubercharge. If the old-timers simply get frustrated and start filling the voice channels with feces, that impression is going to stay with the newbie and harms the community as a whole.
I find it fascinating to hear that already, some veteran players are using their Proof of Purchase hats to distinguish themselves from newcomers. We'll see if human nature drags down the gaming utopia that Valve appears to be working towards, but I for one welcome this grand experiment in PC gaming. I don't believe that full retail games will ever die out, but hopefully this will spur other large game developers to try out F2P financial models.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Steam F2P: Round One
Steam is now distributing a handful of microtransaction-based free-to-play games, and the first one I'm trying is Forsaken World. With some more playtime I'll write a review, but so far in the first hour or so I haven't found any deal-breakers. The graphics remind me of WoW but not as angular, so it runs quite well on my aging gaming rig. Overall it feels a tad generic, but there's still plenty of opportunities for unique gameplay to emerge.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
MineCraft on Xbox 360?!
At E3 on Monday, Microsoft announced that MineCraft would be coming out on Xbox 360 sometime near the end of the year. Normally I wouldn't care, but a couple specifics caught my eye:
- cross-platform functionality between 360 and PC
- Kinect support
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Hackers Ruin CoD: Black Ops Matches Also
I was excited to see that Call of Duty: Black Ops is having a free (multiplayer) weekend on Steam. That is, until I encountered one or more game hackers in a match. If you've never played a recent CoD game, one of the handy features is a "kill cam" showing who killed you, from where. After getting killed immediately upon spawning (multiple times), I watched the kill cam for as long as it displayed. The camera of the player in question was moving in an unnaturally jerking manner, racking up kills through multiple layers of walls. It was quite obvious that this wasn't the behavior of a normal player, and 'his' 77-0 kill/death ratio seemed a bit odd as well. Teammates agreed that it just wasn't fun anymore, and we all left the match.
This is why I don't mind paying $50-60/year for Xbox Live. It may be a walled garden, but Microsoft at least tries to keep an even playing field by punishing cheaters. Only time will tell if CoD: World at War settles down from an online Wild West, but between that and Black Ops on PC, I won't be taking for granted a fair (fire)fight any time soon.
This is why I don't mind paying $50-60/year for Xbox Live. It may be a walled garden, but Microsoft at least tries to keep an even playing field by punishing cheaters. Only time will tell if CoD: World at War settles down from an online Wild West, but between that and Black Ops on PC, I won't be taking for granted a fair (fire)fight any time soon.
Playing with Imaginary Friends
In CoD: Black Ops, you can play "Combat Training" bot matches. It surprised me to find that the PC version names the bots after people on your Steam buddylist. It was nifty at first, until I thought about how few of them would actually play a FPS online, let alone B.O. *le sigh*
CoD: WaW Hackers
Looking through my pile of clearance games to play, I decided to try out the multiplayer in Call of Duty: World at War. (Don't know why, but I recently heard the siren-song of ranking up in CoD again.) The first thing I noticed while waiting for the match to start was all sorts of colorful player names, some cycling through multiple hues. No biggie, that might just be a bonus at some insanely high level. Once I got into the match, however, things went downhill. The entire upper-left quadrant of the screen quickly filled up with automated messages from a couple players hawking a YouTube channel apparently about game modding (a bannable offence on XBL). I reported them, but soldiered on through the match since leaving early shows up as a loss on your record. It didn't help that occasionally I would see a player levitate across the level in mid-air. I can't prove this, but I think some of my opponents may have been invulnerable as well, unless there's a perk that allows you to survive melee attacks to the back of your head.
Normally I wouldn't care about what others are doing for fun, but the spamming messages obscure my vision, and I'm paranoid about getting suspended/banned from XBL because the automated matchmaking throws me into games that may be hosted on modified consoles.
My question is this: why is there so much blatant game modding in World at War? I play MW 1 and 2 also, but have never noticed such a flagrant disregard to the TOS. Is it simply because the game is older and not policed as strictly as the 'big guns' of XBL, MW2/BlackOps? Or is there something about WaW that makes it easier to hack?
Friday, May 27, 2011
OnLive: It Just Works
Intro
The concept for OnLive is pretty cool: you install a small client program or use their set-top box with your TV, and as soon as you click the Buy button (or Free Trial button), you're playing the game, in flippin' sweet graphical goodness. No installs, play on any computer, easy peasy. The whole concept is that the games are running on their servers, so you're simply sending keystrokes/mousing to the server, and watching a video stream of the action in real-time. If you're computer can handle YouTube, it should be able to handle any game on OnLive. So, does it work as advertised?
OnWard to Victory!
I decided to try the 30-min. trial for Unreal Tournament III, a game that I already own. That way, I could compare the two experiences. Just like the company claims, as soon as I clicked the button to start the trial, I was looking at the title screen. I played a round of Warfare and one of CTF, against bots. I was a little curious how well a twitchy shooter like UTIII would work via streaming, especially since I use wi-fi (something OnLive doesn't recommend). If this works, the only thing more demanding regarding accuracy would probably be Homefront, since Counter-Strike isn't offered for some reason. ;) Amazingly, it worked. Really well. There was a tiny bit of lag, but on par for me with playing online. Never did I wish I was playing my installed version instead, and that's the big thing for me; if you can forget that the game you're playing isn't installed on your computer, mission accomplished for OnLive.
If you don't want to be restricted to playing on a computer, purchasing some AAA-titles will score you an OnLive 'mini-console' for free. It's a little box that you plug into a wired internet connection, your TV via HDMI, and a USB keyboard and mouse if you don't feel like using the included wireless controller. When the price for the device is $100, spending $45 on Warhammer 40k: Space Marine (pre-order) and the mini-console and the game Darksiders doesn't seem that bad of a deal.
A nice bonus to having someone else handling your game's hardware is that the game will look as pretty as they can make it look. Although it's rather early to see this in action, one conceptual advantage to OnLive is that they can upgrade their servers to whatever's cutting edge, freeing you from the expensive cycle of hardware upgrades. Also, they offer a $9.99/month PlayPack subscription that gives you access to 50-something games at a time. Provided that the selection changes regularly, it would be like NetFlix for computer games. Some games also offer rentals for a few days at a time, something that you can't exactly do through Steam or store-bought PC games. Not all of the games offer this, but that may be the game publisher's decision.
OnDead
Maybe I've gotten too used to the Steam school of storefront aesthetics, but the vertical-scrolling list of available games seemed rather quaint. When your library of games is small, however, it works. As an unproven concept, OnLive is in a catch-22 where publishers don't want to invest in an unpopular system, but it won't become popular without compelling games/prices. The list of upcoming AAA titles like Duke Nukem Forever and the new Deus Ex are encouraging, but this definitely isn't Steam yet. One oddity when I was playing UTIII was that it was in widescreen format, with the video options being customized so I couldn't change it. I suppose that shows how determined OnLive is about promoting their service as an alternative to gaming consoles (vs. PC gamers). Just like Steam, if the company ever disappears so do your games. And with no local files at all, your OnLive games are VERY gone. For some reason I felt inspired to actually look over the TOS agreement when I updated the client, and something stood out to me: apparently OnLive can delete your account if you don't log in and actually use the service for a year. I'd be curious to see if the TOS for Steam has anything like this. I still reinstall old games on occasion (American McGee's Alice right now), and I'd hate to think that a chunk of my gaming library would just vanish if OnLive doesn't offer any new games that I'm interested in for a year or more.
This isn't a ding against OnLive, but I'm wondering if they're slightly ahead of their time given the current state of American internet access. When the ISPs have things like undisclosed bandwidth caps & traffic shaping to combat what they consider "excessive usage" of their advertised unlimited plans, it makes me nervous to pay full price for, and then play for hours on end, a game that could cause service charges or get my internet cut off for the rest of the billing cycle. (But considering how much NetFlix some of my friends watch on their Xbox 360, maybe I'm just paranoid. :> )
Conclusions
I really hope OnLive survives to reach the critical mass that Steam saw, with tons of new games big & small added all the time, and crazy-cheap sales. Right now I can't see myself paying $50-60 for a game when the company doesn't have a very long track record for their completely new concept yet, but if three things happen I could definitely see myself splitting my online purchases between OnLive and Steam:
The concept for OnLive is pretty cool: you install a small client program or use their set-top box with your TV, and as soon as you click the Buy button (or Free Trial button), you're playing the game, in flippin' sweet graphical goodness. No installs, play on any computer, easy peasy. The whole concept is that the games are running on their servers, so you're simply sending keystrokes/mousing to the server, and watching a video stream of the action in real-time. If you're computer can handle YouTube, it should be able to handle any game on OnLive. So, does it work as advertised?
OnWard to Victory!
I decided to try the 30-min. trial for Unreal Tournament III, a game that I already own. That way, I could compare the two experiences. Just like the company claims, as soon as I clicked the button to start the trial, I was looking at the title screen. I played a round of Warfare and one of CTF, against bots. I was a little curious how well a twitchy shooter like UTIII would work via streaming, especially since I use wi-fi (something OnLive doesn't recommend). If this works, the only thing more demanding regarding accuracy would probably be Homefront, since Counter-Strike isn't offered for some reason. ;) Amazingly, it worked. Really well. There was a tiny bit of lag, but on par for me with playing online. Never did I wish I was playing my installed version instead, and that's the big thing for me; if you can forget that the game you're playing isn't installed on your computer, mission accomplished for OnLive.
If you don't want to be restricted to playing on a computer, purchasing some AAA-titles will score you an OnLive 'mini-console' for free. It's a little box that you plug into a wired internet connection, your TV via HDMI, and a USB keyboard and mouse if you don't feel like using the included wireless controller. When the price for the device is $100, spending $45 on Warhammer 40k: Space Marine (pre-order) and the mini-console and the game Darksiders doesn't seem that bad of a deal.
A nice bonus to having someone else handling your game's hardware is that the game will look as pretty as they can make it look. Although it's rather early to see this in action, one conceptual advantage to OnLive is that they can upgrade their servers to whatever's cutting edge, freeing you from the expensive cycle of hardware upgrades. Also, they offer a $9.99/month PlayPack subscription that gives you access to 50-something games at a time. Provided that the selection changes regularly, it would be like NetFlix for computer games. Some games also offer rentals for a few days at a time, something that you can't exactly do through Steam or store-bought PC games. Not all of the games offer this, but that may be the game publisher's decision.
OnDead
Maybe I've gotten too used to the Steam school of storefront aesthetics, but the vertical-scrolling list of available games seemed rather quaint. When your library of games is small, however, it works. As an unproven concept, OnLive is in a catch-22 where publishers don't want to invest in an unpopular system, but it won't become popular without compelling games/prices. The list of upcoming AAA titles like Duke Nukem Forever and the new Deus Ex are encouraging, but this definitely isn't Steam yet. One oddity when I was playing UTIII was that it was in widescreen format, with the video options being customized so I couldn't change it. I suppose that shows how determined OnLive is about promoting their service as an alternative to gaming consoles (vs. PC gamers). Just like Steam, if the company ever disappears so do your games. And with no local files at all, your OnLive games are VERY gone. For some reason I felt inspired to actually look over the TOS agreement when I updated the client, and something stood out to me: apparently OnLive can delete your account if you don't log in and actually use the service for a year. I'd be curious to see if the TOS for Steam has anything like this. I still reinstall old games on occasion (American McGee's Alice right now), and I'd hate to think that a chunk of my gaming library would just vanish if OnLive doesn't offer any new games that I'm interested in for a year or more.
This isn't a ding against OnLive, but I'm wondering if they're slightly ahead of their time given the current state of American internet access. When the ISPs have things like undisclosed bandwidth caps & traffic shaping to combat what they consider "excessive usage" of their advertised unlimited plans, it makes me nervous to pay full price for, and then play for hours on end, a game that could cause service charges or get my internet cut off for the rest of the billing cycle. (But considering how much NetFlix some of my friends watch on their Xbox 360, maybe I'm just paranoid. :> )
Conclusions
I really hope OnLive survives to reach the critical mass that Steam saw, with tons of new games big & small added all the time, and crazy-cheap sales. Right now I can't see myself paying $50-60 for a game when the company doesn't have a very long track record for their completely new concept yet, but if three things happen I could definitely see myself splitting my online purchases between OnLive and Steam:
- OnLive emerges as a stable company that will still be around in a few years.
- They offer impulse-buy sales for games. Under $10 is my sweet spot.
- American ISPs legitimately upgrade their infrastructure, enabling truly unlimited, fast connections.
Also, if more games offer the rental option, I could definitely see myself trying them out on long weekends. I'd highly recommend downloading the client and playing a trial or two to test the OnLive service before plunking down any cash, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
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