Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 437

XCOM The Boardgame, Sunless Sea, Darkest Dungeon, Heroes of The Storm, Offworld Trading Company, Diablo III Season 2 Update, Special Guests David Heron and Michael Zenke, Games As Service, Your Emails and more!

This week David Heron and Michael Zenke join Sean and Allen talk about games as service.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Like Swimming - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 28:48

And One - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 48:58

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

Comments

Not sure if you guys have a topic for next week, but what about Game Remastering? With the remastered version of Homeworld coming out, and Grim Fandango recently released, the timing seems right. What recent remastered games were good, and which weren't? Which games do you want to see remastered (*cough* Tie Fighter *cough*)?

Anyway, great podcast, been listening since GFW podcast went off the air and left a big hole in my listening schedule (and you can have Sean Elliot and Jeff Green on anytime!).

I'm glad you guys mentioned the Peter Molyneux interview. Say what you will about the man, that article really left a bad taste in my mouth, it felt like pretty shoddy journalism. And perhaps that's easy to say, because I'm no journalist, and I didn't get burned by the Godus Kickstarter, but... It just felt disrespectful and *wrong*. Granted, the man is a visionary, a dreamer, with poor management skills, at least that's what I've gathered. But the article, ugh... Just that opening line "are you a pathological liar" seemed really, really wrong.

Great discussion, and a nice change of pace (although I'm always a bit disoriented at first when we have new voices on, or voices we haven't heard in a while ). I particularly agreed on Evolve. In my opinion, rolling out all that DLC on day one with so many different kinds was a big mistake. I'll be steering clear of it, for sure.

Eleima wrote:

I'm glad you guys mentioned the Peter Molyneux interview. Say what you will about the man, that article really left a bad taste in my mouth, it felt like pretty shoddy journalism. And perhaps that's easy to say, because I'm no journalist, and I didn't get burned by the Godus Kickstarter, but... It just felt disrespectful and *wrong*. Granted, the man is a visionary, a dreamer, with poor management skills, at least that's what I've gathered. But the article, ugh... Just that opening line "are you a pathological liar" seemed really, really wrong.

Great discussion, and a nice change of pace (although I'm always a bit disoriented at first when we have new voices on, or voices we haven't heard in a while ). I particularly agreed on Evolve. In my opinion, rolling out all that DLC on day one with so many different kinds was a big mistake. I'll be steering clear of it, for sure.

I'm also happy to hear some other voices critical of that interview (which I stopped reading after the first question.)

Most creative teams need idea people to dream something up, leaders who can see the big picture and marshall resources, and soldiers who can execute a task when given. There are lots of quality leaders and lots of good soldiers out there, but not a whole heck of a lot of idea people.

To vilify someone who by all accounts is a pure idea person / visionary for poor leadership skills seems more in service of feeding the internet outrage monster than anything else. Like there's a pull for a scandal to make people upset instead of a nuanced post-mortem over a Kickstarter project that didn't pan out.

I gave up on RPS about 2-3 years ago when Walker took this turn into geraldo-style "journalism"... but I don't see how anything that Molyneux said is the least bit defensible.

he's equal parts dishonest and delusional, and while I wouldn't assign any of it to malice.. at some point people have to stop covering for his incompetence and negligence.

I'm really surprised the XCOM Board Game discussion came out the way it did. Having the app allows a far more complicated game to be as streamlined as it is. There are far fewer cards, dice, etc. than had it be necessary to represent all the systems the app computes for you, especially the turn order and durations. XCBG is therefore simpler to learn and play than other good Fantasy Flight games.

I wonder how many players the podcaster (David?) played it with? I have so far only played it with two (commander and communications; squad leader and scientist) and it was a great blast and the right amount of individual stress and required communication. I could see, though, that in a four player game, it might be too hard to coordinate group action and skill synergy, but it was perfect at two.

He was right to point out that the in-app index is pretty frustrating.

Keithustus wrote:

I'm really surprised the XCOM Board Game discussion came out the way it did.

Me too. It really came off as the game being poorly made, which I don't agree with.

A friend of mine just bought it and brought it over this past weekend. Four of us, none of whom had played it before, and only one of us (me) having played the video game, played through the tutorial with no real problems. We then played through a full, proper game just fine and enjoyed it. And we actually won.

That said, I do fully agree with the podcast guest in that the game really does need a printed manual to allow new players the ability to read through it so that the players who have played before aren't forced to play through the tutorial every time a new player is present.

I'm willing to let them not print a manual for the possible (but unrealized) advantages gained by amending the in-game manual both to fix/errata things and to integrate expansions far better than games relying on printed manuals. And fix the indexing.

That said, this could be the slippery slope to day-one patching of manuals.

Thirded on the XCom Board Game.

I also, though, disagree with the premise that a tutorial game is needed every time you have a new player at the table. I was introduced to the board game as the only new player out of four, and was given my job as Squad Leader "because it's the most intuitive." I was given brief instructions on what to do when one of my responsibilities came up, and on the issue of "How to choose which soldiers to send," and a summary of how the other roles might synergize with mine. (Research might give you new weapons to use, which work like this; command can train elites, etc.) I had no trouble following along with the game, and we played through a game on normal and then one on hard.

If you have two new players or three, the tutorial might be necessary, but not always. My understanding is that on the easy setting there's also an unlimited amount of time in the "pause pool," so on any easy game you can pause the timed portion of the game to explain things as they come up to the new players.

I'm not sold on the need for a manual, TBH. Reference cards for each role (They've got the list of responsibilities already - just expand them to "HOW?" would do it) would serve. There are enough videos (including official ones) on how to play the game that a manual's just extra paper.

The app black boxes a lot of tracking meters so that you don't have to worry about them, and also allows for randomization of elements to ensure that different playthroughs follow different patterns, enhancing replayability. It absolutely simplifies and enhances a game that would otherwise end up being overcomplicated and repetitive.

If nothing else, this game really gets at the "Oh my god" stress factor of the video game - that sense that things are almost always about to fall apart, and that there's no guarantee of a win until the very last turn.

There are enough videos (including official ones) on how to play the game that a manual's just extra paper.

But surely reading a few pages of a printed manual (or, like you suggest, a reference card) can be done in a much shorter amount of time than whatever the average length of those videos is.

MeatMan wrote:
There are enough videos (including official ones) on how to play the game that a manual's just extra paper.

But surely reading a few pages of a printed manual (or, like you suggest, a reference card) can be done in a much shorter amount of time than whatever the average length of those videos is.

Maybe. I just find that for most games that are as complex as the typical FFG offering, the manual never really works for me. It's like having a handyman's reference text of terminology as opposed to a how-to project guide.

FFG's "How to play" videos tend to be in sets of three or four, each of which is about 3-4 minutes long. A little more than reading a manual, but typically much, much more useful.

Just wanted to drop in and leave a note that I really enjoyed this episode, as well as all the guests on it.

In regards to Molyneux, I don't read RPS so haven't seen the interview, but my long-standing perception of the guy is that he likes to promise Jesus but just delivers Jim instead. Jim's a cool guy, great to have a beer with, but he's not, y'know, Jesus.

So I just ignore most of his promises so I don't get hung up expecting Jesus.

That said, I don't know the specifics of the whole Curiosity + Godus thing going on, but it certainly does sound ill-conceived and irresponsible on his part. Peter Molyneux really does need people capable of managing him and his ideas a bit better.

I absolutely defer to David Heron when it comes to things like mechanics, but, while I think I'm usually one of the more cynical Rabbiteers, I actually felt at Gen Con that Fantasy Flight did a passable job at pulling off a hybrid digital-analog board game – which is something that a lot of people have failed at. I might go so far as to say that hybrid games are the concept that's most easy for me to get cynical about, to the point where the best I can usually muster about a demo is "I can see how this could fail, but it might avoid that trap." XCOM intentionally stresses out players, so maybe that kept me from detaching as much as I usually do, but I didn't notice the usual weaknesses I expect in the hybrid space.

That said, I can't speak to the manual, since the demo guide was running the app and gave us plenty of verbal explanation before we played.

Eleima wrote:

I'm glad you guys mentioned the Peter Molyneux interview. Say what you will about the man, that article really left a bad taste in my mouth, it felt like pretty shoddy journalism. And perhaps that's easy to say, because I'm no journalist, and I didn't get burned by the Godus Kickstarter, but... It just felt disrespectful and *wrong*. Granted, the man is a visionary, a dreamer, with poor management skills, at least that's what I've gathered. But the article, ugh... Just that opening line "are you a pathological liar" seemed really, really wrong.

I agree. The interviewer starts bagging Molyneux's work ethic based on his tweets, fer chrissakes.

I feel RPS picked the wrong topic to go all muscular on, except it's probably the right one from their point of view: an easy target (as ccesarano points out, this his been Molyneux's MO for years) and plays to a lot of reader angst.

Fourthed on XCOM. I think it's tremendous.

One of the things I really like about it is that I can lay out the game and start playing immediately. It's not obvious in the tutorial, but you can tap the name of the activity at any time to pause the game and open the rules for that activity. So I'll sit down some new players and just tell them 'we can just start, and you'll learn what you need as we go.' And it works. A new thing comes up, I pause, explain the rules, let them work through it, then go. I'm usually able to have the game running full-speed by round 2, in part because most of the activities are intuitive.

I do acknowledge the criticisms Shut Up & Sit Down had, where each individual activity isn't really amazing; in some rounds, you're just going through the motions. Still, those simple motions can be incredibly tense, when the Chief Scientist knows they should put down another scientist, and they're looking to the Commander who is mentally calculating how to deal with the UFOs on the board, and the Squad Leader is shouting 'I'm going to need two credits to defend the base!' and the Central Officer is counting '5! 4! 3! 2! 1!'

It's not going to be for everyone, but to echo MeatMan, the podcast seemed to end up disappointed and groaning about the game being poorly made, and that's just not true. It accomplishes what it sets out to you; maybe that's not what you want in a game, but it's certainly not a poorly made game.

The lack of a paper manual is a bit odd, to be sure, but it works. The app makes it so that accessing the rules you need at this very moment is easy. I think you just need to accept that the game wants you to get started so it can teach itself to you, rather than asking you to memorize pages of rules before you begin.

BeriAlpha wrote:

I'll sit down some new players and just tell them 'we can just start, and you'll learn what you need as we go.' And it works. A new thing comes up, I pause, explain the rules, let them work through it, then go. I'm usually able to have the game running full-speed by round 2, in part because most of the activities are intuitive.

Mind blown! (I knew you could access the rules there as you go, but hadn't thought to try to start that way.)

Keithustus wrote:
BeriAlpha wrote:

I'll sit down some new players and just tell them 'we can just start, and you'll learn what you need as we go.' And it works. A new thing comes up, I pause, explain the rules, let them work through it, then go. I'm usually able to have the game running full-speed by round 2, in part because most of the activities are intuitive.

Mind blown! (I knew you could access the rules there as you go, but hadn't thought to try to start that way.)

I've had the opportunity to teach the game to a few groups, and I've found that I like to start on Normal. Tutorial pauses more than is really necessary (when you have someone who knows the game), and I feel like playing on Easy with infinite pause time ends up ignoring a major game mechanic (limited time). I actually wish there were an option to play on Easy, but with limited pause time.

BeriAlpha wrote:

I actually wish there were an option to play on Easy, but with limited pause time.

May I suggest restraint? My few playthroughs (all on Easy), we didn't even use pause. We didn't always win, but pausing more wouldn't have helped.

I also really like the talk about "games as a service." I think there's a lot of fuzziness in terms of expectations there that I think could be clarified if we looked at how it is and isn't the same as "software as a service" in the corporate sector (or even B2C), in part because I think the expectations are clearer (and potentially more legally enforceable) for non-game SaaS.