Gamefly Unlimited PC Play - good but needs to be better

While not new, Gamefly has always been a good deal for renting out games for all the major consoles. Assuming consumers have the time to play and return games at a reasonable rate, renting out games through Gamefly can save a lot of money versus buying games to play.

Gamefly also has PC game sales and PC games that can be rented under an unlimited PC play option. Although I love the concept, the available title selections leave me a little disappointed even after the service has been available for months. It only contains old PC games that I have already beaten and not anything that I would consider new. Of course, if you haven't played any games for a few years then it does have some good ones like Bioshock and Assassin's Creed but for the rest of us it doesn't really provide anything compelling.

My guess is that the service suffers from the same problem that Netflix does - content providers are unwilling to provide the content for business reasons. I applaud the service but until they have recent games then it doesn't really add any value.

Digital Game Management Problems

Over the past few years there has been a huge rise in the quality and quantity of digital distribution platforms:

• Amazon
• Steam
• GOG
• Origin
• Many others

I love the competition that results in lower prices for my games but as I have purchased over 400 digital games (and counting), I have discovered new issues that arise from owning so many games that you don't have sitting on a shelf.

First, we should start with how I use to take stock of my game collection - by looking at the bookshelf. Like movies, I would stack all of my games in a bookshelf organized by platform. Just by glancing at them, I could tell how many games I own (and consequently how many games I still haven't finished). It acted as a constraint against the purchase of new games because if I had a lot of games sitting on the shelf then I knew I didn't need to go out and buy more. Once I finished a game, I could sell it on ebay. If I sold enough of them, then I could look at the bookshelf, see that I was low on games, and feel fine about purchasing more.

With the rise of digital distribution, I no longer have a stocked bookshelf. So whenever I look at it I feel like I need to get more games. If possible, I always buy the PC version of a game (unless it was a horrible port) when it goes on sale. And due to Steam and others, there are tons of sales going on all the time. So the combination of amazing savings and the drive to purchase new games has led to me owning more than I have time to play.

Now, the easy solution is to break the habit and stop buying games until I play the ones I already have (but the steam sales are so good!). But while I work on that, I think it's important to look at the other issues that come with owning everything in the cloud.

Problems:

Multiple copies of games - I've only accidentally done this once (that I know of), but I once bought Dragon Age through a steam sale only to realize I already owned the game on Origin. I discovered this fact because I was about to do the same for Dragon Age 2 until I did a Gmail search and found the receipts for both Origin and Steam. Thankfully they were both cheap but it was still quite a shock. It was then that I realized I needed a way to figure out what I owned which leads to the next problem...

Keeping track of what you own - Having games stored in the cloud certain saves on physical space but it makes it harder to keep track of what I already own. I can no longer look at my game collection on the bookshelf to see what I may already have. Because I own games through Amazon, Steam, GOG, and Origin, I need to keep track of which service has what game through some kind of system. Currently I store all digital receipts in Gmail and then search for a game I think I may own already before purchasing it. However, this requires me to remember which games I own and which I don't. And with over 400 games and counting it gets harder and harder to do that.

Cappuccino effect - If you drink coffee regularly and don't make it yourself or have it free at work, you come to realize that you spend an awful amount on that habit. I tend to go to Starbucks, and just coffee is about $2. You go for something with espresso and you are looking at $4 or above. If we average $3 for five days then you have just spent $15 per week. At 48 weeks a year that adds up to $720 per year just for coffee. That is a lot of money to spend on just one habit. The same behavior can also apply to games that go on sale for 75% - they don't cost a lot of money but the costs can add up quickly.

Solutions:

There is an easy solution to all of these problems - only buy a couple of games at a time until you finish them and move on. But given how deals are structured, in order to achieve the best price for a game some forethought and advanced purchasing is required. One possible solution is to limit how many games you buy that you aren't playing currently, no matter what deals are going on. That would ensure you bought some cheap games but don't go overboard and buy more than you need. Once you finish some games then the queue opens up and you can proceed to buy more games.

Of course, first-world problem jokes aside, this problem of keeping track of your library will only get much worse as the digital market expands and more people migrate their collections to the cloud. I might be an outlier now but as more people switch to buying games digitally this issue will start to become more visible and eventually someone will need to figure out the best solution to fix it.

Microsoft IllumiRoom has a chance

Microsoft Research has garnered a bit of a reputation for vaporware.  Just google (or bing) the Microsoft Courier or the original Microsoft Surface (now known as pixelsense).  Both were really cool projects that seemed like they could change how you interacted with the world.  Both were cost prohibitive and didn't depart strongly enough from established products like laptops, tablets, and non-interactive display surfaces.  To put it simply, there just wasn't enough demand for these niche projects to go beyond anything more than low-volume or prototype stages.

Microsoft Research's latest baby is IllumiRoom.  The best way to describe it is to just let you see it.

This is bridging the gap between virtual reality and standard displays.  On initial review, it seemed over the top and I immediately wrote it off.  A decent projector can cost thousands of dollars and would have to be mapped to the room exactly to not mess with the television display itself and give you a good picture.  Paint and carpet colors need to be factored in, as well as furniture.  I just didn't feel it would be a sensible purchase for your average gamer.

However, perhaps the system isn't is expensive as previously expected.  The technology relies on 2 critical pieces: A) Mapping the room, B) Projecting the peripheral information.  For A, the kinect already does this to a certain extent.  A 'kinect 2.0' could certainly not only map the room but also adjust for colors and lighting, as well as map what people were in the room.  Technology wise, it might be close to production ready at consumer level costs.  The importance of this mapping technology can't be ignored - this is where the flexibility of the IllumiRoom really shines.  It could be made to work for basically any room, regardless of setup.  For B, admittedly my main limiting factor, the linchpin is realizing that a higher quality projector is totally unnecessary.  The IllumiRoom is designed to extend your peripheral vision, where your visual acuity is substantially lower.  You could project a 640x480 200" picture and as long as your central vision is focused on the television, you could even say that it is a retina display.  A very cheap, low resolution display paired with an extended picture adjustment system (zoom, focus, keystone, etc) would work perfectly for this purpose.

This is by no means cheap for your standard gamer, but could very well bring things into the realm of possibility.  A $300 kinect + projector package is certainly marketable.  Finally, the next Xbox is set to be revealed within the next few months.  While 4K TVs were all the rage at CES, that technology is still quite a while away, and TV's need to grow another 20-30 inches before it becomes useful.  So that means that the next Xbox will be rocking hardware that is basically overkill for 1080p.  Yes, even at 1080p textures, character models, framerates (60 fps!) will be substantially better than the Xbox 360, but we will definitely be far into the diminishing returns curve while fixed at 1080p.  I'm sure the next Xbox has more than enough horsepower to drive an extended field of vision.

There are some final hurdles to overcome.  For example, both the kinect and projector would basically have to be behind, above, or next to the player - all are somewhat awkward positions - especially when you factor in the power cords and connectors.  However, the driving force that could overcome these hurdles shouldn't be ignored either.  The wow factor.  Immersion technology has been way to expensive or gimmicky (3D glasses) to really work.  It typically offers lower fidelity picture quality for only one person - but people typically agree that its pretty awesome - just not practical.  This is a simple and flexible immersion technology that could be near market ready, visible to everyone, and within reaching distance for cost.

Project Shield Update

After watching this interview from Sessler (who asked questions that I still had), my excitement has been dampened somewhat. It seems that all video streaming will occur at 720p, which is fine for the handheld but that same resolution will be piped to the television over HDMI as well.

One of the awesome things about PC gaming is the ability to play games at a high resolution with a high frame rate. If I'm stuck at 720p on my 55 inch television, then it makes more sense just to lug the PC into the living room so I can get the 1080p resolution and remove any latency issues whatsoever.

Still a cool device but at only 720p it starts to lose its appeal.

Project Shield Impressions

Nvidia has revealed a new device that is both controller and screen at the same time. You can read about the device here but I was most floored by the potential of streaming games. At first it seemed pretty gimmicky but after I thought more about it I discovered some wonderful uses to expand the technology that I hope they take advantage of:

• Streaming PC Games wirelessly in the home
• The most important issue with this will be lag but if they can make it seamless then this sounds to be pretty awesome. Imagine having your huge tower tucked away in a cold place in your house and sitting on your couch with just a controller on your big screen TV - you could get rid of the noise and mess of cables but still enjoy the beefy graphics you only get from a PC. 
• For those that prefer the Keyboard/Mouse combo then those could be hooked up to some very small box which would be tied to a monitor. Nvidia didn't announce that but I imagine that would be the next step. You would still be limiting the wires needed and reducing clutter.
• Streaming PC Games outside the home
• This would essentially replace what Onlive does except it would come from your own computer - meaning it would probably not have enough upload bandwidth to support it unless you have Google Fiber. I don't see this as viable currently - unless they somehow integrate it with some Grid servers to provide the necessary bandwidth. 

I already have both the Vita and 3DS so I don't foresee me wanting to play games on this controller/screen. I think the biggest benefit would be eliminating the need to have the PC Tower next to a monitor or TV thus removing the wire/dust problem that always arises from it.

Rumors of the subscription model's death have been greatly exaggerated

Many analysts, gamers, developers, and publishers alike feel that there is a shift in the PC game industry. One that is moving away from a pay-to-play approach and moving towards a free-to-play-then-pay approach.

The current growth of games like Guild Wars 2 and League of Legends, and the dramatic loss in popularity of Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Trek Online have only cemented this opinion. It has gotten to the point where a game's failure or success is now determined by what model the developer/publisher use.

I think this is an absurd mentality. Bottom line is that if you make a product that is compelling enough, people will pay for it. I don't think people really care that much about if they are paying $15 per month or $10 for a singular piece of content. I think they care about value.

It's surmised that WoW's subscription success is a one time deal - the game was a breakthrough product and Blizzard was able to leverage that into a novel cash model. Since then, MMO after MMO have tried to emulate Blizzard's model and none have been met with very much success. Yet, maybe it isn't so much the model as the fact that every subscription MMO that has come out basically hasn't been as good as WoW. Each MMO has tried to different in some way - but none were different enough and overall, none were better. Often times it is because WoW has 7 years of development into the game that has resulted in an incredibly matured product - new MMOs are rarely at feature parity with WoW. Other times the initial population wasn't large enough to create a sustainable social environment - a necessary component of the MMO.  SW:TOR leveraged their story, Rift had dynamic events, but at the end of the day, neither delivered as much fun as the full WoW experience.

On the other hand, League of Legends has taken the PC gaming space by storm. And Guild Wars 2 (not technically free-to-play) looks poised to capture many of the stranded ex-WoW players over the years.  Games like Lord of the Rings Online have recovered and grown after converting to a free-to-play model.  However, I feel that these are testaments of the free-to-play model working, not that the subscription based model is dead.

In the current PC gaming space I think you can make 3 solid premises.  1) Free to play is a viable model for the success of a wide variety of games.  2) Subscription based games that, overall, are not as good as WoW are not successful.  3) Games that are not successful with subs can become successful with F2P  It is not logically sound to conclude that the subscription based model is dead.

In particular I want to examine with premise 3 is important - it is a lesson developers should take note of.  In a subscription based model, developers have a tendency to be lazy or too long term in development.  SW:TOR tried very hard to recapture subscription with huge mega-updates to try to impact the feel of the game itself.  The result was long periods of very little apparent development.  F2P keep developers honest.  They MUST offer compelling features and product - and they get better feedback.  As in an earlier post, simply trying to talk to the community won't give a developer a good idea of where to focus development time.  But in a F2P model, the developer has direct sales feedback - if a feature is good, people will buy it.  If it sucks, it doesn't sell well.  Free 2 play is also far less dependent on an initial hook to overcome a pay-to-play game's barrier of entry.

But the bottom line again is that if your product is compelling enough, people will pay for it - and I say that they won't care if its piecemeal or a sub.  If its good and you can make people want to play, they'll pay.  I promise you if a developer can create a game that has an interesting IP, is at feature parity with WoW, has more than 1-2 elements that improves MMO gameplay over WoW, and developers actually deliver frequent updates continual content, people will sub, the game will grow, and that cash cow that every publisher has coveted will be theirs.  I think the lesson that we have learned over the last few years isn't that the subscription model is dead, its that creating such a game is damned hard to do.

What gamers want

I'm currently playing Star Wars: The Old Republic pretty avidly.  That and an occasion dabble of League of Legends.  It's funny how different they are.  Star Wars is an MMORPG rich with history, scenery, immersive stories.  League of Legends is basically a simple tower defense game with a stable of characters you can play with.
SWTOR is very possibly the most expensive game ever produced, but has been plagued with a loss of subscribers, some pretty negative feedback (though it was initially reviewed well), and seemingly a loss of support from EA, its publisher.  League of Legends, on the other hand, is a free to play game that is becoming an unstoppable force, easily eclipsing Call of Duty 4: MW as the most popular PC game, maybe even of all time.  LoL has an estimated 15 million active players, surpassing even WoW's vaunted 12 million mark.
The odd thing here is if you look at the feature roll-out with Star Wars, it was prioritized pretty close to what the community was demanding.  And that's after the game received a lot of positive initial reviews.  So what happened?
I think game developers need to be very careful when it comes to gathering feedback from the community.  I think there is a very simple but powerful phenomenon here - and that is gamers don't always know what they want.
Let preface that by saying gamers DO know what they want at a very simple and abstract level.  It's different from gamer to gamer, but whether its the raucous laughter at a hilarious piece of dialogue or the sweet satisfaction of that last kill after months of frustration, what gamers really want is to have a good time: or fun.  But how do gamers have fun?
Let's go over 3 of the elements in MMOs that are commonly thought of as wanted or unwanted:

A) Grinding sucks
Many common MMO elements are somewhat repetitive nature: aka the grind.  This is now universally denounced.  But there are 2 very important reasons why they exist.  A) They keep players occupied and slows progression (necessary to develop a time commitment that makes leaving a game harder), and B) To increase the satisfaction of the end result of the grind.
What I believe players don't realize is that removing the grind doesn't make them happier, it only makes the reward worth less.  It also removes something to do, which then in turn can results in the player getting bored. Developers need to strike a good balance here because too much grind is boring inherently.  I think ideally you want very little grind at the very beginning so you don't lose people immediately.  Through the early mid game, you want a fair bit of grinding to make rewards worthwhile, and then taper the grind off as people are more and more time committed to the game.  Still, don't remove it entirely, as you do need to give people something to do and work towards.Bored players unsubscribe or quit more than frustrated players. They also complain about lack of content.

B) MOAR CONTENT NAO!
Speaking of content, let's talk about that for a second.  Content, by itself, can't drive a game.  I don't believe its physically possible to develop content at a rate that most players can easily outpace.  It's also not necessary to make a great game.  League of Legends has basically no content, and can be incredibly addicting and fun.  SWTOR has tons of content and is not meeting expectations.  Content isn't always a bad thing - just look at Skyrim or Fallout 3, but it certainly isn't the solution for a game that is boring players by not having enough other compelling elements.

C) Exclusive limited items are awesome!
This is a specific subset of limited items - because I think everyone who plays like limited items to a certain degree.  Without them, the game risks of becoming bland. However, if the item is too exclusive and meant to serve as a badge, this concept backfires. I've heard a fair amount of 'hardcore' gamers say that the game needs this.  I disagree.  While a small number of players will have their e-peen stroked by their badge of elite gamer awesomeness, the rest of the community is left out.  So while the initial reaction is exciting, I believe long term this is an overall negative experience.  It also likely won't satisfy the truly hardcore gamer (that is actually able to earn this item) long term.

There is an initial reaction when looking at these elements in an MMO setting, but perhaps it isn't as clear as you think.  Sometimes, when things don't feel fun to you, it makes something else more fun. Or maybe it just sucked to begin with - who knows?

Free game codes from PAX East

I know its been a while since I last posted but I'm currently cleaning up my place and have some leftover beta codes that I got from PAX East back in April. First person to use them gets them.

Magicka - get the game free on Steam
CY7JL-90TVD-D3008

Bullet Run - Beta access, 2 codes
www.bulletrunthegame.com
2KGK-F9XC-X4FA-4GR2-NZGT
RD9J-PGKP-PG39-2AAE-2KXN

Blacklight - get free stuff in the game (weapon, tag, and camo)
www.playblacklight.com
blacklight.perfectworld.com/redeem
TPZ9L6T

D&D Neverwinter - Beta key
playneverwinter.com
ZDC35-R4C-88LM

E3 2012 - Day One Impressions

Normally I spend my first day at E3 walking between South and West Hall to plan out what I will be doing the next two days. I try to take a lot of pictures early to show others what the convention floor feels like (it really is a spectacle you have to see). If I can, I stop by and play games and view demos as long as the lines are short but I mainly map out which games I need to see. I'll try to provide individual impressions in other posts but here is a snapshot of my day one at E3:

• Dead Space 3 is more of the great Dead Space you love. This time it is set on some frozen planet and there is co-op. You can drop in/out but the story and cutscenes actually change depending on if there is another player or not so they say you get two games in one. I say its more 1.5 but whatever.
• Far Cry 3 can be described with one word - boobs. I can't say I've seen a game start out a demo with boobs but now there is Far Cry 3. Watch the trailer to see the context because I could try to explain it but it wouldn't make sense. It looks frantic and melee attacks are a lot more fun this time around. The jungle looks fantastic but I think they are taking the Heart of Darkness theme a little far.
• Quantum Conundrum - This is a great puzzle game that his made by Kim Swift who helped make Portal. You will find a lot of similarities between the two games except now you change the environment instead of teleporting. You can make the environment heavy, fluffy, slow, or reverse gravity and objects behave differently depending on what you do. Of course the more advanced puzzles have you combining multiple behaviors to solve the puzzle. Comes out on the PC in June.
• Sleeping Dogs - This was the same demo I played at PAX but it is still a lot of fun. Fight mechanics are like assassin's creed and the chase scenes are very interactive. All of this set in an open world environment.
• Lost Planet 3 - Looks like the previous two games and about the same type of fun. If you liked the previous games you will like this one otherwise you can pass.
• Playstation All Stars - Think Super Smash Bros but not as good with Playstation characters. Nintendo has always had beloved franchises to grab characters from but Playstation just doesn't seem to have the same caliber of characters. 
• Lego Batman 2 DC Heroes - Another Lego game but this time they have a great open world in addition to story modes. I played as Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Batman and there are other characters as well. 
• Sly Cooper Thieves in Time - Another great Sly Cooper game. I played the original series so I'm looking forward to this one. Plays just like the previous games.
• Zone of Enders HD remake - Still fun but not graphically impressive. I played the first game and enjoyed it but I don't see a lot of people picking this up.
• Darksiders 2 - Rips off a lot of good games but it's still great. Good combat system and Prince of Persia acrobatics combine to create a fun experience.

E3 2012 - It Has Begun

I have been lucky enough to be able to attend E3 for the last 3 years and this year is no different. While I won't be able to match more sophisticated outlets in coverage I will certainly enjoy playing and watching these games and plan to give impressions on those games that I experience. My suggestion if you want the best recap of news is to simply watch the press conferences that are available. They provide a good summary of the talking points companies have to offer and have many good demos of games - some of which appear on the show floor.

Well, it's time to get writing. Stay tuned...