Randomly Mine #9

My apologies for not assembling this ahead of time. Editing Max Payne 3 took up the bulk of my schedule these past few weeks, but now, I am free.

Thank you for all generosity and support.

Unlocked

There’s more conflict in my head about Siege than there is conflict in Siege itself.

There’s a comment I see quite often, and its players saying that they enjoy the grind. That – some acknowledging how much this sounds like EA’s reddit post – they feel a sense of accomplishment, playing for hours until they buy the character they wanted.

Here’s my take.

I bought Finka and Lion the nano-second they were available to me. I didn’t accomplish anything, I bought them in the same way I buy Popcorn.

Accomplishment in gaming doesn’t come from playing hours and hours, at least, not to me.

I didn’t feel any accomplishment upon killing a boss in Warframe for the 15th time in a row so I could build Rhino. I felt like I pulled a convoluted slot-machine lever until I finally profited.

But, that’s not to say I’ve never felt accomplishment in a game. Even in Single-Player, it just wasn't time based.

In Bad Company 2, it felt amazing to join a match of Squad Rush with 1 ticket, and defeat a cocky enemy with it. Ensuring our medic never went down, making sure our Sniper used his motion-mines to detect the opposition, charging for the bomb-site while being fired upon.

That accomplishment came from our actions.

In Shadow Warrior 2, it felt amazing to begin with only a sword and side-arm, slowly building an arsenal that surpassed my carrying capacity. This required experimentation and adaption, putting myself in-danger until customizing my perfect combination of deadly weaponry.

That accomplishment came from my decisions.

Playing Siege for hours and hours, ignoring everything in the store to save for characters that are purchased immediately doesn’t have that.

However, I believe those who enjoy Siege’s pursuit, doesn’t only come down to a difference in taste.

I have all the Operators and recent players – unless they paid up – don’t. This means the process of grinding does have a decision to make, which to buy? And in that environment, the satisfaction of deciding which Operator to get, and experimenting with them until you’ve mastered them delivers the satisfaction.

BUT.

Your decision is what provides enjoyment. The hours and hours spent sinking your teeth in the grind, is just padding.

By the logic of more time spent making the completion more satisfying, then the Starter Edition is the best version of the game, and even those who enjoy Siege’s grind tend to not argue that.

For Siege, I believe its system would be best to put you in the position of making those choices, instead of encouraging you to make one choice in particular.

One which amounts to what most Game Publishers amount to…

Give us money. Give us money. Give us money.

007

That’s not James Bond’s code, that’s the number of Spy games I can think of.

No One Lives Forever

Perfect Dark

Death to Spies

Agent

Alpha Protocol

Velvet Assassin

Covert Action

And every single one of these is dead. Hell, Agent didn’t even officially release a screenshot.

It’s frustrating because you’d think that of all the power fantasies out there, being a Spy is one that game’s would be equipped to portray.

Driving cars and shooting goons are their own genres, and things like RPG’s rely heavily on conversations your character partakes in, often speaking with a tone that’s every different from your own.

Making an interactive techno thriller not only seems like a good fit, but something that’d almost make itself.

Well, I have a theory about why this type of game hasn’t been done as often, aside from the obvious.

That being none of the names I’ve mentioned made any sort of money to keep a publisher interested for longer than five years.

In games, we’ve made a lot of progress towards setting up a world. Making grass move with the wind, ensuring each movement on someone’s body is  believable, rendering every texture that the player could microscopically inspect.

We’ve created paintings for people to endlessly look at, however, in dealing with what happens when a player touches said paintings, oh dear…

In-fact, we’ve either hit a brick wall, or hit said brick wall hard enough to sends us backwards butt first.

For all of the fidelity you may see in Call of Duty, its levels and worlds are less interactive than Duke Nukem 3D from 1996.

The priority of presentation today forces developers to exclude detail which could be seen as a waste of time. If a game’s about shooting soldiers, why toggle toilets?

However, in an espionage game where the world is a frienemy, this is not acceptable.

Inspecting people in a party like a private eye, infiltrating bases or interrogating baddies, requires an approach to world and level design that’s the opposite of popular gaming right now.

In a time where levels are literal rather than places with people, a Spy game is not only fraught with difficulty, but ill-advised.

The door is wide-open and a Spy game, be it in the past, present, or future, has serious potential. It just needs someone to slip through.

Iron My Sight

This title doesn’t mean anything, I’m just a child that laughs at childish things.

I’ve been rather impressed with Aeria’s most recent Free to Play shooter. The same publisher that brought me the pathetically enjoyable Wolf-Team where a military FPS combined with Werewolves – seriously – has now produced a Call of Duty clone that might surpass Call of Duty itself.

Featuring better map design, gunplay, and UI design, Ironsight is the F2P Military FPS that should’ve existed years ago. Where most Korean shooters attempted to combine Call of Duty and Counter Strike, either believing it improved the formula or protected themselves from being seen as a carbon copy; Ironsight is shameless in its efforts.

And honestly, at the perfect time.

When the Call of Duty franchise is struggling to refine its own formula, this was the perfect opportunity to present a Free alternative that reminds people of Black Ops II rather than Ghosts.

But the opportunity and potential is far greater than that.

Tencent’s WeGame is a platform that's been talked about for years now, it’s a Steam rival already released in China that may see a Western release in the future and it’s likely WeGame would come with a global release of Call of Duty Online.

Raven Software’s Free to Play version of Call of Duty that combines new and old weapons on new and old maps with new and old game modes.

Being a Tencent game, the company that’s bought out Riot and Epic Games – effectively – it’s littered with Microtranscations which would probably be adjusted coming to the west, but unlikely to use a satisfying system.

Currently then, it seems that Activision relies upon Call of Duty to make its profit in Western markets, and leaves the extra funding in gaming giants such as China, to its Free to Play alternative.

However, that leaves the door open for someone else to make a free Call of Duty game worldwide, and that’s exactly what Aeria have done.

Ironsights tight gunplay, low system-requirements, clean graphics, and generous progression, will claim its audience before Activision and Tencent even attempt to appeal to them.

The Call of Duty name may have power, but in the PC market, there’s not much left. Sales of the games have been a fraction of the consoles for years and retain a lower playerbase than most Independent shooters, which is further enforced by its DLC which split up the user base.

I’m not convinced Call of Duty Online would sweep the masses, and especially not with competition planting its flag years in advance.

U-E-F-A

There’s no particular reason I said it that way. I’ve even called it UEFA in the past. I’m just an idiot.