Randomly Mine #8

The Lootbox Blamebox

Recently, I talked about how people blame Overwatch for Valve’s recent direction in the games they make. I explained how it doesn’t add up, since Valve has multiple games that dominate their own platform, with economies and monetization avenues that don’t exist in Overwatch.

Well, something else that Overwatch gets blamed for by gamers around the globe is the lootbox. Those disgustingly greedy, gambling based bundles of filth. 

After Overwatch came out, suddenly, lootboxes were everywhere! And Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a game no one played but read the headline of a PC Gamer article for, was able to add microtransactions at the last minute. So it’s not impossible!

No, it’s just ridiculous.

Were the lootboxes in Battlefront 2, Call of Duty WWII, and Destiny 2 costmetic only packs that gave you permanent sprays, icons, emotes, and skins? No.

That doesn’t sound like Overwatch’s system at all then.

It’s Overwatch in the same way that Mustard is Ketchup. Similar texture isn’t going to make you want to squeeze the yellow paste on your French fries.

Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 4, FIFA, and Call of Duty had lootboxes before there was a screenshot of Overwatch. More importantly, they had systems far closer to what publisher’s desired. Gameplay effecting systems that encourage people to increase in power, not through time but money.

A system that Overwatch does not use.

Look, Blizzard is often credited by gamers for influencing the industry, and rightfully so. They’re one of the most recognizable brands in the business and one of the best when it comes to polish and community involvement. But it’s important to remember, as SkillUp put it…

Companies don’t care what’s popular, they care about what’s profitable.

When You Have 1000 Games

When you have a thousand video games, it takes over a minute to scroll down the list by keyboard. You have to remember the password for your five launchers. You forget the names of games you’ve already owned and gift games to your friends to stop yourself from buying more.

When you’ve got a thousand games you’ll never be up to date in terms of releases. You’ll have hundreds with less than an hour clocked. And you’ll refuse to buy the fairest of Microtransactions, because you’ve bought multiple games for the price of a sword.

When you’ve got a thousand games, a thousand hours into one game is impossible. A thousand gigabytes is adorable. And you’ll uninstall games because you’ve never started them.

These three paragraphs make me wonder, why do I have a thousand games?

I’m not a physical hoarder. I forget to eat most days. My room’s currently more barren than a nuns por- wait, already used that one.

It took me four months to buy a lamp for this room, I’ve got one notebook from over ten years ago, and my speakers are even older than that.

My Mother even had to convince me to keep drawings from my childhood, because I currently hold such little attachment to them.

But when it comes to media, I consume.

I’ll find an answer one day.

Or maybe I’ll just buy ten more games during the next Steam sale.

Skeptical Spectator

Imagine Football being broadcasted in first person. Imagine if rather than having a full view of the pitch, someone would be cutting between points of view on the fly.

Well, even this would be better than FPS Esports.

Because in Football, there’s one objective.

It’s relatively easy to assume that the most interesting and intense action taking place is going to be wherever the ball happens to be on the field.

Rainbow Six Siege doesn’t work like that.

A single team can cover the entirety of a floor. Maps are multistory interiors that can take place in a suburban house or a skyscraper in Japan. Players can be slowly crawling or charging at a full sprint.

These are just some of the challenges that a game like Rainbow Six Siege faces as a spectator sport.

During the Invitational, a kill happened so quickly that not only did I the viewer not see what happened, neither did the commentators, who awkwardly tried to make coherent sense out of the event.

When was the last time you saw Hockey commentators miss a shot on goal?

USA’s 2006 coverage of the Halo 2 MLG season may have been pre-recorded but frankly, it gives exposure to issues with livestreamed matches of FPSs.

During a live-match. Commentators have no idea when the next dramatic play is going to occur, and what results, is the director awkwardly shifting between players, trying desperately to find something interesting.

When a firefight has been started, it tries to cut to the players involved, but due to the quick deaths in Rainbow Six, the firefight has likely already concluded, and all you get to see as the viewer, is someone’s screen going dark.

Until we’re able to get an AI that can predict the future and perfectly cut to every fight before they start, I think the only solution would be to give some control the viewer.

I picture having a “main-screen” that’s controlled by the event’s director, but underneath that are 10 screens that are the players from both teams, which viewers can see and if they click on one of them, gets a fullscreen view of their perspective.

But there’s plenty of challenges here. 

First, twitch is unlikely to implement such a feature, so it’d have to be developed in house, which is very expensive.

Second, you’d have to stream eleven different perspectives to the viewer at once, it’s already hard enough to stream just one.

Third, E-Sports is profitable as is, and such a program would require a lot of investment that might not be able to make a return.

Currently, FPS e-sports isn’t horrible. It’s got a following, and if you’re familiar with the game, it’s interesting to watch those at the highest level of play compete. You learn things or simply just admire their talents. But as for something I’m going to watch on a regular basis, it’s behind sports that I already don’t watch.

Neotokyo

January’s multiplayer playsession was a blast, and I’m pleased to finally have an understanding of this highly remembered, but rarely played mod.

On the surface it’s just Counter Strike Weeb.6 but you’ll quickly discover there’s more to it than that.

Something that’s at first infuriating is the lack of pinpoint accuracy. Counter Strike uses recoil patterns, meaning that if you play the game enough, you can predict where each bullet is going to go based on your inputs. It’s what separates low-level and high level play.

But Neotokyo’s inaccurate weapons has a random spread as far as I can tell, which in the early hours may lead to you screaming your nuts off.

The benefit however, is combat’s not about whoever center’s their screen first. It’s about positioning, tactics, and your abilities.

But the biggest side-effect of having an FPS take priority of positioning over aiming, is level-design.

The maps in Neotokyo were by far the stand out.

I love Rainbow Six Siege, but its design does lead to a few tropes. Defenders always have a solid interior, Attackers always have some kind of safety window when pushing forward, and maps will have levels 1-3.

Neotokyo’s simplicity means it can be far more experimental and distinctive in its layouts.

Maps are as diverse as multi-floored compact corridors in a highrise apartment, to a snow filled cabin in the middle of the countryside.

You might be spraying an SMG through subway cars, or using a magnum with precision in a Japanese temple.

And this map variety led to me wanting to play one match to the next, because each was its own unique experience.

The trend recently through MOBA’s and Multiplayer shooters has been elegant complexity. And it’s great, but there are downsides compared to simplicity, and map design has had the biggest impact.

When a player can enter a hallway with hundreds of potential abilities that need to be accounted for, you as a designer are going to run into barriers. Give someone just run, jump, shoot, use, and designers have a playground to work with.

Less is more.