So, apparently Mozilla is paving some fancy new roads between web browsers and video cards. With the increasing popularity of apps like google earth and 3d browser-based games, as well as the ubiquity of 3d-accelerated hardware, I think it will probably get a lot more support than previous efforts to bring 3d to the web, which will be great for uses like the ones I just mentioned.
What I can’t believe is this:
“If you think about the traditional browsing experience of flat pages and links this is not a natural way to interact. People are much more used to walking around and picking things up so a 3D browser could lead eventually to a more naturalistic way of interaction.”
I really hope that quote was from a PR flak and not an actual developer. Think about the things you do online. Would any of them be improved by being able to pick things up? I can’t believe that people are still clinging to this Hollywood image of the universal 3D interface. Sure, it looks great on the silver screen, but its really fraught with difficulties, as usability guru Jacob Nielsen has been saying for over ten years:
Evolution optimized homo sapiens for wandering the savannah - moving around a plane - and not swinging through the trees….
Using 3D on a computer adds a range of difficulties:
*The screen and the mouse are both 2D devices, so we don’t get true 3D unless we strap on weird head-gear and buy expensive bats (flying mice)*It is difficult to control a 3D space with the interaction techniques that are currently in common use since they were designed for 2D manipulation (e.g., dragging, scrolling)
*Users need to pay attention to the navigation of the 3D view in addition to the navigation of the underlying model: the extra controls for flying, zooming, etc. get in the way of the user’s primary task
Certainly, people (especially gamers) are a lot more proficient with 3d navigation than they were 10 years ago, but I think most of those people would agree with me that navigating 3d games is just plain harder than navigating 2D games. The jump to 3D has given us a much greater sense of immersion and more complex environments (which is very important for game-like experiences), but doesn’t convey much more useful information. Most games become much easier to navigate when the player is given a 2D map, and the same is usually true in real life. As Nielsen explains:
Note that 3D works for games because the user does not want to accomplish any goals beyond being entertained. It would be trivial to design a better interface than DOOM if the goal was to kill the bad guys as quickly as possible: give me a 2D map of the area with icons for enemy troops and let me drop bombs on them by clicking the icons. Presto: game over in a few seconds and the good guys win every time. That’s the design you want if you are the Pentagon, but it makes for a boring game.
via The Escapist
For those who missed it, there was a horrible article about the RE5 controversy written by Earl Ofari Hutchinson in the Huffington Post recently. It’s rife with the kind of simplistic, knee-jerk, politically correct reasoning that really makes more sensible liberals look bad. The article’s entire argument seems to be that Japanese companies have marketed racist things in the past and said that they weren’t racist, and now Capcom is saying that RE5 isn’t racist, therefore RE5 must be racist (reading it, I was reminded of the juror who insists that the defendant is guilty because he shows no remorse). Ironically, I would say that the article offered a rather racist portrayal of Japanese businesses.
For a more sensible, reasoned response, I recommend Ben Fritz’s article on the same topic for Variety. He brings up a point that I think is central to the confusion that arises in these kinds of controversies, which is that the question of whether Resident Evil is “racist” is actually comprised of at least 2 questions: Read the rest of this entry » »
Downloaded the demo for Age of Booty from Steam. Seems like a neat game, but IGN gave it a low score because they couldn’t get the online multiplayer to work, which is really what the game is about. But they released a patch the other day that’s supposed to fix it. Unfortunately, I still can’t seem to get a game started. I’m at the Player Match screen, but it just keeps saying “Looking for Player”. Even my name disappears from the list from time to time. No way of knowing if nobody’s online or if everyone is just already in a game, or if they’re in places I can’t access in the trial, or if its just not working. I’m not getting any error messages or timeouts…
Update: While I was writing this, I did manage to find enough players for a game, but it took a couple of hours, I think. A later attempt didn’t take quite so long. Still, doesn’t seem like there’s many people playing - a problem that could seemingly be fixed by extending the demo time limit…
More unfortunate is the fact that the trial times out after a day! All the single player challenges are locked, except for the tutorial. I did figure out that you can start a private game with only computer players (not sure why I have to be logged into GameSpy to do so…), so I was able to get some idea of what multiplayer is like. Nice game. Kinda reminds me of Bang! Howdy!, but no so frantic. Everything is laid out on a hex grid, which I find immensely comforting.
But I’m not going to spend all day figuring out if player matching is working or waiting for someone else to show up. I don’t want to get off on an old man rant here, but I remember when a demo got you as much as one third of a whole game. Granted, that was in the early days of shareware and it wasn’t really a sustainable strategy but the stinginess of a lot of the demos that get put out these days kinda digusts me. I realize that developers want to give people incentive to actually buy the game, but its certainly having the opposite effect on me.
Listening to the new game/rap mashup The Ocarina of Rhyme online. The samples from Zelda are clear and easy to identify, but the lyrics don’t seem to relate in any way. Its good if you like rap, but if you’re just a Zelda fan, this isn’t the album that’s going to make you jump up and say “finally! rap that I can relate to!”
Just when you think David Walsh and the National Institute for Media and the Family (NIMF) are starting to get it, they prove otherwise. They were starting to come around and support the ESRB and call for parents to educate themselves about the rating system, but their recent press release regarding the Wii release of Madworld finds their heads firmly up their asses once again: Read the rest of this entry » »
As one of the few people who actually thinks Dragon’s Lair is a fun game, I rather enjoyed the pitch-perfect parody of the game featured on Sunday’s episode of Family Guy. I wasn’t able to find the clip on Google Video, but did come across this somewhat dated but still rather amusing amateur Family-Guy/Dragon’s Lair mashup:
If this recent episode of Canadian “news” show The Fifth Estate is to be believed, this is what M-rated game boxes need to look like in order for parents to know that they shouldn’t buy them for their kid. Apparently, the problem with ESRB ratings is that they don’t come in the form of complete sentences. Never mind the fact that these same parents presumably don’t have a problem with the ratings on DVD boxes, which come in tiny fonts on the back of the package, usually with no descriptors. But the most egregious fault of this episode is probably its convenient ommision of one the most important facts in the case of Brandon Crisp’s death.
For all the skills you have in Drakensang, the game doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility in how you deal with situations. They tend to be rigidly scripted. You can’t target the pack of giant rats from a distance because you have to trigger the “encounter” in order for them to become targetable. Your perception ability won’t allow you to find that hidden item because you’re supposed to find out about it from the barmaid first. You can’t use stealth to sneak up on the group that your chasing because the script calls for a lengthy chase sequence. Okay, fine, its a linear game but this last case - the chase scene - was a particular annoyance. What’s that? You want to me to rant about it? Well, okay.
Now, everybody who has played videogames for any length of time knows that most chase scenes are rigged. NPC’s will tell you to hurry up because somebody is getting away and every second counts but, in reality, you can take as long as you want and when you turn the next corner, your quarry will be just a few steps ahead of you. Drakensang is no exception in this regard and I can accept that it’s a legitimate design decision. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and plunge headlong after the murderous band that is ostensibly trying to evade me.
The problem is, while I’m willing to play along, the game seems intent to thwart me by throwing up distractions from the sidelines! My dwarf keeps detecting hidden side-passages with (rather unimpressive) bits of loot in them. Now I’m forced to make a choice between role-playing the chase and skipping the loot or grabbing the loot and destroying the believability of the scenario. Why would a designer want to present me with that choice? Either way, I’m going to catch these guys. Why reward the player for ruining the scene?
This is not the first time I’ve seen this in a game. So a word of advice to game designers: If you want me to behave in a certain way, don’t tempt me to do otherwise!
Baldur’s Gate was possibly the first game I ever paid full price for. I only caught the tail end of SSI’s golden age of “Gold Box” D&D games, so when I heard everyone raving about this new revival of TSR’s flagship product on the PC, I was in.
Unfortunately, I hated it. The precise tactical battles that I enjoyed in games like Secret of the Silver Blades and Dark Sun: Shattered Lands were replaced by chaotic skirmishes full of characters bumping into each other, not finding their paths and sometimes just not doing what they were told. The unpredictablility of having everything happen at once made it seemingly impossible to make meaningful tactical decisions. Eventually, I was able to make some peace with the game when I discovered that setting the game to auto-pause after each round and turning off the AI gave some semblance of turn-based gameplay, but it’s clearly not the way the game was intended to be played and resulted in a lot of rough edges. It was the beginning of a long hate/hate relationship between me and the words “real-time strategy”.
So you can imagine how pleased I was to read claims by the makers of the german game Drakensang that they were bringing the turn-based style of pen-and-paper games back to the PC. Finally, I wasn’t the only one who felt this way (just the only one in my country, apparently). The combat actually plays out a lot like Baldur’s gate, but the turn-based mode is easier to turn off and on and the game seems to be made more with that mode in mind, while still seeming like something that…*shudder*… real-time combat fans will find enjoyable.
Everything is still happening all at once in combat and player positions aren’t confined to any kind of grid, so its difficult to know just how your commands are going to translate into what actually happens on the battlefield, but so far I’ve managed to play it for several hours without wanting to break my keyboard. I can at least take some reassurance that somebody else out there doesn’t think that turn-based, pen-and-paper style combat is something broken that needs to be fixed.
The Escapist has more news on the fitness guru, Michael Torchia, who is criticizing the Wii for not having proper warnings and more sophisticated sensors to tell if the user is excericising right and generally for allowing people to hurt themselves. I have to wonder what this guy thinks of excercise videos. Those things don’t come plastered with warnings and they have no idea if you’re excercising properly or not. You could hit yourself in the head with a cast iron skillet and the guy on the screen will just keep doing his thing. I don’t remember anybody launching class action suits back in the 80’s when those things first started coming out.
Also, I couldn’t help chuckling as I skimmed his biography. Apparently when he made the decision to get fit, “He vowed that he would never be perceived as an underdog”, which is kind of ironic considering he’s championing a lawsuit against a major videogame manufacturer.