• I really like Kindle app. It’s hassle free. I can get samples to ipod or ipad or to my computer and sync between devices. I can buy stuff for ipad, read it in ipod and check library in PC. It’s just super cool.
• Kindle app user interface is good. Has everything I need and more.
• I don’t need night lamp anymore. Ipod touch is great device with proper backlight, so night time I read my kindle books using this tiny device. It’s convenient.
• The catalogue is huge: I can get the book I want in 76% of the cases. I do wish people would transform their old books to kindle formats, and have sent authors info on this. Maybe one day I get 100% of the books via kindle store.
• Ok prices. Sure, the prices could be always lower than paperback versions, which is bit like slapping my face… but I don’t complain. It’s not that big price difference anyway. Convenience is what matters me most.
• My bookshelf is always with me, even when I’m offline. (As long as I have battery left…)
• My digital book library takes heckofa less space than my physical lib.
• I don’t know if there’s DRM. For once, I’m happy to be a customer who can buy stuff without hassling with visible DRM. For example, if Amazon goes down (it doesn’t, just stating an example), I can still access my books. If my network connection goes down, I can access my books.

I simply don’t have any reason not to buy physical books (except for Terry Pratchett, since there’s no kindle digital Finnish version available – and for the fact that the hardcover versions look good on my house, they are decoration too) and thus I’m buying only Kindle books.

They have made pretty close to everything right (small thing with the book prices that should be lower for digital versions compared to physical and second minor thing is that I’d like to fetch & download book samples via kindle app), and totally got my money.

Also, I’ve spent more money on books than ever before (I’ve been a regular book buyer always), for your information. That means not only they get all the money I spend in books… but they’ve actually managed to increase the amount of stuff I spend on books.

The bottom line is that… I feel like I’m treated as a respected customer. I get stuff the way I like in nice format with decent price.

That makes it easy to buy stuff from them.

There’s plenty of lessons here for other industries as well.

Mafia or gangster games deal with quite tough subjects. Games depict various kind of violence, blackmailing, extortion, drugs and other heavy stuff.

Before age 30 all was ok, but now I’ve been thinking if this stuff is bit too much, at least the more realistic approach games take. Pixel art gangsters with humour I’m pretty much ok with, but if there’s really realistic art, realistic setting and immersive story I’m not sure if I want to get immersed in that world.

What you think? Do you find any violent games/criminal/gangster disturbing? Why? Why not?

Some new character art arrived, and now I’ve got pretty much all the art I need. I’ve ordered bunch of decks again from Artscow and waiting them to get shipped to my place.

Here’s art, created by Anton Brand (really recommend him if you are into this sort of artistic style).

Each of the character has hitpoints (top left) which determine how many wounds they can take before things get nasty (they won’t die though). Each character also has unique once per game ability, which they can use in tough situations. Last but not least, each character has item skill – which means they can benefit slightly more of those items during the course of the game.

Here’s the Veteran:

And here’s the Redneck.

When the new deck of cards arrive, I shall finalize balancing & testing the game… and then we get one step closer to finish line.

I finished Fallout 1 week or two ago, and one thing particular was how the choices I made in the game were represented in the end. In the game, there was certain action (see how I don’t spoil game plot.. even when the game was made 1998, ahem) that affected certain community. I could have chose a difficult path and helped the community, but I took a shortcut. I thought “whadda hell, I can’t be arsed to help ‘em” and chose the quicker option.

In the end of the game, I had won something major, but this community didn’t do so well. Thanks to my actions (or lack of them).

I don’t know why I didn’t complete the game decade ago, but I must say that the game was fun still today. It was damn hard at times, but fun too. I actually didn’t want so much combat, as I was more interested in character dialogue, sub-stories, main story and decisions that affect the game. I liked how the game didn’t hold my hand telling me “now I must go to speak to man there (let’s mark that in your map) and maybe he will tell you about secret X”. Oh noes, I had to figure out what I needed to do.

Few times it was bit irritating to wander around, few times I needed to get save files from past to get pass certain stuff… but all in all, I actually eventually learned to like it, even though I whined about lack of auto-save earlier (in Fallout 2).

Eventually, I learned to like these things that game didn’t have:

• No auto-save (I learned to save intelligently, and it didn’t cut immersion)
• No achievements (thank god)
• No hand-holding (for a long time, finding some ammo felt like a true achievement even when game didn’t tell me “Achievement!! You found goddamn ammo! Here’s a badge for you!! Aren’t you one happy camper now!?”. No, finding the ammo was achievement. I didn’t need game to tell me that. I felt intelligent for figuring out stuff.)
• No one straight path to victory: instead, I could choose what to do, and actions affected the whole outcome of the game and story. Really nice, really nice.

And it cost just $5.99 which was a steal.

Amazing that a game that was made about 14 years ago still beats many modern games. Easily.

• You have done something great
• and then some evil corporation clones your stuff.

Well, there’s few different ways to handle this:

• You can wee on their tent, and make superior PR move that gets picked everywhere around the net. (Recommended)
• You can whine how there’s evil corporations and that your stuff shouldn’t be copied.
• You can concentrate on building success that doesn’t depend on stuff that can be cloned. Match-3 games can be cloned. Tower sim can be cloned. RPGs with deep storyline is harder to clone.
• You can make shitty game that doesn’t sell anything. These are rarely cloned too.
• You can ignore em. (Pretty good plan)
• You can think what’s important, why you are making games. Profit? Passion?
• You can make gross zombie games. Big studios rarely clone those. (Hah!)

Now, regarding the “game mechanics can be cloned”. I think this is pretty good thing. Sure, ripping off somebody’s game mechanics and then cloning pretty much the whole game with different graphics is bit shitty move… but that’s how it needs to be.

Businesswise, it’s pretty profitable to be second in the market. Clone hit games, and make some changes. But that’s something hundred zillion other corporations are doing. Zynga isn’t only one cloning their way to success. If cloning was the way to go, then how come there aren’t as successful other cloners?

And this also makes one really ponder why you are making games? Are you making games that you can profit? Or are you making games mechanics & games… that are spread all over the world? Doesn’t it make one happy that by creating something cool that everybody wants to clone… something cool that others can benefit from? Isn’t that a pretty darn sweet thing?

Or, is it so that you were doing this stuff for profit? In that case, jump to one of those clone factories and see how happy things are there.

Or do you just “want fair fight”? Well, time to wake up. This is a really open market world where best offering (not necessarily best product) wins the profits. If you do game that can be cloned by a big studio, then you knew what you were against when you first started. Or did you really think that after you make your smash hit, nobody would be interested in getting the money too?

“But this kills innovation”
Tough luck. And yes, for some genres at least. At one point Match-3 games were selling like pancakes. They were hot stuff (not sure how they do nowadays). Now, is the innovation in match-3 games killed? I suppose. There’s every now and then one new different match-3 game but I feel the market is pretty saturated.

So, if you do some popular gaming thing that can be cloned, of course you can except that there won’t be innovation.

We can cry and bite our legs off, but that doesn’t change anything. If we are worried about cloning, then we should do stuff that’s hard to clone.

We know that there’s cloners waiting for the next hit game. That’s perfectly fine. I mean, creating a clone isn’t going to guarantee success. It’s risky. Not all cloners are profitable. It takes heaps of effort too, and is not “easy way” to go.

There’s people doing games for passion, and not getting money. That’s perfectly fine too. Whining about “but rules should favor me as [insert random reason here]” is not going to cut it. If you don’t like the rules, you can go play somewhere else.

So… who’s evil?
I think it’s quite natural to think that Zynga is “evil” or “doing wrong” when they clone a game. They are a company who want to make profit. They have business strategy that is targeted to maximizing profit. They might steal an idea or two, but so does everybody else. They might clone stuff they can clone, but so is everybody else. Zynga is just doing things better than many other corporations.

I’m not saying Zynga is less evil than me (slightly richer though). They simply seem to have different values from me. I try steal every game idea I can, but I try add something unique, something of my own in the creation. I want to do something I like doing, and something I like to experience. If somebody was to clone that stuff and make profits, that’s pretty cool. Next time they need ideas, they know where to find me.

I feel that the chaps at nimblebit chose the right way to deal with Zynga’s copy & “we wanna buy you” offer. They turned this into a PR thing which favors them. Zynga can clone the game, but they cannot clone the fact that nimblebit has the “small good guys against big evil corporation” edge that can make an interesting story. Nimblebit managed to create a cool story out of the situation, and I’m pretty sure they benefit from this.

That’s the name of the game.

P.S. And if Zynga is successful, do you really think that other big players won’t notice it and challenge them? This zoo is filled with predators who are ready to attack each other as well.

Here you go:

1. Have big loading times and use word “loading” when switching between places.
2. Show the same dialogue options over and over (if you wanna ensure that “character might need that info”, then make so that character has journal where conversation was stored)
3. Hold the players hand by (1) first letting character tell what to do, (2) then showing text telling what to do, (3) then pointing the next goal on the map regarding what to do and (4) showing hint “maybe I should go there” in the journal. (This one is tricky: on the other hand you don’t want to player to be lost not knowing what to do next… but on the other hand too much information kills immersion. Check this video ‘if Quake was done today’)
4. Making player guess what you thought that should be done next. If player knows what should happen next, but your game user interface prevents (in RPG, not talking about car driving game) him from reaching the goal, that kills immersion. There’s a great article about this at Raph Koster’s site.
5. Make character pick dialogue option he thinks is ok, when in reality the other party takes it as offense. This too can be tricky, but bear in mind that as a not-native English speaking chap, I might miss some nuances of conversations… and sometimes I might pick dialogue option that I thought was friendly, when in reality it was offensive. There’s no easy way to get past through this option though, and not sure what’s a good solution (other than accept the fact that this way I learn better English…)

Anything to add to this list? Complaints or solutions?

The audience of this blog are mainly game developers, so that affects the outcome of the poll. My not so wild guess is that if audience would be mainly gamers, the percentage would be much, much higher. As you can see from the earlier blog post replies, some folks do play all the games they buy.

I presume there are also gamers who don’t play all the games they buy, but what is quite certain that game developers like to *just* buy the games.

Why would this be? My guess is one or some of the following reasons apply:

• For research purposes: hearing about some game and then testing mechanics can be enough for a game developer to buy the game.
• To bring old memories back. Every now and then there’s new game that you played 20 years ago and either a remake or similar game appears, and you just want to add it in your collection.
• To increase your collection, you hoarder.
• To support game development. This can be somewhat funny… that game developers buy each others games to support development. I do this too.

And I bet there’s some other reasons (feel free to add).

But whatever the reason, it is quite strange that nowadays we buy games we won’t quite likely even play.

Why is that?

Should we all start making intro screens from now on?

I don’t know what happened to the dog, but then I encountered a game over screen showing bones of a dead human. Text indicated that it was bad thing for mankind too as they were not saved.

Then I saw the start menu.

Then… I started wondering if there was auto-saves, but heheee, there were no such things as autosaves in ’99. Nah, I should have saved the game and not mess with the gecko.

Okay, I realize that now.

Now, I might suck at Fallout but do I have to go through the damn trial again? I found a great strategy of fighting which consisted of “hit & run”. Hit once, run 4 squares away. Wait spider to follow and hit again. Repeat for a long time.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Fallout 2. It was game I never played in my childhood and I want to correct that error.

But, I started thinking stuff from game designers point-of-view. I encountered a permanent death. All my progress was lost, and I have to restart.

I started thinking: “does this make game more fun?”

I doubt it.

Okay, if there would have been auto-save… then I could have wanted to continue from that point and try saving the dog bit differently. Or, since there was no in-built autosave I could have just saved the game every 15 minutes.

…but that sort of breaks immersion to me. I’m going on a mission and tribesmen there and I can have ask guidance and all, and then trout slap to my face: “HEY, I GOTTA SAVE NOW” my brain reminds me.

I think permanent death works great in games where rounds are short. For example, Rogue Spear multiplayer was great. One shot and you could have to wait for the round to end. It was pure genius and added to thrill.

(And to clarify: permanent death means all your progress is lost and hell no your next character can pick up your experience/items/stuff/anything and no loading either. It’s one shot thing: if you die, you must start game from zero. That’s permanent death. Period. Everything else isn’t.)

Fallout’s (okay, it’s decade old game, I know) lack of auto-save – in my humble opinion – does NOT add to the gaming experience. I’d rather have one slot that I cannot save/load whenever I want, but so that it would autosave like every 30 minutes or at critical points (like just before going to critical area or something).

I think that way no much immersion is lost since I don’t have to go to pause menu & save the game… and it would still offer me meaningful choices to make. I would know that I have to make good decisions, since I’d have just one slot where the game is saved. No fooling around, but thinking what to do next.

Don’t get me wrong: the game’s just great. I’m just thinking out loud about permanent death & auto-save.

What you think?

But if censorship is the alternative “solution”, then I welcome piracy. If I have to choose between “piracy is ok” and “censorship is ok”, then I choose “piracy is ok”. Besides, in this case, censorship has zero effect on actual piracy. Which means my tax payer money just got wasted in Finnish court, thank you very much.

Today, it was reported that Finnish court decided that ISP must block certain domain which parrot lovers use to search illegal stuff, and this is pretty shitty thing to do.

(sarcasm) I would link to the page but my site might get to the Finnish block list so I won’t (/sarcasm).

The fact that Finnish Court can order ISP to block domains, that’s bad. Really Bad. Don’t get me wrong. I’m quite against piracy, but censoring domains is not the way to fight piracy (if you are into that sort of thing).

Now, the court ruled that one of the Finnish Internet operators (we have few major ISP) must block it’s customers access to thepiratebay.org.

The people who use TPB can do the following though:

• They can use thepiratebay.se
• They can use google.fi for illegal torrent search
• They can use million other similar search sites to find the stuff they want. Blocking 1 site has absolutely no difference to those who wanna pirate stuff
• They can use OpenDNS (thanks @taboobuilder) or whatnot to get to thepiratebay.org

What now happens is the following:

• TBP just got more fame.
• The copyright owners who started this court thing, don’t realize that they do more harm to themselves with this. Now TBP and other sites just get more publicity when different medias cover it, and more people might start to think “hey, I wanna pirate too!”
• We might be entering in censorship era here in Finland.

I talked with one pirate who never buys movies (he buys music instead) who said that he actually uses google for searching torrents. He says it’s much better search engine system than TPB.

So, the next logical conclusion is that Finnish Court also blocks Google. And who knows, some people might share links via Facebook or Twitter, so let’s block those as well.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not supporter of piracy.

But I hate this sort of stupidity.

Censoring site this way is wrong way to fight piracy.

And we really should not be “anti-piracy” but “pro-customers”.

We can try stop people who never buys our stuff from getting our stuff for free, but I think better idea is to concentrate on giving absolutely superb stuff for those who want to buy our stuff.

Just saying.

1. First, count how many bought Steam games you have in your library. (If you are not sure, just take a rough guess)
2. Then, count how many games have you played at least for 2 hours

Divide “games played” with “games count” to get percentage, and answer the poll here:

I have about 30 bought games in steam, and less than 10 that I’ve played more than 2 hours. That’s 10/30, aka roughly 33%.