On the Subject of PCZone

Kelly Brook

I was slightly saddened to hear of the recent demise of PCZone magazine. That's right, "magazine". You know, bits of paper with words printed on them and glued together and sold in shops. Yes, shops - places where you would go to buy porn before the internet was invented. You know, porn - pictures of bare ladies printed in magazines and then dumped in the woods for kids who weren't old enough to buy them to find.

Slightly saddened, but perhaps more surprised that PCZone had survived this long. It was a must-buy for me back in the 90s, being significantly superior to the competing (and shit) PC Format. One of PCZone's most notable contributors was Charlie Brooker who started out as a cartoonist before emerging as one of the magazine's most memorable writers, and who has since gone on to become an established name in British TV and radio comedy, and who has been mercilessly ripped-off by that derivative, talentless hack "Yahtzee" Croshaw.

And lest we forget, PCZone was responsible for the magnificent Colin Culk, who's occasional videos were hidden away on the cover CDs.



Can't be arsed to link them all, just search youtube for Colin Culk, they're all on there.

Nostalgia aside, I won't really miss PCZone that much. I don't recall when I last bought an issue but the chances are it's been well over a decade. You could argue that's there's still a market for intelligently written, irreverent games-related journalism, but the fact is today's gamers are mostly fucking retards with single digit attention spans who think Zero Punctuation is a masterpiece of satire rather than repetitive, tiresome cuntery. In that sense the passing of PCZone is sad because its demise is a symptom of a broader malaise.

On the Subject of Graphics

Kelly Brook

I was unfortunate enough to stumble across this painful example of "journalism" on the otherwise quite respectable bit-tech.net. It's (thankfully) short, but in order to save you from wasting even the smallest amount of time reading what is in reality a bunch of ignorant, idiotic wank, let me distill some of the "best" bits.

"Crysis with all the sauce turned on looks just as good as Left 4 Dead"

What a dick. Define "good". L4D has graphics which are appropriate given what it's trying to achieve. Heaving hordes of zombies are more important than rich environments. Indeed, the sparsity and starkness of L4D lends to it's post-apocalyptic feel. Crysis, on the other hand, attempts to render a rich, lush tropical environment with a much smaller density of NPCs. Similarly, WoW is quite openly designed to run on as many machines as possible, and looks very basic as a result. Do the X million WoW players care? Do they fuck. L4D would arguably not benefit much from running on CryEngine 2. Crysis, on the other hand, would be impossible to build on Source. The fact that someone compares the two demonstrates a tragic ignorance of graphical effects.

"how good a game looks isn’t about how technical the graphics are"

This is really the same point, and again relies on the tiresomely ambiguous use of the word "good". How "realistic" a game looks IS dependent on the lighting pipeline supported by the engine. How "good" it looks is a meaningless, subjective metric. This is just another example of people not understanding the difference between graphical complexity and art design, or at the very least not appreciating that a more sophisticated engine can only increase the options available to designers, while no amount of clever design will achieve realism beyond the capabilities of the engine technology, even if it can disguise its shortcomings.

"I really hope that graphics advancements slow down some and gives the hardware a chance to catch up"

What a fucking retard. How about hardware advancements speed up to enable better graphical effects? Let's put the brakes on progress just so you fucking morons who can't afford a decent machine can run "high end" games on your piece of shit PCs. These are the same sort of people who still claim Crysis is "poorly coded" to this day, despite a) having no experience of graphics programming, and b) the fact that nothing has been released since Crysis that is anywhere near as visually complex.
Anyone with a clue knows that video card technology has been sadly stagnant for the last couple of years, while nvidia sat on their thumbs waiting for amd to catch up. The 9x00 series in particular didn't deserve to see the light of day, and nvidia are still reguritating three year-old tech in the form of the GTX250. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and blame the global economic fiasco. The fact is still that a combination of weak tech and the increasing trend towards porting games from aging console hardware to the PC are holding back much-needed advances in graphics.

If Crysis is indeed the pinnacle of PC graphics then in a few years or maybe less than that, we’ll be able play our games at the native resolution of a 30in display with all settings on max using mid-range hardware

This is such a meaningless statement. There are plenty of games right now which will run perfectly well at 2560x1600. Some of them even look good. This quote borders dangerously on a "we will have photorealism in X years" prediction. Crysis is a triumph of graphics programming on current hardware, but it is a long way from photoreal. And it's not just about being able to push enough pixels to be able to run it at a high resolution. I'm sure even Crytek's own developers would be happy to point out the many approximations and cheats they had to employ in order to squeeze every last frame-per-second out of the engine, at the expense of realism. Did you really mistake the Koreans in Crysis for real people? Or even one of the trees and bushes for real trees and bushes? The graphics might be "sufficient", they might be "impressive", but they're by no means photoreal, in the same way that you would never in a million years confuse that Final Fantasy film with live action. This quote is just more whining from someone who can't afford a decent PC and who thinks the whole games industry should just spin it's wheels churning out second-rate, 5 year-old visuals just so that they run well on his shit PC.

Of course the author is simply trying to align his own worthless opinion with that of industry luminary Doug Lombardi in order to look cool and connected. Unfortunately he's also misunderstanding the issue. There are other factors involved when it comes to game graphics, most importantly cost. Let's say Crysis is 80% realistic. I just made that up, but the point is that the last 20% of realism would cost a disproportionate amount to achieve, even ignoring the fact that it would be nowhere near possible on existing hardware. The sheer amount of data that would be required would demand so many modellers, texture painters, animators and level designers that it's simply not realistic to expect genuinely photoreal games. Consider the enormous budgets consumed by current AAA titles, and then look at what they achieve technically. Yes, there are the constraints of the hardware to consider, but bear in mind that modern games also seem to be shrinking in terms of hours of game play.

Another issue that sometimes pops up during discussions of game graphics is that of ray tracing. It is currently being waved around as some sort of magical technology that will single-handedly make all games photoreal, if we can only get hardware that can process it in real time.
Unfortunately this is simply not true. The fact is, there are some effects which can be achieved more effectively, or more accurately, by ray tracing, but it also comes with a lot of it's own limitations, and not just when it comes to speed. Even if the hardware was available, there would be no reason to have an engine ray trace everything all the time, it's just not necessary. It's not really the simple choice of "ray tracing vs. rasterisation" which is often described. Visual effects artists in film or television don't ray trace everything even though they don't suffer from the limitation of having to render a frame in 1/60th of a second. Because it doesn't add anything to the visual quality in a lot of cases. Of course if you're dealing with pretty, glossy reflections in complex surfaces there are few alternatives. Not to mention other applications like shadowing, occlusion and colour-bleeding, although in those cases there are alternatives, and alternatives which often produce superior results. The point is it's not an "either, or" situation, and while it would be nice to have access to real-time ray tracing functionality, don't expect it to suddenly make all your games photoreal. Ray tracing won't improve your models, your textures or your animation.

On the Subject of Tabula Rasa

Kelly Brook

So it appears that Tabula Rasa is the latest casualty in the Great WoW War, where armies of hapless developers attempt to bring down the almighty King of the MMO scene and are ultimately crushed. I did buy TR, tempted by promises of sci-fi goodness in the face of countless, interchangeable, medieval, dungeons and dragons, swords and sorcery grind fests. Of course really it was just the same as every other MMO, except with pew pew gun animations instead of swordplay, and its own take on magic that was no different to anyone else's.

Another casualty of the war is the reputation of Richard "Lord/General British" Garriott. Once-revered for the Ultima games which I never played, or at least some of them, Garriott looks set to follow Brad McQuaid into the MMO history books with his erstwhile genius reputation in tatters. It doesn't help that he recently bailed on TR, citing "new interests" following his trip into space. Of course the gaming world saw that as abandoning a sinking ship because that's obviously what it was. Even more so than when AoC's chief of staff quit his own ship. At least AoC is still running. For how much longer is anyone's guess.

It's sad in a way, though, because at least TR was an attempt at something different, without being as overwhelmingly different as Eve. It just suffered from being a dull idea and from mediocre execution. It wasn't at all fun when I played it. It wasn't a compelling world in which to spend time, there was nothing interesting to do there, the class tree system was interesting, and certainly had potential, but was just one-dimensional and tedious in practice. I like the idea that you develop your character into a specialised role over time rather than picking it up-front like in most games. There just wasn't any depth to the system, and it was basically just a long-winded way of getting to the class you pretty much knew you wanted from the start.

But at least the Collector's Edition was good. In fact, it still ranks as my favourite to date and was a very satisfying, well-presented package which I shall hold on to. And when I look at it in the future I will shake my head and sigh and lament the passing of another game which could have been special, but wasn't nearly special enough.

A Year in Review

Kelly Brook

It seems amazing that the first anniversary of this esteemed publication is approaching with great haste.

It feels like it has been a somewhat muted year as far as game releases are concerned. Late 2007 saw some big-name titles like CoD4, Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War, some of which fell flat and others of which have caused endless, tedious, ill-informed arguments about "optimisation". Of course 2008 still has some way to go, and with likes of Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 still to come there's certainly potential for improvement. Still, this year has passed, or at least is passing with much fewer titles of any real value.

On the MMO front, both AoC and WAR have finally appeared. AoC falling foul of the tiresome, self-righteous, purist, "veteran" community and falling short of content for those of us not interested in mindless grind. WAR will probably become the PvP WoW, for people who are into that sort of thing. There's no evidence that it will have a serious impact on proper WoW, and it's PvE content is decidedly poor, but the fact that it's core mechanic is PvP means it stands a better chance at retaining players than AoC. Because competitive PvP MMO gamers are, of course, idiots.

Meanwhile I've touched upon various issues that have come to my attention over the last year. Wide screen formatting, PvP, beta testing, forums etc. And more importantly I've taken to posting pictures of attractive women in various states of undress, which is after all much more entertaining. At least for me.

On the Subject of Age of Conan

Kelly Brook

Naturally I have refrained from chasing "beta test" keys for AoC. I do still have it pre-ordered, and I will go in with an open mind and give it the same opportunity to disappoint me that I afforded both Vanguard and Tabula Rasa.
It is interesting, somewhat satisfying, but at the same time crushingly inevitable to see the Conan backlash already beginning to creep out into forums. Recall that this is the game that has been heralded as a new virtual-world order in MMOs, typically by people quitting some other MMO and trying to both encourage back-patting sympathy and "you losers can stay here, I'll be in AoC" one-upmanship.
Now that a much broader population has had the chance to get a limited taste of the game the one-upmanship angle becomes less effective, so of course those people move on to the "meh, been there done that" stage where it becomes fashionable to be "over" the game, even before it has been released.

Oddly enough a lot of the reports from beta players (it's hard to seriously refer to them as "testers", as I've suggested previously) have been fairly positive. Some refer to the "revolutionary" combat mechanics as gimmicky, some don't see any real difference compared with existing MMO mechanics, some find it awkward, some welcome the change. I've heard it described as being somewhat like The Witcher's combat system, in being very simple but at least different to 1-2-3, or in some cases 1-1-1 button-mashing.
The graphics have had similarly mixed reviews. The problem here is that we've been seeing screenshots for years now, and sadly the quality has declined steadily over the course of development. Probably because the early media was pie-in-the-sky McQuaid-style dreaming which had to be "refined" to cope with the harsh realities of out-of-date PCs. Not to mention squeezing it onto an already out-of-date console. Still, some people have remained positive, some less so. While it can look impressive, the down side seems to be relatively small explorable regions. It might be fun to bash Vanguard but if there's one thing it got right it was scale. Scale, and the ability to explore that large landscape with relative freedom. No invisible barriers (except the ocean), no impenetrable wall of mountains in every direction. In contrast Conan looks to be firmly in the GW/LotRO school of enclosed, claustrophobic environments which is a shame.

At this point we come to one report from beta that has me particularly distressed. Apparently the time of day can adjust dynamically to suit the quests you're currently pursuing. What. The. Fuck. Say goodbye to any sense of inhabiting a unified, coherent world. It's obviously a ploy to cater to the ever-popular "casual" demographic. "Waaah, I've logged in but this quest has to be done at night and it's currently morning". I'm no hardcore MMO player as I'm sure I've established, but butchering the game world in the name of accessibility is sad and misguided. I personally considered Vanguard's day/night cycle to be entirely too short (something like 45 minutes I seem to remember, I can't be bothered to look it up), and that game had plenty of quests that required you to kill creatures that only appeared in certain time windows. Oblivion's was similarly ridiculous, but at least you could get time mods so that you didn't miss whole days while you were simply talking to NPCs.
And yes, I know my beloved The Witcher cheated the issue by letting you meditate for up to 24 hours at a time, thereby advancing the clock to whatever time you needed, but I see a difference between single-player and MMO games in that respect. I think everyone who's playing within the same game world should at least see the same time of day.
Personally I think a day/night cycle should be substantial. I understand that people probably play games at a similar real-world time each session (after school/work or whatever) and that it would be undesirable to find yourself playing in-game in the middle of the night all the time. I would suggest that the solution is in two parts.
Firstly, have a day/night cycle that's designed so that your real-world play session will occur at a different in-game time each day. Prime numbers are good for this sort of thing. I suppose ideally the cycle shouldn't be so long that you don't see any real change in virtual time during the course of, say, a 2 hour play session though, so I'd be maybe thinking of a 7 hour cycle as a sensible minimum, although I'd be thinking more along the lines of 13, or possibly 17 (as 13 is too close to half a real day).
The second part of the solution is to do with content, and designing quests so that while they might require you to complete them during a given time window, the completion of that quest isn't going to hold up your progress in the bigger picture. On the other hand you shouldn't feel like you've "left the quest behind". Not that I know how exactly you'd achieve that, but then it's not my job.
The point is, letting the player time-travel for their own convenience compromises the game world as a whole, although I'll have to see it in action for myself before I can properly judge the impact it has on the game. I suspect it's going to introduce more of a Guild Wars dynamic, where it feels more like a bunch of single-player instances joined together by glorified chat hubs.

Ultimately I don't really know why I'm reporting these opinions, since none of them are mine and therefore none of them are correct. I will be sure to deliver my definitive verdict on the game in a couple of weeks when it's properly released, including the all-important review of the limited edition packaging. Will it be a triumph of Tabula Rasa Collector's Edition proportions, or a sad joke like the Crysis limited edition box? Only time will tell.

On the Subject of Community Relations

Kelly Brook

The former Guild Wars "Community Relations Manager" Gaile Gray recently moved on to another position at A-Net after several years service. She was (and, I suppose, still is) regarded with some affection by the majority of GW players who had encountered her either in-game, or on one or another of the major fansite forums.
Although not by me. I always found her to be really quite condescending and always giving "I can't talk about that" answers whenever a subject of any importance arose. She didn't seem to really contribute anything of value, other than simply being a human face to the company. But as such some people regarded her as some sort of celebrity and were forever name-checking her in forum thread titles, "Gaile: please read my self-important thread and then reply to make me feel special and popular". "Gaile: I'm going to address this thread to you personally so that other people will be impressed and think I know you". "Gaile: I have some dumb suggestion, but if I address it to you personally then you'll ignore all the other thousands of dumb suggestions and pay special attention to mine and then you'll be impressed and we'll become friends and then A-Net will employ me as lead designer on GW2".
Community relations in games is a strange thing, especially in MMOs where there really is a community of players that are brought together within a single virtual game world. When I started playing Vanguard towards the end of the final beta I was actually quite impressed by the amount of open dialogue between the developers and the players. Of course the game was a piece of shit, but that's not the point. I even posted on a Vanguard fansite forum expressing my high opinions of these free and open discussions and my hopes that they might continue beyond the release of the game.
Funnily enough they didn't, and these impressive lines of communication were almost entirely severed, seemingly intentionally. As if some corporate arse-hat had decided that the developers are not supposed to mix with the lowly players. Maybe it was intended to protect the company for some sort of legal issues or some other tedious shit.
Of course Sigil had plenty of other things to worry about at the time, like an absentee lead designer, a game that had cost tens of millions of dollars to produce and was a piece of shit that no one wanted to play, and the Sony vultures circling overhead.
But the lack of communication with the community is by no means unique to Vanguard. Sometimes it feels like the developers are smugly assuming that it is proper and correct and clever to take a hands-off approach where they leave the community to look after itself, as if their intervention would somehow compromise the natural order. Like when nature documentary film-makers don't interfere with wild animals killing each other.
They're wrong of course. What you end up with is a lot of people acting like smug, spoilt little cunts and making the game world a lot less pleasant place to spend time for reasonable, decent players. I know developers and publishers are terrified of upsetting their darling paying customers, but they really ought to think beyond the individuals to the game world as a whole. While devs often report having banned X-number of botting gold farming accounts, it's much more rare for them to address more personal issues of scamming, abuse or people simply acting like dicks. And even when individuals are targeted for more "serious" offenses such as hacking or duping they often get a slap on the wrist like a 24 hour account suspension.
I think developers should take a lot more responsibility for policing the behaviour of players and should be a lot more draconian when it comes to dishing out punishments. Players have long since reached the stage where they know nothing bad will happen if they scam someone, or abuse them. You only have to browse a typical MMO forum to see what smug, self-important fucks a lot of them are and the sneering, holier-than-thou, self-centered attitude they often have when it comes to other players. I've previously suggested that some players seem to be incapable of feeling like they've advanced unless they've been personally responsible for someone else failing. MMOs become an endless game of one-upmanship and competition, even in PvE when really someone else's progress has absolutely no impact on your own. Unfortunately those more balanced and higher-functioning players who are content to play their own game often find their progress interrupted or otherwise hindered by people kill-stealing or finding pleasure in some other activity that only serves to spoil the game for others.
And that's the problem - by leaving these little fucks to play their own "fuck up the game for everyone else"-game, hands-off developers are allowing the whole game to suffer. For every one player acting like a dick, many others might get sick of the developer's lack of intervention and start looking for something more fun to do. For every shit-head the developers ban, many more might be attracted to the game knowing that the increasingly common antisocial behaviour is being kept in check.
But it seams many developers are much too self-righteous and smug to worry about the little people who pay their subs and fund the developers' salaries. They continue to pretend that the hands-off approach is clever and intentional rather than simply lazy and stupid. The closest they come to mingling with the commoners is to hire someone like Gaile Gray to patronise people while refusing to tell them anything or do anything at all of any value. And the players lap it up, smugly boasting to each other about "that time Gaile answered my question in-game" or "I was right behind Gaile in the conga". If only they realised how worthless that was in the bigger picture.

On the Subject of Gears of War

Kelly Brook

It is good. It makes me think how good Tabula Rasa would be it it played like an MMO GoW. Then again I've barely played TR yet so who knows.
Also on my ever-expanding gaming to-do list: CoD4 (pre-ordered on Steam), The Witcher (barely played, but so far so good), HL2:Ep2 (bought but not at all played), and not forgetting the imminent release of both Crysis and UT3.
Busy busy busy.