Category: Whatever

10/31/14

Why Shadow of Mordor is a Good Choice for Halloween

Lloyd Sabin, All Hallow’s Eve, 2014

How Do I Look at the World?

I am a seasonal kind of guy. I read books that are indirectly connected to what’s going on outside my window. I listen to music to put me in a weather-appropriate mood. And I game the same way…linking what I play to my perceived notion of whatever season I’m in. I’ve written articles about this before, dating back about 10 years when I wrote a review of one of my favorite PC titles ever: Rome Total War – Barbarian Invasion (BI).

I remember starting my first campaign in that game in the fall, which felt so damned perfect it was palpable. The apocalyptic tension of the barbarian hordes slugging it out across a dynamic map of Europe and Asia blew my mind as the leaves on the trees outside my gaming room yellowed and fell to the ground. As a matter of fact it may have been BI that cemented this seasonal thinking in my brain. It may have started with books and music when I was a teenager, but PC games made it an official way of thinking, or some kind of disorder, as an adult. (Ed note: we’re voting for “disorder”).

Fast forward ten years and I’m still posting threads on what games are best to play in October, to get really juiced and jazzed for Halloween. I still listen to Type-O Negative tracks, the Cure and old U2…of course the album October by the Gaelic music gods is on constant rotation for me this time of year, despite the album being over 30 years old. But what to game?

Yes, the Uruks you encounter are pretty fierce...but there are worse things lurking.
Yes, the Uruks you encounter are pretty fierce…but there are worse things lurking.

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10/22/14

How To Make It In The Game Business – Playtesting!

Jim 2200-point-Scrabble-Name, 22 October 2014

How can you make it in the game business?  How about playtesting?

(Interviewer’s disclaimer:  I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Hamilton via a playtest.  I will absolutely not indicate which one as it turns out that’s quite the forbidden thing.)

For the folks that don’t know, who are you and what is your role at John Tiller Software?

My name is Rich Hamilton. I cut my teeth on Avalon Hill and SSI games as well as 1:72/HO scale miniatures but had boxed my hobby up a few years earlier as my life just didn’t have room for it, in more ways than one! Then one day, in a Computer City I believe it was, I found Battleground Ardennes and I was hooked from the moment I looked at the back of the box.

I’ve been active on-line with the Tiller games since late 1997 when I stumbled upon the old Leadeaters outfit. From there I migrated to the “sister clubs” hosted under Wargame.ch (CCC/ACWGC/NWC/MBC, etc.)  and have played an active part in a variety of sites at varying levels. WarfareHQ, later GameSquad, was probably my largest “club” activity outside of the Wargame.ch clubs.  I started the SDC, or Scenario Design Center, as a central hub for Tiller user-created content in the late 90’s posting my custom work and content from many others.  Several years ago I handed that site over to Steve Trauth who has done a fine job expanding both the content and appearance of the site over time.  I also spearheaded the three TillerCons along with help from quite a few others. Having a 20+ system LAN party for three days was a good way to enjoy the games and discussions related to the games.

I made contact with John Tiller directly in 1998 through my activities on the SDC and was given the opportunity to be the scenario designer for my first game, War of 1812. From there I lead/participated in several game design projects (French & Indian War, Campaign Waterloo, Mexican-American War), but also started project management duties for several titles spanning the Squad Battles series, Naval Campaigns, Modern Air Power, Musket & Pike, Napoleonic & ACW. During all this I became the official front man for HPS support in late 2001, handling all email communications and patrolling the forums. Today my project management roles continue, and while I continue to be the front end of HPS Support I also fulfill that role for John Tiller Software.

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10/8/14

How To Make It In The Game Business – Your First Convention

This article originally appeared in Scrye Magazine, which is now defunct.  So we thought we’d share it with you and give you some insights on Making it in the Game Business.  Look for some more articles as we pester publishers and designers to share their accumulated wisdom with us.

Planning

Conventions can be a great way to get your game in front of your audience. The high concentration of gamers and the foot traffic in the exhibit hall make for a target-rich environment for a new company. If you’re looking to spread the word about yourself, setting up shop at a convention is a great way to do it.

The first question you really need to ask is “Why are we going to the convention?” Are you focusing on selling product? Building some buzz around your company? Trying to meet people and show off your game for another company to pick you up? If you don’t go into the show with a solid definition of success, you won’t have much of a measuring stick to gauge your overall investment in time and effort.

One of your next decisions needs to be “which convention?” Staying close to home, or with a friend, can cut down the overall cost. If a local convention is not an option, then try to shoot for a convention whose major events are closest to your core products. GenCon is a heavy RPG show; Origins is a role-playing and board-gaming mix, with some card events for good measure. There are many smaller, local cons as well, and they are often willing to offer booth space to a company at a low rate.

Get your deposits in as soon as possible. The difference in cost can be dramatic. As an example, at Origins 2006, a booth cost $555 if paid by January 10, but went up to $671 if paid at the end of March. For a new company, the $120 difference might make or break your first show.

Finally, you need to decide on your booth crew. Drafting a friend is a cheap way to man your booth. But you need to make sure that folks working your booth are as well-versed in your product as you are. Remember, the customer doesn’t know that your buddy is just here for the free convention; the customer sees a representative of your company behind the table.

The very first booth with BayonetGames at Origins in 2005. We had no clue what we were doing back then, but we figured it out over the next few years.

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10/1/14

How to Make It In The Game Business – Navigating Steam’s Greenlight

This month we’re kicking off a new series of articles about “How to Make It In The Game Business”. And since we obviously don’t have a clue (because we haven’t been able to quit our day jobs yet and devote full time to GH) we’re bringing in some outside help!

Every Wednesday in October, look for a column from someone with practical experience in the game industry to drop in and offer some advice, encouragement, and wisdom about the road they’ve traveled in the game business.  After October, we’ll shift to a monthly column, but we wanted to open with a bang.

And for that awesome opening column, we’ve brought along not one, but two game developers to tell you all about their journey through Steam’s Greenlight program to shepherd their titles to publication.  So please welcome James from Evil Twin (in blue ink), whose Victory at Sea naval wargame is out there now, and also welcome back Steve from Yorkshire Rifles (in green ink), whose Airship Dragoon got a lot of coverage from GrogHeads earlier this summer.  Both describe their path to Greenlight success.

When we were given the task of taking Tabletop war game Victory At Sea into the digital realm, our first concern was how long if, ever it would take to get onto Steam.

Traditionally, developers hoping to get their game featured on this hugely popular platform are invited to sign up for Valve’s Greenlight system, where they can submit promotional videos, images and other game information for potential customers to see. The Steam community can then view and rate those that they’d like to see more of, with Steam eventually releasing the games that receive the most votes. Whilst democratic this is by no means a speedy process, with most games enduring a wait of anywhere between 2 days and 2 years for their game to reach players.

I am “Steve_Yorkshire”, also known as my developing/old modding/trade name “YorkshireRifles” (which is a play on words of “Eton Rifles”, a 1979 song by The Jam). I am a lone indie developer (sometimes known as a “One Man Army” in certain circles of indie development) and I created an old fashioned, uber-hardcore, turn-based squad tactics and global strategy game called “Airship Dragoon”, that has much more in common with titles from the 1980s and early 1990s than contemporary tactics games. It’s a niche strategy game, densely complicated, with enormous campaigns, lengthy battles, and is pretty much the antithesis of modern fast-paced gaming. And it’s available on Steam after getting through Greenlight.

Greenlight is reported to work with a simple algorithm; gain votes from the public members of Steam to get into the top 100 with a modifier depending on commercial popularity of the genre. Whilst this algorithm is not available for public scrutiny it would seem logical that “Action” is more popular than “Strategy”, and thus strategy games would gain a positive modifier due to there being less of them.

In fact from our chats with other developers we have been told that going through the Steam Greenlight process can require patience as well as the ability to hold your nerve when the popularity slows down.

We had received funding from Creative England’s Games Lab SW fund to help make the game we wanted, turning Victory At Sea into a large scale WW2 Naval strategy with RTS and sandbox elements. Our main concern with all the effort we had put in was, would anyone have access to play it through the stores we wanted? Continue reading →

09/3/14

GenCon 2014 – Paradox Talks Runemaster

Cyrano grabbed a few minutes with Troy Goodfellow of Paradox at GenCon, and had a chat about Runemaster.

Click images to enlarge

runemaster_LOGO

Paradox Interactive isn’t just some software company: not to wargamers, and not to me. This, after all, is the band of Swedes that took a nigh-unplayable board game and turned it into one of the most successful strategic wargame franchises in PC gaming. This is the company that created the greatest medieval soap opera simulator in the history of everything and layered it on top of a robust conflict engine that lets me (and, apparently, some of the contributors to this very site) fancy themselves rulers of obscure kingdoms. And this is the company that soon (never soon enough, mind) will release one of the most anticipated World War II strategy games to come along in quite some time.

This is a company that has nurtured the wargame like its own child and kept alive the grognard fire during the harsh winter of console ascendancy.

So why, then, am I standing in the Paradox Interactive booth at GenCon talking to Troy Goodfellow about a game that involves the participation of men, elves, dwarves, and other fantasy races in the coming of Ragnarok?

And, let me say, talking to Troy Goodfellow about Ragnarok is weird in and of itself. He’s a widely-published games critic, co-founder and co-host of the “Three Moves Ahead” weekly podcast, and overall fanatic for the history of the Great Patriotic War. What, then, does he think he and the Paradox team are bringing to Runemaster, the up-coming turn-based, tactical RPG set in a world confronting the Norse eschaton?

The answer, reassuringly, is the ability to simulate people killing each other in various ways. OK, ok…Goodfellow, now an assistant producer at Paradox, and I spoke about other things…

Like the Clausewitz engine, for example. This is the system, first built for Europa Universalis III in 2007 that’s lurking under Runemaster’s hood. He said, early in his tenure with Paradox, he was invited to corporate and given a quick run through an earlier version of the game. He asked what it was running on and, when given the answer, admitted to being shocked.

Based on my own plays through the alpha of the game available at GenCon, I think most users will be shocked too. The game is in the family of Heroes of Might and Magic in that there’s an overmap where heroes are minted, armies raised, and experience gathered. It’s worth noting in passing that the game does not include city building or development. Heroes get their armies the old-fashioned way: at barracks.

Runemaster_pdxcon_screenshot_01

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