Evony and Ivory

Evony... I don't know about y'all, but this game's ad has been popping up on every game-ish site I have found. Each ad features a buxom model asking "Are you ready to play, My Lord?" The cleavage is massive. The hook is so obvious and ridiculous. So I clicked on it.

Turns out that Evony is a tech-tree medival simulator on par with early versions of Civilization. It just goes to show you how far computer gaming has advanced to make something like Evony completely free to play.

Evony is a web-browser embedded game. I'm guessing it uses Java behind the scenes, but I haven't pulled back the covers to look. None the less, it is a very complete and comprehensive game. You start as Lord of your city and must build up cottages, saw mills, barracks, etc and all the while upgrade various buildings to hit the quest goals. Typical for this sort of game you must manage resources and plan for player aggression--although you are give 7 days of peace to start.

There are ways to establish alliances and declare wars. There is a market system of buying and selling resources. There are wild, unowned valleys to explore with armies and plunder. It seems you can purchase (with real USD) resources directly and this seems to be the intent of the designers. To hook you with a free game and then let the first rube with $50 on Dad's credit card wipe you out with ill-gotten armies. Thus inspiring you to buy in. I don't think I'll be buying. But it is a fun easy diversion to run in the background.

Facebook Farm Town and Social Gaming

While I typically only consider writing about "real" games like morgs and table top games, I have spent a bit of time fooling around with small Facebook games. I realize now that these are having a large impact on game playing in general and so I thought I'd at least give them a mention.

I'll use Farm Town as an example. A simple graphical game designed to kill time and leverage social networks. The idea is to plant various crops, harvest them, and sell the proceeds for "coins" to buy more virtual objects for your farm (including more crops). The game has aesthetic satisfaction as you try to put together both a profitable and visually pleasing farm. It has a nudge of mathematics as you will look for ways to maximize your profits. Even shop-a-holics will enjoy using the “store” and showing off for friends. The game rewards social behaviour by granting more coins to the farm owner when someone else harvests their corps. So if harvesting “corn” got you 180 coins solo, then having someone else harvest gets you 200. The harvester also gets paid (by the game, not the farm owner). Thus there is no downside to asking others to come to your farm and harvest.

These mini-games encourage more game play and may entice more “mainstream” digital users in to gaming. You could call them ‘gateway games.” Hehe! There are now hundreds of them on Facebook and I’m sure hundreds more on other social sites. So far I don’t know of any that cross boundaries between social sites, but I’m sure it could be done. I’m also sure there are a slew of hidden issues in these games regarding privacy, spyware, and other weird things that could happen. But too many folks play them now for them to ever disappear. They are a newish game form loose on the market. It will be interesting to see how far it goes.

By the way… I could use a few more neighbours. If you’re playing Farm Town on Facebook, send me a note!

Game On!

Long Live the MORG!

I have declared that from this day forth... Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games shall no longer be referred to by the unpronouncable acronymn "MMORPG", but rather by "MMORG" in the proper sense and "morg" in common vernacular.

I mean if we can tolerate "pwnd" and "lolcatz" then why on earth do we have to stay saddled to MMORPG? Morg, I say!

I love morgs! Long live the morg! Hug your morg today!

Game On!

(morg!)

Clear Skies

Fan fiction has been around probably longer than copyright. While most of it is bad and some of it is really bad, every once in a great while you come across a really good bit. Ian Chisholm has created two episodes of a show called Clear Skies based on the MMORPG, Eve Online. The story takes some liberties with Eve cannon, but delivers where it counts--a great story.

I have no idea how long Ian and crew spent working on this fan project, but the results are worth watching even if you're not an Eve fan. The basic plot is simple, the characters are entertaining and considering it was all "filmed" with in game graphics between Eve Online and Half-Life 2 (Eve has no human avatars or hallway environments), it's pretty awesome!

The files are too big for me to post. But here's a link to the Eve Online forum post that has the links to download and the mirrors.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=783871

You can find all the bits of each 40 minute episode on YouTube, but Warner Brothers forced YouTube to audio silence the conclusion of Part 5 / Episode 2 for copyright infringement. So skip youtube and just download off the mirrors. The quality is better and you get to see the whole thing. You'll like it if you just like Sci-Fi. You'll love it if you know Eve Online.

Enjoy! Game On!

Battlestar Galactica: the Boardgame

So at DoG I got to play my first session of Battlestar Galactica. I bought this game a few weeks ago and I've had my eye on it for long time. Search Google/Youtube for video reviews of the game, there are many and they will probably give you a better idea of the game. I wanted to talk about this specific game session on the blog. In a nutshell, I loved it.

.
Players select characters to play at start up. I went with Giaus Baltar. I was 4th pick. Giaus' special ability is to draw a skill card of any type during a "crisis". This is handy as it guarantees that during my turn I can at least help a little (or hurt). The crisis phase of each player turn is really where all the action is and makes or breaks the final victory. One per game, Giaus can look at any player's loyalty cards to see if they are a Cylon. Giaus gets two of these cards, but in this session, I was not a Cylon.

.

The game was wicked cool and did a lot to capture the feel of the series. The pilots kicked cylon butt in space. The other characters threw in support in most respects just like their counter-parts in the series would. I even ended up in the Brig for while. The Cylon attacks were probably the most gripping. Attacks don't end at the end of that player's turn. So the next player draws a new crisis that must be dealt with in the midst of the attack. Sometimes second attacks occur on top of the first. The intensity starts to build. The Humans struggle even in the most cooperative game.

.
In our game the President (Laura) and Starbuck turned out to be Cylons. I actually turned out to be a "Sympathizer" but since the Humans were already fairing poorly, the "sympathizer" doesn't have further negative effect. Having the President turn out to be a Cylon is a pretty rough blow to the Humans. But as it turned out, the Humans just barely squeeked out a victory. We lost a ton of population and morale, but we made the final jump.
.

We had 6 players in this session. I think the game would play best 4-5. But 6 is quite doable. Really I think you could do even more. 3 players would make it really hard on the Humans. The challenges don't get any easier with 3 and that means the total contribution each player makes must be higher.

.

The game complexity overall is not too bad. It is far less complex than say Axis and Allies, but certainly several steps above your average boardgame. Avid fans of the series may really like the game, but they will have to absorb some moderately complex rules. Game lovers should have no issue at all. It is a longish game--running 3-4 hours. But unlike other long games that seem "forgone" for the last 30% of the game, BSG is gripping right to the end.

.

For those Wellington readers... We should plan a game-my house--I may even provide pizza. Game On!

Day of Games (DoG) May 2009

I have several posts mentally queued up. But I'll get this one out first. I went to a mini-con in Wellington (Turnbull House) last Saturday simply dubbed "Day of Games" hosted by Sophie (on those blog links in the side bar).

The format of this con was simply to break up the day in multiple 2-hour sessions and lets players and GM's cut loose on anything they wanted to join. It seemed to work out pretty well. I was happy to show up and just go with it.

My first session was playing 3:16 with Sophie and 2 other americans--oddly enough. We had a good time with this simple format game. 3:16 contains about 5 game mechanics total and so plays very quickly, but still captures the feel of a good roleplay experience. I was Tech SGT "Wrench" Turner. We shot lizards in our first "deployment" and then played drug crazed soldiers in training for the 2nd deployment. It was a lot of fun.

In the second session I got to play the game that I really wanted to try, Battlestar Galactica (boardgame). I'll do a separate post on this game. It was very satisfying.

I also got to try another Final Flight game called "Cosmic Encounter". It was good to squeeze this one in to try it. It probably would not make it in to my collection, but I can see how it would have appeal for some play groups. The central theme of CE is negotiation between players. I would see this game being best played between folks that knew each other at least casually. We only had 3 players and that made the negotiation triangle not all that interesting. It would be best with about 5.

Overall, I think the event was a good success. I was happy to see the gamer crowd in Wellington again and happy to get table time with folks.

Free Willy

Okay, so my major game play has still been Eve Online the last few weeks. One thing that keeps pulling me back to Eve is that it is fairly easy to "play" even when you're not logged in. That is... you can do a lot of things with it offline... I shall dub this Eve Offline. What I'm talking about here are the things that happen with out much online involvement like selling goods, making goods, and skill training.

The market system in Eve is without equal. It easily rivals global economics. There are hundreds of individual markets spread across dozens of regions. Many players make all their in-game credits by simply buying and selling goods without ever moving them. Some buy bulk quantities in one region and then move them to another region at a mark-up.

All the player driven manufacturing is done from stations and complete over time. These "jobs" continue even while you're logged off. Often I'll assemby the materials for a multi-day job and then just kick it off to run. I can wait a couple of days and then go back and fetch the job. Presumably, I then post it on the market and wait for the ISK to roll in.

While I'm logged in for 5 minutes to fetch jobs and post goods to the market, I can also queue up skills to train. Thus while logged off, my characters can happily be making stuff, making ISK, and training for new ships or abilities. I can go off and play WoW or watch TV.

My latest achievement is the Orca. I bought one off a corp-mate who named it "Free Willy"--thus the name of this post. This is a relatively new ship in Eve--offically called an "Industrial Command Ship". It is not a combat vessel in any fashion, but it is a great toy for goofing around in Empire space. The mining bonuses it provides are exceptional. It's hauling capacity is second only to Freighters. But while a Freighter can do nothing beyond haul giant cargo's, the Orca can haul very, very large cargo's, fit various modules, loot cans/wrecks from space, contains a ship maintenance bay, and a corp hanger bay. I am extremely pleased with the ship. In fact, I'm fairly certain that CCP will have to do something to buff up the Freighter now since it is such a complete dog of a ship... dog ship, I say.

I think next I will work on getting better at dealing EM damage--probably T2 Praetor drones. This will allow me to cut through missions for Khanid Royal Navy quicker. Quicker missions means quicker ISK. After this I'm not sure. Maybe I'll work on T2 Rails for more direct damage dealing.

Game On!