Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

A Piece of History is Now Free.

One of the grand daddies of MMO's, Everquest went free to play. It was the first video game I heard tethered to the idea of video game addiction. It was also the first game that, according to rumor caused the end to many relationships as one partner spent so much time playing Everquest the relationship flew apart at the seams. Whereas I had no known proof of this, the stories seemed real enough. It was also coupled with a new concept to me that people could spend "too much" time playing video games. I sort of dismiss that sort of notion now as digital life is all encompassing and one can spend the same if not more time simply reading news articles, looking at Facebook... Read All One of the grand daddies of MMO's, Everquest went free to play. It was the first video game I heard tethered to the idea of video game addiction. It was also the first game that, according to rumor caused the end to many relationships as one partner spent so much time playing Everquest the relationship flew apart at the seams. Whereas I had no known proof of this, the stories seemed real enough. It was also coupled with a new concept to me that people could spend "too much" time playing video games. I sort of dismiss that sort of notion now as digital life is all encompassing and one can spend the same if not more time simply reading news articles, looking at Facebook or a Smartphone.

That said, my first throws with this game was largely from a negative "this game will suck your life from your bones" perspective. Needless to say, I totally wanted to lose my life to it, I just never got the opportunity. One reason for that was at the time my wife and I were quite poor and we had no money for the subscription. I was able to flirt with disaster a few times though and I loved every second of it.

I was able to play it a bit over at a friends house that played religiously. He let me create a character and I picked an Elf Necromancer. I remember summoning my pet from bones I collected from killing Skeletons and then hoarding more bones to sell to other players in a stack. Doing those simple things in the game were so awesome and I badly wanted to join the ranks of Everquest players, but it wasn't meant to be. I took out my Everquest angst on Telnet MUD's and spent many an hour huddled around my screen slaying creatures and leveling up in a text based world.

The last few years I have hoped Sony would release Everquest as a Free to Play game and recently noticed my wish came true. The details of how that works are on the Everquest site.

http://www.everquest.com/free

I created a Gnome Wizard and eagerly started the game. Right away I noticed a few things I hadn't before. Early on, there was a bit of BBS / Internet drama about Everquest stealing from MUDs. Some people accused Sony of stealing code from MUDs to make Everquest. I never really understood the argument, Everquest is a 3D game and MUDs are all text. As I played the game now I notice Everquest does draw heavily from MUD's and as such requires much more typing than any new MMO. A staple of modern RPG's / MMO's is to click a NPC to initiate dialog. In Everquest you must type "Hail" and click. Then you have to read the dialog and parse out words you can use to continue the conversation. As I realized these mechanics were central to the game, I remembered the old calls of Everquest "borrowing" from MUD's and the argument made more sense to me.... 13 years later... Not saying Sony actually stole anything, but I understand the argument better now.

That all said, if you have never played Everquest or wanted to come back to it after being years apart now is a great time to do that. It is available from download from the Everquest site and is a new entry in Steam under Free to Play.

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 12/15/2012 at 12:47am

You know what's free? Frog Fractions. You know what's fucking rad? Frog Fractions. http://twinbeardstudios.com/frog-fractions

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/15/2012 at 12:54am

Wow, Frog Fractions kicks Number Munchers right in the feels.

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 12/16/2012 at 02:04am

Frog Fractions: GOTY.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/16/2012 at 04:49am

Hopefully they wrap up all the DLC and package it up for a re-release.

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 12/16/2012 at 12:54pm

By the way, that board game store I was talking about is called "Unplugged Games" not "Brick and Mortar Games." Not sure what I was thinking.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/16/2012 at 02:39pm

Thanks for the clarification. This time I will let it slide... But next time? Horrible consequences.

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Interview with the 0 A.D. Project

Was able to talk to the 0 A.D. project, something I have wanted to do for some time. 0 A.D. touts itself as "A free, open-source game of ancient warfare" and has been in development since 2001. Its totally free and available for download at the site right now:

http://play0ad.com/

jdodson: I have been tracking the progress of 0 A.D. for years! I think Age of Empires II, beyond some balancing is practically a perfect game. It sucks because it is really broken on modern Windows now. Getting an entirely free software version of this kind of game that can be modified by anyone and updated for modern systems interests me. I view Free Software as preserving culture. Its easy to... Read All

Take This Project

http://static.tumblr.com/fg31ubd/vqzmd3a6h/rgb-colorlogo-horiz.png

I just wanted to take a minute to promote the Take This Project (www.takethisproject.tumblr.com) which is an organization of writers, programmers, and gamers in the gaming industry who are suffering from depression or other mental illnesses to raise awareness. Having dealt with anxiety and depression myself (heck, I based my blog on it), I recommend anyone who is interested to check out the material for the website and follow the group on Facebook and Twitter (@takethisproject). I am very supportive of people who provide an understanding and encouraging community to show those who may not be afraid to seek help that they are not alone. I try not to bore others or bring... Read All

A Link To My Past

This cartoon totally nails how I felt going to Toys R Us to get a Nintendo game. Walking down the aisle, looking at all the boxes and picking that one game I obsessed over until my next birthday.

Thanks Mom!

Image from Zac Gormans Blog:
http://tmblr.co/ZyT1fxZ9x9_j

Hurray?!?

Hi CG members,

Finally today Steam support just replied to my email regarding the Scammed Revoked Torchlight 2..
n they decided to return it to me =) Unbelieveable.. I thought of it as pretty much gone!

So yeah, my entry here is cancelled.. Thanks for the Fantaboulous opportunity though..
Another great giveaway that I will miss =( Last time was Borderlands 2 n now this..

So yeah, have a great day everyone.. I'm looking forward for another awesome giveaway =P

Travis Admin wrote on 12/13/2012 at 04:37am

Dude! That's awesome. The Steam crew are pretty good to their users. It makes me happy to hear good customer service stories like this.

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/13/2012 at 06:49am

Another great Steam deed! I want to take a moment of silence to thank Gaben.......

TonyJapMayo Post Author wrote on 12/13/2012 at 05:00pm

I've heard of that name.. Forgot when or where.. Steam Admin guy? anyway, Thanks Gaben =P

Travis Admin wrote on 12/13/2012 at 07:09pm

Yep, Gabe Newell is the head of Valve. Gabe Newell, shortened to Gabe N., then further shortened by 4chan to Gaben.

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/13/2012 at 07:55pm

I think they picked that because its his email at Valve and its totally awesome to pass that around? :D

TonyJapMayo Post Author wrote on 12/14/2012 at 02:27am

Ah, ic.. Thats awesome.. Head of Valve must have lots of games, best job ever =P

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/14/2012 at 03:59am

New life goal: If I meet Gaben find out how many games he owns.

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Game Shop: Minecraft Mayhem

In this episode of that wacky Game Shop, the gang play a game very similar to Minecraft together. It uses a pretty cool four player split-screen that works really well for the episode.

Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition: Free on GoG

"Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition, the legendary FPS in which the Earth's greatest hero provides a steady flow of bullets and badass one-liners, is available on GOG.com, for the low price of one smile, for the next 48 hours. That's not all. For the first time in history, this supreme space-alien slaughter simulation is also available on Mac!"

Duke Nukem 3D Free and now on Mac? Awesome. Best head over to GoG and nab this game before the clock runs out. Never played any Duke games personally so here is my chance to redeem myself!

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/duke_nukem_3d_atomic_edition

Dat Firehose: Diablo 3, Scaling League of Legends

Looks like Blizzard is experimenting with Diablo 3 on consoles. No official plans yet they are getting it working.

http://www.polygon.com/2012/12/10/3752536/diablo-3-running-on-consoles-still-not-an-official-blizzard-project

Riot Games, the makers of League of Legends is now dealing with "big data" and how to scale that to millions of users. As a programmer I find this sort of thing interesting.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/12/08/207248/for-league-of-legends-creator-riot-games-big-data-is-serious-business

Valve wants to get DoTA 2 running on tablets but it looks like the current offerings are not hefty enough to power DoTA 2.

... Read All

Will_Owens wrote on 12/12/2012 at 03:31am

I'm really considering getting Eador. I loved playing HoMM (15 years ago? Jeez) and love games that have opaque systems I have to dig in to learn making this look outstanding. The graphics also look pretty cool in that Age of Wonders watercolor painted kind of way. If anyone has any experience playing it I would love to hear more about it. Also, if it has multiplayer capability, we could get a game night going.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/12/2012 at 03:41am

Ill append the post but have you played... let me get the link...

Battle for Wesnoth? Its an Open Source game that is very mature and runs on all the relevant platforms, I even think it has an iOS and Android port:

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Its free too :D

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/12/2012 at 05:42pm

Reason I bring it up, is because if we want to have a game night with a turn based strategy game that might work as its free for anyone to download and runs on all platforms.

Will_Owens wrote on 12/13/2012 at 12:59am

Very true, although, in my case it would be a game morning. I'd be up for that if we can organize something, but turn based strategy isn't the most popular genre anymore...

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/13/2012 at 06:52am

Yeah it really isn't. Maybe we can plan something closer to the holidays, ill have some time off to make scheduling anything much simpler :D

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Thoughts After Finishing Braid

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EfhR_jDjesY/Te8B-_eYniI/AAAAAAAAA-E/vVQPvdNabko/s1600/Screenshot-1.png

Having just completed Braid for my blog (www.backlogkiller.com), I thought I would transfer some of my comments over here to Cheerful Ghost. If you haven’t finished the game and don’t want to have anything ruined, I guess you should skip this post. Although, there’s really not that much to ruin since the entire game is mechanics and puzzle driven.

Braid, the brainchild of the (in)famous indie game designer Jonathan Blow, is a puzzle platformer that uses time manipulation as its primary mechanic in addition to the standard running and jumping. By pressing a single button, the player can reverse time to avert death, manipulate entities in the world, and experiment with... Read All Having just completed Braid for my blog (www.backlogkiller.com), I thought I would transfer some of my comments over here to Cheerful Ghost. If you haven’t finished the game and don’t want to have anything ruined, I guess you should skip this post. Although, there’s really not that much to ruin since the entire game is mechanics and puzzle driven.

Braid, the brainchild of the (in)famous indie game designer Jonathan Blow, is a puzzle platformer that uses time manipulation as its primary mechanic in addition to the standard running and jumping. By pressing a single button, the player can reverse time to avert death, manipulate entities in the world, and experiment with different solutions. Although this sounds simple, the introduction of new elements such as monsters or objects immune to time control complicates things greatly. Using time reversal and properties unique to each world, the player must control the main character (Tim) to collect puzzle pieces and rescue the enigmatic princess that was lost in the past.

Throughout the game, the player is fed small bits of story through strange blocks of text that hint at the identity of the Princess Tim is looking for. This enhances the somber mood of the levels and adds enormous gravity to the metaphor the mechanics of time manipulation work to build. The concept of going back to correct your mistakes and take another path through life is universal and lies in everyone. As a way to represent the desire to recapture a lost love, career, or youth, Braid is very effective and quite touching in my opinion. Unfortunately, the game squanders this chance by making a baffling narrative choice I cannot even begin to understand.

Spoilers Below:

The ‘Princess’ in Braid is actually the secret of nuclear weapons. Tim is a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project that brought about the age of nuclear bombs and the cold war. Even though the metaphor of time makes sense in terms of the desire to put that genie back in the bottle, it is absolutely ridiculous (in my opinion) when slapped on the game. What could have been a poignant and relatable concept is blown out of the water by the torpedo of grandiosity. I don’t understand why this was done other than to say ‘video games can be important’. Importance can take all shapes and sizes. I cannot relate to developing of a weapon of mass destruction, but I sure as heck can relate to wanting to recapture something I’ve lost in my own life.

It is easy to see why Jonathan Blow is such a controversial designer. The brilliant game design makes me very hopeful for his new project, The Witness, but it also worries me about what direction it will take. Many great stories have dealt with personal conflicts that give them an even greater impact which may have helped Braid. Despite this, I enjoyed the game and was only mildly let down by the ending since it was such a pleasure to play.

Read my full thoughts here: http://www.backlogkiller.com/2012/11/36-braid-game-myth-legend.html

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/12/2012 at 03:39am

One thing you can do with games is make statements. I am glad you spoiled the game here so I could find out what the reveal in Braid is, thanks for that. Does the reveal for Tim's character make sense with the style of Braid? Perhaps not.

I found the gravity of a nuclear assault on life and the landscape to be fairly poignant in Fallout. Just existing in an environment can clue you in to what a designer is trying to say.

That said, starting with a known concept like a Princess and then flipping that over to have the Princess be undoing something they believe is evil is interesting.

Did he start the player out with some regret and baggage or did the reveal just kind of come out of nowhere?

Will_Owens Post Author wrote on 12/12/2012 at 03:53am

The block text kind of hints at regret, but personifies the Princess in a way that makes it almost explicit that it's an actual person. I may have been assuming too much, but it really just came out of nowhere. I think Fallout works as a commentary on nuclear war because it takes concepts we are all familiar with such as anger, violence, and other base emotions and pasts them on a recognizable backdrop. Braid uses a fantasy inspired theme (although there are hints in the artwork) that doesn't really support that kind of left turn at all. I don't usually like to say stuff like this, but it felt like it totally M. Night Shyamalan'ed at the end.

Travis Admin wrote on 12/12/2012 at 04:30am

Seems you either love or hate that story reveal. I was torn. It was interesting, compelling, and poignant, yet considering the game it was a part of, it didn't quite work. I think had it been done a little differently or on a different kind of game or with a different setting, it would have been awesome.

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/12/2012 at 05:35am

That makes sense.

@Will do you mean a later M. Night film, because I felt the reveals in his first couple up including Lady in the Water were pretty awesome. (my taste)

Will_Owens Post Author wrote on 12/12/2012 at 06:07am

I haven't seen any of his movies since Signs to be honest.

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/12/2012 at 06:27am

No problem, but I get what you mean, total switcheroo but wasn't stylistically earned.

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More Time with the Wii U

This weekend I made my way to the Mall for a bit of Holiday gift retrieval. As I made my way through the morass of Holiday Shopping Victims I noticed a Wii U Kiosk. I navigated my way through the Horde and spent some time watching kids play and asked the attendants some questions about some of the games.

One thing I took away from checking out the Wii U is that the games are very pretty. The New Super Mario Brothers Wii U & Scribblenauts HD look stunning.

One game stood out to me as a pretty fun example of the new Wii U tablet style controller was Nintendo Land. Nintendo Land is essentially a set of Wii style party games similar in tone to Wii Play & Wii Sports.... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 12/11/2012 at 02:01pm

It really does look unique, interesting, and fun. But so did the Wii, and with the exception of first-party titles, I barely ever touched it. There were a few good ones, like MadWorld and No More Heroes, but it's been collecting dust since Super Mario Galaxy 2. Nintendo made something amazing, but the lagging graphics and tons of shovelware kinda pushed out third-party developers.

Hopefully the Wii U is different, but I worry that once the new round of consoles that MS and Sony release will push it to the same spot as the Wii.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/11/2012 at 05:20pm

The last game I played seriously on the Wii was Super Mario Galaxy. My wife and I still pull out the Wii for the Just Dance games at parties. We just picked up Just Dance 4. I have a soft spot for the Wii, but like you it mostly goes unplayed. In the end, my Playstation 3 did more so hopefully the Wii U can fill that void.

I am wondering what Microsoft and Sony are doing next, so far I have no idea what that is but I will hold off until I know more for sure.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 12/11/2012 at 06:22pm

I'll admit that up until a couple weeks ago, everything I heard about the Wii U had been kind of underwhelming. But now that the system is out and people are getting some hands on experience with it, I'm seeing a lot of really positive reviews. Hopefully this enthusiasm will stick better with the Wii U than it did with the Wii.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/11/2012 at 09:37pm

I think the Wii U made some choices to give it lets over the next generation better than the Wii. A few reasons:

The Wii U is compatible with all your old Wii Stuff.

The Wii U is essentially a PS3 or XBox 360 horsepower wise. I believe this is important because the PS3 and XBox 360 will be supported well into the next generation. Whereas the PS4 and XBox 720 might look better, I believe publishers will still make PS3 and 360 ports well into the next generation.

Its $300. This is a good price to start at as it starts reasonably and will drop over time.

That said, for me the most exciting platforms are the PC, Steam in your Living Room and Apple TV with apps.

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