I just got home from finally seeing the re-imagined Star Trek, and I wanted to get this post out while the images are still fresh in my head.

We all know that roughly 99.9% of movie based games are TERRIBLE. Across the history of Star Trek games, with rare exception this has been born out. But what's nice about this alternate reality story line is that it gives game designers new places to go with this storied IP. While the sleek lines of the original Enterprise are back, nearly everything else is new. The balance of power is more level, with Klingons, Romulans, and the Federation back to their Cold War era stalemate. The characters are familiar but with new aspects and histories to explore.

I guess in part I am re-energized to be immersed into the Star Trek universe via gaming.

At least until I see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

It needs to be said: Duke Nukem was the Jean-Claude Van Damme of the gaming industry. At first he was ubiquitous; his face everywhere, and the starring vehicles were pretty darn good. Then, just like Mr. Van Damme, the Duke underwent some changes during his storied career, and eventually wound up homeless. While it looks like Mr. Van Damme has kicked the coke for good, gotten off the street, and found happiness with his third/fifth wife; whether the Duke will find redemption is anything but clear.

But why should we care that the Duke is no more? It all comes down to the thing that makes the world go ‘round (and I’m not talking about love); Money.

In an age where the cost of development is so high for AAA titles that only the biggest companies can afford to develop new top level titles, it’s sad to see the probable death of a top name in the industry. Not because Duke Nukem Forever would have a guaranteed success, or even a good game for that matter. But simply because of the sheer amounts of money that has been poured into the title over the last 13 years.

At some point along the way, it had to become clear to someone at 3DRealms that the Duke was never going to see the light of day again. When that occurred, some form of a “Plan B” should have become the immediate course of action.

The first option clearly should have been to pin down what worked in the development done so far then break down the plot into segments and go episodic. This is clearly a workable plan these days. Selling the first 1/3^rd of the game online would have brought in scads of money to continue the next segments. When this was decided against, it should have triggered a “sell off” of game assets to either the publisher (as 3DRealms tried to do before shutting down when it was far too late) or another development house, to get as much out of the completed work as possible.

It’s not at all that DNF will never see the light of day, it’s simply that there are a tremendous amount of very good titles coming from small shops that could be made even better, or marketed more actively with just a little additional funding. And while small shops struggle to get their great work noticed, 3DRealms was like a giant black hole for millions of dollars worth of cash. If more of that money had been put towards other titles, we’d see more “make a great game, and you’ll find a big name publisher”, like The Witcher.

Let’s hope the industry learns from this lesson, and that companies stop pouring money into vaporware titles, and focus on products that can achieve something more than being the butt to a ton of industry jokes.

We did an interview with Felicia Day of The Guild fame a while ago but while watching Discovery Channel, I came across a Sears commercial that had her in it. I thought she looked familiar and sure enough, here's the commericial featuring the Guild actress selling a washer and dryer.

 

 

In a level-less society, there are few milestone indications proving you've advanced. EVE Online's chat channels aren't caked with "Ding!" messages slathering over what level someone's popping champagne corks over. Yet the "Gratz!" that follow a triumphant message stating the new ship you've purchased can often fall surprisingly limp as well.

That's because in EVE, being able to fly a certain hull type doesn't mean you can fit that certain hull type with appropriate equipment.  You could pilot a cruiser -- a popular, high-powered ship class -- in short order:  the license is yours, have at it.  But you won't necessarily have the acumen and certainly not the experience to put it to good use yet.  The technicalities are beyond the scope of this blog, but suffice it to say that any player can prematurely get themselves into the cockpit of a large boat long before the rest of their gangly-youth body has caught up to the size of their paws.

There is one method for accurately measuring a character's growth and advancement, but it surprisingly lacks ceremony...

I swung over to the always-trafficked Brutor Tribe Treasury, Rens solar system. The Six Kin Development Warehouse -- my usual haunt where I pick up a solid stream of missions from my security agent -- lacks cloning facilities. I deftly slapped down the sixty-five thousand ISK purchase at the Treasury and ding'd in corp chat that I'd upgraded to a Clone Grade Gamma.  Solemnly, as expected:

Crickets. Nothing...

They're a quiet lot by default, so I can't fault them overly much. But that clone will retain two million, fifty thousand skill points in the event of my demise.  (Think of it as a 'save point' for my character Billy Blame's advancement.  I currently have just over one million, three-hundred thousand skill points, and my then-current clone was steadily approaching the lip of what it could muster. I have to imagine that that's solid progression, since I've focused almost exclusively on Learning skills; skills that do nothing except increase the number of skill points I acquire per hour. From go, I earned seven-hundred twenty skill points per hour, according to my iPhone's Capsuleer app.  I now earn one-thousand two-hundred eighty-seven per hour.  I've nearly halved the rate at which I acquire skills.  (There is a major discrepancy between EVEMon (EVE Monitor) and Capsuleer in reporting how many skill points I earn per hour, but I'm neither inclined enough nor numbers-savvy enough to prove who's correct.)  When a single skill takes several days to top out at level five -- even at my low levels -- the patience to train Learning skills pays rich dividends over the course of a tenured career.

Regardless, my purchase of a Clone Grade Gamma was a silent and uneventful ding, likely because there's nothing outward to disclose, nothing showing off me piloting a new Bellicose, Rupture, Scythe, or Stabber-class Minmatar cruiser. But it was a solid indication that my patient training is paying off. Just as it does for absolutely everyone in these space lanes. Which is why it's never a call for celebration.