Battlefield Hero's and time wasted to their beta key events.

If anyone has been following BF and their closed beta, which by the way, information is dribbled out to people - Their site has very little information other then to be released summer 08 and check for beta contests.

First things - If your going to have a beta key contest. Make it fair. World Wide. For everyone. Telling a north American consumer that the contest starts at XXX Stockholm time doesn't do anything for us. I'm sure the people in Stockholm know exactly what time the contest starts. - The rest of us have to look it up. And if your on a slow ass work computer that in itself is frustration. (Or, in the case of the last beta key contest which started at 10 am in the morning for those of us in north America - Well, I'm stretching things a bit, It started from 7am Eastern time right on to about 2 pm Eastern time, considering your location in North America. If you work for a living like and have no access to a computer during those hours, Your forced to sit out these contests or wait and hope it comes out some time this year)

Second - I applaud your trying to be creative with your contests - but enough is enough, Just Lotto the damn keys already. Making us put together a word from 9 different WebPages that couldn't have gone down faster if you had slash dotted them isn't fun. Seeing error with web page and 404 not found, Is reminiscent of the old radio station contests that would offer people money to do fairly embarrassing or painful things - Or as I like to call it, Who can NOT pee the longest. Win big money if your the last guy (Or Girl) with a ruptured bladder.

I'd like to point out something here - Your game while maybe be originally free to play - Will need to generate some revenue. This will most likely come from a paying source - Mainly parents or the people your irritating with this ridiculous contests. Right now, the only people winning these keys are kids or people who have the time to waste jumping through hoops. Me, I'll just go to your competition and play their FPS game - Who knows, I might even plunk down some cash right at the start just to own it. I'm sure Wal_mart or Ebgames won't make me do a dance contest, or humiliate myself singing a hit single at the cash register just to play the game. (Though, last time I checked Wal-Mart had Rock Band set up for people who were into that sort of thing)

Here's another thing to look at - With a parent like Electronic Arts [EA] giving the green for development - You might want to keep in mind that EA has cancelled MMO's with a far greater subscription base then this game will likely ever have - In fact, if you look at the history of Cancelled MMO's from EA (Earth and Beyond, Motor City Online, The Sims Online) You'll see that they have a finite lifespan, and driving away people who want to play the game, but won't because they've been forced to jump through an unlimited number of hoops will only hasten the demise of a product.

So Battle Field Hero's. You get a big wet raspberry from me when it comes to your beta contests.
Lastly - Consider this - Mythos, A free to play MMo (Fantasy based) Has been cancelled (Though it might show signs of life soon) And Dungeon Runners (another fantasy) lifespan is looking gloomy - The time is right for the marketing of this game, Getting the people rebounding from the previous two products won't be difficult, but not if you make trying to get into the game about as fun as a root canal with out sedative.

Encouraging developers and players to step away from the standard subscription model.

A couple of things before I get started here - I'm mostly familiar with EQ1, and Eq2, So this is where I'll be focusing my ideals - This isn't to say that these ideals couldn't work for any other company. He or she who is flexible survives, those who fail to adapt die.

In North America - Every MMO we play, along with a few normal games (Like Hellgate London) have a monthly subscription cost. These costs range from $10.00 to $50.00 a month in American dollars and cover your basic monthly subscription. For most of us in the America's, further perks are not available unless they are freely given as a monthly update.

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The Shadow of Odyssey or The Shadow Odyssey – Sony Online Entertanment [SOE] hasn’t picked an actually title for it yet, and I can’t seem to get any concrete information.

So here is my list. Who knows some of these might actually happen. While I can say that I have almost as much experience in games and the fantasy genre as some of the developers out there, I don’t work for Sony. (Or sadly, Have any programming or design experience – yet anyway)

This is fairly long, I've attached the more tag so I don't completely run anyone else’s column right off the next few pages... Continue on, Said the spider to the fly...

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I’ve been playing games for a long time now, Starting out on my dad’s apple IIE, moving to a friends Tandy 1000, and eventually owning my own 086. During this time video game creators, who could and would do literally anything they wanted in the game worlds, ruled with iron fists. Though they’d often listen to their fans and implement changes that made their games easier to use, or often just easier.

When MMo’s where released – Everquest, Ultima Online and Asheron’s call (The Big three) These games became even more evolved, more difficult per say; and in some area’s more imbalanced.

My point here, is I question game developers who’ve undertaken the moral stand of:

Speak no evil, Hear No evil, See no Evil – There for Evil doesn’t exist.

This can be directly translated in the games industry to:
Speak of no issues, Hear of no issues, See no issues – The game is perfect

If there’s no one to voice the problem, Point it out, or make an issue about it, the game must be perfect; therefore they can keep on punching out games and expansions, expecting to make money – In their perfect world.

Take EverQuest for example; Players had to wade through years of developers stating working as intended. I.e. Snakes can kick, even in high fantasy. All-right it’s a lame example, but I needed to use something.

In the interests of players, why do developers ignore some obvious issues in favor of adding glamour to the game? A real example would be some glaring issues that will erupt in the near future with some racial abilities, in a game I won’t mention at this particular time.

Some developers have community representatives and moderators that think that if they delete, Mute and ban those who speak up, that they’ll take care of the problem – By removing negativity from the boards all must be well.

It’s interesting to see, that the suggested banning of people from boards is supposed to teach them to be better. I think there’s just more festering negativity waiting to pop out. For every person a game relations manager ban’s on their board, there’s that many more people that this person can influence from other boards when they go to rant about such bad problems that are occurring in said games. Perhaps if these people who are in control and charge of the boards had instead said to those people, “try to come out with something better then” those people with the issues could be forced into a positive suggestive manner benefiting both parties.

Ideally I think that heavy moderation of game forums leads to serious blind spots in games productions. I can’t speak from experience on this one, but I’m sure that Sony Entertainment was just as blatant with the deletion of threads and banning people from their forums when they decided to change star wars galaxies to that piece of crap it is now, (The NGE – New Game experience – which cost them about ¾ of their subscriber base. I can’t give the exact numbers of people who left the game, however those servers are mighty empty now.)

Smedley who works for Sony Entertainment, even now admits that the NGE was a mistake. I’m sure that if they had of originally listened to the people they were so busy ignoring in the first place that they’d still have a good majority of those subscribers.

I think that it eventually boils down to this; Game developers should listen to those who object to their games, the changes they make to their games instead of trying to stamp out the problem people.

Having said all that, unfortunately it boils down to personal perspective, for every “bad” change a game has, there’s someone saying it’s a good change, and usually not a developer. – Though lately in personal experience it’s been someone closely involved with the game developer, taking sides, usually those of the developers.

I think if more people who “tested” and played these games would speak out, then both the players and developers could come to agreement (Though, I’ve yet to see a game fail because enough players were disgusted with the game developers choices that they’ve all cancelled) Usually it’s the parent company who’s footed the bill of producing the game that see’s that there isn’t enough subscriber base to fill forecasted values and usually end up terminating a game before it comes into its own.

This is a post that should really belong over at mob hunter with Lorial at the helm, but as he’s shown the world as of late he’s more in tune with Wow, the Eq these days. Hence I’ve taken it upon myself to try and step into his big shoes.

Eq2 is an easier, more update version of Everquest, Currently in it’s 3rd year (4th anniversary in November) It’s unfortunately not showing the subscription power of its predecessor – though few games these days can compete on a subscription basis with world of warcraft.

With out any doubt there can always be improvements. He who fails to improve fails, simple as that (Even in the business world).

So here are my 5 ways to improve Eq2.

1. Creation of Hot zones

Eq 1, Had hotspots and zone revamps to draw players to the various unused zones. Players in these zones saw increased experience gains and often new equipment. While Eq2 doesn’t necessarily need entire zone’s revamped to give yet more stuff to the game, A subtle experience increase (even the designation perhaps) of making some of the older unused zones “hot” spots would help draw players to the zones and make grouping much more viable.

I don’t know if anyone has looked lately, but a lot of the zones (Ie. Any other zone besides Kunark) sit empty. Zones made for about a hundred players have seven or eight players in them, and of those, most are harvesting in relative safety.

By bringing bonuses to any on of these zones and promoting grouping and fun play to players who started with Kunark and had no where else to go after the timorous deep. I’ve seen countless unsatisfied players from level 20 to 50 on just my sever, so I don’t think that this can be any other then a right move.

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There are a lot of words flying around today about how game addiction is suddenly being recognized for what it is. My goal is to challenge that statement. While I’m not disagreeing that video game addiction does in fact exist, I’d like to changes some conceptions that the current media would have us believe.

I’m not disagreeing that addiction is a problem. Merely that we shouldn’t apply a broad scale application to the issue.

Yes, Computer [game] addiction can often have tragic consequences, let us not label all people who play games as addicts, rather saving that special label for the few that need it, rather then suffer the problem to become commonplace.

A simple way of looking at this – The majority of us used to go home after a hard day at work and hit the couch and watch hours of TV each night. While that was socially acceptable, those of us who choose to forgo the TV and instead spend those hours playing video games are suddenly at high risk of addiction.

The world has changed since the majority of us have passed childhood. No longer do we go outside and find something to occupy our time, today, many of our children turn to video games as a source of enjoyment. Indeed many of us ourselves change to various forms of games as a recreational activity.

Suddenly the world is at risk to video games. I’d like to challenge the statement of addiction and have people think about what we’re saying.

So often the word addiction makes people instinctively think of drug users. That gritty grungy world that most of us only have the slightest definition of from the media formats that we associate with.

The direct definition of an addiction is
1) A state of physiological or psychological dependence on a drug liable to have a damaging effect,
2) Great interest in something to which a lot of time is devoted

A better definition of addiction comes from real love

“Addiction is the compulsive use of any substance, person, feeling, or behavior with a relative disregard of the potentially negative social, psychological, and physical consequences”

I’d like to put my definition of addiction forward.

*Any habit that becomes the driving need of one’s behavior.*

Driving Forces

Instead of saying that any person spending large amounts of time at any one activity is an addict, we should rather look for symptoms of addiction before crying foul.

Just saying that a person is addicted over sheer quantity of item doesn’t quite qualify by today’s standards.

(if that were the case, I’d be addicted to work, writing, surfing the net, and hey, various life factors in general)

We should look for key signals of a forming addiction rather then applying a blanket statement.

I’ll be the first to admit. When we talk about video game addiction it’s far easier to see the effects in adults, then it is in children – The example below is taken out of context of a full article.

• Most of non-school hours are spent on the computer or playing video games.
• Falling asleep in school.
• Not keeping up with assignments.
• Worsening grades.

It wasn’t that long ago that this could be attributed to TV, or even other things – Just because that these problems are cropping up in children, we should look beyond the game before we start crying addiction.

Instead of saying crying Addiction – perhaps we should look deeper into the problem, is the child happy? Is there problems at home that are driving them into the world of video games?

Applying blanket statements is often a way to generalize a problem, and since video games won’t go away anytime soon (If ever) we really need to be far more clear.

Closing Statements

Several years ago, I had made the statement (In ironically an article about game addiction) that by 2005 there would be 15 million online game accounts in the world
(Massive Online Gaming, 1st edition)

By today’s figures there are at least 30 million accounts worldwide

A simply astounding figure

In fact, when you look at It in one way – there is 1 person playing world of Warcraft for every 1 million people in the world. There are better odds of meeting a person playing wow then winning any lottery.

The problem we had, and now have isn’t going to go away anytime soon – Instead of applying blanket statements for the future we should be educating people instead of causing needless worry and panic.

I’m not going to go into key signs and signals of game addiction; if you follow my source material you’ll find ample enough warning signs and blanket statements.

The only thing I can really say to this is to educate your-self on game addiction – recognize it for what it is, instead of what the masses want us to think.

-Sources-

City News : Recognizing gaming junkies – US Doctors

China – Money – Online games

Massive Online Game magazine – print edition – Moral Grounds: Addiction

Real Love