Design and propping by me.

DISH WIPES!

Rest your eyes on these puppies:

The text reads:

We soak up all talent!
jobs.massive.se

Here’s a photo of the stack:

I saw stacks atleast three times as massive (get it?) leaving the building.

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Just a few days till the Soviet Assault release. Here’s a few related links:

The new war room is now live on massgate

Massive On Soviet Assault As “The Director’s Cut” over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun

WiC: Soviet Assault Video Bonanza also at Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Massive’s single-player mini-expansion puts a human face on the Russian Bear.

And:

Terrific storyline; great voiceovers; solid strategic gameplay.

Check it out.

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Unrelated but interesting links:

The Linear RPG

Basics of an effective FPS encounter

IGN has some more information on it.

For some some specific details on what you’ll be missing out on, look here. We’ve known this for a while, obviously, but it’s still a little bit sad. There are however good reasons for not releasing it.

Apologies to those of you waiting for this.

According to Metacritic, PC Gamer gave it a rather alarming 62 out of a 100, a bit unfairly, I’d say. And, yes,  obviously I’ll be a bit biased on the topic, but hear me out.

Since there’s some confusion on the topic: The retail version of Soviet Assault (also known as World in Conflict: Complete) will cost 24.99, and include World in Conflict, as well as the new Soviet Assault content. Add to that, if you only want the new levels, they are 14.99, so no need to fret if you already own the game.

Personally, I feel that the complete version is a good deal on a game that received an 89 average (93 by PC Gamer) on Metacritic (as well as several awards), plus the added content and I sincerely hope that one unfair review wont put any new players off.

This is essentially a mapping problem (a split between what the player expects is possible and what is possible), and I hope to discuss this (as well as the follow up article in which I believe a few faulty conclusions are reached) a bit more thorough in a later post, but as a quick note, I’d like to discuss the topic in relation to RTS design.

From the article:

Gaming technology is incredible. With new hardware advancements, developers are bringing us bigger and more exciting worlds. We often have the opportunity to roam for miles or to actually walk through entire cities, exploring seemingly every nook and cranny.

But what happens when there are areas in the game that developers don’t want us to get to? Usually there is some kind of barrier that halts our progress or, alternately, an element of the story of the game which explains our inability to continue onward.

While this certainly is a problem (what gamer hasn’t been frustrated by the dreaded invisible wall?) something that struck me as I was reading it was that there is very little of this problem in a game like World in Conflict. Why is this? Obviously, there are boundaries at the edge of the map, and objects block the path of vehicles.

Three things spring into mind:

2D vs 3D movement: First, navigating a 3D world (which seems to be what Griffiths is focusing on) is a lot more complex than the fairly 2D vector that constitutes movement in World in Conflict – even if you’re controlling air units, you only move around a single plane, there’s no gameplay involved in height. This creates a very binary situation: an area is either passable or impassible. There are exceptions to this (infantry can move through forests), but for the tank and support role, it results in the notion that if it sticks up from the ground, you can’t move through it.

Speed and scope: Of course, in a game like World in Conflict (and I suppose most any “traditional” RTS) the scope is very different to a first or third person game. Units traverse a larger area, with less speed. This creates a gameplay where you’re rarely stressed, and you issue broader movement orders rather than specific control over a certain character.

Direction: This is also interesting. Of course, gameplay elements in strategy games will not be situated outside the allowed play area, and in most games, in an uninteresting area, away from enemies. The designers want you to go to that gold mine in the center of the map, much as they want your enemy to do to the same, provoking a conflict, and thus, gameplay. Add to that the fact that these games typically let the player know where he is located in relation to the world (left corner, right corner, etc), it creates a fairly simple case of going from starting point A, to interesting point B.

While first and third person games by no means direct the player away from gameplay and into boring areas, they rarely inform the player of his current location, and the specific location of his goal, and thus it becomes more of an exploration game. Couple this with the complexity of a 3D world and the increased speed and decreased scope, and you increase the chance of misinterpretation greatly.

What would the result be if we transfered this simplicity and sense of direction to other genres? What would such a game look like?