Creating Maps and Communities

While I mostly use this blog to report on subjects that genuinely interest me, I also use this blog for school work. The map below is an example of a custom map I have created on the local public pools in Jacksonville, Florida, the place I currently reside.



So what does this have to do with gaming? Well this map specifically does not relate. However, I can see uses for making personalized maps in the gaming community. While many think gaming is a lonely activity, it is actually quite social. People from all different locations meet online to participate in the shared experience of gaming. But how do we find people in our area who are interested in the same games?

Perhaps people could use the map making capabilities of Google Maps to share locations of open LAN parties or local game tournaments. These maps could then be shared on various forums, blogs, and Internet sites to bring interested people together and create not just a virtual community of gamers, but a physical community.

ARK: Survival of Trendy Entertainment

The game developers behind the video game ARK: Survival Evolved are facing lawsuit charges, according to an article published by Kotaku earlier this week. Studio Wildcard, the developers of ARK, are facing a lawsuit from Trendy Entertainment, the developers of Dungeon Defenders. This lawsuit could affect ARK's development.

Image source: https://goo.gl/rxlNN6

According to Trendy Entertainment, its Ex-Creative Director Jeremy Stieglitz breached a contract with the company when he began working on ARK after leaving Trendy Entertainment in 2014. Stieglitz allegedly ran into problems at Trendy Entertainment and sought to part with the company. As part of an agreement, he signed a non-compete agreement that would keep him from directly trying to compete with his former company for a year. According to the lawsuit though, Trendy Entertainment claims that Stieglitz began approaching Trendy Entertainment employees with a new project within a month of his departure from the company. 

Regardless of whether or not Stieglitz broke his contract with Trendy Entertainment, there remains another question about how much influence Stieglitz actually had on the development of ARK. According to PC Gamer, Studio Wildcard denies that Stieglitz had any major involvement in ARK other than consulting. If Stieglitz was not a major part of the development of ARK, then Trendy Entertainment's lawsuit would not be able to affect ARK since the company had a contract with Stieglitz and not Studio Wildcard. 

Unfortunately, if Trendy Entertainment's injunction against Studio Wildcard is approved, the company may be forced to stop development on the game or even remove it from Steam until the lawsuit is decided. This would be quite a blow to the company considering they just released a new game mode for the game titled ARK: Survival Of The Fittest. This new free-to-play game mode is similar to the player versus player survival arena games like H1Z1: King of the Kill and The Culling, which I discuss in a previous post. 

A court hearing will be held on April 27 in the Eight Judicial Circuit of Florida to decide on the approval or denial of Trendy Entertainments temporary injunction. 

Review of Daybreak Game Company

While I usually try to use this blog as a way to share information, providing some commentary but keeping it mainly fact related, I felt a need to write a more opinionated post on Daybreak Game Company. A month ago I wrote a post about developments with H1Z1 and Daybreak Game Company. The controversy over splitting the game and charging for both parts rubbed many gamers the wrong way. Well, last week, the same gaming company announced that they will be discontinuing one of their long awaited MMO games, EverQuest Next.

EverQuest Next was announced back in 2012 as a next gen title for the company’s highly popular EverQuest franchise. The game was supposed to be released not only for the PS4 but also the Oculus Rift. Fans of the franchise and the MMO genre, including many of my friends, have been waiting ever since the announcement for the game, part of the reason being that, like H1Z1, EverQuest Next was meant to be free to play (F2P). Daybreak Game Company claimed in their announcement that they canceled the game because it simply did not live up to their expectations in terms of quality.

While I appreciate that the company chose to cancel their game for the sake of quality over quantity, I think that the cancelation comes at an interesting time. It hasn’t been very long since they announced the split of H1Z1, and I can’t help but think that this was an opportunity for them to focus instead on their cash cow, rather than a title that they haven’t finished (even after 4 years). Instead of releasing two widely popular F2P games after years of waiting, Daybreak Games has cut their popular title list in two and charged double for one of the games. Could they be making up for the revenue loss from EverQuest Next with H1Z1? I can only speculate, but I do not doubt it.

I understand that this company has to make money, and I would not fault them for covering the costs of EverQuest Next with H1Z1 sales if the game lived up to the expectations. My personal opinion is that the game really has not made any significant changes. They have updated the game a few times since the title was split, a new game mode was even added, but these updates were marred by an equal amount of bugs.

Positive updates included the addition of hitmarkers, making it easier to judge the drop on bullets when shooting from far away, and the addition of a new game mode. While I am not necessarily a fan of the new game type, I still think it is good that they are trying to add more content to the game.

However, in implementing these changes had a number of negative effects. First, there was the bug that made it impossible to drop items in stacks. Before, you could drop any number of bullets in a group for your friend to pick up, making it easy to share ammo. However, for a brief period of time, this function was broken and player had to drop bullets one at a time.

Luckily, this bug was fixed. However, as soon as it was, the new update threw in another bug. If you are a passenger in a covered vehicle, the camera glitches by changing perspective at about 10fps. In all seriousness, this sort of glitching should have come with an epilepsy warning, but for those who do not have epilepsy it was still quite an eyesore. As far as I am aware, this bug had not been fixed as of March 18. A smaller issue is the missing graphic of the player profile pictures in the lobby, but this is a small bug that does not affect game play.

Other changes to the game can be found on the Steam update page, but in my opinion none of these updates really add to the game but are, instead, fixes.

The one thing Daybreak had going for them was that H1Z1 was one of the few games of its type. However, there is now a new game titled The Culling which is very similar to H1Z1 in that it is a battle royale type game, but with smaller server groups and more crafting. The reviews for this game are also very positive, and perhaps it could become an alternative to H1Z1.

While I will continue to play H1Z1, I am curious to see where they go with the game, I am beginning to have my doubts when it comes to Daybreak Game Company. They have canceled one of their most long awaited projects, one that they had made numerous promises about, and it makes me wonder if we will ever see any development with H1Z1: Just Survive. H1Z1, though still popular, now has mixed reviews on steam, which is not necessarily good feedback for a company. Overall, I am simply not impressed with the company or the promises they haven’t kept. 

Microsoft's UWP: The End of Console Wars?

As with any large community, there is bound to be disagreement, and the gaming community is no different. For gamers, the term "console wars" is one likely to make blood boil in defensiveness or heads shake in annoyance. This so called war is really just a dispute over which of the two popular consoles is better: Sony's Play Station or Microsoft's Xbox. These two consoles often have exclusive games and similar new hardware developments that compete for a spot in the homes of gamers around the world. The war, as silly as it may seem, represents the competitiveness (or not lack of competitiveness if you consider only two companies are truly competing) of the industry.

Image source: http://goo.gl/ovYguA

However, on the sidelines sits a different kind of system, the PC, that is more flexible and able to play most console games. Because of its open capabilities, PC gamers have coined themselves the "PC Master Race," a term used both jokingly and seriously by Internet users. 

Steam has been the most commonly used PC gaming application, gathering all of the game launchers in one library for easy access, and allowing users to easily find and purchase games and items through the store.  Run by Valve, the application is the hub of PC gaming, acting as both as a gaming access point and social media where users can create profiles, add their friends, join groups, and create discussions. 

Microsoft, which has largely focused on console gaming with the Xbox, has decided to step into the PC gaming world by using its new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) to combine Xbox One and PC experiences. According to Keith Stuart from the Guardian, head of the Xbox division Phil Spencer claimed two weeks ago that the UWP would allow crossplay between the console and PC and that the company had plans to create an Xbox app for Windows 10 users to do just that.

However, Spencer stated that the UMP technology is not necessarily meant to "unify", but to allow Microsoft to get a foot into the PC gaming industry. With the UWP, users could have access to titles through Microsoft's Window's Store, and developers could create UWP compatible titles to be distributed by Microsoft. The Windows Store is seeking to become a competitor of Steam. 

Despite Spencer's statements, the platform does allow for greater interaction between PC and the Xbox, which could be a good thing for console gamers seeking greater flexibility when it comes to their game play. Developers too will have an easier time porting games between console and PC, so long as they are designed to be UWP compatible, perhaps ending the competition between consoles and PC's. 

But not everyone is thrilled about the new software. The CEO of Epic Games Todd Sweeny criticized the initiative in an article on March 4, claiming it may be "the first apparent step towards locking down the consumer PC ecosystem and monopolising app distribution and commerce." Sweeny expressed worry over the Windows Store; he claimed the default settings for the UWP required that users purchase games and apps through the store and not the developer sites, potentially limiting the direct relationships between consumers and developers. While this setting can be turned off, it is not easy to get to for the average PC user. If true, this could also affect mods, since many are developed by the game's fan base and may not follow the Windows distribution model.

After expressing his concern over the UWP, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Kevin Gallo claimed, "The Universal Windowns Platform is a fully open ecosystem, available to every developer, that can be supported by any store." While this claim contradicts Sweeny's criticism of the exclusivity of the platform, users and developers alike will have to wait and see how the UWP will affect gaming as it develops.