Sicarius

We were right!

Englisch, Unterhaltungsbranche

“I think that we traditionally thought that people only buy games at Christmas or around holiday time, and now we’re looking back and going, ‘You know what, GTA launched in May; Resident Evil comes out in March’.”
– Glen Schofield (General Manager of EA Redwood Shores Studio)

When I read this statement my first reaction was literally a facepalm. Don’t get me wrong: It is great that someone finally openly acknowledges that they were wrong all these years, but still I can’t help but feel a sense of “Isn’t that what customers and media alike were saying all the time?”. Didn’t we moan year after year when October came and the three month release frenzy began? Didn’t we say that good games will always sell no matter the season? Yes, we did but it seems like no one was listening.

The more Electronic Arts finally is coming to its more customer-focused senses since CEO Jon Riccitiello took the helm, the more I think that the execs not only of that company but also all the other bigwigs out there lived under a rock all these years. It’s very shocking to see how surprised they were that new IP (Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge) actually sold as well or even better than last years crapccessors Need for Speed, FIFA and whatever although the reasons are obvious to almost every serious gamer.

These games sold well because of two things: They were relatively new and featured some innovation and were not just the predecessor in a new box and the package one got when he/she bought the games was really polished. Of course there were still some issues like the fighting in Mirror’s Edge but most of them were purely because of decisions made during the design process and not because the controller wasn’t recognized, the game’s performance was shit or bugs seriously inhibited gameplay. But will EA or any other company really learn from this experience? My answer is a yes and a no.

The big players like Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard or even Ubisoft Entertainment are indeed finally recognizing that quality not only sells better but keeps the customer looking forward to releases from the company and that it, the most important argument for company executives and investors, reduces operating costs in the long run. The initial bigger investment done into a proper quality assurance process saves a ton of money after release. You don’t need to pay for additional patches, you don’t need such a big customer support department and you don’t need to do an image campaign because no one wants to buy your crappy products anymore.

On the other hand there is still the issue of milking successful franchises. An aspect Electronic Arts excelled at in the past but is now seriously challenged by the newly-formed giant Activision Blizzard.

Activision-Blizzard even openly admitted to investors that they want to milk their franchises by releasing every year at least one new installment of every major brand. This means each year a new Call of Duty and each year at least one new Guitar Hero if not more (there were four new releases with that name in 2008!). The only comfort is that opposed to Electronic Arts, where each new installment was made only by one studio, Activision Blizzard at least tries to make the development cycle as long as possible. In case of Call of Duty this means that one year Infinity Ward releases a major new installment of the series, the next year it’s Treyarch Invention turn to use the technology and release a game while in the background Infinity Ward has already put one year worth of work in the next version.

The really sad aspect of this strategy isn’t that the customer still receives only marginally improved sequels every other year but also that hundreds of creative people are damned to work on the same IP year after year without a real option to break the cycle other than leaving the company or getting fired. Until then they can only do their best while hoping that the one year when the cow is finally dry and no matter how good the game may be no one really wants it, is still far away. Luckily, the mass market needs a long time to notice a decline in quality. Enough time for the parent company to buy a studio with a new, promising IP and start the cycle again…

Sicarius

Games Convention 2008

Artikel, Englisch, Gespielt, Podcast, Spiele, Unterhaltungsbranche

Today’s entry will be short in terms of content and, as you will have noticed by now, in English. The reason is simple: I told a few people that they can access the article about their game from here – and most of them neither speak nor read German. But the reports themselves are of course still in German. It was already enough work writing them up without translating them. So here is everything I wrote for JörgSpielt (Jörg has deleted his website in the meantime) as a GC-Reporter:

Microsoft Sidewinder X5 (was sadly deleted with the website)
Burnout Paradise (PC)
Zweiklassengesellschaft (Kommentar)
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. (PC)
Mirror’s Edge (PS3)
Vertigo (Xbox 360)
Red Faction: Guerilla (Xbox 360)
Moviesandbox
Palladion (PC)
Moviestorm

That is almost double the amount of articles I wrote last year and I hope I didn’t leave quality on the street for quantity. And on that note I would also like to thank Azzkickr, Rondrer and Daiah for reading over some of the stuff.
I’m also looking into the possibility of adding all these articles somehow to the Bagdadsoftware-Database but I’m still unclear on how I will do it. For now they will remain solely on JoergSpielt.de.

Besides all the written stuff, I also recorded the promised third episode of the UCF Podcast:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:30 — 9.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS

As the name suggests, it is all about the Games Convention. And besides a few reports on games I played, I also interviewed JakillSlavik, Miles, Rondrer und Jahn. That’s why the beginning and the end sound worse than the middle part, as they were recorded in Leipzig with my voice recorder. But as always everything should be understandable.

Speakers (sorted by appearance): Sicarius, Rondrer, Jahn, JakillSlavik, Miles

Technical Details: 10:29min long; 128kbit quality (but some of the initial recordings were in 96kbit); 9,61MB big; Recorded with the voice recorder Olympus VN-2100PC and Audacity

Music credits (sorted by appearance):
Brian Conrad, Sue Kasper, Justin McCormick – SimCity 2000 – Track 47 (Complete)
Brian Conrad, Sue Kasper, Justin McCormick – SimCity 2000 – Track 31 (Parts)
Alexander Brandon – Deus Ex – DuClare Chateau (Parts)

And last but not least, the overview of our – well this year more my day at the Games Convention:

Games Convention 2008

Pünktlich um vier Uhr fuhr vergangen Donnerstag also der silberne Peugeot mit JakillSlavik und Sicarius Richtung Leipzig. Nein, das ist nicht ganz korrekt. Eigentlich fuhr er erst zu Rondrer und Jahn, um diese auch noch ins Auto zu packen. Aber der Weg ist sowieso der gleiche. Die Fahrt lief auch insgesamt ganz gut. Abgesehen von ein paar LKWs, die uns notorisch vor der Nase hingen und ein Navigationsgerät von Falk, welches sturer als ein Bock war.

All in all more than enough to keep you busy until Thursday and the release of the next entry. But before I finish: Here is the proof that I really was at the Games Convention and didn’t just fake everything:

Marc, Jörg und Christoph auf der GC
(Marc “Varloris” Fouquet, Jörg Langer and Christoph “Sicarius” Hofmann)

And you can also find my face on this website (deleted in the meantime).

Sicarius

M0r3 3ngl1sh plz!

Allgemein, Englisch, Seitennews

I thought it would be a good idea to take it a little slow after all these weeks full of information and dozens of pages of text. But of course I don’t want your brains to stop working, so I decided that it is time for another international entry since the last one was all the way back on 11/29/07. I’ve even some related news:

As I had mentioned in the very first entry in English on 06/14/07, I was rated C1-3 in the English test of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language. As it had been a while since I took the test the last time (two years to be exact), I jumped on the chance to do it again – with a surprisingly good result: I’m now rated C2-3 (after C1-3 comes C2-1 and so on).

Of course this result should be judged carefully as the test doesn’t involve speaking the language. But still it’s a good indicator for reading, writing and understanding the tested language both in normal and in business environments. I’m really glad that we can do it here every once in a while without charge. On that note I also have a little story that you can may be laugh at:

Yesterday when I made lunch, I was reading the DirectX 10.1 Whitepaper from AMD (yeah I really read that kind of stuff). Since no one else was there, I thought to myself: “Why limit myself to reading?”, and so I read the whole thing out loud. I know that is not really something new but it still has somewhat of a stigma to it and I hope that in the future I will overcome it a little more often. “Programmable” and “Compatibility” are by the way two words of those words I hope that I will never need to speak out loud :).

Now that this is settled, let’s get into senseless talk about things that come to mind. It has been a while since the last time I did that :).

The last few weeks were great for me in a way. No, I still haven’t found the love of my live or anything but what did you expect from someone that doesn’t move a finger to change that situation? So stop pointing out the window and just let me the fuck be! Telling me how “cute” that “couple” out there looks won’t change my current attitude! I know you want grandchildren and whatever but that’s not my fucking job – especially since the UGC (Unwritten Generational Contract) has already gone to hell!

Okay, I’m sorry. I got a little carried away there for a moment. But I think all you single guys/girls out there exactly know what I’m talking about and most certainly hate those conversations as much as I do.

Anyway what I meant was purely in terms of getting things done and moving forward. Also the feedback on the page wasn’t really there; my correctors gave me a lot of constructive criticism which I can and already have used to improve my overall skills. But it was also great to not really having to think about the next entry. The last two month I always had enough stuff in mind – and in many cases already prepared – so that I basically just had to put it online. Of course that phase is now over and I’m already struggling to think about something for the Monday entry (actually that is a lie but don’t tell anybody) but it was awesome as long as it lasted.

But of course that’s something you don’t really care about. You just want to see new stuff two times a week and I understand that so let’s move on to something completely different: The UCF-deal is now one month old, which is reason enough for a (very) short look back.

For my side the results are not completely satisfying. The hits back to Bagdadsoftware are there but very limited. And at the same time the participation of the users is neither here nor there very high. To be fair, it does seem like the whole forum has currently some attendance problem but still I’m a little disappointed. The content is there and I made sure that a constant stream of new stuff went online – in some cases even before I upped it to Bagdadsoftware, so I don’t see any shortfall on my part. But on the other side: What did I expect from a console dominated forum? Penetrating such a thick hull just can’t be done over night.

So I hope it will get better over time as I establish myself more over there but like I said: Currently the forecast isn’t the best. Of course I won’t turn my back on the UCF in any case but I really need to look into ways to get more permanent and, if something like that even exists, active visitors here. If I want to fulfill my goal of total world domination, I finally need to start doing something for it :).

But for now let me just finish up today’s entry. So I hope to see you all again on Monday.

As always feel free to comment in English but be aware of the Wrath of the Spam filter(TM)! Save your comment before you click “Hinzufügen” or the endless void may consume your words and turn them into a stream of 0s!

Sicarius

100% Cat-free

Allgemein, Englisch, Spiele

Initially I wanted to open this entry with some kind of philosophical statement but as I thought more and more about it, the statement itself made less and less sense. So, as you may already have noticed: It’s gone for good. Instead we have this mysterious opening which no one besides me really understands or cares about. This isn’t too bad either, come to think of it!

I don’t really have a plan for today – no, that isn’t entirely true. I knew I wanted to make another foreign language entry and I was also certain that I won’t do any first impressions today. But at the moment I’m making this entire thing up on the fly but I think the quality of the entry so far clearly reflects that. At least for all those cat-hating individuals (you know who you are) out there this is better than the last entry.

Not that there isn’t noteworthy stuff happening in the gaming-world right now but I just don’t feel like doing something “useful” at the moment. My brain seems to be totally burned out because of all the new game-releases and stuff. Or perhaps I just have another one of those lazy moments I sometimes suffer from. But I don’t want to dwell on that. If you give in to the urge to be lazy you will be. So I need to be proactive and do something about it. So let’s talk a little about what I’m actually doing at the moment rather than the fictional life I usually create here (everyone knows after all that only an obsessive and mentally deranged individual could write so much stuff all the time – no offense to all those obsessive and mentally deranged individuals out there. I’m feeling with you!) just for you.

Currently I’m seriously looking into (certified) distance learning but not in the pursuit of a better graduation since I still think that’s pretty unhelpful for me unless I plan to go all the way and study something useless like computer science. And that’s not something I’m really looking forward to in the near future :). That train is gone for good anyway.

Instead I’m looking into two courses called “Journalism” and “Creative Writing School” and I fully intend to begin one of them before the end of the year. The question for me at this point is just which one I should take.

The “Journalism”-one is pretty what the name suggests. You learn the important ins and outs of being a journalist and not really more. The positive side is that it only takes 14 months and at least looks like the one which has more of a practical use in my pursuit in entering the professional games-journalism-market. The “Creative Writing School” instead not only promises the more complete picture of writing (including journalism but not so deep) but has also a bigger focus on the usage of language. This takes of course a little more time (30 months) but from a personal point of view seems to be the more interesting choice. The biggest downside (besides the much longer duration) seems to be the rather slim practical use of the certificate itself. A course like that is most likely of a better use for someone that wants to write novels and stuff like that.

In any case the quality of both courses and the school (HAF) that offers them seem to be very high from what I hear so that isn’t really the issue. I think it will be the “Journalism”-one but rest assured that I’ll definitely keep you posted!

Other than that I’ll let you know that I installed Quake III Arena once again in preparation for the LAN at the end of December. It is only fair that my opponents are aware of the fact that I’m back at training again (instead of gaining the remaining six levels in Sacred). But since my sparring partner hasn’t the game installed at the moment, the whole process will be a little slower than intended. But I will be ready on the 29.12. to kick some serious ass. I also hope that my opponents will find their confidence again because at the moment they seem to have already given up on winning. Perhaps it helps them a little when I say that this won’t be a picnic for me in my opinion. After all I won’t just fight a bunch of losers which don’t really know anything else than Counter-Strike this time :). But beware: Just because I’m back at training doesn’t mean that I suck now. I just need to brush up on some techniques like casually crashing the server when I’m about to loose. At the time of this writing I’ve finished Tier 0 through Tier 2 on Nightmare (for the two millionth time) and I’m up against the railgun-whore Klesk. The first taste of what awaits me in Tier 7 on Q3TOURNEY6 (for all the n00bs: Xaero).

But that’s not the only old game I’m at again. As I made more room for all the new games that finally arrived on Wednesday (expect more on that in the next entry), I looked over all those games that are sitting there and waiting for me to finish them. So I played another couple of hours with a girl I find way hotter than Miss Croft (fictional, movie impersonation and event stand-in): Rayne the Dhampir – and I don’t mean the ugly looking Kristinna Lřken-impersonation in that one terrible movie from the director whose name shall not even be whispered on these pages (she really looks awful in there). I, of course, mean the fully digital version from BloodRayne 2 (again: not the movie!). Complete with her black/red latex-dress and high heels :). And no, I’m not free for some CS or S&M later – at least not for the none-gaming usages of those abbreviations.

I really hope that we’ll see BloodRayne 3 some day. The story of Rayne is really interesting and the second game was already a huge step from the two-dimensional first game (in terms of character-development). And, I won’t deny it, fighting with a Rayne in HD would just be a geek’s wet dream come true.

Yes, I can already see the words forming in the minds of some of the readers: “What a pathetic pervert! Can’t get a real woman, doesn’t have the money for real pr0n and uses instead some kind of Hentai for losers!”

Naturally I won’t go into that kind of discussion. Especially not during a time where thousands of people are running into the cinema just to see a digital version of a naked Angelina Jolie. But don’t worry: Beowulf would also be a fairly good movie (no real blockbuster though) without that particularly scene (or actor), so you don’t really need to be ashamed :). Personally I don’t really like her face. Those lips are just too obtrusive.

Okay, enough of that. That’s already too much insight into the intimate regions of my brain. So before I start talking about things which I wouldn’t even fell comfortable with telling my (currently imaginary) wife about, let’s just end the entry here and now.

Sicarius

State of Gaming

Artikel, Englisch, Unterhaltungsbranche

Nachdem wir ja nun den Event des Jahres erfolgreich hinter uns haben, gibt es heute mal wieder einen Artikel. Und zwar handelt es sich um den Artikel, den ich eigentlich bei MobyGames veröffentlichen wollte. Da sich die Sache aber nun schon über drei Monate hinzieht und mein Geschreibsel dadurch nicht gerade aktueller wird, habe ich mich dazu entschlossen ihn endlich zu veröffentlichen:

State of Gaming

In 1972 the first console ever was released. For all those that missed the history lessons about that topic: It was the Odyssey from Magnavox. Games like Table Tennis (a game like Pong) or Cat and Mouse (a maze game) were released for it. Very simple titles which everyone could understand almost immediately and were already fun to play.

(Natürlich ist es ein englischsprachiger Artikel. Er sollte schliesslich bei MobyGames veröffentlicht werden.)

Wer die Lektoren waren, weiß ich nicht mehr aber obwohl ich die Sache etwas überarbeitet habe (in drei Monaten ändert sich viel), sage ich einfach mal danke an Rondrer, Daiah, JakillSlavik und Azzkickr fürs korrigieren. 50% davon werden sicher stimmen :).

Gleichzeitig habe ich auch mal die zwei Artikel Spielezeitschriften und JoWooD etwas ergänzt und um aktuelle Vorgänge erweitert. Aber keine Angst, die Ergänzungen stehen separat. Ihr müsst also nicht noch einmal alles lesen.

Also geht lesen und diskutiert. Rondrer ist sicher nicht der einzige, den der Artikel stellenweise verärgert ;).

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