Review -- Well of Souls

With the gajillions of free to play MMORPGs out there, developers really need to add something unique to stand out from the crowd. Well of Souls does this, not by awe-inspiring graphical performance or ear bleed-inducing musical quality, but by opening up a plethora of worlds for the player to visit, literally.

The Well of Souls core tends to get described as a game engine more than anything else, with user-created "worlds" being the games themselves. Each world has its own story, artwork, music, etc and are completely independent of each other. This means you cannot create a character in the world called RoT and expect to be able to use it in Specops. You must create new characters, starting at level one, before playing each world.

Due to the variety of worlds, with each of them being different and of better quality than others, it's difficult to review Well of Souls based on traditional categories such as "graphics" and "story." It's definitely no graphical powerhouse, only supporting 2d images with a fairly small color palette at low resolutions. Regardless, good artists can make and have made good looking worlds.

Other than worlds, there is another unique feature of the game: cheats. What game on earth would willingly allow players to cheat? Why, Well of Souls of course. Players can enter "cheat codes" that will do certain things, such as resurrecting themselves. This can become a nuisance at times if another player wants to fight a cheater, but any player is able to host a server and set the rules to disallow cheaters from joining. Cheaters are also easily marked for other players to see.

Now, what kind of MMORPG would this be if it didn't have a clan function? Clans in Well of Souls are called Guilds, and they can be made across all worlds, and it's possible to have one guild take on characters from all worlds. Each guild gets its own page in the guild hall, where the details of each member are listed (world, level, class, etc) including the rank given to them by the founder, the Guildmeister. The Guildmeister is allowed to change the page background and music, and enter the guild's forum url amongst other small things.

A guild war system is supported, but it is incredibly flawed and rarely used. The basic concept is that one guild declares war one another a few rungs above them on the Guild Ladder. The guild goes out and fights members from the other guild to build up points. If they have more points when the timer hits zero, they win the war and rise above them on the ladder. The problem with this system is that fighting members of the other guild isn't the only way to build up points; killing monsters will also earn the guild points. The majority of wars using this system turn into mind-numbingly boring monsters slayfests. Guilds rarely use this system, and instead choose to simply ignore it, and still fight members of a guild they're at war with.

Well of Souls can be downloaded from here. Only one world comes with the game, the demo world called Evergreen. Other worlds can be downloaded separately by clicking "Check Online for New Worlds" in-game. If you're a socialite or a would-be game developer that doesn't the absence of polygons, Well of Souls is worth a try.

How did the gamers vote?

For the sake of argument, let's say that the majority of gamers fall into the 18-29 years of age category. We all know that most gamers tend to be on the younger side, and the 18-29 category happens to be the youngest category on CNN's reporting of the results.

Of all of the voters in this category, 66% voted for Obama and 32% for McCain. Of course, not everybody in this category are gamers. According to one Gamespot poll, the vast majority of gamers supported Obama (439 votes for Obama, 146 for McCain, 30 for a third party).

However, upon closer inspection of CNN's statistics, we see a somewhat surprising “revelation.” Everybody had been expected younger voters to come out in droves, but they didn't. They only made up 18% of the total, only two percent above the lowest demographic, 65+. This is incredibly sad, considering that this age group is one of the largest groups in the US.

So, how did the gamers vote? Sadly, they didn't.

IGDU -- A Business Proposal Overview

I have to do a business proposal for an EC business in my E-commerce class. Below is the overview of that proposal (tl;dr summary below it).

Video games and game design has interested me for some time now. Unfortunately, if I were to try and seek a job in the industry, I would have to move to the complete opposite end of the country for it. Then there's the hurdle of building up the experience needed for most jobs offered. It's a catch-22, since to first get the experience, you would have to get the job. A method to build up a portfolio would be to work with a small group of people over the internet on some kind of game project, whether that be a mod to an existing game or a whole new game entirely. Of course, finding someone with the exact skills needed for a certain project is about as daunting as getting a job in the industry. After all, there's multiple factors in creating a video game; you need someone to program it, someone to do all of the artwork, someone to create the music and sound effects, someone to write the background story and in-game dialog, someone to market it, ect. It's overcoming such challenges to form a group that inspired this business proposal.

The company's name is the Indie Game Development Union, or just the IGDU. The overall purpose of the site is primarily a social networking one; to assist team builders in finding individuals that have the skills necessary to complete some kind of video game related project, and provide the means of communication so that the team can operate at maximum efficiency. A secondary purpose would be to help members become educated in various fields relating to game design, such as programming.

Upon registering at IGDU.net, users would gain access to a number of services and features. All members would get a virtual portfolio page to show off their work on. This can include character images, music demos, etc. Each member will be given the ability to host small files on the IGDU's servers, which they can then integrate into the portfolio. Also on this page would be a personal blog the user can use. On this page, the member could also post contact information, such as an email address or MSN Messenger handles. Signing up for the site would also give them access to the IGDU forums, where fellow members can chat with one another. A wiki would be set up, on which members can create articles and tutorials on various video game design aspects, such as a tutorial on AI programming in C++.

Similar to the portfolios each individual member gets, each development team gets a team page, a team page that all members can contribute to, and a private team forum. On the team blog, updates can be posted about how the project is progressing. Screen shots can also be posted to give other members a sense of what the project is all about.

Competition exists primarily in GameDev.net, but also in sites like GameSpot. GameSpot allows it's members to create “unions,” which are basically meant to be fan clubs of certain games or genres, yet, GameSpot unions dedicated to game development have been formed. GameSpot, though, aims towards the players, not the developers. GameDev.net on the other hand does aim towards developers. It assists potential developers learn the trade and get game development jobs. As stated previously, these kinds of things are a secondary objective. The IGDU more or less assumes that the majority of its members knows how to program and do are already, and just assists in team building.

Revenue will be derived primarily from ad space. One reason for including file hosting and private team forums on the IGDU site is to help build stickiness, so that more revenue can be gained by the use of ads and affiliates. Of course, hosting the files and blogs can potentially eat up a lot of space on the servers, costing the IGDU a good bit of money. To counter this, members would only be allowed to host smaller files, but can opt to pay for an increased limit. This can either be a one time payment to host a single over-the-limit file, or a monthly plan where the member has to pay a small fee monthly but is able to host an unlimited number of files over the free limit. Payments for the hosting space would be conducted through PayPal or by credit card.

tl;dr: The business, called the IGDU, is a social networking site that aims to bring together indie game developers to form development teams. A virtual portfolio for each member assists in finding people with the exact skills needed to fill a job.

Super Mario RPG

For the first post on Eye of the Beholder, I'll be doing a review for one of my favorite games of all time: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for the Super Nintendo. It was developed by Square in 1996; it wouldn't be for another 7 years until they developed another game for a Nintendo system.

The game starts off just like every single other Mario title does with Peach being kidnapped by, you guessed it, Bowser. Mario, as usual, rushes off to his keep to rescue her. But during his rescue attempt, a giant sword comes falling out of the sky and crashes into the castle, sending Mario, Peach, and Bowser flying out of the castle in different directions. When the sword came crashing down, it broke through the Star Road, the origin of shooting stars and the granter of people's wishes. In this Mario game, Smithy, who controls the giant sword, is the primary enemy. Mario travels across his world in pursuit of the seven stars that make up the Star Road and finding Peach's whereabouts.

It had a unique battle system for the time. It was a traditional turn-based system with the inclusion of timed button-pressing sequences (timed hits). So, if you were to have Mario attack a goomba, you would press the A button just as your attack is about to extra damage. All basic attacks are done in this fashion, but special moves have slightly more complex actions. Super Mario RPG is also one of the few games that differentiates itself by having all characters use one set of points (flower points) for special attacks. Carrying out all of the timed hit methods are very easy, perhaps too easy. Regardless, it adds a sense of action to a typically passive kind of battle system.

Really, Super Mario RPG is one of the easiest games around, but it's as fun as hell . Technically speaking, it doesn't match up to the likes of Chrono Trigger. For some reason though, it is just so addicting... It's like my gamer crack. Trying to do all of those super jumps for the attack scarf, the games winning the Star Egg in Grate Guy's Casino, leveling up to the maximum level of 30 feels so rewarding when you accomplish them. Elements of the story and battle system can be found in most of the Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario games: Bowser at some point allying with Mario against a common foe and timed hits.

Super Mario RPG has definitely had a lasting legacy. All future Mario RPG games have taken it's timed hits. One of Mario's allies in Super Mario RPG, Geno, made a cameo appearance in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. All of the Paper Mario games have revolved around the collection of seven stars as in Super Mario RPG (well, technically it was 8 in Super Paper Mario, and they weren't stars, but hearts). Some times it really seems as if Nintendo has no originality...

If you don't have this game and/or no longer own a SNES, it has been released on the Virtual Console . If you don't have a Wii, well, there's always roms and emulators.