NXE is here!

After months of work, the magic day has finally arrived.  Many of the features my team has developed are invisible to you, dear reader, but trust that the dark magic they emit fuels the juicy bits now flowing to your console as of 45 minutes ago.

One reasonably high profile feature, and a personal favorite of mine, that you can see is Marketplace on the web, which you can find here.  It’s a million times easier to find games and movies, manage the content you’ve already purchased, and play with your download queue.

Any feedback you guys have on either the new user experience, or especially the web-side stuff is welcome and appreciated!

Avatars

Apparently I’ve been allowed to use my Avatar in public communication (although I can’t talk about NXE any more than has been publically disclosed, so track your vision balls to the left.  I can however point you at some reviews other people have done that I agree with, in lieu of opinions of my very own.

NXE has a street date

Via Major Nelson:

John Schappert, Corporate Vice President of Xbox LIVE, Services and Software, announced today during his Tokyo Game Show keynote that the New Xbox Experience will ship to Xbox 360’s around the world (in 26 countries, localized in 11 languages) on November 19th 2008.

I just tried out Netflix last night, and all I can say is that my god, there is something truely beautiful about streaming nearly any TV Show I’ve missed (Starting with second season of 30 Rock) from the last couple of years onto my 46″ Plasma seamlessly through my 360.  It brings tears to my eyes.

Penny Arcade Expo

Having now successfully returned from Toronto without DHS dragging me off into a dungeon, time is largely sunk into being at work and getting the new Xbox Live Experience ready to go.  I will however, be at PAX this weekend, so if you’re going, let me know.

Major Nelson will be there showing off the new Xbox Live Experience, so if you don’t want to talk to me, you should at least go check that out and talk to him.  He’ll be in booth 412 at 10:30 and 3:30 on both Sat. and Sun.

Inside the New Xbox Live

Edge Magazine has a preview of the new Xbox Live Experience we’ve been working on. Favorite quote (since it happens to be about my piece of the puzzle):

“How do you keep it compelling, how can you stay out of the way so people can play games, how can you share everything that’s on it, how do you use all the tools that are there?” he asks. “But we’re also making a publishing system that’s hooked up to a backend that’s moving every day. So it’s not all about art direction, it’s also about making a framework, a platform, that’s going to change over time, or daily.”

You can see part one here.

Part two has also been released here.

Lockdown

So by now, much has been made in the gaming press on the topic of the announcements Microsoft made at E3 last week. I’ve been toying with talking about those announcements all week, but I’m faced with several dilemmas.

Firstly, as my work for Xbox Live is not, shall we say, evangelical, I don’t feel that it’s my job to bolster support for their products simply because they pay my rent. That said, being publicly critical of moves made by Xbox Live could be what’s referred to as a career limiting move. This puts me in the odd position of not being able to be completely, ah, free with my words so to speak.

Secondly, while the new Xbox Experience has now been announced, I’m no longer embargoed from speaking about it. I have a lot of thoughts around the plethora of offerings that were announced last week, and what that means for the industry. The problem is that I don’t really know how much of it is mused on my own, and what’s based upon experience from being in there building it. Speaking about it, even though it’s been announced, could potentially cause me to accidentally disclose something I shouldn’t, which would result in very bad things for me.

So for now I think I’m going to have to settle with “I’m really excited to see the reaction to the stuff we’re working on over here” until I’m more comfortable with the limits of what I can say. Sadface.

The Shifting Revel

Aside from my Achievement addiction, I have a profound love of Magic: The Gathering.  Over the years I have abandoned the game, stayed away for several years, and then come back to it, each time harder than before.  The last time I seriously got into playing Magic was during the Odyssey block, back in 2001.  I played reasonably seriously, going to tournaments occasionally and spending hundreds of dollars on pieces of cardboard.  Just before I began University, I gave up the game, and I haven’t played it since.  Most of my friends at the time sold their collections and bailed out for good, perhaps keeping a couple of really well built decks for posterity.

Last week, a bunch of us got together and decided to do a booster draft - a game where everyone buys three $4.00 packs of 15 cards, and the cards are cycled around in a systematic way so that it’s possible to build a functional (although not very good) deck with a small investment, and play using only those cards.  This has had much the same effect as a bunch of coke addicts deciding to do a line for old time’s sake.  The game is so addictive that with that one brief exposure, most of us are considering getting back into the game, and building real decks once again.

Scott Lynch, in his extremely excellent The Lies of Locke Lamora describes a scene he calls The Shifting Revel.  In order to defray tempers and choke off any uprising before it can gain traction, the Duke of Camor underwrites a giant festival which takes place at regular intervals in the local bay.  It’s called the shifting revel because the festival takes place in the form of hundreds of boats - those of the attendees and local merchants - who lash themselves together in the bay.  The attendance changes from revel to revel, as does the specifics of the entertainment - but there are always keystone features which remain the same and give the revel a grounding.

Magic is a Shifting Revel, and I think this is one of the reasons it’s both so addictive, and that it’s remained so popular over the years when nearly every other collectible card game has sputtered and failed.  There is no specific strategy in Magic that is predominant - there are several major strategies, none of which is better than any other in general.  The game is simple enough that the basics can be grasped in ten minutes, but complex enough that the building of a good deck requires knowledge of statistics.  There are endless combinations of cards that can put together to make a deck, and no two players will use even the same deck in exactly the same way.  The game is very well balanced, but this isn’t what makes it a shifting revel.

Most people who play magic at the tournament level play with what is referred to as “Standard Edition” rules.  Essentially standard play limits the cards you’re allowed to use to the two most recently released blocks of cards, each block containing three sets.  New sets are introduced every roughly 2 to 3 months.  The effect this has on gameplay is profound.  With any given set of cards, in a matter of weeks, tournament play solidifies around several ‘types’ of decks, based around the cards that are legal in the last two blocks.  Each type of deck will revolve around a particular strategy for winning and involve several major strategic cards from these blocks.

The trick is that every time a new block is begun, an old block of cards will no longer be legal in standard tournaments.   This typically has the effect of crippling all deck ‘types’ that are currently used in tournaments - and the scene shifts.  New deck types emerge as players explore the possible combinations of cards from what is left, along with the new cards being slowly filtered in every two months as the new sets emerge - in fact, as each of the new sets in the block emerge, new possibilities emerge as well.  These possibilities are not as severe as the shakeup when a block rotates out of use, but are enough that a fury of new deck styles must be explored.

The business potential of this strategy is huge.  Games are fundamentally about exploring a possibility space, and when that space has been explored to its limit, the game ceases to be interesting.  In Magic this possibility space is expanded at a rate that gives people time to master the space, but not long enough that it becomes uninteresting, and then is grown.  On a yearly basis (or so) the entire space is turned upside down, things you used to know no longer apply, and there are new details to take into account.  This is a shifting revel, and it allows the old to become new again, and again and again.

This is much to the profit of Wizards of the Coast, who have managed to create a game so popular that many pieces of cardboard sell for 500% of the price of a booster pack in the secondary market - some particularly useful cards can go for many times that.  That’s a lot of money for a card that won’t be legal in standard play two years from now.  The thing I find particularly interesting about this is that it hasn’t been done in online play (other than in the online version of MTG of course) for any other game that I know of.

Digital Distribution systems provide a very smooth way of rolling this out.  Any game that contained the addictive hooks of MTG and based around shifting revel - potentially fueled by micro-transactions - that rotated on appropriate basis in line with the exploration curve of the possibility space…  Well my friend, that would a license to print money.  Systems like Xbox Live provide even further hooks such as Achievements (Imagine getting badges for beating someone using only direct damage, by milling their library to depletion, by using only creatures, for using a particular combination of cards, etc.), and if it was done well, might even outstrip the fanfare that Wizards of the Coast has been raking in for nearly the past two decades.  This would allow for a game that is not only highly addictive, but extremely interesting ludologically as well.  In any given year, MTG is recognizable enough as MTG - there are certain rules that never change - but the dynamics of the gameplay are totally different, if you’re willing to pay the price to keep up.  There are very few games that evolve so organically over such a long period of time, and I think it’s time we had another one.

A Week in Cuba

As previously mentioned, I went on vacation last week, and apparently the world does not stop while I’m laying on the beach.

Big news of the last week.  Apparently it was GDC or something.  I wasn’t there, so if you want juicy GDC goodness, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Microsoft

• Microsoft, in a new initiative called Dreamspark is making much of its developer software free to students.  This software includes Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server, XNA Game Studio, XNA Creator’s Club Subscription, and Expression Studio.  That should be plenty of tools for would be game developers to muck about in.  Details are here.
• Microsoft is dropping support for HD-DVD with the discontinuation of the add-on for the Xbox 360.  All remaining units are being cleared at firesale for $50.  I would not be surprised if there was a Blu-ray add-on in the future.
• Microsoft announced during the GDC 2008 Keynote a new service, the so-called Xbox Live Community Games.  Under this service, users can build a game using XNA Game Studio, and then upload it directly to a community portal where the game is democratically reviewed.  The reviewing process is intended to look for infringing or objectionable material.  The best of these games get automatically uploaded to Xbox Live for the masses to enjoy.  No specifics on pricing, or if the developer is getting kickbacks (as one would assume they would if Microsoft is collecting on their work).

Sony
On the Sony side of things, Phil Harrison, one of the founding members of Sony Computer Entertainment, and the president of SCE Worldwide Studios, has submitted his resignation.  Changes in leadership often come with widespread changes across the board, but it depends on the size and momentum of the company in question, and Sony is rather largeish, so I would not anticipate a massive change in the direction of their games.

Australia

Australia is talking about finally getting a new rating that will allow more mature titles to be sold there.  Unfortunately, I doubt this will alleviate the massive delays they usually incur before North American/Japanese release, and release to the land down under.

Electronic Arts

EA is offering to buy Take Two!  I would suggest in reaction to the recent Activision/Vivendi merger, EA is looking to add some more meat to its already colossal frame.  EA’s new CEO John Riccitiello has mentioned that he’s extremely unhappy with the scores EA’s games have been getting of late, so there might be some incentive to own some games that are critically acclaimed (which might have fueled the recent acquisition of Bioware as well).  Take Two is brimming with talent, including the developers of the Grand Theft Auto series (Rockstar), Bioshock (2K Games), and Civilization (Firaxis).  While EA’s initial bid is a bit lower than Take Two is looking for, most analysts are expecting this deal to go through eventually at some price point.

On a side note, Take Two is the current owner of one of my favorite IPs of all time, the Tex Murphy series.  This series was created by Access Software (later renamed to Indie Built) in the 90s.  Microsoft acquired them for the Links Golf series, and then sold the company to Take-Two who then shut it down.  While a revival is not likely at EA, it’s marginally more likely than at the parent who shut them down in the first place.

EA has a habit of killing great teams by using simple business math.  If you have everyone using the same tools and processes, costs are lower.  Unfortunately, this slows down and breaks the dynamic that produced the great team in the first place.  This is something you can do with teams that are having trouble realizing their full potential, perhaps due to infrastructural problems, but when you acquire a really solid team, it’s important that you just leave them alone to do their thing.  Riccitiello seems to be aware of this, so perhaps Take Two’s properties are not going to join the legacies of Westwood, Bullfrog, and Origin.

Havok

Havok is free, to which I say, OMGWTFBBQ.  Well, okay, it’s only free on the PC, but as of May 2008, you at home will be able to download your very own copy of Havok Complete (which includes the Physics and Animation packages).  This is a non-commercial license, but it allows hobbyists to get their hands dirty with the most widely used physics engine in the PC gaming space, which is good for companies looking to hire people who know Havok already.  This theoretically lays some groundwork for Havok’s more specialized products for behavioral animation, deformable solids, and cloth rendering.

And that’s all that happened this week, I’ll be posting on a more semi-regular basis now.

Xbox Dashboard Update

The press release for the Dec. 4th Dashboard update has some cool stuff in it. Major Nelson has released a couple of new tidbits that we’re in the press release.

One of those two features fixes a major longtime problem with Xbox Live, although it’s not expressly stated in the release.

Previously, if you decided to move to another country (I hear people do that sometimes), you were screwed to the nines. The Live Passport framework locks in the country code when the account is created, and that country code cannot be changed. For things like webmail, it doesn’t really matter. The only result is that the advertising that you get is irrelevant to you in your new country.

But because an Xbox Live account is tied to a Live Passport, this has serious repercussions. Firstly, you need to pay for your account with a credit card who’s billing address is in the country your passport is linked to. What this means is that you would need to maintain an active billing address and credit card in your old country, just to be able to continue to pay for the service.

Secondly, you’re locked out of any content you might normally have access to in the new country (e.g. if you move from Canada to the USA, you would normally now have access to Xbox Live Marketplace TV and Movie content, something which is forbidden in the great white north).

The work around in the past has been “Start a new Xbox Live account”. Yeah. That means you lose all your achievements, your gamerscore, and any months of paid access you might have had left on the account. Additionally it means that you can no longer access any games you’ve purchased on XBLA from any machine, only the console you specifically downloaded them on in the first place. If that machine should happened to, oh, I don’t know, fail in some way, you’ve lost the title.

The potent point in my opinion is this. Starting today, you will be able to re-associate your Xbox Live account with a new passport account. The question is does Xbox Live retain a separate copy of the country code, or do they simply follow the pointer to the one used in the Passport account? If it’s the latter, all problems are solved tomorrow, and ye who change countries can rejoice in the streets.

On a related note: Canada (and some of Europe) is movie rentals on Xbox Live Marketplace on Dec. 11th! Yay for being slightly less of a second class citizen.

Gamerpoints vs Achievements

I’m going to have to throw this one over to my fellow Canuck, Nerfgun.  As previously mentioned, I’m quite the dainty trollop when it comes to achievements.  There’s something quite sadly affirmating about having the game pat you on the head and give you an A+ sticker.  Must be a Gen Y thing.

I hadn’t really given much consideration to the fact that Gamerscore and Achievements are not one and the same.  In theory the point value attached to a given achievement should indicate the relatively level of difficulty for earning that achievement.  However, at the end of the day, it would appear there is no actual policy regarding how difficult something should be for a given number of points.

 And really, that’s impossible to dictate globally, because there are some games that are just easy.  A raw gamerscore doesn’t really tell you anything about the skill of a player, it just theoretically tells you how much time they spend playing Xbox 360 games.  I’m not even sure that’s true, actually - Gabe and I have nearly the same Gamerscore, and I hear he plays video games like it’s his job.

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