Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

I must not have been paying very close attention because I don't know exactly when this was announced, but I believe it was today, as much as 3 hours ago. I noticed a twitter message suggesting watching the announcement cinematic. I've embedded that cinematic here below. It seems like the game will be an interesting strategy card game if nothing else, so feel free to check it out at the official web page. I hope it will be a fun game!

League of Draven

I recently bought Draven with some of my IP in an effort to have a new carry that I could play in League of Legends. In the week or so that I've had him and have played him, I've discovered that I really enjoy his play style. The laning phase where you should try to catch his spinning blades gives me an interesting minigame to play on top of the normal lane phase. The other good thing about Draven, is that I've won a bunch of matches with him. I was definitely quite bad when I first picked him up, but I've gotten significantly better with him since. I'm sure there's still a ton of room to improve, but it's fun to have a new hero to play. For your viewing pleasure, here is video of my first game ever with Draven.

Best Sim City User Review

I just found the best user review for the recent Sim City game from EA. Check out the link if you want to read the whole review, but I'll quote some of it here for emphasis:


"I was looking for something new for my computer, when I stumbled upon this game on Amazon and decided, what the heck, lets give it a shot!

I have to say it far exceeds my expectations.

Thankfully, the game never actually loads."

I don't really plan to get Sim City since it requires EA's Origin service, but it's good to see some people actually enjoy it!

Competitive Gaming Reflections

I just went back over my post from a couple years ago and noticed that I largely got it right back then. I provided a list of 3 things that I would add to every online competitive game to make them more enjoyable, and right now I would like to suggest a slight modification to that list to change the emphasis. My new list is as follows:

1. Build in rewards for players that behave well.
2. Provide training(tutorials) for players to encourage good behavior.
3. Humanize other players through lobby or cooperative gameplay.
4. Provide punishment for misbehaving as necessary.

In this new list, I switch my emphasis slightly to leave punishment as the last resort. So many times, we see bad behavior and think, "I should punish him for being mean." It's quite easy to identify bad behavior and focus on dealing with it, however I believe the more important thing is to focus on the good behavior. If you give rewards for being nice to others, and treating them with respect, you are likely to condition your players appropriately. In addition, the majority of players will leave your game with more happiness in their life, not less.

Another useful technique includes the humanizing of other players. Once you realize that everyone else in the game is another human being with a life and emotions, you will be much less likely to insult them and put them down. If I'm going to spend 30-50 minutes of my life with a group of 4 strangers in League of Legends, I would like to feel like I brought some sort of positive experience to their lives and increased their happiness. May we all be better people, even when it comes to our online interactions with people we don't see face-to-face.

One Game a Month

I've decided I want to be more involved in game design in my life. To that end, I'm going to attempt to participate in the One Game a Month program, where many game developers attempt to complete one game in each month of the year. I plan to follow the theme for march, which is "Rogue" and create a rogue-like of some sort. I'm not yet sure what platform I will target, but I do want the game to be electronic. I may just make something quick and easy in python using a command line interface. Or maybe I'll follow this tutorial to create a roguelike using the libtcod roguelike library.

The setting for my rogue-like will be a world invasion of giants that you must defeat, based losely on the futuristic sequel I'd imagine to the recently released movie, Jack the Giant Slayer. I plan to use a lot of procedural generation of content, which is something I have wanted to do for a while. We'll see how far I get in the month, but this is definitely a game I want to do.