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.

Feels Good Man

This game as Sona felt pretty good and made my day.

Dealing with Losing

I've lost a lot in League of Legends. In fact I currently have a losing record. I don't feel the need to disclose my win/loss record at this time, however, I will note that a couple weeks ago I had a winning record. Over the last approximately 2 weeks, I've probably lost 10 out of 15 League of Legends games I've attempted. Yesterday, I had a pretty punishing loss when I played a game as Amumu. I played well the entire game, I kept my team alive in clutch moments and I was everywhere I could reasonably be expected to be (in Bronze I at least). I bought a ton of wards, and I built items to support my team mates. Yet somehow, we still managed to lose in the end. There were a few times I could point at that changed how the game went.

The first point where we could have changed the outcome of the game was probably after we aced the enemy team. 3-4 of us were still up with about 30 seconds left for the other team to respawn. I ran down the middle lane to begin taking down their final tower and inhibitor, but the rest of my team ran back to base to buy items. Had my team members come with me to take out the turret, I bet we would have won because of the lane advantage the inhibitor would have given us.

The last point that we lost was when I went back to buy another giant belt before the final engagement. I told my team that I'd be a second and that they should wait for me. I even pinged for them to retreat in case they couldn't read my writing. Naturally, 3 of my team members ran in to die all alone without doing any real damage to the other team. That sealed our loss. I was sad. Luckily my next game turned out to be a win. Actually, it wasn't even close in my next game. I went something like 12/2/24... as Sona playing support... How do the skill levels of ranked games get so messed up in Bronze? I lost only 2 League points for my loss, but I gained only 6 points for the win. Why can't matchmaking give me a decent match up that will be a close game and help me advance?

As far as dealing with losses, I find that my best solution is to shrug it off, and move on to the next game. Even though losing because of someone else's stupid decision hurts, and it hurts even more when that person blames you for it, I find it best to be gracious and accept responsibility for your mistakes. I guarantee that anyone that loses a game, has not played that game perfectly. You might even lose the game outright through character selection. Let us all have fun while playing, support our team members, and remember that other humans (players) all deserve respect when you interact with them.