The End Game

Focus Tests

2010-06-28T11:59:00.003-04:00

Ugh, time flies so fast. Been so busy lately. But I figured I might as well post again before I get bruised up from all the pokes I've been getting lately for neglecting this page! I'll have to tell you what I've been up to in my next post. For now, I might as well finish this draft that has been sitting here for months!

When I was studying at the Ubisoft Campus, one of my design teachers' main job (when not teaching) was running focus tests. He had this big team to perform the tests and I thought it seemed a bit of an overkill. Then a few months ago, I had to organize and run my first focus test. Was I ever glad he had explained to us how he used to run his. At the end of the test, I had to admit that not only everything he did in his tests was justified, but the wealth of information you could gather was unbelievable.

We wanted to assess the difficulty and appeal of a new feature we're about to put in the game for the 5-12 year old players. Usually, booking a room and getting it all setup for your needs seems to be the toughest part as everyone and their brother always want the same room you need. But in this instance, that was cakewalk. The toughest parts were:

- Rounding up enough kids (boys and girls) of the right age group
- Putting together a good test for us that would also retain their interest
- Coming up with a comprehensive (but non-leading) questionnaire

When the kids arrived, I remember getting a major knot in my stomach. As I'm the only woman on the team, the guys all decided (without consulting me!) that I would be the best suited to deal with the kids! I love kids but have none of my own and have never taken care of so many at once. Fortunately, they were the very receptive "I don't need to cling to my momma's skirt or start crying for nothing in the presence of strangers" type. I was more nervous than they were. They were just eager to start playing :P

Quick explanation of what the test was about. Insert a few "there are no bad answers or performance" type speech, then we're ready to start. I was nearly pulling my hair in the first few minutes. The kids were so impatient that while I was logging them in, they would start hitting random keys on their keyboard or click that little X at the right corner, or refresh their screen... So yeah, I had to log a few of them back in, 2-3 times in a row! >.<

Eventually, we're all there and ready to roll. The kids start playing and remembering my teacher's description of his own tests, I start moving from one kid to the other, observing their reaction, body language, unconsciously spoken words, comfort (or lack thereof!) with the mouse, etc. It was incredibly revealing.

The boys were extremely vocal. So you didn't need to be next to them as much to know if they were happy or annoyed. A lot of mumbling (both positive and negative), heavy sighs of exasperation or shouts of triumph. The girls on the other hand were a lot quieter. They just focused on their task and their frustration or happiness was usually shortly displayed on their face: a short pout, a pleased smile. While the guys would flat out ask how long they have to keep doing this or if they can stop when they would get annoyed, girls would simply get restless on their chair or looking around to see if others had stopped, thus making it okay for them to stop too.

Performing the one-on-one post-test interview helped clarify a few things, but nothing imho was more revealing than their body language. But more importantly, I got a whole new respect for play tests because of all the things you take for granted but that isn't so obvious for your players. The most eye opening one was regarding chat.

We had a 6 yo girl trying to answer a 9 yo girl who had asked her a question in chat. The 6 yo was taking forever to type. Her spelling being very limited, she was trying to type things phonetically. Since we had a very strict language filter to protect the kids, half the words the 6 yo typed were being rejected, making it even harder for her. By the time she was ready to hit send, the 9 yo had tired of waiting and walked away. The 6 yo was so depressed, it was heartbreaking.

Other silly things such as the kids don't play this specific mini-game not because they don't like it but because it requires a dexterity with the mouse that their tiny hand doesn't have. Just slowing it down a little changed it from frustratingly hard to fun and exciting. The funniest thing though was this girl staring at her screen for a few minutes then clearly starting to be annoyed. When we asked what was the problem, she said "it's broken, it's been loading forever". When we asked why she thought it was loading, she pointed to the progress bar of the challenge she was working on and surely enough it looked a lot like a loading bar though it wasn't!

I'm now a strong believer in focus tests. But like in every other type of survey, when trying to interpret the results, you need to be as objective as possible and not try to make them say what you want instead of what really is. In the end, it's all about adjusting the game in a way that will make it appealing and enjoyable for the players.

Ancient History

2010-05-13T21:01:00.003-04:00

Airmid asked a question that I (and I'm sure many other designers before and after me) have had to contend with in the course of their careers. "What would you do to help a content designer who is not completely familiar with the history of a game but has great intentions however marred by inaccuracies as they may be?" Short answer: he needs to do his homework.

Now for the longer answer...

We all know the saying about good intentions and the road to Hell. Depending on the game and the length of its history, I believe you should set some realistic goals as far as how much catching up you can do and then go at it. In a game like UO, there is simply no way someone who just started working on it (and never played it before) will ever be able to grasp the full depth of UO's history and legacy. That doesn't mean they shouldn't try nor should they feel defeated by the enormity of the challenge.

History is just that. Something that happened in the past and no longer is. The new designers shouldn't try to replicate the past but feed off of it. Learn from its successes and mistakes to give the game their own fresh new spin. History is a tool to help understand the community and the vision that drove the designers of old.

The developing studio and the veteran members of the team are often a wealth of information on the game. In a game like UO that has traveled so much and with so many changes in Dev Teams, information gets lost. But in truth, I always found that the greatest information actually came from the fan sites. And I have first hand experience of that.

In late November 2008, Draconi had told me that as soon as I was done with the Christmas gifts and events, I was going to scale down my involvement in Live to really focus on developing content for the Stygian Abyss expansion. He asked me what exactly did I know about the Stygian Abyss. And as I started fumbling through a lame answer, I realized that I didn't know didely squat about SA and not that much more about the Ultima Series because it has always been about UO for me.

I was beyond embarrassed and angry at my own ignorance. Draconi was very gracious about it. He didn't understand why I was beating myself up over it and very patiently gave me a quick run down of the story and asked me to start thinking of what kind of content I could come up with for it. Well, I felt humiliated and angry because I should have known better. Because I had known for over 5 months already that I would be joining the effort on the SA expansion. I should have asked myself that question long ago and done something about it. I should have been proactive, but I had not.

Guess what I did over the Holidays? I pulled up every web page, every fan site I could find on SA. Even got a copy of the game, but it wouldn't run on any of my PCs. By the time the Holidays were over, I knew the darn thing backward and forward and could even have filled some of the blanks for Draconi. Having finally done my homework not only made my job much easier, I was more help to my Lead as well and it gave me tons of inspiration for the content I developed (including the pushme-pullyou statuette for the stealable items).

Not every game has such a devoted community as UO does. But most online games (and even offline ones) have very well documented fan sites with old quests, world scenario walkthroughs, skill training guides, template discussions, game history, you name it. A designer that truly wishes to learn is only limited by how much time he's willing to invest towards that achievement. First, he needs to play the game. Second, read up everything he can get his hands on (again, set a schedule with realistic goals and milestones). Talk with the players. I have a few UO friends that are walking UO bibles and databases.

You can't learn everything about a game with a long history over night. But with genuine, reasonably paced effort, no mountain is too high.

Day One

2010-05-10T21:47:00.002-04:00

There's nothing like starting a new job. I don't know if you're like me, but the night prior, even though I know Day One is usually mostly uneventful, I inevitably get a sleepless night of tossing and turning and reminding myself how not to mess up. And then the day is over and you're like "what the heck was I so nervous about?". But sometimes, like today, you get your first test which could very well set the tone for the next weeks, months or even the remainder of your stay at that specific job.

In truth, I kinda hate Day One. First, morning sucks big time. It's the never ending HR paperwork, presentations and what not, going over benefits, bla bla bla (yawn) then visiting the studio. To be fair, it was exciting the first time when I was discovering some cool and unexpected benefits. But in my case, I left EA in the US to join EA in Montreal (GO HABS, GO!). I had already visited the Montreal Studio, I already knew what the benefits were (though there are some minor differences, especially because of our different healthcare system) and I had already gone through the presentation about EA and its history. It was interesting though watching the reaction and excitement of the true newcomers.

But I was itching to meet my new team, settle into my new workspace and get cracking on the project!

Then came afternoon and I got my wish! WOOT!

I must say that I love smaller teams. That was one of the great things about UO (despite the downsides that also comes with it). But I find them so much more efficient than huge teams. There's less dicking around waiting for everyone and their brother (not to mention the janitor) to give their 2 cents about everything, only to get back to square one because we couldn't get a clear majority on anything :P

Small teams are all the greater when the members have compatible personalities. So far, it sure seems that way (did too during the interview). I'm keeping my fingers (heck even my toes!) crossed that it stays that way!

I was itching to get cracking, and cracking I got! After the smooth sail of the orientation morning and friendly lunch with the producer, I got my first assignment. Three hours later, the executive producer came knocking to see how I was doing so far. We have big week in perspective and what I'm working on will play a non-negligible part of it. My breath catches, I swallow painfully as my heart starts beating erratically.

Moment of truth...

He will either think I'm brilliant or wonder why the heck he hired such a moron. I guess I could settle for a third option where he thinks I'm alright. But who wants to settle? :(

Both the executive producer and the producer are standing in the room staring expectantly at me. I dive in and start giving my spiel. By the time I'm halfway through, I get an approving nod. I breathe a little better. My monologue then turns into a 3-way brainstorm expanding on one of the suggestions I had proposed to resolve an issue. By the time we're done, the executive producer tells me with a smile to keep doing what I'm doing then they both leave.

It lasted barely 10 minutes though it seemed like forever. Then the weight of the world got lifted off my shoulders.

In the end, I don't know whether they thought I was brilliant or not and frankly it doesn't matter. I realized at that moment that as long as they don't think I'm a moron, I will gladly settle for doing alright :P

Interviewing

2010-04-28T10:25:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's been a while! I guess I've been a busy bee. A lot of it had to do with planning my move back to Canada (woohoo!) but interviewing for my next job certainly ate a big chunk of my time. I have to say interviewing sucks, especially once you enter the professional field. And the higher up the ladder you are, the tougher it gets. But there are ways to make things a little easier.

Saying you must do research on the company you're applying for isn't just a cliche. It is VERY important, especially in the gaming field. It not only gives you insight as to what the project you could end up working on is about, but also informs you as to what their other games are and their quality (or lack thereof!).

Keep in mind that an interview is a 2-way street, except that your side is narrower than theirs. The company is trying to assess if you're THE right candidate, but you too have to determine if it's an environment and/or project to which you want to devote the next few years of your life. So while the studio ultimately decides if you get the job, if you didn't do your homework and accept a job that wasn't necessarily the right fit for you, you may end up very miserable. If you're not happy in your job, chances are your performance will suffer, and with that so will your evaluation, your chances at promotions, and in an industry where everyone knows everyone, it could even hinder your ability to land the right job elsewhere.

Being a game designer doesn't mean you are the right candidate for every design job. Even a great chef will not just waltz into a kitchen and pretend he can cook any type of food. Everyone has their specialty and that's where doing your homework will save you from a painful interview. Look up the studio's games. Play them then ask yourself some of the questions they are likely to ask, such as:

1. Have you played our games? Which one do you like best and why?
2. What did you like the least and why?
3. How would you improve the features you disliked?
4. What other games of that genre have you played?
5. In your opinion, what are the most important features for this type of game?

These are just the basic warm up questions. If you're having a hard time answering those, you're already in trouble as the really tough ones are yet to come. If you haven't played any games in the genre you're applying for, then you should consider applying elsewhere. It's not only that you don't know and understand the preferences of the community, but it's mostly the fact that it didn't appeal to you enough to play it for fun. How can you design well for something you don't care much for?

Now the part I absolutely detest is the design test. Not every studio will give you one (thank God!). You normally have a week to complete it (and you will need it, especially if you're working full-time during the day). It starts off with a bunch of question to assess your knowledge of the gaming world (usually around the genre you're interviewing for), questions on your own professional accomplishments in the industry, questions about your knowledge of the game itself (if it's already released like in the case of an MMO) and finally a design question where you have to create a quest or mission based on parameters provided in the test.

That last one is a real pain. Some studios will only ask you to write a general outline of the quest. That's not bad. But some will ask that you also give a fully detailed level design of the quest with visual support that would be good enough to proceed directly to implementation. While I understand how these give the studio a good idea of your design and documentation skills, it does bother me a bit as it feels like I'm doing free design work for them.

And the same is true when interviewing in person. Sometimes you will be asked how would you resolve a very specific issues currently affecting their game. Be prepared that they could end up using your solution even if you don't get the job. Giving such freebies or not is up to you, but the quality of your answers certainly increases your chances. Just don't give away all your best ideas when asked what would you add to the game. Give them good ones with just enough details to pique their interest. Save some of the better ones for the 2nd or 3rd interview. And keep the awesome ones for when you actually get the job :P

Interviews are always tough and a bit nerve wracking, but if you're going for a genre that you love, your passion, knowledge and enthusiasm will shine through and carry you. Just make sure you don't burn bridges with previous employers. You wouldn't want to pass all the interview process with flying colors only to lose the job because you couldn't provide positive references!

Good job hunting!

Money Talks

2010-01-29T15:19:00.002-05:00

In my last entry, I was defending the right for people to spend their money however they see fit, especially when it comes to entertainment. It doesn't matter that others find that extravagant or silly. As long as it makes you happy and isn't hurting your budget, why not? To this I received a comment from Greypawn saying that I just made a pretty solid case in favor of RMTs (Real Money Transactions). I was going to post a comment in response but as it would be too long for a mere comment, I decided to make a full entry.

So my short answer is "I am not against some form of RMTs, but..."

RMTs can be extremely detrimental:

1. Newbies bypass the much needed learning curve
2. You have nothing to thrive for: you already bought it
3. It's a breeding ground for scammers, dupers and hackers
4. It attracts bots/scripters, resource farmers, gold spammers
5. It ruins the natural balance of the game's economy

Those are the main points (that I can think of off the top of my head) but each has a slew of other negative consequences attached to them.

A newbie buys a uber account, fully geared, prime real estate and a couple hundred millions. But he gets frustrated that he can't solo the peerless bosses though the seller said he soloed them with those characters. Difference is, the seller had skills. That cannot be bought. It's learned over time. Going back to fight weaker creatures to slowly master your skills when you're already way too powerful makes it very boring.

People usually buy things that are hard to obtain, painful to harvest or highly desirable. If your ultimate goal was to own a castle, you could spend months/years slowly saving your gold to eventually acquire your heart's desire and then a couple more years of saving to buy the rares that will decorate it. Or, you could spent $1500-$2000 real life money on a castle and a few more hundreds on some rares and get it all within a month. The former took maybe a few years to get it all. The latter got everything he wanted within a few weeks. Will he still be playing in 3 months from now?

The minute you involve real cash, the worse always comes out of too many people and greed gets the best of them. Over my 12 years in UO, I've seen people stoop to the lowest of the low just for a few dollars. Betrayed long time friendships (even real life ones), creative scams, hacks and credit card fraud just so they can get their hands on your stuff and make a buck off it.

Then you have those who will not scam or hack, but who will script their little hearts out running bots to farm gold or resources. Those who will convince others to let them dupe their valuables or worse give a cut to hackers who let them dupe their stolen items. Problem is that be it a dupe or a bot, an unnatural amount of items, resources and gold suddenly enter the economy. Way more than the economy was meant to be able to absorb. And once many see how much money can be made, competition kicks in. Price wars soon begin and before long the currency is so devalued that the legit players can't even sell the resources they acquired the proper way because the dupers and bots are underselling at a 10th of their normal value.

But because so much gold is now in the market, everything costs 50 million. It makes a HUGE barrier to entry for newbies and almost forces legit players to buy gold just so they too can afford what they want. It doesn't matter that gold is cheap. Players shouldn't be forced into that situation. And designers spend ridiculous amount of time trying to counter the actions of such dupers, hackers, scammers and bots and trying to fix the ruined economy. All time that could have been spent fixing bugs or developing new content.

In a case of a theme park game (like WoW or most of the other level based games), RMTs are even more damaging that how long you will continue playing their game relies on a thoroughly planned progression. The entire game is leveling and acquiring gear. If you buy an account with all/most characters already at level 80 and fully geared, then there is absolutely no reason for you to play. Unless you want to camp the PvP instances which can actually be a lot of fun.

With all that said, how can I be "somewhat in favor" of RMTs? Until bots and duping can be eradicated, I don't think any game should officially support RMTs. But if that was achieved, then I would encourage the game to provide an official system to complete RMTs to eliminate scams and fraud. I don't have a problem with a newbie buying 5 million to get himself a decent suit, pay for his insurance and even placing a small 7x7 in the woods. It makes the first steps easier. I wouldn't begrudge a crafter, whose life is all about merchanting, spending a thousand or so buying a Luna house so his business can be even more booming.

Basically, as long as it helps you enjoy playing the game more but not bypass the purpose of the game, then as a player (and a fierce advocate of free choice), I say sure! But as a developer, I'm more inclined to say a big fat no!

Tight Shoes

2010-01-09T13:43:00.004-05:00

In the world of entertainment, there is no such thing as one size fits all. There's a hat for every head (well ok, most heads) and a shoe for every foot. While everyone needs shoes, not everyone will invest the same amount in the pairs they buy. I love comfy shoes, but I wouldn't sink $500 in a single pair. Yet I know people that do and it makes them happy. Question is, how much do you spend on yours and how much do you think others should spend on theirs?

Why am I talking about shoes? Not because I've got a shoe fetish, hardly. I just love making random comparisons :P

This post is in fact about a conversation I had with a long time friend of mine over the Holidays. When I lived in Montreal, my best friend Claudy and I had made it a tradition to hit up the Casino once in while (usually once every other month) and we played the Roulette. We each had a budget of $150, sometimes $200. We pooled our money together and most of the time we came out on top. Our best winnings actually were of $2800. Over the Holidays, between dinners and get togethers, we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Casino.

We lost...

So I was talking with my friend Caroline and the subject came up. She was flabbergasted that we "blew money at the Casino". I was surprised that she was so shocked. I asked what's the big deal? We lost and we weren't upset. Disappointed because winning is always nice but we didn't dwell on it nor shed a tear over it. But she went on about how silly it is to give away your money at the Casino, you can't win, people lose their houses over it, not to mention their marriage, life, etc.

I'm like woah! Back up! We're not addicts. We went there with an amount that we were comfortable to spend on our entertainment, win or lose. But she was just hung up on the fact that Claudy and I went in with $400 total and came out with $0 after a few hours.

So I told her: last summer, you and your bf spent $500 on a pair of tickets for the Grand Prix. You sat, under the sun on uncomfortable benches, listening to the very loud sound of the cars speeding around the track, and watching most of the race on a giant screen because most of the time the cars were too far or blocked from view. And you paid outrageous prices for watered down beer and popcorn in the stands. Paid overpriced parking spots and had to deal with the painful downtown traffic. Total money spent: about $650. I watched the exact same race, for free, on my giant flat screen, in the comfort of my own home, drinking and eating quality beverages and foods. As much as I enjoy F1 Racing, I would never spend that kind of money on it.

The same is true of people who spend fortunes on collectibles, for certain shows and concerts, games, cars and car enhancements, shopping, decadent restaurants, you name it. I mean, some people spend thousands of dollars on stamps! I don't get it! But the important thing is that I don't need to. It's their shoes. They're the ones walking in it. That shoe wouldn't fit me, but if it fits them, more power to them! Let them enjoy it!

Establishing the cost of the form of entertainment you seek, accepting it and being at peace with it is the most important step to enjoying it. You could spend $6000 on a 2-week trip to Hawaii or hook yourself up with a really nice home theater that will last you for years. Each choice is as valid as the next. While that choice will be easy for some, it will be extremely difficult for others because both shoes fit and both are as appealing to them.

Transpose this to the game world... Why do players spend millions in gold or real life cash purchasing rare virtual items? I don't know. I never spent cash on rares but there was a time I used to spend millions in gold on them. Today, I don't get the people that still do, yet I used to be one of them. But if it's worth it to them, who am I to tell them otherwise? Some people use the game as a chat room. I wouldn't pay money just to sit at a bank typing my little heart out. To each their own. Others will pay just so they can kill (and be killed by) other players. Is that any stranger than someone who pays to tend virtual plants, raise virtual fishes and chickens? Or build and decorate a house they will never be able to physically set foot in?

Why did I pay for five accounts for so many years? Couldn't I fit all my needs into a single one? Maybe, if I had tried hard enough. But I didn't try or want to for that matter. Because those shoes were a perfect fit, incredibly comfy and worth every penny.

In Excess

2009-12-21T13:18:00.002-05:00

Usually, when you eat something really good, you almost feel sorry you're eating the last bite because it was so good you could indulge some more. But sometimes, you'll get something awesome yet as you get closer to the end, and while it's still good as it was when you first started, you just don't enjoy it as much. In fact, you actually start thinking it's good but it needs to end. That's when you know you had too much and as the saying goes, too much of a good thing can definitely be a bad thing.

What got me writing this? The latest game I've been playing: Dragon Age. For any RPG fan, that game is seriously bad ass. I cannot remember the last time I've so thoroughly enjoyed a game. And I mean the "counting the work hours left before I can go back home to resume my game" enjoyable. The story was awesome, the characters were fantastic, the world looked gorgeous, the gameplay, UI, enemy AI, you name it, got a big fat thumbs up from me. Obviously, the game had some flaws, but compared to its successes, they barely qualify as footnotes.

The problem? The game is extremely long. So long in fact that at some point, after completing a main quest segment when another quest chapter opened, I thought "are you serious?" I didn't know whether to be thrilled or annoyed because I was ready for dessert. There were just a few too many courses to that meal and my tummy was rather full at that point. Not only were there many chapters, but most of them were very long as well and had extensive literature.

It's somewhat strange to be complaining that I got too much for my money. But that game clearly displayed to me one of the things I struggle with the most as a designer (and even as a blogger!): moderation. How long should an event be? How many rewards should you give? How much text/journal/dialogs is needed for the players to they really understand what's going on? This is especially challenging with chain quests. I know players don't want to stop every 5 minutes to read a novel. So putting out journals and scrolls that give clues and some of the background story is difficult. It has to give enough but not be so long that players go "argh!" every time they stumble on a new journal.

The same is true with monsters. How many monsters should a player grind through before they reach their destination? If your goal is to simply fight a boss, do you really need to systematically walk through miles and miles of dungeon slaying various levels of mobs to reach him? Reaching a boss should be difficult but there are other ways which do not need to be a grind.

In the end, I much rather get too much than feel ripped off, but just enough is always best! The fact is there is A LOT of journals and books and what not to read in that game. It breaks the rythm, so in that sense I found it annoying and often just skipped right through a lot of it. But after I finished the game, I went back and started reading them and they are honestly worth it.

That said, I've had players complain some of my events were too long (the Death of the Council was one prime example). Yet I thought the length was just perfect and quite a few players felt the same as well. I guess it just goes to show that we don't all have the same appetite!

Exponential Growth

2009-12-01T23:51:00.004-05:00

A player messaged me to on the forums to thank me for the recent Thanksgiving event, saying how his wife, guildmates and himself have had the most fun they can remember in a long time with it. He was hoping there would be more of this type of simple, quickly put together event in the future. It made me giggle because this event broke every rule of proper design procedure.

So this started off with Mesanna asking if we were turning the champ spawns into turkeys again for Thanksgiving. To which I replied the turkeys are kinda lame. They're just way too small and are more griefy to see during champ spawns than anything else. So we decided to go bat our eyelashes at the artists and see if we could get them to enlarge the turkeys. When they accepted, being my usual shameless self, I asked if we could also get a cornucopia for the players who don't do champ spawns. And they agreed to squeeze it in their schedule! Since we didn't have much time, the plan was simply to spawn the cornucopias in the players' backpack on log in and do the champ spawn thing.

Then I saw the finished version and I was like "dang Grimmy (GrimmOmen), those be some fine looking turkeys!!" They were just too nice not to allow everyone else to enjoy them. So from there I told Mesanna I would make them just randomly spawn overland in Britannia and strut their stuff.

Famous last words...

So I'm thinking hmmmm they can't just walk around and do nothing else! Let's make them mini-bosses! Now to figure out what their AI will be. When that was nearly done, it was hmmm but what are they going to drop as loot? Lets make them drop the cornucopias!! Then hmmm the cornucopias are kinda lame just as is. They should drop food! Hmmm maybe they should have something special, I mean seriously who cares about a slab of bacon?

So Mesanna asks me if I'm done with the Turkeys and I'm like eerrrr yeah? But she knows from the look on my face that my evil wheels are still turning. She gives me the look of death and says "cut off date is..." to which I interject "yes, yes, I know! It will be done!" (with some more shameless eyelashes batting to which she's completely immune! Wise woman she is!).

But that event is just too short. There should be a little something more to it and not just a random grinding on turkeys. So I get a bug from QA regarding some issue with the Halloween costumes and my mind wanders back to it and to the Hag and "ting!" the light comes on!! My buddy Zeef!! I always thought those little maps were cool so after a bit of tinkering (and lots of running around to choose locations) I put in the nests and maps, but it didn't really make sense for turkeys to give maps. Hell, it didn't really make sense to have giant turkeys to begin with! How do you justify that? (You know some players will go wtf is that?) Well while trying to come up with the turkey's attacks, I had been reading a bit on the Internet about turkeys and stumbled on an article about the father of American ornithology, Alexander Wilson and I suddenly had my quest back story and the moon grass as the fall guy!

But could I leave it alone? No, because I'm hopeless like that. Then came the: a) I need to come up with a "useful" reward for the deco haters (enters harvester's blade), b) bards are going to complain again that they've been neglected (more tweaks to turkey's AI), c) crafters, crafters, crafter, why the heck do they think they should be able to do everything hunters do? gah!!! (fine, lets have map fragments and give stuff to top 20 attackers), d) PETA alert!! (chill people! I got it covered! *adds non-mutant eggs and prevent players from abusing them*).

Now the real fun begins. QA >.<

The problem wasn't so much functionality issues (though there were a few of those). It was mostly things like: if you do 4 back flips with a red ribbon on your right pinky toe while holding your right ear with your left hand you will be able to nuke 10 turkeys in 3 seconds while also looting other people's nests in Trammel.

*blinks*

In the end, a few bugs still managed to slip through the cracks, but overall it was well received. Frankly, I was happily surprised people didn't complain about doing maps. I think they're wonderfully challenging and a good way to get people to explore lands they have neglected for far too long. But this is a bad way of designing. It's too easy to let yourself get carried away and things grow so far out of proportion that it bursts at the seams. In this case, it worked out, but careful planning before implementation saves a lot of headaches and bad surprises.

PS. We made cut off date :)

In Context

2009-11-13T18:54:00.003-05:00

It is uncanny how much power people can give simple words and how relentlessly they can latch on to your usage of a specific word to go on a crusade. I'll likely get in trouble for this one but frankly, I don't care because this chick is annoyed! The culprit? A not so very fuzzy "care bear".

What's a care bear? The Urban Dictionary has a lot of very appropriate definitions for it. My own definition of a MMO care bear is a mix of definitions 1, 3 and 6: essentially a player who takes part in all aspects of the game except for those involving PvP. Throughout the industry, this term is also used that way. BUT it's also used in the pejorative way, though usually by the players.

It's all a matter of context.

It is up to you how you interpret one's words. But use common sense. I always felt it was ridiculous every time I make a post referring to PvPers and non-PvPers I spend forever trying to figure out how to word a sentence with the word Trammie, but don't have to think about it twice to use the word Fellie. In fact, I usually use Trammelite instead of Trammie, which I think sound retarded but normally avoids any stirring of the politically correct fanatics. Why is that?

Developer's definition
Trammie: any player that never comes to Felucca. Period.
Fellie: someone who exclusively (or mostly) plays in Felucca and takes part in PvP.
Care Bear: someone who doesn't necessarily live in Trammel, but who doesn't take part in PvP. (Yes, there are people who enjoy Felucca but not PvP)

Players and others definition
Trammie: wuss, whiner, pixel crack hoarder, animal tamer
Fellie: griefer, PK, thief, hacker, duper, cheater, (insert extensive list of faults here) and trash talker. Probably has a small weenie irl and low self-esteem
Care Bear: the most annoying type of Trammie who deserves all the grief they get from Fellies.

People need to lay off the paranoia sauce. It's kinda like when someone says "you're cute". It can simply mean what it says, ie that you're huggable, lovely, cuddly or w/e flattery is implied. Or it can mean you're a smart ass, a dumb ass, an idiot, etc. The context dictates which one it is. A developer addressing a broad audience, including his customers, would obviously not use a term in the derogatory sense. So it's rather mindboggling the way some people have decided to take it the wrong way and just won't let go.

It somewhat reminds me of what guys often complain about regarding their girlfriend or wife. He did or said something she didn't like, whether maliciously or not, and 2 years later they will have an argument and she will dig that one thing back up and throw it in his face even though it has nothing to do with anything! And the poor guy can't help but think: "good Lord, woman, GET THE F... OVER IT!"

Seriously... -_-

Political correctness has always rhymed with BS to me. Good thing I'm not the PR person! For the record, the majority of the Dev Team are Trammies, including our Producer. Hell, he's a Tamer, so what does that make him?! Personally, I've always considered myself a Fellie and a PvPer. However, since I disbanded my guild 2 years ago when I joined the Dev Team, I've rarely PvPed even though I live in Fel, which makes me the team's only Care Bear. And I'm damn proud of it!

Community

2009-10-30T20:26:00.002-04:00

Wow, I can't believe my last post was in July. I guess I owe Slickjack another thanks for poking me out of my procrastination!

I was chitchatting with some of the Devs from Warhammer and Dark Age of Camelot after a town hall meeting. We ended up discussing the importance of the "social" factor in MMOs and of building community going from the chat system, crafting and trading, to guilds, alliances, group quests and epic encounters. The whole time, I kept thinking that these are things developers use to facilitate (all to often "force") community. But to me, that is not what community is about.

In most MMOs, the fact that Joe decided to take an extended break, quit, sold his account or passed away in real life isn't likely to make much of a difference. If he was the GM of his guild, it will probably fall apart and everyone will scatter. The folks with the best gear will be picked up by current "flavor of the day" guilds, the rest will PUG their way into their next guild. Some will stick together, but those were often friends before they started playing the game to begin with.

And therein lies a significant part of the issue. When a game is heavily level and gear dependant, it destroys its own community by dictating who gets to play with who, when and where. You cannot build a solid sense of community by being exclusive. Yet exclusion is at the foundation of many class based games. You want to raid with us? Would be nice except you're a tank and we just don't need another one. Better luck next time! Oh that's your best friend? Yeah sorry, his gear sucks too much and his level is too low, he'll pull too much aggro. Tell him to look us up in a few weeks/month when he's up to our level. Auction houses? Awesome! I have no idea who the seller is, and frankly I don't care: I didn't even look at their name, I just checked the lowest price.

Then I remembered a thread that started not too long ago on Stratics about Atlantic's History. And I thought: see, THAT's what community is about. To me, it's not forcing people to group up with other folks they don't know and probably don't even like just so they can partake in some of the better content. It's giving players the chance of being part of something, to leave a lasting mark in the world, to make history.

Community isn't spamming the Looking For Group channel for the first person that can do 3K+ DPS. It's people from all walks of life gathering on a ghost infested beach, year after year, to commemorate the real life passing of a player who made his mark in the world by becoming UO's greatest librarian. It's hanging out at player run establishments like the wild and crazy Odyssey's Club was. It's the RP towns like Paxlair and Sanctus built from the ground up by the players. It's when other players ask for you and your shop by name when they want quality goods. It's the fear, awe, admiration, love and even hatred inspired by the mere mention of the name of a player or a guild. It's when reminiscing about the old days is more about the people come and gone, than about boss mobs and class nerfs.

While it is true that promoting social interactions in games increases player retention, I think most games miss the mark. What kept me playing this game was knowing that my presence made a difference. I had an impact on the world. I had something to call my own. I can quit any other MMO today, go back in a few months or a year, and after a bit of a grind, it will be the same it always was. While I'm gone, not a whole lot of people will miss me as there will be plenty of other DPS, Tanks or Healers to pick up where I left off. As a UO player, if I quit tomorrow, I feel like I have a lot to lose: the house I worked so hard to acquire, the clientele I took so long to establish, the guild or the player town I devoted years to build. And in turn, my absence will affect those who knew me.

In my humble opinion, true Community is when the individual matters and when the only limit to the fame, influence and accomplishments you can achieve are only those you set for yourself.

Enemy Mine

2009-07-09T10:05:00.002-04:00

Sorry, I've been neglecting my blog, but we're crunching big time with Beta. Not to mention I pulled a disappearing act and went to Montreal to get majorly pampered by Mom! And while enjoying some much needed R&R, I couldn't help but check out the Beta forums and catch up on various games I hadn't had a chance to play. While reading the boards, there was a post about players PKing during beta which made me go hmmm.

There simply never seems to be any way around the irreconcilable differences between PvMers and PvPers. The hatred and venom between them is mind boggling at times. So while chilling at my parents' house, I stumbled on an old movie I had loved when I was a teenager called Enemy Mine and I couldn't help but draw the parallel. The story is about this human pilot fighting an alien enemy. Both end up crashing on a hostile, abandoned planet and are forced to cooperate in order to survive. Through their hardships, they get to know each other, understand and respect their differences. From mortal enemies they became more than brothers because they learned to view the world through the other one's eyes and realized being different doesn't mean being bad.

PvP isn't for everyone but it's not because you do that you're necessarily a jerk. And it's not because you don't that you're automatically a wimp. Some people are vegetarians, others love meat. They're still people and one isn't better than the other. Trying to walk in the other guy's shoes doesn't mean it will grow on you. Some things aren't meant for everyone, but it could at least help you realize that the other guy is your normal every day Joe, cool friend, good brother, good husband, good neighbor. Just a dude who is different, like that Drac from the movie was.

Being mainly a PvPer myself, every time I see these threads, I systematically have to fight back the "here comes the whine" (+ rolls eyes) reaction. Especially in a game like UO where 75% of the content is exclusively PvP-free. It blows my mind when PvMers begrudge any crumbs tossed the PvPers' way. Of course there should be PvP-exclusive rewards, otherwise where is the gratification? Would a PvMer fight a challenging (though fun) boss mob more than once if there was no reward at the end of the day?

When it comes to PvP, and in the case on the forums, PKing, it's usually up to the designers to provide their players with ways to limit the "inconvenience" to those who do not wish to PvP or to set up a smooth learning curve so the barrier to entry isn't too brutal. Some games succeed at it better than others. And some, by design, not so much. Darkfall is the perfect example.

I want to believe I'm not wimp when it comes to taking a beating (in game!). But when I tried Darkfall, I experienced exactly what PvMers describe feeling when forced into a PvP situation (that they usually lose) when simply trying to PvM. In Darkfall, there are no safe zones even in noob towns, anywhere, period. When you die, you lose absolutely everything (except your noobie weapon that you can't gain skills with). And every time I would step out of town to fight the (much too rare) goblins or trolls to level a bit, one or two PKs would show up and rape 10 noobs in the blink of an eye with us barely doing a scratch to him/them. Some nights, you couldn't even reach the goblins without getting PKed again. It was the most frustrating experience ever. I felt like the sacrificial lamb offered to slaughter for the greater amusement of relentless bullies.

I toughed it out for a while, knowing from the get go I wouldn't renew my subscription. It was shocking to see myself cussing out those PKs. But in truth, what bothered me wasn't getting PKed. It was the fact that I was helpless, the fact that I had no way of honing my skills before I was thrown to the wolves. The fact that these guys knew it and abused the heck out of it. Those PKs were a minority, but their presence was overwhelming. And because Darkfall's UI is so different (quite unique and interesting), it's an extra barrier that made things even harder.

In the end, it just reaffirmed (to me) what I've always believed. When it comes to PvM and PvP it's always about choices. I chose not to be farmed by the PKs in Darkfall and cancelled my subscription. It's both my gain and my loss. Many others have toughed it out and experienced some of the cool other content in the game. To me, it wasn't worth the aggravation and I'm ok with that "loss". Similarly, players in UO and most other MMOs out there, can make the choice to exclusively PvM or to PvP as well. It is your choice whether or not to expose yourself to danger. If you choose not to, then you also choose not to have access to certain rewards (other than buying them where applicable). But be grateful that in those other games you at least have a safe environment where you can learn and grow before you face the beast. Because at the end of the day, the beast is really just another Joe who has been doing it a bit longer than you and has learned a few tricks along the way.

Anticipation

2009-06-08T22:21:00.002-04:00

Whenever a new game or expansion is about to be released, fans are always dying with curiosity and anticipation. Will it be as good as we hope or worse than we expect? But one thing people often don't realize is that the Devs are just as excited and anxious, for pretty much the same reasons!

Players complain about being bound by the NDA when they wish they could share what they're testing with their buddies, but imagine designing something for months and having to keep quiet about it? This is when we finally get to show off those (hopefully!) cool features we secretly worked on. It's also when we find out if it was a hit or a miss.

Since we're still frantically working on finishing some of the features, the content is being delivered in stages. I can tell you that there's nothing worse than realizing that one of your features isn't going to make the next publish because of whatever bug. Whether the bug is your fault or someone else's is totally irrelevant. It's just disappointing. You know annoyed you feel when you're waiting for a highly anticipated patch just to be told the Devs delayed by another week? However valid or not the reason for the delay, you still feel cheated. So we're all in the same boat, just for different reasons.

But for our features that do make it, there's a mix of dread and excitement about how it will be received. I won't lie, after the last publish I was all over the forums reading players' comments about their first impression of the latest additions. Did we live up to their expectations? Exceeded or majorly failed?

After that though comes the "time to bang your head on the wall". Silly things such as "we would love to test this but you guys forgot to give us the tool to craft it with". Or better yet, "sure, I'll fight the boss monster if you guys would be so kind to put a doorway in". And we're like: how the heck did we forget that?! Silly stuff that makes you want to kick yourself. We're just as frustrated that you're not able to try some of the stuff. More so even, because our oversight caused it.

I spent the week-end beta testing on my normal player account. There's nothing more enlightening than to be down in the trenches with the rest of the guys, especially when they have no idea who you are. You share their pain on the mobs that are way overpowered or so easy they bore you to death. I've said this before and this week-end reinforced that conviction further: you cannot understand your players' pain unless you experience it first hand. You HAVE to play your own game.

Next week will be crazy. There are a lot of bugs to fix from the previous push. And from my own experience this week-end, a lot of tweaks and balance are needed to get some of the features to go from functional to fun. But there are also more features I want to get in so I better find a way to meet the cut off date somehow! Because I'm a big kid, and I just can't wait to show off the new toys we get to play with! :D

Dilemma

2009-05-31T12:35:00.004-04:00

Design vision and player wishes often seem to clash. Sometimes it's a minor difference in opinion/expectation, sometimes it's fairly significant. And that can be seen in some of the heated posts on game forums. Players wonder why the heck we don't just give them what they want. Some designers will take the "cuz I said so" approach while some will take the "there's a good reason, just trust me" approach.

I personally believe in the honest, open dialog approach. But I understand why so many don't. Frankly, players chew you up regardless so it's reasonable to ask yourself: why bother?

As designers, we have to strive not to fall into the: I'm gonna do this because I can, I got the power and because that's what "I" like. Which is somewhat paradoxical as I also consider designers to be artists and I do not believe an artist should bastardize his art to please others. He should be true to his vision and let others discover its beauty.

But then, we're not truly artists, are we? I guess we're more like scriptwriters on a TV series who have this (hopefully) awesome story to deliver in so many episodes. Sometimes we need to adjust some characters or events based on our audience's response. I remember thinking that when I watched the cast interviews of Battle Star Galactica before the finale. They were saying how Anders (who was only meant to have a small 2-3 episode role) was turned into a main character in reaction to the fans hating him so much for hooking up with Kara (I hated him for it too and ended up loving him by the end of the series!).

Like scriptwriters, we cater to an audience that gives almost instant feedback throughout the creation process. Sometimes our response will go against their wishes and still work out for the best (as in BSG) and sometimes it won't. But invariably, the fans' voices will influence the direction we take, sometimes steering us in a different path than originally intended.

In UO, I've been facing that same dilemma, namely with the gardeners. My vision as a designer, which was also shared by many on the team, isn't shared by quite a few of the gardeners. A bug introduced a way for players to grow some plants in hues we didn't want them because frankly they are an eye sore. While the bug was quickly fixed, we decided not to revert the few "ugly plants" they had obtained during the bug, since we figured that would be the end of it. But turns out players remained with a number of colored seeds that allow them to keep growing those horrors and cross-pollinating them, which makes me cringe beyond words.

So I looked into the code on how to revert all existing ones and neuter the remaining offensive seeds. Once I found the solution, I went to the gardeners forums to make a post telling them the fix for these abominations was on its way! But what I found was a really long thread of excited players sharing their experiments results, building up cross-pollination charts, giving each other tips on how to achieve certain hues and certain breeds. It was like watching a bunch of kids in a toy store. I had this strange mix of major annoyance, amusement and pride at how nice the kids were playing with each other.

And I just didn't have the heart to post... After thinking about it long and hard, I just reverted the "fix". It's still a hard to swallow humble pie but if it doesn't create imbalances and is just a matter of personal preferences, sometimes it's ok to let design vision take the backseat.

Beta Testing

2009-05-18T08:08:00.002-04:00

Now that ours is but a few days away, people are getting even antsier and desperately hoping to make it into the beta. I know the feeling all too well. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Everyone and their brother is spamming me for beta code requests. Some I know will rock it, others... not so sure. So the question is: are you truly beta test material?

Beta is a critical phase for us. This is when months and months (sometimes years) of hard work finally get handed over to players for thorough scrutiny. This is when we first find out if this ship will sink or sail, if it has holes and where is the water leaking in from. Water we don't see because we're too busy on the deck. Unless our testers take the time to explore every nook and cranny in the hold, there is a chance we'll only realize we're sinking once we're way far in high seas.

The truth is a lot of people sign up for beta not to test but just to quench their curiosity and for bragging rights. I can't blame them either, because I've done it too. But knowing that the number of codes issued is limited, it is important for people who sign up to understand that as much as we try to account for every silly things players will do during normal gameplay, we can't catch them all. Testing is what allows for the issues from such behavior to be addressed. If new skills or systems are way overpowered or unbalancing, if the UI isn't overly friendly, if some of the content needs some tweaking, beta is the time to bring it up so they can be fixed before the game ships. There's no damage in a closed environment, once it hits production shards, it's a whole different story.

So if you sign up, try stuff and use that feedback form or the in-game bug report feature. Nobody expects you to do as thorough a job as a QA Tester would. We only expect you to play as you normally would and bring up what doesn't work. Nobody knows better than you how you enjoy your specific game style. If you mainly play a crafter, we don't expect PvP feedback from you, but we sure as hell would like to know if the new content works for you. Don't get a code just to let it rot.

Beta testers have tremendous power. There is no other time you will have the Devs as attentive to your every word as during beta. It doesn't mean you will get everything you want (especially if your request would require massive system changes), but now is your best chance of having a real impact. I beta tested a few games myself and often heard people just randomly bitch about this or that but when asked if they submitted a bug they would just say "why bother?", which blew my mind. Or some would say things like "I'm sure someone else already reported it". Do not worry about submitting duplicates. Never assume someone already submitted, and don't just sulk about what you don't like.

Beta isn't about you finding out whether or not you like the new expansion. It isn't about status. It isn't about just hanging out with the Devs and participating in the few events. It's about making sure the expansion will launch as smoothly as possible. So don't take up the place of someone who would truly help polish the game through this critical phase. If you sign up and get a code (for UO or any other game), please log on often, play and use the heck out of the bug report feature.

PS: details and ways to replicate is a Dev's best friend. :)

Expansions

2009-05-10T23:28:00.004-04:00

So as most of you now, we're currently in the last miles of our next, more than long overdue, UO expansion. I'm not going to discuss the details of that specific expansion here, but I wanted to share my thoughts about expansions in general and my issues with them; namely the fact that they make old content obsolete and raise even higher the barrier to entry for new players.

One of my biggest problem with expansions is that they usually rhyme with new lands and dungeons. How is that bad? Because new expansion doesn't mean new players. While they tend to bring a certain amount of new players, they're usually aimed towards player retention, so your currently bored players have something new to chew on. The influx of new players isn't significant enough to offset the exodus of existing players into the new areas.

In a game like UO, it just means that perfectly good systems are going to waste. The impact on our players is fairly minimal. But in a level-based game like WoW though, it's a different story. Looking at their latest expansion (which had quite a few really good things in it), I couldn't help but sigh. Another skill cap increase, meaning a noobie will have 80 levels to grind through before they can start playing with high level friends. New uber epic gear for level 80s to strive for, meaning once noobie manages level 80, his gear will still be too weaksauce to play with his friends in the cool instances. Even though they reshuffled the points required so that it takes you the same amount of time to reach 80 as it would have taken to reach 70 before the expansion, there are less people around to help you level or do those low level instances because everyone is in the new lands. So noobie is once again SOL.

Then look at resources and crafting materials. All the new cool recipes involve new mats that drop only on the new mobs. Why ever bother with old mobs then, especially since the old recipes using the old mats are trash compared to the new ones? Granted, they have the whole Achievements system put in, which seems to be all the rage these days with every game (I'll make a blog entry specifically about that at some point). But that only makes you go back once then never again.

I took WoW as an example because most people know it or of it and it covers the majority of the issues I find with expansions. But UO has had many of the same issues through its various expansion. I'm not against adding new lands. I just find that generally it's not done in the most efficient way. You shouldn't sabotage your own previous designs by making it useless or obsolete. I don't think the size of the playground matters as much as the quality and the number of the things you can do in it. I don't believe in having perfectly fine game systems just go to waste because we're pushing players towards the new shinies.

If an old system has become a little stale, give it a bit of a face lift. Even if you create new areas, mobs and resources, you should tie them to the old lands. Your new uber recipe should use mats from both worlds. You don't need to create an entire new dungeon with mostly useless critters just to have a new epic encounter. You could simply add cool new features to an existing dungeon that will grant you access to a new boss, and only create a new area in that dungeon for the boss' lair.

Instead of spending months/years building new regions so old ones can be abandoned, I would rather see all that time devoted to making new art assets and new badass creatures. As a player who just bought an expansion, when I receive the new "sword of ultimate pwnage", I want to see a wicked cool sword with awesome effects. Not the same old, rehued rename lame sword I've been using the past 5 years. Having a sexy looking new world populated with the same tired renamed/rehued creatures with a bit more stats is quite the turn off.

I was discussing this with a friend who said he wants new lands with an expansion because he gets tired of seeing the old places. My response to him was that if he's having fun, he won't care whether the land is old or new. Players aren't a grasshoppers swarm that needs to move from region to region once all sustenance has been drained out of it. It is our job as designers to make sure food doesn't run out in any given region. Period.

In my humble opinion, expansions should be about optimizing existing content and adding more content that will enhance player's experience. Not creating new areas to be cannibalized.

Random (Rated M!)

2009-04-26T23:07:00.004-04:00

Haven't posted in a while since I was in the middle of moving. Thankfully, this painful process is mostly done. So for my "comeback" post, I figured I would give you a little insight into some of the conversations of your devoted Dev Team. Please be forewarned, as stated in the title, that this is rated M. So if you are easily offended by crude words or nudity, you might want to skip this one altogether!

In order to protect the identity of the (not so) innocent, I will refer to the everyone based on their role on the team, ie Artist, Designer, Worldbuilder, Engineer, QA, Admin (for Producer, MD, and ADM) and DAoC for members of the Camelot team. Having no shame whatsoever, I will not hide my own contribution to the following!

Artsy Pants

1. I go over to the artists to request some new art, knowing my chances are slim.
Me: Hey, I know you guys are busy, but what are the chances you guys could make me a crack tile.
Artist 1: A what?!
Me: You know, like a crack on the ground. We have one already but it's tiny and I need a big one.
Artist 1: You want a big crack?
Me: Yeah, a very big one. You know, a "big ass" crack.
Artist 2: Did she just say she wanted a big... "ass crack".
Me: *blushing furiously* NO!! NO! I'm sorry, I just meant, a big hole!
Artist 1: Oooh you want a big hole? And what you want to do with that hole?
Me: I just want a big hole, crack, fissure, w/e you want to call it for stuff to come out of.
Artist 2: A fissure now is it? So you want a big orifice that has something coming out of it? And you would like us to provide you with that?
Me: I'm not gonna win this one am I?
Artist 1 & 2: Nope.
Me: I hate you all! *walks away*
Artists 1 & 2: ROFL

2. We're commenting about the SA poster were the female gargoyles have boobs bigger than their head and where the male gargoyles frankly don't give us women much eye candy to drool over.

Engineer: Nah, they aren't too big!
Me: Dude, seriously, compare their size to her head!
Engineer: They're not... errr... oh wow!
Me: Told ya!
Engineer: Bah, still looks fine.
Admin and Me: *roll eyes and mumble something like "typical male"*
Artist: LOL
DAoC: Frankly, I don't care about the boob thing, but something else bothers me.
Artist: Oh?
DAoC: If gargoyles are hatched, how come she's got a navel?
All of us: OH SHIT! LOL!

3. We're having our weekly team meeting to update everyone on our current progress, what we've accomplished this weeks, hurdles and other tidbits.

Artist: Gargoyles finally have underwear!
All of us: *cheers and applause*
Me: So now that you're done playing with panties, you can get some real work done?
Admin: REGINE!
Everyone else: LOL!
Me: *with a not so innocent look* What? He said he was fiddling with undies!
Admin: *shakes head*

4. But nope, the underwear fiddling is far from over! I'm passing by the artists' desks when I overhear QA and Artist 1 discussing gargoyle undies issues.

Me: Dang brother, are you seriously still messing around with those undies?
Artist: No ma'am! I've done all the fiddling I could do, and passed them on to the next guy.
QA: And the next guy (*raises hand*) passed it on to the other guy.
Artist: Who is now trying to pass them on to someone else. You interested?
Me: Oh hell no! Them undies have been around too much for my liking. They must have all kinds of bugs by now.
QA: Quite the understatement!
Me: You can keep those to yourself, tyvm!

QA Woes

1. I'm talking with the artists about the new monsters when a QA passing by spots me and calls out my name.

Me: Go away, I don't want to talk to you!
QA: WTF? What did I do?
Me: I hate you! You're always giving me bugs!

*Moment of silence*

QA: You know, that kinda sounded wrong.
Me: Huh? Ohh?! OMG, I didn't mean it like that!!!
Artist: Dang QA, I thought you guys were supposed to help squash bugs. Not pass them around!
QA: I thought that's what I was doing!
Me: You guys suck... -_-

2. QA comes to my desk while I'm discussing with Admin

QA: Hey Reg, you know that word you used for your new system for SA?
Me: Yeah, what about it?
QA: Well you used it as a noun, but it's actually a verb so (suggestions) would fit better.
Me: Really? One of you guys suggested that word!
QA: Maybe, but it's not cuz English is our first language that we all speak it right!
Me: So I see.
QA: So can we bug it?
Me: Yeah, fine.
Admin: Wow, you just got vocabulary bugged!
QA: Bug write up: Designer language skills - FAILED!
Me: Haters! :(

3. Just when you thought it was over, the bugged undies come back with a vengeance. I go over to QA's desk to give him some extra info to help him test my latest contribution to the game. He's in the middle of explaining to Admin some of the undies issue. So I peek in!

QA: Female gargoyle for some reason has see through panties. But the male is just fine
Me: Oh wow!
QA: Yeah, that's pretty bad.
Admin: I don't think that would go down too well for our Teen rating.
Me: No kidding. That's quite the bush!
QA & Admin: LOL!
Admin: You haven't heard what he named her when she was hued all red!
Me: Huh?
QA: *hues the gargoyle red* Meet Ms. Firecrotch!
Admin & Me: ROFL
Me: You guys are so bad. *starts walking away*
Me: I guess we'll have to make craftable razors for Tinkers and shaving cream for Alchies!

Fails

1. An engineer drops by my desk to show me the latest improvements to the SA Map. I go to the link he provided me which loads a screenshot of it.

Me: Oh nice! I like this very much. A million times better than the old KR one.
Engineer: Yeah, it's pretty cool. Now lets see if we can get the other features in.
Me: *tries to click the X on the map to close the gump*
Engineer: OMG, did you just try to close a gump on a JPG?
Me: *blushes*
Engineer: LOL, epic fail! *walks off*
Engineer: Guys, guess what Sak just did?
Me: ugh!

2. We're having another weekly meeting

Engineer: So among you non-KR users, how many will start using the SA client when we launch?
Admin: I definitely will to macro.
Everyone: WHAT!? WTF?!
Admin: *blushes furiously* NO!! NO!! I meant, I like how you can set up macros with it. And it's much more user friendly than 2D for crafting!
Everyone: LOL.
Me: mmmmhmmm, you just so outted yourself! *eyes Admin suspiciouly*
Admin: You can all bite me!

Fangirl

2009-03-08T22:11:00.002-04:00

A while back, in a blog entry that would probably better qualify as a rant, I was expressing my rather unflattering views about groupies. So it's a little ironic to be talking about myself today as a fan girl. Though I will say there is a difference!! (At least there is in the twisted little world I evolve in!)

Last Thursday, we were having a design lunch to discuss SA (among other things) but mainly to come up with ways to try and fix the never ending saga of the ghost cams. And it was one of those discussions where you can see the goal, you can almost touch it, but there are so many hurdles in between you and it. You bounce ideas off of each other and they get shut down with very valid arguments, then revived with as valid counter arguments, and so on and so forth.

Halfway through the discussion, I was explaining why one of the proposed solutions wouldn't work because applied one way, it could be circumvented, while applied the other way, it would unfairly punish legit players. And it suddenly dawned on me (again!) that here I was, little Sakkarah from Atlantic, playing with the big boys. I mean to have Leurocian sitting at my right, Draconi and Uriah (Calvin) sitting across the table from me, and Wilki on my left, all of them paying close attention to my words and valuing my input, it was just eerie. And I was like "OMG, I'm still a fan girl!" Sheesh!

I was telling a buddy of mine about it and he said he didn't know how I did it. In my shoes, he would be too intimidated, afraid what he proposed would come across as lame, that he couldn't picture himself arguing against an idea these guys would come up with and that frankly, he didn't think they would give his ideas any real consideration. First off, I pointed out to him that he already argues with them about their ideas on the forums. And he was like, "Dang, you're right!" Of course I am! :P But I also explained to him that there is one thing I've learned over the years, mostly when I worked in the music and movie industry: even the greatest of idols is just another person. And being a yes man or a yes girl (ie a groupie) is the best way to make sure no one will ever care to hear anything you have to say.

It's not because you disagree with them that you have less respect or admiration for them. If you have been put in a position where your opinion or creative input is required, then you shouldn't be embarrassed or apologetic about it. Just be true to yourself and stand by what you believe in without trying to impose it onto others. That's always been my philosophy and I'm just too darn opinionated to act otherwise! I could go on a spiel about "have faith in yourself" and all that jazz, but I won't. Ok, ok, I lie. I had in fact written another four paragraphs which really ended up sounding preachy, self-righteous and holier than thou. So I delete them! (owned!)

Anyways, I just wanted to say that you know how sometimes you put people on a pedestal and once you meet them irl you feel it was a total let down? Well, I thought it was pretty cool realizing that after a year of working closely with those guys, I'm still a fan.

The New FICO

2009-03-01T11:36:00.001-05:00

Aside from language, one of the first things that hit me when I first moved to the US is how everything here is ruled by your credit score. To get an apartment, utilities, cellphone and even certain jobs, your credit score is a major factor. So imagine me freshly landed in VA being told that even though the three US companies that monitor credit are exactly the same in Canada, they couldn't use my Canadian credit history in the US. As such, I was a nobody and therefore considered a credit risk. Imagine also that for the first month, I couldn't even get gas or electricity because they won't give it to you unless you have a social security number. Except it takes a little over 4 weeks for a new US resident to get one. This all translated as me having to make big security deposits for absolutely everything, including a $700 deposit just for a stupid cell phone.

So I was browsing the International Game Developers Association discussion group on Linkedin when I stumbled on the Reputation Share thread. Their goal is to provide a type of FICO score not for your credit history, but for your online behavior. I have to say I have extremely mixed feelings about it. Here's an excerpt from their information white paper:

"When someone registers on a site supported by ReputationShare, the service knows at least some of the following:

• This user is unknown. This email has never been used on any site in the participating network
• This user has reputation reports from 37 sites in our network. They have used these sites 5,233 times over the past 32 months without any negative incidents
• This user has 17 complaints against their reputation – 16 for spam, one for bullying...
• This user has made purchases from 73% of the e‐commerce websites they joined in our network. (You may want to greet this user with a discount coupon.)
• This user has bought from e‐commerce websites in our network 13 times, and reported for charge‐back fraud all 13 times.
• This user has been banned from one or more sites in our network for soliciting for sex from a user whose profile is that of a minor."

There is no question that it would be nice to track sexual predators, especially in MMOs. As a former guildmistress, I've had to deal with such situations: one where one of my female guildmember had to get a restraining order against a former guildmate who was stalking her in real life after she put an end to their in game relationship. Another where I found out that the 29 yo female I had just booted from the guild had been having cyber sex and phone sex with a 14 yo kid in the guild. And that makes me think yeah, I definitely would much rather keep such people out of the games I play or work on, and away from children.

Then you're looking at all the scammers, griefers and exploiters and thinking yeah, without such creeps, the game would be so much better! Problem is, people, especially in this last group, do change. My own experience (which is in no way meant to be taken as an official statistics) has been that most of the scammers and griefers are teenagers. Many exploiters also are teens with quite a few in their early 20s, but still fairly young and irresponsible. And I've found them to have really improved their ways as they mature. Problem is, your FICO has a way of sticking to you like white on rice. Repairing it can be extremely difficult.

Some of you will say "Tough luck! They should have thought about it first!" I don't quite disagree. You should be held accountable to a certain extent for your misbehavior. My problem is that FICO type of systems have too much of a "guilty until proven innocent" approach. As with my "coming to America" story, scoring systems punish you right off the bat with all kinds of penalties not because of any wrongdoings on your part, but simply because you haven't yet proven yourself.

I've known people who have always paid all of their bills on time, who owe nothing and who never borrowed because they don't believe in credit or being in debt. You'd think they'd be the ideal candidate for a mortgage right? But no, they can't get a loan because they don't have credit history. They are nobodies... Once rating Internet behavior becomes a standard, how long will it take before you're asked to make hefty security deposits because you are new to the scene or had a few misconducts years ago when you didn't know better? I support the idea behind this service, I just don't think I agree with the service itself.

Priorities

2009-02-24T12:11:00.004-05:00

Last week, a player was complaining on the forums about the range on using a certain ability. Since he had given a very clear, concise yet detailed explanation of the issue, it took me no time at all to verify the issue and turns out he was absolutely right, the range was way too limited. It was an extremely easy problem to fix so I did it right away and replied to the thread acknowledging the problem and informing the player the fix would be in the next publish. Yay? Not quite.

So a few players responded to the thread very pleased about both the fix and the speed at which said fix was put in. But then came the PMs of a few very disgruntled players giving me hell about clearly having no sense of priorities, questioning my IQ and wondering which "talents" I used to get this job since I'm obviously clueless about what players need! I wish I had a camera when I read the nastiest of those PMs just so I could have seen the expression on my own face. I'm sure even I would have had a kick out of seeing my own shocked expression :P

While the wording of those players' question was way out of line, the question itself was quite valid. When it comes to bugs, balancing or wish lists, how is the priority set? It all depends. Obviously, bugs that are game stopping or that could have a significant negative impact on the game in the long run (such as duping) take precedence over everything else. For the rest, the main factors taken into account are:

1. Severity of the inconvenience they represent
2. What other systems/features may be impacted by the fix
3. Amount of time required to fix it
4. Resources available to allocate to it
5. Balancing considerations required
6. The number of people affected by this bug

In this specific instance, the inconvenience wasn't game stopping but significant enough. It didn't impact any other systems and in fact, I had already spent the past month working on the specific system the issue was a part of. I knew specifically which script contained the line of code to be adjusted and it simply involved increasing a number from 90 to 200. Granted, I had to give it a few more minutes reflecting on potential balancing/abuse issues, but they proved to be nil/negligible. So overall, less than 10 minutes to fix something fairly inconveniencing. In terms of bang per buck, I'd say it's worth it.

The question then is why are the most inconveniencing issues not addressed right away? Well they are. But it's not because you are looking into an issue that you can fix it immediately. More importantly, not every fix is a good fix. And when a fix does more damage than good, sometimes it's better to just deal with the bug until a better fix can be found. I do not believe in punishing the majority of legit players just to prevent a minority of cheaters/exploiters. Over the years, I've seen fixes (in various games, not just UO) that have done just that. But then, is doing nothing any better? Definitely not. That's when a temp fix, partial fix or at least some form of a deterrent is put in place until better tools to permanently fix those issues can be developed.

You'll ask but what about the bugs that really wouldn't take a whole lot of time to fix, that wouldn't create notable imbalances and that have been sitting around for years? Well, that's when you start looking at point 6: how many players are impacted by this issue. And unfortunately, the good of the many does outweigh the needs of the few. It's like going to the ER. You've been waiting for 10 hours, the whole time watching people that came long after you go right in long before you do. And you're like WTF?! You are no less important than the next guy. Your pain is no less real. Is it fair for you to suffer much longer than needed just because your injury isn't as critical? Absolutely not. But when push comes to shove, the critically wounded won't survive if made to wait, you will.

If given the choice to fix 10 bugs in 1 day that will benefit 85% of the player base, or fix 1 bug in the same amount of time that will benefit 20% of the player base, which would you take? Would knowing that these 20% have been waiting for a fix for 4 months longer than the 85% influence your decision? What about knowing that the fix for the 20% also has a risk of creating new issues that will impact a yet unknown percentage of the player base but likely in the 50%-70% range?

So in the greater scheme of things, there never is an easy answer. While logic dictates to put the brunt of your effort towards the majority, no one should be made to wait indefinitely. Just like the guy sitting in the ER, don't hate the patient who got rushed in while you're still waiting. The doctors may be fighting a losing battle giving him CPR. Yes, your fractured bone hurts and it sucks having to wait so darn long, but it's nothing a good cast isn't guaranteed to fix.

Playing God

2009-02-18T21:58:00.002-05:00

Or at least trying!! The whole team has been cranking up on Stygian Abyss. While my time is mainly taken up by Live Content and bug fixes, I've been contributing quite a bit to the expansion. Lately, it's all been about world building. Except, there's no resting for me on the 7th day because after 6 days, I'm far from being done!

Seriously, world building is the coolest thing ever. I always wanted to dabble into that. Granted, I did a bit of it when I was Level Designer, but it's not quite the same. Back then, I would design the layout, size, shape, main path... Now I get to do all that, but also get to dress it, make it organic and give it life. And man, is that ever time consuming! Any of you who have spent insane amounts of time customizing and decorating your UO house (or for non-UO players, if you have done it in games such as The Sims), try to imagine doing the same but for an entire city!

Why does the whole process take so much time? Well, first you need to decide what kind of environment we're building. In this case, we're on the Gargoyle City so the artists and designers had to come up with a look. I mean, if you were to walk into a Gargish civilization tomorrow morning, what would you expect their architecture to look like? How would that architecture be affected by the world they evolve in? When laying out the city, you have to factor in their type of society and the reality they live in. A nation in peril and under constant threat will likely build its cities like fortresses whereas societies accustomed to peace and abundance are more likely to be very spread out and maybe even nomadic.

Then comes the whole inner streets of the city itself. Government buildings should be easily accessible while fairly well protected. Markets should be laid out in a way to facilitate shopping while avoiding bottlenecks, regrouping similar trades, with the banks not too far away, with all of the above near main roads. How is the interaction between inhabitants affecting that layout (hierarchy, politics, religions...)? Are the roads wide enough? Are the buildings spacious enough? How annoying is it going from point A to point B? If I was living here or visiting this place for the first time, what would be a natural path for me to follow? Would I get hopelessly lost if I landed here tomorrow morning? Does the main path make sense or am I itching to rez-kill the architect?

But the worse part (yet also most fun) is decorating. Yeah, that building is sexy but it needs life. Problem is, it's one thing to decorate your own house, but decorating a world is a whole different ball game. It has to make sense for the target civilization. It must account for their customs, beliefs, politics and economics. But also for the fact that hundreds of players, their pets, spammers and spellcasters will be strutting their stuff alongside the NPCs that populate that world. So yeah, you could go all out making it pretty, but too pretty can also mean too laggy.

Until I started in this industry, I never really paid much attention to how buildings or cities were laid out. Well, except when something was clearly wrong with it or aggravated the heck out of me. If you walk into a castle and the prison is accessed through the king's closet, you would probably raise an eyebrow. You might actually be cussing up a storm because you spent 2 hours looking for the cells in the lower levels of the castle (as traditionally is the case) only to stumble on them by accident when exploring the higher levels while trying to complete a different task. But when a world/city is well planned, because things flow so well, you do not realize how much work was put into making it a seamless experience for you.

I'm not going to break any world building speed record but I sure am having a blast. So far, I've seen what I've made. I won't call it good (you be the judge of that!) but I think it's alright. Though as a wee bit of a disclaimer: once SA launches, if you ever fall through a hole in the floor and your character breaks a leg, don't throw stones at the world builders. It's probably my fault! :P

Benefits of Failure

2009-02-10T22:08:00.002-05:00

Odd title, right? But so accurate. And a shameless rip off of J.K. Rowling's Commencement Address at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. Tomas Bryce linked me this speech a while back and it's well worth watching. So much of what she said rang true for me, especially this part:

"...the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success..."

The average person's idea of success... That sums it all. I've always had good jobs and respectable pay, which equated to contentment. I wasn't miserable, far from it. But I wasn't happy. Without happiness, is there truly success? The lack of misery kept me to that routine. I sometimes questioned if this is what I was meant to be, but I had already begun my slow death: I was getting "comfortable". I had just bought my 2nd duplex and was already planning an early retirement. The houses would be paid off by the time I'm 50 and the rental income from all 4 apartments, minus maintenance costs, would have me living comfortably. Great plan until disaster struck.

Out of pure stupidity, I had bought that second house without proper inspection, because I "trusted" the owner/seller who had also sold me the first house a few years before. I ended up with major emergency repairs to pay for. To make matters worse, a tenant in each of the duplex decided they weren't going to pay their rent anymore. With the Quebec Rental Board being extremely protective of tenants, it took nearly 5 months before I was rid of the first tenant, and 6 for the 2nd. Aside from that huge income loss from those 2 unpaid rents for half a year, I also had even more repairs to do in the 2nd tenant's apartment. He completely wrecked it then fled the premises a week before the judge finally granted me the eviction warrant. It was 1 week before Christmas.

Icing on the cake? I was working as a soundwoman in movie dubbing at the time. The industry entered a downward phase. Since we were unionized, layoffs were based on seniority. With only 2 guys hired after me, I was the third to go. Nobody moves in the winter in Montreal. So it was a few more months before I could find new tenants. By then, I was this close to losing both my houses.

It was a long uphill battle, but one I was determined to win. Movie dubbing was picking up again. The studio called me back but it wasn't the same. I already knew then that this wasn't it. I left them not too many months later for a better paying job. One day, looking for a 2nd part-time job to help get back to the "comfort" zone I once had, I stumbled on a job opening as QA Tester for Ubisoft. The schedule didn't fit mine but it got me browsing their site. And that is how I discovered they had just opened a campus in Montreal. The enrollment period for next year's students was ending in 2 or 3 weeks.

At the time, my head really wasn't into putting together a portfolio, but I knew I had to. Thank God for the events I had organized as a player in UO or I wouldn't have known what to send them to try to convince them I had "the right stuff" to be a designer. It was many months before classes started but the timing was perfect, just when I got my finances back under control.

What I got from this ordeal is: 1) it's ok to fail as long as your learn from it (namely don't ever trust a Realtor, spend that extra $500-$1000 and get a proper inspection!); 2) don't let failure defeat you but rather consider it as an opportunity to reassess yourself, your goals and explore ways to reach them. If not for all that mess, I probably would have remained in movie dubbing for a long time, and never truly been happy; 3)Never give up. I never lost hope (though I confess it wavered a lot) and it paid off as didn't lose my houses. Last but not least, 4) it was the trigger that sent me on the path to achieve the dream I had as a little girl of becoming a designer. If not for this, who knows how many more years may have passed before I realized there was finally a game design program in Montreal? By then, I might have considered myself too old to go back to school. God knows I wasn't the youngest at the campus! Yet if not for graduating from the program and working in the field in Montreal, I never would have qualified for the immigration requirements to work in the US.

Pain can sometimes be a much needed wake up call and a blessing in disguise.

Survivor's Guilt

2009-02-06T20:30:00.003-05:00

This week was a pretty darn rough one. As someone was very quick to post on Stratics, we've just been through a substantial round of layoffs. Not just at the Mythic studio, but throughout EA. It's one thing when you hear the statistics, see some random dude bawling his eyes out on the news after getting laid off, but when it happens right in front of you to people you know and care about, it's a whole different ball game.

There's a number of things that go through your mind while what feels almost like apocalypse comes crashing down. At first, it's the panic: OMG, what will I do if it's me? Where will I go? How will I meet my obligations? Then it's the denial/rationalization: nah, it won't be me because (insert reason here)... Then the ugly finger pointing: if any one needs to be let go, it should be (insert name here) because (insert argument here). And then the list of casualties starts popping out, and each time you see one of the bosses walking towards you, your heart skips a beat and you pray that they will keep walking. Please let it be someone else... And when it turns out to be someone else, you struggle with relief, sorrow, sympathy and guilt.

When all has been said and done, the victims aren't just the ones who got laid off. The ones left behind are too, especially in a more family-type studio where a lot of people have been together for years and many actually are married couples or relatives/siblings. Not only did many of use lose long time friends but a lot of us also feel guilty that we were "spared" because we have less obligations, don't have families to support, don't have as much seniority, etc.

But life goes on. You resume your daily routine but the absence of those who left is felt even more strongly. It's not just the loss of the camaraderie, but also their contribution, that extra weight they used to carry that you now have to shoulder. All those things you always took for granted and now you're like errr... And it gives you a renewed appreciation for them. Too bad it's when they're gone.

I take the party to count my blessings. I still have a job I love, with an amazing team. I've seen how devastated our leaders were going through this painful process and how determined they are to make sure this doesn't happen again. A lot of studios shutdown but we weathered that storm. Way I see it, it's up to us to make sure our buddies will a home to come back to when the sky clears in a hopefully not too distant future.

Stupidity

2009-02-02T08:02:00.004-05:00

I had to write this little rant because frankly, I don't get some people. With the current state of the US economy, you'd think people would have learned not to repeat one of the mistakes that led to the situation we're in, but nuh uh!

So I've been looking for a new crib because Fairfax is everything but cheap when it comes to housing. Before I moved to the US, I had to check out apartments online and only had 1 day in VA to visit them. I ended up taking the one that was the cleanest and the closest to work. That translated in a hefty $1600/m nothing included which was a little over 3x what I was paying in Montreal. Add to this another $200 for utilities, cable/internet, that made me cry every month :P

Almost a year later, I'm looking for something more reasonably priced for a single person and was even considering a roomy. So I see this ad about a fancy pants mansion where the lady wanted to lease a room or private suite to a single person with prices ranging from $800-$1100 everything included. So even with the suite, I'd still be saving $700 a month which is nothing to sneeze at.

I go check out the place. The house is honestly badass. Beautiful hardwood floor on the first floor. The kitchen & dining room area alone are as big as the entire condo I currently live in. Six bedrooms, wine cellar, wine tasting room, at least 3 fireplaces, the works! Except turns out her so-called suite is a set of 2 bedrooms and the prices have jumped from $800-$1100 to $1200-$1600. She also omitted to mention that she was planning on renting 4 of the 6 bedrooms in sets of 2, the 5th bedroom individually, keep the 6th one for herself, the wine cellar , the wine tasting room and the basement living area each as 3 individual room. So altogether, there would be 7 roommates sharing the house.

I'm like wtf?! So me, miss reluctant to have a roomy to now be living with 6 strangers? errrrr....

At that point, I already know this isn't for me, but the lady (who happens to be very charming btw), is very talkative and gives me and Sue (another lady who was visiting the place at the same time I was) a full spiel about the situation. So this $1.x million dollar mansion was for sale. She just bought it and is signing tomorrow. But since she can't afford it on her own, she's trying fill it up with tenants to cover the mortgage, taxes, insurance and utilities. She also doesn't quite have the down payment so she needs us to commit today, sign the papers and give the security deposit so she can have everything on hand the next day when she meets with the other folks for the closing.

I'm just speechless and trying not to slap her unconscious to try to knock some sense into her. She even had the nerve to complain that the lenders would not allow her to rent all 6 rooms individually or she would have had 9 people altogether (including herself) and made more money to cover her expenses. After I left, I went to check another place. By the time I got home, she had called my place 3 times in 1 hour and sent me 2 emails to see if I was ready to commit and remind me that she needed the deposit right away.

Now I don't begrudge the woman trying to get some help meeting her obligations by renting out part of her house. Everyone is doing it these days in Fairfax. But let's be real. Why the hell would you try to buy a house you KNOW you can't afford on your own? Why put yourself at the mercy of total strangers who can walk out on you any day and default on payment every other month? Tenants don't give a hoot if you lose your house. Why set yourself up for failure? Doing such an investment with family or long time trusted friends is one thing, but this is sheer stupidity.

I initially planned on buying too instead of renting a new place. Seen many I can afford, my favorite though would require me to stretch myself a little thin. But in the current economy, I made the choice to wait few more months, lower my expenses (especially rent) and build myself a safety net. Maybe I'm being too careful, but I don't care as long as I'm not yet another statistics.

The Name Game

2009-01-25T17:57:00.002-05:00

When Publish 57 notes came out, I got a few flames over the names of some of the new stealable items. Which frankly I accept because to be honest, I wasn't fond of some of the names either. So why didn't I change them? Well, I couldn't come up with something better. Yup, it's that simple!

Naming things or characters is probably one of the worse design challenges for me. First of all, I will think about a totally cool name in French but that sounds unbelievably cheesy in English. I also like the names to actually mean something and be relevant to the item/character they will be attached to. This translates as a lot of time spent searching name databases or trying to make up names that sound badass.

What actually got me posting this was watching our new flock of EMs going through the pain of trying to name their EM and RP characters. Some of them were ICQing me, banging their heads on the wall saying how they had spent hours/days just trying to come up with "the right name". And I could totally relate to that pain because every time I write a new quest or create a new item/reward, I go through that same headache.

Added to this is the fact that many players have a Ph D in nitpicking and will eat you alive for naming things the wrong way. I wish I could remember the details of a case a few years back where a certain resource used for crafting was the source of major flaming. Turns out the Dev had named it the wrong part of whatever the resource came from and players gave him hell saying this is not what is used to make this. This other part is! I thought it was silly to fuss over that, but that stayed in the back of my head.

While I don't believe in allowing ourselves to be bullied into basing content on fear of flames, I do believe that gaming can have educational value. People memorize the names of their "cool" items in game and it's well worth putting a little extra effort in appropriately naming stuff.

And so when I added the resource to the cocoa tree, I ended up spending quite a bit of time reading up on chocolate fabrication and cocoa trees to find an appropriate name for the resource and what it would look like. Same for the appearance of the tree itself. Ditto with the spider webs from the Halloween event. I didn't want to just plop a web deed as loot, that seemed a little lame. But paying a visit to my best friend wikipedia, I learned about gossamer and spinnerets and the rest is history.

Sometimes though, the names have hidden meanings, are meant to give people a smirk or are little winks winks. In UO, you will from time to time run into known characters such as the famous Barton who became legendary thanks to a very bratty Atlantic player. Many of you also ran into slimes named "a j wilson" after a game critic that had given UO bad reviews. Some are a bit more subtle, such as the Warren, the upset ghost (specter) of Ultima Underworld (Stygian Abyss) which was a wink wink to producer Warren Spector.

The problem is how much time spent picking names is justifiable? If you're half as picky as I am, an hour can have gone by and you're still nowhere near having found a suitable name, especially for characters. I shudder at the thought of ever trying to come up with a name for a baby! So sometime, when you see a lame name in any game, know that there are 3 probable reasons: a) the author has bad taste, b) the author gave up trying to come up with something l337, c) you have bad taste :P

Comments

2009-01-18T12:30:00.003-05:00

When programming, one of the things teachers always tell their students is the importance of commenting what you are doing. Some people would get utterly pissed for losing points for not commenting enough a script that was otherwise perfectly functional. As I only had a few scripting classes as part of the game design curriculum, I didn't realized the importance of those couple lines until now.

Designing in UO is very different than other games I've been on. Here we're jacks of all trades. We do world building, designing, decorating, storytelling and a heck of a lot of scripting. In fact close to 3/4 of our work is writing code. Problem is, this isn't like a console game where you normally have the engineers assigned to handle all the coding on specific levels and where once the game ships, that's it nobody messes with the code anymore (aside from a possible patch or two). In a MMO, and especially UO, it's not because you worked on this code today that someone else won't be using it next week or in 5 months from now. And as new content gets added or modified, properly commenting scripts takes a whole new meaning.

Ten months ago (dang has it really been that long?!) when I started on the UO team, I didn't have a whole lot of scripting experience. So this has definitely been quite a learning process. As such, I relied heavily on the work of my predecessors not only as inspiration but also as an educational tool. It's not just about how they did it, but often why they did it this way instead of that way.

What would really make me cry is opening a script with 1500 lines of code, not a single comment, funky variable names that mean nothing and function names that are even more meaningless. I will have to leave my opinion about naming conventions to another post, because I have quite a bit to say about that!

Luckily for me, there were also quite a few scripts that were little gems of comments. "This function does this". "I've handled it this way instead of that way (which would have seemingly been the logical way) because (insert reason here)". Or simple things like "this script is being attached to (...) by (...) and does (...)". And "I'm returning an integer instead of the object because (...)" or "I've added this block here to deal with an exploit where players (...)". Yes, this last part I've seen in plenty of scripts!!!

You cannot begin to imagine how invaluable those little comments are even for yourself. I go back on some of the earlier scripts I wrote and if not for my own comments I would be asking myself why the heck I did it this way. It saves so much time to not just sit there trying to figure out the logic. It can also spare others the pain you went through trying to figure out how something works next time around. By this I mean you tried to get something to work for days/weeks and finally realized that passing this type of variable will not work because the value is actually assigned elsewhere and totally bypasses what you are doing. Adding a one-liner comment saying: "note that this variable is handled by included script/function (insert name here)" will make you very popular with the next person to fiddle in this script.

On a side note, while you should always be professional in the comments you write in your scripts, some humor in good taste is never a bad idea. I like stumbling on the random comment that will make me smile, smirk or flat out lol. Speedman had a cute one that was more of a John Steinbeck wink, wink in the mace and shield glasses script where the first comment line read "Of Mace and Men". In one the Champ Spawn scripts, rather than giving one of the functions a bland "choose random players to give the scroll to", the comment was along the lines of "now the fun of picking some lucky dogs". In one of the buff scripts, the function where the buff was actually given to the player had "Beef me up, Scotty!" as a comment. Another that made me giggle (because I have a really silly sense of humor) was the "Ph4t L3wT, gImM3!gImM3!" comment where the reward was being generated on a boss monster.

In short, you should always comment your work. It shouldn't be a novel. One or two lines is usually more than plenty for a block of code. But it will do wonders for you and the people who will need to go into stuff you've done, especially if you had to handle something in a non-traditional way. The occasional smart humor is plus. Just remember that moderation is always in good taste!

Troubled Waters

2009-01-12T22:21:00.008-05:00

I was having a heated debate with a friend of mine regarding the quality (or lack thereof) of recently released MMOs, upcoming ones, expected expansions and so on. It was interesting seeing how our opinions differ now that I'm on the inside compared to how similar they were when I was on the outside.

The fact is a number of new MMOs have failed despite a strong start and a lot of hype. Some expansions failed to deliver on revenues and player retention while other games have postponed themselves into oblivion. You have to ask yourself why do we always seem to miss our deadlines? Why do we cut corners or deliver stuff (too often) sub par or not to the level of reasonable expectations? Is it bad management? Incompetence? Cluelessness? Carelessness? Some dumb suit/corporate noob making decisions on stuff he doesn't know jack about?

Sometimes, it is indeed a bit of a mix of all of the above. But in truth, most of the time it's just that shit happens. Every time you think you've got a smooth sail ahead, you end up running into a freaking iceberg. If you're lucky, the iceberg just grazed your ship and with some paint you cover the scratches and you're as good as new. But often times, you hit it head on and next thing you know, you're taking water from every side. Fight hard as you may, sometimes there's just not enough escape boats. That's when you hear of games closing and projects being canceled. There was just no saving it. It was taking too much water and you have to make the decision: do we cut our losses and save who/what we can, or do we all go down with the ship?

Some other times, the ship doesn't sink despite a mighty blow. The crew will work around the clock, pull every trick imaginable, do whatever it takes to see that it reaches the shore. It will be banged up, battered and look like crap, but it will have made it. Was it worth saving though? What's the point of a cruise ship that no one will set foot on? I mean, you could take another year and pull the whole fixer upper but are there any funds left to do that? How about the crew? After weathering such a bad storm, a few people will think twice about setting another foot on that deck. And if despite all that you manage to pull through, there is the real possibility that by the time you're finally ready to launch, your potential customers will say "bah, the whole cruise ship deal is so last year!" Too bad you were wallowing neck deep in troubled waters then.

There are never any certainties in game development. Sometimes things simply go your way. You've got wind in your sails and everything is a joy ride. Other times, it's just one squall after the other. As a "sailor" myself, I can empathize with crews who have seen their own ships go down or are struggling to keep it afloat. I know how much blood, sweat and tears gets poured into it.

Whenever you start a journey, you can never know how far it will take you. The (must see!!) miniseries From the Earth to the Moon is a fine example of what game development can be like. Obviously, the series isn't about video games, but it shows how many unexpected hurdles you need to overcome during development process. How even the tiniest mathematical error can cause major setbacks. And that at times, only a near catastrophe can give you that much needed second wind.

I'm blessed to be part of an amazing crew, with a captain I respect and a ship I love. She has withstood her fair share of storms and God only how many more await us ahead. But I have good faith that she and we will take each other home safely.

Home, Sweet Home

2008-12-26T13:35:00.047-05:00

Or should I say "Snow, Sweet Snow" ? I've been in the US for a little over 8 months now, the longest I've ever been away from home. I knew I was homesick, I just hadn't realized how badly until I got to the Dulles Airport in DC and heard some of my fellow Quebecers speaking French while waiting for boarding. That gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling. But I got griefed a couple times on my way home...

It started great with Mesanna and her hubby Michael dropping my Canuck toosh at the airport. So I strut my stuff to the check in counter to have the agent tell me it's going to cost me an extra $100 for my 3rd bag. I'm like wtf? I originally packed 2 bags but Mom warned me the previous night to bring boots and coats because they were getting pummeled with snow and cold weather. My winter coat being Siberian weather proof is quite large and heavy. The coat and boots took a whole 3rd bag on their own. I give the agent my debit card, mumbling the whole time through. Then I go "Hey!! Wouldn't that qualify as a hand bag? It's not too big is it?" He looked at the (fairly big) duffel bag that contained my coat and boots and says "Yeah, that could be considered hand bag." I "yoinked" my debit card back with a big fat grin for saving that bit of cash. He told me that if I had been travelling beyond Montreal with a 3rd bag, Air Canada would have charged me $240 extra! You can be sure next time I'll make sure to verify how many bags I'm allowed!

So after a very annoying and insanely long wait in line to get searched, scanned and w/e the heck it is that they do, I finally get to my gate and start reading Shaman's Crossing while waiting for my flight. I had been meaning to read that trilogy forever but never seemed to have time anymore. I could hardly concentrate because I was getting all fuzzy listening to other Quebecers waiting. But that fuzzy feeling got crushed within seconds as I realized they were all talking about their flights being cancelled because of bad snow storms. Then listening to the anglophones (not sure if they were Americans or English Canadians), their flights too were cancelled. The incredibly long line of people I had seen standing on my way in weren't people lining up to board. They were waiting for customer service, hoping to find a new flight home. Thankfully, my moment of panic was short lived as my own flight was one of the few that had been spared. It was only delayed by an hour!

When the plane was flying over the Dorval Airport in Montreal, I could see the straight lines of lights outlining the streets and the white blanket of snow that covered the ground as far as the eye could see. I got all misty and felt my throat tighten. I never thought I could be such a girly girl. The flight attendant warned us that it was snowy, slippery and cold (-16 C) outside so to be careful. I was curious to see how I would react to the snow and cold not having been eased into it this year as barely 2 hours ago I was enjoying +12 C in Washington DC. Turns out you don't shed out of your system 30+ years of good old Canadian cold that easily. Not only did the cold not bother me, it actually made me all giddy. I loved the sounds of the snow crunching under each step and how my feet just naturally knew where to land to best avoid the slippery ice.

The one thing I didn't remember fondly is on our way home, some of the areas were still burried in snow, the roads a pain to travel through. I've been here a week and every other day we've had over a foot of snow fall, which in fact translates as 2-3 feet of snow to shovel. I would have been miserable without a white Christmas but I could have done without the shovelling :/

But aside from the pains of winter, it was great seeing again such things as a tot being pulled on his sleight by his mom on the sidewalk, our beautiful snow covered parks and just the general beauty of our old stone and brick buildings, which there seems to be so few of in Virginia.

I'm also sad I will be missing all the cool festivals that will be taking place over the next couple of months in Montreal and Quebec City. I was always a big fan of the Ice and Snow sculpting which can be seen at the Fêtes de Neiges of Montreal and the Quebec Winter Carnival. Montreal in Lights is another beautiful event where they play with lights and snow and ice to give the city an eery look at night.

In one week, I'll be returning (home?) to VA. It's weird how you can quickly become lost in where's home. On my way here, while filling the declaration form, my instinctive reaction was to write my Montreal address. But that no longer is my permanent address. I did my Christmas shopping in Montreal to avoid the tax headaches at Customs, and every time I showed my Bank of America card to pay, the cashiers would automatically switch to (often broken) English. And even though I would keep speaking French to them, they stuck to English. They assumed I was American and took pride in serving their customers in their native tongue. Trouble is, I was starved for French but didn't have the heart to tell them to speak to me in French or they might take it as a rebuke of their language skills and I wasn't going to go in a story of my life to explain how it came to be that I pay in US dollars.

Part of me is looking forward to be back in my own things and (in a sick kind of way) to be back to work. They always said it takes a sucker for punishment to go into game design, I guess I fit the profile! But part of me feels like I've finally come home from a long trip and the thought of leaving again and especially parting from my family, knowing it will be many more months before I see them again really sucks.

For now, I won't dwell on it. I'm off to Mount Royal to do some skating. With luck, I'll get to do some skiing too, some snow angels and maybe even get away with ganking my brothers with snow balls!

Accountability

2008-12-17T23:20:00.002-05:00

This is inspired by a post made by a player who deleted his Companion character after a friend threatened to page on him for attempting to sell it. I'm obviously not going to discuss the details of this specific case, but I would like to share my thoughts with you about these kind of situations.

Case 1:

Imagine you are friends with a former Counselor, Companion or Seer that somehow managed to maintain his powers after the program was terminated. One day, you find out he's trying to sell his account hoping to make a bigger profit due to said powers. What do you do? Do you try to convince him to have his powers removed first? If he refuses, do you threaten to page on him if he doesn't? Do you page on him anonymously? Do you let him make his money then page on the buyer? Do you stay out of it altogether? If you do nothing and the buyer ends up abusing those powers in a way extremely harmful, would you feel any guilt? If/when an investigation is performed and punishment is handed down, if your name comes up should you also be held accountable because you knew and didn't prevent it? Or should you be absolved on the basis that you didn't benefit from it?

Case 2:

A while back, an entire guild was banned, including all linked accounts, for duping an exploiting. Admittedly, not every member in the guild took part in the illegal activities but all of them were fully aware of what was going on. If you were invited to join such a guild, would you? If you joined but neither helped duping nor helped stopping it, was it fair you got banned too? If you broke no rules but just allowed your friends to do so, does that make you accountable? Should you only be accountable if you actively took part in the illegal activity? What if you didn't take part but knowingly accepted gifts of duped items and gold? Would that make you more accountable? What if you didn't accept any actual items but enjoyed the benefits of illegal programs such as scripted ghost cams? When you hear the impact on the victims of your guild's activities, do you feel any guilt?

Thoughts:

To me, this isn't so much a matter of right or wrong as much as a question of choices and consequences. For every situation, there are 3 choices: 1) avoid it, 2) ignore it or 3) act on it. Avoiding is often the simplest and safest solution. If you do not put yourself in a difficult position, you will not have difficult choices to make. Ignoring is the deceptive one, because as proven by history pretending not to see what is happening does not necessarily shelter you from the fall out. Acting on it can be both the toughest and the easiest. The wise will carefully weight the pros and cons of his decision: "I will stop this because... and I accept the consequences." or "I will take part because... and I accept the consequence." The wreckless will act first and think of consequences later.

You are the master of your own destiny. You make your own choices and you will have to deal with the consequences. If maintaining certain friendships require you to betray your values, you might want to reconsider those relationships. That includes the "if you were my friend..." guilt trips. Take responsibility for your own choices.

The holidays are upon us. It's a merry time, but all too often also a tragic time because of DUI. Will you avoid it by not going out? Will you ignore the people who are clearly drunk and driving, hoping they will make it home safely? Will you act by taking away their keys or by being the drunk trying to drive?

It's all about choices...

Please have a safe and happy holidays.

The Highway

2008-12-08T23:47:00.003-05:00

Democratic societies always pride themselves in the fact that the people have the freedom to choose what they will be, who will lead them and which direction their community should evolve in. They essentially promote the right of the individual to be happy, to be prosper, to simply be... And then we enter a virtual world and all of a sudden, everyone becomes a dictator. Anything that isn't going my way needs to be removed. Why?

The Felucca vs Trammel saga is without a doubt the one with the most visibility, but it's hardly the only one in the "my way" category. Every time new content is added or a subgroup of the community voices its displeasure with the state of things, someone will come up and say "who cares? your class/profession/facet shouldn't exist anyways. You guys suck!"

And this isn't even just the random flamer. A lot of people genuinely feel that if they and their friends do not actively take part in certain activities or mini-games, those are a waste of resources. Some people feel that people who take part in mini-games such as gardening, cooking, house decorating, raising fishes in their aquariums or even using the checkers/mahjong game boards in UO are silly, wasting their time and completely missing the point of UO.

Says who?

What is the "proper way" of playing UO or any other game for that matter? Bashing on monsters 24/7? Killing every player on sight? Strip mining every vein in the land? Role-playing your little heart out? Out-talking every banksitter in Sosaria? In my book, as long as they are having fun, aren't ruining the game for others and aren't breaking the ToS, then they ARE playing the right way "for them".

The fact that you do not enjoy or agree with a certain playstyle shouldn't justify you trying to destroy it. The fact that development time is given to a subgroup you do not care for doesn't mean you should feel cheated it wasn't devoted to yours instead. Every cell and subgroup of the community needs its share of love or it will wither and die. The assumption that by killing a facet or playstyle will get people to migrate to yours is flawed. Cutting your leg off isn't going to cause for a 2nd head or a 3rd arm to grow, it will simply make you crippled. A healthy body is one where every organ and limb is equally well taken care of.

It's not because I love meat that I'm going to try to coherce vegans into being like me. Live and let live. The richness of a community comes from its diversity and the respect of our differences.

Wishing Well

2008-11-28T16:51:00.003-05:00

Memories usually seem to consist of our best and worse times. The bad memories, no matter how hard we try to forget about them, they just seem to have a way of crawling back up to the surface. The danger with those is allowing them to dictate the choices we make in the future for fear of a repeat, making us sometimes miss out on great opportunities. On the flip side, good memories are the ones we like to revisit. But just like bad memories, they can be dangerous. When we dwell too much on the past, we fail to appreciate the present for what it is and constantly compare anything we get to what once was. So the question you have to ask yourself is was the past really all that great?

There are a number of things that make something great, often a combination of the right elements at the right time. But put that same something in a different setting or at a different time, and it may very well turn out not to be so great after all.

As a child, there was this great big park a block away from my house where I used to play with my brothers. It was huge! And there was this great river running through it surrounded by swings and slides and all sorts of fun things for children to play with. My brothers would tease me all the time, threatening to throw me in the river. The river was so wide and so deep, surely I would have drowned!

I was about 6 yo when we moved from that house. In my early 20s, I was driving by the area and decided to do a little detour by the park I so fondly remembered. When I got there, at first I thought I was at the wrong place. You see, the huge park that I remembered was really a small park on the corner of the street. The great big river was a small pond that ran through it. It was barely a meter wide and maybe 2 feet deep. There were 2 slides, a sand square, 2 sets of swings and a couple benches.

I was sad and disappointed to see it with my grown up eyes. As a child, it had been a great almost mythical place. As an adult, it was just small, bland and dated. I wish I had not gone back. I wish I would have just kept the wonderful memory of it and not today's reality of it.

People often say "I wish we could go back to when..." thinking they would be happier if they did. This is especially true in UO. Like many players, I wasn't happy with AoS and I had mixed feelings about Renaissance. But would I really be happier on a pre-AoS, pre-Pub 16 or pre-Renaissance shard? On some fronts yes, on others hell no! Globally? I don't know.

The old days were great, no question about that. But it wasn't just the game mechanics that made it great. It was mostly the people, the different mentality, the different era. Times change, people change and expectations change. It took me months pre-Power Hour to GM Mining, and that was with me mining every night for hours non-stop. I won't even talk about how long it took for smithing and lockpicking. I loved the difficulty then, but I would hate to go through that today. I was never fond of having to use reagents to cast spells. I cannot bear the thought of going back to no LRC. But I miss the Seers and Counselors, the slew of player run towns and RPers galore of old. More importantly, I miss the people who have now moved on to other things.

Bottomline, you shouldn't live in the past. It's ok to learn from the mistakes of the past and take some of the good from it, but not dwell on it. You HAVE to look to the future and you have to evolve into something else, and hopefully something better. If you wish for the past long and hard enough, you may just get it. But once you do, you will likely realize it really wasn't what you thought it would be and all you will have accomplished is tarnish and maybe even shatter the fond memory you once had.

Recipes

2008-11-17T21:00:00.003-05:00

Ever noticed how every time a new game comes out, a new feature gets added or a new expansion is released, people always go "OMG, they just copied/ripped this off of (insert copied game here)!!" ? I know I've done it a few times myself but recent events made me rethink the matter.

Every time we do a new publish, some players always find a way to look at the Clilocs to get some spoilers as to what is upcoming. Sometimes, what they see is indeed new content, but sometimes they just see work in progress or internal stuff that will never get in the game. In that specific instance, they saw a new reward I was working on for a future publish. Someone made a comment on the board about it being a rip from World of Warcraft. My initial reaction was "huh?!" but after further thought, I could see how that player would think that.

But while WoW indeed has something similar, this reward was simply a beefed up version of a UO item that existed long before anyone ever heard of WoW. The change is essentially increasing its duration and the buff it provides, making it useful again. So why did the player consider it a WoW rip off? Because the current UO version didn't keep up with the evolution of the game and is obsolete at the moment (hence the revamp it's getting). The majority of UO players isn't even aware it exists while the WoW version is a commonly used item. You could almost say WoW made that type of item popular.

So would it be fair to say that WoW copied its version from UO? Maybe, maybe not. I would lean towards probably not. In truth, how do you determine who rips off of who? Who had the original idea of whatever?

Most games could be called a rip off of an older game. What RPG didn't steal something from D&D? What FPS didn't take from Doom or Duke Nukem? What sand box didn't copy from GTA? Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Does it even matter? A perfectly roasted chicken is just as good as a nice omelet. I wouldn't put chicken in my bowl of cereals, but I wouldn't make a cake without eggs.

There are only so many ingredients to go around. And any way you cut it, there will always be flour and eggs in a cake. Regardless of the amount or type of flour, you will put some in. Whether you put icing on the cake or not, is up to the cook. Replacing the cherries by strawberries in a black forest cake doesn't make it a strawberry shortcake. But you have to ask yourself if the strawberries really belong there or are they just going to go by unnoticed, buried by the overwhelming flavors of the other ingredients.

In the end, the ingredient itself doesn't matter as much as what it's being used for and where. As long as it makes sense, tastes good and doesn't transform your cake into something it wasn't meant to be, then go for it.

Thine Medicine...

2008-11-01T01:25:00.002-04:00

When I interviewed to enter the design program at the Ubisoft Campus, one of the interviewers asked me what, in my opinion, makes a good designer. And I remember the first thing I said was that the designer must play his own game. That obviously wasn't the only criteria, but to me, that's always been one of the, if not THE most important factors.

You shouldn't only play your own game because other games significantly broadens your horizons. But not playing your own game not only disconnects you from the game itself, but from the community as well. MMOs have a way of taking a life of their own because so many minds, so many playstyles come together and lead it in a path very often unexpected. But beyond that, what looks good on paper, what seems cool on your stand alone, what's pretty darn easy when you're running around in God mode (and even when you turn it off), is often a whole different story on a live server.

Reading comments from players is nothing like experimenting it yourself. Sometimes, you see players complaining about the way this or that was implemented and your initial reaction is to debate whether to pull out a violin or hand them a box of tissues. You go try it out with a regular account and go "yup, forget the tissues, let's send them some cheese and maybe even crackers" if you're in a generous mood. But other times, you try it and go holy cow!! Too many mobs, not enough mobs, mobs too hard, mobs ridiculously easy, drop rate insanely high, drop rate infuriatingly low, grief potential galore, etc.

There is nothing more revealing than walking into someone else's shoes even if only for a short while. That frustration, you lived it first hand. You understand it. I got pissed off (I mean cussing up a storm pissed off!!) fighting one of my own creations. And I thought to myself: "hey stupid, guess what you will do better next time?" And the thing is, what frustrated me the most isn't even what players have complained about on the forums. But in game, I experimented it first hand and witnessed players being aggravated as well. And if not for that, I never would have known the flaws of that design.

And that is the most invaluable information that no forum, book, article, poll or fancy pants theory can ever give you. You have to be there on the field and take that experience into consideration on your next project. It won't necessarily make you a good designer, but it sure as hell will help you at least be a better one.

The Rift

2008-10-26T13:25:00.003-04:00

Now that we've survived the madness of Publish 56, I'm back to ramble some more. Except this time it will definitely qualify as a rant because this past few weeks have just made this issue all the more obvious, at least for me.

We often hear or talk about how people change once they get a promotion, become famous, become rich or end up in a position of power. We also often smirk at artists who say "I'm still the same person that grew up in the projects! I'm still real!" as they fire their maid for folding their hand towel to the left instead of to the right. But while there is no question that success (in whatever form it may come) sometimes gets to the head of whoever achieved it, it is often the friends and close circle of people who are negatively changed the most by it.

You win the lottery, everyone suddenly expects you to constantly shower them with lavish presents or pick up the tab every single time you go out. And it better not be in that old run down diner you guys have been going to every Friday night like clockwork for the past 10 years. You're rich now, so it better be some fancy pants place or you're a Scrooge. To hell with tradition, to hell with the fact that the good old simplicity and casual routine was what you looked forward to every week and what kept you grounded. They want to live the lavish life through you, and as a good friend you should indulge them, no matter what the cost to you.

You got your big break in Hollywood?! Now everyone and their brother knows that if you are any kind of a real friend, you will somehow get them a small part in your next blockbuster movie. What do you mean you can't get them front row tickets to the Oscars? Did you really try hard enough? And how come you're always so darn busy all the time now? Your friends not good enough for you anymore? Who cares that you have been on set for 12 hours straight and that when you get home you have to learn your lines for next day's shoot?

So you landed a cool job at the White House. Stop making such a big deal about the NDA. Friends don't keep secrets from each other. Like you really risk losing your job if you divulge certain things or behave a certain way... You're just on a power trip, aren't you? It's just a lame excuse not to hang out or share info. Just like you're too important now to discuss the healthcare crisis with them, or any other crisis for that matter. And lets not start with the selfish BS about you having brainstormed all day about said crises and when you come home from work, the last thing you want or need is more brainstorming about it. If every single one of your friends want to contact you one after the other, or simultaneously, be it occasionally or every day to express their views about the state of the economy or vent their frustration about the shortcomings of the government you're working for, you should make yourself available and cater to their needs. (dang that was a long sentence!) And why would you take offense when your friends trash talk the government you work for, your colleagues or the project you're on? It's just a job right? You don't have to take any pride in it... And what kind of a friend doesn't help a friend in need? Ok fine, you don't work for Immigration, but it's still government stuff and you work for the government. Surely you can fix your friend's passport issues...

So my point...

I genuinely believe I'm still the same silly girl with the same silly sense of humor. But over the past 6 months, the number of people I've stopped talking to altogether or that I've distanced myself from (or have distanced themselves from me!) has grown exponentially. The past couple of weeks, a few more were added to the "I cannot be bothered with anymore" list.

My time off is no less sacred than yours. My new job didn't make me your punching bag or a commodity to facilitate you getting what you want. I do not come home from a long day's work just so I can get an earful about how you think all that we're doing sucks. There are forums for that. My R&R time isn't it. I'm not customer service, so even if you cry me a river about your in-game assistance needs, I will tell you "I cannot help you with this" so just page a GM. I have nothing to do with accounts or billing so if you managed to get banned, sucks to be you cuz I'm not bailing you out (not that I could anyways). As I didn't get injected with a superdose of uber knowledge when I got the job, I cannot enlighten you about server side issues because I'm a designer, not an engineer. And since I'm not tech support either, I also cannot tell you why running Vista on your specific machine seems to be causing issues with UOA. In fact, had you seen me struggling to install my new video card on my PC, you wouldn't ask me any tech support advice. And that question you messaged me 20 times about over the last 4 days? You would have gotten the answer in 2 seconds had you Googled it.

To me, a buddy or friend is someone whose companionship and conversations I enjoy. Someone I get to relax and do cool stuff with. And in rougher times, someone who will support me and who I will support in return when needed. The same way they say don't bring your work at home, leave your friends' job out of your relationship. The person who changes the most often isn't the one we think.

Pulling Hair

2008-10-02T21:51:00.004-04:00

Two or three years ago, I had one of my most aggravating summers over the griefiest, stupidest thing ever. I came home from work on a very hot summer day, and the minute I opened the door, I was slapped by the most horrendous stench. So I covered my nose thinking "omg, what the heck?!" as I headed straight for the kitchen. That had a very distinctive smell of rotting meat and I figured I had probably forgotten something on the kitchen counter and the extreme heat did a number on it.

Trouble is, get in the kitchen, nothing suspicious in sight. At that point, I'm almost gagging, so I open all the windows and all the doors to let some fresh air inside. Then I methodically search every nook and cranny in the kitchen. I open every cupboard, the fridge, the oven, move both of the latter to make sure nothing fell behind them. Nothing...

The smell clearly seems the strongest around the fridge but despite my best effort, I find nothing. I look through every other room to no avail then back to the kitchen for a 2nd thorough search but nada. At that point I figure maybe it's something from the pipes, but it's too late to call a plumber. He drops by the next day, takes a whiff and goes "nope, that doesn't come from the pipes". There is something decomposing somewhere. But knowing I've checked everywhere, and since I'm gonna pay him anyways, I ask him to have a look through the drains and everything just in case. He does and as he predicted, nothing.

A couple more days of this, including a cancelled dinner because I am just too embarassed to have friends over under these conditions, I suddenly think of checking the dryer's air vent. I remember my mom used to have issues with birds nesting in hers and thought maybe one died in mine or something similar. But nope. This nightmare went on for a few weeks then the smell just faded away on its own, and one day it was gone. While I was happy, I was also really upset and concerned that I never found it because it could very likely resurface at some point in time.

About a month later, the light bulb near the sink area in the kitchen went out. Having a cathedral ceiling, I had to get a small ladder to reach it. So after I removed the ceiling light fixture, I turned to put it on top of the fridge and noticed a small white tray with something dark on it sitting at the far edge of the fridge. I remember saying something in French that could be translated as "are you freaking kidding me?!" but in a very unlady-like fashion.

There it was, a steak I took out one day, while trying to reach something else in the freezer and that somehow got pushed all the way to the back. And I was so angry with myself because I had checked the top of the fridge but didn't climb on anything to see all of it. It was a very big and tall fridge. I just had a quick glance from where I was standing and blindly patted the top as far as my hand could reach which wasn't all that far, despite my 5'8". I mean, to have been this thorough with everything else and so careless with this one... Granted, I NEVER put anything on top of the fridge except for the occasional quick swap of items so I had no reason to expect this and yet...

So you're wondering why the heck am I telling you this? Because to me, bug fixing is a little like that infuriating incident. You are faced with an unpleasant situation and follow your nose to the source. Sometimes, you're lucky: the problem is sitting right there on the counter and you can just dispose of it however is most fitting. Sometimes, it just fell between the stove and counter. Move the stove out of the way, and bye bye problem.

But sometimes, it will be sitting on the far edge of the fridge, at that one place you will never think to look. You know the problem involves the fridge and you'll look inside the fridge, around it, under it, behind it, you'll even empty it and trash everything inside, but you'll never think to look at the back edge. And because sometimes, just like in my incident, its properly wrapped and therefore doesn't leak or trigger any other visible sign that could point you to the back edge. So you'll resort to the most far-fetched and improbable alternative causes, like the pipes and air vent. And it will take a burnt light bulb, sometimes weeks, months or years later for you to finally see where that darn thing was sitting all along.

Out On A Limb

2008-09-23T00:24:00.003-04:00

Like a lot of people, I was part of a band when I was younger. Did the bar scene, and even scored a few gigs that were significantly more important. Every time I had to step on that stage and grab that mic, those dang butterflies would start playing a football match in my stomach. And it didn't matter how many times we performed, that stage fright would always be there. But fortunately, for me at least, getting the first note out was the hardest. The minute I would sing that first line, the stress would drop and then I would just roll with it. That is when the public enjoyed the show. But when they didn't respond well, that was a whole different story...

Then I grew older and decided I didn't fit the "starving artist" profile. So I moved on behind the scene and watched others perform. As a Stage Manager for nearly 10 years for the Montreal Drum Fest (among others), I got to meet a lot of pretty big names in the showbiz and it always blew my mind to see how nervous some of those really seasoned artists would still get before getting on stage.

And then I became a game designer for a MMO and it feels like I've gone right back to those band days. Back then, I was one of the main composers of the group, did vocals and keys. So every time we performed, I was putting myself out there to be judged both for creativity (song & lyrics) but also as a performer. And it was nerve-wracking because any way you cut it, your creation is a part of you. When it gets rejected, even though you know better, it's hard not to take it to heart. Sometimes it was good material but bad timing. Sometimes it was downright poor material. The hard part is knowing the difference and learning from the mistakes.

When I was working on console games, I compared the profession more to that of a writer, a novelist. You create your fiction, your characters, the world they evolve in with all its rules, however wacky they may be, at your own pace. And once you're ready and you believe you got it right (or marketing puts their foot down!), you bring your "masterpiece" into the world and hope critics will kindly welcome it.

But with a MMO, it's more like being that stand up comedian that must come up with new material on a regular basis, because you just can't keep feeding them the same joke week after week. And every time, you look for that inspiration, that stroke of genius that will make your public go ooooh! aaaaah!! And while you're dreaming of the stand up ovation, all you really think about before you step out on that stage is "please, let it not be boos!"

When I ran player events, I would get nearly sick with nerves in the minutes that preceded it. It's incredible things that you can tell yourself when it's too late to back down: "What the heck was I thinking? This thing sucks!! They will laugh at me! They will say it's lame and retarded! They will (insert other random self-depreciating comment here)". And I would wonder why do I put myself through this? And the answer would always be the same: I just need to create, I need to write, I need to do this. And then the event would take place and it would be well received for the most part (there will always be the disgruntled few), and it made it all worth it.

And now that I do this on a much larger scale, with significantly more people to judge my work, it's all the more terrifying, but at the same time, all the more exciting. And to continue the comparison with a comedian, while my goal is to get them all rolling on the floor laughing themselves to tears, if I can at least get the majority to give me that grin, that giggle and better yet that laughter outburst, then I will have had a good performance.

But regardless of the outcome, I will be right back at my drawing board because, just like the musician, the comedian or the dancer, the "artist" within just need to express himself. (You can translate that as "we're suckers for punishment!")

The Grind

2008-09-13T13:01:00.005-04:00

Of all the things in gaming, Grinding is probably one the most annoying things, right next to Griefing. There is nothing I hate more than starting a new character in any MMO and knowing I'm going to spend the next however many days, weeks or months doing the same repetitive, boring thing over and over and over again, ad nauseam and beyond.

Funny thing is, it didn't bother me 11 years ago when I started playing UO. I was a pure crafter and I would spend hours on end, days, weeks just mining the hell out of every mountain in Britannia. And then spending some more hours just making the same armor pieces in the hope of getting that coveted 0.1 skill increase. And boy, was I happy...

Today, the mere thought of training another miner makes my skin crawl. Identically, the prospect of leveling another character in WoW or LOTR or any new/existing MMO is just a big fat turn off for me. Grinding is purely and simply not fun, not when you've been there, done that as much as a majority of seasoned gamers have. It's mind numbing and it keeps us from what we really want to get to: the fun part, the end game PvP or PvM.

I can understand why so many games use the Grind as a training/leveling method. The Wikipedia article actually covers fairly well a lot of those aspects so I will not bother repeating here. The problem for me is that Grinding, imho, is a cop out and fails to fulfill its real purpose which is to train the players.

In many of the Grind games, the training quests can be summed up as 1) go fetch, 2) go deliver, 3) escort, 4) kill X number of, 5) kill X number of to get Y amount of and last but not least 6) gather X amount of. How does any of these make a better warrior, a better priest, a better crafter, etc?

If I'm going to spend an extended amount of time "training" a character, I would expect that by the time I've reached the highest level, I would know how to play that template well, in all its complexity and uniqueness. And if I'm a new player, I would expect that when I'm done training that character, I would have a good understanding of the game world in which it takes place.

My first WoW character was a holy priest. As such, you would think the "Grind" would be focused on my class and require me to perform tasks in keeping with the role I would be playing during raids. So why have me kill thousands and thousands of mobs for weeks when I will hardly ever be doing that in the end? A little bit of it doesn't hurt, but putting me in situations where I had to manage my shackles, fears, fade, lifting debuffs and diseases, the whole while keeping larger and larger numbers of NPCs and myself alive in increasingly difficult environments would have helped me become a better healer. Wacking 30 panters, 30 Raptors and 30 Tigers does not.

But one of the First Aid quests portrays well what I consider a class/profession appropriate quest. If I recall properly, it's in Theramore where an NPC physician gives you special bandages and you have to heal a number of wounded soldiers ranging from mildly to critically injured. You barely have any time to think as you must quickly assess who most urgently needs your assistance because the critically will die fast. If you let more than a certain of your patients die, you fail the quest.

In UO, our training is also a Grind. But our world is so complex that even veteran players often forget a lot of the mechanics actually available to them. Some other tools are simply not used because players aren't used to them, don't understand their importance or are uncomfortable handling them. If they had been made part of their daily routine through training, they wouldn't be so alien to them. It would also be a good way to teach players, newbie and veterans alike, about the world they live in and make them familiar with things they may have forgotten or never known about.

Any fighter/hunter template should be taught the specials and abilities specific to their class. You're a mage? Then your quests/training should require you to demonstrate you have mastered the use of your spells according to your level: curing/healing self or 1+ other(s) (could be something similar to the WoW First Aid quest), Fielding (you must keep a certain creature from reaching a certain location for a preset amount of time using e-field or para fields. At higher levels, you may also need to keep an NPC alive by healing/curing and casting walls to prevent enemies from casting on him), Dispelling (enemy fields or summons to make your way to/escape from some area), etc. If you're an archer or a dexxer, have quests with objectives that force you to use your various specials/weapons, from dismounts, to mortal, to moving shots, to chugging (arm/disarm macros), to healing or cross-healing using bandages, spells... And while at it, quests that show you were you can gather arrows, bandages, etc.

Crafters, such as tailors, should gain skills/experience from gathering the raw materiel (picking cotton in fields, sheering sheeps, gathering leather...), transforming those materials into cloth with the spinning wheels and looms. Have objectives that range from creating dyes (we need that!), dying specific items, crafting/enhancing others, and (if I had my way!) forced out into danger zones to harvest magic resources directly off the back of live boss monsters.

If training/leveling was more oriented towards teaching players how to play the characters they made instead of making them read play guides, I strongly believe it would be seen as less of a chore and definitely not a Grind.

Emergence

2008-09-08T19:31:00.005-04:00

A former classmate and I were reminiscing about some of our favorite design classes. One thing leading to the other, we ended up discussing Emergence. Every industry has its buzz words. In video games, Emergent Gameplay is definitely one of them. Essentially, it's when a new, totally unintended gameplay suddenly appears in game. Or in other words, when players make an unintended use of the game mechanics to achieve a goal. Does that description sound familiar?

For the longest time, I thought of Emergent Gameplay as a fancy word to describe an Exploit. In many cases, the games where emergent behavior was noted were combat or FPS games. The unintended behavior was labelled "strategy" and was not only condoned but encouraged. In fact, in the majority of our design assignments, our teachers often asked what elements of our design would help promote emergence.

So what's the difference? An Exploit is detrimental to the game, gives an unfair advantage to the user, creates imbalances and/or has a negative impact on the community. Whereas Emergent Gameplay enhances the game, creates new opportunities, adds gameplay and is generally beneficially to the overall gaming experience.

For example, a player finds a loophole that allows him to dupe infinite amount of gold which ruins the economy. Another realizes that combining certain skills, certain equipments and performing certain actions in a specific sequence allow him to one-hit kill everything and everyone, making it impossible for anyone to compete against him. In both cases, on a stand-alone game (PC, Console), we would just call it a cheat because frankly, the NPCs could care less. But on a multi-player game, the response is quite different as it hurts the player base.

But with Emergent Gameplay it's quite the opposite and in a game like UO, it can be a really beautiful thing. Once I wanted to have a talking dragon for one of my player run events. And it was Soar (founder of the QuestMasters) who gave me the perfect solution: 1) we have communication crystals which allow a player speaking through the emitter to be heard by anyone within range of the receiver, no matter how great the distance between emitter and receiver; 2) back then, white wyrms and dragons shamelessly looted anything they killed; 3) tamed pets can be made to follow anyone, even if they are invisible; 4) players with high hiding skills and stealth can move around unseen.

Four completely independant, unrelated game mechanics combined to create a new one...

So I put a receiver in my backpack and attacked the white wyrm who chewed me up in a blink and looted the crystal off my corpse. The tamer then told the white wyrm to follow our stealther who then hid. I got resurrected and ran off inside a house a few screens away. When the players taking part in the event arrived at the wyrm's location, the stealther moved towards them unseen, followed by the pet. All the players saw was a white wyrm coming towards them at a slow pace as if of his own free will. When the stealther reached the designated location, he informed me in party chat and I began talking through the communication crystal. The players saw my words appearing above the white wyrm as if it was the one talking to them.

House decorators in UO are also phenomenal in their ability to use game mechanics in unexpected ways to create amazing illusions. It's surprising what an axe, the right mix of items inside a to-be-axed crate, clever item stacking, cloth/item dying/cutting, funky combinations and unusual house customizations can turn into. As an EM, I ran a couple house deco contests and some of them just knocked my socks off. In the Halloween contest, Sarmi's Whimsy Witch just blew my mind, from the stacked black and white pearls to create peeping eyes through the roof, to the amazing witch and vampire. The tanks in Demented Pleasures were also very clever. (Sorry if the pages aren't sexy. They were quickly slapped together so the other EMs could help me pick the winners). But I'm still speechless from the Christmas Deco contest again from Sarsmi, her Winter Wonderland. I personally had the greatest time turning my own houses into puzzles thanks to house customization like the stairs/teleporter maze and the clock puzzle from my Wheels of Time event (did people ever suffer in that one! LOL).

The more you create game mechanics that interconnect, the greater the chance of seeing new unexpected gameplay emerge. It is both a wonder and a concern, especially in an online game. But it certainly helps take it to a whole new level and give it a life of its own.

Behind The Scene

2008-08-31T13:46:00.004-04:00

I originally planned for my next blog entry to be about one of the many nightmares one can have when relocating to a new country, but I decided to keep that self-pitying post to another time (sorry, you won't avoid it!!). Instead, I felt I needed to acknowledge some pretty awesome people who all too often get no recognition from the player base, except for flames when things don't work out. And these folks are the QA Testers.

When the first video game studio opened in Montreal, having no experience I told myself if I could get a job as a QA Tester, it would be my way into the industry. But now that I am in the business, I can tell you that I'm not so sure I would have cut it. It takes a certain type of person to do a good job of it and a hell of a lot of passion and commitment. People often romanticize what a Tester's job is like. Yes, you're running around in a game all day, but you're not actually "playing". You are testing, trying all the crazy stuff players could do and event try to think about stuff no one in their right mind would deliberately do because you know that some way, somehow, some dude WILL do it.

Granted, some of the testing can be fun. I mean, who wouldn't want to be the first to try fighting this cool new monster or riding this cool new mount? But then take the case of the latest gardening additions. Started off with just the cocoa tree. No biggy right? But then I decided to add new plants. For each new plant, we're talking new seeds. Then I decided they would spawn at a certain rate on a certain number of monsters. Then I decided, you know what? lets add a few more seeds and a few more monsters and play around with the drop rate. Then oh wait, after a quick design meeting, taking player feedback into consideration, I make some more changes. Lets instead divide the seeds in smaller spawn groups and monsters in various groups also to make it less frustrating for players to hunt the seeds. By the time I've reached the final design QA has gone in and tested, retested and retested how many times?

Now keep in mind whenever we talk about drop rates, as a designer I provide QA with a chart of expected results. So guess what? They go in and kill every single designated monsters hundreds of times and draw up a chart of the results to see if they meet expectation. And that's how they found out certain seeds weren't spawning at all. Some were spawning on the wrong mobs, etc. And then they grow each plant making sure every label is right, the growth rate is appropriate, the grown plant meets requirements, and so on. And each time we change our minds, they start all over again.

And to thank them for their awesome work, I went ahead and designed something else for factions which needs some thorough testing on damage output. To give you an idea, imagine if I was talking about an explosion potion. Now it's straight forward enough right? Toss a pot and the total damage from the pot will be divided by the enemies within range. So QA comes along, create the pot, makes sure the pots can be used stack and unstacked, that it doesn't lose it's properties when unstacked, that it can properly be thrown, that it does the damage expected, that the bottle is then destroyed, etc. But then here comes the crappier part, he then needs to layout what the damage received was on various characters: with or without armor, under curses such as corpse skin, if the thrower has alchemy and the impact of the alchemy level, if the player uses potion enhance, and so on. And test under the various combinations of these factors and whatever else the designer didn't think about. Now we, the designers, look at the results and decide ok, is this overpowered or not? If yes, then we change the base damage and who gets to retest all over again? That's right...

I don't think I would have the patience and thoroughness for this. Personally, I think if I had just fully tested something such as the purple potions just to have it come right back a couple hours later for retesting, I would be banging my head on the walls. But our guys are so awesome. Never a complaint, quite the opposite. In fact, on a few occasions, I had one of them walk into my office to get a bit more info about something he was testing for me or pointing out some of the game mechanic issues which could be circumvented with a slight design adjustment. And some of those resulted in a lot more work for them and that was not an issue. It was all about trying to get things out as right as possible.

Truth is, QA Testers keep the Devs honest. They will not let us cut corners. I hate getting a bunch of DevTracks about bugs found, but I am grateful for QA catching my screw ups and often thinking for me about stuff that never would have crossed my mind. And you know, mistakes will still happen and things will manage slip by, but without QA we would be in serious trouble. So when I see people criticizing our QA, I'm like you guys don't know a good thing when you see it because our guys are awesome. (Yes, I'm sucking up right now because the next things I have in store for testing will be quite painful!)

But kidding aside, I just wanted to say to the UO QA team, much love and many thanks!

Reality Check

2008-08-21T12:04:00.003-04:00

I recently joined the Game Developers Group on Linkedin and while browsing through the various articles, I stumbled on a link to an "ambitious MMO" plan. That definitely got me curious, and I decided to check it out. By the time I finished reading the post, I was wondering if the guy who wrote it 1) had balls of brass, 2) was on crack or 3) needed a serious reality check.

His very long post didn't actually detail what the game would about, it was more of a recruiting spiel. He first states that a new revolutionary MMO is required because all others that have been done before have miserably failed to meet players expectations and new MMOs are nothing but a reheated version of existing ones. While I think this is an easy generalized statement, I don't disagree that MMOs still have ways to go and that there is too much of the same out there.

The problem was more with the second part where he introduces himself. Essentially, he states he has no design training or experience of any kind (not even fiddling with map editors), has no programming skills either, but that his extensive gaming experience made him an authority in what players seek in a game. His team was still very small (only 2 other people who I seem to recall also had no professional experience) but they would welcome anyone reading the article who were daring, creative and willing to embark on that wild journey. My immediate reaction was "you're joking, right?" but I knew he wasn't.

I'm always a little baffled when I read stuff like that because I wonder why he feels HIS extensive gaming experience makes him a greater authority than other gamers. It's not like game developers aren't gamers themselves. But beyond that, being a great driver doesn't make you a great mechanic, just like being a straight A student doesn't make you a good teacher.

It takes so much more than a few cool ideas to put a game together. Even coming out of school, I didn't realize just how many different talents were required to make a game until I actually started working in the industry. Despite that, I'm still discovering new things today I didn't realize needed to be done because other departments of the team are handling them. And creating a MMO is even more ambitious and demanding.

Generally speaking, I love the idea of an independent developer and there's nothing greater than an unlikely success story. But you also need to douse your ambitions with a bit of a reality check. When the Wright brothers tried creating an aircraft they didn't start on a spaceship, they started with kites, then gliders and then included an engine, etc. If he had talked about making a flash game or a DS kind of game to wet his feet, he would have had more credibility and a better response. It would be a good learning experience and help him develop some tools, build relationships and expand his professional network in a fairly short period of time. And if the game is successful, it would also help him build the financial means to achieve his end goal: a MMO.

But a MMO takes years to create with a large full-time team. If you've got too small a team or only work part-time because your team has to work elsewhere to make a living, by the time your game will be done it will already be dated. In truth, if making independent games was so easy, don't you think a majority of game developers would just go rogue and have their own start up so they can enjoy true creative freedom? And for those who have, how many such start ups have failed?

Even though he's biting way more than he can chew, I hope he won't choke to death on it. And once the piece that got stuck goes down, if he's smart he'll take a step back, take smaller bites and get to live to enjoy his dessert.

Duping Woes

2008-08-15T19:01:00.002-04:00

Duping is such a nightmare for everyone, not just the players, but as much if not worse for the Devs. It's like a cancer that just keeps eating away at you. And just when you thought you had gone into remission, boom, there it is again.

Players cannot begin to understand how much time and energy we devote to tracking down and banning dupers, removing illegal items for the game and finding ways to fill the holes that allowed the dupes to occur in the first place. But dupers are like cockroaches. You kill one, 10 more come out. Some of them are easy to catch. They're amateurs spotting a pot of gold and in their greed allow themselves to be caught red handed. Those are my favorite as they're not only easily disposed of, but they also usually cause the least damage to the community.

The Dons, the Master Minds, those are the ones that suck. They are hard to get. They are speedhacking little roaches, that only come out in the dead of night and are pretty much immune to most pesticide you can throw their way. You will never catch them alive. They will throw their minions under the bus, but you won't get your hands on them. They're the ones that really hurt the community and the Dev team and the game. And just like the Godfather, you often have to resort to nailing them on tax evasion. And yes, sometimes this means you need to let the minions run around unhindered a little longer just so you can work the trail back up to the leaders.

Each time, we have to divert development time to track down dupers / exploiters, fix the loopholes, remove the offensive items and investigate their accounts to gather sufficient proof to proceed with a ban. This translate as delayed publishes, canceled new content, lesser bug fixes. For the players, it means their legitimately acquired items losing value while inflation rises. For new players it means a tougher barrier to entry. For the game in general, it means serious imbalances between the haves and haves not, accelerated depreciation of entire game systems because the reward that gave them their purpose is now flooding the market.

So make no mistake: Devs have NOTHING to gain by allowing dupers to run rampant. We don't spam how many people were banned or when we are banning people. That doesn't mean it's not happening on a regular basis.

You would be surprised to know how many people were actually banned in the last wave. What boggles my mind is how eager players are to believe someone claiming innocence. We also have nothing to gain by banning innocent players, quite the opposite. Do mistakes occur from time to time? Sure, no one is perfect. But you shouldn't assume that because someone says "I didn't do it" means they really didn't. Anyone who gets caught speeding will likely try to sweet talk their way out of a ticket. If it works, WOOT! If it doesn't, oh well, was worth the try. That doesn't make them any less guilty. Difference is, the guy who crashed into a tree because he was speeding won't make a fuss, because clearly there's no getting out of that one. Both as guilty, just one more obvious than the other.

Troll Alert!

2008-08-11T23:44:00.005-04:00

Since I gave the Cheerleaders some TLC, it's only fair I give Trolls some attention too. But while the previous post was a nod to Cheerleaders, this is more a question mark. I honestly fail to understand why Trolls act the way they do. We often hear the cliché statement that Trolls are just sad people, angry at the world that bullied them, venting their personal failures in real life, (insert other lame excuse here) and who are trying to make others feel as miserable as they do themselves. But fact is, I've known a number of Trolls (and griefers for that matter) who are everything BUT losers or depressive in real life. So why?

I read the forums and it's the same people going on and on about this or that, throwing every insult they can come up with, whining and complaining about everything and anything. It doesn't matter how much you go out of your way to please them, they will find something to be disgruntled about and stir the pot over.

Sometimes, they have grounds to be unhappy but they voice their displeasure so viciously that whatever valid point they were trying to make gets losts in the rant. And the truth of the matter is, once you establish yourself as a Troll, we (the Devs) eventually just stop reading you. So who really gets hurt in the end?

When I read a post and the first line is "Devs, I demand an answer now!!", the first thought that crosses my mind is "I hope you're not holding your breath irl!" That alone pretty much guarantees you will NOT get a reply. And then the posts where some dude is popping a vein over the fact that we're not customizing the game to his specifications. It's like what?! And then they are offended that we don't post or reply to them. But what do they expect? We know they will twist our words and hold everything we say against us. So why put ourselves in the line of fire?

On another forum, this guy was talking about shutting down accounts and randomly ranting about how the Devs' shortcomings had pushed him to this. But reading the thread further, he actually posted how he's really just closing accounts because rl makes it impossible for him to continue playing as much as he used to. And I couldn't help but wonder why he had felt the need to unfairly bash us when in fact it was the changes in his life (that we have absolutely no control over) that impacted his ability to play.

I dont know the English equivalent (and I'm too lazy to look it up!) but in French we have this saying: "you can't catch a fly with vinegar". I will be more enclined to stay after hours to fix a bug or add a feature that wasn't planned in the schedule to make someone pleasant happy. Trolling is the best way to ensure you probably won't be read and that your concerns, however valid they may be, are less likely to be addressed in a timely fashion.

With that said, I would really appreciate if a Troll would hit me up and give me some insight on what's the deal! And not just the trolling against Devs but also the trolling against other players. I would REALLY love to know what's the kicker.

Perspectives

2008-08-07T22:25:00.002-04:00

Making certain design decisions can be difficult. When you do your job right, you put a lot of thought into it. It's not just a coin toss or taking shortcuts, it's about what makes the most sense in both the short and long term. Sometimes, these decisions aren't overly popular and make things a bit more difficult for the players, but it's also for their own good.

As a player, I often used to say "wth do they do it that way? Why isn't the drop rate higher? Why can't we just get straight to (insert wish here)?" And today, as a designer I read the boards and get the same questions from players regarding decisions I or the other members of the team made.

I cannot go into the specific case that prompted this but I will give a different example. People have often complained about the artifact drop rate in Doom. It took too long. The same people always seemed to be getting the arties, etc. After a while, players got discouraged and most people stop camping Doom. A number of months ago, that drop rate was notably increased and people flocked back in droves to Doom. Within a month, the value of artifacts had collapsed. Within another month, a majority of people had once again abandoned Doom and mostly didn't care for artifacts anymore as they were now too common. Same thing with the Planar Swords and Shields. The minute people had a dozen, they lost interest in the event.

Finding the right balance where something is attainable with reasonable time and effort is never easy. But you have to do it in a way to maximize the longevity of your design without making it frustrating to the players. If players can get mass amounts of a new item you introduced within 2 weeks of it becoming available, that item will immediately lose its appeal and people will no longer bother with it. And that translates as days, weeks and maybe even months of designing and testing down the drain.

Randomization really serves both the player and the designers. It creates rarity which causes demand, which translates as higher resale value, which makes it desirable and therefore something players will actively hunt (Doom Arties, Crimson Cintures...). For the designer, that means more bang per buck.

So unless an object is highly consumable with default sustained demand (PoF, Potions, Petals...) , you shouldn't expect to have them easily available. Sure it would maybe make your life easier, but you would be bored with it within weeks/days.

The Cheerleaders

2008-08-04T22:35:00.005-04:00

In my humble opinion, there are 5 kinds of people who posts on forums: the Lurkers (that's me!), the Chatters, the Trolls, the Groupies and the Cheerleaders.

The Lurkers read most threads but don't post all that often. The Chatters are babbling machines with multiple posts in almost in every thread. Most of their posts have little substance but when you trim the fat, they're actually a good barometer to measure the community's general state of mind. The Trolls will simply hate on everything and anything. They will dissect every word you've said and interpret what you haven't said in a way that will enable them to spill as much venom and bile as they possibly can. The only positive comment to come out of them will be to praise someone being even more vicious than they were. The Groupies (in the case of UO) are either sucking up to the Devs or sucking up to the "in crowd" in one of the other 4 groups and occasionally to someone in their own group. They're annoying little things that have no thoughts of their own. They'll just shout a Hallelujah! Amen! to anything their idol says even if it makes no sense.

Then you have the Cheerleaders...

These guys really get a bad rap and I think it's mostly because people tend to confuse them with the Groupies. To me, a Cheerleader is a more contained, healthy mix of Chatters and Groupies. The non-extremist opposite of the Trolls. The optimist that enjoys the fact that the bottle is still half full instead of obsessing about it eventually being empty. It's the person that doesn't sugarcoat things but who gives you that much needed pat on the back when you screwed up.

I mean seriously, when you screw up, you know it. You don't need anyone to tell you or rub your face in it. You KNOW! And when your blunder negatively impacts others, it sucks all the more. The Trolls will make sure to remind you every day until Kingdom come. Getting up when someone is kicking you while you're down can be quite the challenge.

But then the Cheerleader bitchslaps the Trolls and tells them to piss off. Grabs you by collar and pulls you back up on your feet. Looks you straight in the eyes and says "You messed up, you Noob! I know you had good intentions, but you didn't deliver. Curling up in a corner licking your wounds will do no good. So dust that dirt off your shirt, get back in formation and lets play ball! We still got a game to win. I believe in you so you better make me proud!"

And it is that voice that makes you want to try harder, do better and go the whole nine yards.

Culture Shock

2008-08-02T21:20:00.009-04:00

When I was at the Ubisoft Campus, my teachers often talked about political correctness and moral issues with video games. Be it violence, sex, religion, racism, these are many of the factors that will affect the potential success/failure of our games and may limit its distribution in certain regions of the world or impact the rating from General to Mature. But just as important is the cultural background of your target audience and the language barrier.

A few weeks ago, when I was asked to write the Death of the Council event, I was pretty psyched at the opportunity to do an event that would stray from the invasion/monster bashing type and go with something a bit more interactive. But I quickly realized I really needed to rein myself in because some of my puzzles, though they seemed pretty obvious to me, turned out not to be that easy for others. And while I may be a big mystery fan, the event still needs to cater to the players that aren't.

But the biggest shock came when I was asked if the event text was ready to be sent to Japan for translation.

It suddenly hit me that the Rebus puzzles I put in the quest can prove to be a significant challenge for non-anglophones. French is my first language and though I consider myself fluent in English, it's still tricky to me at times. So I'm thinking about the Japanese players and wondering how they will fare with English word plays. In the end, the Japanese team had to change the rebus passwords to something more culturally accessible to their players.

It reminded me of when I used to work as a sound engineer in movie dubbing. We were recording the French version of the movie Sphere and there was this scene where the crew is going down to the space craft that landed in the ocean and they are breathing helium. They were making all kinds of silly comments with that funny helium voice and one of them said "follow the yellow brick road". I was surprised when the director asked me if I knew what that meant or referred to. And I said yeah, and explained how the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz had spoken those specific words with an helium kind of voice. To me, having been extensively exposed to the American culture, the Wizard of Oz is a classic known to all. But to the director and actors who were more versed in the French Canadian culture, this was not common knowledge. Unfortunately for them, they had to try to convey the same message (or at least intention) as the original movie, in the same lapse of time and make the actors' words fit with the lips movement on screen. Synch 4tw!

So this little reminder has given me a greater appreciation of the work done by the localization team. It will also likely impact the kind of puzzles I come up with in the future.

Are you kidding me?!

2008-07-29T23:14:00.007-04:00

I used to be a real game junky. It didn't matter what the game was, if it was new and I didn't have it, I was buying it. Then I started playing UO and slowly but surely stopped buying other games. Granted, I play plenty of real time and turn-based strategy games, lots of those Shockwave puzzle and dash type games, the occasional random action adventure game (hell I did play Thief and Splinter Cell and GTA!) but I'm really picky with the games I enjoy playing.

My beloved brothers (all four of them!) started giving me an earful about that. What kind of game designer are you if you only play a select few games? There's nothing worse for a girl than to admit that your brother is right. Seriously, it sucks! But I can't help it that I dont get excited at the thought of playing yet another FPS, and the sports games don't do it for me either. Combat games can be cool though, especially when I whoop my brothers!

So I went shopping for a few console games and grabbed a few recent games that I normally wouldn't bother with. I have a thing for older games (who would have guessed right?). I had just finished replaying Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy and was itching for another game of the type, or something like Soulreaver when I spotted Full Metal Alchemist in the discount bin.

I get home and decide to start with the Alchemist (Devil May Cry can wait a little). Intro starts, a few cut-scenes here and there, here goes the tutorial. So I get on this train and have a few meanies to fight. Aight, bring it! They tell me to hit the circle so I can transform something (I think it's a box) into a spear. Then once I have the spear, I need to press the Triangle to equip it. Ok, so far so good. Then they tell me to perform this combo: Square + Circle + Square + Square. Hmmmm ok, I can handle that. I dont think I got it right a single time but who's keeping counts right? And the tutorial keeps going so I must not suck all that bad. Oh wait a minute, new combo. Now I have to hit Square + Square + Circle + Square + Square... At least I think that's what it was. Moving right along, here comes the next combo. This time it's Square + Square + Circle + X + Square.

>.<

I know I hit Square, not sure what I hit after but it wasn't the right combo, that I know for a fact. Right... I don't think I want to know what the next combo will be. I simply cannot picture myself button mashing those combos everytime I want to spank some baddy. So I put down the controller, turned off the TV, put the game back in its box and played some LOTRO.

The Devil will wait a little longer. Tomorrow, I'll see how I fare with Mass Effect...

The Hook Up

2008-07-27T23:12:00.000-04:00

People have a certain impression of what being a game designer is all about. The usual reaction when I tell people what I do for a living is "OMG, that is soooo cool!" and more often than not followed by a "you dont look like a gamer!" -_-

Most of the time, they will ask me how I ended up in that field, how did I "score" such a job. And I tell them I've been playing games for as long as I can remember, that for many years I wrote and ran events and fiddled for quite some time with graphic design programs, level editors, etc. which in turn allowed me to build a decent enough portfolio that got me accepted in the game design program at the Ubisoft Campus. From there I was given the choice to do an internship in a video game company or do the school project. I went with the intership and got hired there, until the day I moved to the US to work on UO.

Since my joining the UO team has been announced, it's funny the number of people that didn't use to give me the time of day who suddenly think I'm the sweetest person under the sun. But beyond that, it's incredible how passionate those same people are about game design and how they feel they would be the perfect fit. Invariably, they ask for some sort of a hook up. "Can you get me in? Can you push my resume if I send it to you?"

Now here is where I get offended. It's not the fact that they are trying to use me to get where they want to be because I understand that sometimes you've got to be ruthless to get places. If that's what you have to do to get your foot in the door, then better shameless than sorry. No, what gets to me is the fact that these people do not actually care about the profession, and often they dont even care about the game or have quit playing it.

It's all about the glamour. Being able to brag about having "the cool job". When you ask them what they think the job entitles, they have no clue. They give me ignorant remarks such as "adding stuff to the game?". When you ask them what their qualifications are, why they think they deserve an interview more than the next guy, most of them fumble. Have you ever been a DM? A what? A DM, you know a Dungeon Master? Errr no? Hmmm, ok, have you ever writen fiction? Short stories? Fantasy tales? Quests? Puzzles? Errr no, none of that either. Wow, ok... Have you ever tried to create your own map with the map editors that come with certain games? Hell no! That looks too complicated. Sheesh, lets see. Have you ever done anything game related at all? Graphic design? 3D modeling? Scripting? 3D animation? Been a QA tester anywhere? Something? Anything? Oooh you Beta Tested a couple games and you feel that should suffice to qualify you as a game designer? I see.

So hmmmm, assuming that by some sort of miracle I do manage to get you an interview, how are you going to convince the team that you can do the job? You don't know? Haven't gotten to that part yet?

This is not a game.

All the people on the team, be it the artists, the designers, the engineers, the testers and yes even CS (despite all the bad press they get) are really hard working, passionate and creative people. We don't play games all day. We WORK.

You want to work in games, earn your place. It doesn't have to be with a billion diplomas or years of experience. But it certainly has to be with undeniable passion and commitment. You cannot just wake up one day and expect to be handed over a game design job (or any other job) without some sort of credentials or verifiable talent or skill. You can't afford to go to school or there are none in your area teaching that field, then you build yourself a portfolio at home. Start playing with the map editors that come with your games. Start learning programs such as Maya and 3DS and Photoshop. Take advantage of the free online scripting programs. Start writing some fiction. Start setting up some player run events. Do the work for a bit to see how that shoe fits. Once you know what kind of work we're talking about, then you can ask for the hook ups.

Stop asking for free rides.

/rant

Insider Trading

2008-07-18T20:41:00.000-04:00

As a game designer, working on a MMO is so insanely different than working on an offline game. It is mostly different because imho, to be a good MMO designer you must also play your game as you cannot fully understand the repercussions of your choices, the players, the community, their needs, struggles and aspiration unless you are right there alongside them. But if you do play the game, every decision you makes as a designer also affects your own gameplay, with the power to tip the balance in your favor or against yourself.

And with this power comes knowledge... knowledge which can also be your worse nightmare...

So here I am with my guild. We just finished a spawn and are rolling for scrolls at the GH. One of the guildmates tosses his 105 on the ground. A few others do the same with their 105 and 110. I look and say nothing. But I know in 2 days when the publish hits, those scrolls will actually be worth keeping for the extra turn in points. That first guildmate then proceeds to throw a map of Sosaria on the floor. I stare at him for a couple seconds and clear my throat saying "you might want to hang on to that, it could sell for a pretty penny". He goes, "Pfft, I have those coming out the wazoo, so does everyone else. Can't even give them away! Let the damn thing decay. Anyways, I've thrown most of the others out already".

I bite my tongue. In a couple of days they will be worth 10k pts. I should know, I coded that myself...

I try to think of a good way to get him to keep it, but frankly I can't without making him suspicious that I have insider info and maybe even blowing up my cover. I keep quiet...

For a minute there, I think of picking it up. I mean, I could use those 10k points myself. But then I feel like a sleeze and leave it there to decay. I don't know if anyone ever picked it up. But I remember thinking if I had been smart, I would have picked it up and given it to him when the publish hit. Oh well...

The next day, I'm in Luna. I need some explosion kegs but I'm too lazy to make my own. While shopping, I see tons of items for free or dirt cheap which I know will be worth a bundle of points. This guy is selling forged metal for 50 gp, they will be worth 250 pts tomorrow. Talk about a good deal! He's got at least 15 of them on his vendor. I buy 4 and as I'm about to buy the 5th one, it suddenly hits me: this is insider trading!

I try to rationalize this: 1) I'm not doing anything illegal within the rules of the game, a player has the right to buy off a vendor; 2) if I dont buy them, someone else will plus the seller is getting the price he asked for; 3) if I wait til tomorrow when everyone else knows, I will be at work when it hits the shards and by the time I get home, it will all be sold out...

Except...

Another player has no way of knowing about this. The vendor would (and will) raise the price if he knew about this. Tomorrow, other players too will be at work when the news is posted on the Herald and they too will miss out. I mumble for a while then walk away. I grab my keg and recall out.

The next day after work, I rush to Luna and straight to the forged metal vendor. He sold out... Big surprise... I check out the other vendors nearby. The few that still have forged metal are selling them anywhere between 5k and 10k a piece. What a rip... I cuss some more and recall out. I'm annoyed and slightly frustrated but at the same time, I somewhat feel good about myself for not abusing my priviledge.

Then I get in vent. My guildmate is cussing himself out for losing well over 100k points because of all the maps and virtue armor pieces he threw out... Our GM tries to cheer him up. I feel bad all over again...

I discussed my dilemma with my colleagues later on. The consensus seemed to be that I can't help but knowing what I know and I cannot share that knowledge with players, friends or not, even if they're screwing themselves over. And that at the end of the day, as long as my actions remain within game rules, what I do for myself is between me and my conscience.

I guess sometimes knowledge just sucks...

A Wormy Tale

2008-07-13T12:31:00.000-04:00

The following is a fiction inspired by real events. The case displayed isn't at all an actual request, just a made up example to demonstrate how things aren't always as simple as they seem.

* * * * * *

I wake up a fine morning, all excited to head out to work. The project I'm working on only needed a wee bit of tweaking then off it went to QA for testing. I don't really want to start on my next big task until QA passed the first one so, having some time to kill I glance at the forums and see players request yet again for something we promised them a while back and some other stuff they've just been wanting forever because it was omitted originally.

Feeling like a good Samaritan (and frankly to quell the outcries too), I grab one issue which seems like it would be a quick fix and start digging through the code...

If you're a fisher, come see me, I've just uncovered the bait stash of the century!

So the players were saying "Why can I write in the red and blue books but not in the burgundy ones? Can we please write in the burgundy books?" I figure, heck, I don't have a problem with that. It's just fluff, doesn't create imbalances and if it will make them happy, have at it!

I dig up the code controlling books thinking this is a 10-15 mins job. Then I start reading through it and feel a cold shiver running down my spine as it downs on me there are actually 5 different scripts controlling things. So I open each script look through them and realize how one is included in the other or inherits from that one and how this other function defines how the blue and red books react and dictates what interactions are allowed with all other books.

I take a deep breath...

"You can do this, girl! It seems more complicated than it really is! Just think how happy the players will be once Com posts it with the next patch notes!"

So I changes a few lines here and there. Go to next script, change a few more lines, add a couple more. WOOT! It compiles! Test it in game. Ugh, talk about miserable failure. Go back to the code, fiddle some more. Doesn't compile. DANGIT! Work on it some more ("OMG, has it really already been 2 hours I'm at this?!). Yay! It compiles! Test it. Hmmmm, this part works, but now I've just broken all other books. Wait a minute, worse than that!! I've broken All other items!!! I don't think double-clicking a trashbarrel should open a writable book gump.

*cries*

A little bell goes off... I just received an email from QA. My previous task passed successfully! Go me! I have to write and setup a new event, which is fairly important... at least definitely more than being able to write in the burgundy book vs the red and blue ones. Plus in terms of bang per buck, there really is no comparison...

By now, the worms are crawling all over me and throwing a party on my desk, high fiving each other.

Decision time...

I take another look at the clock. I've already spent (wasted?) 4 1/2 hours on this dang thing. I know what the problem is, and if I fiddle with it enough, I know I can fix it, but it will be another hour or two atleast. If I stop now and revert what I've done so far, it will truly have been a waste of time. So I shake off the worms that were nesting on my arms and plow on. Another 1 1/2 hours later, touch down!

So 6 hours, lots of hair pulling, head banging on the wall and thousands of worm squashing later, players can finally write in burgundy books without it breaking previously working features of the game. Yay?

I'm a little annoyed it took so long but I'm happy it's done and smile at the thought some players will be pleased at that little bone thrown to them in the next publish.

* * * * * *

Two weeks later...

The patch notes of the latest publish have been posted. I'm curious to see players' reaction to all the stuff the team and I have worked on the past weeks/month. For the first couple of days, no one seemed to even notice that burgundy books are now writeable. I'm a little disappointed but shrug it off. Then someone finally seems to notice and starts a brand new bandwagon:

Player 1: "Wtf? Instead of working on balance issues, or major bug fixing, or new content, you Devs have nothing better to do than allow players to write in stinking burgundy books? You morons need to be fired! Get a (censored) sense of priorities!"

Player 2: "No kidding! This is (censored) pathetic! No wonder this game is going to hell!

Me: *sighs*

* * * * * *

Another two weeks goes by...

A colleague drops by my office to ask a few question regarding something I submitted to make sure QA is testing the right things. While talking, she mentions some request she saw on the forums and points out a couple which she felt might be worth taking a stab at, despite our pretty tight schedule. She didn't look at the script (that's not her job anyways) but unless she's wrong, she thinks it might be a quick fix.

I smile and reply "yeah, I read it as well this morning". She says "Ok, cool!! Just thought I'd throw it out there if you had time to kill". I nod at her, still smiling, while she saunters out of my office. The nodding turns into headshaking. I had a quick look at one of the issues and a conservative guess says a full day for that "quick fix". I let out a sigh that almost sounds like a painful moan. As I turn back to my monitor to continue on my current task, I spot worm trying to crawl its way back up the top of my desk. I flick it off. "Dont be so impatient you slime ball. It isn't time for you to party yet. You'll get another turn soon enough".

What was I thinking?!

2008-07-05T17:02:00.001-04:00

I've been debating for a while what the first topic of my blog should be, not for lack of ideas, but because there are so many things I do want to talk about. It took a news snippet on CNN to finally convince me to get off my lazy bum (well not really since I had to sit to do this), and finally set up my blog and start writing.

They were talking about AoC, WoW and Warhammer. Somehow, Ultima Online managed to get a nod. It was funny to read the UO forums and realize players had a reaction similar to mine when they viewed the footage: "Argh!! Of all the things from UO they could have shown, they presented the oldest, least exciting stuff!! Dangit! Oh well, at least it's some exposure". From there, another thought crossed my mind, a question I've been asked so many times before I joined the UO team and even more so now that I have: Why UO?

Why indeed!!

Lets see here...

Left a good job where I was working on a next gen game? Check
Passed on teaching game design to aspiring new designers? Check
Left family and friends just to be lonely in this foreign land? Check
Moved to an overpriced new city where I feel out of place? Check
Working on an old game with dated graphics and code? Check
Making less money because of the cost of living here? *mumbles*

So what the heck was I thinking?

I could go on a long explanation of why, but I will simply give an analogy.

Remember "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"... Jessica, the bombshell married to the clumsy, goofy rabbit. She could have any toon (and probably most men too!) that she could possibly want. But nuh uh, she wants the rabbit. Why? Because HE makes her laugh, not the rich dude, not the "omg you make me drool" sexy guy, just the plain silly little rabbit.

I've worked on next gen games. They're cool with their bad ass graphics. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. It was a cool job. And when that job would be over, I would start another job on another cool game, with kick ass graphics, that I didn't overly care about either.

So what was I thinking?

That working on a game you love beats working on one you don't.
That it's awesome to actually look forward to Monday mornings.
That UO doesn't make me laugh but it sure as hell makes me smile.