Thoughts on Marvel Heroes

I recently had the good fortune to be able to get in on the Marvel Heroes open beta a couple of weeks ago through Steam. I jumped on to Steam and went to my library to figure out what I felt like playing. As I perused my list, I came across “Marvel Heroes – 2 days left”. I was confused. I didn't remember downloading a demo or getting a gift or anything. So I went and checked it out on the Steam store. Ah ha! An open beta for the weekend. I looked at the in-game photographs and description and thought, “It looks okay, maybe I’ll check it out later.”

At this point, one of my best friends and most excellent gaming buddy, Trevor, jumped online. He wanted to do some gaming, but wasn't sure what he wanted to play. I mentioned that the Marvel Heroes open beta was available and we were off!

As we began to play and get our feet beneath us, my fiancé wandered over to see the game. (She is a Marvel fan-girl from way back.) When I mentioned the game to her earlier she didn't seem excited at all. And, truth be told, she hasn't been very excited about gaming for a long time. (I blame Blizzard. What they did to WoW broke her heart.) However, once she saw Deadpool and Wolverine clobbering waves of bad guys, she got a gleam in her eye.

Hulk smash!

“This is free to play?” she asked.

“Yup. This is the last open beta before launch,” said I.

And then she was gone. Downloading the beta on Steam.

Marvel Heroes is an MMO ARPG. Think Diablo meets super heroes and you're in the right neighborhood.  In fact, the game is being developed by Gazillion Entertainment. The president and COO of which is David Brevik of Diablo and Diablo 2 fame. Knowing this put me at ease straight away.

The game is done in the same top down isometric perspective as other games in the ARPG genre. The environments are lush and well done within the confines of the genre's style. Much of the scenery is destructible, which is a practical necessity when you deal with heroes like the Hulk, Thing, and Colossus. Speaking of which, watching one of those guys throw a car at a group of baddies is AWESOME!

The heroes that I’ve played so far seem to all be rather different in play style and hold true to their iconic powers as found in their respective comic books. Some definitely seem over powered and others under powered, but it makes sense in the setting and keeps characters from becoming too homogenized.

Another interesting and FUN decision by Gazillion was to make the iconic characters playable. Nothing puts a smile on your face like playing the Hulk and smashing. The only problem I had with playing the actual heroes from the books is that it can be a bit jarring when you see 3 or four of yourself running around on screen.

Avengers assemble! Or at least some of you...The biggest issue I have with the game currently is that it seems like the main story line is pretty short. I don't know if this is really the case, however. The day that I played the game with Trev and my fiancé, it seemed like we made it through two thirds of the story chapters, but there could be more in the full release of the game. That being said, the real fun of the first two Diablo games was leveling your characters and destroying hordes of enemies in the pursuit of better loot as it is here with Marvel Heroes. Plus Marvel Heroes will have endgame content in the vein of raid bosses, it sounds like.

So what do I think about the game? I think it's a great start that can really be built upon, and I think the proof is in the pudding.

Trevor, my fiancé, and I played the beta for an entire day together with us settling on the Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor. Honestly, it was the most fun I've had playing a video game in a while...

... And we've all bought one of the Founders Pack options available on Steam.

Marvel Heroes will be available in the U.S. June 4^th.

“Remember the Athenians.”

WoW Confessions

It started out innocently enough. I was having lunch with Ryan, the editor of the podcast, and he was giving me a bad time about my lack of game time recently.

"There's all this Game on Girl talking and yet you're rarely on Steam."

I confessed that my professional and personal life has gotten in the way of "serious" gaming but that I still game socially everyday. I then sent him an invite to Bookworm Heroes, my new social gaming addiction. A little role play, a little word building. Pretty much perfect for the amount of time I have to game right now.

From there we started discussing other games we played together.

"What was that one game we started that we didn't really get back to?" asked Ryan.

"Which one? That's most of the games we've all played recently."

"The MMO?"

"Oh Guild Wars 2."

"Right. That one. That was the last big one we all got together and didn't play."

So I asked because the answer had been bugging me for awhile: "Why didn't you like it, Ryan?"

"It wasn't WoW."

He said it. What I had been thinking for ages but had never said. As much as I loved the streamlined questing, the story elements, and the artwork of Guild Wars 2, I couldn't engage with the game the way I normally would with an MMO. I couldn't figure out why... I think in part it was timing and the other part was the lack of commitment from my fellow gamers. We just didn't "click" with Guild Wars 2 as a group.

So then I said it.

"I miss WoW. I miss playing Sunnybee (my main avatar - a human warlock)."

Ryan said, "Yeah me too. You were just getting good with Sunny when we quit."

It was true. I wrote about the first time we all raided together and the satisfaction I felt from that experience. We had managed to get decent gear and I was finally understanding spell durations and not to "clip" my duration spells. It was also one of the first times we had all worked together as a group.

We started talking about going back to WoW, resurrecting our accounts and old friends (avatars) and how it might actually be fun to <gasp> play a panda. A hush fell over the table and Ryan said, "After all the grief you've given WoW, after all the stuff you've said about Blizzard on the show, how can you go back?"

I thought for a moment about going back in secret... starting a new account and not telling anyone, perhaps most importantly one of my closest gaming friends, Mark, who was furious with Blizzard after D3 and pandas and pokemon pets. But I knew that would be beyond disingenuous. Game on Girl was created based on my gaming experience and has grown into something amazing and dynamic and awesome and I couldn't start lying about that.

It's been a couple of weeks since this conversation and Ryan started a new trial account to test the waters. I've been tempted but I still haven't committed myself to going back into the WoW fray. I can't quite bring myself to do it even though the thought of playing again is compelling. The time commitment keeps me from opening a browser and reinstalling the game.

So, dear readers, I ask you: what is a gamer to do? To WoW or Not to WoW? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Episode 62 - Genese Davis

Bridging the gap between gamers and non-gamers: this is a topic that we've addressed many times on the show. This week we talk to author, host, and video game columnist, Genese Davis. Genese has written a novel, The Holder's Dominion, aimed at describing game culture and the desire to game to non-gamers. Listen to hear Genese's story about becoming a gamer as an adult, the process of writing a novel about gaming, and how to lark your life. 

As always, we'd love your feedback. Let us know what you think in the comments here, on our Facebook page, or on our Twitter account. 

Until next time, game on!

Regina & Rhonda

Episode 62

4 hours

I usually buy a fashion magazine at the airport but those things are so heavy. I got the newest WIRED instead.

Zynga: A View from Outside (with a definite sound of ax grinding)

If you are on Facebook, you know Zynga.  Even if you never heard of them, you've probably felt their affect.  FarmVille, FarmVille2, YoVille, Words With Friends, Indiana Jones Adventure World, CastleVille, CityVille, ChefVille, The Ville, Slingo, Vampire Wars, Mafia Wars, Hidden Chronicles, Bubble Safari.... all are current or past games that either you or at least some of your friends have played or are playing.

Founded by Mark Pincus in April 2007 (named after his beloved bulldog, hence the company's logo), Zynga launched its first game in July 2007:  Texas Hold'Em Poker (now Zynga Poker).  Within 2 years the company was the #1 app developer on Facebook, with over 40 million active users.  That's serious participation.  (Contrast that with World of Warcraft's 12 million players in October 2010, their benchmark number.  Yes, I know its apples and oranges in gaming, but it still puts the numbers in perspective a bit.)

Zynga expanded from their San Francisco headquarters (complete with weekly happy hours, free massages, gourmet food, and an indoor dog park) to additional facilities in Los Angeles, Austin, Dallas, New York, Seattle, Toronto, India, China, Germany, Japan and more, mostly due to acquisition of established studios. Since inception, they have seen revenue surpassing the market value of Electronic Arts.  Zynga went public in December 2011 with a declared a market value of over $7 billion.  All this without producing a single tactile product; everything is virtual, all is code.

How do they do this when playing the game is free?  Through advertising revenue, and by enticing players to spend money in order to advance game play through either buying enhancements directly or through business partners (for example, if you apply for and are accepted for a Discover card through a link on a Zynga game, you get bonus virtual currency to use in that game).  But players can choose to forego dropping a single dime into the Zynga bucket and still participate.

Sounds pretty great, doesn't it?  Well, if you think so, you haven't played many Zynga games.

I have played numerous Zynga games and except for Words With Friends, I no longer play any of them.  Two games - CastleVille and Vampire Wars - I played significantly, advancing to high levels before quitting, and I will admit to paying out cash to buy VWs currency a few times. (Zynga has since abandoned Vampire Wars).

Why did I become disenfranchised with the games?  Big reason #1:  complete and utter boredom.  The games, enticing at first, would very quickly became mindless clicking without any skill, imagination or involvement on my part.  In Vampire Wars, I would literally spam the Enter key and then sit back until the game caught up with my clicking.  Then I would spam it again.  And again.  Not exactly a fun time.  But I had to complete copious quests in order to level (with enhancement rewards) or to obtain randomly granted items that would allow me to do what kept me in the game:  buy outfits for my vampire avatar.  Even with the hours of time invested and personal achievements I racked up (and outfits acquired), eventually it became just was too mind numbing to continue.

Then there were the service errors.  Games would not load, or quests would be broken or would cause your system to crash, and those problems would last for days, with no time frame for resolution and often without even acknowledgement of the problem, despite pages of forum posts pleading for updates.  "Down for maintenance" screens would greet players at any given time without notice, and a "spinning orb of death" (the icon that indicated the game was "thinking" before moving on to the next action) would hang game play constantly. When these incidences happened - and they happened often - the silence on the part of Zynga was absolutely deafening.

But what broke the camel's back for me was the pervasive sense that I, as a player, meant absolutely nothing to Zynga; I was merely profit fodder, unworthy of even a modicum of respect.  Complaints were not addressed, questions were ignored.  Games were labeled as being "beta" months after being released, yet Zynga still solicited money from players in those games.  Excuse me, but you do NOT charge for beta.  Period.  Game play would start out fun then devolve into rote repetition of quests, actions and narrative, as if Zynga had gleaned as much as they could initially then would lose interest and move on to the next game release.  Player loyalty meant nothing and longevity in the game was rewarded with diminishing returns.

Plus I often felt that I was being forced into doing Zynga's marketing and recruitment for them because I could only advance in the game if I solicited a certain amount of players to be my "neighbors" or in my "army" or "clan", who then could send me items or visit my realm or vote on my avatar's appearance.  Often these appeals could only be done through my Facebook feed.  The moving target of privacy settings and the complexity of building specific groups made tailoring those appeals to "gamers only" daunting.  And frequently the game would find a way around my settings to suddenly start broadcasting game announcements (purportedly to celebrate my achievements) that would be seen by all, which alienated many of my non-gaming friends.  It felt like Zynga was expending more effort to figure out how to circumvent my privacy settings than it did to support my game issues.  While it is possible that Zynga was not always the culprit in these broadcasting and Facebook interface issues, with no information flowing from them to the players, it made it awfully easy to assume so.

Then you hear about the incredible perks their employees get when you can't get a dev to respond even once to an 24 page long thread that has been building for days in the forums and you wonder, if they can hire dog groomers, why can't they hire someone to manage the forums or provide feedback?

That negative vibe goes deeper.  Word is that Zynga blatantly copies other games; CEO Pincus reportedly told his employees, "I don't f*cking want innovation. You're not smarter than your competitor.  Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."  Admissions of participation in scams and complaints about promotions that download malware, going after other companies that dared to put "-ville" in their game titles, forcing stock buybacks and executives selling stock right before negative reports are published - it just felt sleazy to be supporting the company in any way.

Bottom line, if it doesn't feel right, don't do it.  If you aren't having fun playing, then stop.  It didn't and I wasn't, so I did.

Karma's a bitch, though.  In 2012, Zynga stock nosedived and the company had dismal quarterly reports.  Investors are abandoning ship, and CEO Pincus dropped from being a billionaire to having a personal net worth of only $425 (only!) million by 2013.

It's not all bleak, though. Through Zynga.org, the philanthropic arm of the company, players have raised over $15 million that benefitted numerous nonprofits and causes, and raised awareness for projects such as clean water and alleviating hunger.  That might not be money Zynga itself paid in, but someone has to spearhead the effort and raise the platform. Yet one has to wonder if this philanthropy is in place to merely make the company appear more community minded.  With Zynga cutting regulatory ties with Facebook and aggressively moving into the online gambling arena, the question is, will this herald a positive new focus or give the company grounds to become even more mercenary?

Time will tell if Zynga becomes more player centric and broadens its blinders to something besides profit uber alles.  But I, for one, won't be there to find out.