Since 2007′s release of the iPhone, Nintendo has adamantly opposed the device in favor of its own mobile consoles, much as they’ve done with every competitor’s hardware in the past. And Nintendo has a legacy to stand on, with the NES and SNES and even the N64. But things kind of break down after that, as competitors moved to optical media and basically left Nintendo in the dust. With the Gamecube, Nintendo attempted to get back in the game, but it wasn’t until the Wii that they were finally back in the good graces of the gaming populace. But even that momentary lack of judgement on our part has faded, as Nintendo’s ability to capitalize on the Wii’s innovations leave us with a few nice gimmicks, but ultimately little staying power.

The argument for Nintendo has been two-fold:

1. Nintendo will use the momentum of the Wii to finally offer competitive hardware in their next console.
2. Nintendo still has the mobile gaming market locked down.

Early reports of the Wii successor leave little to drool over, and the mobile market has slowly been pushed into iPhone territory, even though Nintendo ironically called it a novelty. It’s one thing for Nintendo to have dismissed the iPhone in 2007, but year after year is no longer excusable, especially when their countermeasures are a poorly performing 3D Gameboy. Nintendo’s now no longer leading much of anything, other than a steady march to the grave, much as SEGA did when they fell over thanks to the Dreamcast flopping.

There are investor calls for Nintendo to develop for iOS, but we’re still seeing push-back. It’s the same stubborn push-back that Nintendo of America has been cooing for the last couple years, and now it’s coming straight from Japan. “No, we want our software to run on our hardware.” Nintendo must be quoting a long-lost SEGA exec. The problem is that Nintendo’s hardware is, in a nutshell, crap.

Nintendo does one thing well: it makes great games. Old ports would be wonderfully on the iPhone, let alone new games using Nintendo IP. It’s a no-brainer to bring these titles over, and if Nintendo really wanted to brand some hardware to go along with it, we’d gladly support an iPhone sleeve with hardware bluetooth controls to go along with it.¹

If Nintendo doesn’t wake up soon, they’ll be forced to go this route anyway. Why not capitalize on the transition early instead of blowing more capital on failed hardware projects?

Similar Posts:

• iOS devices as mobile consoles. – That iOS games are threatening the traditional mobile gaming market is no longer a surprise. Today, …


• Microsoft Kinect: a cute novelty. – We haven’t weighed in on Microsoft’s Kinect (formerly “Project Natal”) because we haven’t seen anyth…


• Microsoft wants another monopoly, or, the Vivendi Deal. – Microsoft is yet again reaching out with greedy hands for a bigger market share in the console gamin…

There’s a rule that most Monopoly players don’t know about, which we remember a cousin telling us about when we were but a wee lad. The rule states that if someone opts not to purchase an available property after landing on it, then it is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Not having ever played with the rule, it came as a shock to us, but once accustomed to it, it becomes immediately evident just how much the rule adds to an otherwise straightforward game. Critical Miss talks about the rule and why early Monopoly players chose not to keep using it, resulting in a Monopoly rule-set passed down verbally that doesn’t even acknowledge the rule’s still right there in the instructions.

We, gamers as we are, might think a game featuring lots of inter-player shafting is superior to one without. But Monopoly is, and always was, played not by gamers, but by families; and inter-player shafting is liable to cause all sorts of upset… Somewhere along the line someone said, “Let’s just leave out that stupid auction rule; we’ll have much more fun that way.” …parents want to play a crippled game of Monopoly because they’re too scared to teach their children how to deal with interpersonal conflict…

It’s a solid theory of why the auction rule vanished from the Monopoly hive-mind, but if it’s accurate, it says a lot more about American parenting and culture than it does about protecting fragile young emotions from the evils of board game strategy. That’s because the kind of inter-player shafting that can result from something like Monopoly’s auction rule is highly prevalent in European board games, which unlike their American counterparts, are based less on chance and more on player skill and strategy. The reason board-game enthusiasts love games like Settlers of Catan, for example, is because European board games almost always have some degree of player interaction, while typical games of Monopoly are mostly about rolling dice hoping to get lucky. There’s no skill in the latter, whereas the former requires haggling, player manipulation, and in most games, a degree of bluffing.

The dumbing down of American board games may make little children less apt to cry because they can quicker learn to understand how chance screwed them versus getting screwed by their own family, but how much of that attitude results in American children growing up with incredibly thin skin? Much like how Europeans don’t put up metal guard rails on the side of every mountain road, European board games don’t coddle their players, and instead teach them how to survive in a world of danger. Even if a few crying sessions happen at an early age due to being screwed out of some play-money in a board game, Nietzsche’s rule is apt, here. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

There’s a difference between protecting our children and teaching them how to survive, let alone teaching them the difference between friendly competition and familial loyalty. Suffice to say, if removing Monopoly’s auction rule was an intentional dumbing down of the game just to keep a bunch of whiny youngsters happy, then it seems we’ve been on a slippery slop of poor parenting for quite a long time, considering the game is over 100 years old.¹

Similar Posts:

• Review: Settlers of Catan. – Additional Commentary (in yellow) by DrMantis. Introduction I don’t care how many geeks out there sw…


• NPC party members are a good idea. – Lots of folk are annoyed at Bioware’s revelation of “companion characters” in the upcoming Star Wars…


• 10M WoW players an illusion. – A little over a year ago, I commented on the success of World of Warcraft (WoW), and predicted that …

While the Sim City franchise was the flagship for the Sim genre, other Sim games managed to capture an audience as well, offering similar gameplay but in a different setting. One such title was Sim Tower, released in 1994, which resembled Sim City in most aspects, but instead of building a city across a landmass, Sim Tower required the player to build what amounted to a contained city inside a skyscraper. The same core elements were in the game, however: residents would need to be attracted to the player’s world, and if their needs weren’t being met, they’d move back out. Just as in Sim City, random events would mix things up: terrorist bomb threats, discovering buried treasure while digging underground sections, etc. While Sim City had players optimizing roads and mass transit, Sim Tower required optimization of the elevator system.

Tiny Tower is not Sim Tower. Released for iOS a few weeks ago, Tiny Tower borrows several elements of Sim Tower, but doesn’t claim to be a spiritual successor to it. In fact, while Sim Tower was a relatively deep simulator, Tiny Tower is the exact opposite: it’s a casual game more reminiscent of a Facebook game than a serious PC or console title.

The gist.

Tiny Tower is a freemium title, and it works rather well considering it’s a casual game.¹ There are two in-game money systems: coins are generated from store and apartment profits, and is used to build new floors and stock store supplies; bills are used to speed up restocking of supplies and upgrade your elevator. While bills can be earned in-game, they come in very slowly, so players can opt to buy bills via real money transactions (RMT). Ultimately, this means that players willing to spend real money can generate coins quicker, and that means building a larger tower faster than if they earned bills from simply playing the game. Fortunately, progress is not woefully slow without RMT, so unless you’re truly impatient, RMT is not necessary.

Money aside, the core gameplay consists of building new floors and assigning them a floor type; you can choose to build a residential floor for people to live on, else one of five commercial floor types (creative, retail, recreation, service, and food). There’s not much to manage at the beginning, but as you build your tower up, you’ll end up with a variety of stores, because while you can choose your floor type, the store actually built is random.² Each bitizen of your tower has an inherent preference for working in a particular type of store, so where you place them will ultimately determine not only how happy your bitizens are, but how efficient things on their assigned floor are. This is the resource management aspect of the game that becomes more time-consuming as the game goes on, as you end up reshuffling bitizens around once you have adequate floors that match your bitizen’s preferred employments.

Each store has three things it can sell, and three bitizen employee slots. You can only sell as many types of items as there are employees, so a store with only one employee can sell one item, while a store with three employees can sell all three. You spend coins to “stock” store items, and then wait until a certain amount of time has elapsed for the stocking to be completed.

Ultimately, there’s no “winning” in Tiny Tower, and most of the gameplay involves keeping stores stocked with items and trying to place you bitizens appropriately. There are also random visitors to your tower that request a floor number, and you manually move the elevator in your building to the floor in question. You’re rewarded when you deliver a visitor to the correct floor, by either receiving coins or bills. Or, you can receive a restocking/construction time bonus if you deliver a VIP bitizen to a floor of your choice. There’s also a mini-game of sorts where you need to find a particular bitizen in your tower by touching the floor they’re on.

Where it wins and fails.

Tiny Tower is a small time investment, and perfect for short breaks where you can complete a queue of tasks like restocking stores or building a new floor. The casual nature of the title is arguably its biggest strength, and is a passable time sink for when you can’t get vested into something deeper. There’s always a reward around the corner, which explains why Tiny Tower is addictive, but whether the rewards are sufficient to keep you playing for more than a week or two is the big question.

Ultimately, Tiny Tower succumbs to its casual gameplay, revealing a rather hollow game. Not only can you not lose, but you can’t really be set back by anything, either. There’s a way to compare your tower size to that of your friend’s towers, but no ramifications for falling behind, nor any way to interact with their towers by exchanging bitizens to optimize one another’s stores. With no competition or random events that would set you back, Tiny Tower ends up a treadmill that doesn’t take you anywhere.

The resource management isn’t overly complex, but for such a casual title, you’d think that certain tasks could be automated, even if not efficient. For example, bitizens should automatically occupy vacant apartments, instead of relying on a system where you deliver potential, random bitizens to an unoccupied apartment via the elevator mechanic. This is so cumbersome and slow, it’s almost always worth it to spend bills in order to “force occupy” a vacant apartment.

While there’s a “demand” meter for floor types, it’s highly predictable. Keeping a balanced number of floor types pretty much results in full demand all the time, whereas building too much of a given floor type will push demand for that floor type down. It’s horribly simplistic, and makes Tiny Tower feel more like a game for kids than a game well-suited for adults standing in line somewhere or sitting on the toilet.³

In the end, we have a game that’s reasonably addictive for a few days, then trails off once it’s clear that you’re not getting anywhere good, with almost every task repetitive with a growing annoyance factor.⁴ There are cute aspects to the game like reading bitizen “Facebook” entries, but these are novelty. Things clearly missing from the game that actually impact gameplay are questionable design decisions. For example, backing out of a VIP bitizen delivery because you want to quickly construct a floor to make a construction time bonus pay off is impossible, because as soon as you click on the VIP, you have to make the delivery immediately. We wish the developers considered things like this more than adding bitizen Facebook updates, which offer no bonus to gameplay decisions.

The one thing Tiny Tower does do for us is make us wish that a Sim Tower port were in the iPhone’s future. If anything, Tiny Tower shows us that tower games of this nature have an audience, and upping the strategy in a game like Tiny Tower is something that would still attract a sizeable audience. Unfortunately, that’s still an area that most iOS games aren’t capitalizing on, as the casual gamers have a solid lock on top iOS games. Maybe that makes us the silly one, since we stand by the fact that what makes a good game isn’t always what makes the most money, or what attracts the largest number of players. Still, we’re pretty sure that there’s a middle road, and we’d love to see developers find it.

Similar Posts:

• Increased XP shitty for legacy players. – Cameron Sorden at Random Battle pointed out how Blizzard’s decision to drastically alter the amount…


• RMT, and Order & Chaos. – The business model of Order & Chaos (O&C) is irking us a bit more now, and it might help us to have …


• Casual vs. hardcore defined by convenience of play? – Casual versus hardcore gaming is a relatively new discussion among gamers, ousting such classic favo…

We’ve been somewhat critical of the Apple TV as a gaming console, and when we last wrote about the subject, we proferred that the key to Apple’s gaming platform success was already achieved in Apple’s mobile devices:

Technologies like AirPlay, or even video-out adapters, may well serve gamers to stream iPhone and iPad gaming to the big-screen, and this is where we expect to see additional innovation. Why tack on additional costs to the Apple TV by offering new controllers, or muse about potential storage solutions, when we already have capable storage on existing iOS devices?

John Gruber linked a comment from Phil Harrison, who was involved in the original Sony Playstation launch. The future of Apple, Harrison contends, is also the future of gaming. And Gruber responds by noting that the Apple TV doesn’t even support apps yet, as though to point out how the Apple TV will be another salvo aimed at the console industry. But as we pointed out back in April when we talked about the Apple TV as a console, the changes Apple would need to make to the platform to complete against the traditional console market is unecessarily complex, and the more likely scenario Apple will pursue is much easier to envision:

The Apple TV doesn’t need gaming apps, it simply needs to present the apps already on our iOS devices to the big-screen. Everyone thinks the Apple TV could be another platform for Apple to push, but its true strength is in acting as a bridge between our existing Apple devices and the television. Just as it already streams music, photos, and video from our devices, the Apple TV could be leveraged to present a gaming experience served up from these same devices. The issue then is not adding controllers and storage to the Apple TV, but adding an Apple TV to our iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Or more simply put, mobile Apple devices shouldn’t be seen as accessories to the Apple TV; the Apple TV should be considered an accessory to mobile Apple devices. We can take this further to say that the Apple TV will never be a gaming console, but it will be the accessory that brings the console experience to the home, thanks to bridging audio and video from iPads and iPhones to the family TV. The proof-of-concept was playing iPad games on TVs thanks to a wired adapter, but the release version of this technology is AirPlay, which already works fairly well for conventional media. With iOS 5, AirPlay will work for streaming audio/video from games to the TV as well, and as Real Racing 2 for the iPad illustrates, the technology will allow mobile devices to display additional information, while the main visual output will show up on the TV.¹

There’s still the small issue of storage, because 64GB max on the iPad means that only a handful of truly deep games can sit in one’s future Apple console library at a time, but that storage limitation will slowly disappear. Plus, the reality is that many gamers are content playing games that don’t require massive storage requirements for graphics files and video, so just how serious this storage problem will be is questionable over the course of the next couple years.

We fully expect gaming developers to implement AirPlay functionality in future titles, to at least supplement the gaming experience There’s no need for Apple to compete for shelf-space in Gamestop, because beyond their digital distribution of games thanks to the AppStore, Apple’s console is already being shipped in several form factors thanks to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. The Apple TV is just icing on the cake.

Similar Posts:

• Apple TV, AirPlay, and Plex. – When we mentioned jailbreaking the Apple TV, we didn’t make clear that yes, a jailbreak for Apple TV…


• The Apple TV as a console. – Over the past couple days, we’ve seen considerable speculation about Apple’s involvement in televisi…


• Siri integration with the Apple TV? – Microsoft recently sent out a heads-up to the masses that XBox Live will undergo [another update](ht…

Naysayers be damned: Gameloft has posted on the upcoming Order & Chaos (O&C) patch, despite the fact that most critics insisted that Gameloft’s lazy attitude on updating previous titles would negatively affect O&C. The bullets:

• New quests will be added in the last two high-level regions
• A server migration system will be implemented, allowing you to change your server
• The cost needed to teleport from one city to another will be adjusted
• The amount of money lost upon dying will be adjusted
• All cemeteries will become non-Player-versus-Player areas (non-PvP), meaning no player will be able to attack another one in a cemetery
• A teleport will be added in Greenmont
• Additional content and several bug fixes will also be implemented…

What this does is confirm that the game was pushed out the door without being fully done. That is to say, the lack of quests at certain levels was suspicious, in that it felt like Gameloft didn’t spend as much time on quest content as they could have, and just wanted the game out to start generating money. If the lack of quests in the mid-20 level range is any indication, the high-level tiers must be truly quest-sparse, which the update should address. Same is true for dungeons¹ and PvP.

Presumably, the server migration system will be RMT-based², and is of questionable worth; after starting our first character, we realized that the Goons were on another server, so we briefly considered re-rolling. Switching servers would be useful, but since guilds have a max capacity of 60 people, most people who’d use this feature would switch servers to play with a smaller group of friends, rather than switching to play with larger groups.

We wonder if the likelihood of cheaper transportation³ and less of a death penalty is any indication that Gameloft expects to make adequate money via other RMT, or if they’re afraid that the complaints about these things will drive off new players. The teleport hub in Greenmont is a logical addition, and it’s amazing that it wasn’t added already.

Overall, it’ll likely be a couple patches down the road before O&C feels like a complete MMO, if things beyond solo PvE are important to you. We’d start to get more enthused about dungeons if there were a parallel announcement about a good group-finding system, but there hasn’t been one as yet. The arenas don’t intrigue us too much, as we’re skeptical that they’ll work well given the small amount of abilities, specs, and classes the game offers. But at least Gameloft is trying, and they do still have a veritable lock on the genre right now on iOS.

Similar Posts:

• A bit more on Order & Chaos. – Questions about Order & Chaos (O&C) are still making the rounds, because the game’s features aren’t …


• RMT, and Order & Chaos. – The business model of Order & Chaos (O&C) is irking us a bit more now, and it might help us to have …


• Order & Chaos, initial impressions. – As a former World of Warcraft (WoW) gamer, we found ourselves intrigued when Order & Chaos (O&C) was…

Questions about Order & Chaos (O&C) are still making the rounds, because the game’s features aren’t documented well, and finding out more about the game is either a practice in raising your Googling skills, else based on in-game experience. For some, neither of these options is desirable. Since we’ve wasted time on both endeavors, we’ll happily regurgitate our findings, and correct some of our misunderstandings from our post two weeks ago.

The classes.

We pointed out earlier that we actually wanted O&C to invest in the Diku-genre, as it’s a solid starting point for a robust MMO scene on iOS. It turns out, however, that the holy triad concept is watered down in O&C, which in a way makes sense, since O&C is just watered-down WoW to begin with. What we mean here is that in games like WoW, aggo is a function of threat, which can be generated in a variety of ways. In O&C, threat is based purely on damage, which means that healers can freely spam spells, and DPS classes need to be aware that they will likely be expected to kill anything that runs towards them, or at minimum, tie it up until someone else does. This makes the defensive Warrior spec rather questionable, because while it helps keep a Warrior alive, it doesn’t really aid in herding mobs, and decreases the Warrior’s damage output.

We suppose that at end-game, and/or when Gameloft places further emphasis on team dynamics, that Warriors will be expected to hold adds, while the DPS classes help burn down main targets, but the lack of taunting, or threat mitigation via skills for DPS classes, means that Mage AoE abilities are basically too dangerous to use against difficult mobs. Since so much of the game is solo-friendly, like WoW, most Warriors are speccing offensively, and the rage-like generation that Warriors are capable of keeps them fighting with little downtime. Gear is pretty self-evident here, with a focus on strength and stamina. With the exception of maybe fighting over one-handed weapons with Rangers and military Monks, Warrior itemization should be easy, since Warriors are the only class that wear plate.

The same can be said for Rangers, whose specs basically determine whether they are ranged or melee capable¹. Ranged Rangers² specialize in slow, high-damage attacks, with crowd-control abilities keeping enemies distant so they hopefully die before getting in our face. Melee Rangers, on the other hand, mimic World of Warcraft’s Rogue class, which emphasizes stealth, fast dagger attacks, and some crowd-control to keep adds at bay until a primary target can be neutralized. The obvious downside to the Ranger is that it’s a pure DPS class, which means if more Diku-style encounters are to be added in the future, these classes will likely be a dime-a-dozen. Gear is all about agility, with melee Rangers likely looking for some stamina items as well. Since this is the only class that exclusively wears leather, itemization shouldn’t be a problem for the most part.

The Mage is pretty straightforward, with one tree focused on pure damage output (fire), and one with slightly less damage output (ice) but with arguably more utility. Both versions of the class are for ranged DPS play, so if played correctly, Mages, like non-melee Rangers, shouldn’t be getting hit much. Mages may fight over some cloth gear and weapons with healing Monks, but most leveling Monks should be military-specced anyway, so gearing up in a team shouldn’t cause too much heartache.

Monks are different than the aforementioned classes because the specs differ so much; healing Monks rely on Wisdom, while militant Monks require Strength and Stamina gear. The former is also ranged, while the latter is melee. The former is a great support class in teams, while the latter is more of a utility DPS class. Geared up correctly, a healing Monk should have adequate mana regeneration, such that downtime is minimal, but in our own experience pre-level 20, there’s a lot of eating food between fights to regenerate health and mana. Long-term, this is supposedly more of a problem with militant Monks, who blow through mana a lot quicker than their healing-focused counterparts. Still, the potential nice thing about the Monk is that you can spec for melee DPS, and as long as you have healing gear stashed away somewhere, you can probably get away with healing in a team without re-speccing³. Healing Monks are also incredibly boring to play, because they don’t have many combat abilities, and quickly get beaten in the face.

The world.

Travel is painfully slow, especially if you need to run back to a major city in order to upgrade skills. There’s a teleport system in place, but it’s arguably expensive, and doesn’t go everywhere you’d want it to. There are no mounts in the game yet, which is curious considering this would be a perfect use of RMT⁴. The main city starting out is not easily traversed, and it’s somewhat of a pain to run from one side to another; the main city needs to be redesigned to be less linear, and have vendors more easily accessible.

The auction house remains the most viable method for acquiring gold, especially considering that your character is docked money whenever she dies. At least one of the minor towns has a convenient-placed auction “vendor” near a chest, so you have a decent way to bid on and post items. It seems that raising the cash at early levels to afford skills, deaths, inventory upgrades, and the occasional purchase relies on the auction house or RMT. We hear that at later levels, there’s enough gold coming in from quests and mobs that this is less of an issue, but at earlier levels, expect to price gathered crafting materials competitively at auction in order to have reasonable spending money.

While Gameloft is known for being slow or simply unresponsive in getting game updates out, they seem to be committed to rolling out updates to O&C; some form of team-based Diku-style encounters for end-game seem planned, though it’s unclear if these will be instanced, or simply be world objectives. Currently, PvP is based on dueling or World-PvP at later levels, but a WoW-like arena system is also planned. The World-based PvP is complainant-prone, thanks to loss of gold after each death. This may be mitigated somewhat by better cash inflow at later levels, but we can see this being very annoying if it happens often.

The rest.

Crafting is actually useful, but an extremely long grind. Only smithing relies on items gathered from ore nodes around the world, as leather-working and tailoring are based on items collected from mobs. This means that ore is generally priced a bit cheaper on the auction house, while leather and cloth are less bountiful and more expensive. Expect to spend cash at the auction house for these items, unless you’re okay with farming low-level mobs for crafting supplies. We’re told that high-level crafting relies on RMT-derived items, which we’re not a fan of, but we don’t expect to get to that point anytime soon considering how much of a grind professions are.

O&C is a great way to get a WoW-like fix in a less complex package, and Gameloft has a lot of potential here to make huge waves with the game. However, updates will need to be iterative, and the business model needs to be tweaked to keep a dedicated player-base that won’t cry foul if RMT is required for success in-game; RMT should be a crutch at best, but not mandatory, especially on top of a subscription fee and up-front purchase.

We’re looking forward to how the game evolves, but with reports that the grind becomes unbearable at the later levels, we question whether Gameloft can get end-game updates out in time for more casual players to hit the level cap. Unless Gameloft gives level-60 characters something to do, World-PvP ganking will likely become more commonplace before people get bored of the game and move on. A proper end-game PvE and PvP experience will keep players around for longer, however, and with the iOS distribution model, expansions can be funded quickly and easily as time progresses. Gameloft had better lock this down now before another big player makes their entry into the iOS MMO arena.

Similar Posts:

• Upcoming Order & Chaos patch. – Naysayers be damned: [Gameloft has posted](http://onlinegames-forum.gameloft.com/index.php?topic=106…


• Order & Chaos, initial impressions. – As a former World of Warcraft (WoW) gamer, we found ourselves intrigued when Order & Chaos (O&C) was…


• RMT, and Order & Chaos. – The business model of Order & Chaos (O&C) is irking us a bit more now, and it might help us to have …

The business model of Order & Chaos (O&C) is irking us a bit more now, and it might help us to have a better understanding of Gameloft’s expenses for this title. Freemium titles are typically free, with profit derived from real money transactions (RMT), where players purchase in-game items for actual cash. Overall, freemium titles are considered profitable, so why is O&C not being distributed under this model? In other words, what makes O&C less profitable than other successful freemium titles, necessitating the monthly subscription¹ and up-front cost?

Because of the RMT model, players paying the monthly subscription alone are at a disadvantage; buying gold becomes advantageous when min-maxing, because more gold means more vendor and auction house purchases, which means players who dabble with RMT can level faster than regular subscribers. Plus, since characters lose money whenever they get killed, players who take too many risks, or are simply not very good, could find themselves without adequate funds to purchase skill upgrades. Again, a clear advantage for those who spend on RMT.

That said, Gameloft’s done a good job of relying on craft funds to limit gold expenditures on crafting skills. This means that crafters can potentially see decent profits on the auction house, assuming their better items don’t bind on pickup. The auction house really becomes the only way for regular subscribers to stand any chance of making decent profit for their characters, but there are a couple problems with this, too. For one, the primary auction house location doesn’t have a chest nearby, which means players can’t easily post a lot of items to the auction house at once (because of inventory issues). A good solution would be to combine the auction house and chest system at auction house locations, such that there’s no need to courier items between the chest and auction house. Two, the auction house should be more readily accessible. As it is, running to the auction house takes too much time, especially since there’s no cheap transportation system in the game, unlike World of Warcraft’s hearthstone which quickly transports a character to a major city. Here again, RMT provides players a way to get around faster, because those who buy gold can afford to make use of portals, while regular subscribers cannot.

Finally, while O&C doesn’t run on 3G, a nice feature Gameloft could add is an auction-house/chest/mail interface that’s still accessible over 3G, letting players check in on auctions, post new ones, etc. This would allow players to remain engaged with the O&C world, even though they couldn’t actually “play” because of a lack of wifi.

Similar Posts:

• A bit more on Order & Chaos. – Questions about Order & Chaos (O&C) are still making the rounds, because the game’s features aren’t …


• Upcoming Order & Chaos patch. – Naysayers be damned: [Gameloft has posted](http://onlinegames-forum.gameloft.com/index.php?topic=106…


• Creating a player-based vendor system. – While wrong about Aion’s lack of an auction house, Tobold raised an interesting point concerning pla…

As a former World of Warcraft (WoW) gamer, we found ourselves intrigued when Order & Chaos (O&C) was announced for iOS. Gameloft titles are known for cloning gameplay, art, and themes from blockbuster titles, and O&C is no different. The title offers to do one thing that no one else hasn’t, however, and that’s delivering a solid MMO experience to mobile devices¹. And in this respect, Gameloft delivered.

WoW lite.

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Order & Chaos isn’t going to replace WoW. At least not for most people. That’s because WoW has a rich, established setting that’s interesting the moment you enter the game. O&C may share an aesthetic style, but it’s WoW watered down. The quests are just as simple as vanilla WoW, and while the world appears to have a decent scope to it, the atmosphere isn’t reflective of racial or cultural differences. New characters are basically dropped right into the game, and while WoW eases new players into game mechanics in way that’s mind-numbingly slow your second or third time around, O&C throws you into the mix a bit quicker, expecting you to get the hang of things before you’ve even explored the full interface. So maybe the tutorial could use some buffing up for people new to the genre, but maybe Gameloft expects most people downloading O&C to already be MMO veterans.

Let’s back up a bit and talk about character creation. The game limits players to four races (two per “side”), and players can choose either male or female gender. Model customization is limited to skin and hair color, hairstyle, and face style. There are about four options in each category here, so the customization isn’t horribly robust, but it’s plenty for a first attempt. What surprised us is that there are no racial bonuses, so other than appearance, there’s no benefit to which race you decide to go with.

There are also four classes to choose from, each being available to every race: Warrior, Mage, Monk, and Ranger. We’ve only played around with the Monk thus far, which looks like it can be specced to do extra healing, or be combat-proficient. It’s unclear to us as yet whether O&C is a true Diku-style MMO, but at first glance we didn’t see any threat-reducing spells available at our class trainer. By level nine, we had a one go-to healing spell, and we grouped up twice to take on some named monsters, where we were more useful healing than fighting.

There’s a talent tree for specializing, and it looks pretty deep, so the customization here may be interesting. There are some talent dependencies, and other talents that require a certain amount of pre-spent points in a given tree in order to buy them. Unlike WoW there are two trees per class, with the Monk being the sole healing class. The Ranger looks to be a cross between a WoW Hunter and Rogue, while the Warrior and Mage are more obvious. Again, without any indication of a threat meter, we don’t know whether the Warrior has a taunt-like effect, but we imagine this must exist, if only because his armour is clearly more robust.

Like WoW, each class has a trainer, but unlike WoW, you buy books that contain skills. So rather than buying the skill, you buy the book and then use the book to learn the skill, which is really just a pain in the ass considering the extra step. There are a lot of extra steps like this littered throughout the game, like when you click an item in your inventory, and you have to click another little icon in order to bring up a smaller window comparing it to the item already occupying the respective item slot. These things just go to show how polished WoW was when it came out in 2004, and how even after all this time, a clone isn’t getting everything right.

O&C includes crafting, which seems limited to tailoring, leather-working, and smithing. There’s a quest you can complete which lets you choose one of those three, and we don’t know why you wouldn’t choose the one that lets you craft your own gear. The only gathered we’ve yet seen is mining, and it doesn’t require special gear – you just click on a resource node on the map, and your character pulls a pick-axe out of her ass and starts hammering away.

Yet, decent gameplay.

It’s pretty remarkable that Gameloft got O&C to run well, particularly given the low resolution. The game does feel a tad cramped compared to playing WoW on your big-screen monitor, and we can’t help but think that reducing text sizes and some icons wouldn’t alleviate our virtual claustrophobia a bit. But the gameplay is pretty smooth, with a virtual control-stick appearing on the left side of the screen, wherever you decide to drop your thumb. This only gets in the way when you want to loot a mob whose corpse is on that side of the screen, but it’s not too annoying to move the camera to the left so you can loot easily. Yes, your right thumb controls camera movement, as well as jumping and using your hotkeys on the bottom-right of the screen. There are three hotspots near the jump button where you can place spells and items, but if you need more (and you will), you can place less-used abilities on a shelf that you can pull up or hide on the right side of the screen. This is where we stashed our potions and food, and definitely beats bringing up the player inventory just to use a potion mid-combat.

The lack of addons is actually nice. We don’t know how many hours we spent working on an ideal addon configuration, and compiling it for others to use. Needless to say, it’s somewhat refreshing knowing that every player is on equal footing, and that when you want to play, you don’t have to first update all your addons or mess with your screen layout. Since there’s no O&C version of wowhead, you have help with quests thanks to a blue arrow that points in the direction of a selected quest objective. Presumably, this won’t be as helpful when you have to travel half-way across the world, so paying attention to quest descriptions will be necessary, but in the initial levels of the game, it’s a foolproof guide.

WoW-like “groups” are called “teams” in O&C, and they work decent enough. The chat system includes a global channel, which, as in every game, can be a royal annoyance. This is perhaps even more true in O&C, if only because players come from various countries, using various languages. There are regional servers, but this hasn’t stopped Korean players from creating characters on the American servers, complete with names that we don’t have the proper keyboard set up for, even if we did want to type them.

About the only major gripe we have with the game is the business model. The game costs $7 to download, and after a free, three-month subscription, costs $1/month. That’s not bad, but there’s also a “freemium” model here, where players can buy gold and other items for real money. How this will affect balance is still up-in-the-air, but it seems as though many of the for-pay items are temporary buffs and aesthetic enhancements (like pets)².

Moving forward.

O&C is certainly deep, in the sense that player progression isn’t super-quick. It doesn’t seem to be super-slow, either, but we’ll have to play more to see what kind of curve the game offers. Right now, the game feels like more complex Gauntlet. That is to say, it’s a hack’n slash emporium with various MMO elements, but not offering enough to foster a complex community³. That’s not to say that Gameloft couldn’t expand on O&C as time goes on, offering new abilities, races, classes, emotes, customization, et al. If anything, O&C blows games like Dungeon Hunter out of the water, because of the MMO complexity.

What we hope to see in the next 10 levels or so is more Diku styling, with areas that require grouping and the holy triad of classes (tank, healer, DPS)⁴. We also hope to see varied class builds, and a world with considerable atmospheric changes. The background “lore” has been weak thus far, and we hope this will change; right now, we don’t see a reason to separate races into Order and Chaos factions, because both races are seen pretty close to the get-go near starter areas. With no clear faction contest, Order and Chaos offer even less context than Alliance and Horde in WoW does.

O&C is an awesome next step in the future of mobile MMOs. While the inability to play over 3G is a hit against the game, the fact that you can take an MMO along on an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, is still remarkable. Even better is the proof-of-concept that Gameloft managed here, showing developers that an MMO on these devices is not only possible, but that the control scheme can be good, and needn’t be hampered by the lack of a physical keyboard. So even if O&C fails to deliver an experience even marginally as robust as beta WoW, it’s already challenged other MMO developers to create something better. For that alone, O&C should win a prize.

Similar Posts:

• Upcoming Order & Chaos patch. – Naysayers be damned: [Gameloft has posted](http://onlinegames-forum.gameloft.com/index.php?topic=106…


• RMT, and Order & Chaos. – The business model of Order & Chaos (O&C) is irking us a bit more now, and it might help us to have …


• A bit more on Order & Chaos. – Questions about Order & Chaos (O&C) are still making the rounds, because the game’s features aren’t …

Over the past couple days, we’ve seen considerable speculation about Apple’s involvement in television manufacturing; some wish to believe that Apple will delve into the TV production business, while others are critical in this regard. Others still are taking this opportunity to point out that doubting Apple’s entry in a given market has a poor track record, what with Apple having releasing the iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV not long after pundits proclaimed these endeavors too risky, or too unlike Apple.

What’s certain, at least, is that Apple doubled down on their “hobby,” the Apple TV, when they released an iOS-based version costing just under a hundred bucks. The device is plug-and-play, easy-to-use, and is already offering alluring new features thanks to fancy licensing deals with Netflix, Major League Baseball, the NBA, et al. Indeed, the Apple TV is being positioned as an alternative to cable television, offering a consistent experience across markets that do not share the same cable provider. More importantly, the a la carte television and movie programming has gotten substantially better over time (addressing a chief complaint we’ve had with the Apple TV for years).

So Apple TV’s getting better, and that means Apple has an excellent weapon they can use to continue infiltrating an otherwise chaotic industry, offering a clean, consistent experience that potentially rivals the experience cable operators offer. Lessien believes that Apple can leverage apps, iAds, and subscriptions to even further promote the Apple TV, where apps pay homage to the living room gamer.

Apps, in particular games, give Apple an opportunity to extend their hugely successful mobile development platform into the living room. Low-priced apps, immediately downloadable, connected via GameCenter, controllable with iOS handheld devices just make sense. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft should be nervous.

There’s still a question as to how apps will work on the Apple TV, because to date, third-party Apple TV apps have been part of official iOS updates, not voluntary installs from an Apple TV AppStore. And then, of course, are the issues with transforming the Apple TV into a console replacement.

What of the controller?

The Apple TV comes with a lone remote. It’s a nice, simplistic remote, and in no way capable of working as a good console controller. The notion of using iOS devices as controllers is a worthy one, with such functionality easily worked into Apple’s Remote app. But whether it can technically be done or not is hardly the issue. Rather, if Apple planned to situate the Apple TV as a console replacement, it wouldn’t drastically increase the adopter fee by requiring a controller purchase several times more than the cost of the Apple TV itself. While many people already have iOS devices they can use for this purpose, Apple won’t make that a requirement any more than they made having an iPhone a prerequisite for iPad cellular data service¹.

The alternative to buying up older, second-hand iPhones and iPod Touches is simply buying a new iController that only runs the Apple Remote app, or perhaps runs a specific iController app that allows developers to create skin-able controller layouts for various games. The controller wouldn’t need an A5 processor, much storage, or RAM, and could rely purely on bluetooth for connectivity. With a gyroscope for added functionality, this iController could probably come in at a reasonable price-point, so families could pick up an Apple TV, two iControllers, and a multi-iController charging dock for under 200 bucks.

Such an iController would clearly be wireless, and would have a sufficient battery life for prolonged gaming sessions. But, without tactile feedback, and being limited to virtual buttons on the device face, there’s an obvious question of how capable the device would be compared to the multi-button monstrosities that modern gaming controllers have become. That’s not to say that a simpler, more polished interface isn’t an attractive proposal, but this could be considered a major flaw when compared to consoles whose controllers offer a button for every conceivable action in a given game; Apple TV games may inherently need to be simpler.

The only other option is let the Apple TV interface with bluetooth-enabled gaming controllers of a more conventional form, but this then becomes a contrary force to the multitouch philosophy that Apple has pushed for iOS. In order for Apple to remain consistent in this regard, we see it challenging devices like the Wii, but not button-heavy consoles like the XBox 360 and Playstation 3. Ultimately, if the Apple TV is to compete in the console wars, it needs to find a way to offer the same titles that other consoles do, and that means offering a controller scheme that’s not weaker in comparison.

What of the storage?

The Apple TV doesn’t have a lot of storage. In fact, it’s designed to stream content, not download it. So when we talk of games, anything substantial is no longer a possibility. Yes, Apple could allow the attachment of an external hard-drive, but now we’re again pumping up the cost of the device and making it less accessible. If Apple decided to increase the Apple TV’s storage, we could get away with simpler, casual games, but to truly compete with the big boys, we’d see games many gigs in size. That’s not to say that Apple couldn’t position the Apple TV as a casual-friendly console and compete exclusively with the Wii in this regard, but why limit market penetration to such a niche role?

The only other option is to stream video, and here, Apple may have a sound strategy. That is to say, Apple has already proven it can get content owners on board with its platform, as seen with record labels, movie studios, and TV broadcasters. So, if Apple decided to take on OnLive, and use the Apple TV to stream gaming video feeds, then storage isn’t an issue. However, this seems contrary to the AppStore ecosystem Apple has established to date, and makes rolling out a nation-wide, consistent experience difficult. That’s not to say such a move isn’t plausible, merely unlikely.

What of established iOS gaming?

With no clear solution to the problems of offering low-cost controllers and storage for the Apple TV, there’s nothing Microsoft and Sony need to worry about just yet². Apple would likely do a much better job than OnLive for getting a streaming library of games available to a wide audience, but the technology here is still too young for widespread adoption. Apple is better off focusing on how they can situate the Apple TV as an every-man device, and look to entering the set-top console fray at a later date.

Where traditional gaming companies need to watch out is Apple’s continued domination of the mobile space. Technologies like AirPlay, or even video-out adapters, may well serve gamers to stream iPhone and iPad gaming to the big-screen, and this is where we expect to see additional innovation. Why tack on additional costs to the Apple TV by offering new controllers, or muse about potential storage solutions, when we already have capable storage on existing iOS devices?

The Apple TV doesn’t need gaming apps, it simply needs to present the apps already on our iOS devices to the big-screen. Everyone thinks the Apple TV could be another platform for Apple to push, but its true strength is in acting as a bridge between our existing Apple devices and the television. Just as it already streams music, photos, and video from our devices, the Apple TV could be leveraged to present a gaming experience served up from these same devices. The issue then is not adding controllers and storage to the Apple TV, but adding an Apple TV to our iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Similar Posts:

• Apple’s console already exists. – We’ve been somewhat critical of the Apple TV as a gaming console, and when [we last wrote about the ...


• Siri integration with the Apple TV? - Microsoft recently sent out a heads-up to the masses that XBox Live will undergo [another update](ht…


• Apple TV, AirPlay, and Plex. – When we mentioned jailbreaking the Apple TV, we didn’t make clear that yes, a jailbreak for Apple TV…

World of Goo is an impressive indie title, which appeared on the iPad not long ago, though it’s been available on other platforms for quite some time now. Developer 2D Boy comments on World of Goo’s iPad success:

In the first month of sales on the iPad App Store, World of Goo sold 125K copies (thanks to being prominently featured by Apple). In comparison, World of Goo’s best 31 day period on WiiWare was 68K copies (thanks to a mass mailing by Nintendo), and on Steam it was 97K copies (thanks to two promotions at discounted prices). So far, the iPad version is by far the fastest selling version of the game, both in terms of number of units sold and in revenue generated.

John Gruber correctly points out that, “This is what makes iOS different than Android.” But more importantly, this is why companies like Nintendo should be fearing Apple right now, instead of ignoring Apple’s success in the gaming sphere. Even if you dismiss iOS as a platform that “hardcore” games can be greatly successful on (which we’d argue), you can’t deny that volume sales of low-cost games are breathing new life into the indy game scene, and forcing larger publishers to rethink how they market future titles.

One has to wonder what Square’s thinking is when publishing a $15 title on the AppStore, when the top grossing games are sold for significantly less. There’s this odd mental block that some traditional developers just can’t seem to get over, in which they believe they are devaluing their work by selling it for cheap, even if the total profit in the end would be greater. We liken this in some ways to the print industry, who is still failing to adopt to today’s new media en masse.

Similar Posts:

• Five months later, and still sucking. – Look, I wanted to love it just like everyone else, and briefly, I did. But it’s now almost five mont…


• The impending Mac AppStore. – Just over a year ago we addressed the suggestion of a Mac AppStore, effectively saying, “it won’t ha…


• Nintendo must be high. – The rumour band-wagon is hastily moving forward that a gyroscopic controller from Microsoft will ful…