[Episode 22] Mod Squad

[Ravenlock]

http://image.colonyofgamers.com/imcast.png


We've made a big deal before out of how versatile a platform the PC is, how its very nature as an open system means that it can house experiments and experiences that consoles simply never can, so long as they remain shackled by static hardware and strictly governed content requirements.

Mods rest at the very heart of that divide, allowing PC gamers to take the games they buy and tweak them, mold them, sometimes completely reshape them into something new, something uniquely their own. As it happens, several of our crew have a history of tinkering in the mod world, and you'll get to hear all about it in this episode.

The discussion runs long and there's a lot of news to cover, so the Retro segment takes a vacation this week, but you do get a discussion of Igneous (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=13952) in our freeware segment, and a look at the very elaborate Sins of the 13th Tribe (http://tgnforums.stardock.com/351057) BSG mod for Sins of a Solar Empire. We also point you to the ongoing CoG Child's Play drive, which you should already have donated to. If you haven't, go do the right thing (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showpost.php?p=420677&postcount=2). We'll wait here.

A few other random links I promised I'd post:


Read J Arcane's excellent column, RUN"HISTORY (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=13679).
Go play Quake in a web browser (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/25/streaming-stroggs-flash-quake/)!
Check out this remake of Maniac Mansion (http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/11/maniac_mansion_3d_remake_nearl.php?utm_source=feed burner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gamesetwatch+%28GameSetWatch% 29)!
A 3rd person UT3 mod (http://www.moddb.com/mods/airborn) with hot air balloons and cities in the sky!
We like RockPaperShotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com), and so should you.
Natural Selection 2 (http://www.naturalselection2.com/) is looking pretty hot, and a $20 pre-order will get you into the pre-alpha, if that's your thing.

...More to come as I remember whatever else I forgot. ;) Get settled in, kids, this one ain't short.

Immortal Machines presents... Mod Squad (http://www.immortalmachines.com/public/podcast/Mod_Squad.mp3).

Hosted & Summarized by Eric [Ravenlock]
Participants are Robert [Trebor], Jacob [MagGnome], Jeremy [Lord Don], and very special guest J Arcane!
Produced by Clayton [Voodoo]

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[MagGnome]

This was a great episode. Clayton, J Arcane, and Jeremy really lit up the mod section!

[Ravenlock]

Dammit, I forgot the link to RUN"HISTORY when I posted. Fixed.

[Vigil80]

Good episode. Bigger is always better when it's all content. :) One thing jumped out at me. Here's a paraphrased quote.
The new Medal of Honor will be modern. Because we didn't have enough modern shooters already...
Now I wouldn't say this statement is incorrect in its sarcasm, but I'm a little at odds with it, and wished the crew would have expounded on it a little. It seems like a shooter is either WW2, modern, sci-fi, or maybe horror. None of the categories has what I would call a sparce selection. We have apparently decided as a people that WW2 is finished. Are we saying the same about the modern era now, too? Sci-fi already has two behemoths in the forms of Halo and Gears, so how much room is left there?

So what is the real feeling behind the above statement, what game are you hinting at wishing someone would make? Kolibri 2, perhaps? :p

[Ravenlock]

Hmmm. Well, as the owner of that statement, I suppose it's my job to clarify it. It was born of the following feelings, primarily:


Like all entertainment industries, video games exist in a very "follow the leader" market. Somebody makes a boatload of money with a formula, everybody else wants to copy the formula.
Clearly, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series is one of the current leaders.
As I said on the podcast, it is very tricky to treat contemporary warfare in a way that is both entertaining and believable in a game, for a host of reasons ranging from the fiction to the gameplay itself.
(Tangent: I personally don't think CoD:MW does this very well, and as I've said, their single player gameplay, occasional "whoa" moments notwithstanding, is actually pretty formulaic and trite.)
This naturally doesn't stop everybody from trying, and since CoD:MW1 we've seen a pile of imitators both on the "modern and trying to be realistic" side (Six Days in Fallujah, Kuma War) and the "modern but silly" side (Frontlines, Conflict: Denied Ops, Battlefield Bad Company, etc), some somewhat successful, others dismal failures, none of them measuring up to CoD:MW in sales or reputation.

None of that means that EA might not step up with a really excellent, special game in the new Medal of Honor. After all, the Call of Duty series was essentially born of the reverse situation, with MoH guys splitting off and deciding to one-up their former team. It does, however, make it feel like a "me too!" effort, and when it's a subject matter I already feel so iffy about (as I expounded on in the episode) I just feel like I really don't want a huge glut of it.

I also feel like EA's done so well in the last couple of years stepping outside their box and taking risks on new ideas like Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Battlefield Heroes, etc, that to see them appear to be chasing Activision's dollar signs so blatantly seems disappointing - even though I realize that perception may be wrong, and from the other side of my own statements they are taking more of a risk by tackling something so tricky and being so up front about their intentions.

So that was a bit rambly, sorry for that, and as I said on the show my feelings about it are a bit muddled. At a base level I simply don't trust the video game format to handle a serious examination of actual warfare, and that concern is amplified when you're setting it in a current, actual conflict, because I think it sends some weird and uncomfortable messages even in a clearly ridiculous and fictional setting like CoD:MW's. So I wish the formula wasn't as popular, and I'm nervous about what the outcome will be. But hell, it's early yet, we'll see what happens. I'm not saying I won't play the game. ;)

[Vigil80]

All good points.

Personally, I'd like to see SWAT 5, and a proper Rainbow Six, as long as we're talking about (realistic) modern shooters - non-specific to EA, of course.

So based on your feelings, if you were king of EA, you're saying you'd rather they spend their resources on another new IP?

[Ravenlock]

No, not at all. I completely understand why they might need to do what they're doing - Dead Space was pretty successful, but they've absolutely taken a bath on things like Mirror's Edge and some of their Wii experiments. (Though apparently ME may be getting a sequel, so it doesn't look like they've abandoned the franchise, which is nice.) If they have a need to take what their investors will see as a safe bet, assuming that's what this move constitutes, that's fine.

As one of their consumers, though, I felt pretty good about "the new EA", and I'd prefer that they not go back to dressing in their old clothes, currently being worn so smugly by Activision.

[Doogie2K]

My own mod history is confined to a very small amount of dicking around with the Descent II editor (I made a really big box with a smaller box hidden by a grate), and...Space Empires IV.

Space Empires, for those not familiar, is a space-based 4X game series in the vein of Master of Orion, made by Malfador Machinations. I played the hell out of the shareware version of SEII during the Windows 3.1 days of my childhood, but the really cool thing about SEIV was that <i>everything</i> in that game was governed by text files and bitmap pictures. So my friend and I went and tweaked a lot of the items in the game to give combat and empire management a bit of a different flavour. The main things we did were give shield generators a limited ability to regenerate, instead of forcing you to use a dedicated item that took up space and was useless the other 3/4 of the time, and allow mining facilities to have a limited amount of storage, for basically the same reason: not as much need for dedicated facilities, leaving more room for more mining stations, or shipyards, or whatever. I'm sure had we more time or motivation, we could've really started changing the properties of the weapons, maybe allowing mass driver cannons to pierce shields to a limited degree or something like that, but by the time we'd done even as much as we had, we wound up moving on first to Master of Orion III (ugh) and then Civilization III.

[LordDon]

That sounds like it was a lot of fun to mess with.

[Doogie2K]

That sounds like it was a lot of fun to mess with.

It was, just because it was so simple to make really powerful (and occasionally game-breaking) changes. If I'd had more time/interest in those days, I might have actually gone ahead and made an honest-to-God mod, instead of just tweaking a few numbers and adding a few attributes.

I haven't investigated SE V yet (I've had it on my Steam list since the Strategy Inc. sale threeish months ago), so I don't know if it's as flexible; probably not at this stage, but it's worth a gander, I suppose.