Ticket To Ride: Europe edition, Pirates

We've been looking for a boardgame and have heard plenty of good things about Ticket To Ride. Eventually we got the Europe edition, because the map looked a lot more interesting than in the original US edition.

We've only played it together once, but came away impressed by the simple, rich rules. The components are also first-class.

What really impressed me was their online version. You get a code with the boardgame which allows you to play the game's online version for an unlimited time. It's a simple Java conversion of the original, with lacklustre graphics and token sounds. However, it's a joy to play and works very well as an online multiplayer game. They've done this with a couple of their games, but Ticket To Ride is the only with a sizeable player base.

It made me think they should make a good-looking version of the online game and sell it separately.

Related to this, Sony Online Entertainment is releasing a separate online version of the popular Pirates collectable... cardboard ship... game ("constructible strategy game", they call it), today. They're giving all their launch-day profits to Child's Play. This is the first time I'm applauding Sony for something in quite some time.

Speaking of Child's Play, the gamer community has donated over half a million dollars so far, this season alone. That's really something.

On disability (Nintendo Wii)

I am a healthy person. Regardless, I can't play Burnout for more than around half an hour at a time: I can't keep gas (RT) and nitro (A) down all the time without my right hand aching. I have often wondered how much my life would change if I was no longer able to hold a joypad or use a keyboard and mouse. (It's pretty scary, actually: people break their hands all the time.)

Everyone is not as lucky as I am. I find the people's dickheadedness in this post's comments section astonishing. The guy is just saying that it would be nice if there were consistent options to adjust the Wiimote's sensitivity to accommodate people who can't move their hands that well, and people are crying "cheat!" and "tough luck, disabled guy, live with it!". This being the internet, many are drawing ridiculous parallels like "well, the guy with no hands can't play either, next we'll have to help him!".

I've ranted about usability issues before. Microsoft has pushed the developers into conforming to their standards on the usage of the 360 joypad's buttons, on respecting customized soundtracks and incorporating Live. They even have a setting for console-specific "preferred controls" to avoid having to set your invert, gearbox and viewpoint preferences in every FPS and driving game you play.

Is it possible that they haven't even thought about demanding customizable controls while at it? What about all the people who prefer "southpaw" layout, with movement on the right stick? Like many left-handers? There are no technical reasons to limit the user's customization of controls, yet it's extremely rare to see that an option.

I imagine there are a lot of people with minor hand problems, like missing fingers, aching joints and whatever, who could be helped just by giving them the option of, say, using RB instead of A for the majority of gameplay.

Even very common disabilities like hard of hearing and colorblindness are usually not taken into account. This could be remedied with simple rules on user interface design. I understand that these options can be the last thing to finetune before shipping and thus being very barebones, but we're talking about the overall quality of not just the one game, but the industry. If accessibility (to a sensible point...) was taken into account in the planning and design stage, these would be non-issues.

Since developers don't seem to take this up and publishers won't make them to, some industry entity should take up the accessibility flag. There's a lot of cheap, good PR on the offer, if you need an incentive beyond being as good as you can be.

I find this especially depressing because playing videogames can be one of the few ways a disabled or bed-ridden person can communicate with her peers on an equal level. To limit their options for no good reason is a shame.

Update: A couple of links to complement the post. First, there's One Switch, which is a campaign for greater accessibility in games. Then it appears that the International Game Developers' Association, or IGDA, has already taken accessibility into account in a special interest group's blog.

Massively Multiplayer (EVE, Stormreach, World Of Warcraft, CCP + White Wolf)

I've been intrigued by the massively multiplayer games for a long time. I've played some Anarchy Online and tried free demos of a couple of others, but haven't really gotten into any of them, mostly due to the grind of the games being such a bore: the games don't properly start until you've invested dozens of hours and made friends with other players.

These games are commonly called massively multiplayer online something-or-other, usually roleplaying games. The "massively" is just needless gloating, and "multiplayer" says the same as "online", really. If it's an RPG, I like to stubbornly call them net-RPGs or something of the sort, as I feel just stupid saying "MMORPG" aloud. Don't you? If it's not an RPG, can't we just say it's an online game? Or a net-game?

There is one game in which the "massively" part rings true, which is one of the reasons I'm itching to try it out. Eve Online's players truly are all in the same world, running it in unison. It's a grand social and economical experiment, hailed by some as the ultimate game and by others as the, well, ultimate bore. There's been a lot of cool stuff done in Eve, like the way the economy actually works and the way the players have set up the world's allegiancies on their own, without GM intervention. We intend to check out EVE with my wife in the Christmas holidays.

Then there's World Of Warcraft. It's massive in the sense that everyone and their cats have played the game and there's a truly massive amount of players at it at any given time, regardless of how many separate servers they inhabit. The games has one thing going for it: it's visually so pleasing that I find it hard to resist jumping in whenever I see it running on-screen. We had already decided against ever trying it out, wary of some of our friends' regret over the time they'd put into it, but last weekend the fever hit again.

I really don't want to spend all my spare time on a (single) game. However, there's nothing wrong in playing something for a while. There's another online RPG I'd really like to check out, Dungeons & Dragons Stormreach, but I always thought that I shouldn't touch it as I wouldn't have the time it required, anyway. But so what if I only played for a couple of months, as with other games? If the game can't offer proper gameplay during the opening moments, it's probably not worth my time anyway.

As I had pondered about these things and settled on rying out at least the free demos of these games, the news hit that CCP, the company behind EVE, had agreed on a merger with White Wolf, the company behind my beloved Vampire tabletop RPG. Something good is bound to emerge from this union.

Child's Play 2006

Penny Arcade is again organizing Child's Play, the gamer charity for children's hospitals. I'm going to participate with my wife. It would be great to have you along.

We haven't participated in earlier years because it's been a US thing, but now that there's an Egyptian children's hospital to donate to, we really have no choice but to chip in. We've been to Egypt a couple of times, since my wife studies Egyptology. The last time we visited an orphanage for handicapped children in Luxor, and the people and their need has stuck with us.

You can buy toys (including videogames) or donate cash via PayPal. It's a great Christmas gift not only for children, but for the gamer community: there really is no better PR for the often criticized and ridiculed gamers than this campaign.

Introducing: Life

I've set up a new blog, Post 1978, to cover my life. Yes, the kind of blog every kid has these days. I've been trying to avoid getting one, but after much deliberation, I've come to think that I might be able to better handle some issues through it. So it likely won't be a "dear diary" type of everyday journal, since I don't have time for that kind of thing, but a distillation of stuff that is affecting me.

This also means that the blog you're currently reading will be more strictly about gaming. Hooray! Being on topic must be a good thing.

Holiday bliss

As the increase in my Gamerscore may indicate, yesterday I played Oblivion some nine to ten hours straight. It was good. I cleared the entire Arena quest in one sitting and got some mileage in the Fighters' guild. My 360 is happy.

I was pretty surprised to find the energy to install and begin playing the original Fallout in the evening on top of the day's unheard-of-in-many-years gaming stint. I've only played the sequel and Fallout Tactics previously, so it was rather exciting to embark on the original Vault-Dweller's journey. The interface was a little clumsy and the resolution is low (looks kinda muddy on my laptop), but otherwise it rocks a lot. The soundscape is excellent.

Today we're off to Tallinn for three days; gaming is probably limited to Dweller on the phone.

So pointless

This is so pointless that I love it! 360voice.com gives my Xbox 360 its own blog. Not only can I check via Microsoft's official offering what my 360 is doing right now (say, from work), now I can also check out what it's thinking about.

We laughed very hard at the Lego Star Wars II trailer on Live and promptly decided that we need the original game. Sadly, it's all sold out at Play.

In other news from a galaxy far, far away, Darth Vader is an ass.

Update: We got the original Lego Star Wars for the Xbox used from the local EB Games. Based on a half an hour's play, it's cool, but a little slow and unpolished. The easygoing nature is very much appreciated, though, and it really does feel like playing with Lego! I especially like the way they gloss over the plot. Much like the Clone Wars animation series, this is Star Wars at its best - condensed so much you don't even cringe at the acting, the writing and the pacing.

It's my vacation, by the way. I've watched some telly (Miami Vice, Over There) and taken it so easy that I've been pestered by a headache all day. Maybe I'll play Oblivion all day tomorrow and not feel bad about it, since I don't have to work the next day.