With the Euros on and my current enjoyment of FIFA 12 (I will get Accrington Stanley into the Premiership!) I have been considering how to bring football into the realm of boardgames. I've a pretty good base of an idea, which I have been considering for a few days, but am yet to write anything down. Essentially it'll be set in a similar, or the same world as Blood Bowl (Games Workshop's old specialist game of fantasy gridiron). Players will manage their fantasy medieval-esque squads and develop them and the game mechanics will allow players to "drift" players around the pitch each turn to get into position and then a couple of players to perform special plays, such as making a run, a long pass, a slide slide tackle or a shot on goal. I need to get my ideas onto paper, but I think it could work. Reading this paragraph back to myself I realise it sounds odd, but trust me, I think I've got the germ of an idea that could be developed into a simplish, fun medieval-esque football game.
Another idea came to me very quickly one evening after watching Toy Story 2. A game bidding based card game where players aim to buy the rarest toys to win the game. A simple, short, fun game for a large groups. The game would consist of a stack of cards with duplicate copies of various toys, this is shuffled together and then a certain number of cards are drawn off the top and placed in a seperate pile. Cards from the main pile are then placed face up on the table and one card from the seperated pile is turned face up. The cards from the seperated pile will give players an idea of which cards are now rarer in the main pile, because for each duplicate of a card in the seperated pile, there will be less in the main pile, thus they are rarer and worth more points. This will not be evident from the beginning of the game but will become more so as the game progresses allowing players more insight into what to bid for. That's my quick summary, but I'll get it down properly and maybe wop together a draft version for testing; not sure what to do about money, maybe something similar to High Society...?
Saturday, 23 June 2012
Ok, I need to talk about Battlefield 3
I very disappointed in DICE, the creators or BF3. A few months ago they opened up their servers to be rented out to players so that they could setup and run them. This sounds all well and good but it now means that there are only a very few official servers running and nearly all the servers run by players have ridiculously high amounts of tickets.
The consequence of this is that you can no longer just nip of BF3 for a quick match for 15-20 minutes and then come off again, having satisfied a hunger for some quick killing and objective grabbing; games now tend to run on for an hour at least.
The other big issue is that if you are doing particularly well then there is a strong chance you will be kicked prior to the end of the game so that the people who run the server get the MVP awards - 3 kicks from a server and you are banned. You may not have even done anything wrong!
The consequence of this is that my brothers, friends and I who have all loved the Battlefield games ever since the very original, Battlefield 1942, are now thoroughly disenchanted with the franchise and feel alienated. Once again capitalist money grabbing has destroyed a game!
I must say that we have persisted for a while since the change, which was back in April or March sometime, but our play time has just dwindled. The real nail in the coffin is the "Premium membership", which gives players free and early access to all future expansions plus additional content, all for a cool 4000 microsoft points - that's about £35. Considering we payed ~£25 for the game, plus have already paid out 1200 microsoft points - ~£10 - the prospect of another pay out equal to the total we've already paid seems absolutely ridiculous.
There are other issues, which I breifly touched upon in my earlier post about BF3 when I couldn't compliment it enough! The issue with forming a squad and then trying to join a game together is still there; we get split between the teams and waste the first game trying to get together again.
DICE, please, bring back more official servers, get rid of the server list browser and just make it easy to join a game, as a squad, first time, and if you're going to anounce a premium membership, anounce it upon release so we don't waste money on content we can then get for free once we're premium members!
BF3 has slid down my pile of games and I can't see it becoming an easy favourite again. I hope the community has sense and urges them to move back to the ease of their previous titles - BF: Bad Company 2's menues and squad support was a joy. However, I fear the community loves the way things are changing - I really dislike the modern gamer's mentality.
The consequence of this is that you can no longer just nip of BF3 for a quick match for 15-20 minutes and then come off again, having satisfied a hunger for some quick killing and objective grabbing; games now tend to run on for an hour at least.
The other big issue is that if you are doing particularly well then there is a strong chance you will be kicked prior to the end of the game so that the people who run the server get the MVP awards - 3 kicks from a server and you are banned. You may not have even done anything wrong!
The consequence of this is that my brothers, friends and I who have all loved the Battlefield games ever since the very original, Battlefield 1942, are now thoroughly disenchanted with the franchise and feel alienated. Once again capitalist money grabbing has destroyed a game!
I must say that we have persisted for a while since the change, which was back in April or March sometime, but our play time has just dwindled. The real nail in the coffin is the "Premium membership", which gives players free and early access to all future expansions plus additional content, all for a cool 4000 microsoft points - that's about £35. Considering we payed ~£25 for the game, plus have already paid out 1200 microsoft points - ~£10 - the prospect of another pay out equal to the total we've already paid seems absolutely ridiculous.
There are other issues, which I breifly touched upon in my earlier post about BF3 when I couldn't compliment it enough! The issue with forming a squad and then trying to join a game together is still there; we get split between the teams and waste the first game trying to get together again.
DICE, please, bring back more official servers, get rid of the server list browser and just make it easy to join a game, as a squad, first time, and if you're going to anounce a premium membership, anounce it upon release so we don't waste money on content we can then get for free once we're premium members!
BF3 has slid down my pile of games and I can't see it becoming an easy favourite again. I hope the community has sense and urges them to move back to the ease of their previous titles - BF: Bad Company 2's menues and squad support was a joy. However, I fear the community loves the way things are changing - I really dislike the modern gamer's mentality.
Friday, 1 June 2012
Creative update
I've not posted for a while so I thought I might just put an update on each of my games, which I'm working on at the moment:
Gangland - Haven't really progressed, but ideas are still fresh and a few rules have been amended. I need to push forward with creating beta version to test out new and altered rules.
Fantasy cardgame - I've been working on this one most recently. This was my original game idea from before xmas and ideas have been coming to me for this game so I've been updating my rules and considering new ideas for cards.
Gridiron cardgame - This is the working name I'm giving my secret creation. The idea has pushed forward quite a bit since my last post. The game will feature a drafting system, special dice for the matches and illegal business for raising extra funds, as well as story cards, training cards etc. Pretty excited about this one.
Because my Open Uni course started at the beginning of May I've not had much time to play computer games so not much to say about those at the moment. Skyrim is great though! Maybe I'll rant a bit about that in a day or two.
Gangland - Haven't really progressed, but ideas are still fresh and a few rules have been amended. I need to push forward with creating beta version to test out new and altered rules.
Fantasy cardgame - I've been working on this one most recently. This was my original game idea from before xmas and ideas have been coming to me for this game so I've been updating my rules and considering new ideas for cards.
Gridiron cardgame - This is the working name I'm giving my secret creation. The idea has pushed forward quite a bit since my last post. The game will feature a drafting system, special dice for the matches and illegal business for raising extra funds, as well as story cards, training cards etc. Pretty excited about this one.
Because my Open Uni course started at the beginning of May I've not had much time to play computer games so not much to say about those at the moment. Skyrim is great though! Maybe I'll rant a bit about that in a day or two.
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