I discovered a nice game called Cabals, which combines trading card elements with a tactical board game. But unfortunately the game was released 5 years ago in 2011. So not a lot of people are still playing, and those who do have collected cards for years. So every time I start a PvP game, first I'm waiting for a long time for an opponent, and then that opponent is far, far more powerful than I am. And the daily quests appear to only count PvP games, so if I play solo games I get no influence to buy more cards with.

In a PvP game, players are the content for other players. So when a game ages and people drift away, the content they provided is gone as well. At some point a game becomes nearly unplayable for new players, as they have nobody of their level to play with. So they leave quickly, the game doesn't get any fresh blood any more, and the dying process accelerates. Of course that hits smaller games faster and harder than bigger games. Hearthstone isn't much at risk to run out of players for some time to come. But just like the smaller MMORPGs struggled compared to World of Warcraft, other card games struggle compared to Hearthstone.

For me the lesson in this is that developers shouldn't rely too much on the presence of other players as content in their game. They need to think how well their game still would work with very few players around. Is the game still interesting enough to make players want to spend money? Is there still decent progress possible for a new player when the few other players around are all veterans?

Failing that the developers need to take measures to get new players into the game, which isn't easy. Kyy Games is hopefully pulling it off for Cabals, by getting the game greenlit on Steam. I just hope the game can be played cross-platform.

While I do live in Brussels, I was not at the airport today, nor did I use the subway. Terrible times, but me and my family are safe for the moment.

I am not yet totally convinced that virtual reality devices are the future of gaming, and there are some serious challenges to overcome. But if we imagine that in a few years everybody is playing with VR goggles on instead of in front of a screen, what does that mean for the games that we play? If our experience with virtual worlds becomes "more real", do we still want the same virtual worlds and game mechanics that we have now?

Developers are starting to think about it. At the GDC 2016 there was a talk about the fact that sexual harassment becomes a lot worse when it happens in VR as opposed to on a screen. But personally I was thinking of something else: Even in the absences of perverts and griefers, what kind of virtual lives do people want to live?

I spent my weekend playing the excellent Stardew Valley, which is an indie game on Steam that resembles (and improves upon) the console game Harvest Moon. Not futuristic VR graphics, but pixelated 2D graphics. But what stood out most when playing the game was that I was never ever killing anything while playing it. In my huge Steam library there are very, very few games which don't involve killing enemies, be that AI-controlled "monsters" or other players. Sure, no actual blood is spilled, but do we really want all of our games to be murder simulators?

In real life some people use their holiday to go out and kill stuff. But that is a rather small percentage of all tourists. Most people prefer to travel to just see things and do different peaceful activities for the experience of it instead of killing things. A cynic might remark that this could be because hunting people is illegal in real life, and computer games thus offer an opportunity that you don't otherwise have. But if you look at all games having beautiful 3D virtual worlds you can visit, you'll find that the percentage of them which aren't murder simulators is tiny. Surely there must be a bigger demand for virtual experiences that aren't about killing!

And virtual reality might be the tipping point in a development towards more peaceful games. We know that soldiers, in spite of having trained for it, and in this day and age certainly having killed stuff in games, can suffer from PTSD when actually killing somebody for real for the first time. If VR makes the virtual experience more visceral, then maybe more people will to some degree feel uncomfortable with killing, especially killing virtual humans in a gory fashion. And that could give rise to totally new gameplay mechanics, e.g. a photo safari game where getting close to the animals without disturbing them is as important as the "aiming and shooting" part. We could have virtual world tours as time management games (comparable to 80 Days but in 3D VR). And there sure are lots of other ideas where the virtual reality can be used to create great experiences that don't involve killing. Murder simulators will always have their place in gaming, but not every game has to be one.

I'm doing spring cleaning in the "installed games" section of my Steam library. Maybe you just play one game at a time, up to the end, but I'm easily distracted and switch to a new game without necessarily finishing the game I had started before. So I end up with lots of games on my hard drive that I haven't played for months. And I find that different games are different in how easy it is to come back to them.

For example I didn't uninstall XCOM 2. I have set up an "endless" game with the help of a mod that messes with the Avatar timer, and so the game stopped rushing me towards the end. I have done nearly all research and have nearly fully developed soldiers, so whenever I want I can pop into the game, play a mission or two and then stop again. XCOM 2 being turn-based, and the UI being right there on the screen there isn't much risk of me forgetting how to play it. I managed to turn XCOM 2 into a "casual" game where I can play when I feel like it.

I did uninstall Shadow of Mordor, because of the controls. I was playing with a gamepad, and there are just too many different actions my character can perform, each of which requires pressing several buttons simultaneously. When you start a game you are taught all these button combinations one by one, and end up being competent in using them all. But there is no way I can remember all of them now. And I have never seen a game where you can play a tutorial that teaches you all the controls while you are in the middle of the game. So if I wanted to play Shadow of Mordor again, I would need to start over, and play the 30+ hours I already did again. Not going to happen.

A similar problem of memory made me uninstall Pillars of Eternity, last played a year ago. I simply forgot most of the story and whatever my plans were. The controls are easy to pick up again, but the story isn't. The hero who has forgotten everything is an old cliche in RPGs, but that only works at the start of the game, not in the middle of it.

I also uninstalled a couple of games that I remember perfectly well how to play. But those were basically endless games, like Thea: The Awakening, which I played through many times. Great game, but maybe the next time I feel like playing a fantasy 4X game I want to play a new game rather than a game that I have played many times before. It isn't as if my Steam library wasn't full of possible candidates!

There are so many new games around that I rarely pick up an old game again. However I did buy Final Fantasy IX on the iPad, having played it over a decade ago on the Playstation. Despite a hefty $20 price tag for an iOS game, I felt it was worth it. Everybody has their favorite Final Fantasy game, and mine was always number 9, because it had a more lighthearted story and less science fiction elements. And as luck would have it, it is the first Final Fantasy game which was given a complete UI overhaul to make it work better with the touch screen.

How about you? Do you often go back to old games? Is your hard drive full of half-played games? Do you eventually finish them, or do they end up getting uninstalled like mine?

In the previous session the constables had intervened in a battle between bandits and thieves, killing everybody but Morena, the bandit leader's wife who had been kidnapped by the thieves. In this session they continued their way through the Cloudwood and reached the camp of the dying skyseer Nevard. Nevard confirmed that he knew Gale, the "eco-terrorist" that the constables were looking for, and that he could arrange a meeting. However he wanted the group to do something for him first: Take him to the top of Cauldron Hill to watch the stars at night.

Cauldron Hill is the highest point in the city of Flint, but also a haunted location. At the top of the hill the connection to the parallel world of Shadowfell is strong, and a coven of witches used that fact long ago to terrorize Flint and hide in Shadowfell when somebody came after them. Finally they were vanquished, but Cauldron Hill remains full of dangerous dark magic, and the mayor of the Nettles quarter in which the hill is located is always a powerful mage skilled in the defense against the dark arts. Fortunately for the group their invoker Eldion had worked in the past for Mayor Reed Macbannin, so there was some chance that they could get a permit to climb the hill.

But first the group held a lively discussion on what to tell their superiors about their progress in the case. James, with his background as second generation constable, wanted to report everything and just follow orders. Eldion, the politician, was a lot more skeptical about whether their bosses had told them everything and whether Gale was really culpable of everything she is accused of; so he wanted to not tell their bosses about the potential meeting with Gale, to keep his options open in case he didn't believe her to be guilty. In the end they told their boss that they wanted to do this favor for Nevard to get "information about" Gale, without going into details. Their boss, Stover Delft, was okay with that, and commended them for having killed the bandit leader. He also was very interested in the criminal contacts of Nilasa, and asked that after helping Nevard the constables should look into where Nilasa apparently bought illegal goods for the terrorists.

On visiting the manor of Mayor Macbannin, a haughty butler made the constables wait while the mayor was still receiving a courier. Then the courier came out of the manor, smoked a cigarette and chatted a bit with the group before the butler called them in. Mayor Macbannin immediately recognized and welcomed Eldion, telling him that he had taken an interest in his career since Eldion left the Mayor's service to advance his political career with a stint in the constabulary. While he normally didn't let anybody visit Cauldron Hill, in this case the Mayor was willing to make an exception for Eldion, as that would make great training in fighting against dark magic. He even hinted that he was looking for a successor one day, and Eldion might just be the right candidate.

So the group got a carriage and went back to Nevard. A shaman in Nevard's entourage used a scroll of dubious origin on the group which shared their health with Nevard; that allowed the old man to travel in spite of his frailty, and even protected him against damage at the cost of the health of the constables. Back again at the Mayor's manor, Macbannin instructed them how to keep safe against the dark magic of Cauldron Hill: They had to wear special iron amulets to prevent being cursed, and he provided them with four kegs of goat's blood with which to make a ring of blood around their camp. The shadow monsters that were likely to come over from the Shadowfell to Cauldron Hill at night usually weren't very bright and would follow a trail of blood in the hope to find a wounded animal, even if that trail led them in an endless circle. However the constables were warned that this protection wasn't perfect; they needed to keep still and hide the light of their fire with stones.

As it was getting late and the encounter on Cauldron Hill risked to take some time, we ended the session at this point.

At this point in time all the even remotely likely scenarios end up with Hilary Clinton as the next president of the United States. And the Republican party is 100% responsible for that. It was their election to lose, and they completely lost it in a spectacular fashion.

Everquest Next was cancelled this week. I'm not sure anybody was really surprised by that news. The constant series of changes to the company and personnel movements didn't bode well. For me the game had pretty much died when they announced to kick out StoryBricks. Daybreak will still release Landmark, but I guess they'll just slap a "released" label on the unfinished mess they have so that they won't have to refund all those $99.99 founder's packs.

Unlike many other people on the internet, the fact that game companies want my money doesn't make me angry. I know there are a lot of Free2Play games out there which I can play reasonably well either for free, or for a limited amount of money which roughly corresponds to what I would have bought the game for. I know other games require tons of money, and unless I want to experiment with that concept, I just stay away from them. But what still makes me angry is when these games have bad game design. Thus I'm writing about Clash Royale, the latest SuperCell game with a huge advertising budget.

I was reading an article about time-sucking video games in which the author complains that the games he is playing have become bigger and bigger, requiring near endless amounts of time, and going on for years. I checked my calendar, and it still said 2016, so at first I was a bit puzzled of why the author realized this a decade later than the rest of us. But then I realized that he probably had never played MMORPGs, and the MMORPGification of other game genres like shooters was really a new experience for him.

The MMORPG is dead, long live the MMORPG! There is actually nothing in the definition that says that a MMORPG needs to have a series of abilities with cooldowns on hotkeys unleashed upon auto-targeted enemies. MMORPGs just used to be like that because of ping and server response times. These days any sort of combat system is possible for a massively multiplayer online game, from shooter to martial arts. That leaves us with a lots of games in which lots of players are running around simultaneously, and some of them are advertised as being MMORPGs, while others are being advertised as being shooter games, or whatever else.

What remains true for the companies is that a multiplayer online game account is harder to pirate than a single-player game that comes on a disc, and that a player who is hooked by your game for a long period can be made to pay more money over a long time instead of buying the game just once. So the economic advantages are still there. But so is the economic risk: Making a game like Destiny or The Division costs millions of dollars, so a flop can be costly. And because these games require so much time-investment from the players, players can't play all that many of those games in a year. I never spent less money on games than during the first years of World of Warcraft, where WoW just basically ate up all of my time. That is great for the few games that end up being mega-winners, but it leaves a lot of others in the dust.

The author of the article in The Verge claims that time-consuming games are bad for the players as well. I'm sure that some aspects can be, but there are also aspects where the players have an advantage. For example even an "expensive" subscription-based MMORPG costs you less to play for a year than buying a new console game every month. And playing the same game for a long time means you don't constantly have to learn new control schemes and game mechanics. On the other hand you could play a different mobile game on your tablet every day for free or pocket change and not run out of games for years. It is very hard to say what ends up being more fun, lots of inexpensive games or a single multi-million dollar game you play for a long time. How about you?

While I don't claim to have a complete overview of all the new Free2Play games coming out, I did notice a kind of a trend: More and more "free" games on various platforms are using game elements coming from trading card games like Magic the Gathering. Many then combine classical Free2Play elements like leveling troops or fusing them with the trading card method of finding cards of various rarities in random boosters. As the potential as money pit of random boosters has been known since the 90's, I'm just wondering what took them so long. A completionist wanting every most rare card fully upgraded can spend thousands of dollars on such a game, so the attraction to the game company is obvious.

What is less obvious is that the system isn't actually all that bad for the players either. There is always a limit to how many cards you can take into a battle, so having twice as many cards doesn't make a richer player twice as strong. Frequently there are even other resource elements in the game, so the more powerful rare card is costing more resources, which somewhat balances them out. Yes, to some degree this is Pay2Win, but it isn't as blatant and unbalancing as other systems where money buys you a linear increase of power.

You know trading cards are main stream when Supercell releases a game that has them, called Clash Royale. Supercell tends to make highly popular "free" games that earn them millions of dollars per day. Having said that, I find Clash Royale not a very good game. The basic premise of playing a single-player MOBA / tower defense game with trading card troops has promise; but every win rewards you with a chest, and you either need to wait hours for a chest to open or pay to open it. As you only have 4 chest slots and even a simple silver chest takes 3 hours to open, you quickly get to the point where you are informed that you won't get any reward for winning any more, because you have no room for those chests.

So I'm sticking with Gems of War, which has trading card games in a Puzzle Quest type of game, and which doesn't push me all the time to spend money. And my level, currently 65, depends on games played, not on money spent. Spending money on cards is more like spending money on added content, as it allows me to build different decks and try out different strategies.

After over a hundred hours played, I have to agree with the reviewer who said that XCOM 2 has a pacing problem. The strategic game isn't as fun as it could be because it doesn't give you enough control over the tactical game. To see what I mean, compare XCOM 2 with games like the Total War series or the Heroes of Might & Magic series: In these game your moves on the strategic map initiate tactical combat, and you have some control when you want to attack and whether you want to attack the enemies main force or just do an easy fight for a few resources. XCOM 2 doesn't have any of that. There are 4 story missions and the occasional Avatar facility that you can attack whenever you want, but all the other missions in the game just pop up at some point and you need to do them *now*, or deal with serious negative consequences. That isn't just sometimes annoying to get frequently interrupted in some strategic map action, but also can have you waiting around for a mission when you want to attack and there isn't a mission on offer.

The source of the problem of course is that XCOM 2 copied the pacing more or less from the first XCOM. There UFOs would pop up from time to time, and it made perfect sense that you couldn't fight the aliens when none of them were in sight. But the background story in XCOM 2 is reversed, the aliens are in control of earth, and you are playing guerrilla rebel fighters. If the aliens are everywhere, why wouldn't there be a location for me to attack at any given point? Why can I only attack the aliens if they allow me to?

In the over thousand mods that XCOM 2 now has, I haven't found a single one that gives you the option to attack aliens when you want. However I did find a number of mods that mess in one way or another with the Avatar timer, and thus allow me to play a longer game. To me that is more fun, because I can play more games against the harder aliens with soldiers that have more options, instead of having to rush to the final mission and finish the game. But I would be interested in either an XCOM 2 expansion or an XCOM 3 with a different pacing, and lots of options to attack different points on the strategic map for different rewards, instead of having to "scan and wait" for those rewards.