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OpenGame ID

March 2, 2016 by Belghast

The Problem

Now that I have consumed my morning coffee from my trusty skull mug… I am going to try really really hard to focus on a topic that I had kicking around my head. It all started with a rather simple announcement yesterday that the Microsoft store had Gears of War: Ultimate Edition available for Windows 10 computers. We will talk about the bullshit of making games Windows 10 exclusive some other day… but the discussion for this morning is game accounts. Right now I feel like I am deluged with account systems that serve no value to my life, and only serve to make shit more complicated when I just want to play a game…. and even worse when I want to try and play with friends. For a period of time my life was all nice and Zen, and pretty much everything I purchased went through the Steam interface. Sure Steam does some shifty shit, but it provided me a nice clean interface to play my games… and also a decent account system to keep track of which friends were playing which games. When a game integrated with said steam account system, and used steam servers for multiplayer… shit just worked and worked beautifully. Then Electronic Arts got pissy and spawned the Origin store, forcing me to deal with yet another store front with a significantly worse in every possible way interface. The worst bit about this whole thing is just how annoying the account system and trying to get everyone that I might want to play with “re-friended”.

Over the years I have picked up a number of these extraneous accounts that all do different stuff, and I need all of them for some reason or another. Just to rattle off a few of the multi game accounts: Steam, Origin, GOG, PSN, Xbox Live, Nintendo ID, Google Play, Amazon, Apple Store, Battle.net, Direct2Drive, NCSoft, Funcom, and now I am having to care about UPlay in my life as well. Then there is a whole other tier of things that are game social media like… Anook, Player.me, Raptr, Xfire, Discord and a couple of dozen other accounts that I am forgetting about right now. Then to even further confuse things you have Twitch, Hitbox, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GPlus, and all of the other social trappings that folks want to interact over. Trying to maintain some semblance of the same group of friends among ALL of those platforms is complete and total bullshit. Sure some of them throw you a bone, by allowing you to either import friends or link accounts… but the end result is just pure madness. So this got me thinking… about all of the things that work well and all of the things that fail miserably. The challenge is that no two companies want to play together nicely… and everyone seems to revel in their proprietary crap. I think the problem is that they simply don’t want to have to comply to essentially their competitors designs, which makes everyone trying to re-invent the wheel and doing a piss poor job of it.

The Idea

In my perfect scenario there would be a single account that is portable and disconnected from any one manufacturer, that could be integrated with all of the existing services and act as a glue to allow players to share their connections between all of the platforms. The idea is that there would be an open standard, that was designed for social gaming. My idea is to start with something similar to LDAP, where you have an authentication core that then also has a metabase with different security bits that allow writing of data to different segments of a user account. This would allow PSN Trophies for example to exist in the same structure as XBox Live Achievements… but otherwise stay separate. The idea would be to divide up the social aspect of gaming from the structural requirements of running a game network, so that the friends list lives on its own… and all of the technical bits get buried in the segment of the account that folks don’t really need to look at anyway. Having a single game account would also go a bit towards solving some of the issues with anonymous access to gaming, and having disposable interactions. I don’t like the concept of real names being thrown around in the ether, and I think that is absolutely the WRONG idea to go about fixing that problem. However I do think that Belghast#1752 for example my Battletag is just as unique as knowing my real name… and so long as this is a piece of data that I cannot shed without a lot of effort it means you can track my actions across multiple platforms. If you see that a given “OpenGame” account has been flagged by Microsoft and PSN for abuse… then maybe it is time for Battle.net and Twitch and Steam to investigate their actions as well?

The problem with my idea is that it sounds great on paper… but the challenge is… who exactly would run such a system and who would administer it? If it is just an open standard and the individual companies are responsible for running their own servers… then where is the buy in and where is the cost savings. If it is a third party company… where is the monetization to make it work? I don’t have all the answers, but this is just the course of a “wouldn’t it be cool if” sequence that I had yesterday throughout the day. I would love to see someone fix this problem, and I would love to see things work in a way that is pro-consumer and not necessarily pro-company. We’ve reached a point where you can pretty much play any game on any console you like… and most of those also end up coming to the PC. I just wish we could get a point where you could also end up playing with PSN friends on your PC, and Xbox friends on your PS4. Considering we have examples like Street Fighter 4 and FFXIV that allow PSN and PC players to play freely together…. I have to assume that the roadblock is Microsoft, and even with an “OpenGame” system they would probably still remain a problem. This mornings post will not help in any meaningful fashion.. but I just wanted to get my thoughts out there. I welcome anyone with the right entrepreneurial spirit to come along and steal this idea… because I would rather have it be a thing than have credit for doing it. I’ve had a mantra for awhile now: “Anything that gets in the way of playing with my friends is bad” and this sort of “OpenGame” system would go a long way to fixing some of that. Here is some ideas for what a system like this would have to have.

Fixed ID that stays with a user between game systems and networks.
Not Real Name based… too much bad shit can come of this.
Systems in place to change that ID in case of dangerous shit like stalking and such… but enough friction to keep it from happening often.
Ability for each game system/network to update only their segment of the total account.
Friends lists are free floating and work regardless of what system you happen to be in… so cross pollination between games.
Thorough Privacy Settings… so you can say “this user can play with me in this game, but not in this one”.
Ability to go 100% stealth mode… because sometimes you’ve had enough interaction and need quiet time.
Linkages to social and other media platforms to allow folks to interact freely (but should also follow above privacy rules).
Cross Game/Platform/Whatever chat (again privacy aware).
In server based games, would be awesome to have suggestions as to which server most of your friends are on.
Ability for services to log account actions against the OpenGame ID.
Sign-Up process difficult enough to make it challenging for folks to keep spawning new IDs.

Man With the Hand

February 28, 2016 by Belghast

The Struggle

For over a year now I have desperately tried to get into Dragon Age Inquisition. The game starts really slow and throws your character in the middle of a conflict that I did not really care for. Be warned that there are going to be a few minor early game spoilers here, but I am going to try really hard not to say anything super spoilery. During Dragon Age II, you are constantly getting vignettes of Varric being in essence tortured and questioned by a figure that is identified as “The Inquisitor”. In Dragon Age Inquisition (and the anime if you had chance to watch it) you are introduced to Cassandra Penteghast…. the same Inquisitor who you learned to kinda hate during Dragon Age II. The thing is… in truth I actually rather like Cassandra, but the initial set up of the game places me squarely on the side of some epic side-eye when interacting with her. Not to mention that my character is apparently being blamed for some catastrophe as a result. Then with a huge amount of narrative whiplash I go from being the pariah and prisoner…. to quite literally the chosen one of Andraste. At no point did I want ANY of this… in past games I have only feigned interest in Andraste to get Leliana to like me. I am generally fairly anti-religion in games… and in this case especially since my preferred method of playing Dragon Age games is to play a Dwarf that believes we all spontaneously came from the stone and will return back there again someday.

Then on top of that… we basically find out that there is a war breaking out between the Mages and the Templar, and I am not terribly fond of either side. The entire game seemed to focus on my least favorite aspects of the Dragon Age world… and somehow got rid of the parts that I loved. I absolutely love the concept of the Grey Wardens. I was all about drinking demon blood and fighting dark spawn, and I would have been completely happy if we just had more games where I fought lots of bad things to save kingdoms. With Dragon Age II…. it took a big detour, but even then I got to fight self righteous asshole red lyrium Templar…. and was mostly okay with it. The thing that carried me through that game were the characters that I got interested in…. but the problem thus far with Dragon Age Inquisition…. were the fact that I simply was not really feeling the characters at all. I like Cassandra just fine, and Dorian and Solas were both growing on me. Varric felt like a caricature of Varric from Dragon Age II…. which bothered me from the start. Leliana changed for the worst, and was not the character that I came to adore…. lost all of the soft spots and became this battle hardened zealot. Blackwall is cool enough but I already had Cassandra to tank so quite literally had zero use for him. The only character I completely and wholeheartedly loved…. was Sera, but that didn’t really feel like enough. Mostly the grouping did not feel like “my team” in the same way as the other Bioware outings did, and more so felt like a bunch of characters that I just happened to get thrown in the same room with.

The Turning Point

DragonAgeInquisition 2016-02-27 19-29-50-85 — A Better Horizon

As I said at the beginning of my post… this has been a struggle for over a year now. I will sit down… play for a few hours…. not get drawn into the game and then log out once more. With the new laptop I have been in the process of trying to play games that I for one reason or another struggled with. At the top of that list was Dragon Age Inquisition, and last night I finally realized that I was sitting at a pretty major turning point in the story. I had been putting off the assault on the breech, thinking that it might lead me down a path that would ultimately lock me into the “end game” in a same way as attacking the collector ship does in Mass Effect 2. Sure I was only 20-30 hours into the game, but Dragon Age II was really short… so far all I knew the base game here was short as well if you simply steamrolled your way through the story. Last night Dragon Age pulled a “Link to the Past” on me… and bam all of the sudden I saw everything that everyone was talking about this game. Essentially I now view everything that I did up to this point as largely “the tutorial level” and now it feels like the real game is finally beginning. I have to tell you I am really excited to be “into” this game.

The game manages to pull together a sequence of events that not only cements your motivation and why you care about the events of the world…. but also serves to cement your team. I went from feeling this was just a group of people that I was stuck with…. to being a group of MY people. I am also completely bought into the Inquisition as an organization, because after last night I realized that I am the person shaping the fate of this organization. I can make the Inquisition be this brutal force similar to its namesake…. or I can make it into an organization that cares about people and tries to save them in the process. Bioware I am sold…. and I am ready to get started playing this game. What is frustrating about all of this is… Dragon Age: Origins had an AMAZING introduction… or at least it did if you played a Dwarf. By the time I completed that opening sequence I was completely sold on the setting and the characters and ready to go out into the world and carve my niche. Dragon Age II had a much rougher start, but even though it felt more forced and pushed down a single hallway… I eventually reached a point where it felt I was changing the world. Inquisition though… feels like the worst of those two options…. where you have only the most vestigial of control over your own character as you are forced down a path. Thankfully it seems that the skies are clearing…. and I am ready to step forth into the new world.

Rockets and Striders

February 25, 2016 by Belghast

Love Rocket Is A Lie

Wow-64 2016-02-18 06-16-11-22

Last night I did little productive. I think I am still dealing with the after effects of not sleeping terribly well on Monday night, because I ended up going to bed insanely early. I did however get Witcher 3 installed on the new laptop, and it runs amazingly well. The strange thing is…. it almost runs better on the laptop on a mobile video card than it does upstairs on my desktop and a full fledged gtx 960. That has been the oddest revelation is just how little difference there has been in performance, and in some cases it seems to perform better. I am guessing that might be due to the difference of the laptop being a 4th gen i7 and my desktop being an FX-6300…. which if that is the case I guess I will be paying the Intel tax on all future systems. The bulk of my actual game time was switching between my six level 100 characters in World of Warcraft and trying to get the “Love Rocket” mount to drop. Now granted I have done this for several years at this point without luck, and quite honestly I am not sure why. Now the Headless Horseman mount is badass… and I can absolutely see why I chase that every single year I am actively playing during the Halloween event. I would absolutely use the hell out of a flying spectral horse, because it looks amazing.

The Love Rocket on the other hand…. I am largely just chasing because it exists and I don’t have it yet. Now I have had the Blue and Red rockets from the card game for years, and never end up using either of them…. largely because I don’t like the slight wobble while flying. So I cannot see how having a giant pink rocket is going to make that effect any better. That said… the thrill is in the hunt and even though I have gotten like a dozen pets… I am still going after the mount every single day. The best and worst part of the entire experience is when you go to click your Heart-Shaped Box… because for a moment you get a surge of hope… only to have it dashed quickly when you find nothing interesting inside. I think the worst part of the event are the Love Tokens, because seriously…. could they have just not made these BOA? There are some really cool things you can purchase with them like heirloom upgrades but by running the dungeon each day during the even you won’t get anywhere near enough to do something with them. Sure there are a bunch of quests that you can also do… but they are freaking annoying. I have my magenta drake from doing the holiday events, and I made a little promise to myself never to touch them again… well apart from the dungeon encounters.

Water Strider

The other big frustration for the player base right now seems to be the fact that the Water Strider is changing functionality in the latest Legion Alpha build notes. Original its restrictions were simply limited to “non-battleground areas” but it seems like they are greatly reducing its usefulness by limiting it to only Draenor and Pandaria. I absolutely get the frustration that players are feeling over this, because Blizzard honestly makes a bunch of bizarre calls. What I don’t get is why this seems to be the breaking point for some folks, and other even more confusing changes weren’t. What I have to somehow believe is that this is an additive effect of all of the fiddling that Legion seems to be doing… and that for some they are choosing to draw a line in the sand here. To those players… I promise that I understand your frustration. I am losing an entire spec… Gladiator will not exist in Legion and I have gone through the whole “seven stages of grief” thing over that. Being able to be a viable dps with a sword and a shield has always been my ultimate “player fantasy”. There is just something awesome about smashing mobs in the face with my shield, and a huge part of what kept me glued to Warlords as long as I was… was the ability to live out those dreams. The side effect of that however is that it was a horribly fiddly spec, that was difficult to itemize for…. and because of that I can absolutely understand why it is going the way of the Dodo.

To the players who are frustrated over this mount… I hear you… I really do. There have been many times in the past of this blog where I have railed on Blizzard for their failures. On March 25th of 2011 I wrote an article chronicling all of the things I saw as failures in the game in my “Is WoW the WoW-Killer?” post. I read through it yesterday… and it was a lot less ranty than I originally thought it was. The thing is… I’ve learned that it is absolutely okay to play other games. In fact I would say it is pretty damned healthy to shift back and forth between games on a regular basis. That sort of distance has allowed me to see the parts of the game that really are being done well, and learn to ignore some of the things that just out and out piss me off. Sure it means that I often disappear from World of Warcraft, and venture into other lands for awhile… but that distance allows me to blow off the steam and remember when I come back why I liked the game in the first place. I am not meaning this to be trite or offensive…. but if the Water Strider is your line in the sand… then really it might be time for you to go explore other games as well. I am not saying “leave” the game… just go play something else for a bit. The World of Warcraft is a great game, but during these long content doldrums it can also be an extremely frustrating game to be a fan of. Right now I am actively playing WoW, FFXIV, Destiny, ESO…. and planning on picking up The Division when it comes out… and hoping to return and play some more SWTOR at some point as well. Playing all of those games has in truth allowed me to more greatly appreciate the quirks and things that each of them do the best…. and to some extent ignore the faults. The only true statement is that there is no WoW Killer coming…. but instead a bunch of interesting games to explore that have their own rich communities.

Snagging Playstation Plus Games

February 24, 2016 by Belghast

Playstation Network Trick

This is a trick that my good friend Ashgar showed me some time ago, and I have talked a bit on the blog… but given several comments from my twitter feed I thought it was probably time to create a dedicated blog post about it. One of the awesome things about Playstation Plus is the way that it synergizes between all of the available Sony platforms. For the longest time I had only a Playstation 3, but had even intent of some day picking up both a Vita and a PS4. At one point I think I was lamenting having to go upstairs and log in my PS3 because I had forgotten to grab that months free games. It was then that Ash shared with me that you could in fact log in through the Playstation Network website and not only grab games for the systems you owned but also for everything that was currently available. What was great about this is that for several months ahead of picking up my Vita and PS4 I was able to start stockpiling a library of games to play on it, so when I finally purchased them I had more than enough content to keep me interested.

Having done this now for a couple of years… I have to say the Sony Network site is less than easy to navigate. Since their site is somewhat resistant to deep linking, I sorted out the best path to get to where I needed to go in a matter of clicks. As a way of demonstrating the path, I threw together a quick image. Once logged into the website, from the site header click the “Games” tab in the menu bar. On the next screen that loads click “Playstation Plus” which is confusing because there is also a Playstation Plus Specials option that doesn’t really lead where you want to go. Finally on the next page click “Free Games” which will then get you to the area of that months games. Now something I have noticed is that it sometimes takes a few days for the PS+ titles of the month to show up in this section. From here it is simply a matter of adding all of the games to your cart and checking out. The games will all have a $0 price on them, but you still have to formally check out with them to get them added to your account. If you encounter games saying that you are “not eligible” generally speaking that means the game supports cross buy and you only need to have one copy of the game for it to work on all platforms. The store however will be showing a separate copy of the game for each platform it is available on. Go ahead and check out with what is available, and if you refresh the page all of the games should then show up as “Purchased” like the below screenshot.

Game With Gold As Well

The other thing I have realized is that this sort of trick works with Games with Gold from Microsoft as well. Their system of releases is a little bit more fiddly as they seem to like to stagger them throughout the month, and when the next batch is released you generally lose access to the previous batch. I have however been successfully adding Xbox One games to my account, without actually owning an Xbox One. I figure at some point I will pick one up, and it will be nice to have a huge batch of games to play on it when I do. The quirk with Games With Gold is that you have to check out with them individually, and often it still shows a price tag associated with the game… until you get to the final step of the checkout process. Hopefully this post helps some folks out, because it is nice knowing that you can quickly snag your months worth of games without booting up the individual consoles.