Pocket Stables

After the disappointing Pyraplex , Pocket Stables is a return to form for Kairosoft. The graphics appear much improved although still charming and lo fi. The gameplay is a mixture of the two separate Kairosoft genres- the Game Dev story style where the player builds a product and lets it run and the Oh! Edo Towns type 'build em up' where the player tries to create 'combos'. You build your ranch, complete with training facilities, places for your horses and jockeys to live, and visitor facilities. No 'combos' here, but placing facilities correctly and brightening the place up with plants is part of your path to success.

The real star of the game is (of course) the racing. You can choose your tactics, skip past the announcer's blah blah blah and see how your horse does. My only problem is that the course preview doesn't show the curves of the track like Grand Prix Story. The mechanics of training for a race are simple- your horses use your training facilities and you can use special training at the cost of money/medals(the 'research points' for this game) and fatigue. You can also research, equip and upgrade abilities such as 'speed'.

The base horses you can buy are pretty dire, but luckily, due to the breeding mechanic, you can create much better horses. This mechanic really shines as it lets the player tinker around.  I noted that Pyraplex was disappointing before, and the reason was that you could get everything on the first playthrough. Pocket Stables much improves on this. I have not won a triple crown yet, but I'm still working on it. I also enjoy the attention to detail- the backwards walking sprites on the observation deck, the odd little indicators of the horse breed(a fro for bouffant, a little top hat for noblesse), and the strange breaks from reality such as the fact that people apparently pay over $10 to take cell phone pictures of your ranch.

Yes, Kairosoft has a formula, and if you like the formula, you'll like most of the games. I enjoy these lo fi sims which allow you to play either for a few minutes or a few hours.  I find their games soothing- usually I mute the music on Kairosoft games but for Pocket Stables I like to listen to the soothing music as the visitors, horses and jockeys go about their tiny business.

I find as I get older the games I want to play are more retro in style. Smaller, cheaper, less stimulation. Pocket Stables keeps the faith.

Indie Games Vs The Heavy Hitters

I have mostly stopped buying games for $60. I'll only buy say, CiV or FF13- games I really anticipate for $60, and that's maybe one time per year I'll drop that much on a game. For indies,$10 is my sweet point, because some indie games are really short. $20 is pushing it, and I'll be waiting for a sale. For $20, I can get a DS game (used) or one of the huge backlog of PS2 games. I actually prefer 2d graphics or retro style game play. Unless the voice acting is stellar, I don't need voices. So a lot of the things that push up the price such as fancy graphics, motion controls, or whatever, I don't really have enough interest in to invest $60 in.

I used to have a lower threshold, but as I've added more hobbies, and more importantly, as real life priorities have increased, I have less money and less time to spend on games.

I think that a lot of times, the major labels so to speak, forget that not every game needs bells and whistles, but every game needs solid gameplay. With a lower price, I'm not so annoyed if it's not an amazing game, but at $60 per pop, it has to be the best game I've ever played in my life.

I'm not the only one!

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who makes up stories while playing video games. Games seem meant for narrative to be placed on them. Whether you're fighting the onslaught of the great alliance between the Aztecs, French and Zulus or readying your chasm spell against the Shadowbringer, you're the star of a story. It may not be newsworthy, but it's interesting-- a snapshot of how we live now.

I read an article critical of Farmville recently as well, and I thought "Duh! Farmville is escapism and not in the way this author is talking about.". I mean, I played Farmville's ancestor Harvest Moon into the ground, and I must say that pretending to farm is a very meditative and restful experience. And yes, I made up my own stories- "yes, just selling my pineapples! Better run over to the Inn to give Ann some eggs".

PC Master Race Fail

Some douchebags are all like PC rulz j00! PC Master Race FTW! Now, why this is pretty racist sounding has been explored quite adquetely. But I'd like to notice that PC games stereotyped as being played by your mom aren't being considered as part of the 'PC games that are so much better than wimpy console games' crap.

I think it's all about keeping games the preserve of adolescent like boys. Games that can be played in short bursts to accommodate the schedules of adults with demanding jobs and women dealing with the leisure gap are stigmtized as not 'real' games, even though in the past, games like the simple rpgs, hidden object games[descended from Myst, I believe] farm sims[I have a theory that Harvest Moon started the farm sim genre] and puzzle games that are being called 'casual' and 'not real' games were considered 'real' when they weren't believed to be played by women or older people, but now that we realize that they do, we think they aren't 'real' games.

I think that the definition of 'real' games will soon narrow so much that only first person shooters with tons of gore on the PC will be considered real games, and even CiV wouldn't be considered a real game because it's too easy to play or some mess. The faster we decide that gaming is gaming, the less silliness there will be.

Where have you been?

To me the next big step in game design is going to be someone who figures out how to make an involving game that does not revolve around physical confrontation.

What Tom Bissel? You haven't been playing Tetris,Bejeweled, Diner Dash, Harvest Moon, Ranch Rush, Virtual Villagers, The Sims, and all the zillion games that don't revolve around physical confrontation with enemies? They are involving to many- having sold millions and having been played thousands of times. I don't understand how this guy has only played such a narrow slice of video games- especially since he is talking about the narrative value thereof! He acts like he hasn't heard of Final Fantasy- a gaming franchise which has sold millions, and doesn't talk about RPGs at all in his musings on the stories of games.

I understand that we can't sample all the gaming genres there are, but dude, there's Final Fantasy on my mobile phone. Not a fancy Iphone or whatever. A regular phone. Gaming is exploding now- consoles, PC, cell phones, ipads[I saw a nice rogue like game being played on the ipad-niiice], heck, you can download games to consoles now! Gaming is exploding- don't just stick to the core, guys, go out to the edges and seek out fun wherever it is, whether you're seating gusts at a wedding or soaring through the clouds!

Gaming Is So Dead!11!

Says some dude at Cracked. Personally, I think Microsoft and Sony misstepped with the whole motion thing. If I want to do a fitness game, hey, plenty of people have Wiis. Why should I buy some new thing? And yea, I think the folks that say- you know, we have plenty of games to play already, so maybe I'm not going to go out and buy whatever is new- have a point. I still play Civilization 4 despite it being an older game, and replays of stuff like Persona 3 and 4 also take up my gamer slots. The gaming audience is getting older as well- there are a lot of children playing with their DSes in restaurants[where they shouldn't] but there are also grannies, my mom and me, playing and we tend to have less time to devote to long sessions of gaming, so we need new games less often. And of course there's the recession. Fear of losing your job can make you decide that you're fine with another playthrough of Persona 4, rather than a new game.

Also, I would like to take some time to talk about casual gaming versus 'core' or 'real' gaming. I'm an old old person[26] and so I remember when Mario Kart was a 'real' game, and now it's supposedly not a 'real' game. I find that when a game broadens its audience beyond pimply teen and immature males, it ends up being 'not a real game'.

That's bunk. Whether I'm pretending to hula hoop or pretending to murder zombies with a shotgun, it's all gaming. What I want to see is solid game play. I don't care if it's got white women in service jobs or John McMuscles,Space Marine in it as long as I can have a solid good time.

Casual Games, Cost, and Quality

Has the rise of the 6.99 game decreased game quality? I don't know- maybe. As a person who loves casual games, I admit that I won't pay more than $10 for one. Why? The length. If a game has 8 hours or less of gameplay, it's not a good value if it's more than $10. Why do I say this? It's because of price comparisons. A DS game like Chrono Trigger or The World Ends with You with more than double the amount of gameplay is 19.99 at amazon.com. Not to mention the fact that these games are on physical media. If I want a used PS2 game, I can get many good ones for $20 or less. So collector's editions or full price is out. I'm also a core gamer, so maybe I'm unique in this.

Although quality has been lowered recently, I agree. A lot more hidden object games and a lot fewer classics like Chocolitier 2[the best of the 3], Artist Colony, or Plants vs Zombies. There are some bright spots like Ranch Rush 2 or My Tribe, but yes, quality has been reduced. I think some producers should go out on a limb, and start innovating again. 6.99 is a low price, and so some games on the borderline will be purchased, but even someone like me isn't going to play the 50th knockoff of Diner Dash unless there's a really good twist to it.

Give us something novel, and maybe we'll pay more, but probably still not as much as we'd pay for a 'core' game with over 30 hours of gameplay. Thems the breaks!

Consumerist Discovers Casual Gaming

Wow! A new trend on bigfish games that is annoying me is collectors editions of downloadable games. I understand that getting people to pay 19.99 for some wallpaper and a strategy guide included with the game instead of the ultra discount 6.99, but I wonder who falls for that? You could get FAQs for these games for free. Of coure, I don't understand hidden object games either. I need a little faster pace. OK, a much faster pace.

I find in casual games I find graphics pretty important. I prefer games with bright cartoony graphics, and avoid games that look like they just discovered polygons...




I don't like Virtual Villagers [top left]graphics for example- things don't look smooth- there's too jagged for me. I do like My Tribe[bottom left] graphics. Amazing lush production values aren't needed for casual gaming, but graphics that don't distract from the game's goal are.

I rolled my eyes

at this comic. Because it's giggly femme gamers leading the push to define casual game as not 'real' gaming. They might not see themselves as gamers, but the idea of gaming as only Halo and Grand Theft Auto, with a little Smash Brothers thrown in has not been pushed by most female gamers of any stripe.

The Death of Anime and Casual Game Pet Peeves

O The Death of Anime

Will bangzoom stop dubbing anime?

The death of anime.

I have to admit that I rent anime[although netflix is short waiting half my anime list] and buy manga. The problem for producers of anime is to separate people who have legitimate complaints from people who will download no matter what. Some people torrent SigIkki stuff, which is FREE ONLINE. So you have to market to people who actually will buy. For example, I buy manga because I like the dead tree experience. I'm willing to pay a little extra for color pages, and with prices, I am comparing to the cost of books so manga does not seem too expensive- a mass market paperback book is 6.99 at least, and most books I find at Borders are at least $15. Compare me to the sort of person who wants a terabyte of the newest stuff whether he actually reads it or not, and you'll see who companies should market to.

Casual Game Pet Peeves

I hate it when you can choose say...the gender and hair color of your character but not the skin color. Really folks? That's an easy tweak.

I also hate it when even if they have males of darker hues[see Gemini Lost], there's no females of darker hues. What's up with that?

Reviews: Wild Ones, Gemini Lost, and Powers by Ursula Leguin

Wild Ones

I read volumes 4-9. It's a vaguely pleasant manga, with characters that aren't insanely gripping, but interesting enough. Sachie is a pleasantly interesting protagonist-dense, yet hardworking and loyal. Rakuto has a mysterious past out of central casting, with the requisite selfish mother and kind father, who only wants to be a good dad, but is hamstrung by obstacles that would not be viewed as an adequate excuse for a mother not to see her child. I also enjoyed the fact that the obstacles to lurve weren't eliminated after the first volume or so, like some manga I have seen. Instead of folding at the first sign of TRUE LURVE, Azuma stays in the running, making determined attempts to catch Sachie's eye. Likewise Chigusa Sensei doesn't just drop out of the story after his arc is completed. Wild Ones is competent shoujo- the illustrations are better suited for paging through quickly than detailed study, and the plot is pretty weak, mostly relying on one shots of people nearly finding out the TERRIBLE SECRET that Sachie lives in a Yakuza family or Sachie's big mouth getting Rakuto and Azuma into situations in which the kind and gentle Yakuza who never extort money, give anyone an injury worse than a bruise or do anything that could be remotely construed as illegal, help innocent and hardworking people out. Basically, I'm glad I got this from the library. I would have been mad if I spent money on it.

Gemini Lost
A well produced game with brightly colored graphics. You click and drag your little people to cut wood, mine stones, do research,etc. I liked that the game incorporated its Zodiac theme in that only characters with 'preferred' Zodiac signs can marry[and near automatically produce children] One game mechanic that I was annoyed with was that the children are fairly useless until they are 18. In an agrarian society, you'd think they'd at least be able to fish or do something in the garden. Some may complain about the lack of innovation, which is a consistent problem with casual games, probably because they come out so fast, and are meant to be light entertainment, much like the arcade games of long ago.

Powers by Ursula LeGuin

Yet again, Ursula LeGuin manages to write a book that is amazing and an instant classic,etc. I think my favorite part of her writing is that people live in the cultures they are born with, not the cultures that we would prefer them to live in. In a society based on slavery, our protagonists are not the lone voices against slavery who bravely resist. Instead, they very humanly believe that the way the world is is the only way the world can be. I also liked the depiction of the lives of the Marsh people, especially the observation that city people may have thought of their lives as simple, but their culture was really rich and complex. I also liked that Gav was not the sort of person who automatically fit into radically different societies at a blink like many fantasy protagonists, and I liked how the theme that Gav must learn to see the sexual violence against women in his society was subtle, yet powerful. With his sister, the women of the forest, and little Melle, everytime he is unable to really see what the true circumstances of the women in his lives are, tragedy follows, but when he is able to see them for what they are, things improve.

I also like how the 1st two books were swept into this one- not over obviously, but beautifully all the same.

Oh My Kingdom for the Princess!

Designers, why did you have to add a stupid cannibal obstacle? Haven't you gotten the memo? That sort of othering crap isn't cool anymore. Why does it matter? Because it's unnecessary, and annoying. It would have taken just as much effort to create almost anything else but a cannibal, and it wouldn't have been a throwback to 1925. Defending why we need random cannibals in games would take more effort than simply getting with the program! Man!

Some Reviews

I read volume one of D Gray Man- Not bad. Secret powers, ancient mysteries, imaginative art.. I liked how the mangaka seemed to understand that in a first volume, you need to hit the ground running. Instead of taking forever with a bunch of useless nonsense, by the end of the volume, our protagonist has a secret destiny and an adventure to go on. Good job. Sure, it's not astoundingly original, but a lot of the time tried and true genre work can be better than going out there on a limb. There's a reason that boy's adventure is so popular. It's because it has some attributes that work. Here we have something a little scary[ souls being fused with machines], a long quest that promises a lot of variety yet with an overarching plot to keep it from becoming stale. Looks encouraging.

I'm also starting on My Kingdom for the Princess. Interesting gameplay, which reminded me somewhat of the first Westward. You need resources to meet your goals. You can build buildings to help with this goal, and also plan your tasks so you always have say...enough wood and food to repair the bridge that is out. Fun graphics- cartoony like I like them.

Cute Knight Kingdom

Eh, I played this for a few minutes. The graphics are primitive, but so was the predecessor Cute Knight I have to admit I find the former more charming. The new system of gaining job experience doesn't seem as charming and seems a bit longer than it was previously. It was sort of a meh experience, not worth my game club credit.


In other news, I'm surprised that people don't remember that Final Fantasy tends to be linear. Then again, I started in the Nintendo era, and I don't think I remember a Final Fantasy that was extensively nonlinear. There were bonus bosses and fetch quests, yes, but I just can't imagine a nonlinear Final Fantasy, although I have not played the MMORPG ones since I don't play those games.

My Life Story

My Life Story is the sort of sad little game that is addictive for no reason that I can see. Maybe I just enjoy resource management, and buying items. I have to admit that I always liked the part in Final Fantasy where you went to a new town and bought tons of shiny weapons and armor. Basically, the premise of My Life Story is that you're some sort of loser just out of high school. You can be a white male loser or a white female loser. I decided to be a white female. You can choose what you want to do with your time up to a point. Basically you need to keep yourself healthy, full of energy, entertained and full while still doing your job and getting an education. On the weekend, you automatically go back to your digs and get some bonuses.

I was reminded slightly of Princess Maker 2, although you have less freedom. You can choose a major after general ed at college town college, and you can purchase items for bonuses. There are events and little milestones that keep you going. Basically, it's a cute game. The graphics and music are inoffensive. But somehow, I keep playing it. A mystery.

I think it could be improved by making it more possible to customize your character. Maybe have different attributes that could be improved on by various activities. Here you do the activities to avoid losing the game by being rushed to the hospital.

Traditional Genres? Whooey

I don't think casual gamers need to be moved towards traditional genres at all. We're a new force in gaming, and I hope we remake the face of it. Less violence, more creativity, more fun for all.

Writing The Unmapped Fantasy...

Beautiful essay. To make fantasy truly a universal genre, we'll have to break it down to the bottom, the very beginning and build again. That will be very difficult.

I started to play Diner Dash 5. I'd like to note that I don't want to connect with facebook- no one cares. But I see new character types, which is promising, and upgrades that actually affect game play. Sadly, they decided to make the customizing the restaurant thing even larger. I'd like the game to be more difficult, and I don't care about being an interior designer or whatever.

Casual Games

I'm playing Flo Through Time. There are many other time travelers in this universe- cell phone guys in Ancient Egypt and Medieval Europe, etc. I understand that the appeal of casual games is that they are fast and cheap, so that's why the graphics aren't as advanced. I actually prefer more cartoony graphics. When they try to go polygonal like the Westward series, it just looks like 1st gen playstation graphics, and so looks less like a style and more like bad graphics.

Casual Game Blather

People debate casual vs hardcore games. This guy says we should talk about games as far as their genre, not as far as being 'hardcore' or 'casual'. I think many hardcore gamers would be lost as far as casual game genres. Time management or hidden object might get a 'huh' from hardcore gamers. I'm a hardcore casual gamer, btw. I loved Diner Dash Tycoon, but thought that there should be a hard mode. I'm certainly a tourist in this taxonomy. I don't compete to be the best at a game, because I know I can't compete. I'll be tired of a game way before I get anywhere near good enough to compete at any level. When I replay a game, it's because I want to experience more of it- I replayed Persona 3 so that I could unlock some more costumes and see more of the social links I had bypassed, not so much that I could say that I had done everything in the game or that I was somehow the best.


I love playing casual games, especially if there's a new twist or if the same old gameplay is executed really really well. I have several casual game mechanics that bother me. I hate sliding customers into stations- what, they can't walk? and I also dislike hidden object games. I also love games in which I can micromanage things. Bigfish is pissing me off with hidden object games every day now, BTW. I need games that can be played in bursts now, because even though I only work 30 hours a week, that means that sometimes for 3 or 4 days in a row, I don't get to game more than 15 or maybe 30 minutes. I don't even have kids!