'F' Freemium Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Dishonored, XCOM. CityVille.

Which one of these is not like the others…? Does something seem out of place?

Yet, people routinely spend more and more money on freemium games and subscription games. Why? Because the games are designed that way, and they never end. Until the companies shut down the servers and you lose everything you paid for because you technically own none of it.

Back when I played Diablo II, the idea of buying a Windforce Hydra Bow or SOJs on eBay was ridiculous to so many people. Spend real money on a digital asset, something on a computer screen?! Are you crazy? But now, it's commonplace to buy more coins, carrots, energy, whatever.

Are you having fun?

I suppose that's the key question. I'm still playing Skyrim, a game released almost one year ago. I paid once for it, and two hundred hours later, I'm still having fun on my flawed first character. I wasted three skill points. Arguably, five. Don't care. The game is great.

For me, Skyrim is the greatest game ever made. I've played so many. Thousands. Hundreds on each current platform, including over 900 on iOS.

And now, in a span of just a few weeks, I have Borderlands 2, Dishonored, XCOM. Hundreds more hours. No microtransactions.

I admit, I'm not big on the competitive multiplayer experience. I used to be, I loved PVP in World of Warcraft in the beginning. But the drive to compete encourages odd, unglamorous behavior in people. It gets ugly. Ever played COD against angry teens?

Too much posturing. I just want to enjoy the experience and take in the art. Spend some time in Skyrim staring at the sky and dynamic weather changes.

I love art and design, and I'm fascinated by game theory and strategy, so I respect (and admire) the freemium business model in many ways. This is a case of really loving the player and hating the game.

Roger Ebert famously said that video games aren't art. Perhaps it wasn't, at one point. Pong, perhaps. Not today. Not with Bethesda's games (except Brink, because that sucked. Hard.), sandbox RPGs and shooters. Even Minecraft.

Some video games are art in its highest form.

And then there's Zinga.

Brad Chin uses Blogsy

Disability Blues

Tired, and kind of cranky today. Lots of pain. I think my iPad needs to be repaired, the software, anyway... It keeps crashing. Not good, when it's basically your only computer.

I've been enjoying drawing on my iPad with my oStylus DOT (thanks again, Andrew!) — if you have a capacitive touch tablet and draw (or want to) on it, you MUST get the DOT. Now.

My favorite drawing apps are Noteshelf, Infinite Sketchpad, Sketchbook Pro, Brushes, Adobe Ideas, Procreate and Zen Brush. If you do any vector art, Ink Pad is incredible. Adobe Ideas is technically vector as well. Sketch Club is also worth mentioning again.

I saw an advertisement for the new WACOM Intuos5 multi-touch tablets; they look really nice. I've never been good at using those, but they're about 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of the 12" Cintiq, and perhaps more usable. It has greater sensitivity and multi-touch. That's pretty sweet.

I don't have much to say about other apps today, but here's some game stuff:

I have some Eve of Impact promo codes to distribute! See if you can break past 100K!

• The Witcher 2 is out tomorrow!

• Mass Effect Infiltrator seems to play better, and there's a neat space game called Dangerous worth checking out if you like space sandbox type RPG/sim games.

• Ubisoft added a marketplace to Assassin's Creed Recollection where you can buy and sell memories (cards).

• If you like card games and strategy, check out Shadow Era and Playdek's Food Fight iOS and Nightfall — as well as Ascension (by a different publisher) — but Shadow Era is free (and not the junk kind of freemium, either) and *one of the best CCGs I've ever played. It reminds me of *Magic: The Gathering in my youth when the game was simpler, with fewer cards and strategies.

That's all for now.

I think I need a nap. I'm too tired to go through and link everything. Just use Google.