It's Steam Summer Sale time. Thankfully my wallet has managed to remain unsullied. I think a lot of it is that the same games seem to be what go on sale every time, so I've already bought most of the games that would have interested me. At least that's the conclusion that I'm drawing with the way that every time I see a sale on a game I might want, I already have it. Seems the gimmick this time is that players are split into 5 teams, and they get points when they craft a badge. At the end of each day the points are tallied, and thirty people on the winning team get three of the games on their wishlist for free. Only problem is that there are tokens that players can randomly (albeit rarely) acquire when they craft a badge that allows them to switch teams. This has had the predictable effect of causing players to jump to winning teams, thus causing them to gain all the more advantage. So far, of the 3 days the sale has been running, only one of the days has seen a close race, and even that was only between 2 of the 5 teams. The other two days it was a wide gap between the winning team and the rest. If they do something like this for the rest of their Summer/Winter sales, I'm hoping they do away with the ability to hop teams. It's a neat idea outside of the blatant one-sidedness of the whole thing.
Meanwhile Google Play switched to a song that I'm having a hard time ignoring. It's a chiptunes song by Big Giant Circles called Far Beyond Eyes. I've never heard it before, but it's freaking amazing! It's like a compilation of standard RPG tropes; boss fight music, overworld music, title screen music, dramatic scene music; all wrapped into a single song. It's... kind of a little bit awesome. That is definitely getting tossed into my favorites playlist. Alright, back to typing that last paragraph now that the track has switched to something still awesome, but not distractingly so. Almost sounds like something out of Mega Man X at parts... *Ahem* But yes, right... back to that first paragraph. Yeah, I know, this is the end of the second paragraph. Just think of it as time travel or something.
After talking to a friend about Tribes the other day, I decided to download it and get back into it. Unfortunately, it seems that the developers have stopped supporting it, which means the community has shrunk a lot. The main effect of this is that the players who stick around are generally the highly skilled ones. As much as it sucks when a lot of "n00bs" join multiplayer servers, they're kind of a vital tool in the longevity of a game. I suppose I can't blame the devs for dropping support for the game if it wasn't making them much money, but at the same time I have to wonder how well it was advertised; which I guess is a double-edged sword in and of itself. Game isn't doing well, and advertising is not only expensive, but doesn't guarantee an increase in sales. So now Tribes has kinda devolved into the Team Fortress Classic problem where there is no getting into the game because nearly 100% of the community who still plays it has damn-near mastered the game.
Thanks for joining me today's PAD, and I hope to see you back on Monday. Until then, I need to trim my beard. Oh, and game well.
-Shiro
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