Watch Steam for price drops

This could probably be done a little better, but the core idea is here: Watch a set of specified games on Steam and, if the price drops, send out a notification email. Set this up on a daily cron job and you’ll be notified when the game you’re looking for drops in price. Might be months, but it’ll likely happen.

$games = array(
    "Batman: Arkham Asylum" => array(
        "id" => 35010,
        "known" => "$49.99 USD"
    )
);

foreach ($games as $name => $values) {
    $doc = new DOMDocument();
    @$doc->loadHTMLFile(
        "http://store.steampowered.com/app/{$values['id']}/"
    );
    $current = $doc->getElementById("game_area_purchase") \
        ->getElementsByTagName("div")->item(1)->nodeValue;
    if ($current != $attributes['known']) {
        mail(
            'youraddress@example.com',
            'Price drop on steam',
            "$name dropped to $current"
        );
    }
}

Maybe better would be to collect the price from each day over a set of games and graph this data over time. It’s not necessary, but I’d be curious to see that extension of this idea.

Novel gameplay elements

I was recently alerted by Slashdot to an upcoming game called Achron, a real-time strategy game that plays on the notion of “real-time”. I think this demo gives a reasonable overview.

It’s interesting to see how new ideas propagate throughout the development community. Prince of Persia’s 6-second rewind, Braid’s full time-flow control, now time-travelling RTS games complete with grandfather paradoxes. It’s this kind of innovation that I’ve come to appreciate and will continue to support. I’m not the only gamer that’s tired of playing EA’s Sports Game YEAR+1.

Valve’s MMOFPS

I left World of Warcraft ages ago because I was unable to keep myself from the siren call of conditioning under diminishing returns. I went on for a while with various games that promised a fixed ending, or at least a reasonable episodic period that I could withdraw without consequence. Oh, it was working so well.

My favourite for a while has been Team Fortress 2. It’s gameplay is balanced, varied and provides opportunity for both team and solo work. More importantly, I could pop in, play a round or two for some 20 minutes, then pop back out without being drawn in too deeply.

Recently, however, Valve changed things up a bit. I won’t repeat their post, but the short of it is that players that play more are rewarded with special items. My first reaction was “Yay, presents!”, that is until I realized what it meant: to get them I have to grind. It’s like a recovered junkie learning that Kellog’s started putting heroin in their cereal.

I understand that Valve has a stake in keeping the community alive; New players see an active community with a supportive publisher and decide to purchase the game. Still, I suppose I’ll need to retreat back into the single player indie games that don’t care about me after I’ve purchased their product. Fortunately, that genre has been doing quite well for itself.

• World of Goo
• Braid
• Crayon Physics
• Osmos

My issues with Fallout 3

This screenshot is an example of the poor attention to detail in Fallout 3. Doctor Li has just informed the three of us that someone needs to go inside the irradiated chamber and activate the water filtration pump. I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t that super-mutant standing behind Lyons immune to radiation?” Why yes, yes he is. Unfortunately Lyons seems dead set on insisting that either she or I go in. Ugh.

The first hour or two of Fallout 3’s gameplay is brilliantly engrossing, to the point that I found myself emotionally invested in the game. It’s unfortunate that the illusion was broken in the finer details (sloppy NPC pathfinding, diversionary side-quests, incorrect gender pronouns). I went from being my character in another world to controlling a faceless digital puppet in a series of traditional CRPG mechanics. Shame, that. I had just started getting into the game too.

As a follow-up, I went back to try the game again. I figured I could make the game playable by avoiding the elements that eroded my suspension of disbelief. I intended on avoiding NPCs and the primary plot, y’know, trying to just fend for myself. Unfortunately, the game shows its frayed edges all the more at that point. I suppose the magic’s lost.

Server load distribution

Server allocation in MMO games could be better and I have an idea on how to improve it. My main gripe is that some games host seperate instances to distribute server load. This ensures that if one server goes down, it doesn’t affect the entire player-base. The down side to this is that you won’t necessarily be playing on the same server as your friends.

Assume that you can’t move your character to another server (eg. World of Warcraft and that most of your friends live near you. The obvious solution to this is to host servers based on location: one server for New York, one server for Canada, etc. The problem with this is that everyone logs on and logs off at similar times, which would only cause increased network congestion.

To solve this, how about longitudinal strips? The idea there is to distribute network congestion across several time zones. For example, one server would be assigned the space between the 49th parallel and the 54th. This wouldn’t be restrictive; feel free to choose another server. However, if you learn that a neighbour also plays the same game, chances are you’ll be on the same server.

Good idea? Either way, I’ll toss it into the public domain. Figure someone might be able to make good use out of it.

Farewell, Captain Placeholder

I never thought I’d see the day, but I think I can finally declare myself free of my addiction to World of Warcraft. I always knew it was an IRC cake with a thick helping of Progress Quest icing, but it lured me in by my sweet tooth. At my worst, I was sleeping 5 hours between Molten Core raids and gathering blindweed from the Swamp of Sorrows. You can’t do that for long before realizing that you need out.

Thing is, repetative gamplay inevitably becomes tiresome in any disguise. Games need that moment where you step back and say “I’m done.” World of Warcraft doesn’t have that a moment, and I’d be willing to argue that’s by design; It’s just a series of perks that suggest you’re one step closer to a climax that doesn’t exist.

In that light, I’m setting a new rule for myself: I will only play games that end. First on the list is Planescape: Torment and I couldn’t think of a better way to kick off this resolution.