Thereby Hangs A Tail

Time for another fashion report. My latest acquisition is the Black Mountain Set, as worn by Sophos Sisyphus, sometimes known as Sophia.

Sisyphus has a very unusual backstory as you can see from the panel,on the left.

If you can pick your way through the translation, the gist is that she's forever rolling the stone of her age up the hill of years from eight to twelve, whereupon it slips and rolls back down and she has to start all over again. She's knows she's doing it but she doesn't know why. She wants to stop  but she doesn't know how. It's heartbreaking.

That's not why I picked her, though. I picked her because she has a tail.

It's not a real tail. She's a human girl not some kind of animal that walks and talks like one. (If only...) The tail's a part of her costume. I thought it was attached to the legs but it turns out it's sewed into the top.

As you can see, there's really no way to tell where it's attached from the pattern. The tail doesn't appear in any of the pictures. Well, it wouldn't be attached to the shoes, I guess, although with magic in the world you can never be sure.

Before I decided which pattern to unlock, I spent a good, long time looking at all the available options in the Fashion preview window. I was a little gunshy after unlocking the last one and finding it didn't look exactly as I'd imagined.

I couldn't find any more full sets I thought I'd want to wear just as they come. There are several I really liked the look of when I saw them on the big, splashy, full-screen picture that flashes up when you first acquire a new Phantom and some still look good on the Line-Up page but when I got to see the as-worn version in the preview window, most didn't look quite so appealing.

Consequently, instead of full outfits, my main focus has moved to separates and there you have to be very careful. Some patterns give you Top, Bottom and Shoes but quite often, especially with any of the gowns or dresses, the Top and Bottom (And sometimes even the Bottom and the Shoes.) are all one piece.

Separates combine pretty well in Noah's Heart. They fit together very smoothly. There are plenty of pieces that share an aesthetic and go together convincingly. I'm acquiring a lot of leather jackets and leggings and things with straps and buckles. A tail, though, that's something special.

Sisyphus' Top and Bottom both go with several things I already have but if I want to wear the tail, I have no choice but to wear the top too. Luckily it goes really well with several options in my wardrobe.

As you can see, my choices do tend towards the gothic, although that's mostly a by-product of the original designs. I'd prefer at least a splash of color but for that I'd need some dye. The good news is I have finally figured out how the dye system works. The bad news is that, as you'd expect, dyes are mostly sold in the cash shop. 

There are some that come from "Events". I have received a few of those but at the time I didn't really understand how to they worked and I used them up trying to figure it out. The other good news is that the're not very expensive. I could unlock a dozen colors for five dollars and a dozen is about twice as many as I'm ever going to need.

That brings me to a very significant moment of truth. Do I actually spend some money on this game? Given I've been playing it for nearly a year and it's cost me nothing, it seems reasonable to pony up a fiver. I'd spend twice that on an indie game on Steam that might only give me four or five hours of playtime and I must have had hundreds of hours of entertainment from Noah's Heart by now.

Without being entirely paranoid, I'd be wary of giving my credit card details to whoever's behind this thing but I just checked and you can pay by PayPal, which is the exact reason I made a PayPal account all those many years ago. 

Looking past that decision, I'm really not sure what Phantom to butter up next. There aren't many obvious choices left for seperates and none of the full Outfits feel like anything I'd wear in preference to those I have already. 

I might even have to start thinking about which Phantoms would be most helpful in combat rather than focusing on whose clothes would suit me best. There are practical reasons as well as cosmetic ones for bribing a Phantom into liking you, after all. 

For the time being, though, I might just make some pies and stockpile them. They don't go off so there's no need to rush.

What I've Been Listening To Lately (No Cover Charge Version)

I had been planning another covers collection until I read Rachel Brodsky's entertaining pushback against the current glut of tedious run-throughs. There's a lot in her thesis I reject but it did what a good opinion piece should do: it got me thinking.

For instance, the bit where she quotes a five year old Slate article by Carl Wilson: 

“By the early 1970s, when Dylan, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon alike put out covers albums, whether to patch over a fallow period or just to get back to their roots, they met with hostile critics and lousy sales. Covers? What a rip-off!”

I'm old enough to remember when that happened and it's kinda-sorta true, although I'm not so sure about the "lousy sales" part. Or the hostile critical reception, for that matter. I seem to remember at least some of those albums being pretty successful commercially and John Lennon's "Rock and Roll" was definitely hailed as a return to form at the time.

In general, though, covers albums back then were often regarded as self-indulgent, both by the record-buying public and the pop press. There was a moment, just after the sixties died, when a lot of established rock stars - you can add David Bowie and Bryan Ferry to that list - seemed to feel it was time to stop innovating for a while; to step back and take stock of where they'd come from. 

Paying tribute to their influences and establishing their place in a tradition seemed to matter more than being the first to try something new, at least for a while. It wasn't a desire always shared by the audience, many of whom wished their idols would just get on with it and write some new tunes.

Not that most of the perpetrators were digging too far back into their own timelines. Bowie's Pin-Ups, for one, mined a very specific seam of the superstar's past; about three years to be precise, from 1964 to 1967, the moment when the young David Jones was transitioning from mod to flower-child, the first of a seemingly endless series of chameleonic changes.

In 1973, those chart hits from less than a decade ago seemed like relics from an archeological excavation. We had so much less of a sense of our own pop-cultural history in those pre-internet days. It's hard to imagine now but at the time, music from even five years before seemed like it came from another era altogether. I remember listening with fascination to that album as a young teenager; it was as though Bowie was holding out some of the lost jewels of a bygone age for me to admire, although when I listened to the originals later it occured to me that he wasn't necessarily giving them the best setting in which to shine.

The thing about all of those albums - or at least the ones I've heard - is that most of the covers were very faithful. That's the basis of Rachel Brodsky's objection to the current wave of covers sweeping the charts and it's one with which I wholeheartedly agree. While it can occasionally be instructive to hear one of your favorite acts attempt to replicate, precisely, the work of another, on the whole I can't see a lot of merit in this kind of musical cloning.

Neither do I have an awful lot of time for the now-standard approach to doing a song "differently", namely slowing it down or speeding it up so it sounds either like Leonard Cohen on downers or The Dickies on meth. The varispeed method was fun for a while but we've heard it done too often (And too often heard it done badly.) for it to have the impact it once did.

With all that in mind, I took a look at the covers I'd been stockpiling and decided some of them just didn't cut it. For example, this version of the truly wonderful Rilo Kiley classic, Portions For Foxes, by Lydia Loveless and Jason Hawk Harris really motors but also flattens out the oddness and loses the desperation. It just makes me want to hear the original. Plus I don't much like Harris's voice.

Still, I do have a handful worth sharing. Covers that don't sound exactly like the models or covers I like of songs I don't. So even if there aren't enough for a whole post of their own, I can at least kick some of them out of the waiting room by throwing them in with the new stuff. Oh yes, there's new stuff, too...

London Calling - Urthboy (The Clash cover.)

A few weeks back, for some inexplicable reason, TripleJ threw a bunch of archive covers onto the channel including this one from 2009. It's not great but I thought it was interesting, especially considering Mick Jones' enthusiastic and early conversion to hip-hop, something he pursued with vigor during his time with Big Audio Dynamite, a band I'd prefer to listen to than the Clash these days.

Bags - Dominic Fike (Clairo cover.)

I mean, where do you even start? Fike's voice is like sandpaper and not in a good way, the drummer sounds like he's laying carpet, there's a bizarre prog interlude that lasts all of ten seconds and the whole thing is a total mess. It completely changes everything about the song, from the feel and the texture to the import and the meaning. I wouldn't call it a good cover but at least it's not boring.

Like A Prayer - King Hannah - (Madonna cover.)

Okay, this is one of those slow-it-down affairs I said I was done with but the drone makes it more than just the nine millionth Cowboy Junkies rip-off. There's a seven minute extended take if you haven't had enough. Some of the YouTube comments pick up on the similarity to Portishead's cover of ABBA's SOS, which opens up a whole fresh nest of vipers. I don't have my snake-handling gloves close by so...

Wagging Tongue - Depeche Mode (Wet Leg Remix)

And we slide into the grey. Where does a cover end and a remix begin? This is right on the borderline. After all, when you start adding vocals you're taking ownership, aren't you? Not to mention treating the original singer until they sound nothing like themselves. Honestly, the remix could as well be a different song. A better song. Don't take my word for it, though. Judge for yourselves.

Vampire - Olivia Rodrigo

All the way out from under the covers now but still not free from the influence. As reported by NME, Olivia Rodrigo gave an interview to Vogue recently (She's on the cover. Milestone!) in which she talks about her parents' musical tastes and growing up listening to "grunge, rock, and alternative: No Doubt, the White Stripes, ’80s metal, riot grrrl", all of which you can clearly hear in her magnificent debut album, SOUR.  

Despite being marketed as a pop phenomenon and a Disney Princess, Olivia Rodrigo is an alt-rocker through and through. She may be "a definitive Gen Z pop star" but she went to see Depeche Mode with her dad a few weeks back and they're taking a father-daughter trip to see the Cure next. She's the poster girl for not compartmentalizing by age.

Vampire is one of the strongest songs I've heard this year, a super-smart, super-charged crescendo that starts slow and never stops building. It's from the upcoming sophomore album, of course. The Vogue writer got a sneak preview (A job with perks!) and likened what she heard to "Le Tigre, Charli XCX, and the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack". I can't fricken' wait!

You Don't Even Know Me Anymore - Charly Bliss

At this point, since I just mentioned her, I'd usually slot in the excellent new Charli XCX track from the Barbie movie but we already had that earlier in the week. Instead, let's have this and not just because of the nominal connection. It sounds faintly like something Charli XCX might do, only slowed right down, although what it really reminds me of is a less frantic, calmer Superorganism.

What it doesn't much sound like is Charly Bliss, which is great, even though I really like what Charly Bliss usually do. I'm all for experimentation, when it works. And this works.

Good Things Take Time - Harmony

I feel like I could claim this post is still channelling 1970s radio segue protocols by quoting the YouTuber who raves "THANK U CHARLI XCX FOR MADE ME DISCOVER THIS BEAUTIFUL GEM" but I haven't been able to stand up a source for that so I won't. For all I know Charli came round to his house and played it on her phone. 

No, she didn't.

The video has a great opening but the tune doesn't really take off until around 1.45, after which it just flies! It has all that glitchy hyperpop chaos I so love but there's a melodic throughline to carry it. I'd be dancing round the room to it now if I hadn't just booked an appointment at the hernia clinic.

New Jeans - New Jeans

My KPop credentials are non-existent and I confess I only watched this because I read that they turned into the Powerpuff Girls but I'm really glad I did. Like half the videos these days, it takes it's sweet time getting started but from around 1.08 on it's sugarcharged magic! 

Also, I always make time for eponymous songs. Every band should have one. 

Also, also, seven and a half million views on day one. Just sayin'. 

Also, also, also, I really need to watch the Powerpuff Girls some day...

Now U Do - DJ Seinfeld, Confidence Man

Come on, it's summer! This is the stuff! It's also the edit because a) the edit has something moving on screen even if it's only the lyrics - although, frankly, those lyrics really do not need to be spelled out and b) shorter is always better, unless you're high, in which case just loop the damn thing already and leave the rest of us out of it, goddamit!

Rainbow Sweater - Liza Anne

I'm guessing they're Australian? Dunno why. Just a feeling. 

Wait a mo. I'll check. 

Oh. Nope. Born in St. Simons Island, Georgia. 

Are you born in an island, though? wouldn't it be on an island? I guess it depends how big the island is. I mean, I live on an island but no-one ever says they were born on Britain. 

How big is St. Simons Island, anyway? 

Wait a mo. I'll check. 

17.5 square miles. And it's barely an island at all. Look. I can see why you'd be born in it not on it.

Weirdly, there's a video of Liza Anne doing Rainbow Sweater live at Baby's Alright in Brooklyn (Not on Brooklyn.) and for once it's not been posted by Jarrett Wolfson. He must not have been there that night. Maybe he couldn't get in. It was a sell-out, apparently, which isn't surprising because Alex Lahey was headlining and she's brilliant. And also Australian. So that's where I got the idea...

I feel we may be running adrift here... The post could do with a big, crowd-pleasing finish. Have I got one?

Wait a mo. I'll check. 

St. Charles Square - Blur

There we go! That'll do it! 

Thanks Damon. Thanks Graham. Thanks... um... the other two.

Until next time.

AI Rights

The cultural troposphere echoed to the smug cheers of the We Hate The Future crowd earlier in the week, when Valve supposedly banned anything smelling of AI from Steam. At the time, the market-leading publishing platform hadn't made a statement of any kind on the topic but a developer, whose game had been rejected for using AI assets, took to reddit to make the case that an unannounced ban was operating behind a cover of silence.

I read the rejection notice and the import seemed clear: unless you own the IP rights and can prove it, Steam's not taking the fall for you. It seemed obvious Valve weren't taking any kind of stand against automation per se. It was just the usual line-toeing over copyright; hardly surprising, given the potential for litigation and the outrageous costs involved.

Nevertheless, the non-event was widely and misleadingly reported as "Valve All But Bans Steam Games From Using AI-Generated Content" and variations thereof to the point where, by way of a statement given to Eurogamer, Valve eventually felt the need to make their already clear position positively crystalline. 

Among other things, the interview hearteningly confirmed 

"We know it is a constantly evolving tech, and our goal is not to discourage the use of it on Steam." 

The statement makes it abundantly clear the issue lies with copyright and intellectual property rights, not any ideological opposition to the generative process itself, something they expect to evolve and change as the technology ages: 

"Stated plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion. As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process." 

The statement concluded by confirming that "developers can use these AI technologies in their work with appropriate commercial licences" but that they "can not infringe on existing copyrights". Valve also asserted that until the whole thing settles down, they'll be happy to issue refunds to developers whose games are rejected for using AI assets of uncertain provenance.

In a similar test of mettle, Unity doubled down on their commitment to a shiny, happy future under our serene AI overlords. The game engine giant's CEO, John Riccatiello, expressed the belief that while "Some companies will try to make the same game with less to save money, other companies are going to try to make a better game with the same or more".

By "more", he means AI tools such as Unity's Muse and Sentis, the former "a ChatGPT-style bot"
within the Unity engine that can produce "usable artwork and programming code" from a text input, the latter allowing the insertion of generative AI "directly into games." 

Prior to this, the peanut gallery had been hurling shells in Unity's direction following the removal of partner-company Atlas from the Unity Asset Store when it emerged that Ajax didn't necessarily have the rights to the AI-created assets it was providing. The other nine AI-providing partners, however, remain in place. For now.

Meanwhile, Unity plans to train its AIs on work it already owns or licenses, which seems the obvious solution for very large corporations. I've worked for a couple of those in my time and there was always a clause in my contract of employment claiming ownership of anything I did at work, whether or not it was something I'd been asked to do or had anything to do with my job. It's not like signing away your rights for a wage is a new thing...

As Ricciatiello says, "it's going to take a couple of years for this wobbly bicycle to not feel like it's so wobbly". It should be obvious to all by now that we're currently in the wild west era of so-called AI. It's a phase that all new technologies enjoy, sometimes briefly, sometimes for quite a while, before legislative and regulatory authorities bring themselves up to speed and attempt to take control. 

In the case of AI, taking control may prove somewhat more of a challenge than usual. As Janelle Shane of AI Weirdness points out, telling the difference between work created by humans and AIs isn't always as straightforward as you might imagine. Set a thief to catch a thief, as the old adage goes, appears to be a principle that doesn't apply to lightfingered AIs.

If she's right, and it's pretty plain she is, then the process of image-matching can't reasonably be handed over to the usual algorithms. It's going to be a lot of work for someone, going through the entirety of the worldwide web with a magnifying glass.

And it will require an exact match. Without going back to the legislative well again, you can't prosecute someone for copying a style or an idea, either visual or written. You have to steal their actual words and images.

The grey area seems to be the way the AIs were trained, which allegedly involved simply downloading the entire worldwide web without asking anyone if it was okay. The argument is the whole lot was ripped off right at the start so any use of any of it now is de facto trading in stolen goods. 

Added to that, the the current output of most AIs ressembles bits of pre-existing work sloppily glued together, so working out who owns the rights to the individual pixels might be a problem. If it takes the courts months to decide if one three minute pop song sounds too much like another, good luck with proving which of a gazillion pictures was the source for something that looks like a crayon sketch of a six-year old's nightmare.

It's all good fun until someone loses their job, as the saying goes. Or their house, after the lawyers' fees come in. It makes me nervous about using AI-generated images here, if I'm honest, although that's mostly because I'm morbidly risk-averse.

It's easy to think these things will never affect you directly but I was disturbed to read that the RIAA had demanded Discord release a complete list of members of the AIWorld channel. I'm on there! I haven't actually used it to make anything because it wouldn't let me but still...

For now, I think I'll still use AI illustrations on the blog. I just love them. They look amazing. 

They also used to look like nothing any self-respecting artist would want to put their name to, let alone legislate over, but the stuff I'm getting from NightCafe is starting to make me twitchy. You do feel some of those have to be lifted from somewhere...

My plans for my own AI covers channel on YouTube are going to have to stay on hold, though. Just as well. It looked like far too much work anyway. 

What even is the point of AI, if it doesn't do eveything for you?

Tarisland Closed Beta: Final Impressions

One day I'll learn to take my own advice. I've been banging the gong for weeks, warning everyone not to take anything the current batch of so-called AIs say at face value . Use them to do some of the grunt work, by all means, but always check their results. They can't be trusted.

I wish I'd done that when I copy-pasted Bard's reply to my query about the NDA. Actually, I did, but I only cross-referenced the substantive NDA part. The rest of the information I let slide and somehow something Bard said lodged in my memory as fact: "The closed beta for Tarisland started on June 27, 2023. It is available on PC and will run for two weeks."

Yeah, no it won't. The Tarisland Closed Beta Test lasted exactly one week. It began on June 27 and ended on July 4. So, when I said on Tuesday the beta had a few days left to run... it did not. I found that out when I logged in to play yesterday evening and the servers were still down.

I had logged in the day before to play and the servers were down then but either the full closure notice wasn't up or I somehow missed it. I only saw something about "maintenance". I assumed they were patching. I remember wondering if it meant we might be getting something new.

Last night, when I went to log in, I found the servers still weren't up. The closure notice was, though. I was mildly surprised and mildly disappointed. I'd played at least an hour or two every day, sometimes a good deal longer. I had things in mind still to do, both for posts and for fun.

If I'd known the test was half as long as I though it was, I'd have made different plans. I did wonder why the in-game beta calendar had rewards for hitting daily benchmarks over just seven days. I figured maybe there'd be a new one for the second week. 

Both the lighting and the weather effects are excellent.

There is no second week, sadly. We're done. Time for the wrap party. 

On the evidence of the closed beta, I'd be quite keen to play Tarisland when it goes live. It's bright, cheerful, well-made and fun. It's not original or profound or ground-breaking but it doesn't need to be. It's a mainstream MMORPG, aimed at the existing MMO audience. Judged like that, it ought to meet most reasonable expectations.

Whether it can hold the attention of its target audience for any length of time is another matter. The extremely well-established pattern of the last decade or more is for large numbers to flock to the opening of any new, well-publicised MMORPG, like a flock of seagulls descending on the city dump, only to leave as quickly as they arrived, when the novelty wears off. It usually takes no more than a couple of weeks; almost never more than a couple of months.

Based on what I experienced and observed during the beta, a number of things stand in Tarisland's favor, perhaps most significant among them its professionalism. Everything works and that's an achievement all of its own, these days.

There are a lot of mini-games. This one was tough. But fun.

In the whole time I played, which probably amounted to a dozen hours and thirty-five levels, I never encountered a single bug. There was almost no lag or latency at any time, even though I was connecting from the UK to a server in North America. I managed twice to get stuck on geometry but an "Unstick" button in the UI fixed that immediately.

I didn't see any items with strings of data instead of names, something I see regularly in Noah's Heart, which has been live for almost a year. Every function and service within the game seemed to be working as it should. I've played plenty of live MMORPGs that were far buggier and less polished.

The beta did only include three zones, so it may be optimistic to extrapolate that level of quality control to the full game-world, when it arrives. I can name several MMORPGs I've played that seemed fully-functioning and polished up to a certain level, after which everything fell apart. (Okay, I'll name a couple: Dark Age of Camelot, which had virtually no content after level 30 at launch although the max level was 50 and Guild Wars 2, where the zones up to mid-level were as slick as you'd like but then rapidly deteriorated into a bug-ridden, unfinished mess.) 

But professionalism will only take you so far. Tarisland doesn't strike me as an ambitious and adventurous game, designed and built by an enthusiastic but inexperienced team, learning from their mistakes as they made them, like New World. Neither does it feel like a passionate but ill-judged attempt to make the game the developers wanted to play in the forlorn hope that there was an audience that wanted to play it too, like Wildstar. That lack of passion and adventure may or may not be a good thing. It's hard to tell.

Welcome to the big city. And Catherine. She talks a lot.

As An apt recent comparison might be Lost Ark, another very professional title, designed to serve an already-extant audience. Lost Ark demonstrates that even having a polished, working game and running it efficiently while adding content regularly isn't always enough. Despite the enormous interest the game generated in the weeks and months leading up to launch and the generally high levels of satisifaction expressed by those who played it when it went live, player numbers have dropped precipitously since.

Tarisland does have the advantage of something of a captive market in its home territory of China, where a huge opportunity has been created by the forced withdrawal of World of Warcraft. As has been pointed out by others many times, Tarisland has to have been in development for years, making its considerable and convenient similarity to WoW rather curious.

Conspiracy theories aside, the beta very much gave the impression of a composite product made up of a number of quite specific influences and inspirations, not just a slavish copy of one game. It looks and plays like a considered attempt to combine the most popular and successful features of the most popular and successful MMORPGs in the Western fantasy genre, something many developers have tried before with very limited success.

There it is, Ducky! My ancestral home. No! I am not a squirrel!

It would tempting to call it cynical but I have to say Tarisland in beta didn't feel like that - or at least no more so than any would-be mainstream MMORPG. The world felt like a place with both a past and a future, somewhere created by people who cared about it, at least a little. 

Once again, I'd stress that absolutely nothing about the setting or the lore or the storyline felt original or inspired but I'd say the same about at least two-thirds of all the fantasy MMORPGs I've ever played. And two-thirds is being generous. 

As far as world-building and narrative goes, the Tarisland I saw in closed beta more than met average expectations for the genre. How much something like that plays into player retention and loyalty is hard to say but I suspect it's more than we generally acknowledge. The games that really bed in and hang around - WoW, FFXIV, EverQuest, GW2 for example - all have labyrynthine backstories and enough lore to fill a library. It may not be what people come for but it could be a reason they stay.

It's something of a truism that most players don't read quest text so it may be that the flatness of the translation won't be the problem for many that it was for me. Of all the aspects of Tarisland I considered when I thought about the prospect of playing the game for an extended period, the narrative and the characters who carry it came close to the top of the list. I found the NPCs more rounded and convincing than many in similar games and the story more engaging.

You can hear the writer's voice in there under the translation. It just needs a polish.

Unfortunately, the translation, while it wasn't bad by any means, tended to put up a wall between the meaning of what was being said and its emotional impact. I could always understand everything clearly, which is a lot more than I can say for many such translations in other games, but there was a slight but unmistakeable tendency towards the kind of inflection that comes from someone trying to express themselves in a language they know only from formal education, not from life. 

A bit like that last paragraph...

Playing EverQuest II for a while yesterday gave me a very useful point of comparison. Quest dialog in EQII is by no means great literature. It's often fanciful, occasionally overwritten and not always grammatically correct. What it always is, however, is unmistakeably the work of someone who either grew up speaking English or now speaks it with complete fluency. It may not always read elegantly or melifluosly but it always reads naturally.

This one still manages to be quite funny. I bet the original's a hoot.

It's unlikely that either the storyline or the quality of the writing, voice-acting or translation will be the key factor in most players' decision on whether to carry on playing Tarisland after their initial curiosity has been satisfied. That choice is much more likely to revolve around how much there is to do and how compelling it feels.

Here, the prospects look better, if only because the entire game has evidently been constructed as a nested heirarchy of seemingly achievable, if extremely time-consuming goals. Exactly what MMORPG players respond best to, in other words. If you like making numbers go up while completing prescribed, repetetive tasks, one of the more successful recipes for MMORPGs in recent times, Tarisland has you covered.

There are plenty of repeatable dungeons with increasing difficulty levels including one of those infinitely ascending solo instances. There are PvP battlegrounds. There are raids and world bosses.  There are rep grinds and tradeskills and achievements - everything a fully-featured MMORPG ought to have. It's an impressively comprehensive offer for a game still in beta.

Maybe, but I woudn't trust anyone dressed like that.

If that makes it all sound a little formulaic, well it is. As I said, someone has clearly done some research into what's worked for other developers. About the only major feature I didn't see in beta was housing, which at least leaves something aspirational for the first expansion.

My biggest concern, looking towards any potential future I might have with the game, was the apparent lack of much in the way of open world, explorative gameplay. It felt as though most of what lay ahead would be a linear plotline (Broken up into "Seasons", as is currently the fashion.) and a lot of grinding of one sort or another. 

I don't discount any of that as entertainment. It all has its pleasures. It seemed like a shame, though, to have created such an expansive, aesthetically appealing world, yet not to have filled it with the kinds of small stories that bring the landscape to life. 

It took a while but eventually I realised that's exactly what the developers had done. The storyline may whip you through each zone at such a pace it's hard to take anything in but these aren't the sort of zones you see once and never again. 

Did I mention the GW2-style instant travel?

One thing I've neglected to mention until now is that Tarisland uses a flat levelling structure similar to Elder Scrolls Online. Everywhere you go, it's alway the same level; your level. In combat terms, you never outgrow a zone but also you always have good reason to return; those rep grinds, for one.

As I moved back and forth across the three available zones, I noticed new quests popping up on my map. The game doesn't seem to employ the old-fashioned quest hub system, where a whole bunch of quests appear in one place when you flip some invisible switch. Rather, as you do quests in one place, more seem to pop up around the map. 

I didn't have time to investigate just how it all worked before the beta came to its unexpected end. It may turn out to be less organic than it felt at the time. All I can say for now is that I found it quite engaging while I was doing it; less mechanical than a standard quest hub set-up, more like a natural outcome of wandering around, poking my nose into other people's business.

Overall, I had a good deal of fun in the Tarisland Closed Beta. I found myself looking forward to playing every day. I played it in preference to other games and not just because I knew my time there was limited. When I discovered the beta had ended "early" I was a little bit disappointed. If I'd known it was going to be half as long as I thought it was I'd have played twice as much.

Okay, but when does the next beta start?

I can't see Tarisland becoming my next big MMORPG but I can easily imagine it taking the place of the disgraced World of Warcraft in my rotation until and unless Blizzard sorts itself out or gets sold. It scratches that exact itch, as it's clearly been designed to do.

It also doesn't hurt that Tarisland will be fully free-to-play, whereas the endless free trial for WoW comes with a lot of very serious restrictions. Even if the Microsoft deal goes through and I feel okay about playing WoW again, I'm unlikely to resubscribe for more than the odd month, here and there. Tarisland could win out purely on ease of access alone.

Finally and quite importantly, I ought to reiterate that Tarisland is a rare example in these modern times of a true WoW-style, tab-target MMORPG. In that respect it plays exactly like a Western-made game from fifteen years ago. There's no hint of action combat, click-to-move or even autopathing. 

If that's your style, as it is mine, it's not like you're so overwhelmed with choice you can afford to give Tarisland a miss. It might be a long while before another one like it comes along. Unless it's a massive hit, of course. In which case, welcome to the WoW-Clone revival.

Any Color You Like, So Long As It's Pink

It's probably about time for a break from the series of First Impressions of Tarisland, although not because I've run out of things to say about it. If there's one thing you can say for new games it's that they give you plenty to write about. 

The beta still has a few days to run and as I told them in reply to the final question of the last survey they sent me, I do plan on playing right 'til the end. In fact, I'm going to miss the game when it's gone. I'll probably do a summing-up post then but I'll pre-empt it now by saying I reckon I'd have gotten a month, maybe six weeks, out of Tarisland before I got distracted by something else and wandered off. 

That's not bad for an MMORPG, these days. They can't all be Noah's Heart. (That's irony and yet somehow it's not...)

Anyway, this isn't a post about Tarisland. I'm not sure what it is, to be honest. I think it's going to be one of those grab-bags or portmanteaus or whatever you want to call them, where I cram in a bunch of topics that have nothing to do with each other. Like this one:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

I don't usually do book reviews. It's a bit too close to my day job. Maybe that'll change when I retire in about a year and a half from now, although I kind of doubt it. Reviewing books is a lot harder work than reviewing games or TV shows.

Once in a long while, though, something comes along that seems worth mentioning, either because it's exceptional or because it's relevant in some way. In the case of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, it's both. Apparently it was a massive success in hardback so it's entirely possible everyone but me already knows about it. I only got around to reading it when the paperback came out a few weeks ago.

T&T&T, as I'm going to call it to save all that unnecessary typing, is the kind of family saga you get when the family in question is the new sort, the sort that doesn't involve blood. It covers around a quarter of a century or so, from the early-mid 'eighties to somewhere close to the present day and tells the story of two people who were often in the right place and the right time but rarely both together.

It reads like some miraculous mixtape version of Anne Tyler and Douglas Coupland, if they were both millennials and Coupland hadn't gone batshit crazy. Since those are two of my all-time favorite writers, that's the highest praise. The reason I'm writing about it here, though, isn't so much the quality of the writing, which is high, or the entertainment value, which is even higher; it's the milieu.

The two central characters and most of the supporting cast are both gamers and game designers. I have no way of knowing how accurately the latter is represented but if it's anything like the former it has to be close. There's a small degree of cultural liberty taken with the timings here and there, as Zevin acknowledges in the afterword, but by and large the whole thing feels true and real.

I'm too old to have made the exact same gaming choices but there are enough resonances to make me feel part of a shared cultural experience. The detail may be fuzzy but the import is sharp. 

T&T&T is a top-class, character-driven meditation on the complexity of human relationships in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century and I'd heartily recommend it on those qualities alone. I could make a fair old list of books that fit that bill but if you want a quality, mainstream novel that also correctly references and contextualizes EverQuest, this is the one.

Prime Gaming Day

I'm not clear when Amazon decided they deserved their own annual holiday but I guess when you have the revenue stream of a not-so-small country you can do pretty much what you damn well please. 

This year's Prime Day falls on the 11th and 12th of June so do be sure and mark your calendars (And if you don't have a calendar, Amazon can sort you out. Funnily enough, I was looking at our lovely Moomin calendar in the kitchen only yesterday and wondering why it is that people still have wall calendars. We sell a ton every year at work and Mrs. Bhagpuss wouldn't be without one.)

If you're a Prime Gamer, however, best not get too excited. Here's the underwhelming offer. 

"Prime members can claim bonus classic games each week, including Prey, Baldur’s Gate II, Shovel Knight: Showdown, and STAR WARS: The Force Unleashed™. Additionally, members can claim different in-game content and perks for several popular games over the next four weeks, including Overwatch 2, Diablo IV, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0, and Pokémon GO. T&Cs apply"

I bet they do. To be scrupulously fair, it is in addition to the regular monthly stipend, which for July comprises four games: Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! (The interrobang appears to be part of the official title.) NAIRI: Tower of Shirin, Wytchwood and Lunar Axe. 

Nairi looks interesting, although since it's also currently available through the Steam Summer Sale for the knockdown price of 99p it barely even counts as a giveaway. At least there's a free copy of Baldur's Gate II in there. I claimed that one even though it's better than odds on I'll never play it again.

Would You Pay To Read This?

No, of course you wouldn't. Neither would I. Who pays to read stuff on the internet, ffs?

Well, according to Stereogum, quite a few people. Yesterday they gave the annual fundraising pitch, which wouldn't generally merit a mention from me except that it featured a number of statements and claims that I found surprising, to say the least.

"You are no doubt aware that dozens of publications both big and small have shut down this year", they said. Well, no, as it happens, I wasn't. Have they? Is it more than usual? What were the big ones? Anything I'd have heard of?

They refer to "the dismal advertising climate", which I take to mean either a scarcity of advertisers or a reduction in advertising income, but a few paragraphs later they apologize that "our ad experience has been brutal lately", wishing they could "reduce the ad density and disable some of the more obtrusive formats" but explaining they can't because "over 90% of our revenue still comes from advertising".

I found that particularly hard to parse because I have quite literally never seen an advertisement on Stereogum. I run ad blockers that successfully block almost all formats, although of late a few new ones (Those annoying sideways ads on Massively OP, for example.) have been trying to squeeze in through the cracks.

It surprises me anyone puts up with anything other than the absolute minimum of advertising on the web. Do people really just not do anything even to try and stop it? Maybe people like it. I mean, I love magazine ads, many of which are a genuine artform. I'd never suggest ripping all the ad pages out of a magazine before reading it. But screen ads really don't meet those kind of aesthetic standards, do they?

I'm aware, before anyone points it out, that if everyone decided to block ads and advertisers stopped placing them altogether because of it, most of the currently free, commercial content on the web would either vanish or put up pay walls but I'd be fine with that. Let's be real here - most of us wouldn't be reading the stuff at all if it wasn't free and I for one wouldn't miss most of it if it was gone. I'd be happy to stick with the amateur stuff people write just for the fun of it.

As for paying to read blog posts I don't think that's a goer, especially not when all your five dollars a month gets you is access to a Discord channel and some bonus "exclusive" and archive content. You don't even get to skip the ads unless you double up to ten dollars a month for the VIP subscription. It's hardly surprising they've only managed to generate 10% of the revenue they need that way.

Perhaps the most surprising thing in the article was the suggestion that if the worst came to the worst they might have to paywall the Comments. Apparently "a lot of blogs ... have paywalled the ability to comment" Seriously? I'd have thought subscribers would pay not to see any comments, not the other way around!

I'm not ragging on Stereogum particularly. I'm sure all of the prozines I read regularly have similar problems and similar solutions in mind to deal with them. I'm just wondering out loud how long it'll be before the only free content on the web will be AI-generated. After all, AIs don't demand "competitive salaries, benefits, and vacation time".

We may be heading for the perfect, virtuous circle: the AIs can "write" the stuff, the bots can "read" it and the rest of us can go and do something more useful with our time. 

Did They Even Have Video Games In 1968?

It's all been kicking off in France again this week although, really, when isn't it?  There's been rioting and across the country and even in French-speaking regions of Belgium and Switzerland, according to the NME, following yet another in a depressingly familiar sequence of events involving armed police and young, non-white suspects. 

I wouldn't be mentioning it here if it wasn't for something staggeringly stupid that French President, Emmanuel Macron said. Apparently it's all the fault of those pesky video games. Again! Honestly, will those kids never learn?

Macron, who I'm sure is an expert on the subject, what with his background as an investment banker and all, believes video games create a "disconnect from reality", which might even conceivably be true, at least for the time someone's actually playing one. We usually call it "immersion" or "escapism" but I guess "disconnect from reality" works, too.

It's a far leap from there to his next assertion, that the rioters "are acting out the video games that have poisoned their minds". Sure they are. They wouldn't, say, be really fricken' pissed that someone who looked a lot like them got shot dead for - allegedly - speeding in a bus lane. I mean, it's a capital crime, right?

It's disheartening, to say the least, how little impact the results of years and years of well-reported academic studies have had on changing the supposedly popular belief that kids play video games and it sends them all screwy. Only kids, mind. Let's not mention the socio-economic statistics that place gaming right at the heart of global popular culture and mark the average age of a "gamer" somewhere in the mid-thirties. 

Still, never let facts get in the way of good sound-bite, eh?

I've got quite a few more topics bookmarked but time's running on and I want to play Tarisland while I still can (Got to fit a session in before the evening's rioting. My turn to bring the milk-bottles.) so I'll leave some for next time.

Let's finish with a song, like usual. I've got a few good ones saved up for the next music post but I can't wait that long to share this from Charlie XCX. It's from the Barbie soundtrack and it samples one of my favorite-ever singles, Toni Basil's Hey, Mickey! How pop can you get?! 

Play loud and enjoy!

Tarisland First Impressions: The Market or Why A Duck?

I was working all weekend so I didn't get much chance to log into the Tarisland beta. Those Noah's Heart dailies don't do themselves, you know. I mean, they almost do but you still have to be there...

I wanted to play, though, and I did manage to get a few minutes, here and there. On Saturday evening  I was fiddling about with the UI because I didn't have enough time to go adventuring, when I happened across something you'd think might have come up in the tutorial but, as far as I can remember, wasn't even mentioned - the Market.

By "Market" I don't exactly mean the cash shop. I think it probably will be the cash shop, when the game goes live, but there is no cash shop in this beta. 

I suppose it's an assumption to say the game will have a cash shop when it goes live but it seems a pretty safe one. It would be a weird free-to-play title if it didn't. Then again, now I come to think of it, I haven't actually seen any mention of the payment model. 

Hang on - I'll check... 

 

Hmm. It's surprisngly unclear. I can't see anything specific on the official website other than the much-touted "Say No to Pay to Win!" policy. A general search of the web finds most sites describing it as "A Free to Play Cross-Platform MMORPG" so I guess that's what it is. I imagine the payment model is something so obvious to the Chinese developers they don't even feel the need to mention it. Are there any MMORPGs in their home market that require a subscription?

Anyway, getting back to the point, I hadn't noticed until a couple of days ago that there even was a marketplace. I think it might get a mention at some point during the extended tutorial but I don't recall anything specifically directing me to open a window or buy anything, as happens in most games that rely on people spending money in the company store. I had to find the Market for myself.

What I found when I did surprised me a little. I knew the game had various factions with which you could raise your Reputation and that by doing so you could purchase crafting patterns and other useful items. I also knew there were tokens to collect for doing different activities such as running dungeons and other instances and that you could spend those tokens on gear upgrades. What I hadn't appreciated was just how intensive and wide-reaching those systems were.

The Market window has three tabs: Appearance, Market and Trade Assoc. 

There's next to nothing in the Market tab, just some health and mana potions, a four-slot backpack expander a name-change token, all of which you can buy for a small amount of silver, the most common in-game currency. I'm guessing (A lot of that going on here.) that this is the tab where most of the non-cosmetic Cash Shop items are going to appear, when the time comes.

The Trade Assoc. tab breaks down into half a dozen sub-tabs, each featuring a named Association. Some of those in turn open out into more tabs, around a dozen in all. That's almost certainly just the beginning of what you'll see when the game leaves beta. 

The Associations are:

• Adventurers
• Honorary
• Universal Hall
• Reputation
• Lifestyle
• Friendship.

Each of them uses a different type of token from a different type of gameplay. The Adventurers Association rewards stat gear for the tokens you get from running dungeons, whereas the Honorary Association takes tokens from PvP. Sound familiar at all?

The Universal Hall is a kind of ascending solo instance as seen in games such as Final Fantasy XIV and takes tokens earned from doing that content. Reputation is self-explanatory. So far there are only three Reps, one for each of the zones available in beta, but presumably eventually there'll be one for every zone in the game. (And again, I'm making an assumption, this time that Tarisland will launch with more than three zones...)

Lifestyle Association is for crafters. This turns out to be where you buy the kind of mats that are often vendor-sold in MMORPGs, as well as the crafting tools themselves. If that was explained in the extremely brief crafting tutorial, I must have missed it. Everything in there costs nothing but silver and in amounts that seem very reasonable, although since I have yet to do any crafting, don't take my word for it.

For the Friendship Association it looks like Tarisland has borrowed an idea from FFXIV generally reckoned to have been a good one and then expanded on it. The currency you spend in this tab is the Friendship Badge, which you earn in three ways: by doing dungeons with players who have never done them before, by completing - or in some cases just attempting - the higher difficulty Elite and Arcane instances, and by taking on the Healer or Tank role in Raids. Be a good egg and karma will reward you, in other words.

It's a wide-ranging and potentially very solid scaffold on which to build a range of platforms for character-progression. It certainly seems to back up the No Pay-to-Win claim which, of course, invites the question so what are you going to make all your money on, then?

I'm guessing that's where the third tab, Appearance, comes in.

In Appearance you can buy Mounts (Ground and Flying), Costumes, Weapon Skins and what the game calls Pendants. We'll get to Pendants later.

All of the mounts (There are only four available in the beta) have special abilities in addition to their obvious mobilities. There's a mech suit that allows you to craft a portable Warehouse, giving remote access to the storage vault to you and your "nearby allies". There's also an elegant, icy elk-like creature called a Polar Bluehorn that allows you to gather crafting materials without having to dismount. I wanted that.

I'd seen people riding the Bluehorn and wondered what you had to do to get one. You get a free mount from a quest fairly early on but it's a clunking great rhino that I found aesthetically unpleasing, not least because someone on the art team made the dubious decision to have female characters ride the thing side-saddle. 

Or maybe everyone has to. It's about as wide as a VW Microbus. You'd need some thighs to straddle one of those, gender notwithstanding.

It hadn't really occurred to me I might just be able to buy a better mount and even if the possibility had crossed my mind, I certainly hadn't entertained the idea that I might be able to afford it. When I found the mounts in the Market, it came as a very pleasant surprise to discover I could do both.

In beta, that is. I'm pretty sure it'll be different in the Live game.

It's not explained anywhere I could find it but I'm guessing everything in the Appearance tab will eventually be available only for a curency purchased with real money. Oh, I'm sure there will also be a way to earn a pittance of the same currency in-game. There always is. The main route to looking good, though, is going to be through your wallet.

For the beta, however, it seems we've all been given a stipend of three thousand... I'm going to call them Gems, because that's what they look like. Mousing over the icon for once produces nothing. 

I spent a good, long while examining all the ways I could spend my free money. I really wanted the Dauntless Explorer costume, a kind of catwalk version of something Indiana Jones' cooler, younger sister might wear. (That's younger when the first movie came out, obviously, not younger than Indie is now, when his hypothetical lil' sis would probably be even older than I am...)

Unfortunately, I couldn't run to both that and the Polar Bluehorn and the sheer utility of not having to get on and off my mount to gather from nodes won out. That still left me with a chunk of change to spend so I spent some of it on...

Well, I kind of blew the reveal with the picture at the top of the post. Yes, I bought a duck. 

And not just any duck, either. I spent 180 Gems on a bright yellow duckling that tosses a purple ball into the air then catches it, occasionally turning somersaults, all while sitting on a fluffy white cloud that floats over my character's head. The in game logic and lore-appropriate explanation for this is anyone's guess.

Weird objects that float above the player-character's head are called Pendants in the terminology of Tarisland. It's a category that also includes back items and halo-like particle effects, a couple of which I may well also spend my remainingGems on before the beta comes to an end. I am absolutely the target market for this kind of thing, always providing it's not going to cost me anything. Well, anything other than my self-respect, but that's a ship that sailed long ago.

All things considered, the mechanics underpinning this aspect of the in-game economy seem solid enough. I personally prefer the more traditional approach to gearing up that comes from beating up monsters and taking their stuff but token systems have been with us almost as long and many people seem to prefer their predictability. 

According to the website, Tarisland is also supposed to have a "Free Trading System ... committed to restoring the freedom of trade in the endgame and creating an economic system that closely resembles a real market." If that's in the beta, I haven't found any sign of it yet, but then it took me twenty levels to find the bank, so once again, don't rely on anything I tell you.

At the end of my session this morning, most of which was spent researching this post, I was asked to complete another, entirely different, lengthy survey on how I was finding things. They didn't ask me to score the Market but if they had I'd have given it an 8 out of 10, which is what I've given most aspects of the game I've been asked about so far. 

I am a very generous grader, though. Always have been.