Blogs - Ultimoore

So how many achievements must a man get now before you can call him a man? What are they? Why do I want them? Do they serve a purpass to Desura and it's clients?

In this I will try and use games from Desura as examples in this blog.

These question I hope to answer but also both Desura team and Game makers can also answer to. So to bypass the first question, well save that gem for later.
( and I don't mean this Jem , freaks.) What are Achievments?

Well the dictionary defines achievements as this:
a·chieve·ment/əˈCHēvmənt/

Noun:

1. A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.
2. The process or fact of achieving something.

"He tests

In the game industry achievements supply clients goals or in some game completing a progression in a games story. (*cough ..Call of Duty.. Cough*) Anyways the point of achievements is the create extra game time in a game and give the player the feeling of self worth in completing certain tasks that are not part of the main story. With this reasoning companies like Valve , Microsoft and Sony have seen massive sales in gameing and longer playtime for players. Thus allowing for more content for a single game and more time in between titles.

Nokia did an eight week field trial was conducted in the fall 2008 to
evaluate how people would experience Nokia Image Space
service as a whole. The achievement system was studied among
other issues in the trial. A total of 20 participants were recruited
for the study. One group consisted of Flickr users in Helsinki,
Finland (age 30-45, 8 male, 2 female). The other group consisted
of students in Nice, France (age 22-26, 9 male, 1 female).
Participants had Nokia 6210 Navigator phones as their mobile
clients and they used their own computers as web clients. They
were introduced to the service at the beginning of the trial. Later
on, we assigned weekly tasks for them.
Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected during the
trial. Regarding quantitative data, we recorded log data of the
participants' use of the service, and asked them to rate their user
experience on different aspects of the service. Regarding
qualitative data, we interviewed participants both at the start and
at the end of the trial. The first interviews were phone interviews,
lasting 25 min per participant on average. The second interviews
were conducted face-to-face, lasting 45 min each.
RESULTS
When the interviews were analyzed, three major groups of
participants emerged concerning their attitude to the achievements
in the service. The first group (6 users) was indifferent towards
the achievements or disliked them mildly. The second group (6
users) appreciated the system. The third group (4 users) did not
understand the purpose of the achievements. The rest did not
mention achievements in the interviews.

of the first group, 4 people said it was "quantitative goals" meaning all they had to do was take any picture and they would get an achievement.
This study was done by Markus Montola, Timo Nummenmaa, Andrés Lucero, Marion Boberg and Hannu Korhonen.

This begs the question. "Why do I want them?" As a gamer they added like I said earlier the feeling of self satisfaction in completely "Wrapping" a game. As a Desura enthusiast, I want Desura to contend and eventually be better than Steam. By having a Achievement system buddies can email you asking how did you get that achievement "BALLS OF FIRE!" in Wizorb, or " Shank Me Later " in Project Black Sun.

This rolls us into the 3^rd question, "Does it serve a purpass on Desura?" In general gaming no, In the grand scheme of things yes. If Desura added a smart achievment or Accolade system on the clients. Players should have the option of being able to seach for members who also have achievements / accolades in that game thus finding common interest with other players. Indie Developers can add more content to their games and maybe expansions. Now that Desura is Multi-Platform ie: Linux, Mac and PC. They can truely have a home for PC gamers and developers. Its up to the Clients to not only light a fire under the Developers ass to comunicate with Desura but also Desura to light a fire under there own ass to have a trial system going.

For my closing question, "So how many achievements must a man get now before you can call him a man?" answer? This guy.

Ok, so we may have come along way from this.

And yes, this is the bad kid from the classic movie "The Wizard" with Fred Savage.

But I have found now a days Game developers want to (sorry for the loose term) "Emulate" classic games that inspired them. Here is my question.

Why do so few have Keymaps for gamepads?
If you want people to have that Nostalgic feel in a game take that little bit of time and add the keymaps for gamepads. Hell I got 4 gamepads to choose from to deal a fist full of death in my titles that I have on Desura that can use gamepads. sure some games are more point and click like : "Clockwork Man series" (Which I might add is worth getting....not a plug.) . Some games have not much for mapping at all and should have made alittle more effort but other than that. I love all the games here on Desura and would love to see this distributor like the new 360 of Linux/Windows gamers.
Now I know all of you cannot have advanced gamer gampads like this:And yes , I still own one of these.Hope you enjoyed another rant by yours truly.

Hello,
My name is Ultimoore and I have been a Linux Gamer for 1 year now. I have to say I really love being one and really get to see both sides of the game industry both the AAA side and the Indie side.

I have played a number of games, mind you alot of them were free but I had purchased a few. But having a family and a job that sends you to differant parts of the world, slows down the purchase rate. I have enjoyed so far the games that I have played and talking to all members of the community and dev scene. Desura has made the link with linux gamers like me. I love it and hope it keeps growing.

But what I can't wait for is a RPG called Dilogus : The Winds of War. When I first read about it in Jan 7 2011 I could not wait and with using Unigine which I might add is a sick engine the future of Linux Gaming is on the rise slowly but its coming. I purchased my copy of OilRush another game under the Unigine, also I have added King Arthur's Gold to the shopping cart with Project Zomboid, Eschalon: Book 2 and the Clockwork Man series. This is going to be a busy holiday with games.

Update 16 Sept 2011: I have emailed SquareEnix to see if they had any options to do 2 things.
1. Make a Linux and Macintosh clients to spread the love and gain more players.
2. Sell the "FFXI : Ultimate Collection 2011" on Desura and other possible games.

I got and email saying that I will get a reply back in 4 business days give or take?

Squareenix , EA , Ubisoft. Companies like this you think how amazing would it be if they added some of their games to Desura.

The Idea

I have been for a few months been on a "Quest" if you will to bring games to Desura by emailing major label companies.
Back in 1992 (before emails) a group of individuals wrote some letters to a magazine about how a phone company should change how they bundle their product to customers. In that article they said that they need as much support as possible and asked everyone to flood the companies with letters asking them to change the bundle product. 14,639 letters were sent to that company they saw that people do pay attention and want a change.
I want to get some suggestions on some AAA games and the name of the company that makes it . Each month I want to sit down with some people and take a vote. In each month well decide to mass email the company we pick to either :

1. Get the game on Desura.
2. Get a Linux Port made so then it can be added for linux gamers.

The People

Now everyone involved must get everyone they know to write an email. I know with my friends alot of them just want to write an email to "Stick it to the man". Others will help to because they are my friends. You will have some people who will say "Why even bother?". Why did the people of France revolt against the monarchy? Because changes needed to be made. Last week I was asked this question. "Why just put Windows on your computer?" Why should I? As a customer I would like to be able to play games on Desura and on Linux. In my mind since the wonderful team at Desura are opening their doors to support Linux gamers I will do the best I can to bring "the masses", what brings customers to Desura are games like Bad Company 2 , Final Fantasy 7 , Call Of Duty : Black Ops , Prince Of Persia , etc.... Don't ever get me wrong I will buy as many Indie games as I can to support those who work so hard for the community. I want to bring the masses and help make Desura the best multi computer platform game distributor on the net.
If interested feel free to PM or post a comment.