Yomi Online Rankings

We're trying out making online Yomi matches best of 3 instead of best of 1 in the free online version at www.fantasystrike.com. You can leave feedback about that here.

In this system, think of taking the opponent's like down to 0 as winning a "round" in a fighting game. So when press Quickmatch and find an opponent, you play best of 3 "rounds." You can't switch your character between rounds. After someone wins a "game" (meaning they won best of 3 rounds), you can get a rematch. If you rematch, the loser can switch his character, but the winner cannot, as is customary in fighting games. Rematching can be good to do for your own personal improvement, as it will let you get deeper into the nuances of playing against a particular opponent. If they are exploiting some bad habit of yours, you might never really figure that out if you don't play a longer set. Up to you though!

The main reason our system was 1 round before instead of 2-out-of-3 was just time. If it takes 15 minutes to play Yomi, you'd have to set aside 45 minutes to play a best of 3, which is unreasonably long for the default way to play the game. Looking at the data, an average "round" lasts between 8 and 9 minutes though. This is shorter than we expected. If you figure that half the time a best of 3 will go to 3 rounds and half the time it will end in two rounds, the average for a best of 3 set is 22.5 minutes or less, which is acceptable for us to try. The benefit of more rounds is that you have more time to get a read on the opponent and exploit their weaknesses, so it's a better test of skill.

Leaderboards

We're resetting the leaderboards now, because of this change. From now on, leaderboards will be showing people's perforamnce in best-of-3 situations, rather than best-of-1. Congratulations to garcia1000 for taking the top spot on the first season's leaderboard. Garcia's hobby is making statements that sound plausible, but that are actually false. Also he plays Lum and is a poker master in real life. (Those two things are plausible and actually true.)

Stats from Season 1

Here are the stats for ranked games (with mirror matches exclude) by character:

Midori	2238 / 4238  52.81%
Geiger	2358 / 4492  52.49%
DeGrey	2731 / 5257  51.95%
Lum	2202 / 4310  51.09%
Rook	2367 / 4689  50.48%
Grave	2516 / 4987  50.45%
Argagarg2592 / 5172  50.12%
Jaina	2503 / 5107  49.01%
Valerie 2486 / 5231  47.52%
Setsuki 2924 / 6436  45.43%

Yomi's balance has held up remarkably well, so we're very happy about it. It remains closer balanced than any known fighting game. What's interesting about these stats is that Midori is often ranked last in tier lists while Grave is often ranked first. Grave doesn't even crack the top half of the chart here though, and Midori is #1. That said, all these percentages are very close anyway.

Now let's look at those stats ranked by popularity instead of by win-rate:

Click to read more ...

The Wii U

Some people seem to hate on Nintendo's concept for Wii U, while others are excited. I think the skepticism is understandable because it's hard for people to imagine a new thing that's different from current things. I still am reeling from people on my forums who "couldn't imagine how the Apple iPad could be of any use," and now it's created a new category of device that may eclipse PCs. The gaming world in general couldn't really imagine the Wii catching on (what's with the weird remote and lack of power??), but it dominated for years. Even the *balance board* accessory outsold the entire PS3 platform, last time I checked. So perhaps its best to look at some history, first.

Nintendo's History

Nintendo has always made good games, but they've also always used a hardware strategy that sets them up for success. (How the hell they make such consistently good games, regardless of hardware, is beyond the scope of my post, but an interesting question, too). Their strategy has been to make new "verbs" and then design games for those verbs. This is actually their term, though I forget if it was Miyamoto or another Nintendo representative who used that term. What they mean is their hardware gives players a new way to interact with games, and so Nintendo can offer new experiences.

If you think back to E3 several years ago, Nintendo boldly announced "We won't be announcing the controller for the Wii at E3." Yes, they actually announced that they would not announce something, and that made news. Why would they not announce the controller? Miyamoto explained that Nintendo was the first system to have a d-pad, and now that's standard. They were the first to have rumble. They were the first to have an analog stick. I think there were other firsts in there somewhere too, but the rest of the industry copies them and they wanted even more of a headstart on the Wii, which is fair enough. We now know that the secret at the time was that they were the first to bring motion control to consoles and the mainstream.

Iwata's Promise

In 2006 at the Game Developer's Conference, Nintendo's President Iwata addressed a packed auditorium about the future of Nintendo. At events like this, you can kind of feel the tenor of the room, if people are angry or bored or whatever else. In that room, the feeling was excitement and skepticism. Iwata's story of the future was exciting but, I think many (including me) thought it was kind of a fairy tale.

Iwata told a story about a company who was doing well and top of their industry, but then another company came along and took their crown. It was about Nintendo losing to Sony, remember that's what happened during the days of PS2. The punch line is that his story was really about Pepsi losing to Coke. Pepsi found itself on the #2 end of the cola wars, and Pepsi's strategy then, he said, is exactly what Nintendo's will be now (in 2006). Rather than sink more money into fighting Coke on the same battlefield, they diversified. Pepsico then created the #1 selling bottled water, the #1 selling sports drink, the #1 selling energy drink, and several other categories. They were fighting on a battlefield that Coke didn't even know they were supposed to care about.

The DS, he told us, is this kind of disruptive

Click to read more ...

Yomi and Puzzle Strike, back in stock

That was a pretty painfully long wait to get more Yomi and Puzzle Stike, but the wait is finally over. The games are here and ready. Also, all pre-ordres / backorders have now shipped, to everyone who ordered anywhere in the world! Phew!

As always, you can get my card games from www.sirlingames.com if you want to buy online (also at Amazon in the US). They'll ship right away now that they're actually in stock. Or, you can try your local game stores anywhere in the world. If your game store doesn't have my games, you either tell them to contact Dan at Salute@GameSalute.com or you can tell him about your favorite store yourself.

Thanks to everyone, and your orders are on the way right now, if you haven't gotten them already.

More on SCG4

While my main job right now is finishing up Flash Duel: Raid on Deathstrike Dragon and the Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack (and after that, the full Puzzle Strike Expansion and Yomi expansion), my hobbies are "Sirlin Card Game 4" and the Fantasy Strike fighting game.

I told you guys a bit about the fourth card game before, in painfully vague terms. I think I have to keep that up for a while unfortunately, but I can tell you more about how designs develop, even without the details. The last time I mentioned this game, I said how it was like Magic: the Gathering, but with some major new thing, and that even with that thing completely changing the whole game, you still have Llanowar Elves or whatever. So I had two "big ideas" on the table to push the game into even newer territory (in addition to the original big idea that really makes the whole game work in the first place). I also mentioned how I talked to Soren Johnson (Civilization 4) about it, and though we only talked that one time, I'll use his comments back then as a point of reference.

Big Idea #1

One of the two ideas he liked a lot, so I developed it more. I was concerned that it was too mentally demanding, especially in the first turn of the game, but it added a lot of flavor and also potential for strategy. The mechanics of the game in general suggest a certain theme and this idea played right into that theme, so it's easy to see why Soren liked it. After more playtesting with and without this mechanic, I have to say the game is just smoother and more fun to play when it's not there. Sometimes you have to cut good ideas. Even a good idea has to pull its weight and add more to the game than it subtracts. (Here, the subtraction was too much to keep track of and too much think about without it quite justifying the extra strategy and flavor.) I still keep this idea in the back of my mind though.

Big Idea #2

The other "big idea" was something I had tried to make work for a long time, and it never really did. Soren wasn't excited about it to begin with, but he said maybe there was potential on this one if it could be leveraged as a way to simplify the presentation of the entire game. It reminded him of something in Civ (as well as many other games, but he worked on Civ after all). I wanted this idea for flavor reasons and because I had a vague sense that it could somehow improve gameplay, I just couldn't figure out how. I hadn't thought of Soren's take that it could maybe ALSO simplify things, though. There's a lot of information you have to be aware of during this game, more than at any given time during a game of Magic, and he was very concerned about this. So he proposed a way to use this particular idea in a way that lets him only focus on a subset of all the stuff at any given time. Or at the very least, only have to focus on a subset of it all during the first couple turns. He said that if you can access more stuff as the game goes on, it feels less intimidating and it can also be good for strategy.

Soren's particular suggestions of how to implement this didn't work, but the concept was sound. I found a different way that does work and it turned out to be an incredible advancement for the game. Improvements to a game might come in the areas of a) accessibility, b) strategy, or c) flavor. It's rare and amazing that

Click to read more ...

Yomi and Wired.com

Wired.com has a glowing review of Yomi! It's thorough and has lots of pictures, too.

Yomi has been out of stock for months now, but it will finally be shipping again at the very end of May. You still have until May 13th to get a free set of "cursed" character cards if you pre-order before May 13th.