Black Gate

Readercon is a science fiction convention held every July in or near Boston, Massachusetts.

I’m a member of the Yahoo Fictionmag (FM) group, and FM-ers once again showed up in strength, July 8th thru July 11th in Burlington Ma., to reaffirm Readercon as, short of a worldcon, Fictionmags best attended con. I had occasion over the weekend to engage in a friendly ‘hello’ and often more, with Fictionmag chums J.J. Adams, Amelia Beamer, Mike Blake, Neil Clarke, John Clute, Don D’Ammassa, Ellen Datlow, Paul Di Filippo, Scott Edelman, Peter Halasz, John Kessel, Mary Robinette Kowal, Kate Laity, Barry Malzberg, Darrell Schweitzer, Gordon Van Gelder, Sean Wallace, and Lee Weinstein who, along with myself and chum-alum Marty Halpern, brought our number to 20.

There was rumor of a planned gathering of FM-ers at the con however, consistent with past efforts at such planning, the group maintained its unblemished record of such good intentions remaining unrealized.

Probably the main spanner in the effort was the involvement of so many in our number on panels, precluding a quorum of FM-ers at any one time at the bar during the day. For awhile Paul di Filippo appeared to be on almost every panel but with apparently only seven on his schedule had to vie with with Ms. Kowal (10), Messers Kessel and Malzberg (8 each) and Messers Clute and Edelman (7 each) for the title of ‘Panel-King/Queen’. [Non-FM-ers authors Walter Hunt and Shira Lipkin had us beat with 11 scheduled panel appearances each].

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I read a lot of geeky books. And I don’t just mean science fiction and fantasy, I mean books that make even many normal geeks raise an eyebrow at my choices, such as books on game theory, economics and business, philosophy, and so on … things that have nary a laser rifle or robot or sword or sorcerer in sight. Right now, I’m reading Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine. (An abridged audiobook version is available for free.)

It seems like when I read these books, the principles they espouse often show up all over the place, and that’s certainly happening at GenCon. In fact, the principles of “free” described by Anderson have always, in some form, been at the heart of every industry of sales. (Early on in the book, he explains how free cookbooks made the failing Jell-O company thrive.) And the gaming industry is no different.

For example, many roleplaying games have for years offered free little booklets that allow you to get started with a game, try it out in a limited way, and see if you enjoy it before you invest dollars and hours into playing it. But the problem is that these books were not actually free. There was a trade-off, because the publishers still had to actually print out the booklets and distribute them and so on. There was a cost to this, so it wasn’t just that they wanted to make money – if the gambit didn’t work, they were actually out money! Now, with the online world, PDF versions of books can be distributed (virtually) free of cost! That’s how Black Gate is able to offer reviews and commentary for free through these online blogs, for example.

Many of the gaming companies at GenCon have also embraced “free,” such as Hero Mages, an online board/strategy game that is completely free to play, but which allows players to pay a price to access certain premium characters and options (such as the ability to create and save your own map designs). (Anderson calls this business model a “freemium” model, where a portion of the users spend money for upgrades, which supports the site for everyone.)

Another company that is brilliantly using “free” as a means of promotion is Shard Studios, who have created the Shard RPG. This game is based on the Hindu mythology of India and allows you to play a number of animal-based races. The setting doesn’t have any metal, but their weapons and equipment are built from gems of various types that can be used to power magical items, such as flying airships, or forged into weapons (such as the swords in the pictures above) with different properties. The books are beautiful and the setting is truly enthralling … it is one of a handful of games that I left GenCon knowing I would definitely want to try out by running a full game with.

How is Shard using “free”? Well, on their website, if you go to “The Game” link you can choose to download a “Welcome Booklet.” This booklet contains the entire game mechanics of the system, setting information, some introductory character templates, and so on. It is essentially the bulk of the main core rulebook … except for character creation, for which you need to buy the actual book. But, by checking out the Welcome Booklet, you can be sure that you really want the game before you shell out the money for the entire set of rules. And, if you just want to play the game and never create a character, I suppose you could even do that (although, as most gamers know, character creation is one of the most fun aspects of any game).

I don’t know how many attendees are making it to GenCon this year, but the place is certainly packed. For example, here’s one of the game rooms. Not a dealer’s room, but just a room where people are playing board games.

The rooms that house the miniature war games – WarMachine, Hordes, HeroClix, Dark Ages, and the like – are typically even larger than this one. They’re spread throughout the building, in rooms both large and small. And, of course, some of the attendees choose more elaborate clothing.

Today, I’m going to focus on some of the electronic/video games that caught my eye at GenCon. I normally don’t spend a ton of time in the video game section, because my life doesn’t leave a lot of time anymore for video games, but once upon a time I was an avid online gamer, and it is always fun to dip my toes into that genre of games now and again.

One of the games I played back in the day was City of Heroes, the MMORPG superhero game created by Cryptic Studios and NCsoft. (In fact, one of my first paying writing gigs was a review of City of Heroes for City Slab magazine.) I haven’t played City of Heroes in over four years, but apparently the partnership between Cryptic and SOE has fallen apart, with NCsoft retaining ownership of the City of Heroes intellectual property. Cryptic Studios, in turn, teamed up with Atari and Hero Games to create Champions Online, taking everything they learned from the original creation of City of Heroes and improving upon it. The graphics are slick and the game play looks pretty smooth. Visually, of course, it looks like a comic book world, and the overall appearance is much like City of Heroes, but the stats system is built upon the Champions RPG structure and it uses the Champions setting. It’ll be interesting to see how this superhero MMORPG competes with the established City of Heroes.

While that was the only MMORPG that really caught my eye, there was another online game of interest – Hero Mages. This is a free (yes, you read that correctly!) online board/strategy game, which can be played by up to four players against each other. Each player controls a magic-user (chosen from fighter mage, wizard, sorcerer, and summoner) and two guardians (chosen from bard, rogue, barbarian, paladin, psionist, soul reaver, warrior, and samurai). The goal is to destroy the enemy teams before your own team is killed. It’s a fun game and free, so check it out.

Two other stand alone games warrant mention. If bloody console-based game mayhem is your thing, then check out Dante’s Inferno from Electronic Arts. The game follows Dante as he battles his way through Hell to rescue his fair love, Beatrice, who is being held captive by Lucifer. I’m not much on these slash-em-up games even in the best of times, but if there were ever a game that made me want to pick up a gaming console and rip through some demons, this was it. The graphics were phenomenal, and the players seemed to be hypnotized by the screen.

On the other end of the spectrum, and much more my speed, was the quirky stand alone PC game Odd Society. You play one of the ODDs, a race of creatures that have recently gained freedom from The Conglomerate, to whom they were enslaved. Now they are forced to find resources and build a society for themselves. The mechanics are mostly simple point-and-click, so it’s pretty easy to get into the game quickly. The graphics on this game aren’t nearly as slick as Dante’s Inferno, but that’s part of the point … unlike the Inferno hellbeasts, the ODDs are unusual little beings that are supposed to be endearing and sort of roughly rendered, like Dr. Seuss characters.