I play as many RPGs on iOS as I do other platforms at this point. Lots of great ones, lots of crap ones. When the library is as insanely large as the iOS ecosystem already is, you're going to have a mix of good and bad.

But there are definitely some very, very high quality RPGs there that in some cases I think play better on iOS than anywhere else.

One game worth mentioning not in our iOS listings is Avadon: The Black Fortress. Really terrific if you like the old school Infinity Engine games. I reviewed it for PC here but have also played it on iOS and it plays very nicely there as well - not Editor's Choice level nice just because not everything translates from mouse to touch screen quite as seamlessly as one might hope, but nice enough to be a fantastic game.

Of course, Baldur's Gate, the original Infinity Engine game, is available on iPad now also and is an absolute triumph IMO.

Something that sort of falls outside our coverage but is a wonderful game as well is King of Dragon Pass.

Wow high praise DW. I am a huge fan of Thomas Covenant so will def check this out.

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for making this little corner of the web seem like coming home on a daily basis.

New Year's Eve is my absolute favorite holiday of the year and I will be partying like 2012 was the best year ever (which it was, supplanting 2011 before that and 2010 before that). The only thing that is going to be better is 2013!

My only resolution is to continue dropping weight at reasonable and healthy pace - I have dropped close to 40 pounds this year but wouldn't mind dropping another 20 over the next couple of years.

Saw Margin Call, which a lot of folks had told me I HAD to see because I work in that biz.

I thought it was really good. Did a great job of capturing the general feeling of "oh crap" that went on as the implications of what was about to happen became clear between 2007-2008. It doesn't explain the technicalities of what happened, but is more about the convergence of individual interest and corporate interest, etc. Challenging insofar as it makes you think about what exactly the "right" thing to do, knowing what we know now, would have been in the same situation again. Excellent if you are into a more cerebral, Wall Street thriller type of thing.

Yeah experienced gamers will definitely need to jack the difficulty right away. Normal is very easy!

I think the part where you started with "That's nice, but irrelevant to the points I was making," doesn't come off so great. It kind of sets the tone for the entire thing - without that the rest of it doesn't read so badly.

Which is a bummer because I think you make some good points.

Anyway, that was the feeling I had reading it. It doesn't sound like you really meant it that way but that's what it felt like.

You asked so I'm answering, please don't take it as criticism or anything. Obviously you feel passionately about this genre and some of the games mentioned and you answered with that passion!

My favorite old game story was trying to get Doom deathmatch working with my friend. We both had one phone line - the concept of multiple was a crazy extravagance - so we'd be on the phone, tweak the modem settings, then try to call with the modem, but then somebody in the house might pick up, then you had to call back but then he wouldn't pick up because he thought you were calling with the modem, etc etc. Then even when you DID connect, it wouldn't work, so hang up and tweak the modem settings some more... just a total mess, the type of thing that isn't even an issue at all anymore.

The most in depth analysis of the numbers I've been able to find is from infoDev: http://www.infodev.org/en/Document.1056.pdf

In particular, the section on "Negative externalities from trade of artificially scarce assets" (section 3.4.1, starting on page 17 on the doc) talks a lot about what we're discussing here.

I see what you're saying, and it does make sense.

I guess the only thing I'd say is the analogy you make about electrical appliances and plumbing isn't the same thing as an MMO. The MMO doesn't exist AT ALL if the company doesn't pull in enough dollars to keep the servers running and the people as well. Outsourcing tasks like leveling and gold collection and such does not help them because they get more money making YOU do that task in the form of your subscription. Again I really encourage you to read the Gamasutra article - the time issue, and the Money In Money Out are dramatically impacted by these things.

I do think it is a model that could work though, what you're suggesting. I think in a lot of ways the real money auction house for Diablo 3 sort of does this, right? But Diablo 3 was designed with the Real Money Auction House in mind from the getgo, and Blizzard is able to alter drop rates in accordance with maximizing value for certain items, allowing them to put the cut of sales in their own pocket. I don't think other MMOs were necessarily designed with that in mind, and there are certainly real, no fooling, game economic impacts that have an effect on subscriber base when you have these things.

I think overall though, I like the point you're making here because it would be interesting to see a game designed with this type of stuff in mind that actually rewards/empowers this type of behavior while still balancing with the needs of the traditional gamer.

It's a really interesting problem, to be sure.

I guess maybe we're looking at it from different angles then.

The goal of a company is to make money for its employees and its shareholders. Based on that, it sounds like we probably agree that by that standard, FFXI is a success. My hypothesis is that they deal with things like botting and paying outsiders for leveling/grinding purposes because there is a BUSINESS reason to do that.

Are you simply arguing that bans for paying outsiders to do that sort of thing is unfair in some kind of esoteric sense? I guess I can see that.

They are good points. Without the data on player habits it is very tough for us to do anything but speculate, but in the case of FFXI or some other struggling MMO, it would be interesting to see them try something a little bit different just to see if it works. Any lessons they learn could potentially be applied to a future product.

However, the flipside of that is it is hard to know whether FFXI is actually LOSING piles of money, just losing subscribers, or whether it is barely breaking even/losing money without actual access to the numbers. Let's not forget that as late as June of this year, Final Fantasy XI was hailed by Square Enix itself as the most profitable Final Fantasy in franchise history. That may be part PR spin, but the point remains that we don't know what the subscriber threshold is for FFXI to make money, whether it is currently making money, etc because we don't have that info.

Points about corporate greed aside (and I maintain that without actually knowing what the P&L is for running/maintaining a game like FFXI, making that accusation is not productive since it is not provable/deniable), it sure would be interesting to see more of this type of data made public. But there are issues of competitive advantage there as well.

I certainly am not privy to the player behavior statistics Square Enix has - but your idea that it "can't hurt them" does definitely interest me.

What I mean is, I actually do wonder if it would be possible for them to somehow implement a system whereby they get a cut of profits for player transactions like that involving actual TIME. When it is gear and gold that's one thing, since they can control drop rates, but when you're talking about paying somebody to play the game for you how would you even enforce that? And why wouldn't a player simply want to go around the issue by conducting the transaction outside of the game so they keep 100% of the cut instead of anything less?

It's an interesting problem.

Well, that is one way of looking at it. Not necessarily an incorrect way.

Another way though is that this is how you pay for these games and the staff that builds and maintains it. Obviously if there is no profit to be had, the game will cease to exist.

I certainly understand your POV on the matter, but I also understand the company POV which is if they freely allow this, they lose a big chunk of money that keeps the game alive in the first place. For evidence you need look no farther than the virtual graveyard of past MMOs that couldn't get a handle on this type of thing.

The more interesting question to me is how you design games that CAN allow this and still be profitable. Diablo 3 is kind of an interesting experiment that way - make no mistake that Blizzard manages that game like an MMO, even if there is no monthly fee. The new Guild Wars is another.

I think the answer is more of a design issue from day one when you are planning how you are going to make money and keep games like these running. As currently implemented, it is easy to see why Blizzard and Square Enix take the stance they do - they don't really have a choice as the games currently exist if they want to keep being profitable.