The big three browsers in the international community.

Royal Pingdom has a great write-up with some interesting statistics about browser usage, global region-by-global region. 1 It kinda made me think about why adoption rates of browsers would differ in other regions than here in the US, at least on a proportional level of some kind.

AN OPINION FOLLOWS:

North America still favors the Internet Explorer. I’m not sure if that’s helping other countries regard us as no longer the ideological center of intelligence in the world, or just because Microsoft’s operating system is just shipped in high enough numbers to make marketing irrelevant. Chrome’s takeover of second place from Firefox however, seems to suggest the faster release cycle, in addition to Google’s clout, might be the better way to go ahead as far as garnering marketshare.

Europe, however, are adopting technologies that are of higher relevancy for the technological ecosystem or things that support multiple languages and input possibilities because unlike NA, there are more than two languages spoken in most other parts of the world. As Europe has been the proving ground for Mozilla’s modern browser approach, I can see how it excels here, if only my slim margins.

For the Asian region, Chrome adoption has been outstanding, no doubt due to its minimalistic nature and its display of their languages (clearly not based on the Latin alphabet). Likewise, in South America, the culture of Internet users prefer the more updated and relatively safe browser to navigate online with the boom that the culture is experiencing.

The African region takes to Firefox for performance reasons, largely. Sure the Latin alphabet is possibly not the preferred character set that would fit for the region as a generalization, but it handles Unicode in a decent enough way for it to be a major player. What’s more is that the performance of Firefox on low-power machine—say those that might run on a power supply that isn’t fixed—complements the machines that are in use there.

Oceania, then, might have the make up of a hybrid of the NA and Asian regions based on the large influence that Australia has and how much of a foil they are to their European cousins. Alas, they are still being dominated by Microsoft’s dodgy browser. I suppose IE is just the ‘that’ll do’ solution for them down there? Chrome is growing pretty fast, probably due to the rest of the nations in the region and language needs.

It’s reassuring to see that at least the rest of the world has moved on from a browser platform that updates once a year and perhaps four more times in a decade. I know we can do better here in the North American region, but I think that would mean we would have to remove Internet Explorer with fire because the upcoming version of IE might be a bit too integral in the upcoming tile-based UI of Windows 8.

BF3 companion app comes to iPhone, but will skip Android?

Okay, I know that many of you folks could give less than over 9000 shits about anything that Electronic Arts is doing in the gaming industry that isn’t ruining Mass Effect 3’s ending, and that’s fine. This blog probably isn’t for you in the first place.

EA’s subsidiary responsible for Battlefield 3, Digital Illusions CE (also known as DICE), released its long-awaited mobile app for its Battlelog pseudo-social network it deployed with the launch of the game. DICE’s Global Community Manager for BF3, Daniel Matros, announced the release on his popular Twitter feed. 1

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this whatsoever. I, as an iPhone 4S user, have already downloaded the app and it’s all great fun being able to show folks that I am not among the elite in the BF3 community by my sub-1.00 kill/death ratio and the fact that my top three weapons include the SKS, not to mention that I haven’t hit Colonel level 50 yet, let alone any level of Colonel.

As a Twitter user, there’s nothing wrong with announcing something before your PR department releases something boring and simple. That and you get to inject a bit of personality into it, whereas if a PR drone were to write up the release, it would almost completely lack any manner of emotion or excitement.

However, in response to users asking him about an Android version (which surely has to be coming at some point), zh1nt0 had the following to fire back with: 2

@mund0x Android.. It´s like asking if future BF games will be released on Betamax

I’m not quite sure that was the most professional sort of reply from a Global Community Manager.

Now, I don’t think he’s going to be losing his job over something like this. I mean, everyone has a right to their opinions, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to be getting a talking to from the community at large after comparing Android to Betamax. There are Apple fanboys, and then there are those that take things a bit too far.

And to be quite honest, the Battlelog application doesn’t seem to have the design thought put into it compared to the Halo Waypoint companion that Bungie and Microsoft developed for the iPhone. For the short time that I spent playing the Halo prequel title online, I felt like the mobile experience the app provided actually enhanced the system as a whole.

To DICE’s credit, the Battlelog system would be great if it weren’t so tightly integrated into the game thanks to the capabilities and EA’s desire to show off Origin. But then again, Battlelog is no replacement for the server browser being built into the game itself.

Will the next big competitive FPS please stand up?

It’s hard to predict what the next big thing is going to be in FPS gaming anymore. I thought for the longest time that Modern Warfare 3 was going to be the premier competitive title that would emerge from the last release cycle of games, but it seems like the next release cycle will hold what the community will probably circle around.

MW3 and Battlefield 3 have all the necessary components to construct a vibrant competitive scene. Some may argue that these scenes exist and that I’m ignoring them, but I don’t think they have reached a critical mass compared to the titles they are replacing.

These games are arguably successes in their own right, but they still haven’t garnered the support of competitive organizations in the way that they need to. Here are a few thoughts on why I think that these games fall short on gathering critical mass to construct a competitive scene.

Design As Intended

The competitive modes around these games are generally the means to provide players with the circlejerk that they need so they can boast on their achievements. These modes were designed for small instances and not for ongoing campaigns, such as a league. Furthermore, the amount of weapons and the smaller variances that these weapons have in these games contribute to the complexity of game balance. There’re only four classes of players in BF3, however each of these classes have up to 10 different primary weapons to choose from and there are three different types of weapons among these 10 for each class, at best.

Additionally, these multiplayer modes require players to play the game in order to unlock additional weapons. Only a limited arsenal is available for players in MW3 until they rank up enough times to gain access to the complete arsenal that’s available in the game. Unlocking the complete arsenal in BF3 this more complicated as players have to fulfill four specific roles in game play to gather the required experience to do so.

Ultimately, confrontations in these two games are governed by scarcity and seniority. Scarcity, in this context, represents the amount of players with access to a more complete arsenals and newer players to the game. In the same manner, seniority represents the amount of experience that up player games while playing the game.

In a purely competitive arena, these two principles no longer matter because, if the competitive arena set up with any common sense, all the weapons are unlocked for all players and the skill level of the competitors represents the highest portion of players. In this circumstance, the game has to fall back on mechanics, reflexes, and strategy.

Specific roles in this situation are not specific. All of the roles in these situations are fluid and everyone is essentially doing the same thing: eliminating the other team in the most efficient manner possible. Almost all of the effort the developer puts into the game to maintain balance and atmosphere are eliminated in the same way: matches become oversimplified and tactically meaningless in ways the developer did not intend.

Community Logistics

For players new to the competitive scene in these games, finding venues in which to compete is not as easy as it once was. Currently, the simplest way to get into a match is to simply click ‘quick match’ or enter a matchmaking mode. To actually find friends to play in a competitive mode, a player has to actively pursue these things.

The microcosms which are matches are short enough to where running into individuals in one match then doing so in a second match seem to be a oddity and almost an anomaly. BF3 has a certain leg up on MW3 on this particular point, but it’s still difficult to build a community around a specific server compared to other games. All of these communities typically do not produce top-tier teams, these types of communities have always felt part of a growing, successful scene. Luckily, these communities have already been founded in older games and are migrating to newer games as they gather interest from their players.

Still, the pub community aspect of these games make the competitive scene possible by way of continuing the success of the title. In games where the competitive scene does not rise to level of international interest, these communities often turn into the harbors of the most loyal players in that game.

For the console players of these titles, the pub server scene has been replaced by online communities where players can engage in posting and discussion about the games. Neither online gaming service provided by the two major consoles even holds a candle to the value of discussion and interaction that takes place on subreddit. the networks simply seem to be the medium in which stereotypical pre-teens throw racial slurs and threatening messages at other players, often behind a veil of anonymity.

Replacing actual servers for these console games, console gamers depend on LAN events for supporting their competitive scene. It’s the model that Halo made popular and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to go away anytime soon.

Pickup and Playability

These two games are also not intuitive for newer players to jump into compared to upcoming titles. CS:GO and Tribes: Ascend have fewer complexities surrounding their core game modes, in which they expressly eliminate the other team in the most efficient manner possible.

The spiritual successor to Counter-Strike has set weaponry for either team that is playing that game. Tribes to send have vastly different types of weapons and all those weapons play different roles. Both games have a core component based on what is available to you, the player, in a particular situation.

Okay, I’m out of ideas. I’m really just upset about how MW3 and BF3 were supposed to save the FPS genre and haven’t because of shit developers.

I’ll just be honest here. I really thought that one of these two games would really just clean up and neither of them really have. I enjoy playing BF3, and from what I can tell of MW3, it’s the bastard child of MW2 and Black Ops. Neither of these games are made for a competitive scene.

These games are made for people to spend money on them. And not in the roundabout marketing style, either. The genre seems to have become the DLC delivery machine of choice in the gaming industry and has lost sight of what the FPS has been known for.

So will there be another competitive FPS to sweep the industry?

With Valve focusing on more than one product, it’s safe to say that CS:GO might not be the company putting its best foot forward as it has done with its entire lineup to date, excepting Team Fortress 2. Massive intellectual property owners, EA and Activision Blizzard, have more incentive to rehash older games and continue their DLC dominance of the industry instead of innovating in the field of gameplay.

Plus, consider what a competitive title is in the industry right now: it’s either a strategy game or a fighting game. Both games are typically solo efforts and require little to no teamwork to succeed and both games already have massive cult followings that span multiple games inside their genre.

And in both of these scenes, change has been affected on them by developers who really just wanted to mix things up. Starcraft 2 is an evolution of the original game complete with a graphics and engine overhaul. Street Fighter IV was a massive departure to the 2D fighting system by rendering 3D graphics while integrating online multiplayer for the first time in the series. DotA-clones didn’t change how the game was played, but made the game easier to play for a variety of gamers. MVC3 reintroduced how matches could be won and lost on the character select screen with its three-character tag team format and the strategy that added to the game.

Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 just added more boring shit for players to grind out that held back access to the games’ arsenal while making it more difficult to organize any sort of competitive meeting.