Hedone in Beta

German developer Acony’s Hedone is one of three free-to-play shooters scheduled for late 2011-release that many gamers hope will alter the current paradigm in the free-to-play world.

While previous F2P games garnered attention simply due to the fact that they were free,  Hedone, Warcry and Blacklight Retribution (all built on the UE3 engine) are currently being looked upon to  close the quality gap with AAA titles.

Could these new games cause the tectonic shift that takes the AAA player base and moves it towards F2P? Let’s take a look at Hedone and see if we can do some earthquake prediction.

Mankind has always sought new boundaries and his masterpieces have always been bent to either killing or entertainment. Today, in the world of 2018 the Lazar.us Corporation has created a new masterpiece that fuses art and death into a single global phenomenon.

This is the future of entertainment; this is the greatest show on the planet.

This is Hedone.

Biggest Surprise at E3

Hedone’s independent developer Acony, based in the town of Villingen Germany, right into middle of the fabled Black Forest, was given some major press coverage at E3 this year. In fact, FPSGuru gave the game its “Biggest Surprise” award.

I can only assume that what impressed FPSGuru about Hedone was its concept, not necessarily its gameplay. After all,  Hedone’s DNA actually comes directly from the somewhat pedestrian and now defunct shooter called Parabellum, also from Acony.

Here’s a vid showing off Parabellum:

GamersFirst, the MMOG giant that features Warrock on their servers, cancelled Acony’s contract for Parabellum due to diverging opinions on its direction. Acony’s devs, undaunted, apparently forged ahead and created Hedone, a total conversion, high-concept edition  of Parabellum. With a workforce of 50 devs, they created their new game 14 months after the original’s cancellation.

Admittedly, Parabellum footage still seems meek in comparison to AAA titles — not a paradigm-shifter by any stretch of the imagination; however, the gap continues to close. Many MMOFPS gamers hailed Parabellum for moving the F2P shooter experience up the technological tree and are currently anxiously anticipating Hedone.

The Concept

Think Roman gladiators in the 21st century:  gladiatorial combat to the death, televised to a world-wide audience of blood-thirsty fans.

The culture of celebrity taken to the ultimate, in Hedone, contestants are brought onstage into a globally televised combat game show.

Now, back in ol’Rome, if you nicked a gladiator in the carotid, chances were that he didn’t last long enough to hear the manager’s post-game speech. In Hedone’s world however, medicine has improved so much that the game’s losers can make a comeback. Any one dying in battle will simply have their minds uploaded to a new cloned host. So now we have a guilt-free, though morally questionable, true blood sport.

Synths are the breakthrough that allows Hedone to even exist. Contestants on the show have multiple Synths created of them before each match so that when they die, they can be back in the action as quickly as possible. Each Synth is an exact physical copy of the contestant down to the smallest detail.

This is not exactly an original idea. Remember Schwartzennegger in The Running Man? Heck even Star Trek (the original series) did something similar (see the Breads and Circuses episode).

I will give them this, the backstory Acony has put together for the game is quite exhaustive.

Contestants on the HTV combat shows are celebrities around the world. Each has a loyal legion of fans cheering them on as they fight on live TV. Each seeks to stand apart from the rest and achieve mega-stardom. In Hedone, being good isn’t enough; you also need to look good doing it.

As contestants battle through a match, the global audience votes for their favourites and the most successful gain access to experimental technologies as the game progresses. Playing to the crowd and pulling off daring, showy moves is essential to get the fans to love you.

Battles take place in a variety of locations prepared by dedicated location scouts seeking new and exciting arenas for the next match. Oilrigs, shanty towns, industrial complexes and many others including purpose-built arenas have all hosted matches.

Lights.

Camera.

Ammo.

The story definitely has heft. For example, take the case of the fictitious HedoneTV.  Owned by the in-game-character John J. Lazar, a social media entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Lazar.US Corporation, HedoneTV puts on to-the-death gladiatorial fights and telecasts them around the planet.

John J. Lazar

Media mogul. Celebrity. Murderer-in-Chief.

All of these names have been used to describe John J. Lazar, the founder and owner of Lazar.us. His soaring trajectory has taken him from one of many businessmen trying to make money in social media into a global celebrity.

The best known product of Lazar.us without a doubt is HTV, the entertainment channel that broadcasts Hedone and all of the other combat entertainment shows. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, viewers can watch explosive action from all over the world. Selection shows, highlights, live matches and pay-per-view specials stream to fans of the most extreme reality shows in the planet.

Here is a Gamescom vid showing Hedone gameplay (German language…but the gameplay is shown).

Beta Registration Rage

A closed Beta for European gamers started back in August and is now over; however,  an American Beta, with American servers,  should begin soon.

In-game experience is subject to NDA, so I cannot tell you much about the gameplay; however, I can say that my experience at signing up for the Beta was just plain nasty.

Visiting the Hedone.TV website and the game’s official forums was irritating to say the least. I was hoping to get info on the game’s closed-beta currently under-way in Europe and instead I was subjected to the usual triple-redundant-registration-fest that I abhor. I can only assume that many potential Beta players probably just clicked “X” on their browser tab after a few minutes of trying to register or search for relevant information on this game.

Why on earth would the developers add layers and layers of hurdles between the player and the game? I just don’t understand this. I think only one person on this planet seemed to “get” the fact that users want a great experience with technology…and Steve’s dead now. Heaven help us.

Here are just some of the barriers Acony erected around the Euro Closed Beta:

•  Had to register for Hedone’s forums AND separately for the Beta
•  Guess what? True-to-form, I can only get the Beta key from a third party website. Of course I need to sign up on yet another site for that.
• Ok, got my Beta key…but as the key came from a German language site, I had to translate the email the key came in.
•  Had to register the key on Hedone’s site, per the hidden-away Tutorial posted in their forums. This was not as easy as you might think, given the cleverly constructed CSS for the site. You see, Acony uses black for both the background and foreground for data inputs…a real challenge for registration. It would have been simpler to construct the site in raised type for blind people.
• Two page NDA…sigh.
• Beta Key Invalid!
• After all that, it appears many people’s beta key is not being accepted by the website. We’re urged to enter it into the Beta of the game itself. That gem of advice was also hidden obscurely in a random thread on the site.
• The game! Of course. Almost forgot there’s a game to download here somewhere. The site I received my Beta key from didn’t send me a download link. So, where do I get it?  I actually had to Google for it. No biggie…but really?  The closed Beta was available from Fileplanet – of course <he says sarcastically>.
• Naturally, the original 1.3 Gb D/L was already out of date once I did find it, so luckily, I got to D/L a new version yet again once in game.

Given this torture, I suddenly found that the game’s name Hedone, from the Greek “pleasure” (as in the word hedonism), seemed to be somewhat innapropriate.

The European Beta experience will hopefully translate into a better upcoming American Beta.

Platforms and requirements

• Hardware min requirements are currently not official:
• Intel CPU   Core 2 Quad Q6400 2.13GHz
• AMD CPU  -  Athlon II X4 605e
• Nvidia GFX Card  -  GeForce 8800 GT
• ATI GFX Card  -  Radeon HD 4670 512MB RAM
• Direct X 9

• The game runs AhnLab’s Hackshield anti cheat software. Hackshield is a Korean made a/c client and is a poor-man’s version of Punkbuster.
• Maximizing their investment, Acony appears to allow XBox and PS3 to partake in their vision. Wow, if that isn’t a red flag…I don’t know what is.

A Brink comparison

Will high-concept make people play Hedone? Initially, it will attract an audience to be sure, just look at Brink, also a high concept game. In the end, Brink failed because of its gameplay, not because of concept.

Hedone needs to excel at gameplay and if it does, the concept will only benefit the game. If the gameplay is lacklustre, the concept will only serve to remind us of how misguided the dev’s priorities were.

Talking the talk, walking the walk

Speaking of hope, I certainly have my fingers crossed that Acony will provide us with a game that befits the detailed backstory they have provided us with.

The game appears to have nuance. For example, the game’s narrative is strong and the developers appear well-schooled. The nuance of which I speak is even seen in Lazar’s name which strongly evokes  the biblical Lazarus: the dude whom Jesus resurrected from the dead in Christian mythology. Get it? Lazar has figured out how to resurrect his gladiators…Lazar/Lazarus. Anyone? Anyone at all? Buehler?

I just hope the devs know their audience here…not sure there are too many English Literature students will be interested in playing FPS games. So far, there has been some positive reaction from the Hedone community. I certainly hope their hopes will be fulfilled, as they have waited years for fulfillment.

Once the game is released, we’ll give Hedone another try and report on its progress, until then, I’m going to go pleasure myself, because Hedone’s Beta sign-up sure didn’t.

Links

Website:

HedoneTV

Twitter:

HedoneTV

JohnJLazar