Op-Ed
Fan Service
0I like this trailer. I am very much looking forward to Aliens: Colonial Marines because I consider Aliens to be one of my top three most favorite movies of all time. I used to watch the VHS tape of it every single day, for months straight, when I was in high school. It was both a horror story, and a story about a bunch of bad-asses who’s asses weren’t as bad as they thought they were.
The switch from swagger to stagger was itself part of the horror effect of the movie. Here we had specially trained, heavily armed marines who were so sure of their ass-kicking ability that they dismissed their mission as “routine” (“Is this going to be a stand-up fight or another bug hunt?”), but eventually panicked as they were picked off one by one (“Pull your shit together, Hudson, we need you.”). Part of the power of the film is that not only do the good guys lose, but we see them go from an overly confident unit who pays the price for letting down their guard.
A lot of games based on popular IPs serve two masters: fan service, and attempts to carve their own niche in the canonical universe. Naturally, fan service is important. When you have an IP as big as, say Star Trek, Star Wars or the Alien universe, devs want to capture the essence of what makes the IP representatives so popular. For ACM, that’s the second movie in the series, Aliens, which is a natural focal point for a video game, with the guns and the action and claustrophobia and the marines and the aliens. It’s the most action-packed (and the last non-lame entry) of the series, and ACM seeks to invoke the same excitement and terror that made the movie so popular.
But sometimes fan service goes too far, often times into eye-roll territory. It’s now become “hip” and the norm to include “wink wink” content – either as a reference or outright – that lets the fans know that the developers “are fans too!” by adding things that fans will recognize. Names, places, references to situations, styles, memes, and even the occasional sly and not so obvious references (remember the “xenomorph skull” in the background of Predator 2? That kind of thing). It’s gotten to the point where devs don’t even bother to smooth it out, instead just dropping it into the game en toto as is, basically whacking the player over the head with how clever they are in tying their product back to the much-loved IP.
So I cringe at the thought that ACM is going to be about you, and your wisecracking, overly confident marine squad who’s sent out to find the original squad. You’ll be exposed to a lot of bro-fisting moments, a lot of swearing (naturally, because I shouldn’t be allowed to play these games when my daughter is in the room. Thanks for that, devs), a lot of one-liners delivered in an attempt to formulate some memorable quotes (“Hey Vasquez. You ever been mistaken for a man?” “No. Have you?”), and a lot of recycled tropes (“Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen”).
Normally, it’d be quite refreshing to have this kind of situation if the game were the first entry into the IP, but according to the current description about that game that I have found, it takes place between Aliens and Alien 3 where you and your squad are sent out to locate the missing team who went to LV-426. I assume the impetus is that the expedition hasn’t been heard from (since Ripley, Hicks and Newt basically drifted off in a different direction without notifying anyone at the end of Aliens). What I do not want to see is an Aliens clone, with the same wise-assery, pound-for-pound, the same bravado, the same jokes or mannerisms. I don’t want my team to be a “let’s brush off any threat that may be responsible for chewing up the first team, because we’re so badass, at least until we see how badly we are also getting pwnd!” party. That would be a huge let-down because the writers really wouldn’t have had to do anything aside from taking the Aliens personalities and pasting them onto video game avatars of a second and totally unrelated squad. We’ve already seen and enjoyed it – when it was Aliens – and could now use something fresh that strips away the fraternity atmosphere and builds off of what I’d hope would be an atmosphere of “We lost the first time. Something very, very, very bad must have happened if one of our elite teams suddenly vanished. Stow the attitude”…and ramp up the tension and horror. Because WE know what’s waiting on LV-426, so wisecracking is going to be totally out of place while we move our squad into this interstellar killing field.
Self Loathing For The Uninitiated
0I’m not a psychologist. I’d like to be, because if there’s anything I enjoy more than playing these games, it’s the psychology behind making them, or the psychology of the people who play them. It really doesn’t fit into the overall motif of video gaming per se, but as a blog which focuses mostly on the multiplayer genre, taking an interest in the ebbs and flows of the underlying community does present itself as a never-ending source of material, both good and bad.
One trend that’s not uncommon is this idea of self loathing, or seeing a come to Jesus moment on Twiiter, or hearing someone had an epiphany, that once they’ve come to that sudden realization that they have wasted a good portion of his or her life playing video games – or generally, a single game in particular – he or she feels compelled to tell everyone that he or she is clean and sober, and have taken it upon themselves to save everyone else from the grip of [Insert Game Title Here].
Holy shit, this annoys me.
I don’t have any quotes on hand, but let’s paraphrase, because I’m sure you’ve seen the same ones I have, or ones very much like these:
“Just canceled my [Game Name Here] account. Best. Decision. Ever.”
“I can’t believe I wasted X years of my life playing [Game Name Here].”
“I spent so much time playing [Game Name Here] that I forgot what the sun looked like.”
…and other variations on the theme. Some people even go so far as to feel that they are so born again that they sink all their money (presumably saved now that they don’t have a monthly fee to send to [Insert Company Here]) into an actual film about how piss-poor their lives were while they were in the grip of such an unholy vice.
Before we go any further, I want to put the breaks on the sarcasm and admit that addiction is a Real Thing. Some addictions are easier to understand than others (like cocaine compared to serial reality TV viewing), but any interest or compulsion need not be chemically introduced in order to trigger an addiction. Addiction in any form can ruin lives, and kudos of the highest order to those who realize that they are addicted, and who manage to break the cycle and reset their lives.
Most of the quotes I’ve seen, and the ones I want to take to task, where people are making statements as if they just left their last support group session are from people who are not addicted. These people are being sarcastic and even insulting. I used the term “born again” above because it’s extremely apt: the generally accepted thrust of the term “born again” is that a person is overzealous about their new-found “religion” (whether it’s actual religion or not) to the point where they overcompensate in the opposite direction. What they loved is now hated with equal passion. If they were a cheerleader for it, they now revile it with no minced words.
To be honest, I don’t know who these people are trying to convince: the people around them, or themselves. I’d prefer it if people make their decisions without fanfare. If you are happy that you’re no longer spending 40 hours a week raiding, then write a book, knit a sweater, volunteer at a soup kitchen, or rescue kittens, but please, spare us your self-congratulatory victory lap. Our memories aren’t so short that we have forgotten how you vehemently defended [Game Name Here] against all comers just last week/month/year. We’ve all quit games, so your accomplishment is not as Herculean to us as it is to your S.O. who’s been nagging you to spend some offline time with them, or to your GPA which has been languishing in the low decimals because it was so important that “SexehKiteh” and “Be4stMastah26” not be let down when they pinged you to take that role in the raid Monday through Sunday.
Although I’m not a psychologist, I get that people like validation, and these people will certainly get some attaboys from the peanut gallery, from others who have gone through the traumatic experience of clicking that “Cancel Account” button themselves. But we can’t delude ourselves into thinking that we didn’t enjoy it. We like playing these games, because we belly up to the bar again and again for the same potential for punishment that we’re so proud of kicking this time around. Leaving the game isn’t the real moment of pride; realizing that maybe we let things get out of hand should be the real take home message, but that would require that we admit to people that we are weak, and that we decided it was easier to shirk our real life responsibilities in favor of a virtual world and the approval of people we only know by alias. No one, especially those seeped in geek culture, ever want to appear weak, so the game becomes the demon that we’ve overcome, not our own wills.
So if you want to really get respect for breaking free, admit that you fucked up. Say “I have a problem; I see it; And now I intend to fix it”. You may not get the snarky high-fives, but it’s amazing how sometimes articulating the problem can be a more powerful force towards solving it than pushing the blame onto an inanimate object in a public forum for some short-lived slaps on the back.
The Great And Secret Show
1Trailers!
Who doesn’t love a good show? Trailers give us a window into the world of a game before we have the game in our hands. Companies use them to drum up excitement in their product, and sometimes (rarely) to show us actual gameplay.
More often than not, though, trailers are a PR thing. They’re like little movies that are used to set the scene. Since they’re not giving us actual information on how the game plays, trailers are used for emotional punch. Remember the Gears of War “Mad World” trailer?
How about the Star Wars: The Old Republic’s “Hope” trailer:
But let’s face it: so many games rely on adjectives like “gritty” or “visceral” to describe their gameplay, and since a picture is worth a thousand words, that’s a lot of the same adjectives shared between the two trailers above, and amongst a lot of other similar games available today. These trailers are trying to impart feelings to potential players: you’re alone. The odds are stacked against you. You’re fighting for the Future of All Humanity (or whatever race you’re a member of). You’re warding off extinction. The weight is on your shoulders, grunt. Get out there and give em hell.
Then we have Wildstar.
And, as I discovered today, Wakfu
These last two are quite different from the trailers we usually see. They’re funny! They’re stylish! A lot of production value went into these trailers…which isn’t to say that the others were created on a half-assed shoe-string budget over the course of a weekend, but for me, the last two trailers really make me want to play those games. Maybe it’s because we’re so inundated with these wartime games like Gears of War, Assassin’s Creed or Call of Battlefield Infinity that the trailers rarely register as anything other than an appraisal of their production values. I appreciate the humor of both the Wildstar and Wakfu trailers because they didn’t just go with gameplay and a guitar-grinding soundtrack, or a bunch of flying text and the sounds of slamming metal. They were fun to watch, which — true or not — makes me associate those games with “fun”.
Sadly, I don’t think a game like Gears of War could field a trailer based on humor, but then again we have Red vs. Blue which managed to turn Halo into a comedy show (if you appreciate that brand of lowbrow humor, I suppose), so it’s not impossible. But I also think that the Wildstar and Wakfu trailers didn’t take that frat house humor route.
GTA Is A Poor Man’s Skyrim
3Every now and then, I sit down and think about my “dream game”, the one I would make if I had unlimited time, unlimited cash, and unlimited talent at my disposal. I realize that there’s no guarantee that it would be feasible, or even of interest to anyone else, but it would be an interesting project for me, nonetheless.
Ideally, it would be a sandbox cyberpunk title, because I believe in the sandbox model, and I love old-school cyberpunk. I’ve written about some of the ideas here before, but what got me thinking today was whether or not it was even worthwhile to do an urban sandbox title in the age of Skyrim.
Grand Theft Auto would say “yes”. It was considered to be THE sandbox standard for many gamers and for quite some time. You could jack cars, drive around the city unfettered, mug people, steal stuff, kill people and…I think that’s pretty much it. I’m sure there are achievements to be had for locating certain things in the world, but as far as honest to goodness exploration goes, GTA really pales in comparison to Skyrim.
In Skyrim, you’re dropped into the uncharted wilds and are pointed in an initial direction. After that, it’s hands off. As you go about it, you find those paths into the woods, or even just ground that’s apparently uncluttered by undergrowth, which instantly sets off the endorphins for exploration because you know that the path into the mountains can end with a cave, or ruins, or a temple. After a few hours, you forgot what the heck you were setting out to do in the first place. And that never stops! So many people have lost countless hours of well-intentioned completion in Skyrim, not because they were sighseeing, but because they started out sightseeing, and then got sucked into a totally unrelated series of side-quests based entirely on what they found on the other side of the mountain they had no good reason to climb.
I haven’t played a lot of GTA (the combat annoyed me, and I suck at the driving), but I tried to mentally apply the Skyrim theory to an urban sandbox design, and came up short. We live in the same reality that GTA inhabits (though only to a degree. I may drive like a maniac, but I don’t pick up or kill hookers). We know what it’s like to move through a city, where people travel in vehicles more often than they do on foot and move at higher speeds along smooth streets designed specifically to bring people from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible. In between these pathways we have obstacles like buildings or infrastructure or natural formations like coastlines or rocky outcroppings. Even if we get off the streets and head down alleys or break into people’s apartments in GTA, how much variation could we expect? Each apartment has a couch, a TV, a microwave oven, and in a singular building each apartment design is just like the others in that building. I just don’t think that urban sandboxes provide the same kind of fuel for exploration that Skyrim had.
Although sandboxing is far more then the environment, the reality of the urban environment is a limitation that the realistic setting imposes. Consider Fallout 3. While not fantasy, it could be considered fantastical, a bridge between the reality of an urban environment and the make-believe world of high-fantasy. Fallout 3 and Skyrim can design their worlds without having to faithfully replicate our every day experiences, which aren’t really all that exciting venues for spontaneous exploration. The artistic license that the fantasy setting affords allows the environment to play a more central role for exploration in Skyrim then it ever could in GTA.
I Got Wurms!
2Next time someone starts with some kind of e-peen swagger about their raiding abilities, I’m going to grab the back of their head and shove their face into Wurm Online until they cry. Considering it only took me about 3 minutes to reach that point, I should be able to get through a sizable chunk of the most “hardcore” MMO players out there in about…a month?
In all seriousness, Wurm is possibly one of the top hardest of the hardcore games out there, and by that I mean it’s a game that refuses to hold your hand in any way. It’s a sandbox of the highest caliber that starts you off with a lengthy tutorial which teaches you how to move, how to use tools, how to harvest trees, forage for food, mine, combine items to make better items, how to walk up hills, and how to create roads. Basically, it covers how to do everything but fight. Fighting is pretty much the low hanging fruit of the game development world, and I guess the Wurm devs figure that you already know how to swing a sword, but you really have absolutely no clue how to actually survive in the wilderness.
And survival is the name of the game! You’re given a lot of tools to start out with, but no food or water. It’s up to you to apply what you learned in the tutorial (you were paying attention, right?) to find something to eat and something to drink. Although you won’t die of starvation, everything works off your stamina, and in order to replenish your stamina, you need a full belly. So you can forage in the grass for berries. You can try and kill some animals and while you’re working on that, you can also learn how to die because the creatures in Wurm aren’t trash mobs; they’re bad-ass killing machines. Remember the initial advice Neo got in The Matrix about how to handle an Agent? That’s right; you run.
The graphics blow. But before you thoughtfully push in your chair on your way out of this post, let me explain. Wurm isn’t about the graphics. It’s barely even a game, really. It’s more of a simulator, like a street-level High Fantasy meets SimCity. The purpose of the game, so far as I can tell, is to put you to work. There’s no empty accomplishments here, no achievements that pop up when you kill something, or make armor, or tie your shoe, or just log in like in other MMOs. The success is the achievement. It’s in the survival and the progression from tree to plank to wall to house. You spend a lot of time doing what may seem like menial work – cutting down trees, making logs, making planks, and failing frequently – so when you finally get enough materials to put it all together, your hard work is meaningful. It’s something that you’ve focused on, spent time learning how to do, and actually has a use in the game. For many people (myself included), this is the ultimate progression game: tangibles, not meaningless and arbitrary numbers that are raised with each successive expansion.
One of the most interesting aspects of the game is how it’s set up to encourage – for lack of a better term – settlement. Players can buy deeds which allows them to claim land. Once a player claims land, he or she has control over that plot and can dictate who can build, who can harvest, who can plant, and who can take. Several deeds together make a village, and players can become citizens with rights to act in that village. Roads can be built to facilitate transport, and gates and fences and walls can be constructed to make real, honest-to-goodness towns. This is both a good and bad thing, though. It’s good, because people who pay for the membership (a paltry $6.50ish USD per month) to support the game have a piece of the world all to themselves. It’s bad because new players have a hell of a time finding an unclaimed place that allows them to harvest anything unless they know other people who are kind enough to let them have a tree to work on to get started with.
Remember when I said the graphics blow? That might have been a bit harsh, because to be honest, I was quite taken with much of the visuals. On my way to Darkpaw Bay (home of several Twitter Luminaries), I passed down a road that was hemmed in by several buildings, and which was over-hung by willow tree branches. It was very cozy and secluded. Later, I entered a “forest”. I put that in quotes because many in-game forests are just sparse trees here and there. This forest had a canopy so dense that I felt like I had just gone indoors. The landscape is fully deformable, so there’s hills and valleys, and gardens, orchards, mountains, animal pens…all kinds of things to see on your trek throughout the land, many of which change over time due to players making the world their own.
What I decided, then, was that Wurm Online reminded me of my fond memories of Ultima Online. Both dropped you into the world with little instruction, both gave you tools to make what you wanted, both had that element of danger even on the outskirts of an otherwise safe village. You can walk for quite some time and never see another moving object (player or creature) so that when you do see something or someone, you just have to stop for a second and evaluate your options: keep going? Fight? Backtrack? Flee? Everything we normally wade into with bravado in other MMOs requires calculation in Wurm, be it combat or crafting.
I can’t “recommend” Wurm, because it’s not something that you just download and try when you’re bored of whatever game you’re currently playing. You need to really want to try it, because you need to be honest in your attempt to make a go of it. The first time I tried it, it didn’t go well because I was overwhelmed with the options, and the lack of direction. Thanks to the help of Arkenor, Stargrace, and Petterm, I’ve had a much better time my second time around, and that foot in the door is really what is needed to see how the game can grab you (if you’re interested in being grabbed in this manner).
Here I Go Again, On My Own
3I am not whining. I am not kissing-off. I’m not looking for (any more than the usual) attention (that anyone who blogs appreciates).
In fact, this is more of a revelatory post than anything else.
So this morning, I decided that I had experienced my fill of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I hadn’t logged in for a few days, and the last time I did, I had forgotten where I was in the story. In the absence of that critical feature, I just couldn’t get excited about what was left: trashing mobs between objectives; rinse; repeat. This isn’t a bash. SWTOR is an excellent game, very well done, and is a worthy addition to the MMO genre. My ADHD just got the better of me once more, and when I don’t log in to a game for a few days, it’s always hard for me to return to it. In this case, blame Star Trek Online.
Yeah, STO. It’s older. It’s sometimes polarizing. But I got an email saying that I could get in early for the F2P shift because I was a lapsed subscriber, and I’m finding that I’m having a lot of fun with it. This is not unusual for me. I find that I have returned to most of the MMOs I’ve quit. In thinking about my future with SWTOR, I actually thought about this cycle: if I return to these games later on, and potentially have a lot of fun with them, why did I quit them in the first place?
Like a lot of gamers I know, I’m pretty easily swayed by hype. It’s OK; I’m man enough to admit that marketing materials are super-effective when it comes to new games, most of the time. What really pushes me over the edge is the excitement generated by the People I Trust™ on the social networks. When the tide rises and people start peeing their pants over the next MMO, it’s infectious, so long as I can find something about the game that I can enjoy, I’m more then willing to jump on board on day one and play hard until the steam runs out. That’s when I usually quit, and it mysteriously ends up being around the mid level 30s.
But then I return at some point down the road. I have done it for EVE Online, Everquest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, and many others that I just can’t remember right now. Usually at that point, I end up having a lot more fun then I did the first time around. So my mental task for this morning was this: How can I skip that initial burnout, and just get that second-wind enjoyment?
When I say “play hard”, it’s not as hard as other people. I’m a fairly casual hardcore gamer; I play frequently, I play many things, I play on almost all platforms, but I don’t usually use guides, and my goal has never been to get to the “end game” of any MMO. I end up leveling much slower then others around me, which is both OK and a pain in the ass, but if I’m in at launch, I usually ramp up the participation. I played 15 hours straight on Rift’s launch day, and maybe 9 hours for SWTOR. So when I say “burnout”, it’s not in the traditional sense; it’s more like I get a point of fatigue where I allow another game to intercept my time, and then my momentum is broken. So “Play hard” is really in relation to the end result: a precipitous decline in time spent in the game, which translates into a “what the hell have I been doing?” sobering up.
When I go back, though, it’s usually after the announcement of an update or expansion. Developers have had time to fix issues and release new content. When I return in these situations, I’m seeing the game with fresh eyes, and have something new to experience in the process. Unlike the new release, there’s no pressure when I return. I’m not surrounded by people rushing to the level cap, and I’m playing the game because I want to, not because I got swept up in the excitement of marketing and communal hysteria.
The problem is, I can’t skip that initial foray into the game and just get to “the good stuff” because it’s precisely that initial leaving that allows me to have those relaxed epiphanies that I enjoy so much more. When I (or we, if you agree with me) fire up a new game, it’s new in so many ways (even SWTOR, with it’s classic theme park sensibilities, had that “new game smell” about it). There’s new artwork, new UIs, new mechanics, new vistas, and new people. Even those repeated tropes we see across many MMOs are tweaked and for a little while it’s possible (if you allow yourself to) to see them all in a new light. New games offer new discoveries, and it’s fun to make those discoveries alongside everyone else. When the dust settles, though (for me, around the 30s), I’ve gotten into the groove. The mechanics have been memorized, the UI is burned into my mind, and one zone starts to looks an awful lot like the previous zone, in composition if not design. Here’s where the fatigue may set in unless there are extenuating circumstances to negate it – like people to play with on a reliable basis.
Returning to a game that’s familiar, but changed slightly, makes it an almost different beast. You get a little bit of that “newness” back as you try to remember what your abilities do, and where you are, and what you’re supposed to be doing. Chances are at this time, anyone you might have known in the game has either left, or is on his or her Nth round of alts. The players have rubbed the game to a smooth sheen in your absence, and it’s now comfortable and relaxed, like a comfy armchair in front of a fire on a cold evening, as opposed to the mad crush of Wal Mart at 4AM on Black Friday that we have with launch days.
So it’s because I spent that initial mad rush shoulder to shoulder with everyone else on launch day, learning the ropes, that I get that disappointment of losing all the “new” from the game out of the way, and can come back to the game and appreciate it when the dust settles. I can’t ever expect to start a new game – even six months after it launches – and to stick with it through to the level cap. I apparently need this cycle of hype-play-quit-rest-replay in order to get the kind of comfortable enjoyment that I need to enjoy these games.
Crowdsourcing Your Imagination #D&D
0Here’s a new one: Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition.
Here’s one better: Wizards of the Coast wants you to help design it.
According to the NYT article, conjecture is that the D&D franchise has been slipping for years due to dilution of the product (card games, board games, video games, etc), competition from upstarts like Pathfinder, and, of course, video games. I personally thing that It’s more of a case of relevance than it is a case of “what’s better”, although I could write chapter and verse about how tabletop gaming offers a different outlet then video gaming. The problem is that D&D is relevant as a cultural touchstone for many geeks my age who played it when they were younger, before the rest of the noise that the franchise is fighting was ever conceived. We have fond memories, and many of us would really like to get back into it, but we don’t have the time or the people nearby to play with, so we shrug and go back to our video games where we can play (alone) with millions of other people. The experience of tabletop gaming is still relevant to us, but we don’t have the time or the resources. Then there’s the case that a lot of D&D purists didn’t like the 4E direction, complaining that it was capitulating to the dominance of the video game mentality and pulling the imagination out of the product. So Wizards is crowdsourcing the design of the 5E to the community.
The idea is that they’ll be engaging players in play-testing, and then will take the feedback to mold the 5E, and by doing so, Wizards hopes that the players will feel invested in the experience because they’ll have made it their own. This investment in making the game personal is the real hallmark of tabletop roleplaying games, and is something that no video game has really ever been able to provide.
The problem with this plan as I see it is that we live in the Internet Age. You know, where people create screen names to hide behind so they can toss out spittle-flecked rants with virtually no ramifications whatsoever? Where everyone is quick to blame someone else, because everyone else is a moron? The Internet is great in that it’s allowed people from all over the world to come together and share their individual thoughts, beliefs and ideas; it’s also been one of the worst dehumanizing inventions ever created because it’s allowed people from all over the world to come together and share their individual thoughts, beliefs and ideas – and then to belittle, insult, and demean the individual thoughts, beliefs, and ideas of others. D&D has long “enjoyed” the stereotype of the “rules Nazi”, that guy (usually a guy, of course) who memorizes the rules and believes that the game can only be played through strict adherence to said rules. Marry that guy to the World of Warcraft generation that believes in the “I Win” strategy of only one right way and a billion wrong ways to play, and I’m thinking that putting a bunch of these people in a room to help shape the future of D&D is going to end up being a rule-Nazi, I Win Button, Internet forum slap-fight of the highest magnitude. In the end, none of them will agree because every one of them will have their own pet peeves and pet wants for obscure minutiae that will invariably butt-heads with the peeves and wants of a whole host of other participants. I think I’d rather hang out with mind flayers then to sit in on those conversations for even 10 minutes.
I really hope Wizards knows what they’re getting into. The other night, I mentioned to our D&D group that I’d like to see more roleplaying and imagination then what we’re getting from the current module we’re running, which was designed to be little more than a string of tabletop-miniature combat scenarios. I do think that Wizards realized that they did alienate a lot of old-school players by making it more visual and tactical, and less imaginative and free-form, but they’re not willing to let go of what they see is the trend towards the “one way to play” mentality gleaned from the legions of guides written and consumed by online gamers. They want the best of both worlds, which is why these play test sessions will put players in the “advisory” position – a sounding board for design decisions that Wizards makes, to see what flies and what thuds, and not really as an open forum regarding what should and should not make it into the 5E. At least, I hope so. Putting these cooks in charge of the kitchen is going to lead to nothing but health code violations. However, I’m sure a lot of players are expecting to actually be allowed to write the rules – complete with peen-stroking, line-by-line credit for their contributions – and are going to raise holy Internet hell when Wizards releases a 5E that doesn’t look anything like what they suggested.
To be honest, I’m OK with the 4E. I remember the days when there were so many goddamn numbers and tables and charts that I just said “fuck it”, and played entire sessions without ever touching the rule books. We winged it, with the DM setting the scene, and the players running with it. The 4E can be used this way; in fact, I think it’s more suited to this seat of the pants play style than any edition that’s come before it. I’m afraid that the franchise will return to it’s roots of rigidity driven by the barking of a generation that’s cut their gaming teeth on pushing each other around based on gear scores and demands that things be done “just so”.
My 2012 Resolution: Fuck You
7I’d like to open 2012 here at Levelcapped with a familiar and cliché quote:
When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.
– Nietzsche
The reason why I wanted to use this is simple: I believe that the abyss is staring me down, and I’ve decided that it’s a contest that I just can’t win.
If you’re a regular visitor to this site, thank you. Although I write almost entirely because I like to monologue, because it helps me organize my own thoughts and opinions as an exercise in self-edification, and allows me to butcher the English language in a public forum, regular readership is always a heartwarming and much appreciated side-effect.
The abyss in question at the opening of this post, however, is the greater gaming ecosystem. This encompasses what one might expect in the use of the term ecosystem, from the tippy-top to the slimy underbelly. Before I expand on this, however, any expansion on this will result in some collateral damage, and for that I am truly sorry.
I spent a sizable chunk of 2011 writing posts on how the gaming community should spend more energy working towards common goals rather then working to propagate the necrotic practices of snark, backstabbing, sarcasm, insults, and – for lack of a more inclusive term – general douchebaggery. I’m old enough to remember when video games were solitary affairs, thanks to the social space between humans who are the vanguards of a new cultural revolution, and those who see that space as a total waste of time. Now I’m apparently old enough to pine for those days of social isolation, because our legacy has bloomed into a feeding frenzy of narcissism helped along by the Internet. My posts had been written in the hopes that maybe I could assist in staring down the abyss of self-centered elitism, gender, racial, and sexual slurs of all stripes, over-inflated egos, outdated assumptions, and the “me me me” that infects the greater gaming ecosystem (and, truth be told, the wider field of humanity) today. Sadly, I realize that it is impossible to make a void blink first.
I spent the majority of my winter break in silence. I naturally skirted social media because I didn’t need it as a distraction on a daily basis like I do when I need a break at work. When I did return, it was like returning to one’s childhood home-town after years abroad: nothing is seen in the same light as it once was. I went on a cleaning spree, whittling my Twitter follow count from 150 or so down to only 82 of the people who I consider to be the bright spots in the otherwise dark night of the gaming community. I also cleaned house on G+, and have made a pact with myself to employ a hair trigger mandate for both: I can no longer tolerate bitching and moaning – passive-aggressive or overt – which serves no purpose except to undermine any attempts at furthering discussion, to make one feel good about one’s own point of views while making others feel bad (intentionally or not), or to tear at a community which is built around a shared enjoyment of all things video game.
In short, if a person finds that his or her time is better spent attempting to elevate him or herself above the crowd through insults of person or product or group, is intolerant of the thoughtful opinions of others when presented for the purpose of discussion, or who believes that his or her opinions carry more weight in the world than those they seek to oppose, they can fuck themselves. In this, I am reminded of a quote from Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol:
“I am sorry for him; … Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always.”
I am confident that this post will find it’s mark, as no doubt someone will read it and will be offended, and then angry, and may either entertain or engage in posting an equally hate-filled comment or an I-can-barely-be-bothered-to-write-this themed response. This is the Internet, after all, and one cannot willfully enter a slaughterhouse and be shocked by what goes on therein. Know, however, that there are those who I consider to be above this, who have been engaging far beyond any unintentional damage they may have caused through miscommunication or simply “bad days”. There’s a difference between the occasional wiseass comment or having been rubbed the wrong way, and a deep-seated rot.
My 2012 gaming resolution, then, is to step back from the abyss and not even bother with it, to leave it alone and to let it enjoy it’s own putrid company. I’ve tried to be a force for good, but you can’t sell what people aren’t buying, and I’m not going to waste any more of my time in the mud with those swine.
The Horse Ain’t Dead Yet: More Mobile Gaming Thoughts
4I’d actually be happy to move on from this, if other people would also agree to move on from this. Sadly, it ain’t happening any time soon, it seems.
First up from iOS game developer Andrew J. Smith. Let me start by saying this: I totally get where he’s coming from, and on the surface, I agree with his assessment. However, as G.I. Joe has always told us, knowing is half the battle, which is why I’m confused as to why someone would persist knowing the score as Mr. Smith apparently does.
In a recent Gamasutra article, he wants to tell mobile developers that “players are not your audience”. Eye grabbing headlines aside, he goes on to state that when developing your game for a mobile platform, you can’t focus on who you want to play the game; you have to walk the line of the platform controller (Apple, Android, Microsoft, etc). That means, in his opinion, that you should work-in the features of a specific platform like the cameras, back-touch on the Vita, or Kinect on the Xbox, in order to make it attractive to the approval committee and the people who pull the strings on marketing for the products on the storefront.
From a developer and realism standpoint, I understand where he’s coming from, but from a consumer standpoint, this is really the last thing I want to hear from someone who probably prides him or herself on their creative abilities and no doubt has a high desire to make something fun and entertaining. I read what Mr. Smith has to say and all I can picture is someone in chains being paraded around in front of an audience by the platform controller. It’s hardly the kind of relationship that I would expect a creative, fun-loving developer to willfully enter into, unless being seen and making a mad grab for cash is far more important the reaching the people that you want to reach, which I always thought was one of the reasons indies chose to go it alone as opposed to jumping on board with a larger dev/pub, but I’m just an outsider here. This is another reason why PC gaming will never die: there is no dog and pony show that developers need to perform for approval; just their consumers.
The second point about mobile gaming that I saw today was made as a comment (also from Gamasutra) in an article about the “worst things to happen to games in 2011 according to analysts”. I’m no so much concerned with the contents of the article, but this comment by Bob Johnson struck me almost immediately:
iOS gaming is both a blessing and annoyance. It’s great I can buy some 1-trick pony kool idea games for $1 or $2. It is great that is extremely easy to do so. It is great also because we might not otherwise see some of these games.
But man soon I find myself buying a ton of them for $1 or even getting them free. And then I have 50+ games on my iPad that I barely have even played. And that might be a month’s worth. And there are a thousand more out there that were released last week. And every site says try this one and that one. And …this is good and that’s good and it’s only a $!. There’s too many!
My kids even say Dad you don’t have to buy any more games. We have enough. It has almost become uninteresting to them.
IT’s gaming junk food that is readily available so you get sick of it almost.
That is where I land in the spectrum of mobile gaming, and I suspect a lot of other people do if you were to ask them (or are one). Analysts and pundits look at graphs and charts and see sales in terms of quantity, distribution, and dollar signs. In that light, people pissing away a dollar here or two dollars there looks like everything is healthy, and that the mobile gaming tide is forever rising. But from the consumer angle, it’s a total whitewash. Cheap, bite-sized games means you never have to – or often times can’t bring yourself to – stick with a single game for long because there’s always a deluge of newer, cheap games each and every day. At some point, I suspect we became numb to new releases because we’ll look back at what we have bought and realized that we’ve never played it, or never played it for long before shelling out for the new Utopia which was really just another bust. Like Mr. Johnson’s kids, it’s all white noise now, and wholly uninteresting, without staying power.
Vita Vs Mobile
2The PlayStation Vita. If you’re a gamer and/or technophile, and the idea of carrying around a PlayStation 3 in your pocket doesn’t make you salivate, then you’re either dead, or aren’t being honest with yourself. Sure, you may not want one, or will be quick to point out that you wouldn’t be caught dead with one, but you cannot deny that this thing emanates power like a leaky nuclear reactor. Massive OLED touchscreen? Motion controls? Dual cameras? Wifi and (optional) 3G connectivity?
But that all sounds like a smartphone, doesn’t it? After all, smartphones have touchscreens, most now have motion controls, dual cameras and, of course, wifi and 3G. And they play games. Judging by the statements of many media outlets, you’d think that the Vita was already consigned to the junk heap of time, a relic, and an absolute waste of time, resources, and cash because smartphones – and tablets – are where handheld gaming is headed.
Not so. I’m talking from a my position as a gamer, the kind of person who pre-orders these kinds of things, sight unseen, because it raises the hairs on the back of my next whenever I see obviously airbrushed PR photos, or when I read and re-read the specs as if it were some kind of vintage erotica. This is the evolution of hardware for the gaming community. First came the early consoles, then the PC, then more powerful, dedicated and tethered consoles, and now a first class gaming machine that is free of the in-place restrictions that we’ve been saddled with thus far. Hallelujah!
But “mobile” gaming nowadays is all about smartphones, right? Publishers and developers are eschewing desktop or console titles to bring their little works of art to the iOS, Android, and, yes, Windows Phone. For $0.99 USD, you can have a game in your hand – a tiny, tiny game in your relatively not-so-tiny hand – that can compete with whatever you’ll find on the 3DS or the Vita, right? If you listen to the breathy statements of pundits, you’d think so, but the truth is that the Vita is made for games, while mobile devices have games available. Being a gamer and being told in no uncertain terms that the Vita is DOA because so many people have smartphones is missing the point. There will ALWAYS be a market for devices like the Vita or the 3DS. Of course, unless the market is overwhelming the competition, pundits usually declare it a “failure”, which is the same thing in my mind as calling every movie ever made “a failure” because Avatar made more money then they each did on their own. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? So why would we consume the same rhetoric when it comes to situations like the Vita versus smartphones, and games versus apps?
The question now being asked is “will consumers bite” when the Vita is released at $250 USD, considering you can get a 3DS for $170 USD, or a 16GB iPod for $199. As a gamer, my knee-jerk reaction would be to punch someone in the face and scream “HELL YES!”, but the key lies with a single word: consumers. Although mobile games can’t hold a production-quality candle to what we’ll see on the Vita, there are now, and will always be, more smartphones in the hands of the general public then there will be Vita in the hands of gamers. That is a fact. Then – and only then – when you throw in a morass of inexpensive, “throw away” apps, you’ll see that yes, smartphones will bury the Vita through the sheer force of numbers. But numbers do not equate to quality, nor is it a barometer of potential satisfaction with what you’ll end up finding on your app store of choice. With a lower barrier to entry for developers (I use that term lightly in many cases), you have to wade through a lot of shit before you find the diamonds that the mule ingested in order to smuggle them through customs. So sure: smartphones have the number advantage. But you can’t tell me that the PlayStation Junior isn’t going to blow these wannabes out of the water in tech specs, performance, features, and visuals when it comes time for it to take the stage.
Leave the smartphone games to your mom and grandparents. If you’re a gamer who’s disenfranchised with the 3DS, support the Vita and show the industry that we as gamers aren’t going to hang our heads and simply agree to get our mobile gaming from the sub-standard fare being dumped into app stores around the world. Put down your fanboy placards and smarter-than-thou troll quills and realize that there’s a huge chunk of the gaming industry who is ready to chase the shiny of mobile gaming, and to hell with their current constituents, and take a good, honest look at the Vita. Do you want this to be the last hurrah for gaming hardware designed and dedicated to gaming? Doesn’t matter that it’s from Sony. It’s platform neutral, because it will the last hope of all gamers before we’re swept into the mediocrity of the tower defense clones or the physics-based platformers that clog in the smartphone ghettos.
