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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.
I Try. I Really Try. But I Can’t
8Like the saga of the haves and have-nots (or have-less) that is playing out across the U.S. at this point in time, the video game industry is pulling in two different directions. The industry’s “1%” is the AAA blockbuster which is built for millions of dollars, advertised for millions more, and quite probably makes all that money back – and more. The industry’s “99%”, on the other hand – the indie games – are big into the arts, like to sit around and sing protest songs around the campfire, and pride themselves as being anti-corporate, unrestrained, and able to take chances.
We in the U.S. are taught to root for the underdog, the underpowered, the scrappy contender (it’s how America was founded, after all!). The movies of the 80’s pretty much exist because of this trope. Any sports fan who is loyal to his or her long suffering team knows what I’m talking about. We’re supposed to support those who try to take on the status quo with nothing but their own blood and their own sweat. It’s fighting the good fight.
I can’t do it, though, and I feel horrible about it. I feel horrible because I really can’t get excited about what we get from the indie circuit titles these days. These are for all intents and purposes great games, because they are the underdogs we should be rooting for: the kinds of games we should be excited about because they’re not mandated by a board of directors or mathematically designed to sell millions by pandering to a built in demographic or aren’t sequels riding the wave of previous reception and good-will. When we curse the lack of innovation in the Corporate Game Industry, that’s a win for the indies, right? I mean, aside from actually supporting the developer, which is like saying that you think the Salvation Army does good things for those in need while blowing past their donation stations outside your local grocery store.
I’ve seen people hawking indie titles by appealing to this spirit of championing the “little guy”. If you like great games, support our indie developers! is what they’re asking us to do. Sadly, I personally don’t think the majority of indie games are that great. How many indie games are physics-puzzle platformers? How many are top-down shooters? How many are modeled after the games I grew up playing 20 years ago? Most of these games are high-definition coin guzzlers that aren’t even in vogue anymore, having been eclipsed by the big budget AAA titles pumped out ad nauseum for your Xboxes, Playstations, and home computers.
And here’s the self-loathing again, because I respect indie developers the people more then this post would lead you to believe. These are often times beautiful games, shoe-horning innovative mechanics into a tried and true glass slipper, and I’ve no illusions that these were not stressful and difficult projects to undertake. I’m a developer, and I used to have the drive to develop pet projects on my own time, but somewhere along the way I lost the desire to create. I know how much dedication it takes to tackle the small projects that I am used to, and I therefor have but a vague sense of the madness that an indie game developer must possess in order to not only undertake, but to complete a project, put it out there, and then suffer with well-wrung hands while he or she watches the public consume or deny their labor of love. While any developer worth a damn puts his or her all into a project, the corporate machine serves as a bulwark against the red-hot criticism of the Internet should the developer choose to treat it as “just a job”. Indies have no such luxury, and any negative review, customer complaint – or even posts like this – can cut deep with discouragement.
Still, I can’t love or praise indie games just because they’re indie. That would be like giving a donation to the Salvation Army Santa because he rings the bell with fervor. I have bought some excellent indie titles – Uplink, Dungeons of Dredmor, Atomic City Adventures and of course Minecraft – so I’m not anti-indie. I just want something that’s not another shooter or a platformer or a top-town strategy-slash-tower defense game. As with anything we’re asked to purchase, each person must have a desire to own the goods or to use the services, and not just because we love the idea that we’re supporting the underdog. We might as well just mail checks to random people if that’s the mentality – which wouldn’t be a bad idea if the person could honestly use the cash.
So if you haven’t started sharpening your pitchforks against me yet, thank you. I value the fire that the indie segment holds to the corporate feet, and recognize that these men and women are working harder every single hour then I do all day (literally). They deserve respect and accolades, but I can’t personally hand over my cash every time someone begs me to “think of the indies” until the indies themselves start taking the chances beyond the kinds of games that are stuffing the iOS App Store or which perennially show up in the Humble Indie Bundle. Where’s the RPGs? The racing sims? The building sims? I would shove my paycheck in an envelope and slobber all over a stamp faster then you can say “ the postal service is going bankrupt” if I could get an RPG built with indie sensibilities and passion, because I know it would kick 11ty billion shades of ass. So please, indies, think beyond the arcade. I’d rather spend my money with you then to buy Bobby Kotick another hairpiece.
Dear Mrs. Clause
6So I guess there’s a chain letter going around, targeted at you. I know, I hate em too, but it’s the price we pay for being on the Internet, I guess, and this one isn’t so bad. I got it from Rowan at I Have Touched The Sky, who apparently got it from River at High Latency Life. I thought that I’d hedge my bets and get some wish list items down. I’m realistic, but I’d like to let you know that if you could make these come true, then I’d campaign hard for you to get your own religion. So keep that in mind /overexaggeratedconspiratorialwink
1. Something groundbreaking and out of left field that will make everyone’s hair stand on end, this year at PAX East. While I absolutely appreciate the fact that PAX East is held only 45 minutes from me, 2012 is shaping up to be a kind of a droning affair. Last year Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 (and even Battlefield 3, and some others) were the big draws. By the time PAX East 2012 rolls around, SWTOR will have launched, and GW2 will be just another “hurry up already!”. Honestly, I don’t see anything wicked awesome on the schedule (as we say in New England), except maybe Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, but even that’s not wicked awesome enough (at least for me).
2. Please don’t let the PS Vita suck. And please keep the anti-Sony comments away.
3. Grant me the time, the tools, and the willpower to sit my ass down and to actually complete one of these projects that I’ve either started (like Universe, for crying out loud) or have on the brain. Even if it never goes public, or if it does and doesn’t register on anyone’s radar, I’d still like to be able to say that yeah, I made a game. It’ll be a start.
4. Peace on Earth, etc. I’m sure other’s have that request covered in spades, so…
5. Finally, what I’d really like is for gamers all over to remember that we do what we dos for enjoyment. We don’t cure cancer, or actually explore new worlds for the greater good of humanity, or feed and cloth needy children, so chill out on the gravitas! Yeah, I know that a lot of people enjoy being on the naughty list because they think it makes them all badass or something, but like Big Hair in the 80’s, you may think it looks cool, but really…it’s not (I apologize, Mrs. C, if you had Big Hair in the 80s. We’ve all been to dark places like that). We game for the same reasons people collect scale model trains, or knit, or make beer in their basement: because we like to win, to succeed, and to accomplish something through perseverance and trial. But being civil, kind, compassionate, inclusive, fun, and patient are not virtues that need to be discarded in that pursuit. You don’t win when you’re an asshole, even if you reach your goal. Not you specifically, Mrs. C. That was the Royal You. I’d like people to live by that in 2012, not just in gaming, but in anything they do.
So just in case you were planning on surprising me with these, I’ll start melting down the good silverware and making the molds for the Mrs. Clause idols… but if you can’t get to it, it’s cool. I can use plastic flatware, and maybe the molds can be sold as cake pans or something.
Oh and…uh…just one more thing: if you can get me involved in whatever the heck is going on in that picture on River’s blog, we’ll call it all even. Thanks.
10 To 1 Odds Say Mario Rescues Peach
0Wow. This came out of left field: A call to arms for game companies to get into the gambling space for e-sports titles.
I’m not entirely against this. But then again, I kind of am.
The article talks a lot about how e-sports isn’t as much of “a thing” here in the West as it is in the East, but it is growing, and with it a homegrown gambling industry. The author suggests that game companies themselves need to get in on the ground floor of incorporating online betting into their infrastructure. From a business perspective (which ignores the whole mountain of legal issues that is gambling in the U.S.), it makes absolute and total sense to me. E-sports is on the rise in West, thanks to League of Legends and the resurgence of DOTA clones, which elevates other games like Starcraft II here in this hemisphere. I’m sure that it’s an easy sell to get gamers to toss a few bucks into the ring to bet on their favorite teams, especially if it’s controlled by the operators of the game itself (and not some shady third party).
But from a top-hat and monocle perspective (yes, that was an intentional link to EVE Online’s annual tournament), I’m not sure it’s a good thing for the gaming community itself. Go look at any forum and try to imagine that these people who have nothing but virtual association to their games now have real world, hard earned money on the line. You think some gamers are surly now? Add to that the fact that if EVE Online has taught us anything, it’s that these participants aren’t morality-guided professionals. These are nerds and geeks who are suddenly recognized as being the crème de la crème of their community, complete with adoration and the scent of money. What’s to stop any of them from throwing the match if it means they come out ahead? And I don’t even want to imagine what this would do to the image of the games industry as a whole, although there’s a whole lot of non-gamers out there who think gaming is all about sex and guns already. We’re conspicuous in our total lack of gambling, so maybe we’d just be fulfilling their ignorant fantasies in the end.
This is a dim light through a small crack right now. If this were to go anywhere it’s would require a total reevaluation of the games industry: what it stands for, what it want’s to be, and how far it’s willing to go. It’ll also require some serious legislative mud-wrestling (calm down; we’re talking fat white Congressmen, not hot women in bikinis) to sanction online gambling in the West, and then to accept it in an industry that most of them don’t bother to understand, and which is still thought to be aimed mainly at little kids.
There’s just way too much to cover on this subject, and not enough electrons to do it.
So, Something Kind Of About SWTOR
12This isn’t about SWTOR per se, although it is. More to the point, it’s just a stream of consciousness post with Star Wars: The Old Republic at it’s core because, let’s face it: it’s topical in certain circles right now, what with the release date and monthly pricing having been released and all.
Some people who are in beta have merely said that “it exceeds expectations” (paraphrasing there) and seem to be generally enthusiastic about it. Others are, of course, down on it because it seems like a retread to them. Recently, I’ve watched the video on the companion system, and while I’m going along with the rest of the herd in giggling at seeing Blizz the Jawa popping a heavy artillery cap into someone’s ass, this singular video really “did it” for me. Bringing the voice overs to what could have been a pretty stale experience with otherwise cardboard NPC interaction is going to take this particular aspect of the game to a new level.
So here’s just a few other musings:
Unguilded On Account Of Meh
I had originally signed on to join the Multiplaying.net guild Delusions of Grandeur, but decided to back out. I’m not interacting with any of the members in regards to this game, which is basically an ongoing pattern of mine: I really don’t follow/discuss/understand/give a rats ass about a game until maybe the week before it launches. I figured that being in a guild for the sake of being in a guild has never, ever worked out for me in the past, so I probably won’t miss out on anything anyway. I have several local folks (including my not-so-much-a-gamer brother) who are already on-board for SWTOR, so although we may be unguilded, we’re not alone.
Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Nerdrage
I’m far beyond caring if SWTOR is theme park, World of Warcraft derivative, “been there, done that” or whatever witty maxim the Internet’s Finest have chosen to lob at this title this week.
This weekend, I watched the “new” TV show Person of Interest, which my wife had recorded and which I happened to be in the room for. It was not bad, but neither was it horribly original. One of the current trends in TVism is this “shadowy organizations/people doing good” motif. Kind of like the A-Team, but with fewer cigars and less explosions. These kinds of shows get the green light because people keep watching them. Same with cop shows, lawyer shows, doctor shows, and shows with ensemble casts.
I also watch Warehouse 13, which I like, but it’s not original. Back in the late 80’s or early 90’s there was a show just like it (kinda) called Friday The 13th: The Series, which had nothing to do with the movies of the same name, but instead was about people who collected cursed artifacts and returned them to a secret vault for safekeeping.
Basically, any kind of entertainment we have has been done before in some form. Maybe we’re not old enough to have partaken in it the first time, or maybe we’re awash in it, but getting all uppity about it is both ignoring the fact that this is the pattern to how humanity works, and getting all nerd-ragy for nerd-ragy’s sake. A lot of times it’s hard to be original, and originality isn’t always embraced when it’s presented to a crowd that claims to want originality. Every now and then, something comes out of left field that wows us, and we ask why we can’t have more like this. Well, I think the answer is that we do, but we don’t appreciate it when we see it, or we have to be in the right mood for it, and at the most basic level, we like what we like. If that happens to be a favorite sweater or pair of jeans, or a restaurant we frequent in a city of other possibilities, or a game design that we’re comfortable with, so be it. There will always be the occasional Minecraft standout, but if we had a new groundbreaking title every week, I’m sure the Internet would find something to bitch about anyway.
No Shoes, No Shirt…No Beta
I’ve kinda given up on betas. There was a time when I signed up for every beta for a game I thought I’d want to play. I take beta seriously, though. If I am chosen to put the game through it’s paces, I’m going to use that opportunity to help smooth out the road I’m going to be riding on, so to speak. But since the modern beta test has become a preview period, and the potential applicant pool has gotten so much larger, both my chances and desire to get into a beta have diminished significantly.
I don’t like to repeat myself. Considering how slowly I play these games, and how I have a need to see progress in my gaming, rolling back to earlier content with alts is pretty painful for me. I generally do it only when I need a lower level alt in order to play with someone, or there’s a mechanic in place that makes playing an alt a totally different experience. Rift is a good example, with the soul combos, and SWTOR, with it’s proposed class-based storylines, sounds like it has the potential to be another. But I don’t want to enter into a beta test which is not a beta test just so I can sate a desire to get my hands on a game.
The Last Of The (Subscription) Mohicans ?
Is SWTOR the last of the upcoming AAA, subscription based MMOs?
There’s a few notables on the horizon, like The Secret World, World of Darkness and…uh…honestly, I got nothing, without looking it up (see Unguilded On Account Of Meh, above). The other juggernaut, Guild Wars 2, is out-of-the-gate free to play, and this year has seen an unprecedented number of formerly pay to play titles migrate to freemium with cash shop. At this point, the only game I have that I want to play that isn’t F2P or which isn’t going F2P is Rift. I wish I could simply buy time from the cash shop.
People still seem split on this whole F2P/Freemium deal, but the tide is rolling in favor of the cash shop. I do suspect that supporters of the F2Shop model (like myself) will one day look back on the subscription model with nostalgia, for the days when we had the buffet ad not the a la cart. I don’t think I’ll miss the balancing act of deciding which games to pay for and which to put on ice, but if anything the F2Shop model has yet to solidify into a universally accepted configuration, and I don’t think it will any time soon. Too many games are vying for the privilege of coming up with the one, best adopted strategy for what to offer for free, and what to put behind the pay-wall.
But with so many titles in the F2Shop space, is any game going to be able to command a subscription as it’s only option after SWTOR? I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect that once the train has left the station, it’s not coming back.
Blah Blah Blah, Or ‘This Conversation Bores Me’
1
NPCs can be pretty chatty, depending on the game you’re playing. World of Warcraft has some pretty succinct NPCs, while some of the Asian grinders seem to be populated with people who’s sole purpose is to take years off your life by bending your ear for the most inane reasons. Generally, the conversations are there for flavor, and clever designers have realized that either most players don’t bother reading the text, or are accessing the quest text for the nth time, and have provided a ‘tl;dr’ section at the bottom for just the objectives.
I’ve never really minded the conversations I’ve had with NPCs, although I’m not a lore-seeker. Filling the quest log is the real reason I talk to anyone, and having to keep several overlapping threads of narrative straight in my mind is really just taking up space. Besides, the gist usually boils down to a handful of templates anyway: I lost X; We have a problem with Y creatures in the area; There’s spies from faction Z. And so on. But this weekend as I was playing Dungeon Siege III, I found myself making that rotating/fanning hand-motion that is ASL for “hurry the fuck up, already!” Later, I compared this experience to Final Fantasy XIII, and also thought about Bioware games, and MMOs. Why are some of these interstitial interactions more palatable then others, at least for me?
I played FFXIV for the cut-scenes. I really wanted the action to just STFU so I could watch the beautifully rendered (if mentally irrelevant in the time-honored JRPG tradition) cut-scenes. I kind of sat uncomfortably through the conversations in Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age, but couldn’t get away from NPCs fast enough in DSIII. I decided that what I was getting out of the situation made the difference, as did the presentation.
See, with FFXIII, the conversations and cut-scenes were full-on cinematic, complete with renders, camera switching, background music and anything you’d expect to find in a motion picture. That made up for the ‘WTF’ storyline. Contrast that to pretty much anything Bioware has done (or is doing), which is basically a mannequin conversation system: You stand off-screen while you watch your conversation partner(s) stand stock-still and recite their lines. The same goes for DSIII. While you get to “choose” what you want to “say” in the mannequin conversations, the conversations and the situations themselves are about as engaging as watching C-SPAN in 102 degree weather when the A/C is broken.
The sad part is that there was, and probably still is in many quarters, bad blood between many gamers and cut-scenes. When they’re poorly done (the cut-scenes, not the gamers, this time), they can make their appearance a signal to take a bio or get another beer*. IMO, games like FFXIII may be as comprehensible as a badger in a wet-suit, but they’re enjoyable to watch because of the craftsmanship that’s gone into them. Same with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Both of these games feature rendered, cinematic scenes that may be jarring as they shift from in-game visuals to these slickly produced mini-movies, but for me, it’s well worth it.
I mentally cringed when I thought of what Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to bring. It’ll basically be combining the mannequin method with the “OMG shut UP already!” molasses of EverQuest 2‘s conversation system. I applaud the idea of making MMOs more cinematic and less of the “postcards from NPCs who are too lazy to do things themselves” systems we see in most MMOs, but I’m already preparing for the slog by turning up the heat and settling in for some TV.
* Yes, I suggest making a drinking game out of poorly scripted, poorly executed cut-scenes. If you can find your way to the keyboard after you’re done, please try not to vomit on your keyboard. You’ll thank yourself in the morning.
Man, Things Have Really Gone Down Hill
4Good Old Games is a wealth of “classic” video games which are made to work on modern operating systems. They recently started pumping out the original Ultima games, I through IV, with the latter being free to download (it’s free on EA’s website, so GoG can’t in good conscience charge for it).
Naturally, I downloaded Ultima IV, because…it’s free! And it’s Ultima! How could I not?
I then got to thinking, as I sometimes do: will I get to play it? Will I want to play it?
As a card carrying "Elder Gamer” (I just made that up, but am accepting membership signups at the next window), I remember the days when Ultima games were the most amazing things ever. Huge worlds! Lots of people to talk to! Epic stories! We (my brother, my friend Bob, myself, etc) would spend hours and hours playing these games: I’d wake up in the morning each summer vacation, before my brother (the unwritten rule was that whomever reached the computer first that morning had it for the day), and get started where I’d left off. We had an Amiga 500 with a piddling 13” monitor, which certainly did the graphics justice. I’d play for hours, until I decided to shut it down, or started to vomit from the eyestrain headache. Usually the latter.
But now? Now we’re used to supermegaultrasupremekidneysforsale AAA games with voice-overs, breathtaking graphics and intricate storylines. Kids Who Don’t Know How Good They Have It* probably can’t fathom how we could have stood playing on those clay tablets with nothing more then an animal skin and mammoth thigh-bone to guide us. But really, can anyone who gamed then and who games now, ever go back to those older games? Hell, I tried playing Ultima Online again, and couldn’t fathom it.
Why? Have our tastes changed? Many gamers like to rattle off their gaming lineage like it’s some kind of heraldic family tree that highlights their place in the gaming geek hierarchy, but faced with the opportunity to roll back the clock, we just can’t do it. It’s not willpower, it’s not even a lack of time, really. It’s just…something. We can’t go back, maybe because our lives aren’t what they used to be.
As much as I like to thump my chest and claim association with Ultima back when it was first run, the fact is that I don’t think I can stomach it now. I think I’ve been ruined by the cinema-tastic games we have at our disposal. Ultima games were long on silence: limited audio, limited narration, whole lot of limited feedback about where we were and where we needed to be. Now, we have 5.1 audio blasting orchestral scores, a cast of dozens dealing out iconic lines in full voice over, amazing cut scenes, in-game maps that track our objectives, and web-based databases which catalog anything and everything we might ever want to know about where to go and where we’ve been.
So yes, we’ve become lazy. Playing in the silence of old school games, with their repetitive mechanics and limited feedback and zero hand-holding is a chore now. I’d like to force-feed someone Ultima IV the next time they bitch about how repetitive “the grind” is in an MMO. Those games are also “hard” and unforgiving in many ways. 12 HP is absolutely OK for a level 1 character. So what if the skeletons hit for 7 damage a piece…and there’s 3 of them? And who needs a quest tracker…or quest log for that matter? Just talk to people, and use your own intuition to figure out where to go next. If you make a mistake, backtrack! Search! Take your time and enjoy the game.
Maybe that’s where things got all out of whack. At some point, we stopped picking up a game because we thought it would be fun. Instead, we pick them up because of peer pressure, because it’s the latest, hottest thing, and we don’t want to be left clueless while everyone around us is discussing it. When playing, we don’t want to look stupid or clueless, lest we incur the wrath of the "better informed” players. I propose that we’re no longer playing these games, we’re working at them, but when while working, we’re getting a whole lot of assistance in the process. Sure, Ultima IV would also be work, but it would be like dragging a stone Escalade tied to our ankles, in the dark, up hill, both ways. With the required grue in the wings.
I might welcome the chance to just clear my plate of all “modern” games, and only work on one, single, older game like Ultima IV, but I think that would be a nearly impossible task, because A) of my gaming ADD, and B) I have no willpower to actually do it. I suppose it’s just as well, because when I think of Ultima IV, I remember it fondly through the lens of many, many years, and I don’t think I’d want to wreck that by trying it now, and ending up frustrated and angry.
* Get off my lawn.
Quick Bytes: June 20, 2011
0I’m not really a comic book superhero fan. I like ‘em OK, but I think that in the years that superheroes have been spooled out to the point where things have gotten really thin in the service of trying to find new and interesting stories and venues to push the comics. The issue I have with superheroes is that nothing is off limits. It covers everything from real science to science fiction to fantasy and magic, and to me, this is just too diluted to be coherent. Which is why I find it odd that I’ve been playing a lot of Champions Online and DC Universe Online lately. I’ve gotten my friends to give CO a shot, and so far it seems to be going well. People apparently like it. When I tried DCUO in late beta, it was a horrible PS3 port for the PC, but it’s cleaned up a lot, and while it’s retained some irritating consolisms (can’t really alter the UI?!), it’s a more-then-decent action MMO that’s pretty damn fun.
So Fallen Earth is going freemium. Now, once Star Trek Online makes the switch, all will be well in the universe, and I’ll never have to pay a subscription again. Well, the $20 Station Pass is still mightily attractive. Sadly, I will still only have the same amount of time as I do now to play all of these.
I had been waffling on renewing my Rift subscription when it comes due in…August?…but thanks to the Father’s Day sale (?) which saw the price of the game drop to $9.99, I got my wife to give the free trial a go. We got to levels 11 as Guardians on Estrael, her with her rogue and me with my Cleric, and she signed up for a three month tour of duty. We had been giving Lord of the Rings Online a test-drive again, but as much as I like LotRO, there’s just something about it; it’s slow, and relaxed yet tense. After having played LotRO for a few days and then jumping to Rift, my wife commented early on about how fast Rift’s combat was. One side effect of all of this: having to explain genre and game-specific tropes to someone who isn’t necessarily familiar with them, and seeing someone learning about this genre that we all sit around and talk about like old folks on porches on a summer afternoon (or a televised political debate gone horribly awry, depending on who’s involved).
Sometimes, I Hate The Northeast
8Here’s a kind of gaming inspired post, which I promise I’ll get to in good time, but I wanted to start off by saying that I really do love living in the Northeast. We’re financially better off then most of the rest of the country, have access to Boston, New York and Montreal (how international!), and despite the epic levels of bitching that goes on about the weather, it’s a cardinal sin in my book to have summer without rain, fall without color, winter without snow, or spring without mud.
But the Northeast is also one of the oldest parts of the country, and takes great pride in it’s “Yankee heritage” and other Farmer’s Almanac horse-shit. Here’s an example: I used to own a house in the town of Hillsborough, New Hampshire. It was a small town, and very old (trivia: it’s where President Franklin Pierce was from. Sorry about that). It’s one of those old New England towns that’s run by a committee of old men who refuse to consider approving anything “modern” within the town limits because it would spoil the “old towne charme”. Consequently, the “downtown” was a jumble of run-down buildings that no business wanted to occupy, probably because of some town charter mandated that they be maintained to some historical standard that was either A) too expensive, or B) was just a stupid and arbitrary rider designed to keep the town in the 19th century. I live in a (slightly) better (and more populated) town now, although the town council also has that pervasive desire to cling to “the way things have always been done”.
And they wonder why the young people want to get the hell out of here…
If you can sense my general disdain, know that it’s because I do care, but it’s really hard to not grumble when I realize that I’ll never see a place like the Card Kingdom within 200 miles of my home. If I were to show this website to my neighbors, I’d expect the following reactions:
- Who would go to a place like that?
- Too many kids would hang out there and cause trouble for other businesses nearby.
- Why would you waste your time with that kind of thing?
I have to hang my head in sadness, because when I heard about this place (via Penny Arcade), I thought it was a cool idea. When I saw the pictures and thought about it a bit more – especially when it came to my attention at the exact same time we were talking about PnP gaming on Twitter – I had that same pang that I had last year after the end PAX East 2010, when we had to leave what was essentially an enormous get-together of “our kind” and return to the daily numbness of work, and a community that doesn’t quite “get” us or our interests.
I’d kill (metaphorically) to have a place like this around here, since most of my local friends have absolutely no interest in indulging my near-pathological attempts to bury their faces in a deeper level of geekdom. I guess it was good enough for them when they were younger, but now that they’re more “sophisticated”, they’ve left that part of themselves in the back of their closets with their comic books and Star Wars figures. A place like this would be a real beacon for people who are interested in these kinds of pursuits, which, as can be extrapolated from the fact that a business like this exists at all, shows that this kind of shit isn’t just for kids or nerds of ages gone by. It’s a business, and can be enjoyed by any and all. Just not in the Northeast, I guess.
What Makes It Stick?
4One thing that I find myself wrestling with day in, day out, is my apparent inability to stick with a game for any measurable amount of time. I have a long Steam backlog (as do many, thanks to the infamous holiday sales) which I may or may not dip into from time to time, but I know with certainty that no matter how well done, no matter how engrossing a game may be, I’ll ditch it somewhere between two weeks and three months.
This was really brought home to me this morning thanks to the confluence of several different events. First was the release of the Amazon Appstore, which offers a free exclusive download of the Angry Birds: Rio edition. The second is the release of The Sims: Medieval today.
The Angry Birds release illuminates my inability to deal with difficulty: even though AB is one of those throw-away games you play when you have nothing better to do, the moment I encounter a level I have to restart, I quit. See, I think it’s because I have too many options on how to spend my time to “waste it” by struggling with a cell phone game.
The Sims: Medieval is another situation. It’s a game I have more then a passing interest in, but not so much that I had to pre-order. I was considering picking it up on release day (today), but the problem is that I just picked up Settlers 7, and am still working my way through Rift…although at a much slower pace then before. Again, it’s a matter of too many options, but this time coupled with opportunity to make the purchase (in my defense, I didn’t get Dragon Age 2, which I avoided by telling myself not to buy sequels to games I didn’t complete).
All of this brings me around to a question for you, the reader: what makes YOU stick with a game? I know people do it. I see people talking about Herculean will-power that they exert in order to complete a game before starting another. I also know some people are dedicated to one or two games, especially when MMOs are involved. I’m not so much curious about specific games, or even genre preference so much as how people avoid the temptation to just jump ship from one game to another.
