MP Gaming, Harassment, and Some Thoughts…
Last week was tragic, in a word. There were not only things going on in my life, but a much larger and more important issue that arose. Firstly, and most importantly, it is best for anyone who reads this to go and listen to the comments made in context of which they were made. Here is the video that you can view to hear the comments as well as a secondary news post with links to deeper discussion of the topic on the show. Here is the quote that concerns discussion and the entire reason this is even news at all.
“Rea: Can I get my Street Fighter without sexual harassment?
Bakhtanians: You can’t. You can’t because they’re one and the same thing. This is a community that’s, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community–it’s StarCraft. There’s nothing wrong with StarCraft if you enjoy it, and there’s nothing wrong with anything about eSports, but why would you want just one flavor of ice cream, you know? There’s eSports for people who like eSports, and there’s fighting games for people who like spicy food and like to have fun. There’s no reason to turn them into the same thing, you know?
You can’t go to the NBA and say “hey, I like basketball, but I don’t want them to play with a basketball, I want them to play with a football.” It just doesn’t…it doesn’t make sense to have that attitude, you know? These things are established for years. That would be like someone from the fighting game community going over to StarCraft and trying to say “hey, StarCraft, you guys are too soft, let’s start making sexual harassment jokes to each other on StarCraft.” That’s not cool, people wouldn’t like that. StarCraft isn’t like that. People would get defensive, and that’s what you’re trying to do the fighting game community, and it’s not right. It’s ethically wrong.
I know that you’re thinking “what do you know about ethics? You say racial stuff and sexist stuff.” But those are jokes and if you were really a member of the fighting game community, you would know that. You would know that these are jokes.
Rea: So, ensuring that we alienate any and all female viewers…that’s the ethical thing to do?
Bakhtanians: Well, you know, there are layers here, if you think about this. There are layers of ethics. There are people who are racist and commit hate crimes, right? And then there are people who are racist but they have tons of friends of all colors and they have deep love for those friends. Do you think those people are one and the same? Absolutely not.”
They were badgering her, continuously and nonstop, making her feel extremely uncomfortable and doing so with little to no respect to the people around them, the gaming community, and most importantly human decency. He brings up two reasons for his actions. The first “if you were really a member of the fighting game community, you would know that. You would know that these are jokes” and the second is “That’s not cool, people wouldn’t like that. StarCraft isn’t like that. People would get defensive, and that’s what you’re trying to do the fighting game community, and it’s not right. It’s ethically wrong.” I think this is a much deeper issue than anyone is giving credit for. While I listen to the stream and the conversations quoted above the main culprit, speaking towards Miranda (after saying that he doesn’t know where the line is) states that it is a so cal line, and that is where it comes from.
While I can sit here and debunk every word of his sentence, let me just state the facts. I live in southern California, have played in what little arcades are here, and have been for over 20 years. I know what the arcade scene is supposed to be, what the mentality and atmosphere of the arcade generation is. Around 2 years ago a few friends from work decided we would go to a local restaurant during lunch and play Street Fighter during lunch breaks. We had a blast, we talked smack, but most of all we had a deep respect for the other person, whether it was with Blitz, Street Fighter, or anything else. Not once did it come to putting down the other player, or making someone who lost feel like a terrible gamer for doing so. That is the same way it was when I was a child, and it still is the same way today, for myself and those around me.
The entire purpose of the arcade is to compete with one another right then and there, nothing regarding multiple matches, but simply you will get to play as long as you do not lose. Anyone can walk in the door, be it a fighting game champion, or the neighbor, and every person has the same opportunity to take the person on the stick out. In my opinion, that directly counters the comments made above, and any sentiment that harassment, put downs, and disrespect are part of the game. Heck, the NHL playoffs is one of the most bitter rivaled games in sports, but after every match the players stop and shake eachother’s hands, whether they are bleeding, broken, or bruised from the battle, there is a deep and meaningful respect for the journey.
Ethics, the study and attempt to understand what is right and wrong, essentially it has everything to do with this topic. Saying something is ethically wrong because someone is suggesting it be changed, is like demanding that slavery be reinstated because it was the norm, or that whaling, shark fining, seal clubbing, deforestation, and many other practices be allowed to continue because they are what happens even though there are laws preventing them from occurring. I cannot see, or agree with, the logic presented in what he was trying to communicate. There isn’t a law saying that women cannot be president simply because it has always been a male, but it hasn’t happened yet. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen, it simply means that it hasn’t. It is legally wrong to own a slave, it is legally wrong to assault someone, berate someone, and harass someone, but it does happen. I really wish the person who did this takes a deep and hard look at his own thoughts, and really sits down to contemplate what is right and wrong.
The side issue of all of this, and the main reason I am posting this right now is because this isn’t just the standard for street fighter. It is a standard of all games that are online, co-op, or whereby multiple people get together to play a game. Someone didn’t ask a female Pikachu to smell them as a punishment, someone in counter-strike doesn’t get t-bagged after every death, but it happens more often than not on the Xbox and Playstation platforms. This is not a PC vs. Console discussion, simply a discussion of maturity. Are PC gamers more mature? Forum threads would suggest not, but then again the loudest 10% post on forums, while the rest of the community simply plays the game. 9 times out of 10 when I hear someone in the press describe how they play online, they say that they turn off voice chat. I know from my own experiences, voice chat is an extremely key aspect of enjoyment, competition, and sportsmanship. When playing gun game in CS:S often you give the person who won the match crap because you were 2 kills away. You call him a hacker, or say it was a bullshit kill, but that is the extent of it. Nothing personal, nothing extremely negative, or harsh, but simply commenting lightly on the situation. It is to the point in games like Gears of War, Halo, Killzone, Call of Duty, etc. that if you have voice chat, someone of young age who quite honestly shouldn’t be playing an M rated game will give you crap for sucking, being older, being a girl, or simply not being them. It isn’t a matter of age, it is a matter of respect for one another, maturity, and most of all it is a matter of not having the people in the servers to boot out deviants and to set standards. Everything is on autorun, text based, and quite honestly lazy. The CS community thrives on differences of opinion. One person want to play surf, gun game, standard, arena, or zombie modes, and those are available to them. They may want to play with beginner level players, on smaller server sizes, with specific weapon restrictions, rpg mods, stats mods, low gravity, or in a server of a specific clan, community, or group of friends. Any which way you can imagine, the game presents the opportunity to do so, and the players in the game can remove deviants by verbally telling them to leave, team killing them until they leave, voting them out of the server, banning then by vote, getting an admin to control the situation, or simply leaving themselves. Again, choice is the key here.
The main difference between CS and Halo is the average age of the gamer. If you look into the ESA and other video game groups you will find that the average age of the PC game is 10 or more years higher than that of the console crowd. This means people with much more life experience and whom know what is right, wrong, and how to handle a difficult situation.
I am not going to try an conclude anything, but leave you with this. The following video was linked to by Miranda (Super__Yan) with the words:
@ProtomCannon’s article on SRK (http://shoryuken.com/2012/02/29/back-to-basics-getting-beyond-the-drama/) made me remember why I love the fighting game community so much.
…
In short: my coach was a jerk, he doesn’t represent the entire community. I’m not ever leaving. See you at NCR. I’ll leave this here: http://vimeo.com/13324213
Thanks for reading, and remember, in the words of captain planet, “the power is yours” to do what is right, wrong, and to let others know that what they are doing is wrong or right as well.
Keep on keeping on…
-nabokovfan87
Mass Effect 2: 2nd Playthrough Thoughts
In the past, I have played slightly more than zero RPGs. Feel free to view the “Hi, I’m Nabokov” blog for more info on that, but the point here is that RPGs have been a relatively new thing for me, starting with Demon’s Souls, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Earthbound when I was very young. I was intrigued by the ME universe ever since I stepped foot into it, and quite honestly I couldn’t wait for a second game in the series.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one, and seeing what happened with Dragon Age 2 had me vehemently expecting a dramatic letdown. This isn’t the point of the post where I tell you how awesome it ended up, but you would expect it to be wouldn’t you? When I finished the second game I was extremely disappointed at what I had played. Moreover, I was confused at what to even think about my experience. I made a thread over on another forum, and the summary of the thread is simply the following; The first game had dramatic experiences, encounters, and stories that were compelling simply because it was all new and because the world had so much tension, but with the second game, there was hardly any tension, and players of the first knew what to expect. The shooting was worse, the story was horrible, and the ending mission was a joke.
After that, I wanted to play the game again after I had time to remove it from my subconscious and play the game for what it did rather than basing my opinion on anything I had played before. I also was able to play the game with the DLC. I wanted to know if the game itself had simply removed the good stuff, or whether I was simply out of it for my first playthrough. So I bought 35 dollars of DLC for the game I had paid 20 dollar for a year ago and booted it up. 25 hours later I was finished, I had done all of the loyalty stuff, all of the DLC, all of the upgrades, and touched just about every aspect of the game that was remotely possible.
Did I enjoy it? Well, I think I have right around the same opinion, I have no idea what to think about this game. I think that the design of the game is broken. The video cutscenes are at such low resolution and severely distorted on PC that they bring you out of the experience, the FOV of the game is severely broken, especially considering the constant battles inside complexes and cave buildings, and the ending should have been something along the lines of the lair of the shadow broker ship mission, which parallels the citadel end mission from the first game very well. I really dislike how cookie-cutter the ending of the game actually is. If you want to play it correctly then you have to get the IFF at the very end, and instead of being about something interesting, the survival of your squad ultimately relies on how many bullshit loyalty missions you ended up playing. Moreover, the developers have Mordin set to die first beyond all other crewmembers, even though he is a scientist, not a fighter, right? I broke down the other DLC on the latest episode of the Damnit Slam Show, feel free to listen if you want to hear more (http://www.damnitslam.com).
I guess the summary of my experience is that the game isn’t finished, and the only reason I played it again was to get the right character and decisions for the third game. I am invested, but I don’t feel like paying double for DLC that should be in the game especially considering how empty the experience feels compared to the first game. Every building, area, and aspect of the game feels much smaller than the first. The citadel feels like a shopping mall, rather than a hub, and places like Illium are so poorly designed that you spend the majority of the time walking to where you want to go, then actually doing something interesting. For a franchise and developer that automatically receives 10’s whenever someone things they are coming out with a new game, it is a big letdown. It isn’t as shit at Dragon Age II, but it is pretty bad.
-nabokovfan87
Kickstarter, PC Gaming, Petitions, and Gamers vs. Publishers SOLVED!
Kickstarter double fine stuff happened, I listened to podtoid, and a lot of thoughts have been going through my head. Let me elaborate, I am a PC gamer. I am told constantly that games are going to be 60 dollars instead of 20-40, ports are impossible to make, and that my platform of choice has been dead for the past 10 years.
It makes me laugh to consider those things as truth, but you get the idea. PC gamers exist in a world where no one wants them and it is by the grace of pure passion and love of the craft that anyone enjoys it. I don’t know how many times I have heard the media say they hate playing things with 10 year olds on Xbox live, only to tell them that it is far better on PC because of moderators and maturity of the player base, but they just keep paying for online because they think that is where everything cool happens and they can have their cool t-shirts and cool games and everyone else is stupid for not joining them. OK, obviously some background behind that, but let’s just move on.
There have been hundreds of indie games on Kickstarter in the past. It is amazing that this is getting press because double fine did it, but by all means I am glad that it has. Immediately my mind spinned towards what could be possible, and what SHOULD be happening right now.
So, imagine a world where (this would be far better in the movie guy voice, but…) the next time someone tries to petition for a port, the HD remake everyone wants doesn’t happen, a developer takes a shit, or your favorite developer just doesn’t want to localize that brilliant title from somewhere on the other side of the globe, it was actually possible for you to do something about it. The people purchasing the products themselves were ACTUALLY given what they wanted. Fucking brilliant right? Yeah, but it will take 10 years for this to actually happen, and I know 5 companies right away that simply could do it right now and have a bazillion buyers. Let’s see.
1. Demon’s Souls PC Port
2. THQ games… (Metro 2033: Last Light, SR4. etc.)
3. GR/RS HD remakes on PC
4. RARE being bought out by the fans
5. Psyconauts 2
6. Earthbound 2
7. Pokemon Fully 3D PC RPG with super HD graphics (not fucking cell shading)
8. Red Dead: Redemption PC
9. MvC3 PC
Obviously I can keep going, but that isn’t the point or the question I am going to even discuss. The reason all of these will never happen is because the developers are in the assholes of publishers who want to make a piss-ton of money. They don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves, and they will literally step on babies just to make a dollar. Maybe not, but I think you know they would deeply consider it.
All I am saying is imagine a world where the stupid bitches making decisions now, weren’t. It would be amazing as a gamer, specifically a PC gamer, if we were all a little more open to the idea of some 14 and 17-year-olds making a game have having someone help them out to get it released (Side note, please support the 14 and 17-year-old who are trying to make a survival horror PC game that has a bitching soundtrack).
I really wish less publishers owned great companies and licenses like MvC, RAREs games, Demon’s Souls, etc. which all will take either a long time or hardly ever exist on expanded platforms simply because people want to sit on them and not do a damn thing with them. I would love to see Super Mario World 2 exactly in the SNES style, or an actual DKC4 SNES port exist in today’s world, but because someone at wherever doesn’t want to even give it a shot, it won’t happen.
Here is my idea…
A website that isn’t called Kickstarter, where gamers and companies can actually discuss things and gamers can propose ideas to developers (not publishers). Gamers can back it, the developers post a number of sales they must require to work on it, once it is reached it goes to the approved section, and then the developers go to whomever and get it made. It isn’t a perfect system and I am sure there are some tweaks to fix it, but in all honesty, something like that needs to happen.
Thanks for hearing my rant, please post your thoughts below!
-nabokovfan87
Darkness II: PC Demo Impressions
The darkness was a gripping game by which you discovered the story of Jackie, his struggles, and his hidden secrets. The narrative, visual, aural, and gameplay design all created a world unlike any others. It presented a compelling tale by which every aspect of the design was used to enhance the atmosphere and quality of the game to create a timeless classic that can be considered one of the best shooters, stories, or games of it time.
The darkness II demo was recently released, and it presents a game with drastically different visuals, similar sound design in terms of music, but a game where every other element seemed to be for the worse. The blood particularly is an extremely odd shade of reddish orange, and every shot, stab, or attack poops it over the ground splattering the environment with what appears to be pumpkin goop. Maybe it is shading or a lighting effect that produces visuals by which the blood appears to be Jello-like and pouring out in 50 lb batches per bullet.
The weapons feel extremely loose, to the point where lowering the sensitivity all the way still results in an experience where the aiming is so imprecise that aiming when dual wielding is more than immensely difficult. The crosshair ends up so large that it feels like a formerly extremely precise pistol is now a shotgun at 100 yards away. It is a good thing to note here that the hit boxing is extremely varied. Some enemies go down with a single shot to the chest, arm, leg, etc. while others take 4-6 shots to the chest. This appears to depend even more on the weapon used, for instance the Uzi resulted in around ½ of a clip per enemy death rather than the singular bullet of the 1911.
The visual style feels as if the world of the darkness takes place in a bright, cheerful, well-lit, alley with gobs of “blood” spurted around the environment. Directly contrasting with the first game is a cell-shaded visual style, detracting from the serious tone of the first game. The lighting alone is enough to cause me to question whether this game was remotely designed for the darkness. In the first game every advertisement, vending machine, and light-bulb caused the darkness powers to cower away and present a weak and easily defeated Jackie. The sequel presents a cheery, bright, colorful environment whereby nothing seems to bother Jackie and his powers apart from spotlights. Stupidly, the game has skyscrapers lighting up the alleys and streets and light-bulbs that cannot be shot due to mesh coverings. It is the same asinine design from F.E.A.R. where you can shoot the lamp mounted on the ceiling to make it rotate and move around, but you cannot actually destroy the light-bulb itself. This atmospheric lighting detracts from the game to a point, where I said earlier, it makes me question whether or not it was even designed for the title in question.
There was another thing that deeply concerned me. In the darkness powers, there is one which aims the guns for you. Tell me, when is a game that aims or plays itself a game? Clicking is interaction, sure, just like turning on the T.V. is interacting. It is one more thing in the sequel to directly contrast with what the initial design of the series. That does not mean to say the developer cannot edit or adjust the game in any way, but simply that if the majority of the game is different, it is not the same game. In the past such games have been side stories, retellings, or relaunches of the series, not sequels.
The audio has sync issues, the overall feel of the game is different, the main antagonists was annoying more than anything, and all of this amounts to a game whereby I am torn between purchasing a sequel to one of my “best of all time” games or simply passing it based on the developers poor decisions. It is kind of like when you wait 10 years for that next movie in the franchise, and it ends up being Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Time will tell, but if so, R.I.P. The Darkness.
Improvement: Take Pride in Design!
Patching games to fix issues is nothing new. It started in the arcades with ROMs, which were updated to fix exploits, revise difficulty, and improve the overall experience for the players. This legacy continued on the PC platform, where the internet connectivity made it the perfect place to easily update games. Now we live in a console centric world where platforms like Steam are seen as useless because “PC gaming is dead” and the normal routine is to pay Microsoft and Sony for the pleasure of removing annoyingness from their broken systems. Be it cheating, exploits, game breaking bugs, or even the all encompassing “security update,” most modern patches revolve around 2 things, piracy or laziness.
Any gamer on the PS3 has experienced the following, and gotten shit from Xbox gamers because their particular platform is “far superior” to PSN. After unboxing a game, put it in the system, turn on system, install firmware update, wait 30 minutes for that to finish, launch game, new patch notice, begin patch process, 20 minutes later the patch utility restarts and installs the patch for 10 minutes. By the time this process is completed, what little time some people have for gaming is gone and “fun” must wait for the next opportunity. It is an asinine system that is built to ensure people will more than likely purchase the proprietary “subscription” service for either console in order to not put up with bullshit.
Xbox gamers can say Xbox live is better, but let us all stop pretending. When I play my games on PC I turn the PC on, check my email, check the news, and I more often than not immediately get a popup indicating that a few of my games were patched. Imagine that, a system where developers use the internet to send things to their consumers easily, quickly, and without someone else prohibiting what used to be a seamless exchange. There is no need for a long and drawn out “approval process.” Those hardly ever improve anything and are only intended to make console gamers wait for shit and pad Microsoft and Sony’s bottom line demonstrating how “useful” they are to developers. Microsoft’s uselessness has even found its way onto PC, in the form of GFWL. It is amazing how the same games can come out on entirely different platforms, no matter the audience size, and how much bullshit one group will put up with. That is the passion the designers should have.
Console games used to be designed for cartridges, where the fabrication of the games themselves was expensive and final. Games had to be perfect, if they were not, there was no going back, no revision, and no way to “fix” lazy mistakes. As a child, those were just bad games, now we see popular games like Street Fighter IV and others with revisions on release day awaiting the player.
I used to be on the PS3 side of things, but after having my 6th one stolen and being told by Sony I had to wait a year to play my games because “I had previously deauthorized my accounts in the past year.” #4 and #5 were YLODs and #2 and #3 were shipped incorrectly during the RMA process, which damaged them. That is on top of losing my saves more than three times for extremely difficult games like Demon’s Souls, all thanks to hardware encryption rules which are used to “prevent piracy” or as I like to call it, “more bullshit.” Needless to say I have enjoyed being forced to only play my games on the PC side of things, it has made me appreciate the ease of use with the interface and not having to put up with categories or blades, but being able to sort things easily as I see fit.
I enjoy picking what server I want to join, what map, game type, and rules I want to play with in Counter-Strike. If CS had the same setup as Halo and Gears, all that would be played is Dust2, nothing else. No gun game would exist, no zombie mode, no surf, no anti-Awp/Auto servers, no beginner servers, no servers with different player limits, no arena servers, no standard map only servers, and more importantly everyone would have to put up with stupid amounts of lag because they never get to choose which region their server exists in, that being if they were even given the option of having a server at all. It is a luxurious experience to simply have things work the way they should, and while Steam has many issues, it is a vast improvement over PSN patching and paying for half the game over in Xbox land.
This is not just an issue for the provider, it is an issue for the development of games as well. Skyrim has had quests that have been broken and would lead to the loss of saves, loss of quest completion, loot, ability to progress further in the game, as well as many others. TF2 has been practically remade in a different light, patched over 250 times into a game that is now about hats rather than strategy. It is standard practice to release a game, and day of release require an initial patch before actually playing the game. I am sure anyone could Google some form of “most broken game, worst patch, or release day woes” and find hundreds of thousands of pages filled with users complaining about that very subject. These all occur because patches are no longer about improving the user experience, or adding to the game, it is about fixing what is broken, and was released in half-playable condition. The best way to improve a game, franchise, series, and platform is to hold the people making the game responsible. If you take pride in your work, if you do it to the best of your ability, it will result in amazing user experiences like Demon’s Souls, Half Life, and F.E.A.R.
Now we move to the all important topic of the month it seems, piracy. Sopa and Pipa, Oh… Pipa, popularized the whole anti-antipiracy sentiment because consumers were against a system whereby some overseer was able to dictate whether or not they had access to something. Sound familiar Mr. Microsoft and Sony? It is funny how consumers cannot hack devices to put free games on them, fix broken firmware, or just flat out improve the functionality of a device, but it is OK for the same group demanding the previous activity be stopped to lock users out of basic fixes and flat out hold them out of multiplayer for an entire platform unless they pay a fee. I am going to guess you can see where this is going, you think I am going to rant about how piracy is not evil and how the world should simply allow it to exist?
Well, no, I have been living in a world of piracy for many decades now. One currently where it is easiest to simply Google a game name and have an ISO download link immediately, that works for every console, not just PC games folks. While you can blame PCs for all of the piracy, it is quite clear that torrent websites have been attacked by trojans, congressmen, angry developer letters, and police raids all of which have more than curbed piracy of large files like games. The addition of digital download platforms has put the nail in the coffin for the common gamer as well. The rest of those whom pirate PC games are simply the hardcore hackers, pirates, and vermin that will never pay for anything if they can get it for free, it is a psychological barrier, not one that software and hardware based DRM will help to break. Again, I am not vouching for it, I am simply stating facts.
These both culminate with what amounts to two separate platforms where the driving force for updating is to stop piracy or fix bugs that should have been caught by anyone who actually played the game prior to release. Instead, games are designed to a deadline, an insane deadline that encourages the “we will fix it later” mindset. The single best way to improve the gaming experience, simply stop being lazy and stop being all about prohibiting users. As Jim pointed out, the best way to fix piracy is to simply provide a better experience. Steam has done this. Indie titles like Beat Hazard, blockbusters like Demon’s Souls, user supported games like Frozen Synapse, and even Kickstarter projects like Abandoned all put the game above any sort of anti-piracy or laziness. Fans have directly supported all of these things with community feedback, monetary support, word of mouth, and in some cases direct design discussions with users. These games may take a bit of extra time, but there is nothing better than word of mouth and customers doing the marketing to sell a game.
It is all about making the single best possible experience available to the player. I think many game developers, platform holders, and even gamers forgot about that a long time ago. It is not about making something for money, fame, or to be better than the person next to you, the reason certain games will always be considered good, and the reason games are around today, is because those games have the heart and soul of every person that worked on it and every time you launch the game you can see the passion on the screen.
Hello, I’m nabokov
Hi. Most of you probably don’t know me and those that do probably don’t know me all that well in the first place. So I wanted to start off by giving some background into my gaming habits and explain a bit about why I think the way I do.
I started playing games as a child, going to grandma’s house, playing Tetris on her NES and Game Boy. I spent weeks of the summer at my uncle’s place on his NES playing Super Spike V’Ball and World Cup Soccer. My parents owned an Atari 2600. My siblings and I would beg for it to be brought out and hooked up when we have time off from school. My childhood friends had a Sega Genesis that we would play sonic on and another had a PC that we would play DOOM II on. My more personal gaming memories started when I got my own Game Boy from my Grandma and later when I got a lime green Game Boy Color years later. I enjoyed playing NHL 97 (Yes, I even remember the year), Tetris, Pokémon, Metroid, and a glut of others. Years later, my siblings and I were given a Super Nintendo with Donkey Kong Country 3. Since then I was hooked on games. I came home and had to fight the urge to ignore my homework, just to get a few more laps in Super Mario Kart. Trips to Grandma’s house were never complete without a round of Mario Paint and a few hours of Super Mario World. As you can see I have had a diverse gaming history, playing many genres on many platforms.
Over the middle and high school years I spent weekends playing Tony Hawk and Vigilante 8, Madden, etc… Things really changed for me, however, when we finally got a PC in the house. I spent hours upon hours playing Math Blaster and Reading Blaster along with Lemmings, and NHL 2001. One year I even got Half-Life and Rainbow Six as a gift from my other uncle, the preacher. They became the games that I couldn’t get enough of. I played the sequels, spent hours watching that 10 minute long behind-the-scenes video for Ghost Recon. Eventually, I got the game on a PlayStation 2 that I had received for Christmas.
During high school, I met a friend introduced me to Counter-Strike, foremost amongst other games and I was hooked again. With my rekindled excitement for PC gaming, I built my first PC for graduation. I have since built a second and am waiting anxiously to spend more hard earned money on the upcoming ATI Radeon 7970 to finish off that build. A few years into college I was finally got a PlayStation 3, my first personal console purchase. I’ll never forget that experience, the enjoyment and the sheer shock in my mother’s eyes when she asked the question, “It costs how much!?” Needless to say, the PS3 has been a long and rough ride, one that has shaped every future buying decision for consoles, and I will eventually get to writing that out for everyone to enjoy. I later got a PSP for use on my way to and from college. I’ve used it on a daily basis since the day I got it.
While attending college, though, gaming has been reduced to a weekend enjoyment. I spent many years with my PS3, all seven of them (units, not years), and got to play some very cool games. From Gravity Crash to Uno, I enjoyed the hell out that system, but more to come on that later. Eventually I was able to get my uncle’s NES from him as a gift, and went on an EBay buying spree, getting games for it, as well as repurchased an SNES, a Game Boy Advance, an N64, and eventually, a PS2. I am nearly out of school and looking forward to enjoying those systems in the future. Currently I spend time recording my own podcast about gaming and hardware. I play when I’m not working on homework or traveling back and forth to school and work.
You may ask yourself, why did I just dribble on for the last 5 paragraphs going system by system and make it seem like I was trying to prove something? Well, truth is that I have some pretty extreme opinions, some have told me. You may have heard how terrible Lair is as a game, but I don’t even remotely think so. You may have heard how fantastic the Left 4 Dead series is, but I view it as a ripoff of an extremely popular mod called Zombie Master and as far inferior to its inspiration. You may have heard how brilliant BF3, Portal and Skyrim are, but I would argue otherwise.
These opinions are not just to get attention, page views, or contrive a conversation and get satisfaction out of putting others down. These thoughts came from years of having the very nature of my own beliefs molded, shaped, and matured through life experiences. I also spend a majority of my time listening to others thoughts on podcasts, many hours a day. I have had personal beliefs and things challenged and formed when I took a multitude of philosophy courses at college. Along with those there is one other major factor to consider. I don’t scour the news, blogs, or reviews. I play games completely on my own. No one, be it near me or in my house, enjoys gaming apart from talking to friends whom have moved and those I have met over the many years of online gaming about their thoughts. It more than likely all started 4 or 5 years ago when I decided that my goal for the year was to play genres I had never played before. Prior to 2005 I spent my years in shooters, strategy, sim, sports, and SNES games. In 2006 I played RPGs, JRPGs, League of Legends, MMOs, RTS games, Rhythm and Music games, and many other genres for the first time that I would traditionally avoid.
While review methods and systems can change and come into question, I have found that I take a very different approach when I play games. I do not look for others to confirm or deny my opinions. I play the game and see the game for what it actually contains, not crowding my own experiences and opinions with the majority or basing them on what others feel. Simply put, I am able to base my thoughts and reviews on circumstances that happened during gameplay and not those whereby I bring outside influences and experiences to shape and mold those thoughts. If Half-Life 5 came out and I was responsible for reviewing it, I would look at the game on its own before I considered ranking it in terms of the franchise.
Moreover, I believe any game can be artistically and critically compared to any other game as long as you have the proper understanding of the genre. For instance, I can compare Madden to Witcher 2 as long as I understand the background of each genre, the difference between a game like Blitz and Madden, as well as something like Dragon Age: Origins and Witcher. This is very similar to when you hear someone in the games press proclaim that one game is like another for their own genre. Perhaps something like “they tried to create a game with the controls of Mario, but the visuals of Crysis.” It may seem out of place, but when you compare sound design, graphics, visual style, controls, and other factors it is a lot easier to say that one game does one particular aspect much better than the other.
To explain this you need to understand the context of when I first thought this. As you know, I play sports games. I have since I was 10 or so years old. I have heard over the years from reviewers and media explain to their readers and listeners that “they aren’t the sports guy” or “I don’t cover/play those kinds of games.” It is all a load of bullshit. We all consider them, compare then, and rank them when we make our game of the year lists, or our “Best Games Ever Made” lists. I do not play one genre, I play racing, sports, strategy, shooters, RPGs, arcade games, platformers, and I know what makes a game good. I know what makes each genre different and what the design criteria for each game are. In complete honesty, it’s asinine. Consider the same argument for movies or books, and imagine telling a critic they can only like horror films or romantic comedies.
I guess at this point I should cut myself off. I will end by listing my top 20 or so games of all time, look out for more from me, and by all means feel free to ask me anything in the comments.
My Personal Top 20
1. F.E.A.R.
2. Evil Genius (PC)
3. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (ARCADE)
4. Demon’s Souls
5. Counter-Strike: Source
6. Pokémon (GB/GBC)
7. Max Payne Series
8. Donkey Kong Country 3
9. Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear / Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm
10. SWAT 4
11. Half-Life
12. Super Mario Bros.
13. F.E.A.R. 2
14. Gran Turismo Series
15. R.U.S.E.
16. Heavy Rain
17. World Cup Soccer (NES)
18. Lair
19. Dragon Age: Origins
20. Civilization V
21. Super Mario Kart
Flipside #3: Dear EA Sports: See things from a new perspective (again)
The following is from my post over at colony of gamers, feel free to follow the link and post there or post in the comments below:
http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=17602
This whole thing started when someone asked about pc parts and I recommended some stuff. Later that day I got a pm with someone asking for a new cpu, mobo, ram, and video card for around 300 dollars. I pm-ed back with approximates, explaining that a motherboard is typically 100 dollars, a good quad core is 100 dollars, and ram is 100 dollars. I had asked if he/she would be open to spending a bit more to get a good video card.
Long story short, I ended up having to knock 100 dollars off and after looking up a cpu, mobo, and ram for 200 dollars I got this reply.
[QUOTE]That’s amazing, those components sound stunning for that price. I’m gonna purchase the mobo now and start hunting around for a case. With a little tight budgeting I might have this thing all together in under a month – I’ll let you know how it goes.
Thank you so much! [/QUOTE]
As you can see he/she was very happy with that quality of parts for that price. Essentially it was an 890G motherboard, a 3.0 GHz x4, and 2 gigs of ram, using the onboard video chipset to play TF2. Seeing this I was very glad I was able to help, and taken back at how much you can get these days for the price. I spent 750 dollars on a console and a game, 850 on a top of the line PC, and am still amazed at how I can get 5 games on steam for 10 dollars.
I went over this on a podcast, arguing with my co-host about how at e3 Microsoft needs to announce that Xbox live is now free, but that they will likely add TV features and raise the price. After 10 minutes of explaining that what Xbox live provides is perfectly fine if they wouldn’t charge for online play.
As you can see this is all about what you get for the money and what should be free and what should be charged for. Times have changed from the era where Rainbow Six 3 had 3 10 dollar expansions all with 10 or 15 single player missions, while in the latest Call of Duty you have to pay 15 dollars for 4 new maps and people will do it without thinking twice.
Now we have a company like EA following in Xbox live’s footsteps, trying to charge for online play. Granted, if you buy a new copy the online is free, and a rental gives you a week of online, but the point is to look at the used copy where 10 dollars unlocks half of the game. People bring up the scenario where a new copy is 65 (after tax) and a used copy is 55 with the 10 dollar online pass. Let us be fair though, it is more likely that a used copy is much cheaper, and will be closer to 40 dollars with a 10 dollar online pass, or even less.
I proposed to my co-host, why not just charge for roster updates, and if you buy the new copy of the game you get those updates for as long as you still have the disk. Considering most of madden is an excel sheet that has numbers according to “skill”, I cannot imagine that something like this would be too difficult for them to do. If you buy the game used and do not care you will simply have to play unranked and with the old rosters, but you still get to play online with friends. If you buy it new, you get the added benefit of being able to always keep you roster up to date, even when the servers are now down, sending a several mb file is something I think EA should not mind doing, when you consider there was a flat fee for doing so.
Is this perhaps the compromise where GameStop gets their hand slapped and EA’s customers don’t get robbed of content for buying used?
Flipside #2: Dear Valve: Tread Lightly
The following is from my post over at colony of gamers, feel free to follow the link and post there or post in the comments below:
http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=17398
Before I even get started, and judging by how the last one of these went, I want to say something initially. I never planned to release this on the day the Mac version of Steam, but since I have no class for 8 hours, I actually have time to write this up. This is not a PC vs. Mac topic, but intended to be more of a “Please don’t let this happen topic”.
For those who have not seen or been a part of what is going on, let me recap what Valve has done since the release of DOD:S. First, They released TF2, which was created by the DOD:S team and the features were updated back into DOD:S and KILLED that community. TF2 was a part of the orange box, which included several games that were already out on PC. When this was first out I had little to no interest in buying the episodes and portal, but did want to try out TF2. Unfortunately it was only available for over 30 dollars when CS:S and DOD:S both released for 15 dollars (10 at release). I also owned a PS3 at this time, and the PS3 version of the orange box was practically unplayable.
Valve’s Next Release was L4D and L4D2, both of which were much smaller packages then CS:S and DOD:S, including only 4 levels at the time of release and was later updated with more levels. This trend started with DOD:S which had 2 levels added along with a new gameplay type that was and is only implemented in those 2 levels. TF2 continued this trend, and boasts over 200 patches after its initial release, basically remaking every single character in the game to include new abilities, weapons, and rebalancing.
The point here is that now valve has split its development even further from a formerly only PC developer to now developing for PC, Xbox 360, Mac, and rumored Linux. With games becoming smaller and relying heavily on patches to become what once was a full title, it worries me that eventually I will be paying way more for a lot less (I would say I already am), and having to wait months before the game is fleshed out or until everything is added. For instance, I have waited until now to get into TF2 because it has taken this long for ALL of the classes to be patched, which should result in one class not having a dramatic advantage over another.
As the title suggests, and with the release of another beta for a game I enjoy, I take a moment to hold my breath and hope that nothing negative comes from this. I hope that valve actually listens to those playing the CS:S beta and implements the patch the way the users want it to be implemented. Thinking back to DOD:S beta, and how just the ability to walk through someone, and adding a kill cam turned off 75% of the players, it makes me very worried that this will happen to arguably one of the biggest PC mods/games multiplayer games out there. Already things like surf, minigames, and other mishmashes of custom settings have been found turned off, resulting in portions of the community without their game. Hopefully, things turn out for the better this time instead of resulting in the death of one of the greatest games out there.
