Posts Tagged Video Games

Before I got into CRPGs, before I ever logged into my first MUD, my first and favorite computer games were always RTS games. This has always continued to be the case, despite my annoyance at a growing emphasis on multiplayer combat to the detriment of story campaigns and character development.

For me, Story is Everything.  If the game doesn’t have a strong inherent story of its own, I have to be able to make my own story for my characters. Unfortunately, a lot of the RTS games these days have forgotten story completely and don’t exactly allow you the opportunity for much story creation on your own. If there is a single-player campaign, it’s half-assed and repetitive. If there’s any story at all, it’s the exact same two paragraphs of flavor text before every battle regardless of what race you’re playing. Some games don’t have single player options at all.

So naturally, I’m more than a little excited about the grand-daddy of RTS games launching its sequel tomorrow. Blizzard has always been good with story, to the point that I continue to replay the original StarCraft campaigns to this day, in spite of the fact that my PC technology has far and away outstripped it and the only way to make it look remotely right is to play it in a tiny little window on my huge monitor.

Aliens! With Armies! Yeeeah!

Blizzard’s never exactly been original with their stories or their games. The difference is that they take what has been done and, inevitably, find some way to do it better, even if it’s something as simple as making the interface more user friendly.  The Warcraft universe is almost a direct ripoff of Warhammer 40K with some elements of Tolkien and a strangely prominent amount of Lovecraft thrown in. Starcraft, well . . . let’s face it . . . Starcraft is Aliens with armies. And without Vasquez, which is a real pity. I love Vasquez.

But while not original stories, or even original looking characters, Blizzard’s stories and characters rarely feel like they are just paper-doll placeholders. The stories actually have a proper plot arc, the characters actually grow and change. Sometimes they change into bad things, but they aren’t just static “I’m important because I’m in charge” types.  Blizzard can always be counted on for a good campaign, even when good single-player campaigns are out of fashion.

I’ve been in the beta, playing skirmish matches against other players and co-op against the computer, and I have to say that I’m very pleased with what they’ve done with the gameplay, and the graphics are wonderfully pretty without being too much of a resource hog.  Apparently the single-player campaign gameplay has been balanced separately from the PvP combat, and I’m interested to check out how they’ve done that, and what sort of difference it will make to the singleplayer game.

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I don’t usually post here about my activities in World of Warcraft – that’s usually reserved for my WoW dedicated blog, to keep from clogging up this blog with too much WoW.  For the last six months or so, I’ve been on an extended hiatus from the game, but was planning to come back when the next expansion, Cataclysm, comes out. In fact, I was beginning to get really excited about it.

Initially the implementation of RealID in WoW didn’t worry me too much, beyond the thought that people might get annoyed with me for not friending them back. It was optional and you had control over who would have your information.

Then this happened:

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

Now, I would be the first person to agree that Blizzard needs to do something about their forums, which are a haven of villainy and scum.  Since early in my first few months of playing the game, I learned to avoid the official forums like the plague. The majority of posters there have no other thought than to troll and bully people.  Over the period of time I have spent playing the game, my posts on the official forums have been limited to event announcements as guildmaster of an active roleplaying guild, bug reports, and technical support questions.  It is true that anonymity encourages the bad behavior. However, that same anonymity also helps to maintain the security and privacy of people who aren’t behaving badly.

Now, it’s not hard to find out my real name. I’ve got it all over the place. As a professional writer, it is important that I maintain a web presence under my real name in various locations and on various social networks. It’s not really something I hide all that much, and the fact that I play WoW is no great secret.  However, I do know a large number of people who have every reason in the world not to want their real names associated with their activities in an online environment, or to have strangers they might meet in that online environment know their real name.

Here are some of the problems I see immediately with this issue:

First of all, I happen to live in a state where it is still possible to be fired from your job for being gay. It is a state where violence against gays is still a major issue and there are no hate laws. In the last three months, I have seen in the news at least two unprovoked attacks against gay men in my state, one resulting in severe injury and the other, just this last weekend, only escaping injury  because the victims knew self defense techniques.

For a long time, World of Warcraft has been one of a few places where people who are still forced to be in the closet, be they gay, transgendered, or gender-queer, could be themselves without fear of real life repercussions. There are many prominent gay guilds in the game. Attaching real names to characters and guilds and removing anonymity could potentially force people out of the closet in-real-life. Many of these same people have good reason to fear not just for their jobs but also for their personal safety if their secret is exposed.

Second, I know of a number of women who purposely play male characters to avoid being harassed due to their gender. It is unfortunate, but misogyny and sexual harassment are major issues in the gaming community, and WoW has more than its fair share.  Exposing real names on the forums would also expose the gender of those who choose to play characters of opposite gender for reasons beyond “I just liked the way they looked.”  It is quite often difficult to be a woman and be a gamer – you have to constantly fight against the assumption that just because you’re a woman you can’t tank, you can’t PvP, you can’t…play as well as a male.  A lot of women have avoided this by playing male characters and pretending to be male.  There are also women who have been stalked and harassed by real-life ex-boyfriends or in-game acquaintances in the game who have escaped them by rolling new characters with new names on new servers, retreating into anonymity. Removing that anonymity would expose them to further harassment.  It could even provide a means for stalkers and rapists to locate victims. There’s a reason why we teach our young girls to keep their Facebook profiles private and to not give out personal information. To do so compromises their security and puts them in danger. It makes it easier for predators to find them.

What happens when the first murderer finds his victim through the WoW forums, Blizzard? Or the first pedophile? Because they are there. I have had personal contact (and reported on multiple occasions) at least one pedophile that is still playing the game.  What happens when the first homophobe decides to take up arms against someone that got outed on the WoW forums? With a real name, it’s not that difficult to find an address, or find out where someone works, or harass them, blackmail them, harm them.

True, murder and rape would be the most extreme potential ramifications, but they should be considered. The fact that people could lose their jobs if their identity is revealed should have been considered.

Of course, the way to keep from losing anonymity is to avoid posting on the forums at all, but where is this violation of privacy going to stop, Blizzard? And did you really want to leave a significant portion of your customer population faced with the choice between asking a tech support question and preserving their own personal safety?

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I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Pac-Man came out the same month I was born. Pac-Man (and Ms. Pac-Man) were the first games that my chubby little toddler hands ever spent a significant amount of time playing, and I continued to play the different versions of the game over the years as I grew up. There weren’t many arcades in my area, but there was a Pac-Man table at one of the restaurants my family frequented, and I remember sitting there asking for one more quarter…just one more of whatever adult I was with. I had Pac-Man on my Commodore 64, I had it on the Atari that I inherited from my uncle.

Pac-Man was my gateway, the first game that led to a lifetime obsession with video games.

And, just as I did a few weeks ago, Pac-Man is celebrating its 30th Anniversary today. You can go over to Google‘s main page for a google logo-ized playable version of the game, but there are plenty of other versions out there too.

In fact, if there’s an 80′s game you’re feeling nostalgic for, you can probably find either a flash or java version of it out there.  There are emulators too, of course, but they can be problematic, and why bother with a download when you can play them online?

I found this treasure trove of flash and java versions of old games the other day over on a website called, appropriate enough, “Classic Online Games“. They have sections for old Commodore 64, Nintendo, Sega, and Arcade games, and all sections are full of games any 80′s kid will recognize, plus some you might not.

All of the games on the site are free to play.   Some have been updated to a point-and-click interface, and all can be played with a keyboard and mouse, though, you’ll find that using a keyboard for most of them can be problematic. You may need a USB joystick or controller to properly play some of them.  I don’t usually plug merchants on this blog, but you can get both over ThinkGeek (and no, I am not paid to say so).

As for me, maybe I’ll spend some time trying to see if I can even get close to my old high scores on some of these games.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Pac-Man, may you munch ghosts happily all day long.

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This kind of goes along with my previous post concerning the way censorship and ratings in the US tends to be heavy-handed when it comes to nudity while allowing all sorts of violence to be branded “kid-friendly.”

There’s a phenomenon that I come across fairly regularly where people will ignore the ratings on a piece of media, buy the piece of media for their children, and then complain that “OH MY GOD, SUCHANDSUCH HAS NAKED PEOPLE/LOTS OF BLOOD AND GORE/HORRIFIC IMAGERY THAT MY PERFECT CHILD SHOULD NEVER SEE WITH THEIR INNOCENT EYES!”

At which point I tend to want to take the package, point at the rating (which inevitably is M, R, NC-17, etc.) and go “Yeah? That’s why it’s rated for ADULTS ONLY!”

At which point I get a blank look, and/or: “But it’s a cartoon/video game/comic book/etc. and cartoons/video games/comic books/etc. are meant for kids.”

Where did this come from, this automatic assumption that just because something drawn, either with traditional animation or art media or digitally, it therefore is intended primarily for children?  This is almost certainly a purely Western notion, because Japanese anime doesn’t seem to make that assumption (though I have seen Westerners assume thus in regards to Japanese anime).

First of all, as the first generation of at-home gamers (of which I am a proud member) grew up, video games grew up with them. Right now, the vast majority of gamers are ages 25 and up, both male and female. We’ve long ago outgrown shiny happy fairy-tale castles with a pretty pink princess inside, and most of us look for darker, grittier, more cynical, and yes, more realistically violent games.  For those of us who are parents, of which there are no small number, most of these games are such that we would never allow our children to play, though we may play them ourselves.

These video games are rated “M”, which is clearly marked on the video game package, along with the translation “For Mature Players.”  These are video games that are made for adults. Why, then, do some parents buy these games for their children, ignoring the rating, and then complain about the content?

The same seems to go for any animated cartoon, though shows like Beevis and Butthead, South Park, etc. have made a dent in it, I still see and hear of parents letting their children watch “cartoons” and then throwing a fit when they find out that it has some sort of inflammatory not-for-the-kiddos content in it.

Again, the ratings for these “cartoons” are clearly displayed on the television during the opening credits, are clearly available over the internet for anyone who wants to see them, and yet the parents are raising hell over these shows containing more mature content when they’re clearly marked as being not for kids.

But… but…. but… they’re cartoons.

Yeah? There’s been dirty pictures drawn all over the place since the first caveman picked up a stick of charcoal.

The same “but it’s made for kids” philosophy extends to comic books and any movies based on comic books too, as we all saw with release of Watchmen and the Legendary Blue Wang. I saw plenty of moms and dads leading their little kids into that movie, and then leading them right back out with hands over their eyes.  I had to wonder if they had completely failed to notice, on purchasing the ticket, that the movie had a great big “R” next to it?

No, because you see the thing is that these people who ignore the ratings on things and then end up burned inevitably turn on the distributors, the creators, the writers, the artists.  They are EVIL EVIL people for exposing their precious children to these things!

But it’s not the creators’ or the distributors’ fault. They made a product that was intended for adult consumption, and clearly marked as such on said product. This mark is a warning for parents, it says “This is not for kids.”  If the parent then chooses to ignore that warning, then it’s the parent’s own fault for what they have chosen to expose their child to.  You were warned. You chose not to heed that warning. It’s not our fault if you get burned.

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Here lately, with me playing less and less WoW out of sheer boredom with the game (after five years, it’s finally getting old), I’ve been poking around and looking at some of the other MMO offerings already out or pending release at some point in the future.  All of them have some little something to offer that sets them apart from WoW, but for the most part, even then, they just look like the same old thing. Some of them, many of them in fact, don’t even seem to want my sort of player around.

See, I don’t like huge-group raiding. I absolutely, passionately detest PvP.  According to Bartle, I’d be an explorer/socializer as my gamer type. I enjoy finding every little secret place in the game, and I enjoy spending time with my friends, many of whom live too far away for me to see often in person. I love roleplay, the idea of stepping into a character and creating my own story.

So I got to thinking about what would make me really get excited about an MMO. I’m quite aware that many of these things I’d want are total pipe-dreams, but it would still get me excited, were it possible to do.

• A game built *for* roleplayers, with a large, immersive, and dynamic (*changing*) world and a story you can really sink your teeth into.  This could include any of the following:
  • Dedicated mods that work only on the roleplay servers.  I’d even be willing to pay more per month to ensure that my play experience is free of RP griefers and netspeak and that roleplay is enforced. People rolling on RP servers are there to RP, otherwise, gerroff.
  • Interface options for roleplayers, like EQ’s ability to flag yourself as a roleplayer, or like the various description addons you can download for WoW, but integrated as a part of the game.
  • Good character/clothing customization.
  • RP related quests. (I have seen this done before.)
• An extendable post-level-cap advancement option, even if it has nothing to do with actual combat ability or utility (ie. being able to spend post-cap xp on things like an extra tradeskill, a percent extra gold gain, unlocking fun ‘toy’ items, etc.) to keep the game interesting for non-raiders after they hit the cap. (WoW tried to do this for casual gamers with the achievements system, and it’s a good idea, but could use some expanding.)
• A game where a player’s skill, rather than their equipment, determines their success, and where it actually requires skill to reach level cap and beyond. Yes . . . I like it when it’s harder. I’ve often cried out for nerfs of my own classes after they became so easy to play that complete idiots make it to level-cap without even understanding how their class works.  A harder game makes for more skilled players, and skill has nothing to do with what you’re wearing.

That’s my little wish list.  WoW did a lot of things right, a lot to change the face of MMO’s, and like I said, I’ve been playing for five years. That’s a hell of a shelf-life, especially without taking many breaks in that time.  I’ll probably never see any of this stuff, but it doesn’t hurt to hope.

I’ve been playing a lot of Dragon Age: Origins lately, and a lot about it has reminded me of something I’ve been missing a lot of in games, lately: Story.

The games that I remember the most fondly from my childhood are those that had the best stories and character development. Gameplay in some of them might have been simple turn-based “Keep Pressing X” type controls, but the stories were what kept me playing them. My first introductions to PC games were also story-driven games. Some of the best stories I’ve seen in video games were in RTS games in which I might have been controlling entire armies, not just in RPGs where stories are “essential”. (Starcraft is an excellent example of a good, well-written RTS campaign)

The thing is, with the coming of multiplayer gaming, storytelling has pretty much been deemed unnecessary. The best examples of this are in the RTS genre, where the RTS of the past always had massive, story-driven single-player campaigns – campaigns that simply no longer exist in the modern versions.  If an RTS game even has a single player option or campaign at all, it nearly always seems plugged on as an afterthought, a repetitive little bit of narration plugged on what is essentially just a “against-the-computer” battle.  Without the story, there is nothing to make the player care about the characters or races.  It all turns into making a choice between the pure gameplay based advantages and disadvantages of each, rather than because the race itself means something to you.

As much as I love World of Warcraft, MMORPGs took the story out of the RPG just as much as multiplayer removed it from the RTS.  True, these stories might have a large, involved storyline put together by the developers, but the average player likely knows very little of it beyond the names of important bosses in dungeons.  (The exception to this, of course, would be roleplayers, who make it their business to know the lore of the game, but they are hardly the “average” players.)

Dragon Age has reminded me of just what I loved about all those old games with their involved stories and characters you couldn’t help caring about (or hating with a vengeance, as the case may be) – that it’s paired with good, fun, gameplay mechanics only adds to the fun of the game. It also brought to mind just how few truly story-driven games exist on the shelves these days, and just how much I wish there were more.

I’d like to see gaming get back to the point where story is not just an unnecessary and thoughtlessly added bit, but an essential part of games.

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It appears that I haven’t scheduled the post that I thought I’d scheduled for today, but that’s okay, because work’s gone slow to the point of being virtually non-existent today, and I needed something to do.

Mostly, I’ve been writing.  I’ve got a new story going that I’m loving so far, with characters that aren’t doing anything I planned for them but are doing a lot of stuff all on their own, and that’s fine by me, because it generally tends to make a better story.

I’ve also read through this interesting analysis of how a zombie infection/invasion would realistically spread.  It had a lot of math in it, which tends to make my English Major Brain go “Durr?”  It was still incredibly interesting in pretty much the same way that string theory is interesting, that is, I understand very little of it, but it looks really shiny!  There may be a story in this…

Maybe I just need a vacation.

Found an adorable graphic-adventure-esque casual game called William and Sly I may poke my nose into if the rest of the afternoon ends up as slow and work-free as the morning has been.  What I’ve played of it so far is fun, but I’ll probably be looking for other things to wile away the hours until getting-off-time.

Any suggestions? Got a favorite casual game that I could try?