A brief insight into the daily torment of trying to explain things to casual gamers. This happened at work today, after a colleague noticed me reading Minecraft's subreddit.
Her: "What game is that?" Me: "Minecraft. It's kind of a building game?" Her: What, like Lego?!" Me: "A bit. But you need to gather resources and food to survive as well." Her: "So can you starve?" Me: "Yeah" Her: "So it's like the Sims?" Me: "Not.. really? Here, let me show you..." -loads up the guild's Minecraft map- Me: "This is a map of everything my friends and I have made on it. That's a farm, that's my house, this is a forest, that's the sea, this is all ice thanks to a snow related accident we had..." Her: "So you built all this with other people?" Me: "Yeah, there's about 10 of us. There's more but this map hasn't updated in a while." Her: "Why not?" Me: "The server owner's kind of busy and hasn't had time" (I didn't bother going into plugins and mods) Her: "Oh... It looks interesting, I bet it could be a big hit if more people played it" Me: "Well it is, there's something like 25 million players worldwide" Her: "Wow! And he has to update all of them?" Me: "Well no... yeah."
It's difficult to explain something to people who have to simplify everything down to comparisons. I guess Lego Sims is a very broad way to describe Minecraft... but my word, it's a pain to break something so complex down into that.
I was going to attempt a game review. But I've changed my mind.
Back in 2005, I was still living with my family and cycling to work on an industrial estate across town. The journey was about 4 miles each way, which I could cover in 15 minutes on a good day. One day in August, my family went on holiday to Wales for a week. I couldn't get the time off so didn't go with them, and had the house to myself for a week.
On the second day, I got out of work early and set off for home. I was on the cycle path out the back of the industrial estate and stood up on the pedals to get some power down (as you do). The rear derailleur snapped straight off, the pedals span wildly, my foot went under the rear wheel and I was catapulted over the handlebars. I managed to get my hand out to break the fall but from the crack it made I knew something had been damaged.
I lay there for about 20 minutes in the path trying to feel various parts of my body to make sure everything was attached. During this time a couple walked past, looked at me and just stepped over my body and kept walking. I was in too much pain to talk. I could tell my left hand was fractured or broken and there was a large patch of skin on my right shoulder that had been grazed right off. There was also a dozen or so grazes and scratches on my right side, and a line of puncture wounds on my right calf where the gears had gone into the skin.
The couple had disappeared. Nobody else was around. My phone was dead and nobody was home anyway. Eventually I managed to stand up, and pick up the bike. I had no choice. I had to start walking.
It hurt. I was limping with blood seeping from more wounds than I could count. The bike was wrecked but I was able to wheel it with me. I passed numerous people on the way, but none stopped to help or check if I was ok. I eventually got home around 2 hours later. Bike was left in the garden, and I tried tending to some of the cuts. The pain was still too much and I couldn't reach most of them with my right (working) hand. I was crossing the kitchen when I suddenly stated to feel really faint, and I felt myself falling.
I don't know how long I was out for. But when I woke up I was lying on my back in the kitchen in agony, feeling terrified, helpless and alone.
Why am I telling you all this? Because it still wasn't as bad as writing about the awful experience I had playing Test Drive Unlimited 2. Awful physics, irritating characters with painfully bad voice acting and an incredibly stupid story/career mode that will make you want to gouge your eyes out. Even the AI racers are predictable and slow. If Steam was a brick-and-mortar store I'd have marched straight back there with a pitchfork in one hand and a mutilated copy of Test Drive Unlimited 2 in the other.
I've never felt such nerdrage at a game before. In fact, just describing it is feeling like the start of an amazing rant... but I'll spare that for now. More on that another time.
Starcraft 2. The name may sound generic to a non-gamer, but SC2 is far more than just a game. The competitive scene is huge, international and a lifestyle for thousands of players. Tournaments are held across the world constantly, and players and fans alike turn out in their droves to watch events with thousands of dollars in prize money for the winners. If gaming is ever going to affect worldwide culture, this is the game to do it. It's already the biggest draw of the Iseries events in the UK, and it's only going to get bigger.
So what exactly is it? In gaming terms it's a real-time-strategy (RTS) game. In non-gamer terms, it's like chess on acid. You could even say it's the modern equivalent. Even Gary Kasparov has spoken highly of it - his son is a major Starcraft addict. The basic principle is simple enough: you build up an army and kill your opponent before he kills you. But the strategy involved goes far beyond chess. Do you play passively and build up an economy to produce a bigger army later, making yourself vulnerable to early aggression? Or do you go straight for an attack as soon as possible and hope your opponent can't defend against it?
I've played SC2 casually on and off for about a year. I watch the tournament streams and keep up to date on the mechanics. When I first started, I tried playing in the competitive scene for a couple of months. Despite knowing most of the game mechanics and upgrades, my macro skills and multitasking were awful. I'd constantly forget to add buildings, train units, or expand my base. As a result, I never escaped the lowest league (Bronze), but told myself that being in the top 8 bronze league players was where I belonged and resigned myself to never getting promoted.
After several months of playing the occasional fun-run game of Starcraft with friends, including helping them to practice (which basically involves me being a punching bag for them), I was starting to feel slightly bored with it. Sure, it's fun to just mess around with friends, but I was seeing them get better at the game and start to make real progress up the leagues and ladders. I was starting to miss competitive play, but for some reason this button terrified me.
A world of pain awaits.
It seems silly to say I was nervous about playing a game, but anyone who's tried gaming competitively will tell you that it's not much different from competing in sports. The butterflies are exactly the same. I had the same feeling when I was playing arena ladder games in World of Warcraft, and even in Team Fortress team games.
I was off work today (after a long weekend visiting friends up north, one of whom incidentally plays Starcraft much better than me) and was slightly bored this afternoon. After thinking for a while and reading the Starcraft posts on Reddit that constantly mock and ridicule bronze league players, I decided that I didn't want to be the butt of their jokes. I'd force myself to get better! I would have to play 5 games for the server to gauge how good I was and place me in the appropriate league. I just prayed that it wouldn't put me back into Bronze. Please God, anywhere but Bronze again! After playing a couple of games offline to practice, I finally conquered my nerves and pressed "Find Match". I'll save the details of the 5 individual matches, but suffice to say that I was so determined to win them that I made fewer mistakes than I can ever remember making in a game of SC2. My macro was still clumsy, but I wasn't screwing up with game-ending mistakes like not being supply blocked (which stops you building anything) or forgetting to spend all the money you've just saved up (having 2000 in the bank doesn't help anything!). In the end, I won three and lost two. My three wins felt amazing as it had been so long since I played anything competitively, and my two losses were due to not scouting my opponent and losing to an unexpected strategy.
So, for a bronze-level player, winning three games and losing two, you'd expect to remain in the same place you started. But nope. It's put me in Gold league. That's higher than any of my other SC2-playing friends. It's even higher than some professional casters/players such as Totalbiscuit.
...I have no idea how long I'll stay out of the hated bronze league. For now I'm just glad to be free of it. But as soon as I start playing more games I know I'll lose match after match, and slide inexorably back into the jaws of bronze.
And now every time I log onto Starcraft, I get confronted with this. And once again, I'm terrified of that button.
It's increasingly rare to see original ideas for games being released. Whether it's because game companies aren't willing to risk losing money on a concept that might not fly, or there's very few unexplored game ideas left, who knows. But that breath of fresh air is exactly what made Portal a success, and it's also what the massively underrated rooftop-hopping Mirror's Edge should have received.
A soundtrack sample for your listening pleasure, and for some ambience while you read.
Mirror's Edge is a first-person game released in 2007, developed by Dice and published by EA. For a few months it turned heads and raised eyebrows, as no game had attempted such an od mix of FPS and platformer before. However, a few months later the aforementioned Portal was released and got all the attention for being original and fun. Mirror's Edge was quickly forgotten.
And it's a shame because it tapped into an interesting market. Sure, there have been games before which incorporate parkour (Assassin's Creed being one of the most famous) but to actually BASE a game around it was a brave move. And it actually works really well. Not only is it unique in this respect, but also in that the game gives you the choice of not killing anyone throughout the entire story if you don't want to. It seems this is what the developers were aiming for as picking up a weapon slows you down and stops you pulling off most moves. Of course it's easier to just shoot your way through, but the game is based around speed and momentum through the level, and stopping to aim and shoot just ruins the illusion. Why not just knee them in the face like a boss?
Dice have done everything they can think of to add to the immersion of the game, to make it feel as if it's actually you with the ninja-like skills. The camera angles may be difficult and unhelpful at times, but again, that's true of real life parkour as well. Your head bobs while you run (the amount depends on your speed), the camera shifts focus and brightness accordingly depending on what you're looking at, simulating real vision, you catch glimpses of Faith's hands, feet and limbs depending on the moves she's carrying out. And of course, the dizzying sense of vertigo you get when jumping between skyscrapers. Which happens a lot. The game has managed to make the rooftops of the city feel natural, so much that in the few instances you're at street level it feels awkward and uncomfortable. I found myself looking around for a way back up more often than not!
Despite the immersion, the story is rather lacking. I found it quite difficult to care too much about any of the main characters for most of the game, and in the middle of the game the levels started to become a tedious formula of:
-Travel to location in the city -Watch a cutscene revealing another part of the plot -Oh shit, the police are coming! Run away for 30 minutes to end the level.
Luckily it picked up again towards the end as all the seemingly disjointed parts of the story fell into place. Like all good single player games, there's plot twists. In this case, so cruel that at the start of the last level I felt an anger and determination that I can't remember ever having felt before at a game. And that leads me onto arguably the game's strongest point: the lead character, Faith.
For a while now I've been rather annoyed that games companies seem to be unable to create a strong female character without resorting to making them look "sexy" (Lara Croft) or following the damsel-in-distress model (Princess Peach) in order to sell copies. However Faith Connors has already become one of my favourite videogame heroes. She looks cool, doesn't mess around, has a tragic backstory and the aforementioned crazy ninja-like skills. Whether she's taking running jumps off crane arms, surfing subway trains or sliding down rooftops, it's impossible not to be impressed with this rather unique protagonist. Why can't more female characters be designed this way?
Cool girls don't look at explosions. They just turn their heads and walk away
All in all, Mirror's Edge is a welcome change from the usual style of "shoot-everything-that-moves" first-person games. Whether it's worth the £12 Steam is currently asking for it, is a matter of opinion - if you're looking for an underrated game with an original twist, then go for it. You can be a hipster gamer too. However if you're easily made queasy, this could be a risky one to go for. It made me feel nauseous on more than one occasion, but that just added to it for me... I'd be equally terrified to try this stuff for real!
I personally can't wait to see if anything comes of the rumours about a Mirror's Edge sequel, and what, if anything, can be expanded upon to merit a sequel. I really hope there is one. The underlying story premise of ME is that if you don't conform, you can be pushed to the edges of society if you let it happen. The games industry needs a major player like EA, arguably the most mainstream publisher of all, to throw some of the money made from the Modern Warfare cash-cow at Dice, and take another leap into the unknown and provide us with an even greater game.
Not long ago my manager asked me if the 3DS was worth buying, since I'm a gamer and all. After giving my opinion on it and whether a casual gamer can justify that amount of money, she commented on how nice it is to have someone around who knows about "this sort of thing". I replied that I've just always been into gaming and I'm pretty much a geek so "this sort of thing" is right up my street.
"Well at least you're not a total geek who plays World of Warcraft or something!" she laughed.
Actually...
I stopped playing WoW two months ago after three years continuous subscription. Most of the people I enjoyed playing with had either jumped ship, cancelled their accounts or simply disappeared. It seemed like a good time to stop. My sub was being renewed automatically every three months and when I cancelled it there was still two months left, so I had plenty of time to reconsider. In the end I completed everything I wanted to do, so just let it expire. I've not really thought much about it since despite retaining my officers' position in the guild. The community had expanded far beyond just WoW to many other games and meetups at LANs are now pretty regular. My mage is now another footnote in the guild history.
However, a few days ago we had what could be described as a "diplomatic incident" in the WoW side of the community, as several members left together to join another guild. For some reason the staff decided to remove all their alts, got confused and kicked out the wrong people, which led to them getting banned on our Minecraft server and almost getting their forum permissions removed. After a good couple of hours talking with another ex-officer/current guild website admin we got a basic idea of what happened and most of the people involved are ok with how it's turned out. Mostly, anyway. Can't please everyone.
But what it made me realise is that despite all the complaints, boredom, rubbish game updates and poor service from Blizzard and WoW, I still miss and care about the game massively. Perhaps not the game itself as the sense of community. I miss being able to log on after a bad day and unwind. I miss the laughs and jokes on Ventrilo, the staying up til 4-5am with a small team of friends deep in enemy territory fighting and evading hundreds of furious Alliance players.
Yes, I was a pretty major PvPer. Not the best in the world but smart enough to not die. And compared to the average players on our realm I was pretty bloody awesome. My videomaking skills, not so awesome.
At its peak we were co-ordinating the entire Horde side of Wintergrasp battles and organising massive server-wide battles through friends on both factions. But when the Cataclysm expansion hit things rapidly declined and within a few months we'd lost most of our core members. I'd lost motivation and ended up spending more and more time playing alone. Eventually, just a week before my subscription ran out, I got the last achievement I wanted - the Conqueror title. But with nobody left around to see it or celebrate with, it was massively hollow and underwhelming. I logged off at the top of a mountain alone and left the game quietly. Nope, not even a forum thread about it. Go me.
Anyway, that sense of community doesn't seem anywhere near as strong at the moment. All of our old circle of friends are spread across all sorts of games, and some no longer game at all. The former officers have all taken up their respective roles as admins over various parts of the community with the exception of me. Compared to how it used to be with not being able to get 5 minutes peace without someone asking about the next/last event or any number of other guild related matters it's hard not to feel like dead weight.
Maybe Guild Wars 2 will turn things around when it's eventually released. But a lot is being pinned on it not being a letdown.
And I'm still not sure it'll be able to match the mayhem of Tram Time. Apparently they don't like it when you occupy their transport network.
At least in GW2 you can destroy buildings. I'll destroy all the buildings.
I'm a big fan of one of the nerdiest game niches there is: sim racing. In a gaming world where racing games are increasingly arcade-y and easy to play, with some even giving you the option to pause and rewind the race to try again if you crash (DAMN YOU CODEMASTERS!), sim racing is an escape for those who want a racing game that's actually satisfying and rewarding to play.
The downside is that a lot of people take it extremely seriously, even to RP levels, thanking their teams and pit crew (even though it's all automated AI) after a win or inventing reasons why they didn't finish if their internet connection drops out halfway through the race. I'm not that extreme, but I do have a racing wheel simply because it's impossible to compete with a keyboard + mouse or even a controller when racing against people with wheels and pedals.
I know this because my wheel broke a few days ago (the mounting assembly burst out of the back just because I was leaning on it, and I'm not even that fat or muscular), and rather than buy a new one I decided to try using the keyboard and mouse. I even created a new profile with a new name and car colours just so people wouldn't realise it was me. Terrible idea. It's akin to having your mouse break in a game of TF2 and deciding you can use the D-pad to aim. First attempt, I crashed out on the first lap because having a car on either full lock or no steering at all will only end one way. Usually in the wall or the side of someone else's car.
So then I spent an hour getting my PS3 controller to work and mapping all the keys to that. It was better, but still an absolute nightmare to drive! I was 8 seconds off the pace in the first race with the controller, and in the second one I got kicked from the server because the brake button (L2) decided to stop working and I wrecked two other people due to not being able to stop.
So after discovering why "controller" has the word "troll" in it, I set off for B&Q with a few ideas of how to fix the wheel. After messing around with superglue, then a hacksaw to cut my way in to reattach the bolt, and finally attempting to tie it to the desk I gave up. It's only a cheap wheel and by this point I'd spent about half of what the wheel was worth trying to fix it. Rather than head back to B&Q to try my next two ideas - heavy duty velcro and suction cups - I'm just gonna buy a new one.
Funnily enough, this will be the third one now. When I cancelled my WoW subscription I thought it would save money. Ironically I'm spending more on this free-to-play racing sim just through buying peripherals.
All this just to be tooling around at the back of Race2Play events! I can't help it, it's fun. Profile here. http://www.race2play.com/homepage/show_member/22073
ADDENDUM: Got this wheel just in time! Had a mail from R2P saying the first of their members has received rFactor 2 keys. Seems like the sequel we never thought would arrive is finally almost here!
Oh hi. This is the first post on my new blog so I may as well make it a good one. So I'll be explaining why gaming as a 'nerdy' thing is a stereotype that belongs in 1990.
My family and workmates are vaguely aware that I'm a gamer, but it almost never gets talked about. The exception is my brother who's an avid gamer, but only on Xbox, so our conversations usually end up being about what the best console is (clearly not Xbox). And the only time gaming gets brought up in work conversations is when a major title like Modern Warfare 3 or the latest FIFA game is released - neither of which are really my thing. So my gaming persona is mostly overlooked and ignored like a massive spot on the centre of my face that everyone's too polite to mention.
Now, most of us gamers have heard one, or all, of the following:
"Videogames? Get a life!"
"Why don't you go outside instead?"
"Videogames are for kids!"
You get the idea. It's not quite as widespread as it used to be, but it still carries a stigma for some reason. If videogames are your choice of entertainment you're automatically a loser, a geek, a no-lifer, a hermit. And yes, some people are. But the same is true of music lovers, TV addicts, bookworms, in fact just people in general. But my beef is this.
If Billy is playing videogames for 6 hours while Bob is watching Xfactor for 6 hours, both of them have been sat in front of a screen for the same amount of time. At least Billy has had to use his head in some way. Meanwhile Bob's losing brain cells watching Gary Barlow trying his best to be as mean as Simon Cowell, or watching montages of people crying while Snow Patrol plays in the background. Bob's brain is rotting. He's zoning out and staring into middle distance while slowly sliding down his chair. He's slumped half on the floor with a sudden urge to buy the Little Mix album. He's doomed.
...Can you tell I'm not a fan of Xfactor? In the meantime, it's time that videogaming is accepted as an art form alongside movies, music, literature, and even the classic paintings you see in museums. You could even say it's the ultimate artform because videogames combine all of the above into one package. Take a game like Mass Effect. Epic story, great graphics and design, beautful music and brilliantly shot cutscenes. Any of these aspects on their own could easily compete with the best the 'real' art world has to offer, but combine them all onto a screen and they suddenly lose credibility. Why?
No really, why? In this day and age computers are everywhere in our lives. Saying you don't use computers in 2012 is almost akin to saying you can't read. And with that comes gaming. There's games to suit everyone these days. From pick-up-and-play popular games like Farmville and Angry Birds, right through to life-devouring games like EVE Online, it's one of the broadest and most accessible artforms ever.
And that's why I'm gaming in the evenings after work, instead of doing a Bob.
