You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Gaming’ category.
Okay, first of all, go to Jezebel and read the whole damn article. It is good and does not just apply to the gaming sub-culture, it works everywhere for the most part and is useful to have in the back of your mind as you see stuff go down around you. The excerpt deals with the online gaming community, but can easily be applied to meatspace and the silly douchy “objections” are in the same vein.
- Now I’m going to address some objections from the very juvenile delinquents I’ve been talking about -– if any of them have read this far.
- “What’s the big deal? It’s harmless banter. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the game.” To start with, it’s our game, not yours, and we get to decide what’s acceptable behavior. You meet our standards or you get out. Apart from that, nothing that is done with intent to cause hurt is harmless. The online abuse I have seen goes way beyond banter. Threats are not harmless, they are criminal acts.
- “But this is part of gamer culture! It’s always been like this!” No, it is not. I’ve been gaming for over 40 years, and it has not always been like this. Yours is a nasty little subculture that arrived with anonymous online gaming, and we’re going to wipe it out.
- “This is just political correctness.” Invoking “political correctness” is nothing but code for “I wanna be an asshole and get away with it.” I’ll give you a politically-incorrect response, if you like: fuck that. It’s time to man up. You don’t get to be an asshole and get away with it.
- “You’re just being a White Knight and trying to suck up to women.” I don’t need to suck up to women, thanks; unlike you, I don’t have a problem with them, because I’m a grown man.
- “Women are always getting special privileges.” Freedom from bullying is a right, not a privilege, and anyway, that’s bullshit. Males are the dominant sex in almost every single activity on the planet. The only areas that we do not rule are dirty, underpaid jobs like nursing and teaching. Do you want to swap? I didn’t think so.
- “It’s hypocrisy. How come they get women-only clubs and we don’t get men-only clubs?” Because they’re set up for different reasons, that’s why. Male-only spaces are about excluding women from power, and making little boys whose balls evidently haven’t dropped feel special. Female-only spaces are about creating a place where they are safe from vermin.
- “But there’s misandry too!” Oh, and that entitles you to be a running sore on the ass of the game community? Two wrongs don’t make a right.. I’ll worry about misandry when large numbers of male players are being hounded out of games with abuse and threats of violence. If a few women are bigoted against men, you only have to look in the mirror to find out why.
- “Free speech!” The oldest and worst excuse for being a jerk there is. First, you have no right to free speech in privately-owned spaces. Zero. Our house, our rules. Second, with freedom comes the responsibility not to abuse it. People who won’t use their freedoms responsibly get them taken away. And if you don’t clean up your act, that will be you.
- OK, back to the real men for a few final words.This is not about “protecting women.” It’s about cleaning out the sewers that our games have become. This will not be easy and it will not be fun. Standing up to these little jerks will require the same courage from us that women like Anita Sarkeesian have already shown. We will become objects of hatred, ridicule, and contempt. Our manhood will be questioned. But if we remember who we are and stand strong together, we can beat them. In any case we won’t be threatened with sexual violence the way women are. We have it easier than they do.
It’s time to stand up. If you’re a writer, blogger, or forum moderator, please write your own piece spreading the message, or at least link to this one. I also encourage you to visit Gamers Against Bigotry, sign the pledge, and share it.
Use your heavy man’s hand in the online spaces where you go –- and especially the ones you control –- to demand courtesy and punish abuse. Don’t just mute them. Report them, block them, ban them, use every weapon you have. (They may try to report us in return. That won’t work. If you always behave with integrity, it will be clear who’s in the right.)Let’s stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the women we love, and work with, and game with, and say, “We’re with you. And we’re going to win.”
Diablo 3 is an action RPG, in other words, it is one happy dungeon romp after another, always in search of the biggest and brightest loot to make the character of your choice that much more powerful. D3 does a wonderful job at using a variable reinforcement schedule when it comes to getting your items as all treasure dropped by monsters is random, so you never know when your lucky spin is going to come up. Someone did their psychology homework, full marks Blizzard. D3 falls down in a few areas for me that I would like to touch on, specifically the character advancement system and how, despite a plethora of neat character skills, almost every skill does exactly the same thing. I have a couple of quibbles with the character advancement schema as well that I will touch on before getting to what I see as a major problem with Diablo 3.
Character advancement, as opposed to Diablo 2, is rigid as character statistic advancement points are doled out in what is deemed to be the correct ratio for your particular character class. So, for instance, as a Witch Doctor, when you level up your intelligence always receives the majority of your advancement points. Contrast the beefy barbarian that advances her strength at a increased rate. Now, these predetermined choices make sense for how each character is designed, but by making the point allocation automatic, players miss out on customizing their characters to their wishes as opposed to what what Blizzard thinks is best. Why bother with attributes at all when they are not player controlled? This leads, in a minor way, to a certain baseline similarity between characters in terms of how they are built. You won’t find a burly mage, or a barbarian that is intellectually gifted. Not really a big problem, but it plays into my main concern with how D3 feels distinctly modular when it comes to the core mechanic of the game. 
Diablo 3’s core mechanic is to defeat monsters and gain experience and gear that make your character more powerful and set up for the next challenge. Not a complex task, but a viscerally satisfying one as you, through various means, send the earthbound minions of hell back to hell, preferably in bloody, non-tessellated bite sized pieces. I’m good with that and the graphics for the various characters their associated skills are really quite amazing. When I see a Wizard call down a meteor swarm my screen shakes and huge fiery globes of burning death rain down on the enemies – Awesome! Or when the Witch Doctor summons an inhospitable pool of acid for the baddies to bathe in, or when the Barbarian begins adding extra ventilation on the nearest demon, it is all good. But here is the thing, despite all the cool graphical monster annihilating madness being served up what is actually being inflicted upon our most gracious enemies is a number (and the exact same number in each of these cases) and its called DPS, or damage per second.
The DPS generated by your character is dependent on your (predetermined) statistics and of course the gear you happen to have on. This is where I find the modularity of D3 detracts from the game. The epic minion crisping meteor swarm cast by the wizard does damage based on her DPS rating, that same wizard could cast Blizzard, a different area of effect spell, and do roughly the same amount of damage. Different graphical effects, same end results. There is certain amount of variation as you can modify the abilities you use with different runes that are unlocked as you gain experience, this provides some variation but does not adequately address the problem of modularity. It is like playing with Mr.Potato Head, whether you slap the goofy glasses on that lovable spud or configure him to wear his nose as a hat, in the end he is still just Mr.Potato head. Similarly in D3, using the the wizard example, you can pummel and deep-fry your foes with meteors and do X damage, or you can freeze them with blizzard and do, you guessed it, that same X damage.
So all you need to worry about is your DPS (damage), the choice of what shiny way you want to deliver said damage is mostly inconsequential, because if you remember the game mechanic that D3 is based on is slay da monster, get da loot, rinse and repeat. As the game increases in difficulty instead of becoming more complex the choices really boil down to two factors:
1. How much DPS am I doing?
2. How much life do I have?
Not enough of 1 but lots of 2 means that you’re trying to defeat enemies with harsh words while your demonic foes are peeling your face like a banana and using your skin to make doilies.
Not enough of 2, but lots of 1 means your are one means you’re viciously kicking ass, chewing bubble gum and taking names until you cut yourself on the gum-wrapper,bleeding out as you keel over dead.
So really, the meta-game of D3 is finding the balance between killing your foes and not becoming fish food yourself. Determining this requires playing with two factors, your DPS and your Vitality (life), everything else is secondary to this axiomatic notion in D3. And that is where the problem for me lies.
After running like the good hamster I was on the Diablo 2 treadmill I said to myself, “I’m done with action RPG’s, they are nothing more than beautifully constructed Variable Reinforcement Schedules that soak up my free time.
I quit. I really did. I was Diablo free for about 10 years. Then,
Greasing up the treadmill, preparing for the odd late night. Off I go…damn you D3, damn you to hell…
I have a great many weaknesses, but one of the more prominent lies in the area of cooperative gaming.
Oh, how I miss the blocky good times.
I remember, back in the day, that occasionally Blades of Steel (hockey) on the 8-bit NES, a glitch would occur and somehow you and your friend could both control players on the same team. It was chaos as the controls mirrored each other so the defence guy had to be careful not to interfere once he passed the puck out his area of responsibility. It was often traumatically funny, with our pixelated little hockey avatars swooping around seemly at random, the game confused by two sets of input, while the computer went in and scored on us. Oh the angst and thrills of victory (especially over the pink tinged Montreal Canadians). In the same vein, Contra, another 8-bit classic we played to death as it was one of the first legitimate two player co-op games on the home console market. Life was good, but things were poised to become great back in the summer of 1991.
Nineteen years ago, Electronic Arts (back when EA was just another good budding developer) released NHL Hockey. My best friend and I had been waiting for this game to be released for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis for about a year. I can still remember coming home from school and seeing the large cardboard box wedged in the mailbox. My pulse still quickens at the memory.
Co-Op + Playoffs = Awesome!
You see, EA Hockey was not available in Canada(!) when it was first released, I sent away for it, buying directly from EA via snail mail. We got our copy an entire delicious month before the rest of Canada had retail access to the game. EA Hockey was innovative for its time, the first game featuring a top down vertical play action, but more importantly, you could choose to both play on the same team.
Sweet Mother of Jebus, but was it fun! The Edmonton Oilers, back in the 1990 still featured amazing talent and my best friend and I relished making the one timer players, and those oh so sweet cross ice passes from Messier to Kurri, not to mention those wacky breakaways with the speedy Petr Klima. EA did not get the license from the NHLPA so the avatars only had numbers, but that was fine, back then we knew all the numbers for the Oilers.
Oh, Mega Drive, with the crappy homemade s-video to RCA converter.
I’m sure, if I found my school records, I could track the dip in my academics when that first game was released. I’d do it again though, in a heart-beat as those were some great times for me on the video game front. Yes gentle reader we’re getting to War in the North, but know that the road getting from there to here passed through many a classic co-op title – Streets of Rage 1,2 (especially 2), 3, Double Dragon (sega master system), Contra, of course the EA NHL and NFL games, Altered Beast, GOLDEN AXE 1,2 (Oh how I miss you sweet barbarian princess),oh don’t forget NBA Jam (boomshakalaka!!).
After about 2003ish, gaming companies finally got the idea that people like playing on the same team together and titles began to pour out – Soldier of Fortune 1,2, Serious Sam, Team Fortress, SW Battle Front, Counter-Strike, Diablo 2, and of course the current pinnacle of co-op shooter gaming Left for Dead 1 and 2. (I realize this is far from comprehensive list, add your favs in the comments). The number games now that feature co-op gaming are simply too numerous to list here, however it is nice to have your particular gaming addictions properly fed. :)
Having played the Lord of the Rings games for the original xbox (and being a Tolkien fan, pre-movies) the idea of entering realms from the fantasy series has always been particular appealing. As a side note, I always wonder why developers try and take a game based around a successful and wildly popular co-op mechanic and make it into a turd-a-rific single player experience; yes I’m looking at you Golden Axe: Beast Rider.
Back to the LoTR though, on the PC-gaming front not much has been done (well) with regards to cooperative play until now. The Lord of the Rings: The War in the North fills out the cooperative role nicely so far (I’ve only played 2 of the 8 chapter of the game). Like its Mega-Drive predecessor LotR:WiN is based around the singular concept of finding neat new ways to put the pointy end of your sword into nearest Orc baddie. I was leery of purchasing the game reviews were mixed at best. What won me over was the price drop from $50down to $20 dollars. Twenty dollars is the sweet spot for purchasing most computer games, as they tend to disappear from shelves and not return until a “new and improved” gold edition (for more $$) is released later in the year. Anyhow, for forty dollars, even lacklustre hack and slash is fairly good deal.
Economics aside, I did feel a certain amount of trepidation due because this was one of those “gut-purchases” more than my usual “brain-purchases”. Hmm…how does it look?
Yah, okay…I’m sold. It is as fun as it looks (so far). Seeing that this is already some eight hundred words, I’ll continue this nostalgia/anecdata/game review in another post when I have more of the game under my belt. :)
My friends and I have been hitting the Left 4 Dead pretty hard as of late. Lo and behold, youtube can further feed the fires. This clip won’t make much sense to those who have not played L4Dead, but suffice to say, Francis is one of my favourite characters in the game.
The Old Republic (TOR) does many things right when it comes to structuring the MMORPG experience, that being said, character creation is an area sadly neglected as choice is limited and inconsequential other than for strictly aesthetic purposes. They are as follows: Chiss, Cyborg, Human, Miraluka, Mirialan, Rattataki, Sith Pure Blood, Twi’lek, Zabrak.
I bet you’re thinking, “Wow, that is lot of choices Arb. What could you possibly be talking about?”. Well as mentioned, the choices are largely ‘just for looks’ as all species share the same attributes. The lithe Twi’lek is just as dexterous as the plodding Cyborg and has the same amount of endurance as the battle hardened Sith Pure blood.
At the time of the close of the beta, each character class was really nothing more than a paper doll to hang your belongings on. This is not out of the ordinary for MMO’s as you do need to have a reason to adventure; getting all the shiny baubles to put on your character is important after all. A little more differentiation would have been nice though during the character creation process.
Bioware did give this area a slight nod as they gave each race a ‘social racial ability‘. However, these abilities are inconsequential to actually game play and could actually have a negative effect in the hands of the stupid. For instance the human racial ability is called rally – you press it and everyone around you breaks into cheers and jumps up and down. The serious role players are not happy as someone can make your character do things, albeit harmless things, with no input. The ‘serious’ role players have been quite vocal already on the testing forums about these racial abilities. My question is if you are going to make racial abilities superficial, why bother with them in the first place?
Rather than have ephemeral differences between classes, why not give actual bonus that matter to the base stats during character creation? It would make your choices matter more and enhance your connection with your paper doll. As TOR seems to have followed WOW in so many areas why not in this aspect in character creation with having meaningful racial bonuses?
Having a unique dance for being a Twi’lek is nice and all, but when the blaster bolts start whizzing about, I’d prefer to be a little more nimble because its hard to bust a svelte dance move while taking a dirt-nap.
I came in about midstream as far as the overall beta test for TOR was concerned. The game itself has come a long way since October in terms of graphical polish and some of the mechanics of the game. The TOR beta recently closed and I would like to say it left a Star Wars shaped hole in my gaming heart, but alas, it did not. The game was good, but not great.
The much vaunted voice acting was immersive to a certain extent, but because of practical limitations, most of the conversation choices during the voice acted cut scenes were of little consequence to your character or the story arc you happened to be following. So, playing as a Jedi Knight, I could sass talk my Master, follow my emotions and generally be a jerk during my time on the training planet and I would still get to the end of the content with roughly the same character stats/condition as if I had been the super supreme serene jedi mistress that was truly at one with the force. Actions with out consequences tend to make the choices offered superficial and therefore unimportant and ultimately skipped over, just like the crusty blocks of quest text prevalent in other MMO’s.
The style of other MMO’s is what I was hoping to avoid in playing TOR. Therein lies the crux of Bioware’s problem, they need to be different… but not TOO different as to make people shy away from the game. This leaves TOR looking a lot like WOW, only with a different IP and setting. Do we really need more of the World of Warcraft style of interaction? Apparently the answer is a resounding yes. The problems of TOR begin with the interface…
The GUI of TOR at the time of the beta was not customizable at all. You could have a total of four visible bars, two along the bottom and one on the left and one the right. Of course there was the alt-shift hot keyed ones, but those are a pain in the arse, not to mention virtually unreachable while you desperately attempt to stun that damn Sith Juggernaut who is cutting you a new breathing aperture with his lightsaber. The other problem is, too many abilities and buttons to press while in the heat of combat. Playing a melee character was pretty much out of the question for me as circle strafing while having to keep someone in range of your glowstick-o-doom and having the umpteen number of hot-keys necessary to beat them down was a little to steep a curve. Playing a ranged character was significantly easier, and could easily do the damage that any of the melee characters could do with less button stress.
Stress was common in PVP as all levels where thrown together for most matches, and the extra abilities the higher levels get did make the difference in one on one fights. However, with a little teamwork and communication the warzones, even for low level characters was fun and enjoyable. I’ll cover the PVP I did in another post. :>
This is probably enough for my first post on my TOR beta impressions, I’ll cover character generation and PVP in future posts.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…