Posts filed under 'Video Games'
If we gamers consider ourselves Homo ludens—humans who play—we can’t ignore that we have subspecies. Many call themselves “gamers,” but most mean something more specific. What distinguishes Homo ludens from people who don’t call themselves gamers, what unites us, is the perceived geek-factor of the games we play.
Within our geeky species, though, we’ve got varieties so distinct from one another that they can hardly be considered the same animal.
- Homo ludens sangoculi
Those whose eyes begin to bleed after avoiding blinking for five hours during an important raid. In other words, video gamers.
- Homo ludens terataleae
Those who play with monstrous dice. In other words, tabletop roleplaying gamers.
- Homo ludens con-concilii
Those whose definition of “diplomacy” is almost the exact opposite of Webster’s. In other words, board gamers.
- Homo ludens shovelens
Those who shuffle. In other words, card gamers. This subspecies is broad enough to encompass such infraspecies as homo ludens shovelens economica (trading card gamers).
No taxonomy is perfect. As with life taxonomy, the borders are blurry and subject to change. Unlike life taxonomy, in which separate subspecies rarely mate outside of unusual circumstances, Homo ludens is basically engaged in one enormous, non-stop orgy of crossbreeding. In common with Douglas Adams’s Hagunenonns of Vicissitus Three*, Homo ludens is a super-evolutionary being that morphs from one life form to another several times over lunch.
Despite that, though, most gamers do seem to wind up identifying more as one particular subspecies than any other, at least for a given time. For instance, although many MMO players also play roleplaying games, the vast majority of WoW players seem to be Homo ludens sangoculi, and many have never touched a icosohedron in their lives. A quick survey of gaming blogs supports this hypothesis. There are many video game blogs, many roleplaying game blogs, and so on. But there are very few blogs that embrace both kinds of games.
I enjoy different varieties of games with equal fervor. Surely, I’m not the only Homo ludens ecclecticus, right? Who else is out there? And what other subspecies belong in the taxonomy?
*If you don’t know about the Hagunennons, do get your hands on a copy of the original The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC radio production. It has quite a few gems that didn’t survive to the many later versions of the property that will absolutely tickle a fan of the setting.
October 16th, 2007
| I don’t just like games; I’m a foodie as well. On Fridays, I publish a drink or cocktail recipe that I enjoy as an accompaniment to some sort of game. These aren’t necessarily drinks I’ve invented, but they are superior potations that gamers who tipple are liable to enjoy. |
My brother-in-law introduced me to scotch, and to this most strongly flavored variety, all at once. Pronounced something like “la-froyg,” this single-malt Scotch whisky is decidedly an acquired taste. I happened to acquire it on my first sip, but most people have an adversarial relationship with it for a while.
If you come around and learn to like it, though, you’ll probably put it near the top of your Scotch list.
My brother-in-law says drinking Laphroaig is “like drinking a campfire . . . in a good way.” It does taste like you’re pouring ash, cinders, flame, and smoke onto your tongue. But it also tastes as if you mixed all that with honey.
Several varieties of Laphroaig are available for sale in the United States, but I’ve only ever gotten bottles of my preferred kind, cask-strength, from my brother-in-law. He picks it up in duty-free airport shops or asks his coworkers to grab a few bottles when they travel.
The booklet that comes with the cask-strength bottles recommends adding water. In my experiments, I’ve added as little as one drop or as much water as the booklet recommends, diluting one part whisky with three parts water.
It’s always good, but I’m getting more and more partial to the more dilute mixes. At the 1:3 ratio, Laphroaig seems to become a Scotchy wine. Because your taste buds don’t get deadened by the strong alcohol and flavors, you can appreciate every nuance. The color rarefies to a paler amber. I can imagine Tolkein’s elves sipping a wine something like this. And perhaps some more exotic race that favors some fanciful acorn wine would find this pleasing.
I can’t see putting ice in this, ever. And using Laphroaig for a scotch-and-soda would be an abomination.
I do not drink alcohol to get drunk or even for its mild depressant effects when I’m stressed out. I grew up in a family that taught me mental exercises to deal with negative emotions, and those exercises almost never fail me. I do find the process of making a perfect martini very meditative (in fact, I enjoy the process of making one almost more than of drinking it), and I won’t pretend that I don’t sometimes enjoy the effects of strong drink.
But such effects aren’t the reason I drink, and if I ever find myself depending on a chemical such as ethyl alcohol to deal with life troubles, I’ll know I have a problem.
But when I played the “Robbing the Cradle” level of Thief III: Deadly Shadows in a darkened room with a top-notch set of headphones, I had to take a break for a couple of fingers of Laphroaig cask-strength. I credit that one computer game experience with showing me just how immersive a good game can be and, for the first time ever, teaching me to love the horror genre.
I was terrified. I actually trembled as I explored the abandoned insane asylum. And almost all the fear came from the sound itself. The terror of not knowing what was going on, wondering who or what made that noise, wondering why the place was so vast, so empty. And finally uncovering the source of all the madness, even as I became so trapped in it that I just couldn’t escape.
Thief III may have been the worst of the three magnificent Thief games (probably because they bowed to the Xbox restrictions), but it was still a damn good game. And “Robbing the Cradle” is a big part of the reason why.
Even now, sitting here in a brightly lit office, remembering the experience makes me wish I could uncork a bottle of Laphroaig in a warm room with a merry fire and good friends. We’d laugh. We’d sing. And then, as the fire died down, maybe one of us would tell the tale of the Cradle again . . .
August 24th, 2007
There’s nothing much there yet, but the Bollywood3d web site is live. One Sanjit, apparently associated with the effort, commented on my last post on the subject. He mentioned that, yes, it’ll be possible for people in the U.S. to play, so I’ll be watching very, very closely.
July 31st, 2007
Simonc at GameSetWatch has some interesting thoughts on whether free games are a threat to the AAA game publishers. He concludes that some consumers may “get their ‘fill’ of games from the free Flash-based ones.”
Personally, I think the competition driven by free (or ad-based) games put out there by non-game companies to drum up business for their main business lines will only force the real AAA publishers to innovate (or find innovation and exploit it), and the best games will continue to thrive as they outpace the free loss leaders (though they may put in more and more ads, till they become as bloated with product placement as hit movies are today).
Wind-up toys, once a mainstay of toymakers and a delight to children, are now shoveled over the counter along with Happy Meals. But the best toymakers have gone on to create innovative and genuinely fun new toys over the years.
July 30th, 2007
I love Bollywood movies. It’s a lucky Sunday that I catch the four-hour Bollywood music video show on my local cable company’s “international” channel.
So I’m very excited that Bollywood3d is experimenting with game tie-ins to Bollywood movies. What they’re doing actually sounds a lot like what Google and Universal are doing with the Ultimate Search for Bourne. The games will come out before the movies they’re tied to, to build up hype and interest. But unlike the Search for Bourne, players will buy these games, and it sounds like real development may actually go into them.
Apparently, the Indian computer game market is slow, but Indian culture and history and its awesome movie industry make fertile ground for fascinating and fun video games. Will I be able to participate? I don’t know. I don’t speak one whit of any Indian language, and I probably wouldn’t qualify for the prizes even if I can participate.
But I’ll be watching in December, when the first game is scheduled to come out.
July 26th, 2007
Today, Tobold wrote about what may be the death of turn-based strategy games, pointing out that even though technical limitations don’t force game developers to opt for a turn-based model, in some cases a turn-based model can offer greater depth of play.
Attempts to move tabletop gaming online have mostly failed. For instance, I ran a campaign in Neverwinter Nights that didn’t work for two key reasons. First, it took an enormous amount of time for me to create the game world between sessions. Even if I’d had more and more time to practice developing the world with the provided toolset, I’m sure I would always be spending more time creating scenarios than running them.
Second, as soon as combat began, the players were hopelessly outgunned. I kept lowering and lowering the difficulty of the fights in the game, but the players couldn’t keep up. Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games are designed to simulate combat to some degree of accuracy, but the all depend on a turn-based model.
Sure, this means a few seconds of battle can take an hour to play out. Sure, in a real fight people don’t have time to make such decisions. But it allows people pretend they actually have combat skills. No one’s ever penalized for not remembering a keyboard shortcut and losing because her war-hardened combat veteran character forgot to raise her shield at the right moment.
(Neverwinter Nights actually was a turn-based game, though by default set to simulate real-time action. In a multi-playered, game-mastered game, though, allowing all players to pause was impractical. It simulated D&D reasonably well for the solo campaign, but failed for group play.)
Porting board games to computers has been more successful simply because no one’s trying to change the rules. No one wants to play speed-Monopoly, with button-mashing magnates making a Trump-like killing in the real-estate market simply because they can roll their dice the fastest. (Okay, maybe that’d be fun, but only in a weird way.)
But something breaks down with roleplaying games. Computer RPGs are an almost completely different genre than tabletop RPGs, even if they’re built around the same ruleset.
I asked before (in the context of voice chat) about non-MMO online roleplaying. But I’m thinking about it even more, now, ’cause I’ve got a friend from college who wants to start a campaign up again.
How can I get the tabletop roleplaying experience with remote players? Now that video conferencing is effectively free, we can at least talk to one another. And I’ve mentioned Gametable before, which provides a shared map and die rolling.
But are there any tools that really take advantage of web-connected computers to simulate the game itself while still giving the richness of turn-based play? Any tools that can handle the intricate interplay of a multi-character fight—with positioning, fancy moves, conditions that persist from turn to turn, all the number crunching—while still giving the players freedom to choose at (at least moderate) leisure their characters’ next actions? If so, I very much want to hear about them!
Has anyone successfully moved a tabletop campaign online? If so, what tools did you use? If it failed, what didn’t work?
July 26th, 2007
In the spirit of my call for more innovative independent games, I’d like to second David Kushner’s suggestion in The Sandbox that students get access to cutting edge development tools.
Games that come packaged with level-building tools have fostered some real contributors to the gaming industry, and many of the great innovations in gaming have come from new outsiders who see things differently and are willing—and free—to take risks.
Kushner’s comparison of the future of video game design to YouTube is, I think, very insightful. Content development has shifted. Anyone can create a periodical, share a movie with the world, or publish a novel. And anyone can do these things cheaply. If it becomes easier for fancy games to be done inexpensively, we may well discover the next great type of game on some form of social network.
Sure, 99% will be crap, but the social networks already have tools in place to sift through silt to find the nuggets of gold.
July 25th, 2007
Last night, for the first time in a long time, I visited the WoW battlegrounds. Before going, I respecced my 70 dwarf priest to a standard PVP build (this one), took a deep breath, and plunged into Warsong Gulch.
I chose Warsong because I spent long hours there back when I was level 19. For my first visit back to a world fighting intelligent enemies (instead of moronic mobs), I figured a familiar battleground would be a good idea.
And I’m not happy with my performance at all.
Oh, we did well. We won both matches (one 3-to-0, the other 3-to-2). And I think I aided in the victory in both counts. As a “face melter,” I was in the top five on the damage count both times as well as being second in healing for the Alliance side.
But I played without skill. I performed as well as I did on the ladder partly because I don’t think many others played with much skill. In my case, I spent a lot of time trying to remember button mappings. (And accidentally trying to use the click-to-cast combinations from Clique while forgetting to actually mouse over a unit frame—duh!)
When I wasn’t distracted by figuring out how to cast a spell, I was bewildered by what spell to cast. Should I be healing? Spamming damage? And if so, what damage spell was best?
I occasionally made good use of Mass Dispel, both offensively and defensively. I saved some lives by with Vampiric Embrace, but I don’t think my direct heals were ever done wisely.
How do I know I can do better? Because a few of the enemies were played with true finesse. I don’t know if they had highly superior gear or better mods or macros, but they obviously did the right thing given the situation. I was lucky if I even realized what class I was facing.
I think, in the end, that I need to practice. Just as going through any PVE fight has become so simple and automatic that I almost don’t have to think about it, I’ll need to achieve the same in PVP fights if I want to feel happy about my skill. It may take a lot longer to get there, given the intelligence behind the pixels I’m fighting and the great variety of abilities I’m up against, but it’ll be fun learning.
So, once more into the breach, dear friends. Once more!
July 20th, 2007
In the 5 days I’ve been in the Tabula Rasa beta, I’ve tried the game three times. If I’m interpreting the NDA correctly, I can’t say anything about “software, software code, designs, graphics, rules, playing strategies, artwork, visual depictions, plot, theme, setting, characters, characterizations, skills, marketing and promotional plans.” That’s pretty much everything. I think it’s probably okay to talk about things mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the game, although I’m not going to repeat what’s said there just to have something to say.
Instead, I’ll just record some general reactions:
- I am excited that combat itself may demand some player skill. It does feel somewhat more like a first-person shooter or over-the-shoulder shooter. It’s still damn easy, but it’s fun.
- On some of the very early missions, when my character ran with a bunch of NPCs to defend a front from invading aliens, it really felt, for a brief moment, like I was participating in a front-line battle. The odds seemed overwhelming, and even though I didn’t come close to dying it felt like a narrow victory. This was probably the most fun I’ve had so far.
- The missions since then have basically felt the same as any MMORPG, with the normal blend of FedEx, kill-10-rats, and gather-20-widgets quests. Not unfun, but nothing new.
- The cloning system seems clever (save off a copy of your character at any time, so you don’t have to re-level), but it appears there’s no way to respec. Why not just allow players to spawn new characters from any branching in the class tree at any time, cloning retroactively?
- The UI has all the familiar elements, but the default controls are different enough to give gameplay a more action-oriented feel.
- As in other MMOs, everyone basically runs around jumping.
From other MMOs, I’m used to extensive online resources in which other players have figured out optimal specs, written up spoilers for every single mission, and optimized lists of equipment. That simply doesn’t exist yet (and what’s on the playtest boards is speculative and hard to find). This uncertainty is fun, and I should remember to embrace it in other games (that don’t penalize bad choices too harshly).
So far, I don’t think I’d call Tabula Rasa anything like a “next generation MMORPG.” It is, indeed, the same game with a different coat of paint. Whether that science-fictional coat of paint with the games innovations and tweaks is enough to make it a contender for real market share—and more importantly for my dollars—remains to be seen.
I’ll just have to keep playing to find out.
July 19th, 2007
World of Warcraft will definitely have built-in voice chat soon. Many other MMORPGs already have built-in voice chat. For games that don’t have it yet or won’t have it, most serious players use other voice chat programs. (This is not news.)
I don’t exactly fit a traditional gaming category. (And really, who does?) But I do like the storytelling, immersion, and roleplaying aspects of MMORPGs, for all that they’re virtually non-existent.
No voice chat tool I’ve seen really supports these things, but there’s no point in bemoaning the fact. Voice chat is too darn useful to gamers to leave out. All multiplayer online games will and should have it.
So my question is, how can people who are interested in immersive roleplaying continue to enjoy it while voice chat is inherent to the online games they enjoy? They could:
- Turn it off or ignore it
Which, of course, means deliberately crippling their game experience.
- Restrict RP to chat channels
Which means continuing to RP as they have in the past.
- Try to RP via voice
Which will interfere with people who wish to roleplay characters of of the other sex, will expose bad actors, and will upset the illusion of the gameworld. Of course, tabletop gamers are able to suspend their disbelief for these sorts of things, but one of the reasons RPers use WoW and other MMORPGs (which aren’t really a good vehicle for roleplaying) is because they can simulate some aspects of their character more easily than they could at the gaming table.
In the end, voice chat is another intrusion of reality into the illusion of the game world. Since UO, MMORPGs have become less and less simulations and more and more games. And I’m not really complaining about this. More people want games than want simulations that make you wait eight in-game hours to go shopping.
So perhaps the future of online gaming isn’t in the big MMORPGs with persistent worlds, but in bringing tabletop games online. I know of several products trying to do this (like Gametable), but I haven’t tried them yet.
And if some sequel to Neverwinter Nights makes campaign construction and game-mastering easier, that may be a solution too. I ran a campaign for about ten sessions. The story was good, and the roleplaying was good (and all text based). But preparing for sessions and actually running the game was almost impossible. But if something like that were easier and faster, I would eagerly give it a try.
Has anyone had experiences with non-MMORPG online roleplaying? What was your experience like?
July 18th, 2007
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