Tag Archives: Video Games

A Long, Strange Trip.

As mentioned here, my laptop has been angry with me for going on 4 months or so.  This cause me to retreat away from my usual comfort space of Team Fortress 2 and MMOs, and try to find ways to amuse myself.  I went two totally different directions – Facebook games, and diving back in the Xbox 360.  It’s come back now, in time for me to test SW:TOR and get back in to WoW for Cataclysm, but the damage has been done.

Facebook games are what they are.  I found a couple nice card based ones that occupy me well enough (Eredan and Urban Rivals, primarily, though Clash and Tyrant are in there too).  It’s the 360 part that’s really interesting to me….

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How Games Talk to Us

Been meaning to respond to Enrique’s comments on what appeals to us in games for awhile. Finally found a moment to breathe and decided to post this up rather than, you know, breathing.

It’s a breakdown of what I see as the four core tasks that constitute most gaming experiences. I’ll leave a link to the full article, but for  a tease, here’s the Cartesian graph that finally let me start wrapping my mind around where I was going.

Four Key Gaming Tasks

Look forward to any comments.

How Games Talk to Us.

Bah. Humbug.

One of my guildies recently posed a question that boiled down to “Is it weird for a 42 year old guy to play DnD with 20 year olds?”  He wanted to get back in to gaming, didn’t have a group, signed up for the friendly local Comic Book Store’s open gaming.  Group was young, his coworkers are hassling him, he’s confused. 

This annoys me.  It’s reflective of the nature of this site, sure, but come on.  If he’d gone to a gym and gotten in to a pick up game of basketball with a group of 20 year olds, it’s not a thing, as long as he can keep up.  If he’d gone to a bar to watch a sporting event of note, and there were 20 year olds there celebrating, and they started high fiving, it’s not a thing.  If he’d joined a community theater group and been Claudius to a 20 year’s Hamlet, and they hung out, it’s not odd.  But if he games, it’s weird?

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‘Ware the anger of video game widows

Dee made a post about a woman named Jillian R, a “Phoenix Early Childhood Parenting Examiner” (citizen reporter, in other words) who posted what amounted to a rant on video game players and how they ignore families.  My first impression was this is a woman who has dealt with being a “video game widow” in the past, and she has a very large axe to grind because of it.  A video game widow, as the name suggests, is someone who has become ignored by their Significant Other due to the latter always playing video games.  Internet widows are a related flavor.  While Jillian R tries to lend some legitimacy to her post by mentioning “research” that will appear in forthcoming articles, this first post is really nothing but an internet rant.

Her basic argument – that video games take away from family time – has been applied to practically every hobby of the past 50 years.  Golf, cars, crafts – you name it, someone has been a hobby widow of it at some point.  The argument is not without merit, as there are some people who do completely ignore other responsibilities in pursuit of their interests, but it’s not isolated to video games nor is it the inevitable outcome as she tries to argue.  Case in point: I know several families who make playing video games a part of their family life.  They all play together, have fun, and strengthen family bonds.  I also know several people who may not play with their families but are nonetheless in healthy, happy, long-term relationships.  I’m just one person; multiply that by the number of gamers out there, and you can’t claim that video games destroy families.

The rest of her arguments are just plain juvenile.  The money thing?  How much does a family outing to the movies cost these days for a family of four?  Let’s see… assume $9 tix for the parents and $6 for the kids, plus candy and sodas for everyone, you’re looking at $50-$60 for two hours of entertainment, about the price of the average new release video game.  The difference is the game will last you ten hours minimum, and likely more.  Plus, if it’s a game for the family, you can all talk while playing.

How about the “sex appeal” of male gamers?  I don’t know about her, but most people I know don’t pass judgment on the worthiness of a mate based on a single attribute.   The gamers I know run the whole spectrum of individuals – male and female, husky and thin, short and tall, passive and aggressive, liberal and conservative, pale and tanned.  They play sports, shop, pet their cats, feed their kids, and weed their gardens.   Does having a green thumb make you “unsexy”?  To put a personal note on it, my girlfriend does not like video games in general, but that has not impacted our 3.5 year relationship.  She also recognizes it for what it is – a hobby, and something that her own daughters enjoy.  It’s something we even do – gasp! – together, and she and I both enjoy watching her 10 and 7 year old play Guitar Hero; laughing, smiling, and having a good time.

The short of it is that people like Jillian R are the reason this blog exists.  Too many of them have some bizarre, biased view of geeks as pale, fat, mouthbreathing, socially inept soda suckers who spend all their time in their mom’s basement.  While I’m sure there are some who fit this stereotype, the great majority do not.  By painting video gamers with the broad brush of family haters, she does nothing but show the world her own insecurities and past pain with someone who did ignore her.

1UP already stole my headline

Rock out with your block out was pretty obvious, to be fair.  I can’t make up my mind how I feel about this.  On the one hand, the concept I find to be pretty stupid, but then I don’t have kids.  But I’d kill to have two or three of the songs on that brief preview list available in the full game (Kung Fu Fighting and Song 2 if you’re wondering).

Blame the parents-pt. 1

Women like this make my blood boil.

It’s not even so much that the only good thing she said video games can do is improve hand/eye coordination.

It’s not even that she said that instead of playing video games, people should try to be better spouses/parents.

It isn’t even that she “GUARAN-DANG-TEEs” in all caps that no geek will ever get married if s/he doesn’t stop button mashing.

It’s the fact that she resorted to name calling  as old, tired and overused as her C U Next Tuesday when she called gamers fiscally irresponsible junior high aged kids with no social skills. Oh and here’s another brilliant quote:

” …your THUMB muscle isn’t really the first thing the woman is going to look at say, “Oooh….What a MAN!”

Oh and apparently, all women want a man that is “kind, gentle, sincere, and puts them first as a priority” so apparently, males that game are complete assholes and physically weak individuals that won’t be able to  protect us poor damsels in distress when we call out for help.

Views?

Domo arigato, Harmonix

Harmonix announces that next week’s downloadable content for Rock Band will include a 7-song pack of REO Speedwagon and Styx.

Jesus, if they’d only mix in some Van Halen, I could recreate the Texxas Jam in my living room.  I’m regressing back to my youth in the best possible way.

Update: The Texxas Living Room Jam playlist from the songs available for the game:

“More Than A Feeling” – Boston (Texxas Jam, 1979)
“(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” – Blue Öyster Cult  (Jam, 1979)
“The Trees” – Rush (Jam, 1979)
“Hello There” – Cheap Trick (Jam, 1980)
“Roll with the Changes” – REO Speedwagon (Jam, 1981)
“Any Way You Want It” – Journey (Jam, 1982)
“Bad Reputation” – Joan Jett (Jam, 1982)
“Renegade” – Styx (Jam, 1983)
“War Pigs” – Black Sabbath (technically not a Jam band, but Ozzy performed in 1984)
“Highway Star” – Deep Purple (Jam, 1985) 
“Living on a Prayer” – Bon Jovi (Jam, 1985)

Why yes, I did in fact only pick songs for the bands that would have been released concurrent with or prior to their Jam appearance.  Well, almost…Bon Jovi’s appearance predates Slippery When Wet by a year.

What?

On definitions.

It’s hard to say whether or not a geek has come out of the basement, as one must define “the basement” before this statement has any purpose or meaning. It seems there are essentially two interpretations:

  1. The basement is literal, as in the cubby hole in which the geek seeks comfort, outfitted with the tools of their particular geeky flavor.
  2. The basement is figurative, an expression encompassing the comfort zone surrounding someone and their geeky hobbies that encompasses not necessarily a place but also the people who serve as companions and/or confidants.

As an architecture and gaming (video, board, and RP) geek, the first interpretation interests me as physical space. Everything from the kitchen table to a home theater falls within this category. Some geeks only engage in their chosen hobby in a particular locale, either out of necessity (a video game console is generally required to play video games) or preference (the kitchen table has the memories of countless campaigns etched into its scarred surface). “Coming out,” in this case, generally means removing oneself from this ensconced location (or a similar venue) and going somewhere where the activity in question may be observed by those who do not participate. Perhaps this means a coffee shop for a pen-and-paper roleplaying group, or a gaming room at a convention (such as what Austin had during SXSW).

Other people will pursue their interests wherever and whenever they can. To them, space matters not, for the pursuit of the activity is tantamount. They still insulate themselves from the outside world, however, through their environs and/or companions. Gaming in the living room or the local hobby store is no different to the guy with his trusty dice bag and clip board of character sheets in his backpack. The second interpretation applies more to this type, as coming out of the basement means removing themselves from the protective bubble shielding them from what they interpret as the “outside.” An example for our dice-toter may be teaching his RPG-neophyte friends how to play D&D at home.

Naturally, these two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and may depend on the hobby in question. As I mentioned earlier, some require special conditions or equipment, or they may require multiple people. Technology has a hand in blurring these lines, however. Thanks to portable game systems like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, a video gaming geek can “come out of the basement” in a park or on public transportation. Laptops, PDFs, and dice rolling programs allow RPG geeks to throw dice almost anywhere. Coming out of the basement, therefore, is getting easier to do. The preponderance of technology in our lives makes the executive sitting on the commuter train, staring and poking away at a little box cradled in his hands barely worth noting. Maybe he’s reviewing today’s meeting schedule on his Blackberry, but perhaps – just maybe – he’s finally tracked down that elusive, rare Pokemon.