I love reading, I love gaming and most of all, I love free, so I asked for a copy of her book to be sent along.   I am not finished yet, but I have read enough to be pleasantly surprised by several elements of the book, and wanted to frame my future review of her work in terms of my own “play reality.”

First off, her book is co-written by Teace Snyder, FTW a self-proclaimed “life-long hardcore gamer” and founder of the gaming site www.teace.ca.   His influence and understanding of our community is evident from the very first paragraph and throughout the book, and it immediately sparked a curiosity in me regarding how this book might differ from my preconceived notions of what a ‘video game researcher’ might look and sound like.   In addition, he is the researcher/ author’s twenty-something son, and the subject of a large portion of her life’s work.   Interesting…

What I’m talking about are the dark ages when people couldn’t illuminate rooms with the light from their handheld videogame consoles.   The dark ages when people didn’t know videogames could brighten their free time and spark their imaginations because, quite simply, they hadn’t been invented yet.  Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true… seriously!   You don’t believe me do you? You’ve already put down this book and started playing a videogame haven’t you!?

Guilty as charged!   I am not going to talk much further about the book itself.  I haven’t read enough to decide if I agree or if I think it’s a pile of shite, but the book is well written, and appears to take an even-handed approach to the topic.  I will write a comprehensive review when I have given the tome its due.

I remember when video games didn’t exist, because I was there.   It is a well documented fact that I am a hardcore gamer, with a long history in and around gaming.   Gaming is at the very core of who I am, the man I have become, and I am only half-joking when I tell my wife that I want “Cyndre” on my tombstone next to “Alex.”   I have been Cyndre for over 60% of my life, and the line between internet persona and real life human, no longer exists in any concrete form.  I don’t ‘play someone else’ on the internet, what you see is who I am, and who I am has been shaped in both good and bad ways, by gaming.

I am a very blessed and lucky husband of a beautiful, intelligent woman, and the proud father of two amazing little children.  I have been successful in the corporate world and I have started several successful businesses and now list “Entrepeneur” as my full-time occupation.   I credit gaming for many of the skills that have allowed me to accomplish what I have in my life.   Focus, creativity, problem solving abilities, social interaction, organization and leadership skills….   even blogging and creative writing have helped me excel in areas that have no relation to an online world.   I want my children to grow up as gamers, to love and respect the magical worlds we play in as much as I have, but I also want them to temper their fascination with gaming in a way that I have never been able to do.

I suffer from a gaming addiction.   For as much positive that has come in my life as a result of gaming and online worlds, there have been negative consequences as well.   It took me many years to realize and acknowledge this as a serious issue for me, and I and those around me have suffered as a result of that addiction.   I continue to game despite this, because it is a large part of who I am, and without it, something feels like its missing.   I have taken months, even years off from serious gaming, and I miss the friends, the connection that exists in our  community.  I miss the challenge, the entertainment, and I tend to find myself wasting as much time watching mindless television in place of the MMOs, which is far less emotionally and mentally healthy.

So many gamers and gaming advocates choose to ignore the negative social consequences that exist as a result of gaming and MMOs, but that is just as disingenuous as those we rail against who seek to tear our community down with false findings from their so-called research.   We as gamers need to understand and acknowledge the good and the bad related to the games we play, the time we spend doing it, and how it impacts us and those around us.   Without research… honest research in this area, and we as gamers willing to read, understand and adapt to those findings, we will never advance the genre socially.

I look forward to reading more of Dr. Gackenbach’s book, and I hope that my initial impressions of her temperament with regards to the topic are correct.   We need that research, we need more like it and we need it written in a way that gamers will understand, absorb and react to.

~Cyndre

My Play Reality is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Yes, this is one of those extended metaphor posts that takes an example from another setting and applies it to gaming.

The simplest guide is to look at the customers. If the restaurant has the right people eating there, the food is probably good. Who are the right people? The ones with interests aligned with yours. If you are reading his book, Mr. Cowen assumes you are with him, but notes that you can reverse his advice if you are looking for status over food quality. If you’re looking for authentic X cuisine, you want to see people from country X. If the decorations means nothing to a middle American audience, and there are people shouting at each other in a language you do not understand, and it is poorly signed in a strip mall, this is a restaurant that draws in people who would know good X food. It must be surviving on quality. If you see lots of smiling faces and people enjoying the atmosphere, they are enjoying the atmosphere first, the food secondarily. Restaurants are businesses that respond to incentives, and if they get more customers from their music than their food, they will put give more attention to the music. Tourists are a bad sign; repeat customers are the ones who will judge a place based on the quality of the food. Trendy food is bad; hipsters are not known for being drawn to quality.

If a restaurant can live off reputation or being a status symbol, it will. This is not to say that the Michelin-starred restaurant will be bad, just that the $200 meal will be about as good as the $10 meal at the strip mall place without a celebrity chef, assuming you know the right things to look for rather than the Chinese buffet with food sitting in brown sauce for hours. Using reviews is a skill that relates back to the previous paragraph. What are the people praising? If the food (and specific dishes) are not the first thing, the food is “also nice” rather than the primary draw. Find the most recommended, big-name place in town then go three doors down to the place taking its overflow customers with 90% of the quality, 50% of the price, and 0% of the wait. If you’re Googling for recommendations, don’t look for “best restaurant [city]“; that has too much noise. Look for the best cauliflower or duck restaurant, even if you do not want those specific dishes, because the websites getting that specific really care about the food being served; read their other reviews for useful advice on what you really are looking for.

Of course, this advice is tuned to foodies and the adventurous. If you really like burgers and chicken strips, congratulations! The core of the restaurant system is tuned to you. If you like Americanized Chinese food (and many do, American, Chinese, or Chinese-American), there will almost always be somewhere in town serving it. Pepperoni pizza will always be there for you. There is nothing wrong with that, although you might want to branch out and see what other culinary excitements exist. But it will always be easy to find, and it is the more discriminating tastes that will be harder to satisfy.

Okay, let’s bring it around to gaming, for anyone who has not caught the connection. Who is playing your game and why are they playing it? If they look like you or who you want to be, that is a good sign.

Farmville players are not gamers; if you see a real gamer praising a Facebook game, it might be worth considering, but generally the entire area is a wasteland in terms of gaming. It seemed to have promise briefly, but no. They are almost explicitly time-killers with cash shops rather than games. On the other hand, if all you want is a loose connection to people and about as close as your non-gamer mom gets to gaming, go for it. But don’t expect it to be the gateway drug that leads grandma to Halo.

World of Warcraft seems to have become MMO McDonald’s. Again: not a bad thing, millions of customers, but it is tuned to the median. People praise it for the low-level questing experience, although to my mind you find that better elsewhere these days. Amongst serious gamers, people talk about gear and raids. If you like progressive tiers of raids, WoW is the place to go, as if McDonald’s had a biker bar attached to the back. People talk about improving gearscores and specific bosses. IF you don’t care about gearing up, WoW’s endgame will bore you.

In Star Wars: The Old Republic, developers and players talk about stories and companions. Personally, I tend towards books for stories, but I hear only good things about SWTOR in that respect. It seems to crush WoW for that low-level questing experience. If that’s what you’re looking for, SWTOR is the best thing ever. But I have yet to hear anyone say great things about running an alt through the content again or about the endgame. People ride the rides at the theme park and then they leave. This is a great thing if you are looking for a short-term experience, but then so are single-player games.

EVE Online players are the most hardcore of the hardcore. If that is you, and you love PvP, there is no place better to be. If you are happy being a cog in that PvP empire, there is no better place to be. If you love economics and spreadsheets, there is no better place to be. Those are the customers it successfully draws and retains. If that is not you, this is not your game, but EVE really is a serious gamer’s game.

A Tale in the Desert is that tiny place in the strip mall. Mr. Cowen cites a restaurant where you order in advance because it is run by one guy with just a couple of tables, and he cooks everything to order. Tiny, tiny niche, very good at a very small range. Worth considering whether that might be your niche. Players there talk about the community and the crafting. I cite it as the most hardcore PvP game ever, but that aspect is used to keep EVE players out. ATitD is also for the hardcore, but the community differs.

City of Heroes players want to talk about their costumes. Hmm, that seems like a gameplay warning. The big thing you hear is about these dozen alts he made, and here are the costumes for each, and I’m trying all these different power sets. I’ll talk about the gameplay, because the higher levels are great for mass AoE insanity, but the biggest draw seems to be the visuals, the diversity of play options, and the style.

Guild Wars (1 & 2) players seem to be all about mechanics, which makes sense as we don’t have a live game for the latter yet. I was interested in stories about Guild Wars because people discussed their skills and combinations and synergies. I don’t recall much about the setting or community, just the thousands of skills and what you could do with small sets of them. Guild Wars 2 is too early to tell; we’ve been through years of promoting it one system at a time, but the people who are into it seem really into it, gamers, which is a good sign. Granted, we the MMO gaming bloggers did the same with Warhammer Online, and that turned out like it did.

When people talk about Lord of the Rings Online™, they talk about the setting. You get to play in Middle-earth! There is a central storyline quest, like in SWTOR, except you get Legolas instead of lighsabers. That’s pretty much the main draw. There are festivals and hats. You don’t go to LotRO for the quality of the endgame raiding. You go to play a hobbit and to meet Gandalf.

And we’ll end with Rohan’s quote on TERA:

Still, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. TERA chose high heels, skimpy armor, and lolicons. And thus they get the audience that is primarily attracted by high heels, skimpy armor, and lolicons.

: Zubon

Shopping By Customers is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Scarlet “MMO”

Except for the aforesaid exception, the MMO genre seems to be bleakening. With a gracious nod to Beau Hindman, I would say that this only seems to be the case for so-called “AAA” titles as F2P titles seem to flood across the land like a scute mob.

38 Studios MMO in-development now has Rhode Island managing some of it’s affairs. TERA launched, I guess, but it is going on sale within virtual minutes afterward, which as Syp says after only two weeks of launch it smells funny. Star Wars the Old Republic was a nice flash in the darkness, and its current state seems better than most. Yet, EA/BioWare is constantly sending out bat signals of free weekends, and other silly gimmicks, which seem to indicate a sinking ship, whether it actually is or not.

Yes, Syncaine, EVE Online glorious light of MMOs is standing by, and I’ve actually been somewhat interested in taking a peek at Rift again. Rift has remained rather solid, for lack of a better word. Perhaps “excellently managed” would be better, which only benefits subscribers all the more. They seem to be managed in ways to benefit both subscribers and the company, which even without stockholder-screeching subscriber numbers seems to be a pretty awesome way to go. That’s how EVE Online started, more or less. A sustained MMO is the most successful MMO.

This of course leads me to Storybricks, and I agree with Ethic that it would be a terrible shame if this project succumbed to the darkness. Yet, I can’t help wonder if they had stayed away from the three scarlet letters and simply likened the toolset to a creative tool with a rockin’ multiplayer aspect. Bhagpuss alludes in the comments that games like Neverwinter Nights might have been a better selling point. If you have a few extra bucks, Storybricks is a good cause to add light to the MMO world in a different way.

Undying aRPG

The ultra-blogs seems to be bouncing back from Diablo 3 woes quickly. Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn are both claiming the tide with events like Torchlight 2 stress test weekend and the successfully ended Grim Dawn Kickstarter. Then there is a free-ish Path to Exile, which people are saying neat things about.

Yesterday morning’s RockPaperShotgun impressions on Diablo 3 really hits it home. Did Blizzard really spend this many years working on the perfect barrel crumble instead of simple UI updates? On some level I plan on getting Diablo 3, but it didn’t feel like a “must have” from the start. It definitely does not now with all the server woes and lackluster impressions. It will likely have a Metacritic rating above 90 anyway by the time all the reviews drop.

The Irreversible Point

Life goes on anyway. I just picked up Dear Esther for $5, which was exactly the amount I wanted to pay for the experience. The game broke 100,000 sales in doing so, which seems pretty good for thechineseroom already at work on two more games. I also picked up Gratuitous Tank Battles, which is a tower defense style game. The developer  added a little campaign, but the crush of options would have been much better suited to a whole progression-scale campaign. For about $20, it is probably a tad expensive to have an ultra-deep experience. It really more amounts to fiddling with tanks and defense towers as toys rather than a deep tower-defense game.

I really think that if the developer created another “Gratuitous” game but took the time to create a tutorial-type campaign where a player was given increasing tasks to progress through the whole game instead of being handed a monstrous rule set, they would have a big hit for strategy enthusiasts. My favorite tower defense games seem to start with 2-3 towers instead of 10.

#Realfood

As a quick aside, today is Food Revolution day. Jamie Oliver is one of my personal heroes, and his first show The Naked Chef really transformed my ideas of food. We’ve really embraced the idea of ”naked food” at our household. One of our favorite dishes is smoked salmon, roast asparagus, and pasta with olive oil. It’s simple, fast, and fresh. Our main dinners are usually stir fries and pastas because they can carry nearly anything.

I’ve spoken before on how it is relatively easy to eat healthy. I implore you all to cook something new today. Viva la revolucion!

–Ravious

Languished Thoughts is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I have to admit that I took the bad news about 38 Studio’s difficult financial situation this week rather hard.  I have been following this game since before the company was even formed, when Curt was talking about his desire to build something great, something he could be proud of and something he would enjoy playing after he retired from baseball.   When two of my favorite MMO bloggers and game designers, Steve and Ryan, joined the team, and then Salvatore, McFarlene, Rolsten the names kept coming…  I was excited.

The single greatest moment in my blogging career was related to 38 Studios and Copernicus.  In 2007 I wrote here at Kill Ten Rats about the game, and Curt Schilling stopped by to chat.   Curt is a hero of mine.  He is a legend in my hometown, a devoted husband and father, a pillar in every community he has lived, a vocal advocate for many worthy causes, and above all he is a gamer.   A sports giant that I can identify with on a personal level, and one who has proven himself to be an honest, honorable winner.

To read the troubling issues that Curt and the team at 38 Studios are going through right now, is heartbreaking.   I don’t know what will happen, but I hope for the best.  I want to play the Amalur MMO.  Keep fighting guys, give us a world we can fall in love with.

If you build it, we will come.

~Cyndre

38 Studios is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

It might be the most coveted name for Guild Wars 2 at the moment. Greedy name grubbers. It’s amazing that there is so much greed around names.

Four Days. That’s it. I honestly thought that once my account was linked I would get quite some time to lock down my Guild Wars character names. Let’s see, I have 10 character slots in Guild Wars with the majority of characters being over five years. Guild Wars 2 comes with 5 character slots… perhaps? I have four days to decide how many character slots to fill with old names or risk losing them. Or, in profitable terms, I have four days to decide how many character slots to buy.

That’s pretty rough. Then again, there a few names I am looking at like a vulture. How sweet it would be if that jackass that owns “Hiro Protagnist” let’s that name go back in the pot. (Actually the jackass is a pretty cool guy I have talked to once or twice to in Guild Wars about his monopoly of that name.) I’m sure on day 5 there are going to be plenty of vultures like me trying orphaned names. Greedy name grubbers.

What I would love is to be able to also safeguard a few one-word names, ArenaNet. I am sure I am not alone in the willingness to throw down a couple bucks to bogart one. ArenaNet is already about trading off time vs. money with the gem exchange, and the launch day name snipe is purely about time (with a huge amount of luck). Next beta weekend event just open up the gem exchange with a microtransaction to safeguard the name.

ArenaNet could even make it a lottery. Pay $1 to enter a lottery pool to win the name “Legolas” or “Drizzt”. The three-thousand losers that don’t get the name “Legolas” get $1 worth of gems instead. That’s $3,000 in ArenaNet’s pocket, and a fairer way to get that name.

Why isn’t ArenaNet greedier?

–Ravious

[GW2] I Name Thee Greed is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

: Zubon

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

[GW] Luxon Realism is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Basically, what I mean by this, is we have gotten into a rhythm that essentially guarantees that every ISK of activity within our system is harvested in short order of it materializing, and the skill level of the pilots doing the work has gotten to the point that this is a largely trivial effort.   This leaves little ‘content’ left for the other 22-23 hours per day when Anomalies or Signatures just haven’t spawned ‘yet.’

Yesterday I was out scanning the home system, and found three Signatures and five Anomalies had built up since many of our crew spent Tuesday battling Error 37 instead of Sleepers.  I quickly resolved and ignored our static connection which had been bookmarked earlier in the day, and within a few minutes I was adding new bookmarks for a Gravmetric Site (YAY!) and an outbound connection to Class 3 W-Space.

A month ago, we viewed Wormholes in our system as security threats, and something to be distrusted and feared, and we largely collapsed or criticaled them as soon as we found them…  ESPECIALLY if we had content to play around with in our system.

Now, the vast majority of our pilots see a Wormhole as opportunity.   This is a critical step in the progression and development of a Wormhole corp who have aspirations to eventually grow beyond the “Kiddie Pool” as one of our friends refers to C1-3 systems.

Wasting no time, I warped to our new playground to have a look around.   Entering C3a, I quickly identified just one Cosmic Anomaly, a Tower and  Bestower Industrial ship which I assumed was unpiloted inside the POS shields, using my on-board scanner.   In addition, a quick glance at the POCOs (Player Owned Customs Offices) that appeared on both my Overview and D-Scan identified the occupants of this system.  

This is important for two reasons…  First, I plug the system ID into Staticmapper which will tell me the Class of wormhole if I don’t already know, the probable Static connection,  the Variable, which are buffs or debuffs applied by the complexities of the system’s sun, and the level of activity in the system based on Kills of Sleepers, Players and Pods.  Next, I plug the Corporation’s name into both Evewho, and Eve-Kill to get some intel on the residents of the system with whom I am now co-habitating.

In a matter of minutes I know I am dealing with an Industrial focused corp with limited activity and membership, I know when they are active primarily, and their general efficiency with regards to PvP (i.e. where they hunt, or get hunted, and how they fare in those encounters, as well as the ship classes they typically use.)

Rechecking D-Scan, I determine that these pilots are offline, and I am free to launch probes to see what else this system has to offer.   A quick, single probe scan reveals six Signatures, one of which is the connection to my C3 from whence I came.   While my single probe was timing down, I was launching and positioning an additional six to create a complex, multi-axis scan machine that resolves signatures quickly and accurately.

The Signatures end up being three Ladar sites (Vast, Barren and Minor) and two additional Wormholes, both leading to High Security Space in two different regions.   Checking D-Scan again, and noting that I am still alone, I take the time to warp around, Bookmarking both strategic locations within their home, as well as to create two Tactical Bookmarks, which essentially refer to area’s of space that can not be warped to without active piloting of a ship, or Combat Scanning Probes.

I have done this, because tonight, we will be back.

I quickly post a message on our private forums regarding the find, and put out a call for pilots to temporarily suspend their raid on Error 3006 to come wreak havoc on our neighbors.

At the dedicated time, pilots begin logging in and we enter C3a with a contingent of Sleeper ready Battlecruisers to clear both the NPCs from the Ladar sites (which I warped to and activated earlier) and the single combat site.   After the sleepers from the Vast Ladar site were dealt with, the combat team moved on, and our three Gas Cloud Harvesting ships warped in and got to work.

 Over the course of the next few hours we pillaged their system of every last ISK of content, before heading back to our home system and finishing the night by clearing our own Anomalies.

Maximum Efficiency in our home system, and getting close with our neighbors.  We still have work to do, to improve our PvP efficiency, but that is progressing well also.   Once our skill ques catch up to our goals, we will be ready for bigger and better Classes.

~Cyndre

[Eve] Maximum Efficiency is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I recently spent over an hour chatting with Brian “Psychochild” Green about his latest project, Storybricks. I had to be honest with him and explained that I just did not give Storybricks the time it deserved. I took a glance at it, didn’t “get” it, and moved on. Therefore, I wanted to give him a chance to help me understand just what exactly are they trying to do. I feel their biggest problem is that people are trying to relate it to anything else currently out there and falling short. It is easy to explain something by saying “It’s sort of like this.” but there is nothing sort of like this. Truth be told, they really have something new and interesting on their hands and it would be a terrible shame if this project failed due to nothing more than people not understanding it.

Let me take you way back, let’s call it 10 years, to the days of my very first MMO, Asheron’s Call. At first I thought it was some stupid game my brother played until he dragged me online kicking and screaming. Shortly after that, I was blown away. Just imagine and the things that can happen. Worlds change, big bad dragons are slain and disappear. Entire cities are destroyed and left in ruin. I couldn’t wait to see what the future held. Jump forward to World of Warcraft. Static world, static story, individuals have very little impact on the world. That said, huge success. Some tried to innovate and failed, which only leads investors to point at WoW and say we need more of that, just put it in a different setting. To that I say BORING!

Here we have a group of folks daring to do something different. Creating a storytelling system to allow everyone to tell a story. Allow everyone to live your story. Create your own NPCs and breathe life into them. Or death. It’s up to you. Don’t feel like creating? Just play! Permanent changes are possible. Individual players CAN have an impact on the game. Storybricks is the first thing to come along since I began dreaming of what could be possible in the MMO industry that matches up with my expectations. The problem was simply that I didn’t get it. I had grown so used to having story be the part of the game that you skipped over because you just wanted to find out the quest objective, reward, and how quickly you can finish it and move on.

When I look back on my MMO gaming history, certain events stick out in my memory. They all were situations where the players decided they needed something more to happen in the game. Where players took it upon themselves to become the Evil Wizard that the new guild applicant needed to convince to give away his staff in order to become a full fledged member of the guild in Asheron’s Call. Or where two players role-played racing spaceship thieves that bragged about their heist in general chat only to have other players become involved in the ship recovery in Eve Online. Or where over 50 players banded together to help a lost child find their mother in Anarchy Online. All events role-played by real people. All events that I’ve never forgotten about.

Imagine what you could do if you could create your own NPCs to fill those roles. Imagine what you could do with a group of people and an entire city filled with your own custom designed NPCs that react in various ways depending on how the players interact with them. Some players might get rewarded. Some might get tossed in jail. It’s really up to you. The only limit is your imagination.

So now I am asking you to do what I’ve done. Give Storybricks a little more time. Dig in, let it sink in. Try to understand just what might be possible. Create and share a story, win prizes. The truth is, every time something “different” like this fails, it just leads to more of the same. It would be a damned shame if we looked back in 5 years and wondered what if. Keep Storybricks alive. The game industry needs things like this to succeed.

- Ethic

Spotlight on Storybricks is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

It can be very frustrating to log on, scan the home system and the surrounding constellations, and realize that there is almost nothing you can feasibly do that will be of any significant benefit.   On a positive note, the last payout was a whopping $348,000,000 ISK so we are really getting good at milking the spawns we do get.   Now if we can figure out how to make content more consistent, though I think we all already know the inevitable answer… move to a bigger Wormhole with a 2nd WH Static.   If only we were ready for it, but we will be soon.

~Cyndre

[Eve] Fickle Wormholes is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

: Zubon

Other Funding Sources is a post from: Kill Ten Rats