LootBot3000

February 12, 2009

A Culture of Anticipation?

Filed under: MMOs — Exeter @ 7:05 pm

What do iPhones, Mats Sundin and Star Wars: Episode I (…and II…and III) have in common?  Hype.  Overblown, monumental, undeserved hype.  One moment you’re cheering for an upcoming product and eating nothing but President’s Choice ramen noodles so that you’ll have enough cash to spend on it.  The next, you’re waiting for your bus muttering “that’s it?” to a sketchy-looking dude whose scent is an interesting blend of McDonald’s and dog sh*t.

It happens all the time in music, technology and movies and for as long as I’ve been playing on my computer, it’s been a part of being a gamer, too.  Anyone else remember “The Last Thing You’ll Ever Desire” or “John Romero’s about to make you his bitch”?  More recently, we’ve seen a couple of spectacular flameouts in the MMO space with the Mount Everest Award for MMO Epic Fail, at least in my opinion, going to Brad McQuaid for his sterling job on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Let’s have a gander at the life-cycle of disappointment from an MMO player’s point of view.  A “revolutionary” title is announced, trickles of information, maybe a screenshot “leaks” from the studio, forums go wild, a glowing “hands-on preview” or three is published on gaming news sites and in print magazines, everyone goes nuts in anticipation, it’s finally released … and falls flat on its face.  Criticism starts, flame wars erupt on forums with thread titles containing the word “betrayed” and bloggers start the “I knew it” phase of gaming grief.  Yet before the blood is mopped up and the dust has had a chance to settle, another “revolutionary” title is announced along with a suspiciously well-crafted trailer *cough* Bioware *cough* and just like lemmings, we’re hopping off of cliffs in an effort be among the first to start a Facebook group, blog or tweet about how amazing this title is going to be.

For every title that pans out as hoped, there are many more that don’t.  You’d think that we’d be much more cynical, reserving judgement ’til a product is in-hand or at least in beta before singing its praises.  But we don’t.  Why do we do this to ourselves? Are we being blindly optimistic, insanely masochistic or do we simply live in a culture of anticipation always looking for the next great thing?

February 10, 2009

The Medium Matters

Filed under: Life, Nerdiness — Exeter @ 11:07 am

After renting the same apartment for nearly a decade, my wife and I are in the middle of moving to our first house.  So, needless to say, we’re busying ourselves with packing all of our stuff and I’ve got a considerable collection of DVD’s, video games, books and miniatures to move. Definining a genre is largely subjective — trying to categorize Star Wars always made for long distractions during the old pen & paper RPG nights — but I like to think that I’m a well-rounded nerd, able to enjoy them all.  However, I find that my own level of enjoyment of a particular genre is dependent on the medium in which it is presented.

Take video games as an example.  There’re no two bones about it, I’m an MMO addict.  However, no matter how much I like the idea of playing a sci-fi MMO, they don’t tickle my no-no spot.  It could be just the current offerings, but science fiction (Anarchy Online, EVE, Tabla Rasa) hasn’t translated well  into an MMO for me.  Also, despite my nostalgia for the days when a friend and I used to pool our allowance to get the most out of our comic book purchases, the superhero setting doesn’t do it for me either.  No, when it comes to getting my groove on in a virtual world, a high fantasty setting (EverQuest 2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online) is my opiate of choice.  Single-player games, on the other hand, run the gammut from shooters (Call of Duty 4) to sci-fi and fantasy RPGs (Mass Effect and Planscape: Torment) to 4X-games (Civilization 4).

When it comes to the written word, however, I find myself completely turned off by novels in the high fantasy genre.  I couldn’t get into Lord of the Rings (though I enjoyed the films and the MMO), I wince at the thought of reading anything based on Dungeons & Dragons and I daydream about suing Robert Jordan for all the time I wasted turning pages in his Wheel of Time series.  In fact, with the exception of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, I have yet to enjoy, and now make it a point to avoid, books that prominently feature magic, the supernatural or fantastic races.  When I read, I generally turn to either alternate history or historical fiction.

Film and television is a different beast entirely and with  Lord of the Rings being an exception, I find once more that I’m uninterested in fantasy as a genre. This is where the various shades of science-fiction truly shines in my opinion.  From the drama and techno-babble of Star Trek, to the gun-slinging space-cowboys of Firefly/Serenity, I’m a total junkie for all things science-fiction.  My DVD library is stuffed with geek-approved flicks like Star Wars and Alien(s) as well as seasons of Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 with scant offerings when it comes to anything involving swords or sorcery.

So while some, including friends of mine, can consume anything even the slightest bit related to science-fiction and fantasy, for me the medium definitely plays a role in shaping the nerdy aspects of my personality.  And the moral of this story? Blogging is a great way to reflect on your hobbies and a fantastic way to avoid having to actually pack it all into boxes.

February 4, 2009

The User Interface: A prime-time drama?

Filed under: MMOs — Tags: — Exeter @ 7:59 pm

While I’m a huge fan of the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) genre and love hopping around from site to site on “teh interwebz”, reading blogs dedicated to them, sometimes I’m left scratching my head. At the moment, I’m sitting here, an eyebrow arched in a way that only villains with twirly moustaches and stovepipe hats ought to do at the notion that an MMOG fails because it didn’t come up with a fancy new take on the user interface.

Am I the only one that thinks that it is asinine to yank out the “Boo! Hiss! Copycat!” card simply because the interface is adopted from another game and doesn’t have go-faster stripes on the handlebars? There’s a reason that the world hasn’t embraced the square steering wheel; version 1.0 (Project Codename: Roundie) was a success! Why? Because innovation is not the point. It serves it’s purpose and that’s that. However, some pundits would make it a sin to adopt a UI based on WoW’s hugely successful model and then constantly praise WoW’s easy to use UI as one (among many others) of the reasons that it has enjoyed so much success and become the cornerstone of the genre.

I know. Your eyebrow is twitching now too, isn’t it?

At the end of the day, a game should be judged on what it does provide, which leads to the only question that matters when it comes to reviewing a game: is it fun? Something that can’t likely be deduced in less time than it takes to make a bag of popcorn in the microwave.

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