Category Archives: The Android’s Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Ponies, Pop Culture, and Games

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There is no cow level.

There is, however, a pony level in Diablo 3, if the datamining is correct.

The blog's official response.

Now our initial idea with this post was to semi-jokingly rescind any previous doubts we’ve expressed regarding this game, and leave it at that, but I actually think I can turn this into a more in-depth blog post, so here we go:

I’ve heard some people express dismay at developers who throw too many knowing pop culture references into otherwise immersive games. Blizzard is a good example here; most of us played Cataclysm when it first came out, even if you quit directly after reaching level 85 the way Mister Adequate and I did.

Mister Adequate actually rerolled entirely and leveled to 85 from scratch rather than playing his existing level 80 draenei, presumably because he breaks out in hives when he is not playing a tauren warrior. Picture is related.

Cataclysm, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is chock-full of references, jabs, and full-on homages to pop culture. Uldum is pretty much entirely dedicated to it, between the Indiana Jones storyline, the Katamari Damacy quest, the Hackers references, and anything else I’ve forgotten. Actually, I’m pretty certain that there were more playful pokes at culture than there weren’t.

There were a lot of people who weren’t exactly fond of this, feeling that an MMORPG should be more immersive and that what WoW was doing here was purposefully pulling players out of the world that they had so carefully crafted. Others thought it was all in good fun and point out that, come on, Blizzard has pretty much always had their tongue firmly in cheek.

This isn't Warcraft in Space!

I tend to sit somewhere in the middle; I like my games full of rich lore but it doesn’t always have to be super-serious business. It might say something about me that Uldum was my favorite zone in Cataclysm by far. And ultimately, for me, it comes down to the gameplay. Civilization isn’t exactly the world’s most accurate history simulator– in the game Mister Adequate and I are currently playing, my civ just discovered an ancient manuscript containing the secrets of nuclear fission– but it’s sure as heck fun.

What do you guys think?

The Android's an Amateur Developer (Ideas), The Android's Horn-Rimmed Glasses (Indie), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Patronage and endowments.

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Something interesting has occurred to me. I was thinking about how other creative/entertainment sectors will very often have people who do things because they want to, rather than because it’s what the market demands. Now this may seem like a senseless statement but I can assure you, even if you’re trying to stick to your guns on every last syllable, when you’re writing a book you still have “Who will this appeal to?” “Will this drive people away from future books?” and the like in the back of your mind. Well, I do at least. Even with something I can completely control like that, there are such concerns. Even so there are always people out there who are happy to use their success to make something they really want to make, be it a movie or a TV show or whatever, even if it’s not going to be a major blockbuster. Similarly, we have all kinds of patrons for the more revered older arts, donations to save a statue or to support a poet or the like. But do we have the same for games?

Well I suppose the short answer is “Yes.” but that wouldn’t make for very satisfactory analysis, tempting as it is to leave it here and abscond to New Antioch where I am trying to craft a brutal urban wasteland from which the poors and minorities have no escape.

Okay, blog's over. Job well done! Time for donuts.

We do have, for instance, the indie game scene, where things like Dwarf Fortress and Aurora are superb examples – the former is funded by donations alone and the latter doesn’t even accept those because Walmsley’s independently wealthy. Toady has pretty explicitly said that while he takes player thoughts into consideration he’s making a game that he and Threetoe want to make, and if other people want to play it and support it that’s great, but if they don’t they’re not going to make radical changes to the game in order to appeal.

Similarly there are people of particular renown who have some leeway even in major companies. I imagine that if, say, Shiggy says “Making a game.”, Nintendo will pretty much let him do that. And we know there are people like Sid Meier, Will Wright, and Peter Molyneux who have had in the past a huge amount of discretion in what they make. But these times seem to be lost now.

In essence I’m just wondering – what if some really rich dude comes along, gathers up a bunch of programmers, and says “We’re making the best space 4X game ever. It’s going to be compared positively to MOO2. We will do what we think is best for the gameplay, not for sales. Profits and sales are secondary to the main objective.” Not indie, but real big-budget, triple-A stuff. I tell you what, when I am mega rich and rule large tracts of the universe, I’m going to make sure some great vidya gets made. But in the meantime I wonder if we might not benefit from a greater spirit of philanthropy towards games in this manner, and help spur new innovations and experimentation.

Edit: Unrelated, but something everyone should read. I think this is one of the most important articles currently on the Internet regarding gaming, it touches a lot of points about a vital game and company.

The Android's Casting Magic Missile (RPG), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

Multiple and/or Ambiguous endings

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Please note this post will contain spoilers for Breath of Fire III.

As you may recall, I’ve been playing through Breath of Fire III lately. Well, last night I got to the end of it, and I did something I never have in the other times I played it – I chose the ‘bad’ ending. What you’re intended to do is fight and overthrow the Goddess, who is keeping the world in a static place, in the belief that change can only make things even worse. There are hints of this throughout the latter part of the game, and she admits as much herself – but in my adulthood I’ve found her case rather more seriously presented, and compelling, than I did when I played through when I was much younger.

Now, to be clear, the game suffers from what I would suggest are poor writing decisions. One of the characters is implicated as being very much more important than you presume, but they only actually reveal this when you are talking with the final boss before deciding whether to acquiesce or to fight. Therefore I can as a player understand it all and deduce that this character is probably speaking sensibly – but it should be rather less convincing to my character. Indeed, some of the other reactions to what they learn in the very last room of the game are a bit weak as well, though it’s somewhat more forgivable because the characters really couldn’t have time to develop more complex opinions at that point.

Also because one of the characters is still a freaking onion

It got me thinking about it all though. The ‘bad’ ending isn’t really presented as being all that terrible, as long as you keep in mind what the characters know rather than what you know about tropes. And what the Goddess said about the possibilities of the alternative mean it’s quite believable that they would be happy enough with the outcome. Despite this it feels a bit lacking – it’s clearly the “bad” ending because if nothing else, there’s a good deal less to it than the “good”. A lot of games seem to suffer from this sort of thing; sometimes an alternative ending is acceptably given less time, or is quite clearly the worse option to take, and very often it’s not left up to the player to fully decide whether their course of action was right. Games try to do this sort of thing, and for many “player choice” and the like is very vaunted, but a JRPG nearly 15 years old seems to make a better stab at actual ambiguity and leaving it to the player to decide the worth of what they did than a lot of modern ones with their binary DOUBLE GANDHI/EVIL LINCOLN dichotomy.

These days I would normally load up a save towards the end of a game and see the other ending(s) just for completeness. I’ve decided not to with this playthrough. It feels satisfactory leaving it where it is.

The Android's Favorites, The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

Dearly Beloved

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The other day Pike and myself were looking back with fondness on a certain videogame company. It was quite stunning, once we actually sat and talked about it, just how many games they were responsible for, and not just games, but true classics, things that defined – even created – genres.

Which company am I talking about? Well, which one came to your mind when you read the above? In this case we were discussing MicroProse, but there are quite a few companies which could have been mentioned here and all would fit; Bullfrog, Rare (Of old), Codemasters (ditto), Psygnosis, etc. (And these ones are just examples from the UK!)

Tally ho, chaps!

Where are the equivalent companies today? Who are even candidates? You can point to people who have had huge impact – Bungie for instance – but one series of FPS games, however brilliant and however influential, does not put them in the same league as these giants who bestrode the 80s and 90s. Nobody that I can think of today has the ability to put out X-Com, Transport Tycoon, Master of Orion, Civilization, and Rollercoaster Tycoon. Now, okay, you look at any of these companies and they tend to have something of a narrow focus, at least in the games that really stand out, but still, nobody today seems to come close, regardless of focus. Maybe Blizzard and Valve, but the former seems to be determined to fall from grace, and the latter hasn’t released something that isn’t a hat since the Bally Astrocade was new. I’m not trying to say there are no good companies anymore or anything, but none seem to really have the scope and grandeur of some of these old-timers we so fondly remember.

Who is your favorite game company of yesteryear? Am I overlooking someone modern?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Thoughts on “The Gaming Community”

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Games are ubiquitous. I don’t know if they’ve quite eclipsed movies and TV as the world’s entertainment medium of choice but they’re certainly close. Pretty much everyone plays games, to a greater or lesser extent.

Which is why I think it’s slightly unusual that a.) people tend to refer to “the gaming community” as a whole, and b.) tend to position it as something weird/edgy/underground/geeky/pick your adjective.

Now don’t get me wrong– gaming communities exist. Obviously. These, however, tend to be focused on a game or series, a genre, or a company. Or they’re centered around some other sort of common ground: a blogosphere, an idea, or what-have-you.

These communities have one base thing in common– a passion for games– but after that, you’re dealing with a very wide range of individual people with differences in opinion, taste, and so forth. And I think that sometimes, everyone forgets this. Players forget this. Companies forget this. The “non-gaming world” (as it exists) forgets this.

Just as one can’t make sweeping generalizations about any group of people, one cannot make sweeping generalizations about “gamers”. For example, not all gamers like DLC and microtransactions– but not all gamers hate those, either. Some like them a great deal. Some have complex opinions on them.

Likewise, not all gamers play Call of Duty or WoW or TF2, but some do. Not all gamers dress up and go to cons, but some do. Not all gamers think Portal jokes are still funny, but some do.

And now the obligatory pony image.

When you have a group of people that is this diverse in tastes and interests, you’re going to have a lot of differences in both opinion and background. And that’s a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, stereotypes exist, and so depending on who you ask, “gamers” all do this or “gamers” all want that. Even we, as game players, are guilty of making these generalizations sometimes. It’s okay, it’s a part of human nature. But I think the world as a whole would do well to try to remember that it’s a bit more complicated than that.

…anyways, not sure where I was going with that. I just thought it might be an interesting subject to toss around. I will tell you one thing that all these different communities have in common, though: friendships (and more) are forged in them. Heck, Mister Adequate and I met on a video game forum seven years ago, which explains how a couple of kids on opposite sides of the pond got together in the first place.

And that’s pretty fantastic.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Flash of Steel’s National Characters series

I just want to make a very brief post to plug Troy Goodfellow’s National Characters series which he has recently completed over at Flash of Steel, a blog anyone interested in strategy games should keep up with. It’s essentially a look at how games implement different countries and civilizations, what this says about our perspectives, and what impact it has on games and gamers. It’s something to mull over on Sunday!

The Android's Distracted Boss (Casual/Flash), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

I’m terribly sorry for the impending rant, but…

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The front of this blog was, until I posted this, a very pleasant post. It was an enthusiastic post by a long-time gamer about one of her very favorite games ever. It heartens me when someone enthuses so about something they love, doubly so when it’s in a medium I cherish.

And that is why it hurts so much to post this, because there are ugly, ugly things afoot and I’m just not able to stand them anymore.

Let me begin with a small sample of events:

XCOM

That’s enough by itself really, and I’ll write at length about why it does matter that they’re using the X-Com name for something that is entire not X-Com at another point, but suffice it to say, FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-

Age of Empires Online

I’m not opposed to online/casual games in principle, but on the other hand, you can pay a full $19.99 USD for a single civilization pack. OR you can pay $99.99 (Yes, one shiny cent shy of a Ben Franklin) for everything. Oh no wait, I’m sorry – everything for now. That’s just the “season 1 pass”. It lasts for the next six months. Ninety nine dollars for six months of a game. And they say MMOs are bad value!

Brian Reynolds now works for Zynga – founded by a man who wanted to be able to buy victory because he sucks at games – and defends the most excruciatingly casual, pay-to-win games imaginable.

Many companies (I’m looking at Namco real close right now because of their SCIV shenanigans) put DLC on the damn disc. Even Paradox is making DLC now, though at least that’s all genuinely optional stuff. How long until their graphical DLC stomps on player-made graphics mods though?

DLC in itself can be okay. Look at what Rockstar make: The Ballad of Gay Tony, The Lost and Damned, and Undead Nightmare are all absolutely superb. But they’re all pretty much expansion packs in their own right. The increasing nickel-and-diming of players for stuff that is either on the disc, should have been in in the first place, or would once have come free in a patch (Remember those? When patches had stuff in them?) is just disgusting. I get going where the money is, but there’s still plenty of money to be made on those of us who actually play videogames; We’re the ones who still buy tons of games in the recession, we’re the ones who still buy Nintendo consoles even after they made the GameCube, and we’re the ones who are going to invest serious time and money into gaming.

In short,

Mister Adequate has evolved into The Incredible Hulk

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

In Which Video Games Make Me More Productive

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Anyone who knows me at all will know that I write a lot. Writing at least one novel a year– for NaNoWriMo— is standard for me, and this year I decided to bump it up a notch and write TWO novels, so before November hits this year I am plinking along in Camp NaNoWriMo.

Between odd work schedules, the possibility of moving (again) and the way writers’ block loves to time itself so it hits when I actually have time to write, it’s been slow going. I’m a good five thousand words behind or so– not a thoroughly insurmountable gap, but still a sizable one. Anyways, I was really having a lot of trouble motivating myself to do anything, but then I hit upon a brilliant plan. Basically, I’d force myself to write a good sized paragraph (or the equivalent of it, should I be writing dialogue or something), and then I’d reward myself with ten turns of Civ.

…I was not expecting this plan to work as well as it did.

I think I’ve written more in my current book since implementing this plan than before I did, and I just started doing this a few days ago. I’m knocking out a thousand words an hour– a very high rate for me– and that includes spending a good chunk of time in game.

Playing Civ like it's my job.

The best part is that once I really get going with writing, I don’t have much trouble continuing. This is something I learned back in the day when I used to trick myself into writing by setting a “one sentence a day” goal, knowing full well I’d write more than a sentence. The same thing is happening here; I’m frequently writing two or three paragraphs in between my ten turns of Civ. But the one rule remains steadfast: I must write at least one paragraph before I let myself play more Civ. You wouldn’t believe how fast the writer’s block dissolves when I’ve got Civ an alt+tab away.

I feel really good about this. What’s that you say, world? Video games are a waste of time and are keeping us from being more productive?

Come back and talk to me about it after video games help me motivate myself into writing a novel.

Well, I’m off to do more writing and Civ’ing. I eventually plan to extend this to other turn-based games as well, should I tire of Civ. I’m excited. I can’t wait to SMAC and write.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned from Video Games

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Sometimes I’ll be driving down the road in town and I’ll see a sign outside an area that’s being developed. It’ll say something on it like “2 acres, zoned commercial.”

And I know exactly what they’re talking about. I mean, why wouldn’t I? I’ve played SimCity.

In fact, 99% of what I know about city development and planning comes directly from SimCity.

Just like everything I know about Europe in the 15th century comes from Europa Universalis 3. They don’t teach you about this sort of thing in school– not here, anyway. You get one year– nine months– of “World History” and they have to cram everything from pre-history to the present era in those nine months. Do you think they have the time to tell you about a bunch of dinky little countries in Europe that have since disappeared or merged into larger ones? They don’t.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is responsible for the rest of my knowledge of pre-19th century European History.

Now, some games, of course, expressly set out to be educational. Some of them succeed, and some of them don’t. The Oregon Trail is one of the ones that succeeded. Thanks to that game I am expert on dozens of landmarks dotting the midwestern US, as well as several other interesting tidbits, such as: how to use 19th century first aid to treat a variety of illnesses, when it is appropriate to ford the river or caulk the wagon when crossing a river, and how to identify a wide variety of poisonous plants. Whether or not any of these skills will come in handy some day remains to be seen, but one can only hope.

Strategy games have taught me a good deal about war through the ages. I can’t claim to be at the same point that Mister Adequate is (the chap actually has a master’s degree in this sort of thing, thanks to an interest in it that was sparked by video games), but where else would I have learned about various types of war doctrines or crazy sounding terms like “amphibious invasions”? The History Channel, maybe.

Next up, on the History Channel!

Actually, I was recently flipping through a coffee table book my mom had lying around; it was called “The 100 Most Important Ideas in Human History” or something. Reading it was like reading an enhanced version of the Civilization tech tree. I mean, you literally could have released this book as an addon to a Civ Special Edition package or something and no one would have questioned it because the game and the book cover the exact same material.

You know, I could go on and on with sort of thing all day. Just like all other media, video games teach us things and mold us into who we are. Sure, we all love to relay that infamous Pac-Man joke:

This one.

…but somewhat lesser known is the fact that surgeons who played at least three hours of video games a week made 37% fewer errors in surgery simulations. Or that kids who played a math game over the course of a few months saw their test scores increase by eight.

Glad to see I’m not the only one who learns from games!

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

Playtime Confessions!

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Yesterday I officially joined the 300 club in Civ IV.

This isn't counting about a dozen hours of vanilla Civ IV before jumping up to BtS, nor is it counting about a dozen hours of a particular mod that Steam wouldn't track properly.

Ahh, it feels good. I love statistics like this. I love them to the point that I have been known to buy games on Steam that I already own just so it can start tracking my playtime. (It’s like Gaben really knows how to reel us obsessive-compulsives geekwads in!)

A few other games I played a lot tracked your time as well. I was really close to 300 hours in FF Tactics Advance. I’m also relatively sure I was close to it in my original Pokemon Red file, before it was inadvertently deleted.

Of course, MMOs deserve to be in a tier all to themselves when it comes to playtime. If I recall correctly, before quitting, I’d clocked up about 220 days played in WoW across all of my characters.

That's well over 5000 hours!

I think over half of it was spent on my main, Tawyn the Night Elf Hunter. As time went on and Blizzard bumped experience rates and made questing and LFG more streamlined, and as I got more experienced at the game myself, I’d spend less time on an individual character. For example, I think my resto druid had a mere 12 days or something similarly miniscule for her /played, despite the fact that I got her to (then) endgame and was raiding with her for a little while.

So yeah, I doubt any other single game I’ve ever played could come close to what I dumped into WoW. Like I said, MMOs deserve their own tier in this “game”.

And I still wish I could see an accurate playtime counter for everything I’ve ever played. That would be fascinating.

Okay, lay it on me. What are your most played games, gentle readers?