Well I have to say that gaming is a big part of my life. Mostly video games, but I dabble in other types as well. And one constant in my life is that I never have enough time for all the gaming that I would like to do. I didn't even have time to write a proper post about gaming this month (though I really wanted too). But at the moment I am very busy with field work, which includes long, long days, and not being at home. As such, I cannot game or write about gaming.
That being the case I will revert to a bit of a bullet list of things I wanted to touch on.
Halo changed everything. Not just for me, but for the medium, I think.
Gaming is a valid artform.
The gaming industry and where it is headed. Big developers and corporations are required for large, and in depth technical games. But will the "impersonal corporations" hurt games? Can games continue to be good art when developed simply as a product to make money?
And lastly, I need more friends who are into gaming, for co-op experiences.
I really would have liked to write more about this topic, as it is near and dear to me, but stupid "real" life has gotten in the way. So this last minute vomit of words will have to do.
PS - this was written in my approximately half hour of free time I get while in the field these days. So I apologize if it makes no sense at all. My mind is numb.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Watching Starcraft 2 videos on YouTube made me into a man
It's true, gentle readers. Before I started watching Starcraft 2 videos on YouTube, I was not a man. More appropriately, my experience has allowed me to understand why many men who are not me are interested in things that are conservatively considered manly (and boring). Namely, watching sports and cars. Gross.
To bring you up to speed, Starcraft 2 is an online sci-fi strategy game where players choose one of three races to duke it out. The first was an incredible success and the second has been designed to facilitate the burgeoning genre of "E-Sports". Some of the top gamers make a lot of money. Some companies that you've heard of sponsor the Major League Gaming championship.
So Starcraft 2 is big, especially in South Korea. I dabbled in the first, but I was never huge into it. When the second came out, I decided I would play it a bit. Single player was fun. I turned next to multiplayer, and got slaughtered. I don't really have the time to get good at Starcraft 2, so that was that, I uninstalled it. I later learned that top SC2 players will have an APM (actions per minute) of upwards of 200. What! I can't do anything 200 times per minute.
I heard that commentated SC2 videos were online and I figured I would check it out. I found one such caster, HuskyStarcraft, who the kids seemed to like. Turns out over 600,000 kids are subscribed to him at the time of writing). He comments on SC2 videos for a living through his YouTube channel and at competitions. Neat! It turns out that I quite enjoy watching games from time to time. The game prioritizes multitasking and organization rather than strength and agility.
I was watching a tournament game and one of the players had a keyboard with all the keys removed except for those that he used to play the game. A lot of the top players are on teams and live in player dorms. People fly from all over the world to compete in tournaments. South Korea is the world's SC2 leader. The best Zerg player in the world right now is Stephano, a young man from France. This is an interesting world.
It hit me when I realized I was regularly watching SC2 videos and convincing people to watch them. I follow these just like normal mens watch sports. I get it now! I feel towards an e-sport what others feel towards prefixless sports!
I've been pretty excited since my realization and I've considered other things in my life that parallel typical man interests. I'm really into biking and can totally justifying tons of money on a bike and its components. I know what different oils to put on my bike chain for different weather, how different tires affect winter performance, and what different puncture points on a flat tire mean. Dude, I could totally be talking about a camaro here if I had a mullet.
There's an interesting book I read recently: it's called We Are All Weird. One of the gists of it is that in this day and age we have the means to be as weird as we want. If there is something to geek out about, someone will geek out about it. I hope that once this attitude becomes more prevalent that there will be more acceptance to fringe interests / less bullying / happier world. I'm not sure whether this has changed throughout my life, or whether it's just a growing up thing, but I feel like people are generally more tolerant towards weirdness these days.
Watching Starcraft 2 videos on YouTube in your boxers is probably still weird though.
Here's an interesting Husky video to get you started:
Saturday, August 25, 2012
These Are A Few Of My Favourite Games
So I literally just finished playing Journey. My brother recommended it to me months ago but I just finally got around to buying it last weekend, and let me tell you, it is a beautiful, affecting game. A new addition to my list of favourites for sure. And with that in mind, I figured I'd share that list with you as my post for the month.
#1 - Megamania for the Atari 2600
My introduction to gaming was a bit different than that of most kids born in the mid-80s. I never had a Sega Genesis or an SNES; my family didn't have a modern console until we got a PlayStation. What we did have, though, was a relic from before I was born, the Atari 2600. (My original plan for my post this month was to haul the thing out and take some pictures of it, but I ran out of time.) In case you're not familiar with the Atari, this is the system with the joystick and single red button on the controller. It's pre-NES.
And while I loved most of the games that we had for the Atari, Megamania was by far my favourite. The gameplay is along the same lines as stuff like Space Invaders and Asteroid, and I was basically a pro at it. There isn't a whole lot more to say about this kind of game, though, so let's move on.
#2 - Super Mario Kart for the SNES
We'll skip the NES because to be honest the only games I ever really played on that console were Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, which are obvious classics that everyone has played and no one needs to hear anything more about.
Mario Kart is kind of the same way, but I suppose it's more notable for me because I fell in love with it over the course of a few days spent with my family in a cabin at a lake about an hour and a half north of Edmonton. It was February and almost too cold to be outside most of the time, so the other older kids and I spent a lot of time playing Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country. While not exactly my introduction to multiplayer gaming (the Atari had a few options that weren't just turn-based, but I rarely played them), this marked the first time that I understood video games could be something played together, not just played by one person and observed by everyone else.
Also it was just a great game.
#3 - Portal for the PlayStation 3
I'm skipping over the original PlayStation and the Xbox because while I loved a few games on that console for sure (primarily platformers), none of them really changed my perspective of what a game could be. (If I'm not mentioning a console at all it's because it's pretty much off my radar completely.)
And then there was Portal. Somehow I found out it was a puzzle game, decided I had to play it, and pretty much haven't been able to shut up about it ever since. In case you've been living under a rock and don't know how this game works, it's like so: you have a gun that shoots both ends of one portal, and you use it to navigate your way through test chambers.
For me this game was also a revelation of interactive storytelling. It's a great example of how games can have stories as interesting as the ones in movies and books, and how amazing that can be if the medium is really exploited.
#4 - Minecraft for PC (or in my case Mac)
I hope I'm not mistaken in saying that Minecraft is the purest sandbox available in gaming right now. In a nutshell, you mine and you craft. This is basically electronic Lego and it pushes all of my buttons: collaboration, construction, exploration.
That's all for now, though.
What are your favourite games?
#1 - Megamania for the Atari 2600
My introduction to gaming was a bit different than that of most kids born in the mid-80s. I never had a Sega Genesis or an SNES; my family didn't have a modern console until we got a PlayStation. What we did have, though, was a relic from before I was born, the Atari 2600. (My original plan for my post this month was to haul the thing out and take some pictures of it, but I ran out of time.) In case you're not familiar with the Atari, this is the system with the joystick and single red button on the controller. It's pre-NES.
And while I loved most of the games that we had for the Atari, Megamania was by far my favourite. The gameplay is along the same lines as stuff like Space Invaders and Asteroid, and I was basically a pro at it. There isn't a whole lot more to say about this kind of game, though, so let's move on.
#2 - Super Mario Kart for the SNES
We'll skip the NES because to be honest the only games I ever really played on that console were Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, which are obvious classics that everyone has played and no one needs to hear anything more about.
Mario Kart is kind of the same way, but I suppose it's more notable for me because I fell in love with it over the course of a few days spent with my family in a cabin at a lake about an hour and a half north of Edmonton. It was February and almost too cold to be outside most of the time, so the other older kids and I spent a lot of time playing Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country. While not exactly my introduction to multiplayer gaming (the Atari had a few options that weren't just turn-based, but I rarely played them), this marked the first time that I understood video games could be something played together, not just played by one person and observed by everyone else.
Also it was just a great game.
#3 - Portal for the PlayStation 3
I'm skipping over the original PlayStation and the Xbox because while I loved a few games on that console for sure (primarily platformers), none of them really changed my perspective of what a game could be. (If I'm not mentioning a console at all it's because it's pretty much off my radar completely.)
And then there was Portal. Somehow I found out it was a puzzle game, decided I had to play it, and pretty much haven't been able to shut up about it ever since. In case you've been living under a rock and don't know how this game works, it's like so: you have a gun that shoots both ends of one portal, and you use it to navigate your way through test chambers.
For me this game was also a revelation of interactive storytelling. It's a great example of how games can have stories as interesting as the ones in movies and books, and how amazing that can be if the medium is really exploited.
#4 - Minecraft for PC (or in my case Mac)
I hope I'm not mistaken in saying that Minecraft is the purest sandbox available in gaming right now. In a nutshell, you mine and you craft. This is basically electronic Lego and it pushes all of my buttons: collaboration, construction, exploration.
That's all for now, though.
What are your favourite games?
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Ness Vs. Unassuming Local Guy
Video games. I've spent countless hours over the years playing Super Nintendo games, saving up for an N64 with my brothers (money kept in an old plastic container), staring at the tiny dot matrix screens on original Game Boys, and, more recently, borrowing time at my brother's computer to play PC games. But I'd be lying if I said I liked all games equally. My first video game love was Earthbound, and it will always hold a very special place in my heart.
Earthbound is, to put it lightly, weird. The main character is a little kid, the locations are varied (mole caverns, small town in the grips of an insane cult that worships the colour blue, land before time -ish area featuring gigantic dinosaurs), and the enemies are hilarious. You fight things like "Big Pile of Puke," a "Manly Fish," and "Cute Li'l UFO." Your weapons can include frying pans and baseball bats. The goal of the game is to stop an evil alien from taking over the world.
The first diary I ever kept included painfully detailed accounts of playing Earthbound - there's a page where I list what areas there are (this is directly before a one-page story written from the perspective of an anthropomorphic dolphin), and I wrote almost daily about where I was in the game and what was happening. Clearly something about this game really clicked with 11-year-old me, but I've also really enjoyed all the times I've re-played it. I recommend it to anyone who's interested in RPGs.
And the music is great - last year I, along with the Bath Haus Klezmer Band, tried covering this song. Enjoy!
Earthbound is, to put it lightly, weird. The main character is a little kid, the locations are varied (mole caverns, small town in the grips of an insane cult that worships the colour blue, land before time -ish area featuring gigantic dinosaurs), and the enemies are hilarious. You fight things like "Big Pile of Puke," a "Manly Fish," and "Cute Li'l UFO." Your weapons can include frying pans and baseball bats. The goal of the game is to stop an evil alien from taking over the world.
The first diary I ever kept included painfully detailed accounts of playing Earthbound - there's a page where I list what areas there are (this is directly before a one-page story written from the perspective of an anthropomorphic dolphin), and I wrote almost daily about where I was in the game and what was happening. Clearly something about this game really clicked with 11-year-old me, but I've also really enjoyed all the times I've re-played it. I recommend it to anyone who's interested in RPGs.
And the music is great - last year I, along with the Bath Haus Klezmer Band, tried covering this song. Enjoy!
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
August Topic!
It's August!
The July poll closed with the following breakdown of votes:
So the topic for this month is video games. I promise I'll try to avoid making my post just a million screenshots of my Minecraft server.
Contributors: You can interpret this topic any way you want, and you can write as many posts about it as you want (within reason, obviously, not like 200 posts over the course of the month, but I don't think any of us have that kind of time on our hands). When you write your post, make sure you tag it with the topic and your name/blog identifier, so that if any potential readers like you and hate the rest of us, they can find your posts easily.
Everyone: There is a poll for the September topic in the sidebar, and you can vote until the last day of this month. Whichever topic gets the most votes gets written about next month. If a topic gets no votes for three consecutive months, it gets moved off of the poll to make room for other potential topics (unless there aren't any). Comment on this post or the topic ideas post if there's anything you'd like to see added to the poll.
The July poll closed with the following breakdown of votes:
- 0 votes: high school graduation, reunions, travel, professional sports, manual labour/skilled trades
- 1 vote: ancestry/genealogy
- 2 votes: siblings, writing, monarchy
- 3 votes: -
- 4 votes: video games
So the topic for this month is video games. I promise I'll try to avoid making my post just a million screenshots of my Minecraft server.
Contributors: You can interpret this topic any way you want, and you can write as many posts about it as you want (within reason, obviously, not like 200 posts over the course of the month, but I don't think any of us have that kind of time on our hands). When you write your post, make sure you tag it with the topic and your name/blog identifier, so that if any potential readers like you and hate the rest of us, they can find your posts easily.
Everyone: There is a poll for the September topic in the sidebar, and you can vote until the last day of this month. Whichever topic gets the most votes gets written about next month. If a topic gets no votes for three consecutive months, it gets moved off of the poll to make room for other potential topics (unless there aren't any). Comment on this post or the topic ideas post if there's anything you'd like to see added to the poll.
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