ZEN & the Art of Gaming

One Chance only

2011-06-29T22:15:00.000-05:00

Time to get your game face on and let CapCom know it is Game Over for the no replay feature on Resident Evil and planned for other titles. There is a save slot for 1 game only. No decision branching permitted. No letting your sister or brother play it. And most of all no replay in maniac Mode. So, for 40.00 you get one play through, no resell value, no collector's value and most of all no replay.

That is 3 months of WoW - 4 if you buy a year. That is the price of Guild Wars which lets you make a limited number of characters and repeat most missions. Of course you can always delete a character and make a new one. That is enough of a donation to a MUD to make most owners happy. These days it is what it takes to fill up my car. So given the choice of filling up my car and playing a game once, think I'll take the car.

Most of you know I have no issue with Game Over. When it is Game Over - what do you do? Go back and try it again. If you saved too late then you go to an earlier save point and start from there. On a perma-death mud or other MMO you start over or if they reset on a schedule - wait for reset. No biggie - well except for the losing part. Capcom objects to games being replayable and resalable. They decided to do something about it. They have brought back the single save slot. One save only ever for the life of the game. It is not even like the old days of single save where you could overwrite your existing with a new start, 1 game 1 play through that is it. Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS is one such game but there are rumors of more to come.

What to do you ask? I have heard much whining and ringing of hands in the lame gamer community, but a quiet movement has started. People are canceling pre-orders for Capcom games. They are refusing to purchase them and they finding other things to do. The problem is the movement is too quiet. Other publishers need to know what happens when they take away replay capability. You lose sales, you lose customers and most of all you start to lose gamers. If I can play it only once, then maybe I need to dust off the D&D books and play that with my friends, maybe I need to sell my DS and my console, or maybe just maybe WE need to let the publishers know that if they want to keep selling games, they need to stop being so worried about resale. After all consoles, etc change enough they can already count on sales from ports, re-releases and add ons So If you are a true GAMER (not one of the lame ones who give up at the first hurdle) Let CapCom know. Write them, email them, post on social networks and on forums. If you cancel and order POST it and let them know why. As for me, CapCom is now one of the DO NOT BUY products in the house. If it has anything to do with Capcom, it will not pass the threshold. They will not get any money from me. If you feel the same way, let them know. In the mean time I Guess i will save any money I would have spent on Capcom games and maybe buy myself a few new components for a gaming rig.

Multiplayer Dramas

2011-06-10T00:22:00.002-05:00

I was catching up on my reading on The Mud Connector the other day, when I hit this thread. If you are member you can see it, otherwise the summary is this, a player that disagrees with the admin was site banned or deleted or frozen - it happens. He posted in the Admin Ethics forum a complaint that the Admins there were unfair and he is done playing there after "playing there for years'. His reason was that players there are biased, racist and just plain rude to people who are not like them and the Admin does not punish their friends, but does everyone else. That is not really the purpose of that forum. It tends to be a place where administrators, builders and players discuss ethical issues regarding their game such as is it right to play a mortal, code pirating and lifting etc. Although it is a fair discussion to start, just not one that should be done by naming names and as the poster himself states to force game owners and admins to change through peer pressure.

After much back and forth and ridiculing of people in general some good naturedly, some not so, one Admin posted something that I think is one thing everyone forgets. I do not know how to link to a specific message there so it is visible to non members there so here is a slightly edited version.

...snipped quote...

The simple fact is that no MUD has any requirement to treat players fairly. They are not even schoolyards, which have rules with some enforcement and supervision; they are instead sandboxes or playpens. Unless the game's admins attract law enforcement activity or prompt their hosting provider to yank them for allowing something blatantly illegal to go on (like letting people use channels on the game to trade kiddie porn or some like that) or the overall game owner who provides or pays for the hosting gets sick of it and pulls the plug, a game can go on for years just for the benefit of the admins and their friends.

Now, that is true. But most owners and people who run games that I know try to be fair. They try to make sure everyone has a good time. That means most have a few rules and rules have to do with respecting other players. For the mist part every GM, Admin, WizOp etc, I know hates having to play nanny to players who cannot understand that sometimes their way of having fun destroys a game for others. Most withstand being called names, accused of unfairness as above and even shield guilty parties (for a while) from the wrath of the other players. But GMs behind the the toon are human.

So, what I am trying to say here is before you go posting things like that think about a few things.

1. Why? If you are DONE there why deal with it at all.
2. Why answer an unfair admin in a public way or pick a fight with him in a public forum of his peers and most likely friends.
3. If you call the Admins names or insult them do you really think that will make them want to be fair to you or help your cause ?

This to me is one of the things I have never understood. When I am done with a game be it board, online or console I put it away. If I am done for good I delete all, sell it, or in worst case scenarios throw it out. This is what most normal people do. I know gamers are not normal, but then again we all move on to other games. To use board games as an example, I do not play Snakes and Ladders anymore. I may have played it with daughter when she was little. Now she has outgrown it. So it was given away to someone who might enjoy it. I do not blame the game for it being no fun for me anymore.

The second is a bit more difficult to address as it deals with personalities. So let us liken it to a work situation. If one employee is constantly gossiping, using racial and sexual slurs about others or you or harassing you in other ways, the obvious thing to do is ask them to stop. They may not realize the current joke about (insert nationality, race or other sensitive topic here) is offensive to you. They will not ever realize if you do not speak to them. If that does not work, then avoidance is the next logical step. You have to work, you may even have to work with the person, but nothing says you have to have anything other than a work-related conversation with them. The last step is to ask a supervisor to step in and mediate or speak to them. If all of the above fail and the person makes it impossible for you to work there then the answer is it is time to move on. If you really love the on-line game I suggest you try the above. Otherwise just skip to the last step, unlike work you do not HAVE to play there.

The last is to me the one that confuses me the most that people do not understand. If every day you went into work you insulted your boss, when it came time for a promotion it is unlikely you will get one. Even If you are correct in what you say, lack of respect in how you are expressing yourself is not doing you any good. I have had bosses reprimand me for regulations they consider idiotic or stupid, but part of their job is to ensure the regs and SOPS are followed. If usually, they agree it is stupid, but we come to an understanding of what has to be done through conversation. I have never been written up for any of those incidences because we listened and spoke to each other. But if I had constantly undermined the supervisor's credibility and authority with co-workers, if I had insulted her outright daily by accusing her of favoritism, if I had accused him self-service only his own interests to his face, or even pointed out only mistakes made and lack of knowledge. Then when I brought before my supervisors with a minor infraction, I doubt any would have listened so fairly to my defense nor would I have gotten off with a just warning. Would it be fair, probably not, but what should I expect from someone who has been disrespected so much? Bosses are only human. So are GMs.

The upshot of this is in gaming as in work or life people are still people behind the toons. Before you complain about how the GM is treating you, look at how you have treated him. Before you complain about others making comments about you based on your toon or what they perceive to be the person behind it, ask yourself what assumptions have you made about that player. If you still see no reason, then there are only one of 2 possibilities - you are the problem or they are the problem. Either way it is time to move on, not look back and grow. If the same issues arise elsewhere perhaps it is you. If not, it was probably them. Either way you are out of that situation and in a new one where you can enjoy yourself leaving the others back there to do the same.

Persona 4 Review - Grilled Beef Anyone?

2011-06-08T01:26:00.003-05:00

Persona 4
First let me say up front, this one is not as dark as Persona 3 and storywise it is less mature or complex. Another one off the stack!

Start up and Synopsis:
You are a second year transfer student to Inaba High School. Your parents are both "working overseas" and you've been shipped off to live with your Uncle - Dojima Ryotaro and cousin Dojima Nanako for a year. As you pass through a tunnel on the train there is a vision of the Velvet room. Maybe it was a dream? This time you are rolling in during the day, you are met at the station by your Uncle and his daughter Nanako. Seems you have not seen him since you were in diapers. He has to explain his relationship to your mother to you - ok I want to know the story there! Why has she not spoken to her brother since you were a baby?

You guys head back to the house, Inaba seems to be a sleepy town. But it must have been a long trip. You stop at the gas station and Nanako makes a beeline for the bathroom - but not until her father asks her if she can go by herself. (What sort of father does not know the answer to that?) The gas station attendant seems to know the Dojimas. He welcomes you to town, tells you they are looking for part-time help and you will probably be bored fast here after coming from the city and be wanting a part-time job. He shakes your hand in greeting but before he gives you his name Nanko comes back and asks if you are feeling OK you look sick.

You get back to the Dojima residence, sit down for dinner and Dojima's cell rings. He has to go to work leaving you and Nanko alone. You find out he is a detective and that he is gone a lot. She settles down to watch TV, the news is all about a newscaster, an enko singer and a city council member who is married to the singer and having an affair with the newscaster. Nanako finds it boring and switches channels. A commercial comes on for Junes, and she sings along happy and settles in to watch a show. You go upstairs go to bed and have a freaky dream that involves a figure shrouded in fog that keeps asking you if you want to find the truth. You chase it through the fog, find you can throw lightning and use some sword techniques against it. It laughs at you and tells you come on then, and you awaken.

Nanko cooked breakfast for you, no sign of you Dojima. You two start walking to school together. Along the way you see a kid a fall off his bike, you decide to leave him alone. You are introduced in the classroom by the homeroom and Philosophy teacher, Morooka Kinshiro. He goes off on a rant about morality, a girl interrupts him by asking if you can sit there, and your school year starts. As class is letting out teachers are called to a meeting and students told to stay in the classroom. So naturally people who are curious about the 'big city' come to talk to you. You find out the girl is Satonaka Chie she and her friend Amagi Yukiko offer to walk home with you. You are told to leave police working in the school zone alone, there has been an 'incident" off you go. Of course on your way, you run into the crime scene, it is a murder. You find out later the victim was the newscaster that was in the love triangle and she was found hanging upside down from an antenna on a residence (hanged man tarot style). Dojima yells at you for being there and everyone decides to go home.

So you help Nanko with some housework when you get home and head up to bed. No freaky dreams tonight. It is raining when you are on your way to school. You see the same kid skid on the slick pavement and wreck his bike again this time he is stuck in a garbage can. His name is Hanamura Yosuke and he is in your class. Yosuke invites you out after school Chie horns in and Yukiko has to go home and help at the inn. The three of you end up at Junes. Chie tells you all some weird story about the midnight channel where you supposedly see your soulmate at midnight if the tv is turned off and it is raining. She makes you all promise to watch it.

Enter the unrequieted love of Yosuke's life, Konishi Saki. She seems down, Yosuke asks what is bugging her. She makes some comment about if only she had not left school early and then ignores his question. Eventually you head home and you find Nanako alone seeming to think your uncle may not come home again. ( Chaos Monkey and I would up calling him Dickhead Dojima, If you follow his social link you will see why. ) Just as you are starting to comfort her, in he comes. She puts on the news for him. The press found the high school girl who found the corpse and are interviewing her. Her face and voice are masked. Nanako thinks it is boring and your uncle is asleep sitting on the couch.

You head upstairs remembering your promise, At midnight, a girl appears on the TV. It is blurry and you cannot quite see her. You go to touch the TV and your hand goes through the tube and gets stuck in it. You manage to pull it out, fall on the floor and wake Nanako who comes to check on you - giving you a very odd look.

The next day at school you tell your friends about the midnight channel. It seems you all saw the same girl and Chie is confused that her soul mate is a girl. You also hear that Saki was the person who found the corpse and she is not in school that day. You go to Junes after school with Chie and Yosuke again seems Chie's family are looking to buy a TV. As you are all looking through the department you stick your hand in a widescreen TV. It goes through, Your friends freak out and run around as customers are heading that way all 3 of you fall through the screen into the "TV World". Where you meet Teddy the empty bear suit. He helps you get out then you all go home. Eventually through various things you put together that people who appear on the TV during the Midnight Channel die - so off you all go to find out what is going on and to a clue on a student's death. You meet with Teddy again and eventually FINALLY have your first real fight. It is almost 2 hours since you started the game.

Now, the fun starts almost every time you save someone they are added to your party. Of course there are social links as with the other one. No one I really cared about died in this one, One us under the threat of dying at some point after they are saved. Eventually you uncover the plot withing the plot or do not. If you make wrong choices at crucial moments, the game fast forwards to your leaving to return to live with your parents. If you make the right ones, you get the final answer and leave satisfied.

Gameplay
The game again combines a card fighter with a High School RPG. By day you attend classes -except holidays. You fight shadows to level up and use the Velvet room to fuse personas. Your time however is very limited with less leeway than Persona 3 even, so you will have to make choices. You must balance your after school time trips into the TV, with school clubs, working and other social activities to raise your social links.The social links affect the types and levels of Persona you can fuse as well as when it is with a group member how much they will assist and how. Some will take death blows for you. It is better to complete a social link than to have multiple ones almost complete. Only completed ones count in the end. Part time jobs and books help raise your courage, understanding, knowledge, diligence and expression. Some of these must be at certain levels before you can start a social link with some individuals. Some can be done at night. Also there are the usual side quests and this time there is fishing added which raises diligence and gets you things you need for some quests or just better eq.

Battle in the TV world can be is easy enough each persona has different strengths and weaknesses. Like any RPG of this nature, you gain more party members as you rescue more people. You can bring 3 into the zone with you and each has their strengths and weaknesses as well. You can set characters to act as they see fit or to support or to play them a individuals and you set their actions. The latter is definitely suggested for boss battles after the first one maybe even for that one and I found some characters I wanted to control because they are SP hogs and blow through all the SP in the first few levels.

With a little forethought you can have a party ready for almost anything. There is no limit on the time you can spend in the TV world. But you have a time limit to save each person based on the weather forecast. The person must be out of the TV world before it becomes foggy in Inaba. Fog usually occurs after "several days" of rain. Boss battles take place on the highest level of a zone and most have a mid boss of some type. Your real life intrudes frequently in the form of exams and school trips so you sometimes have less time than you think.

You gain money through quests, defeating shadows, from your part time jobs and from selling things you gain in the TV world. There is a shop that makes interesting weapons for you. And the usual supply store that sells healing things.

Technical
None - GOOD Job!

Complaints
I preferred having the weapon types to the streamlining of just physical.
It is not as dark as I like - less for mature audiences than the previous one.
Teddy is annoying, I hated when he was my support as soon as I got Rise I ditched him. He is just as bad in your party. I refused to use him.
To much grinding needed still and you have to spend longer bouts of time in the World.
The music wears on your ear after a while no variety in choices (unless I did not unlock it).
Having to enter the velvet room to save persona, leave to dismiss persona then come back in to take others out of the compendium STILL.
The start took too long. Almost 2 hours before your real first fight and I was blasting through the choices when I timed this, having already done it once.
I liked the combo persona specials in 3 and am sorry they took them out of this one.
Sometimes the forced story portions went on too long. I needed places to break or save.

Likes
The multiple endings and the fact you can fail, more games need a game over.
The part time jobs made a nice change from the reading to raise the stats.
The gameplay was solid and consistent. No technical issues
Lots of slots for saving. I like this in an RPG lets me branch decisions.
Engine for battle seems better, I prefer not having my time set by Death or being tired.
I can SKIP the card shuffle THANK YOU!
When I fuse a persona it is now immediately added to to compendium.

Upshot
I liked the game. I have already started another one to see how many social links I can get done. The boss is good and hard, not a cop out. The story is good and the solution odd enough but it is just not dark enough nor is it anything innovative, I mean a bunch of kids outsmarting the police department in their investigations - how scooby doo . The protagonist and the people are not as mysterious overall and most of the social links were not as interesting in their stories, too pat, set seen it before. Where Persona 3 had Bebe, the girl whose parents were getting divorced, the drinking monk and Tanaka - this had only Kanji and the nurse that I actually enjoyed the story on the links. The rest were rather ho hum and I felt like slapping the a few of them for being idiots and not seeing the answer. The battle engine is much smoother and the annoyances that detracted from Persona 3 are for the most part gone, although I did like being able to tell the group to split up in 3, it made the grind go a little faster, I rarely missed it. I do recommend it. Out 10 I give Persona 4 an 8.

Persona 4 Cracked Theories

2011-05-31T00:05:00.002-05:00

It's time for more cracked theories - those ideas we come up while we are playing the game sometimes after 4 am.

The upshot of THIS Persona is that you are new to town, staying with your Uncle while your parents are wherever Japanese Parents go to leave their kids. (If we believed Anime and games NO kids have any parents around or at least one is dead. So upshot of this is kids go to Japan, but LEAVE before you start a family cause there is 50/50 chance you will be the dead parent!)

Anyway the protagonist gets dragged into events by entering a world in the television. If they get the people out before their shadows consume them as it were they survive. If they fail, the person dies. I will do a FULL review once I beat this boss I went in under leveled AGAIN. But for now onto the theories, We have been collecting them as we went, and who knows ONE of these or more maybe true!

1. There is something in the fog or rain that causes it. Your first oddity occurs as you are on the train heading into Inaba and pass through a tunnel. There is a repetition of weirdness at the gas station and later on when you touch the tv screen in your room it 'melts' Maybe it is something in the rain.

2. The Parking attendant is behind it. He is always there in the rain. He may also be the gas station attendant that first greeted you, offered you a job and none ever appears on the board. Okay maybe not the same guy but it is odd that people only want valet parking in the rain. And why do we see him only when it rains, he says something about the streets being more empty. Perhaps he is hiding out from his last crime spree on some other place?

2. Your Uncle is behind it all - the death of his wife unhinged him. He constantly is not home, he tells Nanako he is working when he is receiving calls about the mysterious car that killed his wife. At one point you see a figure in the fog who is upset that he failed this time (something very Jack the Ripper like in it)

3. Nanako is behind it all - at every time she says something is boring that is on the news on TV, that person is the next victim. There is a Panda bear in the room with her that is reminiscent of Teddy. And the TV world seems a little like a child's idea of how things would be.

4. Yosuke is behind it all - he is bored, there is nothing interesting going on. The TV's the kids enter through are in Junes where he works and the locals all hate him and his family for 'ruining' their downtown. Sounds like a perfectly good revenge to me. To top it off, there was this girl he was interested in who seemed lukewarm to him. He protests his interest is all to help find her killer, methinks he doth protest too much.

5. You are behind it all - The first murder gave you the idea and you knew you could do this thing with the TVs already. So you are playing stupid and letting everyone set themselves up. Your parents actually are dead or in the TV world or left for fear of their own safety.

6. Yukiko is behind it. She seems a bit unstable in many ways, very cold not interested in a boyfriend and hates how everyone expects her to take over the Inn just be cause she is an Amagi. She wants to leave and find her own way, but keeps getting held back by a sense of duty to her family and the expectations of the town..

7. Misuzu Hiiragi, the wife of the man (Taro Namatame) who had the affair with the first victim (Mayumi Yamano) is behind it. She travels a lot, seems to be more than a bit of a controlling type and is concerned about her public image. He disgraced her and these others may have seen something.Her picture appears on posters in the TV world at the Mayumi Yamano's death place.

8. Adachi is behind it - come on NO one is that nice and that gullible! He seems ineffectual but sometimes shows a flash of insight and competence.

9. Naoto is the actual killer. The Prince of Detectives shows up BEFORE he officially reports to the station. He talks to Kanji, and Kanji is the next victim. He is hiding something from everyone (that is obvious) and seems to know a lot more and be willing to believe the high weirdness than any NORMAL person should. Plus he taunts the group repeatedly about it being a game for them.

10 Mayumi Yamano is behind it all - she is not dead, went into hiding and substituted someone else's corpse for her own. She killed Saki because she saw her doing the replacement or saw something that would point to her. She went for Yukiko because she was in chrage of the hotel on the days that Mayumi Yamano stayed there. She goes for the others because they all have contact with Yukiko in some way.

11. The town itself is the cause. Their xenophobic nature gives rise to the shadows. There is something odd about beef being the food Inaba is known for when there are no cattle ranches near there. It is mentioned a few times. The town is full of people who judge and find their neighbors wanting. The entire theme seems to be about what OTHERS think and hiding from them in the fog.

12. The owner of the beef stand and/or her husband is behind it. They are killing people who have figured out the secret behind the beef.

13 Kinshiro Morooka is behind it all. He certainly seems to hate immoraloty, his job, the students, and Inaba today as opposed to how it WAS.

14. Juness the department store is behind it all. They are taking over the city because they are actually owned by the Corporation that was doing shadow research over a Gennouken High School in Persona 3.

Actually. looking over our list (which was compiled as we went) MOST characters hate Inaba. Kanji seems ok with the town, but dislikes the people, everyone is so full of hate for the place and each other and envious of other towns that we thought maybe it was a sort of Inaba Gestalt. Anyone have any others? BTW the answer was in our theories and we were rather surprised that the coders were almost as warped as we are. Any that anyone else had - EXCLUDING the correct one?

Violence and Video Games Again

2011-05-26T19:33:00.001-05:00

A study has been published linking actual (well maybe) proof that video gamed desensitize the brain to violence. At least according to an article at University of Missouri. Basically, one group played violent video games and the other non violent. They were then shown photographs and the brain's reaction to the photos was measured. (Why does that evoke a mental picture of Alex in theatre watching movies in A Clockwork Orange?) Those who had played violent games had less reaction to say a picture of a man holding a gun in another person's mouth than the group that played non violent ones. They followed that up with setting people up with an opponent. They could give their opponent a blast of sound as an attack. Again those that had been playing the more violent games gave louder blasts to their opponent.

It may be they are correct, it may be that violent games desensitize us to violence. God knows that has been proven in real world situations such as children growing up in war torn countries, in violent neighborhoods and even in violent households. Studies have been done again and again on those. Studies have been inconclusive on violent television and movies as one is passive and does not feel like your life is in immediate danger. But one would THINK a university would write up such a hot topic even in their own in a more professional and scientifically accepted manner. There is even a Skinnerian reference of being rewarded for violence perhaps being a cause. (NO kidding, I am not a fan of Skinner but I do admit he had some damn good points and was very thorough in his research and testing - too detached from a parental point of view.)

A few points in the article immediately raised my eyebrows. First there were 70 young adults taking part in the study, one assumes college students since there tends to be a ready supply of them at a University. There was no mention background vetting, are they football players or members of some other athletic team for a physical contact type sport, were they gamers already, do they know a thumbpad from a control stick, what sort of movies and shows do they watch and what was their home life and upbringing like ? Was there a control group made up of similar people?

At one point it is mentioned rather offhandedly that the subjects that " had already spent a lot of time playing violent video games before the study showed small brain response to the violent photos, regardless of which type of game they played in the lab." By stating you not KNOW if these people were already desensitized, it indicates that the a NORM has not been set. Or if it is set subjects were not tested beforehand to ensure they fell into that norm prior to the test. Perhaps these subjects re of a personality type that does not react as strongly to violence from the beginning and that is why they LIKE violent video games.

There is some indication in the article that at least some have played games in the past. Much mention is made of the violent games they tested, but none of the nonviolent that were used. Were they competitive, cooperative, team vs team, dating sim, or are we talking Farmville type cooperative where you really might as well be playing alone except that the company wants to addict more players so require friends to complete a task as opposed actually NEEDING more than one person to complete it.

The next thing they failed to mention at all is a control group - a group that does not play any video games at all and how they react to the same photos and games. It is this type of sloppy testing or at least reporting of findings that just fuel an argument that some people already believe to be true and give more ammo to the naysayers. What is even MORE interesting is that the study has not even been PUBLISHED and yet here are the 'experts' running out to spout their findings and set the gamin industry and parents in an uproar yet again.

Here is a study for you, how about the desensitizing of any claim regarding human behavior and movies, video games and other past-times from sloppy scientific studies? I think you may find that it is related to the "Boy who cried Wolf Syndrome". Those who are on the fence will remain so until you demonstrate that the study was non-biased and performed according to pure scientific method standards, I will wait and see what the actual study results that are written up in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. But by rushing out with a poorly supported conclusion in an article, It already makes me suspect that the study was approached with less than a detached air. Which seems to be the case these days in almost every field, to make the test fit the hypothesis. And that my friends is why people do not believe in Global Warming, in evolution and in studies of violence in video games. Too many 'scientists' seem to have an agenda that is tied to some commercial or organizational cause. Now excuse me I have to go PK a bunch of gamers.

Generations of Gamers

2011-05-24T23:25:00.004-05:00

I was standing around on the MUD talking to a clan member. He is an older player (in playing years on this game, not in real life age), so I was not surprised when he uttered words to the effect of "90 percent of the new players today would not survive a week back in the day." At first I shrugged off the observation as the usual nostalgia for a Valhalla that was crowded and somewhat simpler, but then I thought about what he said. In some ways he is correct.

Before you all shout TRAITOR! at me hear me out. I stumbled across the MUD on day when looking for something else with the name Valhalla in the site name. I was excited, I book marked it went on with what I needed to do and then forgot about it for 2 weeks. I was doing my usual bookmark maintenance on my browser when I saw it again. So I fired up the old telnet window and went to check it out, muttering that I neither had procomm plus or any connectivity software I could write helper programs in nor even a rudimentary mud client. It took some configuring and about 3 days of trying to figure out how to move, speak and perform the basic commands. Look was easy, but the rest depended on the engine back in the day as did the help files thos one was actually pretty friendly Help returned information of how to use help. So I settled back and started to read.

That is the first thing I HAVE noticed about many modern gamers, if it is not in a wiki or fed in small doses as they start, it is too hard or not user friendly in their eyes. Guess they never played Zork. So I read for a while off and on for 3 days. I made sure the find the rules and read them. Very few people are about if any but it is in wee hours of the morning my time or around lunch. Most people are in school or at work.

On the third day I log in starting to get the hang of it now and get shouted at to change my name, by players and admin. Oh shit an admin, guess I better change my name. I had used ZetaThompson when I made the character because I was used to door games that created an account based on your BBS login. This was a direct connect MUD of the old skool, like the ones I used to pass through BBSes to get to at Universities. If a Sysop told you to do something you did. If an ADMIN did you you did so IMMEDIATELY. These days people argue. They complain if a name like ZetaThompson was not wanted why is it not blocked? In those days if you argued with an ADMIN you got deleted and ip blocked. Sometimes you got blacklisted among the MUDs and other door games - especially if you were suspected of being a rabble rouser.

Old MUDs were pretty simplistic and most were auto PK at level three. That meant at level 3 or 5 you were killable by any other player. It did not matter if you were level 3 and they were 50 or 300 or 3000, they could and in many cases would kill you. They would loot your corpse and they laugh at you if whined. So when a player shouted make it something easy to type, I did not comply. I made it easy for ME to type. I logged back in with a new character and then someone pointed out the sign that I should have read. It started the newbie training. I started it and completed it, dying once maybe twice during it not bad given some tutorials. Then went off to find my guild and train. I messed up my stats big time. Everyone does, apparently I exceeded expectations on that one. I have seen present day players delete and start over if they are even 2 points off on a stat because they must be PERFECT in order to compete. And to make matters worse if you ask 3 people what the perfect tank is you will get 4 different answers. The concept of playing a character that is less than perfect and making it work is not acceptable to many modern players. They want the answers now so that they can dominate the game and win it, except there is no win on a MUD really. This seems to confuse many and they leave feeling cheated. There is no end to the MUD, it is a world in which many stories take place.

I of course picked the worst path for a newbie, but I stuck with it. Eventually I made a second character. I found out a lot listening to players and not talking much. I played a role with my characters, one acted a bit flirty and dumb (she is the assassin), the other was her brother who was very polite, quiet and ready to do anything to protect his sister, even though he was ready to strangle her more than once. When he was turned female by another player I played along. A small group of us (3 maybe 6 players on a good day) ran around exploring working on quests and getting killed a lot. We had fun. After about 2 months I hit level 50, adult on this mud, but by no means finished. I averaged a level a day that I played, I read the rooms, the quests, looked at things in the donations hall. I tried different commands sometimes to my death, sometimes with no avail sometimes with expected or unexpected results. The first quest I accepted took me almost 2 weeks real time to complete. Probably about 10 hours playing time. I could not find that garlic. Finally I asked. Now players are upset that we do not have a WIKI with all the answers on it.

Finally, I started running with the big boys. The screen scrolled so fast as we ran the exp grind it made me dizzy. They told me do not bother to hit on telenet. I asked about clients after my stomach stopped churning, got 4 or 5 different recommendations - each had their favorite - and picked one. I bought and installed it no more than 2 weeks later and then donated to the MUD. It was not much, but I appreciated the coders and owners letting me into their home and all the work they had done and hey 15 - 35 on a game is cheap. So I became a long term player of the game. These many new players come in and donate immediately figuring the more the pay the more they will get in considerations from the admins, owners and of course get a better character out of it. The thing is, one of the best PKers on the MUD was so for 3 years with no Personal Items and having not spent a cent on their character. Skill matters most, even today. equipment makes the skill more effective, but if you do not know when to heal, when to cast, when to trip, you will lose against an equal or even lesser player.

This is how ALL games and gamers should be I feel. They should be fun. But alas many people who play games are not gamers, they are merely people looking for a shortcut to winning. They want the titles and the rewards and the equipment. If they are not good enough to get them or miss out because they are limited they will do anything to get them from another. I have heard of players asking ADMIN for quest answers of quests no one has solved yet so they can get the reward and accolades of being first. I have heard of players wanting to pay for whatever is needed to win a contest because they did not have time to do it but wanted the reward. And of course there are the ones that find ways to cheat and get more than they should have.

All of us know these people, we have seen them on Guild Wars, WoW, Eve even Neopets. They hack or buy their characters. Someone else does the work and they reap the reward. Then when they are deleted by the admins or the GMs, they whine and lie or worse act as if what they did was fine because it is just a game so it is okay to cheat, break rules and then get angry at the person who caught and finally punished them. These people are not gamers and my clannie was correct back in the day they would not have lasted very long. They would have been PKed off the game by the real gamers. The lesson is real gamers know they sometimes do not win. The challenge is to do better each time. That is why the DIKU coders are now experts in their fields. It is just a shame that the legacy they left for future generations is now populated with those who do not understand that the game is reflection of life. Sometimes it is enough to just survive and improve.

Game legends

2011-05-17T05:25:00.003-05:00

Urban game legends

Can anyone verify any of stpries in above link? By verify I mean either point to a legitimate documented proof or have seen it with your own eyes and have screen shots that verify but do not look to have come off any of their 'proof?' I am curious The WoW stuff sounds like something out of a .hack anime. The Mario stuff almost sounds like a slam together job using a background intended for another game. Yes developers did used to put little games or easter eggs in apps because it is fun and because they were bored. But I have not heard of that particular one in Excel 95. So anyone?

More Gamer Rants

2011-05-08T00:22:00.001-05:00

It has been a while since I went off about gamers. Let me count the ways in which lamers who claim to be gamers are pissing me off.

Them vs Us attitude. Not in GvG PvP or even GM versus players. Rather the attitude I have seen lately of the newer gamers are better than the experienced gamers and the oldtimers on a game are out to get them because they have skilz. AS IF! New players frequently DO learn things or know something that the old farts on any game do not know because they became complacent in the way they played and did not explore or check other ways. But maybe the oldbies know some stuff the newbies do not, too. Try talking to each other instead of writing off another player because they are newer or older int he game.
Actively seeking exploits and sharing them with other players so that the game becomes unplayable for those who try to stay within the spirit of the game. Here is an example: on one mud I play there are items that are flagged no store to keep players from hoarding them so that others cannot get them. (usually quest items) Boats could be stored, bags and other containers cannot be. So they would place items in a bag, place the bag in a boat and store the boat. When GM told them to stop this they commented 'I thought that is what boats were for in the game.' Interesting most people think boats are forms of transportation used on water, which is their purpose in the game too. This of course led to boats being non storable, which is a pain for the rest of us who do not want to lug around a boat or pay for them each time we need one.
The attitude that if money is paid into the game they can do whatever they want, even spoil everyone else's fun who also paid. Let me know how that works in real life for you guys, willya? Next time you go to a hotel room which you pay for try this - party all night with stereo up, Make sure you smoke in the room and wander out into the hallway screaming. Pour beer out of your window onto the cops below because you can and when the hotel staff change the lock on the door and you complain but you PAID for it so you should be able to do whatever you want let me know how that works for you. (Go to any anime, sf, or other fun convention for more ideas of how to get arrested in a hotel )
If you can do it you should. Yep right go ahead that is why Guild Wars deleted 3700 accounts. That is the odd thing, there are rules on any game and in life. Yes you can break them, but there are consequences. Somehow it has become the case that some people feel if they spend money on anything they are entitled to break the rules with NO consequences. Here are some examples of what it means.

Playing game lawyer or poor stupid underprivileged gamer who don't know no better Let's be clear here, intent, topic, and content all matter. This particular link is about offensive language. I have heard the same arguments in forums, other games and even . "I didn't know Damn was a bad word" "hey the NPCs say this bad word why can't I say this in a public place, channel, etc." My advice to gamers who try this? Stop it all you are doing is making yourself look ignorant and annoying the GMs.
Doing something because it is not blocked programmatically but tattling and whining when someone does it back. Sometimes there are reasons something is not blocked by code, sometimes not. But if you trap a player with a spell used in a way it was not meant to be, or 'accidentally' pick up someone's eq using the shadow step exploits etc , do not complain when retaliation occurs either by players that were cheated or were taught how to do this by yourself or others through whome the information spread or by the GMs when they recode the spell, skill, object or whatever is being exploited.
Breaking a rule because it is possible to do so then complaining about the consequences. Yep sometimes there are ways to break a rule. SOMETIMES there are reasons it may go unpunished (see intent statement above) but if you break one and the GMs mete out punishment. Do not complain. Take the time to read the rules and the site user agreements. You implied consent when you went on to play. If you did not read them, that is your fault.
Wanting special consideration for non special cases. Example - One player wanted to play more characters than permitted on a game. They found a way. They were temporarily site banned for doing so. When a husband and wife team known to the Game Owner for many years wanted to play together, the player complained because they had more than the limit on from the same site playing together. HEY LAMERS: MAYBE if you did not play with yourself so much you might have some FRIENDS you could play with too.

Now, the point of this is, the people mentioned above are not gamers. they do not want to play the game for the challenge or even for fun. They are the posers who just want to have all the equipment and titles and rewards without doing the work. Some are just scam artists who want to take your money and even your account so they can sell them. Isn't that what got a lot of companies in trouble, overselling stock? City and State governments get nailed for ghost payrolling. In most of those cases people go to jail. Yes, games are fun, most of the time people do not wind up in jail for breaking a rule. But I am tired of people giving real gamers a bad name.

Cracked Theories - possible spoilers for persona 3

2010-11-13T01:45:00.004-06:00

Yes, it has been a while, yes I have been working on Persona 4 again. in the mean time, here are some of the cracked theories we came up with on Persona 3.

The protagonist is a persona of the 'creepy kid' who is behind it all. Ok this was a bit too close for comfort, but this came about because of the opening sequence ever notice how it looks like the protagonist is wearing a mask like a shadow? So what if the protagonist was a new type of shadow created or augments by the Corporation
Mitsuru is behind it all, yep she was sent along to form this team and watch over it to keep those able to stop the corporation from world domination in line.
Nozomi Suemitsu is behind it, he is revealed to be a religious fanatic so perhaps he is actually behind all of this talk of the end of the world because of how sinful people are.

More next time but hope this whets your appetite for more cracked theories on games We have a BUNCH for persona 4!

Persona 3 FES

2010-07-27T01:19:00.000-05:00

This was my first foray into the Persona Universe. Let me say 2 things up front about this game First it is Dark As you know I like dark. Second - while I would call this a Mature Game, it is not Leisure Suit Larry or even GTA. The game deals with death. people die, people you like, people you do not like. Do not give this game to anyone under 16, you will scar them for life.

That said : on with it. Yes Another one off the stack - almost.

Start up and synopsis:
     You are a second year transfer student to Gekkoukan High School. You also happen to be an orphan and there is no explanation of You arrive late at night at the station on April 1st and head to the dorm. As midnight strikes most people are suddenly replaced with coffins. You continue on listening to your headphones. It seems you have seen this before. Or just do not care. Upon arriving at the dorm, you are greeted by a creepy kid and have to sign some sort of contract. OKAY So you sign and suddenly there are people in the lobby, one of them has a gun! They are both acting a little odd but the girl with the gun shows you to your room (Could I have an escort without a gun please?)
     You get up the next morning and a seemingly normal High School rpg begins. There is a lot talk about Apathy Syndrome sweeping the nation. People just stop and stay where they are. You hear students gossiping at the gate about it. You find your class meet some people and the game at this point does not really allow you to make many choices, this is one long set up.
     Then they come, shadows attack the dorm drawn there by Akihiko, one of the dorm residents. You head for the roof with the girl with the gun you have found out her name is Yukari. I call her annoying. Sh points the gun to her head and is unable to pull the trigger. You grab the gun, point it at your head and know instinctively what this is, it is not a gun but an evoker. You utter the word Persona and the first of your persona's appears and kicks the Shadows' ass. End of basic game set up and tutorial. Ok so it's a little strange that you have to shoot yourself in the head.

     The truth comes out that these Shadows attack people, and their nest is is the location of Gekkoukan High School. But it is only accessible during the dark hour. that weird time at midnight when most people are in their coffins. The few that are not are Persona Users. The students at the dorm have formed SEES - "Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad". You the player are special user in that you can use multiple personas.   So of course they wanted you to join. Eventually you find out there is an opposing group - Strega led by a nihilist prophet -Takaya. They use the dark hour to carry out assassination requests they received through their Revenge Website. You are told you have 1 year to get to the root of the problem. Once the truth about Nyx is revealed, they become the center of a cult wishing for her arrival and the annihilation of society and of course they try to thwart your plans to save the world.
   In being special you find there is a door in Tartarus that none but you can see. Behind it is a room with a man, Igor who gives you advice concerning social links. He has the contract you signed and reminds you of it periodically. He also allows you to fuse personas (DO NOT DO THIS YET) to form new ones. His odd sidekick Elizabeth can store them and makes some odd requests of you. Most of which are fun.
   As the plot thickens there are lots of betrayals, revelations and some deaths. It turns out there is a reason you are special. There are people who help and some who hinder. but eventually it boils down to you have to save the world from the eventual coming of Nyx the mother of all shadows and her desire to wipe the slate and start over. You have to make some hard choices and that is part of the fun.

Gameplay:
Somehow the game manages to combine a card fighter with a High School RPG. It does so well and with minimal annoyances. By day you attend classes and clubs, hang out with your friends, work on social links or stat increases through various activities. and do some of the side quests given to you by Elizabeth. By night you have the option to fight shadows in Tartarus, increase your courage by singing Karaoke, increase knowledge by studying, there are some social links that are available only at night as well. The stats you can increase affect your ability to get some social links started. The social links affect the types of Persona you can fuse. It is better to complete a social link than to have multiple ones almost complete. Only completed ones count in the end.
   Battle in Tartarus is easy enough each persona has different strengths and weaknesses. Like any RPG of this nature, you gain more party members. You can bring 3 into Tartarus with you and each has their strengths and weaknesses as well.
With a little forethought you can have a party ready for almost anything. The more time you spend in the Shadow's nest, the more tired you become. If you are too tired you are forced to leave the dungeon. If you stay on a floor too long death comes after you. Eventually you must fight him. Do not try it before you are ready.
Each character in addition to have a persona also has a weapon type. Some shadows have the ability to block Junpei's slashes but not Akihiko's punches. This becomes important especially in the higher levels of the nest as you hit more and more shadows with only
The daily grind is broken up by Boss battles that take place somewhere in town. Each boss appears at the full moon and the completion of the battle reveals more of the story.Sometimes party members get ill or you do on those days you may not be able to form a party to fight. And your other life intrudes in the form of exams holidays and school functions so time management is necessary.
     However there is still the grind of leveling and gaining money so that you can store and unstore persona. If you get to the goal in Tartarus early, you get the bonus of gonad. Harder mobs no death to stalk you, it was fin but not needed. So no sweat if you are cutting it too close to the deadline.

Technical:
Some loads take a while. When I completed the game, it did not save the completed version. So if there is anything to unlock I cannot do it. Other than that no technical issues.

Complaints:

The party sometimes gets in each other's way.
I really hate cutesy stuff. The dog story is cool the dog in the party is not.
What is it with robot girls in these things. This one actually has a story plot but you know, this is just getting old.
The music wears on your ear after a while thank goodness for my ZEN Mp3 Player. Celldweller and Five Finger Death Punch worked well as background music in the dungeons when grinding.
Speaking of wearing on you, so did Mitsuru's and later Fuuka's words of encouragement. Let us lose them please.
Having to enter the velvet room to save persona, leave to dismiss persona then come back in to take others out of the compendium.
The final boss battle. COP OUT. I wanted an epic battle. But at least if you were going to do it like that you did not make me waste hours.
Sometimes the forced story portions went on too long. I needed places to break or save. Sometimes I got them, usually I did not.

Likes:

The story does not pull punches. I like that it is dark and while things turn out ok they do not for everyone on a personal level.
The social links and their stories were interesting and varied. The nice answer was not always the best depending on to whom you were speaking.
The gameplay was solid and consistent. No technical issue (except perhaps that the end.
Lots of slots for saving. I like this in an RPG lets me branch decisions.

Upshot:
I liked the game. I will play it again in hard mode. Easy is too easy BTW. This time I will work on the social links and stats more. I highly recommend it. Out 10 I give the Journey portion of this a 9.

FES
Ok so the Answer is a second game on this. It takes place after the events above on March 31st. The last day of your year. I will not review that here. As a matter of fact I MAY not finish it, it is shaping up to be a major grind with no social links
and less of a story to hold my interest.

Paper Tiger Games - Smooth Site

2010-07-25T01:35:00.001-05:00

This is just a quickie to let people know about Paper Tiger games. I have been talking lately about casual games that are run on Face book. Most of these games are simplistic. many are brain teasers or action flash ones, but the thing is most of them on Facebook cost money or are extremely limited.

Paper Tiger games is basically a kid's site chock full of casual games. All I found are free to play even to download. When school is in session, the site can be busy, in the summer months there is peace and quiet. The site boasts 316 games. I will be honest, I did not try them all. I used only Opera and Firefox on the site. Guess what, not one was broken, not one over drove my fan or coprocessor, all were fast to load and all were free.

So if you are looking for checkers, connect 4, connect 2 (a sort of solitaire majong variation) reversi or even a fps, check out this site. It gets a thumbs up from me!

Farmville The Cash Cow

2010-07-24T03:22:00.000-05:00

Zynga has many other games as of this writing in this same format and using the same structure. Alas I could not take any more excitement. So I jump straight to the game Zynga seems to put the most time and money into and that seems to be the most popular - Farmville. And why not at last estimate (April or thereabouts) Farmville had an estimated 80 million people playing it worldwide. Think about that is 9 New Yorks. THat is the entire population of the coutry of Germany. Needless to say employers are up in arms about employees playing it on their time and people have claimed addiction much like the WarCrack games.

Premise:
You are a farmer. You plow the field, plant the crop, harvest the crop. You add things to your farm, expand it, visit neighbors farms and partake in monthly collection contests.

Game status:
Beta (aren't they all?)

Game play
Yeah you guessed it : Clickety Click Click. Recruit players. Spend real world money for in game decorations and perks.

Technical
Of all the games of this design this seems to be the smoothest running. Yes things still disappear from the gift boxes. Yes it is still a HOG and graphics take forever to load sometimes so that your farm looks partly green and partly white space. Yes the moving of the toon from one place to another is INCREDIBLY slow and tedious, so much so that most players have trapped the spawn point. Yet people seem to like this game.

Appeal
I am not certain WHAT the appeal is, perhaps the ability to do virtually nothing except click, move up the ladder of your friends and watch the crops grow?

So now that I have taken all I can of the clickety click I can stand I would like to point out that Before Farmville there were other apps on Facebook that basically did the same thing. So I put it you readers to explain, Why is Farmville more appealing than MyFarm or any other sim like game? Why is it now included on xfire? Something I once thought was a semi-reputable gaming site. Anyone? Is anyone reading or is it time to harvest your soybeans?

Cafe World - Needs more Spice

2010-07-22T19:49:00.001-05:00

Now for the one that was tied with Fishville for next to last. The reason Fishville won was basically lousy coding and poor communication as well as being the last of the games Zynga Games of that design to update to code to match the others. This one is just damn slow and stupid.

Premise:
You own a Cafe, you cook dishes sell them and people eat them. The more you sell the more profit you make, the more profit the bigger the Cafe can be. You can and make dishes and hire more employees. Oh wait this is sort of like Fishville Oh well.

Gameplay
Clickety click click. Click on stove to select recipe click on stove 3 more times to 'add ingredients (all hard coded, no choices here), click on the stove to serve the dish, click on the stove to clean it, click on the stove to repeat. - Ho Hum. Unless of course you get the special stoves by either recruiting an army of friends and begging them for stuff or paying Cafe Dollars (Yep bought with RW money) The it is just clickety click. Faster Ho Hum. Oh and can anyone tell me why it takes 9 hours or more to make eggs sunny side up. Denny's would be out of business if their short order cooks took that long!

Technical
It takes FOREVER to load. It is nice the little green bar shows that it is loading greenstuff (whatever that is) but why does the game run in the background? People get up come in leave, wait, but the player can do nothing until game load is complete. I thought the purpose of a game was for someone to play it, not for it to play itself. Here is an idea, stop eating up the ram by having the toons do stuff and use it to load stuff faster. Things disappear from the gift boxes, special features to be completes hang about and the graphics load is awful. For example, the floor in a cafe done with 2 different tiles alternating loads one set of tiles then about 3 minutes later (No exaggeration : it timed in at 2:53.). Last but not least down time seems to be frequent with suggestions to play from the Zynga site or another of their games instead (which is probably down too.)

So All in all this is just another beta that IS a beta (unlike Fishville or Treasure Isle which seem to be in alpha stages.) If you are into clicking and voyeurism this is for you, If however you are a gamer looking for a time fill on your lunch break, try solitare.

Fishville Fry

2010-07-21T01:10:00.001-05:00

It took a while for me to decide what the next worst game in the Zynga pool is. I have come to the conclusion it is Fishville Ok so maybe it is stress management thing. THEY say aquariums are relaxing. I maintain THEY either want to sell you more stuff or never actually ran one, but it is relaxing to watch. This game however is anything but relaxing.

Premise:
Again the premise is about as difficult as any on the Neopets site or any other kid's site, only this is for adults?? Basically you raise sell and keep some fish.and decorate the tank. Watch the fish grow, fight the fish, feed the fish, watch the fish die if you forget to feed them.

So you have your aquarium and you can chose some gravel and backgrounds for free or pay RW money to get some others. Then you do the same with fish and decorations. Surprise surprise. The next step is ts to drop the fish eggs - if they work that is and of course recruit neighbors to play because well you know this is a game that REALLY requires a multi-player environment. You feed your fish and then come back when they say to feed them again. Rinse, repeat till full grown then either keep or sell. Oh and you get mastery points for each sale as well as money and .. well if you read the previous blog you know how it works, only instead of digging you feed fish.

Now for the exciting difference! You can fight your fish! Yep just like the arena in Neopets only not. There is no actually live interaction involved. You click say fight pick an opponent. You win or lose based on stats only and that is it.

Next comes the visiting neighbor's tanks and feeding their fish. And of course yours.

Game play:
Clickety Click Click once in a while you may click and drag something.
Technical

First when you mouse over or click on a fish it should tell you how long till next feeding - except their 13 hours must be equal to my 5. And sometimes the fish return to their same level of hunger. Perhaps they have sustain cast on them? The game takes a long time to load, some items do not work, others disappear after placing or on the way to the gift box. Fishville seems to be the red-headed stepchild. It gets the updates LAST if at all. This may be due to it's lack of profitability or due to other issues. I do not care, I do care that it seems that they want me to pay for a game that they do not maintain at the same level that they do others in the look and feel.

While we are on the subject of paying ALL these games have BETA on the splash screen. Most sane people will NOT pay to be BETA tester, It used to be beta testers were paid or at least given a free copy of whatever it was they were testing.

Zynga games seem to come in two basic formats the * Wars one or the *ville one. All have the same basic look and feel. There is very little strategy or even mathematical prowess required for Fishville. So, if you want to wade through a boring game with lots of non functioning functions be my guest. Perhaps it will ease your stress.

Zynga - the new Amway

2010-05-30T23:56:00.005-05:00

Once in a while I step back from MUDDING, console games and PC games and look at what is considered casual gaming. Zynga has lately been one of the names that is splashed all over such games - much as EPIC and IGN was in the past. They have become a staple of social sites such as MySpace and Facebook and have developed (I use that term loosely) multiple Flash games. Yet they leave something to be desired as a game developer. Perhaps it is a sense that gamers or even coders are developing the games instead of the accounting department. So over the next few weeks I shall take each Zynga game and critique it here - starting at the bottom.

Ah what IS the bottom - that is a good question. There are several games that vie for this position in my mind in the Zynga list of games. I think though Treasure Island maybe the winner. You begin this game on your own island with a hut. a shovel and little garden plot in which to grow fruit. Oh and a gem tree which grows a certain color of gem.

The basic game premise is that you travel to islands on a map and dig to find treasure. Each island has 3 treasure collection types hidden on it. Each collection contains 5 items to collect. The idea is that digging uses energy and returns fruit, experience points,a treasure chest, a special or nothing. Eating fruit restores a certain percentage of energy. Gaining a level restores it all and increases the max. So you click on a picture of a map, click on an island on the map, click on a spot on the island and watch your basic low grade toon go through some lame animation. Tinse and repeat till out of energy, eat fruit, go again.

Not boring enough for you? But wait there is more! See you can travel to friends' islands click on a button to chase off sea gulls or clean it or something and gain xp. Then get a gem from their tree. They may have a different color gem tree and this becomes important because you NEED these gems to unlock Tiki heads to gain access to certain parts of some of the islands. How exciting! Of course this means you must recruit friends to play the game and they have to agree to be your neighbors.

So what is the problem with this game other than the Ho Hum factor? Well, first if you do not have enough friends who cannot sleep at night and need something tedious to do, you are unlikely to get the gems needed to proceed. Unless you purchase, find or earn 'Island Cash' see Island cash is used for in game items. Like most Zynga games this is a lame excuse to get real world money out of its players.

As if that were not enough, the collections are so few that the RNG for any collection chest discovered returns the same items over and over. Figure 21 chests on an island 15 possible items to fill 3 collections, so why do i get 6 of the same
two items OFTEN and few of the others even to the point of obtaining NONE of one of the collections? Perhaps they are all behind the Tikis i cannot unlock because most of MY gaming friends have at least some taste

The final thing that makes this the bottom of the list, other than the stereotyping of islands and their dwellers, is just lazy coding. Performance is awful. Why does EVERY Zynga game kick my fan off into high on my machine? It is not like any real processing or even hardcore graphics are going on. I think most of the artists at Zynga use children's coloring books as templates for items and characters. Why can't pop ups for actions wait their turn? Why do they interfere with each other? And most of all I want to know why it is you can track how long since a neighbor logged in but cannot return a different message than you have already collected this from this neighbor today. How difficult is it to make another object to return upon that if statement? here let me GIVE you logic zynga -

Check neighbor gem counter //max number of gems that by be collected from island
Check last neighbor login //last login of island owner
Check PC obtained time //date and time of last gem obtained from this island by pc
Check

on command get gem from basket
secure pc
IF neighbor login > 24 hours //island owner not played in over a day
return "Sorry your neighbor.name has not been around to harvest any gems. Suggest
neighbor.name come play with you on Treasure Island."
goto fail
IF neighbor gems <= 0 // max gems distributed
return "Sorry, neighbor.name's gems have all been claimed."
IF pc obtained time gem <= 24 hours //player got one from here already today
return "Return later you already got a gem from this basket today."
ELSE //valid collection condition
PC gems = pc gems +1
neighbor.gem counter -1
PC obtained time reset to server time
endif

FAIL
unsecure pc
end

Ok sort of messy psuedo code but when a game is about the intelligence level of a 3rd grader on a site that requires you be 13 or older to have an account. I figure there is a serious lack of basic understanding of logic in the coding team. Even Neopets has more exciting games than this and they are MEANT for kids. So as far as casual gaming goes this one FAILS.

Gaming Social sites

2010-01-21T18:40:00.001-06:00

This was written for a class I am taking

There are several networking sites of which I am member. I have discovered that I prefer sites that are focused on one aspect or another such as tech support, writing, business or as in the case of these two sites, gaming. The purpose of the gaming social sites is provide a means of communication outside of the games so that players who have formed relationships over the course of a game may communicate.

Two such sites are WGFriends and GamerDNA. Both started with very focused intentions. They were a means for people who play online games to keep in contact. Both have evolved very differently.

GamerDNA began as a site known as GuildCafe. Its main emphasis was a way for Guilds members in Guildwars to communicate and share information when not in game. Its features include a free forum/website for the Guild with some predefined graphics or the ability to upload your own and to set security levels for your members so that Guild officers had places to plan before announcing to the general membership any changes or raids. The site also has general forums for discussion about games and gaming and a news feed on the gaming industry. The site also allowed the creation of other games' guilds and clans and the users could add the games to the database. While this was great from a user standpoint, it lent itself to other issues such as the duplication of games in the database, for example Valhalla MUD and ValhallaMUD.

Then EVERYTHING went online, not just PC games but consoles and even mobile devices. In an effort to support all of these the site evolved into what it is today a Facebook/Twitter clone with a gaming and marketing emphasis. It now also features things such as live Twitter feeds, information of who is playing what game provided though other sites such as Xfire, PS3 online, Wii Online and other live console and game interfaces. This is provided the game is in their database which now features mainstream commercial games and very few independent efforts. True industry news is buried in marketing hype press releases and they have shifted the emphasis from the general gamer to "the male, 18-34 demographic." Many of these features are useful - most are not to all players and development seems to have halted on the older features. Many visually impaired gamers have complained that the site is no longer as accessible as it was in the past.

WGFriends on the other hand started out as a way for those who follow independent and smaller games. They began as a MUD rating site and have expanded to include Twitter and Facebook feeds as users' options. They are lacking the comprehensive newsfeed and security levels within user made forums, but as they are expanding they are constantly polling all of their users as to the functionality and usefulness of each feature. They keep in mind the W3 standards and while their growth is not as explosive as other sites have been there is steady growth that the owners address regularly.

Of the two sites I am presently leaning toward preferring WGFriends not so much for the features it presently provides, but rather the service that the owners provide.

FU2 Codemasters

2009-11-23T06:06:00.003-06:00

I purchased OVERLORD 2 because I liked the first one. Then I hit some issues with the installation. Yeah it was copy protection stuff. As usual a 3rd party company created it. So I muttered a lot and started sending e-mails copying Codemasters to the to line so they could be aware of the issue. After a day the company responded. It was an easy fix. But, Codemaster's also responded with they did not think the game would run on my machine as my video card was too old. Sigh. It is not THAT old, but ok.

It loaded, the registrations went through so I had hope. The cut scene started fine, but when the game went to start, it turned out Codemasters was right. It was a no go. The game still sits on my shelf laughing at me.

So sometime, not so long ago I got a survey request from Codemasters to tell them what I think of Overlord II. THey noticed I registered the game. COOL! A chance to let them know why I was disappointed. A chance to let them know I love their games but cannot afford to upgrade every year just to play a game. So off I go to the site to fill in the info. A site run by another 3rd party company.

The survey starts out with the usual qualifying questions. (Yeah i did that for a living for a while too) Do I work in any of the following industries - no, Do I own this game, yes. What age and sex am I? I answer. Suddenly the screen pops up and and get Sorry you do not qualify. So first i have to ask myself. Why send the email inviting me to the survey when you got that info off the registration? Did they not share that infor with the survey company?

Then I get more annoyed. You see, since I did do that for a while I sort have an idea of how a company decides who to survey. They base it on who they perceive their market to be. Which means that they are not reading the refistration infor or at least not querying it before they contact the buyers of the game. That or they just do not like females that are older to purchase and play their product. In speaking to other gaming friends it seems many companies do not like males over 30 either. So I got some news for ya CODEMASTERS. PEOPLE OVER 20 PLAY GAMES AND GUESS WHAT SOME OF US are *GASP* FEMALE. So deal with it.

Sound and Fury

2009-10-16T15:29:00.009-05:00

Another disappointment this week. Assassin's Creed was originally slated for this month for the PC. So I saved my 60.00 and went off to the store to see if this machine can handle it. It is not out. It is now due out in March of next year.

So instead I spent 35.00 and reassessed my desire for the game. Of course now it will be bigger, better and require more hardware. And that is the state of gaming. Gone are the days of companies that came out with great games like Thief, Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore. Beautiful graphics, great story and good game play. Instead everything must be online, interactive and require more hardware, different o/s's and twenty tweaks. I sit here with games I would love to play but in this economy cannot justify upgrading the machine just to play a game. What starts out as a 60.00 purchase becomes 260.00 or more by the time you get the latest graphics cards, sound cards, and RAM needed for this generation of games. Games that in my opinion are no more exciting than those mentioned previously that ran on less of a machine.(2MB ram, 486 processor or less and 1MB or more hd space.)

Why? Perhaps that should be the big change made in the industry. Set machine specs before the project starts and hold the developers to them. Set them so they run on a machine that is one back from the state of the art. Why? Because delays in the production of a product point to issues in the industry which means low profits. Low profits mean people are not buying games. If the industry is losing money perhaps they need to poll their player base and not rely on the propaganda put forth by marketing sites and what they claim. Sure I would love a 7,000.00 machine just for games, but honestly it was a chore getting a 600.00 one.

Yes I am one voice. One buyer one gamer. But I plan what I will buy and save for it. So do others. When it turns out I cannot run it on the equipment I have, I move on. Even Guild Wars seems to have made changes to the old game so that now some areas lock and freeze due to graphics issues, areas I made it through before on this machine on dial up even. Overlord for the Wii pushed the limits of the machine. That still blows my mind. It was MADE for a console with very definite specs, yet there were still points when the graphics overwhelmed the machine.

So if anyone in the industry truly listens, which I am doubting more and more. Here is a suggestion. Go to the gaming sites incognito. READ and I mean READ the forums regarding installation and issues with games. See what people truly complain about. Look at what they are really running for a machine. Not what they want, not what they drool over, but rather what they have now.

Delays are acceptable if it results in a good game that anyone can run on their system. Delays are fine if the game is worth it. But tell your marketing group to lose the hype. We are tired of all the sound and fury about airware. Too much hype leads to disappointment and disappointment leads to money going elsewhere.

Oh and on what did I spend my 35.00? 2 games - Trine for the PC and a used copy of Baroque for the Wii. Sorry guys someone else got the money I had planned for Assassin's Creed, because they had the games in the store for systems I have.

Overlord: Dark Legend

2009-07-26T23:49:00.011-05:00

Let me start out with a little background on this. I already own Overlord for the PC. I like the game, it is fun. I plan on getting Overlord 2. So when it came out for the PC I went to my local Gamestop to purchase it. They were out of stock. So I asked price 40.00 within my acceptable budget for a PC game I want. Since they are a local store and know us and what systems we buy for and been listening to me complain about the lack of Wii games for me, they pointed out Overlord Dark Legend.

My first thought was how fun! I can use the wand to sweep my minions around. Then i saw the price 50.00 hmm. So Chaos wanted a copy of Persona2 for the PS2 we got that and I decided to do something I have never done before. I rented a game. This means I had a time limit so I did something I rarely do. I played the fame through in less than a week. That means I missed some stuff and did not go searching for everything. Keep this in mind as your read.

Start up:

I almost did not play this game. Imagine this, you rent a game from your local Blockbuster. You bring it home and put it in the system . The first screen that comes up in your less than 6 month old system is that it needs to upgrade the system to play this game Yes or No? No detail, no explanation of how - nothing. I should add that I have no Internet connection on this system. It is not an option where I live. No cable, satellite is cost prohibitive so I was doubly unsure if it would even work. With a lump in my throat I selected yes expecting it to fail.

Start up:
It started the update bar and stopped around 30%. After a while (probably less time than it seemed) I had decided it has frozen I put the controller down to go restart and WHAM it finished. I guess Codemaster and Nintendo have been taking lessons from Microsoft. Information would be nice guys!

Usual historical cut scenes start. The game is presented as a bedtime story told to a young Overlord about another young Overlord on his 16th birthday. The upshot is this:

Once this was a great evil family with the Black Duke who built the area up from scratch. Over subsequent generations the family frittered away the fortune and the present Overlord is absent a lot. His wife ran off with a hero and the older siblings are either frolicking with Elves or cavorting with Dwarves leaving the youngest alone on his 16th birthday. The cook gives the young master his birthday present. Which leads him (eventually after a bit of tutorial type running around) to the throne room that has been sealed. Now the fun starts. Yep it is a Cinderella story with a slight difference.

Gameplay:
I am still playing the first version of Overlord on my PC. I missed having as many buttons to use to get to things. A few things are a bit difficult with the controller (like selecting default spell). On the other hand after you get used to it, it is actually a pretty natural feel to use the wand and nunchuck on this game. I liked it more than I thought I would. Fairly good job Codemasters you get get a B+ on that.

The story romps right along and a lot of the old favorite stuff is there. Yep nasty hobbitses, tricksey elves and drunken dwarves. All are there. Over all the game is pretty easy and any RPG player can see where the plot is going, but it is fun enough to follow along. (I still LOVE my minions! Those and the imps in Dungeonkeeper have to be my favorite support characters of all time)

There were only two things I found annoying. The first was the repetitive phrases uttered by NPCs when you venture near them. If I hear that phrase "The way you cut through those plants.." one more time I may engage in a little Overlord activity against the television. Give us a repeat or ignore option PLEASE. The second was along the same lines but was a bit more frustrating and that was the Bard kept telling me about the bug that needed squishing after I had completed that side quest. The cook did the same about the posters in town. I went back to each and checked my journal to ensure I HAD completed them. I had. That needs to be revisited

I wish there had been more cut scenes with the Minions, I may not have found them all though. The ones that were shown I liked.

The two final bosses are a pain (as they should be) But the Elf may have had other issues. See next section for that. So I will not address that until I figure out what was technical difficult and where it really was. The game is rather short it came in at 16 hours or so. I am not complaining about that. I enjoy a game based on its story and difficulty. Parts are difficult but nothing was impossible. However it ended faster than expected. I expected a confrontation of some sort with my siblings or a final battle of semi epic proportions. At least the townspeople throwing rotten veggies at the siblings. I do not mind the way it ended it just seemed a bit abrupt as if the coders were told "ok that's enough now tack on something to end it."

Technical stuff:
Ok already mentioned the update. I had locks and freezes as I approached endgame. They occurred after I got the side quest with the gnome statues and continued until I defeated Erasmus. I suspect memory issues from the way it acted. It would lock at a loading screen for the town of Meadowsweet and for the Elven areas both at load of area and during battle. Once I was past the elven areas it ran fine again. The issue MAY have been a scratch on the disk, but I think not. Locale and actions performed for locks was too varied. I considered trashing the game more than once due to this.

Some graphic weirdness ala old Sonic games. i.e.: something did not load then finally did. Usually it was an obstacle or background but still I noticed it.

One area kept telling me there was a mana device present even after I picked it up. I wasted time and locked up several times looking for it.

Fun factor:

I liked the game. I was prepared to not based on some other gamers' feedback. I would definitely replay it. So that ranks high. The minions are hysterical and the jester is fun. The missions are doable in a reasonable amount of time. I like that I do not have to spend 4 hours to get 1 mission done.

Upshot: I like it. It is great little game and immensely enjoyable. I give it a 4 or 4 and half out of 5 (provided the tech issues were a bad disk and not bad programming otherwise drop it .5 for that.) I encourage you to try it. However, I will not pay 50.00 for it. Sorry guys that is too much 40.00 MAYBE if I feel flush. 30.00 probably, 25.00 definitely. Maybe your pricing structure needs to be revisited.

Gaming Backlog: Devil May Cry (PS2)

2009-07-15T02:30:00.010-05:00

Ah HA! I finished one. Fr those of you who do not know I have a gaming backlog like you would not believe. But at last I finished Devil May Cry. Game play was good. I did not do a completest game. So impressions are from a first play through without annoyances.

Start up and synopsis:
The game starts out with a cut scene of Dante sitting in his office as a long willowy woman comes crashing through the window. Interesting way to get some one's attention. She proceeds to try to kill him, then when that fails she hires him. All normal for Dante.

So off they go to a Castle on an island and now things start to get strange. First Trish as we have been told her name is goes vaulting up to the top of a cliff leaving Dante to walk up the long way. This theme runs through the whole game. Yep, that's right Dante can't jump for shit. So off he goes walking.

Several hours (game play time), a few platforms and some cool weapons later, he finds Trish again and guess what? She is working for the bad guy. Shock! You mean the woman that looks a LOT like Dante's mother who just happens to come into his office through the window and can jump sheer cliff-faces in a single bound is a DEMON? (or are they devils? Still fuzzy on that.) So now it is time for her to deliver Dante to her boss and guess what, yep she fails.

Now comes the weirdness. Dante is starting to clue into what is happening (never mind the PLAYER is smarter than the supposed professional in this and has figured it out LONG ago.) Dante goes for the big guy. Big guy almost gets him but guess what yep the woman saves him (why? Dante gets all emo over it (Talk about picking the wrong women) Goes off fights some more and guess what? Yep, Trish shows up able to function in spite of being deaded a while ago by her ex employer. OK Then comes the REALLY stupid stuff. Starfox/Sonic Adventure style flying of a museum relic that Dante just HAPPENS to know how to fly and a last minute getaway before the bad guy's corpse and any remaining minions are supposedly buried under a ton of rubble.

Well we will see about that there are 3 sequels after all.

Gameplay:
The moves are fun to do, not annoying ones that you have to contort your fingers into pretzel shapes in order to accomplish anything and even auto mode is playable. Except once it is on, you cannot turn it off. The biggest complaints I have are lack of the ability to change my camera and Dante can't jump. Look I do not mind the occasion engine controlled jump from the correct spot but I should be able to jump BACK. Not fall down and have to climb all over.

Game is mission oriented grades applied to mission upon completion based on object collected, NPCs whacked and time.

Technical:

Don't know if it is my set, the switcher box or what but at times backgrounds and graphics were too muddy. Had to turn it up all the way on the game to see things like ladders against the wall. I do not have to do that on other games so suspect it is the overall clarity of the graphics in the game. Dark is good, muddy is bad.

No locks, no bugs, no issues Good solid coding. Great job on that.

Fun factor:
Overall the game was good. Dante definitely earns the title of Badass. Missions for the most part go fast with a few exceptions caused by the difficulty seeing and getting used the inability to turn the camera to get in the right spot for a jump. Will probably replay it at least one in Dante Must Die mode.

Upshot:
Bosses in the game on Normal Mode are hard, but for the most part not impossible to beat even first time through. The story line is acceptable and only gets ridiculous near the end. The female character, Trish, is rather lame. There are major holes in the RPG plot. But hey for a shooter it has more plot than most. Give it 4.5 out of 5
The ending was a too stupid to warrant that last .5.

I started DMC 2 Can anyone tell me why Dante now reminds me of the Prince in PoP Sands of Time? Hmm

WTFM

2009-06-27T04:14:00.004-05:00

Ok so, here is what happened. After years (ok maybe not years, but a corrupted card and a restart, I FINALLY finished Fire Emblem Path of Radiance on the GameCube. It was not my best game, being my first play through of it and I rushed through the parts I had already done the second time. (Could they have made those ending sequences ANY longer? I was falling asleep.)

I HAD to finish it because my daughter wanted to see me port the gamecube came over to Fire Emblem Radiant on the Wii that the family Holiday present. So I go to port the Path of Radiance data to Radiant Dawn. I follow the onscreen instructions and lo and behold, frozen Wii at the port point. Sigh, technology is great when it works.

Being a big RPG gamer. I have many branch points and saves on the card. I figure perhaps they are the issue. Having learned my lesson when the card corrupted the first time on Darkened Sky RIGHT BEFORE THE BOSS BATTLE. I made a backup card. Realizing I have bee slacking about keeping the backup up to date and thinking maybe it was the unfinished games on there that were the issue; I decide to back up the whole shebang and delete all but the finished game off the real card. It is not able to be copied. OK that just pisses me off.

So off I go to the game sites to see who knows what. Fire Emblem site has nothing about this where I can find it. Wii site has nothing about this where i can find it. So I start checking Gamespot, GamerDNA, and their ilk. Gamespot paid off.

It seems that If you have any game that is saved in easy mode on the card, it will not copy or transfer. It will NOT allow you to copy the game blocks onto another. Ok that is just kinda lame. I deleted the easy branches and Presto it copies onto my back up and is able to be ported over to the Wii. Now the rant moves to the old style I would RTFM if there were any entries in FM about this! DOCUMENTATION IS NECESSARY WRITE IT AND INCLUDE IT PUBLISHERS.

One Answer

2009-06-18T00:54:00.008-05:00

I have been ranting about games going to the marketeers I mean dogs. Well J. Radoff had one answer over at Gamesutra. He mentions a lot in the article that is from a marketing point of view, possibly because he IS a marketeer and not a designer, but a many of the things he says holds true.

First and foremost Gamers talk to each other. In any given week 2 or 3 of my gaming friends will pass on a website or a game to me to check out. Some are flash in pan interests for us, some retain our interests. Let me add to Mr. Radoff's list of things that make a game virile as he calls it.

1. Accessibility - people who are visually or hearing impaired or have other needs are a large minority of gamers. Make certain the game can be played by anyone. This includes making a game that you do not have to squint to read the fuzzy font or that you have to be a contortionist to get the move needed to complete a level out of the controller (think fighting games)

2. Cross platform. Over 50% of my gaming friends run some form of *nix. Many games are still too Microsoft dependant. Not all console gamers are on a cable modem. Do not make the game require the latest hardware just to start. We will put up with slow if it does not crash. I liked Cutthroats. Too bad it fragged my hard drive to hell and back every time I ran it. I still liked it enough to run it off a dedicated drive so that i could defrag every time. But as the game progressed it became unplayable. OPTIMIZE the game for a lower end machine.

3. Cross browser I do not use I.E. Most of us do not use I.E. Firefox is the favorite. Opera is up there, Safari, to name a few.

4. Affordable. Make the core game affordable. Guild Wars is a good example. The core game is cheap in comparison to many other games. Pay for stuff is 10.00 per item (pretty much). The mud I play starts at 15.00 per item. That we can probably afford off a paycheck; anything we have to save up for is probably not going to generate as much overall income.

5. Even playing field. It really irks players when someone buys a character in a game. When items are bought make them useful, in game attainable or status items. Extra storage in Guild Wars, the spell pack that saves the player from having to spend 3 years on line to get all of the spells.

6. Humanize the staff. In an online game let the coders owners admins marketing people be seen sometimes. It lets the players know the developers are still involved.

7. Make the game a challenge but not impossible. Skies of Arcadia was fairly easy but people come back to it over and over because of the way the game was put together, the character interaction, the graphics and the storyline. Toy Commander was hard DAMN hard but the story, graphics and sheer strangeness kept that one going. And I swear one day I WILL beat the Lands of Lore series, I even keep an old machine around so I can play it.

8. The above leads to the most important. Your players have to LIKE the game. Something has to keep them interested during the XP grind periods. Character interaction, other player interaction, quests and storyline. In Guild Wars the what will happen next kept me going. In Zork, Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder, Doom and even Descent little surprises along the way, red herrings, sub plots and character interaction are all things that kept my interest. These days Overlord, Devil May Cry, Titan Quest and the Fire Emblems are my interest holders. Eldar Scrolls and Assassins Creed beckon to me, but what I would not give for another good game like the Thief series (in no kill mode) or almost any game put out by the old Westwood Studios.

Game makers by all means listen to Radoff. But the thing he says that rings the truest is that gamers talk to other gamers. And if you are not hearing what they say then you need to get out of the business. Because the best games are those made by gamers for gamers.

Is the Gaming Boom Going Bust

2009-05-15T22:52:00.006-05:00

For the past 3 years or so games and gamers have been high profile. Yet this year it seems that some of that is falling off. I have some theories as to why.

First and foremost is oversaturation. Everyone and their brother has gaming blog, podcast, or whatever. Non gamers have stopped being curious about the sub culture and started being annoyed.

No diversity in L&F. Bartle said it when he said he had played Warhammer, it was called World of Warcraft. The games are starting to all look alike. Many years ago the trend was to look like EOB then it moved to the Diablo look, now it is Warcraft look. Very little in the design or the functionalty makes a game stand out within its genre.

Economy. Yes it is hitting the gaming market. People are starting to think about what game they are going play next and count their pennies. People are returning to titles and online games that are safe or at least that they know they like.

The morph of the craft into a business. Game coders used to be the renegades of the programming world. They were the true geeks, they did not work for deadlines. They worked to make it good. This was not always the utopia some make it out to be. Games did not work or worked only on some systems or with some co processors, games went way over cost and were outdated when they came out. Or they never came out. Many companies went under, suffered from hostile takeovers or were flat out bought out. The pendulem has swung too far in the opposite direction now. It has become big business and markleting rules all. Game companies announce release dates and are held to them. Too much structure stifles creativity.

More in a day or two.

What does an admin do all day?

2009-04-12T02:38:00.004-05:00

The other day I was on Guild Wars. Players as usual are standing around talking in Ascalon. One was trolling for flames. People got upset by his or her verbal abuse of others and started trying to report and get an admin to respond immediately. When they did not, players immediately began complaining about the admin staff.

Ok so, you have a favorite game that you play online. Suddenly something happens or is not working as you think it should be. So what do you do? Maybe you look for an admin. But while one shows as around, they are not responding. What DO they do all day anyway?

Well first let's start with some information. Some games have 1 admin (most likely the owner/designer whatever) while others have 20. Specific tasks differ according to the game, but here are some of the tasks that are assigned to admins on any game.

Read and respond to mail sent to admin.
Check bug reports sent to admin.
Check reports of cheating sent to admin
Prioritize both of the above for action
Ban proven cheaters
Check with other staff members as to actions they have taken
Check change log
Recover/reset passwords
Read complaints about game balancing
Read ideas for game balancing
test and monitor new areas and areas reported as having issues
perform copyovers or reboots as requested by builders or other staff
(and sometimes by the players)
And be visible at times so the players know that the Admin are around.

Getting the idea? Now places with multiple admins split up these tasks, but 10 to 1 they add more such as Play testing, Code review, implementation, coder/builder liaison, etc. Unless it is NC or Blizzard, you can bet that the Admin does all of this unpaid. Some places even ban the admin staff from playing the game they admin. (though this is an unwise move on so many different levels that companies that do this are far and few between.

So please remember before you throw a fit that the Admins on your favorite game are never there, that it may be true - but most likely they are just busy trying to make the game a little more fun and or enjoyable.

Why is there always the need to blame something?

2009-03-18T00:33:00.003-05:00

First read this blog about another homicidal student. And here is the article on the shooting.

Now when I was growing up Rock and Roll (specifically Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles) were blamed for Son of Sam's and Charles Manson's killing sprees. By the tome I was in college violent television and movies were the cause. Now it is video games. The fact is there is something WRONG with the people that do this. Outlawing violent TV or video games is NOT going to change it. Outlawing comic books or graphic novels or even fictional accounts are not going to change it. People like this find something to obcess about and as a result to justify their violence. YES, they need help, yes they need monitoring by their parents, keepers whoever. BUT stop blaming an outside source. Rant over