Hiro Antagonist

Why, did you think they all looked like this?

To be fair, the stereotype of the fat nerd isn't true when it comes to gamers - they're more underweight than over (QuakeCon, a 3,000 person LAN party was filled with 25-30 skinny guys for every chubby fellow).

But what of the stereotype of the female gamer?

From personal experience, I'm not at all surprised that 40% of the people that play video games are female. Back in the 80's as a kid, that would have been odd, but as games became more complex, they picked up a bigger audience. Especially sims, the Sims, if you will.

I'm at odds with how I feel to female gamers. Half the time I wish I'd never heard them on the mic, because all of the sudden prejudices rush in and I don't think of them the same way any more. Gamers that sound younger than 14 also do this to me.

I play competitive, twitchy games. I've got a knack for them and the obsessive mindset to practice them far past when most sane people would stopped playing. During tournaments, I'll put in as much as 75 hours a week. No classes helps, of course.

I don't mind people that casually play twitchy games - they're playing to have a relaxing good time. Perfectly legitimate pursuit. Sane, even. I'm also playing to have a good time, though more for being the best at something than anything else.

So I find myself resenting female gamers (the ones that play twitchy FPS games, that is). Which is frustrating, because intellectually I'm all for people being all equally meritable.

When it's not silent frustration over every other male around me drooling to do things for them, it's over how easily they give up. And emote. "Oh My GOD! Did you see that? Gosh I hate this game! Stupid [insert whatever here]!"

There's these male reflexes that leap to say 'shut the fuck up kid, get your head in the game or get out'. But that's what I'd say to a younger guy who didn't know better. The odds are they'd shutup and work harder, or quit. Doesn't seem like a productive strategy for female gamers though. Just grit teeth and say 'yeah, we'll do X next time and things will work out' or 'yeah, you've just got to do Y, don't sweat it, you'll get it next time'.

I hate myself for feeling like this. Both in that I feel I have to act a certain way, coddle people, and that I feel like a female gamer won't take the game as seriously as her male counterparts and just give up when it gets tough. Or give up a lot easier than a male would.

To be honest, games are entertainment. If you're not entertained, there's a failure somewhere and the odds are that it's not you. If someone has a low frustration threshold and doesn't place significant import on a game, all said and done, that has little play on games as a whole.

Gaming is also a social exercise though, and interacting with people is part of it. Where should you expect others to live up to, and what is too much to ask?

I'm not certain that any of us know.

And this is how you shoot hunters out of midair in L4D without breaking a sweat:



(from a scrim last night, most memorable kill I made)

No, this score was not the result of a pub stomp.


(currently playing for these guys)

" If he's right, the tactics in life are the same as in quake. Anything that moves and isn't obviously on your side, shoot it. Anything that doesn't move, shoot it anyway because it's probably thinking about moving and killing you as soon as you turn your back."

So. True.

When it comes to gaming, there's just no point to it if you can't utterly dominate the other team, grind them down into the dust and destroy them.

I have this crazy friend who plays video games 'for fun'. I'm not quite sure what he means - the fun is clearly in decimating the other team or your opponent, the rest is just pointless fluff, right?

Working on a new map, this time for Left 4 Dead, a really fun zombie apocalypse game :D

It doesn't have a name yet, but it's a military base with a working minefield - seeing zombies exploding and flying into the air after walking over a landmine is HILARIOUS! However, they work on the survivors too, and if you get pulled across the landmine field, it's pretty rough. But fun!

Expanding on an interesting Slashdot article about the IGDA having internal heated arguments over 'crunch time' being a bad or good thing (the irony is that the IGDA is supposed to increase the quality of life for game developers in general, so being pro-crunch time would be doing the opposite of their stated goals), in general, the concept of 'crunch time' is a bullshit concept.

Back from my dotcom days, when I had no connection to video game development, we did 'crunch time' on a regular basis. With every single project, actually. What is came down to was "We need you to do 85 hour weeks to make up for our lack of planning."

Companies love crunch time. You can get employees to do insane amounts of overtime and not pay them for a minute of it. You can work them to death, then lay all of them off when the project is finished, and bring in a fresh batch of people too naive to catch onto what's going on. You can burn people like matches and get away with it.

Until your company collapses, anyway. Like mine did. And lots of others. But unintelligent management types who *think* they're awfully clever can keep this up for a few years, then move on to the next company, so it's no big deal to them.

Coming from someone who used to do 85 hour work weeks during 'crunch time mode', if the management can't "see a viable strategy to meet these deadlines without crunch time", you have idiots in your management, and quite possibly incompetent idiots, or even worse, malevolent idiots who think they can burn workers like a cord of firewood.

Between solid planning, and the sound business sense to not take on projects that have idiotic and unrealistic deadlines, crunch time can be entirely avoided. Don't take the line of bullshit they feed you that 'it's inevitable'. It's not.

I've gone through some of the best games in existence this year, Fallout 3, GTA IV and I've been playing COD 4 and Left 4 Dead on a pretty frequent basis. The first two, however, once you go through the full story... There's not much point in playing them afterward. And the last two?

I've played COD 4 to the point where I've got basically every golden gun (for those of you who don't play Call of Duty 4, it means that I've played a ridiculous amount and have beaten every challenge the game has to offer and pwn n00bs online left and right to the point where it's no longer a challenge).

Left 4 Dead is a very fun zombie game, but... Well, there's not a lot of material to it (only 4 campaigns), and when you play the same maps over and over again, not matter how fun your team mates are, you're just shooting the same zombies at some point.

I'm waiting for some new amazing game to come out, or at least something that can keep away the gamer boredom blues...

There's some nice RTS type games out there, but... Eh... Another Elder Scrolls: Oblivion caliber game would be nice, but that's nowhere to be found. Don't care for MMO's at all, hate subscription model games.

Bah.

1. Don't chase a straight.

2. If it costs you nothing to fold, and your hand isn't a sure win, fold.

3. Don't pay to see cards.

4. Chase a flush sparingly.

5. If you've got a good hand pre-flop, raise the blind pre-flop accordingly.

6. After the flop is dealt, if your opponent checks, remember that, as its a strong indicator of what his hand is.

7. If your opponent raises at the flop, look at the flop, determine what the best hand he could possibly have would be, compare to your hand, and if it's extremely unlikely that he has a better hand, raise him. If it's impossible for him to have a better hand (you have a pair of aces, for instance, and the flop was 2 6 J in no matching suits), raise a lot.

8. If all the other players but one fold pre-flop, and your lone opponent doesn't raise the blind, you should raise the blind. If he checks at the flop, raise again. If he raises heavily at the flop, consider your bluff very carefully.

9. If the community cards form a hand that is crazy stupid (say there's three of a kind, or four of a matching suit), keep in mind that the odds of someone having a full house or a flush go way up, and bet sparingly.

10. If any of your opponents are raising, especially post-flop, don't bother bluffing, especially if more than one are raising.

11. If you're the big blind, you're bearing a sunk cost already, so value your current hand slightly higher than you would otherwise. Especially if everyone but the small blind has folded.

12. If you're bluffing, do so consistently. Raising pre-flop then checking at the flop isn't something you should do if you're bluffing. If you really had a pair of aces, you'd still be raising even if there weren't any aces at the flop.

Been addicted to Left 4 Dead lately (get it if you don't already have it, it's 50% off this weekend on Steam for $25).

If anyone on my friends list plays, feel free to add me on Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/montag

"EVE Online is too complex and hard to be fun!"

"Before anyone posts the 'cliff of death' drawing...

It is the complexity that keep one playing the game, day after day, year after year. So think of it like this; When you first learned to ride a bike, it was a rather complex task just to stay balanced, no? Learn to ride this bike, and you can have a lot of fun."


"If Eve is a bike, then instead of having pedals and handlebars to control, it has complicated and unintuitive set of buttons that take a full day of tutorials to understand. Then once you get this bike, you have to ride the same trails over and over until you can get a better bike. Then once you get a better bike you ride a more challenging set of trails over and over, until the boredom is unbearable. Once you get a good enough bike to race against other bikes (or you just get sick of the trails), you find that all the veterans will always have better equipment, skills, and money then you. So only way to way to win at bike races is to get a bunch of friends, sit outside a gate, and beat the shit out of any unsuspecting bikers that come through, and then race them while they have broken legs."
-Cornflake917

On a personal level, I have nothing but respect for the EVE Online developers, as they seemed like smart people (they actually had equations in their power point presentation heh) and quite concerned with the quality of user experiences when I went to their talk at the Austin GDC.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, it seems that the game I overheard talk of while drinking* with some fellow game devs at the Austin Game Developer's Conference back in August is finally being released by Replay Studios; Velvet Assassin (wikipedia, youtube trailer).

Inspired by real life female WWII commandos, Nancy Wake and Violette Szabo (the latter who's last name I was too drunk to recall post-AGDC). Both of them are amazingly hard-core, even for commandos.

My favorite quote about them is still the following:

""Her French companions, especially Henri Tardivat, praised her fighting spirit; amply demonstrated when she killed an SS sentry with her bare hands to prevent him raising the alarm during a raid. During a 1990s television interview, when asked what had happened to the sentry who spotted her, Wake simply drew her finger across her throat."

Hopefully the game will turn out well.

*There was a uTorrent developer at the bar also, but sadly he didn't let any secrets slip, even after chatting with him for a while :( Still, meeting one of the uTorrent developers is like meeting Superman in real life. *hero worship* lol

Fallout 3 is a game that rightly deserves its reputation for the vast amount of ethical choices given the player. You're not stuck being the cardboard cutout hero. Upon finding a town in need, you can help them and be a hero. Or ignore their plight and enjoy the benefits of amoral karma. Or nuke their town into oblivion and be a villain feared by most and deeply respected by other evil-doers. Some of the better parts helpers in the game won't even join you unless you have a sufficiently evil level of karma. And there's some who won't join you unless you have the karma of a saint.

However, the easiest way to play the game is as a good person. Ignoring the quests means you miss out on lots of XP and some rather interesting weapons and armor given as rewards. However, you get massive amounts of positive karma for finishing quests, which means you're the equivalent of a saint by the end of the game.

You know what's funny? The end of the game showed me that being a saint is a truckload of bullshit. You're in a situation where you have to choose between you or another innocent person getting the short straw to go into a chamber full of deadly radiation. Whichever one of you goes will die. Well, except for your helpful sidekick who's immune to radiation. Except, all of the sudden, he's not so helpful any more. In fact, it's quite possibly the most blatant artificial dilemma I've ever seen. So kill myself? Or let the other heroic person be a hero? What do I gain by my death? Nothing. What do I loose by the death of the innocent person? A little sleep, maybe. The innocent townspeople don't care who dies, as long as their saved. So there's literally no incentive to choose suicide. None!

But in the ending cutscene, if you don't choose suicide, you're lambasted for your choice. Nice.


Obviously the moral of the story is; 'It doesn't pay to be the paragon of virtue in this game'.


So after I beat the game for the first time, I decided to go back and create a new character. Time to have fun being evil. And you know what? Slinking through the halls of Rivet City in the depths of the night, killing every innocent citizen in their sleep until the entire ship is as empty as a Western ghost town? It feels *good*. Had it not been for the shittiest of shitty endings, it probably wouldn't feel quite as good as it does now. So thanks Bethesda developers!

To continue on the topic of Fallout 3 from my last post, this is quite possibly the most awesome weapon ever:




The Experimental MIRV Fatboy launcher - it fires nukes like a shotgun fires buckshot. I mean, a shoulder-mounted nuclear artillery launcher is pretty damn awesome, and what's better than shooting a nuke at someone or some town? Shooting EIGHT nukes, of course!

Bwuahaha!

(I've also killed myself accidentally with this weapon *so* many times. Word to the wise, don't fire this thing at anything even remotely close to you.)

So I recently got a copy of Fallout 3, and wow, it's a highly addictive game. To give you some idea of how addictive, I stayed up last night till about 7am this morning playing it. Yeah.

In many ways, it's the sequel to another extremely addictive game by the same company, Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Actually, it's a different game from an entirely different series, and the fantasy RPG universe of Oblivion couldn't be more different than the sci-fi RPG universe of Fallout 3. Except that they use the same game engine (I swear, they even use some of the same default sounds), happen to be made by the same company, have a similar style of level layout (big open expanses, cities, and dungeons that are made by people obsessed with 90 degree angles) and a few other things.

But that's hardly bad at all. Oblivion is one of the best and most addictive games I've ever played in my life. Sadly I never really played the original Fallout game when it was out (does watching a friend play count?), but if it was anything like this one, I fear I missed out quite a bit :(

But yes, Fallout 3 rocks. You should get your hands on a copy!

You know what? Afterburner II is still as awesome to play today as it was twenty years ago. Wow.

(a friend brought over an Xbox with some ROMs on it)
(and if any of you didn't play it in the arcade back then, it was REALLY, REALLY awesome :D :D )

Today's badass award goes to Nancy Wake. I overheard her name at a game developer's conference I attended in relation to a game about covert operations, and looking at her wikipedia entry, I have to admit, it's pretty impressive stuff.

"Her French companions, especially Henri Tardivat, praised her fighting spirit; amply demonstrated when she killed an SS sentry with her bare hands to prevent him raising the alarm during a raid. During a 1990s television interview, when asked what had happened to the sentry who spotted her, Wake simply drew her finger across her throat."

My kind of woman!

A rather long article, but an excellent one on the subject: How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity, by Ed Catmull of the Harvard Business Review.

A short excerpt:
"When it comes to producing breakthroughs, both technological and artistic, Pixar’s track record is unique. [...] In the following 13 years, we have released eight other films (A Bug’s Life; Toy Story 2; Monsters, Inc.; Finding Nemo; The Incredibles; Cars; Ratatouille; and WALL·E), which also have been blockbusters. Unlike most other studios, we have never bought scripts or movie ideas from the outside. All of our stories, worlds, and characters were created internally by our community of artists. And in making these films, we have continued to push the technological boundaries of computer animation, securing dozens of patents in the process.

While I’m not foolish enough to predict that we will never have a flop, I don’t think our success is largely luck. Rather, I believe our adherence to a set of principles and practices for managing creative talent and risk is responsible. Pixar is a community in the true sense of the word. We think that lasting relationships matter, and we share some basic beliefs: Talent is rare. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur. It must be safe to tell the truth. We must constantly challenge all of our assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy our culture. In the last two years, we’ve had a chance to test whether our principles and practices are transferable. [...] The success of our efforts prompted me to share my thinking on how to build a sustainable creative organization.

It's been a long, long time since a single player game has dominated my time spent at the computer like this one has.


Will Wright's (the man who brought you Sim City) Spore is absolutely fucking amazing.

Get it!

None of the Sim games after the first Sim City really held my attention. This, on the other hand... It's like the first time I played Sim City at least a decade ago. It just sucks you in, and it's absolutely amazing.

Quick synopsis: You play a creature that evolves from the single cell stage to the space age. Swimming around in drop of water to running around as a small pre-sentient animal, to a tribal stage, to a civilization era, and then onto space.

I think I played it for ten hours straight the day I got it. I can't remember the last time a game had that effect on me...

So now that I have nicely upgrade computer (intel quad core), I can actually play some modern games. One I've been playing the last few days is Assassin's Creed. It's very fun, though it has some Grand Theft Auto style shortcomings - ie, repetitive missions, you're just playing what's essentially a series of sandbox levels. Oh yeah, and it has rather long and boring cut scenes that you can't skip. That's one of the greatest sins of game design. Don't punish the player.

But much like GTA, Assassin's Creed is still a blast to play. You can make him jump and climb and leap over EVERYTHING!!! There's nothing like jumping from rooftop to rooftop at top speed, running and leaping over several death-defying drops (Parkour) to a guard three buildings away and stabbing him in the face. It's great.

I have to give it props on the accuracy of how things look when you're sword fighting. They actually do the things people do in real life, they swing the same way, and the same things happen. It's not fencing, but you practice with one or two types of swords, and you get a feel for what's possible and not when looking at movies and games. The designers deserve massive praise for the accuracy of it all.

But yeah, you play Altair, who's basically a twenty-something flying squirrel on crack who happens to look like a human. And goes around stabbing people in the face. And the back. And the neck. And in the foot too! Terribly violent, but terribly fun!