Multiplayer Dramas

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.

Generations of Gamers

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. I did not have 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 this 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 to 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 I 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 to 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.  Now many new players come in and donate immediately figuring the more they 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.

More Gamer Rants

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.

1. 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. 
2. 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.
3. 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 )
4. 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.

FU2 Codemasters

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

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.

Is the Gaming Boom Going Bust

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.

Why is there always the need to blame something?

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

Gaming addiction - Old problem new awareness?

So a few weeks ago a player on the MUD went postal and started player killing everyone. Some logged off most retaliated. At that point the player started whining that people were cheating and reported to the Administration the perceived cheat.

The admin looked into it, spoke to the players involved separately, spoke to witnesses then ruled it as not a cheat or a rule infraction. The admin then informed the accuser and the accused of the decision. The accuser was upset.

Phrases were uttered like I have spent so much on this game and I do not have a job. I will leave and take my friends with me. This game is my life. I have nothing out side of it, don't take it away.

Obviously this player has issues. The issues are not game related, but personality related. This person (whether it was true or a put on) has now told everyone who plays the MUD that they are not capable of functioning in the real world and has retreated to games as his life. True or not the thought is sad. There are people who rely on outside sources to validate themselves to the world.

We see it in business, people can;t function if they lose their prestige, they fall apart if their department is taken away. In relationships it is what makes people stalkers and in personal ties hobbyists who turn into fanatics.

It is a form of addiction and of escape from reality. So why are there so many these days, or are there? Is it like the perceived increase in woman gamers, just easier to find people or is it truly new phenomenon? Where does the responsibility of the game owners and other players start and finish. Most states have tap laws so that bar tender may not overserve a guest. Should game owners siteban perceived addicts?

On the other hand.. If this is a fairly new problem, why is gaming the chosen form of escape now? What is it replacing? Television, books, or something similar? Or is it because people cannot meet face to face as they did. Are the less tolerant of differences in spite of the lip-service paid and as a result ostracize those who do not fit into a their image of themselves. Or worse does it allow those who are insecure to hide rather than try?

I do not know and am seeking an answer. It worries me that so much mainstream emphasis is placed on gaming lately. All I do know do know that games are supposed to enrich life not be life.

If wishes were Bugs then Gamers would Rule

Lately I have been quiet here because I have been busy with the MUD. Valhalla is growing again and it is because we are 'restructuring'. No we are not laying off non paid MUD staff, but rather organizing and adding.

Here is what we have done so far - reinstituted the bug, typo and idea reporting tools. They have been there but no one was using them.

Help file update. The owner of the engine (whistler) and the main big boy Admin (Darg) have added a LOT of changes over the years. But many have never been added to the help. The new admin (Etna) has started on that huge task.

Brought back the MUD paper so that progress can be read by all those who care in it as well as to involve others who wish to contribute, but do not have the time, inclination or knowledge to build or admin.

Implemented 1 new zone, brought back 2 that had been removed for correction and contacted all builders we could find that had zones in progress on test.

Hardware admin (Bakka) has added new eq and been tweaking things.

So perusing the bug reports there are lots of real ones, some that are the usual WAD (working as designed) then something I never saw in the 'real world' The wish bugs. Ones such as this quest must be broken because I cannot find the people I need to, or the reward must be bugged because I cannot use it or it has higher reqs than i like.

So what is this? This is a game.. not all characters can use all items nor should they. Not all quests are easy to solve. And no the admin will not change or fix so you can have the most powerful character in the game.

I really wonder about gamers somedays, I thought it was all about the challenge. That is what most SAY, but it seems when it comes down to it, all the things that are being done, have been done and are slated to be done do not matter. To the players, it is not about making the game better, it is about bragging. Even though if the game were to be made easy it would not be worth bragging about.

So, next time you go online and check a cheat site or a walkthrough for ANY game, think about this. Why are you really playing the game?

Thoughts on gaming

I have been thinking about gaming and gamers a fair amount lately. Seems that this is latest manufactured marketplace. What does that mean?

Well, years ago I was an IT professional. I sort of fell into the position because I could read the LAN manuals. I found I liked it. So, i started coding, DBM, etc. Being a D&D player, somewhere along the way I discovered or was introduced to online and PC gaming. BBSes, door games, direct connection to another machine and across the company LAN were the early days of competitive gaming. Then came MUDS. In their heyday MUDS would have maybe 200 people logged in. If their muxes and modem banks could take it.

Then Consoles got into the act (Yes, I am skipping a lot.) Dreamcast started Phantasy Star online. It was a big hit. But the Sega died in the Hdw market, But not the idea. Now Xbox, Wii, PS all have online possibilities. WoW has taken D&D's spotlight as the devil incarnate. And suddenly thousands logged into one game is not uncommon.

Yet still the gaming companies seeks more for their market. So what happened? Why the boom in gaming? Or s it just that we all came out of the closet at once? I suspect it is not so much a boom as a unification in some ways. Remember when I mentioned back there that MUDS had maybe 200 logged in at a time? Multiply that by the list of MUDS that are active on The Mud Connector. Now add a few hundred more MUDs.

It is not that there are more gamers. It is that we are now identifiable. Yet to the gaming companies it looks like a jump. More on this next time.

Thinly Disguised Marketing

DIGG started out as a geek site. Participants mainly dugg articles that pertained to technology. Of course there were videos, high weirdness and games but lately it seems to be a site for people to promote their own products. I started shying away from DIGG this year when articles on the presidential primaries and videos on YouTube became the predominate additions.

I started hanging around sites like GamerDNA, JSGames, WGFriends and (shudder) Gamespot for gaming info Castlecops and Bleeping Computer for tech stuff. But it is getting discouraging. You see people are too into marketing themselves and their games, addons or own gaming sites on these.

Most of these places have an area where you can submit news (if they are not flat out like DIGG and are social bookmarking sites.) Yes, people need to market the games they create and play. Lately, all I see are list articles (the 10 Best Games for Your Goldfish to Watch); videos of someone reviewing a game or ranting about what lousy parents gamers make while their child sets fire to the trash can behind them; spam for Wow gold, leveling, and other forms of account theft; Ventrilo logs of people hacking or cracking the server with not so hilarious results; videos of dancing and teabagging toons; YouTube 'reviews' of systems by someone's hot sister; and thinly veiled promotions for games developed by the poster with fake controversy and/or rave reviews. These articles. with the possible exception of the true spam, get voted up in the list by meat and sock puppets and articles of true value: reviews on games not posted by a minion of the publisher, good game releases, and real game demos wallow at the bottom of the pile.

How about some moderation on these sites?

Girl Gamers Part 3

This article went up on Gamer DNA today:

Top 10 list of Xbox 360 games both men and women play equally. Bully: Scholarship Edition is in the top ten list? Suprising! Find out what the other 9 are!

read more | digg story

the same stuff I have been ranting about for months, nay make that years, since I admitted that Zeta has a female operator. So what took gamers so long? Why are they surprised that women like the same games as men? And why does it matter? Part of the problem is that gamers are believing the propaganda laid down by their own detractors.

First there are the in game and in forum trolls. They are the ones that reply to any post made by a female member of the community with comments such as: "There are no girl gamers, only fags and dykes.", "All girls who play games are fat, ugly and can't get a man irl.", "All girls who play games are in it to cyber." and my personal favorite "Girls just can't play games. They aren't smart enough."

Here are MY answers: Right, lesbians are not female and girls don't play these games, women do. Absolutely I can't get a man IRL, I got my kid through a faulty
firewall on an I/O port while cybering on a bbs. Man am I lucky I didn't pick up a virus." Though I rarely give answers to these types. They crave attention and thrive on controversy. Just adhere to the rule Don't feed the Troll. The Troll is parroting what they have heard from casual or non gamer friends.

The problem is that for at least one of those statements they are sometimes correct. Some women do Cyber. So do some men. Some men cyber as females, some women cyber as males. Personally I don't care as long as it is kept private and I don't have to hear a replay through the clan channel. But it seems that is all some females do or at least all they are perceived as doing. This is of course promoted by those who believe that the internet is nothing more than a thin veneer of substance over a steaming pile of pornography.

Then there is the problem that many females do not play games because they are "too violent" for a woman's more sensitive nature. This comes from the misogynists who want to keep females in the dark ages. They fear the female that can think, so the best defense is to keep them from believing they are as resilient as men. My answer to that is Lorena Bobbit. I would rather blow away my boss in Doom than in IRL.

Next there are the ones that buy into the idea that all games are made for guys. Have none of you SEEN the Prince in Prince of Persia Warrior Within? I'd take him in a heartbeat! There is just as much eye candy for women as men. And if you prefer women, don't worry most games these days let you pick which avatar you want want to play.

The problem goes back to the post I made about gender treatment on MUDs. You see it seems to be the same attitude on most online games. Girls get a lot of help, but the wrong kind. They are not taught by the masters how to play the game, what stats are important, what tricks and how to use them, they are lamed. Females who teach themselves on stand alone games or hide behind a male character or at the very least a unisex name seem to learn the fastest. Though I am finally seeing this change a bit.

Ok so, the gamers are getting it, most of them. Why aren't the game manufacturers? Because they are buying their own hype. They believe that girls do not game therefore they must make games appeal to girls. STOP CALLING US GIRLS!! Some females have taken to the Girl Gamer label but not all of us. So, just stop already.

Second, stop producing crap. One of my favorite games that held the most potential was Cutthroats. But it fragged my disk so badly I had to play it on the D drive only. Age of Wonder chokes when I enter certain towns. And Interplay HATED my old Intel processor. Even Dungeonkeeper would flail when the graphics got heavy.
Put specs on the box where they can be seen and do not put the lowest end. Put what is needed. Ok maybe I won't buy it because I do not have an UBER gaming rig, but at least I won;t hate your company for lying to me and making me shell out 40 - 70 dollars for a game my machine can't handle.

Which brings me to the main reason I almost stopped gaming. (Ok the thought crossed my mind for about 30 seconds and then I got real.) Technical support. FOr those of you who know nothing of my "real life" I spent many years in tech support of a product that was proprietary. That meant I HAD to make it work on many different machines with many different issues. It was in the early days of Windows (Yes Virginia there were computers BEFORE windoze.)

I had turned my entire IT dept onto Doom. One of my bosses turned me onto this cool game Burn Cycle by Philips Interactive. It would start, I could get to partway through the first section then it would crash and burn. So one day I decide to call the tech support number listed for the US (Philips was a UK company so I guess they were using a third party tech group). Back in THOSE days we got charged. (It was usually a 900 number). So I bite the bullet and call. I get a techie he goes through the usual is it plugged in type questions (We HAVE to ask, so I don't bitch too much.) I rattle off my machine specs and wait. (It was a state of the art 486 btw with a Cyrix chip.)

The convo went something like this:

"Uh is that a Mac?"
"No it is a custom built 486"
"I never heard of Cyrix, are you sure it is not an Apple?"
"Cyrix is made by a division of IBM. Apple uses Motorola."
"Uh, hold on a moment."

Remember this is MY dime and I hate paying to put on hold. So after about 5 minutes that seemed like 20 the techie switches me over to his supervisor.

"You are trying to run this on a Server? You know it is not made for LAN play." Mgr type
"No, on my home machine."
I again explain the details.
"Look is your husband around? I think you are confused about the chip and the Bios and we really need to know that because it matters about how the uh computer thinks."

At that point I decided said never mind, "I'll figure it out or deinstall"

Now usually I would just fume about that but I had been through several similar 'pat on the head' type conversations at work lately with client companies' tech support involving DOS 5 and the share issues when it came to printing to a port. (For some reason if share was loaded it would not allow an app to print to a port and share had to be loaded for old windows products. So we had to write a little script that unloaded share to print and then reloaded it and talk users through putting it on the PC in the proper directory.) For some reason for about 30 seconds I bought into the idea I could not comprehend what the issue was. Then I shook my head and deinstalled and went back to blowing away creatures in Doom. Nevermind, there are plenty of other games by companies who know how to treat a lady who calls for tech support. Yep, treat her like a Gamer.

Manners and Gaming

Ok, let's talk about MMOs and MUDS and manners. On both you get what are commonly called PUGs or Pick up Groups. Now most muds have a small playerbase. As a result a lot of players fort of group together consistently. When a new player joins the game, everyone wants that person in their group to help them level, to get to know them, and to check out the future competition.

Until recently it seemed to be the same on MMOs of those that are willing to join a PUG. But then there are those who have been taught no manners. Here is an example from last night. I had one of my two big girls on. I have not yet maxed them out so I was going back and doing some side quest stuff to finish it off before I head to end game.

I start selling off treasure when someone adds me to their group asking for help in one of the harder missions. I talk to her she has been trying to get a group for a bit so I say ok and change my plans. I figure it is no skin off my nose to help her and who knows maybe I will be lucky and pick up a rare drop.

She makes me the leader. Hmm I am not too fond of that - an assassin character on this game is more of hit and run type and this mission is one where it is hard to get clear sometimes. If you can't hit and run you need a healer nearby to keep you alive or to res.

Now my policy on adding group members is this. First people who need the mission. Then others to help out. So I take all comers. We still don;t have a full group. We add NPCs and head out. There is a new player in the group who has never done this mission, as we find out once we are IN the mission, Ok well all of us were new at some point. He is not a maxed character in levels, gets killed (after I do I should point out). And the person who started all this is complaining about him.

So we all die resign, return to city and regroup. First we kick the NPCs and look for more players. Finally we find a monk/mesmer (for some reason the initiator of this was convinced we needed one. Personally I think we needed a nuker.) He looks at the lists of the group members' spells and leaves cause they are not good enough.

Then she suggests I kick the two members that are not maxed on levels and we get others to replace em. At that point I say, Hmm, well why don't I leave then and you can get who you want in the group. I did and went on my way to complete my side quests with minimum deaths (i.e. none) and alone. Although I did offer to take anyone with me who needed to do them.

Now on a MUD no one would ever think of kicking a player who is already in the group unless they were AFK. They might offer suggestions for eq, or spells or even tell them don't hit, just suck up the xp for a bit and heal or boost us where you can. But to kick someone out of a group you begged people to join because they are not experienced in the game, well.. Sorry that is just rude.

Oh I should add while I finished selling off stuff, she tried to add me again. I am afraid I refused, politely but my answer was - Look I have already done this, let someone who hasn't have a chance. And all I would be is dead weight. - perhaps not the full truth, but the otehr rule to manners is, if you want to run te show then take the leadership position otherwise, STFU and mind your manners.

Girl Gamers part 1

Another label. It looks like this one is sticking, so it seems time to address it.
First let us look at what it means Girl - female, not yet adult Gamer - someone who plays games.

Well yes there have always been girls who play games. Jump rope is a game, chess is a game, Ace Deuce is a game (I still own you Brent), females both adult and pre-adult have been known to play these games. But the epithet Girl Gamer refers to any female who plays a console, computer or online game. Females have played these for as long as they have been around too, suddenly though we are labeled and they are looking for ways to market to us. Pity they are probably going to ruin some great games that way.

See this is my problem I am not a girl, although I did start gaming when I was one. BUT I am a gamer who happens to be female. Several things started me thinking about this, but the most recent was on Valhalla. See another female approached me said wouldn't it be great if we had an all female Clan. I said "no".

Why you ask? Well gender in not basis for commonality. Yes, there are some things you can say I have in common with other females, they tend to be biological in nature. However, I like playing RPGs and strat games. My friend prefers FPS, another friend will only play things like Bejeweled and dominoes. Yet, we are all female. So when you get us on a place like a MUD we all head in different directions. I go for the quests or off to role play with friends, Elly heads off to the casino or other mini game and Cathy is off to PvP. Same game different aspects. That is what is great about MUDs.

I used to like FPS, when I did I played Doom, Zero Tolerence, and Descent. I liked the graphics and the playability. They were not games made for women they were made for everyone and were good games. Prince of Persia is still one of my favorite games. Last I checked that was not marketed to women. Why do I not play them anymore? I got bored.

Strategy games work for everyone how do you market strategy and tactics to a gender? Either you can counter that attack or you cannot. Gender does not matter when you are besiege and trying to fend off the attackers hoping they starve and lose troops before they manage to undermine your walls. When running pirate ships against a blockade your plumbing is not going to help or hinder the situation. Either the game play is decent and the situation realistic or it is not.

Earlier this year I took part in a panel on female gamers. It started out as rah rah. Girl gamers rock etc.. Then the nasty truth began to come out. Not all of us like the same type of games. Not all of us are the best at the games, but we still like to play. AND not all of us like each other. Because well, we are people and guys don;t always like another guy just because they are male and play the same game do they?

We were asked what could be done to bring more women to gaming. None of us agreed. Some wanted to lose the chainmail bikinis and get real armor. Some liked the revealing nature because it showed they could kick ass with less than a guy wore.
Some wanted some beefcake, some said no it would embarass them. Some wanted to save the prince, - ok most of us wanted to save the prince. It was what we did with him after we saved him that we differed on. Our point to the marketeers - yes who else would hold such a panel - was "Look either you game is good or it isn't. If it is good we will play it. If it is not we won't. It's that simple."

As for us uniting because we are all girls I think one in the panel said it best. "If you are on the other team you are my opponent. This time we may be team mates, next time you may be on that side. When we are on the same side I will work with you. But when you are against me I will do my best to kick your ass." Yep, that is the right attitude GAMER first.

Since When are Gamers Quitters?

Ok, I started sounding off about this elsewhere, but since the phenomenon has transcended the MMO. I feel it necessary to go into deeper analysis. Cranky Old Gamer mode is ON.

Alas, for the gaming youth of the world. The demise of the game over screen seems to have led them down the path of many of the CEOs of companies. As long as you succeed it does not matter how. As long as your numbers look good who cares if they represent reality. I am talking about the quitters.

We have all known the people who if a game is not going their way, they pitch a fit, stop playing, take their ball and go home. I have always assumed that these people were not true gamers. I may still be correct by my definition of gamer, but it seems not by others'. I have to wonder if that little reset button, or reload or lack of a true sense of losing has lead to this idea that one can always win. I have news for you. You can't.

We have seen the aftermath of result driven people in various companies; Arthur Anderson, Enron, and others too numerous for this old feeble brain to call up at the moment. The mentality of having the numbers, the stats, at whatever cost, even at the cost of lying, cheating and stealing is what led to those fiascoes. Alas, it seems to have begun to pervade the mentality of gamers.

I first encountered the quitters on a large scale in an MMO. The problem with an MMO is that since it IS massive, the likelihood of knowingly running across the same player is lower than on a smaller game. I suspect this makes players feel safe about leaving a party in the middle of a quest or mission because the prospect of failure is looming over the group. Maybe the healer died. Maybe a character or two did. Now there is a death penalty. Be it lost experience, lowered stats whatever, the player leaves without a word to his or her brothers and sisters in arms, thereby ensuring the group's failure.

Of course, the one leaving if confronted - and yes I have been known to hunt them down and ask in tells "WTF is your problem leaving like that without a word?" Usually there is an excuse "I have to go, Mommy is calling." - and they switch to another character (associated friends lists are SO nice) or I hear that the entire party is lame and they are not going to play with so many incompetents. (Ok so I raised the level of the bailers vocabulary a bit I admit)

I wonder what it would be like if a quarterback left the field because the team was losing. Not the same you say? What about team PK or games online. I have seen over half a side bail out when they were losing. THe same excuses prevail. Now, it couldn't possibly be that they other team is better armed, has a better strategy or that they are better prepared or even just got lucky? Nope. It is never that.

Well, it finally got to the point that set my blood boiling. My daughter plays Go. She has been playing for almost a year. One saying about Go we have heard over and over is the Quicker you lose your first 50 games, the better. In other words, the more people and games you play, the better you get through experience. Recently she started looking at online sites that match people. Being new to the sites she has a low rating. So, someone challenges her. Now, she is not a master, but she is not a beginner either. She wins pretty consistently against the people she plays, but she needs new challenges. So she logs into a site as a new player, gets a challenge and the player bails partway through the game as it becomes apparent she is not an easy opponent that will boost the player's stats on the site. SHe tries again, it happens again. She plays a few games, wins some, loses some and logs off. So now she has a rating on THAT site, albeit rather low. She tries another site, same thing. Instead of conceding when they make a mistake, the players just leave the game without a word. Hmm wonder what would happen if Boris Spassky had done that in a chess tournament?

It seems we are becoming quitters of the worst sort. The sort that will leave our compatriots out to dry. The sort that will leave just to preserve the appearance of being good. Never mind that the appearance will be scratched and marred the first time a true challenge arises. Numbers matter more than fun and improvement. Pity. I had always thought that gamers were at least loyal to each other until the game was over and the next begun, except for in Risk and Machiavelli. I guess this is just another example of us old dinosaurs who plod along taking the death penalties or loses on our stats in order to have the personal satisfaction of being able to say I did it. Doing it seems to be less important than looking like you did it. Even to the point that looking like a winner without actually being one is the path that many pursue.

Roleplaying, what is it?

There are many forms of gaming. I would LIKE to say I have tried them all, but I can't - yet.

One of the lowest tech and highest imagination forms of gaming is Roleplaying. It comes in many forms from the old Let's Pretend game that children play to a sophisticated profession known as acting. Yet all are based upon one premise, you are pretending to be someone else.

So how do you do this? I'll let you in on a secret - you don't. What you DO is find an aspect of yourself and apply it to that character. I have found there are only two things most people cannot roleplay well in a game - what they cannot conceive as a possibility and what they do on a daily basis.

While the first point may seem obvious, it is a bit complicated. For example, There is a cardinal outside my window, I can concieve easily of the following, listening to it's song happily, muttering at it what do YOU have to be happy about, scaring it off, shooting it, reaching out ripping it's head off and eating it like a cat. Now in real like i am likely only to do the first three actions. The second three are things that would horrify me. So if I am playing a character that is the type of person I am NOT I might choose to roleplay out one of those last two actions. But there are other things that have not crossed my mind that I could do. These are teh ones I cannot roleplay.

Now expand that. Try to think of being a character that you have no concept of. Actually the one that comes to mind for me is a sunfish. How would I BE a realistic fish (Yes, this was once given to a group I was in as an exercise in a method acting course.) Ok what does a fish think about, I don't know, does it even think? Food I suppose, swimming. What makes a sunfish different from say a blue gill? I have no idea. In other words, I cannot roleplay a realistic sunfish because i have no experience with them.

Most people cannot effectively roleplay what they do on a daily basis, because it is what they do. Imagine narrating your day, literally step by step.

"I am awake, I lie in bed for a minute listening to the radio, What is that playing? Oh, it's Brahms. My feet hurt. I lay back in the pillow until the piece is over. When I hear the announcer say 'It's 7:00 and time for the news', I arise and get my clothing out of the drawers. I put on my panties and bra first then the pants and pullover shirt for work. I can't find my socks. I go to the laundry room and hunt through the dryer for a clean pair."

And so on, while a good writer can make that sound much better than I just did, they cannot make it any more interesting without delving into the psyche of the individual and taking the scene out of the realm of the immediate action which, unlike novels and stories, is not done in roleplay. Typing out step by step such actions as eating breakfast, driving to work, working, meetings, eating lunch, working some more, gossip around the water cooler with no juxtaposition of the abnormal mixed in with the normal bores most people. As a result, the person 'falls out of character' and into themselves and loses the sense of it being a game.

Now if one were to take that last example and insert an abonormal occurance for that setting, THAT opens up roleplay. If a band of vikings suddenly time warped into the office and started raiding, it would cause the writer of the ordinary day to find something in the character to deal with the situation. In short, roleplay is using what you know with your imagination and that of others to have fun.

Next time - Types of roleplaying games.

People Confuse me

Why do some people say they will do things, get overloaded then complain about having too much to do? I see it happen in the workplace all the time, but the same thing occurs in gaming. Many online games have clans. Like anything, clans need leaders. I am not leader material, support yes, leader no. I understand my limitations. COULD I lead a clan, probably. WOULD I enjoy it? Probably not. Put me in second place, or third and I am happy. But front man - no thanks.

But why do so many people beg to be in a position tha requires time and patience? Then when they are about halfway through, they lose interest and go off to something else? I see it in forum posts - role play threads held up by people who have to be involved in everything. They post for a few weeks then disappear for months leaving others hanging.

Or even worse in forum owners that start forums but let them die after a few months or even years. Then rather than close it down or pass ownership on to someone else, they leave the site open to attract spammers and take up space.

In clans, players who beg, plead and cajole admins for a clan or for the leadership of an exisiting one only to disappear in a few months - usually at the first sign of discord or when the clan becomes large enough it actually requires some work.

In team stratagy games where members are given tasks such as building funds or forces. They begin, but disappear before the end game so that the team cannot compete. Now these are just in games you say. they are not important. Yes and no, these are personality traits that as I have said I have seen time and time again in real world. It is just more annoying to me in games because they are my escape from that real world.

Weirdness

Ok, I am a gamer. I admit it a hardcore gamer. Being an oldtimer, I tend to like text based games known as MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHs, What have you. Some of these are hack and slash, some are pure role play, some are a mix. But MMPORGs and graphic based games have pulled players aways from these old style games and we get damn few new players. So my question is, why do some Wizops seem to go out of their way to chase off players? Then sit there and bemoan the fact they have no players? Here are some recent examples from a myriad of MUDs

Wizop caught cheating - deletes characters caught, harasses all who knew about it then proceeds to make new characters thinking no one noticed the Wizop's consistant playing style and cheats again. Players leave disgusted because the Wizop must always win.

Wizop repeatedly shouts things about a player when the player is not on that gets others angry at the player "Fred is the one that broke into the clan and stole all their stuff, Fred is the thief that took all the money from the bank, Fred is the one that looted George's corpse. Players proceed to PK Fred off the MUD.

Wizop constantly reboots MUD when certain people log in.

Wizop constantly "accidently" deletes a player's character and restores it back 2 weeks. Player loses all exp and gold.

Wizop "loses" certain player's donations to mud.

There is one mud I have played for 5 years now. I have played there because yes sometimes the Wizop is an ass, but I have never seen him actually try to drive someone off the MUD and have seen him give people multiple chances. Why? because the Wizop knows that people come to play a game and game should be fun, not a chore.