Is it real? I mean, really real?

I didn't grow up rich. Most of the toys I made were homemade. I remember I actually made myself a little wooden Tommy gun and ran around my parent's yard shooting up the place. I had a few other little things, swords, crossbows, all that I made from the woods behind the house. They were pretty good for a kid with no attention span and only the most rudimentary understanding of power tools.

But what made up for the quality of the items, was the fact that I transported myself when I was using them. I really had a lot of fun, pretending to play war, or building a survival hut out in the middle of "the wilderness" all of 500 feet from my house. But that didn't matter. The sense of accomplishment I felt when I came back in from "winning the war" or "being rescued" wasn't diminished by the fact it wasn't real. I admit, I don't know what it's like to actually accomplish those things, but I'd imagine they're comprable to what I felt.

As I got older, as I think most of us did, I stopped wanting the purely infantile excitement of imagined accomplishment. I wanted to achieve in reality. I started doing better in school, started looking for opportunities to make a difference in my neighborhood, I plugged into a few volunteer organizations, and all with the expectation that I'd find that certain satisfaction that I felt as a kid. I'd say I came close. But as with most nostalgic memories, I never got it quite right....

I think that what I came to realize is that what I needed wasn't a real accomplishment, but rather the feeling of accomplishment. One that was relevant to my context. If I hung out with a bunch of football players and bragged about how I read Sowell's "Basic Economics" when I was 12 I doubt that'd mean the same thing as it would to a bunch of bookworms. Our accomplishments are entirely based off our context. That's why video games are so powerful. Video games not only provide easy to achieve goals, but they provide a context in which those goals are important. When I'm saving the universe, that feels important. Despite the fact that the universe I'm saving is a bunch of ones and zeros on a magnetic disc.

But does the fact that it wasn't real diminish any part of our personal satisfaction? I don't think it does, at least not to a huge extent. Especially when we understand the context of videogames to be something we inheritantly seek out for a sense of satisfaction. Much like a drug, videogames give us the feeling that we want from them. They enable some aprt of our brain to latch on to sensory information and tell us that we're doing a "good job. And that we're achieveing. That feeling, like a drug, is still real. It's a chemical reaction happening in our brain. But the fact is that the reason it's happening isn't what people call "real". But if I played videogames for what was "real" I wouldn't be playing videogames.

The bottom line is that I enjoy the "false" sense of accomplishment I get when I defend Gondor from Sauron. I like it when I hear the Halo announcer tell me I've gotten a "Killing Spree". I feel good when I see "100%" complete on a game's statistic. That means something in my own personal context. Whether or not a college profesor would advocate that this is "meaningful" is irrelevant  I like it. And in the end, that's the entire premise of gaming.

Are we losing our sense of creativity?

Are we running out of good ideas?

I've been gaming for a while, so I've seen the industry develop. While I'm not an expert, just a fan of games, I like to think that we have

Dis gat go blat blat blat

 And recently there's been a startling trend in one of my favorite genres, first person shooters. If you've paid attention to Bungie, who guys who brought us the beloved Halo series, they're working on a new title: Destiny. Destiny is a futuristic first person shooter... Like Halo... Like the last Call of Duty... Like a lot of other games, think Crysis and Aliens: Colonial Marines. We are being confronted with a pattern, we've already made plenty of war games from history, the original Call of Duty's, the Battlefield's, the Red Orchestra's, and before the turn of the century isn't prime real estate for video games. Remember the god awful attempt by the history channel to make a Civil War FPS? Spending a realistic amount of time reloading a musket doesn't sound like an enthralling game play mechanic. And it wasn't.

Unless it's a survival horror game where the lack of action adds to the suspense and overall atmosphere, FPS games tend to require more action packed, fast pace, ball breaking, combat. Players enjoy being immersed into a warzone, where their alertness and relaxes are on call for survival. It's the thrill of being integrated into a living situation, where your participation impacts the outcome of the battle. Think about Planetside 2. MMOFPS's aren't common, but since I started playing Planetside, I completely see the advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is that you are literally part of an alive battle field. Armored convoys, air support, infantry movements, all unscripted and genuine results of individuals, give the player the sense that they are really in a war. I also feel completely useless. With over a hundred people in a battle, your kill or two wont change much in the grand sceme of things. Especially when their spawn point is right behind them, just as far away as yours is. Even Planetside shows us the imitations of our "strip mining" of settings. It's set in the future, where you can deploy anywhere on a planet by clicking a button called "instant action". It drops you into combat (which is necessary for MMOFPS's cause who wants to walk all that way?) but what happens in a game where you don't have that technology in the setting? How would you make a WWII game? Parachutes? Maybe. But I think this is evidence of a more systemic problem.

Game mechanics can't be divorced from their setting. Otherwise people will complain that the game doesn't make sense. But with the expectations of excitement players have from their gaming experience, are game developers being limited to futuristic settings to satisfy those expectations?

Ethics and Video Games Part Two.

Video Game Teaching.

I got myself Bioschock Infinite. For those of you who haven't played it, Infinite is set is a pseudo American Anglo centric caricature of life in the US, around the turn of the century. For those of you well versed in history  that can mean a lot of things. But the developers emphasized theocratic and racist themes as definitive characteristics of "Columbia". 

When we look at video games, what we see is hugely important to the power we ascribe it. Are they just toys, in a sense no more effective then an action figure? Are they interactive learning tools that have implications for how we interact with the world? Are they art? Are they industry  Are they a movie with a bit more interaction? Are they something else completely?

Not a great movie to watch while high.

When we think of video games as something more then just entertainment, required justification of content becomes imperative. If we think back to the greatest films of this past century, Requiem for a Dream, Shindler's List, Shawshank redemption, 12 Angry Men, we sort of see a pattern: each of those movies has an important point being made. There are themes about morality, ethics, and social virtue, lessons being taught, and ideologies being promoted or critiqued in the movie. There is a justification, for the content. 

Bioshock Infinite is a perfect example of this. Class struggle, racial discrimination  totalitarian politics, theocracy, all these issues are being explored and explained through the game's environment. You get a sense that on a larger scale, other then your immediate objectives, there isn't justice in the world of Columbia. Those thoughts, those feelings are provocative and they can make your head spin. These are the same thought provoking feelings and thoughts that I get when I watch Good Will Hunting. 

The fact is, video games have a great way to expose us to new ideas and new thoughts. Hell, this is why I am paying to go to college: to get exposed to new ideas and change the way I think through situations. Video games have a great potential to do the same thing. There is a lot of positive aspects to this. But we can see some negatives. 

What happens when video games teach us bad things? Manhunt has us going around killing people in brutal and disgusting ways. This sort of mindless violence has to seep in somewhere right? We can't be effected positively by our experiences in Infinite's social justice message but be indifferent to extreme violence.

This is true for the most part. What we put into our heads, doesn't come out again. Once we've seen the violent images and gory business we can't unsee it. But does that mean that we need to be overly cautious with how we regulate and stigmatize video games?

In my opinion, no. 

Video games, like any other sort of media or art, has it's high points and it's low points. Movies like Saw (also Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, and Saw VI) have no real philosophical point to them. Their entire purpose is to gross you out and make you cringe. And yet, there are seven of them. Seven. That's quite a few movies to be generated off the principle of a couple of thirteen year olds saying "Dude, know what'd be totally a sick torture method..."

Why didn't we see a sequel to this ground

breaking piece of work?

Even so, the movie industry is just that, an industry. It's there to make money and it responds to consumer demand. People want Saw movies, people get Saw movies. It's how the economy works. Same thing with video games. You want Manhunt? You can get Manhunt. You want Detective Barbie the game? You'll get Detective Barbie the game.

I don't blame the industry. And I'm going to go against gamer culture and say it isn't the fault of the parents. Parents have a lot on their plate right now. A bad economy, finding enough money for their kids to go to school, taking care of a thousand other things, it's not as simple as it ought to be. So how do we come to a compromise on effecting kids less, but still maintaining liberty in the gaming market?

Well we need to understand that it's a culture issue. It isn't as if kids these days are more drawn into video games because they are better then the outdoors. Kids are drawn into video games by social fragmentation. Social fragmentation comes when we have larger more geographically spread out communities. Things aren't as close knit as they were. Your school friends aren't your church friends, and those friends are different from your summer camp buddies, who are in turn removed from your sports teammates. It's a big strain to navigate the social landscape of all those groups. And with the invention of Facebook and twitter, we're bombarded with constant information about all these different groups, at once. When my dad was growing up, he had like five good friends who lived in his neighbor hood, went to his church, went to his school, and that was his community growing up. 

This is like cultural multitasking. And it isn't doing good for our youth. We can't expect to add in media and things, and be surprised when things get crazy. There is a reason why anxiety disorders are on the rise in America, and I doubt it has anything to do with video games.

And if video games isn't the problem, then they shouldn't be targeted as needing a solution.

Ethics and Video Game learning. Part one.

So it isn't at all possible that with the talks of gun control, right now that video games are going to be targeted as a source of over agressive and violent tendencies for youth right?

It's a topic of discussion in the past for legislators here in the US and around the world each nation has it's own views on the nature of violent video games. Germany, for instance, has banned the development of violent video games. They are of the opinion that the GDP isn't worth the effects that these products will have on their population.

All free market arguments aside, are video games teaching us to be more agressive and violent?

Well there hasn't been any data that really conclusively links the two. There are plenty of theories but nothing substantiated. However, if you look at what we know, we can see where people get the idea that videogames teach violence.

First of all, we know that active learning is better then passive learning. If you watch a video on how to make a radio, you wont learn nearly as much as if you actually made the radio with your own two hands. This is universal. So when a video game depicts violence, or situations in which violence is the solution to a problem, thus we are using a very powerful tool to teach kids to become gangbangers!!!!

That's a bit of an overestimation.

'Murica

It's a big leap to say that active learning in a fantasy virtual environment transferes over into real world scenarios. Just because I rob a guy in a game for his pistol ammo, doesn't mean that I'll go to the local supermarket and try the same thing. Thats the difference between fantasy and real life. Even in Grand Theft Auto, which I would argue is a fantasy game, where the enviornment seems to be realistic, we often don't find enough reality. I mean what police man lets a guy just walk down the street waving a gun everywhere? Even if it's legal (God bless America!) the police would still stop you and question you. Also, plenty of the situations are pretty far fetched in the game. I think the difference between the virtual reality and real life is not only discernable, but out right blatant.

We also know that violence in TV and movies desensitize youth to violence. The more they see it in casual settings the more familiar they become with it. This is actually pretty true for the most part. I mean when I was six my dad made me watch "Tombstone" with Kurt Russell. He said to my mother, who was entirely opposed to the idea, "I don't want my kid growing up to be some sissy." Well, it worked. I've never been squeamish about anything im my whole life. Blood, puke, poop, dead things have never bothered me. Now if we follow this line of thought, can't we say that violent video games could desensitize us to violence so much that the player would simply resort to violence at the first sign of trouble?

We don't see that is the case. What we actually see videogames doing is teaching problem solving skills. Violence is almost always an option in videogames, but often times the game provides incentives to avoid violence. If I could avoid a fight, I would because there was always loss associated with getting into a fight. Either I'd use up some precious equipment, or I'd lose health, or my gear would get damaged. Violence, while it may be an option, isn't alway the best option. Violence takes a back seat to other forms of conflict mediation. And game developers know this. We see RPG's making use of more and more diplomatic dialogue options. The progression of Videogames has not been violent situations to even more violent situations, the progression has deescalated the violence in many situations. Who remembers speech checking the Legate out of invading the NCR? I bet a few of us made a new character in New Vegas to do just that.

Part two coming up in a week!

Game environments, Graphics, and Game Play.

With the new Nvidia graphics card that we all saw render a human head, I think we're all looking at our computers with a bit of an inferiority complex. I mean c'mon. Lets be honest. But I think we should look at a different aspect to all this advancement  What are we sacrificing when we pursue graphics in lue of gameplay mechanics or innovation?

When a company sits down to make a game, they have a limited number of resources. Time, people, required features that have to make it into the game, and money to pay for it all. So the company needs to decide what to invest their resources into. So when a company starts to invest more into graphics, that means they have less they can invest into mechanics and testing and other pieces of the game. Graphics have become exponentially expensive to create in high definition. Why don't we see expansions like Heart of the Swarm, or sequels like Half Life 3 come out within a few years? Cause they're working on them. And it takes a long time.

What we're seeing is the new kids on the gaming block (indie game makers) are usually pretty pregen graphically. Lets be honest, if a company like EA made a game with Atomic Zombie Smasher's looks we might possibly reach a new level of hate for them. Now when I say pregen graphics I just mean that they aren't 1080p, melt your card good. They can be totally satisfying for the game it's self, just not cutting edge.

Deus Ex is pretty.

But major companies, like Bethesda, are always pushing the envelop for what can be done. Look at the recent games that came out over the past two years. Masseffect 3, Killzone, Skyrim, all have been beautiful! Absolutely gorgeous games. I remember playing Skyrim for the first time and being blown away by the aesthetics of it just in the beginning scene alone!

But that sort of thing comes at a price. You either have to give something up, or make a game so good you earn enough money to cover the cost of production and then some. Lets use Skyrim as an example.

It took 90 developers, three and a half years and cost roughly 85,000,000 bucks to make. That not something that you, me, or anyone else could have done on our own time in our basement. To make a product of Skyrim's caliber, you need lots of resources.

Like most of my prom dates, FTL isn't
the best lookin', but she sure is fun
when you turn her on.

However lets look at Faster Then Light, one of my favorite games. It took two guys a couple months and $200,000 to make a game that damn sure made more then two hundred thousand dollars. Why did it sell though? Well it sold cause it was a damn fun game to play. Not because the graphics were cutting edge, not because it had all new guns and weapon attachments (looking at you COD) but just because it was a simply over all solid experience.

Skyrim took in $620,000,000. If we punch it into the calculator we get the initial investment of $85,000,000 got 7.29 times it's self in returns.

I couldn't find the exact amount FTL made but my guess is it's return rate was much higher then 7.29.

My whole premise is that graphics should be a secondary objective after fun and engrossing gameplay. And I think the market agree's with me on this one.

DRM and Microtransactions?

I was sitting down to play Empire Total War on my desktop today and, like every time I start the program, it asks me to log into Steam to prove I own the game. A pretty simple and easy Digital Rights Management technique. When I first bought Call of Duty I remember typing in that freakishly long string of numbers and letter. It's been pretty common through the years, you get a new game, on the box or disk there's a code, you plug that baby in and BAM you've got yourself a playable version! But like any product people have to pay for, some people have found a way not to pay for it.

sUpr LeeT HaXor circumventing DRM

People don't always want to pay for games. Some people, want to trial before they buy. What ever the reason, it happens. And piracy isn't as stigmatized as media companies would like it to be. So what can they do to minimize piracy? Well traditionally they've resorted to more and more complex DRM. This, while it's frustrating and annoying, can only stop people who are too lazy to find a torrent that''s got a work-around already in it. And believe me, there are plenty with work arounds in them. Pretty convenient.

Here's the deal, companies want to get money for making games. Good. I agree whole heartedly that they should be paid for making awesome content that we all can enjoy. Maximizing profits is what all companies want to do. It's how they grow and stay in business. I have no problem with a company using DRM to make sure they're getting paid for their work. But if your revenue is coming from both the game's sale, and microtransactions, gamers aren't going to like that. 

What we saw with Dead Space 3's microtransaction mechanism was apparently just the beginning. EA had decided it's going to make microtransactions a common thing in their products. What we see Riot doing with League of Legends is very similar. They say "Play our game for free, and if you like it, you can buy stuff to accelerate your progress." Fair enough. I'm not being charged to play the game so I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks to get some extra points to use. Dead Space is doing something along the same lines, but you still have to pay for the game to begin with.

Microtransactions work for Free-to-play models. Like Facebook games (I'm looking at you Clash of Clans) or some free MMORPG's (LOTR online, or D&D online both say it pretty clearly, NO MONTHLY FEES) but that's because no one is paying to play, so the sole source of income is microtransactions. Thus the makers of those games institute incentives for buying the extras 

Notch's sense of good will likely comes 

from his socialist roots.

But we like him any way.

An even more interesting phenomenon is Minecraft. You buy the game and instead of paying for additional content, new patches are released that add things into games. Basically over the past four years Minecraft has developed into a vastly more complex game without ever requiring payment for new content.

So what does piracy and microtransactions have to do with each other? Well they're both done out of convenience. Lots of games get pirated because people don't want to go out and buy a disk, or some other social activity. Buying games directly from the internet is the future. Consoles are picking up on this and starting to expand the number of games you can download from your network or market place. Game companies are doing the same thing. They're starting to enhance their revenue from games by adding in MT (i've started calling microtransactions MT cause I hate typing it out every time). It's easier then drumming up sales of units through marketing. If selling 1,000,000 copies of a game with MT can earn you as much as selling 1,200,000 copies of a game without MT then it would make good business sense to add in buying things "In game".

The other side of the coin is that adding in MT is starting to alienate gamers from products. If you're seen as some evil corporation *cough* EA *cough* then you're not likely to make more money from this. People will just pirate your game and laugh at your feeble efforts to stop them.

Bad manners and annoying limitations

So I was sitting down at my computer one morning when I came across Neo-Destiny's steam (for those who don't know he was a competitive StarCraft player who turned to League of Legends) and I saw that he was active!

Being that he's one of my favorite players, I tuned in too see some Hawt Draven action only to find him playing Xcom, Enemy Unknown, a non competitive single player game. And at first I wasn't perplexed as it was freaking awesome to watch him, but eventually I had to think to myself "Wait, what's he doing not practicing the game that makes him money?"

So I dug into it a bit and it he probably got banned for BMing his team or something along those lines. Which means the Tribunal (or who ever) decided to ban him for his usual antics. The interesting thing about it is, the fact that League has these control systems seems to be working. I know that Destiny has become tamer since his days in SC2. I mean c'mon. Just look at all the BM highlights that he managed to accrue over the years. However he himself on his stream said that he was getting less and less Bad Mannered.

With Stephano getting suspended a few months ago for making those comments about abusing a 14 year old girl, it seems like ProGaming is cracking down on explicite comments and outrageous behavior.  It used to be up to the individual teams and event organizers to discipline the players (except IdrA's team cause lets be honest what could they do about it?) but with entities like The Tribunal making it's way into the scene, we can expect more standardization across the whole of gaming.

Is this step going to make Gaming a legit sport in main stream society? Are we going to be taken seriously because we start reigning in player behavior? Probably not.

I'd love to see a Pro-Gamer go through this transmutation...

The fact of the matter is Gaming doesn't have Michael Vick-esque scandles, even when we compare Setphano's off color humor it doesn't compare. The closest thing we have is the 2010 match fixing thing we had with some Korean players. ProGaming all in all is pretty tame when compared to Football's made up girlfriend trend, or Baseball's steroid problems. The worst we have is a little immature insulting throwing and some offensive language.

All in all the pro-gaming scene is going through the same transition that politicians are going through. Namely, anyone with a camera phone can expose what they're doing. Screen caps and steam footage can get players in plenty of trouble. But unlike Mitt Romney, Pro-Gaming doesn't have 47% of the drama and poor decisions that our government does.

FIRST... No but really

So! Here we are. First post of my new blog. Im excited. I like news things, new things are great. Which is the perfect segue into the topic of this blog: Technology.

Now you may think "Ohmigawd not annuther technonerd blog" and to be fair this isn't completely inaccurate (if a little insensitive and off putting). But i'll be using my blog to explore gaming as a hobby turned profession. This is one of the fastest growing entertainment mediums in America right now and it shows no sign of slowing down. Perfect for a blog.

So lets get to know each other. I'm Alex (Or Captain Buffalo as most of my screen names were back in the day), a ruggedly handsome 19 year old who's in love with video games. I've played them ever since i way little. Marathon, the Warcrafts, Call of Duty, Morrowind, are all childhood favorites I turn to now and then for "Nostalgia" or the feeling of "forgetting all the crappy graphic and hours of frustrating gameplay". Video games have become much prettier and user friendly, much like girls. In middle school, they're kinda attention seeking and temperamental  but in high school they're exactly the same but you're willing to put up with it now for some reason (Hint: it's probably sex).

I've seen the industry progress. I remember the days when sprinting in First Person Shooters was a wild concept, now you can't find a game that doesn't have it. I've seen the rise of Minecraft, and the fall of Everquest, I watched the little start up company Bungie from it's earliest endeavors (Myth and Myth II were some favorites) to it's greatest achievements in the Halo series.

But right now my interesting is in the budding world of New Media. The fact that I can watch a Mongolian singer belt out the Italian national anthem while sitting in my room in Minnesota is not only hilarious (and confusing if you don't know geography) but also astounding. Such connectivity has limitless implications for our economy, especially in the gaming industry.

We live in a world where you can support your self by playing video games. Look at people like Husky. He doesn't even play competitively but he makes his money in casting. Look at Twitch Tv or JustinTv. These are sites dedicated to helping professional gamers showcase their abilities, get viewers, and play commercials to make some cash. YouTube is where it all started but it's become something much larger. It's become it's own market, industry, whatever you want to call it.

So, I look forward to dissecting the ever changing state