Why all the fuss about “gamer”

This started as a comment on Belghast’s post… I apologize for how rough it is. I need to get to work so I’m just copying and pasting from his comment form!

Here’s what I wrote in response to him:


You might be interested in this post at Gamasutra:
Opinion: Let’s retire the word ‘gamer’

or this one:
‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over.

I find it interesting that this is suddenly a hot topic. Both of those articles talk about the negative connotations of the term.

Honestly I think the whole issue is kind of absurd (no offense intended..as I say I’m the lunatic fringe here and many people ARE discussing it). Do people who knit sit around pondering whether or not they should refer to themselves as knitters? Do runners? Gardeners? “I have a garden but it’s just a couple of tomato plants… should I really call myself a gardener?”

You should call yourself whatever you want to call yourself. Gamer is just a word that is a shorthand way to communicate that one of the many things that holds interest for you is playing games.

And your post even adds nuance.. hardcore gamer vs casual gamer vs tabletop gamer. So you can sub-categorize if you feel the need to.

Tam can identify as Game Designer sure, but that has nothing to do with whether or not Tam is a gamer. It’s like my referring to myself as a Brewer. Sure I brew beer but it’s entirely possible that i might brew the stuff but not drink it, so saying I’m a brewer has no relevance to whether or not I’m a beer drinker. Am I a beer drinker? I do enjoy a beer once in a while but I don’t drink a 6-pack of Bud every night, and Bud is the most popular brand (it’s the Call of Duty of American beer), so maybe I shouldn’t call myself a beer drinker.

But if someone asked me if I was a beer drinker and I said “No” I’d feel like I was being dishonest since I do drink beer. Same with games… I play games, therefor I am a gamer, among many, many other things.

LOL sorry for the tirade… those two Gamasutra articles really got me spun up yesterday and the effects are still lingering… I probably should post this to my own blog since it’s so long….

Too much of a good thing

A lot of my friends are super-excited about Dragon Age:Inquisition coming out this fall. When my friends get excited, I get excited, or at least try to. What’s better than being in a social bubble with other folks enjoying the same game you are?

But I’d never finished Dragon Age: Origins or Dragon Age 2, and I’m trying to stick to a policy of not buying sequels until I’ve played through the earlier games in a series. So I’m in the midst of taking another stab at Dragon Age: Origins.

And whew, what a grind it is. I’m something like 33 hours in and I think a little over half-way through the main storyline (based on the fact that you have to get 4 factions to sign on with you and I’ve gotten 2 so far). So I’m predicting something like 60 hours to finish this game, and that’s skipping a ton of side quests and things added as DLC after the fact. Then I have Dragon Age 2 to get through, and only then can I consider Dragon Age 3.

And suddenly it all feels too much like work, particularly when I read posts like Dragon Age Inquisition Will Literally Have Tons of Gameplay Hours, Borderline Impossible To Tell How Many.

There was a time when I loved hearing that an upcoming game was going to be epic in length, but that was long ago. Back then I had lots of time and not a lot of money so I wanted to squeeze as much gameplay out of each title that I could. These days I have plenty of money (in terms of buying games anyway) but not very much time. And there are SO MANY GAMES to play, both upcoming and in my huge pile of shame.

The problem is that I’m intensely curious about games. I want to experience them all, which clearly isn’t possible. But when I find a game that’s 60 hours long and I figure if I play for an average of an hour every night (which feels about right…some nights I play a few hours, some nights not at all), that’s two months spent with one game, and over the course of those two months about 6 new games will come out that I want to play! Plus these days I tend to play (single player) games for their narrative and not many games have a story good enough to keep your interest for 2 months.

But what really makes me weird about all of this is that I love MMOs and of course 60 hours in an MMO is nothing, right? I guess the fact that MMOs don’t have a “finish line” makes me play them in a more free-form way, if that makes sense. I’m not striving towards this The End goal, I’m just playing to have fun.

Anyway the point is after reading that DA3 is so big that it’s impossible to say how long it is, I’m much LESS interested in playing it than I was before. It just sounds too intimidating! I wonder if anyone else feels the same way?

Alone again, naturally

For the past week or two I’ve been surprising both myself and my friends by being a social gamer. I’ve been doing dungeons in PUGs in Final Fantasy XIV, joined a Free Company (Guild) and have actually been interacting with other members, joined a link shell, added some random folks I’ve met to my friends list. On the console side I’ve been playing Diablo 3 with friends.

I will begrudgingly admit that hell isn’t always other people. Sometimes other people are really fun to hang around with, and playing in groups is a very different experience than playing solo.

But I’m still an introvert in the most technical sense of the word. Let me explain. The best definition of an introvert that I’ve found is that an introvert ‘recharges’ by being alone; s/he expends energy being around other people and gains it from solitude. An extrovert is the exact opposite. They get energized by being around other people and if they spend too much time alone their batteries start to run down.

Yesterday I was really tired. I have a lot of trouble sleeping and it’s often the case that by the end of the work week I feel like I’m running on fumes. After dinner I fired up the PS4 and was going to jump into Diablo 3. I checked my friends list to see who was playing and some friends were. And suddenly I found myself shutting the console off again. I went looking for friends to play with but when I found some I felt this weight settle around my shoulders and it seemed like playing with them would just be exhausting.

Then I went upstairs and logged into Final Fantasy XIV and for the first time, didn’t say hello to my Free Company. Nor did I queue for anything. I just quietly did some solo questing until it was time for bed. I ran into a few friends in the world but sorta pretended I didn’t notice them, which was pretty harsh, I’ll admit.

I felt pretty crappy about this when I was pondering my day waiting for sleep to come. I felt like I’d back-slid into my old ways.

But today I feel better about it. I am who I am and if I need alone time sometimes, well, that’s just the way it is. I think…. no, I KNOW my real friends will understand. I have this bad way of looking at everything in terms of black and white and the fact is I’m sure everyone is some shade of grey. I bet even the most extroverted people have times when they just feel like being alone, and as an introvert there’s just no way I’ll be happy if I put myself ‘out there’ all the time.

I just need to make sure I find a comfortable shade of grey where I am social some times and solo other. To make sure I don’t completely give up on being social and making (and keeping!) friends; it’s far too easy for me to completely tune out the rest of humanity. I work from home so I can easily go a week or more not speaking to anyone but Angela and the dog, and as much as I adore them both, that’s just not healthy. I do ‘talk’ to a lot of folks on social networks but that’s not real time and so it seems to stimulate a different part of my brain or something… The point being this is kind of ‘bigger’ than just games. Right now games are my primary vector for socializing, so I damned well better use them for that!

FOTM: Final Fantasy XIV

kittenSo as mentioned in my last post, I went back to playing Final Fantasy XIV. I kind of resist admitting to “Flavor of the Month” temptations since it feels like there’s a negative connotation to that phrase, plus it gets thrown around a lot. I hear my friends referring to FFXIV as “FOTM” that everyone is going back to, but at the same time most of the chatter I see on Twitter is about going back to WoW to get ready for the next expansion and from my perspective that’s the game that “everyone” is going back to.

Not that any of this matters. What matters is having fun. If you find it fun to change MMOs twice a week then go for it, flavor-of-the-month or flavor-of-the-week accusations be damned! Anyway I’ve always been fond of FF XIV. Fond enough that I’ve been subscribed since launch even though months went by without me playing it. It was always something I intended to play ‘any minute now’ and so when I saw Dusty talking about the game it finally got me to log in. He was playing on Diabolos, I think, so I decided to roll a new character there. I got my dude just the way I liked him but oops, Diabolos was locked for new characters. So I randomly picked Marlboro.

At the same time Scarybooster was playing and he was determined to get to level 20. Only he was on Cactuar. Meanwhile Dusty went on vacation. So after a couple days on Marlboro I re-rolled AGAIN on Cactuar to lend moral support to Scary. That was Monday the 11th.

When I played FFXIV last Fall I got to about level 18 before running out of steam. My issue with FFXIV is that dungeons are mandatory. Let me explain that. Features of the game unlock as you play through the main story quest, and to do that you have to complete quests that require you to do dungeons. I had originally rolled a Gladiator not realizing it was a Tank (ie high stress) class so I really balked at doing the dungeons. I’m a determined solo-ist and I’m fine with skipping dungeons in most MMOs, but FFXIV pushed me out of that comfort zone.

Last Monday I rolled a Thaumaturge and quickly ran him up to 16 or 17 but I wasn’t really feeling it. I never play casters but I was just trying something new. So I switched jobs to Pugilist and he is now 22 and has done the first three mandatory dungeons. I did them with PUGs and they were all pretty fun once I got in them and got going.

I find that my anti-social anxiety actually peaks while waiting for the Duty Finder to pull together a group. I almost canceled my first dungeon queue several times, but once I got in there the group was asshat-free and it was a good time.

The second one was less so but I found that as a DPS as long as you’re not stupid people at worst don’t notice you. Not stupid, at these low levels, basically means don’t run ahead of the tank and activate dormant mobs, really. I can do that. I got a Player Commendation doing that dungeon so I must’ve either done something right or someone took pity on the new kid (when you roll a character in FFXIV there’s a little sapling icon next to your name so people know you’re new).

But what has really surprised me is that in a week I’ve leveled one job to 17 and a second to 22 and I’ve pushed the main storyline well past where I had it last fall at launch, even though I played for much longer at launch.

I don’t know if Square-Enix has reduced the leveling curve or if it’s because I’m playing differently than I did back then, but I wanted to share my playstyle with others because I seem to level faster than my friends newly come to the game (one evening I was playing at the same time as a friend was and in the time it took him to gain 1 level I gained 4).

My new system boils down to: Don’t be a completionist when it comes to Quests. Follow the main storyline quests and do just enough other quests to keep you at a good level for the main storyline. If you’re level 15 and you’re doing level 10-12 side-quests you’re both wasting your time and you’re ‘using up’ quests you might want if you decide to switch to another class later.

You can get a lot of experience doing Fates and completing your Hunting Log, as well as doing Guildleves the 1st time (you get bonus exp the first time you do them ) and doing them via the Duty Roulette (again, bonus exp for doing them that way). Eventually you’ll unlock the Challenge Log and that’s another good source of exp.

For your gear, keep it upgraded by buying gear from NPC vendors. It’s cheap and you’ll outgrow it really quickly. If there’s a level-appropriate quest that gives you gear you need, by all means do it, but it seems to me quests give you the same gear that vendors sell, at these low levels.

Once you start doing the dungeons you’re likely to get gear from them that is better than solo quest and NPC sold stuff, and you get tons of exp doing those things. So you might want to re-run them (again, using Duty Roulette for bonus exp).

In addition to gaining levels there’s a bunch of stuff you can unlock as you go. I found this great list at GamerEscape that tells you when and how to unlock stuff. Via that link I was prompted to go unlock the silly dances, the wolf and coerl (cat) minions (non-combat pets) and the oh-so-flamboyant Aesthetician (Barber). Not only are these unlocks pretty easy and a fun diversion, they also give you experience.

Basically it feels like everything you do in FFXIV is giving you experience and quests are only one of many ways to earn it. So don’t bother doing quests that are lower level than you unless they unlock something specific you need, and you’ll level up like the wind!

Clothes make the (wo)man

Earlier this week I was playing some Final Fantasy 14 and chatting with friends when Scarybooster, who is new to FF14, got his subligar. The subligar is the bottom half of a gladiator get-up. You can learn (a little) more about subligars in the real world on this Wikipedia page about the history of the bikini but for the purposes of this post, let’s just say it looks like leather underwear.

Of course Scary being Scary, hilarity ensued as he went on about his butt cheeks hanging out of his underpants and so forth. Another friend, Oakstout, who was hanging out in chat but not playing, said that he wasn’t sure he could play a game where you had to wear such ridiculous gear.

I am ~almost~ in agreement with Oakstout, but not quite, and I think I’m exactly who the subligar was designed for. I wear it because when you get it, it’s the best armor for that level. But I hate how it looks, so that gives me an incentive to level up and get better gear to replace it.

In general FF XIV goes old-school with gear. You are ‘born’ wearing decent looking street clothes but soon you find yourself in what are essentially burlap sacks (‘hempen’ clothes) and oven mitts and stuff like that. But then you see a level 50 person strut by looking really cool and you have this aspirational moment of “Whoa, I gotta level so I can look like that.”

I feel like this method of coaxing players to level up used to be a lot more common than it is now. Just one more way FF 14 is a bit retro. I kind of dig it, but I also completely understand folks like Oakstout who aren’t interesting in spending $$ to look like a fool in a game.

Then there’s also the issue of gender. I am guessing that people who frequently play female characters don’t give the subligar a second thought. Female characters so frequently wind up wearing ‘armor’ that barely covers anything that the subligar (it is a ‘unisex’ bit of gear) probably seems conservative in comparison. That’s just a theory. Would appreciate comments on that.

Here’re a few subligar shots… when paired with a war harness they do look slightly less ridiculous then when you’re wearing one with a leather jacket or something:

To every MMO, churn, churn, churn…

If you don’t get the title, go here => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5Zdn4

Anyway, lately there’s been a bit of buzz in the gaming social network realm about people canceling their Wildstar accounts. I guess enough people did this and shared it to cause a spike in curiosity about why “everyone” is quitting (and I put that in quotes because of COURSE not everyone is quitting).

I don’t know why people are surprised by the exodus (is that too strong a word?) from Wildstar. What would be really surprising is if a new ‘hot’ game hit the market, “everyone” (that word again!) signed up and stuck with it. A surge of interest followed by a drifting away is normal for a new MMOs these days.

And why not? There are a TON of great games out there and more coming every day. And one of the basic truths about our species is that we’re curious. We’re always looking for something new to investigate. Why did “everyone” (now it’s just getting funny, right?) run out and see Guardians of the Galaxy as soon as it hit theaters? Because it’s better when it’s new! Why? There’s no reason why. It’d be the same movie next week but it wouldn’t be new! If you don’t like movies you can make the same analogy with a new restaurant, music…whatever you’re into. Many of us are excited when something new in an area of interest we enjoy comes along.

So we flocked to Wildstar. Hell I played it and I didn’t like the beta. But I played it because it was new! (Granted I only lasted two weeks.)

The point being, playing an MMO seriously requires dedication to that one game and means more or less ignoring the multitude of other awesome games available. Who wants to do that? So we play the new MMO hardcore for a few weeks, then get a little distracted and start to play it more casually. Then since we’re playing casually we either run out of things to do or stop making progress, at which point we think about that $15/month fee and decide it isn’t worth it. So we quit. And of course we announce that we’ve quit, though why we do that is the subject of another post (once I figure it out). We rarely announce that we’re quitting free-to-play games but I guess that act of hitting “Cancel” on our sub feels more concrete than just drifting quietly away from a free-to-play game.

But what about the people who stick around? Well I don’t know, really, since I’m never the one who sticks around. But I have a theory. The people that stick to that one game are the people who are more socialite than gamer. They play MMOs because they enjoy the company of other players and they have a group of friends that play. I know my one time of playing an MMO seriously was vanilla WoW when I was unemployed and living alone and a little bit lonely and I’d log in and start chatting and laughing with my friends and the game hardly even mattered. The game was just the glue that kind of held us together… it was busy work to give us an excuse to spend all night chatting.

I think that’s part of why so many people go back to WoW. [Sidenote: World of Warcraft saw a drop of nearly 1M players in three months, says Activision Blizzard] WoW is like the universal language of MMOs. “Everyone” (ha!) has played it so getting friends to go back isn’t difficult, and WoW has been rolling along for so long that it’s comfortable and easy to slide back into. Because after hot new things, what we like most are well worn, comfortable things. I’ll posit a theory that most of the people who go back to WoW are social gamers; as a dedicated solo player I never feel the slightest urge to go back.

What’s hastening the churn even more these days, I think, is that after bouncing from game to game for so long, and losing track of friends with each bounce, we’re seeing clumps of players gathering together on voice chat servers just to gab even while they’re playing different games. So we’re starting to lose that “Well I’m not really feeling this game but all my friends are here so I’ll stay” stickiness. (After all it’s not like we often actually play together even when we’re in the same game.) So maybe you’re playing WoW and Jane is playing Wildstar and John is playing FF XIV and I’m actually just watching TV, but we’re still all chatting. Basically we’re heading back towards AOL chatrooms only this time using voice.

So that’s my theory as to why “everyone” is leaving Wildstar. It’s just the natural order of things. There’re too many options for gamers to ignore, and socializers don’t really need to be in the same game any more, and the reason “everyone” starting playing in the first place is because “everyone” loves the smell of a shiny new game and all our friends were going to play. Plus there was HYPE!

The good news for Wildstar and every other MMO publisher is that we gamers travel in herds and 6 months from now Wildstar will be the Flavor of the Month because they’ll announce something new to catch our attention, and we’ll all head back in there for another 6 weeks. And of course there are still the folks that fall outside the quote marks of my everyones and who have found a second home in Wildstar (and probably an active guild of friends) and who will be long-term dedicated customers. Every MMO that’s still around has that group of people (else the game wouldn’t still be around) but they don’t all jump on Twitter once a week to announce they are still playing, so we don’t notice them.

Woolfe: Grin’s retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood tale

Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries is an ‘action platformer’ that re-tells/re-spins the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. This time out Woolfe is the CEO of Woolfe Industries and it seems like Red’s father has died in his employ. Red wants revenge but she’ll have to hack her way through an army of animated toy soldiers (among other things) to get it.

Woolfe is being done by Grin, and the game has already been Greenlit on Steam and featured on the ID@Xbox platform (Microsoft’s push to get indie games on their consoles). But developer Grin has had to cut some features, particularly magic, and they’re running a Kickstarter project to generate funds to get those cut features back in. I’ve grown a bit wary of Kickstarter in general, but this is an example of a game being created by an established developer who already has gameplay to show; I think it’s a pretty safe bet.

They did a lengthy video about the game:

And here’s a snipper from the PR blurbage:

The new video reveals the origins of Woolfe�s creation when, two years ago, aspiring game developer Davy Penasse applied for a 3D artist job at Belgian-based indie studio GRIN. While Penasse was unsuccessful in securing that position, the team at GRIN were blown away by a short, 3D demo at the end of Penasse�s portfolio. Featuring a stylized Red Riding Hood character attacked by evil living trees in a dark enchanted forest, this 10-second clip became the starting point of what would eventually become Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries.

The story of Little Red Riding Hood has been told in various forms since the 10th Century, but Woolfe�s interpretation is a dark fantasy revenge story far beyond a modern fairy tale. Following the death of her father, Red dons a cape, picks up an axe and faces her worst fears in a bloody vendetta against the evil B.B. Woolfe, CEO of Woolfe Industries.

GRIN has also launched a Kickstarter campaign for Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries to help the small indie studio take the game to the next level. The core gameplay is already in place, but additional funding will help GRIN add new features and mechanics, including magical powers for Red that would compliment her current melee combat abilities. Among the many rewards on offer, backers will be able to customize their own Toy Soldier; part of the robot army employed by B.B. Woolfe to enforce his iron rule. The Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries Kickstarter campaign has a funding target of $50,000 and will run until September 4, 2014.

Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries is scheduled to release for PC, Xbox One and PS4 in Q2 of 2015.