Real emotions from our games?

Posted on by Nimgimli

Over the weekend I read an interesting post by Dan Cook over at Lost Garden: Shadow Emotions and Primary Emotions. In it, Cook coins the phrase “shadow emotions” to indicate emotions that we experience second-hand, while “primary emotions” are emotions that impact us directly. Using Cook’s examples, feeling sad after reading a news story about a mother dying is a shadow emotion, while feeling sad because your own mother died is a primary emotion.

Cook says AAA game developers work hard to deliver shadow emotion experiences in much the same way that books and movies do. But, he suggests, game developers can do more and that games are one of the few art forms that can let us feel primary emotions. When your character dies in a permadeath game the feeling of sadness you feel is a primary emotion, for instance. (Still using his examples.) When a spawn camper takes you out several times in a row, the rage you feel is a primary emotion.

I think Cook makes some really interesting points, but I don’t want to follow him down this path. The basic premise of the essay seems to me that primary emotions are a goal game devs should reach for. My problem with this theory is that most of his examples are of negative emotions. Sadness and anger. His positive example (elation) revolves around hitting a goal in a game.

The problem, for me at least, is that as much as I gain satisfaction from reaching a goal in a game, that emotion is fairly fleeting. But if another player pisses me off to the point where I feel rage, I can carry that baggage into my real life far too easily. I’ll be in a bad mood for the rest of the day, sometimes. Maybe this is why I generally play solo?

I think, when I come home from a long, tiring day at work, that ‘shadow emotions’ are plenty for me. I’m not sure I want my games invoking powerful primary emotions, either good or bad. I play to relax. I might be swayed if someone could convince me that we’d get as much positive as negative emotions out of our games, but I’d have to experience that kind of game to know for sure.

I’m also not sure how to categorize the feeling of contentment I get when I finish a game. Is that primary or shadow? I’m not sure it’s different form the feeling of contentment I get from finishing a book.

Anyway, agree or not, it’s a fascinating essay and I encourage you to give it a read.

Is Guild Wars a CCG?

Posted on by Nimgimli

So with Alan Wake winging his way back to Gamefly, last night I hopped back into Guild Wars.

Now, I have to beg your patience, all you Guild War veterans… I’m probably about to cause you a great deal of eye-rolling.

I’ve added a few more heroes to my roster and each one brings some skills with them, and I’ve picked up the odd skill here and there. I could buy skills, but haven’t yet, since I read I can earn a bunch of them for free in one of the other campaigns, and so far I’m getting by with my limited selection.

But staring at those skill bars, and prompted by someone (my mind is like a sieve) mentioning how skills interact with each other and the best way to build a set for your skill bar, my brain suddenly switched into collectible card game mode. So all my skills…those are like my deck of cards, and part of the fun of the game is collecting more. The skillbar is like a hand of cards that I can put together and will eventually tweak depending on circumstances and companions.

Right? Am I right, Guild War vets? I mean, obviously there’s a ton more to it than just this skill collecting/arranging sub-system…

Anyway, another new thing I learned was that you can have more than one hero with you. I have no idea how I got it into my head that you could only have one. Last night I did a Mission with a party of 6, even though I was playing alone. I had my character +3 heroes +1 NPC who was part of the mission +1 Fire Imp ally. Crazy fun!!

Though, *gasp* at one point I thought “This would be better with friends.”

I unlocked the mission that in turns unlocks Eye of the North, but I’m sort of engaged with the Nightfall story now so I’m not sure I want to divert. And the mission I did had a bonus objective that I screwed up, so I’ll want to go re-do that.

Still having a lot of fun…still kind of bemused at how I wound up here after all these years.

My next goal is getting better about giving Heroes orders. Right now I let them run around in default behavior, which means swarming whatever I’m attacking. I was reading the Wiki and apparently you can ‘lock’ them onto a target, which, combined with calling targets, could be pretty handy if I’m a fast enough mouse clicker!

Dear Gamefly

Posted on by Nimgimli

Dear Gamefly,

I’m sorry to say, it’s time we had The Talk. While I really appreciate that we gave Us another try, it’s just not working out for me. This time though, it’s not you, it’s me.

You promised to get better and you did. When we were last together, your turn-around times were awful. I’d spend 2 weeks or more alone each month, waiting to hear back from you. It kind of broke my heart, seeing that empty mail box every day.

You’ve gotten so much better and 2 weeks has become 4 days. Even I can be alone for 4 days without becoming sad.

So why am I leaving you? Frankly, it’s the scheduling. I’m a spontaneous soul. Mercurial! I admit it, I want what I want when I want it. Call me spoiled. Serial monogamy isn’t my style.

I’m sure I really wanted to play Alan Wake when I slipped it into my queue, but when you arrived last week with Mr. Wake in tow, I was enjoying the tender mercies of Vindictus and Guild Wars. You and Alan waited patiently, it’s true, but I started feeling guilty about ignoring you. So last night I tore myself away from those others and gave my attention to you.

Was it good for you? It wasn’t good for me. It felt somehow hollow. It felt, and please forgive me for being so blunt, it felt like a chore. Spending time with a game should never feel like a chore. Please relay my apologies to Alan Wake. I’m sure under other circumstances I would’ve been delighted with his company.

I sent you and Alan Wake away this morning, and honestly it was a relief to have you gone. Then I looked at my queue and felt little but apathy. I wanted Guild Wars. I wanted Vindictus. Hell, I even wanted EQ2. I didn’t want Alice with her Madness Returning, at least not right now. Maybe some day. But not today.

And that’s why you and I will never work out, Gamefly. I just can’t schedule my needs in advance, and I can’t bear the idea of you sitting in the living room, waiting patiently, while I’m in the office enjoying the charms of another. You deserve better than that.

I hope you find someone who can appreciate your charms, Gamefly. But I’m not that person.

But I do wish you well,

-Pete

PS I still have a month left on my account so keep sending moar gamez until then, dammit!

Revisiting Guild Wars

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m tired today. It’s my own fault, really. I was up too late playing video games (again). Will I never learn?

The only reason this is remotely interesting is because I was playing Guild Wars, a game that came out in 2005. A game that I’ve dutifully purchased every expansion for, yet never really played. I’ve tried to get into Guild Wars over and over again since it launched but it’s never ‘stuck’ with me.

Then this weekend I saw Scopique was playing it and that just sort of put it in my head again. I got to thinking about Guild Wars 2 and that mechanic where accomplishments you achieve in Guild Wars 1 will unlock stuff in Guild Wars 2. So I decided to give it another go.

Before I dove back in, I re-read Rubi Bayer’s excellent piece, Stop telling me how to get to 50 points when I only have 3 over at Massively. I also spent a lot of time using the Wiki to answer questions that came up, and browsed a bunch of Rubi’s other “Flameseeker Chronicles” to stuff my brain full of GW info.

I think every game that’s been on the market for a while needs a Rubi Bayer.

One of the things I learned was that I had a Fire Imp ready to be claimed, thanks to my purchase of one of the expansions. That little dude, while kind of a pain in the arse at times (he attacks any and everything he sees) really made my “party” of me and Koss (the first Hero you get in the Factions Nightfall [thanks for the correction, folks!] campaign) a lot more viable. And a lot more fun. That last time I tried Guild Wars my level 6 ass was being handed to me over and over. The Imp made it better.

Pretty soon I added a Monk henchman to keep me healed up, and I started to read quest texts more carefully, taking note of where they started and mentally assigning them a ‘level’ that way. I started doing a lot better, though I’m still probably spending skill points in dumb ways. But I feel like I’m getting a feel for the game. I got my dude from level 6 to level 10 which (get ready to laugh) is the highest level I’ve reading in Guild Wars.

Everyone has already at least tried Guild Wars, so I won’t go on about it much. But I just found it interesting that, 6 years after my initial purchase, and probably after a dozen false starts over those years, I’m finally enjoying the game.

PS Oh, one question for people who enjoy the game. Is the $10 (iirc) “Optional Missions” pack worth buying? And do I need it now or should I wait until I hit 20?

Vindictus!

Posted on by Nimgimli

I don’t even know myself anymore. First I got lured into Champions Online, and now I’ve been playing Vindictus. Once again, I blame Eric. Thank god that kid isn’t a drug dealer or I’d be a wreck. Not only does he have me back playing MMOs, but he has me *gasp* using voice chat and yakking away.

Anyway, if you’ve somehow missed it, Vindictus is an action-MO-RPG. No, I didn’t leave off an “M” by mistake..it isn’t massive. Well, the towns where you shop and craft are massive, but when you’re ready to actually play the game, it’s 4-man instances, similar to how Guild Wars handles it.

So, things I like about Vindictus:

  • It has a nice JRPG vibe to it, and I like JRPGs. There’s a sense that there’s a story here, though I’m too low level to have seen most of it.
  • It’s very respectful of your time. You hang out in a town, then teleport to a “Battle Quest” where you’ll fight. It takes 10-20 minutes to go through one of these, then you’re back in town. How fast you go through is a function of how much scrounging you want to do (you can break containers to get gold and items if you like) and how many people are in your party.
  • It’s fast paced. The actual combat is arcade-style rather than triggered skills and cool downs. Combo attacks, active dodging, stuff like that. A nice change from the more sedate pace of most MMORPGs I play.
  • It’s free. You can spend real money but so far I’m not really sure when I’ll get around to doing it. When I do, it’ll probably be for some vanity item rather than on something I need in order to progress.

The first time I played I was asked if I wanted to summon a mentor, or something like that. I did so, and was surprised that an actual player had teleported into my instance. And he was personable and helpful. Most of the time since I’ve been playing solo, but the few times I’ve jumped into other people’s missions I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the community. At worst, people have been silent.

The devs did a good job on removing drama from playing. If you see an item, grab it. Everyone else can grab it too. There’s no worry about loot ninjas or anything along those lines. Maybe I’ve just been lucky but so far Vindictus is dangerously close to turning me into a PUGger.

Last night Eric and I ran through 4 (I think) missions over the course of a couple of hours. Sometimes just him and I, once with a friend of his and once with a couple of strangers. It was all fun, and the game has the monster-pinata thing going on. You kill a boss mob and hope to get something good. If you don’t…well, just re-run the mission and try again!

I dunno if I’ll be playing this for months, but hey, it’s free! No commitment..just fun. Nothing wrong with that!

Atari’s Customer Service

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m the first one to bitch and moan at bad customer service, so it’s only fair to also draw attention to good customer service.

Last night playing CO I noted I had 3000+ points to spend in the cash shop. Woot!

Today I was over in STO land, and they were offering a deal on Atari Tokens. I wanted to buy some ST:TOS gizmos so I figured I’d spent some money. I ordered 2000 Atari Tokens.

I jumped into STO and it said I had 3300 tokens. Hmm. I checked paypal to be sure the transaction went through. It had. So I hit customer support. I was going to Open a Ticket when a “Live Chat” box popped up. I decided to try it, and a few seconds later I was IM’ing with Mike G.

One we got through the basics of me proving it was my account we were talking about, we started debugging the problem. He said he could see 2000 tokens being deposited in my account. I asked him why I was seeing the same 3000+ I’d seen last night. We went down the list of obvious things. Blowing away cache, trying a different browser, checking in game. Finally I asked him if they could credit me with 1 token just to see if my balance changed, and he left for a bit to see if that was a possibility.

When he came back I asked if he could see a running balance. He couldn’t, but he could see I’d gotten comped 400 CO points on the 28th and 2000 Atari Tokens today. The way he phrased that gave me pause. I logged into Champions Online and it said I had 5000+ points. Eureka!

It turns out that the free points I get from being a Lifetime Subscriber to CO aren’t usable in Star Trek Online. They’re CO points, not Atari Tokens. I apologized to Mike G for wasting his time; I’d never mentioned my previous balance was all freebie points from another game. He remained patient and helpful through the entire process and was very gracious in the face of my being a bit of a bonehead.

So once again, PBCAK (problem between chair and keyboard) but kudos to Mike G for working the problem (I talked to him for about 40 minutes before I realized my error) and never giving up!

A dip into Champions Online: Free For All

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night my buddy Eric (who you may know as BlamefulGecko) dragged me out of my self-imposed MMO exile and into Champions Online.

This isn’t the first time I played CO; I played at launch and even have a Lifetime Membership. But as with so many other MMOs I eventually lost interest and moved on to something else. According to the character select screen, it’d been 169 days since I last played my characters and if I recall correctly that was a 1 time log in during a welcome back week or something. Really it’s been since a few months after launch since I seriously played. (I still have my “Hall of Champions” listed over to the right, with some origin stories.)

Eric wanted to show me the new Episodes that Cryptic has been adding (similar to what they’ve done with Star Trek Online) so we did the first one. I probably didn’t get as much out of it as I should have, since I was feeling really clumsy and focused more on how to play than what was going on, but Eric did a great job of narrating the storyline as we played. It was a ton of fun!

Afterwards, Eric put on a fashion show of sorts, showing me his different characters and all the crazy-awesome costumes he’s created for them, including a lot of splashy bits that he’s either earned through playing or bought at the C-Store.

I found myself trying to remember why I’d stopped playing; I really enjoyed my visit to this comic book world. I might have to roll a new character to take through the tutorials and get my bearings that way, though. I’ve got unused points to spend, bags full of junk that I have no idea what to do with, and I was halfway through our play session before I remembered some powers work for as long as you hold down a key (and Eric had to remind me that you could ‘charge’ your travel power).

Everything old is new again, I guess. Thanks Eric!

Crysis 2 completed

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m a few days late with this…been a busy week. But I finished the single player campaign of Crysis 2 Monday night. The stat-tracker in-game says it took me 14 hours, but of course that doesn’t count all the ‘lost’ time that resulted from death and being set back to a checkpoint.

I played on, I guess, ‘normal’ difficulty (2nd of 4 levels) and favored being stealthy and sneaking around for quiet kills. It took me 10 days of calendar time to get through the game. By contrast, a friend at work picked the game up on Thursday and also finished Monday, and he was away for 1 day of the weekend! So for him it was 4 days of calendar time. Which just illustrates that game length means different things to different people, I guess. I have a girlfriend, 2 jobs, and a dog. My friend lives alone, has 1 job and a cat (who doesn’t need walking). He also plays a lot more shooters than I do so was probably more efficient during the time he was playing.

Anyway… Crysis 2: I really enjoyed it. I sent it back to Gamefly today with a bit of regret, and I can imagine buying a copy on sale at some point in the future. It’d be fun to go back and chase collectible objectives and try the game on harder difficulty levels. In fact in some ways I think I might enjoy it more on a replay since I wouldn’t be so focused on story and could relax and enjoy killing alien scum 🙂 (there were a few levels where I basically stealthed past many bad guys just to get to the next checkpoint so I could see what happened next).

I played some DungeonSiege III last weekend, too, and I suspect I’m liking it more than most people. It’ll probably be the next game I focus on.

So far, the urge to go back to MMOs hasn’t returned. Watching all the fuss about CCP’s cash shop (I guess that’s what it was all about) really reinforced my love for single player gaming. I know if I was caught up in EVE last week I would’ve probably been just as upset as everyone else, and who needs that kind of stress?

Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising launches

Posted on by Nimgimli

Just a PSA to remind you all that Heatwave Interactive’s MMO Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising launches today. I guess there was a headstart program for those who pre-ordered, but I haven’t heard much about what’s going on.

I kind of liked G&H back when Perpetual Entertainment was developing it, but then it died. When Heatwave resurrected it, I liked it again for its old-school charm. But as the beta progressed, Heatwave modernized the game, which was probably a smart marketing move, but it kind of made the whole experience feel a bit too “me too” for my tastes. I liked it when I had to read the quest text in order to figure out where to go, for instance. But then they added a guide system to remove that challenge.

The Estate System sounded pretty interesting, but by the time that rolled around I was drifting away from MMOs and there wasn’t enough there to pull me back in. So I’m sitting out this launch, though I wish Heatwave the very best of luck.

The last time I played, and it was a while ago in beta, the combat engine was still kind of janky. I loved the gladiator’s (the class I was playing) animations when they flowed smoothly, but too often they’d stutter, or you could see models change from animated NPC to corpse. Likewise, in a quest that had me destroying cages, it was jarring to see the model switch abruptly from “intact cage” to “broken cage.” These just seemed like technical rough spots that hadn’t yet been polished out; I’m hoping they have been for launch.

I seem to be forming a pattern here. I liked Rift a lot more in beta, before they made it more marketable and mainstream, and same thing here. Maybe I need to re-sub to Dark Age of Camelot or something. Maybe what’s got me drifting away from MMOs is all the hand holding and lack of challenge?

Anyway, congrats to Heatwave for the launch! And again, here’s hoping the game finds its niche. I’ll come and give it a try eventually, when that MMO itch starts up again!

A weekend of Crysis 2

Posted on by Nimgimli

I mentioned signing up for GameFly last week, and the first game they sent me was Crysis 2 for the PS3. It arrived Thursday when I was tormenting myself with an overnight rental of Duke Nukem Forever. That was OK since it meant I’d have a weekend to get a good start on Crysis 2 in between bouts of Infamous 2.

Let’s skip right to the ending: I never once booted up Infamous 2 (or any other game) over the weekend. Crysis 2 grabbed me by the throat in a way that no game has for quite some time. I put in ~10 hours over the course of the weekend, which is a *huge* amount of time for me. I played until I grew disgusted with myself for wasting so much time playing. And then a few hours later, I was back at it.

So yeah, I really like it. Now it’s time to decide why.

I was really hesitant about the game when friends were saying it was good. First, it’s an FPS and not many of those interest me. Second, you’ve got this NanoSuit which was vaguely off-putting for me. The idea is that it can grant you stealth or extra armor and has a visor for scanning enemies and a lot of other stuff. It seemed like it’d be complicated and claustrophobic. Turns out it was neither.

The game takes place in a New York City under attack, but the devs have really handled this nicely. It was much more reminiscent of Cloverfield than it was 9/11, which I consider to be a good thing. It isn’t open world but the levels tend to be nice and broad (so far at least, I was headed into a tunnel when I quit last night) so you don’t feel like you’re being ushered along a defined path, even if you kind of are.

But I think what really made me love the game is that suit that I’d been so hesitant about. You start out with a Stealth mode, and a while later get Armor mode. This kind of opens up two very different ways of playing. Toggle on Stealth and sneak around to take out enemies quietly, or toggle on Armor and go in guns blazing, able to soak up tons of damage. Both modes deplete energy which recharges once a mode is turned off. I’ve been leaning heavily on stealth and a lot of my kills have been done via sneaking up and pushing R3 for a stealth kill, or using a silenced pistol for a head shot. I make a kill then find a corner to hide it to let the suit recharge.

But, when that gets boring I can switch to armor and just charge in, bullets and grenades flying and chaos ensuing. I do like that style of gaming, but only for brief periods of time. Crysis 2 lets me play the way I want to (so far).

The one potential drawback is that checkpoints can seem pretty far apart when you’re sneaking around (which takes time) and more than once I’ve lost 10-15 minutes of progress when I got killed. I call this a potential drawback because I think run & gun players would take much less time to get through these sections, and in my case the gameplay has been so fun that I didn’t mind re-doing them.

The AI is great. Note that I didn’t say smart. It’s smart enough to be fun and dumb enough to not get overly frustrating. I’m playing on difficulty level 2 of 4 (I started on easiest and it was way too easy). So when you take out a bad guy silently, and someone else comes upon the body, they’ll run to check it out to see if the guy is ok, then start yelling about a man down. During all this time it’s pretty easy for you to take out the newcomer.

On the other hand, if anyone sees you, you’ll start taking fire almost immediately and will have to run for cover. Unless Armor mode is toggled on you’re not going to survive a hail of bullets. If you find cover though, the bad guys are pretty quick to go back to “All clear!” and business as usual. It isn’t realistic but it keeps the pacing of the game fun. Who wants to hide behind a shed for 5 minutes until an AI gets bored and moves on?

Ammo is plentiful, and you can customize your guns on the fly. Add/remove silencers, swap out a laser scope for a sniper scope, and so on. By collecting a kind of in-game currency you can tweak your suit powers, too. Stuff like silencing your footsteps, or adding tracers to all in-coming fire so you can pin-point a source.

The story has me interested, too. You start out as a marine and soon find yourself in this suit, because mistaken for some bad-ass named Prophet and with an entire PMC trying to kill you, and you really have no clue what’s going on. So you the player learns along with you the character as things go from bad to worse and you discover what’s really going on with the plague that you’ve been sent in to contain.

Anyway, I’ve droned on long enough, and plenty of real reviewers have already given Crysis 2 a thumbs up. I’ll just say I concur. I haven’t touched MP yet (and probably won’t) but in my opinion the game is worth it just for the single player campaign. It isn’t a perfect game (I’ve seen a bit of clipping and the odd enemy stuck in geometry) but it’s just damned good fun. Right now the game is $40 on Amazon and I’d say it’s worth buying.