Gaming better than Art?

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I read an interesting article that proposed that Video Games were superior to Art in that they require a social aspect to conquer/appreciate while being consumed.  The gist is that movies and books are isolated experiences, where you could just as easily do they in a black box and get the same value where a video game usually requires thoughtful approach, group strategy and provides a longer term return on investment.

While I agree with the statement I think that both have diverging interests.  I read a LOT and I talk about it a lot.  It’s also socially acceptable to read and often a measure of intelligence (though reading Cosmo would be the opposite I think).  Regardless, books and art are about interpretation and self-reflection.  You can share ideas with the author and other readers, help frame your own ideas and questions and usually by the end of a good book, your perception of your reality has changed.  Maybe you appreciate music more, maybe you think government is inherently evil.  Whatever it is, you change.  Art is meant to change people and that change typically permeates the rest of your life.  Art is also different for different people.  For example, read Orwell’s 1984 and then see how that changes your impression of the outside world.

Games are primarily meant to provide puzzles and then appropriate rewards for solving them in the way the programmers intended.  A bug in a game is when you try a different way to solve something than was intended.  You don’t share a new idea about how terrorists are very good at blowing up buildings or how that giant horse is blocking your path.  You are presented with a problem, a visible goal and the tools to get there.  At the end of the game, you’re better at those puzzles, you’re not necessarily able to map those skills to the outside world.  Though games provide a social outlet, it also removes the non-verbal social aspects and the subtleties that make for great interactions.  People who excel at World of Warcraft gain organizational skills and twitch skills but translating that into real-world equivalents is quite difficult.

If I were to compare Video Games, I would do so versus mental sports such as Chess or Go and a little bit towards physical sports for the adrenal rush you get.  The goal is to repeat an activity until you excel at that activity and some tangential benefit comes from it.

I read/watch movies to enrich myself and explore other ideas.  I play games to perfect minute analytic skills and keep mentally sharp.  With separate goals, it becomes easier to enjoy both while not competing between them.

Feb 8th

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So  it was 2 days ago and I’m late.  Too bad.  Bell had a mental health day and I thought it was a good idea.  Two particular items were of interest and you can watch them online.

First is the Talk on Suicide special.  Some good stuff here and it’s nice to see people talk about it.  Too often people don’t talk and it’s the lack of information and acceptance that builds bigotry.  Sort of like gays while I was growing up.  People didn’t talk about it and it was taboo.  Now we can understand it a bit more, even though some might not accept it, they understand it.

Second is Michael Landsberg’s Depression and Sports.  Clara Hughes, Stephane Richer and Daryl Strawberry are in it as well.  This is more about showing that even elite athletes have “normal” problems than anything else and you truly feel for their situations.  It’s really good.

It’s not an easy road and there are very few people available to help you since they don’t understand the mechanics.  It’s the “suck it up” mentality really.  Well, life isn’t what it was 20 years ago.  People weren’t half a million in debt just to put a roof over their head.  People didn’t have huge hospital bills.  Life was physically harder back in the day but it’s mentally harder now.   People understand a broken leg, they do not understand a broken mind.  The more we talk, the better for everyone.

Mass Effect

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I really liked the original Mass Effect.  I played through 3 times.  It was, in my opinion, the best game BioWare has ever made.  Sure the elevators were slow and the Mako was stupid but the rest was extremely well polished.  Mass Effect 2 simplified a lot of the RPG elements (inventory, weapons, abilities) and focused more on the story.  It ended in both triumph (group combat) and stupidity (human/reaper hybrid) so I ranked it a bit below the first one.

Now the 3rd Mass Effect game is on its way (March 4th) and after the crap-fest that was Dragon Age 2, BW has decided to try a different model on their game.  There are 3 game options.  One is RPG heavy with challenging combat, one is story heavy with little to no RPG elements and the last is combat, where the dialogue choices are all taken and combat is really hard.  I am curious as to what the majority will play.  For me it’s the RPG side.  I felt way more connected to Sheppard in the first game than in the 2nd, even though the scope was larger in the second.

Anyhow, I decided to replay both games to get a save ready for the 3rd.  My original plays were on the 360 (which I’ve pretty much retired) and finding the original for the PS3 is next to impossible.  So I got it on Steam.  Now, the 3rd is only available on Origin (EA’s online store) so I’ll have to transfer some stuff but the game plays pretty well and the loading times are really short.  It’s nice to see a PC interface too as the console version was buggy for me, unless you wanted to play it as a shooter.

So the goal over the next few weeks is to complete both games, then use those saves for the 3rd.  Should be fun!

Ender's Game

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I’ve wanted to for some time now and finally got around to reading Ender’s Game (or the first Mega Man).  The basic idea is that gifted children are recruited to participate in a war simulation room, the thought being that children make better killers than adults simply because they have yet to build any social stigmas.  Instincts are self-preservation after all.

This actually got me thinking a bit further along.  No one joins the military in active service in their 30s but people can swap careers from sales to nursing at that point without issue.  Our social dilemma that requires us to be empathic towards another in case we meet them again triumphs.  Not to mention that after your first funeral in your late teens, your grasp of death is more solid.

When you’re a kid playing cops and robbers, when you shout “bang” the guy is dead until he gets up.  When you do that with a real gun, they don’t get up.  It’s an interesting hard-wired mode where ideas and concepts have yet to be grounded in reality, where actions and consequences are not yet linked.

Back to the book.  The core tenet is that the above statement is factually incorrect.  A gifted child is able to correlate action and consequence, with the given data set.  Where a “regular” kid would have A leads to B, a “gifted” child would see A leads to B, B leads to C and maybe D leads to E afterwards.  I say this from experience in that the amount of information one has to compile, analyse and act upon is staggering.  I don’t think I was a kid for much of a time, certainly never a teenager.  I’ve always been thinking in “adult” terms where the lack of experience simply left me with variables to experiment with.

Aside from the fact that the book deals with complex issues in a rather simple format, it allows all people some insight into the mindset of a gifted child, however neurotic or foreign it might seem.

SWTOR Sales

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DarthHater was part of the quarter sales call for EA (shareholders can call in I guess).  They say that 2 million copies sold, 40% through their online service.  That seems reasonable.  In today’s age of PCs, people don’t go to stores to buy software as much. Steam is awesome.  Origin… has work to do.

The really interesting part is that they have 1.7 subscribers (either trial period or currently paying) and 1 million concurrently.  They go on to say that most (emphasis theirs) are paying.  That’s as low as 51%.  If after a month SW lost only 15% of their subs, that’s impressive.  After playing the game I would say that the number is wrong as the servers have way less people than when the game launched and the first two weeks.  I was running some PvP last night with 50s and I saw the same groups, over and over again.

Oh ya, the average session was 4 hours at a time.  I know I put in close to that time for the first 2 weeks but now the sessions are an hour or two before bed.  4 hours doesn’t say how much per week though, explaining why there are still plenty of players below 50.  Heck, I would say the majority are under 50.  Just goes to show how hardcore some of the other players are to keep that 4 hour playtime as an average.

I don’t want to be more negative but the real challenge is keeping those players past the 3 months mark.  Rift took a beating from it I’m sure (they have a 20 level F2P option now) and I honestly believe Rift is a better game.

Dan Brown

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Ok, follow up to a recent post about bad authors.    I had wrote about how The Lost Symbol was insulting to the average person’s intelligence, especially putting Neotics at the forefront of the book (with nothing to back it up) but a recent viewing of the Angels and Demons film got my blood boiling again.

Quickly, Langdon is summoned to the Vatican to help find 4 captured cardinals who are up to be the new pope.  He follows “clues”, which have next to no basis in reality or are complete fabrications and after letting 3 die, he saves the last one.  Oh, there’s an anti-matter bomb with a battery too.  Can’t forget that!

Anyhoot, the carmelengo (secretary) flies into the sky with a helicopter and the bomb, then parachutes down while the bomb explodes above him.  Let me say that early in the book, the bomb is compared to a nuclear device.  You know, the ones that won WW2?  That destroyed entire towns and poisoned the genetic pool for 3 generations?  And those were weak ones.  So ya, the bomb explodes a few hundred feet above him and everybody lives.  Then Langdon watches a tape showing that the secretary was the bad guy and then the secretary sets himself on fire.

So, let’s get this straight.  Langdon saved 1 life and let 3 people die, then he watched a tape to see who the bad guy was.  Oh and the entire thing takes place in Vatican City, which has the square mileage of a typical shopping mall.  So really, why did Langdon do anything again if the entire plot of the movie is re-written in the last 2 chapters?

Dan Brown writes good stories filled with half-truths, lies and exaggerations – but all stories need those.  I won’t deny his ability in that regard.  What he is absolutely not, is an author.  Sort of like saying Britney Spears is a good singer.

 

Here’s some neato stuff from CERN in regards to anti-matter and Angels and Demons.  2 billion years to create enough anti matter to make a bomb like the one at Hiroshima.

 

Rift Free for 20 Levels

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Here’s the story.

Basically you get all the classes, characters, starting zones, capital cities and teen zones for free.  Considering you can’t unlock the last classes until level 13, this isn’t a huge amount to show.  Still, it takes about 4 hours to get to 20 and the starting zones are pretty sweet.

If you haven’t played Rift, this is a great chance to try it.  In my opinion, it’s the best MMO on the market right now.

Harry Should Have Stayed Home

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I tend to harp on how the “major” authors today are actually quite bad.  Dan Brown and JK Rowling are the two prime examples.  I wanted to go over exactly why JK is a bad author.  Note that author is different than story teller.  Both are good at it, the flow is decent and the story hooks.  The author part is where the story actually makes any amount of sense and the writing is above a grade 10 level.

So, Harry Potter, the best mediocre wizard in the world.  The second coming.  It’s said quite clearly in the books that he’s a below average student with no real aptitudes other than getting into trouble.  My argument, for this post, is that nearly all the events of every book could have been avoided if Harry had listened to his elders and stayed put on his butt.

Philosopher’s Stone: Voldemort wants the stone.  It’s well hidden in a mirror that only Harry can use.  Harry uses it instead of letting the wizards with hundreds of years experience take care of the problem.  Actually comes inches from giving it to the bad guy.

Chamber of Secrets: Voldemort is coming out from a book that Ginny has.  The basilisk is killing people.  Harry hides the fact that he’s been talking to a book and nearly gets killed by a spider for it.  He then deduces where the entrance is, runs down and gets saved by a bird.  Twice.

Prisoner of Azkaban: The worst book by far.  Anyways, he’s to save a bird and his uncle from death.  Fails at both.  Needs a friend and a time travelling device to do it.  Oh, you can save a bird but you can’t save the most powerful wizard of all time with it?  Why is Voldemort looking for anything but this time turner thing?

Goblet of Fire: He’s put into a tournament without wanting to be there.  Needs huge help to pass the first test, a gift to pass the second and barely scratches through the third only to get the top of the class wizard killed in the process.  If he had never gone into the tournament or simply bailed within it, Voldemort would never have his blood and never been born again.

Order of the Phoenix: How many times is Harry told not to go searching for the memory?  What does he do?  He goes searching, finds it and gets his uncle killed.

Half Blood Prince: Ok, so this one he basically is the second character next to Dumbledore, a gopher for all purposes.  Still, he doesn’t listen and disturbs the water, further weakening his mentor.  He does listen towards the end though and lets his pal get shot off a roof.  What, a time turner would have saved him?  Really?

Deathly Hallows: Holy crap.  Everything Harry tries to do here ends up killing someone.  His slave, his friends, his teachers, everyone seems to bite the bullet.  Except the Malfoys.  Oh, the last fight?  He dies, is reborn and wins due to a hidden technicality based on wand ownership. Something Sherlock Holmes would raise an eyebrow on.

 

From day 1, if Harry had kept his nose down and followed the “rules” no one would have died, no arch-evil enemy would have been respawned, no huge war, just simple peace with one retarded gang of evil people in places of power.  I mean really, the Malfoys are still alive at the end and they were the biggest enemies through all 7 books.  In a future post I’ll show how Harry actually didn’t succeed at anything in the books.  Everything was either pure luck, a gift, a friend or a hidden gotcha Rowling used to get out of a painted corner.  Time Turner, really?  To save a bird?

WoW Going Free to Play?

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First, let’s look at the games on the market that are subscription based:

  1. World of Warcraft (7 years)
  2. EvE (5 years)
  3. Rift (1 year)
  4. Star Wars Old Republic (1 month)

Let’s look at the games that swapped to Free to Play, from subscription, in recent years.

  1. Dungeons and Dragons
  2. Lord of the Rings
  3. Everquest
  4. Everquest 2
  5. Star Trek Online
  6. Age of Conan
  7. DC Online
  8. Champions Online
  9. Fallen Earth

I think it’s fair to say that the subscription model is simply dated and saturated.  There are only so many people willing to pay a fixed fee for MMOs when there’s viable competition with no fixed fee.  This in turn makes you wonder if/when WoW will swap to F2P as well.  The pokemon expansion sure does sound like it would work well for F2P or at least microtransactions.  There are plenty of F2P games that offer the exact same experience with no monthly cost.

I think the major difference between the first 4 games is perceived value for the price.  WoW updates at a snail’s pace, 3 content patches per expansion, every 18-24 months.  EvE is even slower but the content is player driven and if you play the game “right” you can play for free.  Rift has had 7 content patches and it’s not even a year old yet.  SW had it’s first patch after a month.  If I was to compare them all, it sure would make you wonder why I would sub to WoW instead of the other three – at least in terms of value.

So my guess is that before WoW’s next expansion there will be a new business model.  That will include more microtransactions, which will push another 25% of the player base to other games.  WoW will go F2P within 2 years.