Not Dark Yet.

I know I didn't write anything on here for over a month, but I was extremely busy with school. It's not like I didn't write about games though; I just wrote in french. The semester work for one of my class was to write weekly on a myspace blog (urgh) about any subject and make links to what we saw in class. So I basically wrote about games (and once or twice about the internet in general) on a weekly basis. The bad thing is, I didn't have time to really write anything here on back on Bitmob, but the good thing is, it helped me develop a rhythm  and a schedule to write. From January onward, it should be way easier for me to get out some weekly content -- unless I get some crazy work again for some classes.

Anyway, here is a blog post I made on Bitmob about games and politics.

See ya later.

First Impressions: Fallout: New Vegas

Those are my first impressions on Fallout: New Vegas, three hours into the game... at which point my Xbox 360 controller's batteries died.

I guess it would be a bit simplistic to say that New Vegas is just more Fallout 3, but it kinda is. The game looks the same, sounds the same, plays mostly the same and I enjoy it about the same. It's both a good and a bad thing. Good because because I really enjoyed Fallout 3, but bad because that was two years ago. How come the issues that were plaguing the game two years ago are back?

Not that there is anything wrong with using old resources. Majora's Mask is mainly reused models from Ocarina of Time, but it's one of my favorite Zelda game ever. What made it work was the clever way they made the old stuff fell new. They used them in different ways and in different situations. They changed the overall style and feel of the game. New Vegas hasn't really done that yet for me. Sure, everything looks more orange, dusty and westerny, but it just feels like more capital wasteland and not its own place. Maybe that will change once I explore more and get to the strip. The other things that didn't change and should have are the glitches. I was lucky enough not to get into anything too crazy, like the spinning head doctor or the game files erase issue, but I still saw a gecko stuck in a wall, and one who had the mysterious qualities of a ghost -- couldn't hurt him and he couldn't hurt me BUT THERE HE WAS! The animations are still weird... two years after the facts. It has been said before and will be said again but Bethesda needs to get out a new engine, this one is starting to show its age. Oh and the hardcore mode is incredibly useless. Those bars never seems to go up.

On the good side, I mainly noticed two things in my short time playing. They added an interesting crafting system and the writing is way better. Not that the last point had a very high bar to go over but we'll take what we can get. The crafting system is a nice addition, even when I presume you can get through the game without ever touching it once. It will certainly fits a few players (like mine) play-style. It is all about collecting whatever you can find, get to a crafting apparatus, and see what you can make. It is certainly better than Fallout 3's handful of craftable items. I didn't get to experience much of the writing in my three hours, but what I got so far is atleast better than the first few hours of Fallout 3. I just had my first plot twist and boy does it already makes the game more intriguing than Fallout 3's convulsed plot about radioactive water, wild goose chase for a missing dad we don't even care about, and totally dumb use of a good GECK.

So yeah, if I am lucky enough not to run into any frustrating glitches, I think I will have a good time with this game, at least as much as I did with Fallout 3, despite all its flaws in term of writing and technicalities. Looks like Obsidian took care of one problem... and totally ignored the others. War never changes, and neither does dated engines I guess.

The Aug... September Madness... sorry guys.

Alright, haven't posted anything on here for a whole month. That sucks. I was busy with the first few weeks of university and with a good whole week of being sick like a dog. But now I got rid of a few things (mainly my sickness) and I can write again! Well, to be fair, I have to write a weekly post (on Myspace of all places) about one of my class. It's pretty interesting, even if Myspace is clunky, and I get to talk on about games and internet culture in french for notes. Could be worse.

In the meantime, I wrote a bitmob article about Minecraft (because everyone did) and I am probably going to write another iPhone game review soonish.

See ya later peeps!

Babycastles and the Indie Arcades: Getting Social

Something is afoot in Manhattan. A bunch of indie game designers and game enthusiasts are creating an indie arcade named Babycastles. Let’s not imagine that it is an arcade in the traditional sense of the word. It’s not rows of quarter munching machines where you can play your favorite fighting game or SHMUPS with a roaring crowd behind you. Well, not that there is any crowds in most arcades nowadays.

If their Kickstarter page and the articles game journalist and Babycastles promoter Leigh Alexander wrote are to be believed, this indie arcade will be closer to an art-house cinema or an indie music show than the arcades of the old days. Babycastles seams to be about two things really: creating an ambiance and bringing the indie games out of your home computer and into the streets.

I’m not really into the New York indie music scene (probably because I’m neither in NY or an indie music fan) but from what I know, once again through Alexander, Babycastles is pretty much growing out from this particular world. While they are raising money to move in a new location near Time Square, the arcade is currently located at Silent Barn, “a hub within Brooklyn's DIY music scene”. If anything, this is a pretty good indication that they are aiming to create an indie arcade with the similar ambiance of an indie music jam.

Just like indie music or indie cinema, indie games main channel of distribution is not through any of the big guys, but through the web. The Internet is a great way to get known, but the social aspect, that special touch you can have when you are playing in front of a live audience or showing your movie for the first time in an half-full theater is something that cannot be emulated. It’s also something most games and gamers lost over time.

Arcades died when consoles and PCs gained in popularity. Still, people would go to each other’s basement to play a friendly match of Goldeneye, or bring their computers and play Starcraft over LAN. The growth of online gaming killed that too. Seriously, how many games nowadays come with a split-screen multiplayer mode? Not many. Gaming used to be something social; you played games with other people, other gamers, in the same room. I think gamers are longing for the real life presence. This is why there is a growing movement for the return and survival of arcades.

Babycastles and other indie arcades like it (Is there even any?) are doing something new. They are bringing a type of game that rarely leaves the comfort of your computer to the social scene. It’s also about cutting the middleman that is the Internet. You play the game and you get to talk about it around a good beer with other people who just played the game. Some games can create interesting discussions about a variety of subjects, while others are all about the bragging rights of beating the high score. Just like the old days.

I wish a long life to those arcades, the future amazing hangouts for the social gamer; the gamer that wants to hang out with his gamers and non-gamers friend, grab a drink and listen to music, and then kick some ass at this new amazing bullets hell game some dude in Europe just made in a day. Hopefully Manhattan is just the beginning.

The August Madness

August was pretty crazy for me. Parents went on vacation for two weeks and came back with a bad flu, I worked like crazy at the Tim Hortons because a few other bakers were on vacation and I barely had time to write anything. So I basically took two weeks off. Not like there was anything interesting anyway...

I wrote a very quick news post today on Bitmob about Jane McGonigal and co.'s new project, GAMEFUL. Check it out, it sounds pretty awesome. 

As far as my own writing goes, I'll also try to get back into reviewing indie games and iPod Touch games. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up a good writing rhythm with university starting in a week.

Looking At Limbo, Facing Your Fears

A young boy wakes up in the middle of a dark forest. You only know it is a forest because you can make up the vague shapes of trees around you. The young boy is as vague as the forest that surrounds him. He is only, to you, a black shadow with blinking white eyes.

You heard that the boy is looking for his sister in this forest, but the game never really tells you that. It's just a throwaway statement from outside the game. You know this is some kind of platformer. Your physical memory takes over and you proceed to the left -- because salvation in video games is almost always to the left of the world.

You quickly realize that making your way through this forest won't be so easy. You come across some water and try to make your way to the other side. The young boy drowns before you. Damn, you died. This game will kill the young boy a lot too. Each death brings the player two things: information about the world and something new to fear. For now, you learn to fear water.

Not long after, you also learn to fear the giant spider that is stalking you and the "Others", young boys, just like your own avatar you guess, that are stuck in this world, this limbo. But the game makes you fear them, for they will try to kill you. Why do they want to kill you? Is it because you are different -- you have eyes, they don't -- or maybe because they went insane in this grey forest? It does not matter. Each time you will see their black silhouette, fear shall grip you.

Limbo does a great job installing those fears in your head, but it also goes beyond and asks you to face them. Slowly but surely, you will learn how to navigate your environment with your little avatar and how to use those traps you fear so much against your enemies. You will methodically take down all of the spider's legs and use her corpse as a platform (gross), you will kill those lost child with their own devious traps, and you will flood rooms in order to proceed in your journey.

It becomes less of a terrifying walk through a dark world and more of a rite of passage, an initiatory journey through the unknown. The young boy must face his fears and weaknesses to become a man. He must learn how to use what he fears to his own advantage. The boy becomes a man as he learns how to use and master his surrounding. The bear trap isn't a danger anymore; it's a spider-killing weapon.

It is no coincidence then that the young boy makes his way from a forest to a city, or some kind of giant factory. On a mechanical level, this new environment introduces new challenges: electricity, guns, saws and gravity switches for example. Like those in the forest, you will slowly learn how to manipulate them.

On a more abstract level, the passage from the forest to the factory makes a lot of sense if you look at this game as a story about the trials of growing up. The young boy goes from the forest -- playground for the children -- to the factory -- workplace for the adult. Both can be filled with adventures and dangers.

After making his way through the gauntlet, the young boy -- who is now a man -- finds himself back in the wood of his childhood. There, he sees his sister crying. The game then abruptly cuts to black. The young boy never gets to his sister, as if the game was telling us this old morale all over again; the journey is more important than the destination. This old saying is very true in the context of this game. We are never given a reason to care about that sister. The game in itself never even tells us that there is a sister to be found.

The young boy, and the player, is pushed forward to make it through the trials laid down by the game because he feels that the journey is going to be worth it, that there is something on the other side of this monochrome rainbow. Once you are there, you figure out that this sister could as well be an illusion, an oasis of hope for that young boy and for you.

Even if there is nothing on the other side of the rainbow, the boy became and man, and the player held his hand through the journey.

I did a Top 10, How Crazy is That.

So yeah, I did a Top 10 over at Bitmob for a monthly writing challenge. Pretty nice. It was also the first time I did a Top 10 -- I honestly don't really love those things but it was a nice exercise. Had to use 50 words or less for each entries. Makes you get to the point a lot faster.

Didn't want to post the Top 10 here before I had the Go from Micheal Rousseau to put it up on Bitmob. Still not gonna put it up here, just click the link the see it. I'm also gonna write about XBox Live Arcade Summer of Arcade's first born Limbo early this week. There's a generally positive buzz about that game around twitter and the blogoshpere.

Oh and Starcraft 2 comes out on the 27th. Don't expect anything from me till the month of August. My soul will be busy being eaten by this game.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly about Blizzard's RealID

A lot of people out there must feel like they just dodged a bullet. Blizzard, under the pressure of its angry and disapproving fans, decided to back up on its plan for RealID. The system is optional in games but would have been mandatory when posting on the forum, exposing your real identity to other forum users. As of right now, RealID is entirely optional.

Maybe it’s the social scientist in me that is talking, but I'm kind of sad to see Blizzard back up on this one. Could have been a nice social experiment to see if lifting the veil on anonymity that is currently covering every Blizzard forums posters would have changed the posting environment.

Nonetheless, this whole debate surrounding the discussion, and its retraction some days later, at least brought to light some problems that are plaguing not only Blizzard's forums, but any big gaming forums (or any big non-gaming forums for that matter). Let's take a look at the pros and cons of RealID's use and what this debacle taught us.


*The Good*

I believe this came with the best of intention: toning down the awful trolling taking place on the Blizzard forums. I’m pretty nobody, except trolls, would disagree that this issue needs to be looked after. RealID as a whole would also puts Blizzard on the same level as Facebook. By using their real names, player can integrate all of their social networking needs under one roof, and Blizzard sure hopes it’s theirs you’ll choose as a gamer.

*The Bad*

 The loss of anonymity on the Internet is something a lot of Internet goers are sensible about and I can understand that, especially on a gaming forum. If you are anything else than a white teenage male, the loss of anonymity will leave you open to potential harassment from, let’s say it simply, douchebags. They’ll laugh at you if your name is slightly different from the norm or sound foreign (ironic when you think it’s the World Wide Web) like it’s some kind of high school courtyard. If you are a girl, get prepared to receive a mailbox full of “show me you tits”. That and apparently people will come to your house and punch you.

*The Ugly*

Call me innocent, foolish, or just plain ignorant, but are gaming forums that bad? Why is gaming culture so attracting to unbalanced individuals? It’s pretty scary to think that you cannot have a discussion about a game on a forum without fearing for your life if you dare disagree with xXX_Blazer645_XXx on the best sword because he might use your real name to find your house and kick your ass. At this point, whether he is xXX_Blazer645_XXx or Jim Johnson, you don’t really care. So I’m throwing this almost philosophical question to the world: what would it take to make gaming forums friendlier and safer environments? One where you could say what you want to say, be accountable for what you say, but not fear for your privacy or safety.

Elephant In the Room: Violence and Games

When you look at what was announced during this year’s E3, you can see how much each developers and publishers try to push their next big franchise. Good portions of those new, or returning, franchises are first-person shooters. Halo: Reach, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Killzone 3 and Crysis 2 are making their way toward our consoles and personal computers with their big guns, big (space) boots and their big wars. Those damn commies/aliens/Talibans/ better watch out!

Cool right?

Not always.

 

Look, there is nothing wrong with violence for entertainment, but can we start to wonder why it is the only kind of violence our industry is capable of tackling? Could a video game shock me with its violence not by its amount or gruesomeness (see: Manhunt 2), but by its impact on the characters and the world? Let’s look at an other medium for inspiration.

Gus Van Sant’s movie Elephant is shocking not because the violence is plentiful, quite the opposite. The violence is short and brutal. One second you're alive and enjoying life (or not) and the next you are bleeding to death in a corridor.

Van Sant lets his characters live their life on screen for a short period of time. He gives the viewer time to get to know these people: their dreams, hopes, strength and weaknesses. He does not discriminate between the victims and killers. They both get time to live before they are pulled out of their world in a brutal way. Each death is affecting because Van Sant never lets you forget that the people being killed are not anonymous members of a mass, they are individuals.

What about games?

You kill so many people and get killed so many times in first-person shooters that violence and death start to loose their meaning. Your enemies are plentiful and anonymous; you are often a one-man army blessed by the power of spawning. Violence is the currency and death (yours or theirs) is what’s being traded. You never feel like something is taken out of the game. At worse, death is about as annoying in game as traffic is in real life.

One effective way video games made death matter is by making it permanent. Sadly, there are quite few examples of such uses of death and they are often removed from gameplay and placed within the embedded narrative. The game will kill someone permanently for you but won’t let you kill or get killed in the same fashion. Aeris died not because you didn’t have any potions left, she died because the game decided to remove her from the game to create dramatic tension. Still, games have been getting better at creating permanent deaths that matter because you caused them or are affected by them.

A good example of a first-person shooter that made death and violence matter more than your average war simulator is Far Cry 2. Not so much because of the unlimited number of mercenaries waiting to be shot, set on fire or rolled over but because of your “buddies”. You meet them, do some small talk, and even though they could have been developed a bit more as characters, learn about them. At the exception of one or two sequences in the game, their life or death relies entirely in your hands. Play with fire by accepting their little offer and you will put their life in danger. If you fail to save them, they will die in your arms, and sometimes by your hands. Once they are dead, they’re not coming back.

Another good look at permanent death in this game was the self-imposed “permadeath” challenge Ben Abraham took last December. The constant threat of death makes you appreciate the little details of the world and makes you question the use of violence as an effective approach to every given situation.

What do I want? I’m not even sure. It's not about "banning violent games" like some over-reacting hormones-fuelled gamer might say. It's just about having a balance between entertaining violence and affecting violence. Maybe I just want more developers to think about violence in other terms than number of enemies on screen or cooler explosions. Maybe I just don't want 14 first-person shooters with 14 different ways of showing us how cool their fictional (or non-fictional) war is. Maybe I just want people to be able to talk about violence, games and what is between them without being called an alarmist or worse, being told it’s “just a game”.

It won't cause gamers to go into the streets and shoot people up, but maybe it causes them to be strangely apathetic to such stories. Violence, war and death is not only about sick graphics and kill streaks, it’s about the Human experience.

Immersion and Motion

E3 is behind us and we safely say that this year's convention was dominated by two big elements: 3D and motion control. What is even more amazing is how PR and marketing decided to sell us those two things. The big buzzword was immersion. 3D and motion control will totally immerse you into the gaming experience and the gaming world.


I am not going to linger on 3D here. It's hard to judge something like this based solely on 2D images. Right now, I am more interested in the new motion control craze that is coming with Kinect and Move, but mostly the former. From what we know about our relationship with the current controllers and the Wii, how can we assume that the Kinect is going to help us be more immersed in games? What is more immersive, holding a controller or jumping in front of your television?


Two schools of thought basically go toes-to-toes here; on one side, the controller is a physical object that exists outside the boundaries of the games and it is anchoring you to the real world, but on the other, the controller is a tool that helps you take control of an avatar and puts you directly in control of the fiction. Depending on which side of the fence you are, you will see motion control in different lights.


"Traditional" motion control such as the Wii and the Playstation Move are controllers that also requires, most of the time, extra movement in the "real world" in order to control the game. Games such as Mario Galaxy requires you to waggle the Wiimote to spin Mario, and the Move will probably require that you point at the screen in order to kill something. So either you will see these extra "real world" movements as something that breaks the immersion even more, or something that helps you immerse yourself even more in the game by giving more faithful control over your avatar.


I think you can split immersion in games in two different categories: immersion in the narrative (the kind you could get watching a movie, reading a book, or playing a good narrative-driven game), and immersion in the system (feeling that you have full control over your avatar). What decides the level of immersion in both categories is mostly the game and what is the level of control the player has over his avatar.

A game like Heavy Rain will immerse the player in the narrative by creating interesting situations that will draw you inside the fiction and make you feel scared or happy for the characters. Narrative immersion can also be created by gameplay, although it will mostly capitalize on emergent narrative. A good example of this is Far Cry 2. You become immersed in the adventures of your avatar not because of your search for the Jackal, but because of the perils linked to your trip through a country that does not wants you.


Even though Heavy Rain lets you do a counter-clockwise quarter rotation of the thumb-stick to open a door, this movement has about as much to do with the real world as a counter-clockwise quarter rotation of the thumb-stick to throw a fireball from your fist. System immersion is present mostly in motion-controlled games. You will not be immersed in the narrative track of a Wii Sports boxing match (well, maybe the emergent narrative linked to punching your brother in the face), but you will be immersed in the system, the gameplay, as the movements you make in the real world will be mimicked in the game. You will feel you have full control over your avatar.

With Kinect, the game literally changes. The control is removed and replaced with more faithful body recognition. As they like to say at Microsoft: "Your body becomes the controller". What is the effect on immersion though?


I am not saying that narrative immersion will be impossible with Kinect, but system immersion will certainly be the focus for many game developers. We can now look back and see that with the Wii, games focusing on system immersion, such as party games, became third party developers’ genre of choice. Many of the game shown so far for Kinect also reflect that.


Narrative immersion also becomes harder to maintain when your whole body is the controller. If a plastic controller was anchoring you to the real world, Kinect will certainly do it even more so. In a movie theatre, you get immersed in the narrative because you are in a state of "over-perception and under-mobility"(French: sur-perception et sous-motricité). It basically means that the optimal conditions of a movie theatre will fill your field of vision with images and your ears with sounds but also keep you in your seat. When you play a game with a controller, you are still in a similar situation. You cannot move away from the television or else the action would stop, and your physical movement is limited to the movement of your fingers. Maybe it's not to the level of a movie theatre, but it certainly is close enough to watching a DVD.


With that in mind, games that would be played with Kinect (and to an extent those which uses the Wiimote and Move more actively) will rather put you in a state of "over-mobility". In that state, you become more self-aware of your presence as a player, as a controller. In that sense, you are fully immersed (Could we even say integrated?) into the system. You are in total control of your avatar. Narrative immersion, in turn, becomes harder to keep. The more complex the movements you have to do to interact with the virtual environment, the more aware you are that this whole thing is a game that you control.


It is not to say that developers who will choose to make full use of the Kinect's features won't be able to write deep, meaningful and interesting stories, it's just that I have an hard time imagining being moved by a story if I have to mimic a fight scene, or scream JASON at my television while walking around my living room. Games truly exist on multiple levels, and motion control integration is just another challenge that game developers will have to work with.

I Once Had a Ranch

Kirk Hamilton wrote recently about Red Dead Redemption’s flawed middle chapters; basically spanning from the annoying Irish to the bloated McDougal, with caricatures of the worst human beings you can have south of the border in the middle, but also its surprisingly well-developed early and final chapters. What’s interesting is that both those sections of the game take place around a certain type of location: a peaceful ranch.

After being shot in the chest, Marston is saved by rancher girl Bonnie McFarlaine and taken back to her father’s ranch. At this point, Marston’s quest for revenge is suspended for a moment. You go around the ranch hunting rabbits with Bonnie, you hurdle some cattle, you patrol the ranch at night and you play a few friendly poker games with the guys after a hard day in the sun. At this point in the game, you can also take on a few missions with Marshall Leigh Johnston in return for information about Williamson. If this game is based on the western genre, why was I more interested and invested in the daily business of running a ranch than the manly cowboy action of shooting the bad guys hidden in a canyon?

Apart from the point Kirk Hamilton makes in his piece; the characters around those missions are much more well written, I think I enjoyed those missions so much because I was free not be violent, not to be a tool in some sociopath hands (I’m looking at you De Santa). The first few missions in McFalaine’s ranch are obliviously tutorials giving you pointers on how to ride your horse, shoot a gun and lasso up horses and bad guys. By breaking those few tutorial mission with some of the Marshall’s mission, all involving shooting bad guys in the head, I found the ranching missions much more innovative. Hurdling cattle may not be the most interesting job in the world, but the mechanics revolving around those missions was novel and interesting enough to keep me hooked and actually enjoy riding behind a group of cows while keeping them in check.

You really get to appreciate those missions once you are at the end of the game. After hours of being a carpet and doing horrible jobs for even more horrible people, you are free to get back to a “normal” life with you family. This is the redemption the game is telling us about, this is the freedom you’ve earned. For a few missions, the game lets Marston, and the player, be something else than a killer. It lets you be a human being who tries to put the pieces of his life together by trying to get his ranch back up. Just like Marston, I didn’t want this part of the game to end. I would have enjoyed just living on this ranch, working everyday to make it better by taking the cattle to the pasture, get some horses to sell them back, get a little garden that the wife would take care of, go hunt with my boy and bond a little, protect my ranch from rustlers and bandits, sell and buy merchandise with towns and other ranches, just put the killing life behind I guess.

Sadly, the cruel world created by this game denies Marston and the player this freedom. It is brutally, but not surprisingly, taken away from you in a moment of violence. Marston’s redemption was short-lived. The civilized world will inevitably kill the old anti-hero of the West; the law does not forgive the criminal turned vigilante. The game completes the circle by giving us control over Jack Marston, John’s son, the boy who lost his chance at a normal life with his family. The son literally becomes the father as the player is given the same control over him and as the game is giving the same options to the player. Jack cannot be a rancher. He can only be the same as his father was during the game, a man who wanders the land in search of someone to help, or someone to shoot.

Who knows, maybe one day Rockstar will release a DLC that will let us be an honest rancher? John wasn’t able to enjoy his redemption but maybe we will be able to lead Jack to his.

A little fan wanking on my part.

So, the IGF Mobile finalists (whose header image is ironically showing a cell phone; a platform that is totally unused by said finalists) have been announced and I'm pretty happy to see one of my favourite game of the year, Spider: The Secret of Bryce manor, is amongst them.

It got both nominated for best mobile game design and best overall game.

A Fiction and A Reflection With MAG’s Beta

A double-feature born from my time with the MAG public beta. First, a fiction to give the feel of the game and then a reflection about war games and what they can give us.

A Tale From the Frontline

12 minutes left.

Our squad leader is sounding pretty confident about the mission when he tells us through his headset: “We have more than enough time to do this.” We just took objective B from S.V.E.R., mere seconds after Alpha and Bravo took control of objective A. With that much time left and a boost in confidence, blowing up objective C will be a walk in the park.

3 minutes left.

I guess he was over-confident. S.V.E.R. may be under-equipped but they can hold a base quite well. Most of the squads are scattered across the map, trying to get their butts inside the hangar, but to no avail. Our squad is focusing on the right entrance, on the second floor. I try my best to heal back my boys but there is only so much a single medic can do. Unfortunately, those tangos seem to come in endless supply. It won’t be long before we are pushed back.

2 minute left.

In a burst of hopelessness, our squad leader screams in his headset: “Come on guys, we can do this!” Is it all it takes? Sixty men (and women?) throw caution to the wind and start running toward the main entrance, zigzagging their way to avoid bullets. Only half of us make it. I get to the objective first, somehow avoiding any tangos. I start to put on the charge… and I blow up.

30 seconds left.

We are on the brink of defeat. I land without taking too much bullets during my fall and start my sprint toward an unachievable goal.

16 second left.

A miracle happens and time literally stands still. Someone, in the midst of battle, was able to set up a charge. With our hopes back up and victory in grasp way, our squad leader shouts: “Shit! We need to protect the charge!” Once again, everyone runs toward the hangar, shooting anything that moves. I make it to the objective and I see a tango making his way to the explosives; he is back to me. I line up my shot, like it was the last one I would ever have to make in my life, and pull the trigger… headshot. I saved the day and nobody will ever know it.

Valor is victorious.

We made it. With 16 seconds left on the counter, we made it. A fight that won’t go down in history, but that will be remembered by all of those who took part in it and bonded through it. This is what MAG is really all about in the end.

Thinking About War Games Through MAG.

I have been wondering for some times about what games with strong military thematic can bring to the table. Are they simple trivialization of war, deadly and sad events presented as fun and inconsequential, or are they no worse than playing “Cowboys and Indians”, fun games teaching us how to cooperate and socialize through role-play? And then again, maybe there is a bit of both.

Dropping Nukes

I wrote an article last month about Modern Warfare 2 and how ridiculous the main plot was. Michael Rousseau wrote in response to my post: “I think the multiplayer actually paints a pretty hilarious picture: a world where people run to their deaths without a care in the world, dual-wielding 100-year-old shotguns, diving from roofs without injury and calling tactical nukes down on the very land they're fighting over.”

Mr. Rousseau’s comment resumes really well what can be seen as the weakest point of most war games, their very depiction of war. Of course, we cannot ask for every single of our war games to give an authentic experience of the battlefield. It would make for a very long and frustrating experience, one where you spend more time crouched and waiting for something to happen than shoot people.

Let’s take a look at the other side of the medal by taking MAG’s emphasis on cooperation, “role-playing”, and socialization as an example of the good elements that can be picked up from a multiplayer session.

"Look out for me"

Why do we play games? Not video games in particular, but social games in general (no, not the Facebook kind). I’ve given earlier in my article the case of playing “Cowboys and Indians”, and it’s because I think that there are a lot of parallels to be drawn between this kids game and a war game like MAG, in both why we play them and what we can learn from them.

The first parallel you can draw is that both “Cowboys and Indians” and FPSs are role-playing games in the literal sense of the term. You play a role in both kinds of experience. In the first, you either play a cowboy or an Indian, and in the second you can take on a multitude of roles: space marine, cowboy, alien, soldier, MIT graduate, etc…

What do we get from role-playing? Well, in the case of young children, it helps them to acquire and develop a myriad of skills and knowledge, going from exploring their imagination to building social skills. Role-playing can even help older children in classrooms to learn through simulation.

Similar elements can be brought by war games, and MAG serves as a perfect example of this. In this game, you get to develop your own role. It lets you pick up and customize your own load-out and create the character you want to be; it lets you role-play the way you want it.

MAG focuses a lot on teamwork; in war, you can’t make it alone. The game forces the users to use their skills in a way to work with the team, and not break out on their own. Each member of this micro-society has a role and has to fulfill it order for the micro-society to function. Medics stay slightly behind to heal, heavy infantries charge forward, commandos try to flank the enemies, etc…

It also puts emphasis on the development of leadership skills. You start by following orders from your superiors and help your teammates toward different objectives, and you slowly (or quickly) gain enough experience to take on those leadership responsibilities. Once you are the leader, you will strive to lead your squad, platoon, or even company and gain even more experience, but more importantly, their respect.

This also leads us toward the concept of socialization through role-play. Kids will learn to socialize with one another through social games as cowboys and Indians. Gamers will also socialize through gaming as they talk and strategize through their specific roles. Some will develop friendships as if the situation in which they are, though simulated, is real. The game environment, even if hostile in its nature, becomes a social space where people can meet up and develop skills together.

Toy Soldiers

So, are war games good or bad? My reflection would make go toward the good side but with some reserve. Not all social games are going to give the player something in return, and a kid who doesn’t want to play along can ruin even a good game of “Cowboys and Indians”. Gaming is a conversation between a system of rules and a player. When you get multiple players to communicate between themselves and the game, a lot of thing can happen. If everyone plays along in the role-play, even unrealistic war games can teach us a few lessons about ourselves, and how we work with others.

New Year

Happy New Year everyone! I hope your holidays were filled with gaming goodness, because mine certainly weren’t, and the situation won’t go any better.

First, my brother is leaving home to go live with his girlfriend (who he has been with for only 2 months) and he is leaving with some of stuff, one of it being the HD TV that was his. I am now stuck with the non HD TV.

It really makes a difference in some games. For example, Battlefield 1943’s texts are way more difficult to read. Not that it really matter, the game is about shooting dudes, but the issue is that the enemies dudes and my team’s dudes are pretty hard to tell from one another at a certain distance; bad when you are an avid sniper.

I guess I’ll need to learn to live with it as if it were 2006 again, because there is no way I’m able to afford an HD TV in the next few months, university being a costly mistress. For a guy who says, “I don’t care about the quality of the graphics in a game, more about the style”, I guess I will have to live by my word.

Oh and he also left with the Wii. That will have to wait too, but I can live with it better.

On a related note, I haven’t played a lot of new games during the vacations. I took a break from new stuff after my little run through Modern Warfare 2 and mostly played old favorites like Oblivion and Chrono Trigger (talk about retro). I’m going to wait for the release of Mass Effect 2 to get into new games. And boy will I have to play it tight.

My console gaming time was reduced to about a day and a half, more or less. The worse is, so many great games are coming soon. Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Bioshsock 2, and Heavy Rain. And there are probably that I am forgetting. I guess I’ll need to play some mad marathon sessions to get through these.

Such is the life of an academic. I guess the good thing is, I will spend more time writing and reading about games, and watch movies. Sure, it sucks that I will have less time to play games, which is kind of the point of it, but I will live with it and maybe even enjoy it more as it will become those rare quality times spent with my favorite medium.

And then there’s TV… Oh shit.