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.

Playing War

Children Playing War - Marc Awoday

I finally got around to play Modern Warfare 2 last week, about an eternity later than everyone else on the planet, and I can now make an informed critique about it. I didn’t touch the multiplayer for two reasons; the first is that I rarely play online games on Xbox or any other consoles for that matter (blame the kids) and the second is my fear of catching on of those crazy bug/glitch/hack that are spreading around like a bad flu.

The single player campaign took me a few hours to complete, one or two of those hours due to my bad habit of dying, and I can resume the plot with one word: ridiculous. Of course, was I to expect some Shakespearian storytelling and deep meaningful talk about the nature of war and humankind? No. But I wasn’t expecting snowmobiles and boat chases either.

Right now I must be beating a record by spending two paragraphs not talking about the now infamous “No Russians” mission. I will fulfil my duty as a blogger and give my opinion about it. Actually, let me resume my opinion first with one more single word: Bullshit.

Apart from the ridiculous setting-up to the mission where you go from being a soldier shooting rebels in Afghanistan to an undercover agent who is strangely the new best friend of a Russian terrorist (and you go from A to B in a day, can you smell the trap), what really kills me about that mission is the amazingly awkward tonal shift between it and the previous and following missions.

Seriously, five minutes before that mission you are jumping ravines on a snowmobile, something straight out of a James Bond movie, and five minutes after said mission you are gunning your way through small Brazilian streets and rooftops. And stuck in the middle of those two scenes that could come from a Michael Bay movie you are asked to “sacrifice a part of your soul” to arrest a crazy Russian (news flash, the cold war’s long over) terrorist.

The scene by itself, and with a good story around it, could have been a very poignant moment of interactivity where you are tasked to do something you would normally never do. Something that goes directly against the notion of the war-game FPS where you most avoid civilian casualties at all cost, something that goes against your very cognitive response. You could have dropped the controller afterward and ask yourself “What can bring human beings to do such a thing in the real life?” But no, it didn’t happen.

Badly handled, it became a shock tactic. Sure, it sets up the remaining of the story but at what cost? You just spent five minutes slowly walking through hell only to get killed at the end in a mildly ironic way. Great, IW took a page from Bioshock and made you feel like a puppet. What now? I’m supposed to go back into the game like nothing happened, back to some kind of high adrenaline military shooter where I shoot evil Russian soldiers and mercenaries. Oh and some Americans at the end for good measure.

This is one of the worst tonal shifts I’ve seen in a long time in any kind of medium.

That being said, if you listen to the word around the blogs and some less than scientific surveys, two out of three MW2 players will never touch the single player campaign, preferring the competitive side of the multiplayer. Fine by me. Not everyone’s into games for the same reasons.

I’ll make a quick mention of the defensive arguments some fans of the game gave to some criticisms like mine. The goldmine probably is the comments section on Tom Chick’s brilliant take on the issue at Fidgit.

I can detect three kinds of defense, the first being the now infamous “it’s just a game” defense and any of its multiple variation. I won’t go back on why this argument is completely bogus; a bunch of more intelligent people than me already did it a bunch of times already. The second is “It’s rated M so stop whining”. Being rated M is not a license to be dumb and shocking for shock’s sake. If anything, it undermines the idea of M for “Mature”.

At the last one is the beautiful “If you don’t like it don’t play it and stop talking about it”. A whole three pages post could be dedicated just to that single argument but I’ll cut it short. People can have opinion and express them. I don’t know why some gamers have that insane fear of talking about games in a mature and critical way. Maybe they are just afraid that they couldn’t keep up.

50 to 60 hours long ! Sorry but I have a life too.

You know what kind of games I used to like? jRPGs. Back in the days (10 years ago or so I guess), I loved to play those long lasting RPGs, be it FF4/5/6, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and many more. I have fond memories of those times. I was also 12.

I just saw on Kotaku that the new FF13 (confidence: I never played beyond 6) will be a massive 50 to 60 hours long to complete. How true is that? I don't know and I really don't much care.

You see, the last RPG I completed was Lost Odyssey. A great game; very touching, nice cinematography, nice classical gameplay, but a quite clichéd storyline. It really threw me back to my younger days where I would sit in front of the TV and carefully select the attacks of my characters. I guess I was a boring kid.

Do you know how long it took me to finish this monster of a game? 40-something hours. Do you know how spread those 40 hours were? Over a full university summer vacation; from May to September.

You see, I am not 12 anymore. I work, I write, I study, I read, and I watch movies. Sure, I also game, but my gaming periods are pretty much spread thin. I'm currently at the end of my term and the only gaming times I get are on Thursday when I'm back to my parents house (to refill on food and clean clothes) and when I'm not burrowed under papers.

My brother bought Assassin's Creed 2 on launch day. Most of the gamers that did the same finished the game by the end of the same week. It's been 3 weeks and I barely touched Venice. See, that's why I don't play jRPGs (or much wRPGs for that matter) anymore.

Where would I put 50 to 60 hours of game and still have time to play anything else ? What I'm going through happens to a lot of older gamers that are starting to have less time for gaming as they have other priorities or interest.

Don't get me wrong now, I still love video games with a passion. It's my domain of interest. But when it comes to leisure time, my gaming will either go to games that pikes my interest (the reason I play AC2 is because of my interest in history represented through games) or games that will give me a quick satisfaction.

What used to be a major selling point to me, as it is for most gamers, just became a sort of a warning. It's not about replayability anymore. It's about whether I will get to finish the game or not.

I'm sorry FF13, but unless your story touches the subjects of traumatic memories, collective history, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, or actual historical events, I guess I will have to pass and invest my time in writing my papers.

I just noticed the irony of writing this instead of my actual papers.

Critic vs. review

From Destructoid:

"However, I'd suggest that all contributors to the specialist games media should err on the side of criticism - they are, after all, writing for gamers, not casual onlookers who happened to have glanced a game review while looking through a newspaper."

I totally agree on that point. The issue here is that most gamers don't make the difference between a review and a critic. A review is simply pointing out the pros and the cons of a game in order to give an idea if I should or not buy the game. A critic may give a quick overview of those points but will rather look at the themes of the game's story, the different gameplay methods used and if it's relevant to the media as an whole, especially to such a young media as gaming. Games like Mirror's Edge needs reviews and critics to look at both side of the issue. One to look at "if gamers are gonna like it" and the other to look if it will leave a mark in the history of the medium which will interest more the academics than the gamers.

It's also a matter of where you're looking. If I want a deep critic of a game, I'll go to the escapist, not Destructoid.

Also @ Cyberxion
"Why does Wario get slammed almost entirely for its lack of innovation, whereas a game like Megaman 9 gets a pass? "

It's because Wario as the pretencion of being a new game but does little to actually do anything new. From a reviewers standpoint, it may not be a bad thing ; don't fix what isn't broken, but from a critic point of view that game isn't really relevant. Megaman 9 on the other was made to be some kind of window to an older era. It gives a glimpse to younger gamer of how it was back in the days. It's like making a movie in black and white in 2008. The style (and gameplay in the case of a game) is the same but they rely on modern technology. You may argue that gameplay evolved since then and you are right but gameplay is also a very important aspect of the medium and had to be the same for the main goal of the game from a critic standpoint "opening a window to the early NES era" to succeed.

Beating the game

I found myself reading a few posts on the Fallout 3 gamefaqs board(that place is pretty horrible) and I was shocked when I discovered a trend in the messages. Everyone seems hell-bent on finding ways to do every quests in the game and not interfere with others in order to get everything in some kind of first round. They ask "did I just fucked up that quest", "will it affect this other quest", "how can I do both and get all rewards", "is it a bug?", etc, etc... . It is as they forgot that, like in real life, some choices needs to be made and opportunities are going to be missed.

But beyond the thematic of the game, I fear that these "over acheiving gamers" are just missing the fun of the game. Instead of enjoying the story the game provides or the stories the players can make for themsleves, they just go from quest to quest, get as much rewards they can, skip unuseful texts, complete the game, get the acheivments if they play on XBox 360 and get to the next. I sadly feels it is more of a symptom of consumerism than anything. I'm not saying they are not having fun. They probably are having fun getting 100% game completion. My problem is that I feel they are missing on other levels of the video games. They miss on the narrative level because for them "story gets in the way of gaming". For them, it's only a game that needs to be beaten, consummed, before getting to the next and repeat the cycle.

Richard Bartle distinguished four types of gamers : killers, acheivers, socializers and explorers. Of course, Bartle was seeing this through the lens of virtual world making the socializer and the killer types a little useless when talking about single player games. Sadly, there's no definitive list of gamer types and it's something I'm sure future gaming theoretician are going to explore. But for now, we see there's a clear opposition between acheivers and explorers. The first wants to get everything out of the game and collect every rewards the game can give, and the second wants to see every little details of the game world and immerse himslef in the fictional universe the game provides.

In the end, it seems like the best thing a game can do if it's goal is to get the widest range of gamer type as possible is to give something interresting to do and choices to make them that will please the most type possible. Games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion did just that. they gave something for both acheivers and explorers. It's important to remember that there is no "better" type of gamers. Altough I might feel like acheivers are missing on the narrative of the game, they can play however they want. I feel like this because I am not an acheiver like them. I am an explorer. In those type of games, I prefer to take my time, get myself involve in the story and universe provided to me, explore large worlds, even if it means I am missing some quests and not getting every rewards I could get. The important is to enjoy a game, no matter what you enjoy in it.