Retro Games, Rotation, and the Gamer

- or -

 

A Question of Retro Games, 

Game Play Rotation Lists, 

& Modem Gamers

Well unless Angry Birds happens to be in his Game Play Rotation List that is!

The Most Dangerous Gamer (Comic)

by Nicole Wakelin on December 10, 2012

 

PREFACE

There has never been a better time to recover from lazy gamer syndrome or its counterpart - no-time-to-play-itus - than today.  Now.  Bear with me, all will become clear.  But first we begin the lesson... 

 

The Importance of Context

Contexts is wicked important.  So are ideas like “logic” or “expression” or even “thought” and “emotion” just to name a few.  One position on these matters can be found in the school of Epistemology -- which is the philosophical science and discipline under which we study and define how we know what we know - and the best was to both communicate and illustrate those points.

At its most basic of definitions “Epistemology” is defined as the study of the nature and scope of knowledge, as well as its justified belief and related systems that extend from there. Epistemology
analyzes the nature of knowledge -- and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief and justification -- and then defines those words and terms and their meaning in useful ways, so that we can thus carry on dialogue together.

The discipline also addresses our means of production of knowledge, and skepticism about different claims therein. I find this immensely appropriate and even poetic when I consider the alternate worlds that I have most recently existed in, and in particular that of the Japan and its northern-most island, Hokkaido, in the world of Hitman (2016), and the world that exists within the construct of the game “Thief” which was for all practical intentions, created in the late 1990s and refined in 2014 but depicts an industrial-age society on some alien world.

Sure, those are fictional worlds - or are they? I can tell you that at times they felt very real to me - and in particular the moral codes that appear to have usurped that of the courts and Common Law in them.

And the Darwinian approach to moral justification - something akin to Python Law rather than Common Law - when it comes to the significance of and importance for “getting even” or revenge - two themes that play significant roles in both of those manufactured worlds.

Despite the fact that humanity - let alone an individual citizen from one of the many different tribes that human call “nation-states” under which the species has been divided -- often and under conditions of grave danger seek that sort of satisfaction. I'm just saying.

To have meaningful exchanges about these - and other - topics we all need to agree on the basic foundation points like the actual meaning of phrases like “Retro Games,” or “Game Play Rotation List(s)” and even “Modern Gamer(s),” and what about “Preface?” That being so, for the record as I write this I am working from the following foundation points:

Retro Games = Any game that is older than the current season - but can be a very old game too.

Game Play Rotation List(s) = Any game title you play regularly but especially one you have yet to complete to your satisfaction.

Modern Gamer(s) = Me. You. Any gamer currently gaming even if they began their gaming career in the 1970s. As long as they are still gaming and doing it on modern hardware, they are a Modern Gamer.

Preface = The bits that come before the meat of the story.

See? That wasn't so difficult, now was it?

The Meat Part

Moore's law is an observation made by Gordon Moore back in the day that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. His observation turned out to be spot-on accurate, which is why they named it after him. It probably didn't hurt that Gordon Moore was also a co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and a little tech company called Intel.

The paper that Moore wrote and published in 1965 described the doubling - every year - in the number of components per integrated circuit, and projected that the rate of growth would continue for at least another decade - which turned out to be a very conservative time estimate, hindsight being 20/20 and all.

Borrowing from his experience I would like to introduce to you:

Boots-Faubert's Law

So yeah, this is the paper I am writing and publishing (well, article not so much as paper but still) that history will draw upon to phrase what will become known as Boots-Faubert's Law of Game Play Rotation - a simple law in gaming that dictates that the typical Game Play Rotation List for a gamer will double in size every 12 months as more games are added to the list thanks to two basic principles:

(1) The wizards at game studios continue to pump out games at a staggering rate, many of which are classified as “must-play” titles; and

(2) The average gamer will not have sufficient time in any given year to spend on completing these games, which will cause a backlog of incomplete games (and games they never got a chance to start playing in the first place) due to the lack of sufficient time to play them all.

The reasoning for this has to do with how big the video game industry has grown, and the fact that it continues to grow, with new studios appearing practically every day.

2014

A good example of this trend and its effect can be found in the year 2014. Bear in mind that a decade ago the typical gaming season - which runs from September through May - generally produced around six AAA titles in the “must-play” category, and so was certainly within reach of the typical gamer. Which was why we didn't really have Game Play Rotation Lists of the sort we have now back then.

Fast forward to 2014 however, and the situation has changed. Peruse this sampling of just the primary “must-play” titles for that year:

1. 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil
2. Alien: Isolation
3. Assassin's Creed Rogue
4. Assassin's Creed Unity
5. Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate
6. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!
7. Bound by Flame
8. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
9. CastleStorm: Definitive Edition
10. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2
11. Chariot
12. Child of Light
13. Dark Souls II
14. Defense Grid 2
15. Destiny
16. Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition
17. Dragon Age: Inquisition
18. Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z
19. EA Sports UFC
20. The Elder Scrolls Online
21. Elite: Dangerous
22. Escape Dead Island
23. The Evil Within
24. Fable Anniversary
25. Far Cry
26. Fez
27. FIFA 15
28. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
29. Forza Horizon 2
30. Goat Simulator
31. Grand Theft Auto Online
32. Grand Theft Auto V
33. Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition
34. Halo: The Master Chief Collection
35. Halo: Spartan Assault
36. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
37. How to Survive
38. Infamous: First Light
39. Infamous: Second Son
40. The Last of Us: Left Behind
41. LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
42. LEGO: The Hobbit
43. The LEGO Movie Videogame
44. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
45. LittleBigPlanet 3
46. Madden NFL 15
47. Mario Kart 8
48. Mario Golf: World Tour
49. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
50. Metro Redux
51. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
52. Minecraft for X1 / PS4
53. MLB 14: The Show
54. NASCAR '14
55. NBA 2K15
56. Need for Speed Rivals: Complete Edition
57. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
58. Pinball FX 2
59. Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare
60. Pokémon Battle Trozei
61. Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
62. Risen 3: Titan Lords
63. The Sims 4
64. Skylanders: Trap Team
65. Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition
66. Sniper Elite III
67. South Park: The Stick of Truth
68. Sunset Overdrive
69. Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
70. Terraria
71. Thief
72. Titanfall
73. Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
74. Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark
75. Tropico 5
76. Valiant Hearts: The Great War
77. The Walking Dead
78. Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate
79. Watch_Dogs
80. The Wolf Among Us
81. Wolfenstein: The New Order
82. World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition
83. World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor
84. Worms Battlegrounds
85. WWE 2K15

While not every gamer is going to like every genre - so there will be some selective removals depending on personal choice, the list above contains 85 games! And it does not help matters that some of those titles don't really include official endings - particularly the MMOs.

Sure I could have summarized that list - but then it would not have contained the gut-punching impact that the full list contains. And if you think that is a lot of games to be released in one year, consider the fact that that list only presents the AAA games - there are three times that number of lesser and niche titles released in 2014 as well.

This is why the average gamer's Game Play Rotation List is going to continue to grow with each passing season.

Another Problem

If you think that the paractical limits that usually apply - like only being able to afford X number of games in any given year - is helpful, consider this new problem: Microsoft has started GIVING games away for FREE to members of Xbox LIVE Gold.

Consider it - today when I checked the list of free Gold games - under the Game With Gold Program - I found the following titles:

Ryse: Son of Rome

Evolve Ultimate Edition

Darksiders

So there you have three more titles I want to play. I WANT to play mind you. But I guarantee you that I won't have the time to fully play them to my satisfaction, so as sure as Bob's Your Uncle those three titles will end up being added to my Game Play Rotation List.

What's the Solution, Kenneth?

I don't know about you lot, but the idea of my GPRL simply ballooning forever bothers me. There are loads of entertainment withering there just waiting for me to play!

Fortunately I have a solution. I say we set aside Sunday afternoon through early evening for ME time. Game Time. We dedicate ourselves to removing titles from our GPRLs by really digging into a game every Sunday. Set Sunday aside for gaming! Free the Games! YEAH!

Elite: Dangerous

In 1984 Firebird released a game for the Acorn called Elite.  It was quickly ported to other platforms, including the Commodore C=64, and it just as quickly secured it rightful place in the history books as one of the best computer games, well, ever.  I am not just saying that because I read it somewhere - I can distinctly recall entire weekends that were spent crouched in front of my C=64 playing it.

Why was it so good?  It sure as heck was not its game graphics, which were polygonal lines, ray-tracing, and text.  Part of the answer to that question has to do with the fact that it took a completely different and even new approach to game design.  Another part is the proven theme of immediate and long-term gratification.

What Elite was in simple terms is a space-trading game in which the player starts out with practically nothing, and through hard work and shrewd trading, begins building wealth, expanding their ship's capabilities, and eventually trading up into a new ship.  That is a simple description, sure, but there is a bit more to it.

The new approach to gaming that Elite took was to force the player to sink or swim.  That in an era during which the basic approach to gaming mechanics was to make things as easy on the player as possible.  Can't dock your ship at the space station?  Most games would do it for you.  Not Elite!

Docking involved developing a bit of skill as well as a basic understanding of physics.  You approached the space station then flew past it towards the nearby planet, then when you got between the station and the planet, you spin the ship around and head back towards the station, matching your ship rotation to the stations, and matching locks to dock.  Sounds simple enough, but it wasn't.

Fail to dock at the least you would damage your ship - at the most you would destroy it.  Succeed and you were safely docked at the station and ready to repair or upgrade your ship, sell and buy cargo, and otherwise better your lot in life.

After a while of docking manually you could purchase a docking computer to do it for you, but by then that is a blessing since you wanted to point your attention towards combat skills and finding really good trade routes.

The game was more than cool - it was addictive as hell, and serious fun. Sadly the sequels to it somehow lost the direction of the original, and the noise that they created drown out something pure and good.

Well it seems that the fan base that Elite held never really went away, and what is more, that a dev team wants to resurrect that most excellent game and its mechanics, but in a modernized and updated interface.  Well, wanted to, but could never quite get the details to mesh to the point that a game studio would fund the project.  So instead, after a decade of delays, they ended up crowdfunding the project, and surprise!  It quickly hit the funding target and then surpassed it!

Elite: Dangerous

The bad news is that it is not going to release until some time in 2014, the good news is that it is going to release sometime in 2014.

Here are some links for you to check out:

http://elite.frontier.co.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite_Dangerous_Wiki

Check it out.

. . . Xbox LIVE Arcade Gamer Points, Skateboards, and the end of the Summer Doldrums

It came a little earlier this year than it has in past years, but as far as I know, nobody who is not clinically insane has complained...  I am talking about the Summer Doldrums of course -- that dry period of roughly two-and-a-half-months during which no new games are released.  I did not actually grow up calling it the Summer Doldrums - having lived in Australia for all of the formative years of my life the "Summer Doldrums" arrived in the middle of the Winter -- and we had our own name for it - the Winter Freeze.

Whether you call it the Summer Doldrums or the Winter Freeze, what it is in simple terms is a drought of no games, which forces gamers to either replay their old games or mine through the games of previous years for titles that they never had the chance to play and so are new to them even though they are old to the rest of the planet.  Personally that was how I always preferred to do it since there were, often enough, some really great games that I did not get to play.

-- The Summer Doldrums 2012 --

 This year was different.  The same period over the course of the past few years was filled with non-gaming activities, so it was not like I was actually bored, but still...  The Summer was filled with taking the kids to the beach, slowly rolling through antique shops and tag sales looking for bargains, and then there was the week we spent as Boy Scout Camp, with my Son as the Scout and my wife and I sharing the week as adult supervision.  I would not want my son to know this, but I suspect that the adults actually had more fun than the kids in many respects, as Summer Camp was a chance for us to -- for the most part -- get away from literally everything.

No Summer Camp this year -- my son needed to make up a class that he had too many tardy marks in, so it was Summer School for him and that meant no Summer Camp.  Sigh.  There is also the point that I had to work since we did not take off the week of Summer Camp for holiday but that is besides the point...  The games that I chose to fill in for the lack of new titles were as follows and in no particular order:

• Gears of War (The original)
• G.R.A.W. (A disappointment but more on that in a bit)
• Assassin's Creed (Revisiting the original)
• Mafia II (Revisting)
• Dead Island (Revisiting)
• Madagascar 3 (Shock!  A new game release!)
• Toy Soldiers: Cold War (Revisited)
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Dawnguard (Work Game - I wrote the guide)
• Doom (Revisited)
• Minecraft for Xbox 360 (Revisited)
• Modern Warfare 3 (New to Me!)
• Scrap Metal (Revisited)
• Battlefield 3 (New to Me!)
• Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed (New to Me!)
• Age of Booty (Revisited)
• Call of Duty Classic (Revisited)
• Crackdown 2 (Revisited)
• Hasbro Family Game Night: Sorry (New to Me!)
• Kung Fu Strike (New LIVE Arcade Title - for work)
• Puzzle Quest (Revisited)
• Wolfenstein 3D (New to Me!)
• Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII (New - for Work)
• Jane's Advanced Strike Fighter (New to Me!)
• Risen 2: Dark Waters (New release for work)
• Zuma (LIVE Arcade Revisited)
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD (New LIVE Arcade Title for work)
• Final Fantasy XI (MMO, Revisited, it turns out you CAN go home again)

You may have noticed that I ended up playing a LOT of different games...  Well, the ones that are marked Revisited I actually owned already so that is not such a big deal...  There are a handful of new titles for work, but hey, that is for work, it does not count...

Tom Clancy's GRAW was a major disappointment and even more so because I was really looking forward to playing it -- but it turns out that after the second mission it is so badly bugged that it is not playable -- hence the disappointment.  I think if it had not been bugged I might have spent a few weeks on that game alone -- as I like that series and genre.

Crackdown 2 was a good revisit -- and a great game though you have to pace yourself and not get too much time in at any one session because it is a tense sort of play...  The Achievements for it are really brutal too -- I have owned my copy for something like two years, and I have only unlocked 12 of the 70 Achievements!

-- The End of the Doldrums --

Yesterday was my birthday and no fewer than five new games were released -- the two most notable being Sleeping Dogs and Darksiders II, both of which will factor as important games in the first half of the new gaming season I am convinced.  A glance at the release calendar shows that from here on out things only get better, so yeah, the Doldrums ended early this year, and that is reason to be happy!

I am going to go be happy now...  If you are a gamer on Cape Cod and a regular reader of the paper's game review section and blog, NOW is the time to start emailing your review requests -- so you know, go do that?






 

. . . Final Fantasy XIV

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The months, then weeks, and finally days that had to come and go before the release of Final Fantasy XIV were often filled with stray thoughts like "wow it sure will be nice when I can actually play that game" because, and I am being honest here, I missed the original FF based MMO (Final Fantasy XI) that I used to play a lot with friends but that I honestly do not have time to play today, or tomorrow, or really whenever.

That is sort of the point, really. Total lack of time. But when something is new and shiny and has that new MMO smell you will be surprised at how much time you can MAKE to play it. Plus there is the added fact that several of my best mates live a long way away from me, and the only time that I get to spend time with them, as well as having an excuse for rambling hours-long VOIP sessions, is when we are playing MMO's.

OK, so where was I? Oh yeah, looking forward to playing FFXIV...

So the game arrives via Sir UPS, and I pop it into my PC and load it -- the PS3 version will not be arriving before March 2011 at the earliest, so it was PC or nothing -- which meant that I also had to locate my PC gamepad and plug that in. Then I had to find the drivers for it because (surprise) I have not actually used that device since before I made the switch to Windows 7.

Once FFXIV is installed and I have my gamepad plugged in with the drivers installed, I go to run the game and... It has to patch.

Three Hours Later

The patch is finally downloaded and installed -- and it only took 3 hours! How cool is that?! I remember patches for FFXI taking 8 to 12 hours, so this one was not bad at all! With the game properly patched, and even though I know that my best mate has not finished installing his copy yet, I go ahead and run the game. I create my character, I do the appearance edit and decide on the basic stats, and finally I am ready to play. I hit play.

I appear in the game, and wow, the graphics are WAY better than those from FFXI. There is an almost haunting realism to them, and as I have created a Mithra, my human-like cat chick, or maybe cat-like human chick... I am not sure... Whatever! Stands at the entrance to a long avenue in a city made of stone, and there she stands. I cannot move. The gamepad is not working.

The lights on the gamepad that are lit when it is properly loaded are lit; clearly the drivers are there, so it should work. And yet not. A quick web-search and I know why! I need to actually configure it to work for FFXIV, which means quitting the game and loading a separate config program. I do that, and five minutes later I am once again standing at the entrance to this long avenue made of stone. There are NPC characters around me, but oddly no player characters.

I push forward on the right joystick and start to walk -- Cool! The gamepad is properly configured!

I take three steps.

The game freezes.

A message pops up: The Server is now going down for Maintenance.

Oh man!

I check the message board on the official site and learn that this "Maintenance" will take 8 hours. I go to bed.

The Next Evening

The soonest that I can log in and play is late the following evening, because as much as I want to play, there are all these other things that I have to do, like work, and family, and you know, stuff. But here I am, and bonus! My best mate has installed and patched his copy, so I get to do my initial exploration of the city with him! Very awesome.

This is NOT Final Fantasy XI...

It is sort of like FFXI, but not. A lot is different. For one thing the leveling system and the jobs are much more complex and require a great deal of careful study of the conversation dialogue that I am having with NPC's. Confusion is everywhere, but slowly things begin to make sense.

I spend an hour and a half exploring this new city, but I am unable to locate the player housing area. I know -- I KNOW -- that there has to be one, and yet I cannot find it. Finally in a fit of desperation I Google it, and I learn that the reason that I cannot locate it is because it is not there. There is NO player housing in this game. The good news though, is the proper way to express that fact is: "There is no player housing in this game... Yet."

OK, so there will be. There is also no follow command, and the help button leads to a notice telling me I should load a website whose URL it provides. That was not optimal. Ideally when you are looking for help in a game, the help should be IN the game.

My first impressions of FFXIV

This game was published before it was finished. So much is missing that I am actually in a slight panic as to why they released it at all... Of course that just means that it can only get better from here, right?

When the game was originally announced years ago, I was still playing FFXI at the time, and I remember thinking that a new MMO would ruin FFXI because it would draw players away. But then at the time I did not realize that I would be one of the players who would stop playing FFXI due to time and life issues, so I sort of imagined that I would still be playing FFXI at the time, which would have made picking up a new MMO almost unthinkable. Now not so much.

First impressions... I like the crafting system better than its implementation in FFXI but I do not really understand the finer points of the crafting system here, so I am not sure how valuable that opinion really is...

I really like it that you no longer have to find a moogle to change jobs -- that your job is totally dependent upon the tool/weapon you have equipped. That is very cool. But I do not understand the different jobs other than the obvious ones -- I mean a fighter is a fighter, but what I think must be White Mage actually feels like a combination of Blue and Black Mage... Obviously if you are not familiar with those classes that does not mean much to you, but there you have it.

There is a strong feeling of a tighter information density here, and a distinct and almost painful lack of community cohesiveness. In the previous MMO you had this definite sense of belonging to your home city -- which was like in this mew MMO pitted in a pseudo-war against the other cities. But the other cities are largely unknown quantities at this point... And still there is this glaring absence of any sense of identity and community.

I am hoping that this is just that fuzzy period of time in which you are just getting to know a new environment and not a true lack of cohesiveness, because that identity factor is a very special part of what made playing these games so attractive.

The other players in the game are a LOT less chatty than those in FFXI... Perhaps it is simply that everyone is new. The game has been publicly available for only a week, and I am clearly overwhelmed by the newness of it all, so I have to presume that so are the other players. Sure, some of them have been playing for almost a month if they bought the Collector's Edition (I did not), because they got early access to the game. So at least SOME of the players should be confident enough to start to be chatty... But no.

One pleasant surprise is that Mithra have tails! That may sound strange, but you see some of the early information that was released about the game two years ago and that was a subject of conversation in FFXI was that Mithra were losing their tails in the new game. I am happy that this is not true, but I cannot explain why that makes me happy.

With games like this you really cannot write a review for months because it takes months to really get a sense of the game -- so if you are expecting a review to appear in Game On you will have to be patient.

My first impressions are that I need some more first impressions. But there is a lot here to like, and assuming that they get busy adding into the game the things that should already be in it, this looks like it will be a very cool MMO home for years to come. They just better get housing in before Christmas, because I am looking forward to the traditional Christmas Quests and setting up my tree, and oh man... Must resist MMO....

. . . Social Gaming

When you see a game identified as an MMO, that means it is a "Massive, Multi-Player, Online" game. If it is identified as an MMORPG that means that it is a "massive, Multi-Player, Online Role-Playing Game" with the latter being a very different gaming experience than the former by far. For one thing, any game that has some sort of multi-player element that is online is technically an MMO, whereas MMORPG's are almost always huge persistent worlds in which you not only play with other real people, but often play *against* them!

My history in online gaming and MMO's of all types has its roots in a game called Ultima Online (UO), which I began playing as part of its Beta release in 1996. The public release of UO in the Fall of 1997 naturally resulted in many late night gaming sessions, and the creation of a small group of friends who formed a guild and, no surprise here, played together regularly. In fact most of us played together daily!

UO was something different - it was a new concept in gaming, really, though in reality it did not create anything new, it just combined a large number of gaming aspects into one packag (for example online gaming was not invented with UO, it existed for over a decade prior to the game's release. Multi-Player gaming was also nothing new, the long and colorful history of the Net MUDs is evidence of that).

No, what UO did was create a new way of gaming that including a key and critical component to the process: social connectivity. And make no mistake, the social bonding that UO promoted was a major and important aspect of the whole experience. All of the people I was gaming with were people I knew in real life before we started playing UO, but most of them were people I had not seen in real life for years!

The group of people that became my gaming family were literally scattered all over the world, with some in New England, some in Australia, some in the Netherlands, and others scattered all over the USA. We had a member serving in the US Air Force and stationed in Japan, and another member who worked for Pitney Bowes in Alaska! It was an eclectic group who really only had three things in common - (1) we knew each other in real life, either from school, the SCA, or work; (2) we were all serious about gaming; and (3) we all embraced the Internet as both a communications tool and the primary source for our careers (in one way or another).

The Intangible

One of the most often heard criticisms of 'net gaming was that it required the devotion of lots of time and effort, and strictly from the casual view of a non-gaming observer, offered very little (if any) reward for that sacrifice.

At the time I was working a contract for a telecommunications company that took me away from home for weeks at a time. Every evening after work, and after eating dinner with the team that I was working with at our hotel, I retired to my room where I logged in to play UO for a few hours before hitting the sack. I was sharing that room with another engineer, and their take on the whole thing was not just skeptical but hostile!

"Look at that! You spend three hours every night playing a game in which you kill imaginary monsters, complete quests for pixel treasure, and then grudgingly sleep for 6 hours before going to work -- where your efforts actually result in you being paid real money for your 9 hours of work!

"Why can't you see the problem?!" he demanded.

This was not a single conversation -- it was an event that repeated itself every few days. My roommate simply could not wrap his mind around the idea that I enjoyed playing the game, and more to the point, that I enjoyed playing the game with my friends, with whom otherwise I would have a hard time maintaining a daily relationship beyond email and the occasional phone call.

"I like it," I invariably began my explanation - and failed miserably because no matter how many different ways I found to rephrase the same answers, the bottom line was this: I was giving that game hours of my life and, as far as he could see, not receiving anything tangible as a result.

Yes, he had a point... I was not receiving a paycheck for playing the game... But how do you put a value on friendship, and hanging out with your mates -- on victory in an epic struggle to defeat a powerful enemy, and ride off into the virtual sunset, your best mates by your side, and carry back a trophy of that accomplishment with which to decorate your virtual home?

I read this quote once -- I do not know who actually originally said it -- but it goes something like this: "For those who understand, no explanation is necessary - for those who do not understand, no explanation is possible."

That pretty much sums up the entire issue...

This New Thing

I was recently sucked in to a new game - well, a new game to me anyway - called FarmVille. I may have mentioned this before, and if you are one of my mates, well, you already know about it because you are playing it with me! I mention that so that what follows has some grounding...

Every day I exchange email with a lot of my mates - and there is a list serv we use to chat with each other in a general fashion (we have been using that list serv since February of 1994 when it was originally created). Lately one frequently mentioned topic on the list is FarmVille - which a lot of us are playing. One of my best mates, Jim, has been drowning in a complex project and had dropped out of sight for nearly 8 months, and was only recently coming up for air now that his project has completed the Beta phase and is ready to release.

One of the first things that he did was announce his return on the list, and then spend a few hours reading the digests for the list to catch up on what he had missed thanks to his employer and its unnatural need to make gobs of money off of the brain sweat of the engineers it employs. That being the case, I was not at all surprised to see a post from Jim, on the list, asking the question: "What is this FarmVille thing??"

The easy answer is that it is a cartoon-like simulation of small farming -- a game in which each player develops their farm, starting small, and by planting crops, raising farm animals, and upgrading the size and capacity of your farm, create a successful farming empire!

Along the way -- once you attain Level 20 -- you can join with other farmers and grow crops under a co-operative scheme, earning money and winning prizes, including limited edition and rare content. In addition to the above, you are able to customize your farm, adding character and flavor to it and stamping it with your personality and interests.

In the traditional sense of the word, FarmVille is not really a multi-player game, but considering that its home is perhaps the largest social networking site on the Internet, and the amount of communication - through IM and wall postings - makes it a social activity in its own right, it certainly qualifies.

Another aspect of the game is the near-instant gratification that if offers, keying into more than one powerful motivator, and providing bragging rights to the players. Having rare animals, or buildings, exclusive content, and even collections of special items that can only be obtained through luck, and what you have is a powerful draw for a game that is technically free to play. But is is really free?

According to recent news, FarmVille -- which is just one of many games that is hosted by Facebook and developed by an independent game company called Zynga -- actually had higher profits than Facebook! The revenue stream comes not from subscription fees, but from what amounts to voluntary content fees in the form of in-game money purchases, which can be used for obtaining rare and limited edition items in the game.

The concept of value-added content and pay-as-you-go transactions is the backbone of this type of game, which is growing in popularity in the past few years. LucasArts is preparing to launch a new free-to-play MMO based upon the Clone Wars part of the Star Wars stories, which should tell you that this model is more than viable.

What do You Gain?

Take a step back and replay the previous conversation and, once again, we are facing the same question - what do you gain from spending your time and effort playing these games? In this case though, there is the added question of rationalizing spending real world money to purchase in-game money, which you then use to purchase in-game content -- digital goods that you do not really own and cannot take home with you if you one day decide to stop playing the game.

Does it make sense to spend money on games like this? Well... No, not if the tangible is a critical component of your thought-process. On the other hand, there is great fun to be had in playing these games, and most of my friends - and myself - genuinely enjoy playing them -- so in that respect, yeah, they are worth playing.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to show Jim how to leverage his in-game coins to generate experience points -- he needs to get to Level 20 sooner rather than later, because he wants to start doing the Co-Op challenges with us!

. . . Ideas for My Column

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G'day!

This weekend my email inbox contained the usual stuff - ads for little blue pills, offers from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Africa and Holland to let me help some honest criminals move money out of the country for a variety of plausible reasons - assuming that (A) I am larceny hearted, and (B) I am so stupid as to believe that they "found" my email address because they were looking for an honest person to help them rip off... Well you see where I am going with that, right? Unless there really is a list of honest people and their email addresses online - and I consider myself a mostly honest person really - I always have to pass.

Suggestions for Digital Grind

Among the mail there were about a dozen nice letters from folks with ideas for my column - and I want to say right now that I think that it is cool that you all like Digital Grind enough to actually send me suggestions.

I always reply to these email suggestions with a polite thank you, but for the most part I cannot use the suggestions that I receive - not that I am saying do not send them in! No, the problem is not you, it is the reality of the newspaper industry...

I only get around 1,400 words every other week to use - sometimes I get more, sometimes I get less - it all depends on how much space is available and of course, the news cycle for that week. I mention this to illustrate that I do not even have enough space to write about everything I want to write about - so while your suggestions are both welcome and appreciated, I hope you will all understand that unless it is a breaking topic or has significant local relevance, the chances are not good.

Video Game / MMO Requests

Another sort of suggestion that I get a lot is invitations to play video games...

I really do appreciate these invites - and there is a very good chance that I will take you up on the friending offer and invite to a game - but there are a few things you should know.

At the moment I only have the following platforms:

(1) PC
(2) XBox 360
(3) Nintendo Wii

And I am only active on the following MMO's:

(1) FFXI
(2) EQ2
(3) SWG

So keep that in mind when you are looking for a game partner d'accord?

Note - I do not play WoW - I will not play WoW - even if it was free.

A New Blog is in the Works

The folks at the paper are in the process of setting up a new blog for me to write - a Video Game News and Reviews based blog, that will be hosted at the paper's site and linked to from the section I write for.

The idea is to expand the paper's coverage of things like gaming and the game industry, and as there are significant space limits in the paper, a blog is the natural choice!

I have to say I am actually excited about this. The first time the subject was raised I had given an instant "not interested" as my answer because, and I blush to admit this, I know what my track record is with blogging! I am good about making entries for a while and then - poof - I disappear. Well, I am going to try really hard to not let that happen this time.

Halloween

I hope that you all had a really great holiday and got loads of loot (candy). I still cannot believe that Summer is over - where did it go??

Ciao!

CMBF