The Sunday Papers surprises me. Sometimes it can be Thursday and my document is nearly empty. I think it’s going to be a small one. And then, Sunday hits, and I’ve all the writing in the world. So, as is Sunday’s wont, I compile a particularly bumper selection of the fine games writing across the week, while trying not to link to some pop-band who’ve managed to surprise me totally in the same period.
- Loyola Professor David Myers has been playing City of Heroes as part of his research. Which strikes me as a good thing to do. However, he’s been playing his Alt Twixt as… well, only obeying the rules of the game rather than the social rules. This lead to becoming one of the most hated players and recieving death-threats. He’s written a paper on it, and a book is forthcoming, but this article has an over-view of the events plus a link to one of his papers. Myers comes across somewhat naive, frankly. Gaming social groups act like social groups? Yeah, so what? And why shouldn’t they. Myers, from their perspective, was acting like a sociopath with no interest in societal mores.
- The Civony ads are quite the thing. Jeff Atwood has been tracking them. This is hilarious.
- We wrote a little about running Far Cry 2 in an Iron Man mode and writing about it last issue. Creative Director Clint Hocking talks about how the permadeath playthroughs of Far Cry 2 started at their end, and the devices they were trying to work into the game to encourage it. Trying to make players cry, basically, via ludic rather than narrative techniques. As always, great to see Clint show his working.
- The second part of Resolution Magazine’s look at how Real World Security Issues in games.
- Meanwhile, Mr Denby goes and drinks from the Eurogamer Money Fountain while writing about flawed-classic Vampire: Bloodlines.
- The oft-splendid console-journo Andrew Kelly has the haircut and (er) posture of a posturing indie-kid haircut. But no! He’s got a dark and geeky past. ONE OF US! ONE OF US! Here’s him on Full Throttle.
- Ars Technica on why they think no-LAN play for Starcraft 2 is a total betrayal.
- Rab Consolevania on his own personal black obelisk. That is, the Fighting Fantasy game books. I could have easily included these in my own Gaming Made Me piece.
- Kirsten at Ready Up continues her Five Lessons in Games Journalism series, with an interview with Jeff Gerstman on writing about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the bloody truth.
- Game Set Watch’s Gaming Anthropologist column caught my eye, in examining the Battlefield Heroes’ community. Paraphrasing somewhat cruelly, it’s free so it’s full of ‘tards. There’s something about this sort of attitude which always rubs me up the wrong way, which I may have to examine eventually. When the most articulate gaming communities I’ve ever been involved in have been purely free ones, putting it down to “you get what you pay for” is flawed.
- Jim Rossignol writing about the beauty of a magazine-layout and transfering it to the modern age. If we had the money and the time, I suspect we’d do things like this. Hmm. I like the contradiction between this entry and the last.
- Steve Peacock on being hype-o-phobic. Love the John Malkovitch/Molyneux mash-up photo.
- Digital Gigolo interviews Leigh Alexander. I’m linking this primarily as a cursory lesson to any would be games journalist in the room. Do not ask your subject to marry you in the first question. You have to manfully resist, as I do whenever I interview Spector. Part of the job is being professional. Part of the job is not proposing.
- I like this. Steven Peeler of Depths of Peril fame goes to the community, asking for what Dungeon Crawl games they’d like to make. A perfect chance to play back-seat designer.
- Here’s some non-game reading for you. Tom Ewing talks about the concept of Poptimism, but segues onto the idea of the charts as a public space – and, I link back to gaming, by thinking how important it is to have generalist sites like (well) us. The more someone disappears into one genre, the more they disappear. The ever-articulate comics/politics blogger – and there’s a powergamed dual-class for you – Sarah Jaffe writes about the Philadelphia Pool Racism scandal, and why it doesn’t surprise. And the Washington Post on the sorry cases of people forgetting about their kids and leaving them in their car. It does nothing but provoke strong emotions. I suspect were I a parent, it’d be more so, one way or another.
- Okay, like many others, I kicked the Horrors’ first album. I found myself giving the second one a chance. And fucking hell – it’s incredible. First single was the album’s closing track, which is an incredibly suicidal and a bit Suicide-al when the synths arrive, a simmering piece of atmosphere: Sea Within A Sea. Second single, Who Can Say is curter and more ferocious with a genuinely great monologue dropped in the middle. The whole album’s on spotify.
Failed.
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The professor’s asinine analysis may also stem from his, to say the least, condescending attitude toward gaming communities coming into the experiment. After all, if you come into any experiment already believing something to be true, that bias may end in a self-fulfilling prophecy — even if what you believe isn’t actually true. Case in point, a very good book called the Mismeasure of Man about attempts to classify IQ by race in the 19th Century.
So anyway, yeah, stupid idiot.
That Leigh Alexander interview is really, really creepy!
It starts with “Leigh Alexander is the gorgeous game journo..”, flows into the proposal and continues with “Does it help that you’re pretty?” and “Let’s talk about sex. Personally, if I had to pound some pixels, I’d go for Chun Li. Thighs like tree trunks. Your turn…”.
I’m sort of amazed Alexander didn’t tell him to stick his interview.
Which Spector, Phil or Warren?
I just came across another, new ad for Evony on your Hype-O-Chondria link. It continues the theme of the last ad in sequence, having given up on the fields background; mercifully, there’s been a zoom out, taking it back to a woman-with-cleavage rather than just displaying the cleavage. The sequence continues…
Mainly when he interviews Dr. Warren Spector.
Mainly.
Maybe this is just naive of me since I don’t play MMORPGs, but I kind of thought that the idea of PvP areas was, you know, for players to kill other players with all the jackassery that that would entail. And with a game that purports to be based around the idea of superheroes and supervillians, I would also expect for the killing to fall along those lines.
As best I can tell, this professor’s main crime was continually using the PvP server for it’s implied purpose, despite being told that he should not. How dare he!
@ Nine
They’re british
Spotify isn’t available to us americans.
Consider it their revenge for all the games on steam they can’t buy.
@ Matt
It’s about as close to PvP as spawn camping is to playing TF2.
That doesn’t work, Spotify also isn’t available to much of Europe (including my country), much like a lot of games on Steam. :(
Hey, a new one! And they’ve got the word “Evony” back.
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4620/civonybewbs.png
@Psychopomp
Actually worse than spawn camping, if I’m remembering correctly about it not giving XP. At least spawn camping helps one make progress towards the goal of the game, so it’s not just something done for the purpose of pissing folks off.
“After all, if you come into any experiment already believing something to be true, that bias may end in a self-fulfilling prophecy — even if what you believe isn’t actually true.”
Anyone who approaches research like this isn’t actually doing research. It’s like calling join-the-dots ‘art’.
FAQ:
How do I get my queen?
There is no queen in this game, the ad you saw is for marketing purposes and seems to be highly effective by the number of times this question has come up.
LOL
The City of Heroes thing seems more like a testament to the failings of the game than the “unethical” behavior of the researcher. From what I’ve read, it seems like the game should have some kind of ceasefire area…
Maybe they should add a queen. It can be like a toned down dating game which has things like “animated gif of me dancing if you make the commoners happy.” or “make religious services available to 80% of the population and for a shot of cleavage”.
Always good to see Bloodlines getting some press, it’s much more playable now thanks the the community fix, and playing as a Malkavian is always fun- if not for the dialogue, then for the ability to kill people by driving them insane :) The article does have a point though, the world detail and personality does taper off towards the end of the game as the main quest becomes a bit more of a combat heavy trudge, and the possibility of choosing an ending that made me scream bloody murder at the screen for its dumbness is frustrating, given the detail and effort the rest of the game was constructed with. Still recommend it to anyone who’s not played it though.
Yes at first I didn’t see why everyone was getting so uppity at the professor but re-reading I realized what was going on.
In the PvP zones there are invincible instant-killing guards just at the player spawn point for each side. What “Twixt” was doing was standing next to those guards and using the teleport foe power to teleport enemies beside him so that the guards would kill them. Constantly. He would have received no reward for this as you do not get xp for anything the guards kill.
However players killed in this way would suffer xp debt. As such the only sort of people who would engage in this tactic would be those deliberately intending to annoy other players.
This isn’t the dark side of human nature or social ostracization. This is people in a restaraunt reacting to someone coming in and flinging poop at them. You just had your meal spoiled and your suit ruined, I think you’re going to be a little ticked off.
Part of the problem with Myer’s “PVP” as I’ve heard it is that he wasn’t killing the other players himself, he was simply teleporting them to a spot where NPC guards would kill them, and that’s where most people took issue. In the City of X games, a pvp death costs you nothing, you die and you come back. When you’re killed by an NPC though, you get an “XP debt” that must be worked off. Myers was abusing this game mechanic to give enemy players a much more punishing death than proper PVP combat would have.
Also, it was cheap as hell, and the talk of his “skill” seems laughable.
But that’s the whole point. Even if you consider the results obvious, Myer is writing for a crowd that probably has never touched a computer game and has no idea about the social workings of online communities, to show how it works the same way online. He writes from a detached faux-naive perspective because that is what is expected, and he does the testing with multiple characters (though he should’ve made characters with different names) to satisfy thoroughness.
If he was playing within the boundaries of the game’s rules, and the game lets you abuse the rules to instagib anyone, isn’t it the game developers’ fault rather than a griefer who is taking advantage of it? On the other hand, the professor claims he is operating within the “rules” of the game when it was obviously not intended to be that way. Playing by the rules is one thing, but what if he changed that to “exploiting the game”?
Maj: bad behaviour is only ever the fault of the perpetrator. The game may have facilitated that behaviour but the fault is all his own.
@Funky Badger
I’d argue that the fault is that of the perpetrator, but the lack of repercussion (and consequently the repetition of the act) is on the developers. I wouldn’t be surprised if their failure to respond to this exploit cost them some subscription money…
Evony ads, Supplemental: They turned some perfectly harmless sites I was viewing into something that was borderline NSFW. Wow, an ad that causes me to slam the entire window closed. Takes some doing.
If he was playing within the boundaries of the game’s rules, and the game lets you abuse the rules to instagib anyone, isn’t it the game developers’ fault rather than a griefer who is taking advantage of it? On the other hand, the professor claims he is operating within the “rules” of the game when it was obviously not intended to be that way. Playing by the rules is one thing, but what if he changed that to “exploiting the game”?
Any action is only explicitly an ‘exploit’ if it is done through abusing bugs. Using game mechanics that are deemed unfair by other players is not exploiting.
Didn’t there used to be an Edit button?
Anyway, similarly, not respecting “faction collusion” is not exploiting.
Vin: interesting point. It seems the “community” censured him in their own way (much as would have happened in any small community since people first congregated together.
Someone saiud upthread “being a dick is being a dick” which wouldn’t make much of a thesis but does get right to the heart of the matter.
Quick reply regarding the Myers article: there are two points he’s not mentioning, by which I suspect he’s intentionally trying to mislead readers who haven’t played City of Heroes:
1) Twixt wasn’t nearly as infamous as Dr. Myers claims; I’m sure he was much hated by the small PvP community on his home server (CoH does not have a large PvP community on any server). But I’ve been playing the game off and on since release, I know a lot of people there. I use the forums relatively regularly. The first I heard of this guy was following a link in the dev tracker on the forums to a thread about this article. There’s no question that he upset some people, but the claim that he was broadly known and hated across the game community is patently ridiculous. I don’t know anyone who’s ever even mentioned the guy, and from what I read on the message boards not too many people outside the server he played on were aware of him at all.
2) Teleporting other players into the guards is considered harrassment and is petitionable. I can’t quote chapter and verse, but I remember pretty clearly the developers saying some time ago that the main problem with it is that it’s difficult to enforce any rule against it, since their policy is that a customer service rep has to witness him doing it repeatedly to the same person. So while it’s not against the rules to do it once, and it’s easy to get away with doing it over and over again, to say that it’s within the intentions of the developers is asinine. There are several game mechanical functions that implicitly confirm this, but I’m not going to bore non-CoHers with the nuts and bolts of it.
In short, basically the guy is dishonest as well as a dick, and he’s trying to profit from it. Don’t make the mistake of taking him seriously.
The Dr. Myers thing is kind of an interesting inversion of Bow Nigger.
@qrter
I thought it was creepy too. I think the worst is the very first comment, especially after she clearly mentions in the interview that she is uncomfortable when people comment on her appearance in the context of her work. Also, the “how did you get this interview?” comes off as the commenter wanting to get hooked up with her.
On the professor thing; I think comparing it to going on a killing spree is a bit extreme.
It’s more like you’re having a kickabout in the park, and you and an opponent stop for a second to have a chat, then some guy on your team repeatedly slide tackles him shouting “Go Team!”. For years. And the park is the only place you can play. And you have to pay to go there.
I doubt the professor communicated much with the other players either (he could hardly explain himself without comprimising his study). In my experience players who talk less are more likely to receive abuse. On a TF2 server I frequent one player is one of the best I’ve ever played against, he never speaks, types once in a blue moon, barely does any teamwork and simply kills you, in the harshest and most abrupt ways possible, over and over again. He gets abuse, ahibet jokey abuse (someone once asserted he has no face) There’s another player even better than him, but he is freindly, chatty and joins in the fun. He is well liked.
If you act like a kill-bot, people will treat you like one.