Blogs

Microsoft’s announcement of its Games Room service recently got me thinking: what is it about old-school arcades that’s so appealing? Well, first of all the loud noises and flashy lights rocked your senses as soon as you set foot in the door. Another attractive aspect was the fact that it was often a rare treat to go there; it was normally while you were off on holiday, on a day trip to the beach, or at a ten-pin bowling birthday party.

There needs to be a marketing rethink for gaming as a whole. I’m talking about for the entire thinking behind gaming: why we do it; who does it; how we’re perceived by those members of the public who, for some bizarre reason, don’t actually play games; and whether we are indeed wasting our time. Things need to change, we need to stop being judged as subhuman shut-ins (which we are, but still) without even the most miniscule of social skills (again, guilty as charged). Therefore, I would like to put forward this proposition – broken down into easy steps for the mind to ingest:

Maybe it’s our undesirable, slightly side talking, but we’re still somewhat fundamentally troubled by the concept of online gaming. Not for its entertainment value you understand which is, by and large, beyond reproach – rather features more implicit. Human desire seems to forever inch back the boundaries like so many Bombermen in a maze.

World Of Warcraft proclaims itself as an MMORPG – a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Several thousand players per server certainly counts as Massively Multiplayer, and no one would question the ‘online’ part. But role playing? How many of us still do that?

So here we are, not twenty-four hours after the head of Apple Corp’s Popular Culture Indoctrination department took to another stage to stand in front of another big screen and wear another black roll neck to announce another Apple product that will make your bank manager a bit grumpy, and everyone and their German Shepard is talking about it. Everyone has an opinion on it, some more asinine than others, and unfortunately I can’t guarantee mine won’t be as well. So you have been warned.

How do you get going in the morning? Think about it and we’ll come back to that in a moment.

As with any invention, people do the obvious with it and shortly thereafter they start to discover the unanticipated uses. That’s when the real fun begins. When Video Games were invented they underwent the same evolution. At first they were simply a new kind of game and people used them for fun, personal challenge, party entertainment, as a medium for competition or interaction and just to pass the time. However, after a while other new and unanticipated uses started to emerge, uses like developing hand eye coordination and dexterity training, or as convalescent aids for stroke victims. They were adopted as training tools for pilots, tank commanders and psychics. That’s what the public at large did with video games.

Do you watch Mad Men? If you appreciate grown up American drama, complex characters and accurately recreated period setting then you absolutely should. It’s a tremendous show set in an Ad Agency in the early 1960’s, lead by a charismatic enigma of a creative director called Don Draper. Near the end of series one he’s given a new projector to try and sell and while he admits that most advertising is about generating an itch for the ‘new’, he hits upon trying a different tactic.

Walk into any studio developing a game today and you’ll more than likely find two camps. You’ll find artists and you’ll find the technology gurus. The artists are employed to spend their time coming up with the most beautiful, outrageous, ambitious and down right unique ideas they can, all portrayed in stunning concept art that will more than likely span the walls of the office.

I’m writing this while on holiday on a paradise island in the Indian Ocean. Well, it would be paradise, save for one thing – there are absolutely no videogames here. There isn’t even a pinball table in the bar. This means I am going to have to go two whole weeks without playing anything. And it scares me. These days, games are always within reach, nearly every room in my flat is home to a console – Dreamcast in the living room, N64 in the bedroom, and my museum in the spare room. But out here? Nothing.

As of this writing, over 200,000 signatures (including mine) grace the petition of outrage (www.petitiononline.com/dedis4mw/ petition.html) directed at Modern Warfare 2’s too-big-to-fail developer Infinity Ward. The complaints centre around the omission of gameplay features that have been considered industry standard for years. Unlike all of its predecessors in the Call Of Duty series, MW2 doesn’t provide dedicated server support. And unlike its predecessors (and myriad games made on a bazillionth of the budget), it doesn’t offer enabled console commands, consistent latency, support for matches with more than 18 players, mod tools, efficient methods to kick hackers from ranked matches… in other words, all those frilly overrated pagan luxuries curiously featured in every one of the series’ previous instalments, and in every PC shooter ever (with the possible exception of Daikatana, which never had 18 players).