Success = License to hate?

Now I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but I am truly starting to feel like the internet is just filled with people who wait for something to become successful, then pull out their claws and rip to shreds because they are “too cool” for anything that is so loved by the mainstream.  This isn’t really a new thing, of course.  I understand that there will always be people who try to prove how awesome they are by insulting things that become popular.  But lately I have been seeing it get real out of hand.

The obvious example is Blizzard and World of Warcraft.

 

 

Now, I could care less whether or not you like WoW or despite it.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and preferences as to what style of MMO they enjoy the most.  But you don’t even have to throw a stone to be caught up in the vile WoW hatred anymore.  All you have to do is log in to any MMO and wait for the word WoW to be mentioned.  It usually takes about 3.5 seconds in a new MMO, or perhaps a few minutes if the MMO is older.  But to read some of the comments, you would think that Blizzard committed some brutal series of murders to incur so much disgust from people.

Tune in next week when we hear about how WoW is directly linked to HIV and the primary cause of Global Warming.

But seriously, it really is funny to see people get so riled up over a game.  And each argument plays out in the same general way.  The first salvo is usually the WoW is for kiddies argument.  This mostly has to do with WoW having a more cartoony art style and maintaining a strong sense of humor throughout.  Also, WoW is popular as hell and holds more subscriber than any other MMO, and so many younger people do play it.  The community of WoW is not the greatest, I will be the first to say.  Some of the idiots who play it can be extremely annoying.  But I have also seen many adults who absolutely love WoW, and I’ve met many wonderful and mature guilds in my travels there.  So it’s not just kids that enjoy WoW.

But I won’t let facts ruin a good story here, so we’ll move on.

The second place where I see this kind of hatred is with the film Avatar.  Now again, it really does not matter to me whether you like it or hate it.  I’m talking about the people who don’t just hate it….they really hate it.  They hate it to the point that they started making up theories that it was un-American because it depicts American troops in a negative light.  Those people must have watched a different movie than I did, because the movie clearly states that this is a coporate security force.  They wear no flags on their uniforms.

So if anything it is a cautionary tale of corporate forces like Blackwater, but once again, I won’t let facts get in the way of a good story.

 

 

But the freshest example of this sort of behavior would be the massive amount of forum bitching that is popping up in lieu of Dragon Age 2.  Apparently, Bioware has reached the proper success threshold that it is now a cool thing to hate on them as well.  But to make myself clear once again, I am not talking about people who simply didn’t enjoy DA 2.  I am talking about people who have now taken their rage to the forums and are claiming that Bioware is dead, calling them traitors, they hate PC players, they have sold out, they hate RPGs, they assassinated JFK…you know, the whole works.

Seeing crap like this from the gaming populace really concerns me.

You might wonder why this is, given that people also react this way to other forms of creative expression.  Well, the primary reason is that gaming is still struggling mightily for respect and acceptance by the general public.  Though it has made some strides in recent years, gaming is still viewed by many as something for kids…a fanciful distraction that any reasonable adult should eventually “move on” from.  To compound this problem, I see so many of my fellow gamers behaving in an immature and petulant fashion, and so it makes me wonder whether people outside of the gaming community will ever be able to truly look at games as art.

And that is undoubtedly what games are slowly becoming…an art form just like books, music, or film.  But until the gaming community learns to grow up and regard their hobby with a sense of dignity, it may be difficult for games and those who make them to ever receive the worldwide respect they so richly deserve.

Please leave a message

It should come as no surprise to any of you that MMOs will be taking a backseat in my gaming time these next few days.  So I will not be available.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200, and please leave a message after the beep.  Some things are just more important than MMOs…you know, like killing Darkspawn. 

 

http://dragonage.bioware.com/

 

The Art of Gaming

As most of you have probably noticed, the volume of posts has gone down here quite substantially when compared to the torrid pace I was keeping last month.  This is mostly due to my RL workload increasing and I find myself with much less free time on my hands.  I really should be in bed since I have to get up for work in six hours, but I am a night owl by nature so what the hell…this is what I do. 

So I was traversing the interwebs this evening and I came across a post that I think you should all have a look at.  In it, Josh Drescher of EA Mythic, discusses some comments made recently by film critic Roger Ebert on the subject of gaming and whether or not it constitutes art.  You can find Josh’s post here.  I also have to admit that I have always enjoyed Roger Ebert’s work.  He used to be the only film critic I would read, not because I always agreed with his opinion, but because his reviews consistently possessed a certain level of detail and insight that I always appreciated.

I got to learn his preferences rather well, and could usually gauge how much I would enjoy a film based upon what he had to say about it.  So I also found myself a bit stricken when I read Mr. Ebert’s comments that spoke of games with such little knowledge or understanding of what it means to create them.  I was certainly disappointed to see Roger Ebert speaking as he usually does, but lacking the typical level of intelligence that he often brings to his pieces.

In a broader sense, I find myself more and more puzzled by the general public’s idea that gaming is a hobby that belongs to the days of our youth and nothing more.  Yes, I fondly remember a time when I feverishly played Legend of Zelda on the NES until the images were burned into my mind.  I can still hear my mother complaining that she was being haunted by the Zelda theme song in her sleep.

I also recall when the Super Nintendo finally came along and cemented my love for this hobby, as I found myself staring with wide-eyed fascination at a controller that had more than just two buttons.  Wow!    Gaming was in its infancy in those days and my gaming history goes back even further if you can believe it…to a time when I slipped the little floppy disk into the computer and played that side-scrolling karate game whose name I can never remember.

But now we come to the present day, and dear heavens, how the industry has changed.  Games are produced with million-dollar budgets nowadays.  They have teams of people working on them that include writers, artists, animators, sound designers, level designers, musicians, and sometimes they even star well-known actors to provide the voices just like an animated film from Pixar.  I imagine that Mr. Ebert would consider Pixar’s work art, and yet I have played some Bioware games that featured stories just as compelling as any film.  While I played these games I was not simply a spectator, for I chose how the story would end.  People would live or die because of my choices.

It beats the crap out of just sitting and watching a movie I always say, and it invests me on an even deeper emotional level because of my participation.  So how is this not art?  I’m still trying to figure out how Mr. Ebert could come to that conclusion, but his lack of knowledge on this particular subject tells me all that I need to know.  In a way he sort of represents the public on this issue, as so many people cannot get past the stereotype of games being for children…or the media-driven concept that a gamer is only a person with no social life and no money, who lives in a hole somewhere and never sees the light of day.

I keep waiting for a Hollywood horror film where legions of socially inept gamers take over the world and force people to sit in basements so they can waste their lives away.  Until recently, I have permitted myself to get all riled up over these common misconceptions.  But anymore I just smile and take it in stride.  Anyone who knows the history of art knows that it has often been associated with revolution.  The art of a society speaks nearly as much about its values as anything else.

Gaming is a young and still has a long way to go.  It is an art form searching for a wider audience and seeking acceptance in a world that doesn’t fully understand it yet.   But we should give the world time.  These things happen slowly with careful, hesitant footsteps…unless we all end up making enough noise to cause a thunder of revolution, that is.  Until such time, those of us who know better can remind ourselves that many pieces of art have lived through a period when they were thought to be nothing more than rubbish, a fool’s fancy.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.
William Faulkner

Many years from now I will look back at some of the wonderful games I have played and find that they will move for me once again.  These games will still breathe and inspire, they will excite and thrill, for they are art come from motion and motion is life. 

Gaming can make a better world

Pure genius!!!  How do we make the world better?  Play more online games of course!!! 

It really does make sense when you think about it.  Virtual worlds are the future.  They will never be more important than the wonders of the actual world we live in…but they can teach us so much about society, culture, and human behavior.  Think about it for a moment.  How is sitting down for a few hours playing an online game any better or worse than plopping down in front of the TV at night?  The former involves doing something with other human beings, the latter involves staring at a television set.

MMOs can bring people together as much as they can tear people apart.  We have all heard it, right?  The stories of marriages being ruined by EQ or WoW.  These are sad tales of people ignoring everything in their lives just so they can just lose themselves in the virtual world of an MMO.  But the stories you don’t hear, and are just as prevalent, are the ones where MMOs actually bring people together.

-  Friends who live a great distance from each other can have an activity that they can engage in together…

-  Couples who are apart suddenly have a way to interact and share experiences…

-  Families who have no other way to keep in touch can use MMOs as a way to sit down and spend some time together regardless of where they are in relation to one another…

These are the things that you don’t hear.  These are the tales that the media would never tell you because God forbid we talk about things that portray the world in a positive light.  But those of us who play MMOs know all about these stories because we live them.  We are the story.  We are the exception to the socially established view that gamers are losers who have no lives.

We have an opportunity, every single one of us, to spread the word and educate people who only associate the idea of gaming with negativity.  We have the voices…all we have to do is learn how to use them. 

What are you waiting for…

So here is one more quick post before I take a break to allow my keyboard to cool off, lest it catch fire.  Allow me to say that if you haven’t gotten your hands on Mass Effect 2 yet then what in the world are you waiting for??!!!  It’s my Game of the Year without question.  If you played through Mass Effect 1 then there are over 700 plot hooks that lead into the story of Mass Effect 2.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1077468p1.html

Talk about impressive…

And so it begins…

Here we are once again, my brave readers.  A few of you might remember me as the chap who briefly ran a blog dedicated to Warhammer Online known as Echoes of WAR.  I played a Shadow Warrior back in those days.  *pauses for effect*  Yes you heard me correctly, I said I played a Shadow Warrior.  *pauses again for sympathy*  If you are reading this and have never played Warhammer Online or are unfamiliar with the Warhammer universe, allow me to lend a picture to your thoughts.  This is a Shadow Warrior…

And this is the default position of a Shadow Warrior…

So it is not difficult to imagine how or why it came to be that I left Warhammer Online and with great sadness, shut down my blog a few months after launch.  It was a decision that I grew to regret as time passed.  So it is with great happiness that I return to blogging once again in the hopes that at least some of you will get a little entertainment out of the crap I write.    This will not be a blog specific to one game, of course.

I enjoy many MMOs and do move around quite often. (it’s how I fight burnout)  But since I recently returned to Warhammer Online I figured now was as good a time as any to fire up WordPress and get back on the horse.  I will be detailing my adventures in WAR over the coming weeks, along with interjecting plenty of banter on MMOs in general so be sure to check back often.  Don’t be afraid to drop me a line anytime through comments or email!  My blog email is on the About page.

Game well, my friends!!!