[The 'Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's GameSetWatch-exclusive column about communities built around gaming. This week he notes the commonalities in Massively Single Player Online games.]

Lately some have been arguing that, as far as games are concerned, content is not always king. In the April 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, Steve Theodore discussed alternative conceptions of games as art. After noting John Carmack's "We're doing entertainment" quote, Theodore writes: "Honestly, not many games can live up to the Romantic ideal [of art].

Recently, Chris Remo pointed out that many games seem to shoot to become epic, and Leigh Alexander suggested that perhaps it's time we stop looking for a “Citizen Kane”. In short: games are games first and foremost, and anything else is incidental.

There is an area of gamingdom that contests the point of content, at least, (though not necessarily art). I refer not to gaming critics, i.e. the “Brainysphere” (which this column has already covered), but to Massively Single Player Online games. The first place I saw the term printed was in the game ForumWarz, though it is certainly not the first of its kind.

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: Examining Massively Single Player Online Games" »

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[The 'Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's GameSetWatch-exclusive column about communities built around gaming. This week features the real life adventure of going to a complete stranger's house just to find a challenge in Street Fighter IV.]

Recently I found myself going to a stranger’s house to play video games with a bunch of other strangers. No one knowing anyone. This is not a typical occurrence, not even for someone who writes about the way gamers organize themselves, but here it happened.

I really think there’s only one kind of digital game that has that intense of a driving force to make a bunch of awkward nerds come out of their crawling places to meet someone, anyone who will play the game they play.

Fighting games, especially Street Fighter, have the peculiar property of turning its most devoted players into the subject material, and I say this with all seriousness. Pokemon fanatics might actually strategize like some of the characters, but they don’t spend their lives like the characters or Pokemon.

Those who admire science fiction and fantasy characters are often subject to ridicule because they don’t know how little they resemble the characters when they imitate them. But fighting game fans become like the characters: glory is important, and they do anything to find a good fight.

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: 'Shoryuken! How SFIV Made Its Niche More Mainstream'" »

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[We originally - and accidentally - ran this 'Game Anthropologist' column on Quake Live before the embargo was up. Now that the game is officially launched - and we have comments from John Carmack over at Gamasutra, with a bigger interview to follow, we're re-running Mike Walbridge's piece.]

“Man, it has been a long time since I played THIS game,” I wrote, hoping to break the ice.
“Welcome to 1999,” someone replied.
“The crazy thing is...some people never left,” another said.

We were all dead, waiting our turn; we're playing Quake Live's clan arena, a mode where the teams square off and each player's death merits no respawn until the next round. We call get maximum armor, health, and weapons, pounding each other into oblivion.

There's also duel, which pits players one on one while the rest wait in line to face the challenger. The list of spectators is a virtual list of quarters lined up on arcade machine. The atmosphere of the site, with its ladders and stats, is almost like a chess club. Quake Live is a bold and new move—it is absolutely free, and it is better than the Quake 3 I repaid twenty dollars for about five years ago.

The download did not take very long; while I waited for the full installation I was offered to do the tutorial level. A woman with a calm mellow voice introduced herself as Crash, whom I recognized from Quake 3.

She walked me through a small level and explained all the weapons and powerups. She was talking in the tone an elementary school teacher might take with a child who tries hard but is failing and needs extra attention and explanation.

“Okay, now let's practice!” Crash said. “You shoot me, I shoot you. Simple, right?”

Continue reading "Opinion: 'Quake Live's Vault Into Immortality'" »

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['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's regular GameSetWatch-exclusive column looking at gaming communities and subcultures. This week, he examines and appreciates the togetherness created by the online forums of a popular game-related webcomic.]

Forum moderators only have control over what can’t happen. It’s up to regular forum posters (and hosting needs) to mold the forums into what they are.

So when one thinks of Penny Arcade, it is defined as one of two things: the artistry and writing of Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins or the people who follow it. The Penny Arcade forums are property of Penny Arcade but only in the strictest technical sense of the word; it has become a beautiful monster, a living, breathing, curious creature that, while not necessarily obedient, is forever loyal.

The Penny Arcade forums are almost a decade old; originally managed Mike, Kara, and other close friends, the forums quickly grew into something to large for them to handle. Both the software and the people became issues that were too complicated, and moderators volunteered to take over (future moderators can no longer come from volunteers; they must be asked).

Over time, the various moderators and administrators have changed. Since 2003, Kevin Hamilton has been the admin that handles coding and programming, while Patrick Groome has been the admin that handles policy and posters for the last two years. I spoke to them about what makes Penny Arcade’s forums so unique.

I asked Kevin Hamilton and Patrick Groome about what makes the forums work so well and they are modest, giving a lot of credit to its members rather than to administration.

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: 'Inside The Penny Arcade Forums'" »

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['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's regular GameSetWatch-exclusive column looking at gaming communities and subcultures. This week he argues that Left 4 Dead represents bigger changes for co-op gaming than, say, Gears of War 2.]

Co-op gaming is older than most gamers; while examination of co-op gaming has always existed (Co-Optimus.com, for instance, is an entire site dedicated to co-op gaming), many recent releases have prompted players everywhere to think about the state of co-op and its capabilities.

In fact, one might argue that Epic's Gears of War 2 is the culmination of what co-op gaming always was, while Valve's Left 4 Dead and its unique game mechanics are truly a step toward the future.

Gears of War 2 followed a formula, and did it very well. It is a shooter complete with content, a campaign, and various multiplayer modes. One of these modes, horde mode, brings the players together in co-operation, a first for a title like Gears of War.

In Gears of War 2, co-op is doing what it has always done: adding even more value and longetivity to the game, creating incentive not only for consumers to buy the game, but to keep it; also, the more players that keep the game, the fewer that have the option to buy used. From the side of production, there was always the incentive to provide co-op modes so that more people would purchase the game.

Turtle Rock and Valve, on the other hand, saw that co-op could have other uses; instead of making co-op an added feature, why not make significantly different design decisions based on co-op principles?

They are not necessarily the first to do this (Army of Two attempted to do the same thing), but they are the first to design a full-priced game around co-op while achieving impressive sales and, at the same time, omitting traditional content!

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: Left 4 Dead: "Let's Do This!"" »

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['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's regular GameSetWatch-exclusive column looking at gaming communities and subcultures. This week he explores how Fable II lacks clarity at first, and how an early multiplayer experience powerfully changed his own journey through the main storyline, among other things.]

(Spoiler notification: if you've heard nothing about Fable II's ending or the characters you meet in it and don't want to yet, you will want to stop reading.)

Most games, even bad ones, at least have plain and simple goals. Fable II does not; even if one includes the many unedited, uncoached musings of Peter Molyneux, there are still some design decisions in the game that are not easily understood by the player. Is it an RPG? Is it like the Sims? Both? Fable II can't make up its mind. Maybe the Fable II-related announcement due this Monday the 24th will let us know, whatever it is.

For example, it seems apparent even from both sides of the box cover ("Who will you become?") that Fable II is a place to explore morality, but the consequences of choices seem weak. I started off playing the game with a friend I know from college, wondering if the world would be a place that is shared together, but it is not. It is just one player playing the role of visitor to another; worlds cannot be shared, and this makes Fable II a mostly solitary game even if there is a multiplayer option.

And the multiplayer actually changed the outcome of my own world! The friend I played with was ahead of me; I earned almost 100,000 gold from his real estate empire by playing with him for just two hours. Where was the challenge in that? Then again, the game wasn't meant to be challenging; it's easy to chop, shoot, and explode enemies away, though admittedly very enjoyable.

Still, it powered me through by enabling to purchase powerful weapons early in my own story. I didn't have to take the time to be a blacksmith or bartender and feel like I'd worked hard; Fable II gives you more money from buying businesses and buildings and by playing tiresome mini-games, but without working I'd earned plenty of money. So the multiplayer aspect, the community aspect, seems like a choice that is made for the benefit of the gamers, but not the game.

When I beat the game, I was faced with the choice to choose the needs of many, the needs of my few loved ones, or to just be selfish and choose a wad of cash. Because everyone thought the latter boring and I'd heard nothing about it, I decided to take the wealth. I was disappointed and not planning on playing the game anymore anyway.

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: Fable II and World Mixing" »

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['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's regular GameSetWatch column looking at gaming communities and subcultures. This week he explores the impact gaming decisions have on marriage.]

My wife, Amanda, will spend two weekdays and a weekend playing a new release that's coming out; she even wanted to preorder it and get it at midnight. I am not as excited about this as she is. In fact, for a while I was dreading it. This is because she wants the new World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and I had become converted to Warhammer Online.

My friend Bill (real name), a friend of mine since I was 10, had leveled up in World of Warcraft while I was in college. I got a review copy of Warhammer Online. "Tell me how it is," he says. "It looks pretty cool." My first verdict was "I don't know", and my second was "I'm not sure but I'm guessing Amanda won't be into it since it's more PVP-oriented".

He comes over to my house to play it for a while. He is not so sure either. I spend a lot more time with it, analyzing it with intent to not only write about it but to give an accurate report to my childhood friend and my wife. Are we going to go over to it?

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: The Gaming Family Habit" »

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['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's regular GameSetWatch column looking at gaming communities and subcultures. This week, he analyzes how Mega Man 9 doesn't only represent the distant past, but how far we've come, and what's changed about all gamers.]

Okay, so I've gotten to play Mega Man 9 a bit and I think the game is a great specimen, gaming's first meta-period-piece. Some people call Upton Sinclair's The Jungle a snapshot of culture and a piece of history, but not a very literary or entertaining read. It maintains its importance as a cultural artifact, a turning point, something that matters.

Mega Man 9 doesn't particularly innovate or call itself art or revolutionary, but it is a great piece of our period, something that will help old gamers understand new and new understand old.

The game may not have consciously meant to do that, but it had to be in the developers' minds. The thing I love most is that it manages to display the developers' opinions (or at least, the opinions they're allowed to express) of video games in an open state. What I mean is that, while the message Mega Man 9 sends is not readily apparent to those not critical of games, it's not exactly invisible.

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: Mega Man 9 And The Bridging of Generations" »

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['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's regular GameSetWatch column looking at gaming communities and subcultures. This week he speaks from the trenches about the developing community of EA/Mythic's new MMO, Warhammer Online.]

If you want the real dirt on Warhammer Online, the best reading comes from those who've played. Electronic Arts, Mythic, and the publications covering WAR can discuss features all they want, but that hasn't always kept those investigating satiated, which is why you'll see forums, comment threads, and sometimes published articles directed toward what it's like to play WAR with other people. There's playing a game by yourself, and there's playing a game with people, and when we have a rare challenger to World of Warcraft, we need to compare both parts.

So, what's the community like in WAR? Plenty of factors make this question a very personal one, but I'll attempt to answer it from these two simple viewpoints of trying it alone and trying it with someone else.

If you try WAR alone, it'll feel lonelier than some other MMOs. For starters, grouping requires less communication, which enhances play time but lessens bonding or memory of other players. I've not yet added a single person to my friends list because it simply doesn't enter into my mind.

Because WAR gives you multiple paths to level your characters, there's no urgency to find someone you can rely on for a specific task—if a task is difficult, it is not an opportunity you regret skipping. Continuing to explore or saying “you know, I'd rather do something else instead, I don't want to wait around” give the journey a different flavor.

The path to glory is still heavily shaped by the game design, but it makes players feel like they have more control due to the abundance of options and the ease with which a person rotates among those options. More control means less submission to imposed standards, which means less cohesive socialization.

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: 'Warhammer Online - A Community Analysis'" »

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['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's take on gaming communities. One time he participated in a psychology experiment that colored his outlook on game rules, game communities, and the influence each has on the other - and here's some ensuing thoughts.]

The "Game Anthropologist" emphasizes game communities because a game is only as good as the community it spawns; not only are games more interesting because of their communities, but the communities that participate in a game and its network tells us a lot about the game.

This begs a question: "Which more strongly influences the other: the demands of game communities and players on the games that are created, or the games on the communities and players that play them?"

I have an anecdote on the matter.

At college I majored in one of the most overpopulated lib arts programs: psychology. At the rather large university I attended, requests for test subjects are frequent. One experiment I participated in involved a computer game a professor had designed.

I don't remember the mechanics perfectly. Participants were told they'd be playing a game and start with forty dollars, represented digitally in the game. The sum of money would increase or decrease in size depending on choices made during the game and upon the game's conclusion an assistant would present the participants with the cash equivalent of what they'd made during the game.

Each round, the players were required to give a certain amount of money to the other three players as they saw fit; the minimum amount was about five dollars. If players gave a lot of it to certain people, and everyone chose that route, everyone would get more money from the game, but if one person chose not to participate in that mechanic, that person would benefit at everyone else's expense. Each participant did this all alone by using a computer in a tiny room; we'd make our choices, and within a minute we'd find out how much each person gave to us each round.

Continue reading "The Game Anthropologist: Games' Influencing of Players" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. This week, Michael Walbridge attempts to summarize the world of the World of Warcraft in its entirety.]

"Oh no, not another article about World of Warcraft. Tired of hearing about it." If you've ever thought that, stop reading. You won't find this interesting.

Some of you still are reading, though, and we both know why that is: because the topic is humongous. There is the universe, and there are galaxies, solar systems, and planets. There are development platforms and genres, there is World of Warcraft, and there are individual games and their communities.

World of Warcraft has spawned at least two books of published essays. One of them has an entire chapter on the most mundane of the most mundane--fishing. World of Warcraft spawns entire blogs and sites that are dedicated to the many, many corners of WoW. To the experienced gamer, games have the ability to be an entirely different experience from person to person.

To the beginning gamer who plays WoW as one of his first games, this is understood quickly instead of gradually. This leads to an opportunity for intelligent observation, the scale of which equals insight into an entire country. Take a comment from a non-official WoW forum: "At 70, you can choose from one of three factions: Raider, PVP, and Casual. You then blame the other two factions for 'ruining the game.'"

Only in an MMO that is as large as World of Warcraft is it made clearly apparent that there are all kinds of players (people) and that video games can be a setting for social interaction, larger than life. You can meet another player and that player can feel, unlike the ones you regularly play with, like someone from another country, another world, another clique.

Even the division of the players into over 100 server still leaves your own cities populated with people who make themselves authority figures, public artists, savants, professionals, entrepreneurs, professors, thieves, beggars, preachers, and thugs. All who play it, know it.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: The World Behind The World Of Warcraft" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. Recently, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. This week highlights some of the thoughts from professor Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer.]

Of the seven people I interviewed, Michael Abbott is the only one who is not a game journalist; he is, however, accurately classified as a games writer. His persona matches his writing: confident, mild, wise, and academic. Still, the two words that keep coming to my mind are "gentle" and "enthusiastic." While the Brainy Gamer is an experiment, he is not far removed from his subject material. It isn't just in text that he gets really excited about games and even more excited that people are talking about them with maturity in an open forum.

Brainy Gamer started in August 2007, a blog dedicated to "thoughtful conversation about video games". Before one year had passed, it had received over 270,000 unique visits, 1,000 RSS subscribers, and an average of 15-20 comments per post. (For those who dig Google Page Rank: 5, purely by word of mouth and text.)

I asked about why he had started it and what it was for. As many know, he is a professor at Wabash College. Brainy Gamer was initially simply a work project, but Brainy Gamer, a living and breathing creature, took on a different life. Even Abbott's opinions have been shaped by the discussion taking place, and now he has new and informed ideas about a myriad of topics, including gaming communities, their formation and evolution, and the place of games in academia.

"I took a sabbatical from teaching; this is my project. It's my attempt to bridge the gap from game community to a new form of game scholarship. Initially, my real purpose was to demonstrate at Wabash that you can be serious about games. The blog started, and it became clear to me that this is something that could be integrated into the liberal arts. It was a lightbulb moment."

"It all started as conversation, but now part of my mission with Brainy Gamer is to convince people that games can and should be a part of a curriculum. It's difficult: we have people who are saying 'just let me play games and have fun,' but there are also those who have never played games and who are saying 'how can we let this in the academy'? I think both groups are resistant, but for totally different reasons."

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'Game Community Interviews, Part 4 - The Brainy Gamer's Michael Abbott" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. Recently, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. In the coming weeks, Walbridge will be detailing some of the key points from the individual interviews conducted for the piece. This week describes his third interview with former GSW columnist and current Kotaku writer Leigh Alexander.]

My wife and I went on a disaster of a vacation for over a week after I had talked to Kieron Gillen. My wife had a work party thing at the worst theme park of all time on the day of our return. I originally had thought I could interview Leigh inside of this park, but decided that no, I really couldn't, even if background noise was minimized. We went home and I rushed inside and called Leigh immediately because a car wreck on I-15 had made late (five minutes) to calling her.

Just as with the other New Yorker I interviewed, I talked to Leigh on Friday as the weekend dawned. I think I looked forward to talking to her more than anyone else because her blog was the first or second one I discovered and I had really based my own doctrine, if you will, on the content and style of what is written there and at the Aberrant Gamer.

Instead of immediately asking about the whole label or community thing, I simply asked why she had her personal weblog SVGL. Kotaku must take a heavy toll--that's a lot of writing and a lot of work and yet she still writes on her personal, non-ad-supplemented blog.

Why did she start it?

"I wasn't really sure what I wanted to say yet, so it was simply a repository for my thoughts and a place to practice my voice," she told me.

"Well, don't you get a hell of a lot of practice now without it? There must be another reason, a reason you still keep it."

"It's still important for me to be able to say things I want when there is nowhere to publish them," she told me. "I mean, it'd be a misconception to say that we are getting paid for our opinions all day and write thoughtful stuff--that's not what our jobs are." She did stress that thoughtfulness and opinions are still part of journalism as a whole; it's just that "think-pieces and editorials" are not the bulk of what she is getting paid to do.

Then I shifted, and asked if there's a commonality, a common, unacknowledged sort of creed all those blogs kept. "Game journalists are constantly having an identity crisis," she told me. "Fans have so few places to go," she told me. "Lots of people don't know about this kind of discussion, and many still don't. If more people knew this discussion was taking place I think we'd have more people who are interested."

"I didn't even know about this kind of discussion myself," I said. "I'd have gotten into a long time ago had I known about it. Gamasutra and GameSetWatch introduced me to it and from there I found the Aberrant Gamer and from there I found your blog and eventually decided to write this piece. Would you say there is a name for this? What do you all do?"

Unlike the last two people I talked to, there was no caution or hesitance with Leigh, at least not on this question. I'd never seen it written anywhere, but she'd obviously been thinking about it longer than I had. "Oh, I'd call it game criticism," she said.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'Game Community Interviews, Part 3 - Leigh Alexander" »

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[The Game Anthopologist is about gaming communities. This week, Michael Walbridge explores the Culdcept Saga community and its struggles to survive and grow.]

If a game is beloved by its players, but doesn’t have the desired support from the developer or those who control the only networks you can play it on, what happens to the community? If it’s a game on Xbox LIVE, it dies, and you can only play by scouring the Internet for a partner and scheduling a match or co-op.

Most games on LIVE manage to find a replacement: another sports, FPS, or LIVE Arcade game to migrate to. But a few games are so unique that there is no PC equivalent and no foreseeable replacement for the nomadic community designate as the next oasis.

But there is an exception, a species we could put on the endangered list: Culdcept Saga, a game so unique and intensely loved by its few supporters that the community is going to extra effort to prevent its death.

A history: Culdcept Saga was released in February of this year and is a sequel to the cult classic Culcept, released in December of 2003 for the PS2. It combines strategy, cards, and dice rolls on a board and has puzzling game design choices, such as the revealing of each player’s hand when his turn comes.

The game is not built with the Xbox 360’s abilities in mind: it is fairly limited graphic-wise - or at least, not that different from what you see on a PlayStation 2 - and this is the main reason that at release, it only cost 40 dollars. It still has an “Only on Xbox 360” logo on the top, despite not being the system’s proudest game (unless, of course, you play it).

Reviews were highly mixed. Most games have a general consensus, but not here: Metacritic scores have a wide range, and in the February 2008 Game Informer, where the reviews come with a “second opinion” mini-review, the two scores were 7 and 8.5 (they usually come within half a point of each other).

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: Culdcept Saga - On the Brink of Extinction" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. Recently, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. In the coming weeks, Walbridge will be detailing some of the key points from the individual interviews conducted for the piece. This week describes the second interview with Kieron Gillen of Rock Paper Shotgun.]

My second interview was with a writer from the blog Rock Paper Shotgun, a place that covers my favorite games format, the PC. Not knowing how to approach, I thought, “Well, they’re four game journalists and they’re all British.” So I tried my best to do what an intelligent British gamer would: I mailed all four of them with the subject “I request a sacrifice”. One of them replied in part with

"Hi Mr Walbridge

You have prompted a shadowy gathering of the RPS hive mind. I step forth, and give the answer. Imagine this in a voice that's very deep, and flames are spouting from my nostrils.

Anyway - pleasure to meet you. Sorry that Carless has talked you into doing work for his evil GSW. I fear and shun him."

That’s how I met Kieron Gillen. I chose to talk to him over talking to all four of the RPS writers because I'm not sure how to talk to four people at once at this point, and I'm still collecting my thoughts. It turned out to be the right choice.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'Game Community Interviews, Part 2 - Kieron 'NGJ' Gillen'" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. So, last week, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. In the coming weeks, Walbridge will be detailing some of the key points from the individual interviews conducted for the piece. This week describes the first interview with Newsweek writer N'Gai Croal.]

N'gai was the first writer I interviewed, but not the first person I contacted. On the first day I started asking, which was June 6th, N'gai responds with "Can you do a phone interview at 4pm EST...i.e. in 20 minutes?"

Um.

I realize that it's Friday. He's a busy man, he happened to be in his office, and he has about an hour left before his work week, if it has any semblance of normal standards, is over. In short, I get lucky, and I also don't have my questions because I assumed that I'd have the weekend to write them. Guess not.

So I don't have a way of recording phone calls. I still wonder how a good way to do this would be--not everyone will agree to Skype. They may have better things to do, and they may not be interested in using a headset.

I called him in what seemed an instant later--the last time I felt like this was when I called up a girl to go on a date, a feeling I thought would never resurface in my lifetime. Who the hell do I think I am? I could talk to some of these other people, sure, but an editor at Newsweek? As my very first interview that I'm doing in video games land? When I just have one commentless little first article on a column at GameSetWatch?

"Hi," I say. My first question is incredibly stupid, yet I don't realize how laughably bad it is until weeks later; I'm still embarrassed every time I remember. "So uh, how do you pronounce your name?"
"Guy," he says. Stupid Sprint service blind spot in my stupid apartment! "Excuse me, what?" I say politely.

"Guy," I hear again.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'Game Community Interviews, Part 1 - THE CROAL'" »

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[The Game Anthropologist chronicles Michael Walbridge's ventures into gaming communities as he reports on their inhabitants and culture. This column is a summary of Michael's interviews with six prominent and prolific game writers and one professor who all have one thing in common: they spend a lot of time blogging, too.]

A Changing Industry

It’s no secret that game journalism and writing about games is dramatically changing, but what’s not so simple is describing or naming those changes. Even more difficult is determining whether personal, alternative writing spaces can be considered communities, and how they function.

Chris Dahlen’s Save the Robot and Leigh Alexander’s now retired The Aberrant Gamer are two of my favorite GameSetWatch columns. I have since followed these writers to their blogs, Save the Robot and Sexy Videogameland. I noted that in the blog chain they are a part of, sites such as Dubious Quality and Giant Bomb kept reappearing, as if there are common ties. I couldn’t see any explicit mention of these ties, however.

As a newcomer with a puny blog and very few paying game writing assignments to call my own, I thought it fascinating that so many overworked, 50+ hours a week journalists were, for no pay and not necessarily as part of their work, keeping frequently updated blogs. At work they write and when they’re taking a break they’re…still writing. “Why, when they’re taking a break, are they still writing? Why aren’t they, I don’t know, playing video games? They certainly don’t get to do that as much as they’d like….”

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'A Community That Writes About Games'" »

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[The Game Anthropologist chronicles Michael Walbridge's ventures into gaming communities as he reports on their inhabitants and culture. This time round, he takes a look at Valve's seminal Team Fortress 2.]

Darn FPS Kids And Their Language

It is no doubt or secret that the first person shooter genre and its communities are highly steeped in the competitive spirit. If playground basketball has its ball hogs, FPS has its kill hogs. The team, for all its necessity, can shove off. This usually isn’t considered a problem, though; it’s what we expect, right? We’re shooting at each other. FPS servers are, after all, playgrounds. A player being the Kobe Bryant of the team is the least of your worries.

In concrete life, when an adult goes to observe children in their element, the children do not act the same. Social science research is often rife with hand-wringing—“how can we study people scientifically when the object of study changes simply because of its being studied?” More than one researcher has lamented. Plunk down a random adult in the back of a high school classroom and the kids act differently. In the digital realm, though, kids don’t care that you are there.

Those who look for scapegoats blame the games. Those of us who play games have a better memory of our childhood; young males, adolescents, children are depicting animalistic humanity and lack of development while online and on Xbox Live because they’re just that: kids. While research and artistry can show us much, we don’t have to look far to see it for ourselves.

All Grown Up

In Team Fortress 2, a game which has been sold to at least 2 million people, showboating, kill-whoring, and brazen, crass insults are a rare sight (on non-modded servers with standard maps, anyway). This is puzzling for many reasons. Not only is it an FPS, it’s a quality, competitive one that is only available from Steam. (Counter Strike kids are different from Halo kids, but not in the way you would hope—many of them are hopelessly vulgar.)

Each character has a taunt for each weapon; that’s 27 animated taunts available, including the verbal ones your character automatically utters upon killing. Not to mention the fact that any time someone kills you 3 times in a row a big “NEMESIS” gets planted next to that person’s name.

When you die, the game zooms in on the person who killed you. Big fists appear over him so you can tell who keeps shoving you back to observing your teammates. Failing to get revenge? Here’s the third shot of your ass being handed to you by some kid from Iowa. But the kid says nothing. Rarely does.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: Team Fortress 2: Radical Departures" »

Posted by Mike Walbridge at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (94)

[The Game Anthropologist chronicles Michael Walbridge's ventures into gaming communities as he reports on their inhabitants and culture.]

If you've played Warcraft III on Battle.net lately you'd feel like more people were playing Defense of the Ancients, popularly called DOTA, than the actual Blizzard game it’s based on. In fact, DOTA is likely the most popular and most-discussed free, non-supported game mod in the world, judging by the numbers. (It's also been a notable inspiration for the plethora of Tower Defense Flash games in recent years.)

Over at the “official” DOTA Allstars forums as I write this, there are 800 people logged in and over 100,000 total topics and over 23,000 topics in the general forum in the last month. By comparison, Warcraft III, the game it is modded from, only has a few thousand topics at most over on the Battle.net website.

Competitive RPG Action the Way We Want It

The game itself is technically played in RTS format but is often described as “RPG combat.” Many players were disappointed by Warcraft III; some were disappointed it wasn’t more like Starcraft, and many found that the heroes system watered the game down into an experiment that was interesting enough to play, but not fun enough to worship.

Warcraft III match strategies are centered around the selection, leveling, and gearing of heroes, with all units simply being support for the hero. Turning points, victories, and defeats are hero-centered. DOTA turns Warcraft III’s hero system on its head—instead of playing an army with an important leader, you simply play the important leader while the computer takes care of the army.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: Defense of the Ancients: An Underground Revolution" »

Posted by Mike Walbridge at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)