Content warning: this contains explicit descriptions of abuse and discussion of suicide, as well as spoilers for the ending of Bioshock Infinite
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NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
By Order Of The Author,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.
— Mark Twain, Author’s Note for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain, undoubtedly writing an angry screed much like this one
Note: There will be spoilers for The Beginner’s Guide herein; if you care about that sort of thing you should probably play it before you read this.
Content warnings: misogyny, harassment
At this point, I have written and rewritten this piece many times in my head. There are so many things I want to say and so many things I’m afraid to say, so many things that have already been said and much more clearly and eloquently than I could ever express. But this community (the gaming community) is my community too, both as a gamer and a creator, and I feel like the community and I need to have a talk. Because, you see, a significant subset of the community has been trying to tell me for most of my life that this isn’t my community, that this community isn’t for me or people like me and others (women, LGBTQ, people of color, etc – basically anyone who isn’t a straight, white, cis man).
I finished Bioshock Infinite a few days ago – for the most part I had fun with it but it was ultimately disappointing, and there are some very specific things I really did not like. Possibly I’ll write a longer blog specifically about that at some point, but for now my summary is: meh.
I’ve spent most of the day today playing Neverwinter and I’m enjoying it. I doubt I’ll stick with it for very long, but there are some interesting things that they’re doing. I also feel like some of the key decisions Arenanet made with Guild Wars 2 have seeped in, or maybe we’re just finally at that stage in MMO thinking, but either way, I’m glad to see it. Artificially inconveniencing players as a means to gate content just never sat well with me, even when I understood the thinking behind it. It is interesting that this shift is coming from the F2P space. With Neverwinter, I think it makes even more sense, with the Foundry in place. Speaking of which, I have played through one Foundry quest (they actually incentivize players to play them, through daily quests). I haven’t yet crafted my own, though I definitely will be playing around with it. Very very curious to see what that toolset looks like. I’d probably be doing that right now if the servers weren’t down for maintenance.
I also picked up Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, and I’ll probably boot that up in a bit to check it out. It looks super fun though.
Originally published here.
When I was a kid, I went through a period of consuming choose your own adventure books in mass quantities. It was the merging of books and games, my two loves, so I kept telling myself that, as the amalgamation of the two, they were even better. But they weren’t better. I never identified with my character in those books the way I identified with Bilbo in ‘The Hobbit’ or Hazel in ‘Watership Down’. And they were definitely not as exciting as stomping mushrooms in Super Mario Bros or hitting things with Simon’s whip in Castlevania. Obviously the gameplay was lacking because there isn’t much you can do with “turn to page 67” (even adding a die roll and combat system, like some of the more advanced versions did, didn’t do much to increase the sense of risk and accomplishment inherent in games like Super Mario Bros and Castlevania), but why was the story not as immersive? The theory I think a lot of us who make games operate from is that offering player choices creates a sense of investment in their character and in the story that supersedes that of a novel or film; however, in my experience, that is seldom the case.
Last weekend was the second Beta Weekend Event for Guild Wars 2, so I spent most of the weekend playing it.
I already had a Charr thief I’d made for the last beta event, but I made a couple of other characters, a Norn engineer and a Human necromancer. I ended up mostly playing the engineer because I really enjoyed the class and the Norn starting area. The thing I’ve found so far is that each class allows for a fairly wide range of playstyles while each still keeps their own unique flavor. The engineer uses pistols, rifles and shields, and has a wide range of utility skills from turrets (some for healing and some for damage/control) to grenades to elixirs (providing buffs to the player and/or nearby players). I highly recommend playing quite a bit with different skill/weapon combinations because it really changes how the class plays.
So, like most of you, I’ve been playing a lot of Diablo III. I’ve mostly been playing my Witch Doctor (level 52 and in Hell Act 1 now), mostly solo though some grouping as well. Some of the fights have been an interesting challenge and Hell is noticeably more challenging than Nightmare (Normal was a joke). Crafting and the Auction House have both been somewhat disappointing so far – crafting is generally more costly than justify its rewards and the Auction House has a disturbing habit of being up and down all the time as they sort out various issues with it (it’s also rather lacking in search functionality and limits users to 10 listings which is a bit disappointing though I understand it).
Blizzard posted a dev blog this morning (Game Design Update) describing some of the issues they’re seeing with balance and play-feel as well as roughly outlining some of their intended solutions. It’s well worth a read if you’re interested in Blizz’s perspective about the course of Diablo III, and of course I have a few thoughts about it.
A Beta By Any Other Name…
TERA, Diablo III and Guild Wars 2
A couple of weeks ago, like many other people, I participated in the betas for TERA and Diablo III. While I wasn’t particularly thrilled by either, they both had some interesting elements.
I beat FEZ today. I mean, I finished the game two days ago, but today I really completed it. As in, all achievements unlocked, 209.4% completion, saw the ‘all cubes collected’ ending. The game sunk its claws into my completionist side and wouldn’t let me go until I was done; it also reminded me that I really do like platformers, especially the part that involves searching for and collecting every last little piece.
I got into a couple betas this week (including Diablo III) and I was going to tell you about that (it’s still coming but later) but I got sidetracked by a little thing called FEZ.