critters in my console

For my analysis on incorporation/presence/immersion in video games I had to admit that my time and experiences with L4D2 had been too limited to any meaningful analysis of the game. Instead I tried to brainstorm FPSs that I could do the analysis on, and ended up returning to a game I played for hours and days and weeks back before I travelled to the US and subsequently started my academic gamer career on ITU. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Call of Duty: Black Ops. 

The hours I invested in this thing, or invested might be a little strong. The hours I killed while killing 10 year old kids online with AK47u and ballistic knifes. I think I spent two days completing the game on veteran, more because I felt I needed to do it before starting my goal to prestige level 100000 than actually feeling for it. I can’t remember if I really enjoyed it, only that I really looked forward to going online and getting the good ol’ endorphin rush in a TDM/Capture the HQ/etc.

I don’t know anybody who were particularly fond of the single player in Black Ops. Yeah, most of gamers probably thought it was fun, but the multiplayer was the main draw. Addictive as hell and easy to jump in and (8 hours later) out. In comparision with Battlefield, which I also kinda enjoy, Black Ops is the easy fix where you don’t have to gather all of your friends to play and be winning. If you’re good enough you’re good enough and can handle yourself without a team - for the most part. And the pacing is so frantic that the three seconds you have to wait to respawn feels like forever before you curse yourself for, again, forgetting to watch the killcam and 20 seconds later you get killed the same place by the same guy. But how I have yelled at the screen during some of my sessions with the game. The days where everything against me and I ended up staying online for 4 hours to finally become the ‘nemesis’ of a british kid who had been ripping me a new one over the span of maybe 20-25 rounds, but nothing compared to the sensation of actually beating an opponent who I knew was better than me, and how I imagined that he knew the same and that he had a temper just as bad as mine, and how his controller was scattered around his room in a thousand pieces. I still don’t care if he was only 10.

Oh how I wish I could do some of this stuff….

I haven’t played that much Fifa since the Bergkamp-days back in 1996-2000. Every time I tried to pick up one of the newer versions, I played 5 matches and never picked it up again. The learning curve had become huge, and ‘12 is no different. It’s not something you just pick up and play. There are four (maybe more) ways to run with the ball, a HUGE variety of skillmoves (of which I have perfected one), three ways to shoot and the list goes on. Apart from all these things that is dependant on input, there is also a need to always be aware of your surroundings and whereabouts. Which way should you run with the ball, pass, dribble, shoot? Fifa 12 perfects the formula - the movement/input is unprecedented. I have never played a game where I feel this much in control and seen my thoughts (or lack of quick thinking) shown on screen. Screw Kinect, Move and Wii. This is the sense of kinaesthetic involvement I dreamed about when playing Amiga back in the days. This is why I feel like a total badass when scoring a goal - because it was all me (almost). Playing Fifa 12 is my chance of being an awesome footballer, even though I suck at the real thing. It’s that close to the real thing. I dare any FPS to do what Fifa 12 does for kinesthetic involvement…

A quick one for today.

As the title suggest I’m on a quest to find literature about how video games feature protagonists, but in my initial scan of the interwebz it seems as though this is something that has not been written a lot about. There is a lot of the usual Are games narratives?-discussion, which is a sensible one. But it doesn’t seem like a lot of researchers has dealt with the role of the protagonist (or player’s role in forming the protagonist). I actually feel like this could be a quite interesting study, so if anybody out there know about any research on the topic I would love to hear about it. 

More specifically I’m interested in how the protagonist of a game can sometimes lead players to do things they wouldn’t do if ‘they were the protagonist’. Think GTA, L.A. Noire. In these games the protagonist is a virtual character that the player embodies while playing - without necessarily having the choice to do whatever they want or the lack of creating a moral system for the character. Instead many games force the player to act in a certain way and do certain actions to progress.

This is still a quite raw idea floating around my brain, so it is still subject to change.

True story. Apparently a generated world in minecraft is around the same size as a 2d cut of Uranus. That’s quite a lot of space for digging, building and getting bitten by zombies. Thanks to Bert Baker for that interesting fact about the size of Minecraft. Go see for yourself how big it is

Speaking of Zombies I have recently played some L4D2. I haven’t played that series since the debut of L4D1 back in the days, so it was nice to catch up and play a bit of ‘running away from zombies, and being afraid if the next special zombie is a tank’. Some of the additions Valve have made from 1 to 2 I’m less thrilled about. The melee weapons in the game just don’t cut (pun, hah!) it for me and they feel slighty detached from the controls I feel. I’m not always sure if I hit anything and sometimes the cuts are sooo random represented by wrong limbs being cut off, etc. I really wish it was possible to get some different feedback than vague audio and visual.

Today’s post was actually just so I could present that funny fact.

Till next time.

Today I found out that I have to pay 1.000 kroner to get internet again - apparently the router provided by ISP doesn’t work and I have to pay for a new one. Strange business strategy…. Anyway this forced me to start an offline game of Minecraft away from the ITU server I had been playing on. Before today’s session I only played a few minutes alone in my very own world. Frankly an offline session didn’t really do it for me after playing it online. It wasn’t the same feeling knowing that you wouldn’t bump into other players and had no chance of showing of your constructions without doing all the youtube-ing that Minecraft is ‘famous’ for. I still managed to put in a few hours, but this was mainly due to a stronghold underground that I explored - my very first stronghold. But my lack of enjoyment when playing alone made me think about why I prefer playing with others - even though I haven’t engaged in any exploration or co-building with my fellow students on the ITU server. I have pretty much gone around my own business on the server and only showed my constructions off to people wandering by. I really can’t pinpoint why I feel so unsatisfied playing alone. Maybe it is the knowledge that my building will forever only be for my own enjoyment. Maybe its the knowledge that IF I wanna go to the Nether I have to do it alone. Maybe its just that it is comforting to know that other players are wasting the same amount of time as me, and thus justify my own time put into the game. Maybe its that I dont always have to go to the wiki if I need advice. Maybe I haven’t been able to pinpoint it just yet - or maybe a combination of all of the above. I’m still pondering going back to my offline game, but it really doesn’t draw me in as the online survival mode does. 

Maybe its because I know its my world - and Minecraft worlds do not hold the dynamic feeling I get when I play e.g. Skyrim or Fallout. I feel like I can make a difference besides shaping the spatial dimensions. I can have friends and allies and make certain factions hate me. I know that I can kill stuff in Minecraft, lava burns, zombies bite and creepers explode. Other human players add another dimension of interaction with the world that I would normally get from NPC (although NPCs tend to add that to a lesser degree). Maybe I need that dimension to be fully present and not just play with blocks.

Till next time.

When I was a child I loved playing with Lego. I could play for hours. Building new structures, tearing them down, building something new and experimenting with how things could be put together (this is also why I think it’s a shame that Lego has made so many special pieces and big building blocks over the years, but that is neither here nor there in this post). The reward was the feeling of accomplishment when you had been looking for a piece for hours and found it - or when you finally had the whole structure finished and it was time to play, but it seemed that that moment never really happened. Instead the constructions of lego grew until there was no more lego to build with. Sadly I’d have to wait for my birthday to come around or tear down some of my existing structures. In Minecraft I have a 1.000.000 x 1.000.000 blocks to play with - and that’s only one layer. Minecraft is like Lego on steroids and it’s amazing. I read a lot about how it is a boring and pointless game - but my experience with it, is the experience to gather materials and construct something that you are actually proud of. There is no point to the game for me - beyond the constructions I make, even survival becomes a minor aspect of the game. It’s only when I need to go further for resources that it really becomes a problem I need to adress. It’s the idea that I need a big castle in the sky to be safe from creepers, zombies, skeletons, etc. when I could cover myself with 8 blocks of sand when the sun sets and be safe throughout the night. Instead I have spent +10 hours constructing a huge ass house/castle in the sky with windows and doors and terraces and furnaces and… 

Till next time.

But can’t stop thinking Minecraft… Damnit. I’m gonna mine some iron when I get home.

I have revived my enthusiasm for building with blocks. I haven’t played with lego for a decade, at least not without with my nephew, but now I’m building again. This time it’s only digital blocks, and I can’t stop. I am constantly tearing down blocks and building something new - something larger. It’s amazing how much fun it can be. I don’t spend much time in my new treehouse/castle, instead I’m collecting more stone to build on top of it. My tower has reached the upper limit set in the code of the game, so now I have started building it wider and spacier. It’s gonna be so cool when it’s finished, but I need to build…..

My first blog on Minecraft. A game I would never have played if it weren’t for Digital Game Theory on ITU. It didn’t appeal to me, and basically not on my to-play list. Boy am I glad that it is on Gordon Calleja’s to-play list for my classes.

Let me start with a couple of things I have observed since I started playing it Sunday. Minecraft is fun in a weird grindy way. It resembles some of the stimuli I find in the Football Manager-series - “just one more block and I will quit for today”. Minecraft has become my girlfriend’s least favorite word over the past couple of days. Finding Diamonds isn’t easy. I prefer building to adventuring - so far. When I read other peoples’ post on Minecraft I see that many started playing Minecraft by digging - I went for the sky and am currently the proud owner of a treehouse turned half-castle on a mountain top. Don’t judge me though, it’s still under development. I’m still amazed over what you can actually craft. Today I made a bed, a trapdoor, a furnace and tomorrow I will try and find a diamond so I can make a jukebox. 

I have a hard time admitting this, as I thought I would never enjoy Minecraft, but I am at the level where I should consider constricting my time with the game. Wow.

This is it for now - but much more sooon. So much to talk about. Tomorrow I will journey out to find a diamond so I can listen to some sweet tunes while re-decorating my livingroom and laughing at endermen outside my windows in the night while eating porkchops before going to bed. Maybe I should build another floor so I could have a library?

I decided this afternoon that I wanted to revisit Niko Bellic andLiberty City. This game has bugged me since it came out, and I never got to finish it. As I remember it I really felt that the gameplay, story and protagonist were all disconnected to some degree.

Niko Bellic, a retired hardened criminal from former Yugoslavia (right?), tries to start a new life but in opposition to Tony Montana he’s not set on conquering the criminal underworld of the promised land. Niko seems as a guy who wants to put his past behind him and start new in a different setting, but he can’t escape the claws of crime - and at that same time he seeks revenge. In many of the cutscenes he seems as a guy who don’t wanna do bad things, but as soon as we are given control he shoots everything around him and plows into pedestrians - and there are never signs of remorse from him. He doesn’t even acknowledge that he has done these things. All of this is just how I remember it, and my reason for trying to replay the game as an honest and non-lethal version of Niko Bellic, to make him a more likeable character and not just the protagonist of a story that is happening isolated from my actions as Niko. How the ef can a mass murderer be a likeable character? Interesting, yes. Likeable, no.

But alas I wasn’t able to find my copy of GTA IV, so instead I tried to take a different approach to playing Fallout 3, and luckily I had a save game just after you exit Vault 101, which meant the whole world was at my feet and ready for some passive exploring.

My rules were simple: don’t kill anything and stay squishy at level 3 for all the wild beast to murder me. This obviously made for much more intense playsession compared to being all powerfull in power armor. Every encounter was borderline deadly.

Everything from dogs to super mutants wanted a piece of Dylan McKay (the name of my lonely wanderer). One of the most intense moments was a quick escape from a metro station, where I was on the run from five to six giant roaches. I had to barricade myself in an office, before I finally mustered the courage to take a shot at daylight. I quickly ran out the office and up the stairs and through a fence door, which I quickly closed behind. When I turned around four feral ghouls were coming at me screaming for fresh meat. I had to dodge them and make my escape blindly running to what I hoped was daylight.

Next thing I know a super mutant yells “HOT POTATO” and throws a grenade in my face. Piece of cake normally, but not so much without weapons, but then something interesting happened. The ghouls agreed that the mutant would make a bigger meal and decided to jump it. I ran away and let them fight it out. I didn’t dare go big and see who the winner was.

I actually really like this way of playing Fallout 3. It totally distorts the power relations in the wasteland. From being an OP wanderer I found myself in the bottom of the food chain, and when I was rescued by the Brotherhood I really wanted the game designers to have implemented a hug animation - and maybe a little cry. Parts of the game that were tense before (e.g. metro stations) became even more tense, and general travel proved to be more about survival than exploration and only when standing safely on top of a hill would I enjoy the view or try to locate my waypoint.

This is possibly not in total opposition to how the game is supposed to be played, but it is certainly not the way that I and people I know have played the game. I managed to get to the New Galaxy Radio without killing anything or otherwise being aggresive, and I’m definitely heading back as Dylan McKay when I get the time.

Edit: @Jokollhom 

I found the answer to Niko’s nationality - kinda. In the end of the game you are chasing a russian mobster, and he keeps screaming at you “balkan peasant, you are not as good as us russians” (slightly simplified for purpose). But I guess you are from one of the Balkan countries.