emptying my brain onto the internet since 1998…
I love zombies. Â Not like in a romantic way, but like in a “they make a great setting for human drama” way. Â I have enjoyed reading every page of The Walking Dead comic book, as it is probably one of the best zombie stories ever done. Â I was thrilled to hear that a TV project was in the works, and now I’m simply over the moon after hearing that AMC has given the project a greenlight.
I cannot wait to see this. Â It will be epic.
There is a special place reserved in hell for Stephenie Meyer. Â Her Twilight series has destroyed vampires. Â Only, her vampires aren’t vampires at all. Â They drink blood, I think, because I honestly can’t remember any of them drinking blood in the movie. Â Maybe they drink blood in the books. Â I don’t know. Â I’ll never read them. Â The wife, who now denies ever saying this, told me that her other book, The Host, was more Sci-Fi and post-apocalyptic and she thought I would enjoy it.
I can’t say I hated the book, but I can say it definitely was not a “can’t put down” read. Â I mean, I might instead say it was an “always put down” read. Â During the two months it took me to plow through her 600+ page novel, if I was ever presented a choice between reading the book or doing something else I always chose to do something else.
The story of the book is this… aliens come to Earth. Â These aliens are a form of parasitic being that can only live in another host body and when they do so they “take over” in that the person who was there is imprisoned deep down inside and never comes back. Â These aliens aren’t hostile, in fact they are so peaceful they insist that they decided to annihilate mankind (without actually killing anyone) because humans were flawed and killing each other anyway. Â They did it “for our own good”. Â We get to follow one soul (what the aliens are called) who is implanted into a woman who was previously resisting the aliens. Â Essentially, if a person is aware of the aliens before implantation they are more able to resist being mentally squashed. Â So Melanie (the human) remains conscious inside as Wanderer takes over. Â There is a lot of touchy feely stuff and eventually Wanderer decides to go out into the desert to see if she can find Jered (Melanie’s boyfriend) and Jamie (Melanie’s brother). Â She does find them, and thirty five other people, hiding out there and the two of them (Melanie and Wanderer) try to find a place to fit in among the rebels.
This is definitely a “chick” book.  Most of the action happens between chapters or off screen.  Because Wanderer is our point of view for the entire book, we stay with her while she stays inside and other people run off to steal supplies and fight the bad guys.  There are a lot of emotions and feelings and crying and love and …. and a bunch of stuff that really I found I could not care less about. Not because I’m some heartless person, but because I had no desire to care about the main character. You see, the point of view is Wanderer, the alien, and from page one of the book I felt that the aliens were arrogant smug assholes.  At best, our heroine is an ignorant useless waste of space who has never bothered even considering that by taking over other bodies they are, in effect, killing people.  It takes nearly 600 pages for Wanderer to come to the same conclusion that I had drawn in the first chapter, and it was the most tedious and boring journey I’ve ever partaken of.
I’d always flippantly said I wouldn’t read the Twilight books, even though, given time, I probably would have eventually. Â Well, thankfully now I don’t have to. Â After reading this pile of pages I have absolutely no desire at all to ever read anything written by Mrs. Meyer again. Â Ever. Â I am sure there are people out there who would enjoy this book, in fact I’ve talked to a few of them, but I could not in good conscience recommend this to anyone.
At the end of this, having now gone through the five elements of what a player gets, technically, from a group structure, it appears that grouping itself needs to stay unless the games are completely redesigned. For example, in playing Wizard 101 I have been a part of a group many times without forming an actual group because the game is built around “casual grouping”. If a player is in combat, to join them you need only step into the combat circle. All combat is contained within a temporary group, four slots for your side and four slots for the enemy, and when combat is done the group is dissolved. But it is turn based card/deck played combat, and not the real-time hack and slash spell casting of the traditional Diku model.
Also, as brought up by many of the people I discussed this with, grouping does bring a social element with it, a sense of belonging and direction. There is just something about being invited to a group and joining that group that bands people together in ways that a random collection of people doesn’t have.
Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this exercise.
I saw this first from Raph, then Lum, and lastly Tesh, and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Â A $20 donation through DriveThruRPG gets you $1,481.31 worth of gaming stuff. Â I have a healthy interest in games and game design, and just like most writers will tell aspiring writers that the best thing to do is read, most game designers will tell you that the best thing to do is play games. Â If you don’t have $20 to give, they’ll take and match any $5 and $10 donations. Â But hey, why not just go for $20 and get the free stuff?
Tooth Fairy:
I have absolutely no desire at all to see Dwayne Johnson in a tutu and wings playing the part of the mythical figure who takes teeth from under kids’ pillows and leaves money behind. Â None. Â Well, maybe if it is awful enough I’ll watch it for a laugh someday on DVD.
Extraordinary Measures:
Based on a true story of a man with sick kids who decides to help fund the research of a drug for a cure. Â I got to see a screening of this a while back, and it was decent enough, but it was typical. Â It tugged the right heartstrings at the right moments, it made me laugh now and then to lighten the mood, and I felt good watching it. Â That said, it really isn’t worth the price of admission. Â Not full price anyway.
Legion:
Angels versus humanity. Â I got to see a screening of this last night and my opinion can be summed up in two words: wasted potential. Â This movie isn’t horrible, but it also isn’t really good either. Â The underlying ideas are fine, but the execution of them is lacking. Â The film could have been staged better to be more exciting, the diner in the middle of nowhere felt way too cliche. Â Every step of the way, every fight, every loss, every win, it felt uninspired. Â The movie took no risks. Â That said… there were some good lines and scenes. Â I kinda enjoyed the movie on some level, but I wouldn’t pay to see it.
Over two years ago on this blog I decided I was going to investigate the idea of building a game where the player was only allowed to create one character. From thinking about it on my own and from discussions on message boards, I came to realize that most MMOs simply couldn’t do it. Mainly because their design has actually come to not only expect but actually count on players playing more than one character. With shared bank space to easily swap items and continuing to limit characters in the number of trade skills and other aspect, as well as encouraging people to play alts and race through the old game again and again removing as many barriers to speedy leveling as possible, you simply couldn’t release a clone of any current DIKU-style MMO that only allowed one character. You’d need to rebuild the game from the ground up.  And most MMO players simply weren’t interested.
Enter the Facebook game.
By default, the design of almost every Facebook game is that you only have one character. As well, there is only one world and everyone shares it.  It is this element, and this element alone that has me taking a second look at the Facebook games that I originally dismissed.
The game play of most Facebook games still irritates me. Â Some of them are what I refer to as “intensely casual”. Â They are casual in that they require very little effort, but they are intense because their design is that there are actions to take and buttons to click all the time. Â These games often provide so much micromanagement that a player can get lost in there quite easily.
I’d love to see some games that can dial back that intensity, like D&D Tiny Adventures (though they go a little too far and it barely feels like I’m playing a game at all), and I’ll keep looking for them. Â Sadly, though, Facebook games are almost less diverse than traditional MMOs, so it won’t take long at all to go through them.
But maybe this is what it takes. Â I said that to do one character in one world that MMOs would need to be rebuilt from the ground up, and maybe Facebook games are where that rebuilding can happen.
The other night I decided I’d drop in to Wizard 101. Â It is a great game for just jumping in and banging out some combat or quests, then logging out. Â It’s casual in the best sense of the word, in that you can play at your own pace and not that it only requires a browser and babysitting.
Anyway, I had forgotten where I had logged out previously and I committed the cardinal sin of Wizard 101: moving before looking. Â I stepped backwards into the street and immediately joined someone else’s combat. Â No big deal really. Â There was only one monster, so I picked a card and attacked. Â I picked my card first. Â The other guy then picked his, but when it came to casting, he went first. Â He threw a damage increase, death +30%, and then I fired off my weakest death spell, which amplified +30% only did about 90 points of damage. Â A waste of the damage increase. Â Now, keep in mind, when you pick a spell, everyone in your group can see what you picked and what you have targeted. Â I picked first. Â There was a good ten second pause for the other guy to make his move. Â He could have said “Don’t use that.” or something, but he didn’t.
So the round is done and the damage increaser was wasted and the guy says, “your jack o as”.
One of the great things about Wizard 101 is that it is very very kid friendly. Â There are two forms of chat. Â The first is completely restricted and only allows you to speak in canned phrases like “Help!” and “Let’s go fight [insert quest target enemy here].” and other such things. Â The other form of chat is free form typing, however, every word you type is compared to the Wizard 101 dictionary and if it doesn’t exist in there the word will stay in red on your screen and will appear as “…” to everyone else. Â What my groupmate was trying to say was “you are a jack ass” but if he had it would have gone out as “you are a jack …” or possibly even just “…”. Â I honestly forget how harsh the censoring is. Â So, because of the chat filter, a new slang has emerged in Wizard 101 using approximate swears.
Back to the group… he then tells me “fine ill let them kill you i wont attack at all” which was fine with me, even though a second monster joined in I can easily take two at a time in this area. Â Of course, he proceeds instead to target everything I target in an attempt to make me not fight. Â *shrug* Â We win and then he says, “more on” “flock off bench” “your a noob end of story there”. Â Translated: Moron. Fuck off bitch. You’re a noob, end of story there.
Flippantly I threw in a “less off” in there in response to his “more on”, and when he was done I said “You’re”. Â Which he took for arguing, like I was saying he was a noob when in reality I was correcting his language, his misuse of “your”. Â He then followed with lines that included “sheet o face”, “little bench” and he tried to explain to me that “you’re”, “your” and “you are” all mean the same thing. Â “master o bait”, “shut the flock up”, “as o hole”. Â The really funny part is when he claims that because of my spelling and refusal to type insults around the word filter it is because I’m a little kid.
What? Â So, in most MMOs, people spouting obscenities are often younger, less mature players. Â But in Wizard 101 I’m being told that proper grammar and not swearing is a sign of immaturity? Â Huh?
The sad thing is that the filter while preventing real swearing also prevents real communication. Â The guy asked how old I was, and I couldn’t answer because the game would not allow “35” or “thirty-five” or “thirty” or “five” to be said. Â In fact, at the end of our conversation he said, “i can tell from your crop of insults your not even third team”. Â Since the game splits players between “under 13” and “13 and over”, I assume he meant “13” but had to say “third team” to get around the filter.
The entire situation ended in irony. Â This guy was so pissed at me for the one miscast spell and my further arguments about his grammar that he reported me. Â If you go to the Wizard 101 FAQ page and click on the question “What happens when I get Reported?” you will find the following text:
When you report someone, or you are reported, a message is sent directly to Mr Lincoln that includes the chat logs of everything that was said before and after that report.
Mr Lincoln then reads the log and assess the situation. He determines how bad the offense was, looks up prior offenses for the reported individual, and based on that assessment he issues sanctions such as muting or banning and sends an email to the offending account explaining the violation and the sanctions.
If the report was falsely made, that is determined as well, and the player who made the false report is investigated as to whether or not they have made previous false reports. False reports are just a egregious as valid ones, and similar sanctions can be levied against repeat offenders of false reporting.
Everything that a player enters into the chat window is logged. These larger chat logs are also routinely checked for those infractions that are not reported.
Under the question “What is considered a Reportable Offense?” you’ll find:
We appreciate that our players want to make Wizard City the best it can be, and we’ve placed the tools in your hand to report players for inappropriate behavior. We ask that you use the reporting feature to identify truly egregious behavior, such as creative profanity (swearing around the filters), solicitation of usernames/passwords, predatory threats, racist comments and other such actions as outlined in the Terms of Use. The old story of “the kid that cried wolf” has a lot of bearing in this situation and we trust that all reports received by players are valid and require support intervention.
So, shortly after my new friend departed (I did add him to my friend list), a pop up window told me I had been reported.  Shortly after that, my new friend vanished, both from the game world and from my friend list. I can only assume my friend managed to get himself banned. On the other hand, my account was muted for 1 day. I asked for clarification and got it. Apparently, when my friend said “you little sheet” and I responded “Sheet of what?” my use of “sheet”, a common sidestep for the word “shit”, was enough to warrant a 1 day mute warning. I have asked if any action was taken against my friend, and I emailed them screen shots of the conversation, since I was unable to report him myself. No word as of yet…
Oh well…
The last thing I want to approach, and it is last only because I wracked my brain for weeks and could only think of five things a group mechanic provides (communications, status updates, rewards, content gating – everything else was purely social and not tied to the mechanic itself), is balance.
Many games these days that have groups use those groups to affect the design of the classes/characters in the game. Some players may not think so, but a lot, and I mean a ton, of time is spent tuning things like “what should the mana cost of this spell be?” and “what differences should there be between the single target version, the group version, and the area effect version?” You can look back at EverQuest and see that clearly in their buffs. A single target version of a spell might have a 2 second cast time and cost 200 mana. The group version has an 8 second cast time -making it harder to cast during combat- and costs only 700 mana -making it a big savings in both time and mana when casting it on a group of 6 players. The area effect version has a 30 second cast time, costs 3000 mana, and uses a pearl, making it impossible to cast in combat, wipes out the mana of the caster and costs in-game money, but it lands on “every player within a radius of X” making it fantastic for casting on a ten group raid at the beginning of an evening of raiding or for spamming buffs at the bank but little else. Every game (in the Diku mold) does this to some degree, using the group as an element of balance.
In Lord of the Rings Online, there are even group maneuvers where one player starts an action that opens up options for other group members to continue the attack. Without the group mechanic and the built in selection of who to notify of a group maneuver, the game would need to move indicators of group actions to the target itself so that a random collection of people without a formal group structure could pull off the same action.
Like with rewards and content gating, the group structure here is a fundamental element of the design for balance and weighs heavy in lots of the decisions made in what players can and can’t do.
Now commencing, the week of “The” …
The Spy Next Door:
Our first “The” film is this little throwaway kid friendly family film starring Jackie Chan as a secret super spy who also babysits. Or something like that. Take the kids, sure, but don’t expect to be anything other than predictable. Not worth my money, and I had the opportunity, three times, to see this for free and never did.
The Lovely Bones:
Our second “The” film is an adaptation of a very successful book. I’ve actually wanted to read the book, however, I put that idea aside once I heard there was to be a film. Films always have to excise content from the book, sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad. If the film is good, I’ll read the book in a couple of years. Anyway, if you don’t know, its about a girl who is raped and murdered looking in on the world after her death. She follows her family and the man who killed her and she watches her family fall apart and the murderer prepare to go after another girl. I’m not sure I’ll make it to the theater for this one, mostly because dramas don’t really benefit from the big screen (and often are hurt by people who won’t shut the hell up), but if I head to the cinema, this will be on my list.
The Book of Eli:
Our last “The” film is this post-apocalyptic tale. I was lucky enough to get into a screening of this last night, and let me tell you, in my opinion, this is one damn fine film.  The Hughes Brothers have taken Gary Whitta’s script and painted it beautifully on the screen with excellent use of Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.  I know some people in the theater were bored, because their shuffling and chatting occasionally distracted me, but I was enraptured.  Even having already seen it, I may pay to see it again.  Well done, gentlemen.  Well done.
And here ends the week of “The”.
I have to admit that the casual games on Facebook fascinate me. Â However, their “abuse” of social networking keeps me away from many of them. Â Every time a friend of mine updates me with some event in a game, or invites me to play, I hide all statuses from that game. Â In a similar fashion, anyone on my Twitter follow list who enables the twitter features in most games that offer them will be unfollowed.
To date, my foray into Facebook games has been two fold. Â On one hand you have games like Scrabble and other board games where you challenge people and play, or go looking for open games and play. Â On the other hand you have things like Farmville and Mafia Wars (the Zynga games) where in order to succeed you have to spam and invite your friends and join groups of people you don’t care about just to be able to progress. Â It is that latter group of games that turns me off.
So, what about you? Â Do you play Facebook games? Â If so, which ones? Â If so, what draws you to them?