My gaming kryptonite, and the interesting implications thereof

So, I'm going to lay bare a piece of Unfortunate Gaming Truths. There's a type of game that's like crack to me, the kind of game that lures me in for just one round at eight o' clock, then I stumble home exhausted at two in the morning. When anyone asks where I've been, I stammer "The office."

My most recent gaming mistress is Card Hunter, but there's a storied lineage stretching back to Civ5, League, and TF2. What's interesting here is that these games aren't the games I want to play: My ideal games have wildly original gameplay, an immersive story or theme, or are otherwise semi-pretentious art or indie games.

Which brings me to a realization about the games that own my soul: They don't give me what I think I want, they don't give me the real experience. I get hooked on games most because of how I experience them, not how they actually are.

To put this a different way, these games could be the Matrix, or Plato's shadow puppets. Things like Civ5's early gameplay are a perfect example: I'm not actually tactically engaged, I'm playing mostly by muscle memory. I've got a bandit camp nearby, so do this, or I'm on an island, so do that. I get the satisfaction of thinking that I'm smart, but all I've done is trot out non-complex solutions to the same problem. This lets me stay in a hazed, tuned-out relaxation mode, but still feel challenged.

Compare that to games that are actually tactical. Transitioning to the mid-game in Civ5 adds layers of complexity, and I rarely end up thinking too deeply about how to win a game of League. If I have to start thinking like that, it calls up a different part of my brain, and makes me sit up and pay attention. So much for the high, it's time to sober up.

Even though I'm more engaged with that kind of challenging gameplay, it's not as fun or relaxing, so I shy away from those games. So what's important, then, isn't that I'm challenged -- it's that I think I'm being challenged. In fact, because I (like most people) like to fill bars and complete milestones, it's actually better for a game to fake-challenging than to actually put up a fight.

In another case, most of the games that hate to see me alone on a night like this are round-based PvP. Here again, perception is key, almost like a Turing test. I found myself quitting out of a Card Hunters arena match because it was against a computer, rather than PvP. My issue was not anything to do with playing a computer, because AI is so good I can't tell the difference. I wasn't looking at chat for conversation. It was exclusively the knowledge that I wasn't playing against another person, which made the game feel less worthy.

The trick being, AI opponents can provide a much better experience, especially if they're programmed with the above point in mind, that the perception of challenge is better than actual challenge. An AI opponent can throw the match at just the right time, or ramp up difficulty to match your play. With an AI opponent, the game designer can build exactly the narrative that makes a player want to keep playing. We still match players versus players, but I can't see any reason to have to do this, and plenty of benefits to having PvE masquerade as PvP.

I'm not going to advocate for us all to unshackle ourselves from staring at the wall of Plato's cave, or demand that game devs not manipulate our gaming experiences. AIs would be a damned sight better than dealing with some League players, for one thing, and a grand strategy game with adaptive difficulty would be brilliant.

What I will say, though, is that those of us who want gaming to push its limits as an art form should be playing games that way. Don't just go through the motions, don't get a seven-round itch. If you want to play something genuinely fresh and challenging, make sure you're both playing games that reward that, and that you're playing those games in that way. Don't go looking for a top-tier game experience while you're mentally checked out.

If you just want to relax or hang out with friends, though, embrace that. If I could have a Smash64 opponent right now that played as well as a human being, it wouldn't matter if they were actually a computer, so long as I never found out. Figure out how you'll have the most fun, then take that design philosophy into the dev studio. We can nudge players in 4X games without making the game completely linear, give them the experience that's most fun.

What's Matthew Listening To?

I may not be a real audiophile, but I have been listening to some good music -- and at the risk of being a hipster, you probably haven't heard of some of it. Which is a shame, because it's worth a listen. Page through, maybe you'll find something new and interesting.

Warning: I listen to NSFW music, and some of the titles ain't clean. Avert your eyes, children and actual adults.

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"Cum Junkie," by Genitorturers. Pop-rock with a catchy chorus that you can never, ever sing in public.

"Wu-Tang Clan Aint Nuthing Ta F' Wit," by Wu-Tang Clan. All you need is to listen to the hook, so you can quote and paraphrase it without feeling like a complete poser.

"Nobody Likes You (When You're Dead)," by Zombina and the Skeletones. Pop-punk about the loneliness of an undead girl. Smart rhymes and an upbeat organ/synth make this a fun parody of both B movies and middle-class culture.

"Hey Baby," by Deadmau5 and Melleefresh. I've heard it described as "for horny nerds," mashing up Deadmau5's expansive, sparse sound with alternating squeaky and gravelly bad-girl vocals. I usually listen to it in the same session as "Le Disko," and the pulsing bass is good for zone-out gaming; it's served me well playing FPSes.

"Tough Guy," by Celldeweller. Celldweller's somewhere between a rock band and a dubstep act, and if you took the structure of late-radio heavy metal, but replaced the solos with heavy drops, you wouldn't be far off from Celldweller. The drops are very Skrillex-y, very heavy and dirty.

"Invaders Must Die," by The Prodigy. They're probably closest to Pendulum in sound, serious drum 'n' bass with heavy distortion. This track goes very abruptly from slow to manic, so be prepared for violent drops.

Memento Mori by The Bastard Fairies. If a burlesque group moonlit as an indie band doing the soundtrack for a coming-of-age story, they'd be The Bastard Fairies. They've got acoustic guitars, airy vocals where you can hear every breath, and samples from 50's era PSAs. Fair warning, their sound changes between Memento Mori and their more recent releases; still good, but less cabaret-ish.

"Clarity" by Zedd and Foxes, "Wake Me Up" by Avicii, "I Need Your Love" by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding. Pop-techno, you've heard it on the radio, you don't need me to describe it to you.

Immersion and "Witchcraft" by Pendulum. I latched onto Pendulum's "Blood Sugar" back in college, and hearing their new style is a dramatic change. (Or maybe "Blood Sugar" just wasn't representative of their style.) These tracks are more storybook and heroic/romantic, but still drum 'n' bass. The cover art of Immersion gives the right feel of musical fantasy: Two nude swimmers, in dark water with a spotlight ray of light, surrounded by a reef and fish.

"Crystallize" and "Elements," by Lindsey Stirling. Apparently everyone else has already listened to this, but I just discovered it. Violin played over dubstep; it's awesome. This is more like European dubstep, with slow, rolling drops, and less thudding bass and more in the higher registers.

The Special Hells: Bringing a Knife to a Flamewar

The worst thing you can ever do is personally piss off a community manager. Maybe your account is permabanned, or you’re given a temp ban from the forums. But if you’ve been riding the line – if the CM can’t quite justify banning you, but you’ve genuinely made an enemy of them – if they have to get creative to deal with you?

Then, my friend, welcome to the special hells.

(Note: This is going to be a list of vBulletin-focused techniques for dealing with problem players. I haven’t worked with other forum backends, but there may be ways to replicate the effects. Also, our version of vBulletin is very customized, so there may be differences from your own versions.)

Important links:

Forums and Moderators -> Forum Permissions

Usergroups -> Usergroup Manager

Tachy Goes to Coventry

This is the classic, the battle-hardened veteran of dealing with spammers and alt accounts alike. When banning someone would just get them to make a new account – whether the user is spamming, or just angry enough to keep registering new free accounts – Tachy is the answer. By adding them to the Tachy list, they’re added to everyone’s Ignore lists.

From the player’s perspective, they’re still posting threads, still replying, etc. All anyone else will see, though, is “The admins decided that X should be quiet for a while.” This applies to their old posts as well, which is a mixed blessing.

If you want, you can remove them from Coventry after they’ve calmed down, but unlike banning them, they’ve lost time to figuring out what happened. It takes a surprisingly long time for them to realize this, often a couple days.

(Fun fact: Facebook uses a version of Coventry in comment moderation. If you Hide a comment, at least in the Page framework, it can still be seen by them and their friends.)

Change the title of the Banned usergroup

For vBulletin, the way banning someone works is that it switches their usergroup to a usergroup with the Banned characteristic. First off, that means you can make more Banned usergroups with different permissions, allowing you to create different degrees of banning; second, since Banned is a usergroup, you can customize it. You can hide it.

Say you’ve got a popular user you need to temp-ban. If his friends see that he’s banned, they’ll rise up in revolt. Usually, the giveaway is the user title: While he’s banned, his title will say as much. You can open up the usergroup and hide that, though, changing the Banned group’s default title to be the same as their pre-ban title.

(If your Banned usergroup has other giveaways, like different avatar permissions, copy your main Registered Users group, and just scroll down and set it as a Banned group.)

“You can’t see the PvP forums? However could this have happened?!”

Some players are good and helpful through most of the forums, but when they get on one particular track, they turn into a Dire Ragemonster (challenge rating 7). Simple: Keep them out of that forum.

vBulletin lets you customize accessing and viewing forums according to their usergroup. This is the same tech that lets you make hidden Moderator Forums. Presto-changeo, now they can’t even see the discussion that was getting them riled up, or they can read it but not comment on it.

(This isn’t usually something that can be set player-by-player. You’ll probably want to set up a new usergroup that doesn’t have access to those forums.)

Changing permissions

This one’s less subtle, but it can give you a way to directly curb a bad behavior without having to ban someone. The ability to have a signature, and what can be included in it, is determined by the usergroup.

You can also change their image permissions, and how long their posts can be. This has to be altered per usergroup per forum, though, so it can take a while to set up usegroups with these permissions changed globally. Alternatively, if an entire board is a problem – generally PvP forums – change it so no usergroup can post images or gifs.­

The banhammer isn’t your only weapon, fellow CMs. Know your tools and get creative, because sometimes it’s a lot better to use something tricky than just banning them. Maybe you can give a player a second chance by only removing some permissions, or maybe you keep a spammer from realizing he’s effectively banned – either way, keep these subtle moves in mind.

Gaming: The Year So Far

We’re nine months in, so it’s a good time to look at the year so far. We haven’t seen many structural changes, like the explosion of Kickstarters last year, but that doesn’t mean it’s been a boring nine months. Read on, and let me know in the comments if you think I missed something.

No one spoils BioShock Infinite’s ending…

Infinite was always going to be a blockbuster, and it was always going to have a game-changer ending. This was never in doubt. It was far from guaranteed that it would be this spectacular, though, and much credit goes to the producers who finally pushed that game out the door. Infinite in March was the first Game of the Year contender, and all the pent-up excitement from years of teasers exploded in cosplay, art and ending discussions.

Oddly, though, this generally didn’t end up spoiling the ending. There was a lot of discussion that there was an ending, and that it would leave you reeling, but not the specifics or spoilers. The media was generally on-point, as well, pointing towards Booker, Elizabeth and their relationship as the most important part, rather than the world they were in.

… or the ending of The Last of Us, either

Plot spoilers weren’t discussed publicly for Infinite, but the mechanics could be debated, and companion AI immediately became a major conversation. In June, Elizabeth was followed by Ellie, and it felt like Infinite all over again. Both games had mechanical similarities, featured an AI companion designed to be appreciated, and had Troy Baker voicing the protagonist.

With all those similarities, the only major difference was that Infinite was more of a cultural phenomenon: Elizabeth and Columbia made for better fan art and cosplay. I’ll be interested to hear the comparisons between these two from a business side. Two art games wrapped in an FPS shell, received with high accolade from the press – but one got a titanic marketing campaign, and another relied mostly on word of mouth. Profit comparisons would be fascinating for these.

(Point of interest: I’ve heard that Elizabeth’s role was actually modeled after Ellie. The story goes that the Infinite team had originally designed Elizabeth closer to the traditional model of a companion, then after watching a Last demo, realized Elizabeth’s mechanics had to change.)

Subscription MMOs still get made

Sure, it makes a degree of sense, but I never guessed that both ESO and WildStar would be subscription-based. We’ve been heralding the demise of the subscription for a while, and now even WoW is considering going F2P; ESO and WildStar might be the last chance for subscription to remain the default option.

Growing pains in the industry

Much like last year, this year’s seen a lot of moments where the gaming industry confronted glaring failures in including women in the community. From Dickwolves getting dredged back up at PAX to the videos of Tropes vs Women in Video Games, this year’s had plenty of headlines about this. Unfortunately, judging by how each flashpoint’s occurred, it doesn’t seem that much has changed: Each flashpoint treads the same ground, without the vocal arguers on each side changing at all.

Interestingly, this year’s marked a couple of shifts in the way we discuss diversity in gaming. In years past, the diversity discussion centered around having female and non-white protagonists; now it seems more focused around how good female characters are, and how we treat female gamers.

Sony serves Microsoft…

After the initial reveals, everyone was watching the PS4/Xbox One drama. Sony didn’t just strike the right tone by reaching out to indies, they backed it up with exclusives and got extra mileage with snarky ads and trollish stunts.

… and Microsoft makes a solid recovery

It’s yet to be seen whether the PS4’s early buzz advantage will matter, though. After E3, Microsoft did a pretty complete 180, blurring the differences between the two systems. Titanfall in particular might match the PS4’s buzz, even if it isn’t exclusively for the Xbox One.

At this point, the console rivalry’s dropped off the radar of casual conversation; with much of the stain on the Xbox One nullified by the changes in policy, Microsoft might be able to build buzz properly when it actually launches.

Saint’s Row IV

For a couple weeks before and after launch, SR IV was getting talked up as much as BioShock Infinite and The Last of Us. Going back a few months, the chief selling point was that this would be as madcap weird as the third game, but with superpowers thrown in. Then the first gameplay section came out, with the Saints in a weird mix of alien invasion and Aaron Sorkin drama, with writing that lives up to Sorkin.

By the time the dubstep gun preorders started arriving, the game had built buzz that wasn’t going away, that this was a genuinely great game. The devs and publishers have kept that train rolling with Sony-worthy trolling, like the GAT V DLC on Steam the day GTA V came out for consoles.

At time of writing, it’s a month after release, and the GAT V stunt still has people talking about it. Right now, the Game of the Year list seems to be Saint’s Row IV, GTA V, BioShock Infinite, and Last of Us.

(Note: I've left GTA V off this list, for the moment, because I'm not sure how it'll shake out. If nothing else, it hasn't been surprising like Saint's Row IV, nor has it been a juggernaut like Infinite.)

DotA 2 makes its case

Somehow, after years of being League of Legends’ perpetually-in-beta cousin, DotA’s emerged as an equal in the MOBA space. League got a huge lead over the past few years, but DotA 2 is making its case, and it’s about equal in the

I’m reminded a lot of what one of my bosses is saying: Riot’s going to start to decline in 2014. It’s definitely far too early to make any calls, but League doesn’t have as strong a grip on the MOVA space as it used to, even in the Traditional subgenre it used to dominate.

BioShock Infinite - Analyzing the Corset Scene

I’ve been thinking about one particular scene in Bioshock Infinite, close to the end, that really lays bare the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth. Go watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cAhaUTlMdo, from 7:50 – 9:17, then come back – this is going to be spoileriffic.

Also, be aware that this is a very, very in-depth look at storytelling techniques. Walls of text are approaching.

[Trigger warning, I’m partly going to be analyzing this scene from a sexual assault perspective.]