Between MMOs, twitch twitch

Haven’t touched WoW in a couple weeks. Not since the patch with the raid finder and Darkmoon Fair. It seems very pointless. Maybe I’ll return to my overachiever troll someday, but not today. And SWTOR launches Tuesday (what an excellent time to burn up the rest of my vacation days).

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Heroes of Might and Magic VI. It’s kind of yes-and-no. It’s the classic game with lots of updates, some of which are very much appreciated. For instance, now, when you conquer a castle, all the mines around it automatically change ownership, so you don’t have to repetitiously go click each one. However, somehow this update resulted in extremely long games, and the way to win them is by sheer numbers. So you wind up with a lot of situations where you attack your computer-generated foe, discover he’s got 800 level 1 troops and 400 level 2s while you’ve got only 400 and 200; this means you have to spend some game weeks clicking “next day” rapidly until you close the gap some more, assuming you can produce more units per week than the enemy. Hence, some of the campaign games I’ve been playing take hours and hours to finish. Not sure how this will pan out in online play, and I note that online is “e-z mode” where you get all kinds of buffs and achievements for everything you do.

I’ve played around with Skyrim. I’m not a total Bethesda noob, having played the hell out of Daggerfall, a delightfully sandboxy game set in the same world. I’ve never gotten too far with Skyrim, though. My most accomplished character, a sullen looking little mage, basically ran around the country stealing horses and galloping around checking the scenery. I was disappointed to find no way to sail south to the warmer lands where the cat people live. Something about all that frozen northern European countryside just makes me want to get in a boat and head south (it’s a genetic thing). I may thrash Skyrim to the point where I get nicer looking clothes some day, but for now, did you know that if you jump off a cliff on a stolen horse, the horse will suck up all the damage and die, but you’ll be able to walk away and go pilfer yourself another nag?

And I play Angry Birds, Plants v. Zombies and Guitar Hero on my phone, but so far none of them interests me as much as the Kindle app, or asking Siri offensive questions.

I’ve been reading about games. Slate had an interesting series about a bunch of guys playing games I mostly haven’t touched, except for Skyrim.

I’ll comment a little bit on that whole series. One, there are a few references to whether gaming is exclusively a hobby for the rich. Personally, my wholehearted embracing of the gamer lifestyle has resulted in my savings account being healthier than it ever has, thanks to my tendency to want to play games rather than go outside and spend money.

And two, not all gamers are alike. These people who play cut-scene, first-person games, for example. Usually when you encounter games in mainstream journalism they are talking about this sort of experience. However, when I’d talk to other gamers in WoW, we spent a lot of time talking about games that are “pure” games – strategy, football, pattern recognition stuff like Angry Birds and Bejeweled. Not protagonist-identification type games with cut scenes.

I realize the people who are mainly into first person games are out there, mainly because they sell articles, probably because those articles are more accessible to non-gamers who think the entire experience is about being led through some kind of movie-like narrative, and get all confused or derisive when encountering something that tickles a different set of brain cells. One of the reviewers in the series discusses not “finishing” games, and several of them talk about the cost of constantly getting new ones. That tells me they’re approaching the issue in a linear, movie-like fashion. Finish one, on to the next. I think I approach games more like music – “I’m in an XXX mood today, so I think I’ll play a few songs by band XXXX.” It’s not like “ooh, I bought a new album but first I need to listen to that last one I bought.”

Which is how music reviewers listen to albums. Not normal people. Which leads to the question: do game reviewers play their games the same way as normal people? I think it would be interesting to have an article about several “types” of people describing how they interact with games. Not just upper middle class red-breasted robins tweeting from the trees, trying to make sure they attract flocks of likeminded red-breasted robins to peck at the bird feeders while simultaneously chasing off the bluebirds and mockingbirds and whatever all kind of birds y’all mainland people have – I’m not too clear on them, having grown up in the land of the Blue Footed Booby.

I'm throwing the mainland vs. islander slant at it because sometimes it feels similar. The main thing non-mainland people notice about mainland people is how much mainland people are convinced they are the Default Setting for All Of Life’s Experiences. You can chalk it up to imperialism or confirmation bias or whatever, and it does indeed get strong and concentrated in the Northeast and a lot more dilute toward the left edge of the map. This bleeds over into what I’m talking about. A mainlander-style gamer journalist will say something like “These are the types of games people play, and XXX is a good one, while YYY is not a good one.” Someone outside this perspective will say “This is the game that I play, and I think it rocks, but my cousin Jasper didn’t like it so much, he plays LLL, and my sister really likes MMM but her boyfriend thinks it sucks. I dunno, your mileage may vary. But anyway, we all played XXX for this article, and we all had some different opinions.” You can see a little of both in the Slate series, but occasionally there's that fit of "I live in a tiny room full of mirrors and affirmations" creeping in.

Speaking of different opinions, I found myself wallowing in the games-and-gender trenches briefly, when I read a re-direct on Jezebel to this bloggage responding to a gamer article.

A subject that refuses to die.

Here’s my current take on the whole mess. Gamers attract the intellectually competitive. I realized when I was looking through SWTOR guilds that as a whole, gamers like to toss confrontational topics and arguments around, but when I do that in certain crowds, they burst into tears and accuse me of being Satan. I’m insulated in a little bubble of confirmation bias because I work with lawyers, and one thing I’ve noticed about law firms is that they are very inhospitable environments for the kinds of people who hate to be challenged. In fact, I’ve got a standing assignment from one of the partners to try to drag one of his associates into stupid arguments because we’re trying to train him not to rise to the bait when the bad-guy lawyers try that particular tactic. (Then, while you’re distracted by the stupid argument, they waltz you around and try to get away with stuff.)

This frequently means that I fail hard when encountering the confrontation-averse. Now, lots of women are confrontation-averse. For example, if you go check out some feminist sites, you’ll see a lot of official “trigger warnings” right before gruesome rapes/murders/acts of meanness are discussed. This is a consensus cultural practice based on the theory and/or observation that sometimes, people get upset and emotional when triggers are triggered, and that it’s a good idea to aim towards not doing that.

When the very sensitive and the very confrontational interact, well, things don’t bode well for the former. The latter will waltz them around and try to get away with stuff. Because they’re mean, insensitive pigs? No, because it’s a successful tactic – especially against the kind of people who claim they’re being fair-minded before throwing down the guilt trip card. Which, admittedly, can also be a good tactic, except it works better on highly sensitive persons than it does against gamers.

The thing is, gamers are sensitive too. In fact, from the comments on the original article, a lot of guys were reacting with instant hostility towards even the merest suggestion they were being reprimanded by a feminist (i.e. rising to the bait).

In Northern Slobovia, people play loud dance pop when they’re happy and sit quietly when they’re sad. In Southern Slobovia, people listen to loud death metal when they’re angsty and when they’re in good moods, take quiet, reverent hikes while appreciating the beauty of nature. How long can these two countries get along before cultural misunderstandings work their way up to nasty ethnic stereotypes and physical violence?

Feminists come from a perspective of wanting to help make everybody equal. The cosmic nerf bat.

The last thing gamers want is equality. Maybe at the starting line, but if everybody’s at the same place when you get close to the finish line, you’re not doing it right.

And at the same time, gamers can clearly see the value in having opponents who live to fight another day. That’s why we make a point of only killing each other with pretend swords and guns (and it also benefits us if lots of people can afford the pretend swords and guns, because an unlimited flowing supply of worthy opponents is what gets gamers all hot and bothered). We can also see the value in having friendships and romantic relationships with other gamers, because teammates are for the win.

And through writing my games-n-gender blog, I started seeing that I shifted more towards a “let’s everybody have some good competition!” perspective than the “let’s all be equalized” one. In a greater, meta-political sense, I do think certain financial industries need a good hard smack with the nerfbat, because they have forced a large percentage of my potential worthy opponents to be so lacking in funds they cannot afford to play games online. And I think the knee-jerk sexists need to STFU and dial the d-baggery down because it benefits all of us gamers to have more opponents (and consider that if you’re the type of person who really hates women – or any other subset of humanity -- by not being a d-bag in public, you’d be encouraging more of them to play, and you could be stalking them in pvp right now instead of whining about your unfulfilled rage urges like some fail-hearted noob who can’t manage to find a port for his keyboard).

The competition-versus-equality thing at the essential heart of the whole discussion is what needs to be balanced, in my humble opinion. The ideal state for it is somewhere in the middle because it's hellish on either extreme. Dragging sex and gender into it is a distraction.