Tag: games

Astroturfing 101

Rule No. 1: Post BEFORE screencapping:

A Spacedad appears! @SuperSpacedad
Yes Gamergate, it’s clearly other people making you look bad and not your own fault. Here’s your bottle and bonnet

Exposing Jihad @XposingJihad
@SuperSpacedad Wouldve been more effective you hit post before screencapping

Isn’t it fascinating how we’re still supposed to believe #GamerGate is all about harassing a few individuals despite the fact that no one has mentioned them in weeks? The SJWs are so desperate for evidence that they have to manufacture it themselves.

Remember, rabbits always lie. They have no sense of honor or self-respect.

UPDATE: Speaking of fascinating, we have a real rabbit here. Never heard of the guy before, so he must be blocking #GamerGate en masse while simultaneously trying to spoof us.

You are blocked from following @SuperSpacedad and viewing @SuperSpacedad’s Tweets. Learn more

The game of the year

Nero’s beautifully brutal review of Bioware’s Dragon Age: Inquisition:

With BioWare’s reputation established in the early 2000s by middling but commercially popular, if somewhat buggy, releases such as Baldur’s Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare was, at least a decade ago, strongly positioned to achieve sustained success at the “average games that perform well with customers” end of the market. (To be fair to both of those titles, they have very enthusiastic fan bases.)

But the company in recent years has become… well, a bit of a running joke. Most gamers say the rot set in around 2009 or 2010, when BioWare was acquired by Electronic Arts. Perhaps it was a talent exodus, too much managerial interference or a failure to keep the creative teams fresh. Either way, BioWare’s ability to release artistically accomplished–and even, some reviewers say, technologically competent–games began to evaporate.

There is also a suggestion that BioWare’s games became unduly politicised at around the same time, pandering to what some call the “social justice” narrative, awkwardly shoehorning minority characters and progressive messaging into its plots and meddling with storylines to push political agendas that have never resonated with ordinary gamers. Practically every release from BioWare now contains dozens of gay and lesbian romance storylines or sex scenes, which many young gamers find baffling.

2011’s Dragon Age II unexpectedly bombed with consumers, despite, of course, the rave reviews from mainstream game news sites, who need only get a whiff of a paraplegic lesbian in an ill-fated love affair with a black transsexual to award a game full marks. Mass Effect 2 wasn’t a critical success with ordinary gamers either; they called it “filler” and said it was “uninspiring.” It, too, bored players with politics.

And then of course there was the extraordinary failure of imagination in Mass Effect 3, the ending of which has gone down in gamer history as one of the most needless creative failures in the history of the industry. The games press, needless to say, denied there was anything wrong with Mass Effect 3, scolding gamers for being “entitled.”

But if entitlement means expecting a sensible and narratively satisfying resolution to an expensive, immersive video game, most consumers will be happy to admit that they are guilty. Many of BioWare’s customers wondered whether more time could have been spent on a satisfactory ending and less on irrelevant lesbian sex themes. 

Don’t be fooled by the reviews. As Nero notes: “That reviews of triple-A games by professional journalists are likely to
bear no relation to their reception by fans has become a truism of
video game journalism.”

I’ve never been a BioWare fan, so their ongoing implosion is of little interest to me.

Anti-game is anti-human

A fascinating article on the anti-GamerGate focus on narrative and how that anti-game perspective is intrinsically anti-human:

Life doesn’t have innate structure, even if you can awkwardly cram cylindrical tropes through square holes to try and illustrate relationships between things you experience and media you consume. But this gets even worse when examining other media. Films and novels are heavily rooted in narratives, because they must have a plot to carry them forward, excepting some very experimental films. Some songs carry a narrative, but you can’t have music that’s just someone talking. That might qualify as poetry, but even some poetry isn’t narrative, merely descriptive. You can have music without a narrative, and for centuries this was the most popular form of music. Likewise, games are another medium which can exist without any narrative at all. Just as music can be art merely for the composition, a game can be beautiful for its game mechanics.

A classic game that can qualify as art based on nothing but core mechanics.

One of the major problems with game criticism—the “subjective” kind that many detractors say is unacceptable—is that it is rooted in Narratology. Instead of focusing on the mechanics, and commenting on how well they work together, critics focus on the narrative and what the mechanics mean for the story, not what the story means for the mechanics, or even if the developer had the intention of making such a statement.

Personally, I love it when a game merges story and mechanics. In fact, I think the best way to tell a story is through mechanics, and not exposition or traditional narrative delivery. But that concept has been rejected by critics, opting to use Narratological deconstruction and insisting that this is the only way to evaluate media. When games naturally don’t pander to this benchmark, they receive failing marks. There’s a bigger reward for developers catering to this cabal of “journalists” than for catering to the actual audience. When the standards of the reviewer and their audience differ so greatly, the reviewer cannot be said to speak for their audience. Despite this flawed approach, proponents of New Historicism insist that all media must be evaluated this way. It conveniently allows them to cite Post-Structuralist reasoning to defend themselves from criticism of their methodology, since the reviewers subjective opinion and any conjecture they can express are consider to be at least as important as the media being judged, no matter how self-evident it is that the reviewer has missed the point.

Papers, Please tells a compelling, interactive story using its mechanics.

To a degree, it’s inevitable that this outlook supports “experimental” titles that don’t really fall into the bounds of “games.” It’s not a medium they’re capable of properly digesting, so content has to be restricted to something they can process. Funny, you never hear the opposition supporting non-narrative films, but they do support games that are top-heavy with narrative. It’s not actually about something “new” or “better.” It’s about something “different.” Labeling it “experimental” is the only way it can get a pass in the wrong industry. If held to the standards of a medium it actually belonged in–one with Narratological standards–it’d fall apart.

Ultimately what these ideas boil down to is an overarching philosophy called Anti-Humanism. This social theory comes as a reaction to Humanism, and the belief that it was too idealistic. While Humanism is all about free will, placing humanity and human actions at the center of life, and using rationality and reason alone to reach moral decisions, Anti-Humanism detaches humanity from inherent meanings (via Post-Structuralism) to “de-center” subjects and remove their agency. In other words, you yourself lack free will, since you’re a product of the world around you, and working towards an ideal self is futile. Interestingly, Nietzsche (credited as a “founder” of Existentialism, a philosophy that places great emphasis on human agency and the absurdity of life) often criticized humanism for being a form of “secular theism.” Anti-humanism finds itself equally religious in practice, but with a much more oppressive set of goals.

Gaming is the natural enemy of anti-humanism. When you play games, you yourself have personal agency. Only a player truly has free will inside of a game. You are playing by a ruleset, but you have choice within that ruleset, and likely have goals and motivations. These are informed by your situation and by the gameplay systems, but some of the highest-praised games have allowed you to set your own criterion for success, and provided you with a system open enough to facilitate that. Many strategy and 4X games are good examples of that. The belief that all humans are free and equal is a core tenet of Humanism, which Anti-Humanists reject.

The idea that the average individual has agency, of course, is anathema in the world of the Social Justice Warrior. Because then he would be responsible for his actions… and his failures.

Of books and games

Ken Burnside of Ad Astra Games chimes in:

So, one of my other gigs – beyond making Cool Space Combat Games, is
being a science checker for SF writers for Baen.  I got asked by Vox Day
to write a science article for their new anthology series “Riding the
Red Horse” – which released yesterday. In its first day of
release, it’s done impressively – it’s climbing up the paid Kindle
listings and is a category leader in Military SF and SF in general.

Ken’s “The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military Science Fiction” is a must-read for any science fiction author. And check this out… Ad Astra is about to come out with the Traveller version of Squadron Strike!

From the most recent review of RIDING THE RED HORSE: “I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of mil sci-fi short stories and essays on war. Each
story left me wanting more of the universe in which it takes place (my
favourite of the shorts was the last one: “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa,),
and each essay made me marvel at the genius of the respective author. I
wouldn’t consider myself a military theory buff, but the essays in this
collections certainly awakened a hunger in me to find out more and
explore the world of war-gaming.”

The making of Kingmaker

This is a fascinating glimpse into the making of one of my favorite games, Avalon Hill’s classic game of the Wars of the Roses, Kingmaker:

KINGMAKER, the board game for adults based on the political and military activity of the English Wars of the Roses, comes on the market in the autumn of 1974. Copies of the game reach the United States by the end of the year, and by the following summer, with the first edition of the rulebook and a bad review in Games & Puzzles behind it, the game s becoming a cult in some circles. Sufficient numbers of the game appear at Origins 1, America’s leading wargame convention, to prompt SPI, America’s leading wargame publishers, to start importing the game in quantity. Now Avalon Hill steps in. British manufacturers Philmar receive a characteristically scruffy letter from Baltimore. But the content is what counts. Avalon Hill like Kingmaker, they want to manufacture it under licence… now read on…

The Avalon Hill Company has a 20-year old reputation in Britain for producing wargames of quality. (Afrika Korps, Battle of the Bulge, Anzio). The enthusiastic offer from the American company to produce Kingmaker was a dream come true – like rolling a double six on the first throw! Not only did their interest assure a far wider audience for the game, but because they were manufacturing from scratch there was an immediate opportunity to put into effect the main rule changes and modifications which had either been suggested or had made themselves apparent in the first year of the game’s existence. Furthermore, these changes could be made with the help of a game design team whose experience and reputation could justifiably be regarded as among the best in the world.

So began four to five months of transatlantic correspondence in which the game was pulled apart and rebuilt – a process which is worth describing in some detail for the light it throws both on Kingmaker, for those who are familiar with the game, and on the ‘playtesting’ side of the game design in general, for those who may be developing their own games.

I had been fortunate in making contact with Don Turnbull at the time he was running the first postal Kingmaker game. It is a measure of Don’s ability and perception that he had started postal Kingmaker, something I had thought impossible, on the basis of the first rulebook. He was the ideal person to work with on the UK end of the game’s redevelopment.

The Avalon Hill developer was to be Mick Uhl, who we supposed would be overseen by veteran AH designer Don Greenwood. In earlier correspondence, and more recent meetings, Don and I discussed those ambiguities which still remained after the reworking of the rulebook. We had also examined every suggestion which had come from other players in the course of the previous 18 months. Most important of these was undoubtedly the rule on Parliament suggested by Charles Vasey, who is now the editor of the successful fanzine Perfidious Albion.

In basic Kingmaker, Parliament is the means by which a player who controls the King consolidates and strengthens his faction. The player summoning Parliament may dispose of titles and offices which have become available through the death of nobles in the preceding rounds, or which were above the permitted holding of living nobles. Since the titles and offices convey extra strength in troops, ships and castles, a Parliament held after a large number of eventful rounds of play could drastically alter the balance of play. A weak king could become strong immediately. Furthermore, since Parliament could only, under normal conditions, be held when there was only one crowned claimant to the throne, they tended to be rare, twice-a-game events.

Vasey wanted to make Parliament a chance for diplomacy and hard bargaining. Each noble was given a number of votes (seats) in both the Lords and the Commons. Then the proposed allocation of each title or office was voted on, first by the Commons and then by the Lords. The bargaining and diplomacy came in because few players were likely to be strong in both Houses. So players with minimal troop strength could hold the balance in Parliament, benefiting as they received a title or office as the price of their support.

Other refinements were added. The award of Bishops can only be voted on in the Lords, the secular Commons doesn’t get a look in. Charles Vasey’s Parliament suggestion highlights an important aspect of game design in general – the work contribution’ of a game’s units – or how much a unit puts into a game. In basic Kingmaker, towns and bishops didn’t seem to “work” very hard. A player might use a town he held as refuge once or twice in a game. It might serve to block road movement. A bishop might never be used as refuge. Vasey’s Parliament maximised the contribution of both towns and bishops by giving them another level to function on. Parliament itself was also “working harder”.

Fascinated by the value of the ‘work test’, I began to apply it to other units and areas in the game.

It also serves to illuminate the process by which Avalon Hill games came to enter their catalog; there wasn’t actually a small office of supergeniuses designing all of these games from scratch, as I had sort of imagined as a boy. Trivia question: what is the direct connection between the book published by the youngest male published author in the world and Kingmaker?

#GamerGate crushed Gawker

Nero reports on the costs to Gawker of attacking #GamerGate:

The cost to Gawker Media of its ridicule and viciousness toward video gamers was “seven figures” in lost advertising revenue, according to the company’s head of advertising, Andrew Gorenstein. In addition, founder Nick Denton has stepped down as president and editorial director Joel Johnson has been removed from his post and will probably leave the company, reports Capital New York….

And now here is a chance to kick the SJW while he’s down. An Ilk suggests action:
A few of us were inspired by that stupid Change.org petition that got GTA5 banned to try to use the same tactic against Gawker’s biggest revenue sources. I figure it may be especially effective to kick them when they’re already reeling from the previous damage we’ve done, while Hulk Hogan’s suit and their insurance company threaten to bleed them further. The petition is here: Get Google and Amazon to stop advertising on Gawker Media.

We’d
like to spread this around and get the signature count up before
posting it in the usual GamerGate avenues (ie our Twitter accounts,
8chan, KotakuInAction), so that anti-GamerGate won’t know it’s happening,
and won’t realize that it’s coming from us or be able to respond to it until it’s too late for them to do anything about it.

They’re down. Kick them hard and keep them there.

How to raise a gamer

This guy went about it much more systematically than I did, but to somewhat similar effect:

My son Eliot was born in 2004 — the year of Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and the launch of the Nintendo DS. By the time he was born, video games were a $26B industry.

I love games, and I genuinely wanted Eliot to love and appreciate them too. So, here was my experiment: Start with the arcade classics and Atari 2600, from Asteroids to Zaxxon. After a year, move on to the 8-bit era with the NES and Sega classics. The next year, the SNES, Game Boy, and classic PC adventure games. Then the PlayStation and N64, Xbox and GBA, and so on until we’re caught up with the modern era of gaming.

Would that child better appreciate modern independent games that don’t have the budgets of AAA monstrosities like Destiny and Call of Duty? Would they appreciate the retro aesthetic, or just think it looks crappy?

And this, for me, is the most interesting impact of the experiment.

Eliot’s early exposure to games with limited graphics inoculated him from the flashy, hyper-realistic graphics found in today’s AAA games. He can appreciate retro graphics on its own terms, and focus on the gameplay.

The lo-fi graphics in games like VVVVVV, FTL, or Cave Story might turn off other kids his age, but like me, he’s drawn to them.

Ender didn’t play enough video and computer games to have turned into a super-gamer like Eliot, but I’ve noticed that he does enjoy playing older games like Warlords and Fantasy General rather than clickfests and twitch games. He’s also a good ASL player and a decent, though not superlative wargamer, as well as being deep into the mod scene.

The skill that Eliot has developed from his early exposure, to such an extent that he’s much better than his father is fascinating though, especially when I consider how Ender was similarly exposed to more military theory and strategy than the average West Pointer.

The Top Gaming Blogs

As one of their Game and Book experts, one of the things Recommend has asked me to do is to identify and vett various other experts, particularly in fields I am qualified to do so. One of the first experts I recruited was the indefatigable Jeffro Johnson of Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog, who is also one of the two star bloggers at Castalia House, because there are very, very few people who know as much about role-playing games as he does.

Jeffro immediately grasped the utility of the Recommend system, so much so that I have already had to urge him to slow down and pace himself. But among the score of recos he has already posted, he has created an interesting list entitled The Top Gaming Blogs of 2014, which is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in games. Lewis Pulsipher is on there, of course, but there are a number of other sites with which I was previously unfamiliar.

The other new Recommend expert is less known for his excellent game design than for the fact that he is Archon of The Escapist, but regardless, he qualifies as a Game Expert twice over. He’s got his first reco up and it’s a good one on the classic X-Com: UFO Defense.

If you’re not on Recommend yet, or if you’re on it but haven’t really started using it yet, I’d encourage you to give it a go. They haven’t even officially “come to America” yet; but have already achieved pretty solid penetration in their native France. I don’t know if it is going to grow into something Twitter-big once they enter the US next year, but it is going to be significant. They’ve now got the five-rating system in place, which was a needed improvement, and they’ll have the Android app out in the near future. And, in due time, a proper game-style Achievements and Leveling system.

They’re also working on the expansion of the categories; there will be gun categories, among others, and I will be looking for experts in a variety of new categories soon. But we’re only looking for serious and proven expertise, not merely serious interest. For example, Jeffro, Archon, and I are all able to rapidly post recos because we have large quantities of our own previous writings on the subject from which we can draw. But that’s merely an indicator, it’s not an absolute requirement. In any case, if you think you’ve got that kind of expertise in something, then by all means, make your case in the comments here.

Jeffro demonstrates his depth of knowledge in this post, in which he wonders why so many of today’s gamers and game designers are not merely ignorant, but don’t even know they’re ignorant:

Why is it that Gygax had a diet of fiction that spanned more than half a century, but the designers that followed him and the younger generation of gamers that played his stuff did not for the most part? What kinds of things do we fail to see simply because we’ve never bothered to survey the past…? And what the heck happened during the seventies to turn everything upside down? Something happened. The fact of it doesn’t require a conspiracy theory to explain it, but it does make me wonder about what all’s gone on since.

Remember: people that haven’t read from the Appendix N list tend to assume that Gary Gygax was a weirdo for using the term “Fighting-Men” instead of something like “Warrior.” They will even go so far as to say that the reasons for his word choice there are unknowable. It’s a small thing, sure… but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. These people are not only ignorant, but they don’t even know they are ignorant. They are simply not equipped to make an intelligent critique of classic D&D, much less assess Gygax’s contribution to gaming.

That “Wisconsin Shoe Salesmen” precipitated a watershed moment in gaming history. His influence is not confined to tabletop games, but spills over into computer gaming and fantasy in general. While many tropes of classic D&D have by now become ubiquitous, the literature that inspired them has since dropped into obscurity. This is interesting and bears further investigation. 

SJW review of games

It seems to me that just as we have a useful metric for dividing Blue SF/F from Pink SF/F, it would be helpful to have one that allowed people to summarize, in a single number, just how SJW a game is. Here is an initial pass at a points list, with 0 equaling not at all SJW and 10 indicating full SJW.

+1 has homosexual or bisexual character
+1 per token Black/Hispanic/Asian
+1 has Magic Negro and/or Saint Gay
+1 contains left-wing political message
+1 core plot concerns left-wing political message
+1 protagonist or sidekick are kickass waifu
+1 female developer mentioned in marketing and PR (see: J. Raymond, Z. Quinn)
+1 takes shots at Christianity or traditional Western morality

Any ideas for improvement? I was considering “+1 produced by Bioware”, but that seemed too obvious and redundant.nt

SJWs are out to destroy games


That’s not hyperbole. That’s not an exaggeration. That is exactly what their long-term objective is; that’s what they mean by asserting that the game industry needs to be “transformed”. They can deny it it all they like, but there is absolutely no question that their true objective is to prevent gamers from being able to design, develop, play games without their approval.

If you want to see where SJWs want to take the game industry, look at the publishing industry, where the company that publishes “Beautiful Me:
Essential Health: Strong Beautiful Girls” has announced “we dropped the ‘For Boys’ from the series name [Biggest, Baddest Books for Boys] and we all agree here at Abdo that it was a very smart idea”.

Give into the SJW entryists and soon it will be deemed as out of bounds to make games for boys as it already is to publish books for boys.