• 26Apr 13

  Infinitely Mind Boggling

  Late last night I woke up and started bawling my eyes out.  Now as a thirty year old male, this is not easy for me to admit.

   

  Like most gamers, I've played and beaten Bioshock Infinite within days of It's release.  I only just the other day began my second playthrough.  Anyone who knows me will attest that I cannot praise this game enough.  Everything about the game is so well crafted and honed to a razor edge and all the important pieces of the game fit together and complement each other in a way few games manage.  It also will forever make me associate the song God Only Knows by the Beach Boys (part of the games soundtrack) in a profound way that few who have beaten the game will understand.

   

  What does this have to do with me crying like a small child in the middle of the night you ask?  I'm getting to that, patience is a virtue ya know.

   

  I didn't wake up crying, it wasn't a bad dream or nightmare.  I wasn't sad or even mildly unhappy.  I just randomly woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep.  I started contemplating some of the overlaying themes of Bioshock Infinite.  The idea that even the most seemingly irrelevant choices, the most mundane decisions we make from day to day, things that on the surface don't appear to have any correlation to one another, that they effect and ultimately change the path our lives take forever.

   

  Then I started applying this concept to my own life.  I had trouble wrapping my mind around it at first, then I looked over at the other side of the bed at my girlfriend, and I understood.  That's when I burst into tears.  We have only been together about a year, but in that short time she has changed the path my life has taken in so many important ways that I cannot wrap my mind around what my life would be like today if we had never met.  I thought of all the seemingly random chain of events and decisions that made it possible to have ever met her.

   

  This is my thanks to Ken Levin and Irrational Games.  You have created a piece of media entertainment and art that has made me think deep about the nature of life, choice, and what it means to have both.  I honestly can't recall any other movie, video game, book, or piece of music that has ever done that to me in such a profound way.

   

  Most importantly, I want to thank my girlfriend Nikki.  I love you, and well....god only knows what I'd be without you....

   

   

  • Posted Apr 26, 2013 10:33 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 26Jun 12

  One Little Choice

  Life is complicated. It's not often that the path our lives take us down is obvious enough to where we can look back on the choices we made and clearly see what part they played in us ending up where we are. I'm one of the fortunate few who did have a rather profound experience of seeing this sort of cause and effect in a very transparent way, and I have Final Fantasy XI Online to thank for it.

  I know that makes very little sense without context. I played Final Fantasy XI, it was my first ever massively multiplayer online role playing game, for almost eight years. I started playing almost on accident. I bought the Playstation 2 HDD for other reasons. It came packed with a copy of Final Fantasy XI, so I decided to give it a shot. The game spread like wildfire among my friends and family. Within weeks everyone I knew who had even a passing interest in video games was playing it.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself. Just a few short days of playing, I switched what server I was playing on. I did this because I found out a friend of mine at the time was also playing on said server. Ironically I never once saw him on the game, and he quit after the free trial month, and the last time I spoke with him was maybe three months later.

  For many years I happily played the game with personal friends. Never giving much thought to the roughly 3000 other players on the server who I shared the virtual world with and occasionally teamed up with. But despite this, I eventually met several people who would impact my life in ways I could never have imagined.

  The first of these individuals I then knew as Abasis. I now know him as Paul, he became what I refer to as "my video game wingman". I've convinced him to try out several other MMO games over the years as well as a handful of co-op heavy games. We talk in one form or another almost every day. I met him for the first time just a few months ago when he decided to take a vacation in my neck of the woods. I consider him just as much a friend as I do the friends I have that I've known since high school.

  While playing FFXI, I also met Kuior, Belkira, and Rekiconeki. I now know them respectively as Stephanie, Matt (Stephs then boyfriend and now husband), and Chris (their friend and roommate). All three of them happened to be from Arizona, at the time I was living in Michigan. I became good in-game friends with them. Regularly doing activities with them in game and chatting with them.

  As fate would have it years later I would end up moving to Arizona for totally unrelated reasons. I go to their house every weekend to play a pencil & paper RPG, or card games, or board games, or whatever we feel like doing that night. They, by random chance, became very real and important friends in my life.

  It's difficult to wrap my mind around sometimes. That if it wasn't for one little seemingly meaningless decision to change servers so many years ago, I never would of met any of these people. People that have become very real influences in my life, people who are now very real friends.

  • Posted Jun 26, 2012 10:30 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 21Jun 12

  The Writing on the Wall?

  A few years back Microsoft made a rather bold statement regarding the video game industry. They claimed that it was "recession proof". Back at the time it actually seemed plausible. In a time of economic turmoil, the industry was doing remarkably well. It seemed even though people were weary about dropping hard earned money on cars, houses, or going on vacations, they were still more than willing to plunk down sixty dollars for a video game. Though here in the year 2012 it seems to be a very different story.

  http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-21-stock-ticker-why-eas-market-valuation-has-crashed?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=us-daily

  This article mainly focuses on EA. But also mentions Take Two, THQ, Zynga, and Activision. Every one of these companies (with the exception of Activision who is more or less towing the line) has had a significant drop in stock value this year. Some more drastic than others but a drop in value none the less.

  So what happened? When did some of the biggest names in our "recession proof" industry start this dangerous downward spiral? Dedicated industry follows have probably seen the writing on the wall for awhile now. I know I have.

  There is no one reason. But in my humble opinion the biggest singular reason is this: Customer Trust. Or rather, an almost total lack of it on the part of the big developers. This manifests in many ways, from needless DLC released mere days after a games launch. Yearly rehashing of franchises with little to no improvement or innovation from title to title. Anti used game sales tactics. "Free to play" games that employ horribly predatory tactics that play on human compulsion to get your money. Lastly, the borderline paranoid need for developers to dominate the users experience.

  Many developers over the last few years have begun to make it very clear that they don't care, or are at least not horribly concerned with, what we the consumers think of them and what they are doing. The focus seems to be shifting from making a product that the customer will like, to seeing the customer as the problem. That their game is some perfect and innocent child that needs to be protected and coddled from all the horrible things that we consumers could do to it.

  To quote Sci-fi guru Joss Whedon: "Great art is meant to be interpreted in ways you never intended. Your art isn't your pet, It's your child. It grows up and talks back to you." But right now, many of the biggest names in the industry are being overprotective and overbearing parents.

  • Posted Jun 21, 2012 8:49 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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