by Julie Whitefeather

This week New Attitude discusses something that many gamers do but few ever admit to doing: the old “DC”.

 Read on…

The Old “DC”
By Julie Whitefeather

We know you do it, even if we can’t see you do it.  But that’s O.K. there is nothing to feel ashamed about really. After all we have all done it at some point haven’t we? It is said that 99% of us admit to doing it and the rest are lying.  Don’t worry it’s not a sin, it’s only natural and for Heaven’s sake you certainly won’t go blind for doing it.

The Old D.C.

Late at night on a weekend the wait for a group with the right participants to assemble can get long.  In fact sometimes hours can tick by in the dim light behind the closed door to your room.  You say to yourself, “If I have to type ‘looking for healer’ in the Looking for Group Channel one more time my fingers won’t be the only thing that snaps - my brain will snap as well.  Other members of your virtual party wait nearby, impatiently tapping their virtual toes as minutes pass into the first hour of waiting for that ever elusive healer or tank. “OMG this is boring” you tell yourself, but you can’t desert your friends who have been waiting with you. That’s when the urge hits you.  “No one will know” you tell yourself. You try to justify it in your mind by telling yourself everyone does it. Your hand reaches out and finds it…

…the off switch to your computer.

You press the switch and cold boot your computer - the old “D.C.”  The next day you tell your friends “I am so sorry, I got disconnected; the cable went out.”

It can be an uncomfortable a situation than watching your friends roll their eyes and say “ya’ sure your cable went out” as you suddenly remember you don’t have cable - you have a satellite dish instead, and unless the morning papers tell of a satellite shot out of the sky they are likely not to believe you.

Even more uncomfortable is trying to get your friends to believe you when your cable really did go out - for the third time in a row - our cable goes out more than Paris Hilton.

Yet this is merely an indication of a much larger issue; why are video games still developed with the same problems? Some game mechanics never seem to change. Videogames where the game play is driven by the “need for greed” will probably never change.  It is also starting to seem that as long as videogames are being developed that we will continue to have to spam for healers and tanks. Yet, some problems with game development don’t change, but should. When this happens I ask myself why they seem to happen time and again. One of the classic indications of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting different results. Perhaps some game developers are just a little bit insane.

I am not talking about little puzzling things that some game developers seem to put in their games - things like World of Warcraft where you can’t wear a hat before level 25. I have often wondered if that was because my character was simply too stupid to figure out to wear a hat before that level; doesn’t she know how? No what I am talking about here are the problems that seem to  come up time and again in the gaming industry; whether they are simply game mechanics that are too irritating for words or problems that are real “deal breakers” and will leave the boxes on the shelves un-purchased.

Among the many “deal breakers” is one of the more prominent examples of chutzpa by designer is which was brought to us by Brad McQuaid, who gave us the preeminent example of a game with a “bad start”.  At this point there is probably very few gamers will not have heard of the travesty that was the initial release of Vanguard and the subsequent behavior of Mr. McQuaid when all of his employees at Sigil were summoned outside and fired “en masse”.  It is fortunate for gamers and those developing the game that Sony pulled Sigil’s fat out of the proverbial fire. I just wish that all of the employees could have been rehired by Sony. Not only was it a good thing that Vanguard was saved by Sony, a corporation that has made a success by having a portfolio of gaming products – but there was even some good that came out of the poor quality of the product that was released. It taught gamers that a product can be changed drastically after its release; the result can be a diamond in the rough that is changed to a polished gem of a game. It also taught developers not to release garbage in the first place, even it means pushing back the release date (something which happens so often now that we come to expect it).

This is not to say that there is never any innovation in the way games are played - no, far from it.  A good example is a game brought to us by a company founded by former members of Blizzard Entertainment – Flagship Studios and their release of Hellgate: London. Yes, I will be the first to admit that Hellgate:London is also an example where the hype doesn’t always equal the hope for a game.  This game also made yes of one of the recent innovations in videogame development: the randomized instance. In Hellgate: London algorithms are used to create instances that are never the same twice whenever they are encountered.  This results in some increased playability (although as PC Gamer said the textures used don’t seem to very often enough). It has also presented some interesting problems, like instances with missing exits and no corpses to make a corpse run to – I think of it as enforced “ghosthood” when it happens.

However, I will still hold out hope that a game designer will come along and bring us a game that changes the way we play games altogether – a game that is not based on healer, DPS (damage per second) and a tank.  While I am holding out hope, I will be gaming with the rest of you.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather