National Gaming Day @ Your Library

I was not aware that there was a National Gaming Day @ Your Library until I saw some pictures from this site's Flickr feed at the top of the page that were posted by Cape May County Library. Apparently kids all over the country, from Kotzebue, AK to St. Thomas, VI, go to their public and school libraries and play video games, board games and even card games like Magic: The Gathering. The libraries even get to compete with one another in Rock Band, The Beatles: Rock Band and Super Smash Bros. Brawl competitions.

Special note: The closest library to me was in Goshen, VA. No Harrisonburg, Charlottesville or Staunton.

The goal of the program is to raise awareness about the uses of games in libraries and expose people to games they haven't played before. It looks like libraries are taken akin to these activities and including them with traditional media.

The website, ILoveLibraries.Org, details everything about it. To get your library involved, go to http://ngd.ala.org/.

Underground Gaming Tournament League

While I posted my finishing blog for Fallout 3 I noticed some pictures in the Flickr feed at the top of the site  of people playing games and painting. Turns out it was a recent tournament from the UGTL in L.A. having a Street Fighter IV tourney along with live artists painting SFIV characters. It's a really neat set of pictures and they even had this video.

These guys are doing competitions up right. And I imaging that some form of this and the competition from Penny-Arcade (The Omegathon) are going to be the future of tournaments. A super collision of cultures. It's awesome.

Most Important Feature of a Game

A story running over on i09 reports that gamers value social interaction and pricing over graphics and story. I feel like that's true to an extent. The proof in our circle is that all of us have an Xbox 360 in our living rooms (part 1) and we all have a Wii but we rarely ever play it (part 2). Is that not true between the three of us?

But based on a game alone, what do you value more between some of the most important game feature? Here's my run down:

• Graphics
• Sound
• Story
• Frame rate
• Load Times
• Replay Value
• Longevity
• Downloadable content
• Realism
• Voice acting

I'm sure I'm probably leaving some things out, but really, when you take away multiplayer/online support, that's about what your left with. A couple of things might strike you as odd; frame rate and load times are huge to me. Consoles today shouldn't have to suffer games that run under 60 frames per second and have load times (at all) with hard drives/storage in every console (and that's for levels, not starting the game up).

The odd thing about this study is that the researchers read game reviews to get their data. And looking at the top selling Xbox 360 games (Halo 3, Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto IV), it seems that their research didn't included these story heavy games at all. All those games do have multiplayer, yes, but they also have the best stories. Coincidence? Maybe.

Most Regrettable Video Game Purchases

I can't imagine how much money I've spent on video games in my life time. My current collection at retail prices as tracked by my list on IGN's website says that it's totalled at almost $5,000. I'd say that with considering that there are quite a few Atari games that aren't on their list, the price of buying consoles (some multiple times because I sold them when I was a kid), and of course the games that I just don't plain have anymore, I'd say the figure is somewhere closer to $7,000 in my lifetime (I have owned every major Nintendo console/handheld at one time or another).

But as I was taking back a third Wii-mote that I purchase this weekend and decided it was a waste of $40 for someone who barely uses two at a time, that there have to have been some pretty stupid purchases down the line. And I bet that most of them weren't even as a kid who couldn't research games online before he before bought them. No, I'd say that as an adult with a pretty big disposable income, the time between I graduated college and when I got married probably had the highest chances of buying something stupid. Especially when I went on a shopping spree for about two years and bought almost everything back that I had sold when I was a kid. That included an NES and games, a SNES and games, and a handful of Atari 2600 cartridges.

But I still can't think of a boneheaded purchase that I truly regretted and actually kept. But here are some of the purchases I made that I think stand out the most and the price I think I paid for them:

• A PS2 and Madden 200(ish) so I could play with Brian online. $200+
• Farcry 2 so Brian and I could make online maps together. We never did and I barely touched the game. $60
• Dance Dance Revolution 3 Ultramix because punishing myself with 1 and 2 wasn't enough. $50
• Devil May Cry just because it was hyped so much. I hate that game. $20
• Earth Defense Force 2017 because I wanted to see how bad a game really could be on purpose. $20
• Full Spectrum Warrior has to be one of the worst games on my list that I still actually have. $40(?)
• Hotel Dusk: Room 215 completely didn't meet my expectations. $30
• LEGO Indiana Jones proved that not all games are good LEGO material. $50
• Lost: Via Domus I knew would suck, but my wife is a serious tv junkie. She played it for an hour. $15.
• Two copies of each of the following DS games: Mario Kart, Tetris, Nintendogs. Having two DS's is murder on your wallet. $180.
• Need for Speed Underground 2 is a classic sequel of suck. $40
• Nightcaster was really an apology from Microsoft for losing my console in the repair center. Free
• X-Men Legends had mutants in it. And suck. $30

So there's my big regret list. And those are all games I still have in my possession. I can't even begin to remember how many games I would buy and then sell on eBay because of retail stores refusal to take return video games because of pure dissatisfaction. When you buy things purely on hype, marketing and review scores, your taking a huge chance with your money and there's no safety net except for eBay.

But in the last couple years I decided that I was going to quit that practice and not sell anything ever again. It's worked pretty well so far and I've only ended up with a couple of novelty lemons.

I hate this generation!

(inserted by Justin, to lighten the mood in here!)

I remember being a kid in the early 80’s when the NES was at its peak. There was hundreds of game that came out every year. If you liked sports games you would buy Bases Loaded, Tecmo Bowl, Double Dribble, Ice Hockey, etc. If it was racing, action, role-play games you had plenty to choose from. You would talk you parents into buying it for you or renting it. So you would open the box on the way home and salivate over the instruction book. Most games gave you a instruction book with a storyline that would set up the action that you would face for the rest of that afternoon, and into the night till you went to sleep.

Fifteen percent of the games made you feel like it was well spent time when you were done with it. The majority left you thinking, “Well it wasn’t great, but I was having fun playing a video game. And that makes it worthwhile”. Then you’re left with roughly ten percent that were just dreadful. You would rather be stuck at home sick watching your moms’ soaps than play that junk. (And let’s face it we have all played hooky to stay home and play games. Hell, I still do it now!)

You didn’t critique these games. You either liked them and they went to the front of your game drawer, or you didn’t and they collected dust in they back. At least until trading games became popular. Then Nintendo Power came out and it would let you know what was slated to come out soon. They didn’t do reviews, (of course because it was an in house project) you would get tips and codes.

I hate people the think their professional video game reviewers.

Now everywhere you turn around everyone has written a review. Everyone nit picks a game and forgets why we play games to start with. Is it fun? No, people worry if the lighting was a little too dark, the shadows are bad, the AI was lazy, and god forbid, the game was short.

Let me give you some examples of where the fun factor is more imortant the HD'ability. Madden looks better than it ever has, plays great but, it is the NFL (No Fun League). There is no real sense of impact with tackles. No subtle celebrations. Where did the injuries go? Ace Combat 4 is a beautiful presentation. We don’t need the storyline. We need a fun dog fighting experience, not monotonous bombing runs and drawn out, looping dog fights. Far Cry might have the best environment in a FPS. But there are only so many times you can enjoy the same mission they give you. GTA4 is a great idea, but there is the repetitive thing again. The Forza series looks and feels great. How many laps do you want to take on that same track, woo hoo! Assasins Creed, great story but the game could have been half as long and it would have been a better experience. All of them looked pretty, but missed the fun factor throughout the game.

On the other hand CoD4 has a short single player story but the online multiplayer is great. They got it right with the audio/visual to make you feel the experience. GOW 1&2 has an awesome single player game, but the online is glitchy. Crackdown may not be the most beautiful game but the entire game is on point. Mercenaries 2 is fun, glitchy and a little ugly but fun.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Now that you have that in your skull here is my other issue.

I was playing a nice quiet game of Hardcore Team Deathmatch on CoD4 when I was rudely interrupted.

My phone rings and it’s one of my best friends. “Hey man, can you do me a favor? If your not to deep in a game. Can you pop in Mercenaries 2?” Now I stopped what I was doing for what I was doing, and for what? He wanted the viral achievement that I had so he could have 50 gamer points.

I hate Microsoft, I hate Sony. I hate Achievement Points and Multiplayer Challenges. It has made them money, because the dumb monkeys have been sucked in to this gimmick.

People play games just to get those achievements and do not return to enjoy the fun in it. For example my friends and I played Horde on GOW 2. We completed the 50th wave and had a blast doing so. But now I can’t anyone to do it again. Now that the achievement was accomplished they are done with that game.

You know where I think Cod4 got it right. The Achievements where all single player, and the Challenges for multiplayer are not attached to the achievements at all. The Multiplayer Challenges that open items in multiplayer are related to kills and headshots, not some outrageous happenstance situation. The happenstance situation were just extras for fun to see if you could it it. (they don't give you anything)

Other than trying to find the orbs in Crackdown I have never tried to complete any Achievements just for the sake of getting them all done. I just have fun, play the game, and get my Achievements along the way.

I’m not an Achievement Whore, just a Gamer!

TED: David Perry on Video Games

A TED presentation was sent to me today from 2006, where game design David Perry touches on the history of gaming and what lies ahead.

In particular, it contains a students documentary on how video games affected him.

It's worth the 20 minutes to watch it.

His closing thought: Games, on the surface, seem like simple entertainment, but to those who look a little deeper, the new paradigm of video games could open entirely new frontiers to creative minds that like to think big.

Gamer Gone Missing

So while I'm in the hospital, I just learned about this missing gamer.

The story is that the father of Ontario teenager Brandon Crisp's Xbox and game Call of Duty 4 because he was too involved in it and in return, Brandon fled his home. Among the suspected reasons were that he ran away with someone he met or possibly even a sexual predator and even the father's parenting has become suspect, the last two theories his mom sticks to.

Yesterday Microsoft donated $25,000 to the reward fund, bringing the total to $50,000. Microsoft is now even loosening privacy details of Brandon's XBLA account and Xbox 360 harddrive to help with the search, hoping to uncover messages or logs about who he had contact with before he disappeared.

Today, Canadian "reality" tv show star Terry Grant of Manhunter has also joined the search. Manhunt is a race-based chase show airing on an outdoor canadian channel where Terry gives the contestants a headstart with their map and compass and releases them out to the  and Terry hunts them down on horseback.

Currently, that is where the search stands.

With such little information, it's hard to place blame or pose a solution for this kind of awful ordeal. I never would have thought of running away, at least past our 14 acre property, when I was a kid. It's easy to place the blame on an outside source, knowing how people can easily band together online with no possible reprocussion from their advice, not even knowing the person on the other end.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out, what happens to him when he's found (and sadly, if he's found) and what kind of effects this will have on gamers, local media, and more importantly, politics. Having such a rough time now being blamed for every youth incident you see on the news, video games aren't getting a better rep because of this, no matter how it turns out.

Mass Market Gaming Getting Stale

bcullers brought over DarkSector last night for the 360. As he started talking about it, he immediately brought up gameplay references like Gears of War and Army of TWO (which is a Gears of War wannabe in it's own right). We shared a sad laugh about yet another Gears clone and then we both said, "Well, if it works..."

It was something I hadn't thought about playing Army of TWO. Instead of the whole time playing the game with an angry cloud over my head because the gameplay in it wasn't original, should I have been more focused on what new things the game brought to the table instead of what it didn't? I'm not sure what other things like that exist in the world like this. When I buy a new game, unless it's a sequel, prequel or derivative IP, I want it to be genuine and different. Music is a possible comparison if you really like music and not a genre. Books too. But I think with games I always want the next game of that genre to fix the things that were broken in the last game.

I think, overall, I find it really hard to not reference other games when playing a new one. Unless it's a game like Katamari Damacy for the PS2 or Brain Training for the DS, your getting a game that is specifically set in a genre (football, driving, FPS) and there is little you can do to differentiate it from it's members.

But most of the games I own (and keep) I like very much. So getting a new game with elements of my old ones should be comforting. But I want new experiences from gaming constantly. I don't want another Gears of War game with a different set of characters, voices, and graphics. I don't want another Forza Motorsport that touts more cars and tracks. I want new experiences and games that make me think in a different perspective. Having sold on eBay Mass Effect (a mediocre space RPG) and Army of TWO (a clone of another game), I can tell my purchases are going to start getting far and few between and overly scrutinized.

A new hope in gaming recently is Penny-Arcade's The Greenhouse. This is a game related comic-drawing duo that has it's hands also in charity work, game expos, and now with Greenhouse, independent game developers. Not much has been said about Greenhouse other than right now it's a platform to release their new game (another hand) "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness". But I wouldn't mind starting to play games on a PC or Mac if meant getting really good content.

Gaming in Cairo

I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but I haven't done more than an hour of video gaming during our two weeks here in Cairo. I played Hotel Dusk on the DS during the train ride back from Aswan to Cairo and then promptly fell asleep.

We did however play a grueling 2+ hour long game of Settler's of Catan. Two hours long because we chatted, bickered and laughed in-between almost everyone's turn.

At least walking around the street and on the metro, I've never seen one person playing handheld games or anything. Not even iPods or any other MP3 music players. I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing or because stuff is really expensive to import or buy. Something that costs $120 in the U.S. could cost $200 or more here.

But with the end of our vacation coming up, I'm starting to think about things at home and how I'm going to cope with real life again. That does include gaming. I've been edging back into reading gaming news posts and checking out Xbox Live friend scores (damn you bcullers!).

We just have a few days left and I'm starting to look forward to having a video game controller in my hands, though honestly I haven't really missed it that much here. I haven't missed TV or movies either. That's good to know I can survive without my gaming habits.