Science Fiction pisses me off

Science fiction is one of those genres where nobody ever seems to get it right. We play EVE or watch Star Wars or whatever and we don't think much of it, but goddamn I hate science fiction sometimes.

It's not that I don't like spaceships or laser swords. I really think those things are cool. It's just that there is always some colossal science blunder that makes sci-fi totally unbelievable. You guys never notice this stuff, or maybe you do, but don't think much of it. This stuff makes me ARGH though. I'm like "WHY DON'T YOU JUST USE BULLETS" and "WOULDN'T A COMPUTER MAKE THAT SO EASY?"

Transportation and communication don't generally bother me. It's usually done horribly wrong, but generally people don't put a lot of detail into it. For instance, in Macross, we never learn how "reflex" thrusters or space fold systems actually work. The technology is "magical" from the perspective of the characters, and isn't really that important for telling a romance. Also, it's pretty easy to use something like plasma thrusters and fusion reactors or solar sails for your impulse drive and some barely quantum theory transportation for your superluminal transport. Quantum theory is nice since we can't really understand it yet, so it makes as much sense as anything else.

Communications is similar, and besides, most people understand that we need "magic" communication to send messages at FTL speeds and thus make up some type of technology that's so far out of the range of real physics that nerds like me just shrug our shoulders and surmise that it could probably work. Once in a while you get stupid things like 40k and its "super fiber optics" (I shit you not) that can transmit signals at significantly faster than fiber optic speeds through a physical medium. Yeah, that only works if real life physics don't exist, and unfortunately, the writers of 40k seem to understand real things like the principles of bullet drop enough to make retarded ideas like self-propelled bullets to solve it.

So let's get into the real things that piss me off. Super fiber optics and gravity drives (making a black hole in front of you so you can fall into it is simply not a good idea) aside, transportation and communication do a good job of making up "magic" technologies that exist outside the realm of understood physics. However, other things don't.

Computers. Agh! I hate sci-fi computers. It's like when writers produce something that's sci-fi, there are 0 nerds involved. Computers are always screwed up in sci-fi, because people don't understand that computers aren't very good at some things, and are incredibly good at other things.

First, the Terminator. The idea of SkyNet is absolutely ridiculous. No matter how much processing power a computer might have, the computer's ability to be self-aware is just impossible. I guess it's not "no matter how much," but it's fairly clear that SkyNet is not that smart, because if it was, there would be no possible human resistance. There really isn't another option. If a computer can think abstractly, it could also think logically insanely better than anything ever possibly could. I'm not communicating this well, so I'll explain.

Computers suck at games. Take DarkSims from Perfect Dark. DarkSims cheat extremely badly - spawning automatically with high powered weapons and armor, where a player would have to hunt for them. DarkSims also aim perfectly and rarely miss (except when their weapon would miss through mechanical failure), often headshotting their opponent with ease. The fact that DarkSims are beatable is testament to how bad computers are at strategy. When a computer tackles a strategy problem, it has to consider all possible options and all possible responses to those options in order to accurately present a challenge. Obviously, computers in video games rely simply on following a basic algorithm and doing it as best they can. DarkSims can aim really well, so a human can rarely fight them straight-up. However, they can be baited into the simplest of traps, because they don't take enemy behavior into account.

Computers are simply not capable of strategy. Sometimes they can perform decently if they are put into a game like Chess. Chess is a very deep strategy game, but each board position might only have a few dozen possible moves (more as the game gets later, but still...). Chess computers are better than humans now, but they are not unbeatable - while Chess is still a solvable game, a computer's solving heuristic still cannot guarantee a 100% success rate against humans' abstract problem solving. This is in a game that is turn-based and has a small, finite number of decisions possible at each step.

Put a computer in a military situation where moving 13 feet before shooting is logically different than moving 12.9 feet before shooting and remember that the computer also has to make decisions in real-time, and add allies (even if they're other computers that can communicate) to the mix, and suddenly you've got a huge mess. People estimate that computers get a little better at chess every time they get twice the computing power. It's theoretically possible that computers could get smart enough to make tactical decisions, but I can only imagine the computing power needed for a computer to determine that a grenade has been thrown in its direction and the proper course of action is to run the hell away. I think terahertz aren't even in the ballpark.

Humans are incredible at strategic thinking compared to computers. We can make abstract guesses about what our opponent might do, then implement counters. We aren't perfect at this, especially compared to other humans who can predict our counters. However, being 50% or 80% effective at predicting a tactical situation is a lot better than 0%, which is about how good video game computers are right now at predicting player behavior, especially in real time.

As a side note, I'd like to point out how much I hate EVE for this reason. Combat in EVE takes away the single most important human factor - tactical positioning - and lets computers take charge. I think that no matter how advanced spaceships get, that we will be navigating them manually in combat, because little nuances of positioning can never be performed by a computer.

However, one thing computers are really good at is mechanical things. Humans suck at things like hitting the right keys when we're writing or executing combos or aiming at things. Humans are absolutely fail at things that improve with mechanical precision, while computers ROCK at it. We can train ourselves to be better but computers are perfect at it by default. Unless the task in question takes too much computing power to perform quickly, a computer will calculate and perform it flawlessly every time. It probably has to be told exactly what to do - for instance, a computer aiming a gun turret would have to be programmed how to lead targets based on the speed of the target and the velocity of the weapon's projectile - but once told, the computer will do that job flawlessly.

It's worth pointing out that aiming hitting a fast moving target with a comparatively slow unguided projectile is better done by humans, since erratic movement by the target will cause mechanical leading to always fail. However, the computer can still tell its human operator an ideal lead, giving the human information to better make critical predictions.

A good example is using artillery. Human operators might aim the gun in some improper way, or not account for some factor such as wind. A computer can make calculations so that, to the best of its ability, it will be able to put that artillery strike directly at the designated position.

Another good example is piloting from two destinations. A computer can automatically predict the optimal path using weather pattern data and such or in the case of ground vehicles, by using known roads. Actually, this is another good example - in Grand Theft Auto 4, our GPS will give our car the fastest route on the roads, which is nice - but our human ingenuity can think of alternate routes off the road or driving the wrong way on one-way streets.

Too often though, computers are retarded. I'm talking about Star Wars droids, where they have illogical emotions and fail at doing computer-optimized things. Also, at the end of Episode 4 when people are doing the bombing run, why are they using targeting computers if the computers can't hit the target? It should be common sense that if one fighter's targeting computer doesn't work, all of the fighters computers will probably be insufficient, and human ingenuity will be needed. I mean, in the end this makes sense, but when Luke is asked why his computer is off, it should be a no-brainer. If other people can't use the computer to hit the target (bad programming), a human is better off making the guesswork. 50% is better than 0%.

That was a loooong rant about computers. This isn't over yet though, I'm still pissed at sci-fi.

LASER GUNS. WHY?! No, I'm lying. Laser guns somewhat make sense, but in real life military scenarios they just don't. It's possible for a personal laser gun to someday in the future shoot a beam that could be dangerous or deadly. However, modern Kevlar vests are extremely effective against a beam weapon (of any type except particle beam). Modern kevlar is by its nature heat resistant, and this is really true of any ceramic or polymer armor. The armor will tend to heat and flake off, rather than applying heat to the rest of the armor. This limits a laser weapon's use against modern armor, and really I don't think that armor is going to become less effective against lasers or plasma guns in the future. Beam weapons are still probably decent against stuff made of metal, and probably really good against fleshy stuff like people. However, modern Chobham tank armor has ceramic plating that is extremely good at absorbing and dispersing heat so lasers wouldn't be very good against tanks.

Against aircraft, lasers have many advantages, since they travel at around the speed of light, nullifying an aircraft's speed advantage (especially with computers to aim!). The problem is that the development of laser weaponry is likely to cause aircraft manufacturers to develop anti-laser measures, including reflective or heat-resistant materials. This would counter stealth technology (which relies on absorbing radiation such as radar rather than deflecting it; a reflective stealth plane would not be very stealthy!) to a degree, but making a gun simply to shoot down stealth planes seems counterproductive.

Also, laser guns have a much more limited range than a typical projectile; rather than cut through the air, energy weapons disperse, or "bloom," losing coherency.

But the worst issue with rayguns such as lasers and plasma guns is that it simply takes too much electricity to make a powerful laser. The same amount of electricity used to make a laser that could melt metal could instead be used to throw a slug at very high velocities - and that slug would be devastatingly effective against any type of defense. Armor is simply worse at stopping projectiles, and until electromagnetic fields are created that repel metal bullets, no protective method will be better at stopping bullets than it will be at stopping ray guns. Even then, lead bullets with a brass jacket wouldn't be deflected by an electromagnetic field, as neither are ferrous metals. Also, neither are depleted uranium or tungsten.

On the same note, electricity is not very good for weapons in general. It takes a lot of electricity to throw a bullet out of a coil gun, and when you compare it to the energy in exploding propellant, electricity just isn't efficient. When we get to the point where capacitors can store electricity to fire a railgun in a vehicle-portable environment, that will be sort of scary, because that same amount of electricity can power a small city. Even still, if some super-tech is developed that makes energy mostly a non-issue, technology is always better throwing bullets with that energy than it is shooting death rays.

Don't believe me? Well, if we had a hypothetical long range death ray laser capable of zapping tanks, people could use that same amount of electricity to throw small particles at sublight speeds instead. The power of a few grams of energy flying at a tenth of the speed of light is absolutely incredible (nuclear weapon incredible). Granted, there's recoil issues obviously, but in terms of destructive power... yeah.

StarCraft 2 and the future of eSports

I'm sitting here waiting for work. I'll be writing up the e3 post at Massively for Marvel Super Hero Squad Online in just a bit, but I was watching SC2 stuff and I thought I'd talk about this.

EDIT: I actually had to interrupt this post for work. Ha! I'm not even done with my normal weekly work yet. E3, you make life so busy. I wish every week was E3 ~

There are two major things that are important for eSports to succeed. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Why isn't Street Fighter 4 a big eSport and StarCraft is? Surely Street Fighter is easier to follow than StarCraft, and honestly it is a more exciting game.

If I got comments I'd be worried about saying that, but it's pretty much true. That isn't a shot against StarCraft. SC has a lot of lulls in its gameplay. At the beginning of the match we are forced to watch people make workers, and it's not until a good two minutes into the game that the real strategy even begins. Even then, there are lulls when one player establishes control, then both players go to full-on macro because attacking is dangerous for the controlling player. In Street Fighter, these lulls occur but they are very short, often only a couple seconds long.

Still, StarCraft is by far the better eSport. This also isn't a shot against SF. It simply doesn't have the elements that make SC better to watch.

The first thing that makes a game a good eSport is commentary. Actually, this is true of any sport, not just eSports. Fighting games just aren't good for commentary. I'd love it if they were, but the big elements of gameplay happen in literally fractions of a second. You could have 3 or 4 big "plays" happen in the time it takes just to explain what the first play was.

Let's take an example. Player A baits a footsie with a low short. His opponent takes the bait and Player A hits his foot with a sweep. Explaining exactly what is going on and how this works to a layman is at least a 15-20 second process (probably much more than that if you want anyone to understand). Immediately afterward, Player A walks forward, does a dragon punch to Player B on wakeup, which Player B blocks. Player A focus cancels, dashes forward, and throws Player B, which Player B throw escapes. In the span of about 3-4 seconds, Player A and B have done so many mindgamey things that if I were to explain all of them, it would take me the entire rest of the match to explain just what went on. In that time, about 20 or 30 more interesting things have happened. This limits commentary a ton.

Only good players will understand a commentator who is talking about SF, because the commentator has to say things like "Okay, footsies going on here, little ground game, A whiffed short... OH ITS A BAIT, hits with the sweep, B is knocked down, A is gonna go for the ground mixup... DP focused, blocked, throw, B techs it, gonna reset the tempo there..." Even then, you'd have to talk really fast to get all of that out in time.

By comparison, StarCraft has a lot more time to do explaining things like invisible spider mines blowing up dragoons and omg Bisu needs more observers. Or whatever. Commentary makes a game accessible to a layman who has never played the game before, and definitely available to people who only sort of play the game, but never really played it on that kind of high level. Commentary is absolutely essential, and because of that, a sport or eSport need to be slow paced enough that a commentator can communicate what's going on to an average viewer.

The second thing that I think is very important for an eSport is expressive individualism. That probably makes no sense at all. Street Fighter at least succeeds on this point, or rather, SF2 and SF4 do and SF3 really doesn't (ha!).

Every time we watch an eSport, we should not see optimal play. This is why baseball sucks, why NASCAR sucks, and why football is awesome. In baseball, there is very, very little room for individualism, and it is almost entirely the pitcher who expresses it. In Street Fighter (4), games are very exciting because even in say a Ryu vs. Ryu mirror, or even a Zangief mirror, there are a ton of ways to play Ryu and Zangief in that matchup so we get to see not just the character elements but also the player's unique style of play.

Note: Zangief mirrors should theoretically be one-dimensional since Zangief is a more one-dimensional character, but because he has a number of little nuancey things he can do, the mirrors are generally fairly interesting, although not as interesting as say, Bison vs. Akuma matches which are crazy dynamic and have a lot of things going on.

Anyway, obviously StarCraft has this element too. There's a ton of difference between different games of Terran vs. Zerg play, and even between the way different players tackle those same matchups and same issues. That makes every match exciting and interesting, unless they are blowout matches (which are rarely interesting no matter what sport you're playing). Sometimes even those are interesting too.

One of the early criticisms of StarCraft 2 was that it might not have this element. I think we all know better by now. There's tons of ways to separate yourself from other players with just the way you micro units or move around the map, let alone how you plan and build things and whether you micro your battles heavily and all sorts of things. I think there's just as much room for expression as there is in Brood War, possibly more so because there is so much less focus on clicking your peons onto mineral patches and clicking rapidly on all of your gateways/barracks/whatevs. I'm sure haters will disagree with me there, haters gotta hate etc. Since I don't get any comments at all I'm probably not going to worry too much about commenters hating, but you never know I guess.

I guess if I had to pick a third thing, it would be a very very high barrier of entry for competition. One of the hallmarks of video games is that in general, anyone can become the next Daigo, or the next Flash. I think that sort of motivates us as gamers to excel. However, I think at some point we do realize just how much talent is involved. StarCraft is a lot better on this front than any competitive fighting game is, really - well, Guilty Gear and BlazBlue have really ridiculous hard combos and obvious wow execution stuff that if you're a layman you can go "wow these gamers are crazy good."

But I think that the barrier of execution for Guilty Gear even is much lower than it is for StarCraft. In GG you can learn some bread and butter combos, good mixups and pressure and master that, and you are mostly good. After you've learned the basic high damage stuff, learning the stuff that requires like mega high dexterity doesn't yield very much reward. Most Japanese casual fighting game players get to this level or higher, and most semi-serious American players do too. If you compare it to StarCraft though, most decent SC:BW players get to the 100-200 APM level, but unfortunately APM has linear growth for the most part; at many points of a match, having 300 or 400 or even higher APM will simply allow you to do vastly more things in a match compared to someone with 200. The same can't be said for SF; once your dexterity has reached a certain level, the game hard caps you. You can't extend an opportunity for damage beyond a certain point, and you can only react to an event at the perfect time or slower. I'll admit that there are certain things like 1f links that even pro SF players use tricks like double tapping to give them more chances to score them, because they require basically impossible mechanical precision. Still, that mechanical precision isn't obvious for a super novice at the game, but having ridiculous hand speed and crazy macro is really obvious in StarCraft. No one will watch a SC replay and go "Oh I could beat Jaedong, he doesn't do anything special." A lot of people say just that about videos of Daigo, Valle, or Justin Wong, because they can't see why throwing 50 fireballs or a dozen low fierces in a row is skillful play.

A lot of people are concerned about the future of eSports right now, with the KeSPA/Blizzard fiasco and the StarCraft 2 launch. I think these people are totally retarded, for the most part. Equally retarded are the people that think that KeSPA will continue broadcasting in violation of Blizzard's copyright.

ESports will continue to make money (at least in Korea) as long as there is a market for it. If people want to watch live matches of StarCraft or SC2, THERE WILL BE LEAGUES FOR IT. As an example, Valve decided to try and screw the CounterStrike competitive scene in Korea by forcing companies to play CS:Source. Korea responded by developing a knock-off of CS 1.6, Sudden Attack, and continued to market SA to Korean fans. Koreans didn't like CS:S, but they did like 1.6, and thus Sudden Attack was a big hit and makes a lot of advertising money to this day. If Korea wants to see more Brood War league play, then there will be leagues for it. Blizzard isn't stupid. They'll milk the Brood War cash cow for all that it is worth, pro teams will continue to play, and people will pay to advertise. Everyone will win, except for KeSPA who continues to fail to realize that if they just towed the line with Blizzard they'd continue to milk their cash cow.

On the other hand, if StarCraft 2 turns out to be the next big thing and everyone in Korea wants to see the pro scene move to SC2, guess what? Pro Brood War will die out, but SC2 teams will form (probably mostly the same sponsors) and pro gamers will get sponsored to play. We'll see SC2 leagues and money will be made for broadcasting companies, for Blizzard, and for the pro teams. KeSPA will probably get left in the dust, but at least from what I understand, only SK Telecom really has a ton to lose in the ordeal. Maybe their team will break up over this, but I think most companies like Samsung, CJ, KT, etc. will continue to sponsor teams and if SK Telecom decides to bitch out and not support Blizzard, the players will get picked up by teams that will.

It's a pretty simple algorithm. If people are willing to pay money to watch a game, it will get televised, sponsors will pay for advertising spots, sponsors will pay players to play on their pro teams, and players will get paid to play the game. The gaming public is the ones who will determine the fate of the pro scene. Blizzard has some say in how it's run, as does whoever they license (in this case, Gretech/CJ). If KeSPA doesn't want to play ball with Blizzard, they'll lose their piece of the pie. Games will continue to be played. Nothing of value will be lost for us; we'll still get to see pro players and pro leagues. The organizational fiasco going on right now is only a big deal for the big corporations.

And lastly, man is it nice to write without an editor. I can write in improper English, make typos, and dont afraid of anything. It is a little liberating. I love my bosses to death, don't get me wrong. They are awesome. However, it's just nice to write without having the editorial eyes. I really should do this more often.

THERE IS A REASON THIS TIME

I'm sure you're all like "omg he never updates."

"Oh inb4 excuse post."

I got a job at Massively, writing their CO column, as well as pretty much whatever they'll let me write about. It's pretty awesome. All of my co-workers are extremely cool. All of them have different MMO tastes, which is awesome. I'm one of the two "hardcore" guys (the other is Brendan Drain, the EVE guy) and the only one who plays fighting games seriously.

In particular, Shawn is really an ideal leader for the team. He's a good mix of casual and hardcore, has a well-balanced and likable temperament, and has an even hand when dealing with everyone. He's pretty much the ideal gamer, haha.

You can read what I've been doing for the last couple weeks (before that I was applying/writing application/interviewing/paperwork stuff, and before that yes, I was slacking) over there.

Anyway, I've been playing a few games lately, mostly CO, some Torchlight (it's really good, but I can't say much about it that hasn't already been said in some other review of the game), and some Mount and Blade: Warband.

Warband is a medieval sandbox game where you play a random dude or dudette who runs around, gets a bunch of people to hang out with them, and goes and ruins peoples' days. Basically, you get your own mercenary group that kind of straddles an ongoing feud between six different kingdoms. You can do pretty much whatever you want, as far as the political things go. You can side with any of the kingdoms, you can start your own kingdom and land grab, or you can support someone else in overthrowing a kingdom. You can even marry into a kingdom.

You can't do much else besides kill dudes, though. There's a bit of roleplaying going on, but most of the game is hacking shit up. You can handle trade goods, and there's a -lot- of money to be made in that venture, but money is mainly for hiring more dudes to go mess with someone's day.

I'm going as RP as I can, which is kind of hard, because I'm trying deliberately not to topple kingdoms or start wars. I'm working on playing the field as a mercenary, and selling myself out to whoever has some cash. This means currying favor towards whichever country is cool with me at the moment, and maybe marrying into a family that is cool. My army is pretty badass, with guys so awesome I can barely afford them. Fortunately I have a number of named NPCs who are all varying degrees of badass for very cheap prices.

The main thing that immediately strikes me while playing Warband is that it is very similar to 'roguelike' hardcore sandbox games. My main experience with roguelikes is Elona, which is pretty easymode for a roguelike, but I've also screwed with Nethack a little.

Warband has the same sort of gameplay - you run around in a sandbox where everything is random, and a lot of whether or not you succeed is how much you've grinded on content beforehand. Also, you're at the mercy of the RNG quite a bit, although not as much as in a roguelike. Still, not getting the right quests or NPCs can make things a lot rougher on you and your fledgling army.

If you've played Nethack (or Elona), Warband has this unmistakable similarity, right down to the emphasis on grinding in the arena until you're level 4 (this is avoidable, btw).

I can't quite get my feelings out into words on it. If you've played a roguelike, the similarity is obvious, but it's hard to replicate the 'fun' of a roguelike into a post. Roguelikes aren't really fun because they are stupid hard and unforgiving, and the beginning of Warband is somewhat like that. It's pretty easy to get captured by bandits and strung around with no cash until you figure out what you're doing.

Robot Unicorns wut?

I could be writing about a lot of things, but instead I'm writing about random flash games.

This isn't just any flash game, though. It's got unicorns, rainbows, 80s synthpop and only 2 buttons.

It's Robot Unicorn Attack.

There's so much good about this game, that words don't do it justice. But damn it, I'm going to try.

A lot has been written about the flow state, and how to reach it. It's essential for competition of any kind. This game is literally all about the flow state - forget the rainbows and the unicorn and the exploding stars.

Let's start with the music. It's the most obvious thing, because occasionally when a lot of things are going on (typically as the game starts to move faster), the sound effects that are normally mellow and soothing start to break up the flow state a little because they inhibit your processing of the background music.

The music is "Always", by Erasure. It has a relaxing melody and calming lyrics about love. The song is typical of late 80s synthpop, even if it was released in 1994. The melody is practically manufactured to sound soothing, and it does an incredible job as a background song for Robot Unicorn.

It makes one think a little about music design. I'm sure that musicians want to produce a unique sound, and I know some people who insist that screaming death metal is the best thing since sliced bread, but ultimately I think we all know music that follows the rules and sounds more mainstream is what ultimately sells. In this case, I think we can see why - it induces an almost trancelike state!

The brightly colored visuals also help by making everything in the game obvious and appealing. Little things like the 5k dolphins that show up add to the visual immersion, and once the game really gets going, they stop showing up (or at least, they take a break between 35 and 70k). The rainbows following the dolphin or the little sparklies that occur when a star pops on screen, all of it is to get your attention without violating the flow state.

The rest of the game is all very smooth too. Two buttons is an amazing design, allowing people to enter the flow state easily without having to master complex controls. It greatly increases the game's accessibility, which is good.

Lots of little design things go into the game, like the strategic positioning of faeries to warn you of jumps or the sound cue of a star.

The slowly increasing game speed over time also makes sure that the game keeps you in flow state; a player of any skill will quickly reach the parts that are challenging and maintain the trance.

In short: play the game, it's awesome.

Nerd, meet Girlfriend (Part 2)

One of my fans suggested I write more, and that he'd read it when they woke up in the morning. He also said they really liked Nerd, Meet Girlfriend part 1 and it inspired him and his girlfriend to play more games together. Aww!

That being said, sometimes it's hard to get your significant other to play the games you actually like. You play EVE, and you're hardcore. You're a productive member of a 0.0 alliance, and you put around 30 hours a week playing (maybe that's too small an estimate for EVE players). You really wish your girlfriend would play EVE with you.

You're a competitive Street Fighter 4 player. Your boyfriend has an XBox 360 and plays random games. You enjoyed playing Halo 3 together (you suffered through Legendary, but made it somehow), but he can't really bring himself to play SF4 with you because you own him all the time and he doesn't understand why linking two crouching strongs into roundhouse is important. He follows the Ken flowchart and loses horribly, and doesn't have fun.

This post is for us. The hardcores, the players that play games to the fullest, to 100%. How the heck do we get our girlfriends (or boyfriends) to actually sit down in practice mode and learn combos? How do we get our significant other to understand that playing the market is actually fun, and doing endgame raids is awesome when everyone actually does what they are supposed to?

Honestly, I don't know the full answer to this. Some love interests just won't sit in practice mode and learn combos. Some love interests will never get what frame advantage is. Some significant others just don't understand why dealing more damage than the tank is important. No matter what we try, nothing will get these people to do what you want.

However, I can pose some situations from experience about fighting games, and go from there.

I've taught a fair number of total noobs how frame advantage works, in a way that makes sense. I've also taught a large number of unskilled fighting game players about guessing games so that they get that "a-ha!" moment when they do something, guess wrong, and understand that they guessed wrong. Honestly, I still beat these people consistently, but it is about 1000 times more fun to play with them because it goes from being a "spam optimal move" fest to being "I am pretty sure they will do this."

The first and most important thing that you need to have is a student, partner, whatever, who is actually willing to listen to what you are trying to show them. A girlfriend is actually fairly likely to listen to you. A boyfriend... might, although male ego will get in the way. If they don't actually want to try, you are screwed.

The next step is to explain the concepts in as basic a manner as you can. Completely avoid complex topics like parrying or combos. In a fighting game, explaining tempo is very hard, but you're going to have to be the one to do it. I use 'my turn, your turn' gameplay as a way of describing tempo, and use Soul Calibur as my teaching game of choice. Even if my eventual goal is to get people playing BlazBlue (Continuum Shift is out for consoles now, yay!), I need to teach tempo in a game where tempo is easy to understand, and Soul Calibur is easy to understand - it's easy to understand controlling space when we explain what each character's long ranged moves are, and it's easy to explain tempo in a game that often rewards blocking with free damage.

MMOs are in the same vein. Explaining mana efficiency is easy to understand. Explain that a healer should choose when to heal wisely in order to prepare for emergencies, because healing when you don't need to wastes mana for when something bad happens, like extra pulls or aggro on someone else. Explaining why fearing a mob is a bad idea (feel free to demonstrate why, it's one of those obvious things if you see it in action). Explain what DPS is (it's honestly not that hard, it's just the amount of damage you do, no need to complicate it with exact time frames).

If you dumb down the nuance things that you know Barney-style, it helps build a foundation that lets them understand things better. I've had girls (not SOs, but the point remains) who were not normally known for being exceptional gamers ask me why so-and-so did some stupid thing, because what so-and-so was doing didn't make sense, since I taught her to do it the smart way. It warmed my (black, evil) heart!

The closer you get to that 'a-ha!' moment, the better. But you are going to have to hold their hand most of the way. I was teaching a friend (guy) how to play Soul Calibur, and after learning about tempo, he just blocked all the time, even when it was safe for him to attack. I looked at him funny, like "why are you blocking, you should be attacking!" and he just gave me the deer in the headlights look. He eventually got to where he could occasionally fluke a good player, and when he went to play normal SC4 players, he tore them apart (warmed my black heart again). He looked at me like, "wow, these people don't even know when it's safe to attack, it's like beating up little kids."

All the stuff I said in Part 1 applies. You have to be patient, encouraging, and 100% positive throughout the learning process. Since we're probably teaching your boyfriend to do something that involves making him fail a lot (because hardcore players do hard things, and your boyfriend is not going to be able to just do them), you need to be extra encouraging. Sometimes taking him to an anime con so he can thrash all over the anime fans at Soul Calibur might be what he needs. Another good idea might be to have him watch you raid, so he can get an idea for what kind of mistakes other people make.

What about EVE?

Well, honestly I think you're screwed, because EVE really... isn't fun. I know I'm going to get hate mail or something because people insist EVE is fun, but it's not. EVE is an enjoyable experience (I hate to call it a game) for a lot of people. Some parts of EVE can be fun, maybe. But the most important part of EVE is the corporate drama, which really has little to do with the 'game' itself. It's something that you can't just inject yourself into. The game itself is about watching progress bars go up (or really down, in the case of enemy health bars). Sure, there is a fair bit of depth involved in making those progress bars go down, but it's not like most MMOs where every 1-3 seconds is a decision-making point. It's definitely not like a fighting game or shooter where every .1 seconds is a decision-making point. If you can get your girlfriend* to play EVE with you, it's because somehow you got her into your alliance and got her involved with the drama, and she likes it.

Either that, or she's an economics major.

Ultimately, this is a hard question to answer in a general way, but I can sum it up like this:

1: make sure they are actually interested in playing with you; if not, go back to Gears of War
2: start teaching them very basic concepts, starting from the first little things they do wrong
3: never get frustrated, use the word wrong, or be negative, ever - 100% positive all the time
4: be aware of the fact that they most likely will never be amazing
5: be prepared to give up, because honestly this is hard and you most likely failed #3

*kind of sexist, but I realize that the ratio of male to female in EVE is like 20:1 or something

Gaming Journalism is Garbage

I read gaming websites a lot, and hype articles are getting to the point where they just aren't good for useful anymore. Yes, there are bad articles on MMORPG.com all the time. I know this. But what pissed me off enough to write about it came from IGN, which considering how long they've been in the business, they really should know better.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this article is taken down, although it's been up for over a week, so my guess is probably not. I got linked to it from somewhere else, as I don't actually read IGN, because I guess I figured everything they wrote was trash.

The article, in case you're too lazy to read it (I probably would be!) is about how JRPGs are fundamentally flawed, and the writers have their own special, magical ideas about how to fix them. Yes, you heard right - writers - that is to say that unlike most trashy gaming journalism articles, this one went through peer review. I can really only imagine what kind of peer review. Was it where they look at the other's brilliantly typed words and fawn over how witty they are? Did they even stop to think for 2 seconds about the PR disaster it might cause?

I think this is the stupidest piece of gaming journalism I've ever read. I'm no industry demographic genius or anything, but it doesn't take a lot of thought to know that bashing on a hardcore gaming genre is going to send the fanboys in droves and they aren't going to be happy.

Also, the next time I read somewhere that Deus Ex is a western RPG, I think I'm going to barf. Deus Ex is western awesome*, not an RPG.

The real worst part of the article is that it's mostly just preferences. It's funny when they claim #9 (grinding) when most modern JRPGs minimize mandatory grinding, and have since the PSX days. Some games (like Lost Odyssey) penalize grinding by adding diminishing returns to EXP awards. Sure, some games still do it, but the fact is that tons of people like grinding EXP for their characters. That's why asian MMOs are still popular over here.

Other things, like improving presentation and reducing cliches are already prevalent in JRPGs. Should we call out Dragon Age for having cliches, too? NO. What IGN calls a cliche is more accurately called an 'archetype', and there's a lot of room for flavor inside those archetypes. Female magic users, being an example they used, are perfectly fine things with plenty of variations. Loner swordsmen are too. So are drunken dwarven berserkers, or cops who are pissed off at the system and think they should pursue justice outside the law. It's about the quality and robustness of the writing.

For western RPGs, the average quality is usually higher just because there are fewer of them, and Bethseda and BioWare really can't do wrong. In Japan, there are a lot more RPGs released in general, because their market is different (they like grindy, stat-based games more than we do). If we compare the Japanese RPG market to the western shooter or action game market, you'll find that the average quality is probably closer (probably worse, in the case of the US action game market).

Sure, JRPGs are a smaller market share, but seriously - does IGN need to bash them for doing what they do? I don't see any reason why a gaming publication should go and genre bash. You don't see me bashing 3D fighters... yet.

Out of the 500-some odd comments on the topic right now, I think there was a 2chan invasion too. Wow, go JP players for being awesome.

*actually closer to a stealth action game

My Resolution Was To Write More

And so I'm trying. I haven't written since October!

So I started NaNo, failed that. It sucked. Then the holidays came, and I sort of got in a slump. My goal is to make up for that, at least somewhat. Ugh. RN isn't dead though, it's just on life support.

Since this is the blog post least likely to be read by returning readers, I've decided to write about something maybe more personal than normal. It will be also more scattered than normal, and believe me, I know my posts are already pretty scattered.

I love drama.

This isn't a new discovery for me. I like interpersonal relationships, and I like hearing about other people's feelings. It's fairly natural, if a little effeminate, for me to enjoy drama.

So a while back, in November, my RP group was thrust into a crunch scenario. The players were forced to make a bad decision - either turn themselves into international criminals, or start a war between two countries. I may talk about the overall campaign later, but it's this decision that is the most important one. So far they've gone on the path towards starting the war, and there may come a time where it may be impossible to stop that. But for now, they aren't 100% hedged in that path.

The drama regarding this decision was amazing. I got hours of quality, GM-free player interaction where they fought, argued, and talked over one another in order to debate all of their possible options.

In character.

It was epic! Everyone had an awesome time and felt good about what was going on. I mean, they didn't feel good about the circumstances, but everyone felt like they had something to contribute, because they all had opinions on what they should do.

As a GM, I love it when my players are excited about their game. Drama is just one way of doing it, and it isn't even the easiest option.

Drama is especially hard because a lot of roleplayers don't take the game seriously. It's hard to have someone who thinks entirely in meta terms to think about how their character feels about something.

Since I tend to attract the meta types of player, it's a little harder than normal for me to instill this sort of drama. At the same time though, it's hard for me to find 'real' roleplayers that actually want to sit down and play a game rather than use the game as a chatroom.

Still, in the end I enjoy character interaction as much as anyone. Roleplaying is about being a group of characters in a scenario, not a bunch of character sheets plowing through a dungeon. To me, roleplaying is about using that character sheet to form a character that has real strengths, real weaknesses, and who we can establish a deep and intricate personality with.

It's rare to really get that same level of roleplaying spirit in a group, and so I really enjoy it when it happens.

I dunno, this post makes no sense, but it's okay. I'm allowed to ramble in my blog a little, right?