Who doesn’t like to fire up a freakin’ awesome computer game every now and then?
Let me cast your mind back to the late 1990’s. There were games released almost on a weekly basis right across the PC, PS1, and N64.
Times were good, and it didn’t matter which system you were on.
Recently, I had been feeling that games weren’t being released, or in as good quality, as they used to be. I guess its an “old” gamers thing, where nothing is as good as it used to be, and in all honstly this past year, for me as a PC gamer, looked bleak.
Then Modern Warfare 2 came along, and the news that the PC version of the game was being gimped. I snapped. I went out and bought a tone of games that had been recommended to me, MANY released in the past 6 months.
It was like my eyes had been opened up. Gaming wasn’t dying, the focus platform had just shifted. I’m not going to say that console gaming is the way of the future, its just where gaming is at, at the moment. Will it come back to the PC? Will it become more focused on mobile platforms? Will there be a new generation of consoles that it will move to? Only time will tell, but I shall ride this games wave now I’ve discovered where it is.
Oh, and for those who go “FPS can only been played on the PC”, that’s wrong, you just have to learn a new technique. Its not better. Its different.
Now as everyone here knows, for as long as I’ve been around games, I have been a PC gamer. Actually let me correct that, I’ve been a computer gamer. That is I play my games on a computer.
But recently, I’ve made a bit of a change to my gaming life. I’ve moved from playing all my games on the PC to most of my games on the Xbox 360.
Now, I’ve owned the Xbox 360 for quite some time, but I’ve never actualy played any games on it, besides Guitar Hero.
This was mainly because all the games I wanted to play were on the PC.
But recently, a lot of the games that I’ve been waiting for, or excited for, have been either crippled for the PC, poorly ported, or just delayed, and there’s also a bunch of games that just don’t make it to the PC.
So I’ve made the switch, and its been fantastic, I’m not being bored out of my mind with the one release in a blue moon, I’ve got a whole back catalog of games that I have never had access to that I can now play. I’ve been catching up on old titles like Assassins Creed, Prototype, Soul Calber 4, and the Halo series just to name a few (yes I know some of these are on the PC, but seriously, they are poor ports).
I’m also loving the fact that I don’t need Steam, or to enter CD keys, or sign up for a service to play my games. Just push my little X button, whack the DVD in the drive, and away I go.
Now, don’t for a second think that I’m thinking “oh the controller controls the game as good as a mouse and keyboard”. Because I don’t. For FPS the PC controls will always be more accurate. That doesn’t mean that the controller doesn’t work. After a little practice, I’ve found that aiming, and movement can be quite fluid in 360 FPS games (don’t know about PS3, I’d imagine it would be the same).
There’s been some discussion on the AtomicMPC forums about in-game advertising in PC games (for some reason, this doesn’t seem to be an issue in Console gaming).
First of all, yes the screen-shots of in-game adds are from a free game that uses add revenue to keep the servers going. I just wanted to show some in-game adds and Quake Live was the quickest game I had on-hand that had adds. Also, sorry for the low textures, as I said, I was in a hurry so left the details turned down.
I’ll copy and paste my argument FOR in-game advertising, and expand on it a little.
QUOTE (SquallStrife @ Oct 16 2009, 10:40 AM)
It’s not a technical question, das, it’s about justification. There is a need for an ongoing revenue stream when there are ongoing costs for an undefined period of time.
There is just no need for it in an offline game, where the ongoing costs are limited, and can be factored into the initial purchase price.
QUOTE (DasBok @ Oct 16 2009, 10:57 AM)
Probably.
Maybe I’m ok with it, ’cause I’ve been expecting it for a while, it was always bound to happen, ever since Half Life 2 came out, and was tied into steam, I’ve been expecting it.
And I honestly don’t think its a bad thing. The advertising is generally out of the way, and companies like the TAC can get a message out, but in a way that doesn’t really affect game play.
I know that the revenue probably doesn’t reach the developers, but I’d like to think that a small part of it goes into maintaining servers, and possibly making it into the packages that they use to fund new games. Heck, it probably does go strait to their pockets, but that doesn’t REALLY affect me, so it doesn’t bother me.
I can understand the whole “principal of the matter” argument, but at the end of the day, if your still buying and playing the game, then that argument has no weight, they will keep releasing games in such a way, and I’m really only seeing this argument from PC gamers, I’ve seen in-game advertising, AND advertising on the Xbox360 dashboard, and you pay $80 for Xbox Live. And I’ve never heard a 360 owner complain about adds in a service/game they play for. (Yes, I know that’s a “they are ok with it, so why arn’t we?” argument).
One other thing I’d like to point out, to me, these adds make me feel more immersed in the game, especially if its based in modern times. An add for “coke” or another product, heck maybe even a TAC one if its a racing game, its something I identify with, and it sucks me into the world more.
And I honestly believe that. I believe that in-game adds can be a good thing. I believe they ARE a good thing. They really do help suck me into the virtual world that has been created. For example, in say Modern Warfare 2, if I see an add for some made up fizzy beverage, I know my minds gonna go “hang on, that doesn’t exist, this isn’t real” and the suspension of disbelief is ruined. But if that same billboard has Pepsi, in a way that I’ve seen it whilst driving around in real life, or on TV, then my minds going to go “quick, get behind cover, I DON’T WANA DIE!”
The fact is that adds are a part of our every day lives. We can’t avoid them, even if blind. So why not have some form of advertisements in game worlds that are meant to mimic real life? And at that same time, why not use real products?
Sure someones going to be making money off of it, but if you were the developer, or publisher, or advertiser, are you going to tell me that you REALLY wouldn’t do it?
Also, if in-game adds really annoy you that much, then don’t play games with them. The excuse of “but I still want to play the game” doesn’t hold up, its similar to the argument of “I can pirate games because I can’t afford them”. It helps no-one and doesn’t make a point.
All the TAC adds for motorcyclist safety have been along the lines of “there’s no re-spawn for motorcyclists” and “Motorcyclists need more Armour” amongst other things.
So last night, me and Nick decided to catchup and play some console games, started out with the awesome Halo 3 ODST, and we got a respectable score on it. My God it is so much fun, both the singe player and the brilliant mod Fire Fight.
Next we moved onto the Wii with the brilliant Mario Kart Wii for some old time gaming. Caitlyn came out and joined us, and it soon degenerated into us yelling at each other and generally making fun of each other like we usually do.
Then Caitlyn started getting into a reminiscence mood, and was trying to remember a level she claimed “might” have been from the original Halo, and after a long time of her failing to describe what the map looked like, and us loading up all three Halo games. She finally went away and drew a few lines on a piece of paper.
You can see this piece of paper down the side here.
Now, how much of a bloody nerd must I be to know exactly what Caitlyn was talking about from a simple drawing like this? And yes, I was right, we loaded the game up, and sure enough, it was the map that we remembered (it wasn’t in Halo).
We also decided it would be cool to every few nights to get a Halo PC game happening, just for fun. If its just us three. Or if any of you want to join, then that would be brilliant.
Oh, and yes, we did also play some Halo 3 in multilayer. Defiantly better than Halo 1 on the Xbox, so much fun. Love doing races in the ATV’s, and some of the new weapons are just awesome fun to try and use. (Single handed playing ftw).
Definitely gonna have to get a Gold subscription for my 360 so I can play Fire Fight, and Halo 3 online.
I should probably make a start of Gears of War, and Perfect Dark as well.
Been a little crazy recently, and havn’t had much time where I’ve been able to just sit down, write, or do other general stuff.
Heck, take a look at the IRC stats, my lines per day for this month are way down, to non existent! So I figured I would go through a bunch of different things.
First thing I’ll talk about is another rant about drivers.
Specifically drivers of big cars. No, I’m not talking 4×4’s. I’m talking 4×4’s, Van’s, station wagons.
Now, I know some people need vehicles like that, but for the love of God, can you PLEASE learn how to drive them. So many people seem to have trouble reversing out of a car park with them.
This isn’t a case of me ranting about people in big cars without driving them myself. I drive both a Ford EB, and a Volkswagen Van (an old early ’90’s white tank thing). And I have no issues throwing them around Frankston city, or other small road places. I can also park, and get out of parks, regardless of size and position fine with both of my vehicles.
Oh and that brings me to another thing about cars. 90% of 4×4 owners shit me. Now I know that some people actual use 4×4’s for what they were designed for. Going off road. And I know some people have 6+ kids for some mental reason.
What shits me is the amount of people I see driving them, who will never take them off-road, and will never have more than 2 kids in the car.
Its stupid, a big 4×4 doesn’t make you safe, infact most 4×4’s have safety ratings lower than alot of small cars (go check www.howsafeisyourcar.com.au).
When on the train back from Bittern about 12 months ago, someone was sitting accross from me, talking to a friend about their cars (yes I was listening in, I was bored). She was talking about how, on a farm, they just drive about the in their station wagon, but when they go into the city they take the 4×4 “because its just safer”.
It took all my self control to not yell “No! Its less safe, you just clog up the streats with your big arsed car like you take up all the seat with your big arse! I hope a truck hits you so you can see how unsafe it is!”
Anyway, enough about cars.
Games time!
I’ve started playing a tonne of Fallout 3. I did try the game out a little bit ago, and I was just treating it as an on-rails shooter, and quit shortly after nuking Megaton.
Recently, after learning a bunch of cool stuff that you can do in it, I reinstalled it to give it another shot. And oh my God, I’m having so much fun (yet somehow, even after disarming the bomb in Megaton instead, I’ve still got a negative karma).
But my oh my, what an awesome game.
Now, I know I’ve ranted about Quake Live before, but that game is just pure Gold, unless you play it as much as The Muffin. Hes over it now, but if you see how many games hes been playing a day for the past 2 weeks, thats understandable. Mental. I mean, I love the game, but maybe 1 or 2 duels, and a few CA games is enough for me a day (can’t stand being in one thing for too long).
Life / Work
As you may have guessed from my last post, stupid professionals shit me.
I’ve been doing some office and network maintenance work for a local company who have just opened, and my God, working with the “communications experts” (read guys who install phone’s with multiple lines, and that’s it), is an absolute nightmare.
They have no freakin’ idea what the hell is going on with everyone else, and enjoy getting in the way of everything.
I wans’t the only one pissed at them, the new buisness owners were pissed off too.
Oh, and then there are the people who work for them. They seem to deliberatly go out of their way to break everything.
No, I’m not going to give you permision to install ANOTHER photo editing program, ONE is enough. No, I’m not going to let you change the clock to a different time zone so you know when to call your boy friend, why? BECAUSE YOU ARE AT WORK.
Oh, and PLEASE stop pulling cables out the back of the computer and leaving them out, I really hate going under that desk. Yes, you can do this, this and this, no you can’t access your bosses private files, please jump into a fire and DIE.
All the way back in 2006, I started my journey into University. And there I met Craig. By mid-year, disapointed with how the IT@PE group were handling social things, we decided to try and organise a LAN party.
It failed. Hard. We cancled it a day before the LAN was ment to run. We had 6 people interested.
About month later, we decided to give it another shot. Craig set us up a fancy website, with a black background, and green tables. It looked horrid, but it summed us up. We needed a name, and after much brain storming with a good friend of us both, Mr Luke “Misc” Alabaster, we came up with the name “GreentubeLAN”, this after falling over many names, all of which caused us to keep cracking up with laughter as we kept getting weirder and weirder with names. Untill we relised we kept comming back to GreentubeLAN.
I think those who were trying to study at Monash Peninsula Library were thankfull we made a decision.
So after a meeting with a cool guy, who to this day, I only remember as “Andrew”, who did leasing on the venues at Monash PE, we finally got settled to use the “Upper Deck Cafe”, and we started the signup. We relised we needed help, and grabbed Michael to help us with the admin.
The LAN came around, 20 people showed, it was fantastic. We had SBS on the plasma showing soccar, we had lounge couches all bunched up with a TV (the TV was never used for NES games, infact, it remained off and the plasma on). I ran a Quake 3 tournament, we all played some Counter Strike. Some guys played UT2k4, whilst others played Americas Army. Nick had a case made of wood.
It was so good, we ran another one, not even a month later. We again go the Upper Deck Cafe, we had a few of our future regulars make an appearance. Matt ran people over in GTA:SA, and we had people scrambling over tables to get to the late pizza. Michael waltzed.
We also screwed up. Too few people with a watchfull eye lead to a fuse blowing, a entire cafe’ fridge turning off (and food in it going bad), a automatic door stuck, and a coffee machine that wished it had never been made.
We wern’t allowed to use the Upper Deck Cafe’ anymore.
However, I remembered a good friend of mine, Daniel. He had offered me a Scout Hall once before, back in the day. A quick phone call, and wham! We had a hall.
Whilst Craig was testing some servers, he met some people who would go on to make TanLAN, down in Traralgon. They decided to come along.
We had the slowest LAN to date, seirously, it was like 256k ADSL. And do you know what? It was fantastic. We ran a UT2k4 competition, we gave awards for the “worst computer” in the looks department. We gave some guy an Action Man doll ’cause he was good at Counter Strike. It was good fun.
Then we ran into GTL4, same venu, huge heat. We had fans going, and it was still bloody boiling. So much, that by 10:30pm, we had all moved otuside to sit around a campfire site (sans fire), sipping cold drinks, and talking. One of Daniel’s friends got the first lable of “bloody hell” when he turned off the V8 Supercars server, after taking 60 minutes to set it up.
GTL5 came around. We were all calling the LAN GTL by now, I still have no idea who cameup with that acronym, even tho it makes sense. It was small, quiet, and had Painkiller. It was really a setup for what was to come.
GTL6 came around, our 1st birthday. We put Wanko in a corner (no he doens’t get a link), we had sponsors from Intel, ATI, NOS Computers, and even some stuff Craig bought at MSY.
We ran a Quake4 tournament, Luke won a gatwatch, “bloody hell” won a orange intel jacket, and Wanko won nothing.
We also had a huge arse chocolate cake. I mean REALLY big, so big it had to be brought down ’cause it wouldn’t fit into the fridge. It had green icing.
I could go on, but the list is almost exactly the same.
Why am I writing all of this?
Well, GreentubeLAN has technicly closed its doors, without actualy closing them. But for now, you can rest assured that there will be no more open to public LANs. All that is going to be left is private invite only LANs.
I would just like to thank everyone who has ever come to a GreentubeLAN. Wether you came to one, or came to all of them. We arn’t big headed enough to say “they were so good because of us”, it was because of you, those who came to the LANs that made them so much fun, and gave us and everyone else so much enjoyment.
We would also like to think everyone who has helped us in any way with the LANs, from our own parents and partners, to Andrew and all the other little guys. You made it all posible, and we are forever greatfull for everything that you did for us.
So now, with DLC, SanLAN, Respawn, and a number of others around, will you ever be able to LAN with the GTL crew again? We would like to hope so, we have plans on attending any LANs in our area that look like fun, and there might be future invite only GTL events, that we will run (hint hint to those reading).
I was going to write this a few weeks ago, since I just wanted to talk about how awesome a group of people are, but held off due to various reasons. But our discussion on IRC the other night about what LANs have become.
Basically there are two sides to the coin. There are those like me, who believe LANs are about gaming. And that multiplayer gaming is more social that file sharing. And there are those who believe that LANs should be file sharing, with games on the side. They claim that its just as social, because while they are doing this, they getup and go talk to people.
I disagree with that, you would be too busy getting the latest… I dunno, what do kids download? Buffy? eppisode to get up and chat.
Quite a few LANs (and ones outside GTL), which have been 90% games, I have found to be a great social experience, excepcily when I was younger. I guess I would like that feeling back. LANs just feel… well theres effort to get people into the same games now. It didn’t used to be like that.
I remember the first big LAN i went to, a game was loaded, and 15 minutes later, almost everyone in the hall was in, and those who couldn’t run it were doing “swaps” with someone (when you die, hop-up and let someone else on). Sure, back then it was 700mb verses 4gb for an install, but our network, optical media, and hard drivers are that little bit quicker, so it shouldn’t be that much more.
I guess you could argue that its “not a game I like”, but hell, you don’t have to like a game to have fun (yes, I know this sounds backwards, but let me try and explain). Lets use an example from GTL here. Counter Strike.
Only a few people like it, yet we used to be able to get a full game going, even of CS haters. I’m not the biggest CS fan, infact, I only play it at LANs if its being played. But you know what? Its fun to play at a LAN, even if its a game I dislike. Why? I can yell out in suprise, and hear the giggles come back. People can get excited at something special happening, and as both a player, and spectator (when you’ve died), its exciting, its funny, its FUN.
I’ve seen a room go CRAZY over a lucky last SECOND difusal, or a stupidly well placed rocket, or THAT perfect sniper shot. Or heck, even someone hiding behind a box with a shotgun, and waiting down the timer. Theres cheering, laughter, whoops, compliments, and ofcourse, explicitives. And they are all going everywhere.
And once the game is done, and the next one is being prepared, or the pizza is being served, everyone is talking about that moment, what the next games going to be like, who to look out for, who worked well together.
Random team-ups have resulted in life-long friendships at LANs I’ve been to in the past (from people who didn’t know each other before the LAN).
People come to the next LAN, and are clapping THAT guy/team on the back, getting ready to re-live the fun all over again, but maybe this time in a new game.
And note what I’ve described could happen in almost ANY LAN game? Not just Counter Strike, or Quake, but RTS games, racing games, sports games, smash-the-hell-outa-them games. It doens’t matter what game it was.
THIS is why those who go to a LAN to file-share will NEVER get the full experience. Noone is going to be chearing you downloading that latest movie. Noones going to remember that epic song you got when that 16TB server went up. No-one is going to talk about anything that happens with file-share, except who has the biggest HDD RAID.
Maybe if your a more social person, you MIGHT get the “meeting people” aspect, but you havn’t EXPERIENCED anything with them, besides bad breath, poor hygine, and a lack of sleep (yes us gamers get that too). Its the experiences that makes a LAN special.
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So whats this got to do with Quake Live?
Well, a Saturday or two back, I joined a server with The_Muffin, he was playing some Clan Arena. Lower skilled players, who don’t take the game seirous (just as I LOVE it), so i joined. After some team shuffles, and “pros” quiting (citing server was unbalanced and gay), and extreme nubs leaving ’cause they wern’t getting headshots, we ended up with some of the greatest guys I’ve ever had the plesure of meeting online.
Long story short, we had fun.
Some got drunk, some of us had music, some of us had wireless internet.
And it was amazing, I have no idea who’s team won what rounds, who got the most kills or anything, we just had fun, and lived the experience. Just the 8 of us, from 9:30pm all the way to 2:30am the next day.
Yes we lost track of time, there was much cited “oh shit! gotta get to sleep”, and even I got in trouble!
It was brilliant, and after the LAN discussion on IRC, I couldn’t help but think “if this Quake Live game happened on LAN, those file-share guys, who would shun a game ’cause its not ne of the 3 they play, would be missing everything a LAN is about”.
