Convalescent

I've had a fairly unexpected turn of events this Turkey Day: an old friend drove 7 hours (one way) to pick me up in order to deliver me to my parents. In particular, this gesture of kindness was because this will be the last holiday season I'll enjoy in the States for a year or two at least.

Thank you, Matt, for your 14 hour donation towards the reunification of parents and son!

As if to add a few more levels to the mountain of gratitude I felt, I was then invited to his home on Friday for an after-Thanksgiving feast worthy of Turkey Day itself! Followed by an evening of board games with friends, I can safely say that this Thanksgiving as a whole has been an outstanding success.

Of course, Saturday I woke up feeling like I was fighting off a cold, and Sunday I woke up feeling like death warmed over. I spent the better part of the week asleep, awakening only for a few hours at a time before succumbing to a fevered dreamworld once more.

I am so thankful to have been visiting my parents' home when this illness struck, as it is infinitely more comfortable than my glorified indoor campground of an apartment. (Everything's in boxes and I'm ready to go just as soon as I can get a sublease signed!)

I'm on the mend now and about to return to Virginia for another few weeks, then holidaying with my folks and off to the Japans in early 2013! Life is good.
I did happen to log into Steam to check out the Autumn Sale. Although I did make a few purchases here and there, overall I felt the offerings weren't that robust compared to previous years. Then again, perhaps this was just to warm us up for the Christmas extravaganza? One can hope.

A funny thing I noticed once again (as this has been a previous thorn in my consumerist side) is how terrible  Steam's UI is for the purchase of DLC. If you're looking at a particular DLC, it conveniently notifies you of which friends already own it, but doesn't actually tell you if you do. A lot of games have a ton of DLC, and it is a huge pain in the ass to go through and figure out which ones you already own. Meanwhile, once you do add a DLC to your shopping cart, the "continue shopping" option takes you back to the store's homepage... very inconvenient if you're purchasing a bunch of DLCs.

I suppose Steam has gotten big enough that a bureaucracy now exists which prevents some common sense upgrades from being implemented quickly and effectively. I'm such a bargain hunter that I slogged through the 50+ clicks necessary to figure out which I didn't already own and make the purchase, but I easily could have said "forget it" and walked away. It is never a good idea to build an obstacle course between your customers and products. Hopefully they'll rework it in time for the Christmas sale?

On Azeroth's Cataclysm (Or: Truly Evolving MMO Worlds)

This post is not what you might call "topical"... I quit playing WoW shortly after the release of Cataclysm, mostly due to an unfortunate job that had begun consuming all of my free time.

At the time, I remember really being struck by how interesting an experience it was to explore a world I knew so intimately (having played WoW off and on since Beta) and seeing it so completely changed, yet still recognizable. It was so much fun to briefly feel like the world was truly changeable and, well, real. Naturally that wore off the longer I played, and having recently returned to dabble in Azeroth, (I mean, hey, Pandas? I'm so in) the fact that the game world still looks like it did the day after the Cataclysm is really immersion-breaking.

I really hope that in the future, MMOs will explore the idea of a truly evolving world. I remember thinking about all the possibilities when WoW first introduced the phasing system with the release of WotLK, and am still surprised at how sparingly they have used it. I kept expecting a quest where I would help build up a settlement through a long progression of quests. I especially think it would be cool as a nod to Warcraft's origins as an RTS game where you basically build up a settlement from scratch for every single level.

I feel like Blizzard really missed a golden opportunity to showcase their phasing tech; if they had included some quests throughout Cataclysm to help the various areas of the world rebuild, then it would have given players a greater feeling of immersion and investment. In the long run, I think the idea of a truly interactive world environment where things can fall apart and be rebuilt directly through player actions will be the rule, rather than the exception. Such a world would naturally engender a feeling of investment and ownership by the player-base, which in turn would mean sustainable long term profits. Of course, it'll have to be carefully done...

I seem to recall an MMO from many years back that experimented with a truly interactive ecology, where the players' actions could have dire consequences; if you chopped down every single tree then the forest wouldn't regrow, and if you over-hunted a population of NPCs then they could die out. As I recall, every server ended up being a dead world.

Then again, I cannot find any evidence of this by Google sleuthing, so perhaps this was all part of a theoretical discussion or a product of the fevered dreams of an old MMO veteran... In any case, I do think it would be an interesting experiment, so long as it was hard to grief such a setup and the player-base had a means for punishing griefers. (It is a shame that griefing is such a thing, but that's a discussion for another post.)

Regardless, I think WoW is onto something with their phasing system. Here's hoping they expand its use to help further immerse the players in the illusion of a truly living, evolving Azeroth, or at the very least serve as an inspiration to more revolutionary MMOs just over the horizon.

On Procrastination

For those of you who know me well, you're already aware that I tend to have a slight problem with putting things off. Case in point: I actually composed a draft on this topic back in 2010! Haha, and that was 100% unintentional. (Full disclosure: I thought it would be funny to put it off for a few posts in a row, but I fully intended to post about it at some point that month.) At least for the past couple of years, I had a pretty dang good excuse: an all-consuming job.

There's probably gonna be quite a few more mentions of how much I hated my old job. Despite how much it took from me, though, I will say that I think I learned a lot. For starters, I never knew that I was truly capable of hard work. I always fancied myself somewhat lazy, and while it is not strictly untrue to say I don't aspire to working hard for the rest of my life, I now carry the self-assurance that when necessary, this ol' boy can man up and get shit done.

Honestly, I even have a sense of understanding when people say they thrive off of hard work. During those rare times when the stars aligned, and my work actually translated directly into results, it felt amazing to see what three back to back 14 hour workdays could accomplish. It felt so good to work hard and get things accomplished, and if I was working in a field that I was passionate about then I really think I could happily do so indefinitely.

I was not passionate about my last job. Combined with the fact that my hard work rarely had anything to do with the metrics my performance was rated on, that job sapped at my very soul. When a 12 hour workday is normal, you quickly lose interest in your hobbies. It got to the point that I felt like my whole life was on hold; I was procrastinating about living my life, just to strive daily for a job I didn't like while earning a salary that wasn't phenomenal.

I now have a new perspective on life, and how quickly it can pass us by. I literally lost two years in what feels like the blink of an eye, and have very little to show for it. But my days of putting off the enjoyment of living? I'm done procrastinating. Time to live my life to the fullest once more!

On Pre-order Bonuses

Ah, yes, the pre-order bonus. There was a time when you'd get something tangible when you pre-ordered AAA titles. I still wear my Quake 4 t-shirt when I'm just going to be gaming at home, despite how raggedy it has become. I still have some old school video game maps that I pin on the wall decoration. Yessir, those relics are from the good ol' days.

That time has now passed. Instead, generally speaking, we get some sort of in-game advantage when we pre-order. It might be platform/vendor dependent, or it might be left up to our choice. The thing that remains consistent is that we no longer are offered any costly tangibles.

Why produce something physically, when you can just add some extra digital content to your game? And so we have a new era of pre-order bonuses, almost exclusively digital in nature. Companies have come up with various strategies to drive up pre-release sales, so let's examine some:

Going the item route really irritates me; too often it feels like it pollutes the intended experience of starting a new character, and these items tend to be decently powerful. Nothing quite like a game where it takes a quarter of a play-through before you find an upgrade to your starting weapon.

A slightly different bonus is to include extra content. Bonus missions, bonus maps, additional characters (or civilizations, in the case of Civ 5), maybe a different color for everyone's default armor. It ranges from "do people really pay extra for this?" when it is merely graphical skins, to a sort of slow-burning anger that I have to jump through hoops to make sure I get the "complete" game.

And of course, these "exclusive" preorder bonuses are never exclusive. They're just ready-made DLC, all they need is to be aged; wait six months and then presto, you have extra profit-flow.

I understand where it all comes from, at least in a vague sense. I know that the projections for overall demand (and profits) are all based on pre-orders, so they do whatever they can to hype the game and lure people in to an early commitment.

That said, I really think that the smartest way to do that is one I often see utilized by Steam; namely, to offer a 10% discount if you pay in full before the game is released. A slightly risky move, you might say, but then again you're free to wait until the game comes out and first impressions are generated. Meanwhile, someone who is a diehard fan and will buy the game regardless of its reviews can get a slight reward for their loyalty, and none of us have to deal with bullshit DLC.

When Video Games Meet Romance

I've been in a few serious relationships in my time, both with girls who got their game on, and girls who never picked up a controller in their life.

Although it is great fun, I'm actually ambivalent about sharing my hobby with a significant other. I have a hard enough time getting my chores done and living a balanced lifestyle when I'm dating a girl who doesn't game, after all. If you think addiction by yourself is bad, imagine having your partner always enabling you to forgo social commitments, chores, work, even hygiene. Obviously, this can lend itself to trouble.

Then again, a close friend has always enjoyed playing MMORPGs and lately has been playing WoW in particular. His wife didn't really understand how he could enjoy the game so much. She was always interrupting him during combat, asking him to do chores in the middle of an instance run, etc. He specifically contrasted this experience to a period of time when I dated a girl who played WoW with me, and constantly lamented how awesome it would be if he could just get his wife into a game with him.

He had a persuasive argument, I must admit; first of all, it would lend understanding of the flow of the game, and theoretically make her more patient with allowing him to finish an instance or not expect his full attention until after a tricky fight was won. Secondly, given the all-consuming nature of MMO culture, it would be a very powerful bond to share between them.

By playing together, enjoying virtual adventures in which they relied on each other to overcome obstacles, he supposed it could actually strengthen their marriage outside of the game. I'm of a mind to agree with his assessment, since I've found that shared hobbies do indeed help build bonds in a relationship.

Well, turns out that after a long and arduous campaign of building her interest in WoW, she finally agreed to give it a go. He hooked her up with a free trial and within a week they needed to upgrade her to a full account; mission accomplished.

I'm truly happy for my friend's success. That said, I'm still not quite sure what I'd prefer out of my next relationship. Bonding over video games is certainly fun, but after spending the past two years being utterly consumed by my job and having countless plans fall through where I was desperate to do something, anything, other than veg out over the weekend... I think I might be ready to enjoy a different shared hobby. Mountain biking, perhaps?

Does anyone have an opinion on the matter? I would love to hear some funny stories resulting from the combination of a passion for gaming and one's love life!

A Brave New World

Time flies. More than two years of my life have gone by quickly, with little of note occurring. Holidays were short and often skipped entirely as my job consumed all. The pay wasn't bad, unless you consider the hours worked and the stress of being on call 24/7/365.

I guess that's why I quit. Friday was my last day, and now I am enjoying the freedom that has escaped me the past few years. Despite my best efforts, I could never find the time, energy, or inspiration to work on any of my hobbies while employed at this last job.

I was feeling pretty trapped since I was working too hard to do a proper job hunt, but I decided to reach out to my old employers in Japan... things moved pretty fast, and now I'm waiting for my visa to be processed. I'll be back in Osaka by early 2013, and I couldn't be happier.

I have never been more motivated to embrace the many hobbies and projects I've always wanted to do "when I have the time". For the next year or two, I aim to ensure that I have plenty of time!

For now, though, I'm just gonna enjoy soaking up that sweet, sweet freedom.