Zombie Apocalypse

I'm fighting off a nasty cold and in the middle of some delusional dreams and thoughts and promises of eternal love and devotion I came to this sudden realization. 

The End of Days is nigh! The Zombie Apocalypse has begun!

The Baby Eater

The Toddler Eater

The Hobo Eater

And there's more I'm sure. I just don't have a habit of searching for news about cannibalism. But I ran into these after just three minutes in the weird part of YouTube. It has to mean something, right? It's not just my feverish delusions, right?

I should go find myself a crowbar, or a capable man with a shotgun...

The Tank-Healer Dance

Where have I scurried off to? Well, you know when you get so passionate about something that you kind of lose yourself in the moment? And you know when that something isn't a thing but a one? Also, haven't been playing anything new. But this had a point other than vain apologies didn't it?

I'll be the first to admit: I'm not the most experienced of MMORPG players out there. In fact, my repertoire is fairly limited. My first big one was WAR and I've just recently decided to give Aion a whirl. Oh, shush you hatemongers. I have my gripes with the game as well but circumstance dictated and I, as the good girl I am known to be, acquiesced. But from what little I have seen, heard and experienced, there is this core fundamental rule all these games seem to cling to.

I'll introduce the topic with a little haiku-esque adage I heard just the other day while I took the mop to the floor.

"If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault.

  If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault.

 If the DPS dies, it's their own damn fault."

Most of you will agree that, although a bit extreme, most of the times the saying rings true. The tank is there to take the beating for everyone and the healer's there to make sure he can survive it. In doing so, he's perceived as a threat and it is then up to the tank to become an even bigger one. The dance goes on and on until things are rendered immobile and pronounced dead. This is not a broad sweeping statement. It covers mostly PvE instanced encounters of the softer kind. I acknowledge the usefulness of DPS classes and that they too have an important part to play but often times with a lesser responsibility load. And, usually, your choice of DPS player (not to be confused with character) is irrelevant while your choice of healer/tank combination is not. Is it any wonder everyone blames either the healer or the tank?

Life isn't made of instanced PvE alone is it? Let's take large-scale PvP then and the only true experience with it I've had. How would one rate this partnership then? Equally as important? Maybe. Ideally, tanks will be the ones to receive the burst damage from enemy lines and they will be relying on their healers to get them through it so they can cause the disruption they set out to do, all the while looking after the safety of their own files as well. This, to me, seems more of a one-sided relationship seeing as aggro isn't an issue and healers are a target regardless of a tank's efforts. Usually. That's when crowd control becomes the most useful. But the safety of DPSs is now an added concern.

So, what's my point in all of this? My point is this: why? Why is the mechanic always the same in that there has to be an archetype to take the beating and the healer to keep contesting for it? Oh, what is that you say? There's something coming out that goes against this premise?

Yes, from what I hear GW2 does not sport dedicated healing classes. And that, against all expectations, is what leaves me the most curious about the game. I've heard it say time and time again that healers are the demise of many a MMO. Which is harsh because it's what I am, a healer. But here you introduce to me an environment where it's every man for themselves in a big battlefield against other factions. It makes me curious.

I still haven't got the money for it and I am definitely inclined to give it the tOR treatment. Imma wait it out.

Blizzard Must Be Getting Worried

I wouldn't believe it if you told me but... there's a World of Warcraft commercial going around.

I can't in all honestly say if this was the first WoW ad to ever grace Portuguese television screens but I can say that they're everything but common. It's the first I've ever come across.

First thought that crossed my mind was "oh, TOR must be making a dent."

That's it. That's what I took time from my busy schedule to come tell you. :3 I'm a sweetie, I know.

You know how they say that looking for a job is a full-time job in itself? Well, it's not, but it sure is tiresome and frustrating.

Here, let me leave you with something a bit more rewarding.

My ass is behind the camera, not in front.

They're Killing Us

I'm not a politically conscious person. I've never been even remotely into politics or kept up to date with the state of affairs. I should, I know. These men and women are shaping the world I live in, I might as well know what's going on. Well, my posture might be about to change as they seemed to have finally started shamelessly killing us.

For someone on the outside, the economic crisis that is currently sweeping smaller European nations might seem overplayed. But from the inside your blood chills when you start paying attention to what's really happening.

I won't lie, some things might not be how I'll phrase them further down but this is what I've heard. This is what reaches the little people, the politically illiterate.

• The most important aspects of our civilization used to be represented and managed by a Ministry: the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, so on, so forth, such like. We had a Ministry for Culture. They decided it was too expensive and we didn't need it.

• The national health system used to be (mostly) free; for more crucial, life-saving drugs and treatments the government would pay the bulk of the price if not it's entirety; now, it has been proposed that anyone over the age of 70 with kidney problems that requires to undergo dialysis pay for it in full from their own purse. Dialysis costs €2000 a month. If they can't pay they can't get it and if they can't get it they die.

• Young graduates have been advised to jump ship and look for work abroad.

• They have been closing down hospitals, clinics and maternity wards. Even the pediatric liver transplant center. As a result, waiting lists have skyrocketed, people need to drive for miles or even to Spain to get to a hospital and children have died as a result.

• Some people getting government aid were mistakenly given more money than they should have (around 570 million euros over the years). They are now ordered to pay back the money they were given with funds they didn't have to begin with.

• The average pension for a retired person in Portugal is €400 a month. Some people in public office (in the present or past) are paid €600.000 a year.

• Ports have been shut down for a week, workers strike

• Mass transportation stops almost once a week, workers strike.

• The government declared workers (and not just public servants, the private sector as well) should work an extra half hour a day. Employers stated they didn't feel that was the right approach and have claimed they would rather cut their worker's pay by 20% instead.

• The  Madeira Autonomous Region had a budget hole of over 1000 million Euros they only recently disclosed to the mainland. Their government hasn't the money to pay public servants in the next two months. 

• Also, that said government has failed to pay back pharmacies for the drugs they had been selling. Thee pharmacies were owed 77 million Euros from drugs the government was supposed to make available for the people. They failed to pay. Now patients with blood pressure afflictions must dish out around €60 for a box of pills.

• A large number of people in positions of power have recently been outed as Freemasons and although I could care less what they believe in or where they shove their fingers in the late hours of the night, I'm concerned of where their loyalties lie and to what lengths they'll go to help and protect their "brothers".

This is madness. This isn't Sparta, this isn't Portugal, this is just shit. More than angry it frightens me. People who have worked their whole lives and have set aside some of their every paycheck so they would have their money back in their golden years are being shamelessly robbed, the government cutting their pension because "times are tough". People who have worked two jobs to do that same things now see only half of their money given back to them because "times are tough". Old people with measly pensions are denied vital drugs and treatments because "times are tough". Seems they're hoping we'll go gentle into that good night so they can stop paying pensions or healthcare all together. Weren't we supposed to be part of the so-called "civilized" world?

And where the fuck is all this money heading anyway? Who are we paying it back to? Europe? And who in Europe is in more dire need of money than us here, dying hungry in our sleep? So, we've been living above our means? I don't doubt that but why realize it now? Is it because the world is coming to an end and we better get our affairs in order?

The thing is we have no one to turn to, no one we believe will step up and take charge and make everything better for us and not themselves. We've been proven time and time again that all they'll do is blame problems on past regimes and kneel down to stronger economic powers.

Seems to me only Coca-Cola still believes in us.

one of those days

You know those days when you wake up after 30 minutes of sleep in unfamiliar and uncomfortable surroundings? Still, you wash your face and muster some determination to march forward and do something good and worthwhile and you even find a song to get you through the day with a smile.

And then a friend calls you. You haven't seen this old friend in a long time, he's moved away and you've missed him. For half a second you think this might be a good time to catch up to go catch some air, maybe laugh a little at the whole thing. Until you hear the panic in his voice and as his world shatters so does yours as he tells you that what was once a common friend has died and he's in desperate need of help. As your knees falter and you crumble to the floor in a heaving heap of limbs your brain somehow manages to get him what he needs and you're left there, alone with news you're not sure how to process.

Because you'd never known someone that's died. Because you're not sure if you can handle more grief. Because you were never really close. Because you were maybe unkind and brutish when you shouldn't have been. Because you're not sure if you should but in.

And so you're left alone on the floor gasping for breath and begging for a minute, gladly forgotten for what feel like years instead of hours. You stare out at the gray sky that just yesterday was so warm, inviting and promising and you send through what little social feelers you might have that whatever might be wrong with you you'll gladly put aside to help. Because you don't want your friends to suffer and you don't want to add to that. So you're left to contemplate your own mortality and how petty some things ultimatly are, left alone to commit a final act of selfishness in a relationship that never really was. Again.

So. It's one of those days. One of those days when all you want is a hug but all you can do is rant on your special little ranting corner for the reading pleasure of people whose business it is not.

But hey. This blog is for me. Said so from day one. I'll need to see this one day, when I'm older and happier and look back pointing and laughing at sad little young me.

Riping Off VG Soundtracks

When I heard through the grapevine that they had used a piece from WAR's soundtrack in a promo for Fox's American Horror Story I felt in me the urge to expose a bit more of these blatant rip offs of game soundtracks. It happens quite frequently, people just don't notice because the target audiences for one medium and the other rarely meet. Except in me.

Example: where does TLC and The Sims cross paths? Me. You can imagine my disbelief and outrage when I hear something from The Sims 2 buy mode as background music for TLC's "Outrageous Kid Parties" promo. Mike believed me then but failed to raise an eyebrow in concern. Well, that wouldn't be the end of my battle for awareness to this issue. There were other instances where I've caught familiar samples of soundtracks in channel promos but damned if I could ever find them online, obscure as they were.

A few days after the TLC incident we were having dinner and on comes Solitary, a reality show in one of the multitude of Fox channels. This time I wasn't going to stay silent about it anymore. I absolutely loved this particular game and as soon as my brain unfroze and I realized what they had done I had to make it known. Mike didn't believe me on this one at first, seeing as he actually liked the show. But I showed him. And I'll show you.

The madness spreads. Mike began by turning his nose but there's no mistaking those strings.

Actually, I have mixed feelings about this, to be honest. Soundtracks are the unsung heroes of videogaming. I personally have spent way too many hours of my life burning images of menus on tv screens just because I liked the music as background for my daily chores. So, is it that wrong for other people to make use of someone's genius work and spread it further through another medium? Yes, it is, especially if credit isn't given to those who deserve it. But I like it that people who would otherwise never be exposed to them have and their lives are richer for it. In some miniscule way. Well, even if they don't know it, I do.

I Love Star Wars And It Should Die

When I was but a babe in pigtails (wow, that came out wrong with some seriously gruesome mental pictures) I liked Star Wars. I liked it so much that I even got one of those Star Wars encyclopedias with all the characters and races and people and I was overjoyed.

If there is one thing I've had enough these days is Star Wars. It's everywhere, they're constantly rubbing it in my face and it's close to making me start a mini-WTT for pet peeves. Hmmm....

I like stuffed peppers. But if every day I had stuffed peppers for lunch and dinner pretty soon I wouldn't like stuffed peppers anymore. And if on top of that I was being bombarded with Stuffed Peppers: The MMO and Stuffed Peppers: The Prequel, It would pretty much turn me off stuffed peppers entirely. Hell, I'm getting nauseous just writing about it.

I may have mentioned before but this is another prime example of why hype trains have ruined so many things for me. Not only does my mind get saturated with it but it actively tries to look for something wrong with a notion, be it a new anime (yeah, I just wrote my new WTT), a franchise, any kind of IP, really. When someone tries to oversell you something, there's probably a big BUT coming.

I'm all for advertisement of a good product. I mean, there are few other ways of getting the public to know of its existence but it comes to a point when you do no more than annoy the very people whose attention you're trying to get and pretty soon they're willing to spend money on anything but what you're trying to shove down their throats. Because people don't like being told what to do, not on the few things they feel in control about. I wouldn't like someone telling me when I should go take a dump any more then I like being told 50 times a day that I should go check out yet another post mortem Michael Jackson show because this one is The Best Show in the World About Michael Jackson. Well I'm the best Me in Metown, doesn't mean all that now, does it?

There are new things out there, new ideas that could be explored and promoted for a good penny. Imagination and good story-telling didn't end with George Lucas. There has got to be other fascinating worlds and universes brewing in someone's head just ripe for the exploiting and mass franchising that we don't have to keep recycling the same ideas over and over for 50 years. I dare call it an insult to the ingenuity of man.

So there you have it: Star Wars has become a killer of ingenuity. If I never say anything else, I say now this. 

Which is not to say I won't ever give SW:TOR a try. What am I, a homeless ranting on a street corner?

Call Me Lazy Bugger

But a lazy bugger you'll always save a special place in your heart for.

I'm not getting into why I haven't blogged. Nobody's really interested. Not even me.

I've been going over a few (read "around 10") oldies but goldies. Some I'm going back to because they're so awesome, others I'm playing for the first time because they say they're so awesome. Having done some soul-searching, meditation, contemplation and navel-gazing I came to the realization that I'm only living once so I might as well play certain things before I expire. God forbid I'm an old lady, taking my last breaths in my time-worn mattress when the thought occurs to me that "I never did give Half-Life a go".

I say that but I still haven't. I'm not dead yet so I'm hoping there's still time. Then again I'm expected to join in a street rally against the national state of affairs soon. Guess me having said time to try Half-Life or dedicate more than 5 minutes to Fallout will depend on my surviving that.

Still, my gallivanting charge through older games comes from a dire need to fill a gaming void in my life. I've since given WAR a rest again as it wasn't satisfying enough to justify its monthly weight on my finances, so I find myself with a craving that can only be described as "the need to equip things".

Equiping things isn't something you can just up and do in real life. You don't get up and equip a pair of pants. You don't go out in the world determined to succeed in whatever endeavor you chose to get a pair of pants that is slightly better than the ones you have on. Well, maybe you do, but I don't. I long for a single player game focused on gear grinding with a girly story. Like Mass Effect. ME3 is still a bit far to dream about, even though we already footed for a Kinect specially for it. Oooooh, Kinect how I must rant about you on some later date because you absolutely make me want to crawl on walls throwing feces at every which way. With a frown and not a smile.

I've tried RPGs, RTSs, Sims, FPSs... I've gone through my repertoire on the Ps3, 360, Wii (a fairly short one), DS, PSP, PC and iPad. I even tried Sword&Sworcery. But, as Bono has said many times before...

When I was a much younger girl, it was times like these when I could find solace in a Squaresoft release but Squaresoft has gone the way of the Nintendo and have adopted, apparently, the same philosophy: if something was wildly successful twenty years ago, give it an aesthetic makeover keep releasing it year after year until it's as popular as Barbara Streisand. But if you remember the tale of poor Barbara you will realize that people know who she is but that doesn't mean they like her.

I'll be spending the next few hours writing about the games I have gone through. This was, after all, a blog started for me to keep track of things I've played and what my impressions of them were. It has saved me from trying to start FFXIII again countless times.

Food for thought.

I am Legion. We are Many.

Nothing biblical here. Move along. Title refers simply to gamers as a community.

When I was a young girl, adults would look down on consoles and gaming with a patronizing grin. Like they would a really expensive jump rope or... those things you spun around your ankle and then lept over again and again. Lemon Twist, that's it (not to be confused with Lemon Party). My point being, games were not considered, for the most part, a very grown up thing to occupy your time with. Unless, of course, we're talking about some kind of sports game. Whole different... ball park.

My boss here at the internship was asking me how I'd spend my long weekend (Friday and Monday are both holidays) and I said I'd probably stay home and play. I didn't get into any details because he wouldn't get it. He's a "have bbq with folks, play with dog, catch the game on tv" kind of guy. He looked at me and asked 'you're staying in?!' I felt a pang of embarrassment which was quickly subdued by an overwhelming sense of pride. Here I am, part of, what seems to me to be, a massive minority that occupies their time with digital interactive entertainment, AKA, videogames.

Outdated views about what grown-up life should be like are just that: outdated. It says a lot that many of the peolpe I play with are pushing 40. In the olden days, people were lucky if they lived past 25 but things change. Way back when, women couldn't vote or show their ankles but things change. You catch my drift. The things we entertain ourselves with change as well and some people seem a bit slow on the uptake.

But others caught on early and made a pretty penny by starting to mature the games as their target audience matured as well. It's my genuine hope that when I'm 80 and sporting a spiffy robotic hip I'll be playing full 3D mystery games set in nursing homes where you have to figure out who pulled the plug on your best friend down the hall. *sigh* I wish I was retired already...

Anyways. It got me thinking that the share of the active population that actually invests in videogames has grown considerably in the last few years and as those people start having babies of their own, a new generation of gamers is born and raised and the prospect of growing sales in the long run must be something very real to developpers everywhere. But in their greed, their lust for quick and fast profit, they adapt their products to fit and please a wider range of potential costumers, dumbing down games with simplified gameplay and long-winding tutorials. We don't need that. Honest.

Take Minecraft. Do you have to play a tutorial to be able to enjoy it? Do you feel like you can't handle the conrols or gameplay because you didn't play through a few test missions? No. And the game was as successful as we all know it was. Minecraft filled a void in our gaming needs. We needed the freedom and the respect the game showed us. We needed to feel that we were given a free world to do things in and that they trusted us to accomplish whatever it was we set out to do without an omni-present father figure putting up invisible walls lest we hurt ourselves.

What bugs me is that games weren't always so. You had the option of going through a tutorial or you could read the freaking manual. Manuals, they still make them, you know. Just in case you slept through the tutorials all of that useful information is still there, in written form. Games had a learning curve. Wether it was steep or a very slow crawl, they trusted you to get the hang of it on your own without flashy neon signs over most of your playing field advising you on the right order of buttons to press. Makes me feel like they think I'm an idiot. Yeah, they think I'm "special" alright.

Stop making things simple. We don't want that. If games are supposed to be a complex work of craftmanship then I wanna feel the burn. Did you see the reviews Dragon Age 2 got? This is not the way. We don't want simple. We pride ourselves in our game-forged brains. And instead of lowering gaming standards to please a wider audience of mouth-breathers how about stimulating the minds of potential gamers with flashy and addictive games that also provide some kind of challenge?

Ok now the rest of the office is reminiscing how they used to play soccer with their neighbours at 8 am on the weekend when they were kids because there were none of these new fangled computer thingies. I gotta leave now.

WAR: Veteran's Prerogative

I'm a veteran WAR player. You know what that means to me? To the world in general? To Mythic? It means I've had to put up with a lot of crap, a lot of bugs, injustices and bad ideas. And it means that I've paid my way through the better part of two years to do so.

I have wasted millions of renown points thanks to a renown rank cap they removed after I've gotten 5 characters to 40. I wasted dozens of hours going through PvE instances hoping for healing gear that seldom dropped, gear I eventually acquired right in time for them to implement the Harbringer changes that made all Intelligence based gear relevant to a healing Zealot. I have been pulverized by bombers, Slayer trains and every other FotM OP class. I have been overhealed for no good reason other than shorter cast times. I've been outDPSed on account of the bad class implementation bat. I've lain dead on the ground with healers trouncing all over my dead body after I've rezzed them consecutively for minutes. I've been robbed of loot and fights over crashes and graphical bugs. I've been branded a quitter when the game fumbles in loading screens. I have acquired currency that was never enough to use and has now been rendered useless. I've been killed by mobs, enemy players, backlash, guard, falling, shrubbery, walls, pebbles, Something. And, for all of this, I've paid a monthly fee.

I'm not bitter. When I get bitter I stop paying and I stop playing (as I have before). Life's too short to do something only to complain about it. I do, however, feel entitled to certain things. I will exploit the shit out of the game at any chance I get if I can get away with it without any negative repurcussions to me or my guild. I think I deserve it. I think I've endured enough bad decisions and managerial tomfoolery to warrant some shady business. Haven't we all? From being robbed silly in our real life accounts to putting up with game breaking bugs (like when some keeps became unattackable and all you could do was stare at them) we've put up with our share of shit. For a fee.

Quality in a product is not too much for a paying costumer to ask for. I don't feel I've always gotten what I paid for. In fact, I feel that people that have been paying for less time than me have it easier, what with their freshly turned 40s being over rr60. I'm not gonna beg for goodies, though. I've been paying and playing of my own accord. I wasn't forced into it. I do feel under appreciated which is probably why I feel no remorse in taking advantage of my good old mates, the bugs and exploits. I've never used third party out-right cheating tools but I've never had to. The game itself provides almost every tool for the kind of exploitation I feel entitled to. I'm a girl from the 3-manning in balcony keep takes era.

Does that make me a bad person? Does that make me a cheater? Do I care? Should I care? For what it's worth, I seldom do anything shady with my main. What she is, for better or worse, is made of pure skill. But my alts... I've got a whole batallion of them. I can't always play fair. And I don't want to. It takes two to play fair. Right Mythic? After all, after all your msitakes and threats of new ones, I keep coming back. Where's my kiss on the cheek and pat on the head? When is it my turn to sit on your lap and tell you what I want? I've been a good girl all these years. Well, mostly.

It's Not Just You

So, during our vacation we were discussing the course of videogaming. Where we see it heading and if we like it or not.

It was a conversation that triggered pretty strong views or maybe it was just the smell of the ocean that riled us up. We, as a whole, are quite discontent with games and it's not just us. It's not just us that's tired of games. Games, apparently, are also tired of us. They're trying to reach a new audience, encompass the world. ore shum thinke...



View during said conversation

The point came up that being a gamer is fashionable nowadays. Not as mainstream as, say, having a Facebook account, but closer to... say... having read a book in the last year. "Why did everyone start playing WoW? Because all their friends were doing it." I'm not going to say I agree fully with this statement but it raises a valid point. Did a lot of people become gamers just because everyone else was doing it? Is it like smoking? Or complaining about the government? Or jumping off a bridge?
Another factor that might have helped gaming become more mainstream were tutorials. there was a time when you were dumped in a game with very little knowledge of the workings of the game. You'd first experiment all the buttons, finding the one that brings up the menu, tweaking any settings the game has and then reverting them to default just in case... It was a journey of discovery, it added to the mistique of the game, being uncharted territory that you had to brave and tame. It made it, for me at least, more enjoyable. There was a learning curve that began with remastering the controller and not just having your charaxcter(s) apply different skills/abilities at different times to achieve a purpose.

Nowadays you'll not only be presented with a picture of your controller with arrows and a description of what every button does but you'll probably won't get to dive in the game proper before you conquer one or three hundred tutorials. It's like you're a toddler and the game really doesn't want you to get hurt. Where were they when I first played Mario?

The point was then raised that we are, in fact, living a vicious cycle. Developers notice that other developers are lowering their standards (or broadening their sights, trying to lure in new players) so they, in turn, lower theirs to try and lure in more people by helping them every step of the way until they feel safe and confortable wrapped in the blanket of assisted playing. Players, having been dumbed down, now expect new releases to guide them through their first steps.

So where does that leave me and others like me? I don't mind dying a few times if it means you'll stop calling me dumb. I don't mind a bit of an initial challenge. Its not like we were spewed out of our mothers' bowels knowing how to walk and talk and wipe our own asses but nobody took me aside for the first months of my life to tell me what my legs were for or what this communication gig was all about. I experimented, tried and failed and, in the end, I think I did alright. It took a fucking long time and I'm not done learning yet but the ride was worth it. It was a challenge.

We didn't come to any real conclusion. It was just a state of the nation kind of thing. We can't expect the gaming industry to alienate new prospective players just because we know what an analog stick is for but it doesn't mean we like being reminded of it every single game. It makes the brain lazy and pretty soon we'll have to go back to Brain Age.

I'm going through the Phoenix Wright series again on my DS. I'm completely hooked. In fact, I'm gonna play some right now while I sigh of relief that I don't have a credit card registered in the PSN.

Tropes

There's no real point to this today, just thought I'd jot down what I spent an obscene amount of time surfing the web for yesterday, lest I forget one day.

Most of my time was spent going through Tvtropes so, if you're as obsessive about this as I was, there you have it.

Wilhelm Scream

First heard it in A New Hope. I archived it in my head under "foley scream" and have since discovered it's a stock sound called something like "man gets biten by aligator and then he screams".

Police Radio

Like many others, I first found this one while playing SimCity 3000. Ever since then I've heard it everywhere. I couldn't even begin throwing out examples.

Howie Long Scream

Similar to the Wilhelm Scream, only, when I first heard it I thought "why are there TIE-fighters in this movie?"

Like me, there are many others whose dreams have been haunted by these sounds. There's also that one annoying baby laughter, that screeching cat, the playground noise, the metalic door opening... you know the ones I'm talking about. It's just good to know that I'm not, in fact, losing my mind and assimilating sounds in a perfectly identical way when I hear them.

Accidental Educational Gaming

English is not my native tongue and it shows. I once might have thought that it didn't but with age comes experience and experience begets wisdom which, in turn, promotes humility. You reach a point in life when you realize there will always be more to learn and you'll never have enough time or will to know it all.

Still, my English is better than most around here and I've had more than one teacher asking me if I was sure that I had never lived in an English speaking country. In a way I had: the world of multimedia entertainment.

When I was a young girl, cartoons were rarely subbed, especially the interesting ones like Captain Planet (he'll bring pollution down to zero one day, I know it) or Thundercats. So, from a very young age, I started absorbing this strange language they used, trying to understand what they yelled as they vanquished evil or died trying. Which is only natural considering that most of the known world speaks at least two languages. Most of humanity is bilingual. Smaller comunities in remote places will speak the language dictated by their governments along with the language taught to them by their parents.

I spent a few years majoring in linguistics. If nothing else, it helped me understand that linguists aren't the old sticks in the mud people take them to be. They, more so than other breed, preach that (much like magic in Dragon Age) language exists to serve man, not rule over him. A language's first and, arguably, only purpose is to help convey information. Therefore, groups of people that need to communicate will use a language to do so and they will do it in the most economical and eficient way possible. What this means is that the linguist in me is more prone to showing the finger to so-called grammar nazis than at people who spell things incorrectly.

Getting back to the point; I remember a few epiphanies I've had while learning this bizarre non-romance language. One day, around the age of eight, I was opening the door to our building when I suddenly realized the difference between "he" and "she". That was some hurdle to overcome, let me tell you. One other time I assimilated the meaning of "on hold" while playing Command&Conquer, its subtle difference from "hold on" despite both using the exact same words. What this means is that, without any effort on my part, entertainment was teaching me. And not through any special tv show like Sesame Street or a game that said "Educational" on the cover. The simple fact they were there and that I was using them opened the door for knowledge to be imparted unto me. I guess that can happen with everything.

This process continues today. I am perfectly able to understand a game from start to finish but, through force of habit, I'll usually turn on all subtitle options. Not only are we accostumed to watching every tv show with subtitles (even if we usually don't read them) but having a written auxiliary helps with memorising the correct spelling of more unfamiliar words. This alone has cimented a few rules like the difference between "your" and "you're" or "then" and "than". They're also a good source of idioms and sometimes I'll even pause the game to digest a witty pun, ending up grinning and finger-wagging a "I see what you did there" at the screen.

This has very little to do with the point, doesn't it? Well, apart from language skills, videogames have taught me a few lessons. Mostly about the importance of friendship, the power of a selfless sacrifice and how to efficiently dispose of a zombie. Oh, and that ugly children can be dealt with by removing the doors from a small room with a fireplace and plenty of rugs. All valuable life lessons. 

I'd play that.

By the way, I hear World of Tanks is out. I wish I liked tanks and guns and stuff. I'm more of a hack and slash girl, myself. Although if I think about it, I loved Ring of Red, Front Mission 3 and Valkyria Chronicles. Hmm. I might like tanky things more than I realise.

Now excuse me while I go come up with a coherent reason as to why someone would make another kill their own parents.

Playing God, For a Change

I've spent the weekend completely preoccupied with coming up with a structured plot. From my perspective, being an ST (you can call it Storyteller, Game Master or Dungeon Master even; it all amounts to the same) is much like being a gamedev. Only, instead of having to code and build a somewhat static environment you're free to to just type a few things up and unleash your world on your target audience. It will be them that shape where the game heads or, at least, how it gets where I want it to. Plus you don't have to be at the office on time. But you also don't get paid. Maybe it's not like it at all. Hmm.

Oppositely from a dev though, an ST must constantly adapt and change the world as things progress. MMOs today might launch a new patch or an update or even an expansion somewhat regularly (or, if they're really short-sighted, they do nothing forgetting that to stagnate is to die).

My point being, maybe that void that needs to be filled in my gaming needs will never be filled by videogame entertainment. Unless, of course, they assign a different developer to each player, to shape the world as they make decisions and push against what has been established so far. So maybe I should stop hoping for revolutionary games and turn my attention elsewhere.

That said, I've been playing tabletop RPGs for some ten years but there are still things I haven't seen done or tried or explored. I've had a blast with every chronicle but I decided it was time to try and make one of my own to expose me and others to different views, approaches and even creatures. Let's just hope this endeavour doesn't die on the shore.

If you've never had the pleasure of trying this kind of game let me throw you a few notions. Forget about nerdy fat guys playing in their parents basement. Today's roleplayers have lifes, jobs and kids. Just like other gamers. They gather around a table with sheets representing their characters instead of a controller and a screen and make decisions based on what the Overlord (yeah, I like that term better) tells them. The Overlord plays God as in he/she controls the environment and NPCs. Players speak out their actions instead of pushing buttons. There are rules, of course, and they depend on what particular system you've chosen to play. We stick to White Wolf's old World of Darkness d10 system. It's more pickup&play than a d20 system, imho.

oWoD has a lot to explore. It's set in the modern world (take that with a grain of salt. Most of the books were written circa 1995) which makes the setting more familiar to most people than medieval dragon slaying. This does not by all means restringe gameplay to the modern era. No, they've provided settings and rules spanning from the Dark Ages to today. You can choose from playing a vampire, a werewolf, a mage, a scientific disbeliever, a demon, a ghost, a faerie, a hunter or just a mere mortal in the middle of all these interesting and cuddly creatures.

This has made for some interesting stories over the ages. Some I've experienced. Some I can't even remember but I'm told happened and I'm inclined to believe them. Like that one time when a couple of Victorian Age mages sat down with a boy who was the reencarnation of some poweful spirit or other to enjoy one of those new fangled "ice-cream" things. Commence a 30 minute debate about who's paying the bill. Exit scene with two mages and an ice-cream splattered child running for dear life. Sometimes players decide to abandon the plot completely and go "look for the Plague". And when that fails they decide to "invent the Plague". Others go meet important figures and "accidentaly kill them". Anything can and usually does happen when you present players with the ultimate sandbox.

Adorable. Just wanna get a kleenex and wipe the edges of his mouth
saying "there now, all better."

More than with any videogame character, players tend to get extremely involved with characters they get to create and incarnate. I've had a few, myself. From the crazy cab driver vampire to the finnish green-eyed black guy called Hill. Once I was a small vampire woman with delusions of grandeur who ended up becoming ruler of a city and demanded a throne made entirely of phonebooks. Another time I played a Nosferatu based on the Mouth of Sauron called Sirius Mann. He was actually quite friendly. During the Dark Ages I was a vampire bred from a line of soldiers who was aptly called Curtis E. Foot. Curtis went on to carry a big two-handed sword and repel guards as other party members went off with relics from roman catholic churches. In Rome.

I guess you had to be there.

Steps and Storytelling

There's something that tends to annoy me to varying degrees in videogames. Stairs and their steps. Sometimes I wish that climbing and going down stairs was more realistic. Usually they'll just continue the run animation straight up/down what is basically a ramp with the skin of steps. In some games the running will be a bit slower in an attempt to simulate real life. Others disregard this completely figuring that if your character has the stamina to run their way through the plot, they might as well be able to run up them stairs.

I've seen games trying to tackle this problem. They will make sensibly sized steps and have their characters actually climb those steps one by one or two by two like regular people. I think Metal Gear Solid 2 did this but, seeing as my stealth skills, as Bart once put it, both suck and blow, I never played it enough to be sure. Problem with this is the game starts looking more like an exercise video and less about whatever the game might concern.

I'm not sure I'll ever be happy with the way these developers nowadays deal with the issue of ascending and descending a series of steps. Then again, if I want realistic step-climbing I could get off my shapely ass and do some climbing myself.

---

For all my complaining about the restrictiveness of games, there's one opportunity that has presented itself plenty of times over and I've always dodged. Much like I always do. It's been a long time since any of us have played a pen&paper chronicle and we've been jonesing for it. If you're looking for a sandbox game (from the perception I have of this genre which I'm still not sure is accurate) what better game than one you make yourself?

Nothing restricts your actions apart from the Storyteller. You want to climb that wall, go ahead and try. You want to kill that cat, go ahead and try. You want to be that cat, go ahead and try. It is possible that my cringing when faced with restrictive gameplay stems from my days as a WoD player, particularly Mage, where if you want to do something you just have to invent a way to accomplish it.

So. I keep going on about how I like making shit up but never before have I taken the mantle of ST. As in real life, I've been pretty content to just be a participant rather than a shaper of events. But I think I'm finally ready to go under the scrutiny of uncooperative players. There's just some things I'd like to throw at them.

I think I might even have come up with a plot. A somewhat interesting one at that. Possibly. Only thing now is, without knowing what characters the players are going to make, they all seem kind of unimportant at this stage. Well. We'll see.

Christopher Shy was kind enough to illustratea lot of things
for World of Darkness and the world is a beter place for it

MMO, What Are You Good For?

It's in everybody's mind, lately. What exactly do we want out of these games? What would make us all line up across the block to purchase a game, makes us antsy at work to play it, make us laugh manically to see happen? Ok, maybe that last one is just me.

I've been thinking about and discussing this a lot (I care about this alot *snicker*). You can blame this fellow. It's been a common topic at the dinner table and that's where my mind wanders on the daily commute.

I've spent a lot of time playing Bioware RPGs lately and I've enjoyed them. A lot of what they did there is what I needed to spend my time with. The battle and progression systems are just challenging enough to keep me playing but not so easy that I just don't care. But what really makes me play them is the story. And not the story in itself but the protagonists of such story. It's the connection I've made with them.

I was watching Mike finish up DA:O during the weekend. 'I can't believe you just told that poor woman to kill her own baby!' I said all flustered. He sneered and, without turning to meet my gaze, he answered: 'You do realize that there is no baby. There is no woman. There's just code.' Of course, he would say that. He's a software developer by trade. But, to me, there was a woman and she did have a baby and he had just killed it by proxy. Ultimately, I know it's just code but what they did with it made me love and hate, happy and sad.

Humans are drama whores by design. We crave emotional connections to things. It is how we find our mates and subsequently reproduce. We need to feel something. And this feeling thing releases endorphins that make us giddy. It is what we live for. Ok, it might not be the meaning of life itself but it's a pretty good thing. It is, if nothing else, a driving force.

I was in the shower thinking "how can I feel this emotional connection with an MMO?" Although I do not doubt that one day the entire spectrum and complexity of human emotion can be expressed in a coding language to then be reproduced by any common household computer, we're still a bit of a ways to go yet. So how can a setting that is massive by definition and must cater to the needs and desires of a multitude of players make me feel connected to it?

I then started thinking what could be taken out of a single-player RPG and be applied to an MMO. Like the concept of party. Although there usually is a main character in a s-p, they usually throw a few more controlable characters in the mix. 'What if you could control a whole bunch of characters and you went out like a mercenary bunch?' I said, jumping out the shower. 'The koreans did it,' was the answer I got. 'Ok but, what if you could, you know, start a business, like a gambling house! And then you could take your mercenary bunch and hunt down people who didn't pay!' Oh, I was on a roll! 'I did it,' he said. 'In Ultima Online. It was called Head Hunting. There was a player run gambling hall callled Salty Dog and they'd post bounties on people who didn't pay.' I then got lectured on how UO was the best game ever, with the possible exception of DAOC. 'If they revamped DAOC,' he went on to say, 'as in, gave it a complete makeover, that's what I'd be playing right now'.

As for me, I don't know. I never played either of those two games when they were hip, I can't see myself playing them now. Anyways, my idea with the mercenary bunch was along the lines of having characters you got to know and love/hate that didn't necessarily have to be other players. Lord knows there must've been many marriages concocted and ruined over MMOs and even in roleplaying servers it must be kind of awkward for, say, two straight men, one playing a girl char the other a boy char, to be all lovey-dovey to each other.

There once was this JRPG called Suikoden, the main focus of which was to gather 108 possible party members. Yes, that's right. You went around the world recruiting people to put in your castle to build your army. Each of them had a story (even if not a very deep one) as each of them was a "Star of Destiny". What if you could do something like that? And then you could pit your forces agains other people's recruits and friends and maybe even kill their love interest Oh, the drama. Nowadays, nothing in an MMO is lasting. No end-game redefines the game itself. And what's the point of getting to the end of the game if your efforts are worth jack shit? I wish we could change these worlds.

Or maybe not, I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm not very good at making things up. But the fact remains that I don't feel a connection with that guy that tells me to go kill five Goblins and then return to him with their trinkets. I feel, at best, annoyed. Get your own fucking trinkets. Why would anyone need creepy Goblin trinkets anyway? What sick dark rituals are you trying to make me an accomplice of?? Maybe I would know if I deigned to read the quests but I don't because I don't like you. I don't even know you. Why do I "grow as a person" (read gain experience) by collecting Goblin body parts and accessories for you? The more I think about it, the more all of this seems weird to me. I don't yet know what I really want from an MMO but what they are today is not it.

DAW: It still is, right?

Maybe it isn't but who gives a shit.

I just thought I'd take this opportunity, as so many other have, to show my apreciation (is that spelled right I wonder qithout caring too much) for a few developers that have changed my life.

First I thought I'd give a shout out to foley artists everywhere. But then I thought "nah, they're still getting paid." So I'll leave that for another day. I'll thank our dearly departed ones, instead. I don't mean they're dead, precisely (although I wouldn't know either way) just that, even if they still develop, they don't in the same way as I met them. So to speak.

Westwood

From the bowels of Westwood came the Command & Conquer series and other precious gems like the PC game adaptation of Blade Runner. I loved that game. Eventually they became part of EA, much like almost everything else in the world. One day I'll get home and find out they bought us out too.

Bullfrog

My admiration for Bullfrog is known. They were the creative minds behind Theme Hospital, Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper. One of its founders went on to create a little-known software house that goes by the name of Lionhead Studios. But my love for the frog that dared to bull lingers on and I miss its spirit dearly.

Maxis

Surprisingly enough, Maxis was bought by EA a few years back. They were the makers of SimCity and The Sims. Simulating things was their... thing, to be sure. And they were very good at it. And I miss them. They're the only reason why I tolerate Electronic Arts. You are what you eat, right? So EA can't be that bad with Maxis in the belly.

Now excuse me while I go get drunk at game night.

Ough

Tough
Through
Though
Thought
Trough

Why so many sounds for the same four-letter combination? Makes us non-native speakers all confused in the head.

New Quest: Balloon Handout

First of all Disqus and my lack of coding skills clashed. Hm. I miss my computer geek. I'm sure he could've fixed it. Oh well.

Secondly, I'm on balloon handout duty today. I was recruited to work as a representative for this training facility and so the rest of my afternoon will be spent standing up among a sea of people looking bored and unfriendly. Also, I've been told that I'll have to inflate the balloons myself. And I can't steal any pens...



FIL: Feira Internacional de Lisboa
I'll be in there. Come visit.



We All Have Dreams

When I was a kid, about 3rd grade, we went to see a play. It was a Pinnochio play. When we got back to school we were tasked in groups of three or four of writing a small essay on what he'd seen at the show.

Now, I don't remember why but I remember it happening. I picked up my pen, looked intently at the rest of the group and said "don't worry, guys. I got this." I'm sure it was quite less epic and awe inspiring and they almost surely did not just stare at me slack-jawed but instead hastened to find something to entertain themselves with.

I set about the task like a kid possessed. The words poured from my hand to the paper in that illegible script I call cursive handwriting. I'm pretty sure my hair was all over the place and the sweat trickled down the side of my face when I was finished. I handed the paper to our teacher and returned to my seat, a smile of absolute fulfilment and bliss slashing my face from ear to ear.

A few days later, after she had graded the essays, my mother went to the school for some reason or other and the teacher called her aside.

She explained about the play and the assignment. 'Your daughter,' and she pointed at me 'wrote it all herself. I have no definite proof but I know this. This is all her. And it's good.' I don't much remember what she said next other from the fact that I was labeled as very lazy, tardy and violent towards other kids (hey, I bet they were asking for it).

Maybe that influenced me but, from that day on, I've written. You ever seen a strange kid scribbling frantically on a piece of paper on the subway/bus, any piece of paper, in fact, from ATM tickets to napkins, writing so frantically that you think his hands might burst into flames at any minute? I was that kid once. But, then again, who wasn't?

I've created so many worlds, fell in love with so many fictional people. I've filled pages and pages with crappy ideas and some pretty good ones. Most of them were crap, granted. If all ideas were good the world would implode from its own awesomeness. Still, I never tried to be a writer for a living. I guess the media influenced this decision of mine. I always got the impression that being a writer wasn't a real job, that it wasn't a viable career choice, that being a published author was something that happened to you, not something you strived to be.

For that reason alone I've stumbled down the road of higher education, dabbling in linguistics, translation and, more recently, office skills. None of them were really my dream. I never woke up really wanting to go do those things, I never went to bed grinning about a job well done. It's more about doing what is expected of me, of doing something, anything, the responsability of being a productive member of...

You know what? It's ok. I mean, one can't complain if one has never done anything about it anyways. I've stomped my feet a few times, yelling "no, this is not what I want for me" but I've never did it to say "this is exactly what I want". I guess I was afraid; afraid of rejection, of not being as interesting or as amusing as I think I am. Like all (or most) level-headed people, I love myself. I'm as interesting as I think anyone could be and damn, I'm funny. In my own honest opinion.

I've just came to the realisation that there is no real conclusion to this train of thought. Am I seeking aproval? A pat on the back? At this point I'd settle for a "it's ok Sara, you can be a no-lifer. I don't mind" from the world. Oh, yes, we all have to find our path in life and it's not always easy and all that. I am lazy. Is there a job specifically designed for the lazy? I wants it. I'm phisically incapable of being anywhere on time. The stars align to make me late, I swear and everyone that has met me can testify to this. I'd love to have a routine that dragged me head first out of this intellectual stupor.

Or it could well be the case that I'm just depressed that Mike's on the other side of the globe and I'm left to clean up after the cat by myself for two weeks.