covert.creations

I crouch. I run. I spin and shoot. Furiously tapping the mouse, I bask in the visceral surge of being in the zone, unstoppable. Finally, as I hurridly wipe the sweat off my hands, the round ends. I relax and exhale. Its over. Satisfied with my accomplishment, I wait until the next round starts.And then I yawn and fall asleep.

Some gamers require neither adrenaline nor an obvious DING! at the end of an activity. They like to relax, and just barely pay attention. Their reward lies within a patient crawl. Their satisfaction more abstract. They never see “the zone”, and they’re defnitely not looking for it.

This supposed demographic depicts a busier person, perhaps with family and professional responsibilities. Less time and less energy. I realise that not every gamer can be so nichified. Anyone can cross into intense multiplayer sessions if the mood strikes. Yet, this situation is quite inevitable for most people, even the devoutly hardcore. Its gonna happen to you.

We’re going to see more games that cater to this phenomenon, quite independant of time or focussed attention. I’m not talking about the “casual game market”. Y’know…those grandma games that supply simple game forms within a cutesy and clicky web app. I’m really talking about asynchronicity. Games where I set an activity in motion…and then walk away. I’m not even sure if this gametype has a name, but I’ll just call it detached gaming.

Some quick examples :

Hollywood Stock Exchange. Sort of an old example, but the bulk of it rested in returning to the game to check your results. The actual activity required no focus or time to participate.

EVE Online. As I’m told, it is plainly clever in this respect. Instead of following the pure timesink model glorified within other MMOs like WoW, they allow you to progress your skills while offline. Its a great example. Set your skill affinity, then log off. Why not? Waiting for a progress indicator or repetitively slaying a mob is just an empty activity.

Animal Crossing. Another detached game, if you want it to be. One of the interesting drivers in this game is indeed time, but not necessarily time spent actually playing it. Real time. As real days progress, you witness more events and happenings within the little virtual town.

There is a commonality at work here, and that is a form of offline persistence. The aforementioned examples require some aspect of it to allow the core activities to incubate within the game mechana. The game state requires preservation between invocations, whether its stored on a server somewhere or on your local console.

Just for fun, think about how this aspect could improve MMOs.

The unadulterated timesink (as found in WoW and the like) is a recognized flaw in the fun factor of that game. If the drive for greater subscription revenue had lessened, we might have seen a subtraction from this active playtime requirement. It would arguably improve WoW measurably. Why not play the AH from a webpage if I want to? Or set my character in a zone to grind and then leave her to it (perhaps at a greater risk from other players)?

I like to imagine a MMO with the hardcore aspects ripped forcibly from its innards. Where I check in periodically to see how my little army is progressing as I make a few ticks and balances of resources or investments. And then log off. A game where time flows and things happen, and then surprises me with the results the next time I visit.

This doesn’t stop at MMOs of course. More on this later, but in the meantime I must sleep.

Both online and off, I’ve found more and more people love to talk about games. Moment by moment seems to edge ‘our realm’ closer to the mainstream, and the perception of “the gamer” appears to gradually shed its awkward social heredity.

In some ways, the plight of videogames is echoed by the comic books that sprung into the hands of the masses over sixty years ago. Having to battle a mindset that viewed them as ludicrous, even dangerous, comics slowly ground down the resistance and became a cultural staple for storytelling. Like videogames, comic book makers even faced Senate hearings in the U.S. to answer for their depictions of violence and crime.

Nowadays, change has become an efficiency unto itself. It comes far more rapidly. In the space of a few years, games are becoming bastard rockstars of our culture. When the cool factor outpaces the nerd factor, true acceptance is within reach.

Why do I know that games are nudging mainstream? Forget about “game profits eclipsing Hollywood movies”, as I suspect that statistic is probably so narrowed as to be meaningless. Really, I know mainstream when I can have a conversation about PS2’s “Black” with someone I’ve bumped into on the street. Or when my sister phones me up and asks me about “story themes” in Halo for her highschool english class.

Can we call that progress? I’d say so, and finally! Ideas and interest in games has been viewed as the purview of nerdly distraction. I cannot count how many times articulating the merits of a particular game’s value were met with cold dismissal. Games are fringe shows for nerds, I was told. But as I said, things are changing. As the audience widens and discerns, I can easily imagine the choices and varieties will deepen. Perhaps even to penetrate the barrier barring our idle distractions from forming into a semblance of cultural relevance.

Right now, every highschool classroom is full of kids whose daily lives are steeped in technological influences. Computers are no longer the fringe, they are practically central to their teenage experience. In the face of this, its obvious that gaming has finally busted through into the realm of cool. The face of gaming at this point is not only on a cell or a PDA, but on t-shirts and tatoos. Music inspired by 8-bit sound chips of yesterday feeds on a youth appetite for retro. All this isn’t new at all, but now this stuff is clearly embedded into our culture. Not even comics enjoyed this level of interest.

As I roam online, or perk up in conversation at a party, one thing is for sure : everyone sure does have an opinion about games. Good, bad, ludicrous, insightful, artsy, musical, useless. Whatever. I’ve heard and engaged more on the topic in the last year than any other.

As someone who’s been in it right from the beginning, its been fun to not only observe and participate, but also be an agent of that change. When clans were new, my friends here and around the world pioneered their definition. Shaped them! And as an observer in that time (and incidentally studying Communications and Media at SFU) I recalled wanting to study and record all of it.

As we form on the precipice of monumental change in gaming as I believe, things will quickly become more complex and fractured and both niche and mainstream, I believe recording today is even more important. There is real history here, and I’m hoping it can be captured and displayed for the future. In that vein, Wikipedia is trying to bolster its entries in their games section. If you have an opinion about a particular game or genre, they have a weekly contribution page on a random topic. Get over there, check it, and lend a hand… if you’re so inclined.

As a positively rabid fan of the new Battlestar Galactica series, I was picqued by a mod-team that’s creating an arcade-style space sim based on the BSG universe. Its a natural fit for a space shooter, since the show itself pulls no punches in its attempt to create a truly visceral space opera.

The mod itself uses a very old engine, Freespace, to create the graphics and environments. Thats the thing about space shooters since the dawn of X-Wing and Wing Commander – space is easier to capture in a videogame because you need only create a static starfield for the backgrounds (and the odd nova, planet or other spacey kinda stuff).

I’m an example of an untapped market. I love BSG, so would love to hit a game that lets me experience it in a new way. I’m also an old fan of X-Wing and WC, so a new space shooter is long overdue. So when a new game comes along that promises to deliver on this demand, I’m ready to pay for it. And notice that nowhere do I mention that I’m looking for “hyper-realistic graphics” in this formula. In this way, I don’t care what it looks like! As long as I get to hotdog my way to victory, I’m happy.

Check the video [13mb]. Proof that super-awesome-hyper-real grafix are simply not required. As long as whats there looks correct, its all good. Sometimes I wonder if anyone notices that, too.