Warhammer is dead to me.

It was flashy, funny, and better (better?) at player vs. player combat than any MMO I've played.

But I don't care anymore. The rest of the warjammers are apathetic, and I think I know why. We approached the game as scientists (overly scheduled scientitsts) and tried to force meaning out of a game designed to minimize meaningful thought. Here's some notes from my most recent post on warjammers.blogspot.com:


"I mean YES the game is beautiful and complicated and they insert humor at some choice moments but the overall feeling falls short of my expectations. I started to grow tired of the place, tired of the game. I turned off the Warhammer sound and put on my own music, it helped. Strange.



... SO: exploring felt pretty shallow. RvR/PvP was engaging and fun. The two experiences combined... feel strange. The gap between an un-fulfilling game world and a hugely entertaining combat system makes the overall game experience a fragmented, chaotic blur. I guess we should have believed Paul Burnett: imagination is the goal, immersion really isn't.

So I have to use my imagination to fill in the gaps of disbelief forming between me and my avatar? No, Paul. The game doesn't facilitate OR encourage imagination. It bottles it, making digital hallucination fast and easy. Quick, streamlined player vs. player combat IS the central aim, and they nail it; I appreciate the game for the things it has introduced. Yet to have A+ PvP in a world that can't convince me that it matters feels shallow somehow, repetitive. It's just counter-strike from a third person perspective.

Wasteland, our server, suffered a mass exodus and we have been instructed to transfer our characters to Iron Rock. Doesn't matter too much, just another chip at the magic circle.
It's the right game for certain people. But Warhammer isn't heading in the direction I want MMORPG's to go. It's pulling the genre toward a more easily digestible, effortlessly repeatable kind of play. Bring back death penalties. Expand the game world. Give me an identity. Make things more difficult. You'll impress me, but lose a lot of your market. People like easy things. Especially easy killing."

What I haven't told them:
I signed onto Age of Conan after hitting level 18 in War. I felt: calmed, serene, beautiful, excited. No one was around, which is sad, but my avatar seemed to feel... right? Like a shower at the perfect temperature. (yes really). This game is so much better. Not because the programming is more advanced or the designers any more talented... It feels right mainly because of the way I approached and experienced it. I built a magic circle for it, made the world my own. I'll admit, I like the aesthetics better. Nothing looks as good as AOC right now. I preferred the combat.

Preferred. It seems that Age of Conan's beloved three-button combo system has been replaced with a faster, more simple 1-button system... making things easier for the masses. God damnit.
I'll be playing conan now once microsoft fixes directx 10, (you guys should be embarassed), and I'll enjoy it. I'll play.

We made Warhammer into a job. Play is beyond that sh*t. Harder to get to, harder to feel.

-Khosmos

Left 4 Dead

Oh man.


Simply amazing. Played the demo four times with Peck. Simple play mechanics (based off half life 2) and straightforward objectives. There are zombies. You have guns. Up to three friends can play along with you.

It feels like middle school when you'd spawn 99 bots in CS and give them all knives just for the sensation of being overwhelmed. Everyone did that, right?

This game holds some serious affective power. I was scared, by a game. What?! Why? Well JPN 61 tells us that fear of zombies stems from a fear of society at large, of the majority's influence over the individual and the human tendency to conform. With modern society becoming increasingly self-aware and, in my opinion, over-systematized... it just feels good to mow down zombies. You know? I think there's something meaningful here but once again, i need to think about it more.

JPN 61, Japanese Art Horror (great class) also claims that Zombies represent the border between life and death, signifying the inconceivable void of not-death(?). Whatever. The game made me FEEL my mortality, prize my individuality and value whatever social ties i held within the game (thanks peck and mike). If you get pinned down by a zombie your teammate has to free you. Players have to heal each other to survive. The cooperative element really made it what it was: WE were scared.

Counterpoint: In the game I'm not mortal. I'm not individual. I played as a retired army vet. When I left the keyboard for 30 seconds the computer started controlling him for me and my friends didn't notice. Made me feel like...

a zombie?

Holy unholiness this game is good. Simple, fun, and playing off of real societal pressures. A+

-Cos

(Oprah vs. Anonymous)

So Oprah said something that revealed a lot about poplar culture, internet culture, and the digital divide that exists between the two.

I’m going to try to recount this as best I can, and while I don’t claim to fully understand what happened, Oprah has highlighted the gap between those who are systematically terrified by popular media (everyone), and those who have been separated from society by the internet (4chan).


A few weeks ago she had a special on internet child pornography. Concerned for the children whom are harmed by the despicable, violence-inspiring sickness that is pedophilia, her program attempted to expose unseen dangers. Her concerns are more than warranted.

Yet in her efforts she “uncovered” child pornography on a site called 711chan.org, a self-proclaimed headquarters for Anonymous.

Anonymous is an internet-based group, spawned from the 711chan/4chan message boards, that has been trying to destroy Scientology by holding protests and disseminating information about the cult’s questionable endeavors to protect itself. Scientology is a whole other story, google it.

There was illegal content on 711chan, and Oprah accused them of them being child pornographers on national television with good reason.

During the show, Oprah read aloud an email from a member of Anonymous, who told her that:

“He doesn’t forgive, he does not forget, his group has over nine thousand penis’s, and they’re all raping children.”

Woah.

I’ll explain:

Here are two popular memes / inside jokes treasured by 4chan.org.
1) “Over 9000!” A sound blurb from Dragonball Z.
a. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBtpyeLxVkI
2) Replacing any word in a sentence with the highlighted word PENIS.

So we have the common Anonymous motto “we do not forgive we do not forget,” followed by a double-meme/inside joke composed of Dragonball Z’s “over 9000” quote and the popular PENIS reference. The “all raping children” comment is what interests me here, if you can get over the graphic nature of the comment.

He’s being sarcastic. The group has its sicko’s, but there are hundreds of thousands of “members.” Of course Oprah is going to believe that they are all violent pedophiles, he told her what she was already going to assume. Yet in doing so he is mocking not only Oprah, but the entire media for their use of fear to entertain.

However, understandably, the masses believed him. 99% of people have never been to an Anonymous message board. The don't understand that these sites are places of completely unmediated commentary, where anonymous posters can say whatever they want, post whatever pictures they want. Their comments are erased within a few hours as new posts fill the page’s memory and because no one on the site can identify anyone else, they communicate through memes, inside jokes and a shared lean toward moral relativism.

But Oprah found some screwed up pictures and blew the whistle. It needed to be blown.

Sometimes people post disgusting photographs for ironic or satirical purposes, sometimes they really are just mentally sick. Thing is, when everyone is anonymous certain individuals can fit through the cracks, and truly free speech may have doomed the impressive social experiment that once was Anonymous. They need to clean up their act. Can they?

The sites are vulgar, yet there for everyone to watch: a perfect stream-of-consciousness representation of today’s internet-addicted, alienated, isolated, anomie-suffering believers in… the internet? relative normlessness? War on ignorance? Cynical and wired, many Anonymous users are the keepers of our communicative future and yet seem to be falling out of public grace before they can even get started.


So I spent time on 4chan way before Oprah did. Some posters are strange. Some post child pornography. Some are racist. The general feeling is that everyone is “kidding.” But many aren’t. If the group wants to survive it will need to figure out how to purge itself of unwanted individuals. They claim that scientology-backed agents began posting on 711chan in order to blackmail the group.

Maybe… Scientology is a motivated little bugger. With ties in Hollywood. And Oprah is a part of Hollywood. I'd say there was a phone call made.


But fifty million women now believe that there is really such a network. Anonymous is not what America now thinks it is, and if the general population cannot understand the intricate obstacles Anonymous faces… maybe Scientology/fear has won(?).

I’m not trying to be dramatic, we just need to realize that there has never been an organization like this, it cannot be classified. It has no real rules, no real leader, and almost no set agenda other than the dissemination of information.

In what was likely it’s dying breath in the eyes of popular reception, however, a member of Anonymous made the greatest pop-culture prank of the past 5 minutes. They punked Oprah, mocking her for the fear her “reporting” creates and admitting defeat in the form of a brilliant inside joke.

Why should you care? Because the two groups of people involved here do not understand one another. Anonymous will not explain what it is going through, and the general population wouldn’t listen if they did. An entire generation of well educated athiest web users are losing touch with the country that spawned them.

Ban the kiddie porn Anonymous, some things aren’t funny. Chill the fuck out America, transparency is the only way forward.

-Dr. Cosmos.

Final Proposal Reactions

We are being stonewalled by the Engineering Dept, but I just hit them with this 10 page experiment proposal that should silence the naysayers.

Quote from the SysAdmin:

"At this point, I cannot say whether this will work out or not. Any of the following could stop it:

* Policy decision that this will be too much of an intrusion/distraction/resource drag in our lab.
* Finding that it takes too much of my team's time to set it up (technical difficulties).
* Thayer School students finding it too disruptive (we'd have to ask you to stop)."

I mean i get where the guy is coming from. But, warhammer is pretty damn easy to install, the kids in the lab aren't going to stop their homework just because we're playing, and they have more than enough space. Its interesting that our department is currently guerrilla in nature; they can tell us to f*ck off without having to answer to anyone.

However, 2 years ago this discussion wouldn't even take place. "Games? Get the hell out of here kid."
But I'm in the gaming lab right now. Sure its an empty room (a few bookshelves and a coffee table) but we're here. I just might be jumping the gun with the warjammers.blogspot thing.

Interestingly the same guy said at the beginning of the letter:

"Thank you for sending this proposal. I am impressed by your concept, by your ideas, and by your ambitious goals."

Cool, thanks SysAdmin, now let us use 6 of your 50+ computers for a few nights a week.

LARPing

Brought up hosting a Live Action Role-Playing Game as a possible side "experiment" for the class to carry out today. Also ran across a documentary on the hobby directed by Christopher Pleass that presents the obscure practise in a reasonable, positive light. In fact, I now think that adults rediscovering meaningless, childish "play" is not only interesting, but increasingly necessary in our hectic world.

An interviewed LARP'er discusses his fear that future online-games will dominate the role-playing hobby market, driving live-action into further obscurity.

With my concerns about the addictive, anti-corporeal nature of MMORPG's, I must say I am interested in trying, well, "play." Outdoors. With rubber swords. I think I'd be a minotaur.

How many of you would come to a tournament if I organized it? How many of you are laughing?

Experiment Proposal

So I'm taking a class on Digital Game Studies, we dont have a syllabus but we do have a cool prof and the ability to do whatever experiments we want.

So here's the idea as I submitted it:

"I propose we pool our resources and assign a portion of the class (those interested in addiction, gamer sociology/demographics or escapism) to play an MMORPG together. This needs to be refined, but here are the main steps:

1. Form a team in an online game (Warhammer Online/Age of Conan) made up of class members and potentially other Dartmouth gamers.
a. Develop and test team dynamics through interaction (as suggested by Linden)
b. Hold various experiments in-game:
i. Anti-WAR protests or demonstrations
ii. Player vs. player raids
iii. Provide support for MMO Addiction in-game
iv. Gain contacts and profile them
v. Add to the game narrative
vi. Suggest improvements to publisher…

c. Record what happens (voice, audio, statistics, screen capture, digital video) and edit into either a:
i. Report with a message for the gaming community at large.
ii. Entertaining narrative (machinima perhaps, as Thomas suggested)
iii. Documentary analyzing what happens to the team as they become more and more involved with the game. Health deteriorating? Social changes? Addiction?
iv. All three, hosted on a website.

2. Questions/Goals
a. Do massively multiplayer online role-playing games have a negative impact on the individual over the long run? Is moderation attainable? What happens when people live in two realities at once?
b. Possible End Goal --> Propose an alternative, non-addictive digital experience, or suggest modifications to the existing ones.
c. (Far-flung) Perhaps report our findings to the group that is creating a game, help them create a psychologically beneficial experience

Notes:
- We would need a room, and hardware. I think both are attainable. I also think corporate sponsorship/support a possibility, and could provide us with much-needed information (statistics)
- I have Age of Conan accounts (5 or 6 around level 60) that we could use, but the game is slowing down and hard to run on most computers. That said, studying the death of a digital world would be interesting. We don’t necessarily have to limit ourselves to one game."

So yea, if this happens, things are going to get pretty interesting. STAY TUNED TRUE BELIEVERS!

500,000 People

UPDATE: WARHAMMER HAS JUST PASSED THE 750,000 PLAYER MARK. Still growing...

500,000 people have signed up for Warhammer Online in its first week. This beats out Age of Conan's 400k, setting a new standard for the efficient distribution of spiritual opium(?).

This means that there are 500,000 people 1) equipped to run the game 2) willing to pay 50 bucks + the monthly fee 3) excited / enticed by either warhammer's ad campaign or someone playing the game. Well done Paul! (skip ahead to 5:00 if short on time)

It was the trailers that sold me:
Trailer 1 Trailer 2

I ordered my version from IGN's Direct2Drive, but i think they sent it to the wrong email address. Thing is, I'm better off without the game.

More interestingly, check out how they describe the war they have created. Dubbed the "Realm War," Warhammer online appears to value all in-game events as one large, historically valuable event/object. It's pretty impressive how hype for this virtual war has been cultivated. The game creators add value to in-game actions through the use of leaderboards, in-game chroniclers... Just click the box:


Anyway, I'd love to become a "watchful chronicler" for them. Sounds like the best job in the world.

Here's the main site if you're interested. These (This / this) are terribly shot in-game propaganda videos... I have to believe something cooler could be done with the Order vs. Chaos theme.