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    Cheating or Exploiting...What's Your Take?

    posted @ 2/08/2007 10:23:00 PM by Douceswild
    Sorry for the lengthy AFK all. I’ve been putting in some long hours at work, but now I’m back with something that I’d like your opinion on. What’s the difference between cheating in video games and exploiting a system that’s already implemented into the game?

    When it comes to video games, people will always find various ways to cheat. It’s just in our nature. Whether it be the 30-life Contra code or hacking a mmorpg to get better items, cheating and exploiting will always be around. There’s also a fine line between the two.

    Everyone knows about World of Warcraft’s first expansion called the Burning Crusades, which released a few weeks ago. One of the new features is a raised level cap from 60 to 70. To a lot of casual players, that brings another month to three months of level grinding and questing to hit the new level cap. Well not everyone.

    A player from France was able to reach level 70 twenty-eight hours after the release of the game. He grinded constantly without any sleep. As tales of him being the first level 70 player in the game spread, he began releasing his strategy to many curious and amazed players. He had forty of his guildies helping him out. He would hit (tag) the mob to claim ownership of the kill, and then the rest of his guild would kill the mob and keep him healed as he moved on to the next mob to repeat the process. Twenty-eight hours later **poof** level 70.

    Now here’s where the controversy comes in. It seems that others are saying that he cheated. In my opinion, “cheated” is a strong word to use in this instance. He only did what Blizzard and every other mmorpg developer intends for you to do when you log in to their game and that’s interact with other players to get the most out of the game. I see it more as exploiting the system than cheating. He didn’t use a hack or mod to speed up the fight or increase the experience points. He just used and benefited from the help of some friends to get the job done.

    I pose the question to all of you. Is what he did cheating or exploiting a system that’s already in motion? You want my opinion? I say, don’t hate the player. Instead, hate the player that can’t play the game.

    Any thoughts?


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    World of MonkeyCraft

    posted @ 1/28/2007 06:57:00 PM by Ninjasistah
    If I was ever going to play WoW this would be the guild I joined.

    I need a guild and WoW experience that is laid back. If I was to jump into the game I would be a complete and total newb, and have to be part of a guild where people were understanding and supportive of my [initial] suckitude... because I would initially suck at WoW.

    I'm not saying that I am going to join, but I am considering it. And it's because I loved the Monkey Island games. I'm thinking Kate Capsize.

    Just thinking about it though.


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    .Hackers of "The World" Unite!

    posted @ 11/23/2006 07:19:00 PM by Douceswild
    “Prepare to charge! Scroll over him with your mouse cursors…and…RIGHT CLICK!” The Douce has an anime that is all about you and your addiction to online gaming. Many of you may have heard of it or watched it already and there’s no denying that we (myself included) see ourselves somewhere in this anime.

    The anime that encompasses just about every aspect of a typical MMORPG is .hack//Roots. The popular online game called “The World” from the previous .hack series has been destroyed, revamped, and re-released as "The World R:2". The new version of the game has been overrun by pk’ers (player killers). Logging onto the game and venturing outside of root town comes with the risk of getting your character pk’ed.

    Haseo logs into The World for the first time as a newbie only to be nearly pk’ed by two players who pretend to be his friends while helping him learn the ropes of the game. He’s saved by a mysterious player named Ovan, who tells him there is a hidden power inside of his character and invites him to join his guild. Haseo begins his grind to level up and in the process, befriends a guild mate named Shino. One day, he witnesses Shino being pk’ed by the mysterious avatar known only as Tri-Edge. It’s said that those killed by this avatar are called the Lost Ones because they never log back in to the game.

    The loss of Shino sends Haseo into a rage as he tries to track down Tri-Edge and discover what happened to his friend. In his search for power and answers, he becomes a pkk’er (player killer killer) as he eliminates any player that refuses or is unable to point him towards the mysterious avatar. Haseo is dubbed "The Terror of Death" because of his rampage and also earns the reputation of “the player who killed 100 pk’ers” after being ambushed by and killing 100 pk’ers in a single battle.
    Roots deals with almost every situation you’ll find in online gaming. Account selling, corrupt GMs’, and guild drama is touched on throughout the series. Friendships are strained online and offline as Haseo tries to find the balance between high-level power and online respectful gameplay. He is still unsure of the hidden power Ovan spoke of and how to summon and control it.

    I’m giving this anime one dark M&M because some of the events that take place are dark as well as the mood of the series at times. We’ll throw in two dark blue tasties due to the sadness of seeing the change in Haseo’s attitude and gameplay as well as friendships being torn apart as people are pk’ed and/or leave the game. Let’s go with one maroon M’er for having a good story and plot that references events and characters from the previous series and sets the stage nicely for the .hack//G.U. Playstation2 game. I’ll put this baby to bed with a purple M&M because .hack//Roots is just plain friggin’ good. Pick it up if you’re a online gaming fan. If you’re not, then watch it anyway so you’ll finally understand the hardships that we go through every time we log in.



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    The "Pink Thing"

    posted @ 11/16/2006 04:48:00 PM by geekwoman
    From reading and talking to so many female gamers I had gotten the impression that women have a very different game experience than males do. I set out to see if I was right.Studies do show that women players account for many game - play hours in online games. In my experience as a games writer I have found that women don't have an easy time of finding free time for video games. Often game play time is interrupted. Someone in the house will always need or want something if she sits down at the computer or picks up a controller. If people are not physically present there is the phone, the coffee pot, the micro (or crock pot depending on where you live), and washer / dryer that all will bleep, buzz or bloop for attention at exactly the wrong time.

    The Pink Thing and Video Games by Geek Woman

    It is no different if she has pets. When there are two small dogs and three cats for example then there are endless possibilities for someone's dish of water or food to be empty. Or they bark because they want "Out!" Or maybe a chew toy has fallen down the steps or a bone has landed behind the couch. Those dramas cause whining from small dogs which sounds like someone is filleting them for Carpaccio. Or the 16 year old cat may become suddenly interested in being on top of the fridge and then on top of Grandma’s TV. Enter the "home chaos factor", which may or may not be limited to one gender.

    Where is everyone else in the place when one is playing a game? Perhaps selective hearing is on a different gene than multitasking? No one else can see who is at the door, get the mail or answer the phone, once a character in an MMO is set up to play. In the frequent situation when it takes you over an hour to get ready and arrive at the location where you want to play next, having long blocks of
    uninterrupted time is essential.

    There has to be some furious multi tasking going on in the background that no one can see. Thank goodness for virtual online avatars. "Wait a second one of the cats is trying to annihilate the curtain..." One of my favorite moments in gaming was when my cat Miroku spelled out "M -I - L -T" when I stepped away from Dungeons and Dragons Online. He made my all character's skills disappear and had her dance merrily while stuck in a wall.

    It is at these precarious times that one's character may or may not be safe while left alone to her pre-programed idling animation of
    scratching her butt. She may be beaten to a pulp. In many games when the area isn't safe you end the session by dying. Subsequently you lose all your points and items. This will depend on how sensitive the developers were to the million and one things that compete for a gamer's time.

    In other games once you are out of the group you will spend yet more time finding a new group when you go back. In some games if you own a house that requires maintenance as in Ultima Online it could crumble into dust. Or you can get past due on your rent in Dark Age of Camelot The livestock in A Tale in the Desert could starve. There are the dreaded weeds of Animal Crossing. The randomness of life means there is going to be a lack of control over the length of our game session.

    Not all games will have the content easily available for solo players or even want to. It is more convenient to play games which are instanced or provide content in small chunks. Games which require big clans of people to band together in groups, can achieve larger goals, like changing the landscape and becoming a virtual community. That has other advantages and takes an even greater investment of time.

    Women make up 43% of all video game players. The number of gamers in the US is continuing to increase each year. At least four out of ten people play video games in the United States. When you read over all the reports it comes out even with women having a larger share overall. Games that make it easiest to save progress after a session of game - play or the ability to save at any time are assets to female gamers.

    Because of what I'm calling a the "home chaos factor" (or office) women play a great deal of the flash based puzzle, games, board games and quizzes which have shorter initial durations. Women also have higher numbers playing children's games on PCs and consoles. Women have stats that double the male numbers in playing dance and music games. Another area where there seem to be more women than men playing are the classic arcade type of ports.

    Women are multi-taskers, and the Internet provides quick connectedness, and information about games during game play. Women apparently do have a different game experience than men do. Women surveyed stated they had other tasks going and other media on in the background while gaming, either the TV, radio or MP3's were used no less than 70%. Since males had higher console than PC use than women, then they weren't necessarily able to be watching TV at the same time.

    Using my reverse logic - if aspects in real life from travel and shopping markets were implemented in game-play, the experience would be even more immersive. Some new statistics are said to show that women prefer to play games solo. Then they demonstrate that men seem to be more likely to group in an MMOG. Can the "home chaos factor" account for that too? I know that when I am playing an MMO I don't like to spend the extra time it takes to find a group of new people to play with to solve a quest. I've found that many of the women that I play with also try to go solo to save time and avoid the hassle of doing a mission repeatedly because new people don't know how to work as a team.

    Women seem to prefer to travel and game alike with established friends. In fact if you look at those other industries like travel and entertainment women's preferences are much more apparent than in gaming. Those are statistics that could be easily transferred to marketing games that would make the game experience more fun. "Girls travel in packs" it can be said. Games on Xbox Live for instance, make it very easy for ladies to play games together and meet other gals.

    In seeing who travel agents say is the average adventure traveler it is not the 28-year-old male that you'd think it would be. Travel agents figures show that a 47-year-old female is the most likely demographic to take nature, adventure, or cultural trips.

    There aren't any universal truths about women. However reaching women gamers is more than just making things Barbie pink. Women do process information in a more detail-oriented fashion. Women will notice more and likely expect more. That means we notice amenities, textures, subtleties, and read between the lines.

    “Now will you all shut up so I don’t get killed!”

    A few weeks ago when Sony / Europe announced that it's dropping the price of the PS2 for Europe and the UK. In addition, they mentioned that they are cutting the price on PS2 memory cards. Then they made another couple of unusual announcements.

    Stating that better efficiency has enabled cost savings to be made, Sony says that they are passing the savings on directly to new PlayStation 2 customers who may not want to shell out the $600 US and even more AU for the PS3.

    Sony hopes that with over 2,000 game titles another market of PS2 owners will grab up the cheaper console. But that may not be the biggest news. Besides the price cut, they announced a new limited edition Pink PS2, which comes with two pink analog controllers and a pink memory card. The Pink bundle will be available from "selected retailers" throughout Europe starting November 8th, and in the U.K. it'll come with the karaoke game SingStar Pop .

    At this time it is unknown if they will follow suit in the U.S. and AU. Some are saying that a comparable price cut will not come until next spring.

    Sony is indeed going to offer a pink PSP in association, we're told, with the singer Pink with the intent being to to attract "young women with freedom, confidence and attitude" to the platform. Unlike the upcoming pink PS2 , the salmon-hued portable console doesn't ship with pink accessories, but it is a limited edition, Sony said.

    The industry will have to start to think differently if it wants to reach the female customers. Just making things pink is not what we are after. One market study shows that girl gamers like to play during their spare time or when they're mobile. The Nintendo DS users are 44 percent female.

    Studies by the US market research firms Yankee Group and Parks Associates confirm the trends that there are several market segments where girl gamers are ahead of males. Mobile phone games are predominantly played by female gamers. In the United States about 60 percent of the people who play games on their mobile phones are women.

    David Gardner, chief operating officer for EA's worldwide studios, was speaking to a conference in Edinburgh. When he said the now much quoted line which was

    "The game industry has been failing women"

    He said the industry had to learn from the film business. And not too long ago this humble jounalist suggested that the games industry look at numbers from the Travel business to find out what girls want.

    Mr Gardner got one thing right "They don't want 'pink games'. They are not trying to play girly games where Paris Hilton and Britney Spears go shopping and put make-up on. Those kind of things have not been that successful."

    Well duh.

    But he said games such as The Sims and websites such as Pogo.com proved there was a market for women gamers.

    "Most of the Sims players are girls - 70% are women under 25," he said. The Sims, which is published by EA, is arguably one of the world's most successful game - with more than 40 million copies sold.

    Mr Gardner said the industry needed to "create some mega hits in the girl space and that it would potentially add a billion dollars to their revenues. That's not small change. It confirms what we have been saying for years.

    Four of our 11 studios around the world are run by women. That's an important start. That is why it is so important for young women to get hired by game development studios now.

    Just making a console or a handheld pink doesn't guantee it will seel to women. Making a sinking ship handheld like the PSP in pink may not save it. The games for the PSP just aren't there, and there are more titles that are of interest to female gamers out for the Nintendo DS. Though some women gamers may be interested in picking up a new pink console, it would be as a novelty. I doubt that anyone is going to redecorate their family room which has black or silver components in the entertainment center, to accomodate a loud pink console.

    A pink handheld game player is a cute accessory that fits into a purse and can match with outfits. But a pink console is going to become dated and very yesterday very quickly. I just saw a commercial for a large hardware depot store where a teen girl says to her Dad, "I'm grown up now, and I want to repaint my room." The pink poofy stuff is painted over with lime green, mauve and orange. Sorry Sony the new black isn't pink anymore.

    Even though we write reviews, and make suggestions, go to conferences and kick butt in our clans and guilds the game developers and the console companies still don’t get it. We are gamers like the guys are. Stop reinforcing the stereotypes. Give us female avatars in games and equality in the industry.

    And if you still don't understand what women want - well you can ask me! (For a price.)

    Geek Woman is a freelance games jounalist and author of Geek Woman’s Game Guides. www.lulu.com/geekwoman She is the Editor in Chief of the Australian women’s gaming portal Game-Vixen.com. She has given a voice to women and girls who play video games to demonstrate to anyone listening that "We are here!" She lives in the USA with her partner, two pomeranians, three cats, scores of bitchy seagulls and a weedy garden.

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    Computer Gaming: Am I Really Missing Out?

    posted @ 9/23/2006 08:20:00 PM by Ninjasistah
    A short while ago I was talking with Pandalicious about gaming and the conversation got very interesting. By the end, we were both in agreement that gaming [on the whole] is incredibly enjoyable and should be a national past-time type of thing. But something from that conversation always nagged at me... it was a question that would bubble up to the front of my mind from time to time, making me question my own gamer-geekdom:

    Am I missing out on something huge because I do not play games on the PC?

    I need to give you just a little bit of history in order for you to appreciate the question... all of my life I have been a console gamer. The first system I remember owning was an Intellivision and ever since then it's been one console or another... from NES to XB360 [and damn near everything in between] I've always relegated my video gaming to a console machine. This is not because I hate PC's [I don't] but I've always thought or had the mind set that a personal computer is for work and a console is for gaming. I have several computers in my home and they are all production machines. By production I mean they are machines that I use for design work or video editing. While all of my machines are powerful enough to play games I do not have the luxury of allotting hard disk space, memory resources, or updates to games that may interfere with my machines running at top speed. I can't let anything mess with my money, or ability to make money to be more specific, so I do not game on any of them.

    Pandalicious will tell you that there are a lot of PC games that she owns, plays, and enjoys on a regular basis. Many of these titles are games I have never played... I wouldn't be able to pick out a screenshot of Diablo if you paid me to, nor would I be able to isolate out from a group of screenshots which Civilization game was which. But as our video gaming conversation went on, I started thinking to myself that maybe I was missing out on a good gaming experience. There have been a bunch of titles that I have seen on the PC that I think are interesting, so lack of content hasn't kept me away... PC titles are no more expensive than their console counterparts, so I don't think that has anything to do with my non-pc-gaming-ness either. I think it's partly fear of the unknown and lack of a gaming machine that keeps me away from PC gaming.

    I say fear of the unknown because I don't really know much about PC video gaming at all. The people that I do know that play these games usually only share with me their horror stories... some patch install gone horrendously wrong, or game saves corrupting or disappearing, not stuff to get me all excited about getting in on the scene that's for sure. So fear of getting into software that I have no previous experience with is unsettling... if I get that Guild Wars game will I really be able to find the help I need if I get lost somehow? I think not knowing the answer to that or at least not having an idea about the answer to that makes it easier for me to justify staying away from PC gaming altogether. Add to that the fact that I would still have to keep my production machines clean and the idea of bringing in another machine just for gaming becomes a hard pill to swallow because I couldn't just get a run of the mill machine... I would have to get a supped-up boom-phatty of a laptop to game on.

    I say laptop because I like being mobile with entertainment, but from the things I've read [from places like EGM, IGN, or CGM] to really have an enjoyable computer gaming experience you need a bad-assed machine... this means heavy hitting processor chips, high, high-end graphics card with lots of onboard memory, a couple of gigs of the high end computer ram, and a big ol' 7200rpm hard drive. My heart start palpitating when I start thinking about getting a mobile machine that can meet those specs... coming up with that extra cash, just for a gaming machine, just never seems to make enough sense to me. I try and I try, but I guess because I just have never had an all consuming "this is the greatest thing ever" experience previously on a PC with gaming [which I freely admit was waaay back in the day] I end up convincing myself to not get into it... one of those "better the devil you know..." kind of deals I guess.

    But every so often, the conversation and question pop back into my mind because I feel like I might be missing out on something. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like there are people getting to experience some things in a way I can't which makes it hard for me to relate to them. I've only ever been to one LAN party, and I didn't even play, I just watch other people play because I didn't know the game... and it makes me a little sad. But I just don't have enough of a "sad feeling" to justify getting a PC just so I can play games.

    What do you think?

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