OrtizGames

Facebook recently initiated “Facebook Chat”, a messenger concept people have been dying for since Facebook exploded from a college thing into the next MySpace. It’s become apparent to me within the first twenty minutes of poking at it that the thing is pure evil, since my feed shows up live on everyone’s chat list if they happen to me talking at me (I don’t answer back being the Facebook dissenter I am, of course) so now if it even occurs to me to download some stupid application for the day, even if I hide it on the mini-feed, everyone who happens to be staring intently at me will be notified.

Of course, it’s also unlikely too many people will be interested in me. I am, after all, somewhat boring–particularly on Facebook. But I somewhat dread a game designer contacting me randomly after having seen me on someone else’s site and walking in on me taking a personality quiz for little girls. Not that I do that, or anything. I just might some day. You never know.

And no, I’m not giving out my Facebook on here. Why would I? There’s nothing of interest on there. If you really want to find me, go ahead and try to find me. You know who I am and where I study. It can’t possibly be that hard.

So now you’re thinking, “All right, Andres, how does this tie into games?” Yes, I know I’m a game designer and I should be focusing on things like Metal Gear Online and GTAIV, but instead I decided to talk about Facebook–because believe it or not, in-game communication with players isn’t all too far from what Facebook just integrated.

And since you’re all so picky about MGO and GTAIV, I will talk about them–in context with Facebook.

The thing about most games–and this is mostly when dealing with the online multiplayer aspect of any genre–is that communication is crucial for anything to work in an online setting. The reason Facebook is so successful is because it centers around the idea of communication and connection between human beings. Video games in an online setting have had a hard time hitting the right formula in order to thrive because they haven’t been able to find the appropriate balance of communication versus play. (Brenda Brathwaite would be so proud of me.)

In the instance of Rock Band, you have an absolutely gorgeous system for playing your favorite songs with friends, rocking it out and sharing the moments through an online setting–but the connectivity is so limited you might as well just get together at somebody’s house and play there. There’s no real connection to be made outside your little group of friends. When people go online, they want to be connected to the World Wide Web. In that instance, online play has been dramatically downplayed and remained a disappointment for those hoping for a richer, expanded experience.

To open a little on MGO before we get into the online communications versus play idea, I have to say I love this game. Metal Gear Online is a gold shooter–it feels natural to the touch and very different from so many FPSs I’ve played. While I love first person, I have to say that MGO’s beautiful third-person action so far trumps any Halo, Counter-Strike or Unreal you throw at me. The transitions between shooting and CQC and laying traps is so efficient and quick that someone with the absolute upper hand can be devastated by a few small mistakes, allowing the dark horse to burst out of nowhere with a smack to the face. Not to mention that they have something called “Sneaking Mission”, in which you get to be Snake. You get to be Snake. That’s enough said.

In case anyone ever wondered about why AI seems so stupid in MGS4 for not seeing Snake lying camouflaged on the ground, trust me–I can’t see him either. It has nothing to do with stupidity. He’s just hard to see.

In MGO you have different issues–on the connectivity side, the fact that at any given time there may be no more than 2000 people logged on to the MGO server and all of them are in different closed games makes matchmaking becomes incredibly difficult. You might find yourself trapped in a game with a range of skill levels between 0 and 7, ensuring that if you’re lower level, the game will be too hard and if you’re higher level, the game will be too easy. Communicationwise, MGO seems to have no issues–other than the fact that your email can only hold so many messages and that there’s no private chat, so talking to your friends while on the menu and deciding what you want to do is somewhat difficult. It has many ways of talking while within an actual match, including keyboard, microphone and predetermined communication commands. Of course, once you have a mic you’ll usually just be shouting into it whenever anything happens, since you’re on a private channel with your team. Interestingly enough, Kojima Productions made the interesting choice of disabling your communication when you are no longer capable of speaking–for example, when stunned, asleep or dead. It makes dying all the more frustrating because you can’t comment on it, but it stops a great deal of raging over the communication channels as an amazingly efficient fix. The communication versus play, however, is a tad unbalanced in this scenario, since while MGO plays beautifully like a completely non-standard shooter with different dynamics from any other FPS I’ve ever played online, it needs to have a lot tweaked in order to function correctly–mainly the issue with how easy it is to get a headshot, and how difficult and one sided it makes the game. Getting close to someone is now an art, and relies on a great deal of luck and patience–both of which are not exactly prime elements to focus on in any FPS. You want skill, timing and precision to be the elements to focus your gameplay on. We’ll see if Konami lowers the headshot ratios by when MGO comes out in June–I will most certainly be playing it because it is simply a true pleasure and just amazing fun when your team and you really coordinate.

GTAIV has its own version of gameplay–but I keep feeling after playing it that the entire thing seems somewhat tacked on, like an addition to gameplay merely created to compete with the upcoming release of Metal Gear Online.

First, however, the main game. The game itself is pure gold, and I’m enjoying it very much–though I’m a little disappointed with how the new features of the game don’t really switch up the gameplay. They make gameplay more interesting and efficient and dynamic, yes. But in terms of “new”, nothing fresh really comes to the table. To be expected–it’s another GTA game, and GTA is simply GTA. The story is lovely, however, and I’m enjoying it when I’m not busy working or on my last days of MGO.

Returning to the multiplayer, it seems to be very much the single player game with more players in it, shooting each other. It’s really not as glorious as I expected, and the fact that contacting your friends is practically nonexistent and gameplay modes are nothing short of a repeat of Unreal’s and Team Fortress’s match modes makes it rather disappointing. It’s still kind of fun, but some modes are somewhat pointed or biased and people playing them are downright stupid. I think there were several mistakes made in the GTA multiplayer, and that makes me wonder really if it was in the original plan of the fourth game or if it was put in to try to sell more and build more hype versus the looming colossus of Metal Gear Solid 4.

To close on GTAIV, the game is already starting to stale a little bit on me–and of course I’ll beat the whole thing and enjoy it, but I realize it’s just like playing another GTA, and because I know the gameplay so well I feel like I can’t get anything more out of it other than story–of course the story will be good, with Rockstar’s witty cynicism and newfound ability to narrate. But it’s a sad feeling I’m left with because I only just got the game and everyone’s giving it such high praise. But really, people… it’s Grand Theft Auto. It’s always going to be Grand Theft Auto.

So Facebook has got the formula for connectivity versus play–but do they? I still think even they haven’t refined the formula, because nothing on Facebook catches my attention anymore. I loathe it–I just can’t become interested in wasting time on it. So we still have a lot of experimentation to go… don’t count on the perfect MMO formula just yet, folks.

Share on Facebook

I hope this shocking video (NSFW) on Kotaku and GayGamer didn’t escape anyone last week, because it certainly cleared up any doubts about the typical behavior displayed by trollers in online play. This is the same kind of crap a minority would have to face in any online game, whether it be World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike or City of Heroes (I was present during that one, and it wasn’t pretty). This is usually why I see a lot of homosexual players “roleplay the straight guy”, or simply avoid all possible indications of their identity in games. In a sense, they’re forced into anonymity because their self-identity isn’t really “tolerable”, according to everyone else. Which is utter bull.

In the same way, I see anyone trying to display any sort of divergence (if someone had a gamertag that pronounced them as black… somehow) being met with the same antagonism. You have to be something utterly indecipherable, or else an aggressive name like “GeekKiller”or something to that extreme. I know I don’t express my being Mexican anywhere online. My online tag is a nondescriptive name, a name composed up of text and 1337 speak, short and sweet and punchy. On WoW, I roleplay my name and character to fit the theme, and I don’t have to worry about ever being trashed because I have a generic fantasy name like “Raurke”. But imagine if I were to use a name like “MexicanTornado”. I would be flogged. I can imagine the taunts now: “Oh, why don’t you just stay on your side of the border?” “Hehehe we’re gonna catch you and deport you to Mexico.”

Funniest thing about that is that they would have no indication that I was an immigrant in the U.S. They would just assume I was because I speak English. How funny would that be, if I were playing from home here in Mexico?

Why is that enforced? It’s like everyone else seems to think their own personal identity irrelevant, so you shouldn’t have the privilege of expressing yours. Which is bull–people have every right to be themselves in any forum. They don’t have to appeal to you. They’re being themselves. And in a forum, you have to just either suck it up or call on why this doesn’t appeal to you and give a concise reason–not ad hominem. I would be ecstatic if I heard someone say, “Well, I don’t agree with homosexuality, and it makes me uncomfortable, but I don’t see that as a reason to diss someone. Maybe if it makes me very uncomfortable, I can just leave, but I’m not really there for them, so I think I’ll just play my game.” And I have. I’ve heard it from someone’s very mouth. It’s wonderful. But not from everyone’s.

This is why the new Xbox Live Dashboard is somewhat promising. If indeed there will be an ability to impose social sanctions on someone for being a troller, so much the better. A point brought across by this little article is that “Part of the fun, sometimes, in doing atrocious things in games is that it’s fiction” and “The fact that it’s fiction does not make it any less impactful to me”. It was also mentioned that “Another part of the fun for me, in video games, is that you can experiment … and if you leave a permanent mark, you can reset, try again.” The problem is resetting doesn’t work when you’re dealing with real people. Real people aren’t part of the game. They’re part of the game experience, but they’re also game players. They have just as much of a right to enjoy it as you do.

If this was meant towards Xbox now making single player game choices that screw you over socially, oh, well, screw that. Yes. I disagree with what I do in a game being a reflection of who I am in a social setting. Look at my Fable and Oblivion characters–Assassins, murderers, blood evil and violent as all Hell. That doesn’t mean I’m that way when playing Halo 3. I do not shoot my teammates. I do not assassinate everyone and taunt them for losing (well, I do assassinate everyone, if I can). However, if the Xbox Live dashboard is for a sanctions system based off your behavior, well, I think that’s perfectly useful. However, I think there needs to be a checks and balances system, or else the Mafia will show up like in The Sims Online, and everything will fall apart.

There’s plans going around somewhere or another to do something major about the code of conduct in online games, so I can expect to see something relatively soon about it. It would certainly be a good change.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Share on Facebook