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Gaming

If anyone can set up a website and review games, is the traditional games press doomed?

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1110330 new magazines If anyone can set up a website and review games is the traditional games press doomed

The Internet is saturated with sites and blogs that publish games news and reviews at a phenomenal rate. Within seconds of press releases being sent out, they appear on the Internet in a dozen different ways. Technologies such as Twitter and Facebook allow us to release snippets of information without even needing to write a full article. Games reviews get published on the Internet days, weeks or sometimes months before the traditional printed press have a chance to release theirs.

I spoke to one very unhappy staff writer recently, who was complaining that he needed to have reviews written for a magazine that was to be published in 2 months time. He could not convince his editor that it would be pointless releasing reviews of games 2 whole months after everybody else.

At any given second of the day there is more information being uploaded than anyone could feasibly read.

So what does this mean for games magazines and the like? If they cannot keep up with the speed at which the Internet can get information out, what place do they have in our world?

Let’s first look at the type of information that is released on the Internet. For the most part it is made up of amateurs, like me. As with everything on the Internet the quality and accuracy of what is published varies wildly. Some of the amateur stuff can be of an extremely high quality, often rivalling that of the professional sites. However, just as much if not more, tends to be low quality, rushed and often filled with nothing more than personal rants. This being the case, people often do not trust the information they can get from the Internet.

The professional sites and well run amateur ones still have to be taken into account though; they get good quality information out into the world much sooner than the magazines can. They have a loyal base of readers who trust what is being written. With the professional sites, it is good to know that just like the magazines, these people are doing it for a living. It is their career on the line if they just start ranting their own opinions in a review. The imediacy of the mobile internet also provides advantages. When you are in a shop, it is now easy to check out reviews of the latest releases and see what people are saying about the game – in real time – over twitter.

So again we ask, can the magazines survive? What do they have that the internet does not?

For me personally it comes down to preference and trust. Sometimes I like to hold a magazine and read it on the train, or in the bath or wherever. Just as with the professional sites, I like the fact that you know the people working at the magazine do it for a living. It is not just a hobby, so you can expect a certain degree of quality and a more informed opinion. At times they are also able to secure certain exclusive previews well in advance of even the biggest games web sites.

There may not be a place in this new age world for all traditional press. The internet is going to take a large chunk of that business. This can be seen already, with many magazines running websites to supplement their printed content. Some magazines have even taken the option of ditching the printed versions of their publication and take it fully online. News papers often have sections of their websites dedicated to games that are never even mentioned in their printed counterparts.

All of these facts aside, I feel that traditional printed press is far from dead or even doomed, as long as there are people like me, who sometimes just want to hold a magazine rather than stare at a monitor and who know that quantity of information is no substitute for quality of content.

Andrzej runs the games review website Yet Another Review Site

PDF Tray If anyone can set up a website and review games is the traditional games press doomed

Reviews – Resetting the Value baseline

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[dc]A[/dc]s a person who runs a games review site, I am extremely fortunate and get to try out not just games, but gaming related hardware. Anyone who has seen my site will know there are quite a few headset reviews as well as reviews of gaming mice.

Just recently though, I have had a slight crisis over how I perceive value. One of the things people often criticise reviewers for, is the lack of connection they have to average buyers. I always thought that I was pretty good at this, but I may have slipped a little!

Don’t get me wrong, I stand by all of my reviews, as I have said before, you can only review based on what you know. You can only compare products against ones you have previously used.

At £150 a product may well be amazing. However, it is still £150. Is that really good value, when a product that is £40 performs almost as well, even if it is missing some of the whizzy bits? The fact that I, as a review, am not paying for it can make for a strange view on the value.

It is my job to put myself in the shoes of the buyer. When presented with two products, each of which has had a shining review – which will I go for – the one my wife will kill me for spending money on, or the one that is almost as good but is less that half the cost?

I do this with every review, but until now did not have a baseline to compare to. Now I do!

But again, this all comes down to experience and having a broader range of products to compare.

PDF Tray Reviews 8211 Resetting the Value baseline

Meet the distracted, multi tasking and gamified workforce of the future.

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Recently I was lucky enough to be given an hour to chat with a group of 16 and 17 year olds about Social Media and technology in general.

It started with a general chat about how we communicate in day-to-day life. I was amazed that the first answer I got was “Facebook”. I had twitter, Xbox live, MSN and email before we got to talking! Face to face human interaction. However, as I spoke to them more and more I began to understand why. They take digital communication for granted in the same way we who are older take face to face communication for granted. They thought that was the answer I was looking for. It is just as natural to them.

This intrigued me, so I pursued it with a question I had been discussing earlier with some colleagues. It had revolved around the concept of white noise on social networks. My argument had been that it is human nature to create white noise, the trick is to filter it out. These teenagers said just that. They take in streams and streams of constant chatter from the likes of Facebook, text messages, email and Twitter, but they can just filter out everything except what they want to hear. The difference being, they don’t have to think about it. They just do it!

I brought the conversation around to the idea of distraction. They all agreed that they are a distracted generation. In fact whilst talking to them at least two were on Twitter on their phones! The interesting thing was, when I picked them up on it they were able to repeat every word I had said. Whilst they seemed distracted, they were still absorbing everything I was saying. What surprised me more though was how often they said they looked at their phone or non-school / work related media. At least once every twenty minutes. Each time they spend up to five minutes responding to things. That’s twenty minutes every hour. In a working day, that represents one hundred and fifty minutes (two and a half hours) of “wasted” time each day. However, these people are always on. They don’t see the day in terms of 9 to 5. They see it as a day. If an email comes in at any time of the day, they respond. This is how it will be for their work. Whist they may seem distracted, they will be working later and more hours than ever and never complain as that is just the way it is.

Finally, I brought the conversation to games, much to their delight. I started talking about gamification and the use of game mechanics either to achieve real world objectives or to make mundane tasks more interesting. They got it straight away, but seemed amazed it had a name. For them it was just what they did day to day. Setting small goals to achieve larger tasks.

However, what really interested them was a conversation about how games are going to make them a better work force. Bear with me!

Taking two very popular games, World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. In World of Warcraft one of your aims is to get money. You get money to buy or make new things. These could then be sofl on or used achieve new goals or make it easier to achieve previous goals – thus earning more money. Sound familiar? Basic business. They were learning core principals of how business works from World of Warcraft. Day to day manufacture good or provide services. We earn money by achieving goals. We use that money to buy new things or invest in things that will allow us to achieve different goals or the same goals more efficiently – to earn more money.

Next, I took on Call of Duty. “How on earth can that make you better at working?” they all asked. “You are just shooting bad guys in the face with big guns”. One of them piped up with a gem that I had set myself up for. “Well, you shoot people in the face with weaker guns to start with. Then you earn money by shooting more people, to buy bigger guns to shoot them more efficiently next time.” Brilliant!

However, that was not the point I was trying to make with Call of Duty. I asked them what they did in the game, how they knew what was happening and what they had to do.

They are looking at the main screen to watch for signs of enemy movement. At the same time, they have an eye on the tactical mini map. They also keep an eye on their ammo levels, spike camera displays and teammate positions all whilst listening to environmental sounds and constant chatter on a headset. At the same time, they are using a joy pad with 5 times as many buttons as the good old NES. Yet they are still utterly focused on their main mission. This constant flow of information is filtered and used as they need it without any thought from them.

They are mutli tasking at a level that was previously reserved only for helicopter pilots.

I have not even mentioned the social skills one learns via online gaming.

This is our next generation of workforce. With this kind of ability to multitask and manage vast streams of information, we should see great things from them. Our job as their managers of the future is to understand this new distracted way of working. We need to learn how to focus this kind of ability and get the best from it. It is no longer good enough to ask for 9 to 5 single task working mentality.

Welcome to the always on. multi tasking slightly distracted work force of the future. As my daughter would say. Deal with it.

PDF Tray Meet the distracted multi tasking and gamified workforce of the future

Combat School, retro games, imagination and broken bones.

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Combatschool Combat School retro games imagination and broken bones

I suppose I could call this the “Realification of Games”, but I won’t!

A slightly related more recent article I wrote can be found here Don’t See what’s there, see what’s not there.

“When I were a lad, games were better”.
That is often an opening gambit of any retro game lover. Of course it is not precisely true for all retro games. It would be more accurate to say; “when I were a lad, I loved the games we had available to us”.

That is not to say some were not better, but try convincing a modern gamer that any C64 game was better and they will laugh at you – before trying it. You see the sad fact is, they all look crap compared to the current photo realistic games we have.

However, the old games relied on something that modern games often ignore. Imagination. I mention Combat School in the title. In 1987 Konami released Combat School in the arcades. It was a military take on the very popular athletics games of the time. You used a roller ball and two buttons to complete seven objectives, which ranged from obstacle courses, shootin ranges and finally combat training with your instructor.

Most of my friends had it on their home computers, but we very rarely played the game, even though the likes of Zzap 64 gave it rave reviews and scores (91%), you see, whilst the main game tried to break our joysticks, it was the final level that really captured our imagination.

Suddenly we were all split into marine recruits and combat instructors on the playground. We began to recreate the game in our own way, setting up obstacles and missions around the school. When we had completed these tests, we got to beat the crap out of each other, pretending it was the final level.

So why is this good you may ask. How does this relate to retro games being in some way better than modern games? Well, on the home systems the graphics were pretty poor. You had to really use your imagination to see the full picture. I used to have a global war game that my dad and I played. We would use a real globe to plan our attacks. So it was with Combat School. Whilst the graphics we not the photo realistic beasts we are now used to, it got your mind going. You had to see the pictures in your minds eye, a bit like when you read a book.

In this case that translated to my friends and I trying to break each others noses on the playground. Today, there is no need for that kind of thing. The games looks so real, you don’t need to imagine the details. They are right in front of you in all their gory glory.

Now we really do just turn on and switch our imagination off.

PDF Tray Combat School retro games imagination and broken bones

Online Gaming. A positive and enjoyable past time.

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423073 390626730966234 374094667 n Online Gaming A positive and enjoyable past time

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away… oh wait wrong story.

A few years ago, in a town somewhere in Cardiff, before I was a father or even married (I was at University), I got my first taste of online gaming. More specifically, clan gaming.

The game in question was Starship Troopers on the AOL network. It was a fairly simple Birdseye view space shooter, set in the Starship Troopers universe. What made it stand out was the fact that you needed to use real teamwork to get anywhere in it. Until then, most games I had played just needed you to run around shooting each other (Duke Nukem, Doom, Quake). None of them needed or promoted teamwork.

After a few weeks, I got invited to join a clan. The Elites of Starship Troopers. It was great, they were great and I loved every minute of it. Sadly, AOL decided to scrap the game about a year later. The clan tried to stay together, but eventually everyone drifted off in their own direction.

It wasn’t until a few years later that another game would catch my attention in the same way. Westwoods Command and Conquer: Renegade. A unique first person shooter that combined resource management, team tactics and fps action like nothing I had seen before or since. But, I quickly got frustrated with people not working together. The trouble was, I was not that good at it, so no clans were interested in me joining. The solution? Simple. Start my own clan.

So Rages Renegades was born.

Built on two key philosophies;
• Simplicity is perfection, but perfection is never simple.
• For fun, for friendship, forever.

Now, it was the last one that became most important. The first one was a slightly pompous set of ideals I had about tactics. They were good ideals, but pretty full of myself in retrospect!

However, for fun and for friendship became very important to us. Over the years the clan evolved and grew. We did well in Renegade, but actually saw some real success in Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2. Sadly, that success would spell the downfall of Rage.

You see, whilst some of us were still about fun, others wanted more. They wanted to take the clan pro (a concept that never even existed when I started out!). So the clan fractured and never really recovered. Some guys actually did go pro, one now runs a pro team. Others disappeared into World of Warcraft, not to be seen until several years later! But for a few, the friendship and forever parts meant a lot. Eight years on we still keep in contact. Rages Renegades still has some presence – albeit just a Facebook group and we still chat about starting again, who knows, maybe it could happen!

In the mean time, a couple of us Revolver Ocelot (Sam), myself and Mr T (Jamie) started writing reviews for my new site Yet Another Review Site (http://www.yetanotherreviewsite.co.uk. Clan gaming had all but been forgotten. We still wear the {Rage} tags, but more for nostalgic reasons than anything else.

Now then, not so long ago, I came across a site call Gamer Dads (http://www.gamerdads.co.uk), through the magic of Twitter. I started chatting to a few of the guys on Twitter and on the forums. Then I managed to get into a couple of XBOX Live sessions with them. I found myself having fun and it felt just like the old days of Rage. They were just playing for a laugh.

And so I sit here writing this post with a renewed sense of excitement about online gaming. Will I ever drop the Rage tags in favour of a GDs tag? I’m not sure. I will wait and see if I get asked. Pride says no, but as my online persona is DaveRage, I can never truly lose touch with my origins. For now I just want to say thanks to a group of grumpy old gits who have reignited that love of team gaming!

That brings me to my final point – the bit I want to call “If you don’t know what you are talking about, shut the hell up.”

There is a lot of nonsense in the media about the evil of computer games. This is usually being spouted by people who’s closest connection to gaming might be a sneaky game of Angry Birds on their iPhone, when they think no one is watching. What they don’t want you to know is how positive online gaming can be. Clan gaming got me through some of the toughest times in my life. I made friends that have lasted for years. I know people in clans who have literally had their lives saved by the people they have met online – through games. It would be nice to hear a little more of that kind of thing in the news from time to time.

Anyway, rant over. If you want to find out more about how positive games can be and don’t want to be bothered by teens who can barely string a sentence together, head over to http://www.gamerdads.co.uk and tell ’em Dave sent you.

If you are into twitter you may like to look at @retrocast and @gamerdads as well. Good for a nostalgic laugh!

Originally posted on www.yetanotherreviewsite.co.uk

PDF Tray Online Gaming A positive and enjoyable past time
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