1624: False Start

Hello. How was your day? Mine was almost entirely wasted, unfortunately.

I was all set to have a second interview for a job I’ve been pursuing recently. I took a shower, got suited and booted, went to the toilet several times as my stomach became increasingly agitated thanks to the nervousness that comes with a job interview situation, left the house, caught the bus, caught the train, had a sandwich, took a taxi to my place of prospective employment… and then waited.

And waited some more. And then a bit more still for good measure. (Rolf Harris was declared guilty of indecent assault while I was waiting. I knew because the place I was at had the TV on in the reception area, and also Twitter was all over it before the Americans woke up and started complaining about whatever “Hobby Lobby” is.)

The time of my interview came. I asked where my contact was. No-one seemed to know, and it appeared that my contact didn’t even normally work on that site. A call was put in; my contact’s voicemail was reached, a message was left.

The time of my interview went. Still nothing. Rolf Harris was still guilty. Oscar Pistorius was declared free of mental illness, so his trial would continue. (News again. Twitter didn’t appear to notice this one.)

Nearly an hour passed, but I patiently waited. I didn’t want to be the guy who obliterated his chances by walking out of the door when in fact there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact my contact had apparently vanished off the face of the Earth.

And indeed there was; they were sick. A member of the recruitment team came down and found me, spewed a string of apologies made from seemingly pure guilt — I didn’t mind, really; there’s nothing much that can be done if someone is ill — and assured me that the interview would be rearranged for another day. I politely thanked them for letting me know, reassured them that I wasn’t angry or upset at the fact I’d travelled quite a way and had been waiting quite a while — I really wasn’t — and indicated that I looked forward to the true main event, whenever it would actually happen.

Then I walked back to the station — I didn’t know a taxi number, and it was only about a half-hour walk, caught a train, grabbed a coffee and a slice of cake, caught a bus and returned home. Now here I am. (Actually, I’ve been here quite a while; I wasn’t out until 11 in the evening.)

Oh well. A wasted day, then, but not one that I feel particularly embittered by. It could be a blessing in disguise, anyway; now I have more time to prepare for the interview. Though I’m sure that even with this blessing, I’ll still wake up on the day of the new interview, take a shower, get suited and booted, go to the toilet several times as my stomach becomes increasingly agitated thanks to the nervousness that comes with a job interview situation, leave the house and proceed much as things unfolded today.

At least things are happening, I guess. Let’s hope they lead to something a little more… conclusive soon.

1623: Attack on Twintania, Part 1

Further to yesterday’s post, I had the good fortune to spend a bit of time in Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut in Final Fantasy XIV this evening, courtesy of my good friends in my Free Company — the “guild” of other people I play with on a regular basis. Although Coil goes beyond Turn 5 now, there are still a number of people who are yet to clear it, and I’m one of them — so part of this evening was set aside as some training time to get to know the encounter a bit better. We didn’t clear it, but we made some good progress.

What follows, then, is an account of how the fight went, written (hopefully) in a means through which a non-MMO player can understand what is going on. I found it an exciting experience — and if you’ve never tried it, you learn something about what high-level play in a massively multiplayer game like Final Fantasy XIV is all about.

Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut focuses entirely on one encounter: eight comrades-in-arms against an ancient dragon named Twintania, put there by the ancient Allagan civilisation to do their bidding. Actually, to be exact, it’s eight comrades-in-arms against an ancient dragon named Twintania and her three friends, but said three friends aren’t nearly as much of a threat.

The fight began with our de facto leader the paladin — a strong defensive fighter whose strengths lie not in doing a lot of damage, but instead in keeping the attention of enemies off the more fragile members of the party — charging in and provoking Twintania and her allies. The remainder of the group then followed — at a safe distance for those members such as myself, who were able to inflict damage from a distance — and concentrated on dealing with Twintania’s three friends. Meanwhile, we were fending off attacks from Twintania and her companions — fiery rings that dropped on the floor and hurt a lot if you didn’t get out of them as quickly as possible when they fell on you.

Once the three smaller dragons were down, the group turned its attention to Twintania proper, gathering around her with a strong defensive fighter at the front and another defensive fighter at the side, accompanied by our Scholar’s fairy companion Eos. The group aggressively attacked Twintania until one of the three Neurolink devices around her neck dropped to the floor, at which point the real fun was about to begin.

A curious “blip-blip” sound — perhaps from the Neurolink? — heralded the imminent arrival of a fireball attack from Twintania on a member of the party. No-one knew who these attacks were going to target, but as soon as the telltale signs appeared, they ran to the defensive fighter and fairy standing to one side of Twintania and shared the damage with their two companions — a direct hit without the support of others would have meant instant death.

As the healers frantically worked to help those hit by the fireball recover, the rest of the group prepared for another troublesome ability Twintania had up her sleeve: the ability to summon a terrible conflagration and trap a combatant within. The telltale “blip-blip!” sound came again, but this time with a different marker; its appearance signalled that the victim was about to become caught in a fiery prison, and would need their companions to break them free before it exploded.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, it was impossible to break through the Conflagration before the next fireball attack came, but here it was possible to take advantage of a curious property of the Conflagrations: while those caught within were completely immobilised, it was possible to break in from without, and despite the temporary incapacitation, a Conflagration provided surprisingly good shelter and respite from the relentless fireballs.

After successfully dealing with this tense situation for some time, Twintania took to the skies and flew off. Had we driven her away? Of course not; this was just the beginning.

A second Neurolink fell from Twintania’s neck; the signal that we had to move into a recessed part of the platform upon which we were standing — actually the right hand of the dormant dragon god Bahamut, who wreaked havoc on the realm of Eorzea five years previously. Keeping a careful eye on the dragon revealed when she was likely to swoop across our battleground, attempting to kill us off with her “divebomb” attack. Fortunately, staying nimble on our feet meant it was eminently possible to stay out of the way of these deadly swoops, and instead focus our attention on some new friends: three snake-like creatures, one of which was known as Asclepius and the other two of which were known as Hygieia.

Although terrifying and against the principles of everything we’d trained for up until this point, the party stood firm directly in front of these three new opponents, eyes occasionally darting to the sky in case Twintania decided to swoop in once more. We weakened the two Hygieia without killing them, then set to work on the Asclepius — and then Twintania resumed her assault. Once again, some nimble footwork saw us dodge all but one of the deadly swoops — the last of which knocked me clean across Bahamut’s palm, but thankfully didn’t finish me off — and it was time to deal with two more Hygieia that had appeared to join the fray.

Muttering an incantation under my breath, I summoned all my willpower and unleashed my Limit Break skill, calling down a shower of meteorites to pelt Asclepius and its four children with devastating, fiery projectiles. The two weakened Hygieia fell to the assault, enfeebling Asclepius, the two remaining Hygieia and the brave frontline paladins in the process. It wasn’t long before the other two Hygieia fell, weakening Asclepius further in the process, and shortly after the larger snake was also defeated.

By this point, Twintania was obviously furious and preparing for some sort of last-ditch “ultimate” attack. We had but moments to dart for the safety of the fallen Neurolinks on the ground — and then to hope and pray as the room was filled with the brilliant white light of an aetheric explosion.

Not all of us survived the blast, and it wasn’t long after this that Twintania’s summoning of deadly whirlwinds finished the rest of us off. We collapsed to the ground — beaten for now, but determined to return once we had gathered our strength and prepared once again for the deadly conflict — and Twintania lived to fight another day.

1622: Another Turn in the Coil

The Binding Coil of Bahamut is — or at least was — the most daunting challenge in Final Fantasy XIV. Originally designed as an 8-player multi-part raid to challenge the very best of the best players, Coil, as it tends to be known by the denizens of Eorzea, is now something of a shadow of its former self, with the toughest challenge now being posed by the imaginatively named The Second Coil of Bahamut.

The reason why it’s a shadow of its former self is twofold: firstly, the average equipment level of most endgame players in Final Fantasy XIV is now considerably higher than it was when it first launched and Coil was the hardest thing in the game; secondly, you’re now provided with a buff called “The Echo” upon entering, which boosts your HP, damage, healing and a few other bits and pieces by 15%. Second Coil has no such buff, but it will have one in the future, when Third Coil, or whatever comes next, is released — and so on as the game gradually ups the stakes time and time again.

This is a clever and sensible move on the part of producer Naoki Yoshida and his team. The Binding Coil of Bahamut, despite still being a very challenging set of mini-dungeons and boss fights even with the Echo buff, is part of Final Fantasy XIV’s overarching story. Working your way through it provides you with information about the ancient Allagan civilisation, whom you keep discovering artifacts of throughout your travels, and also what the main recurring villains of the piece — the Ascians — are up to. It also provides a tantalising glimpse at what really happened to the dragon-like god Bahamut as part of the Calamity — the in-game, in-lore justification for the shutdown of Final Fantasy XIV’s version 1.0 incarnation in 2012 — and what the artificial moon Dalamud was actually hiding inside itself besides Bahamut.

All interesting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree — well, you might not, but humour me. To put it another way, it’s all stuff that people who are interested in the detailed lore and worldbuilding of Final Fantasy XIV will probably want to experience. And through the gradual “nerfing” of it as new content arrives, eventually everyone will be able to make it through Coil and see what’s what — just some people will do it sooner than others.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up tonight is that I’ve been doing a bit of Coil myself this evening. This is something of a big step for me, as I’ve previously only ever set foot inside that place in the company of my comrades from my Free Company. With a lot of high-level content in any MMO — not just Final Fantasy XIV — it’s assumed that you know what you’re doing when you step inside, and that you won’t mess things up, because in many cases one mistake can bring an entire eight-person team crashing to its knees.

This is, I’m sure you’ll appreciate, an enormously daunting prospect, particularly for someone like me, who sometimes lacks confidence in himself. But tonight I not only voluntarily went into Coil “solo” (to be automatically matched up with seven other random players), I also did so on White Mage, a healer class, rather than my “comfort zone” (and main) class Black Mage. And while there were a couple of aborted attempts — largely due to poor party makeup rather than anyone making any horrendous mistakes — there was none of the rage, none of the aggression, none of the elitism that can make playing through difficult content even more daunting than it already is. On the whole, it was actually quite a pleasant experience, despite being challenging — and I was rewarded for my efforts, too, with a new ring for my Paladin and some new boots for my White Mage. Score!

I’m always secretly pleased with myself when I overcome a fear like that. Because although Final Fantasy XIV is just a game, and I understand that, the anxiety and fear I feel from social situations is as real online as it is when I’m getting tongue-tied trying to make small talk with someone I don’t really know. My ticking that box in Duty Finder, queueing up and then repeatedly going back into Coil this evening might not sound like much, but believe me when I say it was actually quite a big step for me in terms of self-confidence.

And who says games can’t do any good?

1621: Requiem for a Dead Game

Pour one out, if you will, for Blur.

Longtime readers may recall that I was rather enthusiastic about Blur when it first came out — largely for what I thought at the time was a good example of how to use “social features” effectively. Of course now, in 2014, “social features” are everywhere in games and have a habit of getting in the way more often than not, so I’m not entirely sure I still feel the same way, but Blur certainly had a lot going for it.

Looking back on my past entries, I realise that I never really waxed lyrical about what a remarkable game Blur truly was, though. I talked a bit about its developer Bizarre Creations — Blur was to be one of its last games — but not about what made Blur special.

For the unfamiliar, Blur was a racing game. Nothing unusual for Bizarre Creations, who had previously given us the wonderful Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast, which was succeeded by the Project Gotham Racing series on Xbox platforms. Both Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham Racing struck a good balance between the realism of “driving simulator” games such as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, and the more arcadey thrills of titles like Ridge Racer and its ilk. Stuffed full of real-world cars screeching around beautifully depicted real-world locations mapped in what was considered for the time to be almost “photo-realistic” detail, both Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham in its various incarnations places a strong focus on driving stylishly in order to gain “kudos”. Powersliding around corners, overtaking your rivals, getting air off the crest of hills — all of it would add to your kudos bank, and there was an extremely addictive high score-chasing thrill to it all.

Blur, meanwhile, took the Project Gotham formula and added a twist that took it further from sim territory and well into the realms of arcade silliness. Although still involving real-life cars screeching around real-world locations, Blur went that extra step and incorporated power-ups too. Powerups that let you shoot homing missiles at your opponents, or rapid-fire bullets, or send out devastating shockwaves, or simply boost past your rivals while flipping them off.

Sound familiar? Sound a bit like Mario Kart? That’s because Blur pretty much was Mario Kart, albeit with much more realistic visuals and less fantastic tracks. It was genuinely something that hadn’t really been done before — there had been automotive combat games, but they tended to focus on destruction derby-style gameplay rather than racing with powerups — and thus it was immediately memorable.

And the multiplayer! My goodness, what a fantastic experience that was. Shamelessly lifting Call of Duty’s system of experience levels and unlocks, Blur’s multiplayer rewarded repeat play by providing you with all manner of ways to customise the way you play, as well as a selection of new cars to enjoy. The game was well-balanced, though, in that having a high rank didn’t necessarily confer you an advantage as such, just more options from which to choose. It was enormously addictive and, for someone like me who generally doesn’t enjoy competitive multiplayer games all that much, enjoyable for a surprisingly long time.

I booted the PC version up today after having a bit of a hankering to play again, and out of curiosity I fired up the multiplayer mode. There were four people online. Not four hundred, not four thousand; four. These people appeared to be actively playing, mind you, but it was certainly a far cry from the hundreds of people who used to populate the game. I admire their dedication to the game, but I also feel a bit sad that here we have an unfortunate aspect of the fast-moving nature of the modern games biz: Blur is unlikely to ever see a great deal of action as a multiplayer game again, making one of its best features now almost worthless. It’s a crying shame; Blur was sent out to die by Activision rather than being promoted properly — conspiracy theories have it that the company wanted an excuse to get rid of Bizarre Creations — and consequently never really had a chance to develop an active, long-life multiplayer community.

If I had a tad more influence, I’d do my best to try and gather people together for one last race around the game’s courses. But given that the PC version no longer appears to be available anywhere and the Xbox version requires an Xbox Live Gold subscription — which I no longer have — that’s something easier said than done.

I guess, then, that the good experiences of playing Blur multiplayer will have to live in my memory. The single-player is good — and still playable — but nothing quite compared to the thrill of taking on human opponents. It’s a pity very few people will have the opportunity to enjoy that, and I’m glad I had the chance to do so when the game was most active.

1620: Community Matters

The Squadron of Shame, the “gaming book club” that was born on the 1up Radio message boards and has subsequently lived in several places across the Internet, has moved house again. We now have our own forum here — though if Squad co-founder “Beige” gets things sorted, we’ll have either that forum or a variation thereof on our own domain before long, which will be nice.

Forums aren’t all that fashionable these days, though they are still used somewhat, particularly for communities relating to specific software companies or even individual games. I can’t say I’ve used one for a very long time indeed now, but having gotten back into the swing of posting on one thanks to the new Squadron of Shame boards, I can honestly say I’ve missed them.

The reason? They’re completely different to the way modern social media works. While you may think that social media would be the ideal place to begin discussions and have in-depth conversations, in actuality modern social media is not at all well-suited for this task. Whereas many forums have long-life conversational threads that stick around for months or even years, the very nature of social media means that posts are transient — they’re there one moment, gone the next, replaced by a cat picture, some vapid meme or One Of Those Clickbait Headlines That Makes Poor Use Of Headline Case And You Just Won’t Believe. And while certain social media posts can attract a long string of comments and stick around for a while due to consistent interest — the reason why Facebook steadfastly refuses to organise posts in chronological order is because of this, if you were wondering — they’ll still fall away far quicker than an equivalent topic on a forum.

This is fine for the sort of vapid nonsense that people post on Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis, but less ideal for more long-form discussion on more specific topics — such as the sort of thing we like to stroke our collective chins over at the Squadron of Shame. Now I know that many existing, well-established forums in 2014 — long-standing gaming forum NeoGAF is a good example — have proportions of the community that do not like seeing “walls of text” (even when they use paragraphs and punctuation and everything), but the fact is that forums are ideally suited to long-form discussion and thoughtful discourse. They’re not instant messages, they’re not time-sensitive, they’re not places to post “fire and forget” comments that you never look at the responses to — they’re places for asynchronous communication between people of similar interests, and an excellent means of having far more detailed discussions than is possible on social media in its current form.

Social media is crowded. Social media is noisy. Social media is like stumbling into the middle of a party, slightly drunk, and shouting whatever you feel like and hoping someone hears it. And, sometimes, that’s fine, and can lead to beautiful interactions, friendships and even relationships. (I’m sitting in this house with the person I own it with because of Twitter.)

But a forum is like getting together a group of people with common interests — depending on the number of participants, it can be like a book club, a seminar or a large-scale gathering — and having a civilised, peaceful, thoughtful discussion on a particular topic. (Usually, anyway. This isn’t to say forums are drama-free, but there’s a lot less of the attention-seeking passive-aggression that’s often seen on social media for the most part in my experience.)

As I said above, I’m not sure whether the Squadron of Shame will be staying on that free forum software for now or whether we’ll be moving to our own site. But either way, the shift — or should I say shift back, since that’s where the group was born — to a forum-based means of discussion has so far proven popular, and I think it will be good for the group in the long term.

If you’re interested in joining us to talk about underappreciated and overlooked games, both new and old, drop by our new home and say hello.

1619: Reflections on Working in the Games Press

As I’ve noted a few times recently, my time with the games press is shortly coming to an end and, short of an amazing offer coming my way that I’d be a complete idiot to turn down, I’m not going to be pursuing further work in that enormously competitive industry. It’s fairly unlikely I’ll be pitching many freelance pieces, either, although I may find the time to do a few in between other things.

Since this is largely, then, the end of my career in the games press, I feel it’s probably an appropriate time to reflect back on my time doing it and what, if anything, I’ve gained from it.

Let me preface this by saying that working in the games press was something of a lifelong dream for me, ever since I grew up with both my father and brother working for Atari magazines. My brother John, when he left home, began working on various magazines over the years and built a career for himself that eventually culminated in high-profile positions at 1up and Gamespot as well as the launch of his own site, the sadly defunct What They Play. His career was an inspiration to me that I hoped, one day, to be lucky enough to follow in the footsteps of. Because, frankly, there’s a significant amount of luck involved in getting anywhere in the games biz… much as there’s a significant amount of luck involved in not suddenly finding yourself without a place of work.

I contributed a number of pieces to various publications over the years as I proceeded through school and on to university. I wrote reviews and articles for the same Atari magazine my father and brother did; I wrote reviews and walkthroughs for UK games magazine PC Zone (may it rest in peace); I wrote tips books and guides for The Official UK Nintendo Magazine, in the years before… well, let’s just say we don’t see eye to eye. But I didn’t seriously pursue a full-time career in the business — it didn’t seem like something feasible, and in the meantime I was at university studying and trying to work out what I was going to do with my life. (I opted for teaching, which turned out to be a Bad Choice from a mental health perspective.)

Whizz forward a number of years and I’m in a bad place. My wife has left me and I’m staring down the oblivion of my life as I knew it. But there was a small glimmer of hope — I was writing for a small site named Kombo. Kombo didn’t pay particularly well — certainly not enough to live on — but it was something. I was writing professionally, gaining some important and helpful experience and getting great feedback. It was a start.

Eventually, Kombo folded and, through various combinations of circumstances, I found myself working for GamePro, a site and magazine that my brother had been in charge of previously, but had since moved on to pastures new. My work for GamePro was initially sporadic and occasional, but over time it grew to a proper part-time gig and eventually a full-time position on a wage I could actually live on.

I had to make a choice partway through my time with GamePro, though. I had an interview with a software company in London, who actually offered me the job. At the same time, GamePro offered me the full-time position. The wages were similar, but the software company required me to move to London (expensive, plus not exactly friendly to my then-burgeoning relationship with Andie, with whom I now own a house) whereas the GamePro gig allowed me to work from home.

It seemed like a simple choice. I turned down the software company and told GamePro I’d continue working for them full-time. Eventually, I got to a position financially where it was practical for me to leave home again and start living with Andie.

All appeared to be going well for a while, until the collapse of GamePro one December. It was a quiet death; I came down to start work one morning, checked my email and discovered a message thread already in progress with everyone seemingly panicking about what was going on. The site was closing, it seemed, and so was the magazine. Everyone was being laid off. There was nothing we could do.

Thankfully, a former colleague at GamePro was working for a business-facing site that focused on mobile and social games, and she offered me regular work for a very generous pay package indeed. Mobile and social are two of the most objectionable parts of the video games industry for numerous reasons, but work was work and the pay was great for what I had to do, so I sucked it up and continued, happy that I had the opportunity to write and still leave myself time to pursue other interests.

But it didn’t last.

I realised something was wrong with the site when all my colleagues suddenly announced their departure within a day or two of one another. The new management who had taken on the site were… not great, to say the least, and it was looking very likely that the generous pay packet I’d become accustomed to every month was soon to shrink to literally less than a tenth of its size.

I jumped ship. Fortunately, around the same time this was all happening, a former colleague from GamePro got in touch about USgamer and, well, you know the rest. Now, almost exactly a year after the site officially launched, I’m staring down unemployment, again through no fault of my own, but due to a shift in the way the site is doing business.

I’ve worked hard for every outlet I’ve had the privilege to work for professionally. I’ve graciously accepted feedback to improve my work — a particular shout-out to Mr Jason Wilson (formerly of GamePro, now of VentureBeat) here, whose copy-editing skills helped me refine my craft in a way no other editor had done in the past — and made an effort to improve and challenge myself as and when I can.

And yet even with a work ethic like that, there’s no guarantee of a stable job. Each time a site folded or restructured and left me without a position, I’ve effectively had to start again from scratch, often with a big gap of unemployment leaving an unsightly hole on my CV in the meantime.

For me, this isn’t an acceptable or desirable way to live. I cannot, in good conscience, look for another job in the games press knowing the inherent instability and volatility of the business, particularly now I’m a homeowner and having no money has even more severe consequences than in the past. My dream is crumbling into dust, but it’s been crumbling that way for a while now; what I really wanted to do, it turns out, was to write for magazines, but that hasn’t been an especially viable option for many years now, thanks to the Internet and the way in which we consume media these days.

More importantly, the way in which outlets make money — you know, with which to pay their staff — has changed. Readers on the Web expect their content for free — attempting to get people to pay money for text is a losing battle. As such, there just isn’t the same amount of cashflow coming in as when a magazine is pulling in money from every sale from the newsstands. It also leads to “clickbait” articles, whether these are top 10 lists designed to encourage readers to read, agree and/or disagree, or provocative, inflammatory op-eds about whatever social justice issue is on the Tumblr sociologists’ radar this week. Overall quality of content suffers as a result, and good quality writing about specific subjects goes all but ignored, leaving the games press a shadow of what it could be, and all outlets looking like slightly reskinned versions of each other.

And then there’s the growth of video to consider, too, but that’s probably a matter to discuss another day.

In other words, then, a career in the games press is simply not a viable option for me any more. Eternal respect and well-wishes to my peers out there who can make it work — whether on a salaried or freelance basis — but I simply can’t do it any more with my current life situation. It’s sad, but oddly I’m less cut up about the death of my dream than I thought I would be; it’s become increasingly apparent over the course of the last four years that the games press I’ve been working in is not the same games press that I wanted so desperately to be a part of for so long. That games press is long-dead, replaced by something very different that I’m not entirely sure is sustainable in its current form.

But it’s not my problem any more. I wash my hands of it all. I’ll continue to write about games on my own time, for the love of it, and if I can make a bit of money off it, so much the better. But career-wise? I’m looking elsewhere. And I’m not looking back.

1618: The End of a World

I’ve never been present at the end of a massively multiplayer online RPG. I’ve never even been present at the end of a beta testing period, which is usually marked by some sort of special event that, thematically, wipes the world “clean” and ensures that everyone starts on a level playing field when active service starts.

So, given Final Fantasy XIV’s curious development history — for those who don’t know, it originally launched in 2010, was heavily criticised for its numerous flaws, then closed in 2012, only to reopen as its current, completely revamped and considerably better-received form A Realm Reborn last August — I was curious to see exactly what the shutdown of the original version looked like. The shutdown of version 1.0 is crafted into the narrative of A Realm Reborn as an event in the game world known as The Calamity. During the events of The Calamity, there was a large-scale battle between the Eorzean Alliance (the three nations that player characters represent) and the Garlean Empire (the villains of the piece, who reprise their role in the main scenario of A Realm Reborn) and the moon Dalamud — actually a weapon created by the ancient Allagan Empire — was pulled down from the sky by dark magic. Dalamud broke open and revealed Bahamut, the giant and extremely pissed-off dragon god. Bahamut’s rage pretty much obliterated most of Eorzea, forever changing the landscape, but not before the heroes of Eorzea — the players of version 1.0 — were pulled into “The Rift” outside space and time, to be released only once peace had returned to the realm… or once A Realm Reborn had been released.

With that in mind, then, here’s how it went down from the perspective of several friends who apparently decided to see the apocalypse through together.

Although a simple event — it’s just players standing around with some haunting music playing in the background for much of the video above — it genuinely feels like something momentous is coming to an end; like the world is really ending. The players know there’s nothing they can do about it; they know that their (virtual) lives are shortly coming to an end, so all there is to do is to spend their final moments in the company of people that are important to them.

Watching the video made me want to shed a few tears, even though I didn’t know the people involved. The quiet melancholy of the scene was surprisingly touching; as the time until the end of the world ticked down, the gathered friends started using their emotes and aesthetic items — fireworks and the like — to mark the end of their time together as a celebration, not a tragedy. Strange server messages started punctuating the chat log, and someone in the area was counting down the minutes until the switch was flipped and Eorzea would cease to be — at least temporarily.

Then, eventually, it happened; the world ended. It was marked not with a huge cataclysm in the game world, but with a simple change to a tiny element of the on-screen interface: the data transfer meter in the top-right corner of the screen changed from green to red, and the “R” number, indicating the rate at which data was being received by the player’s client software from the game servers, dropped to zero. There was a moment of quiet as nothing happened — nothing could happen, as client and server were no longer communicating with one another — and then a black screen and a loading break, followed by the spectacular cutscene that closed Final Fantasy XIV’s initial incarnation once and for all — and which also opened A Realm Reborn.

Prior to last August, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what sitting through an event like this must be like for people who have been actively playing the game which it concluded — flawed or otherwise. Now, I can’t help but think the whole thing would be an absolutely heartbreaking experience; although true friendships will persist outside of the game in which they were, in many cases, forged, the next time you see those people — whether it’s in reality or in a new game altogether — they’ll likely be very different. And those elusive moments you had together in your previous forms will be forever be trapped in the past — but they’ll live on in your memories, as trite as that might sound.

I hope A Realm Reborn stays healthy and lively for many years to come yet — at its current rate, things are going to be fine for quite some time, I’d say, thankfully — but when it eventually does come to an end, I hope I have the opportunity to see its final moments through with those whom I’ve come to know through playing. We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll perform the Manderville, we’ll set off fireworks — whatever we do, I can see it being a special but sad moment that will live with each of us in a way that very few other video games will be able to replicate. (Unless they’re another long-running MMO, of course.)

Still, let’s not be melancholy; patch 2.3 of A Realm Reborn is coming early next month, and it’s bringing with it a continuation to the game’s excellent and enjoyable story plus a whole host of other content. I and my Free Company are really looking forward to it — and if you’re interested in joining, may I point out that it’s currently available at a discount on PC as part of the Steam Sale?

I’ll see you on the Ultros server, non?

1617: Uninformed Hate

This photo of a copy of the UK’s Official Nintendo Magazine did the rounds earlier.

Take a look at the small preview for Senran Kagura 2 in the middle. Now imagine that you work for Xseed Games, the company that did an excellent job on the localisation of Senran Kagura Burst for 3DS a while back, and that looks likely to bring Senran Kagura 2 to Western audiences in the near future.

Well, you don’t have to imagine; Xseed’s outspoken Production Coordinator Brittany “Hatsuu” Avery had a few choice words to say on the subject:

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/statuses/480921145445609472

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/480921515215437824

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/480922219652972544

(Yes, it was; here’s the piece in question, itself a needlessly inflammatory and ill-informed rant.)

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/480923786846289920

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/480923975682252802

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/481109395963936768

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/481110060555575296

Senran Kagura, lest you’re unfamiliar, is a series of games that centre around the exploits of some rival schools that train ninjas. In the first game, released as Senran Kagura Burst in the West, the story followed both the “good” ninjas and their rivals at the “evil” ninja academy, in the process delving into the personalities and histories of characters in a far deeper manner than many other games. The all-female cast is made up of distinct characters, none of whom are downtrodden or defined by the way men have treated them in the past, as some Western critics have complained of games as a whole recently. The story itself sees these characters grow, develop and change, and by the end you have a very good idea of who these girls are, how they relate to one another and their place in the world.

Senran Kagura is also somewhat notorious for its costume damage system, that can leave player characters and bosses alike battling in increasingly tattered (and revealing) clothing as their fights progress. There’s also a magical girl-esque “transformation” system whereby the girls can unleash their full hidden ninja skills by stripping down to their swimsuits, then magically re-robing themselves in a new costume. The transformation sequences are cheeky and sexy — unashamedly so — but the girls are, throughout the whole game, depicted as individuals who are firmly in control of the way they choose to present themselves to the world. As anyone who has played and enjoyed Senran Kagura will tell you, there isn’t a single piece of maliciousness in the game towards the characters; it simply revels in its sexy elements, and is rather refreshing as a result.

Now, as Avery says in her tweets above, people are free to dislike Senran Kagura for whatever reasons they like. But the Official Nintendo Magazine preview — and the editorial linked above — come across as not only needlessly spiteful, but also completely ill-informed. It focuses entirely on the fanservice element of the game — one of the most visible aspects, sure, and one deliberately played up in some of the game’s marketing — and completely ignores the rest, writing off the enormously fun Streets of Rage-style brawling as “there’s also some fighting and we guess we should mention that.”

This is a problem — regardless of the intention with which the piece was written, whether it was intended to be “satirical”, as some people have argued, or not — and not just for fans of Senran Kagura and its ilk. Writers for publications are tastemakers, and are in positions of power to dictate what their audience’s opinions might veer towards. This is a simplification of how things actually work, of course — there are usually a lot more steps in the flow rather than a straightforward “hypodermic” model — but the fact remains that people who write things for high-profile publications have a lot of influence on how certain things are perceived. And when pieces like this get published, they cement popular perceptions — even if those perceptions are unfair or wrong.

Because ultimately Senran Kagura is pretty tame, when it comes down to it. As Avery writes on her personal blog in response to a fan question, Senran Kagura Burst was only rated “T for Teen” by the ESRB in America because there’s really nothing in there that warrants a Mature 17+ rating. To suggest that having pretty girls with large breasts in a game makes it somehow unsuitable for younger players is to be exceedingly prudish — not to mention the fact that the game takes considerable care to depict all these characters as far more than simply large-breasted women.

Why are these popular perceptions a problem? Because they stop people from discovering cool games. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen people dismiss colourful Japanese titles as being “creepy” or “for paedos” simply due to their aesthetic, when in many cases these games address many of the most common things that people complain about in the games industry today. Not enough female protagonists in games? May I point you to Hyperdimension Neptunia, Atelier, Tales of Xillia and numerous other Japanese games with fantastically memorable female leads? Too much brown, grey and dark blue? May I point you to the vibrant, bright colours of most modern Japanese role-playing games? Juvenile attempts at being “mature” ultimately boiling down to people saying “fuck” a lot and being able to peep in on people having sex? May I point you to the Ar Tonelico series, which features some of the most in-depth explorations of characters’ personalities — including respectful treatments of their dark sides and sexual fantasies — that I’ve ever seen? Or if that doesn’t appeal, may I point you to the piece that prompted this post in the first place, Senran Kagura Burst?

Fun fact: I reviewed the wonderful Atelier Rorona Plus this week. I was the only one who volunteered to do so. In the email thread discussing who wanted to take it on, one reason for turning it down included the fact that one person had looked at Google Image Search and it “didn’t take long to find the creepiness”. Atelier Rorona, for those who don’t know, is one of the most charming, sweet and overwhelmingly nice games you’ll ever play — it’s not a fanservicey game by any means, yet the perception from someone who doesn’t know about it is that there’s “creepiness” involved. That’s what we’re dealing with. That’s where these ill-informed rants by people who don’t know what they’re talking about lead to. That’s why the games press could really do with specialist writers… and that’s why I’m pissed off that I, someone who could more than ably step into that specialist role — and indeed have been doing so up until now — am shortly to be out on my ear.

Thankfully for people like Avery and companies like Xseed doing their best to bring niche titles to the West, there are plenty of people out there — fans — who do treat these games with the respect they deserve. It’s just a shame so few of them are part of the professional games press in 2014.

Humour or not, I’m extremely disappointed in the UK Official Nintendo Magazine for the pieces mentioned above, but at least ignorance like that won’t stop me from enjoying the games I enjoy. The frustrating thing, however, is that pieces like those mentioned above make it considerably more difficult to attract new people to these games; stigma is a powerful thing, and it’s tragic to see it applied unnecessarily.

1616: Ascension + Dominion = Thunderstone

That’s something of an oversimplification, of course, but it’s not inaccurate; the card game Thunderstone Advance (of which I have the set themed around Monte Cook’s Numenera setting) very much combines elements of the two distinct deckbuilding games Dominion and Ascension to create an experience that is altogether its own thing, rather challenging, enormously variable and a whole lot of fun.

Thematically, the game represents you and your friends each commanding a band of heroes as they attempt to storm a dungeon and defeat a Thunderstone Bearer, a powerful boss monster that triggers the end of the game if they are either defeated or reach the top level of the dungeon. In order to best your enemies, you’ll have to recruit new heroes to your cause, gather a suitable source of income with which to equip them, level them up and proceed on regular expeditions into the dungeon to stomp all over monster faces and plaster their entrails all over the walls.

There’s a strongly thematic RPG feeling, in other words, but the deckbuilding aspect brings up some interesting new twists. The Dominion side of things comes from the “Village” phase of the game, whereby you can use the cash value on the cards you have in your hand — you draw a completely new hand from your deck every turn — to either hire new heroes or purchase items. These are then added to your discard pile, which means they’ll start coming up in your hand the next time you cycle through your whole deck. As with any deckbuilder, though, cluttering up your deck with too much chaff makes it less likely that you’ll pull a killer hand with a brilliant combination of cards to use together, so at times it’s necessary to exercise a bit of restraint and determine the most efficient way to proceed — that or look into acquiring cards that let you draw more from your deck once your turn has begun.

The Ascension side of things, meanwhile, comes in the dungeoneering side of the game, where you’ll take your hand into the dungeon instead of the village and attempt to defeat the monsters therein. This is mainly a simple task of ensuring you have enough light to deal with a monster in a particular “layer” of the dungeon — deeper levels require more light, or you suffer an attack penalty — and then having enough attack score to equal or beat the monster’s health value. The difficulty comes in the monsters’ various special abilities, and each monster mini-deck, three of which are shuffled together at the start of the game, is themed around a particular style of opposition to the player. One set of monsters, for example, demands that you not only equal or beat the monster’s health value with your attack, but ensure that you do not exceed a particular value, either — or, in a couple of particularly unpleasant cases, you have to get an exact match. Another becomes more powerful if certain types of card are in your hand; another still focuses on forcing you to discard (temporarily) or destroy (permanently) heroes and items you have in your hand. Nasty stuff.

Defeating monsters awards you experience points and victory points. Victory points are how you win — whoever has the most when the Thunderstone Bearer either goes down or escapes the dungeon wins — while experience points can either be used to level up your hero cards into more powerful versions, or expended as “cyphers” to give you small, but often extremely helpful benefits during a turn.

There’s a nice balance of strategy and luck in the game. You can build a great deck but be stymied by a string of tough monsters storming through the dungeon. Alternatively, you can have a seemingly mediocre hand, decide to take a chance on a few extra-draw abilities and end up absolutely kicking arse. Either way, it’s a lot of fun, and it never feels like games are a foregone conclusion.

I’ve only had the opportunity to play the game twice so far — four times if you count the two solo games I’ve played — but I’ve really liked it every time. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to give it another go at some point in the near future.

1615: As Yet Untitled

There was an interesting show on the TV channel Dave recently — yes, the Dave of my inexplicably popular Alpen Sponsors Characters on Dave post — that was, conceptually, very simple but managed to work extremely well. The show in question was Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, a peculiar take on the chat show that was supposedly completely unscripted and off-the-cuff.

Davies hosted the show, accompanied by four guests, usually from the world of comedy. And not the newer brand of comedy that I talked about a short while back; the kind of comedians I liked in my twenties and still like now. People like Bill Bailey, Kevin Eldon, Ross Noble — that sort of calibre of performer; contemporaries of Davies himself, I guess. Performers who, in their own comedy material, do a good job of speaking conversationally to the audience rather than relying on heavily scripted routines, skits or one-liners. One-liner-centric comics such as Milton Jones, who are often seen on panel shows alongside people like Bailey, Davies and Eldon, were conspicuous by their absence, since their form of wit isn’t really conducive to a flowing conversation.

And this is an important point, because that’s all the show was: a bunch of people sitting around a circular table, drink in hand, and having a conversation. And like any conversation between a group of friends, the topic meandered from one thing to another at a moment’s notice, with all the natural flow and surprising twists and turns of a real conversation. One moment they’d be talking about dieting methods; the next they’d be talking about whether or not you’d grab a magic floating poo if it appeared in the air before you. (Would you?)

The format — such as it was — worked really well, and it played to the strengths of its participants. Everyone involved seemed very relaxed and natural at all times, and this led to some convincing, free-flowing conversations that were entertaining to observe. The audience was acknowledged and involved without the participants playing up to them deliberately, and it really made me want to see more stuff like this — it couldn’t have been particularly expensive to produce, after all!

When I think about it, I guess all Davies and his team were doing with As Yet Untitled were applying good practices from another related medium — podcasting — to television. And it really worked well. Podcasts are often simply groups of people sitting around chewing the fat, usually on a particular topic but sometimes not even having that much focus — Kevin Smith’s podcast is a good example of this — and such was the case with As Yet Untitled. It was nothing more than a group of friends sitting around talking about whatever they felt like — and in the process it managed to feel infinitely more involving, interesting and entertaining than any number of overly manufactured, lavishly produced, completely false-seeming shows like The X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent or My Dog Can Do This Thing With a Ball That is Quite Good. It was simple, raw, pure; it didn’t need to be anything more, and so it wasn’t.

More, please.