1884: I Finally Want a PS4

Well, it happened. I finally want a PS4, and naturally this desire comes at the exact time when I have no money coming in whatsoever, making it both futile and frustrating. Still, I can probably survive without one for a little while at least, though once I have some money coming in again — assuming that actually happens at some point; let's be positive — it's going to the top of the list of "Things I'd Like to Spend My Disposable Income On".

Why? Well, several reasons, but chief among them right now is Final Fantasy Type-0, a game which I've been curious about for some time but have never known a great deal about. For the uninitiated, this game was originally a PSP-based spinoff of Final Fantasy XIII's deep (and, to some, incomprehensible) mythos and is noteworthy for having an astonishingly good soundtrack. This, of course, is nothing new for the Final Fantasy series as a whole, but Type-0 seems to be particularly well regarded in this department by people who know their RPGs.

I don't even know a whole lot about the game, save for the fact it's mission-based and has quite a large cast of playable characters, each of whom are useful throughout the game. I'm on board with what I believe is some sort of school/academy situation, and what little I saw of the demo version at PAX East certainly looked enjoyable enough — though with every new installment of Final Fantasy which doesn't incorporate traditional turn-based battles, I'm a little saddened, though Square Enix has made it pretty clear that they intend Bravely Default to continue fulfilling that niche for at least the immediate future.

I'm also intrigued by the bundled demo of Final Fantasy XV which comes with it. Again, I haven't been following the development of XV in great depth, but I feel it's got a great concept: the idea of a game taking inspiration from road trip movies is an inspired one, and eminently suitable for the always-on-the-go nature of most role-playing games. The demo, known as Episode Duscae, sounds like it's an enjoyable, impressive time, and it gives me happy flashbacks to the PlayStation 1 era, where a number of Square Enix games were well-known almost as much for the demos they came with as for the games themselves. (I remember buying Brave Fencer Musashi largely for the Final Fantasy VIII demo, only to be delighted to discover that Brave Fencer Musashi was actually a great game in its own right.) Sadly, the flip-side of this is that there are people out there — including journalists — who are whingeing about the demo being an exclusive bundle deal with Type-0, and others still who are fleecing others by selling on demo codes, or buying the game purely for the demo and then selling the game on without giving it a chance.

Outside of Final Fantasy territory, it seems that some of my favourite developers and publishers — most notably Compile Heart/Idea Factory and Nippon Ichi Software — are finally going all-in on the PlayStation 4. A localised version of Compile Heart's adorable-looking idol-themed RPG Omega Quintet is coming soon, and the latest Hyperdimension Neptunia game, Victory II (or V-II) is on the way to Japan, with a localisation announcement surely not far off. Then there's smaller games that I'd very much like to play, like Resogun, and I'm sure there's plenty more goodness coming down the pipe too, even discounting the impressive, big-budget end of the spectrum typified by most Western publishers these days.

The timing here is unfortunate, then, but as I've said recently, I have a couple of irons in the fire that will hopefully lead to something a bit more meaningful in the near future. It remains to be seen if any of them will prove fruitful, but at least this newly awakened desire for a PS4 at least provides some sort of incentive to get things sorted sooner rather than later, I guess.

1883: Social Justice, Public Shaming and Why I Want My Friends Back

I'm probably going to upset a few people with this post, but this is something that has been festering inside me for quite some time; something that I need to release by talking about it. I hope doing so will help me feel a little better, as well as make the people who care about me aware of the way certain increasingly prevalent attitudes in popular culture make me — and, I'm sure, others like me — feel.

I'll kick off with an immediately contentious statement: I completely understand why the term "social justice warrior" is used as a pejorative.

I will immediately qualify this by saying that I do not think the concept of social justice is unimportant, nor that it is something that should be swept under the carpet and ignored. There are still problems with attitudes towards marginalised groups in society. There are still groups out there whose sole reason for existence is an irrational, burning hatred of certain people. There are subsets of passionate fans in all interest groups — be it video games, sports, movies, books, anything — who do not have a positive influence on the community as a whole.

However, I believe that for the most part, human beings are fundamentally decent people. I've met my share of assholes, sure, and seen evidence of people being mistreated, insulted and even threatened online — although, on that note, I will also say that we're collectively a little hasty to jump to the descriptor "death threat" when it isn't always particularly accurate. But I've also met enough decent people in my time in this world and on the Internet to find it difficult to believe that the world is the seething morass of hatred and prejudice that the most passionate advocates of social justice — the aforementioned "social justice warriors" — believe it is.

Let me clarify my earlier statement. The term "social justice warrior", as I see it — and as many others see it, too — does not simply apply to anyone who believes in social justice, otherwise there would be no need for it; it would simply be a means of describing pretty much everyone who isn't an asshole. Rather, it describes, as noted above, a particularly passionate and outspoken advocate for social justice — and someone who is not above using particularly unpleasant tactics to try and get their point across. Tactics like public shaming; insulting; "othering"; discrimination; ignoring opinions based on socioeconomic, ethnic, gender or sexuality groups; dogpiling… the list goes on, and, you'll notice, these are all things that anyone who truly stands for social justice should really be against the use of, regardless of who they're aimed at. A "social justice warrior" would discount my opinion on all this, for example, because I'm a white, straight, heterosexual, cissexual male: the very definition of the concept of "male privilege" that many of them cling to so very desperately.

Why is this a problem, though? It's easy enough to ignore and filter out other bile-spewing groups based on hatred — when was the last time you accidentally stumbled across neo-Nazi ravings without deliberately going looking for them, for example? — so why not just tune out these people? Well, the answer to that is simple: unlike other hate-spewing groups, these loudmouths are increasingly infiltrating mainstream popular culture having positioned their approach as being "correct" from a moral perspective. My experience of them has largely been in the video games sector, but from what I understand, they've had a fair crack at numerous other communities over the last few years, too.

Let me explain why they bother me so much, and hopefully, my dislike of their tactics will become a little clearer.

A few years back, a games journo friend of mine — Jeff Grubb of GamesBeat — wrote a news story. I forget the exact details of the story (and can't seem to find the original since GamesBeat's numerous refreshes over the last few years), but it involved, as I recall, Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe making some contentious statements that involved the hypothetical punching of a woman in the face. Jaffe wasn't advocating for violence against women, of course; doing something like that directly would be tantamount to career suicide; if I remember correctly, the context was something to do with playing multiplayer games and reactions to winning and losing. The details of the story itself are somewhat unimportant, anyway; what I'm really concerned with here is the reaction to it.

Jeff wrote the piece on Jaffe's statements from a factual perspective — as a reporter, without editorialising. Different publications approach this sort of thing in different ways: more blog-style sites like Kotaku have no problem with their authors saying exactly what they think about a particular issue, whereas GamesBeat's parent site VentureBeat is more of a business-centric publication that is less concerned with drama and more with simply reporting what has been going on.

Because Jeff didn't condemn Jaffe's statements in the article, however, he attracted the ire of an early incarnation of the "social justice warriors". The situation became worse as he attempted to defend himself on Twitter; as time passed, more and more people, including high-profile games journalists with large followings, started attacking him — rather than Jaffe, who arguably should have been the subject of their ire, though even that's debatable, given what I recall of the context surrounding his comments — and publicly shaming him, denouncing him as an "example of white male privilege" and effectively setting hordes of followers on him. I became seriously worried for his safety and wellbeing while this was going on.

This wasn't an isolated incident, either. Numerous times over the last few years we've seen outspoken members of the industry with social justice leanings adopt the tactic of publicly shaming and bullying, even going so far as to threaten people with ending their career. Most recently, we've seen Polygon's Ben Kuchera attacking a member of EA's customer engagement team over the latter's concern over community-made Twitter "blacklists"; in previous months we've seen the widely celebrated writer Leigh Alexander threatening to end people's careers, feminist critic Mattie Brice throwing a hissy fit when someone called her out on a sexist joke and all manner of other atrocious behaviour. It simply isn't acceptable.

All this isn't to say that these people can't voice their concerns. What I do find myself violently disliking about this culture of public shaming that has been growing over the last few years, however, is that there's little to no "right of reply" in most cases. Once someone is branded as a misogynist, sexist, transphobe, racist or whatever by these self-appointed crusaders of morality, there's no recovery from it. They have no opportunity to say "well, hang on a minute, here's why you're not quite right there…" and no opportunity to criticise the arguments being levelled against them. More often than not, critics of Kuchera, Alexander et al are swiftly blocked, silenced and/or mocked, simply because the "social justice warrior" position has been successfully positioned as the "correct" attitude. The same thing happens when anyone attempts to start a conversation surrounding feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs Women video series; while she does attract plenty of hate-filled bile — and that, let's be clear, is always unacceptable — she and her team appear unwilling to engage with or discuss legitimate criticisms of her work, and often post deliberately provocative statements seemingly with the sole intention of drawing the trolls out to point and laugh at them.

Now, I've been standing on the sidelines throughout all of this. I have, thankfully, never been attacked by these people, even when I was working in the mainstream games press on GamePro and USgamer, even when I was writing about notoriously provocative and controversial games such as Senran Kagura and other titles from Japan. Perhaps I was just too small fry for industry "megaphones" (as Alexander calls herself) to bother with, and I'm not complaining; the fact I made a point of remaining positive while acknowledging these titles weren't for everyone helped me build up a decent audience who appreciated the work I did, particularly as it was in stark contrast to the majority of other sites out there.

So why does all this bother me so much? Well, because it's deeply, deeply frustrating, and because the culture of fear that these people are perpetuating online makes me very nervous about speaking on certain topics for fear of being ostracised. More important than that, however, is the feeling that it's driven a wedge between me and a number of friends whom I no longer feel particularly comfortable talking to because I know they've drifted more towards the social justice side of the fence — or, in some cases, become outright zealots. I miss those friends greatly, and it makes me extremely sad that I can't talk to them any more simply because I don't share their ideological viewpoint — or, rather, I do, but I fundamentally disagree with the methods through which they go about expressing that viewpoint.

What should people do instead? Simple. Champion the things that you're fond of and believe in, without putting down other people for what they enjoy. Diversity isn't just about creating experiences that "everyone" can enjoy, though that's part of it. Diversity is also about creating experiences that appeal to specific audiences. There's nothing wrong with that; in fact, it makes for more interesting, more focused pieces of entertainment that feel personal and relatable. Cater to men, women, heterosexual people, homosexual people, cissexual people, transgender or transsexual people, white people, black people, Asian people, anyone you like. Accept that some things are not "for" you — though that doesn't need to stop you from finding enjoyment in them, as the number of otome games I've enjoyed over the last few years will attest — and celebrate the things that are. If you believe that there aren't enough works catering to the groups you consider yourself to fall into, throw your support behind those that do or even make your own. Just, for God's sake, don't ever position yourself as The One Correct Attitude and point the finger of shame at anyone who doesn't fall within your own specific worldview, because that's where the majority of this nonsense is coming from.

I'm not a misogynist. I'm not a sexist. I'm not a racist. I'm not a transphobe. I'm not even an anti-feminist or a men's rights advocate. I just want these "social justice warriors" to understand that what they are doing is not, in fact, championing diversity; it's stifling conversation and creating a culture of mistrust between developers, players and press — and between friends.

I hate it. And I wish it would go away. And I want my friends back.

1881: Path to Redemption

I'm in the process of finishing up Criminal Girls: Invite Only on Vita, and I've been really pleasantly surprised how good it ended up being. I'm planning on writing something a bit more in-depth for MoeGamer when I've beaten it properly, but I thought I'd share a few thoughts on here for those who don't visit MoeGamer, or for those who just want to hear some disjointed ramblings about it now.

It's easy to write Criminal Girls off as an oversexualised mess of an RPG, with a gratutiously exploitative minigame in which you spank, electrocute, drip liquid on and tickle a series of young women posing in suggestive positions. And indeed, even with the "pink mist" censorship introduced in the Western release of the game (and the loss of the girls' voices in these sequences) these sequences are pretty clearly sexual in nature: everything from the poses they're in to the provocative outfits they wear and their reactions after you've, uh, finished — all point to something that while it isn't outright explicit, is certainly rather close to the, if you'll pardon the expression, bone.

But, as with most material of this nature, it bears further exploration, and doing so reveals something a lot more interesting. Why are these sequences there in the first place? From a gameplay perspective, you're expected to complete them in order to unlock the girls' new abilities through five different "tiers", with each tier involving a slight variation on the touchscreen-based minigame. From a narrative perspective, you're "motivating" these girls — who are dead and in Hell, but being given a second chance — to try harder in their struggle for redemption, though in the original Japanese script, still audible through the Japanese-only voice acting, the wording was おしおき (oshioki: punishment) rather than "motivation". If we're being super-picky, we're not actually spanking, electrocuting, dribbling on and tickling the girls themselves; in the minigame you're removing "temptations" from their bodies via various means, and the removal of these "temptations" allows them to take a step closer to being free of sin and becoming "Blameless".

Interestingly, the girls' reactions to this treatment changes significantly throughout the course of the game. Early on, they react with fear and anger when you approach them with the intention of indulging in some "motivation time" and clench their teeth in pain afterwards; by the end of the game, however, they're starting to sound like they're actually enjoying themselves, even going so far as to praise you in some instances.

This can be interpreted in a number of different ways, not all of them positive, but given the themes of the game's narrative as a whole, it's pretty apparent that this is symbolic of the growing level of trust between these "delinquents" and the player-protagonist self-insert character. By the end of the game, they trust the player-protagonist completely, and are aware that the removal of their temptations brings them closer to redemption, in turn making them more powerful and more likely to succeed. A turning point in the story comes with all of the main cast confronting the sins that landed them in Hell in the first place, and it's only through the bonds of trust they've built between one another and with the player-protagonist that they're able to make it through this experience unscathed.

I'm yet to see how the story reaches its several conclusions, but I'm very interested to find out. It has been, for sure, one of the most unusual role-playing games I've played for a long time, both in gameplay and narrative terms, and one that I feel I'll be remembering for quite some time after it's left my Vita.

And no, not just for the kinky pictures.

1880: Better

Well, today was a somewhat more positive day. I took a trip for the interview I mentioned yesterday, and it was a very positive meeting. Remains to be seen whether anything will come of that, but in the meantime I also have some other business I can pursue. So we'll have to wait and see on that for now.

Happy to reach another weekend, even though the concept is relatively meaningless for me at present. I'm still on something of a PAX comedown, I think; I had such a great time over in Boston that coming back to the stark realities of my current situation was somewhat… jarring, hence yesterday's frustration. Onwards and upwards, though, I guess. Hopefully.

On an unrelated note, our Final Fantasy XIV Free Company is being fun at the moment. It seems that everyone has had the same idea as me — that they want to level all of the classes to 50 before the release of the expansion Heavensward in June of this year — and thus there are lots of people playing jobs they don't normally play in lower-level dungeons. It's fun to see people play stuff they're less familiar with, and it's also fun to get to know some of the other classes that I haven't tried out quite so much.

Today I've been playing a bit of Warrior, which is a tank class, and Bard, which is a DPS class with some support elements. I'd held off on levelling Warrior in particular because I couldn't think how it would feel that different from Paladin, which is my "main" class at present. It does have a distinctly different feel, though; just the animations and sound effects make this axe-wielding job feel a lot more cumbersome and hard-hitting than the relatively nimble, graceful-feeling swordplay of Paladins. The cooldown between skills is still the same, but it's surprising quite what a difference just those elements make. It's a more complex job overall, too, with a lot more possible actions to take at any given moment. Paladin is mostly about trying to mitigate damage as much as you can; as Warrior, you have a bit more flexibility and can put out some eminently respectable damage just by yourself. That flexibility means that there are a lot more abilities you use a lot more often, however; I'm not sure I love it, yet, but it's interesting to see the contrast, and it gives me hope that Dark Knight will provide a unique experience again despite being another tank class.

Bard, meanwhile, is a joy to play, and a big contrast from Black Mage, my main DPS class to date. Bard's ability to move while attacking is a complete change from the fixed-in-place heavy artillery nature of Black Mage, and it's a lot of fun. Playing Bard feels very "technical", for want of a better word; there's lots of keeping an eye on your abilities and triggering the appropriate ones at the right time. There's also a lot more "weaving" than other classes — i.e. slipping in extra skills that don't use the "global cooldown" timer between your regular attacks — which makes for some satisfying improvised combos rather than the more fixed sequences that many other classes use.

There's still plenty more to do to get to 50 — Warrior and Bard are both in the mid-30s so far, Pugilist (which later becomes Monk) is just level 15, as is Arcanist (which becomes Scholar and Summoner, arguably two of the most complex classes thanks to their use of pets) and I'm yet to try Lancer (later Dragoon) at all. Then there's all the crafting and gathering stuff to do, as well… I'm going to be busy for a while, but I have confidence I'll be well-placed by the time Heavensward comes out. And then it will be time for all-new adventures!

And what adventures they'll be, if this preview video is anything to go by. Can't wait.

1878: Would You Like Dinner, A Bath or Me?

Spent a bit of time reading through the rulebook for Maid: The Role-Playing Game today. It's an interesting one in that the actual core rules for the game only take up about 20 or so pages of a 200+ page book, so it's pretty straightforward to play; the remainder of the rulebook consists of "replays" (apparently a common inclusion in Japanese role-playing game books, essentially taking the form of a transcribed game session — a good means of getting a feel for how everything works) along with scenarios and optional rules to make the game more interesting than it already is… which is very interesting indeed.

What's most intriguing about Maid is that it offers the potential for a wide variety of experiences. Most role-playing games can boast this owing to the fact that they're essentially improvisatory theatre with a bit of dice-rolling involved, but in many cases they're tied to a specific style of play. Dungeons and Dragons, for example, is geared very much towards Western-style fantasy (and, in the case of 4th Edition in particular, a very combat-heavy experience), while Vampire: The Masquerade is designed for modern-day intrigue and role-playing, with combat being somewhat more incidental. Maid, meanwhile, is flexible enough to cater to pretty much any setting you can think of, and to involve scenarios that range from the mundane to the ridiculous. It is indeed possible to play Maid as a straight-up simulation of being a maid for the master of a household, but I get the impression it's a lot more fun when you start throwing in some of the more ridiculous elements.

Even this is flexible, though; you can put in some lightweight nonsense purely through the character creation process, which provides the opportunity to create everything from demure gothic Lolitas to hammer-wielding robot women with sexual perversions that would make the Internet blush. You can jack up the ridiculousness by including some of the optional rules — such as the "Seduction" rules, which allow maids to gain "Favour" points from sources other than the master of the house through… umm… various means — and truly take things to the max by including the rules for random events. The game explicitly warns you that using random events is very likely to throw anything vaguely pre-scripted completely off the rails, and indeed it's even possible to run a complete game purely through random events if you see fit.

Chaos appears to be a central part of Maid, and it's often player-led. The aforementioned random events can be triggered by players when they spend the "Favour" points they've earned throughout the course of the game, meaning that the players can wilfully cause chaos for the poor GM almost at will. It's part of the character and theme of the game — it's supposed to be inspired by wacky, slapstick anime comedy, and indeed maid-type characters in this sort of show are often somewhat chaotic in nature, with strange things happening around them. (In the optional rules, the chaos of the maids is sharply contrasted with the orderly nature of the Butler character, who isn't allowed to trigger random events and is often penalised for certain things that maids might be rewarded for — like taking advantage of the Seduction rules.)

I'm really interested to give it a go at some point. Question is, will I be able to find players open-minded enough to explore it with me, or will it be a case of some Skype-based sessions with my Final Fantasy XIV/PAX friends, whom I know all appreciate it for what it is…?

1876: Connecting Flight

Good morning from Dublin! Today has been a very long day. Technically it's already "tomorrow" but I haven't yet made it home from Boston (my connecting flight leaves in a couple of hours) so I thought I'd take the opportunity to scribble a quick post.

This PAX weekend has been pretty much everything I hoped it would be. I had a great time with my friends, I saw some cool stuff at the show and I picked up some fun swag.

Most importantly, we successfully carried a number of formerly Internet-only relationships into the offline realm. Doing this is always a nerve-wracking experience — regardless of whether said relationship is platonic, romantic or anything else — and so it's always a pleasure when things come together and we all get along.

I actually wasn't too worried this time around, though. Something brought us all together in the world of Final Fantasy XIV and the fact most of us have been together for nigh on two years now says something positive about us and what we mean to one another. There have been tough times, as with any relationship, and people have come and gone over time, but the people with whom I spent my weekend represent a core group that I have always very much enjoyed spending virtual time with — and it turns out I enjoy spending real time with, too. It's just a pity we're all so scattered.

"I'm glad everyone is exactly how they seem to be," said one of our number last night, possibly slightly fuelled by a beer or two. "It means that everyone's genuine. And that we're all as fucked up as each other."

That latter point is key, and not necessarily a bad thing. Almost without exception, we've all had Shit to Deal With to varying degrees over the years, and our adventures in Eorzea have provided not only some much-needed escape at times, but also an outlet through which we can talk about the things that have been bothering us with like-minded individuals.

And that is immeasurably valuable; in an age where it seems people are drifting further and further apart from one another for various reasons, it's comforting to have a group that is pretty much always there for you. I know I'm grateful for these friends, and I'm sure they are too.

Now coffee is calling, closely followed by a connecting flight, a taxi ride back home and then almost straight back out (hopefully with time for a shower first!) to go and teach clarinet to kids. It's all go, huh. I shall sleep well tonight, for sure.

1875: Ohayou, Goshujin-Sama

Third day of PAX East today, but the main thing I want to talk about tonight is what we've been collectively doing for the past couple of hours: creating characters in Maid: The Role-Playing Game, an anime-inspired tabletop roleplaying game that I hadn't even heard of this weekend.

Maid is a peculiar and hilarious game, heavily based on random generation. Of course, you can pick and choose the characteristics you want to customise things a bit more, but the true joy of character creation in Maid comes from rolling dice and seeing what on Earth happens.

For example, the character I rolled was a boyish lolita (who actually is a guy) with an overactive imagination who was born into a hereditary line of maids and who binge eats when she has a "stress explosion". Another character rolled by one of our number was a super-cool blind ninja maid who wields a raygun (called Ray Charles… work it out) and who is actually a traitorous infiltrator of the master's household. There's a huge combination of characteristics, which make for some hilariously complex and deeply flawed characters.

We've spent about two hours creating characters and haven't actually tried playing the game at all yet, but it's been an absolute blast. From what I understand, it can be played in three different ways: purely based on randomly generated events, as a more structured "adventure" or in a competitive manner where all the maid players are attempting to win as much "favour" from the master as possible.

I've ordered my own copy of the game, since when I went to try and pick it up today at PAX it had sold out — apparently it's been a popular product for the past few years ever since it first came to light. Fortunately, I found that Amazon had a copy for a pretty cheap price, so I'm looking forward to perusing it at my leisure when I get home. And perhaps — hopefully — convincing some of my more open-minded friends to give it a try at some point!

It's a fine example of the creativity that you'll come across if you head a little bit off the beaten track — not just in video games, but also in tabletop games and other media, too. It's a gloriously chaotic game that doesn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as some of the more established tabletop role-playing games — not that that's anything negative in itself, but sometimes you don't want the hardcore "weight" of a Dungeons and Dragons and just want to play something a little… ridiculous. And Maid certainly appears to cater to that.

Can't wait to give it a proper try.

1873: PAX East, Day One

Day one of PAX East 2015 today, and we had a pretty good day, though my legs haven't ached this much for a very long time. It's been quite some time since I had occasion to stand up for the vast majority of the day, let alone walk around a whole bunch, and consequently it's been a bit of a shock to the system!

We've seen plenty of cool stuff, though, and we exhibited our pro-1337 Final Fantasy XIV skills in public by expertly taking down Shiva in a single attempt in front of everyone, then getting a T-shirt and a patch for our efforts. We also got a brief look at Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, which is looking lovely, but we didn't get close enough to have a play because the line was too long. (In fact, the guy manning the line pretty much gave us posters to get us to go away.)

I got to see my former colleague Cassandra over as Ysbryd Games, too — she didn't recognise me at first as, I quote, "there are a lot of white dudes with beards here", but halfway through her sales pitch for the excellent VA-11 HALL-A she realised who she was speaking to and whisked me behind the booth's curtains for a private look at the demo build without having to wait for people to finish playing it on the show floor. VA-11 HALL-A is looking wonderfully promising, incidentally; one to keep an eye on, for sure, as I noted when I last took a peek at it over at MoeGamer.

Then this evening we sat in on a Giant Bomb panel which was pretty entertaining — though, I must confess, not being a particularly regular viewer of their content, some of the references went right over my head. They're a charismatic, entertaining bunch, though, and clearly comfortable dealing with the public even when they ask awkward questions.

Tomorrow will probably be slightly more laid back. We're getting there reasonably early in time for the Final Fantasy XIV panel, which will reveal some of the first concrete details of the upcoming expansion Heavensward, and from there… well, who knows.

For now, though, bed is calling. Very loud.

1871: Imminent Departure

In a few short hours, I'm catching a flight to Dublin… and then on to Boston, Massachusetts (or however you spell it) to attend video game expo and general nerd convention PAX East.

I'm really looking forward to it. Last time I attended, as I've mentioned previously on here, was back in 2010, when I was going through a bit of a shitty time in my life. Once again, it seems, my trip to the States has coincided with a somewhat shitty time in my life, albeit for different (and slightly less horrible, though not by a huge amount) reasons than last time around. Once again, I am looking to the trip to take my mind off things for a few days and to remind myself that yes, I do have friends, not everything in life is terrible and that sometimes, occasionally, it is possible to have a good time and be happy.

I'm not sure what I'm going to see at PAX. In some ways, I'm not even sure I care too much; I'm going more for the overall experience, to have the opportunity to see some things I might not normally have the opportunity to see, and to hang out with friends who have become an important part of my life. It's not the first time I've met a group of "Internet friends" and made their real-life acquaintance, but it is the first time I've done so with a single game we all play together as a basis.

I ended up having a somewhat heartfelt discussion with my Free Company-mates in Final Fantasy XIV the other night, and I admitted that the game had been something of a "lifeline" for me through some difficult times. I was unsurprised to discover that I was far from the only person who felt that way; the frequency with which I see my virtual comrades online makes it abundantly clear how important the experience is to them, for various reasons — be it the opportunity to hang out with virtual friends, to go on virtual adventures, to try and be the best at a challenging game or any other reason people might have to log in day after day.

The "friends" part is important, though. We've all "known" one another for a good proportion of time now; some of us have been playing the game since beta, which means we've been playing for coming up on two full years. Others joined more recently but integrated themselves into the overall group without too much trouble; other people left and went their own way; others took a break and came back, hopefully to stay. Being a cooperative game, it's a game that is, at least in part, about trust: everyone has a role to play. People trust the tanks to keep the rest of the party from being punched in the face. People trust the healers to keep them alive. People trust the damage-dealers to kill things as quickly and effectively as possible. Together, it's a wonderfully satisfying feeling, and the more we've played together — because most of us will partner up with one another rather than strangers by preference — the more we've come to know each other, trust one another and have fun together.

This is why I'm looking forward to PAX. It's an opportunity to hang out in the flesh with these people I've come to regard as real friends. Even if very few of us are as pretty (or, indeed, as female!) as our in-game characters. 🙂

Updates may be sporadic over the next few days as I'll be reliant on public/hotel Internet, but expect something from me… hopefully! If not, I'll write stuff anyway and publish in a big splurge when I get back. 🙂

1870: Cards, Cards, Cards

Spent a bit of time playing Triple Triad in Final Fantasy XIV this evening, and had a lot of fun.

Triple Triad, for the uninitiated, was a card game introduced in Final Fantasy VIII. It's a very simple game, although optional advanced rules can make it surprisingly brain-melting, particularly when they're used in combination. And it's a flexible enough game that, by playing around with these rules, a player with a "better" deck of cards isn't necessarily always going to beat someone with "bad" cards.

For those who have never encountered the game, here's how it works: There's a 3×3 grid onto which you and your opponent take it in turns playing cards from a hand of five. (This means there will be one card left over at the end.) Cards have four numbers on them, corresponding to the four edges of the card. When you lay a card down and it "touches" the edge of another card (for example, you played a card in the middle-left space while there was already a card in the central space, meaning the right side of your card is touching the left side of the card already there) you compare the numbers. Under the normal rules, if the number you laid down is bigger than the number that was already there, you flip the card and claim it as your own. (For example, using the situation above, if the card in the middle had a "4" on its left edge, and the card you laid had a "5" or higher on its right edge, you'd claim the middle card.) Whoever has the most cards under their control when the board is filled wins. Simple.

The advanced rules fall into several different categories. Variations on "Open" mean that you and your opponent reveal either three or all of your cards from the outset, allowing for a degree of forward planning. "Random" disallows you from using the five-card decks you've built yourself, instead pulling five random cards from your complete collection. "Order" forces you to play the cards from your deck in the order you put them in there. "Chaos" forces you to play the cards from your deck in a random order. "Reverse" flips the normal rules on their head, meaning smaller numbers now beat larger numbers — this rule makes a "bad" deck suddenly very good. "Ascension" causes cards of the same type to inflate in value the more of them that are placed on the board. "Same" allows you to claim cards if you put down a card and the numbers on two of its sides match two cards already on the table. "Plus" is a similar rule, only instead of matching numbers, the two sides must add up to the same value. Both "Same" and "Plus" can set off combos, too, allowing you to potentially take the whole board in one go with a lucky or well-planned move.

As you can imagine, combining these rules can make for a game with a surprising amount of flexibility, and change the feel of it altogether. But even in its basic form, Triple Triad is a surprisingly compelling little diversion, and the more you play it, the more cunning little strategies you'll spot and be able to adopt. Final Fantasy XIV allows you to challenge various non-player characters around the game world to a game — who may potentially give up some rare cards if you beat them — and also to play other players. In the latter case, you have the option of customising the rules to your liking, or throwing caution to the wind and having a "Roulette" match in which the rules are determined randomly. There are also regular tournaments — the first one started today — in which you have a set period of time in which to complete (and hopefully win!) as many games as you possibly can in order to score points and get yourself on the leaderboard.

It's an extremely well fleshed-out version of a game that was a lot of fun to play against the computer in Final Fantasy VIII; it's even more fun to be able to challenge friends to a game thanks to Final Fantasy XIV's massively multiplayer nature.

And if nothing else, it's something to do while waiting in a queue for a dungeon…