#oneaday Day 871: A Change of Heart

It's not easy to change your own opinions, for any reason. It's even harder to change it when someone else makes a convincing argument as to why you are wrong and therefore a big dumb-dumb poopy-head. But sometimes it's something you have to do in order to move with the times.

I have two very different issues in mind for which I've encountered the above concept. I'll tackle them in order of difficulty to comment on.

First up is mobile gaming.

Last year, I wrote this post. In it, I described how I thought the supposed pressure from Nintendo's investors for the Japanese giant to start developing for smartphones rather than its own proprietary hardware might not actually be a terrible idea. I actually still don't think it's an awful idea, but after a year of reflection, observation and immersion in the mobile gaming industry, it's clear that what I describe and suggest in that post isn't going to happen.

For all some iOS developers' attempts to take the iPhone and iPad seriously for gaming purposes, there are at least ten times as many developers churning out free-to-play or quick-hit casual games. For every developer who is up front about the cost of their app and refuses to nickel-and-dime the player with additional in-app purchases, at least ten times as many incorporate some sort of means of endless monetization, be it an "energy" system, a means for players to buy in-game currency without earning it or the facility to unlock content without having to progress naturally through the game.

I don't begrudge these developers their income, of course — games cost money to make, and every developer wants to make it big with their titles. But, unfortunately, the prevalence of such business models in the mobile gaming space makes it all but impossible for the "core" gaming community to take it seriously. As much as many of us moan about grinding for levels or money in games, a lot of us secretly quite enjoy it — it provides us with "war stories" about how we played Mahjong for six hours straight in Yakuza 2 in order to be able to afford a fancy dress to give to a girl, or how we accumulated fifteen bajillion souls in Demon's Souls only to die and then die again on the way back to retrieving them, losing them all forever.

In short, the effort and personal sacrifice involved in accomplishing feats in some of these games is rendered meaningless if someone can just come along and pay ten quid to bypass all the pain and suffering. Sure, it's convenient, but it renders achievements meaningless — particularly if the game's monetization strategy features "pay to win" items, whereby players can pay real money in order to gain a significant in-game advantage, be it the ability to "continue" after death without score penalty or simply acquiring powerful new equipment.

What this means is that "core" gamers as a community don't take mobile gaming seriously, which means that when developers do come along wanting to do something serious and non-exploitative, they often get ignored — particularly if their game is seen as "expensive" compared to the myriad free and 69p apps out there. If you want a recent example of this in action, just consider the Kickstarter campaign for Republique that I wrote about here. Despite starting as an effort to get "triple-A" games on iOS, the team behind the project gradually had to accept that this mission statement wasn't going to get them the funding that they wanted, and eventually had to expand and promise PC and Mac versions. Even then, it looked for a long time like they weren't going to make it.

Anyway. I was wrong. I accept that. Mobile gaming is its own thing, and that's cool. I will continue to appreciate it when a developer treats me as a player rather than a customer (or worse, cash cow) and provides me with deep, meaningful, worthwhile experiences on iOS, but I'm no longer holding my breath for it to be the next big thing in portable gaming — at least not for the "core" audience. There is still a place for dedicated handhelds.

Now for the second issue. I kind of don't want to talk about this much because there's been a lot of angry table-thumping surrounding it in recent weeks. There are, too, a lot of very vocal commentators on the subject and I really don't want to attract their ire — firstly, because that is by no means my intention, and secondly, because I've seen people really get laid into as a result of such arguments.

I am, of course, talking about gender issues and the question of whether or not the video games industry constitutes a rape culture.

Some context, first. Apologies to those whom the following offends, but it's necessary to include it for context. (NSFW, duh.)

This trailer for the upcoming game Hitman Absolution made a lot of people very angry, for various reasons. The ridiculous nun disguises covering impractical porn-star dominatrix outfits. The question of how exactly a nun conceals a rocket-launcher inside her habit. The fact that this really didn't look like the Hitman series people knew and loved.

By far the biggest concern, though, was the violence towards women depicted in the trailer.

I am not going to get into the broader discussion of whether or not this is indicative of a rape culture here as, to be frank and honest with you, I do not know enough about the subject and therefore feel ill-qualified to comment on it.

What I can discuss, however, is how my own thought processes went.

My initial reaction to the trailer was simply "WTF". This was shortly followed by "that's clearly sexist and unnecessary", and I commented as such on Twitter around the time it was emerging. My opinion was that the trailer was the result of a horny marketing department making deliberately sexually-provocative promotional material in order to get people talking about the game. On that note, it certainly worked.

I thought little more of it for a while, until articles like this one started to appear, claiming that the trailer was indicative of a larger problem — the trailer was, to paraphrase Brendan's piece, not simply sexist, but evidence of a culture that normalised violence against women, and specifically sexual violence. In short, a rape culture by its very definition.

I had no idea what "rape culture" meant when I saw the initial discussions surrounding this trailer. My initial reaction, like many others, was to assume that "rape culture" in fact meant "directly endorsing rape". Despite being conscious of the fact that I had publicly spoken out against the trailer, the accusations flying around and the increasing anger of commenters on the subject — on both sides — made me feel deeply uncomfortable and, yes, defensive. No-one likes to be told that something they care deeply about has such an odious undercurrent, after all.

But I stepped back for a moment and considered what was going on. This was clearly a hot-button issue for a lot of people, and one that I knew wading into with ill-informed opinions would be desperately, desperately unwise. I'd already seen a few weeks previously that a friend who had inadvertently ventured into a similar discussion got very publicly torn a new one (a little unfairly, I feel — though that's an altogether different story) as he attempted to discuss the matter.

So here's what I did: I stepped away. I read through the various angry tweets, blog posts and articles with a degree of detachment, attempting to understand where these people were coming from and why those who were saying "it's no problem, what's the big deal?" were pissing them off so much. I read up a little on what "rape culture" as a term actually meant.

And I came out of it feeling differently to the defensiveness I felt before. I already knew there was a problem with sexism in the industry, but now I felt I had an increased (though by no means comprehensive) understanding of the issue. I am aware that there are still things I do not understand about issues of feminism, gender, sexuality, rape culture and cultural norms — people spend years studying these things, after all — but I am willing to at least learn about these subjects before sticking my oar into a debate I am currently ill-qualified to have. I am also aware that many of the commenters who feel so passionately about this issue are not, as might first appear, condemning the entire industry and everyone involved in it as sexist, misogynist perpetuators of a rape culture, because gross generalisations are never helpful.

Let's get off the specifics because, as I've said several times, I don't want to get into that particular discussion right now.

The key issue is that a little consideration and reflection goes a long way. Knee-jerk, immediate, passionate, emotional and ill-informed reactions might feel good in the short term, but often they leave you looking like a jackass. I'm glad that I stepped back and considered the way I felt about the discussion surrounding this issue — and why — before even thinking about jumping in and potentially making a twat of myself.

It pays to have flexible opinions, a willingness to educate yourself and, yes, the ability to admit you were wrong (and understand why), in short. That's not to say that you should blindly follow the herd — quite the opposite, in fact. You should take the time to explore an issue, find out as much as possible and gather sufficient information for you to be able to accurately decide whether or not your initial reaction was, in fact, correct.

If it was — in your opinion, anyway — then you'll be well-equipped to argue your case. And if it wasn't, it's important to be humble enough to admit it.

#oneaday Day 870: On the Exploration of Space Via the Medium of Video Games [UPDATED]

[Now updated with some titles I meant to include in the first place but forgot because it was late when I wrote this and I was tired and WHARGGGHHH. Or something.]

Space, they say, is big. Really big. There's a whole universe of infinite possibilities out there, and being boring old humans we're (mostly) stuck on this planet, unable to explore the great black beyond. We can, of course, observe it and take exciting pictures and footage, such as what we've seen from the recent Venus transit. But for the everyday person, exploration of space is the stuff of pure science fiction.

Video games are a great way to immerse yourself in that sense of exploring the great unknown. Plenty of games are set in space, obviously, but it's a smaller subset that actively deals with exploration and discovery rather than simply blowing shit up. Star Trek as opposed to Star Wars, if you will, though I'm aware that's a gross oversimplification of and a great injustice to both series. But never mind.

Here are some of my favourite space games.

Star Control II

What a fantastic game this is, well deserving of its classic status. Star Control II casts the player in the role of a human captain returning to Earth after a long stint on a faroff colony only to discover that our homeworld has been captured and enslaved by the evil Ur-Quan. Thus begins a galaxy-spanning adventure of diplomacy, combat and collecting lots of minerals.

Star Control II is one of those games that blends lots of different play styles together to create a distinctive whole. You have Asteroids-style combat incorporating ideas from one-on-one fighting games — each ship has its own "special moves" and is well-matched against certain other vessels. You have space exploration — the game tells you very little about where to find things, and God help you if you don't note down the offhand mentions of alien species that some characters make. You have resource management in the form of keeping an eye on your ship's crew, fuel and cargo space. You have RPG-style upgrading as you turn your ship into an unstoppable behemoth and recruit various escort vessels to accompany you. And you have adventure-game style dialogue trees as you make contact with the weird and wonderful races of the galaxy in an attempt to recruit them to your cause.

Best of all, you can grab the enhanced port of the 3DO version for modern computers here, or pick up the original version and its prequel from GOG.com.

Star Trek Online

Star Trek Online is an excellent Star Trek game, although it may be a little too heavy on the combat to be completely true to its source material. The game does successfully capture the feeling of piloting a huge vessel around the galaxy to seek out new life and new civilisations and all that jazz, though, and the fact that the game has a strong focus on user-generated content ranging from player-constructed alien races to full mission sequences makes it a great deal of fun. It's not as polished as it could be and PvP is broken as hell, but it's a free-to-play title that doesn't gouge you for in-game purchases at every opportunity.

Find out more here.

Endless Space

I wrote a little about the upcoming 4X space strategy title Endless Space a little while back. The game is now in beta testing as it gets closer to release. I haven't tried it yet but am planning to give it a go over the weekend.

Endless Space is less "personal" than other titles due to the fact that you're not controlling your own individual vessel, you're overseeing a whole empire. That doesn't stop it from being full of the joy of discovery and exploration, however — finding a star system with planets rich in valuable resources is immensely satisfying, and successfully defending it against incurstion from your opponents is even more satisfying.

X: Beyond the Frontier

I haven't played this game for ages, nor have I played its sequels and expansions. But the original game struck me as an impressive experience that truly made you feel like an insignificant speck in a massive galaxy that would most certainly go on with its own business without you. Over time, in true space opera style, you could make a name for yourself and work your way up to being an immensely powerful individual, but the journey was a long, slow, tough one — rewarding, though.

Grab it from Steam.

Spore

Having returned to playing this recently I had forgotten quite how excellent the space section of this game was — it's certainly the most well fleshed out component.

After designing your custom race's custom spaceship, you then take to the randomly-generated stars to colonise new planets, trade with other spacefaring races, toy with the natural order of things on developing worlds, discover lost relics, complete missions, mine for valuable resources, paint planets and carve obscenities into the ground using rivers. It's very freeform in how the player can tackle it, which gives each game the potential to be completely unique.

Will you seek peaceful solutions to conflict? Will you only expand your empire to planets already capable of supporting life, or will you terraform barren rocks into new Edens? Will you go to war with rival empires or attempt to buy them out? And will you satisfy yourself with building out your empire, or will you embark on a quest to get to the centre of the galaxy and uncover the mysteries of the universe?

Grab it from Steam or Origin.

Starflight

I played this game on the Atari ST. It was brilliant. It was a relatively early title from Electronic Arts, and was immensely freeform in its gameplay. Taking on the role of a starship captain, the player was simply tasked with exploring the galaxy. This involved flying to new star systems, descending to planets, exploring in a "rover" vehicle, engaging in diplomacy between alien races and battling enemies. There was supposedly an overarching plot, but I never got that far when playing it as a youngster — I simply enjoyed flying around and exploring space. It may well be one to revisit with the eyes of an adult.

Space Rogue

A space sim from Origin (as in the software company, not the digital distribution platform) that cast the player in the usual role of a "privateer", Space Rogue was interesting for the fact it wasn't just about flying around shooting things and hauling goods from planet to planet. Landing at a base launched a top-down roleplaying component during which you could explore, talk to people, engage in combat against enemies and take part in a galaxy-spanning plot that, again, I can remember very little about besides a series of fetch quests that involved you ferrying messages back and forth between two sisters called Cebak and Tiwa. There were text-based adventure sections, too.

Space Rogue, then, was something of a precursor to the next game I'm going to mention.

Space Rangers 2

An utterly bizarre yet lovable game from Russia, Space Rangers 2 takes players on a wild ride across the galaxy, taking in turn-based strategy, real-time strategy, third-person shooter combat, text-based adventures, trading, RPG-style levelling up and all manner of other crap along the way. It's an absolute Frankenstein's Monster of a game and all the better for it. It's almost futile to describe the experience of playing it, particularly when you can check it out for yourself for super-cheap thanks to GOG.com.

#oneaday Day 869: Eeeeeeee by 3

E3's leaving me a bit cold this year. The fact I'm not covering it for a gaming website is actually a blessed relief, as it means I don't have to stay up until ass o' clock in the morning watching cringeworthy live performances from executives who should know better. But I'm not even feeling particularly inspired to seek out the big news from it myself — nothing's grabbing me as hugely exciting. The most interesting thing to me is probably Nintendo's new console, which does some genuinely innovative and cool things — but we'll have to wait and see on pricing.

E3's not necessarily about people like me though. It's first and foremost about the suits and the money, secondly about the press and the actual gaming public comes in a distant third somewhere. It is, in essence, a huge PR circus whereby lots of companies can make outlandish promises about their new products and hope no-one remembers by the time the product in question actually comes out. (See: anything Peter Molyneux or Microsoft have ever said, anything regarding motion control, anything regarding Vitality Sensors.) It's an important time for publishers to show off their big new titles to keep their shareholders happy, and for the press to help keep the buzz flowing.

I've never been to an E3, so I can't speak for what the experience of actually being there is like. I'm sure smaller developers and publishers are there, too, but I feel a bit sorry for them. As is always the case, the big news is always about what Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft and EA are up to — and probably something Call of Duty-related from Activision, too. Smaller companies are there to get their products noticed, too, but it must regularly seem like an uphill battle to them when all the big sites want to cover is Halo 4, Call of Duty 300 and other Games With Guns In.

There have been a few surprises, of course. Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs is looking cool — at least it did until the dude pulled a gun out — and David Cage's latest project is sure to be just as interesting and divisive as his previous work. I'm not yet convinced by The Last of Us (ugh, zombies) and I want to know more about pricing before I get too excited about Wii U.

Herein lies the rub, though. I couldn't give a crap about the "big games". I know that plenty of people do, otherwise we wouldn't be on our sixth Halo game, our fifth Assassin's Creed game (not counting spinoff titles) and our four hundred and seventy-sixth Mario title. And the big sites certainly cover the big games with aplomb. But where is the discussion about more niche titles like Larian Studios' upcoming new Divinity game and the batshit-crazy looking Dragon Commander? Where's the love for independent developers? Where can I find what I'll be putting in my shopping cart without question next time there's a Steam sale?

This information is out there, I'm sure, but it's hard to find. It's easy to be cynical about E3 because of the information that gets the highest priority. "Biggest budget" seems to equate to "most important" in the eyes of a lot of press and public alike, and that's a bit of a shame. For me, the most important titles should be the ones that move the genre forward, the ones that do genuinely interesting things, the ones that I'd want to discuss on the Squadron of Shame SquadCast. But I guess they call things like that "niche" for a reason.

Also, fuck E3 memes. If one more person makes a "my body is ready" joke I will punch them. Hard.

#oneaday Day 868: Enforced Merriment

The Queen has been on the throne for 60 years. Yay The Queen.

In Britain, despite the fact that we spend roughly 98% of our time being completely oblivious to the continued existence of the royal family (apart from those few members who regularly appear in OK Magazine and have subsequently developed obnoxious and probably quite disrespectful nicknames), it is actually the law that anything vaguely celebration-worthy that involves said group of royals must be celebrated with a Street Party, with non-participants being taken to the Tower of London to be pecked to death by ravens.

As such, there was a Street Party today on our street. I was coming back from my evening of board game and curry depravity and I had work to do, so I really wasn't feeling it anyway, but then my social anxiety kicked in and I was reminded of why I hate this sort of thing quite so much.

I loathe, despise and detest enforced merriment — the feeling that you "should" be somewhere and that you "should" be having more fun than you actually are. Enforcement could be unspoken (a simple feeling that you "should show your face") or explicit (someone outright saying "oh come on, come and see these people!" in such a way that to say "well, no actually, the very prospect fills me with a crippling sense of outright panic" would make you look like A Right Bastard rather than someone suffering from an actual problem). The effects are the same though — a feeling of dread, the thought "I don't want to do this" rattling around your head and, while the socialisation is actually going on, a constant and intense desire to find an excuse to leave or, in extreme cases, to simply bolt as quickly as possible.

The reason I don't want to be in that situation is generally nothing personal to the people I'm supposed to be socialising with — our neighbours seem like a perfectly nice little family, for example — but it is simply part of the whole social phobia. I feel pressured to put myself in that situation, and then once I'm in there, there isn't an easy escape route to get out of it, which makes me panic.

I think the main problem I have with occasions like this is the fact that they centre around small talk, which is something I can't do very well. I tend to think about things a lot before I say them — to a fault, sometimes — and small talk just doesn't work if you're contemplating and considering every single thing that you say. "Should I mention the weather?" I think. "Or does that make me sound like the most clichéd twat ever? Should I crack a joke? What if it falls flat? That's the worst feeling in the world. Everyone's looking at me. Say something."

Oddly enough if I'm in a professional situation where I have a reason to be interacting with strangers, I'm absolutely fine. If I'm running an event, or meeting and greeting customers, or standing up on stage and presenting to lots of people, I have no problem whatsoever in talking, making jokes, being charismatic and charming the pants off people. (Not literally. To my knowledge, anyway.) But take away that sense of context and purpose and I'm fucked. I feel panicked, and all I really want to do is run away and do something — anything — rather than talk to these people I feel I have nothing in common with. I build up resentment, and then I feel guilty about resenting these people for simply being more social than I am, and the whole vicious cycle goes around and around and around until I find some convenient excuse to extract myself and leave, never to return. (Today, I had work to do, so I was able to go and hide for a bit while I did that.)

This particular aspect of social phobia/social anxiety/shyness/whatever you want to call it is why I never really got on with the concept of "going out" for the sake of going out, or going "on the pull", or indeed in speaking to anyone I didn't already know somehow. I count the few occasions that I have successfully managed to initiate and carry on a non-essential or non-professional conversation with a stranger as huge personal victories — justifiably so, in some cases, as some have led to long-term friendships, such as my utterly nerve-wracking first words to my now-friend Cat while trapped in a lift (well, not "trapped" as such… we were both riding it, and it was in full working order) with her on my first day of a pre-term music course at university.

I won't lie, this particular phobia is a real pain to deal with at times, and I really wish I could be free of it. That won't happen without hard work over a long period, however, and I'm sometimes not sure I'm ready to confront this particular problem head on.

#oneaday Day 867: Horrified

Apparently Nintendo did some thing today, but I haven't been paying attention. The reason for this is that I was (still am, in fact) at my friend's house playing a series of excellent board games, including Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico, 7 Wonders and Arkham Horror.

I really like Arkham Horror, though it takes so long to play and we almost inevitably start so late that we rarely finish a complete game. Tonight, we actually got to the end of a game. Okay, it was by losing. But that's still something, at least.

For the uninitiated, Arkham Horror is a cooperative board game that uses HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos to excellent effect, challenging players to compete against all odds in a desperate struggle to prevent various old, evil things from returning to the Earth. It is very strongly thematic, featuring a particularly prominent sense of emergent narrative as the players compete against the game itself in an attempt to come out on top… and usually fail.

The reason Arkham Horror is such a challenge is to do with its complexity. It's not complex in the sense that it's difficult to understand — each of the basic mechanics are pretty straightforward, in fact — but it is complex in the sense that there are a lot of rules to remember, many of which are very easy to forget. There really is nothing worse in a gaming session than snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and then realising to your horror that you've actually been playing it wrong somewhere along the line. It kind of takes the edge off your victory somewhat.

It's frustrating to lose, too. The game puts up a hell of a fight (no pun intended) against the players. Sometimes things seem to be going well then everything just goes disastrously wrong for reasons that seem to have been out of your control. On reflection, though, it is usually the case that such a fate could have been avoided — and anyway, if you were practically guaranteed a win every time, where would the fun be? As it is, Arkham Horror is the board game equivalent of something like Dark Souls — it kicks you repeatedly in the testicles each time you play, and the only way to improve is to practice. This isn't always practical, unfortunately, given that the game's large box contains approximately a million components and takes a long time to set up. The game is, however, possible to play solo, which is always a bonus in my book.

If you're looking for a fun, challenging cooperative game to play with friends on a long, rainy afternoon, Arkham Horror certainly fits that bill well. And if the base game isn't challenging enough for you, the various expansions ensure that not only will the play area take over most of your living room, but you'll be battling the Ancient Ones until the small hours.

#oneaday Day 866: NierCast

I've finally beaten Logic into submission and got it up and running on my new Mac, which means I've finally been able to edit the most recent Squadron of Shame SquadCast. Here it is:

(Direct link for those who can't see the inline player)

The subject of the podcast is Nier, an action RPG for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 published by Square Enix and developed by Cavia. You may recall I was enthusing about this game quite a lot back in early May, and that enthusiasm was what sparked the desire for us to do this particular podcast.

Nier is a fascinating game. Whether or not it's actually a good one is up for debate somewhat, but it's certainly a unique experience in the console space. In fact, to call it an "action RPG" as I did above is a gross injustice, since the game also incorporates elements of bullet hell shooters, text adventures, 2D platform games and open world quest-based "traditional" RPGs. The only games I can think of that offer a comparable experience include Space Rangers 2 and King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame, both for PC, and both offering wildly divergent experiences from Nier, but both taking this "kitchen sink" approach to genre blending.

Nier also distinguishes itself by having a mature plot that is worth following through. Sure, it's pure fantasy, but it's good, compelling fantasy — and the fact that the game was released as part of a much larger opus that spans several forms of media is very much apparent if you take the time to read up on it using sources such as Grimoire Nier. The game can most certainly be enjoyed in its own right without exploring any of the additional background material, but it becomes a far richer experience once you delve into the lore of the world — and, for that matter, the story of the game's creation. It's very much an example of a game whose world and characters are "bigger" than the game they inhabit, much like an author who plans out their characters by writing scenes for them that never appear in the book in question.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Nier, though, is its treatment of "New Game+" — the ability to go back and replay it after you've beaten it once. In many role-playing games, taking on a New Game+ is simply a matter of starting again with all your awesome items, equipment and buffed-up characters from the end of your first playthrough and then romping through the game slicing off heads with gay abandon and nary a fear for your own safety. Nier certainly does this — on subsequent playthroughs, boss fights that were once challenging are an absolute joke — but it's not the most important point.

Without getting into spoilers, Nier's New Game+ gradually adds new layers of complexity and nuance to the plot, calling into question the actions that you undertook without even thinking in your first playthrough. The player is given additional context with which to understand exactly what is really going on — and this manages to seamlessly pull the player's perspective around between several different characters and conflicting viewpoints while still keeping them in direct control of the titular hero. It's a very interesting experiment in a variation on the "unreliable narrator" trope, and one which could really only be done so effectively in an interactive form of entertainment such as a video game. It also makes Nier's New Game+ something that is actually worth doing rather than something which is just there for a bit of fun — and it's worth noting that it makes it abundantly clear when you've done absolutely everything there is to do by actually deleting your save file when you're done. In the context of the game, this somewhat dramatic action makes a great deal of sense (though you are asked to confirm whether you're sure you're okay with this five times) — but can you imagine what would have happened if, say, Mass Effect had pulled something similar? It would have been brilliant, but those complaining about the game's ending would have been even more furious than they are.

The final thing worthy of note about Nier is that it takes no more than 40 hours to do absolutely everything in the whole game including three New Game+ runs (an utterly stupid real-time farming minigame aside, which can be easily gamed by dicking around with your console's clock), making it eminently friendly to the busy lifestyles we grown-ups tend to lead these days.

So if you've never given Nier a shot, give it a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised. And if you have played and loved Nier — or, indeed, have no intention of ever playing it, ever — be sure to listen to our podcast for some in-depth discussion on this remarkable game.

#oneaday Day 865: All Change on Squad Mountain

Those of you who follow what I do over at the Squadron of Shame may have already noticed that some changes have been going on recently.

First up, longtime mainstay hosts of our podcast Chris Whittington and Jeff Parsons have moved on from their presenting duties to host their own show. Too Old For This… is a show for ageing, busy geeks who still like to keep up to date with the latest happenings in comics, games, movies, music and beer (lots of beer), and it's a great listen. Chris and Jeff have a great dynamic together and their show deserves your support.

With Chris and Jeff out of the podcasting picture over at the Squad, we're going to be doing a lot more in the way of our traditional "mission" podcasts whereby we investigate a "shameworthy" game thoroughly and then discuss it at great length. This decision came about partly due to the success of our show on Katawa Shoujo, which attracted a bunch of new listeners and community members, but also because it's something we've always done well — and something which is still very distinctive in the crowded world of gaming podcasts. That's not to say we won't be doing any more "topic" shows or "genre primers" — but a bunch of listeners have been clamouring for more "missions" for a while now, so it's time to give them what they want.

The long-term goal for the Squadron of Shame has always been to be a place for mature, wordy, niche-loving geeks to call home. The "Squawkbox", our freeform discussion board which I set up temporarily several years ago using WordPress. has been a good start to that, but I figured it was time we took it to the next level. We have a number of talented writers among our ranks, so I thought we should showcase that fact a little better. And those who don't want to write will certainly appreciate some interesting things to read and comment on.

Enter our new experimental Articles section, in which long-form articles can be presented, featured and archived separately from the main Squawkbox discussion. They still appear in the main feed, but have their own dedicated sections now. Over time, this part of the site will hopefully become populated with numerous long-form pieces from our members (and guests) about things they think are truly "Shameworthy". The categories I've put in place so far are largely games-focused, but there's no reason this can't expand to other media over time — the joy of using WordPress is that it's easy to tweak, poke and rejig everything as the need presents itself.

I'm excited about what the future might hold for our little site, and this is the first step towards that bright future. Be sure to drop by, join the conversation and let us know what you think.

#oneaday Day 864: Spore-adic

On a whim, I started playing Spore again recently, this time with the Galactic Adventures expansion installed, which I never got around to trying previously. I still haven't got far enough in my new game to come across any of the aforementioned Galactic Adventures, but I thought I'd revisit my thoughts on the original game, as I last contemplated it way back in 2008.

Spore caught some flak on its original release for a number of reasons — mainly dodgy DRM with very strict activation limits and early online connectivity issues (some things never change, huh?) — but also attracted criticism for not living up to its hype. Originally dubbed SimEverything, the game was supposed to be Will "SimCity" Wright's last great masterpiece, simulating the entirety of life right from single-celled primordial soup up to space exploration. A lofty goal, for sure. But how well did it manage, really?

Beginning as a single-celled organism that is either carnivorous or herbivorous, you're thrown into the primordial soup and tasked with surviving. Carnivores must eat little red chunks, herbivores must eat little green chunks. Both can be found just floating in the water, but carnivores can help the process along by killing other organisms. Herbivores, conversely, spend a lot of time running away to begin with.

As you eat, you gain DNA points which can be spent on improving your creature with various parts. In order to evolve your creature, you must mate with another of your kind, which pops up the creature editor and allows said parts to be bolted on. These range from various fins and tentacles that improve speed and agility, to spiky things, poison-spitters and other defensive measures. It's even possible, with enough available points, to replace the creature's mouth to turn it from a herbivore into a carnivore — or even to give it two mouths, allowing it to eat everything.

This process continues for a while, with your creature regularly expanding in size until once screen-filling enemies become tiny little minnows in the background, until you eventually fill the progress bar at the bottom of the screen and evolve a brain. At this point, it's possible to continue swimming around in the soup to gain further points and collect any parts you missed, but the game nudges you in the direction of the next stage, which focuses on your creature's life.

After climbing out of the ocean and evolving legs (which you attach yourself as you see fit), you then get to explore the surface of the randomly-generated world your game takes place on. At this point, progress mostly comes about through either befriending or destroying other species. New creature parts can be found on long-dead skeletons on the planet, and the player's creature evolved with these parts, each of which offer various bonuses to either social or combat abilities.

Upon confronting another creature and choosing whether to befriend or kill it, a little minigame occurs. Combat is rather MMO-ish, with a small hotbar of up to four different abilities available. Socialisation, meanwhile, involves watching what the rival creatures do and copying their moves. As this phase progresses, the player's creature gains the ability to bring along a "pack" of other creatures — either of their own species or allied organisms — which makes both socialisation and combat easier.

To make life a bit more interesting, certain species are naturally aggressive and will attack anything on sight, and there are a few "epic" creatures wandering around who are considerably larger than everything else on the planet. These can be defeated in combat with a bit of care, but for the most part they're something to avoid and admire from afar.

Once the Creature phase is over, the Tribe phase begins. Here, the player is no longer in control of a single member of their species, but instead takes on a more "overseer" role, controlling their tribe like an RTS. Progression through this phase is determined by either befriending or destroying rival tribes.

You begin this stage with a small, simple village and the ability to construct a few "tools". Food must be gathered to feed the tribe and is also used as currency to purchase tools and create new tribe members. Tools fall into two main categories, as with creature parts: social and combat. Social tools take the form of musical instruments, while combat tools are weapons and a healing ability.

Upon meeting another tribe, like in the Creature phase, players must choose what stance to approach them in. If approaching in social stance, both tribes will line up in front of each other and one will "perform" for the other. The "audience" tribe will call out different instruments that they want to hear, and the player must quickly activate their instruments to please them before the audience gets bored. Combat is simple point-and-click RTS-style, though there is also a hotbar of special abilities according to what weapons the tribe has equipped at the time.

Following this point, the game enters the Civilization stage, where the player must conquer the planet they are on by taking over, buying or destroying all the rival cities. The game becomes more complex at this point, with a lot more building, trading and military conquest — though as with the previous components of the game, this phase can be passed through peacefully with a bit of effort.

Following this, the Space phase begins, and some would argue this is where the game begins proper — indeed, this is the phase that the Galactic Adventures expansion concentrates entirely on. Players must explore the galaxy in their custom-designed ship, fly down to planets, collect items, terraform, secure "spice" mines, trade with other species, complete missions, defeat enemies and, eventually, if you want to "finish" the game, build yourself up enough to take a lengthy expedition to the centre of the galaxy — a risky prospect, since this is where the Borg-like Grox, the main antagonists of the game, live.

So Spore certainly does follow life from its humble beginnings up to the space age, and it's very satisfying to look at the comprehensive "history" screen in the game and see how your creature has evolved over time. The main criticisms that were levelled at the game on its original release, however, were more to do with the fact that none of the game's phases had a lot of depth to them — it wanted to be "five games in one" but didn't really pull it off as well as some people wanted.

It doesn't really matter, though. Revisiting it now has reminded me that Spore is a very entertaining game — sure, it's pretty lightweight compared to some heavy hitters in the strategy and god game genres, but that only serves to make the game accessible to all. I'm actually rather glad about this, since I find a lot of strategy games rather heavy going and consequently find myself trounced by computer or human players on a regular basis. I can succeed in Spore while still feeling like I've been challenged somewhat, and simply enjoy the sense of progression, discovery and ever-expanding scale that the game offers — not to mention its wry sense of humour and wonderfully self-referential nature. The game even plays music from M.U.L.E. at certain points, for pity's sake.

And I haven't even mentioned what was one of the main draws of the game on its original release: its focus on user-generated content. All through the game, your galaxy is populated by creations from other players. With the Galactic Adventures expansion, this user-generated content goes far beyond player-made creatures, buildings and vehicles — there are full missions designed by players. It's impressive that it all works as well as it does — content simply "invades" your game seamlessly, and built-in community features allow you to rate, comment on or, if necessary, ban content without leaving the game.

I haven't yet touched the Galactic Adventures content since my current save has only just advanced to the Civilization stage, but I'm looking forward to investigating it. Further thoughts will follow when I've had time to check it out. In the meantime, if you get the chance to grab a cheap copy of Spore, it's well worth a shot.

#oneaday Day 863: Trash-Talkin'

It's not often I feel able to say this and mean it, but there's a piece over on Kotaku right now that is an excellent read. Go check it out, then come back to me.

I can't comment on being a rape survivor or anything like that, but I think that article sums up why I feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea of playing online with strangers in competitive games. I hate abuse, particularly pointless, rage-filled, deliberately offensive abuse designed to provoke an intensely emotional reaction out of the victim — and competitive online gaming seems to pride itself on this so-called "trash talking".

In my own case in the past (and not in games, in the "real world") abuse I have received has been in the form of hurtful comments about my appearance and my weight. I can't begin to fathom what must have gone through the minds of the bullies in question as they said those words that lashed at me like a cat o' nine tails, but they hurt. They perhaps weren't intended to hurt quite as much as they did — "I was only having a laugh" is seen as a valid defence by many these days — but the fact is that they utterly ruined my day when they burst into my ears, regardless of intention.

If I feel that shitty after some stranger makes some low jab at my appearance, I can only imagine how awful it must feel to be a rape survivor and hear how freely the word "rape" is bandied about to mean "beat" or "defeated". I feel uncomfortable using the word, given that I know at least a couple of survivors (to my knowledge), so picturing how it must feel to have such an awful thing trivialised by, say, Gears of War players is disturbing, to say the least. Like the behaviour of the bullies I described above, the intention may not necessarily have been to offend or upset, but there are plenty of people for whom such comments could completely ruin an otherwise fun experience — and, really, let's face it, there's no need for it, is there?

Lest you think me some sort of prude, I will point out at this juncture that I'm certainly not above light-hearted insults with my friends, which often skate into sexist, racist, homophobic and other generally offensive territory. But that's something that we do among ourselves in private — we've set the boundaries as to what is "acceptable" in our group, we stick to it and, crucially, we don't do it in public where anyone might misinterpret our words as genuine sexism, racism, homophobia or any other form of misanthropy. Not one of us would even contemplate the prospect of telling a complete stranger that they'd "raped" them — or indeed hurl any other sort of abuse at them, whether or not there was social "context" for such behaviour.

An example springs readily to mind. I was playing the then-new Dungeons and Dragons Online MMORPG, and I was doing my first run through one of the game's cooperative dungeons with a "pick-up group" of random players. All had been going well until we got to the end and there was an unnecessarily difficult platforming section. The platforming controls in D&D Online were not very good, to say the least, so it took me a good few minutes to get through the bit that the other (evidently more experienced) players had passed with ease. I apologised and made light of it, hoping that they'd do the same. Instead, I was confronted with a torrent of abuse through the private chat channels. I turned the game off at that point and never played it again.

The unnecessary, unprovoked wrath of a complete stranger had ruined the game for me. Whether or not they had intended to upset me that much was irrelevant. It had happened. I grant that I am the sort of person who is very easily upset even by heated arguments, debates and disagreements, let alone abusive words, but being sensitive about such things shouldn't preclude you from taking part in certain activities. Something like an online computer or console game — regardless of whether it's cooperative or competitive — should bring people together, not leave them feeling marginalised, or that their own anxieties, issues and mental scars are somehow trivial. There's no excuse for it, and it's something which gaming culture really needs to clean up if we want our hobby to be inclusive to all.

Therein lies part of the problem, I think, though; some people don't want that inclusiveness. Some people want to feel powerful, to be the top of that little clique, to feel like they have achieved something important and are therefore "better" than others. And they go about that by lashing out at the weak spots, triggers and hot buttons of others. Anything goes in the quest to make them feel like The Big Man. (Or Woman. But let's face it, it's significantly more likely to be a male person.)

It feels like such a futile question at times, but why can't everyone just, you know, get along?

#oneaday Day 862: Lion and Logic

I've been meaning to reinstall my copy of Logic Studio for ages now. For the uninitiated, Logic Studio is a suite of music and audio production tools for Mac that has become an essential part of the podcast editing process for me. I have a podcast to be editing right now, in fact, but am unable to do so until I reinstall Logic Studio, which somehow buggered itself up in the transfer process from my old Mac to my new one.

So it was that today I decided to bite the bullet and begin the several hours long process that is reinstalling Logic Studio. (There are lots of DVDs of content.) I popped in the first disc, opened up the Finder window for the disc and double-clicked the installer, only to be confronted by a message that I really wasn't expecting.

"You can't open the application LogicStudio.mpkg because PowerPC applications are no longer supported."

WHAT.

Logic Studio is a Universal app — for non Mac users, this means that both older PowerPC-based Macs and newer Intel-based Macs can run the program. However, for some reason that remains unknown to seemingly everyone on the Internet, Apple decided to make the installer application for Logic Studio a PowerPC-only application.

On past versions of OS X, this wasn't a problem, as a technology called Rosetta was included to allow newer Intel Macs to run PowerPC-only apps. This feature was phased out in the latest version of OS X ("Lion"), however, meaning that you're seemingly fucked if you want to reinstall anything from disc that is more than a year or two old. (This is obviously not an issue for anything you have purchased from the Mac App Store, since when you download from there you always get the most up-to-date version.)

It's pretty clear why this situation is how it is, even if no-one from Apple would like to admit it — the latest verion of Logic Studio is, naturally, available from the Mac App Store, meaning that those who are really serious about their music and audio production needs should just drop £130 and upgrade. Some of us (like me) aren't made of money, however, meaning a frantic scrabble around Google to try and figure out what to do next.

There was plenty of advice on how to get Logic Studio actually running once it's installed (it seems that Apple included some sort of "obsolescence" tech in the app to actually forcibly prevent it from running under Lion — another nudge in the direction of the upgrade, no doubt) but very little on how to install it in the first place. Fortunately, I eventually found the information I needed, and I thought I could serve anyone suffering the same problem well by sharing said solution. So, without further ado, I present:

How to Install Logic Studio 8 Under OS X 10.7 "Lion"

You will need:
1 copy of your original Logic Studio discs.
1 OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" DVD (10.5 "Leopard" may work, too, but I didn't investigate)
Lots of time

1. Insert your Snow Leopard DVD into your Mac and open the disc's Finder window.
2. Double-click on the Optional Installs folder.
3. Double-click on the Optional Installs.mpkg file to run the installer.
4. Agree to all the bumf and choose your OS X install drive.
5. Rummage through the list of optional installs and ensure that the checkbox next to "Rosetta" is ticked.
6. Begin the install process. It should be pretty quick.

You'll probably get a warning message that Rosetta is not supported on Lion, but ignore it and proceed.

7. Remove the Snow Leopard DVD and replace with the Logic Studio Install DVD.
8. Open the disc's Finder window and double click on the Logic Studio.mpkg file.
9. Follow the instructions as normal. The Logic Studio install process takes hours, so go and do something else and check back to swap discs every so often.

Voila! Sorted.

I haven't finished reinstalling Logic Studio as yet so I don't know if any of the poking around to get it actually running is necessary as yet, but the installer certainly seems quite happy. This Rosetta trick also has the happy side-effect of allowing PowerPC-only applications to run under Lion, which was previously impossible — though obviously you do still need a Snow Leopard disc to pull this off. They don't have license keys, though, so if you have a Mac-toting friend with one, just borrow it — or doubtless some enterprising young individual has put it online somewhere, too.

I'm normally pretty patient with Apple's idiosyncratic ways of doing things — I believe things like the App Store, the "walled garden" nature of iOS and numerous other gubbins are all excellent ideas when you consider the demographic that the Apple of 2012 is trying to court — but all this seemed rather heavy-handed and unnecessary. To lock customers out of an application that they had paid several hundred pounds/dollars/whatevers for because of their desire to be up-to-date with their operating system seems ridiculous — particularly as there's no real reason that I can discern that the app itself shouldn't work. I guess we'll see once I actually finish reinstalling and try to get the bloody thing working again.

In other news, expect a new Squadron of Shame SquadCast by the end of the weekend, all being well!