05.12.09
Posted in games, politics, work at 5:55 pm by Rob Fahey
I’ve written a pair of retrospective pieces in the past few weeks, tying up two stories which I’ve been covering pretty much since the start of my writing career. I don’t expect that either of these stories is actually dead and buried now, but they certainly seem to have reached conclusions of a sort.
First up, a summary look at the rise and fall (and fall, and fall, and fall…) of Eidos, Britain’s one-time great white hope for games publishing. They were bought by Square Enix last month, finally putting an end to years of speculation as the wheezing corpse of the company limped towards an uncertain end.
Secondly, I couldn’t let Duke Nukem Forever pass into the great beyond without a farewell. As I mention in the article, I started my career with Duke – my very first published page in a national magazine included a news story about two exciting new PC games being announced back to back. They were Duke Nukem Forever, and Daikatana. (I’d like to pretend that I’ve got better at calling ‘em over the years, but I’m not entirely convinced.)
Presently stuck in the middle of SOAS’ end of year exams. When I close my eyes, kanji dance a crazy jig on the back of my eyelids, mocking me by being almost, but not quite, recognisable. Count yourselves lucky – if I didn’t have so much revision to do, I’d definitely be writing a gigantic post about the present expenses scandal.
(Suffice it to say that I respectfully disagree with (the otherwise wonderful) Stephen Fry on this one; for one thing, I think there’s a different morality involved when it’s public money on the table, and that a higher standard of moral behaviour can rightfully be expected from those whom we trust to make the laws that govern our nation. For another thing, while Fry is quite right in calling out the nation’s journalists as a venal and disgusting bunch when it comes to expenses and allowances, I don’t think anyone is proposing to let them run the country. Pigs place their snouts in the trough – that doesn’t mean MPs need to.)
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04.14.09
Posted in games, work, writing at 12:26 pm by Rob Fahey
You may have caught the controversy over Konami’s new Iraq war game, Six Days in Fallujah, last week. In a nutshell, the Daily Mail decided that this was a horrible insult to everyone who has ever even heard of Iraq, rang up some of the usual suspects and ran a chest-beating “evil game makers make fun of Iraq tragedy raaagh” piece.
I got a chance to write about this for two very different audiences – once for GamesIndustry.biz and Eurogamer.net, and then for The Times on Saturday. I’m pleased with The Times’ coverage – we wanted to present this as a discussion of accuracy and relevance, and challenge the idea that games can’t intelligently address current affairs, which is quite a progressive position for a traditional newspaper.
Also, if you missed it, Episode 9 of Stage Clear went up late last week. Our iTunes feed is still broken (I believe it’ll fix itself next week), so you’ll probably need to download it manually – sorry!
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03.19.09
Posted in games, work at 1:57 am by Rob Fahey
I’ve been even more sporadic than usual in my updates here of late. I’m blaming my workload; it turns out that doing a university course which everyone and his dog warned me was “really really tough” at the same time as trying to earn a living like a proper person is actually quite hard. Who’d have thought it, eh?
I have, however, been finding time to talk bollocks about videogames once a week, which you’re very welcome to listen to. Episode Six of Stage Clear, featuring a discussion of horror games and a section which co-host Perrin is worried will “get us into trouble” (I’m not sure with whom, exactly, we’ll be in trouble – his mum?), is live on the Stage Clear website (and on iTunes, if you’re that way inclined) right now. (Episode Five, which I never mentioned on this blog, is up there as well. We didn’t just skip that number in case it was unlucky.)
Couple of other quick links – a piece in The Times about why the right games triumphed at this year’s BAFTAs, and an editorial on Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz on why it’s fair to point the finger at videogames over childhood obesity (as long as you’re pointing fingers in quite a few other places simultaneously, starting with the parents).
Second term is almost finished, so I get a month of my old life back before the exam term begins. I’ll blog properly once that happens and stop just spamming links to other stuff I’ve been up to, promise.
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03.02.09
Posted in games, work, writing at 6:21 pm by Rob Fahey
Well, not so much “news” as a collection of links illustrating what I’ve been up to recently.
I never mentioned that Episode 3 of Stage Clear went live last week, marking three whole weeks of actually obeying the schedule we set ourselves. I’m off out to record another this evening, which will bring us to a month. I’m as surprised as you no doubt are (and slightly frightened, if I’m being truthful).
We’ve had great feedback to Stage Clear so far, which is wonderful. To be perfectly truthful, we set out to make a handful of recordings with the assumption that only a couple of our friends would listen, and that they’d get bored after the first few. However, our download figures are significantly better than that, and we’ve had fantastic feedback, which has taken us somewhat by surprise. At this point, we’re thinking about bizarre things like “growing the audience”, but honestly, the only way we’re keen on approaching that is through word of mouth – so if you like the podcast, please do tell all your friends / fake Facebook friends / forum pals / mortal enemies. (Of course, if you don’t like the podcast, you should keep your filthy mouth shut*.)
On a more actually-serious writing front, I’ve been doing bits and pieces for The Times again recently – their games coverage is genuinely going from strength to strength at the moment (no, seriously), with me on the sidelines chipping in context and analysis columns to go alongside some really good feature spreads. Most recently I talked a bit about “How Nintendo took on the world. And won.”, and to go along with the launch of Halo Wars last week, I penned a column “In defence of game sequels”.
Oh, I also got a barrel of good feedback for last week’s Eurogamer / GamesIndustry.biz column, Creative Downturn, so I’m rather chuffed with that too.
I think that’s about the lot. Other than that, I fear that my life has largely been absorbed in a whirlwind of learning kanji and new grammar structures, as my attempts to absorb Japanese at a ridiculous pace continue. You’ve all been spared any further political rants as a result – it’s not that I haven’t been shouting at the television, it’s just that I don’t have time to write it all down right now…
* Or tell us why you don’t like it. We’ll either improve based on your suggestion, or mock you publicly in the next episode, depending on how much we like you.
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02.18.09
Posted in games at 3:23 pm by Rob Fahey
The second episode of what threatens to become a weekly podcast about videogames and arguments is live on Stage Clear. This week, we discuss multiplayer games, argue that due legal process is all “total bollocks” and viciously insult one of our few listeners for daring to disagree with us.
Naturally, Perrin has rendered the whole thing vastly less entertaining than it could have been by leaving out several sections where I was so witty, erudite and intelligent that he feared being overshadowed – but it’s still quite a good listen, I reckon, and it’s definitely a much more professional presentation than our last ‘cast. We’re learning!
(Oh, and we’re on the iTunes store now – search for “Stage Clear” in the podcasts and we’re the first hit you’ll find. Handy if you fancy subscribing through iTunes, which will helpfully download each new episode as it’s posted.)
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02.13.09
Posted in games at 10:42 pm by Rob Fahey
Creative Commons image courtesy of hiddedevries on flickr.
Almost everything I’ve posted here in recent months has been political in nature – perhaps not what the original intent of the blog was, but there’s been far more interesting stuff going on in the political sphere than in the gaming sphere of late.
Which isn’t to say that there isn’t lots of interesting stuff happening in the world of videogames. So much so, in fact, that it merits sitting down once a week or so to talk absolute bollocks about it. In plainer terms – I have been dragged, not altogether reluctantly, back into the world of podcasting, courtesy of a little experiment in Internet media which we’re calling Stage Clear.
It’s rather rough and ready, but our first podcast is up for your auditory pleasure. It’s a bit too long (55 minutes or so, being a recap discussion of 2008’s best or most discussed games) and the audio quality isn’t great, but we’ve recorded a second edition today to post sometime next week, and we’re definitely evolving into something quite listenable.
(My co-host in this endeavour, by the way, is Richard Perrin, an occasional games blogger, even more occasional designer of freeware indie adventure games, and very regular drunkard.)
What I’m saying is, if you want to listen to two blokes talking vaguely educated (I do emphasise the “vaguely”) nonsense about videogames, you could do worse than download the first podcast. If you want something a bit more polished, I’ll post again when next week’s edition goes live. I haven’t done any podcast stuff since Eurogamer’s ill-fated efforts in the space ground to a halt a few years ago, so it’s quite fun to be back. A couple more episodes to improve and work on feedback from our listeners (yes, we have listeners!) and it might even be fun to listen to, too!
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08.13.08
Posted in games at 7:11 pm by Rob Fahey
Quick personal life update. I just got back earlier this week from Amecon, which was a hugely enjoyable weekend. Anime conventions have transitioned over the years from being the preserve of a small sub-genus of bearded, sandalled science fiction nerds into being a bizarre melting pot of subcultures and groups, a process which I continue to find genuinely fascinating. Granted, they’re unified by the fact that to an outside observer, all of them look like they need to get out a bit more – but the sheer range of different interests and subcultures represented makes the events fascinating all the same.
Ayacon, a convention with which I was involved for many years, is probably going to run next Summer for the first time in three years. I made the announcement of this at Amecon – apparently despite having 14 committee members, none of them can actually speak, so I was chosen to go on stage despite having left the committee a couple of years ago. The last Ayacon, in 2005, remains to my mind pretty much the best attempt at embracing and expanding upon the subcultures and interest groups who have flocked to anime conventions in recent years (Amecon, for all that it’s a great event, has generally stuck to a more traditional line). I don’t know how (or even if) the present organisers plan to continue that evolution, but it’ll be really interesting to watch.
I also took the rather heavy-hearted decision this week to hang up my Paladin’s shield and quit World of Warcraft. The basic, underlying problem here is that the destination – the fabled “end-game” – simply isn’t as much fun as the journey, the narrative driven quest to reach level 70. More specifically, I essentially played from level 1 to 70 as a single-player game – and it was great, probably one of the best singleplayer RPGs I’ve played. At level 70, however, you don’t have any choice but to play with other people, so I joined a couple of guilds – first a relatively hardcore guild who wanted to burn through content and do really well, and second an ostensibly more friendly, unfocused guild.
My problem with “other people” in WoW stems from a basic, horrific failure of social skills and interaction in many of its players. Even those who are friendly and helpful can display shocking social immaturity when push comes to shove. In a virtual world where the consequences of your actions aren’t right in your face, and where authority often rests with the first person to click a button rather than being conferred by effort or merit, people feel free to act in a manner which they’d be terrified to assume in their day to day lives.
For me, the final straw came when a close friend was booted out of our guild for no good reason, other than that he’d rubbed someone up the wrong way. With no willingness to make a sincere apology or change things to prevent something like that happening again, I left – for fairly obvious reasons. Ironically, accusations were thrown pretty swiftly of “taking the game too seriously”; I say ironically, because to me, my placing of my real-life friendship ahead of the game in importance seems to suggest quite the opposite. I don’t care about WoW enough to have it impact on a real-world relationship in that manner, and after a couple of shit guild experiences, it’s become apparent to me that I don’t care about the game’s population enough to bother with it at all.
(Frankly, it was probably in danger of turning me into an anti-social git anyway, although it’s admittedly been bloody nice to have something to distract me from a litany of toothaches and chest infections for the past few weeks.)
All of which leaves me with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth, but which more than anything, makes me fascinated to know what research has been done into the difference into how people react to things in a virtual world compared to the real world. I know there was an odd experiment a while back in which someone viewed the world through a screen displaying an image from a camera mounted above and behind their head – effectively giving them a third person perspective on the real world – and it was found that they lost many basic social inhibitions, being more willing to invade people’s personal space, for example.
If such a simple change makes us ruder to one another, it’s no surprise that a consequence-free virtual world changes our interactions in ways that are not entirely positive – although one does wonder whether the next generation, who grow up with virtual worlds as simply another social tool, will end up developing their own social rules that encompass virtual worlds more thoroughly than our own conventions do.
In other news, my dentist did the most painful thing a dentist can possibly do to me today – she gave me an outline of the costs for the rest of my treatment. It’s going to be running close to £5000 by the end of the whole thing; needless to say, I’m not exactly happy, but what can you do?
Technorati Tags: Amecon, anime, Ayacon, dentist, MMORPG, anime conventions, videogames, World of Warcraft
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07.06.08
Posted in games, work, writing at 4:47 pm by Rob Fahey
Unsurprisingly, I produced a couple of Blizzard-related features this week along with the usual batch of reviews and whatnot. I previously alluded to my piece for The Times, which was my first published work with the paper – if you fancy having a read but didn’t pick up the paper, you can see it online here: The WoW Factor.
I’ve got another piece appearing in tomorrow’s Times, so they must have liked the first one.
Also on the topic of Blizzard, I wrote an editorial this week for Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz which explored how the company’s unique “confessional” approach to talking to its audience has played a major role in making them into such a successful developer. Pop over and have a read if you like: Blizzard’s Perfect Storm.
(Sorry, this blog has gone all work-related again. I’m sure I’ll have another political opinion to hold forth upon soon enough – especially as the by-election in Howden & Haltemprice approaches…)
Technorati Tags: Eurogamer, gaming, journalism, MMORPG, The Times, videogames, workblog, World of Warcraft
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07.02.08
Posted in games, work at 12:23 am by Rob Fahey
A quick work-related note – I’ve started writing for The Times, and the first of what will hopefully be many features is appearing in tommorow’s (Wednesday’s) times2 section in the paper. It’s a report from last weekend’s Blizzard Worldwide Invitational event in Paris, and is designed as a gentle and fairly positive introduction to the unique society and culture that has grown up around World of Warcraft.
It’s also, of course, an excuse for The Times to run lots of pictures of cosplayers, but the article text at least presents them in a positive way rather than “christ, look at the freaks”.
I don’t know how regularly The Times will be commissioning work from me – after all, if they hate this piece they might never commission anything again! – but if all goes well I’d hope to get pieces in there every month or so, if not more often. There’s a real enthusiasm at the paper for getting their coverage of videogames up to scratch with the rest of their (excellent) arts and culture coverage, which will mark a welcome departure from the lazy “what are these evil modern things doing to our kids!” scare stories which much of the British press falls back on for games coverage.
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05.30.08
Posted in games at 9:55 am by Rob Fahey
Anyone who has been moaning and crying about the UK pricing for Rock Band, please consider this. In a moment of madness, I’ve just spent 300 quid (including shipping and inevitable customs charge) on a single guitar, and about 60 tracks to play on it.
Yes, the arcade-perfect Guitar Freaks controller I’ve been ruminating over since I got back from Japan last week is on its way, courtesy of a stack of credit I had with Play-Asia (long story) and a quiet month that’s been easy on my pocket. Guitar Hero has never really grabbed me, but Guitar Freaks sucked away countless 100 yen coins in Japanese arcades on this trip out. Maybe by next time I go, I’ll even be able to play without attracting pitying glances from Japanese guys nodding sagely at the genetically impaired gaming skills of the unfortunate gaijin. Maybe.
Perrin is still talking about buying a good drum kit to hook up via an adaptor to DrumMania, too, which would give us the UK’s most ludicrously overblown (but fantastic) rhythm gaming setup. Eat that, Rock Band.
Technorati Tags: DrumMania, gaming???????? ????? ????????, GuitarFreaks, Rock Band, videogames
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