Types of Gamers
I've been doing some thinking and research over the past couple of weeks. Playing several online games and also observing my brother and his friends playing online in my abode. And I realized that I could start classifying some of the basic characteristics of the Singaporean players that frequently appear on these games.
Why should we classify them? It is so that we can have easy reference to characters we perceive online and also to minimize contact with the more unsavoury types of characters. Let's look at the basic types of players first.
One of the most obvious players are usually the winners. They are the players who have vested much time and perhaps money into the game. They are the ones who are usually rather outstanding and play the game to win. They are also able to be split into further categories. Among the winners, you will often see whether or not they are graceful losers. That will further split them into sore losers and self motivators.
The sore losers will bitch and whine about losing and complain about it all the way until they leave the game. No doubt, when they vested much time into any game, they will at first look like a winner. But you will see that ugly side of them as soon as they make their first loss.
And as for self motivators, when they have a loss while playing the game, you can see them encouraging others in their team to try again and attempt to get better at the game. They have vested much time and have enough experience to understand the reason why they lost and are willing to recuperate and try again usually winning a long streak before losing again.
That's it for the winners. Now for the other characters. There's the spy. I noticed that alot of times in alot of LAN type games, there will be a group of friends with too many players and one of their friends have to join the opposite team. Normally it would not be a problem. But if the member that joined the opposite team is of a spy type character. The person usually works against the team joined. The ways include sacrificing one's self to the opponents and also acting as recon for his friends in the opposite team. These characters cause one of the most grief in most of the LAN type games played today.
Other than the spy, there's of course the Leader. This character type is quite unique due to the fact that any of the other character types may actually take up this mantle one moment or another. The Leader character is the type of person that is either forced or volunteered. They work in the same manner by rallying their teammates and giving instructions. In games where strangers playing together have to work together as a team. After one or two hours, the natural leader of the group would naturally stand out from the rest. That person will eventually be in charge everytime the group needs instruction to progress. The person may not be rather charismatic in Real Life. But he/she understands the members of the group and has a natural intuition to direct them in the best way possible. Note, you will notice a Leader character in the losing and the winning side.
Then there's the Supporter. This is a character that rallies behind the Leader. The Supporter is usually one that is first to respond to the Leader's beckons and urges the others to follow the lead. This character is usually filled with a strong desire to win. And when everyone else feels the cause is lost, the Supporter is unfazed and continues trying to rally the others towards the leader. Note, the Supporter is usually second in command depending on the game.
If there's positive then there's negative, thus comes the character known as the Slacker. This character type is usually very passive and doesn't actively seek to win the game. They may be playing the game for the first time or even be very experienced. Anyone can become a Slacker at any time by becoming a character that doesn't contribute to winning the game. The person may just want to win by doing nothing or just doesn't feel motivated enough to chip in for the win. Nevertheless, this character usually causes alot of grief as well.
That's the basic characters you will see in the standard LAN type games being played today in Singapore. With few exceptions even in Non-LAN games such as Audition, World of Warcraft and Everquest. Reason being that it's more of a basic human trait that manifests on the gaming level rather than in Real Life. Do note that traits that come out in gaming are usually the hidden traits of a person's personality, especially if the person doesn't normally act that way in Real Life. It's a very effective way to tell whether a person's rotten on the inside or pretending to be a bad boy on the outside but actually an angel in disguise.
With that amount of analysis, I believe my brain has decided to take a vacation for the next couple of hours. Probably going to take a nap or something to refresh myself before a night out with ex-poly classmates tonight. If you managed to read what I wrote. I do believe that you should pat yourself on the back and then go wash your brain with detergent. Alauz Out!
Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Monday, April 09, 2007
Deep Psyche
Well now, it's been awhile since I posted anything up with regards to anything. Let's just say I've been exploring the games that I have played once and thrown on the shelf to rot. What is it about the games that made me buy them in the first place? Personally, games are like a form of media for me. So to me, it's like buy a newspaper every couple of weeks to check out what's new in the world today.
Why buy the game? Why not try the demos and feel the game that way? I feel that if you only play the demo, you might get the initial feeling of the game. But you'd lose the recurrent value of the game. One perfect example would be game modding. Let's say you played a Half-life demo and felt that it wasn't for you. So you didn't buy it because you felt that it was going to be a waste of your money.
But as time wore on, your friend introduces you to a game called Counter-Strike. You fell in love instantly and wondered why it wasn't being sold on the store shelves. That's when you found out that in fact, Counter-Strike was a game that you had to own the game Half-Life and download it as a free mod. So you end up going out to buy Half-Life even though it's been out for a year an a half ago. That was just an example, I personally bought Half-Life when it was first released here and was one of the first people who tried Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic and other mods that appeared shortly after.
If your not convinced by that example, let's take a second one like Warcraft 3. It's not a game that anyone can just pick up and play because it's technically an RTS. Some people just aren't able to grasp the concept of an RTS. But take one of the most popular mod maps such as Tower Defense or even Defense Of The Ancients a.k.a. DOTA. These customized maps changed the game so much, it's no longer just an RTS game anymore. In fact, so many players play these maps alone WITHOUT knowing how to play Warcraft 3 they can form a totally different player demographics it's simple astounding.
So that Justifies my buying of the games that I deem have immense potential that enter the market. The potential not just lie in the Single Player or Multi Player environments and experience. But the potential for mods that are potentially as popular or sometimes even more popular than the original game itself. These products demand alot of attention and people until today, have not been able to pick out which are the games with the potential and which don't.
But let's just say I can see these things. Games which are below par in terms of graphics for a wider player demographics on lower end systems, have simple game play compared to the other games in the market AND have a simple enough game engine that EASILY allows modifications will be the games that will herald consumer creations with an added bonus of sales of the original games thru the roof. These games are the ones that the consumer buys and plays. But after the original experience is over, they hunger for a new form of play in this simplistic engine.
Thus they innovate and create new ideas for the game and mod it themselves. And most importantly, these mods are FREE! That's the NUMBER 1 drive for consumer to BUY the original OLD games and download these mods. It's a gamer psychology that when a mod is free and it's good to play, there's bound to be more mods that are free and fun to play as well. So it's a worthwhile investment to buy the original game to play with others.
That how so many of these mods came about. So that's why I feel that the new generation of games that are "anti-piracy" and do not allow modding for the game, will never reach the cult status icon that many of the old games have done. This is because of the fundamental reason of more heads are better than one. In the chaos, tens of thousands of gamers are involved someway or another in the creation their own mods, in comparison with a development team of let's say, 12. The gamers out-number the developers by more than 10 thousand to 1. The gamers are bound to beat the developers, no matter how much experience and how much knowledge the developers have.
So when the developers try these new technologies that restrict this creative movement on the gamer front. It is the consumers that not only resist the change but also creates a damper on the retail front. I'm 100% sure that PC games sales are behind console sales now because of the basic reason that as a consumer, I know that the PC game I buy now. Will NEVER evolve into something more than what it is designed to be. So in trying to be MORE PROFITABLE, the game developers have only succeeded in destroying their future value of all PC games.
One perfect Mis-Example is Neverwinter Nights 2. The game modding experience is so bad that most modders give up at the get go. I've read on multiple official and unofficial forums that while the original Neverwinter Nights modders could just host their modded maps online without any need for their clients to download anything or at the very most download it directly from the server itself.
Neverwinter Nights 2 made sure that the players could not even join a server with a custom map unless the player went to download everything, textures, hak paks, maps, BY THEMSELVES from the modders WEBSITES. IF the modder had no website or had no desire to host said files he simply cannot mod the game. You would have to be SERIOUS to mod the game and that takes out all the fun. It's TOO MUCH of a hassle for most modders who want to try it out for fun. Incidentally it is through these "fun" forays that great mods become hugely popular. People wouldn't play a mod that wasn't "fun".
That is all fine and dandy until you realized that 95% of all Original Neverwinter Nights modders were just trying concepts they thought was fun and HAD NO WEBSITE of their own that could host such files. So you just lost 95% of your creative creation audience and your sequel is currently flopping to death because of the lack of innovation from the very customers they have ostracized in which the game has come to depend upon to survive and prosper.
I personally played Neverwinter Nights and sampled some of it's countless mods. And some of the mods were mind bogglingly fun and surprisingly simple to play. Some changed the game so much, I felt like I wasn't playing NWN anymore. But when I tried NWN2, the quality of the game was good, but the quality of the mods were abysmal. There just wasn't any of the mods that had simple goals.
There simply wasn't enough mods created to FORCE the players into competing with one another to create better mods. These serious lack of modders could be attributed to the fact that players who played NWN strongly discouraged other new players with possible new game concepts to adopt the game. WHY? Because they simply don't see enough good mods out there to warrant any of their friends joining them. It's a cycle that will not change once the consumer's mind is set about the hassle perceived in modding the game is too high to encourage more modding.
By allowing nobody but the developer themselves to easily "modify" their own games and come up with so called "paid expansions". They deprive the consumers of innovation that can only come from the consumers themselves. I do believe that there are already people out there who realize what I'm saying is true. And that number will only continue to dwindle as long as there is no support from the developers themselves. And eventually, the developers will wonder why the PC gamer market has so mysteriously dried up despite the glut of so many "quality" games out there.
Well, this may not be an enjoyable experience reading because of the amount of passion I put into my words. But hey, this is sort of my personal point of view which I feel is the answer for the problems plaguing this world. Remember, more points of view are infinitely better than just one and there's no such thing as my point of view being more valid than yours. Alauz Out.
Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
Well now, it's been awhile since I posted anything up with regards to anything. Let's just say I've been exploring the games that I have played once and thrown on the shelf to rot. What is it about the games that made me buy them in the first place? Personally, games are like a form of media for me. So to me, it's like buy a newspaper every couple of weeks to check out what's new in the world today.
Why buy the game? Why not try the demos and feel the game that way? I feel that if you only play the demo, you might get the initial feeling of the game. But you'd lose the recurrent value of the game. One perfect example would be game modding. Let's say you played a Half-life demo and felt that it wasn't for you. So you didn't buy it because you felt that it was going to be a waste of your money.
But as time wore on, your friend introduces you to a game called Counter-Strike. You fell in love instantly and wondered why it wasn't being sold on the store shelves. That's when you found out that in fact, Counter-Strike was a game that you had to own the game Half-Life and download it as a free mod. So you end up going out to buy Half-Life even though it's been out for a year an a half ago. That was just an example, I personally bought Half-Life when it was first released here and was one of the first people who tried Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic and other mods that appeared shortly after.
If your not convinced by that example, let's take a second one like Warcraft 3. It's not a game that anyone can just pick up and play because it's technically an RTS. Some people just aren't able to grasp the concept of an RTS. But take one of the most popular mod maps such as Tower Defense or even Defense Of The Ancients a.k.a. DOTA. These customized maps changed the game so much, it's no longer just an RTS game anymore. In fact, so many players play these maps alone WITHOUT knowing how to play Warcraft 3 they can form a totally different player demographics it's simple astounding.
So that Justifies my buying of the games that I deem have immense potential that enter the market. The potential not just lie in the Single Player or Multi Player environments and experience. But the potential for mods that are potentially as popular or sometimes even more popular than the original game itself. These products demand alot of attention and people until today, have not been able to pick out which are the games with the potential and which don't.
But let's just say I can see these things. Games which are below par in terms of graphics for a wider player demographics on lower end systems, have simple game play compared to the other games in the market AND have a simple enough game engine that EASILY allows modifications will be the games that will herald consumer creations with an added bonus of sales of the original games thru the roof. These games are the ones that the consumer buys and plays. But after the original experience is over, they hunger for a new form of play in this simplistic engine.
Thus they innovate and create new ideas for the game and mod it themselves. And most importantly, these mods are FREE! That's the NUMBER 1 drive for consumer to BUY the original OLD games and download these mods. It's a gamer psychology that when a mod is free and it's good to play, there's bound to be more mods that are free and fun to play as well. So it's a worthwhile investment to buy the original game to play with others.
That how so many of these mods came about. So that's why I feel that the new generation of games that are "anti-piracy" and do not allow modding for the game, will never reach the cult status icon that many of the old games have done. This is because of the fundamental reason of more heads are better than one. In the chaos, tens of thousands of gamers are involved someway or another in the creation their own mods, in comparison with a development team of let's say, 12. The gamers out-number the developers by more than 10 thousand to 1. The gamers are bound to beat the developers, no matter how much experience and how much knowledge the developers have.
So when the developers try these new technologies that restrict this creative movement on the gamer front. It is the consumers that not only resist the change but also creates a damper on the retail front. I'm 100% sure that PC games sales are behind console sales now because of the basic reason that as a consumer, I know that the PC game I buy now. Will NEVER evolve into something more than what it is designed to be. So in trying to be MORE PROFITABLE, the game developers have only succeeded in destroying their future value of all PC games.
One perfect Mis-Example is Neverwinter Nights 2. The game modding experience is so bad that most modders give up at the get go. I've read on multiple official and unofficial forums that while the original Neverwinter Nights modders could just host their modded maps online without any need for their clients to download anything or at the very most download it directly from the server itself.
Neverwinter Nights 2 made sure that the players could not even join a server with a custom map unless the player went to download everything, textures, hak paks, maps, BY THEMSELVES from the modders WEBSITES. IF the modder had no website or had no desire to host said files he simply cannot mod the game. You would have to be SERIOUS to mod the game and that takes out all the fun. It's TOO MUCH of a hassle for most modders who want to try it out for fun. Incidentally it is through these "fun" forays that great mods become hugely popular. People wouldn't play a mod that wasn't "fun".
That is all fine and dandy until you realized that 95% of all Original Neverwinter Nights modders were just trying concepts they thought was fun and HAD NO WEBSITE of their own that could host such files. So you just lost 95% of your creative creation audience and your sequel is currently flopping to death because of the lack of innovation from the very customers they have ostracized in which the game has come to depend upon to survive and prosper.
I personally played Neverwinter Nights and sampled some of it's countless mods. And some of the mods were mind bogglingly fun and surprisingly simple to play. Some changed the game so much, I felt like I wasn't playing NWN anymore. But when I tried NWN2, the quality of the game was good, but the quality of the mods were abysmal. There just wasn't any of the mods that had simple goals.
There simply wasn't enough mods created to FORCE the players into competing with one another to create better mods. These serious lack of modders could be attributed to the fact that players who played NWN strongly discouraged other new players with possible new game concepts to adopt the game. WHY? Because they simply don't see enough good mods out there to warrant any of their friends joining them. It's a cycle that will not change once the consumer's mind is set about the hassle perceived in modding the game is too high to encourage more modding.
By allowing nobody but the developer themselves to easily "modify" their own games and come up with so called "paid expansions". They deprive the consumers of innovation that can only come from the consumers themselves. I do believe that there are already people out there who realize what I'm saying is true. And that number will only continue to dwindle as long as there is no support from the developers themselves. And eventually, the developers will wonder why the PC gamer market has so mysteriously dried up despite the glut of so many "quality" games out there.
Well, this may not be an enjoyable experience reading because of the amount of passion I put into my words. But hey, this is sort of my personal point of view which I feel is the answer for the problems plaguing this world. Remember, more points of view are infinitely better than just one and there's no such thing as my point of view being more valid than yours. Alauz Out.
Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)