Tamrielo

This week’s podcast was centered around our games of the year this year. We talked about a bunch of games, and if you have the time to listen, I think it’s a good show. I go off on a bit of a tangent once or twice, hopefully it doesn’t detract too much from the show!

Picking my games of the year is a bit weird for me this year. I didn’t play very many games by my usual standards, and it’s gotten me thinking about how I interact with video games. Since I landed my first job as a game designer, I made it a point to own every console and play every major release– every game people were talking about whether I was interested in it or not. I’d usually play eight or nine new major titles a month for the entire year, and as indie games got more numerous and relevant, I played a ton of those as well.

In 2012, I paid for 418 games and expansions, counting content DLC but not cosmetic or unlock purchases. I know this because I itemized them all on my taxes. I knew I had the number, and I looked it up, but I couldn’t even start to tell you what most of those games were. I’d be hard pressed to name a game that I knew for certain came out in 2012, but I almost certainly played it. A cursory google search for “game of the year 2012” brings up a slew of titles, and seeing the names I can say with certainty that I played every single one.

What I do remember was a conversation about games of the year in 2012, and I remember being able to deconstruct nearly every game I played into tiny pieces that I evaluated. The thing is, I don’t know if I really enjoyed them. I played so many games that I barely had time to process them, much less take the time to have fun with them. I played games like it was my job, because I believed it was. I was (and to some extent still am) of the opinion that a good game designer should have experience with as many games as possible, and be able to talk intelligently and at length about pretty much any major release.

In forcing myself to play a lot of games I wasn’t interested in, I found out that I really liked a bunch of kinds of games that I never thought I’d enjoy. It broadened my horizons a lot, and while there are still genres that aren’t my thing, even those usually have a handful of games that I really like. I can also cross-reference games– seeing what a fighting game does with animations and frame pauses suggests to me how to make floaty-feeling hits in MMOs feel more solid and satisfying.

This past year, I enjoyed far more games than I think I did in previous years, despite playing a fraction of what I usually played. I skipped a lot of the big releases this year, and spent the time on games I was interested in. It was refreshing, honestly, but I miss the feeling of being connected to the overall gaming sphere, knowing what’s good, what’s overrated, and what’s a sleeper hit.

I’m probably going to play a lot more games this year, try to catch up on the big stuff I missed, but I’m going to try to find a happy medium between the utter deluge of games I’ve forced myself to play in the past and the trickle of niche titles.

A couple of friends have, at various times, commented that they feel like they should jump on a game that “everyone’s playing” just because it’s the thing in the moment. I’d say play games that are fun for you right now, if you’re playing games for fun. I don’t always play games for fun, sometimes I play them for work, sometimes I play them to hang out with people, and I think they’re all valid reasons to play a game, but it’s nice to know which one(s) I’m choosing.

Play what you want to, not what “everyone” thinks you should. Only do that latter thing if you have a good reason.

I’ve been playing Warframe with a bunch of friends lately, and it’s been interesting to me to see how each of us has approached the game. While not open-world, it’s nonetheless a very open game as far as experience goes, and you can work towards various things and move various directions, none of which appear to be wasteful. You can focus on frames, mods, weapons, research, pets, and all sorts of other things that take time and resources to work towards.

Playing with my friends, I’ve been fascinated at the differences in what motivates me versus what seems to motivate others. Bel, for example, has been playing Excalibur and seems to prefer it to the point of playing it nearly exclusively. I get the impression he’s going for total mastery of Excalibur and leaving other frames for other people. Ash has a handful of weapons and frames, but virtually everything he’s got is max rank– he picks a new thing and deep-dives until he understands it thoroughly, then moves on. I, on the other hand, have gone for breadth. I’ve got 12 Warframes, with 3 more building as of the time of this post. It’s about double what anyone else in the clan has, but I also have far fewer maxed out frames and weapons.

I do the same kind of thing in Infinity. I don’t have a full collection of any of the factions I play, but I play nearly every faction in the game to some extent– enough to know what they do and how to pull it off, even if I’m not an expert at it. I play a different list that’s doing a different thing every time I play, often flitting between factions and playstyles extremely rapidly. When I start a new faction in Infinity, or a new Warframe, I generally try to pair it with an entire new suite of weapons. It varies my playstyle as much as possible from the get-go, showing me how different the game can get from what I was previously doing.

I admire the folks who pick a single class, a single weapon, or a single playstyle and play it to the exclusion of all else until they’ve mastered it completely. It’s not for me. I generally favor seeing the game as a whole, which tends to mean that I rarely master any one thing, but I’m capable with a huge variety. In World of Warcraft, most people knew me as a Rogue player. I was a fairly capable Rogue, but I knew people who’d put in the effort to master the class; I picked a niche that I could fill and stuck with it. What I did know, however, was how Mages, Hunters, DPS Warriors, Priests, Druids, and Warlocks worked, and actively worked on understanding Paladins and even Shaman, despite us playing Alliance. When Death Knights came out, I switched pretty much full time to that class, and the Monk was the only reason I resubscribed for that expansion.

For me, seeing the entire game is my motivation. I want to know about the secrets, and the different approaches that most people don’t realize. It’s the high-level strategist in me; it’s not enough for me to know the ins and outs of one particular approach, I want to know how that approach stacks up against another one, what the pros and cons are, and how I’d work them together. Being stuck playing only one thing bores me; my excitement about Infinity is because compared to other games, I can try every faction. I could never really do that in Warmachine, and the concept is laughable in a game like 40k, where you’re looking at an $800-$1000 investment just to start your first army. With that kind of investment in Infinity, I could put together workable list pairings for four or five factions at least. That’s super compelling to me.

I think this motivation is a big part of what makes me a good designer– I want to build things with lots of approaches and let players pick the one they like best. When I write tabletop campaigns, I like to imagine all the twists and turns my players might go down, and I write them out at least enough to entertain them as ideas. I’m thrilled when I’m presented (as I was in a recent session) with a situation I didn’t predict, because that’s another twist to explore and one I didn’t think of. When I’m designing scenarios in video games, or talking about how to build things, I like to know as much about what options are available so that I can make informed comments– a boss that is flatly immune to fire damage is not a great idea, no matter how much the story supports it, if a primary path a player might take involves dealing fire damage to the exclusion of all else… unless I’m trying to encourage some other kind of thing.

This extends to other parts of my life, too. I like to pick up new skills as much as possible, and try lots of new things. There’s an immensely broad world out there, and I want to understand as much of it as I can, even if it’s unrealistic to experience it all personally. I love change, because change is something new to try out, like that new faction or new warframe. It’s what keeps me going.

What motivates you in a new game? Is it different from what motivates you outside of the game?

I learned to type quickly, efficiently, and accurately playing Everquest. While other people I knew were enrolled in typing classes to increase their speed and precision, I was trying to keep up with my Befallen group, letting them know between heals that I was low on mana, and had about three pulls left in me before I needed a rest. I learned to communicate on the internet through text primarily.

When I started raiding in World of Warcraft, VoIP was still relatively new; the idea of logging onto a server to talk with internet strangers was a bit much for a lot of people. I thought it was fascinating, and quickly joined the server. If memory serves, I was one of the first, and I realized that when I spoke out loud, people would listen, largely because I was one of the only people (in a raid group of 40) who would talk aloud. Eventually, the raid required that people at least log into the server, though no one was required to talk and we kept a close eye on the chat log.

Over time, we got comfortable with each other and more and more people spoke. There was always a miniature celebration when someone who’d lurked for months or sometimes years would finally speak up– it wasn’t always great for people’s anxiety about speaking to begin with, but it was as welcoming as any of us knew how to be. We were always happy to hear a new voice, and I know a lot of people built up confidence in just talking to others through our raid– I know this because I was one of them, and I’ve talked to others.

Now, pretty much all of my in-game communication is over voice. When folks are all playing the same game, voice chat is hopping and busy, with people congregating into one or more channels to play games together, or even just chat while we play. It’s so embedded into my sense of gaming that I (and others) have arranged our gaming spaces so that we can sit on voice and play games together, even if we’re on a console and not the PC. It’s like an extended living room where we’re all playing together, except better, because we can customize it for our own comfort.

I occasionally run into other folks who are reticent to log into voicechat, or shy about speaking. I understand it; I was there once. My approach now is the same as it was then– if someone feels like joining the server, great! If not, no worries. If we’re doing something where they absolutely need to listen, I’ll ask that they log in and listen; but no one is ever required to say anything. At this point, it’s pretty comfortable, I think, and I hope people feel welcome joining us.

I get a lot out of being able to communicate verbally with my teammates while in a group. It makes the experience feel a lot more “multiplayer”, to me, to the point where even playing with others in a game without voice, I feel like I’m playing solo. If I feel like playing alone, I’ll simply not log into voice, though more often I’ll join voicechat even playing a solo game.

One of the things I really want is the ability to loop services like Teamspeak and Ventrilo into my consoles. One of the things that keeps me off of playing games on my console is my inability to use the VoIP server that my friends hang out on. I would pay good money for a controller with a push-to-talk button and a plugin for Teamspeak. If one of the major consoles released with Teamspeak support, I’d likely use it exclusively for my console gaming, and I’d get to spend more time on my comfy couch.

At this point, I can’t imagine not having the group of folks to log in and “play games with”, even if we’re all playing different games. When voicechat is quiet, or there’s a lull when people aren’t around, it often feels like something’s missing for me.