Gaming

There are 82 posts filed in Gaming (this is page 7 of 9).

Top 10 multiplayer video game countdown: #10

My tenth favorite multiplayer video game of all time:
Worms Armageddon (PC)

There’s a certain simple madness to this game that I can’t resist. You control a team of cute anthropomorphic cartoon worms with a vast aresnal at their disposal. In a twist on the old “gorilla throwing bananas at another gorilla” QBasic game, you have to take many factors into account in your destruction of the opposing team: Wind, distance, barriers, timing, crazy explosion shapes, etc.

I first encountered this game freshman year of college, when it was about all our bare-bones laptops could handle. It broke the ice between a lot of us on the hall, and we wiled away many a happy hour.

As an added bonus, I appreciate the game for taking a surprising amount of brainpower. Crafting that perfect grenade toss to come from behind and win takes both a keen mind and steady hand. And how can you resist the exploding, flying SuperSheep?

Dead man’s hand

I never thought I’d give in and start playing online poker.

Now don’t write me off yet! It isn’t quite what it seems…

LastCallPoker.com is more than just a poker site. It is in fact a newly launching Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. If you haven’t heard of this before, think of it as a completely immersive world, in this case created through clever web sites and voice mails (so far). I was fortunate enough to take part in the ILoveBees ARG last year, a leadup to the release of Halo 2. Great fun, and I’m looking forward to another experience. Here’s the relevant wikipedia for more background information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

Yes, you can play poker on the site. Its all for fake money, so no pressure. And a bunch of people are doing just that, seemingly oblivious to the deeper gameplay. (Their flash-based poker client is actually pretty nice) There’s also a mystery involving the dead owner, a valuable gun, murder, betrayal, gang conflicts, a crashed cell phone network, and more!

The game is still in its early stages, so feel free to jump aboard! A bunch of players congregate and discuss in the Unforums.

I’m playing the game under a pseudonym – here’s my profile. Add me to your quicklinks list if you join up! And no, the picture isn’t of me. There’s a preselected set to choose from.

ARGs are still a relatively young genre, the first major one being a promo for the movie A.I. So here’s your chance to be a part of something emerging. And at the very least, you’ll pick up some poker skills.

update: fixed Unforums link as per comments

More Gaming in Libraries

Over at Walking Paper, Aaron details his library’s initiative to build up a gaming program.

Exciting stuff! I’d love to work at a library that embraced programs like this.

A few thoughts that one of the comments brought to mind for me:

While I love the idea of library-sponsored video game tournaments, I would be reluctant to let patrons use library consoles online – keep the tournaments local instead.

I don’t think Aaron was suggesting allowing internet play, but just my 2 cents. My experience with Xbox Live has been that anonymity does bad things to people. A good chunk of players are unfortunately out there mainly to swear excessively and cause trouble for others.

If you allow the public online gaming privleges via consoles, this will become an issue sooner or later. One patron being unsociable (or cheating on a game) could easily get the account banned and ruin things for countless other patrons.

Gaming in Libraries

OCLC has a mini-feature up on gaming in libraries. I’m glad to see this area getting some attention, but have a few things to add:

  1. Gaming is not just for teenagers. I’m 22, play video games routinely, and know many older than myself who do the same. We grew up with the medium and aren’t likely to give it up anytime soon. So, isolating all gaming materials in the Teen section may not be the best idea.

  2. OCLC mentions adding video game strategy guides and hint books to your collection. While this is a good idea, one thing to remember is that they need to be constantly weeded. Long ago the library I used to work at started adding these types of books, although in small amounts. Those same old books are still on the shelves, often for video game systems now multiple generations out of date. They look extremely worn and are not a sign of a library being in sync with the culture of gaming.

    3. In fact, I’d ditch the broader ‘hint books’ entirely, and focus on volumes specific to in depth coverage of one game. Video game cheats and codes can be found in abundance, and fresher, on the Internet for free. Why duplicate? Strategy guides for one specific game will have a longer shelf life and fill a ‘not for free’ niche.

  3. I’d be interested in hearing more about the administrative issues in building a gaming collection and holding LAN parties. Are ‘M’ rated games (17 and up) used at the LAN parties? Are younger gamers allowed in? Similar issues exist in collection development, I’m sure. Given all the superfluous hoopla about the ‘video games make children violent’ issue lately, I have a feeling parents are more likely to raise issues about the content of video games in libraries than other media types.

Nuts

You might remember that I was very excited about playing Urban Challenge Online this spring.

Tonight I received an e-mail stating that the event has been cancelled! My registration fee will be refunded. No explanation as to why, and the site for the event no longer exists. Very odd.

I’m disappointed really – I probably wouldn’t have won but the format of the challenge is something I’m naturally good at.

Regular updates will resume soon, the semester is almost done!

Uh….

Touching

Nintendo is running what I officially dub to be the Strangest Promotion Ever.

The objective is to promote the Nintendo DS, which uses a touch screen to play games.

Nintendo will send you a disembodied mannequin hand (pictured). You take pictures of this hand in various situations, send them in, and then the best ones win prizes and/or money.

The name of the promotion? Touching is good.

I’ve signed up for my hand, I hope it actually does arrive. It’d make a great coffee table item, that’s for sure.

Me = Slow

Just the other day I was thinking about the issue of annoying patrons via IM reference.

I was playing Halo 2 on Xbox live, and marveling at what anonymity can do to even the most socially responsible human. Profanity, screaming, and racism unfortunately rule the day. Judging by the voices of the offenders, they tend to be in the early teenage range. The voice chat with a nickname to hide behind gives them an outlet for stuff they’d never even dare try in real life.

However, I do take a certain amount of pleasure in the fact that someone out there is dumb enough to pay $50 a year to be known as “CaptainGonorrhea”. If they’re going to be dumb, they might as well give me something to laugh at.

Anyway, back on topic… I got to thinking about how the same thing could easily happen over IM in a library setting, since using IM for virtual reference seems to be a Big Thing right now. Young teens + real time anonymity + authority figure = fun. Of course I never got to actually typing something up on it, since I wasn’t sure if it was actually happening in practice. Now I see that The Librarian in Black beat me to it! Nuts!

She brings up many of the same questions I would have, so you’re probably better off reading that entry. Here’s the potential solutions I can think of:

1. Block the offenders immediately and save a chat log
2. Warn the offenders, block on a second or third offense.
3. Do nothing, just live with it

And here’s the most creative idea I’ve had:
Use Gaim as your IM client. It allows you to have an away message up, but still chat normally. Set your away message to some version of an abbreviated terms of service. By continuing to chat, users agree to the terms. If they still are profane, then the librarian is well within their rights to ignore entirely (denying them satisfaction) and blocking them, the same way we would eventually call the police for an abusive patron there in person.

The idea could probably be developed further. It still unfortunately doesn’t stop the first abusive comment by a user. But without some more advanced IM clients that work perhaps similar to comment spam filters on blogs, that goal may be impossible.

Greg Schwartz apparently comments on the issue in this week’s podcast, which I haven’t listened to yet. So I may be duplicating something, I’ll be checking it out on the walk to work tomorrow.

P.S. Are librarians using IM for virtual reference being made aware of spim? (SPam via Instant Messenger) Some of what are considered annoying or abusive IMs may in fact be due to this.

The Economics of Video Game Rentals

On my lunch break today I popped down the street to Blockbuster. I had an itching to play a new video game, and a gift certificate in my pocket.

$6.99 for a video game rental now!! That pricing is simply insane. If I hadn’t had a gift certificate I would have walked out gameless. Let me point out the insanity:
(as a side note, imagine the value to patrons of libraries with console games circulating!)

For $14.99/month you can subscribe to Blockbuster’s online Netflix-type rental service. That gives you three movies out at a time. In addition, you get two free in-store rentals each month via printable coupons. Let’s assume that you use both of those rental coupons on video games, which incidentally cannot be rented through the online service; they’re in-store only. Using your coupons on video game rentals covers $13.98 of your monthly fee. If you would have rented those two games anyway, you can in effect get the movies by mail service for a mere $1.01 per month.

I can’t understand why Blockbuster’s game rental fees are so out of line with their standard movie fees, which I believe are in the $4.50 range.

Meanwhile Gamefly has popped up to deliver to the games-by-mail market. Their pricing seems out of line to me as well: $21.95 per month to have just two games out at a time. Most games that I really want to play I can probably find used for that price.

Speaking of video games, any corporate sponsor want to send me a PSP? I’ll give you free ad space for life 😀
In seriousness, it looks like an amazing convergence of wireless, video games, and portable media players.

Up to the challenge?

UPDATE: I’ve signed up solo, but can still take on a partner right up to the day before the event. Drop me a line if interested.

Thanks to the calendar in this month’s issue of Wired, I was introduced to the idea of Urban Challenge Online.

In summary, its Googling for dollars. Entry is $5 for a one or two person team. You get 12 clues and related puzzles to solve using online sources only. The first 10 to do so get a trip to NYC to compete for a million bucks.

I don’t have high hopes of being in the 10, but I’m pretty capable with Google and have an insane amount of random trivia packed away in my giant head. I managed to solve all three of the sample questions on the site in a few minutes. The second one, involving where Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same, I actually knew off the top of my head.

So anyway, I’m looking for a partner!

I’ll enter myself at the end of the day tomorrow (the 22nd) if nobody else is interested. I’ll even cover the $5! The event takes place on Sunday, April 10th, at 8pm EST. My apartment has ample wireless connections if you wanted to relocate and join me. If you don’t live nearby and don’t want to travel, we could probably even coordinate over Skype. (and how cool would that be?)