“Cheating”, “It’s Not Fair” and Other Spurious Phrases That Gamers Love to Use
You would think that a subject such as cheating in gaming is very clear cut. But it’s not. Like everything in life, the more you ponder the subject, the more you can conceive of situations where it all becomes ambiguous.Yes, once again the complexity and inherent nuance of life totally undermines binary, knee jerk positions. Take for example third party “cheat programs” such as Cheat Engine. Using an external program that alters the behaviour of a multiplayer game is clearly cheating and a breaking of the Terms of Service. However, using the same facility to provide yourself with a degree of convenience in a single player game is a different matter altogether. It affords you an opportunity to experience parts of a game that you may not do so under default playing conditions. Those who trot out the tired mantra that you “cheated yourself” and “didn’t learn anything” fail to see that gamers do not share a universal philosophy.
"Have You Ever?"
As some of you may know, I have a weakness for internet questionnaires. Yes, they can be looked upon as self indulgent filler that you post on a day when you’re strapped for inspiration, if you want to be snippy about them. But I find them quite insightful as I like to know about the people whose blogs I read. Sometimes it’s just as much about the person as it is about the blog post. “You are your own brand” and all that. But I digress. I saw this particular questionnaire over at Ace Asunder. Solarayo borrowed it from Quietschisto of RNG, who in turn purloined it from Chrisse of Vamp It Up Manchester who created the questions. There’s a broad spectrum of enquiries and scope for some informative and entertaining answers. So let us begin.
The Problem with Voice Chat
I was reading on Kotaku (as a Vic Reeves fan I always want to say Uvavu) about yet another internet brouhaha. This one stemmed from comments made by live streamer and social media commentator Steph “FerociouslySteph” Loehr (no, I have no idea who they are either), about the use of voice chat in video games. Her comments were willfully taken out of context by the usual suspects and yet another internet drama kicked off. As I have only a passing interest in live streaming and the competitive gaming scene, I don’t feel obliged to wade in and express an opinion about this particular situation and those involved. But the actual sentiments that were originally expressed about voice chat are of interest to me, although they’ve long been forgotten in this particular drama which has now become yet another culture war bunfight.
It's Okay to be a Bad Player
According to the ESA “Over 164 million adults in the United States play video games and three-quarters of all Americans have at least one gamer in their household. As the leading form of entertainment today, video games are an integral part of American culture”. So when you factor in the rest of the world, I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people play video games and that still surprises some people. Now it’s been known for a long time now by video game developers that two thirds of their customers never complete a single player game. It’s a similar story in other game genres. The majority of MMO players never play any endgame content such as raids. A lot of players don’t make it to level cap either. Yet, so much of the game related content produced by gamers themselves does not represent this. So much of the gameplay videos you find on YouTube comes from technically adept players. Similarly, many popular live streamers gain their audience through being competent.
PC Peripherals
I’ve mentioned it before that I seem to get through a lot of PC peripherals. I don’t consider myself heavy handed but I find that keyboard and mice just tend to wear out after about a year to eighteen months. Certain keys on the keyboard become unresponsive and have to be giggled to actually register use. The right hand button on my mouse often suffers a similar fate. Plus, I must have extremely acidic sweat as the plastic on both my current keyboard and mouse have shiny patches where I’ve worn through the surface. A few weeks ago, I took off my gaming headset after chatting with friends and the plastic headband just snapped in two. It was just over a year old and no, before you ask, I don’t have a head like The Mekon. All of which is a timely reminder that we live in a very disposable world and that plastic is a convenient but not necessarily durable material.
Call of Duty Warzone Matchmaking
I’ve been playing Call of Duty Warzone for about a month now and have documented my progress through the game and my attempts to improve my performance. It would be generous to categorise me as a distinctly average player. But I don’t worry too much about this as I am not alone. Not everyone is a high end player, although one’s perspective on this can be skewed as it is the most competent players that tend to dominate games. However, through simply playing CoD WZ regularly, despite my low body count per game I have slowly progressed through the ranking system. I am currently ranked 103 (the cap is 155). CoD WZ is generous with XP and each game’s score is not just based upon your kills. Your final position out of 150 other players is also a factor. There are additional marks for damage and a lot of other superfluous factors that the devs had added to ensure that even the weakest players move forward through the rankings.
Top Five Most Viewed Posts by Year
If you’ve been blogging for a while, it can be informative and fun to trawl through your statistical data. A common refrain from bloggers is that the post that they consider their best work is often the least read and that it’s the throwaway posts or articles written on a whim that find an audience. Both Wilhelm Arcturus and Belghast have analysed their website data and listed their respective top five most viewed posts by year. Having been writing for a comparable amount of time to these well known community figures, I thought I’d follow suit. Because I moved hosts to Squarespace and effectively started from scratch in August 2015 this will have to be my starting point. Although I exported all my content from my former hosted WordPress site, I have little statistical data. However, the six year period covered reveals some interesting details about what posts prove popular.
Pay to Play
When The Culling first launched in October 2017 on PC and Xbox, it’s quirky take on the Battle Royale genre earned it some fans and a degree of interest. However, due to the immense success of PlayerUnkown’s Battleground, its playerbase soon fell into decline and the developers Xaviant abandoned the game within three months. Then in July 2018 The Culling II was released, much to everyone’s surprise. Sadly, the game was patently in an unfinished state and was poorly received by fans and critics alike. There was a degree of animosity towards Xaviant for walking away from the first iteration of the game and then expecting players to pay again. Due to the ongoing popularity of Fortnite, this sequel was dead in the water within a matter of days with players unable to find anyone else to compete against. Not even a speedy transition to a free to play business model could save it.
The Relevance of Domain Authority?
According to Wikipedia, Domain Authority (also referred to as Thought Leadership) is a measure of a website's relevance with regard to a specific subject area or industry. Be warned, do not read the summary I’ve linked to if you are averse to bullshit marketing speak. I vomited blood when I typed “Thought Leadership” but take comfort in the fact that the marketing executive who came up with that inane platitude is currently closeted at home with a partner and children that hate them and will be facing divorce proceedings roundabout Christmas. But I digress. The reason I mention Domain Authority is because it came up in conversation of the Blaugust Discord channel. Author and fellow blogger Tessa mentioned it as a metric that may have changed for many writers over the course of the Blapril blogging event. It has done so for her, although I didn’t take that as a sign that she puts particular stock in this measure. As this wasn’t a statistical measurement I was familiar with I Googled the term and hence discovered the aforementioned Wikipedia entry.
Your Internet Connection
Because I live in a suburb of Greater London there are a variety of Internet Service Providers to choose from. There are multiple vendors offering fibre, cable, wireless and now even 5G solutions. I realise that not everyone is fortunate enough to have such a choice and that there is a great deal of “internet inequality” both in the UK and other countries. Big cities and centres of commerce always tend to have better investment in internet infrastructure. Hence those that live in rural areas will often have slower internet connections or little or no choice with regard to which company provides the service. Considering how essential internet access is these days, this is hardly a satisfactory or equitable state of affairs. Hence the universal provision of robust internet connections has become a regular manifesto pledge of all major UK political parties. However, in the meantime many people are still saddled with poor internet download speeds and unreliable services.
Electric Shavers
I have always found shaving a nuisance and a chore. There was a period in my working life where being suited, booted and clean shaven was part of the gig. So every morning began with a battle with the stubble. I won’t waste your precious time recounting all the various brands of razors I tried. Let it suffice to say that there’s a huge amount of bullshit peddled by the male grooming products industry (yes, I’m looking at you, so-called King of Shaves, you self aggrandising corporate gits). Perhaps the biggest one is that there’s an optimum way to shave. This is an utter falsehood. The way your facial hair grows is as unique as that on your head. So it may well suit Jugdish to shave “against the grain” and for Sidney to do the opposite, while Clayton uses his razor freestyle. There is no “one approach suits all”. However, shaving with a safety razor is a separate post altogether. It is because of them and due to my inherent apathy towards shaving per se, that I’ve recently tried using an electric shaver again.
COVID-19 Pandemic 2020 Part 5
The UK Government’s honeymoon period with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic is well and truly over. Irrespective of one’s political outlook, it is sensible and dare I say it, reassuring to want to get behind the Prime Minister and his cabinet in their attempts to tackle this dreadful situation. Some may have thought it would be the making of the man and way to bridge the political divisions caused by Brexit. But that was six weeks ago and such optimism has conspicuously withered on the vine. Many of the promises made and have proven empty and a decade of politically motivated austerity has left many key public services struggling. The government was under prepared, lacking in talent and driven by the same hubris inherent in all their political decisions. Namely that notions of British exceptionalism would somehow see us through. They haven’t. Despite the recently recovered Prime Minister (who caught COVID-19 due to not following his own instructions) standing at a podium on 27th April and claiming some sort of success, the reality is the complete opposite.
Political Campaigning in Video Games and the Gaming Community
I read an article on Kotaku this morning about Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from NYC and how she was using Animal Crossing: New Horizons as a means to meet the public. According to Kotaku “she was planning on visiting random people’s islands so she could “leave a doodle or note on their bulletin board”. She opened her DMs for four minutes, giving followers a chance to leave some Dodo codes so she could come visit, before heading off on an evening of being offered fruit and hopefully some wholesome online interactions”. Now I am not especially familiar with either Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Animal Crossing: New Horizons and my first thoughts were that this was essentially just a PR exercise. However, upon reflection and bearing in mind the recent focus on organisations such as Cambridge Analytica, it suddenly doesn’t sound so superficial after all.
Blapril: Lessons Learned
I still think it was a good idea to move the scheduled August blogging event to April and take advantage of the lockdown. Many of us still have a lot more spare time on our hands than usual. However, upon reflection the lockdown has come with its own set of problems, one of which being a degree of mental discombobulation which does impact upon one’s motivation. So Blapril has felt a little different to last year’s Blaugust. The passion has still been present but I think this time round there’s also been a degree of catharsis. Writing can be good therapy for all sorts of problems. However, the uncertainty of the times and the worry it engenders has also impacted upon bloggers stamina. I was ill for a third of Blapril which threw my schedule. I’ve also been smitten with a degree of indolence that has made writing a bit of a struggle at times. I certainly don’t think I’ve applied myself to my mentoring role as well as previous years.
"Git Gud"
This post is about my attempts to improve my performance while playing Call of Duty Warzone which I’ve been doing for the last three weeks. However, many of the examples I reference are equally applicable to other games. Also, I want to clarify what my overall goals are. I’m not aiming to be the best of the best. I just want to be more accurate when aiming, learn some basic tactics and not make too many obvious “noob” errors. But I refuse to accept that age alone can exclude you from certain genres of games. Admittedly, quick reflexes may well be the prerogative of youth but age has no bearing on tactics. Hence I’ve spent some time looking into how I can become a better CoDWZ player and I must say that there has been an overall improvement that I’ve found useful. Here are a few points that have helped. Much of which is common sense advice that is often overlooked.
A Month in Gaming
April has been an usual month. The ongoing lockdown here in the UK (and elsewhere in the world) has afforded me more gaming time than usual. The policy of social distancing has reduced my caring duties to just three hours a day. Hence I and many others like me have much more leisure time available. I initially thought that this situation would be the perfect time to try some of the many of the games that I have stockpiled over the years. However, despite trawling through many titles, I still failed to find anything that immediately took my fancy. So I decided to take stock of my overall gaming activities and whether it was time to revise them and try something new. And by new I don’t just mean just buying a new game but taking a step out of my current comfort zone into a genre I don’t usually play. So that’s exactly what I did and the results have been very interesting.
Gamer Motivation Profile
As so many Blapril contributors have posted their Gamer Motivation Profile, I thought I’d follow suit and write about mine. The survey is provided by Quantic Foundry who according to their own website are a “a market research company focused on gamer motivation”. Their aim is to “combine social science with data science to understand what drives gamers”. It’s all presented in a very slick and comprehensive fashion. As with all such services, you have to answer a series of questions designed to probe your gamer psychology and ascertain what drives you when playing video games. Once you complete the multiple choice questionnaire you’re presented with a graphic which shows your primary and secondary motivations, along with a written summary. You can drill down into the data and see how your answers determine the outcome.
Lost: Ten Years On
For those who may be unfamiliar with this particular example of cult television, Lost is an US drama television series that was originally broadcast on ABC from September 22, 2004, to May 23, 2010. The show ran for six seasons, comprising a total of 121 episodes. It was created by Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, containing elements of supernatural and science fiction. The story follows the survivors of a commercial flight flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, that crashes on a mysterious island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. The story is told in a heavily episodic manner. Each instalment would typically feature a primary storyline set on the island, augmented by flashbacks or flash forwards that provided additional insight into the various characters' backstories. Due to the convoluted plot and big production values, the show became a major talking point and fans became heavily invested in theories regarding the “plot”.
Writing and Motivation
This week’s Blapril writing prompt is about “staying motivated”. It’s a perennial subject and one that is always relevant. Whenever writing events such as Blapril/Balugust are held, many of the participants are swept up in the initial excitement and camaraderie. At first they find both the time and the inclination to write. However, after a while, the realities of regularly writing become apparent. Finding the time may become more difficult, as does choosing material to write about. Something that was fun and enjoyable can eventually feel like a chore. Especially if you don’t receive any form of feedback. Hence it comes as no surprise that many blogs fall into decline and fade away. Content is posted far more intermittently and then there comes a point where the writer just stops. According to Google, only 167.4 million out of the 500 million plus blogs had been updated in the past 120 days.
Classic Movie Themes: The Pink Panther
If you mention The Pink Panther (1963) I’d hazard a guess that most people will instantly think of Inspector Clouseau (and possibly throw in a quote in faux French about “Minkeys”) or hum or whistle the iconic theme tune. It’s blend of cool sixties Jazz and Lounge is both classy and evocative. Henry Mancini’s contribution to the Pink Panther franchise is commensurate to that of Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards. If you removed his musical scores from any of the films they would be greatly diminished. In fact one can argue that the movies made in the eighties after Sellers’ death are greatly bolstered by Mancini’s intelligent and accomplished musical accompaniment. The franchise may have run out of steam but Mancini never did so.