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Advocatus Diaboli

May 15, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

On top of my insatiable beer habit, I also have a healthy infatuation with video games.

I’ve been a gamer as long as I’ve been a computer user. I was typing nonsensical commands into the text field in King’s Quest before I’d even learned math. By third grade I knew most DOS commands, just so I could load my favorite games.

C:\>cd games, C:\>games>cd sierra, C:\>games>sierra>kq1.exe – the mantra of my childhood.

If you weren’t already aware, today marks the release of Diablo 3; a Blizzard Entertainment creation 12 years in the making. I wasted (enjoyed) hundreds of hours on Diablo and Diablo 2 back in middle and high school (respectively) and am a huge fan of the series. I played the open Beta a few weeks ago, and a happy to say the Diablo 3 looks like it is going to melt everyone’s face with its innate awesomeness.

Approximately nine hundred billion people wanted to play the second the servers went live. I get it. I really do. We’ve been eagerly awaiting this day for ten plus years, greedy little hands on our our greasy little mice, waiting with unabashed anticipation to hack and slack and loot. It’s not like there were any other good games in the past ten years to tide us over, so this is the culmination of a decade of rumors, theorycrafting, teasers, and tidbits of Diablo lore.

But the servers went down. It was a shock to gamers around the world, as we have no prior examples of this happening. Ever.

As I read the torrent of rage that flowed across the internet like lava flow of nerd tears, I got to wondering. Weren’t all of these people playing Diablo and Diablo 2 at the same time I was? Assuming they were similar age, shouldn’t they have jobs and responsibilities and families and cats? Do they really have time to explode into a dork-furor over some servers being down?

Am I the only gamer who grew up?

As my friend John put it: “You’ve waited over 10 years, a few more hours won’t kill you.” A couple more days won’t matter either. Unless you were scheduled to die in the next few days, in which case, I question why you’d want to play a video game for your remaining time left on this planet.

My advice? Do what I do. Get a job. Go to said job. Do work at said job for 8-9 hours. Eat a nice lunch. Write a blog post. Go home and see if the gaming universe has collectively calmed down.

If the servers are up, play for an hour or two. If the servers are down, hang out with your wife (or husband). Pet your kitty. Drink a beer. Go to bed.

If you absolutely need your Diablo fix because you’re a strung out heroin addict who would kill somebody for just a taste of sweet, sweet dungeon crawling, get creative.

Crazy creative.

Behold, the upcoming franchise: Lego Diablo 3!

Demon Hunter, Barbarian, and Wizard, obviously.

The Emotional Lifecycle of New Video Game Ownership

December 29, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

The highly anticipated multiplayer video game from the big-time gaming company is finally available. It’s an FPS, it’s an RTS, it’s an MMO! You’ve been waiting for this moment for months and your unbridled joy is making the people close to you uncomfortable.

Thus begins the emotional lifecycle of playing a new game:

1. Excitement

No time to go all the way to the store to buy a physical copy of the game, I’ll just download it! Sweet, that was fast! Only 38MBs, that’s crazy. Installed already? Whoa, these splash screens are awesome. I have seen the future, and this is it.

Oh. A 4GB patch. Followed by a 3.2GB patch. Followed by a 2 hour install. That’s OK; I didn’t have to get out of my chair, so this is still a net victory. I’ll just read reviews of the game and all of the available wiki information until the install is done!

What. The. Shit. This intro cinematic is the single greatest thing to ever happen in video game history. How did people make this? It deserves a Grammy. What? Those are only for music? Well whatever, the music is amazing too. Give this all the awards possible.

I submit, after having played for 10 minutes, that this is the greatest piece of art and entertainment ever created by mortals. Zeus himself would have hosted a LAN party while Hera was out of town visiting her mother to play this game.

2. Confusion

Alright, I made my character! He looks exactly like me, except much more athletic and charming. Also, he’s 9 feet tall and blue. What is this tiny robed guy doing? Who are all these people running around with huge weapons? Why is all this stuff on my screen? I clicked the guy, but he won’t do anything! HOW PLAY GAME??

Calm down, you can figure this out. So these buttons move the guy, and that one makes him jump, and ohmygod I’ve got a laser pistol. What can I shoot? Why do I have to talk to all these people? I have a laser gun, let me laser stuff. Can I laser that robot? No? That is bad game design. I could have designed it so much better.

So I’ve collected a lot of these yellow data core things, but I can’t do anything with them. I tried selling them, but apparently this vendor only wants to buy the garbage I find, not anything worth anything. I’ll ask someone in general chat. What do you mean by “L2P noob?” I’m asking because…wait, what about my mother? She doesn’t even use a compu…whoa, dude, I asked because…ouch. Can anyone help me? I just thought I’d ask to…never mind.

Screw this, I’ll just Google it.

3. Comfort

Ding level 15! I got this down now. This game is pretty awesome, after you figure out all the key binds and class options. The graphics are so awesome, and I only have them on lowest setting. I can’t wait to finish up this zone, I heard you get to ride a freakin’ flying dinosaur to get to the next area.

Boom! Zap! Pew pew pew! Oh man, I’m so good, no one can beat me. Did you see that? I totally just took out like 10 dudes at once. I’m like the best player on this sever. Maybe in the whole game.  I should probably become a professional gamer.

Look at that guy in the glowing armor. I can’t wait to be like him. I’m going to be so cool.

4. Apathy

Guess I’ll login and see what’s going on. I already have three max level characters with the best possible gear, but I guess I could start a new one. Maybe I’ll make that one class that sucks and everyone hates just to prove that it doesn’t suck. Nah, I’ll just run around and kill low level people until I get bored.

Oh, you want to show me that quad-barreled, incendiary, fully automatic rocket launcher that you just found? Yea, I threw one of those away earlier to make space in my bags. It pretty much sucks. You want the most powerful sword in the game, for free? I’ve got 3 of them.

I’ll be back in like 5 minutes; I have to go kill the hardest boss in the game again.

5.  Closure

Nah man, I don’t feel like running that dungeon. It’s all the same stuff, you know? Kill bad guys, pick up gear, sell most of it because you already have better, do it all over again. It’s getting kind of old. I think I ran a dungeon while I was asleep last night.

Yea, the game is fun and stuff, but there isn’t enough variety. I mean, owning and commanding your own star fleet is pretty cool, I guess. Yea, I can use my mastery of ancient powerful magic to literally explode people, but meh. I don’t know. I just don’t feel it anymore. I miss the good old days, before they ruined it all to cater to the casual players.

I wonder what other games are coming out soon.

6. Repeat

No time to go all the way to the store to buy a physical copy of the game, I’ll just download it! Sweet, that was fast! Only 38 MBs, that’s crazy. Installed already? Whoa, these splash screens are awesome.

I have seen the future, and this is it.

This may or may not have had a direct impact on this post.

Destination: Skyrim

November 15, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

I’d like to preface this post with a thank you and /bow to my 4-year old nVidia 9800GTX, without who, I could not be writing this post. Based on the posted system requirements, and the system requirements that I assumed would be required after seeing screen shots, I was expecting to have to rebuild my rig to play this game.  I even contemplated by the PS3 version, as blasphemous as that sounds. To my pleasant surprise,  I found that my humble gaming machine runs Skyrim on medium settings, providing still beautiful landscapes with almost no graphics lag.

I, like 800 billion other people, aquired the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim over the weekend. I’ve been a fan of Bethesda Softworks since the days of Morrowind. I was a big fan of Oblivion, too. They won me over with their open world RPGs when I was but a boy, and I’ve spent many, many hours exploring the wonders of Tamriel over the past few years. While I’m only a few hours into my Skyrim adventure, I can tell it will be that warm, comfortable Bethesda feeling I’ve come to know.

I fired up the game, and made a Khajit, as I normally do on my first play through of any Bethsoft game. I like cats. Don’t judge me.

The first thing I noticed, and loved, was that I didn’t have to pick a class right off the bat. Almost any game you pick up nowadays makes you decide your role and possible abilities before you start playing the game, a concept I’ve always thought was weird and backwards. The development of your character is completely organic. You’re running away from a dragon and you happen to kill some guards. Do you take the axe? The bigass sword? The bow and arrow? Do you put on the heaviest armor you can find, or are you cool running around in just a robe?

I opted for the bow, as  I am oft to do. I was pleased to find that any skill I leveled contributed to my overall character level, leaving to me do whatever the hell I wanted. I ran around for a bit, killed some bandits, chopped some wood, ate some bees, even outran a rabbit at one point. Pretty awesome. I climbed some mountains, mucked around in the bottom of a cave. Even accidentally shot a giant in the head with an arrow.

While it’s the same feeling as most other open world games, Bethsoft, and Skyrim im particular, manages to capture something I have’t felt in a game in a long time. My character was free to go and do whatever I would do. If I were to wake up in this fantasy world, I would probably run around in the wilderness looking for stuff to eat. I would probably kill the guy who ran up to me swinging an axe and my head. I probably wouldn’t shoot a giant in the head, but hey, that was an accident. There was no up front “who are you?” check, no forcing me to decide what would be the most fun before I even knew what the game was like. It simply placed some tools in front of me and said, “be free, young bow-wielding cat man.”

But the lack of direction and guidance was not punishing, like Dark Souls. Nor was my hand held too tightly, like WoW or Dungeon Siege III. It was a perfect combination of freedom and constraint. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that the combat is weak, or that this lack of direction is bad. For the type of game Skyrim is – as I call it, an Exploro-story RPG – this is perfect. I’m not forced to dodge every single blow lest my enemy kill me for the 900th time, and I’m not mowing down 20 enemies at once with superhuman prowess. It’s comfortable medium, like a microsuede couch.

I honestly wish a few other games would take this route. Giving players options without locking them in leads to completely unique play-throughs for different types of players. It gives players the freedom to play how they want to, not how the developer expects them to, set on a rigid, made-up system of classes and skills.

Maybe as I’m getting older, I appreciate freedom to a more specific degree, and it’s reflected in my gaming choices. Either way, I just found out you can cast two spells at once, so, yea. You know where I’ll be.

Those who are about to game salute you!

Hide Nothing

May 14, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

I recently had to hide a ring from my fiancé (a tale I will tell in more detail to come). Out of necessity, I hid it in my mandolin case, thinking she’d never look there. While it proved a perfect hiding spot, I found myself reenacting Poe’s “A Tell Tale Heart” on a daily basis; the sheer weight of the secret (despite its positive nature) left me fixated on my pulsating instrument case. Every day it hid in the little fur-lined compartment just underneath the neck of my axe, the more the strength of the ring’s energy would cry out to me, whispering for me to give up its secret at any cost.

I discovered that years of being pretty honest has left me unable to be secretive. I still favor hyperbole and embellishment, but have to accept that I suck at straight-up lying.

It’s OK though; one of the things that gives me emotional dexterity, stoicism, and social leverage is my transparency. If someone wants to know something about me, I tell them. I don’t hesitate, lie, or play shy; I simply tell them what they want to know. I find it so much easier to just be honest about my intentions, behavior, interests, state-of-mind, activities, beliefs, or anything else. I am not so callous as to rant inconsequently to whoever is near me, but I am not shy about sharing an adventure in the right context. I rarely censor myself despite particular company; if my comment is relevant or even insightful, no matter how self-deprecating or condemning, I say it.

I’ve told stories of debauchery during my college years and of my involvement in fringe activities that some might equate with social suicide. Yet, here I stand, perfectly functional, well liked by my friends and coworkers (from what I can gather). My stories and information, no matter how crazy or seemingly embarrassing, never seem to get me into trouble.

I don’t have some kind of power that makes me immune to ridicule. I don’t secretly pay people to treat me differently. I don’t even have a mental disorder that prevents me from feeling embarrassed! I just have nothing to hide.

When you have no secrets, you have no stress from having to keep secrets. When everyone thinks they know exactly who you are, you have no need to act a certain way. People give you the benefit of the doubt; your otherwise odd behavior just becomes “you”, because people come to expect anything. You develop a personal freedom that is hard to describe; you never have to fit a mold, as you have no defined shape. You are fluid, ready and able to be whatever you want to be, whenever you want to be.

Politicians are often scandalized after a nice piece of dirt gets drudged up from the depths of the internet; the little factoid hell-bent on destroying their image. But the only reason it has any power is because they tried to hide it. If they had never covered it up or lied about it in the first place, they would have nothing to be ashamed of. We, as a public mob, love to hear dirt about powerful people; it reminds us that they are just as viscerally human, and just as stupid, as we are.

People always think that their juvenile/perverted/illegal behavior is the worst thing anyone has ever done in the history of walking upright. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Every person that lives and breathes has done things they aren’t proud of, either in the impetuousness of their youth, or in a lamentable, long passed drunken frenzy. Some things are obviously “worse” than others, but ultimately, it is how we react to, and grow with, this experience that is important.

So you slept with a stripper at a bachelor party. Big deal. So have millions of other people, including some former Popes, Presidents, and Philanthropists. So there are some pictures of you floating around naked, post-drug binge, next to an animal. No worries. Welcome to the club. Nothing you have ever done, in malice or stupidity, that didn’t land you in jail, is anywhere near as bad as you think it is. The mind that will be the most offended by whatever it is, lives in your skull.

People assume that the default reaction to an embarrassing story is disgust, repulsion, and abhorrence. But I’ve never experienced these responses. I am almost always greeted with humor, subtle reverence, and sometimes envy. People admire that I have the courage or confidence to say such wild things with no visible fear of repercussion. Most people wish they could live a life free of secrets, fear of judgment, and visions of loneliness they assume will arise if their truth is ever discovered.

I find that most people will never ask you something that will lead to an answer that will offend them. They know what makes them uncomfortable, and usually know enough about me to not ask or pry into something that is not in line with their baser sensibilities. Accommodatingly, I don’t offer this information either; it’s there if they ever want it, but we usually (silently) mutually agree that neither party would benefit from my sharing it.

Herein lies the tact of being transparent. There are many people out there who may not greet my openness with frivolity or friendliness. There are those who might see me arrested, or cry outrage at my cavorting with Goody Proctor (or the like). I acknowledge and appreciate these people. I simply avoid them in general; their judgment skips over me entirely, and if they ever try to sling uneducated mud about me, those closer to me would respond with, “well yea, we all know that about him anyway.”

Not a few hours ago, in responding to a comment about music on a website, I told one of my coworkers that I had a Pokemon website in middle school. Not only does this betray my age, extremely nerdy tendencies, and association with Japanese sub-culture, but it is also something that many people would probably never say (even if they had a totally bad ass Pokemon website back in the day).

But I don’t care, and my coworker got a good laugh out of the comment. And now she knows that if she ever needs someone who understands her kids a little better, she can ask the weirdo in the cube next to her.

Original 150(1)!

A Child of Fantasy

February 8, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

I spent the majority of my waking childhood doing one of three things: reading books, playing soccer, or playing video games. It was a simple existence in which I put fun, fantasy, and anything surreal ahead of the mundane and every day. As a child, I was indulged; my wild imagination a wonderful thing that was fostered and encouraged by pretty much every adult I encountered. My mind danced with thoughts of magic, adventures across improbable landscapes, and a life of constant adventure and excitement.

This mentality continued into young adulthood, but my fantasies became more elaborate and vivid, opening up new vistas of possibility and entertaining strangeness. The books I read were more sophisticated, their language and concepts twisted and unreal, feeding my desire to experience the impossible. The games I played evolved with graphic engines, creating more realistic representations of monsters, castles, and the prior’s nonstop siege of the latter. I was able to indulge my insatiable imagination more than ever. Even my soccer became a calculated game of strategy; the physical exertions of the sport had become trivial and I enjoyed analyzing the war-like breakdown of an unfolding game just as much as I loved scoring a goal.

In college, I was free to indulge to an almost ludicrous extent. While still in high school I had been limited by my parents influence and observation. On my own, I could flood my mind with weird and archaic literature and play copious amounts of games to the maximum extent I could absorb them. I was not just free, I was unchained. My mind went into overdrive, seeking to experience any bit of fantasy I could get my hands on (or mind around) and I would often find myself reading a book, watching a movie, and playing a game simultaneously. I loved the freedom of overindulgence despite the mental and physical ramifications.

My success in college was simply a byproduct of this fantasy-lust; I just so happened to study a field that benefited from mental flexibility and rampant creativity. I actually enjoyed reading the things I read and writing the things I wrote, which I am sure not many college students can say with a straight face.

I never stopped to think that my obsession with fantasy was unhealthy for my development and perceptions. I always considered it normal, just a hobby like any other. I knew many who were as fanatical or even moreso, and figured I was a functional, social being somehow unaffected by something that consumed me so wholly.

The effects were subtle. I did not devolve into a schizophrenia where I thought I was actually a wizard casting spells in my cubicle. I did not dodge imaginary dragons while driving my car. I didn’t even consider myself particularly fantastic, despite constantly being awash in the genre.

I did however build a massive repository of expectation, preconceived notions, and overly exaggerated perception. Any time an adult described something to me, I gathered every tiny piece of information about the topic and began to construct my imaginary idea of what this thing would be like. With emotions I aggrandized what it would actually feel like, expecting it to be as obvious as cold water on a hot day. With events, I expected wondrous celebrations; wildly yet surreptitiously planned and executed. Sensations were not spared either; I always imagine alcohol to taste like candy, having a job being a daily adventure in a hip environment, and various achievements literal milestones that I could tangibly see, touch, and remember with pride.

This doesn’t sound bad. I had very, very, very high expectations for things. This meant I had a powerful curiosity and tried almost anything I could. Exotic foods, various athletics, even sources of altered states, when the opportunity presented itself. I was not out of control, but I was certainly hedonistic for a period, in an attempt to reach that exalted pinnacle of emotion that I had built in my mind. In college I played the role of hedonist to an extreme at times, hoping to get a brief taste of what seemed so ordinary and accessible to others.

When I didn’t feel these things, I was confused. For a bit, I considered myself a sociopath, incapable of feeling the gamut of the human psyche. But one day, I had an epiphany about my life and all my experience. If I remember correctly, I was reading the introduction to Walden for the 4th time.  I had not not felt the various emotions and sensations I sought, I had felt them in a way completely polar to how I had expected to feel them.

I had been in love, I had been truly angry, I had felt spirituality, pride, honor, grace, humility, aggravation, embarrassment. Unlike physical pain and pleasure, these feelings were impossibly ethereal, only felt in wisps and tickles. A lifetime of fantasy immersion had made me brace myself for these feelings hitting me; instead they tapped me one the shoulder and passed right on by without me even noticing.

The result: a general disillusionment. I am nowhere near unhappy, in fact I love where my life has meandered and am proud of the things I have accomplished thus far. I have big dreams and am taking steps to realize them, and feel, for the most part, satisfied. But I am admittedly two dimensional in my emotions, mainly because I never felt what I thought I should feel, when I expected to feel it. I had to force myself to say, “Oh, so that is what X feels like”, where “X” equals any emotion normally recognizable by a person.

I had to spend some time realigning what was reality and disconnecting it from what fantasy had taught me was reality. While this sounds absurd, it was actually quite difficult, and I still find myself underestimating certain emotions and events. I didn’t walk at my college graduation because the entire event seemed washed out and banal to me; to this day I could tell you why I thought that. I also had to acknowledge that I have experienced many, many things that I had simply overlooked, and take time to appreciate them for what they are, not what they might be.

I would say that fantasy ruined my mind, but that would be an oversimplification and overreaction. It certainly altered my judgements and made me expect more than I think is reasonable for the world we live in. But it also taught me to never take anything for granted, and instilled in me a sense of dedication and stoicism that I might not have had otherwise. Because I “missed” many emotions and feeling when they first manifested themselves, I have developed a very placid demeanor; it takes a lot of consistent frustration to push me over the edge. I am passionate, but only to a certain extent, and I do not easily get carried away.

All this as a result of many hours of Tolkien, Asimov, Lovecraft, and Sierra, Blizzard, Bioware.

I do not regret it, as with all of the above confusion about the world comes a few, dominating positives. I find fun in the mundane, by being able to project frivolity and fantastic scenarios on what would otherwise be a total snoozefest. I also have high mental dexterity; I attribute my problem solving skills and fast-thinking to the years of synapses firing over which monster to take down first. I also have developed an immense database of historical and folklore knowledge that often aids me in conversation and in writing; both of which I find myself doing quite often.

I only write this because I know there must be others like me out there who have not come to terms with why the feel (or don’t) the way they do. Others of my generation who played just as many games, read just as many books, and otherwise smothered themselves in science fiction and fantasy surely must have similar sentiments to mine.

If so, fear not. There really is a wonderful world out there, filled with amazing scenery, people, experiences, and yes, adventures waiting for you to discover it. There is sorcery abound in human interaction and pure magic in a lover’s touch. As much comfort as there is in your digitally or scholarly created worlds, they will not serve you indefinitely. I do not suggest complete removal of the thing that has defined you and that you love so dearly, just an active recognition of which world is actually real.

"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. " Isaac Asimov

A Matter of Tradition (and Privacy too)

July 12, 2010 · by Oliver Gray

I am a gamer. I openly admit this to anyone, as I am quite passionate about my hobby and excitedly follow the play-style and design trends that permeate this often misunderstood culture. I have played a little bit of everything, dating back to the early 90s; obscure 8-bit NES titles, pre-GUI text adventures, modern first person shooters, Jap-RPGS…you name it. I was even heavily involved in the poorly understood Compact Disc Interactive (CD-i) movement of the late 90s, but that is fodder for another post.

I love to discuss gaming, whether it be the nuances of game design philosophy, overarching lore that hearkens back to some of my favorite literature, or sharing stories of the sheer fun and challenge of playing against people online. I’m pretty much always up for a gaming conversation, assuming the present company is equally interested, or noticeably tolerable. But my favorite thing to discuss is the societal trends of gaming and the industries impact on how we socialize and entertain ourselves. I will defend gaming as a legitimate hobby until the day I can no longer accurately use WASD.

Gaming from its onset, was solitary. Early consoles required you sit within a cords-distance of your TV. Games were designed with one, possibly two, gamers in mind. The term “single-player” did not exist, only “one-player” or “two player”. But as technology became more sophisticated, it became easier to include more than just a few gamers. Arcades allowed up to 4, 6, 8 players at once, which led the industry towards a social gaming movement. Remembering the 6-person X-Men arcade game of the late 90s (Colossus was my favorite), it was not difficult to see that the future of gaming involved multiple people playing simultaneously.

Our modern systems have embodied this idea perfectly. The Wii is social gaming at its very finest. In fact, the “single-player” component of the Wii is severely lacking. Even the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 heavily rely on multi-player gaming, assuming the majority of players seek human interaction in their gameplay. Not even PC gamers are safe; MMOs have taken over the RPG market with only BethesdaWorks titles like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout 3 holding it down for the single-player crowd.

This is not necessarily bad. In my college days, I gamed online for arguably unhealthy periods of time. It was my relaxation, my escape from the sometimes boring realities of being a student. I played Starcraft and Diablo 2, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike and most importantly for this discussion: World of Warcraft. I was hardcore; gaming hours every night, raiding with 39 other people, running a section of my “guild” and loving every second of it. WoW was my first foray into the dark, mysterious land of MMOs that I had always figured was not for me.

But I was wrong. Something in the magical combination of story, character development, accessibility, strategy, challenge and social interaction hit every primal  and intellectual urge I had ever tried to fill when playing a game. It turned out that the thing missing from all those single-player console RPGs was other people! Traditional RPGs like the the Final Fantasies and Breath of Fires will always hold a special place in my heart, but after a certain point, you want to share your accomplishments with friends; something not so easily done when you have to invite them over to your house to check out your characters.

It also gave me an avenue to stay in touch with some of my closest friends, without the need for awkward “update” phone calls or expensive and lengthy trips. We could hang out, albeit in another alien world. We could work collaboratively towards something exciting and abstractly tangible. We could have all the fun we used to have sitting in someone’s basement in high school, all while dong our own thing as we explored our collegiate careers. It was mainly this aspect that kept me involved. Exciting stories and exotic fantasy lands helped, of course.

I had companies like Blizzard to thank for their beautiful creations. Their creativity let me maintain a social life with those who meant the most to me while subsequently fulfilling my every possible wish for content and playstyle in a video game. I commend them for creating what I could argue is the best video game I have ever played. I am normally one to support their ideas, as they often lead to fresh trends in the gaming industry that other companies can’t help but adopt if they want to stay competitive. Their history of successes is testament enough to their design philosophy, so I do no quickly dismiss public announcements of their new ideas.

RealID at a glance seemed like a brilliant concept. Tie in the “real-life” social aspect of gaming so that players could easily meet up with their friends to play a game. For someone like me, this was incredible. I could see if my friends were playing, and if so, what game, and was even given the tools to communicate with them across platforms to organize a mutual session. If only it had stopped there.

Digital privacy is a sensitive topic, and many social networks take heat for any slight aberration of information sharing policy. Social networking is opt-in, but even people who choose to partake expect some level of data privacy. On sites like Facebook, you can offer as much (or as little) information about yourself as you would like, and even set decently strict parameters about just who can see that information. While your digital security is at risk by posting anything about yourself online, at least social networking sites offer some level of protection.

A recent development suggested that Blizzard would be using RealID in a capacity that no one expected – or more importantly – wanted. Their brilliant plan was to have all official forum posts include an identifying title, to make gamers accountable for their thoughts and language. While tame in theory, the problem entered when they disclosed that the identifying title would be the gamer’s real first and last name. Needless to say, the throngs of nerds were unhappy that their privacy, no matter how minor, was being breached.

The defenders of the idea argued that everyone knows your full name; the government, your employer, your friends and neighbors. They also claimed that many who were upset with the change were hypocrites who embraced other forms of social networking. The main distinction is that social networking sites are generally benign. People are not openly inflammatory for fear of social repercussion, and “dramatic” flame-wars on the likes of Facebook are over esoteric nonsense that has no real impact on the world. Sure, people get divorced and fired due to things said on Facebook, but they openly offered that information and actively allowed it to be associated with their name; they were never forced.

The idea of being forced was the problem with RealID. Many gamers do not wish to associate their everyday existence with something that carries such a social stigma. It is a sad fact that we as a culture are more harsh on gamers and the accompanying alt-lifestyle than we are on the degenerate swarms of morons that clog our TV channels during prime time hours. Steve from finance might not want his coworkers to know that he exists as a powerful mage after hours, just like your project manager might not want to let slip that he too enjoys to unwind in a 3v3 ladder match.

Couple these kind of privacy issues with the intrinsically competitive nature of gaming, and you have a recipe for an article on Fark. Facebook promotes e-stalking, but it rarely invokes enough passion in a person for them to seek physical confrontation with another person. Gaming however, can lead to unbelievable fits of “nerd-rage” (yes, that is exactly what it sounds like) where many already socially damaged individuals could easily lose control over an online loss. Displaying names gives these people an extra resource, should their online bloodlust follow them offline, adding an unnecessary risk for all gamers. The last thing I need is “DeathRogueX” pounding on my front door because in his opinion, I cheated my way to victory in a perfectly legitimate competition.

The above theoretical scenario only needs happen once, to some poor sap, and online gaming would immediately be hit with a wave of uneducated opinions about its safety. It would inescapably become the scapegoat for all things evil, and take even more of the brunt than it currently does as an excuse for adolescent violence. If the above scenario happened to a girl or child, we may see the entire gaming world shift radically; and probably not for the better. It has already happened on smaller scales in other countries, so all it needs is one mainstream US exposure and we all as gamers, take one huge step backwards.

Regardless of these obvious flaws in the plan, the one thing that bothers me is that Blizzard, a flagship of the gaming industry, ignored one very important piece of tradition in gaming culture. Almost everyone I know that is an avid gamer, goes by a handle. Mine for example is “Rumbeard”, but also includes mutations like “Rum” and “Rummy”. Very few people know my actual name, nor I theirs, and this is perfectly acceptable. Handles, tags, aliases and guises are inextricably tied to the basic fun elements of gaming. Some choose to be witty with their names, others edgy, others downright weird. We take pride in our alter-egos and are given a clean slate to be who we want to be, completely separate from who we are. Gamers want that disconnect from the ordinary, it lets them escape and enjoy, in whatever capacity they choose.

Why Blizzard was oblivious to this is seemingly obvious, given their recent deal with Facebook. They did not forget it at all, instead they made a greedy grab for a popular tie-in and attempted to force social networking onto gaming, when almost all gamers did not want it. The two functions are not mutually exclusive despite whatever superficial similarities they might have. The entire world of  gaming relies on anonymity, at least from your true earthly identity.

If gamers are comfortable identifying themselves, it should be their choice to do so, not the discretion of the company who makes the game. As seen by the events of the past few weeks, companies will lose massive amounts of players (and in turn money) if they try to so radically change a paradigm that has been around since you could enter the name of your character at the beginning of an RPG. Digital privacy is important, nay paramount, in the gaming culture and to betray that idea is to forcefully shake the foundations of the industry.

Seeing that they decided not to use real names, some of my faith in Blizzard has been restored. My copy of Starcraft II is still pre-ordered and I will still gobble up any details I can about the future projects from Blizzard. I do however hope that this RealID fiasco is enough to prove to companies that they need to listen to their customers. Some of them are warlocks, after all.

This post requires more Vespene Gas.

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