Monday, March 21, 2005
Ah, a Lan Party
The other night, we had a LAN party after work at the office. I haven't had one of those in a long time. I forgot how fun it was.
We played Unreal Tournament 2004 - everyone but me ended up buying a new copy of the game to play, but there were no regrets. In fact, everyone who played commented on how we need to make this a regular event. Most of the guys hadn't played UT2004 before, but some were veteran RTS players. They got a little confused on Onslaught mode --- though everyone did reasonably well on offense, defense sucked across the board. Next LAN party should be better.
The cool thing about the LAN party that I don't see in online games these days so much is the whole chat-session afterwards. The killer thing about multiplayer games is chatting about them afterwards, who got who, explaining your defeats while bragging about your succeses, and so forth. You get that a bit in the Massively Multiplayer games - the persistant universe and community of regular players gives you a chance to swap stories about your shared experiences.
Back at SingleTrac we'd often get into big multiplayer games of ATF (Advanced Tactical Fighters) Gold, Rainbow Six, Starcraft, or whatever else the game-of-the-month was. We'd joke that it took us two hours to play a one hour game... an hour to play it, and an hour to talk about it afterwards. Flight Sims and RTS games were really good for this, as the 'stories' are longer and more involved. In FPS games, it's more of "what I was doing when you blew me to bits that one time" type commentaries. It's all good though.
Contrast this with... well... Battlefield Vietnam. I really like BF: Vietnam as a game. But online play is an empty, hollow experience for me. I rarely play, unless invited to play by a friend. When I do, I'm playing with strangers who I'll probably never meet again. There's no feeling of community, for me. Heck, most of the servers have team auto-balancing enabled, so the guys you are buddying with right now are likely to be enemies after the next person dies, so you really don't have time to really care. Human players are more devious and interesting than the (horribly bad and uninteresting) AI --- and that's about all I can say about the experience.
Labels: Mainstream Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:44 PM (Permalink)
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It's interesting how multiplayer features can be warped so badly as to prevent the game from being a social experience. I imagine that the idea of auto-balancing and the like probably sounded good on paper, but they had no idea that they were ruining the dynamics that make online play fun.
Or, on the other hand, you just don't have enough friends playing the game. I loved Total Annihilation, but everyone was playing Starcraft. If I wanted to have fun, I had to play Starcraft because I could only get one or two people to play TA.
But let that be your argument the next time someone argues that you need to put down the game and go outside to "get a life". Games are social, and they are much less harmful than booze and cigarettes.
Or, on the other hand, you just don't have enough friends playing the game. I loved Total Annihilation, but everyone was playing Starcraft. If I wanted to have fun, I had to play Starcraft because I could only get one or two people to play TA.
But let that be your argument the next time someone argues that you need to put down the game and go outside to "get a life". Games are social, and they are much less harmful than booze and cigarettes.
You were a Total Annihilation fan?
That is probably my second favorite RTS game, right (barely!) behind Age of Empires 2. I enjoyed Starcraft, but it didn't do it for me like TA.
Brian Hacking pointed me to the "TA Spring" project, which is a new engine that uses the old Total Annihilation data to allow you to play the game in full 3D. Not sure if it will ever see the light of day, but it's really cool... I watch the videos and I start hearing the awesome Total Annihilation music in my head:
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/
As to the social experience of games - before multiplayer gaming was still quite so popular (particular persistant, massively-multiplayer game), I attended a lecture at GDC by one of the head honchos from Kesmai. He had a lot of fascinating stories from one of the most popular multiplayer games out there at the time (aside from Quake), "Air Warrior." He spoke at length about the social experience of several of Kesmai's games - and the very real social bonds that formed around them.
He said two things that really stuck with me. The first was that, "It's not who you are playing against, it's who you are playing WITH." Specifically, your allies and teammates are the ones that make the biggest impact on you, socially.
The other was that "The heart doesn't know the difference" between virtual and real experiences. When the adrenaline and desperation is going, you may know that it's not a life-and-death experience, but when your buddy saves you from an attacker, there's some real-life gratitude that forms.
That is probably my second favorite RTS game, right (barely!) behind Age of Empires 2. I enjoyed Starcraft, but it didn't do it for me like TA.
Brian Hacking pointed me to the "TA Spring" project, which is a new engine that uses the old Total Annihilation data to allow you to play the game in full 3D. Not sure if it will ever see the light of day, but it's really cool... I watch the videos and I start hearing the awesome Total Annihilation music in my head:
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/
As to the social experience of games - before multiplayer gaming was still quite so popular (particular persistant, massively-multiplayer game), I attended a lecture at GDC by one of the head honchos from Kesmai. He had a lot of fascinating stories from one of the most popular multiplayer games out there at the time (aside from Quake), "Air Warrior." He spoke at length about the social experience of several of Kesmai's games - and the very real social bonds that formed around them.
He said two things that really stuck with me. The first was that, "It's not who you are playing against, it's who you are playing WITH." Specifically, your allies and teammates are the ones that make the biggest impact on you, socially.
The other was that "The heart doesn't know the difference" between virtual and real experiences. When the adrenaline and desperation is going, you may know that it's not a life-and-death experience, but when your buddy saves you from an attacker, there's some real-life gratitude that forms.
The cool thing about the LAN party that I don't see in online games these days so much is the whole chat-session afterwards.
That's a nice thing about VoIP, I think. With work, family, and random chance, a group of friends tends to drift apart (geographically). However, we'd always fire up TeamSpeak or Ventrillo during a game of UT2004, and it was as though we were in the same room. There's nothing like screaming, "Holy crap! Did you see that? Did you see that!?" to a crowd of your laughing comrades.
Sadly, we don't play Unreal anymore, with WoW in the picture.
Blizzard, you home-wrecker!
That's a nice thing about VoIP, I think. With work, family, and random chance, a group of friends tends to drift apart (geographically). However, we'd always fire up TeamSpeak or Ventrillo during a game of UT2004, and it was as though we were in the same room. There's nothing like screaming, "Holy crap! Did you see that? Did you see that!?" to a crowd of your laughing comrades.
Sadly, we don't play Unreal anymore, with WoW in the picture.
Blizzard, you home-wrecker!
# posted by 
: March 22, 2005 9:47 PM
: March 22, 2005 9:47 PM
Loved Total Annihilation; much like Void War, though, there was an absolute dearth of people who wanted to play.
I think Blizzard's Battle.net matchmaking service was their ace in the hole that made much of this work (in addition to making high-quality games). Cavedog had just tried making Boneyards, but that was a dog, and TA2 sucked...
Seeing that someone's making a new engine, that could be cool.
In other news today, I must start hunting for my next LAN party. Just ordered a new laptop which should handle 3D games much better than my creaky 366Mhz P3 Sony Vaio...
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I think Blizzard's Battle.net matchmaking service was their ace in the hole that made much of this work (in addition to making high-quality games). Cavedog had just tried making Boneyards, but that was a dog, and TA2 sucked...
Seeing that someone's making a new engine, that could be cool.
In other news today, I must start hunting for my next LAN party. Just ordered a new laptop which should handle 3D games much better than my creaky 366Mhz P3 Sony Vaio...
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