Community and why it matters.

     This post has mostly nothing to do with science, but if you do want something more along those lines here's a chill video I did the other night.

     Introduction aside, I want to take this opportunity to talk about one of my favourite time honoured  hobbies and probably a time honoured hobby of anyone born after the  Cold War.

    I am referring to video games.

    I am a gamer, always have been, always will be. I am not  a legit hardcore gamer although I have sacrificed long hours into the night to pursuit nights to pursuit it. I consider myself a mainstream gamer.  While I occasionally dedicate long hours to building and destroying interstellar empires on Sins Of a Solar Empire or emerging planetary ones on Civ 4 my main pallet of gaming usually comes in the pursuit of the perfect killstreak on popular online PC shooters like Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3. Call me shallow and unsophisticated. The pacifist in opposition of Nuclear Proliferation SonOfTerra92 enjoys playing Call of Duty. Now that the cat is out of the bag I would even go as far as to say that I'm actually good at it depending on how many hours I put in per seasonal "binge" streak (I don't always play online shooters all the time but when I do I unlock time travelling capabilities)

    This article definitely has a Christmas morning miracle feel to it. I am trying to convey a generalization that recently dawned upon me from one of my latest gaming experiences. As to how a Modern Warfreak / Camperfield veteran can find some greater meaning of life from playing online shooters I don't know. Maybe it just stems out from a combination of being born into a generation that constantly seeks instant gratification and me naver having grown out of the "toy soldier" phase of childhood.

      My story begins late 2010, I had just gotten my hands on a community driven non steam version of Modern Warfare 2 called alterMW2. LAN aside the network functioned well enough to allow for stable night time gameplay. It was my first real online experience with gamers from across the globe. The game impressed me to great lengths (this was 2010 mind you) and I was hooked on the fast paced mechanics that the Call of Duty series has been known for, but somewhere deep within the recesses of my mind I wondered "Is this even legal?"




The way its meant to be played :Enough said...

      AlterIWnet or simply "Alter" was a community driven modding group that were every bit as passionate  about the Call Of Duty franchise as I was. The problem was that they mostly owned PC's and just couldn't accept the  hand that was dealt to them as PC gamers when MW2 hit store shelves late 2009. No dedicated servers meant no mod support which was at the very heart of communal PC gaming.

     The Alter project started around 2 years ago. I joined a little later after their launch. I did not at their genesis but farther along enough that I could get a lot of clean fun with minimal "aimbotters" and "wall hackers". That was 2010, fast forward to 2011 and we find alter growing into a multi game community with Alter-ops for COD Black Ops entering Beta and Alter - MW 3 going into Pre Alpha. Their main project that they had originally set out on was coming of age, AlterMW2 was seeing a revitalization in the form of  Alter IW4M2 and the availability of dedi's all the way here in Malaysia . In MALAYSIA !!! (sorry for the all caps, was just trying to hit a point). I could play on a  streamyx connection and have 60 fps gameplay with an average latency below 50. That's quite unprecedented especially when global triple A titles usually lean towards hosting servers in Singapore, which gives rise to other problems (I'm looking at you Battlefield 3)

      Going back to late 2011 I was sill on alterMW2. I must have clocked in at least one hundred man hours playing it, that far into the development cycle the game was as polished as a whistle, no hackers , no tubers , no laggers. It was pure competitive fun that you could choose to take seriously or not (of course I did take it seriously). The developers had taken a game that was bad on PC and turned it into a and playable gem of a title with a living and breathing support community.

I was that good, at one point of time.

     Which brings us to 2012, today . After finishing another semester I realised that I had a lot of computing power that went under-used after purchasing a new desktop the previous year so I bought an original retail copy of battlefield 3 and gave it a few runs on my new "beast-machine". The experience was impressive, offering nearly realistic combat and networking that worked well enough as long as you stayed within the bounds of Singapore and Hong Kong. Don't even bother with Japan if you're playing from Malaysia, you will end up getting kicked faster than a Pro Quickscope on COD. By that time I was also a involving myself with alpha testing alterMW3 whenever I was lucky enough connect.

     Here's where Activision really fucks me over. As a member of the alter community I had made quite friends and contacts from matches and forum threads on the inter web. Hell, I liked these people and enjoyed gaming with them. I looked forward to joining lobbies with them even-though I had never even met them face to face. Even during the occasional match when a "god amongst men" ( a really really good player) was in the lobby, I relished the challenge of engaging them as opponents even though in the end I would lose the match. It was what the gaming community calls a GG (good game). Most of my GG's in the history of my gaming career up to the release of this article came from alterMW.

    So when Activision decided to let loose their corporate hound dogs on the valiant modding community my initial reaction of  shock was masked with sombre tones of calmness. It was a during a semester so I didn't have much time to game let alone network contacts from games. I initially got the news in person from a friend that I had met from a game of alterMW2 who happens to go my university. When I got home only then did the sheer  magnitude of the news hit me. They were really going to shut down alter. A notice had appeared on the forum page regarding a cease and desist letter from Activision. It was really going to happen. Those bastards were going to shutdown people who legitimately made their game better. However, given the fact that I had gotten the game for free also contributed to their downfall. If anything Alter had accomplished to extend the franchise community and fanbase by leaps and bounds greater than the original publishers could ever have done.

    And as an industry isn't that what actually matters. I would have bought the game eventually ... eventually ;)

    Cliff Bleszinski  (Cliffy B for short) a notable figure in the gaming industry once said in an interview with g4TV "In the old days typical development cycle for a game would end at the game's release date. Nowadays the real challenge begins at release on day 1. You just cannot stop building on a community with strong content support". As much as I occasionally loathe cliffy B's ego of which is usually as inflated as that of Kanye West but I have to say that that man does have a point. A strong community is the lifeblood of any successful franchise. They are the people that buy your games or at the very least fall in love with the license and if that isn't a strong enough incentive on its own then the future of video-games as an art platform and as a social phenomenon is totally fucked.

Proprietary Engine or not: If you were gaming in the 90's you'll know what Quake DM felt like.

     Recently, as of a few days of writing this Modern Warfare 3  Activision's latest entry in the popular Call of Duty series went F2P for the weekend on Steam. As preoccupied as I was with upcoming programs and a final exam to boot I was actually ripe with excitement as I planned a weekend getaway where I could try  to"prestige" (The Modern Warfare equivalent of level capping.). I preloaded the game over night and by Friday morning on the 26th of April it was all ready to go. I logged on and altough I did not have the same online profile as I had with my pre alpha AlterMW3 set-up I was still excited to immerse myself in some fast paced COD gameplay but when I finally got around to playing it I felt as if the charm was missing. The networking was definitely more stable than that of alterMW3 and I could easily match-make for games faster than the Alter alpha but the game was full of hackers (Killed by an "aimbotter" on the 3rd match upon starting lol). This was a Steam release, I had thought all the problems would had been fixed for a retail tilte.

This was fun 3 months ago: now its just kind of drab. Even if it is free ...

      I ended up not binging the game for the weekend, in fact that Friday night I resorted to seeking "other" forms of entertainment (if you know what I mean) and I did not regretting it. At the time of this writing the F2P week is already over.

Cool marketing campaign: but will the real code live up to the hype ?

       I started the weekend with the clear intentions of a "Prestige"ious trip down memory lane. I ended up finding out that those memories weren't the same ones worth revisiting. Had it been with a bunch of people worth remembering then maybe the feeling would have lasted. Just maybe I would have walked the whole road home.

We're All Soldiers: Standing on the line, sometimes we lose what we fight so hard to live for...

     By the time you are reading this, more news on Black Ops 2 would have alread surfaced, probably a teaser or some gameplay footage. Its up to you what to make of it. Just because it has a futuristic setting dosent hide the giant money hungry puppeteers pulling the strings behind the scenes. That's the real root of why the industry is yet to be all that it can be.

    Maybe video-games just need their "Woodstock". Its "One good rock show to change the world"something truly unforgettable.

    SonOfTerra92 signing off.
    See you online.