I'm aware this editorial will probably be flushed away by the deluge of "I bot GTA4 lulz" blogs but I'm compelled to post it today nevertheless. I just read a news item about how some bigwig at Crytek has stated future games will not be PC exclusive, like Crysis, but on consoles as well. He blames this on piracy and the fact that console titles sell "4-5 times more". It's telling that this occurs at the time of arguably the year's biggest console release, GTA4, which is claimed will gross more than the box office takings of eight billion movies. I'll skip over the obvious implications for PC gaming, suffice to say the future looks bright for sloppy console ports.

Crysis, and its technical demands, are perhaps partly to blame here. I use that term loosely, for everyone's always whining about graphics and when mind-blowing ones are supplied, they switch to whining about them being unplayable. I personally have held off buying Crysis but that's mainly because I'm on a 6600GT and I prefer to make my toast in the toaster and not in the PC case. So there, I'm to "blame" too. What bothered me was some of the ignorant responses to the news article. One user went so far as to state that when someone blows 700 dollars on PC upgrades, it's annoying to have to pay another 50 to play the game. He even used the word "justified" when referring to piracy. Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. This modern mindset of being "owed" something really bothers me. "I deserve this." Why? Because you paid X bucks to a completely different company? If I blow my retirement fund on a [hawt] sports car, I'm not anticipating Shell will let me fill it with gas for free. It's high time people started being responsible about what they deserve and stopped seeing the world as one big vortex centred on themselves.

PC culture is partly to blame. What do you see in countless signatures? The specs of the user's "rig". I'm not one to have a nergasm upon seeing that someone has a quad core cpu, sigs irritate me more than anything, but it's symptomatic of the focus of the pc gaming scene. It's not about your collection, what you're playing, it's what kind of hardware you've shelled out for. Console gamers don't have to put up with that crap because no one's going to bother with: My Rig: Wii.

It's expensive to keep up with the latest gear. But one reason prices can stay that high is because there are enough people who play along and buy all that crap. PS3 was expensive, but too expensive as it wasn't selling, so down came the price tag. Is that possible with PC Hardware? Who knows...

My main point is, if PC gamers are going to (rightfully) complain about their format fading out, they should be doing something about it. It's not enough to harp on about consoles stealing exclusives, nor blame the companies for releasing demanding games. Start doing something more than hitting your favourite torrent sites as soon as the latest game comes out or posting bad reviews of Halo 3.

Try out some older games so that you realize that graphics aren't everything and can accept games on their gameplay merits rather than how good the reflections are.

Stop pirating. It's very simple. I won't judge the reasons, but if you (or your parents) can afford that sort of hardware, you sure can afford a game or two (that deserves it). The only way to save PC gaming is to vote with money on what games should be made. Otherwise, the future is a bleak post-apocalyptic world full of Cooking Mama games and ps3 ports. It's started already. If you think PC games are expensive, then wait for the price to go down. The message'll be "it sold xyz units when the price went down to this." Guess what kind of message downloading and playing it instead sends? You're seeing it all around you.

Support your favourite games. Developers deserve it.

Well, thank you for your patience! In exchange I offer nostalgic bleating on an era long gone.

I've been playing S.T.ALKER lately (I always get bored adding the dots) and let me tell you, it's quite an intriguing game. Not so much at the start but as the game world opened up so did my thirst for answers. I bring this up because while the game is enthralling, graphically and story-wise, the AI leaves much to be desired. Despite the characters all being relatively capable in the areas they inhabit, at times you'll just witness some really odd behaviour like someone just calmly strafing away over hills and valleys, aiming his gun at some figment of his imagination.

It's oddities like this that actually make the game more endearing to me. In today's flawless gaming world, you rarely get miniature failures but rather complete meltdowns as the game sends you to a bluescreen, ejects the entire DVD drive and changes your homepage to error.log. Roll on the patches.

Shortly after the switch to 3D and when complex AI began coming into play (more complex than look at player, fire projectile, anyway), my friends and I used to roll with laughter at the odd ideas the computer-controlled players sometimes had. You had to use your imagination to make up for graphics, so it was funny when you convinced yourself that this was a living, breathing team-mate, and he went ahead and started running in place in front of the wall. Picture a character running in circles on a bridge before jumping in the air and plunging off the edge, usually with a curt scream. You were used to those types of things because, frankly, that was the norm. I'm not saying you couldn't play the games as your characters were on par with lemmings, I'm just saying that you could forgive occasional randomness like this because it just came with the package.

That's probably why I get such a kick out of the chaos in Stalker. It gives it a sort of retro charm like the playable video games in San Andreas. A character might walk in one direction, pushing another character out of the way, while the other character stands still, arms folded, not really caring. They might even push you, the player. I had a wave of teammates give me a free ride as I stood in front of one and was pushed along. Oddly enough, however, there's a high concentration of chaos occurring at a specific area in the game. It might be because this is as close to a "city" as you get and there are frequently over 15 characters for the game to keep track of in a relatively small area. Admittedly, most of them are sitting around chatting or playing the guitar, though. As I was walking by on my way to trade some salvaged weapons for money, I came upon a dead guy. Just like that, a dead guy lying in the middle of the road. This was especially odd because this is a no-tolerance zone, so much so that when I tried to take out an annoying guard who repeats "git out of heer, Stokker." whenever you pass by him, I had a world of hurt brought down upon me. Yet here was a dead person, and nobody seemed to care. Naturally, I looted the body and moved on. This wasn't a "game body" placed there by the designers, though, as you can't loot those. This was a genuine NPC who had just kicked the bucket. Imagine my surprise, then, when I came upon another body in the same place on a future visit. Now, I know this was not the same body, as that one was still there. So now there were two dead bodies next to each other in the middle of the road. Either there was a sniper nearby or the bar was serving salami past its sell-by date, as they were just outside it.

Later on I found a visibly shaken NPC crouching with his gun drawn a few paces from the same place. If there's one thing the game does well, it's angst, as characters walk to and fro, gun drawn, alternating between stand and crouch and overall just looking like the last chicken in a box anticipating being taken away. In any case, there was now only one body, but one of the three NPCs usually sitting around a fire in a barrel a little further down had apparently keeled over and died. One of the them was visibly shaken, the other was just sitting down. When I came back, they were happily seated, playing a song on the guitar next to their dead colleague. Now that's a harsh world.

Just to clarify: I'm not looking for every future game to be populated with complete idiots (like online gamez lolz!!!1). I'm just saying that when a game can provide the immersion and storyline to captivate me, I'm willing to overlook the strange happenings as the rest more than makes up for it. And why not - you get a laugh out of it, and a blog topic to boot. I don't want gaming to be a chore. By all means get the AI working, the storyline down, and overall just give me the escapism I crave. I'll forgive other miniscule problems though, as I'm well aware of how far games have come.

This entry brought to you by
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Do people get sucked into games anymore these days? I don't mean figuratively, I just remember that this was a common occurence back in the 80s but I haven't seen it happen in any entertainment spectacles lately. They get pulled into comic books and TV shows/movies, maybe, but it's been awhile since I saw anyone get dragged into a game. The reason I ask, is because I was playing Beyond Good and Evil a few weeks back and it got me thinking about the best "role" to take on if you happened to become a victim of transplantation into a game.

See, almost every Pearl (the currency in that game) I found had to be handed over to a bunch of rasta rhinos so they'd upgrade my ship enough to enable me to continue in the game. I was only trying to save the whole planet, but I still had to pay through the nose to do it. I realized this happens time and again in games, and I arrived at the conclusion that taking a path of "selling or creating" is probably the best bet in the volatile world of a game.

Sure, the Hero gets all the glory. Whey-hey, they kicked the Evil Ruler out the window of the top floor of the Oppresive Dark Tower! All hail the Hero! Sure, that would be nice if you could get that far, but what about all the saves and extra lives you had to use? Naah, that's cheating. The heroes always have a whole lot of work to do and are frequently placed in precarious situations. Frankly, it's a lot more hassle than it's worth to get a kiss from a princess or something. Who knows if you're going to be the vanquishing hero, either? You might end up being one of those morons imprisoned somewhere and have to wait until the hero comes along and kills your guards, or, worse still, just a skeleton along the road, to be inspected (boots and coins taken), and forgotten.

You could be the evil overlord too, but you're just too big a target. You'd never get any sleep from all the worrying over whether you put enough spikes in the pit or goblins guarding the door. You do get to plot and scheme, though, and pepper it with a maniacal laugh. That does count for something, I'll admit, but think of all the things you have to plan for - foiling a hero's advances would surely take up all of your leisure time as well as business hours. What if he attacks when you're sleeping, too? You'd never get any decent rest. No wonder they're usually insane.

Don't even get me started on sidekicks, either. You risk your butt constantly, always get the second-best armor/weapons, and are frequently loaded with crap your boss doesn't want to be bothered carrying around himself. You also get stinky hand-me-downs from the Hero when he finds something better. And when you finally finish your quest, everyone remembers only the hero, at best you get relegated to "and co" in the history books. Nuts to that.

Now, I also think a bunch of those people standing around all day (or walking to and fro!) have it quite easy, but you don't really get anything out of it. Sure, your house is saved or he finds your lost frog, but overall it's a drab existence of shuffling about and whining. "You have to stop him!" or "Please, you're the only one who can save us!" are the types of things you have to spout. Lame, isn't it? Plus, if the Hero falls into the lava pit, you're doomed - I wouldn't like an existence like that.

And what about the Important Quest givers? Even worse. It's true that they don't have to work much, butthey're usually someone who can't do the mission themselves for who knows what reason, and once the hero is done with it, who's going to remember them? They're most likely going to be put under intense scrutiny and probably lose their job as a result of the fiasco. "So, you were the sheriff, were you? Why weren't YOU out in the bandit caves, then?" Once the press get a hold of it, you're finished, because frankly all you did was, yes, walk to and fro the whole time. Yes, like a chicken.

No, no. The best profession is the merchant, no doubt. You're never really put into any mortal danger, you sit in your house all day (where you can play Minesweeper at your leisure, as no one visits), and wait until that Hero sap stumbles in, bleeding, so that you can fleece him at your convenience. "I know you're saving our town, sir, but a guy's got to make a living and that's my best magical shield! 60,000 gold, I'm sorry. Okay, 59 999, because I like you. Sorry, you need more gold. Get back to fighting those orcs and stop ruining my rug." The Hero also saves you from going into any dangerous situation by bringing all the dungeon items back to you, leaving you to just knock 2/3 off the buying price and sell it yourself. You'll make a fortune from his constant visits! The merchants are also hardly ever in any real danger from the hero. Sure, you can slap some people around in some games, but the games mostly stop you from doing anything too serious. That, or there are loads of Fuzz around to make you pay dearly.
Overall it would depend what game I was in. Fallout, for example, allowed you to kill just about anyone, including merchants (although you might open a world of hurt on yourself), so I'd probably think twice about being a merchant in that world. All those mentats pills look mighty tempting to all the wrong people, whereas some loser eating tar off the side of the road doesn't merit a second glance. Come to think of it, I wouldn't want to be in that world at all if possible.
Most of the time, however, Merchants are well protected, and are definitely worth considering. I'm not really sure how you get started, though. Do you have to go spelunking somewhere to get some basic things to sell and build up your empire? In that case being a craftsman would be even better, as you'd only pay for raw materials. Or you could just go to the easier areas, clear them out, and wait until Bad Man realizes he needs to beef up security and sell your wares to the saps going in there to fight. Yes, methinks this needs much more planning and maybe isn't as easy a path as it would seem, but it's definitely the safest one.

Sometimes it seems the merchants get their just rewards, as in the fate of Griswold the Blacksmith (and the whole village) in Diablo, but this is not true. The fact is, if Griswold had given you the best stuff for free from the start, you would have made it to the bowels of hell all the quicker and accelerated everyone's demise. No, if you *are* doomed, you may as well stretch out your existence as long as possible.

Even the merchants in RTS games like WarCraft 3 have it easy. They just sell to whoever shows up and don't have to worry about being crushed like the rest of the people on the map. You make no enemies, and make a tidy profit to boot. Win win! In an RTS the merchant, if present, is by far the best, if you can't snag the role of "commanding arrow", that is.

In conclusion, I can't really find any reason why not to choose to be the merchant if the game decides to "play you" one of these boring sunday afternoons. You have great financial stability, you don't have to do the dangerous work, and you have a steady supply of goods coming in from all the adventurers out collecting. Saving the world is for suckers, the real money is in investing in the hero! Remember that, and don't forget to move out of the room quickly if your gaming system is suddenly hit by a wierd lightning bolt or ever starts glowing oddly. Do not touch it! Seek assistance! Oh and one more thing: if I ever play the game you're in, please give me some kind of finder's fee discount! I need that pistol!

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