The Next Generation of Sports is Electronic January 7, 2015

When I was growing up I had several opportunities during my schooling to participate in extra curricular sports. Basketball, Football, and Baseball were just some of the sport programs the schools I attended offered their students to participate in. Like many students, I participated in these activities when I was in High School. No joke, I was on my High School’s Golf team my freshmen year. I played for a year, discovered I sucked at the game and was not getting any better at it despite how long I had been playing, and decided to pursue other interests in subsequent years.  I ended up doing something that wasn’t offered by the school, I played video games.  I have no regrets about that decision, as my experiences playing video games inspired me to peruse a career in discovering new media, as well as write countless fictional works I hope to publish one day.  Sadly, my schooling did little to encourage any of those accomplishments.  In fact, I don’t remember any experiences I had when I was in public school which assisted me in my electronic interests.  When the time came for me to decide what I wanted to do with my life I chose to forge my own path.  It turns out I was not alone.

Two major things have been happening over the past generation that few have taken a serious notice of.  Parents are not allowing their children to participate in physical activities due to the risk of injury, and because of that their children are preferring to spend their time indoors playing video games against each other instead.  For the most part, parents are afraid as hell about their children playing sports, especially sports which involve physical contact.  Let’s face it, the sports we play are dangerous.  Our bodies alone are not built to play them the way they need to be played.  We have to wear helmets and heavy padding just to practice football.  Baseball players constantly run the risk of being hit in the head with a projectile that can exceed speeds of 100 miles per hour.  Tennis players run the risk of elbow injuries due to their elbows bearing the brunt of a tennis ball’s impact hundreds of times in just a single match.  It just doesn’t make sense to play these barbaric games, for all we know they’re only still taught to young people out of some sense of tradition.  Let’s be honest, they were created at a time where there were few resources available for leisure activities and little to no alternatives, meanwhile studies have shown that video games improve hand-eye coordination, and have no discriminatory physical requirements.  Since the wide adoption of Personal Computers and the World Wide Web in the late 90s, our options have exponentially increased, and many, especially the younger generation that grew up being spurned by physical sports, are choosing to do other things with their time.  What this has meant is that the interest in traditional sports is dying, and an interest in electronic competitions (eSports) is growing.  Websites like Twitch.TV, which allows gamers to broadcast all kinds of video games, saw so much popularity they ended up getting bought by the enormous online retailer Amazon.com.  Meanwhile, Golf courses are shutting down all over due to a lack of interest by younger people just as golf’s regular players are literally dying of old age.  Interest in the Olympics is also dying out, as few countries are willing to foot the bill for a short-term event that has costs quickly spiraling out of control in exchange for very little payoff and heavy upkeep.

So it has come to a head that colleges would begin to offer scholarships for some of the best video game players in the world.  College students competing in online games is nothing new, I can remember during my freshman year at college that all my dorm mates wanted to play were games of StarCraft and Counter Strike, and I was pretty good at playing a newer title, Unreal Tournament 2003. The same computer network that college students use to look up information or type papers is perfectly designed to play multiplayer video games.  One of the first video games that offered the chance to connect to other players on other computers was Doom.  In the early 90s, Doom‘s shareware version was released and had a higher installation rate than Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.  College students living together in the same dorms discovered that they shared a Local Access Network (LAN) amongst their computers. While this is great if they need to share documents or other files amongst themselves, it has the side effect of offering amazing connection speeds if they wanted to play video games against each other, and they used their networks to play Doom, bringing a lot of college networks to their knees. Some people have also theorized this factor contributed to the success of Halo: Combat Evolved‘s multiplayer.  While not a PC title, the Xbox shipped with LAN capabilities (which Microsoft called System Link) and many college dorms were equipped with LANs that worked perfectly with Halo‘s System Link based multiplayer. With that, the floodgates opened and college students all over the world found themselves with tons of options for playing video games that they could not have at home.  A year later, Microsoft launched the Xbox Live service, and by the time Halo 2 was released, the players who had so much fun playing against their friends were now ready to bring their games online to play against the whole world.  The Xbox became a must-own item for college students, and Halo grew to be one of the biggest franchises in the history of gaming.  Now, the same generation that played Doom in college are parents, and they’re sharing their love of video games with their children, and now their children are playing.  Games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 have seen huge popularity in modern times.  They’re free to download by anyone with a computer, are fun to play, test strategy, and require skill you can only earn through experience to win.

Is it a sport?  This is something I’ve heard brought up by the older generation who grew up watching traditional contact sports, and pundits like Bryant Gumbel have made their opinions clear.  Their argument is they simply cannot fathom a competition without physical risk being considered a sport.  To that I ask what would they call chess competitions?  Chess is played in almost every country in the world and requires no physical exertion beyond the stamina needed to sustain yourself through a particularly long game.  Video games are very much like chess competitions as they require skill, strategy, and experience to win.  Also like chess, video games are developed and played all over the world.  In many cases it can take years to become fully familiar with just a single game, just as chess requires time and practice to master.  I’m sure Mr. Kazparov would be quite upset to hear that because Deep Blue was not hitting him repeatedly as he was playing chess against it, his contribution to chess in the form of his match against IBM’s computer Deep Blue is not to be championed.  Nearly twenty years since that event, Electronic Sports (eSports) have become a multimillion dollar industry.  The people who enjoy playing Golf, Football, Hockey, Baseball, or Basketball can watch the NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA where they can witness the best in the world compete in a sport they enjoy. The people who are playing video games want to see the best among us compete as well, the only difference is these gamers have no interest in traditional contact sports, they want to see the games they enjoy have the spotlight and because of that they have flocked to eSports events in droves.   Huge events have been held with enormous attendance for many popular game titles ranging from StarCraft 2 to Pokémon.  I’m not kidding, a major Pokémon tournament, featuring players from across the entire world, was held in my nation’s capital last year.

More colleges are planning to offer scholarships to gamers as they plan to form their own video game teams.  We may be seeing the beginning of our entire industry being accepted by the mainstream.  I only have one thing to say about that.  What took you so long?

What Makes Good Atmosphere in a Video Game Part 3: Console Placement January 5, 2015

For this article series, I’m going to continue going against expectations and continue talking about what I think makes for good atmosphere in a video game.  Now, when I say atmosphere I want to make it clear that I’m not going to be talking about the “atmosphere” in a game as created by having high quality graphics or surround sound effects, In my opinion, a game creates “atmosphere” by adding little details here and there. Previously I’ve brought up the fact that fake radio shows and fake advertising have contributed to my immersion in some games, today I’m going to bring up something new.

Nothing can immerse me more than seeing something from our world, in this case, the very console I’m playing the game on, in the game’s environment.  Typically you will see this kind of thing happen in console exclusive games or first-party titles. It is done either as an inside joke to make the player laugh at the irony of seeing the console they’re using to play a game in the very game they’re playing, or if you are less optimistic you can consider it blatant product placement. I happen to think that this adds a bit of charm to the game and further immersed me into the game’s atmosphere, but I’ll let you be the judge of how you feel about it.

So I got to thinking, just how many games are there that feature the game consoles that the player may be using to play the game in the game itself?  Here’s a short list of games I could find where that happened.

Throughout the entire history of the Pokémon franchise, Nintendo has put a lot of product placement into their Pokémon games.  In Pokémon, the trainer you control will typically have a Nintendo console in their bedroom, making it one of the first easter eggs you’ll find in the game.  In the third generation Pokémon games, like Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, your trainer have a GameCube with a Game Boy Advance as a controller in their bedroom.  Nintendo had been promoting GameCube/Game Boy Advance interconnection at the time, and this was a big for promotion for it, as Pokémon titles had a habit of being the biggest selling games on the handheld platforms.   Several games took advantage of this interconnectivity, including the Pokémon titles for games like Pokémon Box and Pokémon XD/Gale of Darkness.  In the first generation remakes, FireRed and LeafGreen, the trainer has a NES in their bedroom instead, heavily implying that this game was supposed to take place in the past, prior to the third generation titles.  This tradition of putting Nintendo consoles in the Pokémon games continued even to the sixth generation, as the opening scene of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, shows that your character keeps both a 3DS and a Wii U in their bedroom.  Although the Wii U is currently lagging behind in this console generation, its placement in the game could be the free advertising the Wii U needs to promote sales.

Anyone who played the incredible Xbox 360/PC title Alan Wake might have noticed the Xbox 360 in Hartman’s lodge.  One of the residents at the clinic is a game designer and if you go through his room you’ll find lots of gaming equipment, including the Xbox 360 console on a desk.  Alan Wake was exclusively on the Xbox 360 at its launch and I’m sure the game’s developer didn’t see any harm in having the console on display in the game’s world.   Next to the console is a single game, which at first sight might look like the Alan Wake game box, but is actually labeled Night Springs, a reference to a fictional TV series in the game.  While the game is a fake, the game’s case is the exact shade of green to normal Xbox 360 game cases, clearly signifying that the game is for the Xbox 360.  This isn’t the last time we will see this game and case in Alan Wake, Night Springs Xbox 360 game boxes were also a collectible item in one of the downloadable episodes.  I don’t know why Alan would have them strewn all over his mind’s environment, but Barry mentioned in the game that Alan did write at least one episode of Night Springs, so the series has a strong significance in his life.

My favorite title on the original Wii was the cult title No More Heroes.  In it, you play as Travis Touchdown, an Otaku who wins a beam saber in an online auction and tries to become the best assassin in the world.  Players who played the Wii version of the game might have noticed a Nintendo 64 in Travis Touchdown’s living room. You’ll probably notice it is sitting on one of his shelves when navigating the game menus while in his apartment.  This is a perfect addition to the set dressing as I can’t think of any real-world Otaku I’ve met who doesn’t own a Nintendo 64.

I can’t talk about any product placement in Halo Reach without addressing possible spoilers, so anyone who doesn’t want to get that game spoiled should probably skip this paragraph.  Towards the end of the game there is a cinematic where Noble Team is talking to Dr. Catherine Halsey, the creator of the SPARTAN-II program, in her secret lab, located deep below the surface of the planet.  While the scene takes place in a non interactive form, the location of the lab is actually fully modeled and accessible in the game’s environment. Because of that, players can get in and check it out for themselves if they know how to get in.  This is an easter egg, I admit, but if you happen to be able to get into Dr. Catherine Halsey’s lab, you’ll find her entire lab is actually run on an array of Xbox 360s networked together. While this is an awesome easter egg it isn’t an unreasonable or unheard of occurrence to find in the real world. My own country’s military will frequently reappropriate civilian technology for their own purposes to save money. In fact, there is a large array of networked Playstation 3 systems doing military applications as I speak, although if you ask me it should be used to host a kick ass LAN party. I guess Microsoft was able to persuade the Office of Naval Intelligence to go with their hardware instead of Sony’s.

Finally I want to take you on a big blast from the past and talk about one of the earliest 3D console games I can remember playing. The Metal Gear Solid franchise has a long standing history on the Playstation platform and some various easter eggs in the games reflect that.  In the first Metal Gear Solid, you’ll find Otacon has a Playstation 1 in his lab, although if you play the GameCube version, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, this was changed to a GameCube with a WaveBird controller.  In Metal Gear Solid 4, there are a ton of references to the Playstation brand throughout the entire game, the most blatant of which is a codec call between Snake and Otacon during Act 4.  As for actual console placement in that game, you can find a PS3 somewhere on Otacon’s transport plane, and Sunny can occasionally be seen playing on a PSP.

These small details give me a deeper connection to the game I’m playing, and succeed in further immersing me in the game’s environment. By bringing in elements from the real world, these games give the player a sense of reality and makes the atmosphere that much more powerful.