When Sally Pwned Harry

So, we tried playing Everquest 2 for a little while. We played through the trial a little bit and it seemed pretty fun, so we went out and found a couple copies of the full game. The first bad sign was the difficulty in finding the original full version of said game. Best Buy no longer carries the game, nor does EB Games. We finally tracked down a GameStop that had a couple of copies, but that was after the dude at the store initially thought that they didn’t carry it. Well, actually, we got one copy, brought it home, realized there was no free 14-day full trial of the game, and had to go to a second GameStop to get another copy. This is after the loooooooong install and patching phase. And of course there are no places to download the patches before you have installed the game, so we couldn’t begin downloading patches before we got the game. Oh, and the trial copy is an 11MB download that then goes on to download 1.4 (or so) gigs of data via Sony’s servers (which took about 6 hours).

So, getting the game was quite the process. We finally started playing and realized that these worlds are totally empty. I have to make the comparison to WoW, both because I’m familiar with and because it’s the competition. When you walk into Orgrimmar or Ironforge, your chat window generally explodes with evidence of the economy and the activity (and the idiocy) of the players. When you walk into Freeport or Qeynos in EQ2, all you get is silence. And lag. Even though no one is there. We probably didn’t give the game a good enough chance to show what it’s all about. Because we immediately went back to WoW. And we were happy. (We’re on Akama as Seriallos (Harry) and Erizein (Sally) as Alliance (though we shall never not be For The Horde)).

I also played Eve Online for a day to get a taste of that MMO. It strikes me as the kind of MMO that you would play while you were playing a console game or watching a movie. Unfortunately for Eve, they have recreated the reality that space is big. Really big. In that space, you do have a lot of players (something like 80,000 players share the one world server). However, when you realize that you have the population of a smallish town in Iowa, with the amount of cornfields that Iowa has, you’re left lacking a little bit. And travelling via auto-pilot through cornfields is not the most exciting or rewarding game experience.

So, we welcome ourselves back to Warcraft, because it’s good there. Hopefully by the time we get our new characters to the end game, it’ll be more enticing to us than it is now.

Check this site out if you want to lose the next few hours to months of your life. He’s pulled together a rediculously comprehensive list of internet based flash games. Look a few posts back for his list of the top 20 of the year. Lots of good time wasting stuff here.

So, Harry and I took our little Christmas break fully intending to come back fresh, revitalized, and ready to write some reviews, make our site look all pretty, you get the point. Instead, certain unnamed evil people introduced us to TV. Specifically the programs LOST and The West Wing. So, instead of being a couple who games, we’ve quickly become a couple who obsessively compulsively watch 8 hours of these god-awfully gripping shows. And then repeat the process the next day. The end result is that, most importantly, you, dear reader, have been woefully neglected. But might I also mention (since this is my blog and I can write what I damn well please) that we have also lost our L33T status as those people who eschew the tawdry crap that posits itself as entertainment to the mindless unwashed masses. We are now those masses. And I won’t even go into when I last had a shower.

So, to redeem ourselves, both in your eyes and our own, we’ll try and get cracking here. I know, I know, I’ve said that before. But I mean it this time! Really!

So we’ve been off WoW for a couple months now (we recently logged on and said our temporary goodbyes to our guild). In that time, we’ve been itching for something new like WoW. So we’re on a MMO kick. Or at least starting one. We got Second Life last night and toyed around with that, and I’m currently downloading and updating the EQ2 (only 8 hours of downloading left) and Eve Online demos/trials. Second Life looks really interesting - we explored for several hours last night. The only issue is that it looks like sex clubs and gambling areas are the most popular places in the world at the moment. I imagine some of this has always been the case, but we’re still looking for those pockets of interesting stuff that people have created. (It must be said that Sally already really digs the appearance and creation tools - I think she worked on her avatar for 45 minutes whiles I was out exploring the larger world). We’ll let you know how these ones go.

We’ve just been busy. A new GameCube, a few games, the first season of Lost, the first season of West Wing, and stuff like that. I picked up Pikmin, Lost Kingdoms, Animal Crossing, and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes for our brand new GameCube and we recently got both Rez and Stubbs the Zombie from Gamefly. So we’ve been busy. We’ll have info on all of those hopefully before too long. Until then, Happy New Year!

A while ago, I said I would compile a list of themes which sprang from the longer post I wrote a week ago or so and it’s comments. It’s taken a bit longer than I hoped to get around to this (see the post just below this) but here we are. So here’s the list. What have I missed? What has been talked to death? What are you interested in? Basically, what I’m trying to do is couch all these discussions in the framework of gaming for couples. I’m not trying to turn this blog in to yet another site talking about gender and gaming or women gamers, or pick your hot-academic-topic of the moment. However, I do realize that in order to have and intelligent and useful conversation about gaming, couples and the dynamics therein, you have to look at things like power and gender in games. Because all of that, from what avatars look like, to who games are marketed to, to how the gaming industry sets up a power dynamic between Harry and I whether we know it or not, all of that and more is going in to and affecting our experience as a couple who games. So although there are blogs and books and websites which address all of this much more thoroughly and thoughtfully than I’m able to, I still feel they are an important aspect of gaming to bring to the table when we are talking about couples who play.

All of that being out of the way, here’s that list:

• Gaming as an identity: both male and female, what does it say about you.
-The de-feminization and over-sexualization of female gamers
-What is the male flip side? What does being a male gamer mean? Is it only an identity that you choose? Or can it be given to you? As in, if you play games casually and are male are you automatically a gamer in the eyes of the public?

• The hetrocentric nature of the conversation, this blog, gaming in general, etc.

• Power, gaming and couples.
-Assuming a m/f couple, how does this affect, if at all the dynamic between them? How does it affect game play? Choice of games? Etc?

• Where are women’s invitations in to games?
- How to we get hooked? How do we get permission to play? From others? From our selves?
- What are we given permission to play socially? RPG’s, the sims, “cute” games, but not FPS, etc

• Perceived vs. actual minority status of women gamers
- Including the domination of the male voice
- Women who play seen to be “giving in” to their male partner rather than having an interest of their own.

• The bigger problem of how do men and women share interests and experiences that are traditionally gendered, regardless of what it is.
- How do we share these important parts of ourselves when they are traditionally inaccessible to those we care most about?

• Men, Women and MMOs
- a whole nother barrel of worms

So, again I haven’t been writing much. I’ve been disgustingly sick for weeks now, and while watching Harry play games while I huddle in a blanket has been a good passtime, writing about said games has seemed like work. Work which requires my eyes to focus and my hand-eye coordiation to be good enough to type. So, my appologies, I’ll be back in the saddle soon enough. Also, from tomorrow until next wednesday Harry and I are traveling south to hang with his family for Christmas, so we may or may not get any posting done.

So, that’s the heads up for now, after the insanity of the holidays we’ll try and get you some reviews, and maybe even an actual design for the site! Whooopee!

Peter Jackson displeased with EA’s LOTR games. Apparently, he liked Beyond Good and Evil so much that he hired the main guy to work on King Kong with him.

Sally and I had a hoot last night (that’s right. I said ‘hoot’) playing Toejam and Earl for the Genesis at Perkin’s (IHOP/Denny’s style establishment up here in the hinterlands, in case you are not familiar) on my laptop. I haven’t had my own powerful PC just about ever. Thank you, work. I grabbed 2 USB gamepads about this time last year, and we’re finally using them. But there we were, drinking coffee, hanging out, watching the mutants, and playing Toejam and Earl. It was great. We’ll have a review up soon. (Sidenote: While in many ways, I despise Windows, it is nice to have a capable Windows machine. Trying to find good emulators and USB support for Macs is much harder than for PCs).

The other bit is that I think I have the review system ready to go. Now we just need, uh, reviews. Of stuff. However, if anyone wants to know how to hack in support for metadata post ordering in WordPress, I’m your man.

Also, Rez is on its way. Hopefully. We finished up Beyond Good and Evil (which was good) and, at the moment, Rez is listed as available now, as opposed to having a short wait. So, hurry up postal service. Get Beyond back so we can get Rez and play with our new peripheral.

The Video Game Revolution: “Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked” by Henry Jenkins | PBS

Some of this you will already know, but of particular interest are #4 and #7. Also, this was an interesting series, and if you can get your hands on it, do. Also, if you follow the link on this page at the top to the main menu, you will find a number of very good essays. Good grief but do I love PBS.