Games As The New Pub

The Guardian Gamesblog has a column up talking about a panel held at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival last week. A discussion was held with several folks from the online world development business, where they discussed games as new social playgrounds or pubs. From the article: "In Korea, the gamers play online games together. It's a social replacement. It's a way for non-social people to socialise. They've even started developing games for bored girlfriends of the guys who're playing Starcraft with their mates."

Comments

not a social replacement...

[yagu]

From the post:

It's a social replacement. It's a way for non-social people to socialise.

It may be a way for non-social people to socialize, if you really want to call it that. But it's hardly, and never will be a social replacement for people who really like to socialize.

I've never really "got" games so I admit a personal bias, but I've never seen any evidence in wave after wave of new technology and new generations of games there is any indication games are a social replacement. I see the same people playing the same games in some variation, but I see no exodus of people-to-people socialization to interaction via gaming.

Yes, there will always be gamers and yes, I see a place for games and gamers, but it's a niche demographic. And, it's probably not worth a lot of investment of time to write games for the girlfriends of the gamers. Either they too like to play games or they don't. They're more likely to be happy finding a good TV show, a good magazine (or a crummy one for that matter), or a new boyfriend.

Speaking as a Starcraft expert

[CrazyJim1]

Koreans were the easiest opponent in Starcraft when I played. Today they're probably pretty good. The reason Koreans were the easiest opponent was that they all hung out in gaming pubs. In gaming pubs, you exchange information on what is the best strategy, but seldom does original thought originate from them. You would always fight zergling/muta rushes that were so predictable that it was simple to counter them. Now many people died to this zergling/muta rush because the Korean players had it down to a science. They played a lot, and they really got their strategy down efficient, and that was their downfall when I or any other pro played them.

Now you could play someone of another nationality who doesn't have a gaming pub, and you'd have no idea of what to expect because people that don't hang out in gaming pubs tend to wing it and develop their own strategy. Typically people who don't hang out in gaming pubs used strategies that were original but not refined. I can only remember a handful of people in the world that had original strategies that were completely refined.

Thats about it for my post, I'll just conclude with some memories of Starcraft :) Starcraft(not Broodwar), had a balance that was unique. If a pro squared off against a non-pro, the game would be over far before the third tiered units came onto the field. If a pro squared off against another pro, and there was no mutual respect involved, the one who made the first mistake lost well before tier 3. If a pro squared off against another pro, and one side respected the other, it'd win, unless it made a mistake(The superior economy + defense beats any attack). Finally if both pros squared off against each other, and both gave mutual respect, then the game could really become a tier 3 nightmare. It was very rare for 2 pros meet each other. It was even more rare for 2 pros to meet each other and show respect for each other.

Re:Speaking as a Starcraft expert

[CrazyJim1]

Respect in Starcraft is playing a solid game, instead of pulling gambits. A gambit can be something such as sacrficing economy in order to rush early, or fast expanding in hopes your opponent can't stop it. When you sacrifice economy to rush, you're hoping that your opponent isn't paying attention and doesn't has enough defense to stop it. When you fast expand, then you're hoping your opponent doesn't spot you, and if he does, that he doesn't stop it.

If you respect your opponent, you won't try cheesy strategies that can be easily beaten. They're both dead end strategies that have no hope of winning if they're stopped. If your early rush is beaten, then your opponent has economy or tech on you, and you lose. If your fast expand is destroyed, then your enemy typically has a larger army and tech on you to finish you off.

When you respect your opponent, you don't try a punk strategy: you play within the limits of what is possible. If you disrespect your opponent, you're banking on the idea that he doesn't have the basic skills to deal with common tactics. Some people don't mean to actually disrepect you, they simply are one trick ponies who don't know any other strategies. I don't mind when people disrepected me as I'd play within the limits and win almost every time.

Re:Speaking as a Starcraft expert

[Quill_28]

Think five move check mate in chess.

To perform this 'trick' move you are assuming that the player is not very good.

If he is he will simply block and you will be out of position.

Performing the five move checkmate on an experienced played would be showing disrespect and also a good way to lose.

Well, look at the bigger picture

[Moraelin]

You never "got" games, in your own words, but you're here posting on Slashdot, which is a kind of socializing in itself. I also personally know pretty social people (in fact, "chatterboxes" would also be a way to describe some of them) which do supplement their face-to-face chatting with a variety of online means. Game are just a slice of that.

If you're looking at online communication in general, there is a very signifficant number of people who use email or VOIP on a daily basis to communicate with old friends far away, instead of going out and making new friends to get their fill of chatting. Mom for example spends literally hours emailing everyone she knows, and now is in another town or some of them in another country.

That's the kind of "exodus" that is happening. Some time ago, if you needed to talk to someone, you pretty much _had_ to go do just that. Go find someone, anyone, in your near proximity to talk to face-to-face. You wouldn't log into Slashdot or some game board to see who answered your messages, you'd go to the pub or whatever.

There are however problems with that model, that you probably realize. Phisical proximity being the deciding factor, other stuff like common interests was mostly a hit-and-miss affair. Mostly miss, in fact.

Let's be frank, many a conversation I've had were boring as hell. And many a conversation I've been basically in what I call "Eliza mode", after the program ELIZA. You can talk to people for _years_ by just paraphrasing the things they've said right back at them later. (Keyword being: later. If you do it right in the next sentence they tend to notice it.)

Conversely, there also is a conformity pressure involved in getting that kind of thing going at all. E.g., let's be honest, a lot of people are into football or listen the same music as everyone else in their school, just to have some common topic with the people in that small pool of people available based on proximity.

The mirage of the internet is basically that it eliminates this very problem. You can talk to the people _you_ want to talk to (old friends, or random people who hopefully have the same interests because they're in a chat room or on a board dedicated to that topic, or in a game you play) rather than whatever happens to be available.

And arguably even telephone was already the beginning of that effect. When your kid would rather spend half the evening on the phone with his/her school mates, instead of having those 19'th century family evenings where you have to talk to each other merely by virtue of that being the only choice available, that's just it. The available pool of people to talk to is now larger than what physical proximity used to dictate.

Internet just enlarged the pool even more.

The effects are more subtle than noticing an outright "exodus" where everyone just stops talking face-to-face at all, but they are there.

And it has to be said that some people did, in fact, do just that: mostly stopped talking face to face. They're not a majority or anything, but they exist. Some of those apparently "non-social" people are in fact social people all right. They just switched to talking over a medium instead of tolerating any self-centred bore to get any communication at all.