Slashdot Mirror
Christmas Shopping For A Gamer
An anonymous reader writes "This step-by-step guide shows you have to find the perfect gift for your gamer, even if you don't know anything about gaming yourself." From the article: "Trying to figure out which games are sure-fire hits and safe bets for the gamer in your life is never an easy task. Tastes range from the light and fluffy to the dark and deadly, and there are games for almost every type, style, and preference. There's no better way to come across as being on top of the game than to give just the right title, just as there's no faster way to cast yourself as clueless by dispensing copies of the GameCube's Charlie's Angles."
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/153422 3&tid=233&tid=188&tid=97
I may be wrong but you're downright ugly!
Just buy them a gift card or give them money.
There, article replaced in one sentence. Jesus. Who pays people to write shit like this? Mom, Dad, Girlfriend, Boyfriend, Cousin, Uncle - we don't want you buying us games unless we specifically say "Buy us x."
schild
editor, f13.net
Best geometry-related educational game I ever played
Occasionally I'll find good deals. If I do get a game for christmas it might be something off the $10 shelf at Walmart.
Aw Frell this
adom of course. There's no better game, even though I've recently bought 6600 GT (because I need dualhead DVI for development). And even though nexuiz works pretty well on my debian system under 1600x1200, with 70 FPS.
next question, this one was easy.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Then when the Inevitable Happens, they can pop in the CD and you'll have some free time.
Stoner hands Trooper Ashtray, with lit joint and a dozen roaches
I found the easiest thing to do is point them to my Amazon wishlist. The secret is to have lots of items at various price-points. It makes their shopping easier and you get what you want. That way I'll be playing Medal of Honor 2 for my PC instead of Backyard Hockey for the GBA.
Sorry, but when you give someone a straight line like that, it is unfair to expect them to resist.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
And why would that be a problem? People who aren't gamers cannot understand that our game preferences aren't only based on the quality of the game itself. A game might get rave reviews, and fit in my favorite genre, but I might not buy it. I just am not interested.
The best example I have is Shogun:Total War/Crusader:TW. I loved the first one, played it to death, but I didn't even consider for one second buying Crusader. I wasn't interested. Even though the genre/quality/publisher is the same, I liked the first one because I'm an anime junkie and love anything with sociopaths running around with on horses with Katanas, "Crusader" just didn't work out for me.Just ask me what I want... screw the surprise, at least you won't end up having paid for a game that I don't want/need.
The article includes a list of titles to compare the gamers collection to, stating that if he/she has none of them, they probably don't have a taste and you can buy anything, since the'll probably not notice the difference. Sadly, I appear to have no taste :-D These types of games I think are missing (some probably because their list seems to target teenagers and aims to only include ESRB "right" games, still I was amazed not to find a single one of these):
Adventure Games (the Myst series, LucasArts, Sierra, simply put, there are none on the list)
FPSes (Half-Life, Doom, FEAR, System Shock, again none are on the list at all)
MMOs (WoW, EVE, you guessed right, none)
It would'nt hurt to include a warning about PC vs. console as well, I've seen clueless grandparents mix those things up...
How about just asking them what they want?
Or, start a conversation with them about games, ya know actually talk to them, and they'll eventually volunteer the information.
No need for a covert operation.
Now I've seen Everything
That's exactly what I was thinking, just ask.
It's not like the question "Hey, what do you want for Christmas?" is some wierd thing. People ask it all the time.
Now I've seen Everything
Stupid mods.
notice this was in the NINTENDO section? so that's why he's not delving into which console the gamer has, or console vs. PC or anything like that. And what's with the list? I glazed over it, but it seems like it's old...NFL/NHL2k3????
Edwin A. Abbott's classic tale of interdimensional hot, crimefighting chicks.
Charlies Angles? - I know they're (a)cute, but the reference is a little obtuse. ;)
Stuck down a hole! In the middle of the night! With an owl!
"Christmas shopping for the 12 year old gamer with ADD"
the one who busts on the GC is the one who can't spell angels in their submission. makes sense.... go back to your m$ xbox!
Well, I generally refrain from blatantly commercial posts but in this case it's on topic and begging for it. If it's a PC gamer you are shopping for, esp. a MMORPG player, it would be hard to go wrong with a t-shirt from my girlfriend's Gaming and Geek T-Shirt shop.
Gamers have a life?
Just ask me what I want... screw the surprise, at least you won't end up having paid for a game that I don't want/need.
This is why for my birthday I got a wrapped game. If I didn't like it, I could just return it.
Slashdot posting for a beginner: 1. Write a useless article about something everything already knows 2. Go to ./
3. ???
4. Post it!!!
CIV I
CIV II,
CIV III,
alpha centaur,
Master of Orion
Master Of Orion II
Master Of Orion III
Stars!
Dungeonmaster II
Sure I have no taste since none of my games are on the list, so please pick any game, I'm probably happy with ANY random game that a relative throws at me.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
According to this list, I would get Splintercell: Chaos Theory, despite never having played Splintercell. I have the game because it was amazingly cheap somewhere and I figured I might want to give it a try one day, but haven't gotten around to it.
If I hadn't bought it, according to this article, I'd have no real sense of taste and any game would be fine. Nothing could be farther from the truth: I have a very strong sense of taste, and most of the games on this list just aren't my taste. Games that suit my taste are rare, although Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance would be very well accepted. No idea how good it is, but BG1 was okay.
But if you really wanted to make me happy, you should give me a serious, hard turn-based strategy game, a category that's completely ignored by this article. How in heaven's name is it possible that it doesn't even mention Civilization 4?
Fortunately it doesn't matter for me; we don't give gifts at Christmas but at Saint Nicholas (December 5), and my sister knew my taste in music well enough to get me an excellent CD from Tristania.
For those in the dark... Flatland. Readily available on project gutenberg, but somebody near me is getting a nice edition for christmas, now that I've been reminded of that.
Cheers, parent
Sure, occasionally you'll miss out, happens with books, movies, cds or similar (also popular gifts) too, but it's not that big a deal, furthermore usually wrong games can be swapped-in, assuming they're unopened, or failing that at the least partially recovered on Ebay.
It's not hard to me to guess (allthough I've never specifically asked) that my wife would like Sly 3, or Shadowhearts Covenant, or any Jak & Daxter game she doesn't already own for Christmas. For *new* series, stuff I ain't seen her play, its triciker, still, a general knowledge of what *type* of games and what type of setting she likes lets me make good guesses.
A not-too-complicated RPG with swords in it, say StarOcean would probably work well. A star-wars game is rigth out.
If you don't know enough about games or the person you're buying for to know what a "RPG" is, or if the game you're buying is set in the 1700s or the 3000, then I don't think it's such a good idea to buy it.
It's nothing specific about games btw, I also wouldn't buy a book, a cd, a movie or a piece of clothing without having some more specific idea what the person wants. It's not as if the 13 year old hoping for Harry Potter will be all that satisfied with Kafka. (probably not anyway)
I give my friends a gift voucher each for Duke Nukem Forever when it comes out, expiring 24th Dec the next year. I've been giving them the same voucher for close to 10 years now.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
I'm inclined to think the same.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
You can never have one too good and it's what every gamer, myself included, actually wants. In some shocking cases absolutely requires to play the games from last Christmas. :(
Don't give the fish. Teach'em how to fish for themselves :-)
That's the best present: knowledge for an endless supply of games.
If you want something to go with the eMule tutorial, give'em a 100mbit connection.
what the hell. This has got to be the stupidest article i've ever read. He's talking about like he's about to go to war, not buying a freakin videogame. He may be using smart vocabulary and is a good writer, but what he is talking about makes no sense what so ever.
*shrug* I don't know
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
is to buy them a gift card, or give them money. Games are personal.
Quite frankly, unless you're willing to reject all of the "commercialization" of the Xmas holiday completely, and refuse to give *any* pre-built products as gifts - you can't escape what you're complaining about anyway!
I mean, what do you suggest? We all start making hand-made wooden gifts for everyone on our shopping list, so they "truly come from the heart"? Or maybe we should just write hand-written letters wishing them a happy holiday, and offer to mow their lawn a few times next summer, or shovel snow off their driveway for free?
Personally, I find it the exception rather than the rule where I feel I have a great gift idea for someone I know, and feel positive they'll appreciate it every bit as much as anything they'd find on their own if I gave them a gift card or cash. Xmas may be "about giving rather than receiving", but nobody really wants to be the one giving less than desireable gifts.
If anything, I'd venture to guess that most of the notion of "cash is such an impersonal gift" came from the mouths of retailers, scared some cash recipients might just save or invest the money, rather than spend it in their stores. IMHO, cash is a *very* personal gift, simply because you only earn money as a result of your labor. If someone thinks enough of me to give me a portion of their "buying power" they earned through hours and hours of work for someone else, I'm very thankful for that.
A colleague recently asked what his gamer son might want. As I had previously helped them purchase a good video card for him, I suggested other hardware options- RAM, a ~$40 OEM Audigy 2 sound card to take some load off the CPU, a Logitech G5 mouse, and surround headphones.
As I read the Article, I saw that there would be lists showing games related to those already owned by the person in question. Naturally, I assumed that they would be split into categories, like sports, FPS, RPG, exe. Boy was I surprised to find that all the games were for Gamecube. I guess Guildwars, World of Warcraft, and other mmorpg don't make the list, along with every civilization builder ever made, including CIV IV, something I wouldn't mind for Christmas. If someone actually follows the instructions from this article, I suspect that they will be baffled when they find that most of the games owned by their gamer don't exist. Also, as others have pointed out, it doesn't even mention what counsel it's for... I have Ocarina of Time for N-64, and I surely wouldn't want The Wind Waker for Gamecube, seeing as I don't have one. I also suspect that I wouldn't want Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 if I had Tony Hawk's Underground. They fail to mention any order what so ever. In conclusion, this article is throughly useless: it skips 90% of games, including whole genres, and what it does go over it doesn't go over in enough detail. I feel sorry for any gamer who's relatives read this. Oh, and if you suspect someone you know of believing something like this, just give them a list. You'll know if they are following it by the smoke bomb (dead giveaway).
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
I'm too cheap to buy [a life], can you post a .torrent for it?
get a life on the pirate bay - use at your own risk
Fuck giving more of your hard-earned money to the greedy gaming publishers. It's only bits anyway. Instead, give them a Usenet subscription (Easynews or Supernews), a DVD burner if they don't have one, and a modchip for their system of choice.
...but then again, I'm probably not considered a typical "gamer."
My collection is pretty much Flight Simulator, Train Simulator, Syberia (I and II), the Myst series, various Chess games, and old-school DOS games such as Stunts and Tetris.
Why does everyone assume that all gamers either want to play a sports-related game or kill something? (OK, so judging from the titles available in the stores and the video games in the arcades, most of them do, but not all.)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
This sounds like a great idea. Wood blocks for everyone! IMHO, cash is a *very* personal gift, simply because you only earn money as a result of your labor.
I guess you've never heard of dividends or the stock market, huh?
A useful trick for finding out what someone would like as a present is to ask him to go shopping with you for presents for other people, then see what he shows interest in. A clever boyfriend did that with me.
Something simpler would be to ask your friend for advice on buying games for someone else. Your friend will end up volunteering what games he has, what's new and hot, what he thinks is cool, etc.
Not a bad article on the whole, though I find some of the lists a bit weird - I don't quite get the Pikmin/Sims connection, and in gameplay Eternal Darkness is closer to Zelda than Resident Evil - zombie games are not a homogenous form. I also question the sports section, with its lack of warning about going backwards, and note that including Crystal Chronicles on a list for non-expert shoppers is an invitation to a total fuckup.
But basically a good methodology, and one that should be extended more sensibly.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
I'm both a PC and console gamer. Just this month I asked my uncle for a Playstation 2. I know it's about 5 years old, but seeing how long its been around, maybe this is the year I'll get one.
I've grown up playing yesteryear console and PC games. The most advanced console I have is a PS1 I got 3 years ago and that's currently keeping me busy with Final Fantasy Tactics and Resident Evil. I got a PC in my room with windoze/SuSE 9.3 that's just good enough to run Starcraft and Baldur's Gate, and my mom's PC in the living room that I don't play anything newer than ET or CoD1 on it.
I've survived with classics and older games and I bet other gamers have or will too. The moral of all this: sometimes it pays to get them an older game that they might have fun with. You do a little research to how much of a fanbase many of these older games still have and you know you'll have chosen a suitable classic.
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory uses destructive DRM copy protection software called Starforce. Starforce installs itself as an unsigned Windows driver and intercepts all calls to any CD/DVD drives on your system, causing potential system instability. It also opens several security holes in your system by allowing any code to run at ring-0 security level. An unofficial list of games that are infected with Starforce can be found here. A simple rule of thumb to avoid infection is to avoid buying any games published by Ubisoft.
Umm.... yes. But I haven't yet seen anyone successfully buy stock and start trading who didn't first have some money to do so. Ultimately, you're still sharing some of your "buying power" with others, and I don't see why that's any less of a gift than anything else.
You're right!
Don't you have someone you'd die for?
The signal-to-noise ratio on the linked page is pretty low. I found the printer-friendly version to be much more tolerable. Unfortunatley, you can't link directly to it. /slap about.com
As an avid Gamecube player, I obviously have no tastes according to this author. I currently own 7 out of the almost 35 games he listed. And out of the games he listed those are the only game I would ever want to own. I've had quite a few of the games in the article but quickly disposed of them due to a lack of interest in them or because I thought they were just plan horrible. There are a lot better games for the Gamecube than what is listed here. Examples... Mario Golf is an amazing golf game, quite probably the best on the system. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy (which is multiplatform) is simply beautiful in design and gameplay. A venerable gem of the current console generation! Are they listed here... NO.
The world has changed while you were playing Everquest, man. Now gamers aren't hardware geeks that never come out of their parents' basements. They're basically any male under the age of 40, and most of the females under 25. Playing Xbox with your friends is a social thing these days, and it's hard to find a kid that doesn't play.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Are gamers really that stupid?
I'd have to agree with this, but for another reason. I have a gamecube and xbox already, but no PS2. I'm not "consolist", but I never got around to asking for it and it seems like it should be hitting a cheaper price point soon. Jak and Daxter here I come!
My UID is prime... is yours?
'Nuff said.
Suck his dick. Play with his balls. Make him a sandwich and don't talk so much.
Now, back to Slashdot.
Video games, and to an extent, DVD movies, are a tricky sort of gift to buy for a number of reasons. The article does a good job of indirectly summarizing the difficulties, despite seeming obvious. And while many Slashdot types will gripe about articles stating the obvious, consider for a moment how many tech support calls really are solved by asking the user to turn on / plug in the computer?
For Games or DVD's, there are only two key things you need to do right:
1) Dont buy something they wont play
2) Dont buy something they already have
Gamers will buy the obvious favorites for themselves within about a day of their release. Getting them the game they have talked about for months wont help you because they will buy it themselves. If they are broke, you have a shot, otherwise, they will beat you to the punch.
You can get some luck buy getting something similar to the sort of games they like. If they loved Resident Evil on the game cube, you might get them Eternal Darkness, or the Call of Cthulhu game for X-box. You can also get around the issue by buying things like extra controllers, or memory cards, or paid year of XBox Live.
Some of the best gifts possible are things that the recipient would like, but will not think to buy for themselves. But if that seems like it requires knowing the recipient too well, you can always get them a hot cocoa sampler box.
END COMMUNICATION
A quick gift idea for a gamer: Anything other than a game.
If you pick a random game off the shelf, it's one of the following:
- Substandard.
- Already owned.
- A rehash.
If you do your research, it still might not work. Do your loved one a favour, and give him chocolates, a card, or something else of sentamental value.
Wait!! that means you're a girl!! AHhhh! *runs away*
Gravity Sucks
There once was a tradition that a gift reflected the giver - not what the other person might ask for on a wish list.
In this way, the receiver got a variety of unexpected gifts, hopefully interesting and useful.
Things they honestly would have never thought of asking for!
Some examples could be:
CD Music that you like and think might be new and interesting to the receiver.
A new BOOK (yes, they still make those).
A musical instrument - perhaps the receiver can find a hidden talent?
Something that you MADE.
Yes, made, not purchased.
(clothing, furniture, a poem, a song, an artwork, some sculpture, a Rad Mod-Box with cool lights?)
Get Creative.
Give them something unexpected,
something you like,
something you think they will enjoy or need,
not necessarily something they will just play with for a few weeks and toss aside.
I dunno if I agree with your last sentence... you'd expect that the 13 year old will eventually be old enough to want to read Kafka, and will dig it out. Books last. Will people still be reading Harry Potter in 25 years? Maybe. Read Kafka? Definitely.
So it's a cool long term gift, with the added bonus of teaching your nephew to see stuff exists outside fads.