Tooterfish's Gaming Infused Blog

Who doesn't love to be in control? As humans we're programmed from birth to seek dominance over our daily routine. We want to dictate on our terms or be left yearning for the privilege and we're healthy in doing so. Controlling our environment is an instinct of survival. There is a line to be crossed, however, when expressing control for social gains to other humans. A line that, left unchecked, can spiral into all kinds of unwanted feedback from other humans, often resulting in such endearing entitlements as "annoying asshole", when violated. Gamers, and I myself am one, are a kind of animal that goes unchecked all day long, thanks to the anonymity of the Internet among other things, reinforced by the numb and generic "good PR" responses (or feedback) from developers, publishers, the media, etc. We love to target all of these industry laborers to feel in control of the industry we're so vested in, all but Valve it would seem. Valve gets a pass by consumers because Valve understands our need to be in control more than anyone else in the industry and the evidence is all over Steam's UI.

Greenlight

Before Greenlight was announced during the summer of 2012, consumers were committed to the Steam platform through their catalog of games. Valve initially candy-coated the allure to commitment by hosting deep discounts for games, and reinforcing that commitment further with its own games, Team Fortress 2 most notably, as it was both free and highly praised. Valve went to great lengths to get games into the catalogs of users, even dipping deep into its own pockets. The deal was sweet, consumers were being coddled and primed for a life long relationship with Valve's Steam service, so when Greenlight was announced, Valve had essentially capitalized on delivering us the idea that we were ultimately in control. We were the gate keepers, and as our relationship became more and more serious, our catalogs growing and growing, there was peace of mind knowing that Steam had become, even if just a little bit, ours. The control delusion was set, and so followed the perks of a happy consumer base that would hardly budge at the idea of simply walking away. The consumers were now psychologically shackled to the DRM service where they tasted real control and were understandably happy about it. Greenlight was genius in more ways than we care to admit and only after so many titles flooded the Greenlight queue did that feeling of control begin to diminish, become pointless, and ultimately lead to Greenlight's fall from validity.

Valve Gives Consumers Power of Narrative

Before November, 2013, Steam was a mere shop, albeit an increasingly successful one. The consumer was becoming bombarded with an endless and overwhelming variety of releases to choose from. The Indie market was enjoying a heightened state of romantic affection by the media and often given generous reviews, leaving consumers at the mercy of critics who were routinely celebrating games that were frankly garbage. Valve introduced the consumer with the power and authority to praise and criticize each release. Valve ensured that the narrative of the consumer was so impactful that developers were often found answering to the many mistakes and flaws being pointed out in personalized reviews. These reviews had the potential for immediate exposure to other consumers, beating even off-site media giants. Again, the consumer was put in control and afforded the sense of ownership over the content, content they were encouraged to promote, and content that consumers knew could drive the overall narrative surrounding a particular title as-well as one's own reputation within the community.

Consumers Get Personal On Steam

Valve has implemented many tools. In Valve's clever wisdom, they've provided these tools to its users to be quilted together to form a warm and cozy blanket of control and ownership, beating away the cold reality of an otherwise terrifying business relationship of which is severely and most completely in Valve's favor. One needs only to gaze upon the many user profiles to see how sincerely our commitment to the Steam service has escalated. Fantastical backgrounds, avatars, achievements that when put together form words or simply a collection of hard to find accomplishments, screenshots of unique and memorable moments in games, wish-lists and collections of software purchased on the Steam service, mods, game guides and, of course, submitted reviews among other things and topped off with a "Level" value to be increased by community participation *Deep Breath*. Valve took the control mechanic we thrive on and turned it into ownership.

Conclusion

You're never simply a user on Steam without an immense supply of willpower, you’re a product of it, an end result of one of the most masterfully orchestrated marketing schemes in video game history. By refunding a game purchase on Steam, which if necessary is more responsible than fanatical, you're already a participant of the control mechanic offered to you. There's no avoiding it, really, so embrace it. You're apart of Steam from the minute you jump into a free to play game. Your legacy is etched forever into the Steam archives. Valve took a service that the world spit upon in the beginning and turned it into what it is today by manipulating our desire to control, and ultimately leading us to a sense of ownership, as fake as it is in reality. 

Now for some food for thought. Upon the next time we drop the boycott-bomb on competitors like Uplay and Origin, may we also remember that Steam's success is relatively new and began with similar challenges; A service that was built to sell Valve games and enforce DRM protocols. With a bit of empowerment and control, the sky's the limit with other distribution services that are, to this day, fumbling over closed DRM and force feeding its users anything but the game they would rather be playing. Valve's competitors in the software distribution market can change, if only they would pay attention to the decisions Valve banked successfully on. Control is the answer, and ownership is the destination for a successful distribution platform that Valve has all but monopolized on the PC.

Bad news for Crytek employees and their customers, especially if you're a customer who has been looking forward to Homefront: The Revolution.

Kotaku has recently updated that its sources working on the Homefront franchise in Crytek's UK office are not being paid on time and have been walking out instead.

New developments point to more trouble ahead. Over the past two days, I've spoken with four people connected to Crytek's UK studio, which is currently developing Homefront: The Revolution. According to those people, Crytek's UK staff have still not been paid the full amounts they are owed, and this week, according to two sources, the staff at Crytek's UK office handed in formal grievance letters and went home.

As my fellow VR brothers will agree, the wait hurts. However, Oculus has opened the flood gates with new promises of delivery to the lucky few mouse-click ninja's who managed to order themselves into the first batch of DK2 shipments.

However, most of us are stuck waiting our turn in what feels like an eternal state of anticipation. Not to ruin your day, but what if I told you that Ebay vultures were delaying your trip to downloadable reality even further?

Take a look at this guy, and you'll know where I'm going with this.

Reading through the Oculus forum, it is apparent that the community knows what's up. If you're a DK1 pre-order veteran, you know all to well how appetizing it is for some assholes to buy up all of the supply and resell on Ebay with a huge markup, slowing the dream mill down for the rest of us. Well, it is just as bad this time around and China is under targeted suspicion, it would seem.

This is great news for real developers intent on polishing prototypes to be released, most often free of charge,  and let us not dismiss the power of the average gamer, busy spreading the word and sharing the experience through word of mouth and via social media. Though the epidemic is certainly not exclusively contained in China either. Right now, even with much of the manufacturing taking place there, China is on the list of blocked orders, and many Chinese customers are complaining of cancellations already.

I have not picked up any official statement from Oculus confirming this speculation.

The IeSF, or International E-Sports Federation, has made a lot of news over the past few days over their decision to restrict females from male dominated competitions. Despite the organization's promise to "promote [e-sports] as a true sport beyond language, race and culture barriers", gender equality, apparently, had not made the cut.

Markus Koskivirta, head admin of the Assembly Summer 2014 Hearthstone IeSF Qualifier explains that "by allowing women into their qualifier, there's a risk that the winner wouldn't be eligible to enter the IeSF's World Championship final".

- PC Gamer

Ultimately, I understand why IeSF would want to promote Male and Female leagues, and they do. Sports are often separated by gender, often to eliminate competitive advantages. You have your Male champion, and your Female champion. However, controversially IeSF has decided to take it one step further in the pursuit to replicate an actual sport event by eliminating females all together in male dominated games. Hearthstone, for example, is not available if you're a female, similar to American NFL Football or Baseball.

IeSF has ultimately over regulated themselves into logical oblivion. Whether you or I agree that video games = sports, the fact remains that, currently, games are a mental challenge for the most part. A female is limited only by their competitive desires, just as males are. I do believe some games will continue to be dominated by males, though if it really bothers you, IeSF has elected, in response to all of the negative press, to open an "Open for All" competition in addition to the Male and Female exclusive divisions. Additionally, gender-restricted competitions, like Hearthstone, have been opened to all players.

The Destiny hype train express is traveling at full speed, as predicted. Unfortunately for the passengers, Joytiq is reporting a likely railway to nowhere.

Coupled with the redacted "$500 million bet" statement by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, implying the game would be a half-billion dollar expedition into the "next gen" era, reports have been emerging of the uninspired voice acting done by Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage.

Here's some beta footage of the dissapointing lack of enthusiasm.

I'm not saying the game will flop over a few lines by a highly-rated actor, or because the game's budget doesn't equate to a mission to Mars, though this is a prelude to a more reasonable expectation that Destiny will probably not live up to the impossible hype generating around it.