funsucker
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Cross-realm play and the rise of the funsucker
When I read Matt Rossi's piece about the future of cross-realm play, I agreed that the possibilities are exciting. But I do see what could be a major problem: funsuckers. We do have funsuckers in heavily quested zones right now. (Granted, this usually only happens after a new expansion or during holidays.) They spawn camp us on PvP servers. They steal our gathering nodes, even though they are in the same faction. (Stealing nodes from the opposite faction is fair play. We don't want to help them support their side of the battle.) They take their huge mounts and sit on NPCs everyone needs to interact with. They suck our fun.
Drama Mamas: The curious case of That Guy vs. the Spineless Jellyfish GM
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. Once upon a time, there was a guild member called That Guy. That Guy was typical of his kind -- abrasive in guild chat, incompetent in raids, seemingly without redeeming value ... Except that the guild always seemed to need him in order to scrape together a full raid group. His GM, the usual enemy of all That Guys in their natural habitat, turned out to be a subspecies that posed no threat to That Guy at all: the Spineless Jellyfish GM. To the horror of guild members, not only did Jelly-Belly do nothing to solve the chaos created by That Guy, but he actually wrapped his tentacles around That Guy and laughed in glee as the guild spun more and more rapidly into a vortex that threatened to suck them all into the briny depths ... Dear Drama Mamas, I am in a 25-man raiding guild on a server. We are a decent group of raiders. We have every raiding stereotype you can imagine: the yelling raid leader, the cool-as-a-cucumber DPS, and the always-has-a-strat guy, just to name a few. So as you can see, we are a typical group trying to climb to the top of the server ranking. I have been in this guild since a month after Ulduar released and I have gotten into the flow of people leaving, joining and quitting the game. It felt homey until 5 months ago, when problems started to arise. I have been having drama with one person -- not run-of-the-mill drama, either. Recurring drama.
Activision Blizzard's CEO is a funpire
Bobby Kotick isn't just the CEO of Activision Blizzard. He's also the CEO of Activision Blizzard who recently said, "You have studio heads who five years ago didn't know the difference between a balance sheet and a bed sheet who are now arguing allocations in our CFO's office pretty regularly," Then again, as Ars Technica has pointed out, his incentive program that, "rewards profit and nothing else." may have something to do with that.That's not all Bobby Kotick recently said, however. He's also known for this uplifting little diddy, "We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Now that quote may be out of context, but what kind of context can make that look... well, good or even mildly acceptable?Something smacks of bad omens here. Sure, things are going good right now for the company that puts out Blizzard games and Call of Duty, but when a company's Chief Executive Officer is saying things like, "We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression," it may be time to double-check your neck for bite marks and then get the hell out of Irvine.
Gamer Interrupted: Are you a Funsucker?
Each week, Robin Torres contributes Gamer Interrupted, a column about balancing real life with MMOs. Well, it used to be each week... and then stuff happened -- lots of stuff that made things go out of balance. But that just means more stuff to write about here... weekly.Recently, the Spousal Unit and I got into an argument over this article about Blizzard's Naming Policy enforcement. In this post, WoW Insider's Daniel Whitcomb asks why Blizzard must be informed of every instance of a name like "Longjohnson", before they will enforce their policy on each one. I say people who blatantly name themselves against the policy are ruining the game immersion and are sucking other people's fun. The Spousal Unit says that the real Funsucker is the person who reports the name, unless he or she plays on an RP server. He says people who name themselves after pornstars and genital euphemisms are just having fun and that people who talk about game immersion are taking themselves too seriously. I say that I play games to escape from the latest train wreck and don't want to see a version of her name on a Blood Elf Rogue when I'm bringing up an alt.The problem here is a difference in opinion of what fun is. We play MMOs to have fun (and relieve stress and escape), but when we are playing with a massive number of other players, the many views of what fun is can and do clash. So the question is, should we care about other people's fun when we are having our own? In my opinion, your "right" to have fun, in-game or out, ends as soon as you start infringing on someone else's fun. But this rule can't be strictly applied because some people's fun may not fit into the scope of the game... or reality. I've tried to come up with some basic guidelines as to when we should worry about someone else's fun and when it's OK not to without being a Funsucker.
Gamer Interrupted: Gamers behaving badly
Each week, Robin Torres contributes Gamer Interrupted, a column about balancing real life with MMOs.Every time someone in the world does something horrible and is also a gamer, the media makes the most of it. I don't want to cite specific examples here because these acts don't need more press, nor do I want to point out the connections with gaming. I'll leave that to the always entertaining Jack Thompson, Virtual Ambulance Chaser. I do think that it is natural for humans to try to find the "why" behind horrific crimes, it is just unfortunate that our hobby is the current scapegoat. We don't know what television shows the criminals watch, what books they read, what music they listen to (though all of these have been scapegoats in the past) -- but the media makes sure to mention if some kind of video game is involved. And that is another product of human nature: The Witch Hunt. When we think we've found the reason, we generalize it to every act we don't like. I haven't read that video games are responsible for global warming yet, but it's only a matter of time.
