17.July.2012
written by Uno Ill Nino in Reviews
Please note, this is on a hidden page because it is waiting to be approved for posting on the www.madcatz.com website. It is not intended to be published on the moofpack.com site, I simply put it here so it would be accessible for my application. Thank you.
Why Gaming Communities Have Become As Important As Games Themselves:
Let me tell you a story. Around 7 years ago, I was standing in the Green Bay airport, holding up a cardboard rectangle with ''Aaron Neville'' scrawled across it in black marker. As they unloaded from the most recent plane, the people stepping through the gate terminal may have thought I was a personal driver picking up the famed singer responsible for ''Everybody Plays the Fool'', but in fact I was there waiting for a man that I had never met before who's name was not actually Aaron Neville. Worse yet, he wasn't even a singer!
The person I was picking up was actually a member of my Halo 2 clan, The Moof Pack. His name is Nick and I have known him for over 8 years now, all thanks to our meeting on Xbox LIVE through other mutual friends. When he flew into Green Bay, we were meeting up to enjoy E3 together as a kind of consolation prize after neither of us could get registered in time for the actual event in Los Angeles. Our solution was to simply get together, hang out, and watch all the coverage on TV and the internet while enjoying cookouts, game shopping, and the local flavor of what passes for night-life here. It sounded great over headset chatter, but once that plane was landing, I think we both heard those voices in our heads asking ''What if you get along better over LIVE than in person?''
As it turned out, we became even better friends, so much so that Nick will be a member of my wedding party next year. So why was I holding up the sign with Aaron Neville's name on it? Because I knew that he would see it and instantly know who I was. In those days, we would often sing to our opponents in the post-game lobby and ''Everybody Plays the Moof'' was one of our favorites. The sign was an inside joke that nobody else at the airport was likely to understand, but for us, it would help immediately ensure that the mood was light and fun while serving as a sort of reminder of our favorite taunts and jokes over Xbox LIVE.
Nick wasn't the first friend I made through online gaming. It actually started some years earlier, with the Sega Dreamcast. I could make the argument that my first experiences were actually on a PC with Doom II, but the Sega Dreamcast and Quake III: Arena were really where I began to enjoy online gaming and start to become a part of a community. A whole new world of competitive play and bonding with others through our shared experience suddenly came alive in front of me. Back then, we didn't have voice chat, or even leaderboards, so you would enter a game and type ''ladder?'' to the other player to ask them for what functioned as a ranked match. If they agreed, you would be on your honor to then play the match and report the results to a website that formed a list of all the registered players with rankings based on their wins and losses.
This website was exclusive to hardcore Quake III players on the Dreamcast. It was through this site that I became a part of my first clan. I wrote down the names of some of the other players around my ranking and set off to find them online. There were no gamertags or ways to send messages then, so I had to actively look for them in servers in order to talk with them. Thinking back on it, it makes me smile to think about how I formed a sort of ''dirty dozen'' by tracking each one of them down. I suppose in my own way, I was a bit like Mass Effect's Commander Shepard, only my goal wasn't saving the universe, just forming a really bad-ass Quake III team.
We hemmed and hawed for days over our clan name. It had to be cool! No, it had to strike fear into the hearts of our opponents! No, it had to be funny! The debate would rage on for a while before we finally settled on the undoubtedly fearsome name of ''Ghetto Blasters''. How we ended up with that, I don't remember. I think we just liked that it had the word “ghetto” in it and it might have been the one name that nobody hated.
Anyway, Ghetto Blasters would go on to be a community of its own for a while. Quake III was such a competitive game, and we were all such huge fans of it, there wasn't any difficulty becoming friends as well as teammates. In the early days, conversations were all about strategies for map control, which peripherals offered an advantage, and which models had the smallest hit-boxes. Over time, the chat-box became more about the people on the team. What we were doing this weekend, who's family just had a baby, who got a new car, etc. While this may seem like the natural progression for a team like ours, it stands as a testament to the videogame industry's ability to serve as fertile ground for bonding, more so when you consider that all of this was accomplished merely with a keyboard and some animated gestures.
Fast-forward to present day. Now voice chat is pretty much standard in multi-player games. On top of that, we have avatars and virtual versions of ourselves to further distinguish us as individuals. Some games are integrated with Facebook and Twitter, others let you post screenshots to message boards, and some even make it easy for you to upload your creations and footage to YouTube so it can be shared easily with the rest of the world. There are specific forums dedicated to individual games, conventions 3 or 4 times a year that allow for cosplay, meet-ups, and more. Being a part of the game industry through its many communities has not only become a huge part of the business, it has also never been easier for gamers.
At the start of Xbox LIVE, The Moof Pack found each other and formed bonds that would last years. Some of us started a podcast that is now four years running, others have regular meet-ups, and some even found employment through other members of the group. That's a pretty awesome thing to have connecting two people, especially when you think about the state of the job market as of late. Today, the group has grown quite a bit since the beginning and its members can be found where ever there are games being played in the spirit of fun, laughter, and adventure. Also, Ghetto Blasters enjoyed a partial reunion after Quake III was re-released on Xbox LIVE some months back. After all that time, a few of us found each other again! Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me considering what big fans we were of Quake III, but it impresses me that the opportunity for a reunion presented itself and did not disappoint.
I guess the point of this story is to illustrate why the social component of gaming is so powerful and not to be underestimated. Critics of the gaming industry love to tout the idea that ours is a lot of overly-violent and immature people, but every time I hear something like that, I think it only serves as proof that those people just don't understand what they are missing out on. While there are always going to be foul-mouthed idiots intent on ruining somebody's day, you could say that about any kind of social gathering. Ever been to a movie where a few people just would not stop talking? How about a sporting event where a fan of the visiting team seemed to be more interested in harassing home-team fans than watching the actual event? Nobody makes the argument that theaters and sporting events are full of hooligans, (ed-with the exception of soccer, I suppose.) so why should gamers be judged according to their worst examples?
We're already winning that war, really. Its only a matter of time before that argument is as old as trying to say that Rock and Roll is a tool of the devil. In the meantime, reach out to your fellow gamers. Visit a forum, a Facebook page, or go big and attend a convention like PAX, EVO, or Midwest Gaming Classic. Put on that headset that came with your Xbox. Send those friend requests over PlayStation Network. Maybe somewhere down the line, you'll be introduced to a new friend, a future employer, or in my case, a future groomsman. Or maybe it'll just be somebody who knows how to beat that boss fight you've been stuck on, but you've got to start somewhere, right?
Why Gaming Communities Have Become As Important As Games Themselves:
Let me tell you a story. Around 7 years ago, I was standing in the Green Bay airport, holding up a cardboard rectangle with ''Aaron Neville'' scrawled across it in black marker. As they unloaded from the most recent plane, the people stepping through the gate terminal may have thought I was a personal driver picking up the famed singer responsible for ''Everybody Plays the Fool'', but in fact I was there waiting for a man that I had never met before who's name was not actually Aaron Neville. Worse yet, he wasn't even a singer!
The person I was picking up was actually a member of my Halo 2 clan, The Moof Pack. His name is Nick and I have known him for over 8 years now, all thanks to our meeting on Xbox LIVE through other mutual friends. When he flew into Green Bay, we were meeting up to enjoy E3 together as a kind of consolation prize after neither of us could get registered in time for the actual event in Los Angeles. Our solution was to simply get together, hang out, and watch all the coverage on TV and the internet while enjoying cookouts, game shopping, and the local flavor of what passes for night-life here. It sounded great over headset chatter, but once that plane was landing, I think we both heard those voices in our heads asking ''What if you get along better over LIVE than in person?''
As it turned out, we became even better friends, so much so that Nick will be a member of my wedding party next year. So why was I holding up the sign with Aaron Neville's name on it? Because I knew that he would see it and instantly know who I was. In those days, we would often sing to our opponents in the post-game lobby and ''Everybody Plays the Moof'' was one of our favorites. The sign was an inside joke that nobody else at the airport was likely to understand, but for us, it would help immediately ensure that the mood was light and fun while serving as a sort of reminder of our favorite taunts and jokes over Xbox LIVE.
Nick wasn't the first friend I made through online gaming. It actually started some years earlier, with the Sega Dreamcast. I could make the argument that my first experiences were actually on a PC with Doom II, but the Sega Dreamcast and Quake III: Arena were really where I began to enjoy online gaming and start to become a part of a community. A whole new world of competitive play and bonding with others through our shared experience suddenly came alive in front of me. Back then, we didn't have voice chat, or even leaderboards, so you would enter a game and type ''ladder?'' to the other player to ask them for what functioned as a ranked match. If they agreed, you would be on your honor to then play the match and report the results to a website that formed a list of all the registered players with rankings based on their wins and losses.
This website was exclusive to hardcore Quake III players on the Dreamcast. It was through this site that I became a part of my first clan. I wrote down the names of some of the other players around my ranking and set off to find them online. There were no gamertags or ways to send messages then, so I had to actively look for them in servers in order to talk with them. Thinking back on it, it makes me smile to think about how I formed a sort of ''dirty dozen'' by tracking each one of them down. I suppose in my own way, I was a bit like Mass Effect's Commander Shepard, only my goal wasn't saving the universe, just forming a really bad-ass Quake III team.
We hemmed and hawed for days over our clan name. It had to be cool! No, it had to strike fear into the hearts of our opponents! No, it had to be funny! The debate would rage on for a while before we finally settled on the undoubtedly fearsome name of ''Ghetto Blasters''. How we ended up with that, I don't remember. I think we just liked that it had the word “ghetto” in it and it might have been the one name that nobody hated.
Anyway, Ghetto Blasters would go on to be a community of its own for a while. Quake III was such a competitive game, and we were all such huge fans of it, there wasn't any difficulty becoming friends as well as teammates. In the early days, conversations were all about strategies for map control, which peripherals offered an advantage, and which models had the smallest hit-boxes. Over time, the chat-box became more about the people on the team. What we were doing this weekend, who's family just had a baby, who got a new car, etc. While this may seem like the natural progression for a team like ours, it stands as a testament to the videogame industry's ability to serve as fertile ground for bonding, more so when you consider that all of this was accomplished merely with a keyboard and some animated gestures.
Fast-forward to present day. Now voice chat is pretty much standard in multi-player games. On top of that, we have avatars and virtual versions of ourselves to further distinguish us as individuals. Some games are integrated with Facebook and Twitter, others let you post screenshots to message boards, and some even make it easy for you to upload your creations and footage to YouTube so it can be shared easily with the rest of the world. There are specific forums dedicated to individual games, conventions 3 or 4 times a year that allow for cosplay, meet-ups, and more. Being a part of the game industry through its many communities has not only become a huge part of the business, it has also never been easier for gamers.
At the start of Xbox LIVE, The Moof Pack found each other and formed bonds that would last years. Some of us started a podcast that is now four years running, others have regular meet-ups, and some even found employment through other members of the group. That's a pretty awesome thing to have connecting two people, especially when you think about the state of the job market as of late. Today, the group has grown quite a bit since the beginning and its members can be found where ever there are games being played in the spirit of fun, laughter, and adventure. Also, Ghetto Blasters enjoyed a partial reunion after Quake III was re-released on Xbox LIVE some months back. After all that time, a few of us found each other again! Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me considering what big fans we were of Quake III, but it impresses me that the opportunity for a reunion presented itself and did not disappoint.
I guess the point of this story is to illustrate why the social component of gaming is so powerful and not to be underestimated. Critics of the gaming industry love to tout the idea that ours is a lot of overly-violent and immature people, but every time I hear something like that, I think it only serves as proof that those people just don't understand what they are missing out on. While there are always going to be foul-mouthed idiots intent on ruining somebody's day, you could say that about any kind of social gathering. Ever been to a movie where a few people just would not stop talking? How about a sporting event where a fan of the visiting team seemed to be more interested in harassing home-team fans than watching the actual event? Nobody makes the argument that theaters and sporting events are full of hooligans, (ed-with the exception of soccer, I suppose.) so why should gamers be judged according to their worst examples?
We're already winning that war, really. Its only a matter of time before that argument is as old as trying to say that Rock and Roll is a tool of the devil. In the meantime, reach out to your fellow gamers. Visit a forum, a Facebook page, or go big and attend a convention like PAX, EVO, or Midwest Gaming Classic. Put on that headset that came with your Xbox. Send those friend requests over PlayStation Network. Maybe somewhere down the line, you'll be introduced to a new friend, a future employer, or in my case, a future groomsman. Or maybe it'll just be somebody who knows how to beat that boss fight you've been stuck on, but you've got to start somewhere, right?
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