Games, Geeks and getting Pwned in HALO.

This time around I am going to drift off my usual design focused view of the world of technology and creativity. Today I am going to talk about video games. Say what? Yes, this irascible and opinionated almost-an-old-timer is going to venture into a whole ‘nother geekdom. Not just the classic  stand-up and 8-bit arcade games that I grew up with, but the overheated world of console games. It may surprise some of you who read this blog to know, I don’t spend every waking moment behind this workstation. Well, I do spend rather a lot of my time here, both professionally and recreationally. Any design professional in the electronic age has also become by default a technologist. Computers are not only our working tools, but also our sources of information, research and resources. So I am here not only working, but studying, catching up with my mob on Facebook, reading webcomics, news–both tech and the rest of the world, and surfing for pleasure. Oh yeah, I also write a blog in my huge free time.There was also a recent thread on one of my Linkedin groups that heavily suggested that Design Pros cannot survive on print alone. We certainly can’t, other than Illustrators, work in traditional media and survive. Of course, if you draw or paint in physical media, your work will eventually be scanned and digitized for publication. I no longer even own a drafting table, (kind of miss it) and my T-square hangs in the closet.  But I am still working. The computer and the digital world is obviously here to stay, and evolving at breakneck speed.

But sometimes I actually DO get off the computer. I do a number of things out there in real life. And from time to time, I will even fire up my sons’ XBox and dive into some immersive amusement. The xBox wandered into the house due to some clever subterfuge of my two then teenage sons. My wife and I proclaimed that we would NOT subsidize a game console in our house. There were both financial and social considerations for our stand. So the two little monsters pooled their resources, and money doing odd jobs and chores and brought each other half an xBox 360 a few Christmas’s ago. I will not underestimate your gaming greed again, my young padawans. Still, they pay for their own games out of their own money. So I hold my piece and only bitch, and stash the controllers, when chores don’t get done. It’s still the family’s TV the thing is plugged into and MY fiber optic Internet service.

Along with the box, they went in with two of the larger hits of the period, Mass Effect, and HALO 3. The HALO series, developed by Bungie, is one of the most popular and considered one of the best FPS Game series of all time. FPS stands for First Person Shooter, a genre of game that came to people’s awareness probably with the venerable DOOM, and other classics such as Unreal Tournament and Duke Nukem.

I have to say that I rather like HALO very much. The “Halo” in question is a Ring-shaped space environment,  familiar to anyone who’s read any of Larry Niven’s Ringworld books. The scenario is a military science-fiction genre over-the-top space opera played out on an epic backdrop of an interstellar war with a multi-race alien axis called The Covenant, and a mutant plague of nazi bacteria cockroaches called The Flood. It’s frakking crazy, but done straight enough that you buy into the scenario. The world has been rich enough to spawn six games, a host of books, graphic novels, original anime releases, persistent rumors of a feature film, and a frankly awesome fan base that even produces their own videos, using the game’s own film recording features – a process known as Machinima. Say it “machine-ima” to get the basic idea. I kid you not. Check out machinima.com and Red vs Blue. More seriously crazy stuff, but fun and the fan love is obvious.

But the HALO world does not take itself so seriously to not stick it’s tongue in it’s cheek to give some nods to the fans over whole geekyness and space opera roots of it all. There is enough comic relief and geek appeal to take the edge off the violence and gravitas and keep the back of your brain aware, “yes, this is a game.” This is in marked contrast to the almost overstated gritty realism in the war-based titles like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. I think the phrase I was groping for might just be, the games have just enough goofiness.

The Campaign part of the game is an achievement in and of itself. However the feature that has inspired the imagination and obsession of millions of gamers worldwide are the interactive online multiplayer modes. Multiplayer games operate on the XBoxLive service on Bungie’s servers, and there are literally hundred of thousands of players in thousands of games twenty four hours a day in ecstatic orgies of over-the-top cartoon carnage. Microsoft only recently forced the closing of the HALO 2 Multiplayer servers. But the HALO 3, HALO: ODST and HALO: REACH playlists are flourishing. There are both cooperative and competitive modes, but most of the obsession and bragging rights center around the team competition Slayer in it’s various flavors.

HALO:REACH, released in September of 2010, is the most recent iteration of the games, and expected to be Bungie’s final foray into the HALO world. The game scenario follows the Covenant Invasion and heroic defense and fall of the human colony planet Reach. This installment in the HALO saga takes the game to a high level of tuned gameplay and polish and brings the story line established in HALO: Combat Evolved, HALO 2, HALO 3 and HALO:ODST full circle. The Game scenario makes it pretty clear. The Campaign opens with cracked and ruined helmet left abandoned on a glassed-over landscape. The implication is clear, you’re going to die. The question remains, just how heroically? Turns out it’s a heck of a trip, through big damn hero time.

If you’re curious, two takes on the gaming world’s response to HALO:REACH turn up on the Escapist Magazine website. First are their more serious game reviews with video supplements, and the fast-talking and heavily opinionated — but seriously hilarious “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation cartoon editorials for a more, um, alternative viewpoint.

Now before any of you for a moment think any of this is trivial, the amount of money changing hands out there is formidable. Producing a hit game, on any console can cost as much or much more than a blockbuster film. Many of them are produced to cinema level standards of art direction and development. The credits on the HALO titles dwarf many films. New games usually drop at something like Sixty Dollars, so at four to five times the cost of a movie, it justifies some investment. A blockbuster game in the current age, can blow a major film’s revenue out of the water if it grabs players attention.

As a designer, I am a terrible graphics geek. I recall that I obsessed about the computer generated imagery in films like Tron and The Last Starfighter. On the computer side, gaming pushed desktop computers capability far harder than productivity applications. Remember that when computer geeks obsess over graphics cards, it’s not to run Photoshop or Roxio Media Creator, it’s to run games – and run them better and faster than the other frea– ah… gaming enthusiasts they are playing against.

When I fist set foot in Halo’s game world, I got killed a LOT. I was busy sightseeing. Seriously. The graphics love lavished on this game is jaw dropping. You suspend disbelief far beyond what the majority of crappy mainstream SF films could hope to achieve. Short of an immersive 3D virtual world, you are really there in the game environment. So I had a real bad tendency to get blown away by a Brute with a fuel rod cannon while I was geeking out over the scenery. But it’s still a lot of fun. The games sport difficulty levels ranging from easy, through normal, heroic and the brutally difficult legendary. The games are quite content to relentlessly kick your a55 till you figure out ways to muscle or finesse your way through.

Now pardon me while I descend into a little l33t. That’s “leet” to you, like the back end of “elite”. A kind of patios developed by computer geeks and picked up by gamers and other digerati.

When it comes to the multiplayer experience on HALO, I am without apology, pretty much a n003.

That’s pronounced “nube” or “noob”, and it means “newbie” and often in a pejorative sense meaning “unskilled player.” I do know how to play the game, and I do have fun. But when it comes to playing with, and especially competing with, the vast mass of players, typically young males, it’s usually no contest. In multiplayer scenarios, I’ll have the least kills and least points in most games. My sons actually refuse to play with me anymore. Dud sucks. Dad’s a n00b.

But since I do actually work for a living, I’m not going to rack up the game hours. Remember spending the majority of my waking hours at this workstation actually producing things? Unlike my sons, I just don’t  spend enough time playing to really get sharp. And good luck at nearly fifty-one trying to match reflexes with the twitched out hyperactivity of a pack of thirteen year olds zonked out on Mountain Dew, Doritos and their own testosterone. No matter how much French Roast or Kenya AA I suck down, ain’t gonna happen. So consequently I get shot up, shot down, blown up, pummeled, headshot, plasmaed, grenaded, and generally massively pwned by kids young enough to be… well, my kids… quite a lot.

I do kind of wish there was a playlist for “Thirty-Five and Over Casual Gamers who work for a living”. It would be fun to round up a possie… um… Party and actually inflict major pwnage on a mob of my equally slow-moving and more thoughtful peers. But wishful thinking aside. The games are frakkin’ beautiful, and for SF adventure escapism, a LOT of fun.