The Hierarchy

This is the hierarchy of gamers as described to me by Tyler Bielman.  It details how gamers interact, who has power of who, and why.

At the top of the hierarchy sits the video game players.  Video games are relatively new and are becoming more mainstream every day.  Where before gamers were restricted to the nerdy kids, now any male can play Halo and still be respected by the outside world.  The sheer manlyness of Gears of War could sustain the reputation of any jock.  Videogames are beginning to ascend to a level above the hierarchy, to the level of sports and poker.

At the next level are the trading card game players.  (Within this section there is a sub-hierarchy, beginning with Magic, but that's another discussion.)  While still considered nerdy, trading card games are still regaurded as a legitimate form of competition.  The general population may not respect TCG players, but gamers do.  The best fly around the world competing for thousands of dollars, and the base tournament scene is relatively strong.

Below the TCG players lies the miniatures players.  As you move down this list the games get older, and miniatures are some of the oldest.  Largely outdated my modern technology, the sprawling table of crafted landscape populated by painstakingly-painted miniatures is one of the nerdiest sights known to man.  At least, that's the way the gamer population views miniatures players.  In reality the support for modern miniatures is out there, especially after Heroclix entered the scene, and now the World of Warcraft miniatures.

Near the bottom lies Dungeons and Dragons.  The go-to game when talking about nerdiness, D&D comes with a lot of underlying connotations.  Sitting in mom's basement eating cookies and drinking coke through the night while still in your mid 20s, that's the image D&D conjours up.  With D&D being the nerdy game, you would think they would be the base of the hierarchy.  Yet there is a type of gamer even gamers have forgotten about.

Larpers.  Live action role players.  The people that dress up in fake armor and hit each other with foam swords in the park.  This is the bottom of the gamer hierarchy.  Frowned upon by almost everybody, the amount of nerd needed to compete is extraordinary.  I know little about how larping actually occurs, but the way it is portrayed in movies and the internet is completely and utterly nerdy.

The hierarchy demands respect.  I find it funny, though, that even though the TCG players may skoff at the miniatures players, they resent the same treatment given to them by the videogame players.  Each level of the hierarchy is filled with hipocrasy.  Players draw a line in the sand, a level of nerdiness they refuse to cross, and anybody past that line is too nerdy.  Personally, my line is wherever there are games to be made.

Useless Skills

I've lost my ability to sit down and play a one-player game.  It started happening when I was in high school, but I only really noticed it after I started playing World of Warcraft in college.  I had heard Bioshock was a great game, so I sat down and fired it up.  I couldn't manage to play for more than an hour - I had no motivation.  Sure the game looked great, but I couldn't find a reason to keep playing.

I used to play games like this all day as a kid.  Through middle school my weekends usually consisted of renting a game from Blockbuster and beating it that weekend.  I would play the game from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep.  I would explore games like Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Banjo Kazooie for hours.  Why was it that I could do this as a kid, but now I can't even get an hour into Gears of War?  Aren't these fancy new games supposed to be better?

It's not like I'm not playing games anymore.  I play a lot of Magic, and I can put entire days into World of Warcraft when I have the time.  What's the difference between the games I play now, and the games I played as a kid?

I think the answer lies in the skills your acquire while playing a game, or at leas the skills you think you're acquiring.  When I went to play Bioshock, one question kept coming up: why am I not just playing World of Warcraft?  What I'm doing in Bioshock isn't contributing to anything - I'm just making a saved file on the Xbox.  When I'm done with the game I have nothing to show for it.

You could easily say the same thing about World of Warcraft, that I'm still not contributing, but for some reason it doesn't feel that way.  Not at all.  For some reason when I walk away from World of Warcraft I feel a sense of accomplishment.  I level up in Bioshock, and I could care less.  I level up in World of Warcraft, and I accomplished something.    There is something in the way that game is designed, probably having to do with being connected to a server full of people, that makes the hours you spend playing the game seem valuable.  The character you are leveling feels valuable (similar to how a kid looks at his card or comic book collection) and as you get better at the game you feel like you're acquiring a valuable skill.

Now I'm having a hard time identifying how valuable these skills actually are.  I've been playing magic for over six years and I gotten a lot better at the game since I started.  I feel like the skills I picked up by playing Magic are pretty aplicable to the rest of my life.  I find myself making other decisions better because of the decision making skills I've learned by playing Magic, so it does seem like I'm gaining something valuable there.

When I look at Dance Dance Revolution, though, is that a useful skill?  Directly translated, there is little chance that being able to push a button with my foot in response to an arrow will come in handy.  But, as another blog post talked about, I found that learning how to play other games, like Guitar Hero, a lot easier because I had played Dance Dance Revolution.  This makes me feel like my learning process has improved, but I'm still not sure if it has.

So what about World of Warcraft?  Am I actually learning a valuable skill?  I can't tell.  There is probably something to be said for learning about teamwork and cooperation, as well as resource management.  Looking back, however, I see a lot of hours spent questing and leveling, and I can't imagine that was useful, yet somehow it feels useful.

The problem is that now when I play a game, if I don't get that feeling of building something useful, I can't find the motivation to play.  It doesn't matter how good the graphics are, or how intricate the level design is, or how well-written the story line is - I just can't find the motivation to keep going.

Rock Band

The first time I saw Guitar Hero was at a friends house.  Her brother, who was away at college, bought Guitar Hero for her and mailed it to her house.  I heard about the game with the funky controllers, but hadn't seen it yet.  We plugged it in, started playing, and it was pretty cool.

I quickly recognized the game as DDR with your hands, and a lot of the same skills transferred.  It  was about following the beat, not looking at the line.  I knew you had to associate a color and a position with a muscle movement.  You can't spend time thinking that a green line means you have to use the top button with your pointer finger.  You start to know green and red at the same time as its own combination.  Then you stop seeing individual notes and instead see groups of notes, patterns.  Soon you're going through whole sections of the song on instict, not even sure yourself how you're hitting each note.

I stopped playing Guitar Hero when I went to college.  I eventually moved into a house with five other guys, one of which bought Rock Band.  It was the cool new toy to have, and the whole house started playing it.  I spend too many nights struggling to fall asleep while Jesse (poorly) wailed Maps into the microphone.  I had gotten to the point with Guitar Hero where the guitar was getting really hard, so I thought I'd try the drums in Rock Band.  Sure enough, it was just like DDR and the guitar.  Using the same techniques I quickly climed the difficulty tree of the drums.  I could do a lot of the songs on expert, though probably 30% of them were still too difficult.  There were concepts like drum rolls that eluded me.

Soon after we got Rock Band I secured a job working on a kids card game, Xeko.  It turns out my boss played Rock Band with his friends, and he invited me over to jam with them sometime.  They had a full band - guitar, bass, drums, and singer.  Fortunately for me, their drummer had a new baby on the way and was running out of time to devote to the band.  I slipped into his position and was drumming with those guys regularly.  It became a ritual of rock band, sandwiches, and watching bad TV ever other week or so.

We started to take our act on the road.  There was a bar they took me to on my 21st birthday that had a rock band stage set up.  We showed up and played a set.  Even though there weren't a lot of people there, we still had a great time, and we've been there a coup times since.  Child's Play had a Rock Band event at another bar, and we went to show off our act.  We didn't do very well, but again, we still had a good time.  We weren't a very skilled band, but we got to watch some real acts perform.  By that I mean they got a high score, but I'd like to think we were the better performance.  When Rock Band II came out we even played a challenge online.  A few weeks from now we'll be trying to find a place to play in Las Vegas.

It's amazing how these games can network people together.  The DDR type game has evolved, taking on a mainstream theme (of rock!) and really playing off of its IP.  It seems silly to get a lot of gamer nerds together to watch other gamer nerds play a game, much less get non-gamer nerds to watch, but Rock Band can do it.  A little IP can go a long way.

Dance Dance Revolution

Going to the mall and playing in the arcade used to be a once-every-other-month activity, usually a settlement with my mother so she could get me to the mall to get new shoes. Tht was until one day, while I was there with my best friend Shawn, we encountered a new game called Dance Dance Revolution. We decided to try it, set the difficulty on easy, picked "Kung Fu Fighting," and failed miserably. We continued playing other games in the arcade, and I didn't think much else of it that day.

Shawn, however, looked into the game a bit more. On another visit to the arcade, he played again, figured out the basics, and liked it. He got me to try again, and soon we were dance dancing on medium. It didn't take much to get us completely hooked. For a lot of my 7th grade year I would go to the arcade every Saturday with Shawn and spend about $20. After playing the game for so long I would see colored arrows whenever I closed my eyes. (The DDR effect.)

We started to get to know the regulars, many of whom were a lot better than us. Heck, we started to become the regulars. There was a whole culture of DDR players that we just getting to know. We got to know the customs, like using a coin to save your place in line. We became very familiar with the neighboring Panda Express, which had free water for all the tired revolutionists.

There were even DDR groupies, like Natalie. She was one of the player's girlfriends who started hanging around. Eventually they broke up, but she stuck around, and eventually started playing with us. She became one of my close friends, somebody I hung out with a lot in high school.

It wasn't long until a tournament was scheduled. Shawn and I were so excited, but we still weren't nearly good enough. Shawn was a lot better than me, and while we were both speedily improving, we still couldn't compare to the good players. Even though neither of us did that great in the tournaments, I really enjoyed it. I've always been pretty competative, so a new outlet is always nice.

I moved away from Missoula, the town with the mall with DDR, and thought my DDR days were done. They were for a while, until I found a friend that had it for their Playstation, and decent pads! I barrowed her sistem for about two weeks and played almost non-stop. I would set the system on endless mode and play-play-play for hours sometimes, only stopping when I would occasionaly fail a song. I got to the point where I could pass almost any song.

Then the school talent show came up. I was already concidered somewhat of a goofball (I did get spunky spirit) so I thought why not do DDR for the school talent show? I practiced a lot more, and got my act down. I could even do part of a song backwards - it was great. Unfortunately the judges didn't appreciate my video-game driven dancing, but I'd like to think I was a crowd favorite.

Since then I have only played a smattering of DDR. Any time I see an arcade, I'll look for a machine, hopefully playing a song or two. It still gets me winded, I'm nowhere near the shape I was in when I used to dance, but it makes me feel good. The sound of the music, the lights, the pads - it all brings me back to that first day in the arcade. It's amazing what a silly arcade game can do for friendships.

The cold, dead hand of WoW

It just won't let go.

I cancelled my subscription.

But it won't let go.

Between winter and spring quarter I realized that I wasn't playing World of Warcraft much anymore.  I have had this account for roughly four years, (Oh my god, was it four years?) but was only super into it for about six months.  Those were a rough six months, filled with crashing grades, a rocky relationship, and nothingness - I wouldn't recommend it.  I'm normally a procrastinator, so playing a game instead of doing homework was normal.  (In fact, I have a 5-7 page paper due tomorrow, and I haven't even started it yet.  But whatever, what I'm doing now counts as homework, too.)  It was never a big problem, until I started procrastinating to the point of just not doing it at all.  There was a summer, however, where WoW was the best thing ever.  I had no obligations, was trapped in faraway Montana, and had a great summer hanging out with my friends online.

Speaking of friends, it didn't take me long to realize that the only time I was having fun in WoW was when I was hanging out with friends.  I would log on, see none of my friends were on, and log off.  I never really made relationships with people online, so if none of my IRL ("in real life") friends were on, I just didn't play.

Once I learned to play in moderation my life improved, but WoW was never really the same.  My friends were still playing, a lot, so when I would log on it was hard to play with them because they were so much more advanced in "level" than I was.  We were still technically the same level, but they were doing instances (dungeons) that I didn't have the gear for.  This decreased the amount of time I was willing to put into WoW even more.

Something I've realized over my time playing WoW, Magic, and other games, is that they are all about promises of awesome things to come.  At least, for me they are.  Unfortunately, these things usually never come, and require a lot of time and hard work to aquire.  For Magic, that awesome thing is winning a Pro Tour, or even becoming World Champion.  I just made it into my first Pro Tour, and that was 7 years in the making.  For World of Warcraft, it was beating the top raid with your friends, or (more my style) being the top arena team.  (Arena is the player-vs-player competition part of WoW.)  Early on in WoW, the promises were even as small as "doing instances with yoru friend at 70."  My friend Kevin always wanted this, but it never really happened.

My point is that I still put countless hours (days, weeks...maybe months) into WoW.  So did Kevin.  So did the rest of my friends.  I never came close to being the top 2v2 arena team, my ultimate goal.  I never even got close to having the proper pvp gear, something that's necessary to compete at all.  Yet, I still gave Blizzard hundreds of dollars in the hopes that one day I'll do what I want to do - nevermind all the grinding along the way that I actually am doing.  Luckily, I enjoy the day-to-day Magic, so the hours I put in are fun.  With WoW, however, once I realized I wasn't enjoying a large part of my experience, I stopped.

It felt good to be out.  I didn't need to log on, I didn't have this nagging voice in the back of my head saying "you should level your one-handed sword skill" or "you really need to be farming honor right now."  A lot of the guilt of not playing disappeard.  (Believe me, there was guilt.)  It was wonderful.

Then came Wanda.

I'm sitting in Wanda's class on the first day, and she said it.  "I want you all to be in virtual worlds, so get an Eve Online account, Second Life, and World of Warcraft at least."  Uhhg.  Now you're telling me I have to reactivate my World of Warcraft acconut for homework?  Seriously?

Damn you Blizzard, daaaaamn yoooouuu!!!!

Community Magic

I wrote this paper for my first English assignment this quarter. It's about the card game Magic: The Gathering, community (what the paper was supposed to be about), and how it affects my life. It's also a lot of me bragging about how awesome I am. It's a rough draft, so no guarantee on quality.

Jonathon Loucks
April 2 2009

Community Magic

I was fifteen when I bought my first Magic card. If you made a list of the geekiest things you could be doing in the late 90’s, Magic: The Gathering (Magic) was right next to Starcraft and Dungeons and Dragons at the top of the list. Created by Wizards of the Coast, Magic was the first trading card game, paving the way for a billion dollar industry with hits like the Pokemon TCG and Yu-Gi-Oh!. I heard about Magic from a friend of mine and bought a pack of cards, significantly changing the rest of my life. I was now part of the Magic community – there was no going back.

Flash forward – I just finished playing a game using Magic Online, a program that lets you play Magic with people from all over the world. Even though the cards are digital, you have to buy them with the same amount of real money as you would spend on their cardboard counterparts. I paid $15, played three matches, and came out with roughly $13 for getting second out of eight people, just about paying for the next tournament I enter. My friend Kellen was perched over my shoulder the whole three hours, providing advice, feedback, and idle chat. This has been the normal routine for the last week. I had played online before, but only recently did I start playing daily.

The reason for my increased online activity was to practice for my recent qualification to the Pro Tour of Magic. A Pro Tour is the highest level of competition a Magic player can participate in. There are four Pro Tours a year, culminating in the World Championships, each giving out as much as $40,000 to first place. I’ve been playing magic for nearly seven years, and only in this last month did I finally qualify for the Pro Tour. The best part: this Pro Tour is in Hawaii, and I’ve got a plane ticket courtesy of Wizards of the Coast. I couldn’t have made it this far without the support of the Magic community from the very beginning.

I first brushed against this community early in my Magic career. Competition has been a major driving force in my life, so once I learned how to play the game I was immediately looking for tournaments to play in. Through a local card shop I met dozens of people much better than myself. Some of those people became my best friends through high school, a few of which I’m still in contact with to this day. A few months later I could hold my own in the local tournaments I entered, and I year later I was winning most of them. There is camaraderie amongst the group, but also a strong rivalry that pushes everybody to get better. Together we would travel the eight hours from our small Montana town to Seattle for bigger tournaments, usually returning empty handed.

Attending the University of Washington was mostly an academic choice, but I’d be lying if I said Magic didn’t play a role in my college selection. I knew Seattle had a thriving Magic community, especially with Wizards of the Coast based in Redmond, Washington. I was worried it would be hard to find new people to play Magic with. I had spent the last four years of my life practicing, traveling, winning, and losing with the same close group of friends. My worry quickly faded as I immediately found Magic-playing friends within the first week. Skirting all the orientation activities my first month of school, I was already absorbed into the new community.

Now not only am I an important member of the local community, but I’m beginning to become nationally (and even internationally) known. With my recent Pro Tour qualification, a few interviews for the official Magic: The Gathering website, and a job writing a weekly strategy column for www.channelfireball.com (a job I’ve been doing at various sites for the past three years, recently settling at this one) my name has gained recognition. Only with my recent success have I fully understood the extent of this community and the bonds it creates.

Each day since my qualification I’ve received congratulatory messages, many from friends I haven’t seen for years – though none as surprising the message I received from Jason.

The Magic community is very trusting. Because you play Magic in the same area, and people rarely stop playing once they start, if you mess with one of us you risk being shunned by the rest. This is why I felt completely comfortable lending $25 to an old Magic playing friend I hadn’t seen for four years. That’s also why I had no problem selling my card to Jason, a friend who needed transportation and was having some cash difficulties. My roommate, also a Magic player, and I were letting Jason sleep on our floor until he found a new place, and I agreed to let the payments slide as Jason got back on his feet, because that’s what the community does for other members. This isn’t the first time a friend has slept on our floor in lieu of being homeless for a week. That’s why when Jason disappeared, leaving my car abandoned and with a $300 towing fee I had to pay, I was shocked. The community was shocked. Rumor had it he had skipped town and was living with his family in California. This didn’t happen.

I thought I was out $300, having not heard from Jason for a few months, when I qualified for the Pro Tour. Amongst the congratulatory e-mails, text messages, and high fives, a message appeared in my inbox from Jason, titled “Congrats.” In the message Jason wished me luck, and even apologized for the way he cheated me. “I am sorry I dicked you, and once I am out of the woods, will make the financial aspect of things right. Anyhow, congrats on the Q[ualification]!.”

This is when I knew what community meant. The man that had been dodging me for months found congratulating me for seven years of hard work - work he helped me with, work he himself had been through – more important than the feud we had. That’s what is so great about the Magic community. While constantly competing against each other, we can put aside our differences and are always there with a helping hand or a pat on the back. That’s the Magic of community.