My Wish list…

Christmas is here. The new year is coming. Here is my wish list. If I don’t get all of this within 30 days, the world will come to an end. Save the world! Get me these stuff:

• Barnes & Noble Nook
• Nexus One (yet to come, you can just give me the cash for it)
• A planet to my name, preferably far from this solar system.
• Dell Adamo XPS, its blooooody thin!
• BuckyBalls, who wouldn’t like a pile of magnetic metal balls?
• This gold coated PS3 from here.
• A pet T-Rex
• A year long supply of rasmalai and daal khichdi
• God of War 3: Ultimate edition: i need a second copy
• Velocity Micro Gamer’s Edge DualX desktop: this machine rapes benchmarks.
• 10 licenses of Unreal 3 Engine
• A publisher for my book: The Zombie’s guide to get a girl
• A white PSP Go
• Razer Mamba
• A set of shurikens and a shiny long katana
• Anything good you can think of

The future is in your hands, errr.. wallet. Save your future. Your kids will thank you for it.

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Motion controls for gaming? Huh!

It will be a sad day for me when the primary control scheme for all the consoles turn out to be motion controls. Why? I could write a book full of reasons.

• Games using motion controls can’t be played for long time: they will destroy your arms and eat your soul!
• Motion controls are just not precise enough: imagine trying to pull off a headshot using a wiimote.
• You look stupid: that weird look on your face while playing a game is already bad enough.
• Long combos? Pulling off a hadouken while jumping? Way too complex for a motion controlled setup.
• Motion conrolled games are gay.
• Traditional setups are just too good: what would you prefer – pushing a button to jump or jumping for real?
• You can never be fast enough: see that ultra cool chun-li’s high-n-low kick combo? Try doing that in real life.
• You won’t be able to boast about it: because motion controlled games are so simlpe, even your grandma will laugh at you as you get owned by her in some stupid game.
• Games will be simple: because you can’t use complex input mechanisms, the developer will be forced to design a gameplay that is simple.
• Will it be portable? I seriously hope it doesn’t turns out this way: imagine stupid looking people kicking and knocking people on the road!
• Destruction it invites: you will probably destroy everything near the console and the tv and hurt people passing by while you play virtual boxing or tennis.
• Motion conrolled games are gay.

For me, the only part of motion i want while i am playing a game is the rumbling of my controller. That’s it. No more stupid hand waves or anything. I can rejoice as i sit on my bed and tap out awesome combos in God of War or dominate people in TF2. And while Microsoft’s project natal and Sony’s wand thingy will make games accessible for more people, it will also dumb down the games in the process. Want to make the game better? There are always other options. More innovation. Stereoscopic 3D, better sound and graphics, better gameplay, more content and more gameplay, and most important: more FUN.

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Calling all ya gamers!

All right. It all started when i ordered a new mouse for myself. $80. By now i am almost used to paying crazy high prices for gaming hardware. Then a old school mumbo jumbo economic rule popped in my head: there are not enough users to buy these products, and thats why they are so expensive. Which brings in another question: why are there not enough users? Turns out that we itself are somewhat responsible for it. We, the indian gaming community, are responsible for the fact that our community is not big enough. Nuts.

Why? Because we are in a way blocking new gamers to come onboard. How? Our ego. Our vanity. We love to taunt over noobs when we own them. And games now are complex enough for total newbies to take a lot of time and practice to be able to play smoothly, leave alone master it. People like us who got the blessing of games in our lives from an early stage got great at playing it. So great that complex control schemes like a keyboard + mouse combo for fps games, or fps on consoles that require one analog stick to look and other to move feel totally natural to us. This leaves the newbies light years behind. Don’t believe me? Try teaching your mother to play a fps. You will get the idea. I tried, and failed miserably. Another example, I went to croma, a big electronics store which had a xbox 360 running Halo 3 for people to try out. The booth was a success. Success in terms of gathering people around it. People of all age classes. I was kinda happy to look at it. Happy that games were picking up among people. But when I looked at the screen, all my happiness vanished. Master Chief was looking at the ground and used to stick to every wall or turn for a good 10 seconds. I asked a few people who played the game, and they all told more or less the same thing: the game looked beautiful, but it was way too complex for them. Then I picked up the controller and played the game for a few minutes, and boy, people looked at me like I was some sort of alien being among them. Gibberish.

Getting more gamers onboard is important for a number of reasons. Cheaper hardware being at the top of the list. More gamers means more games being made as well. More gamers means more competition so that we also can have an annual 5 day gaming tournament. Many more reasons. But how do we get more gamers? More marketing, or making simpler games. These are something we can’t do much about, because these depend upon the developers and publishers. What we can do is introduce people to gaming. Tell them about how awesomely supersensational the games are. Introduce them to a simple game. Don’t expect them to take headshots any time soon. And if you are playing with them, losing a few times to them is not a bad idea either. Just a few times. Let them feel the emotion of owning a nemesis. Let them feel the joy that brings a gamer back and back again to a game. They will tell others about it. I am teaching my 13 year old kid neighbor how to play unreal and a few other games, and apart from the fact that his parents think that I might be spoiling him, everything seems fine.

Here is a call to all you people who gave their precious time reading this mumbo jumbo: you don’t need to be a prophet of gaming, but just introduce one person to gaming. Thats it. Hope it makes my next mouse purchase a bit cheaper. Cheers!

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What a gamer should buy?

Nvidia is going to launch a new graphics card – the 9800xt. And as usual Nvidia will proudly show off its “phenomenal pixel processing power” that enables “cinema quality realism” in your games. While this is true in its eternity, wait just four months and Nvidia will launch another graphics card that will offer “never seen before realism. And since all the new games launched after that would be built to the standard of the newest card, you will be left with two options: either upgrade if you want to play the new games or just stick with your current games. And the worst part: if a new DirectX standard comes, your graphics card is “aged”. And then comes a time when to play a new game you have to upgrade your configuration. And unless you have inherited a lot of cash from your ancestors, you are out if luck.

This brings me to happy part of the gaming society: the people who are proud owners of gaming consoles. You buy a console, pop in a disc, and you are ready to smash your foes. It can’t get any easier. And you don’t have to worry about upgrades (and drivers and viruses). Even your 4 year old brother (if you have one) can operate a console. Gamers couldn’t ask for more.

So, if you are an insanely rich gamer, go and upgrade your pc every four months or so. If not (just like me!), then you have the option to sell one of your kidneys. Or you can just buy (or beg or steal) a console and make your way to gaming nirvana.

P.S. – If you want to see a gamer happy, please donate. I am planning to buy a PS3 (:->) but I don’t have enough greenery in my wallet. (:-<)

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