Do we ever grow-up?

Here is a response to a post on the PC-Gamer board. Read the thread here.

I've been thinking much about this recently. I've considered seeing being 'grown-up' as dedicating less time to my imaginative life. That is, less time and judos to imaginative experiences than experiences of 'reality.' Reality, by my definition, being that which still exists even when you ignore it: taxes, rain and hunger for one.

Play is a serious thing. Just because we think that we stop playing, doesn't mean we have. I think most of our lives - not least our 'professional' lives - are games with set rules and achievements (and power-ups!) Just because we don't commit all the rules to paper doesn't mean they don't exist in a very real fashion: no-one has told me not to wear an entirely black suit (black tie, etc) to work, so I feel it trangresses on some rule (or another.)

I tell an anecdote from Vygotsky (Russian educationalist) to my kids about how play is serious. A bunch of kids are playing on a climbing frame. Without warning one climbs to the top and shouts in his best pirate voice, "Aye ya LandLubbers! I'm gonna cut out ye gizzards!"


A second kid hangs off and, in his best throaty voice, responds (without prompting), "avast to starboard, you can't best me scimitar!"

The two kids play back and forth until a third kid approaches and says, "can I join in?"

Instantly the game ends, without word. The game could only exist when the rules were both spontaneous and implicit. As soon as the rules needed to be reflected and considered, the fun left the game; indeed, perhaps it was a little too close to reality.

As long as people around you trust you with responsibility, 'growing-up' in the way I feel people connote the term is not necessary. In fact, it is perhaps anathema to living happily.

A final thought I'll leave you with is this: in my school I admire the fact that so many kids can actually be kids. I see 15-16 lads playing tag. These are soft kids; just in a semi-rural community where they are (seemingly) free of the angst of being faux 'grown-up', whatever that might mean.

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Shogun 2 2500 against 6000

Tonight, after a difficult day of work, I resolved myself to return to Shogun 2. Often I find myself after a day that exhausts me that I fancy anything other than an RTS game. RTS is, in itself exhausting. Or, occasionally, exhilarating. Both of which are the same thing, depending on when you come.

So, in Shogun 2, for those who have some familiarity, has an event called Realm Divide. It occurs after you become the most powerful faction in the game. Its consequence is that every faction goes to war with you. As a result, you find yourself in battles like I did tonight; Oda and 6000 troops against my 2500.

Once I read on a forum that you should recruit cavalry - that mainstay of crushing battlefield victories - because you risk the multitude of sieges battles in which they are useless. The truth is, though, that the battles often fought in the campaign often require you to pause your expansion and consolidate your economy. Although that has cost me something like 12 hours and 30 mins of research time, it does mean that often I can have armies filled with cavalry sieging towns that are compelled to attack me.

The reverse happened this evening. After a busy day filled with the intensity of teaching with the gut, I had not time for the joy of war. However, some mental impetuosity remained enough to try to fight the battle I had saved on: 2500 samurai against near 6000 of the opponent's.

I expected to fight a battle where I might (hopefully) decimate 3000 or so my opponents army before being overrun. The outcome was different.

Initially I positioned my samurai on my left - next to woodland - while my archers took the open centre ground. My cavalry - 340 strong Katana cavalry - took a right near some woods. The enemy was initially comprised of some 2000 Ashigaru (militia)and about 800 samurai.

To my luck, the enemy marched his front line of archers, and one of his three generals, towards my far right. I should say that Shogun 2 is accurate in the sense that an army will crumble if its generals fall. And that, as a result, the AI will be rather too bolshy with its generals.

Therefore, when the battle started, I was surprised (although not non-plussed) to see a general supporting his Ashigaru archers. I waited, somehow, until he advanced until he had no chance of retreating, and streamed my cavalry from the woods. One of his generals was swarmed, and cut down in short order. Although his archers shot many of my cavalry from their horses, they weren't enough for me to storm and rout 700 of his Ashigaru.

While I was awkwardly micromanaging this one-sided battle, my samurai began to charge a more even battle in the woodland. While his massed archers were attempting to fire upon my elite troops, they were protected by the woodland.

I should have perished on that field. However, the fact that one of his generals had died, and that I had recently slaughtered 800 of his men, meant that his right flank had entirely surrendered. I moved my morale-busting troops - ashigaru bomb throwers - up to support, but without careful managing they were caught by a unit of Yari Samurai (elite spearmen) and annihilated. Against a more worthwhile opponent (read 80% of the multiplayer component of Shogun 2) I would be dead. Against my happy level, though, I was still in with a shout. My cavalry marched against their right, and along with my general's presence somehow routed their entire 3000 army. Perhaps it was the ability to crumble and roll up this flank, but his army was shattered and fled.

For the first time I faced an entirely new army of 3000 troops with less than 1200 of my own, exhausted, men. However, my advantage was that he was marching on in a line. A human opponent would have surely have formed his lined and crushed me carefully. The computer AI, of course, simply formed his four most elite units and charged. Although he should have routed me, my general somehow convinced my men to stay their ground. Like with all such conflicts, the fact that my fewer men managed to stay sooner shattered the morale of his stronger troops. That, and the fact that I managed to surrounded and rout two of his units in quick succession.

In all, I managed to kill 4000 troops for the loss of 1500 of mine. The game told me this was costly victory. I knew otherwise. For me, it was a game that someone I managed to speculate on a battle when the odds were far worse than I had ever played. And I won. I even watched the replay afterwards.

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Should we have a gaming BTEC?

This weekend I purchased a fair few games in the Steam Sale alongside other commitments. Settling down to play, I found my first game - Deus Ex HR - crashed on the first level. Repeatedly. At different points. It tooks 30 minutes of tweaking the settings and files and googling irate forums to get it to work.

In a fit of pique, I posted a message on the PC-Gamers forum. The response was particularly interesting. I suggest, by the end, that if we pioneered a gaming BTEC, what would count as a C-grade? You had to be determined to get DOS games to load, or C64 tapes to run. These days, some games are demanding that same dedication. However, what really makes an A* gaming student?



Here is the link to the thread. Bear in mind that, as a public forum, the language might become a little fruity, so I take no responsibility should you decide to view the following link. There are mods, though, so it's for a mainstream audience:

http://www.pcgamer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13871

PS Great homage to James Rolfe there...

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Skyrim - First Impressions

I rarely purchase new games, least of all expansive efforts like The Elder Scrolls series. Partly this is snobbery: I feel above the tumble of experiencing that to which I feel the crowd might flock because of its newness. Part of it is because of cost: Total War games slash their prices in weeks. And, like with all great gaming communities, the modding community creates a better, more refined game over time.

But it was with great excitement that Skyrim arrived on Friday. As an old friend of sixteen years was visiting my sleepy seaside town, I hadn't planned on getting some gaming time in. Therefore, I had only preordered via amazon.co.uk with a free supersaver delivery. It is with great kudos to that behemoth that it arrived on the release day.



Skyrim is a cultural experience. It links to the ludic desires to game in a sandbox. To discover and create values and experiences and judgements through your autonomy as a privileged human being. The lore of the game has a rich history, too, refined in its desire to move beyond the traditional RPG format of being a bunch of numbers that kills other numbers in an attempt to get the biggest numbers in the game. The genre has a way to go, but joining 250,000 PC Gamers on Friday night was an event.

The graphics look great, but there are issues with smoothness. Smoothness affects the gamer's perception of their experience more than anything. Some tweaks were made of the .ini files (I know!) thanks to help from the community, and it runs smoother than before. But still not smooth. Still, I know one of two things:
a) This game will be refined by free mods in weeks.
b) Without the community troubleshooting my need to reduce my sound quality, my game would have crashed to desktop perpetually.

My first played was for two hours. I felt the distinct disappointment that the genre is still not a narrative. A foolish disappointment, of course. The game requires more from you than that. Just as perhaps life does. But do I want my life to have a narrative? Or should it be a perpetual sandbox? A sandbox life becomes quickly existential and angst-filled. However, a narrative-driven life is one without choice, or the freedom to create meaning.

Still, I wanted to play again soon afterwards. And, in playing, to avoid fast travel (which made Oblivion a little tedious towards the end for me.)

I have worked hard this weekend at my teachering. I have marked for 3-4 hours, and planned for something of the same. I may be able to get some Skyrim in before the evening burns out. But that experience is different to others. I do not want to rush the game and tour the content. This is something to play for different reasons.

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Sins of a Solar Empire Review

Recently Sins of a Solar Empire (known as 'Sins' where I have read it before) was on sale in Steam. It contained all sequels for a reduced price, and was in the top three sales when MW3 and Skyrim were still selling.

Like all excellent strategy games, it rewards concerted time and effort. Despite the immense number of bodies present in the game, there is a sense of control and long-term strategy. However, like all excellent strategy games, it required a hefty amount of time dedicated to get anything out of it.

I looked recently at my Steam Stats; that is, the amount of time I had spent on my games. These ranged from 7 hours a week to 17-18 hours. That is a few hours on most evenings, and a good 6-7 hours over a weekend. Seeing as all the games I play are Steam-tracked, this is an accurate figure. How does this compare with other people?

Seeing some of the profiles of the moderators of the PC-Gamer board, I see I lag behind. There we see people clocking up 50-60 hours a week of gaming. That, as a hobby, is a full-time job.

I consider myself to have more than one hobby. Gaming is one of them, as are writing and running (and, at times, painting.) I follow football with some suitable intensity, and keep myself dabbling in different pedagogies (ways of teaching.) I'm sure, therefore, that people who play games - who also work a full-time separate job - should consider 7-15 hours a week to be a substantial amount of time to dedicate to gaming. And this amount of time should be rewarded.

I say all this because Sins of a Solar Empire is a game that requires some attention. Purchasing it many months ago on the recommendation of a friend, I looked forward to the epic sprawl of civ across space. As I inferred before, this was not immediate. To understand what was going on required 2-4 hours of playing. Even on the easiest level, the enemy aren't useless. I even played through the (separate) tutorials which, for someone who is a teacher, were near useless. But at least they were short. They seemed decontextualised, showing your principles that didn't quite make sense as you did not yet need them. Far better would be to start a tutorial that took you through your first ten to fifteen minutes of play, and then leave to continue to repeat what you had learned in the tutorial.

Instead I was compelled to restart the game several times once I had found myself in winnable positions.

In particular, the game has an options to have Space Pirates. This faction can be bribed to attack other factions and, for those who have invested time into the game, can be an excellent layer of strategy (by forcing your opponents to divert their attention and resources away from their economy and expansion.) However, the Space Pirates are dangerous for a beginner at the start of the game. While you might have six to eight middling ships, they have over a dozen powerful ones. And although you can fend them off, they can attack every fifteen minutes or so. There was no tutorial for how they work, so my first few hours of play involved being decimated, even on the easiest level.

There will be a time, perhaps even now, where writing a tutorial for a game will be done by something with pedagogical expertise, not just a game designer. Such tutorials such be contextualised to the what the player needs, and the immediate experience of the player should reflect the repetition of that learned in the tutorial. New requirements - such as dealing with the pirates, or diplomacy - should be advised upon as and when necessary rather than require the player to bumble through from the start.

Of course, for those willing to dedicate dozens of hours to the game, your mistakes make garner how to work all these functions. You will decipher them in due course.

But, for people like me, there is not the time to spend playing these games so extensively, not when there are:

a) Other games to play.
b) Reality to contend with.
c) A job to maintain.

It says much for Sins that I persevered despite its problems (which are relatively new to its genre, in that the demographic of gamers must have aged in the past 20-30 years.) Consulting my friend, I discovered one way to win was to build as many overpowered capital ships (orbital behemoths several miles long) and focus them in one fleet. With this advice I won a game.

As is peculiar to some games, it did not reward with my new content or congratulations. Instead I was given a stat screen exactly as if I lost, or even quit a game before completion. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It implies that the success of a game depends on the imagination of the player. It also implies, though, that the designers couldn't devise anything else upon completion of the game.



I haven't spoken about the graphics or the game mechanics themselves. As a strategy game, it is polished. I will recommend it, with 3.5 out of 5. But it is telling that, for my sins (groan) I have not played it since completing it, and neither has my friend.

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War Gaming

Since the start of the year I have been playing through the total war games. They're the kind of games that while a man might think he can give them thirty minutes or so, they really demand a few hours at a stretch.

I have always been a fan of the epic stretch of wargames. The strategy of manoeuvring, of bluffing and second-guessing your opponent, of whom you know their strategies and their preferences and their bluffs: I think it's brilliant. The ludic aspect of gaming is, for me, at its strongest in the bluff and double-bluff of wargaming.

Tabletop wargaming is less so. While a worthwhile (if expensive) hobby, such an experience is more the mutual discover of a narrative than a gaming experience. By that I mean that tabletop wargaming is unbalanced, and will always be so. Points and sheets and systems are second to the desire to create a sandbox narrative; something that not everyone is inclined to do.

Fantasy wargaming has had poor representation in the gaming industry. Such games, from the Warhammer series to King Arthur, chug through engines keenly developed but poorly tested (and not through laziness, mind, but rather through their lack of players and history.)

To an extent, The Call of Warhammer mod for Medieval Total War II has changed this. It is evocative of its amoral setting. The graphics are superb. The gameplay is (reasonably) balanced. And it is free.



Yet despite the success of this mod, I find myself drawn towards Shogun and Napoleon far more. These games have a simple addition that has transformed the gameplay for me. A morale bar.

Good friends will deride the addition of a morale bar. In a battle, they say, no general would have seen a helpful bar pop above the heads of the enemy and gradually decrease. True. And neither would a giant crane camera swoop over the heads of everyone. And orders would have to be given from a central unit, and run or shouted or flagged to your corresponding units. That will make for, one day, an excellent wargame of realism. But until then, the morale bar revolutionises the game.

Morale is what makes a wargame more than just a beat-em-up. In war, men (poor sods) don't fight to the last man. If they feel as if they might die, they run. It doesn't matter if they outnumber the enemy across the field. It doesn't matter if they are winning. It only matters if they are in immediate danger. Therefore, in true Sun-Tzu fashion, even with a smaller force, you can force the battle to be fought on your terms.

One example is fighting 700 men against 1400 in a Napoleonic campaign. I was defending a hill, and the enemy advanced along a straight line. In a straight fire-fight I would lose (as I had lost twice before, at 20 minutes a pop!) This time, though, I waited this he was almost in range before retreating my centre and left flank and charging with my right. Although I was in danger of being swamped and encircled on my left, I was able to break the morale of the far right unit. What this meant was I was continually attacking the flanks of my enemy's right while he was still ambling up the hill. Once a few more units broke, panic began to spread across those troops who weren't even fighting. Therefore, even when he had finally begun to encircle me, I was encircling him in return. Throughout all this the morale bar showed me exactly how much pressure to put on each unit to make them turn and run.

Wargaming isn't a genre to play just before bed. It requires, like with all RTS, to over-occupy your mind. Like playing pool before an exam, it is not possible to consider those concerns at the root of your subconscious: the only thing of which you are aware is the game. Which is a entirely new post in itself!

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To plan game playing time

Having moved into a new apartment, I have managed to secure four rooms. The first two are essential - a small bedroom overlooking a churchyard, and a bathroom with a newly-fitted, landlord-harassed shower. The third room is my study (aka Den!) In here I have two desks, one with dual monitors to do my work (albeit with one with a permanently open calendar and to-do list.)



The fourth room has a studio kitchen, two sofas, a coffee table and a dining table (with a view of the sea-front traffic) but, most importantly, my gaming computer has pride of place above above a pseudo-desk/cupboard. I purchased, at great extravagance, a new gaming monitor. Two years ago I was on a 19 inch monitor; now I am on a 24 inch job.

Why tell you this?

It is significant for me that I have separated my work computer from my gaming computer. Too often, and for too long, I have sat at the same computer and alternated between the drollness of work-grind and the enjoyably distracting flashing of FPS games. I feel, like you might, that I do not sate myself on either satisfactorily.

And now?

To watch a film or to play a game is much the same thing. No work is allowed in my living room. I could, as I did in the past, crack open my laptop while watching some something. I don't quite know why I did that. Maybe it's the same reason that people I meet at young leaders courses talk about how they can't take more than 10 minute lunches.

I think I remember writing something about playing the kind of games that take little cognitive effort, or that are especially easy to enjoy, or are simply cinematic experiences. And that playing these games is often the habit of limited time and effort - why give a precious hour of evening time to something that might not work? Why play, for example, Empire Total War when I might not quite what they hell I'm doing? Or what worth giving an hour to a game like Tropico 3 that doesn't even load 2/3rds of the time?

Gaming time, like with film time, is not something that I plan into my day. I either do it, or I don't.



So what significance might this have? In the past four years, I have had periods where I have enjoyed working hard - 70 hour weeks and similar. Like with my running, this is not something that can be happily sustained. In fact, the body and the mind breakdown, or at least become susceptible to fatigues of apathy and ennui. Far more difficult, then, to attempt to live a moderation, working hard where necessary, living as a social being, and still making due time to hobbies that nourish your imaginative life.

My recent ambition is to see quite how I can balance my film watching, and my game playing, with my work and social commitments. To what extent am I willing to do slightly less work, and hence put myself under more pressure in the classroom, under the guise of enjoying a richer imaginative life? How much do I trust that if I plan to watch a film, or to play a game, that I will be eager to do so when the time comes?

Why even bother? I think because, left to my own devices, I tend towards the same limited range of games and films (and people!) Is that a bad thing? Perhaps not. And in the past, when I have tried to play games under the guise of scheduling them in, such as Oblivion, I have found them unfulfilling at best.

Like an esteemed colleague suggested, one often-underrated facet of time management is doing things at the 'right' time. There is little point grinding certain work out in the evening when an early morning, or lunchtime, provides the mind with the necessary impetus to just bloody get it done.

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