Playing multiplayer Shogun 2

I am playing an extensive amount of multiplayer in Shogun 2 at the moment. This is something I have wanted to do for a far time, and something that has been challenging. As I said already in this blog, I played the original Shogun extensively, clocking the campaign on the hardest difficulty. While at the time I thought this an achievement, the truth is that I merely knew the game mechanics. I could beat the AI with any army as I know how to exploit it. It was to my sadness that I was uanble to play anyone online, as my success against the AI made me feel that I was expert. The first thing about mutliplayer in any game, let alone an RTS game, is that the difficulty is more than that of the AI. AI difficult often increases by making the game mechanics unfair (that is, making their troops...

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Total War and Day Z - some thoughts

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Gaming for purpose or for pleasure (or for nothing.)

Many of my hobbies see me sitting on my backside. I took a decision this year to change my gaming chair for thin wooden kitchen furniture. My thinking was that I would balance my gaming time with more active hobbies. This hasn't necessarily been the case. I have spent many hours in a thin wooden chair, and it is a miracle that my back hasn't trashed itself. There is something about gaming and imbibing other bits of literature that can improve. But for what point? And for what purpose? Shouldn't gaming, at times, just be a piece of distraction? Why should significance be sought in all things? One of my students wishes to begin a Minecraft club. I question the value of this club when I consider how much time it would take to do so. But I asked for him to show me a presentation, which he created....

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Hobbies in Half-Term

Some half-terms are designed to recover from the ravages of before. These days my time is less like that, though, as I try to manage my time reasonably enough. Some teachers work like hell during the half-term, and do very little during the holiday. Emotionally, there needs to be a recover. Physically, perhaps too. What I like best, though, is to keep an element of work ticking over. By that I mean completing a little something everyday. And part of that routine is not spending free time gaming. Recently, though, I have found my gaming somewhat lacklustre. A bit too easy, and not evocative by far. Recently, though, my Total War campaign has grown difficult to the point of being impossible. And it is strangely more enjoyable because of it. Currently I'm defending a siege of 700 against...

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Difficulty of games

I have previously blogged with some thoughts about playing a game for 15 minutes. There is something particularly about that time: it might still worthwhile. Often, I find playing a game for a length of time (45 minutes plus) is enough to put myself in the mindset of enjoying it. Of challenging myself, and taking something from it. Games like Deus Ex and Dragon Age are ideal for playing in the chunks of time available in the evening, or between work, eating, socialising and sleeping. However, I have become increasingly lethargic in my gaming recently. I wonder if it is perhaps due to my desire to not die more than three times in the same place. For example, I have been playing through Dawn of War II and, like all good RTS games, it is a frantic game. I don't quite know what I'm doing at...

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15 minute gaming

The past four weeks have been busy. OFSTED and the like have compelled me to aim for the esoteric percentage improvement in my performance that demands an almost absolute immersion in the work. From the outside, you would see a workaholic. And, as I step back, I wonder what kind of person is that to bring up our kids? During such a time, I do not like to dedicate a significant amount of my leisure time to gaming, or even to watching films. I cannot remember the last time I sat and watched an entire film. Normally, instead, I watch 15-30 minutes. My attention span is not what it used to be. It is with this mindset that I have enjoyed the following games over the past three weeks: Deus Ex Total War: Call of Warhammer (and Napoleon)Men of War: Assault SquadSpace MarineThe thing about these...

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Teaching or Gaming or Writing?

I have two computers in my house: my work computer and my gaming computer. This is deliberate as I know that games can affect the way your computer works in all sorts of funny ways. A few months ago, despite careful maintenance my gaming computer gave up the ghost on an upgrade to Windows 7. While this was worthwhile, I lost much of my gaming downloads. I say lost - I can always redownload them. However, I feel that my bandwidth might be hit too much. Such concerns, though, have meant that I have hardly gamed in the past few months. And I certainly haven't purchased (m)any new games. I have made some narrative with my Total War, my Warband, my Deus Ex and my Men of War. I have been chugging through Dragon Age again, and quite happily so. However, in doing so I have found myself...

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Replaying Deus Ex and Dragon Age

At the moment I have redirect much of my hobbying time into other pursuits: two games to which I happily return are Dragon Age and Deus Ex (HR) Both games are well suited to 15 minute episodes. They have great soundtracks, and they both scratch a fantasy and sci-fi itch respectively. And, in lieu of time to explore new games, they keep me ticking along as the classic games they are.&nb...

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A hardcore gamer

An interesting post worth of consideration (and the putting down of my work this Sunday day) referred to the notion of what a 'hardcore' gamer is. The word 'hardcore' has obvious connotations, not all of which are positive. It also evokes the idea that gaming as a hobby is a fad that only attracts certain people, and those people often being teenagers. This isn't too dissimilar to the notion that pop literature attracts people with too much time on their hands. One point made was that a hardcore gamer absorbs the genre and history of the game, rather than just its visceral experience. This is not entirely dissimilar to a point made by a moderator who stated that someone might watch Terminator 2 for its incredible explosions and generally awesome killer-robots. Another person might watch...

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What do teachers really think about games?

Again, a great thread from the PC-Gamer board. As usual, I'm not responsible for the content of this outside link: http://www.pcgamer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17031 At another parents(') evening last week (where I tell parents how their children are progressing in English), I had three sets of folks who told me their kids played too many games. Of course, their kids are probably playing too many FPS games, and I tried to direct them towards something else. Here's an interesting article on what some teachers think about games in school, in light of a teaching union (albeit the smallest one) saying that there needs to be some legislation against violent games:http://beefjack.com/features/what-do...ut-videogames/My take? I think that every student in the 21st Century UK is entitled...

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Suitable Games for 12 year olds.

Very interesting thread about games suitable for 12 year olds: http://www.pcgamer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=170...

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The value of an imaginative life

For a fair time I have been concerned with the importance, or not of nurturing an imaginative life. I'm going to take a wander for 500 words or so, and talk about how it relates to games afterwards. Tolstoy, who was pretty much embroiled in the benefits of an imaginative life, started a farm (Tolstoy farm!) partly because he wanted to see the fruits of his labour manifested in a physical form. So much of my reading and writing and gaming does not exist in a manifest form. Yes, I can see the words on a page, or the picture on a screen, or the books on my desk. My stats can be counted, and games can be completed. But there is not a physical entity at the end of it. It is not like I make something that can be held or admired. There is something Kantian in playing games: what is the difference...

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Call of Warhammer Mod

Purchasing a great PC game does not often mean the end of the game. Extra content in the form of mods expand a game beyond its initial remits. Half Life 2 - perhaps the best-paced single player experience still to be had today - flourished with a wonderful modding community (which in fact led to Counter-strike.) The Total War community is particularly rich. Many mods, particularly for Medieval Total War 2(which must be easier to mod), expand the game to the point where it is almost an entirely new game. Two mods which I recommend to my students are the Third Age Mod (Lord of the Rings) and Call of Warhammer (based upon the eponymous fantasy world.) While both are tremendous games in their own right, the lore and background to the worlds are fantastic. Previous attempts to recreate this world...

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A book of Gaming for Parents

At a(nother) parents(') evening recently I spoke with several families about gaming. It seems that most of my younger students are console gamers, and that they mostly play FPS. Anecdotally, most parents (probably as a result of watching their heirs fritter away their hobby time on FPS games) feel that gaming has little to no educational benefit. That no experience can be garnered from gaming save wasted time and an itchy trigger finger. Saying that, a fair number of parents are open to the idea that there are games that offer either clear educational value, or an enriching experience. In particular, one parent of a child in my room is willing to try out some games having never played a game before in their life. It is for this that I hope to create a list, which would eventually become a...

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Dragon Age 2

This weekend I completed this game amidst a curious reception of two years of angry reviews. I enjoyed the original Dragon Age, as I enjoyed the original Baldur's Gate series. Indeed, for me the party-based RPG trumps the action-roleplaying of the Elder Scrolls series (of which Diablo trumps the Elder Scrolls series too.) For me there is a story in Bioware games, and Dragon Age 2 is no exception. Except, despite PC Gamer's 95% review, it was lambasted by many in the gaming community. Indeed, one popular (console) gaming website simply put "Dragon Age 2? Please" as its summary of the game, as if it was such a terrible inception of a great series that its failure should be apparent to all. It wasn't to me. However, having purchased this from...

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So much to write about...

I have a backlog of essays and thoughts I wish to publish to this blog. But suffice to say this is my thought for tonight: today out of necessity I have worked 14 hours with a 15 lunch break and a 25 minute dinner break. It is almost midnight, and I need to read before bed. I will wake up at 7:00am and be grateful that I am rested already, and that I do not have a ridiculous commute. I have used my google docs and my years of electronic resource cataloguing to plan my lessons for this week. It still took me well over an hour (and most of these lessons I have resource collated already.) During this my gaming computer crashed resignedly. I waved goodbye to a fair number of saved games, and (painfully) my saved multiplayer battles on Shogun 2 and Empire TW (not least my defeat of a level 10 general.)Fortunately,...

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The Games Industry

This is a fragmented article written from a 15-5-1 plan (see my other website, www.thequillguy.com, for a guide to this plan.) I copied, foolishly, a table into this blog, and only took the details of the plan and not itself overall structure. Therefore, the paragraphs do not develop an overarching point, but they might be an interesting read in themselves: Some of my pupils, and I, spend a lot of time gaming, and a lot of time at school. But the school curriculum does not acknowledge gaming. While literature is studied and esteemed, and rightly so, gaming is (for reasons I discussed before) still in its infancy as an art-form of credibility. And that itself is perhaps right, too (at least for the current time.) But while subject teachers...

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