The Fiction Issue #2

In response to “The New Social Lubricant?” from The Escapist Forum: Bars + games = Brilliant!

We’ve only in the last few years in the DC area banned smoking in bars, so I’ve begun to go to bars since, but being an alcohol-hating recluse, they just aren’t any fun. If someone around here combined the quite common board game nights, group gaming, and the general popularity of bars/liquor, I would have a new favorite place.

In case you’re thinking of it, Dave & Busters is the freak side-show version of what this environment should be.

– FSK405K

I live in Hungary and I’d really like to have a bar like that around here. Not really for the “picking up girls” part, rather for the “have fun with friends” part. Sadly, the demographic of bar-goers and the demographic of board/video game players don’t overlap much around here. It’s either this or that. Here, it’s rather hard to have civilized discussions with people in a place with alcohol around, much less play games of any kind.

We still have a long way ahead of us before we’ll have places like The Whistle Stop in this country. :/

– Playbahnosh

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In response to “Big Brothers, Little Gamers” from The Escapist Forum: Good read. I remember when I was a dorm head for a bunch of high school age guys the first night was awful. We had these terrible name games and “say something unique about yourself” nonsense that everyone hated.

I finally got people to start chatting by just bringing up video games. I asked them to talk about which one’s they liked, which ones they were excited about, and before I knew it they were all talking and debating with each other.

– L.B. Jeffries

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In response to “Me, Myself and Multiplayer” from The Escapist Forum: Good article!

The lack of even a miniscule amount of team spirit is why I gave up even buying combat games for their multiplayer aspects, and it’s why I no longer bother with multiplayer at all. Now I concentrate on the single-player experience because I know my teammates (who are AI) aren’t going to wander off to do their own thing, thus leaving the team to fail, and aren’t going to charge insanely at the enemy in the hopes of getting a couple of cheap kills before they get shot down.

Online multiplayer has no effective motivators for players to play for the team, and that’s the case for even the most team-oriented game. I don’t see that changing for at least ten years because, apart from a few enlightened individuals, neither players nor developers understand that it’s a problem. That’s pretty sad, because when games DO motivate team play it makes the game infinitely better for everyone.

– Beery

thats exactly the reason why Xbox live offers the possibility to chat and invite guys from your fl. When you just jump into a game and have to deal with trashtalkers, minors or perk whores you should ask yourself what the heck that friends list is for 😉

As long as you have the possibility to choose and invite there is no need to wear a ‘victim tag’

– HuCast

In response to “The Game Room” from The Escapist Forum: Instead of partaking in the drinking and promiscuous sex that most freshman were, I spent my time in the dorm room alone playing Civilization 2, smoking clove cigarettes and listening to The Cure.

Damn, that was me, too. Except no cigarettes (clove or otherwise) and I listened to an assortment of mostly terrible heavy-metal. But the Civ 2 was the center, the single greatest contributor to my abysmal social life. Forget nerds-vs.-jocks, it was entirely Civilization 2 vs. Reality and the Outside World and Everything Else That Has Ever Been.

Regarding the illicit drug use… um, what? The only drugs mentioned in this article are tobacco and alcohol. A person is described as becoming a “gaming junkie” by playing Mario Cart, but I’m pretty sure that’s both an exaggeration and quite legal. Could someone please point me to the part of the article that glorifies herion addiction? I didn’t see that.

– Execudork

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In response to “Game and Watch” from The Escapist Forum: I must disagree with the original poster. There exists a fundamental problem with televising computer gaming – the games which are televised at the moment are extremely dull to watch, and the games which I feel that it would be interesting to televise already have real-life analogues which are far more exciting – sports games, particularly motor racing.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that lack of absorption into the fabric of the game itself. There are no analogues in computer gaming to being at a sports stadium, with the rain pelting down, the wind battering your face and watching your favourite team play, or to the visceral thrills of being at the likes of the Circuit de la Sarthe or the Daytona International Speedway, hearing the vicious twelve-cylinder roars of a prototype sports car thundering off the stands, smelling the odours of rubber and burning fuel, watching the brakes glow as they pass through the corners in the night.

– RAKtheUndead

A game like Counterstrike does not lend itself well to being televised, but other games like Unreal and Team Fortress tend to be much more frenetic games that can be very exciting to watch, especially between two skilled teams. Perhaps this is because in itself, dying has little consequence, and so the players can take more bold risks, but at the same time, dying at a crucial moment can alter the entire game’s flow.

– Crusnik