San Francisco’s hot, and the DJ on the radio agrees.  “It’s so hot outside that my only suggestion is you stick your head out the window of a moving car and sing this!”  Immediately, Jordin Sparks starts complaining that there’s “No Air."

The Bay Area is tinted the color of baked clay with all the smoke from California’s usual summer forest fires.  Sweat trickles down the back of my neck and it’s only a quarter to 10:00.  I’m trekking up three trolley-stuffed blocks to the University Club on Powell Street, just a stone’s throw from West Coast shopping Mecca, Union Square.  On the vaulted University Club’s fourth floor, I’ll soon receive an unexpectedly bone-crushing handshake from CDV Software Entertainment’s Ted Brockwood, PR Account Manager for the video game publisher’s North American branch.

I thank Ted for the invitation to CDV Editors Day ’08, and that’s when I realize that I need to develop a much firmer handshake the next time I meet him.  He’s ready to talk shop, but I’m already eyeballing the oversized hi-def screens positioned around the room.  Representatives from PC Gamer, IGN, 1UP, and Destructoid are filtering in, and everyone’s making requisite commentary about the hilly climb.

Ted’s got bigger fish to fry, and I’m about to entrench myself in hours of hands-on time with Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, today’s center-stage beauty from German developer Ascaron.  Ascaron is hitting crunch time for Sacred 2’s September PC release, with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 dates rolling in November.

Ascaron is first and foremost a PC developer.  This is their maiden voyage into console development, although an immense portion of the game is already stable enough to allow dozens of players to teleport at will across its 22-square-mile map.  (For comparison’s sake, Oblivion’s map was 16 square miles.)  That’s not including two more levels of wormy underground tunnels in the Sacred land of Ancaria.  Early reports stating that Sacred 2’s underground levels “double” the size of the map are grossly exaggerated, but there’s no doubt that the dozens of cavern entrances make for plenty of spelunking opportunities.  Additionally, every square inch of the topographically-dynamic map is handcrafted.  Every swaying pine, every frog pond, every stretch of beach sand, and every hillside hike is carved, placed, stretched, shrunk, and smoothed into place, one piece at a time.  No overrated random dungeons here.

By nightfall, a full workday later, QA and Customer Support Manager Mike Tata (pronounced Tay-tuh) has already had a long day, not to mention the even longer days he’s had leading up to this event.  Regardless, he’s been bouncing around the game rooms, helping people through a few known bugs, a few unknown ones, and a fair but not unexpected amount of freezes and crashes.  But that’s what crunch time is for, right?  That’s why, even though Ascaron’s offices in Germany are ten hours ahead of us, they’re probably still in there, midnight oil burning, or coffee pots gurgling the start of yet another early-to-rise day.  Guten morgen, I bet.  CDV has been working closely with Ascaron since February, so, compared to the average publisher, they’re rather intimate with the game’s progress, though they’d only recently cracked open today’s latest build from the developers.

Mike has kept his chin up, soaking in people’s feedback, some of it constructive, some of it not so much (the first thing one journalist says:  “Grid-lined inventory system?  F***, I thought we were past this”).

At one point during the day, I grab Mike by the shoulder and walk with him into the PC room where four monstrous desktops and four powerhouse laptops have been buzzing with drop-in/drop-out multiplayer matches since we arrived.  Later, I also snag the gregarious and sharply-dressed Mario Kroll, Director of Marketing and PR, and ask him for a moment of his time, too.  Most of the questions I’ve heard from the other journalists today are centered around game technicalities, embargo dates, and the like.  There’s plenty of joking quips to go around as well.

IGN’s Jason Ocampo asks, “So will there be mounts in this game?”

“Yes.  In addition to horses, each character will have a unique mount,” Mike says.

“Will there be ponies?” Jason raises an eyebrow.

“No, but there will be, uh, horses.”

 “But no ponies, you say?”

Everybody has a chuckle, but it’s apparent that, at least since 2:00 this afternoon, visitors have been taking greater advantage of the full bar in the next room.  As for me I’m pretty sure the bartender wanted to floor me with a single Cape Cod, so I’d had to switch to water pretty quick.  Before that vodka and cranberry mix started making my monitor wobble, the bartender had punked me for ordering “just” a soda earlier.  I contested that the rum part could wait until after lunch, but thank you.

The Cape Cod had me pushing through the rooms like I was being moved by WASD keys.  And Mike, being more of a first-person shooter fan than a role-playing game fan, hopes against hope that WASD movement can be integrated into the PC version before the game ships.  Having the option would be brilliant -- agreed -- but probably won’t mesh well with Sacred 2’s click-and-hold combat on the PC.  The consoles require a touch more skill; since there’s no auto-targeting, the much more natural analog movement is balanced by having to continually reposition footing to face your opponent.

Mario, however, having spent egregious amounts of time playing RPGs (he names off about 12 of them before he goes on), feels that Sacred 2 is full and complete in and of itself.  He also acknowledges a certain “luxury” CDV has as a publisher, in that they have the power to push back dates until they see what they like in the final product.  “We’re not just some publisher that shoves the game in the box and sets it on the store shelf,” says Mario.  “To be on my team, you have to be a passionate gamer.  You have to love games.”

We’ve all seen the effects of games castrated by poor localization:  Inexcusable misspellings, poor grammatical structure, or linguistic idioms lost in translation when they cross the Pond.  CDV recognizes this, and they’re determined not to let their developers’ products fail from wanton oversights like those.  “Something I’ve always said,” Mario clarifies, “is that Coke and McDonald’s sell worldwide, while bratwurst and lederhosen do not.”  I think I know what he means, and now CDV’s purpose and intent gains clarity.  CDV isn’t micromanaging their developers just so they can feel better about themselves.  Like German-American alchemists, CDV is there to exchange local coinage into global currency.  “Sure, we could just leave developers alone and adopt a hands-off policy, but I’ve lived in the United States for 20 years.  I have a better connection with this culture than they do.  We’ll look at a game and maybe say, ‘Hey, this has got a cool core, but this is something you need to tweak to make it more palatable for an American audience.’  We want to make this a joint brand.”

This attention to cultural nuance -- and having a strong base game to begin with -- is why the original Sacred was translated into multiple languages, selling over 1.8 million copies globally, and being named PC Gamer’s RPG of the Year in 2004.  Yes, 2004 was also the year of Fable and Knights of the Old Republic II, heavy hitters if ever there were some.

But what about 2008?  It’s arguable that Action RPGs have settled themselves into a cozy spot and haven’t budged far outside of their own box.  With forum boards recently aflame in a Blizzard-fueled fire, some naysayers would completely write-off Sacred 2 after seeing nothing more than a 20-minute gameplay video of Diablo 3 (it’s smashing, there’s no doubt).  Still, after watching that gameplay video multiple times myself, I’m still not convinced the genre is pushing any envelopes, and especially not by Blizzard.  They may be the best refiners in the business, but they’ve never been accused of sourcing their peons for the cultivation of raw materials.

I carefully load an 800-pound-gorilla-sized question into the chamber before aiming it at Mario’s forehead.  I want to know why people will still be talking about Sacred 2 in two years.  I want to know why Sacred 2 is going to be a Diablo 3 killer, even though Diablo 3 likely won’t be around for a long time."

Mario becomes noticeably hesitant for the first time all evening.  He stares out from the University Club’s balcony, looking at the TransAmerica building but not really seeing it.  He sucks in a breath between his teeth before continuing.

“It’s not,” he starts slowly.   “It not going to be a Diablo 3 killer.”  But he wasn’t saying that in a way to disparage Sacred 2.  “Our character development is much deeper.  Diablo 3 has more action, but not necessarily the depth we have.”  He turns back towards me.  “I have no doubt Diablo 3 is going to be a kick ass game.  But Sacred 2 can totally stand on its own.  It’s not a me-too title.  It never was.”

And then we turn back towards the dusky cityscape, inhaling the forest-fire fallout.  From having played the Diablo games as well as sizeable handfuls of other lazily-labeled “Diablo clones,” Mario finishes by simply stating, “I’m convinced,” when considering whether Sacred 2 will indeed stand on its own.  “I’m convinced,” he said again. "I mean, after all, football fans can play both Madden and NCAA.  Shooter fans can enjoy both Battlefield: Bad Company and Call of Duty 4.  Why, if you're a fan of RPGs, would you not want to buy a role-playing game shipping in a few months, rather than sitting out all year, waiting for another title?"

And with those comparisons beginning to clear up, it becomes more obvious that there will be enough air to breathe for both Diablo 3 and Sacred 2 in the same atmosphere.

The Escapist Magazine is holding a minor contest amongst its forum-goers, seeing who can come up with some winning designs with the Spore Creature Creator.  They need to be thematically relevant to the Escapist, however.  The winner will get a unique forum title (no biggie, but it's a unique enough concept to motivate some folks).  Here's what I came up with...

This first rather amorphous character (here's its short YouTube video) is the illustrious Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame:

The creature below, called the Escape-o-saur (YouTube), is built with The Escapist's "e" logo in mind: 

 




And this is from another animated series they're hosting called "Unforgotten Realms."  I don't know what this thing's name is.  But judging from the pic I grabbed it from, let's call it a "Schmoopy Worm."  (Video)




And this last one doesn't really count, but it's inspired by an ad banner that pretty much owns their site 300 days out of the year.  It's the logo for EVE Online (here's its video):

This last one isn't mine.  It's Virgil's, IT Director for the Escapist.  These little gremlins--Virgil's recreation is spot-on--are Yahtzee's nemesis(es) in the Zero Punctuation videos.

The game:  GRID.  The car:  Lamborghini Murcielago RGT.  The track:  24 Hours of Le Mans. 

The level of idiocy required to actually attempt this race on the real-world 24-hour setting:  Astronomical.

My wife is down in Tijuana, Mexico, for nine days, leading her high school youth group in a home-building project sponsored by Habitat for Humanity.  In keeping with the spirit of selflessly giving her time and energy to a family in need, I decide to stay cool and air-conditioned indoors, sidestepping Oregon's Rogue Valley heat, preparing for a binge gaming session that I will not recover from for at least another 48 hours.  First on the docket is Codemasters' GRID.

Knowing that this is one of my only chances in this lifetime to attempt anything faintly resembling a 24-hour gaming session, I entrench myself into the living room, ready for the long haul.  I've got Kettle brand sea salt & vinegar chips.  I've got a six pack of Thomas Kemper ginger ale.  I've got a Therapist Select Shiatsu Massaging Cushin.  I've got no shame.  And while I fully realize this won't see me through a full 24 hours of gaming, it's a start.

A clock counts down from 24:00 hours in the upper-left of the screen.  The Circuit de la Sarthe is about 8.5 miles long.  I don't have to win, per se.  Simply keeping my car alive for that length of time will be a victory in my book. Here's how it went down.

24:00 -- With only 10.5 miles put on my spankin' new Lamborghini Murcielago RGT, I look once more at the real-world clock out of habit.  It's 9:40 a.m.  I don't have any fancy racing equipment.  I've got a gamepad, just like you; and I've got a stinging fear that my right trigger finger (the gas pedal) will be blistered long before I hit the 12-hour mark tonight.  I've only been in a couple dozen races, I'm guesstimating, and my racing technique reminds me of something comedian George Carlin once said:  "You drive like old people f*ck:  Slow and sloppy."   The light's green and tire smoke fills the lineup.  We're off.

23:40 -- 66.0 miles in and I'm half a car-length ahead of Ron Fellows, a racer I'd been piggybacking since the start line.  He clips my rear quarter and sends me sidelong into a guardrail fence.  Damage indicators light up green in all quadrants:  Gears, suspension, steering, engine, and both front wheels.  I sneer out of the gravel and find that the Murcielago still handles beautifully.

23:39 -- I paused at a bad time.  Coming out of pause, I immediately hit another huge patch of gravel, list right, and roll my car over once.  She lands feet down, so I swerve back onto the road, not much worse for wear.  My trained videogame instincts begin scanning the ground up ahead for a health pack to run over, or perhaps my mind started counting down the few critical seconds required for my shields to regenerate.  Moments later I come to the realization that I'm not playing a first-person shooter.

23:27 -- 96.6 miles in and I'm lapped by first-place Emmanuel Pirro.  He's in a low-slung LMP1 class vehicle.  From what I've gathered, "LMP1" means "Faster Than Me.  One."  I'm currently in 11th place (out of 15).  I unlock the Short Haul achievement, having driven 500 miles in-game.  My pit manager chirps in, "Okay, Dude.  We're looking into the damage to your engine.  It looks like your performance is down 15 percent."  That's the last time I ever hear from him, though things will get much, much worse before this race is over.

23:00 -- The racer in 12th place is making a concerted effort to catch me.  I take a bathroom break.  My urine smells like McDonald's house blend.  I turn on the wife's massage chair and set it to full Shiatsu for 15 minutes as I get ready to unpause.

22:33 -- I've side walled one-too-many curves and my gears are paying the price.  The gears indicator lights up orange.

22:25 -- I side-walled yet another railing, spun my wheels in the grass for a few seconds, and then was promptly dropped from 11th to 13th place.  I panic and begin driving more erratically, with two other racers playing leap frog ahead of me.  I push my car's lightly-damaged limits, hit another patch of grass, start pumping my brakes, and then put it face-first into a farm fence.  My engine's damage indicator is now orange.  (Those were the gears that lit up orange earlier.  This is going well.)  Down from about 215 mph at the beginning of the race, I'm now barely able to push it up to 200.   A wheel noise I'd only suspected before has now increased in volume, especially during slow-down and take-off around tight corners.

22:00 -- I'm a good seven seconds behind 12th place.  I'm more regularly passed by the LMP1 cars.  Second piss break.  I grab a Vanilla Coke, crack it open, and let it start to go flat before I take a sip.  Second 15-minute chair massage begins.  This time on the "rolling" setting.

21:47 -- A near race-ending crash spins out one car in the chicanes (zig zags, I call 'em) before the stadium.  I barely miss the collision, but I carry the other driver's door as a hood ornament for a good 200 yards.

21:35 -- One of the fast-bred cars clips me as we're making the last large bends before hitting the stadium again.  I shoot across the track, overcorrect, shoot back across the track, and plant myself into a wall of tires.  Reminds me of a joke I heard on the 1up Show once:  What do you do with 365 used condoms?  Melt them down, mold it into a tire, and call it One Damn Goodyear.  I'm sure the cries of anguish coming from the audience stemmed from hearing that joke in my head.  My engine light is full-on red.

21:33 -- My driving is better than ever, due in no small part to my inability to driver faster than 194 mph anymore.  Along the straight stretch, I also find that the Murcielago is now pulling ever-so-gently to the right.  Only having a gamepad, compensating for this is a jerky proposition.

21:21 -- Feel like I should begin experimenting more with the e-brake around corners.  But my current driving formula is already failing miserably enough that introducing anything new into the mix right now could prove disastrous.  GRID features a lovely 'rewind' button if you get caught in a bind.  Depending on the difficulty level you're racing at, you'll have more or less of them to play with during any given race.  Without realizing it, I'd used my four flashbacks during the first hour.  I squandered them all.  At best, I should've only used one every six hours.  I'm less than three hours in, and one hard hit into anything and the race is done for.

21:17 -- Wondering what it says about me -- as a person, as a member of society -- having set aside 24 hours of my life to compete in one, single, virtual racing event.  I need to be doing something productive.  Mowing the lawn comes to mind.  Not something I get my kicks doing, but now the need to mow the freaking lawn is suddenly overwhelming.  Instead, here I am, listening to a creaking sound coming from my tires that will undoubtedly narrate my dreams for the next week.

21:06 -- Tom Kristensen pulled in front of me several minutes ago.  I'd nearly lost his tail.  Then he misses a 90-degree turn.  I see a cloud of tire smoke in the corner ahead of me, and one second later, Tom Kristensen is heading right for me, playing chicken (?).  I brake, swerve, and clip the left front of his car at a thankfully low speed; but now I have light (green) damage to my rear driver's side wheel.  I'm currently wondering what it's like to be that third wheel.

21:00 -- 466 miles.  Threw some Papa Murphy's into the microwave.  Let's hear it for Customer Appreciation Day leftovers.  Lack of a soundtrack during the Le Mans is killing me.  Spun the Klaxons' Myths of the Near Future.  That's better.  My eyes have been glossing over, and at one point during the race I'd suddenly snapped to my senses, wondering how I'd made it that far without crashing.  I've experienced that very real fear during lengthy road trips from San Diego, California, to my hometown of Coos Bay, Oregon.  But that's a 14-hour drive.  Only three hours into a videogame, though, has accelerated that feeling prematurely.

20:06 -- Entering a Zen-like racing state of mind.  Things are progressing well.  I'm watching the tree-lined shadows crawl a couple more inches across the road with each passing lap.  My trigger finger isn't complaining anymore.  I'm flipping through a stellar mix of personal albums:  Digitalism's Idealism album; These New Puritans' Beat Pyramid; Holy F*ck's LP, and Add N to (X)'s Loud Like Nature, along with the aforementioned Klaxons.  I hear a telltale blip from Xbox LIVE informing me that I've just unlocked another achievement:  Long Haul.  I've officially driven 1,000 in-game miles.

20:05 -- The achievement yoinked me out of any Zen-like race state I'd entered.  At the zig zags leading up to the stadium, I began to slow down, but forgot to start cornering.  The car explodes in a tiny fireball.  A screen of statistics tells me:

        Speed of impact:  112 mph

        Force of impact:  83.82G

        Total damage:  98%

I made it less than 17 percent of the way into 24 Heures du Mans (in the French), and a supreme feeling of relief washed over me, not even giving frustration a chance to rear its pointless head.  I walked away from the Xbox 360, headed for the garage, and wheeled out the lawn mower.

"Cousin -- It's your cousin!"

The standard greeting from Roman.  My cousin.  He'd called up, wanted to bowl, so we rolled to South Dukes for the lanes on the boardwalk.  We hit up a full game and I came out on top, bowling a rather average 165.  Roman put 130 up on the scoreboard.  Hello was punching out the "New York Groove" on the radio.  Then it was time to take Roman back to our Bohan safehouse.

I'd forgotten that I'd left a Banshee parked in pristine condition in our reserved space, so I pulled up close to it.  Didn't want to scratch it.  Roman had a blast with our time hanging out, of course, so he's all, "Thank you, Niko.  That was fun."  The very next second I was sprawled out in the middle of the road as Roman decked me in the face and slid into the driver's seat.  "That's mine!" he yelled.

"Not now," was all I replied.

And the mission was over.  Ahhh, those silly GTA moments that emerge when you accidentally trap your passenger riding shotgun.

Arriving in the land of purple mountain majesties, Niko Bellic doesn't come equipped with any Rock Band instruments, but that doesn't mean Liberty City isn't a musically-driven town, an earful experience.  There are over 200 tracks to flip through across a rather mind-boggling spectrum of genres, and it's natural to gravitate towards our own real-life tastes when it comes to selecting what Niko essentially listens to in the game.

So it makes a lot of sense when my particular version of Niko listens to a lot of rap music.  A quintessentially American concoction, rap conveys truth, delusion, anger, and promise, frequently appropriating pre-existing and emerging elements, sounds, and textures, then remixing them, remodeling them, and finally revealing them once again in the artist's own image.  That’s the essence of rap music.

And this process, this creation of rap music speaks to the trials and tribulations Niko faces as well.  While his cousin Roman's optimism keeps alive the ideals of what the United States purportedly stands for from an immigrant’s perspective, Niko himself is waking up from this oversold American dream, seemingly within minutes of his arrival.  Early on, Niko begins the arduous and unexpected process of stripping down his hyperbolized, smoke-and-mirrors concepts about what America is, chewing it and digesting it during a downward-spiral series of firsthand observances, and then reconstructing that selfsame American dream into what it truly is for him, recognizable only by him, reformed and revealed by his own hand, not the fanciful letters from his cousin. 

And sometimes (not all the time; I don't want to oversell this idea) the rap tracks playing on 102.7 The Beat and old-school hip hop channel The Classics 104.1 manifest the spirit and intent of that GTA IV journey.  To me at least.

So when Niko is blindsided by a betrayal from a respected, well-liked, and trustworthy individual, in a backstabbing worthy of a blood feud … and Nas is on the radio reassuring Niko that “War Is Necessary” … those are the moments that begin to transcend any average videogaming experience.  It just nailed it for me.  Personalized it for me.  Carved out that particular episode for me.

Perhaps, when you play through the above scenario, you’ll be tuned into The Journey radio station, and Philip Glass’ heart-palpitating string and brass ensemble, “Pruit Igoe,” will narrate your scene (that’s the anthemic song heard on the debut GTA IV trailer).  Or maybe Lonnie Liston Smith on the IF99 channel will bathe your day with funk-laden irony as he explores what might happen were there “A Chance For Peace,” when you already know there’s no longer any chance for that.

Those are the sandbox possibilities that leave me absolutely floored.  Not that, yeah, I can pick up a hooker, beat up a hooker, and take my money back from a hooker.  That’s all well and good (if that’s your thing), but it certainly lacks the nuance I’m describing here.  I’m looking at the myriad aural variables that accompany the myriad tactile variables in Liberty City, even on otherwise common occurrences like the loose-leaf description above.

In one other scenario, after I’d been on a first date with the obsessive-compulsive but nonetheless sweet Michelle, my car silently idled outside of her apartment to the tune of Special Ed’s “I Got It Made.”  And at that moment, there was no better song I could’ve turned to on the radio.

"Yeah, so after only three dates, I totally hit that."

 My wife gave me a strange look.  I'd been building up a strong case as to why GTA IV was worthy of an actual purchase (she accepts that I'm a frequent renter, but casually seeks justification whenever I earmark $60 for a video game).  But, despite my arguments that it brilliantly unfolds the fresh-off-the-boat, immigrant-out-of-water, post-millenial terrorist-striken bloody-nosed American Dream experience, it was still possible I'd just said something wrong.  And when she'd retreated to the reading room for the rest of the night to finish Ender's Game ahead of me (she knows I hate it when she does that with books I've been promising to finish), then it only confirmed my suspicions.  Saying "I totally hit that" in reference to a videogame fictional girlfriend I'd only fictionally dated three times, on a game I'd owned less than 24 hours, was apparently crossing some line of marital fidelity I'd previously attributed only an infintesimal amount of importance upon.

 But my wife made it passive-agressively clear that this seemingly minor indiscretion on my part would not go unpunished.  Just a few minutes ago, she came into my Man Cave, set the book down on the corner of my desk, and said "I'm done" before walking right back out.  She shut the door.

I don't necessarily see a connection, but tonight I'll probably go and drop $150 - $200 on lapdances at the Triangle Club before I crawl into my very, very cold side of the bed.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure why I was so afraid of going back.

It would be hasty of me to say that Sins of a Solar Empire was collecting dust on my shelf -- being less than a month old in my own collection, despite its early February launch from Stardock.  While dust wasn't the culprit, some unknown fear was settling a thick, grimy layer over my ability to return to the 4X masterpiece.  And it wasn't fear of any one particular thing that kept me at bay for the past few weeks.  In fact, it was that intangible fear of the ol' unknown.

I didn't fear the start of a new game.  Possibilities ripe for the picking, you start every time with a developed home planet teeming with a populous that’s hungry for expansion into the stars.  I didn't fear developing resources on orbiting asteroids, striated with enriched mineral veins, my metal and ore extractors grinding and puffing away below the surface.  I didn't fear developing my home planet's gravity well with orbital research facilities, Gauss defense platforms and hangar defenses.  I didn't fear sending out my first Arcova scout frigate, the smoky-voiced captain culling, "If it’s out there, I’ll find it."  I no longer fear the surprisingly accessible research tree, a necessary evil and staple fixture of any self-respecting 4X strategy game, but this one so clean-lined and solidly-placed.  With a growing confidence, I no longer fear dealing a firm hand to pirates and the black market alike.  With money as their driving factor, they both become as easy to control and predict as any ship in your own fleet, any resource you trade within your own space lanes.  And, come to think of it, I wasn't afraid of confronting the enemy -- be it the computer-controlled AI, or those selfsame pirate raiders on the loose.  Sins knows how to hold its own in a firefight, and as guns-blazing frantic as they can grow to be (picture Battlestar Galactica-sized, with perhaps less shaky-cam) it's breezy and beautiful to seamlessly swoop in and out of the action like some omniscient, interstellar hawkeye.

No, I wasn't afraid of any one of those things in particular.  What I was afraid of was keeping all those plates spinning in the air at once.  And doing it successfully.  There's absolutely no way this much should be happening within the urgent pacing of a real-time strategy game, and yet?  Even as a band of incoming pirates ping'd on my PSIDAR, I plunked another 250 credits of bounty on my arch-rival's head, selected my home fleet and focused their fire on each member of the pirates' group, dropping them one at a time from the night sky, popping my head into the research tab to continue development of Titano-Ferric plating (rather relevant in my current predicament), while acknowledging that a third Gauss canon was brought online just in time for planet Liguria's current defense needs, pushing my Arcova scout to another unknown fringe nearly three jumps away from my home planet, and sending in my Protev frigate to colonize a recently-discovered backwater planetoid.

...Only then returning to the heated battle swimming around Liguria, pleased to note that my frigate-laden Kol battleship fleet was mopping up the last few pirate stragglers still putting up the remnants of a forceful, not unorganized attack.  Less than 12 minutes left until the next pirate invasion, only a few seconds to go until the Titano-Ferric plating would be automatically installed on all my ships and orbital structures, the backwater planetoid named and prepped for logistical structures to be erected on yet more delicious mineral finds, and my scout just discovered an empty, nebulous system that was wreaking slow-but-sure amounts of hull damage to the ship’s skin -- time to place it on auto-explore to keep it moving around the star, unveiling more pieces of this solar system and, eventually, settled systems from my computer-run nemesis.

Nope, it’s apparent that I wasn't afraid of any one of those things.  I was simply afraid of the fact that I could actually keep that many balls juggling in the air.  It honestly shouldn't be possible.  It should be too much to manage.  A minefield of tasks lost within their own intricacies.  An overbearing need to babysit each and every one of the game’s multitudinous functions.  That's essentially what I was afraid of.  Being able to, with Sins of a Solar Empire, accomplish what should by all rights be an undecipherable grocery list of impossible-to-manage administrative tasks.

But it’s not impossible.  Not with Sins.  And it’s nothing to be afraid of.

Conan didn't fail me.  I failed Conan.

 I'd drawn up a battle plan -- a sturdy one.  One that involved the upcoming MMO stunner, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and a marathon reading of Robert E. Howard's original and unedited Conan tellings, starting with The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.  Then, come the game's official release date, I'd bring (hopefully) literary-minded observations about the game world, thining the lines just that much more between the established entertainment arts -- movies, music, literature -- and the current pinnacle of interactive entertainment:  video games.  This would serve as an intensive compare-and-contrast from the page to the monitor.  From 10-point Times New Roman to 1920 x 1200 resolution.  From intellectual property to internet real estate.

 My dad didn't introduce me to the Conan stories as a youngster (he was more of a Tom Clancy/Clive Cussler fan, which loses a little in translation during story time) -- nor have I entertained the Conan movies and/or comic books that have endlessly spun off over the second half of the 20th century. Many times, if I'm that late to the party, I'd rather just not show up. 

 But Conan, I realized, would be different.  Conan would be a resurgence, a rise from the ashes of obscurity and irrelevancy.  Not like that other Fellowship that's never actually left the forefront of the world's consciousness.  Conan, I'd heard, and certainly found certain truths in, was a gratuitously violent, mysoginistic world populated with beheaded warriors and naked, fawning women.  Don't worry:  Funcom, developers of Age of Conan, know when it comes to blatant chauvanism and racial stereotypes (oh yes, plenty of those in Howard's stories, too) that we're nearly a decade into the new millenium now -- it ain't the 1930s anymore.  And there are plenty of old school domineering and damaging social structures that just don't fly nowadays.  In Age of Conan, female player characters won't be running around in a chiffon tabard, clinging desperately to sweaty alpha males for sex and security.  A woman swinging a battleaxe can cleave your head from your shoulders just as efficiently as a man-wielded one.

But this plan was to conduct a purist's study of the source texts (themes, motifs, symbols!),  bounced off the most realized and interactive construction of Hyborea ever beheld (instances, grinding, pixel shaders!).  But my plan was far from foolproof.  What I didn't anticipate was a hyper-dedicated, overzealous group of game developers that would create one of the most beautifully-rendered MMO worlds that I will never be able to run at a decent framerate on my current gaming rig.  In fact, I pass more hardware benchmarks for Crysis than I do with Age of Conan.  So, as the Search For America's Next Top MMO continues, expect Age of Conan to always be struggling to keep a decent subscriber population around.  At least for the first year or two, which is a timeframe that, with incredibly few exceptions, makes or breaks an online world.  And not because it won't do anything better or worse than MMO's Current Top Dog.  But because so few people in the gaming world will actually be able to access it.  And of the people that can access it at a playable framerate (remember, Age of Conan is unapologetically PvP/RvR-centric; a bad time to see stutter-stop frames-per-second) even fewer of those people will be interested in such a niche universe as well.  And if the Mature rating is such a gigantic draw, remember:  videogame nipples and blood splatters across the user interface will operate by the same Law of Diminishing Returns as everything else.  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

So, with the sad news that my duo-core Dell Inspiron E1705 isn't up to the task of rendering a competent online version of Hyborea, I'll have to curb my enthusiasm until it's released on Xbox 360 this holiday season.  But I'm a tad flaky when it comes to MMOs ... and there's always, always, always The Next Thing.  Am I right?  This holiday season I might be entirely too enamored with Spore, Fable 2, and Warhammer Online by then.  And Age of Conan might become an already fading memory, before it's even had a chance for people to catch up to its future-proofed graphics-hog dimensions.

An eventful year has passed since I'd finagled with the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes beta.  A lot of good things happened in 2007 that propelled MMORPG gaming into a brilliant, well-deserved spotlight:  The World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion not only kept the core game afloat, it veritably blew the original out of the water content-wise; the decade-long wait ended for Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (nee Middle-earth Online) with droves of Tolkein-ites celebrating with Halfling pipes in hand and "Tainted Love" played by characters in various ribald taverns; the free-to-play Dungeon Runners hit the randomized environments and equipment sweet spot for a Western Hemisphere that isn't too keen on the free-to-play model in the first place; and the completely overhauled Tabula Rasa (pardon me, that's Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa) was met with enough mixed critical acclaim to eventually render the red-hot title into something a bit more room temperature, but still kept itself a hot topic of conversation throughout the year.

Vanguard, on the other glaived hand, went from a cautionary tale against hasty, bug-ridden launches ... to something that was rather un-talked about for many, many months.  And while Oscar Wilde hubristicly chimed, "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about," having Vanguard politely step out of any sunburning limelight may have been a godsend for the overly-ambitious MMO that could.  Vanguard made touchstones out of many elements that MMO critics (by now) relegated to blacklist (read: outdated) status.  Touchstones like "corpse runs" and "experience penalties."  Gameplay that smacked of scheduled "grinding" between unscheduled "spawn camping."  And overland travel required lengthy commutes and a harrowing amount of backtracking from sometimes-redundant mission structure.

But Vanguard wanted the rewards to be well-worth the heartache and effort.  A completely non-instanced world, letting you travel as far as the eye can see without load screens, watching the rise and fall of sun and moon cycles in the sky, witnessing clouds on the horizon shipping themselves acrooss the land until rainfall replaced the blue tracts of sky above.  Complex crafting rules yield everything from furniture to fill your (non-instanced) homes and (non-instanced) guild halls, all the way to manmade ships sailing off through uncharted waters toward multiple other immense continents.  Plus, as no small feature, they launched a diplomacy card game, adding a completely untapped element to the typically skip-worthy motion of MMO conversation, but also making that diplomacy shape the make and mold of politcal machinations across the realms.

Vanguard was so ambitious as to be comparable to a fantasy-fiction version of EVE Online (take that comparison with a grain of salt.  Nevertheless, the comparison is worth examining...)  Even with developer Sigil's company statement printed on the game box -- "Set Yourself Free" -- critics instead came to bury Vanguard beneath a ton of soil that stank of hitching graphics, stutter-stop frame rates, and the unfinished feel of a game that was, well, quite unfinished.  It appeared that, at launch time, Vanguard was not worth more than the sum of its parts.

So, full disclosure:  I caught onto the rise of mainstream MMOs a few years after the turn of the century; sometime with the release of Final Fantasy XI.  I'd only taken cursory glances at EverQuest, though at the time I just didn't get it.  And, as Vanguard is the current crown holder of shamelessly hearkening-back-to-the-old-school-days-of-EverQuest, I was still treading personal virgin territory in Vanguard.  This world, Telon, was everything I thought I was looking for in a hardcore MMO.  Telon was the Promised Land.  Though, as I had found out during the beta, it was more of a Too Promised Land.  Too much undertaken by the developers, too little funding to see it through, Keith Parkinson -- Sigil's visionary leader -- passed away too soon, and perhaps us starry-eyed desert wanderers expected just a little too much.

I'll still admit in Vanguard's favor, however, that I did not personally scribble down pages of notes regarding the rampant bugs and glitches that were ceaselessly being blasted over world chat by disillusioned Vanguardians.  Or, as is more likely the case, my attentions were simply drawn elsewhere.  It's possible I didn't receive the proper amount of copper pieces for stabbing previously disclosed amounts of rats ... as I was probbably mesmerized by the symmetric grandeur of the city of Qalia, stunned as I stared out from a Cliffs-of-Dover height from above.  Perhaps the graphics were hiccupping all the way down to ten frames per second ... but my attention was drawn to the square-rigged sailing vessel coursing between the Colossus-sized statues flanking the harbor entrance.  Sure, even I couldn't help but be put off by the bland severity of my character's grandpa-high waistband on my bland (yet shiny) pantaloons ... but it mattered less and less the more I got sucked into the gravity well of the complex and startlingly-addictive diplomacy card game.  And yeah, the enemies pacing across the map freely handed out tombstones to anyone willing to overdo their Han Solo pursuits.  But that only meant that together we lived, and alone we died.

And now, somewhere around 14 months later, I've returned to Vanguard's world of Telon.  On the surface it's hard not to notice that it's still getting walked all over by rough frame rates (even with a sturdy rig at medium graphical settings), and its artistic direction -- with all due respect to the late, great Keith Parkinson -- isn't necessarily winning any awards, beyond its impressive draw distances.  The textures and character models weren't showstoppers in January 2007, and they haven't improved with age.  When you move from one 'seamless' zone to the next, there's definitely seams showing when all sound effects and movement freezes to sub-zero temperatures.  And you know what?  I'm playing on the exact same laptop I played on during beta, but it's quite possible I'm encountering more graphical errors flipping through menus than I ever did before.

But you know what else?  That first look out across the bay from atop the cliffs above Qalia is still one of the most breathtaking sights ever crafted in any MMO before or since.  The diplomacy game taught to me just outside of the city walls is still a wholly original idea untouched by any other MMO.  And it's getting harder and harder to complain about those darn frame rates when I can run for an hour across a landmass and still not hit the opposite shoreline.  I'm scoping out places to eventually build my home, none of which are in some tucked-away, instanced neighborhood.  And I'm also keeping an eye out for a strong guild to join, perhaps one that doesn't even have a guildhall yet -- because then we can still place that guildhall wherever we want.

I understand that there's a lot of work involved.  Probably much, much more than I can eventually spare, I'll be honest.  It's not like I'm still 16-years-old with a part-time job bagging groceries with summer vacation just around the corner.  I ain't got that kinda time anymore (who does?)  But I'm willing to give the journey a thoroughbred effort and a fair shake.  You can't say that Vanguard never gave you anything, but it sure as heck isn't going to give it to you for free.  I'll see how immersed I can become in this one.  At least until Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures starts lopping off heads on May 20th of this year.  But with Age of Conan falling under the exact opposite mapping model, hyper-instanced from one end of Hyborea to the other, we'll just see how claustrophobic that does or doesn't render me, after setting myself free in Vanguard.

[Randy is playing Noman Resden, a rather pensive and slow-going human Mordebi sorcerer on the Xeth server.]

On Tuesday, March 4, Gary Gygax died at the age of 69.  As one of the seminal founders of pen-and-pad roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax defined "geek" for the whole of Generation X ... and with news of his passing, an entire swath of pre-teen and adolescent memories were tossed back out onto the tabletop for me.

 It could've only been moments later when I received a second, related-only-through-sheer-coincidence email.  The team at Turbine saw fit to give me a one-week, all-expenses-paid vacation back into the land of Dungeons & Dragons Online.  This would actually be my third visit to the city of Stormreach, as I'd bought DDO out of the gate for its February 2006 launch, returned one year later (probably from a similarly-themed invitation) in 2007, and now I'd be back again on its two-year anniversary in 2008.  Each of those times, as much as I wanted DDO to become The One for me when it came to finally settling down in an MMORPG, I'd always simply played for 30 days, then silently, humbly took my leave. 

 Whereas some MMO players suffer from being an "alt-aholic" -- having the inability to stick with and advance any one character -- I have an inability to stick with and advance in any one virtual world.  I savagely devour the initial 30-free days I'm given out of the box and, again, bow out before the developers leak another $14.95 out of my paycheck.  Often I'm completely satisfied, thank you for asking.  In a gaming genre that, by its very nature, cannot provide final closure, cannot provide a bona fide end game, cannot ever roll closing credits -- my condition is a blessing.  My personal "goal" within an MMO is to often garner the very most enjoyment I can out of it for one month ... and then contentedly move on.

 That same philosophy seemingly rang true of my D&D days during middle school and high school.  AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) 2nd Edition was the latest iteration of the now-fabled franchise, and there was an explosion of worlds and boxed sets all over the hobby store shelves.  Each one of my friends had a different world to be Dungeon Master over, and all of us rotated through one another's world's with a fantastic hunger to discover something new.  Chris was DM over the parched, desperate Dark Sun.  My best friend Travis unveiled his Goth tendencies with Ravenloft.  I kept things high-fantasy in Dragonlance.  And Scott, the veteran among us, had a complete library of Forgotten Realms.  We'd play in one world, until we longed for some new scenery, and then we'd move on.

 While I doubt we were the pariahs of society that Gary was made out to be during the rise of roleplaying games, I certainly weathered my fair share of cult-worshipping accusations from schoolmates, blacklistings from friends' parents, as well as being personally preached against in church (on more than at least two occasions I distinctly remember) in the small Baptist fellowship I attended at the time.  Thankfully, the media has labeled video games as the New Devilry, so that D&D fans can finally be left to worship Beelzebub in peace.

 So, without drawing upon too much coincidence in the matter, I've reactivated my DDO account for one more month, revisiting one of the latest iterations of Gary Gygax's empire, set in the newest world drawn up for d20 players, fairly whimpering along as far as numbers go in the bloody, subscriber-based massively-multiplayer landscape.