linterry's blogger

Sometimes when I'm relaxing on a sunny afternoon, thinking about games, I often get exasperated at how devilishly fun World of Warcraft could have been if it wasn't so popular. I guess this sort of needs explaining, doesn't it?

It seems to be some kind of immutable law that if you make any kind of game where there are any number of "game-breaking" imbalances, then it's only a matter of time before they get exploited. The game developers might not even be aware of these imbalances upon release, but once it gets played a hundred times by a million people, sure enough, they will all end up rising to the surface. The more people simultaneously playing the game, the faster this process is expedited. Examples that come to mind immediately are: Corpse Explosion from the original Diablo 2:LOD, massing Huntresses in beta Warcraft 3, and Invisiblity for Mages in pre-beta World of Warcraft. Evidently, all of these imbalances are long gone and buried in the graveyard.

In single player games, this isn't usually a problem. In fact, this is a great way to reward and motivate resourceful players who want to find the most effective way to play a game. For instance, you read somewhere about how certain abilities go extremely well together, and once you've got the combination, the rest of the game becomes a breeze. I guess some people will interject and say this is proof of a lousy game design, but quite honestly I am really fond of games that have these "imperfections" built-in. I guess that's becuase I'm a total sucker for beating the difficulty curve. I like to feel I'm special, even if rationally, I'm not.

However, in multiplayer games, game-breaking imbalances cause a huge problem, because there will always be two classes of people: 1. the exploiters and 2. the victims. The exploiters of course, are having fits of orgasmic gaming because they are dominating so easily. The victims however, aren't having so much joy, and eventually they will either 1. learn to become an exploiter or 2. quit the game. There's no doubt that over time the system will break down and eventually everyone who's still left playing the game will all be using the same strategy.

Blizzard's solution to all this of course, is to painstakingly remove, one by one, every single imbalance that gets discovered by its die hard gamers. Let's take World of Warcraft for instance. The number of ways you can abuse this game have gone down steadily since it's initial release. Every patch seems to flatten the playing field, making every class more or less "equal" in their potential for dominance, or more appropriately, non-dominance. The evidence is of course, in some of the quirky ways some abilities are implemented. Let's take the Mage's Polymorph, where you can transform an enemy into a harmless sheep. In Warcraft 3, the spell was simple and direct. You polymorph an enemy, he turns into a sheep, and you get to hammer on them for as long as the spell lasts without retalation. No ifs, ands or buts. But in World of Warcraft, this just won't work. It's too "imba". It's too exploitable. So blizzard adds all these quirky rules to it to make it work

1. You can only polymorph one target at a time
2. Polymorph heals the target at an incredilbly fast rate
3. Any attack on a polymorphed target breaks the spell
4. Targets become immune to Polymorph after multiple casts

All these rules, from a lore standpoint, make absolutley no sense. Why should turning someone into a sheep heal a target faster than a die-hard Priest could? Many Mages ended up wishing they could polymorph their own allies to get the same healing effect; that's how much nonsense it was. But from a balancing standpoint, they make perfect sense, because they prevent nasty abuses like, say, keeping an enemy sheeped indefinitely, or sheeping entire armies with impunity, or invulnerable tactics like frostbolt, sheep, frostbolt, sheep, frostbolt, sheep. In fact, if the original Polymorph from Warcraft 3 was kept intact, could you imagine the PvP scene? There would be armies of Mages storming around the Battlegrounds, and like a Western shootout, it would all come down to who could push the Polymorph button first. It'd quickly degenerate into a sheeping war, and anybody who wasn' t playing a Mage would probably smash his monitor in disgust, and threaten Blizzard in the forums to fix it as soon as possible. So eventually Blizzard really had no choice but to "tone down" the spell until it could be filed under a standardized category: a single target mez.

So as Blizzard tweaks and tweaks the game, what are we left with? A very strange and odd world where there is no potential for any abuse. That's certainly not a good reflection of the world we live in. But from a business and fairness standpoint, they really have no choice.

The unfortunate consequence is that the game really starts to lose its spice, so to speak. I mean you could say, read about how a Rogue can ambush a target for 250% damage plus 300 and how there are talents that make this crit all the time and increase the damage even further. And without playing the game, you might get excited and think you could dominate so many other players. Except when you actually try this, you'll probably end up disappointed. Ambush, for all of it's apparent glory, is not that much different from say, opening with cheap shot and then backstabbing, or just running up to a target and smacking it with the ultra-boring Sinister Strike. Everything's pretty much similar in terms of damage potential. At one point in the past, it was as good as you imagined it, because that's how most people (including the game devs) imagine sneaking up on someone and stabbing them mercilessly in the back - it's supposed to hurt. It's supposed to be fatal. But then as Rogue's start bragging in the forums just how fucking awesome it is, people playng other classes start to whine and then the game gets sterilized to the point where there are the fewest complaints. But that does not mean that there is much rejoicing either.

I guess the game, in short, has become too one-dimensional in the dominance aspect. One thing I really did like about Starcraft was that things seemed to be imbalanced but in reality, they were pretty balanced. Strategies like bunkering or Hydra drops or mass Carriers would always seem to be so powerful until the counter was revealed. But a game like Warcraft 3, or World of Warcraft, are just too balanced all over. There's nothing really spicy left.

This Dominion (on Victoria Park and York Mills) made me feel... weird.

 

 

 

Well, just a few random things I guess.  Yesterday after having lunch at the Spaghetti Factory (they have the best garlic buttered bread that I know of), my gf and I dropped by U of T.  Even though I used to hate that place, I guess nostalgia somehow manages to put everything into the right color.  It’s nice walking around campus and feeling all those memories coming back - mostly sad memories of walking around feeling lonely and wishing for company, but memories nonetheless.  This time we just visited Robarts Library, because I remember they have a huge collection of Japanese literature and my gf is really into that stuff.

Looking around the library, it seemed that there were a lot of lonely people.  Well, I'm not sure if they were actually lonely, but a lot of people were walking alone, or sitting alone, or eating alone, and whenever I passed by they would always look up and give a brief glance - as if they were checking if I was someone they knew.  I guess more than anything else, it was their facial expressions that told the whole story.  They looked sad almost, as if all they really wanted to be with somebody right now.  There must have been a few solitary troopers who did not want company, wearing an expression filled with purpose and direction, but I can’t recall a single one in the 90 minutes that I was there.

When I visited the Scotiabank Information Commons on the first floor, there was a fairly long lineup to use the short-term-use computers and I could tell by a brief glance that most of them were on Yahoo Mail or Hotmail or sorts.  Over on the infinite-time computers, some were using Word to type up assignments, some were dicking around on online game sites, some were using online chatting, and I suppose there were a few who were actually doing web research.  You could always tell who was doing what by looking at their faces.  Smiling = chatting. Bored and exasperated = research.

I guess that’s not really a surprise.  It then suddenly dawned upon me - a feeling that so many people want to reach out, to touch, and to be touched.  A feeling that people were not made for studying, but made for love.  Whenever I saw someone “studying”, I would wonder, did he really come he to study?  I'm pretty sure that’s what he thought, and if I asked him I'm sure that’s what he would say.  But what if I asked his heart?  Perhaps the heart would have a different answer: that he really came here to meet some indeterminate person.  Studying was just a way to kill time until then.  

I think the total amount of raw loneliness per square meter must top the charts at a place like U of T.

On a different topic I remember reading somewhere that people who are obsessive-compulsive tend to become otaku (nerds, geeks).  I also read that people with manic-depressive tendencies also tend to become hopelessly addicted to MMORPG’s.  Somehow I got the feeling that I am just that kind of person.  I don’t know what it is about me, but there’s always been that emotional instability and that hyper-paranoia fear of social rejection.  There’s also always been a strong fondness for video games, especially those with any kind of Carrot-on-a-Stick mechanisms (which would in the worst cases, take complete possession of my mind for weeks if not months).  I will not forget the time when I drew the map of Durotar using my finger and soy sauce at Shin Yeh Buffet.  For that week of abstinence between the open-beta and retail release, I could not stop thinking about World of Warcraft.  My girlfriend thinks the game is fun, but I have never seen her as excited as I was.  In fact, I don’t think she gets very excited about much.  I suppose that’s what it’s like to be normal.

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-881673.html?tag=yt

"Heroinware" - what an awesome term!

Another great site:

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_intro.html

KATAMARI DAMACY (PS2)

Very, very addictive. Beware. Sequel is out too: WE LOVE KATAMARI (PS2). You MUST try this game if you haven't.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/review/918766.html
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/review/921111.html

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=920744&topic=23030841&page=2

Reading this makes me realize just how repulsive humans can be. People could talk about the game itself, and they do, except when a topic like "how good is your PC" comes along... boom. That egotistic, self-improvement-driven, homeostatic processes start to kick in and you get 500 messages - the #1 largest thread on the board . You also have the requisite "my dick is bigger than your dick" posts, something that is just guaranteed with Carrot-on-a-stick competitions.

On any World of Warcraft forum, the longest threads are always people bickering endlessly about builds (omfg, this build will pwn in pvp, omfg, we got SO nerfed, omfg, why is class x so imba). Yes, there are some people who talk about the lore, and some people who are talking about the quest content, but these threads are much shorter and nobody even starts a fight because there's nothing really to fight about. I think it's a safe bet that more than 50% of the messages on all the World of Warcraft forums have something to do with how to improve your own character, and that 90% of all the "Big" threads involve bickering about class imbalances or giddy hype over some new kind of weapon. Somehow you get the feeling that these people are not seeing the forest for the trees, if I may be allowed a cliched idiom. All they are seeing is the carrot, and it has possessed them like madmen.

Take a look at the magazine sections in any bookstore. How many magazines, right on their glitzy color in huge typeface, promise things like "Improve your swing with these exclusive tips from Golfer X", "Lose 10lbs in a week with a revolutionary method by Dr. Y, guaranteed", or "How to have better sex with him tonight". And you can't help but get the feeling that somebody out there has got his crosshairs on the attention centres of your brain. Somehow, I feel that even if I read Golf Magazine religiously and copied down all their tips, it wouldn't do me any good. In fact, it'd only confuse me as I think of twenty different things before I swing. But if I was obsessed with golf and improving my game, these tips would be too irrestiable for me to use rationality to deduce their impracticality.

How helpless we are then, to the devilish, impulsive, screaming inner child who craves the next big thing in our lives - the carrot. I hope nobody thinks that I believe this can be changed. I don't think it can. For this is the true wheel that drives so many forces in this world - the motion of economy itself is probably fueled by the endless desire for the carrot. But what a peaceful world it could be, if such a phenomenon didn't exist. People could actually know what eternal satisfaction is, instead of it being just an idea.

There's a very special game out there right now - Shadow of the Colossus for the PS2. When I say special - it's like games are coming in at me in all sorts of colors, from red to purple. Some games have weak colors, some have strong colors, but Shadow of Colossus is like goddamn ultraviolet. It's not even in the visible spectrum.

This game almost feels like a sequel to the other oddity of a game called ICO, which is made by the same director and developer. But it's a whole new game in it's own right, and it's much, much, better.

First, you can't level up anything or get any new weapons. You start off with a sword, a bow, and a horse, and it stays like that the entire game. This will seem strange to practically any modern gamer who is used to the cheap narcotic addiction of "OMFG i just got the next L33T epic sword", "OMFG I'm doing 350dmg per strike instead of 295!". Nope. Shadow of Colossus disposes of any aspect of self-improvement. So it probably won't keep you playing until 4am in the morning and make you skip the work the next day. But it will amaze. It will astound. It will show you just how beautiful a video game can possibly get, like a real piece of art that just about anybody can appreciate (and not just the snobs).

The premise is so simple, and that's what's great. Your a hero. And there's a comtaose princess in a temple. And the only way to wake her up is to find the 16 Colossus Giants in the world and slay them, with only your sword, bow and horse as transportion. That's it. There's no gold. There's no armor upgrades. There's no item that extends your health bar hidden in some obscure crevice that you need to check GameFAQS to fin dit. You just find the dudes and kill them.

For someone who can easily become obsessed with the "OMFG I just got the next L33T epic sword" phenemonen, this is a huge sigh of relief. This means I don't feel obliged to explore every single nook and cranny of the area just in case I miss that uber power up. I don't have to continually check GameFAQS for any game-breaking imbalance that will make me uber-powerful for the rest of the game. For once, I can play a goddamn game without GameFAQS. What a relief! I think "character-stateless" games should become the norm. Because when you know your character is just as he is, you can focus on the game itself. Your mind is focused on overcoming the challenges as opposed to wondering if there is any cool power-up that will make the challenge obsolete.

Well I haven't said much about the game. But it's wonderful. You can look up a bunch of reviews on the Internet, which I'm sure will all be very glowing. Sadly I don't think this game will sell very well. I'm sure the Marketing Department must have a bunch of headaches on how to market this game. I mean, what could they possibly brag about? Next Generation graphics? That is most certainly true, but even so, we're all so used to everything being "next-generation" nowadays, I suppose nobody cares. But the graphics are amazing, and I'm afraid I'm not good enough a writer to drive that point home. You just need to see it to believe it.

Today I found myself trying to tutor a high school kid on reading The Great Gatsby. I don't consider myself qualified at all, but I have recently finished four novels by Murakami Haruki, and in Norweigan Wood, he makes several references to Gatsby, so I thought the Great Gatsby was kind of like the friend of my friend. Like we had something in common.

But the book was not easy to read, not even for a native speaker. My student is still ESL-grade so far all intents and purposes he might as well have been reading Arabic. It took one hour and a half to go through 13 pages with him. Really, the whole affair was utterly pointless. And it kind of upset me that great classics like Gatsby are considered compulsory material at such an early age. I seriously doubt anybody in high school has the requisite amount of experience with life to fully appreciate a book like Gatsby. The proper brain cell connections are just not there, and there's nothing you can do about that but let the person ripen another ten years. But that's just my opinion from my own personal experience.

I actually feel a strange sense of satsifaction that I am finally, finally, able to enjoy literature. I always tell people I never read fiction but I think in another dimension, should the dice of life be rolled once again, I could have loved it at a much earlier age. Especially if the dice had me born in Japan. But for the longest time I could never enter the minds of those who loved reading fiction books. It always eluded me: "What the hell is so great about reading a book that's not even real!" I guess I just never found the right book at the right time, so to speak. But when I picked up Sputnik Sweetheart, despite being amidst all the video gaming and internet surfing entertainment wrestling for the remains of my attention, I finally realized just how good fiction can be. In the right circumstances, and in the right times, it can be such a wonderful form of entertainment. And unlike video games or internet surfing, it does not leave your mind feeling sapped. On the contrary, the mind becomes more free than it could ever be.

Today at Fairview Library I went through a recent issue of Computer Gaming World. Usually I don't read the editorials because they are usually pretty boring but this editorial was rather funny. If I may paraphrase from what I remember, I think the editor said something like this:

Oh no. Another night playing 4 hours of World of Warcraft. (can someone delete my account? please? umm, ok maybe not). I have so many other games to go through, but somehow, I just can't get myself to play them. Not to say that those games aren't good. I played Dungeon Siege 2 (reviewed in this issue) and it was quite enjoyable at times. But I had this nagging feeling that every minute in that game was a minute wasted not playing World of Warcraft.

He then goes on about other things and finally concludes that his job is so tough.

Right about a week ago, my girlfriend also started to play World of Warcraft again. I had uninstalled it for the longest time but she kept mentioning how nice it would be to play it again, and I felt the same way, so I reluctantly put it back on.

Why reluctantly? I didn't really know clearly at the time, but somehow I just didn't want to touch that game again. I guess when you play World of Warcraft, hours can pass without even noticing, and often just a three hour session is enough to leave your nerves high-strung for the rest of the day. It's also hard to stop thinking about it, and you end up constantly checking forums and websites for the next uberbuild or uberitem.

The thing is, this game isn't even fun. When you mention the word fun, I think of games like Puzzle Bobble, Tetris, and Macromedia Flash games. Games you can pick up on a whim and drop on a whim. Light-hearted, simple, unadulterated frolicking. World of Warcraft is not frolicking. It's a complete and utter addiction. It starts off as fun all right, with you innocently exploring the world of Azeroth, doing boring quests, and talking nicely to anyone who passes you by. But after you get a few green items and then a few blues, all of a sudden, you want more. Gradually the idea of upgrading your character to be more powerful than others becomes priority number one.

A game like WoW is just evil. It keeps you hooked like an idiotic animal - like dangling a Carrot on a Stick in front of horse to motivate it to run faster (those who played the game will know the irony in that one). People will lose sleep and abstain from eating just so they can get that uber weapon that raises their Critical Strike by one fucking percent. It doesn't matter if that one percent is pretty much insignificant (especially for ten hours of work). The idea that you can raise it by one percent is enough to drive people wild with ambition and greed. Carrot on a Stick.

After the game takes your life over, you start to wonder if anyone really cares about the stories or the content of the quest themselves. I mean you walk into Orgrimmar and pretty much everybody's hanging around the AH or the Mailbox. Nobody is in Darnassus admiring the scenery. Nobody is fishing for the hell of it. Nobody acts like they are actually part of the world of Azeroth. The dominating theme of every server is : I WANT THE MOST FUCKING L33T GEAR, NOW! Hence, the endless instance runs, the overcrowding of the AH, and the endless impulsive trading (WTS!, WTB!).

I have to admit, I play now and then too, and sometimes I even catch myself daydreaming about my character during the day. The funny thing is, daydreaming about the game is often more satisfying than playing the game. Playing the game is exhausting on the senses and it removes us from reality. You really get nothing tangible out of a WoW session other than a few modified statistics on a remote database in the US, jangled nerves, and physically deprived body. So I try my best to limit my time. When I feel that ominous impulse to play again, I just think about playing and that's enough. Weird isn't it. But WoW is just so unhealthy, I can't let myself slide into that world again.

 

I saw this cute fellow at Centre Island today:



Out of the blue, I had to do this, and get my gf to take a picture:



I didn't just do this, I had to do this. It was like a impulse striking me out of nowhere, like wanting to stare at pretty Asian girls when they pass by on the street. I saw these semi-lifelike animal figures and all that filled my mind were dirty thoughts. It was a lot of fun. Had I left the area without doing anything, I would have felt a great amount of regret.

I sometimes find myself disturbed at how much of an exhibitionist I am. I posed for about seven or eight differnet shots, some of which involved taking out my penis in a wide open public area. Of course, I did a quick scan to see that nobody was looking, but I am pretty sure normal people wouldn't go as far as showing their genitals in a public place.

And yet, I cannot even strike up small talk with strangers.

Throughout this whole trip to Centre Island, I kept my eye on seven Japanese tourists. They were all young girls in their twenties and dressed extremely loud - to the point where you could recognize they were Japanese from twenty feet away. Once again, for no particular reason, I felt this compelling urge to get to know them, and get their e-mail addresses. This is rather unbecoming of me, because the majority of the time I am locked within my own shell and try to minimize any sort of contact with society in general. But I suppose on the solitary fact that they were Japanese, and the fact that I have this unproved theory that I'm much more popular with Japanese girls in general, I wanted to know them.

None of them were particuarily pretty, but it didn't really matter. I just wanted to know more Japanese girls. It was as simple as that. Like a perverted stalker, I would purposely try to walk nearby and speak in Japanese to my girlfriend, so as to get their attention. Then when I thought they might be looking, I would then speak in Chinese and English. I vainly thought it would make an impression.

On the ferry going back to the city, a couple of these girls ended up sitting right beside us. I found it unusual that only two of the seven girls were sitting next to us; the other five sat much farther away. Was this on purpose? I could not stop thinking about it. I felt this was the moment of truth. And yet, I could not muster a single word. I looked at them very briefly from time to time, and I noticed they looked at me briefly as well, but I could not say a single word. I could feel the fear within me, a fear that I have felt and conquered many times in the past. But today, I accepted the fear instead of fighting it.

My girlfirend was actually sitting between me and the two girls. She was rather upset that I was so excited about talking to other Japanese girls. It's very understandable. I think I would have liked to use her as an excuse for not talking. It's a lot more comforting to say "I would have talked to those girls, but my girlfriend was next to me so i couldn't." But if I were to be honest, her presence was not the reason. The true reason was that strange feeling of fear, as if an invisible ghost was gripping me from behind and preventing me from taking action.

The most ironic ending to all this was that an eldery couple sitting on the other side of the two Japanese girls were the ones ending up having a conversation with them. I looked in dismay as the two girls suddenly looked the other way and were chatting happily about something that I didn't care about. I was partially glad though, that it was two seniors that got their attention and not two handsome young men filled with testosterone.

We arrived at the dock, and I walked towards Queens Quay looking over my shoulder ever ten seconds. The Japanese girls were gone. I felt relieved.

Today, because I had nothing to do again, I went to the old Dragon Centre near Kennedy and Midland (come to think of it, the words "Dragon Centre" were also written in that stereotypical westernized Chinese font). That was even more depressing than Queen Street W., because I still remember coming to Dragon Centre when I was a little kid and my mom would go into the grocery store to buy groceries and I would go to the video game store and stare at the $150 import version of Street Fighter 2 for the SNES. There would be so many people walking around, and the place was a real beehive of activity.

But now, in the year 2005, there's practically nobody there. Useless shops and For Lease Signs are everywhere, and the few stores that still remain are but a shadow of their former selves. The grocery store that my mom shopped at had three boxes of bananas in front for sale, and they were all rotten. More black than yellow, they probably sat there for weeks without being sold and yet nobody bothered to throw them away. Somewhere inside of me, I wanted to save those rotten bananas. If I could, I'd buy them all and eat them. Maybe that would help the store a little. But I didn't do anything. Like many things, these actions only took place in my mind.

It's funny to see the same places from my childhood rotting away like that. In my heart, a part of me wished Dragon Centre well, and I hoped there would be a brighter future for that mall someday. But I know that place is doomed. The future, at least as far as I can see it, lies in supermalls and capitalist-driven superstores like Wal-Mart. Superstores with endless aisles of plastic products, unbelievably generous return policies and completely indifferent staff. I'm not complaining really. I feel a lot more comfortable in a store like Wal-Mart than Dragon Centre, even if Dragon Centre were still the old Dragon Centre of yore. I guess it's because in a superstore, I'm completely invisible. Nobody is paying attention to me, and when I shrug them off with a quick "No thanks, just looking", I don't feel guilty. But if I walk into a mom and pop store and they come up to me asking if I need any help, I feel almost pressured into making small talk. And that makes me want to leave.

I also went to Wal-Mart. I stopped by the aquarium section. They had quite a few aquariums, with a fair variety of fish. None of them had any decorations, and the living space for the fish was not very generous to say the least. One of them had a bunch of plecos. Sadly, in the corner of that particular aquarium, one of the plecos was lying dead in the corner. I looked at the fish. I couldn't help worrying whether they were feeling okay, or whether they were panicking like crazy inside because they were locked up in a small space with no shelter from plants. The places they were living in, so small and bleak, made my aquarium at home look like heaven on earth. Then again, compared to the fish tanks where Hong Kong restaurants cram tons of live seafood on top of each other like a pile of corpses from the Holocaust, these aquariums at Wal-mart weren't too bad either. I guess I should stop worrying about the mental well-being of fish at a random Wal-Mart location and worry more about proving that I'm worth something by finding a genuine occupation. But my heart is so irrational and I could not help leaving the aquarium section with a heavy heart. I wish Wal-Mart did not have an aquarium section at all.

Because I had nothing better to do, I was driving down Queen Street W. and I saw scenes like the one above. On one hand, I felt so depressed that places like these even existed. Streetcar wires dangling all over the place, old telephone poles, an endless stream of dilapdiated, run-down mom & pop stores you've never heard of... it was quite tragic. I saw this run-down place called Phoenix Chinese Food and it claimed it served Chinese, American, and Latin American food. The sign had a red backgroundand was written in the stereotypical westernized Chinese font. Inside, it had that fifteen year old television whose CRT was probably on the verge of imploding any day now. It made me want to kill myself.



I did not feel like I was in Toronto anymore, at least not the Toronto that I knew of. I was passing streets that I've never heard before (like "Landsdowne") and I really felt like I was in another world. I sometimes imagined what if I were forced lived here. I really think after a few bleak afternoons subjecting my senses to scenery like this, I would finally cross over that magical barrier and commit suicide. My girlfriend however said she wouldn't mind. I guess that's the normal response. But for some reason, the whole atmosphere of this area just unsettled me. I started driving erratically. Truth be told, I was acting all excited whispering "Whoh dude" at every intersection. I was also a little bit scared that we'd get jumped from some anonymous ethnic gangster but I guess I was just being over paranoid.

Let’s say that you have this thing for a girl, and everytime you masturbate sans porn you think of that particular girl.  Then somehow, this fact spreads rather accidentally within your immediate circle of friends, and then eventually after several rounds of gossip, that fact reaches the girl herself.  How do you think the girl would feel?  Not being a girl myself, I asked Shinobu for her answer: “I’d perhaps be a little shocked at first, but undoubtedly I’d feel very happy.”

“But”, I say to Shinobu “if a guy came up to you directly and told you that he masturbates while thinking of you, how would you feel then?”  This was her answer: “It would creep me out to no end, and I don’t think I’d ever want to see that person ever again”.  

I always feel something important is missing from basketball games.  They’re not real enough.  They don’t capture enough nuances and subtleties from real basketball.  I don’t know why it’s always been like this.  The Winning Eleven series, for instance, has an unbelievable game engine that mimics soccer to such an unparalleled degree.  If the basketball equivalent came out, I would be utterly ecstatic.  It would be more exciting than watching newly downloaded Asian porn with shaved pussies.  

Unfortunately, after trying NBA 2K6, the general feeling is: hopeless.  Really, every iteration just adds a facelift and some gimmicky new feature(s).  The underlying physics-reality engine never seems to change.  Dribbling doesn’t feel like dribbling.  Shooting doesn’t feel like shooting.  Even running without the ball, doesn’t feel like running without the ball.

Agggh.  I can’t really explain it.  But I play a game like 2K6, and it’s like, it’s not organic at all.  It’s too herky-jerky.  If you just wiggle the analog controller in all directions fast enough, the player starts wobbling around in a very illogical manner, and the ball never gets dribbled completely.  It looks like a freakishly impossible human motion.  Truthfully, a lot of basketball games do that.  Just shake the controller and the player starts wiggling around in a totally inhuman way.   You could never do that in Winning Eleven, you know?  Because the control isn’t that responsive.  You push one direction, your player has to at least dribble a certain length that way before responding to your next command.  He can’t stop halfway through his dribble and then suddenly turn around like magic with a <1ms delay.  Think Prince of Persia.  You remember that huge delay before you pressed jump and actually leaving the ground?   It might have been frustrating, but without it, the game would have felt like Mario in Persia.

Sometimes, sacrificing control responsiveness for realistic human motion is not only worth it, it’s the only way to do it right.  (particularly in sports games, whose goal is to mimic real human motion)  In real life, you cannot dribble 35% one way and than change back the other way instantly.   If you shoot a jumper, you have to go through the delay of catching the ball and planting the feet properly before even going up for the shot.  Like it or not, there’s a certain degree of restriction on movement, largely based on the physics of momentum and human bi-pedal mechanics.  

But basketball games pay no respect to such things.  You can change directions anytime.  You can turn around 360 degrees with virtually zero latency.  There aren’t enough animations for turns of directions (besides from the canned “crossover” animations, there are actually none for basic movement).  Dribbling doesn’t not require a unit of commitment to go a certain distance.  Shooting the ball is independent of whether you are standing, running towards the basket, or running away from the basket.   No favoritism is given for dribbling towards a player’s shooting-hand side and pulling up for a jumper (which I’ve personally found to be one of the most natural movements when I'm shooting in my driveway).  

I don’t know why I rant so much about this.  But I guess, I can envision a game that is the Winning Eleven equivalent of basketball, and it gets me so excited.  I’ve had so many daytime fantasies of playing a game that would pay respect to all the subtleties of human movement.  Even something as simple as dribbling once to the right off the triple-threat, and pulling up for the jumper has not been executed properly in all the iterations of the 2K6 and Live series thus far.  And judging by the way things are going, I doubt things will ever improve.  Well, at least there’s Winning Eleven.  That’s a sports game that feels so utterly real, like you’re playing the real thing.  When I kick a real soccer ball around in my backyard, I can almost feel the analogies with the video game counterpart.  That’s how spooky it is.  Why can’t there be such a counterpart for real basketball?  Well, I guess there’s always the day-time fantasies.