Babies + Gaming (always) = Bad?

The general advice about TV and children are that television isn’t doing any damage, but under the age of 2 in particular, it doesn’t do any good. I’m reading a lot about kids and the term “screen-time” has replaced the word television on most cases. However, it doesn’t seem to have changed the definition all that much. Watching something on a screen and playing something utilizing a screen are still clumped together and viewed as passive activities. This annoys me.

Hawk girl has excellent fine motor skills; due to some health concerns she sees a lot of health care professionals and the running theme is that she’s smart, friendly and have impressive fine motor skills. I think utilizing touch screen devices, playing with my 360 controller and typing on my keyboard(s) helps with that. It’s also a shared activity; a great opportunity for some premium bonding time.

We do lots of other things too; we play, both indoors and out, we go on interesting walks and trips, we climb and run and do all the stuff kids love to do, but we also use tech a lot and we game more than most.

Gaming isn’t watching TV, it’s a very different activity. It’s also rarely a solitary activity and once she’s old enough to enjoy motion sensor games, it won’t be a sedentary one either. Reading about kids and tech often makes me feel as if the experts are stuck in the early 80′s except that we now say “screen time” and acknowledge mobile devices exists as small TV’s.

The world is changing rapidly and the opportunities for knowledge, learning and exploration that technology brings into the average household is breathtaking. I love books, but I have a Kindle and Chris has a playbook he uses as an e-reader. Technology isn’t an either or, it’s a bonus and yes, like all things, there’s always room for abuse, but viewed and used in the right context, I love being a parent with all these aids to help me be a better one.

 

 

 

Cat on Chair

In our house everything constantly moves. I have a weird genetic condition causing a largely invisible disability and getting comfortable is vital and not easily achieved. We’ve moved my rusty dust-ridden old recliner up and down the stairs, trying to find it a good spot and last night it came downstairs again to become gaming chair attempt number 4.

Whilst Chris was taking a break, our disabled cat valorously risked life and limb to find this comfy spot; which complicated matters just a little. Looks like it won’t be my gaming chair after all.

SWTOR: Naming your characterui(s)

The first character I ever named was my World of Warcraft Druid. I started on a relatively busy and older server and the choices were limited; every name I could think of was taken. I chose my class and character very quickly, the decision based on the intro cinematic I had watched when Chris started playing. Shape-shifting into a Panther-like cat was irresistible. Turns out I never played melee DPS and rarely shifted into catform other than for travelling; but if after two years of playing WoW I had to choose a class and race, it would have been the exact same choice. I loved raid healing as a druid, few things have been as much fun as playing a Tree. I also loved her name and it was the right fit for me.

I did some research on names; the standard google search, fantasy character name generators and digging through my memory of favourite characters from books, but none seemed right. I chose Lileia, the first screen name I had ever used; a name I had come across as an Ancient Studies student and as I vaguely recall now, was the name of a water or wood nymph that appealed to me at the time. It was taken. So I changed the i to a y and called her Lileya and it stuck. Whenever I get to name a character or choose a username or gamer tag, its either Lileya, Lileia or sometimes Lily when its single-player.

This time was no different. It never occurred to me to name my SWTOR anything else. I chose the name before I chose anything else. And so my Sith soon-to-be-sorcerer, is called Lileya. Is it a Sith appropriate name? Not so much, but then I’ve ran passed some awfully inappropriate name characters in the last few days. It’s part of the quirky beauty of an MMO, the environment and NPCs are crafted with great attention to detail and then I see an Emma, Dolli, Dobby, Humanoid, Wolfman (who in fact turns out to be a girl). Some people stick to the same name across games, platforms and mediums, others painstakingly choose a universe and character appropriate name for each of their creations whilst some just pick the first thing that comes to mind when they enter the naming screen.

My main is always Lil; it’s my first choice and subconsciously, I think that does shape my character. There’s similarities between my characters and my Sith Lileya is quite similar to my Druid Lileya; despite one being good and the other evil, despite being in two very different universes, they’re both quiet, confident, solitary, strong women and they are, or soon will be, both healers. I couldn’t name either my ME Shephard or my brand new character in Skyrim Lileya, it didn’t fit. Gaming names often carry more of ourselves within them than we realize and the games where I choose my characters name (even if its just the first name, like in Mass Effect), looks and traits are my favourites.

Cthulhu saves the world / To buy or not to buy….

Cthulhu saves he world has dropped in price to £1.99 for a two-game bundle (partnered with Breath of Death, a game I’ve never heard of and 80 MS points. I know this as, according to Joystiq, it’s being released for Mac, iOS and Android in Q1 this year. Fabulous; an interesting looking game for my phone/iPad. I have some Microsoft points left over after purchasing a bunch to buy Iron Brigade and £1.99 got twin pack on Steam is a steal. I almost bought it. Almost.

Until a friend asked if I would actually play it. Would I? I’ve bought Indie Bundle’s I haven’t even claimed the games for yet; in fact, I own games that I don’t even know I own after the holidays. Some I bought as part of deals and buying the pack was either cheaper or worth it; some I bought on recommendation from friends not knowing much about it and promptly forgot about them and some have been sitting in my Steam account for a year or more, old sale items, old recommendations, old games that looked good when I felt like trying something new and then something else caught my eye post-purchase. The answer to the question is no, I probably wouldn’t play it either on the PC or 360. I would be very interested in the iOS version though; very.

This particular game caught my eye on title alone. I have a soft spot for Cthulhu; it’s Chris calls the little one The Chaos Machine; I call her Cthulhu. Does it warrant an impulse buy of a game, albeit cheaply, that I most likely will never play? I think not. So I won’t be spending any Microsoft points; I’ll wait for the iOS version.

SWTOR: First Impressions

I started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic today. It’s the first time in months where I’ve taken time on impulse to just sit down and play for a while. It was a very enjoyable experience. I felt comfortable, like I was putting on a new pair of an old type of trainer that I’ve worn for years. I haven’t truly played an MMO for two years, but when you’ve sunk so much time into a particular medium, it’s like diving into a pool after not having gone swimming for a long time; rusty at the start but the familiarity has nostalgia rushing back in. I did enjoy WoW an awful lot and it was great to walk back into that kind of world, but without many of the annoyances I also remember very well. I can now open my map whilst moving and still where I’m going because the map is transparent; fantastic. I can hide menus and social bars and chat boxes, even better. I miss my addons, bartender the most, like so many other WoW players.

I did not enjoy the error messages; starting with a code 1003 and a refusal to connect to any server. Turns out that one pops up if you use peer blocker; disabled that and the error went away. Then there was a Code 3, then 3000, then 2005. All were fixed by relogging or retrying, so no real harm done. I chose the dark side, not because it appealed that much, but it seems to be the popular choice and after reading an article at Rock Paper Shotgun about being evil in Star Wars, I wanted to see for myself.

It’s tricky being evil. Also, it’s fun. I enjoy my character’s snarky quips and brimming with confidence laid back attitude. I’m not sure how well I will fair on the evil side, having strong tendencies to be a goody two shoes quite often, but hopefully I can manage to suppress my innate intent to help. I did find it interesting that in this start up area where most of us have chosen to be evil villains, the actual players are still oh so good. Nobody ninja’s, steals or breaks any social rules. Everyone waits their turn politely, offers to assist, jumps in if someone else has bitten off more than they can chew and what I’ve seen of the chat, it’s been awfully polite and mundane.

I’m only a few levels in and it’s fun and cool and enjoyable enough that I will be back for a bit more tomorrow.

Ikea Hacking: The Desk

The desk is done for now.

I used Ikea furniture and shelving which came to a total of around £80:

• 2 Antonius wall rails
• 9 Antonius bracket pairs
• 3 Antonius white shelves 37cm
• 1 Antonius white shelf 28cm
• 5 Ekby Viktor black shelves
• 1 Slightly damaged Ikea kitchen unit
• 1 Solveig Panel Curtain
• Non-Ikea: Some  velcro, cable tidies, screws and assorted bits

The cables haven’t been tidied away yet, but leaving that for last as I’m still moving pieces to get it just right. On the right side is Chris’ standing desk, put together for about £50, mirroring mine minus the desktop and cable nest. Either desk can hook up to the TV to provide additional screen real estate. It’s not traditional, but I’m loving it.

 

2012: The Year of the Franchise?

Gaming News sites have their lists up of the most anticipated games coming up this year. The general consensus is that 2011 was an awesome year for gaming and 2012 will be just as awesome if not more. Having spent my Christmas/New Year Break with family and gaming rather than keeping up with any news,  (I’ve been playing Iron Brigade, Trine 2 co-op and dabbling with Steam sale titles) I haven’t thought much about gaming in 2012 until today. Looking at the big lists, I quickly noticed a trend. We’re in the realm of sequals, series and resets: ME3, Diablo III, Max Payne 3, Bioshock Infinite (the third in the series), Soul Caliber V, The Darkness II, Ninja Gaiden III, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Resident Evil Revelations, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Twisted Metal, Silent Hill: Downpour, Aliens: Colonial Marines, the latest Assassin’s Creed instalment, Tomb Raider, Borderlands 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Hitman: Absolution, more Starcraft II and XCOM. And my personal edition to the list: Torchlight 2.

Franchise gaming is comfort gaming. There’s room for long-term story developments and the opportunity for emotional attachment to characters that grows over time; it’s like long-term friendships. There’s always the danger of comfort games becoming stale and reruns of themselves, but it’s not the norm. Look at a few video’s of Mass Effect 3 and it’s easy to see why it’s generally seen as the most anticipated title for 2012 and far from either stale or predictable. I enjoy my comfort games, my two collector’s editions are both sequals, Halo Reach and Fable III, but it leaves little room for new adventures. There should be a special place on the shelf for new adventures.

Two retail games slated for 2012 release has grabbed my attention: The Last of Us, Uncharted Developer Naughty Dog’s new project announced last year at the VGA Awards:

Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning; an RPG slated for release on 10 February 2012:

What to play over the Christmas Holidays

It’s almost Christmas and I’m still not sure whether that means I have more time to game or less. The little one has had a vomiting bug for 2 days and my gaming time has pretty much gone to soothing, singing and we’ve done more laundry in two days than we usually do in two weeks. On top of that, my net connection is still running on average at 0.2MB and when you’re paying for a 100MB connection, that’s very frustrating. We have been in touch with Virgin; again, and they’re sending out an engineer on Wednesday, the soonest available slot they had open. We also got a lovely official call this morning stating that if it turns out that its our fault that our connection is running slow, we may incur charges, are we sure we want to have that engineer come round? Yes, we’re sure.

What would I like to be playing? Well, there’s the Defense Grid DLC, Orcs must Die!, Iron Brigade (formely Trenched), Trine 2, Batman Arkham City. Also, I have all the games from those Indie Bundles that I haven’t even touched. What will I be playing? Probably a lot of iOS mini-games on my phone whilst we’re out and if I’m really lucky, by Boxing Day I may have some time to get back into something meatier. Hopefully by the 28th I’ll have a decent connection back so that I can do more online gaming; but this Christmas, I don’t see a whole lot of games in my immediate future. I’ve blocked out the post-Christmas week as GAMING on the schedule, let’s hope the little one is well enough to allow for it.

More on the picture: Christmas came early! My first Christmas present for the year, a water drawing table from Grandma that also functions as a very nice seat.

Ho-ho-ho! Happy Christmas.

When to buy duplicate copies of a game

Game Sales are in full swing and there’s quite a few bargains to be had. It’s downloadables month and even though I had the best of intentions not to buy anything at all until I’ve finished Batman: Arkham City and Iron Brigade, I’ve been shopping. I bought all the Indie Bundles, it’s for a cause(s), charity as well as supporting Indie developers, so I’m guilt free on the few pound I spent there. I’ve finally opened my own Steam account rather than stealing Chris’, but since I play more than he does, his account remains the primary account logged in on my gaming PC and my account is the secondary account logged in on the laptop.

I bought Defense Grid with all expansions for Chris as well as Trine 2 (Happy Christmas!) on my account for him to play, if that makes sense. I’ve picked up a few gifts; I wish I had taken advantage of the Sales more when doing so, as I ended up missing my Christmas shopping on Sale day and by the time I got around to it, the game that was just perfect was no longer on sale and I just simply still had to get it any way, but I did get some good deals, Sale or no.

Some of my favourite titles came round and it was quite a difficult decision to decide whether to get them or not. In the case of presents; if it has coop, it was a much easier decision to go for it. I chose Trine 2 and Chris Iron Brigade to be this month’s duplicates. We seriously thought about Portal 2 for the PC, I have the Xbox version, or even Portal 2 x2 for the PC for more coop opportunities, its in my book the game of 2011 and I have friends that own it on PC and not on Xbox that would come and do more puzzles. I refrained in the end as I don’t think I have time for starting Portal 2 all over again on a new platform. How do we decide which games are worth twice the price?

Starting to think about it, it turned into quite an easy decision. It’s all about Longevity. Does it have coop, particularly, does it have a unique coop campaign that adds another 10-15 hours of game play? Is it something you get emotionally involved with; I never tire of playing some games; they’re like home; I know the dialogue, the music and so many fine details and yet, it’s still a thrill to go back and play it just one more time. And those are the games that I will happily buy for different platforms and multiple accounts.

Most games I play through in as few a sessions as possible and rarely touch again. Once I’ve played it, I pass it over to Chris, who takes his time completing them in a slower but very similar fashion. These are games that are easy to share. Games where I’m chronically in the middle of something and very protective of my save files; games where I build up a character, like World of Warcraft or Iron Brigade that I can customise, I’m very protective over my little guy/girl and games that has great coop where I need two copies to be able to do coop; these are the games I’ll spend more on.

It’s Christmas Sale time and my biggest decision is less; what did I miss that I’d like to grab for a bargain and what coop did I miss or which game did I particularly love and would benefit from owning it across platforms. There isn’t many, but there is always that handful of titles that always pulls you back in for more.

Mac or PC like PS3 or Xbox 360?

Browsing in Bath on Monday sparked off the conversation of “What’s next?” for the next big upgrade. I have a PS3, Xbox 360, oldish gaming PC, netbook, iPad and iPhone. Consoles are easy to upgrade, there isn’t that much choice or diversity and apart from mini-upgrades for a few additional perks, upgrades are from one generation to the next. That leaves me with my shabby gaming PC, iPad and netbook. I’m not upgrading just yet as there’s some improvements waiting to happen: Adding accessories: I keep meaning to get that bluetooth wireless headset to replace my Razer wired headset. Forward planning: Keep items charged so I don’t have to get entangled in power cables. Hack a little more: The next Ikea trip is for a angled or pullout shelf to resolve my mouse/keyboard issues. Eventually though, I have to upgrade. To what? This brings me back to the Apple store I was dragged into.

Chris managed to convince me that thinking about a Mac Air as a replacement for the iPad, netbook and desktop PC is the best option and I can’t quibble about cost as it would work out the same in cost and is a better alternative than upgrading all three individually.  I am starting to feel like I’m half-bionic with all the screens and wires that surround me constantly and reducing to one portable item has great appeal. He recommends the 11″ screen; I currently have an 11″ netbook and the screen frustrates me greatly. The text is either so small I can’t read it or all I see are banners and titles and have to scroll constantly with the added issues of popup boxes that cannot move being off-screen leaving me stuck not able to even see the accept/decline buttons at the bottom. The 13″ would be more my style, but I’m not sure. If I could afford the 17″ MacBook Pro, I’d be in heaven, quadcore processor, good size screen and all the power and a bit more on top. However, that’s not going to happen. So we’re back to gaming PC + iPad vs Mac Air.

Playing around with tech I do not own and spending time over a coffee discussing what’s available at the moment and how it would suit my gaming habits made me think about the stuff I don’t usually think about; when is a good time to start thinking about the next big upgrade? If I choose a Mac will I be able to shift my PC games over easily or are there still a lot of games that are PC only; i.e. will I end up having to get a gaming PC anyway? If I get a MacAir will copyright issues hit me when I can’t keep the DVD in the drive as there is no drive? I could mount a virtual drive, but do I want the added complexity of that? What happens to my substantial Steam library? Steam now supports cross-platform PC/Mac gaming, but I’ve never really checked if this applies retrospectively and to how many games it really does apply.

Is the Mac or PC issue the same as the Xbox 360 or PS3 issue, which ends up at you have to have both or you’ll miss out on some very cool content. I can’t imagine not playing Gears or Halo and I love the Uncharted series enough that I bought a PS3 especially for it. Is there any PC only games that I love that much? I think Mac or PC is still a valid choice, nothing significant on a Mac is not either iOS or PC based that I can of and think the fact that I can emulate Windows on a Mac if I do get stuck without a Mac version, makes it a moot point. I wanted my next big upgrade to be a build-at-home-project state of the art gaming PC, now, I think a Mac Air would be a better investment of time and money, but I’m still not sure.

I think it’s great to browse and talk about tech even when you’re not actively shopping; it makes me think about hardware when usually, the only time I think about hardware is when it’s broken or a new hot item is featured in tech news. I don’t think there’s any exclusivity any more when it comes to PC vs Mac; you either love the diversity and flexibility of a PC which you can customize or you love the reliability, simplicity and exquisite design that Apple brings to their products. I’m not a tinkerer and the way the pieces fit together is greatly appealing to me when it comes to Apple products and if I’m comparing Apple laptop to gaming PC, price really doesn’t factor into it; despite my initial first objection that Apple is expensive. I’m not a PC gamer, but I do some PC gaming; for that, I think a Mac will work out just fine.