Week 16: Gaming Cultures

I guess it is true to say that there are gaming cultures in the world today. The initial ones beginning with playing dungeons and dragons in a group on wednesday nights. Rolling the dice to see if you beat a monster or fell to your death from the top of a mountain. Following that there is Warhammer and other tabletop games. These can feature in large tournaments and its hidden depth being that you can choose any class and paint them however you want. (Well, according to some colour schemes).
In the spirit of tabletop games there is the faithful Trading Card Games but I will not get wrapped up in making friends during a childrens card game.

So, gaming, a very popular thing nowadays and you can't say otherwise. There are limitless groups for games, much like there are for films. People can be in cultures depending on the genre of games that they play. The majority of games today are First Person Shooters so you will have loads of people who look forward to their mute and faceless heroes trudging through all the corpses he made. Racing games which are going strength to strength visually but i don't see how you can really refresh the genre. And the Role Playing Game where unlikely hero/anti-hero goes on a daring quest to stop someone they know from ruining the world.

I personally don't play racing games apart from Mario Kart as the handling is far too realistic for my kart racing brain to handle and those neon lights. I try and avoid the FPS at the best of times but damn Valve for bringing out those awesome FPS's of theirs. I purchased the Orange Box and finished portal rather sharpish and only within the last 3 weeks have I played and finished all the current Half Life 2 games. BUT THERE IS ONE MORE: Team Fortress 2 completely changed the genre for me and got me into the FPS. Its just something to do with the graphics and playing as a team that makes it more bareable than other games. So for one, I belong to the TF2 culture. I try and remain on top of funny videos and machinima, pictures and comics and even the control point podcast (Whose group ive joined and need to play with more). I could even tell you that the Female Scout model has been released after being a WIP for so long and that it actually works fully in game. I've made some friends over the game that i play with sometimes and those who I know, namely my best friend Andy, and Phil from the class.

Finally, I am a large fan of the MMORPG. Anything that looks relatively cool and interesting will get a try or a look in from me. (as long as its free). The first MMO I played was Maple Story because it was the only thing my pc could run. I played it solo for a while before I started making friends and joined a guild who I became friends with. Mainly they lived in the US so i didn't play with them much and also that they were too high a level for me to party with. Good friends in the guild being Ann from Texas, Chris and Erica who shared an account and Meep who i've totally forgotten the name of. Finally Reese, who I've been talking to for almost a year now but never met. She only lives in birmingham too, so perhaps one day.
Next was Trickster but that became boring quickly due to it being in open beta and not many people from gamefaqs playing. It was a quiet guild and i didnt know many.
Then it was Lunia. Played that for a bit, stopped and playing it once again, in amognst all that TF2 action.

I guess thats it so in summary I belong to the RPG, MMORPG and ever so slightly, multiplayer FPS games.
Generally, as long as i don't have an overload of work to do, or I'm not entirely shattered or it's 3 in the morning I will try and play either Lunia or TF2. Lunia for long periods and TF2 if I'm in the lab or need a quick game. An addict? Perhaps but for 42 hours as a scout in 4 months, I really should have more than 15 points. T_T