Posts Tagged ‘gaming’

05
Jan
2020

Why did you put down the Vita?

categories: personal; word count: 471 words

Because that’s what you did, Sony. You put it down like Susan the horse from Doctor Who.

When I found out that Sony was going to discontinue the Vita last year and that they were not going to manufacture any more games for it, I was extremely perplexed for a number of reasons, some personal.

Not only is the Vita a reigning household favorite for the simple fact that it is a mobile console, meaning that we can take it with us as needed — and as wanted — wherever we are, and wherever we want to go, but it was Sony’s most recent mobile console. And if they were going to discontinue it, Sony wouldn’t have a mobile console, meaning that the only game developer to have a mobile console… would be Nintendo, with the Nintendo Switch. This meant that Sony would be conceding the entire mobile console market to Nintendo. Was this really the most tactical thing for them to do when there was no word of a new mobile console even waiting in the wings? Not so much as a peep of anything new in development? Seriously, Sony?

We here at the Bub Club, as I like to put it, take our consoles seriously. We take our mobile consoles even more seriously. (And the fact that I call them mobile consoles pays homage to the fact that I am a Doctor Who fan, or a Whovian as some people like to put it. Sometimes I straight up call them mobiles. Sometimes I straight up call cell phones mobiles. That’s the overwhelmingly British lineage in me talking from across the pond, courtesy of Ancestry and 23andMe. I knew there was a reason that I liked the shows that I did as much as I did.) We don’t throw consoles away when they still function, and we replace parts and consoles when they don’t function to make them still function. We frequent pawn shops as needed, and we still have a functioning Nintendo 64 and Super Nintendo. Who says blowing into a cartridge isn’t fun for the whole family? I mean, I’m an asthmatic, so I have one of my kids do it for me, but I mean, my kids know what blowing into a cartridge is like because I’m a good parent and my goal is clearly raising them right here…

Frankly, though, I got a lot of enjoyment out of games that came out on the Vita, and Bub has enjoyed a lot of them as well. So for Sony to completely discontinue the Vita like this and take themselves out of the mobile console market is, at least to me, incredibly foolish. This concedes the whole mobile console market to Nintendo. Do they even care that this affects their bottom line and their revenue, or does it not bother them?

26
Dec
2019

“I won’t defeat this boss for my kids.”

categories: personal; word count: 313 words

This is actually something that I have heard gamer (gaming?) parents say.

It’s usually also the ones who state that “anyone who uses walkthroughs is not a real gamer, or not a good enough gamer,” so the two kind of go hand in hand. I try to avoid these parents if I see them “out in the wild”.

They literally say, with their mouths, that if their kids struggle in a game that they will not help them. Or some of them say that they will, but that they “won’t help them with the final boss, because they have to do it on their own”. Do you know what kind of message that might send your struggling kid, especially if they’re young? Not only do the kind of parents that say these things tend to… carry it over into other aspects of parenting, but this is a really fantastic way to make your child want to give up on gaming (which is another thing that these parents, the Patrons of Gaming, would probably seethe over if it happened in front of them).

Tell me though, what is so bad about helping your child when they need it?

What is so bad about helping your child when they need any sort of help from you?

Because that sends the message that they can come to you for help for any reason and that you will be there to help them no matter what. And this will achieve exactly what you want to achieve but are going about trying to achieve in the worst possible way — your child will remain interested in video games and might pass that interest on to their children. (Or, you could do exactly what you’re doing now, cause your child not to be interested in video games at all, and stop that with this generation. This is your call here…)

23
Dec
2019

Walkthroughs are not a bad thing.

categories: personal; word count: 357 words

In so many circles have I seen walkthrough use lamented as the actual bane of other people’s existences — the idea that other gamers might need enough help to use them, or the idea that other gamers would use them. Allegedly you are not a “hardcore enough gamer” if you need to use them. Some people devote way too much of their time to defining what is a “hardcore enough gamer” to come up with arbitrary requirements as to what this… entails, and I try to avoid these conversations and associating myself with these people, but I’ve seen enough peripheral complaining about walkthrough use that I had to mention it.

You are not a bad gamer, or “not hardcore enough of a gamer”, if you need to use a walkthrough.

Even if you need to use a walkthrough for every single game you play, that does not define you as a gamer.

You are not “less than” for needing assistance in games.

This is an insiduous form of gatekeeping, and I dislike it a lot. God only knows that I’ve used walkthroughs when playing games, especially with Bub, to cut down on the amount of screen time that I expose myself to in the name of not giving myself an unnecessary migraine. If I can plan out what I’m going to do in a game when, I can shorten my exposure to the screen, which is an extremely good thing. This allows me to continue to enjoy something that I love, let me play video games with Bub, all while not walking myself into a particularly severe migraine — for me — because I spent hours wandering around lost in a video game.

So far, walkthroughs have allowed us to enjoy games in that they allow us to shave off time that would otherwise have been spent wandering around absolutely lost causing a migraine for no reason. We achieve short objectives, frequently save the game just in case, I monitor for symptoms, and we continue from there…

But there is a reason that there is the ongoing joke that our backlog is far taller than Bub. No shame in that.

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