I come from a family that used to be pretty strict on the whole “entertainment” side of things.

My parents migrated here from Hong Kong with not much to work with. They started out working in kitchens and gradually worked their way up to a number of restaurants, a take away store and a catering business. For those of you unfamiliar with the glorious hospitality industry, restaurants are hard work - it’s physically and mentally draining, with long hours and tight margins.

Needless to say, there wasn’t much room for trivial things in our household like “games consoles”.

I wasn’t entirely deprived, though. The crowning glory of my formative gaming years would definitely have been my GameBoy Original. I was stoked, because whenever I asked for anything beyond a calculator, the response would usually be a firm “no” . My mum even made a list of conditions I had to fulfil before she would buy it, and I accepted them blindly just to get the damned thing. My dad condemned the idea, saying that I had been spoiled rotten, and that my future was as good as gone. It was like I was given a pound of crack cocaine or something.

I reckon I haven’t turned out too badly.

But I guess their fears were confirmed - I played that thing within an inch of its life. I snuck in as much time as I could into that humble little machine. Before it came along, whenever I went to friend’s places I would always be so incredibly envious of their gaming gear. Their beastly 486s compared to my pokey Tandy TL-1000, their Mega Drives and their SNESes compared to my…nothing. At the time all I had was my GameBoy, and it was good.

(And before you think, “Why don’t you get a paper route or something and make your own money, you leech”, I was obligated to work for my parents. Gratis. Doesn’t leave much time for real work.)

They knew they made a mistake, too. They saw me playing and feared for my future (as most Asian parents do). They hid my precious GameBoy everywhere they could - on top of cupboards, in linen closets, in saucepans and under beds. I would spend a good amount of time going through the house just to find it and get my fix of 5 minutes more. Just 5 minutes more.

Getting a new computer only made matters worse. Remember when you could lock computers with a key? They locked me out of the family computer. Again, I would hunt for the key all over the house. I think I even went so far as to try picking at the lock.

Now that I am gainfully employed, I have a suitably powerful PC and a 360 with a nice selection of titles, as well as a DSLite for the train. I’m considering getting a PS3 on top of this as well.

I feel like I’m making up for lost time in my youth, but at the same time I’m kinda glad that I was kept in line. I doubt that I’d have any less love for games now than I would if I were spoilt rotten. Hell, I reckon I can appreciate them more for what they are instead of whining about slipped release dates and such.

So, to all those parents that are holding out on their kids - you’re most likely doing the right thing by them in the end. Just keep in mind that we’re going to spite you for it once we get our first pay slip.

We’ll be holding 13 competitions at LANoWEEN 2. 13 separate events, from shooter titles to racing games to music rhythm comps. And we want to try and fit it all in one day. To do this, we’ll be running the comps in parallel - the shooter related comps will be paired off with the driving / music themed comps. So, at any point in the day, there’ll be two comps running - hopefully to cater for all tastes. Not to mention TF2-nanza running in the background all day.

Needless to say, I’m a little apprehensive.

I’m not saying that I don’t think we’ll pull it off. I think that most of the team are weathered and hardened from LAN dramas, and the ones that aren’t are enthusiastic and willing enough to support the event until the end. I also think that the schedule should hold, as long as we don’t run into any teething issues. And if we do run into a shitstorm, we’ll just drop the offending comps off. (Not that we will, of course.

It’s just the little voice in the back of my head whispering, “What if?”

I think it’s part of any major project out there - it’s hard to deal with every variable and counteract every uncertainty. I get enough of that at my current workplace. SOGC is no different - we’ve had our fair share of stumbles and fuck ups over the past few months, and yet people keep coming back.

I don’t know why that is, but I’m grateful for it.

So, if you happen to be going to SOGC and it looks like we’re running around like a bunch of headless chooks, it’d be pretty much business as usual. It’s when you see us sitting down, playing games and looking bored that you should be really worried.

Before the onslaught of new titles that came out recently, I’d been busying myself with Arcade titles.

I don’t know if there’s some kind of Facebook quiz out there that suggests I’m a raging limp-wrist for doing so, but in my defence these games are fucking great.

Shadow Complex tells the story of an everyday guy (that conveniently has a military background) that gradually turns into a power-suited, super-shotgun wielding, grenade flinging, kung-fu fighting mean motherfucker of God. Sure, it’s hefty at 1200 MS points, but I’m vaporising soldiers, for fuck’s sake. I can think of activities that are far less rewarding.

Then there’s Ikaruga, which is turning my hair grey. It’s like the game itself is mocking me, laughing at my pitiful attempts to dodge bullets and change polarities in time, flooding the screen with energy beams and tiny bullets, and crushing me with moving platforms. It’s one of the few games that I actually have to focus and try to connect with the game, and feel my eyes gradually dry out as a result.

I suppose since we’re here, we may as well as throw Geometry Wars 2 in the mix. For a game that blinds me with pretty lights, thousands of particles and floods of enemies, it’s still just as addictive as the day I purchased it. I recently played versus mode with a couple of other SOGC admins, and hilarity ensued as we stole geoms from each other, bated each other into enemies, and cheated death as many times as we could to try and take first place. It’s going to take me a while before I start making an appearance on my leaderboards, though…

Speaking of multiplayer, Rocket Riot and Castle Crashers are regular titles that appear on our games rotation among the admins. I think the appeal with these games is that while they are co-operative titles on the surface, there is still a sense of rivalry and every-man-for-themselves. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve copped a rocket in the face from someone else’s wild firing in Rocket Riot, or how often I had to fight other players for scraps of gold in Castle Crashers. There is a cruel irony in the description “co-op”.

So yes - all in all, I’m rather pleased with the state of the “casual” games market. The calibre and quality of these games is well above expectations. The barriers to entry are fairly low, which means that anyone with patience, persistence and a good idea can follow through and potentially make millions.

And it’s refreshing to take a break from games that take themselves a little too seriously. I find it tiring to be continually inundated with ads and marketing campaigns, trying to convince me that this fourth sequel is so much better than the previous three. It’s nice to open up Steam and see a new title featured on the front page, with some simple artwork and a low price.

Hell, I haven’t even talked about PC and PS3 casual titles.

I’ve been playing some Gears of War 2 Horde co-op with jaytee. We haven’t revisited it since several months ago, and ever since I’ve upgraded my Xbox LIVE subscription (a whole two days ago) we’ve been giving Horde a bash.

I used to go through a couple of rounds by myself or locally whenever I had a mate over, and it was good fun for a while, but ultimately it fell into that weird grey area between casual (”I don’t normally do this”) and mediocre (”This gun is shit, the designers had no fucking idea”).

Now that the whole experience thing has been implemented and we’ve both got a bit of experience, I can say that co-ordinated co-op gameplay is where it’s at.

You know what I’m talking about. Starting up that third or fourth session of Left 4 Dead with some friends, barking out alerts when you see major zombies, and standing in a room for several minutes planning how you’re going to take on the incoming horde. It’s beyond just a casual session where everyone shoots what they want, when they want. There’s cohesion and a symbiosis. It’s as if we’d transcended all those group mentality phases and jumped straight into the Performing stage.

Our latest Gears of War 2 session felt like it clicked. We were pulling off flanks with devastating effect. We were baiting and switching, covering and co-supplying. We were instinctively informing each other using Mumble (which, by the way, is fantastic and free).

It’s nice when things just…work.

So, a couple of months ago, according to the folks at the University of Adelaide, teenagers who play video games regularly are more likely to develop anti-social habits that lead to problem gambling.

I guess it’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard.

I mean, if you take it in a literal context, there are plenty of examples of gambling in games. There are interactive scratchies in GTA: Chinatown Wars. There are the pub games in Fable 2. There are slot machines, blackjack sessions, variations on blackjack sessions…you can even contribute ante to a pot in some racing mechanics. Hell, some games just cut to the chase and are purely on casino table games. The online poker phenomenon has been around for years, with pundits playing several games at once, using bots to suck fish dry, and even getting promoted to real poker championships to boot.

But wait a minute - let’s step back for a second.

If we look at a definition:

Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods.

“An uncertain outcome”. That would imply the concept of chance. You are betting on the fact that the laws of gravity and friction will have the dice facing up in a particular way. You are betting on the fact that the single jackpot winning lottery ticket you are buying is one amongst several hundred thousand.

Most games nowadays reward players with skill, rather than by some random chance. Hopefully, it wasn’t luck that had your railgun slug punch through the skull of your opponent across the map. You didn’t just wall run through a gauntlet of spinning knives and do a double somersault pike while snatching that golden idol by chance. You earned that shit, goddamnit.

However…there is an element of luck in games.

I believe that as we progress through games and we start getting comfortable with the controls and the abilities we have, we become cocky. We take chances, trying to push the envelope of what is possible and what we can or cannot do. We try to leap onto higher buildings. We start aiming for the head instead of the body. We try to pull off trickier combos. Risk for reward - it’s the oldest trick in the game design handbook.

Games also promise rewards. Armour sets, higher levels, better mounts, mo’ money. Gamers want these rewards, so we chase them (work and social life be damned). We grind and we crawl and we reload our subscriptions. Just so, hopefully, we get a lucky drop.

So the more I look at games in this mindset, the more I realise that they all have a hook of some sort. And why shouldn’t they? The stakes are high, the bar has been raised over the years. Games need to capture us and hold us so that we’ll keep playing, buying subscription recharges and DLC, and hopefully even the next instalment. Encouraging us to take risks in the hopes for a big payout? Yeah, I’d say that’s some kind of correlation there.

Or, y’know, it’s more likely that these kids need a better parenting model.

I’m just going to go ahead and say that we gamers are big, fat targets. (Apologies if you’re actually fat, don’t take it personally.)

Marketers love us. They’re as young, eager and wide-eyed as most of us gamers. Chances are, they’re gamers themselves. And they know what we want.

The problem is that gamers want it all. We want everything - the highest definition, the clearest sound, the most engrossing storyline, and the most powerful hardware.

So what do marketers do? They throw everything at us.

For instance, take a look at game retailers.

Look at the colours and the pretty lights. Look at the flash deck that’s churning out offer after offer. I see at least 7 different genres of games on the home page, and that’s before the fold.

Everything is trying to get my attention. My eyes don’t have a chance to focus on something in particular, because another little animation of Forza 3 is looping away at the top of the screen.

Gaming news sites are much the same. The content itself on IGN is drowned out by the deafening roar of the iPod Touch flash ad. An ad for the movie The Final Destination gets more space than the handful of headlines that Gamespot has to offer.

There’s no thought given to the content that’s presented to us. There’s no Information Architecture going on here. It’s just a mind dump, a stomach upheaval of content that is loosely grouped together. It’s a page full of animations, filled with links that have no obvious destination and that take you to single landing pages with little to no flow.

So what should game site designers do?

Nothing, most likely. We’ve all been programmed to work in that way. We’re gamers - we want it all, and marketers know that, so they throw the proverbial kitchen sink at us. Even if we don’t, we scan for what interests us, and anything that doesn’t catch our fancy gets cast aside. No biggie - someone else will pick up on it. There are a lot of gamers out there, after all.

And once we get our information, whether it be the score on a review, or the price for the latest and greatest title to hit the shelves, we move on. We close the tab and search for other reviews, or we click “Buy Now”, submit our CC details and get on with our lives.

Some may consider it evil; I see it as a necessary evil.

I’ve been thinking about this and on the state of our current web site at sogc.com.au. Comparatively speaking, there’s not a lot going on there. We used to have some nice big title graphics, sponsor logos, the lot. Now it’s a lot more…austere.

As much as I hate it, I think we need to start acting more like everyone else. Minimalist design belongs in the design studio. Let’s add some flash up in this motherfucker.

So, I’m back.

I’ve been busy with work (55-60 hour weeks can’t be wrong) and I’ve also been busy with the SOGC. Drama abound.

There won’t be as many reviews coming (hell, there probably won’t be as many posts coming) but I need a place to keep my game-related musings and rants.

We’ll see how long this lasts.