Kotaku, the Gamer’s Guide

@excaliburps: Speak & read Mandarin.

No, Owen just entered to the room where Kotaku writers are assembled, pointed to each of us in turn and said 'I know who you are, I know who you are, I know who you are ...' then got to me and said 'Who are you?'. He thought I was someone's girlfriend or something. ;)

@TheEternalCowboy: LOL, the writer. :) I guess I'm a Republican era specialist. And I still love Lu Xun - one of my most treasured presents I ever got is a big propaganda poster from the early '70s of him.

I actually moved to Taiwan just for language study, which did help - but Chinese is the only language I've ever studied that I've been bad at. :P

@thespyderboy: Hey, I got those from Mary Elizabeth Berry, who ended a workshop on early modern print culture with them.

The poor Europeanists were baffled; we all roared. ;)

@TheEternalCowboy: I fell in love with Lu Xun & it was all over after that; the Republican era in China was the first period out of a great many I've studied from history all over the world that I thought 'Hm, I could do this for the rest of my life.'

Plus, it's a damn good field to be in - we actually get jobs. That whole pesky 'have to be fluent in Chinese' thing is a bit of a downer, but c'est la vie.

@Glass_bomb: It got boring after we hashed out some issues, but it was interesting in the beginning.

I'm pretty sure that in a year & a half at Kotaku, he's the only person that I actually pissed off.

@Tuggie: Here's the one he SHOULD'VE posted:

Why couldn't the Buddha vacuum under his couch?

Because he had no attachments! (zing!)

@teraphony: And I thought things were supposed to get easier after the first year. ;) (Hopefully your second year is going better than mine!).

I'll certainly be out & about in the blogosphere & may even pop up on Kotaku from time to time.

@AncientUnknown1: There isn't going to be a replacement, at least not in the near future.

And yes, it was quite epic. He launched the first volley with 'Did I piss in your cornflakes this morning?'.

@Aflack: feels sick to his stomach: Hell yes, my favorite video game character ever <3. Guess you never saw one of the posts with pictures of my KOS-MOS figurine collection, my only real nod to super geekery :D

@excaliburps: Owen had no idea who I was when we met at E3 because I was white (a lot of people have been under the impression I'm Asian, apparently :P). I'm a Chinese historian, hence all the China stuff.

@Anarchist_Gamer: Not precisely, but I have another project going on in addition to my 'real' academic work. Feel free to shoot me a line though, my contact info is on the sidebar. :)

@Komrade_Kayce: I'm not being replaced, but I may be back someday. :)

@Swift_: Breaking news doesn't happen on Saturdays or Sundays - generally speaking. I think the last 'breaking' thing I caught was the Activision/Blizzard merger which was quite some time ago. I leave the 'hot' stuff for my weekend coworkers, be they Flynn or Owen or whoever.

@jove: Yes, yes, we get that, but the creator is Brazilian.

@Shin-san: As has already been mentioned, you don't need to live in Seattle. Danc just has a chat thing in Seattle, too.

@JonG: Sorry, wasn't trying to exclude Spanish, but the designer is Brazilian, so I went with Portuguese. :) The only romance language I speak is French, which 'estamos pensando' certainly is not!

@spindle1000: How funny, one of the people I usually play with commented the other night with some surprise (and a lot of amusement) that I just stopped chatting as soon as we grouped up in a big squad. And it's true, I get really anxious around a lot of people!

I am really enjoying PW - so much so I started my own (very laid back and very small) guild (as to avoid the necessity of interacting with random people that rub me the wrong way - and avoid that whole 'serious players' thing that come with most guilds. I just want to have fun! D:).

@QuietStorm: I'm in history, actually (modern China). It's not that we're all serious (OK, we are - a lot of the time - but we're not a bunch of uptight jerks) or holier-than-thou, it's simply that most people don't 'get it.' It's so far out of their day to day existence that it's a really weird thing to many of them.

I do have professors/grad students I am very comfortable talking about this stuff with, but on the whole I prefer to keep it under wraps.

@QuietStorm: I suppose it depends what your definition of 'compete' is - I guess since I'm not (nor do I have time to be) the 'grind to the end as fast as possible' type player, I'm not blowing through the only non-status items in the cash shop (from my perspective). Sure, mounts make it quicker to get from point A to point B, but you can get them in game. You can upgrade the speed of whatever your conveyance via cash shop. I don't really see that as a 'bonus' in a negative way - like I said, I wouldn't play if you had to pay for nice weapons or nice armor or could upgrade your character (skills and so on) via cash shop.

There's also the added complication of the in-game economy, which includes a lot of cash shop stuff for virtual gold. I just don't play enough to have a hissy fit over certain items being offered for sale. I don't see FTPs challenging WoW/other subscription based MMOs for the 'hardcore' MMO playing audience (though as a group, they are chipping away at the WoW user base in places like China), but I think there's more to the market than 'addicts' or 'ex-addicts.' :P I know that starting next week, my time to play is going to be extremely limited - so I would prefer to just pay for stuff when I'm actually playing; I don't think I'm *terribly* unusual in that regard. Perhaps among 'hardcore' MMO players, but we've established I'm not an MMO player. ;)

(I also don't think you can say it's not catching on across the board - I don't know about PW, obviously, it's too soon to tell, but a lot of 'casual' FTP MMOs like MapleStory are doing extremely well relative to the amount of press/advertising they do)

@QuietStorm: Well, what's the model for a 'level playing field' in FTP games, which are supported with cash shop and/or subscription models? I'm not being facetious - it just seems like as long as there are things for sale, for real money, a portion of the population is going to cry 'unfair.' In which case, shouldn't they just move to a subscription based MMO?

My thoughts - coming from this as a non-MMO player & someone who has had very interesting discussions with game designers (designing for the Asian market) on the issue of the FTP/microtransaction model's perception in the West - are that I would find it an unacceptably uneven playing field if someone had access to WOO! AWESOMENESS! not available in game. And I don't mean 'frivolous' things like mounts or fashion - I'd be upset if I was expected to pay for the nicest weapons or armor in the game, for example. There are plenty of 'FTPs' that lock off areas and high-level content unless you're paying what amounts to a subscription. I don't particularly like that & wouldn't spend my money on such a game, I'd just go to a full subscription only model.

I can see how if you were trying to blast up the levels and/or playing for hours a day, spending lots of $$$$$ would facilitate that. OK, I'll concede that's probably 'uneven,' but unless they move to a subscription model, what's the solution? And even then - doesn't the existence of power leveling services/gold farmers (and players who utilize them) make games like WoW uneven in practice, if not in design? I'm not one of those players who is trying to grind to the end as quickly as possible, nor am I super-attached to my MMO, so while I think it would be smart for PW to drop their PWI prices across the board & especially for the 'useful' items like regen charms that many people want/could use, if I find myself burning through money, I'll move on. I do think they should drop prices & think they'll more than make up for it (esp. on those 'necessary' items like regen charms) in sales, but if they're charging a premium for optional/frivolous items, well, that's OK in my book. I also think things are still being ironed out & what players see right now is not necessarily going to stay the status quo.

Maybe I'm just not protective enough of $1.50 here and a $1.50 there. I've been meeting up pretty regularly with someone in game & we have a nice time playing together - I had a regen charm ($1.50) I'm wasn't using/wasn't going to need for a long time, so I gave it to him since he didn't have one & it makes my game life easier not to have to kill time when he dies. :P

I know my perspective on this has to do with a number of factors, but when people are complaining about high prices while at the same time admitting they spend hundreds of dollars a month in the Malaysian version, my sympathy is somewhat limited.

In retrospect, I should've started as a cleric, since they seem to be in high demand! I guess that's pretty standard for MMOs across the board, though.

Kotaku

Maggie Greene