Stalking Gidgette
A Love Story
A Feature News Article By: BIRD
Photo’s and Layout By: Padgette
Part One: The quick and the dead...
In my last installment I touched on the topic of games you regret not playing competitvely because you were off playing something else or just plain missed the boat entirely. For me it was like that with MOH:AA (Medal of Honor:Allied Assault). While this game was rocking, I was gaming my tits off in Battlefield:1942f for almost two years. And as decent a MP game MOH:AA was, sadly for me I didn't manage a look in as my community was deeply rooted in Battlefield 1942. Battlefield 1942 gave us the ability to play in Air, Land, Sea environments - all at once. No other game had ever done that. In describing it to people i'd tell them, I could be on the ground fighting other soldiers while you're flying above the battlefield in a plane, or out at sea in a ship, submarine or landing boat, Hell, you could even be in an all out tank duel. Then i'd say - And all of this is happening in the same server at the same time, with a whopping 32 players. For 2002 Battlefield 1942 turned a corner in the lifecycle of FPS games and while every other FPS game at that point in time was being built up on the successful Quake 3 engine games like MOH:AA brought a smaller, more close infantry gameplay rather than a sandbox experience. MOH:AA at it's height boasted a huge Aussie/NZ community that keep it going for so many years. That is until when the creators of MOH:AA split from 2012 games and formed as Inifinty Ward and came out with Call of Duty. In 2003 Call of Duty became "the" game everyone had to play. TV shows like Band of Brothers and the Speilberg movie Saving Private Ryan heavily influenced the creation of this little gem. What's exclusive about this was that the game was near perfect, good hitboxes, decent netcode and was a straight shooter. And as they say the rest is history.
And it's weird how things move in cycles, in this case it's the biggest fps franchises that move me. Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises have pulled me in different directions with each installment. For example, after COD1 and COD:UO came out a new Battlefield was launched, see; Battlefield 2. Most of my then clan, Drunkards in Combat, made the switch. Now while I felt no loyalty to stick it out with Battlefield 1942 after playing it for two years and I switched to Call of Duty. My sole justification for that came out of sincere regret for missing\ the boat on MOH:AA. I'd tried to play MOH:AA competitively, hell i'd even joined a team for MOH:AA while in *AUS* clan. And I thought MOH:AA was amazing, but since my community was based in BF1942 it didn't get the kind of attention it deserved. So when Call of Duty was annouced and I played the early single player demo I decided right then and there I wasn't going to miss the boat on this one.
But looking back it's interesting what happened when BF2 came out. In reverse to my reaction to Call of Duty it failed to put the hook in me. I tried it, sure I liked it well enough, but did not want to stop being involved in the COD community as the game still held all the charateristics that we as gamers look for that makes a game really special. What happened next was that I dismissed BF2 and played it somewhat on just a part time basis with Drunkards, while pissing off to another clan to play COD almost exclusively. It's a rare thing to be drawn in by a special game and foresake all others, but perhaps you need to understand the Aussie gaming scene.
In Aussie gaming scene it's the quick and the dead with some things, MP (mulitplayer) game communities can rise and fall and then disappear overnight. The writings on the wall in some cases even before it's shipped no matter how big the advertising campaign is. If the game fails to meet the expectations of gamers by making false promises leaving their hopes dashed, it's the scene that becomes the games harshest critic. Gamers tell their friends to steer clear, download it, try before you buy, and another gamers opinion outweighs any online site or magazine, as media sites just can't be trusted anymore. When the scene passes verdict on a game it can mean the end for some titles, most recently with the August 2009 release of Wolfenstein. Now here's a game that was doomed to begin with. (no pun intended iD) First, the MP dev team got fired on release day, it's gotta tell ya something and in it's midst of it's release campaign the scene judged it accordingly with Fail. After the first weekend the populated servers just dried up. The whisper on the grapevine was that the MP was just plain lousy and as a result nobody was playing Wolfenstein in Australia outside of a month of it's release. And yet in the boom period leading up to Xmas another game comes along ready to take it's place, ready to try and ultimately Fail in the lead up to the November release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
Now, that's a quick death to be sure and a great shame of an otherwise great franchise left to ruin. And don't get me wrong we've all been victim to those hype marketing campaigns that promise the earth and deliver something vaguely like the game they promised. But sometimes, every once in a while there's a game that comes out that is destined to be a scene favourite and for those far and few\ inbetween games that are highly likely to have leagues and clans in the Aussie gaming scene you've got to make the choice early on. Ok, now if you don't want to get left behind, avoid buying the game a month or two later with the thought in the back of your mind that you're going to be able to wade on in and be rambo'ing it up on newbs. Instead let me offer you some free advice....Don't. Or maybe more specifically what i'm saying is "Don't wait". Given the odds, if the Aussie gaming community is all saying this is 'the game you need to play' - Go buy it on day one. It's really the best thing you can do and that is to get in on the ground floor in that same week, soak it up or get left behind. Afterwhich if it becomes a community favorite, or a dud, or just shoved aside for that next great thing - at least you can say I was there when it was kickin. That's how I look back on the experiences I had with Call of Duty and Battlefield 1942.
Even a year seems like an age and two years is an achievement for any game that has a thriving community based around it. In our country nostalgia is generally lost as it seems we're all transfixed either by luring graphics or that there's always something new to be played. But when you are being nostalgic and looking over your bookshelf on those titles now gathering dust, you sight that one special something from way back when. Your mind drifts back to all the league matches you played in, the hours you dedicated yourself to learning the maps, strats, everything comes flooding back - the names of people you played with, the best teams in the league. And you smile to yourself all the while knowing that - I was apart of it since day one.
And we carry on, the scene, it, we all - move on. We go on to play something else. Because in Australia if you're not in there on day one it's likely that 6 - 12 months later most people have indeed have moved on or they're entrenched in a formidable MP community that is generally unkind and unwelcoming to newbs. I sing my praise to the MP games that survive here, as they are the ones that have endured the harshest criticism and as a reward they also recieve the most loyal of fanbases. The communities measuring stick is the same for any MP game out there. Give us a MP game that works, that has decent hitboxes and shoots straight, dedicated servers and you'll have our loyalty for life. And in Australia that's certainly the case for some of the classics, theres still a Unreal server on Internode, a BF42 server on iinet, a COD vanilla server on 3FL.
But maybe thats not what the publishers want to hear anymore, instead they want you out there every 12 months ready to buy this seasons new pop sensation Suckering you in with a hollywood styled advertising campaign so heavy you'll be holding your $90 at chin height athe checkout counter on lauch day, all ready to take that blockbuster title home and fap n' frag yourself stupid ready to do it all over again in another 12 months time. This can be said about the Call of Duty series which has franchised itself with such overkill to the likes of say Guitar Hero or Need for Speed? Whats happened over the last two editions of the game is that this once loyal fanbase which developed over the 2+ years in between the series expansions has finally lost hope in the game. The game maker produces the best bread n' butter fps out there, theres no questioning that, but the game maker - infinty Ward has forgotten it's root's, the PC communities that made them who they are. In doing so they've gone chasing the 'lights of money' and pushing more in the direction of console based - disposable gaming.
To be continued in Part Two, "Regrets and love affairs".