Friday 25 September 2015

Got ya! The Gov'ner's gonna promote me for this


Welcome back Bandits. Today we're celebrating in the Pixel Bandits office, and it's all due to Frontier Development and the brainchild of David Braben, the creators of Elite Dangerous. We'll explain why below but in the mean time we're going back to a soundtrack from a previous blog, so press play and start up the very fitting music, Dave Lowe's soundtrack to Elite II

Gaming clans have been around for a little while now. Whether it's things like Warcraft or EVE and even down to games like Call of duty or Battlefield. People have always liked to form alliances and spend their in game time generally playing with the same other real life people. Even a few of decades ago, clans and guilds were forming and now a large percentage of gamers are enjoying the benefits that come from Clan membership.

Apart from our regular Cod /  Battlefield / Project Cars / Forza clan members, we started up an Elite Dangerous clan not so long ago, the Pixel Bandits Security Force. Essentially a like minded group of people protecting new players from griefers and offering escort wings around dangerous systems. Little did we know that a month along we would not only have 120 active members in the clan, but I received the surprise of my a couple of nights ago when I scanned an NPC vessel to see that we had now been included as Canon in the game. Our hard work had paid off, and the Pixel Bandits Security Force were canon in the Elite Universe.

It's still quite a buzz, to know that the creation of a small family team in South Wales now reaches worldwide (and galaxy wide!) but being included in game is something out of this world. It's not just a small clan tag, such as in CoD next to your player, there are NPC ships going about their business for PBSF, we can gain or lose political standing not only in our system but we can spread to neighbouring systems as well. We'll keep you informed of how this goes on our facebook and twitter (links at the end).

So what's the lure of joining a clan? Well for a start we need to remember that gaming is not this anti-social behemoth that a lot of non-gamers think it is. Just because we're not outside in the fresh air doesn't mean that we are filthy shut-ins who never talk to other humans, quite the opposite actually. With multiplayer online gaming taking leaps with every generation we've now got to the stage where if I want to socialize with people in the Americas, or France, or Australia, all I have to do is turn on my console.

This social aspect of online gaming is really the big draw for those looking for a clan. Knowing that you'll be playing with the same people on a regular basis, and getting to know not only their play styles but them as a person, outside of gaming, is a big thing. On top of that, the fact that most clans have a specific mission statement will let you know not only that you'll be seeing the same people, but also that you'll all be playing towards the same goals, instead of each running around like a headless chocobo and never getting anything done.

The big reasons simply boil down to being a part of something. In a similar fashion to sports supporter's groups, or even something as simple as a book club, there's a sense of inclusion. Sure it would be fun to read that book anyway, but being a part of the group will no doubt enhance your experience in myriad different ways. With gaming it can, as we've seen above, go so far that the thing you are a part of can be included in the game, and for a lot of gamers, seeing their group represented in game is a BIG thing.

I guess we just want to feel like we belong, and that's ok





Wednesday 23 September 2015

You, Trevor, are the proto-hipster


After a day of hard graft in the Pixel Bandits office, we sat down and had a dinner that couldn't be beat. After putting baby bandit to bed we saw Gamechangers, the BBC Documentary about the creation of Grand Theft Auto and thought it would be worth a watch. Our night went downhill from there. Today's soundtrack on the left is from the Fifth installment of the super franchise.

Now it wasn't a "bad program" from the outset. It has a decent cast, including screen bigwig Bill Paxton and Daniel Radcliffe who has certainly come a long way from the shoddy child acting when he starred as "The Little Wizard Who Could", but from the outset something was jarring at me... Following a portrayal of Rockstar after the release of Vice City and working through the construction of San Andreas the program starts heavy and hard with Rockstar celebrating a staggering amount of profit on Vice City and quickly into a depiction of Devin Moore and his brutal murder of three police officers

Which leads us to the first point, that this "Docu-Drama" is, from the outset, less genuine than a cardboard Buster sword. Fiction quickly overtook fact in a poor and unsuccessful scramble for entertainment value. Seemingly within a few weeks Vice City is released, Moore is arrested, killing three officers and former attorney Jack Thompson steps in as the gallant hero on a crusade to stop parents from buying 18 rated games for their underage children stop people making violent games.

In reality, Moore was arrested June 7 2003, around 8 months after the release of Vice City, and it wouldn't actually be until 2005 that Jack "Righteous Thunder" Thompson came anywhere near this case. Again, in the BBC adaptation of the truth you're led to believe that Jack Thompson has never been on a computer in his life, and yet the reason that he didn't jump straight to Moore's defense may well have been because in 2003 he was trying the same kind of thing with GTA 3 and a lad of 16 called Dustin Lynch, who murdered his friend in Ohio.

The big things in the program are right, Devin Moore did kill three people, Hot Coffee was a (really rather naff) sex scene left on the disc but unreachable by normal players, however it is interspersed with misinformation and falsehoods which really brought down what could otherwise have been a factual look at the link between gaming and violent behavior, but that still would have made me angry. why?

Because the media keep asking that big question. Do Violent video games make you violent. The very fact that this argument is still raging after 23 years, since the release of the first Mortal Kombat, perpetuates the myth. If there is no link, why are we still asking the question, the fact that headlines and click-bait ask this question regularly will lead anybody who doesn't look behind them to the conclusion that they must do, otherwise, what's the big hooha?

A psychological study recently revealed that playing violent video games can be a "risk-factor" to exhibiting increased aggression, however not only did they also point out that there was no evidence that this influence was enough to lead to criminal acts and, let's be honest here, the same desensitizing and copy cat behavior can be taken from anything from books, to film, to television, so why the focus on gaming?

 To quote the Independent online newsblog, "The findings have prompted a call for more parental control over violent scenes in video games from the American Psychological Association (APA)." which again is absolutely absurd. The thing about these violent games is that, make no mistake, there is a brutal amount of gore and bodily destruction. In GTA you can pay for intercourse with a prostitute and then beat her until she dies and you get your money back. Do I want my eleven year old to play that, of course not. Do I want stricter parental controls on the game, also a no... because

Video games, much like film, have something in the way of control already. It's taken out of the parents hands. The video gaming development community themselves work with various boards in order to ensure that children do not have the opportunity to perform any of these acts or even witness any of this violent content... and you've probably seen it a few times a day. Each and every one of the games listed in court cases and studies is an age 18 restricted game in the UK. This means that it is illegal for children to buy it, much like alcohol, tobacco, or firearms.


So, who is to blame here. Who is the one to point the finger at when children are exposed to levels of violence that (most of us agree) they shouldn't be seeing. Do we curse out the developers, who spend time developing an adult content game? Do we take to court the classification board who rate the game for sale (by law) to only adults? Do we ransack the offices of the retail stores who 99 times out of a hundred refuse to sell these items to children due to the massive fines and jail time they could serve for doing so? Or should we blame the parents, who buy age restricted games for their children because they are not legally allowed to buy it for themselves?

I'll leave that last question with you. Let us know what you think.