Engaging players and the evolution of videogames

Has the "baddy" Rabban added anything to GEWar? Has it made playing GEWar more interesting? Certainly a handful of players seem to be engaged by this "character". Some, like nimchief, are not convinced. I have enjoyed thinking about the backstory but how long will even this interest last? And the story of Ronin will only really be interesting to Ronin players, even if that!

Peter Molyneux is a big name in the computer games industry, in the clip below he talks about trying to engage games players by making characters they really care about.



And the next clip is an interesting montage of the evolution of videogames over the last thirty years.



Hat tip to Virtual Illusion for both of the above videos.

On the Origin of GEWarcies

The characters and events depicted in the photo above are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons in GEWar, playing or not playing, is purely coincidental.

The Book of Ronin: White lines

There it was again, "ratatata ratata tata ta", it was definitely coming from the other side of the valley. The unmistakable sound of small arms gunfire. Shaomian had just found another crystal of life in the never ending, magnificent valleys of the Himalayas. He was quickly becoming very addicted to the hunt for these since his first encounter with one. He did not know how to rationalise the amazing energy these crystals seemed to radiate. His whole being seemed to be boosted and he partially guessed now that he was hooked on these things much like a drug addict.

Quickly he made his way over to the stream that was meandering lazily in the spring morning. He was sure he had heard the cutting blades of an attack helicopter rising above the sound of the gunfire. There was some better cover closer to the far side of the stream and a good vantage point for whatever was heading here from the adjoining valley.

As he settled down for what he calculated may be a wait of a few hours he cast his mind back to what the old monk had told him about the crystals.

"Yes these crystals of life are very powerful, so much so that you can quickly lose your rational sense and your mind would react purely on an emotional basis. From the outside your behaviour would very much approximate to that of paranoid schizophrenia. Yet from your point of view you would very much believe you were in control. Fortunately most human minds burn out from the experience before they can do much harm to others. Others who have been trained in the ways of mindfulness can last longer. And there are the rare individuals who are born being able to cope with this power. One such fellow studied in the same monastery as I did many moons ago. A remarkable student but cursed with a coldness that left him isolated from others."

Shaomian somehow knew that the monk was talking about Rabban although the monk knew him by another name. "Yes this fellow who you know as 'Rabban' was very much skilled in the ways of combat by the time he left our monastery. Unfortunately he did not want to continue learning our philosophy once he had discovered the existence of the crystals. He left suddenly one night with a copy of the map after murdering our librarian to get it."

Sell low, buy high err that's not right...!?

The stockmarket, I don't see the point really. I remember when I first started I was wow okay so lets look for trends, is it on the up, hmm can we short this stock? And then lo and behold I was informed that all stocks were on a cycle, pretty boring really, no real room for analysis.

About three people in my alliance use the stocks regularly and seem enthused with it. Some want it to reflect a real stockmarket with price dependent on how many buyers and sellers there are and for it to be linked to the geos circulating in the game. I would like to see this but as many previous discussions in the forum have revealed this would detract from the main aim of GEWar.

A more volatile stockmarket may be in the running though so bigger swings would make watching the stocks slightly more interesting than say watching NA post their latest whines considered opinion on the state of GEWar.

Are you GEWar experienced? KRose

PMS Clan is an all-girl gaming club of more than 250 members. Their motto:

We may have boobs, but that doesn't make us nØØbs.

The number of female GEWar players can probably be counted on your hands, i.e. there are not that many. Unsurpising you may say since a wargame is typically the province of spotty teenage boys. However this panders to cliched stereotypes about gender, age and gaming. As the quote in the first paragraph notes more and more women/girls are into gaming. Be they traditionally stereotyped female ones such as Sim City or more bloodthirsty ones such as Halo.

In what I hope to be the first in a series of interviews (if I get the time to post!) I talked to one of the female players or Grrl gamers as the lingo goes, KRose.

How did you first get into GEWar?

Well my story began a couple months ago, when my roommate discovered this intense program called Google Earth. For weeks I would sit and watch him play on this globe like, user interface. Once I became bored of watching, I actually downloaded it myself. However, he was again, way ahead of me. He was already off searching for more things we could do with our new favorite toy, Google Earth. It didn't take long before he found a game that used our new toy as the main game board. While he was off, slowly becoming addicted, I was still mesmerized by Google Earth. It wasn't until he refused to go to sleep some nights and used the excuse "I need to occupy this nuked city", when I realized what I was missing. I quickly jumped on board, and ever more quickly became "addicted". However, I consider it more of a passion now, than an addiction. Haha.

How long have you been playing it for?

I joined November of 2006, about a month before the last reset. It was actually a perfect time to join. While everyone was at war, I sat back in a small alliance called "Black Thunder" and learned the ropes of the game. I learned to occupy all those cities that were abandoned by some random merc, and also became very comfortable saying "No, I will not give you back this city." I experienced the million dollar reset, and learned that having more geos= having more fun. Once the reset hit, I felt like I was already a veteran, even though I was truly nothing in the game yet. I started the reset off by jeweling all day and attacking all night. Slowly my friends began to catch on to all the craziness, and we formed our own alliance, called Lowell Mass United. The 5 of us were on top of the world... or so we thought... We had fun attacking brobie out in Africa, and holding down my hometown city, Seattle. but once we realized that we were just too small to conquer the world, all 5 of us joined the 3rd, which quickly became our new family.

What newbie mistake(s) do you remember making?

I still laugh about this mistake today... I can't remember if I was told this, or just thought of it on my own... But I figured that because diamond mines made a lot more geos than the other resources made, I would only waste 50 dollars every 36 hours building one diamond mine. I wasn't going to waste 100 geos on something that barely made anything in return... 100 geos was pretty much all I had in my bank back then... I couldn't just waste it on a cotton field, yielding only 35 geos a day... That just sounded foolish to me... Hahaha....

What are the good things about GEWar, what are the bad things?

Bad things? Are there any? Well obviously getting attacked or nuked is bad, but isn't it good because we are having fun? And isn't getting attacked good because now you have an excuse to demolish someone? I just think everything is great.

What were the memorable moments for you in GEWar?

Everything so far has been such a memorable moment. The last reset was probably the biggest thing so far... but everyday there is something new... One of these days... I am hoping something spectacular happens, and even better memories get made... Maybe something along the lines of Luke begging me to run the game while he is away for a week... That would be the ultimate memory.

Do you think you will be playing GEWar in 2 years time?

What are you talking about playing?? Didn't I just say Luke let me run the game for a week?? Well after that week was over, he realized that he lost his touch, and my skills by far surpassed his, and logically came to the realization that I should be in control from then on. I will no longer be just a "player" in this little game of war... I will be running it. The noobs will all be saying..."Luke who??"... "Who is this Luke character with a million posts in the Psychiatric Ward forum??"

Many thanks to KRose for sharing her GEWar experience.

If there are any other players who want to talk about their GEWar experience please get in touch.

Once upon a time in Mexico

While others talk Ronin acts and yesterday made a stand against the attention seeker Rabban. At the city of Nuevo Laredo, the stupendous act of bravery by Ronin disciple scanlan can be seen below:


Who will be next to step up to the plate? Who will walk the walk and not just talk the talk?

++Update++

Just for those who may have missed them, check out Lykos's Agent Wolfe's Rabban Update Files to keep up with the latest antics of the wannabe meglomaniac.

pitoh's blog

So my alliance leader the mighty pitoh has a blog, the latest GEWar related post titled "We are the Center of the Universe" had me cracking up. Nice one peenyman! :)

Donator game design competition

Attention all you donator game players enter the New GEWar Design competition. Shadowdani has offered a prize:

The author of the winning style will get a high trained army with the size of your choice (there is a limit though, but it is pretty high ) and the geo amount of its upkeep for one week, based on your current upkeep.

The deadline is 28 March. So get to it!

Show armies tool

An interesting show armies tool done by Hovard, another option should Google Earth keep crashing on you!

++Update++

After fluteflute's comments, I raised a query through helpdesk, they responded:

show_armies.php should only be opened through Google Earth. A whole can of worms has been opened here with the links to hovards tool. I am sure that the coders are working to block it.

So until further notification I have removed link to the tool.

The Book of Ronin: The Bible

The young disciple looked up, the curator was bringing her what looked like some refreshments.

"My, you are a keen scholar, aren't you? You've been there for some hours,” he said “but please don’t forgot to rest and recuperate that brain of yours. Here’s some hot chai, just the ticket.”

“Thank you” she replied taking a cup. “The translation is taking longer than I thought. But, err... I don’t understand the 'just the ticket' reference? Obviously an idiomatic expression but I have not come across it before”

“One cannot be expected to know everything eh!” he joked back. “By the way you do know that the book you are reading was originally part of a larger set? Unfortunately those originals are not here but we do have copies.” Then out of thin air he produced a reference crystal. “This has the copies of what has now been termed The GEWar Bible.” Then he left adding “You can use the washbasin near the door to clean the cup.”

The disciple looked around for a ystal-reader and saw a reading lounge towards the far left-hand side wall of the Ancient Earth history room.

The second moon of the planet was now casting its light into the room. She was reminded now how long she had already been there and thankful that the curator was looking after her.

She took the nearest recliner and hooked up the crystal. The reader flickered alive.


°°access Main Index°°
°°°loading°°°

[]The GEWar Bible

+Genesis

• The Book of NAR
• The Book of UN
• The Book of NO

#Revelation

#Apocalpyse

#Salvation

°°°end load°°°

City Market

An interesting new project, City Market, by Martok who brought you the modded script Redux2. He describes it:

The goal of this service is to become the favourite place if you want to expand and are looking for a city in a specific place, or if you want to get fast cash for your little pacific island.
The other way round, newbies will be able to come here and get a city of their own, probably cheaper than on the free market. This is possible due to the fact that I keep cities for a few days, thus making a bit of profit before selling.

Looks like it could prove to be very useful. Note it is still in test phase.

The Book of Ronin: Despair

It was during the tumultous period when Rabban had just been elected to the Senate that a young doctor, Shaomian Itaima, attended one of the newly elected senator’s victory speeches. Shaomian had just struggled through a long arduous shift at the hospital, he was exhausted. He thought he would get used to seeing the blood, be able to handle the screams, but it seemed the civil disorder was getting worse and the army was relentless in its brutality on the people.

He had to admit that Rabban was charismatic, his words seemed to hypnotise those present. Although he did not like to see himself as an idealist, the young medic was enthralled. After working, elbow deep in the misery of broken limbs, spilt intestines, ear-shattering screams, Shaomian was looking for salvation.

And here now was a senator that was saying that he wanted a world with no armies, no borders, no nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

By the time Rabban was elected world leader Shaomian had gotten tired and dis-illusioned with medicine, with saving those he could, only to see them on the operating table the next week. He had voted for Rabban but the more he learnt of the iconic leader the more he grew disturbed. A colleague had recently left the profession and joined one of the many new armies that were organising and jostling for power in the emerging chaos. Shaomian joined him, leaving his old life of blood for a new one.

After the fall and arrest of Rabban, Shaomian was fighting in the TLI alliance when he decided to quit and retreat from the world that had become more and more cruel. He travelled far and learnt many ancient secrets. On one such occasion whilst resting near the foot of Mount Fuji he crossed paths with an old monk. Being the only souls that they had seen in many moons they immediately struck up a conversation. It turned out that the monk had in fact not seen another person for 50 years, and was very keen to hear of the news from the life that he too had shunned all those years earlier. In gratitude for the exchange the monk gave Shaomian a map.

“This map,” said the monk “contains the locations of the jewels of life. It is said that whoever finds these jewels will become powerful. And that such a power can bring order to chaos.”

The Book of Ronin: Pre-lude

“Ah! So you have found the place which many have looked for since its destruction.” The young Ronin disciple squinted uneasily at the curator of the library which many had indeed thought was but a legend. The old man moved gracefully towards the young woman and reached out his hand to greet her in the way it was said that humans greeted each other many centuries ago.

Having studied ancient Earth history and customs the disciple immediately held out her hand, and clasped the old man’s hand with a firm grip.

“Good, good,” chuckled the curator “You are not as green as you seem,” he waved his hand towards a massive oak door. “Follow me,” he said curtly and the two of them walked into the Ancient Earth history room.

Without trying to hide her amazement the disciple gasped at the room that she was led into, it was unlike any library she had ever been in. Marble floors shimmered like light from water. There were jewels encrusted on the bookshelves, twinkling like stars on a clear winter sky.

“This way,” said the old man as he led them into non-descript cubby-hole in the far corner of the room. It was far removed from the opulance of the main room.

“This...” said the curator pointing to a heavy brown book that was chained to a bookshelf “...is what you have been looking for.” The disciple let out a gasp, for indeed the book matched the description that she had deciphered in her many researches.

The curator seeing her excitement and what he detected as a little fear decided to leave the young woman to her thoughts.

Can this really be the book that the alliance spoke of? If so what light will it shed? She knew that even though many answers may lay hidden in there surely many more questions would also arise.

The Neverending....Backstory

Luke has written a backstory as to how GEWar came to be. He gives some clues:

A long time ago I wrote the story of GEWar(part fictional, part based on events..though never posted).
Part of the story was the Character Rabban. A terrorist which lead to the fall of all governments, which started GEWar in the first place.
Well...let's just say that after his capture 2 years ago, he's escaped.

He promises to reveal some more of this. This has certainly sparked my imagination and immediately thought of how Ronin could have arisen in such a story.

Hopefully my creative juices will not desert me, so stay tuned readers.

Oh yeah nearly forgot to mention that you can Hunt Rabban and get some geos!

++Update++

Luke has posted the backstory and has offfered 2500 geos for the best stories to add to the legend of GEWar. Engage your brain and get those fingers to the keyboard!

Games for geos

It struck me as odd how people tend to prefer the less intellectually demanding games for geos? For instance players seem to go mad for the PM Games Master closest to some set times game. Now, I can see the attraction of this - no thinking involved. And before you ask I did have a go! But heck unless you are a real saddo, you must have better things to do than hang around waiting for those times and on a Saturday to boot!

Why not manage your time better and have a go at say one of the quests that is run by Othafa? The current Quest 4 finishes on the 17 March. Trust me this quest is very straightforward, the tricky bit is to get the co-ordinates as close as possible to the location of the last picture.

And, okay, I admit I have not entered the maths puzzles set by XorgtheZombie, man I really do have better things to do!

New forum (and site) on the block

For people who think that the GEWar forums are over-moderated, why not have a look at the new unmoderated forum brought to you by the people from the Standard.

Spy-catcher

Spies, hate 'em or hate 'em, they are inevitable. So how can you counter them?

Well let's talk to an ex-spy and see what we can learn :

Well I don't know too much about spying given my short career doing it. I can tell you that the only reason I wanted to spy was out of sheer boredom in my old alliance before it dissolved. It really isn't all its cracked up to be unless you have a good reason for doing it. Spies tend to work best it seems when they are closely related to the people they are spying for and not just a free agent.
I have noticed two major spying methods. The first involves low activity maybe on banking resources and seems to result in eventually being kicked. The second is what I did. I was as active as possible as much or more than most people in the alliance. A lot of people seem to have issues with this kind of spying because they end up feeling betrayed. I will say though that I'm not even sure how I was caught. I could have been ratted on or it could have been a script tracking me.
I would say don't spy if you want to hold large cities and be a solid player. Spy if you have nothing to lose and don't fear having your reputation tarnished.

Some may argue that the above guy was not actually a good spy since he got caught! Good spies will be hard to catch but some counter-measures can be adopted to keep them on their toes.

1. Implement a banking system for your alliance where every member has to pay set amount each week. This amount should be adjusted appropriately to your alliance economy.

2. Track alliance finances, implement a regular saving of alliance finance page and import them into an excel file to track geos. Here is an excel file made by Jabotabek to help you do that. PM me if you want help using it.

3. Try to engage with every member in your alliance, unless the spy is really cold it will become more and more diffcult for them to keep betraying you.

++Update++

From GEWarriors forum found this relevant post by robotguy4:

PROJECT FAKE SPY

In this strategy you have a person who has just joined your alliance send out invitations for selling information about your alliance. The people then take the bait, and you send out FAKE'd info for geos. Great fund raiser for noobs. Probably can only be done once, and then BOOM! No more spying problems. Ever. Act outraged like it was a real spy.

continued here

Also from the same post this little ironic gem:

REMEMBER:
According to General Patton:
"The only way to stop people is to make them stop playing the game."

Four essential tips for newbies

1. Get hhmira's jewel file.

2. Get the resource planting overlays (right-click/save-as) :

Oil file (planting on the edges seems to give most barrels of oil)

Cotton file

Diamond file (you will need to contact ska for this file)

3. Invest in bonds

You can invest up to a maximum of 2500 geos in bonds, there are three types of bonds:

7 day (40%)
14 day (150%)
and 30 day (400%)

E.g. for a 14 day bond invest 178.5 (2500/14) geos each day.
Most people opt for the 14 day bond as the best compromise between risk and reward.

4. Get Martok's Redux 2 script from the script library. Read fluteflute's description of it.

++Update++

There's some useful information in this post, Tips for newbies, by Luke.

Okay Luke has confirmed that where you plant resources has no effect on the output you get, the same command runs each time. Ah well, at least your plantings can look orderly!

For pitoh, Reggae Reggae Sauce!

Hey pitoh man I thought you might find this interesting both professionally and personally!




More on the story here: Chef's reggae sauce for Sainsbury's

++Update++

Remarkably after this posting pitoh immediately bought two crates of the above mentioned Reggae Reggae Sauce. One of the consequences of this was felt by the unsuspecting city of Heraklion:



Luke was rumoured to be heading to Kingston to pick up the other crate of the increasingly popular sauce...

From the vaults : anti-mercenary strategy

From time to time I will try to dig up what I think are useful/interesting past posts from the forum.

So the first one that I want to highlight is a strategy to deal with mercenaries from fahhem: Mercenary targetting you?

++Update++

If you want to do your own digging then fluteflute has put up a custom Google search called GEWar Search, this searches the old forum site (hosted on Google Earth Hacks) as well as the current one.

Shaggy dogs

Well I don't think I am going to have much time to do any postings in the next few days. In the meantime readers (I know there are some out there!) should check out some GEWar shaggy dog stories.

Hats off to WindRunner! Man that is some verbal diahorrea ;) C'mon, can anyone top him!?

++Update++

Unsurprisingly WindRunner won this game with a word count of 3164! Surprisingly my entry got censored! boo hoo :(

Are you an obsessive online gamer?

From Internet Addiction web site :

Answer "yes" or "no" to the following statements to see if you may be addicted to online gaming:

1. Do you need to play online games with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve the desired excitement?
2. Are you preoccupied with gaming (thinking about it when offline, anticipating your next online session)?
3. Have you lied to friends and family members to conceal extent of your online gaming?
4. Do you feel restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop online gaming?
5. Have you made repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop online gaming?
6. Do you use gaming as a way of escaping from problems or relieve feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or depression?
7. Have you jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, or even risked your marriage because of your online gaming habit?
8. Have you jeopardized a job, educational, or career opportunity because of your online gaming habit?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, you may be addicted to online gaming.

Oh dear...I answered yes to six of those questions...

Searching the support forum using the term "addiction" I find three interesting posts, two of them are polls :


how much addicted are you to GEWAR???

How does your significant other feel about GEWar?

And this one is a post that contains an interview with a GEWar player from a Dutch magazine:

Not only is msn addictive, more and more people can go no more than an hour without their games. Especially games such as world of warcraft which are rather addictive. Tim from Vught is entirely hooked, "During holidays I start after breakfast with gameing and I just stop when I really get hungery. That is just around 11 o clock in the evening. I play quietly to 3 o' clock at night." The 5th year gymnasium student regularly games all day, and this is from when he was 8 years old. According to his mother he turns of the tv at night, but when she leaves the room he admits to gaming until 3 am sometimes. There is always someone online, which is the advantage of gaming against people from Australia. I admit I have not really had any effort to stop gaming. It always sits in my head. In Tim's room is a large cupboard with some of his computer games. Red Alert 2, Rome: Total War, Half Life 2, and Morrowind but there are a couple titles which lie in Tim's gamekast. When he's not playing, he manages the web forum of the game GEWar. There are games that i'm buzy with at the moment. Tim's friends are not concerned that his hobby has gotten out of hand. They dont say anything about it being a problem. And that whereas more quality spend time with its computer then with its friends. A life without games is this way stupid. Tim hardly goes outside, but he does not find that compared to gaming the world is small and stupid. A life without games is just stupid! On seven of the ten questions of our internet junkie test he answered with a yes, on the other three he said no. He does not see his addiction as a problem. A world without games he can imagine, but he cannot imagine a world without gaming ever coming to excistance. You can consider it complete life as a game.

Needless to say most players don't feel they have a problem. However I suspect a minority do or will develop problems. Should that be of concern? A debatable question indeed.

For fluteflute

Here's me thinking players entering the Geos Blogspot game would naturally publicise each other's blogs. Think again, when I noticed the feed footer that fluteflute added to his blog settings :

Thanks for reading my GEWar blog. To advertise your GEWar blog here please deposit 1k into my GEWar account with a link to your blog. Thank You.

Lol! So fluteflute, instead of 1K geos how about this youtube video? ;)



++Update++

I notice that helo has this in his forum signature:

500 geos and a PM will get you a link on my Blog

Obviously and shamelessly trying to undercut fluteflute ;)

A grammar pedant writes...

+++Guest post+++

Sir,

I admit that the new latest activity comments are funny, and they have been admirably covered by fluteflute - New attacks 'comment' and by helo - Humour latest activity log. There are sure to be many grammar points for the English pedants amongst us, such as the spelling of 'beautifull' picked up by fluteflute.

Another grammatical point comes in the example attacks comments below :

______ could not bother less to have lost the city as the inhabitants were quite annoying with that dialect.

I would humbly point out that "could not care less" would be better and Google Fight gives some support to this :



A staggering 93,400,000 for "could not care less" vs 3,300,000 for "could not bother less".

Imagine the confusion a non-English speaker may have!

yours faithfully,

A. Pedant.

When the GF is out for the evening

So the above is the scene when my GF is out for the night. Very relaxing!

Notice all the essential requirements, Google Earth monitoring the sacred territory, a nice Thai curry courtesy of the aforementioned GF and some liquid refreshment.

Lovely...

...Cheers!

Red Red whine

This amusing post by Red Ivan reminded me of a song (many apologies to UB40!) :

Red, Red whine
Got to make another post
Make me forget that I
still need AO so

Red, Red whine
It's up to you the other alliances
All NA can do, we've done
But AO cities won't go
No they just won't go

I'd have thought
That with time
Thoughts of AO
Would leave my head
It was wrong
And I find
Just one thing makes me forget

Red, Red whine
NA stay close to me
Don't let me post alone
It's tearin' apart
My GEWAR heart

Ronin

In GEWar you can play independently or in an alliance. My alliance is Ronin and needless to say they are fabulous. In alphabetical order:

Angel - divine but deadly
Gradaigh - you want defence you got it
il_sir - jaw jaw but if you piss him off then it is war war
kerithp - will save your soul before taking it
maVerik - don't mention BNW when he is around
nite_worker - don't sleep when he is around
nucleus - young gun quick on the draw
pitoh - brings the herbal heat
scanlan - down under lurker
Ska - lyrical murderer
SilentLucidity - eee its grim up north lad
sneeky - the Karachi kid
sowens - he's big in the other place

Of course each and every member has been in previous alliances, and I need to name check some players who are no longer in Ronin:
Othafa
TracyJunior
Jabotabek
akin
allskinners
mrfix
MountainBoy

Reasons to play GEWar

1. GEWar is free. Though you can donate and get certain advantages.
2. If you ever liked the boardgame Risk, chances are, you will like this game.
3. Get to know and use Google Earth.
4. Make great new online friends!
5. TV is dead. Long live GEWar!

That was my first GEWar blog post!