Closing Down The Facebook Page

Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

Right now Identity Gaming has a number of social media accounts tied to it.  Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and as one guy doing this by myself that's a lot to manage.  So, I've made the decision to close down the Identity Gaming Facebook page.

There are two reasons for this decision

1) The quality of the page itself is garbage.  I've put basically no effort into the Facebook side of this website, I just sort of opened it at the start because I felt that I had to for some reason.  So if I'm not using it, there isn't really any point of it existing.

2) Facebook is cancer.  I follow a number of gaming groups on Facebook to browse through while I'm bored in the bathroom or on a train but almost every single Facebook gaming group is an absolute shit show filled with the absolute worst people.  Have you ever seen someone post a speedrun on a Facebook and then looked at the comments section?  The absolute biggest sacks of shit seem to frequent these pages and on the off chance that IG does grow bigger and get a bigger following, I do not want your average Facebook ruining my day.

For friends of mine who may be reading this, this does not mean I'm closing my personal account, I'm still going to pester you all with my links whenever I put out something new.  It also doesn't mean that Identity Gaming is in any danger of closing down either.  I'm just chopping off the worst part of it

Gaming and Social Media

The fact that gaming and social media have sort of come together in recent years is such a strange phenomena to me.  Back in my younger years if I shared gaming related things on my Facebook wall then I would be ridiculed for being a loser but now I have game systems that let me, at the push of a button, upload screenshots, videos or even put out links to my Stream direct to Facebook and other platforms.

Allow me to share a little story about my first experiences putting gaming content on social media platforms.  A long while ago I used to play a lot of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on my PSP, it was a grand old time.  Just when I was starting out, I managed to grind enough of a certain creature in order to get my first full, self crafted armor set so I was pretty excited.  I thought I'd share this excitement with some of my so called "friends" on Facebook so I snapped a picture, uploaded it and put a caption on it like "woo! first proper armor!".  The comments that I got back were things like "holy shit you're such a loser" or my personal favorite "there's casual, hardcore and sad.  Guess which one you are".  THEN fast forward to 2016 where I can smash a button and upload a screenshot from Bloodborne where I just killed a boss or something and suddenly the comments are things like "well done that game is hard" or "omg I wanna play that game so bad".

This is just one example of that happening but it happened many times more and with other titles.  If you were to go through my old photo albums and look at the screen shots for Left4Dead, Guild Wars or Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine then you'll see a lot of abuse but viewing similar content on newer titles or even posts for this blog clearly shows that gaming content has become a lot more "acceptable" on social media.

Gaming platforms have always had their social elements to them with things like Steam offering ways to share pictures or content with other players but with that it's always self contained within it's own community of gamers.  Facebook is where a lot of the filthy non-players reside, the kind of people who don't understand games and think they are either for kids or for lonely, fat basement dwellers with nothing better to do with their lives so the fact that people now are willing to more openly share their gaming experiences is a bit of a shock, but a good kind of shock.

This improving of the relationship of social media and video games is something we all frowned upon back during the launch of the next gen systems.  You had people on stages at press conferences harping on and on and on about social media this and Twitter that and we just turned up our noses and said "where are the games?".  However we now live in an age where there's a large number of people working within gaming media who are trying to smear and shame it.  Lot's of articles about gamers and games being sexist or violent.  It's stuff that happened before but now it's coming from within.  Except what these social media features allow us to do is show the people directly, the people who don't know any better and would buy into this shit otherwise, that this just isn't the case.  We have been given the tools to fight back against the clickbait, sensationalist bullshit that would seek to damage gaming for a fast profit rather than help us evolve the medium.

Times have changed drastically and I'm actually rather thankful for it.

Online Harrassment Is Largely Bollocks

Thanks to the ongoing Gamergate controversy that I've been quietly watching from a distance it seems like harassment and cyber bullying have become hot topics for the games industry.  Not a day goes by on my twitter when someone isn't talking about "harassment" but quite frankly, harassment and cyber bullying is LARGELY complete bullshit and I speak from experience.

First I'm going to say a little bit about what I would define as harassment or bullying.  Harassment or cyber bullying, to me, would be a situation where the online nastiness that one is experiencing overflows into your real life.  For example, doxxing is a great example of what I would define as ACTUAL harassment.  Putting someones info such as their address and phone numbers on the internet and then having large numbers of people make calls and mail all manners of horrible bullshit is disgusting behavior that could only really be defined as harassment or bullying.

Also things such as DDoSing websites and such I'd define as actual harassment because if you're a content creator that relies on your site to make money (and maybe even a living) then you're directly harming them in some kind of actual way that they can't prevent.

However, saying nasty things to people on social media or in video games is NOT harassment and it's not bullying.  Even if there are large numbers of people doing it, I disagree with the idea that you are being harassed by randoms on the internet.  Almost every website, every social media outlet, every messenger service and every app has a block feature and an account removal feature.  If people are saying stuff you don't like then block them and if it becomes too much, shut down your shit, it's that simple.  Surprisingly, even in 2015, I'm pretty sure you'll be OK if you don't have to log into Facebook every day.

I'm sure there are people who are affected quite badly by people saying horrible things to you on the internet but I'm quite cynical of these people because, as I said before, I speak from a great deal of experience of being "harassed" and "bullied" across my life.  Allow me to tell you some stories.

In my high school days I was rather unpopular (nothing's changed lul) and I'd get bullied a bit at school.  As a young child I discovered MSN Messenger and on there I would talk to the few friends I did have and have a grand old time.  Occasionally, the bullies from my school life would appear to say nasty shit to me but I didn't mind it so much online because that was the one place where I didn't have to take their shit.  Without responding or even really reading what they said to me, I'd block them in a heartbeat and get back to living my happy life.  At home, on the internet, I didn't have to take that shit and so I chose not to.  Now we have a lot more avenues for communication like twitter, LINE, Facebook, Snapchat and all that shit, but I guarantee that they all have block features so you can avoid having to hear shit that upsets you from randoms on the internet looking for a reaction.

I'm aware that some people who are "cyber bullied" may then come off Facebook and face that shit in real life but when it gets that far, to me, it stops being cyber bullying and falls into the realm of just straight up normal bullying, right?

Now what about online harassment?  Things like emails and stuff that I hear people talking about so often?  Well that's bollocks too.  A long while ago my wife bought my Hatsune Miku Project Diva F2nd.  Since I'm a website that talks about games, I announced how pleased I was with the gift I had received with a little picture of the box on Twitter.  Not long after I made that tweet, I received an email telling me, in short, that I'm a horrible person and my wife is a traitor to women who should kill herself.

Pretty horrible thing to have to read right?  Well yeah, but it was sent by someone I didn't know and quite frankly, I don't give a shit about what anons on the internet think about me or my wife.  The criticism leveled against the two us wasn't constructive and the tone of his or her email was nasty so I just deleted it.  I received one more after that with similar words about me and no mention of my wife and did the same thing.

If it was continued assaults, there are features in my email thing to block addresses and filter shit as spam or whatever, so I could have just used those but I've not received one since and I refuse to let stupid shit like that get to me.

As for gaming there's been a sad change in what qualifies as harassment.  Back when I was younger, playing games online was an almost guaranteed way to hear something nasty.  Comments like "you're shit" and "fat nerd tryhard" as well as much wittier stuff was commonplace, it was just the rough and tumble nature of playing competitive online games and still is.  They don't know anything about me and they say stuff just to get a rise and 90% of the time it doesn't come from a place of malice so there's no need to get upset.

The problem is that nowadays, the definition of harassment has become silly and maybe that's another reason as to why I'm so cynical about it all.  Harassment on twitter can now be defined as disagreeing with someone or re-tweeting something that they don't like.  People like to use the word harassment to deflect legitimate criticism.  For example, if someone says something and you respond with like "well, you didn't really do enough fact checking, here are some sources of stuff that says you might be barking up the wrong tree.."  the person will just use the H word and large numbers of people will come to defend despite the idiocy behind the first statement.  I've also seen people use the word harassment to talk about calling someone shit at a game in an in game chat, which is just ridiculous. 

All this said, there are large numbers of people and large groups dedicated to stomping out or supporting victims of harassment and cyber bullying, so I'm more than willing to admit that maybe I just don't understand the whole issue.  If there's anyone with experiences they'd like to share or ideas they would like to put forward to try and tell me that maybe it's not all complete bollocks, I'm open to the idea that maybe I'm wrong on this.

Facebook Buys Oculus

Jesus H. Christ, when did the internet last flip out about something this hard? It's been a while, but people have every right to be upset in the light of recent events.

So to sum up the tragedy that has just happened; Facebook has bought Oculus for 2 billion Dollars.

Now just in case there are people reading this post who aren't in the know, the Oculus was a Virtual Reality headset that was open source.  This means that anyone was free to go on their website and purchase a devkit and start developing things for it.  This was really interesting because the rift devkit itself was actually pretty cheap, which means that the thing was being worked on by hobbyists and enthusiasts and there was lots of really interesting stuff in the works.

Now, there are some hopeful people on various forums and comments sections that I've seen saying that it's a good thing because now the Oculus has way WAYYYY more funding.  Considering that they were only a small operation this injection of money will be really helpful for them to make the rift even better.

But I think these people are being wilfully ignorant to all the terrible things we already know about the Facebook company.  Just think about that for 2 seconds, we had a product made by a small company that was dedicated to delivering a quality product, being bought out by a huge company who's ONLY focus is monetization.  Now that Oculus is part of Facebook it has to start dealing with shareholders who are only interested in one thing, profits.  That means no new and interesting ideas, just safe shit that will turn a profit which means that a lot of the creativity that was coming out of the Oculus will now be killed.

I could write a big long post about all the terrible things that come with this kind of deal, but I won't because that would take all day and anyone with a working brain probably already understands all the negatives. 

A piece of cutting edge hardware that was once in the hands of gamers and technology enthusiasts now belongs to Facebook and if you don't see something seriously wrong with that then you may just need some kind of professional help.

Update Time! Moving into a new place! Stuff Incoming!

Right, first of all, you may have noticed that it's the end of October, yet only one game from the October playlist got uploaded to YouTube.....

Well I'm sorry about that, but moving to Japan and having to set myself up in a new apartment kind of ate all my recording time.  Also not really having a proper place to record in made things quite difficult.  Those playthroughs aren't dead though! They are just sleeping.  Silent Hill, Resi 1, Outlast and Amnesia are games I want to play through anyway, it just won't be in season.  Fortix on the other hand......well I'll slog through it one day because I said I would.

Then there is the blog and the stream.  Well, I doubt very highly that I'll have access to the internet straight off the bat, so it may be a while, but once it's up then you can expect a great deal of streaming.  There may be a bit of downtime with posts too, but if I can get to a place with Wi-Fi I'll at least try and upload more Silent Bomber.

Finally, the social media side of things has expanded! Identity Gaming now has a Facebook page!  So go and throw that thing a like!  All future updates will be written there instead of here and it's another place to look to see if I'm streaming or not.  The link for the new page is here!

https://www.facebook.com/identitygamingcharity

So yeah, I'm moving house tomorrow, bare with me for a few days while I sort my shit out

Micro Payments Are Cruel

Since I'm still preparing to move into my new apartment, I've not really had the chance to sink my teeth into anything proper and since I've been going out a bit doing all sorts of fun Japan stuff, a surprising amount of my time has been soaked up by my iPhone.

Now when you think about mobile or social games with micro transactions you generally imagine a shitty game with very little depth where you can basically pay money to win the game.  For this reason, they are generally not very well liked by people who play real games since paying to win requires no skill and it's a greedy way for a developer to squeeze cash out of people.

Well you're right, to some extent, but just take a moment and think about what's really going on.  These people aren't paying to win because they are lazy, you go and look at the insane numbers of hours that gets wasted on all sorts of facebook and iPhone games it's easy to tell that people aren't paying to win because of a lack of effort.

Just think about who the majority of these games are made for.  They aren't made for you and me, they are made for people who don't game at all and just want a quick fix of entertainment while they have time to kill, or something to play in the background while they upload pictures of the sandwich they had for lunch or whatever bullshit so called "normal" people like to do.

So when these people drop money on these crappy games, they aren't paying to win because they are lazy and just want an advantage, they are paying because they suck and they wouldn't be able to get to that point in the game any other way. 

When you think about it that way it's sort of cruel, that these people who don't really like video games anyway feel the need to drop money on shitty shallow experiences because they somehow became somewhat addicted to clicking farmyard animals......and they suck at even that.  These guys are making carrot on stick games that are JUST hard enough for non gamers to suck at them but not hard enough to make them quit, so instead they just pay a couple of pounds for that thing they can't get.

It's both cruel and genius at the same time, makes me think I should try and develop an iPhone game....

Plants Vs Zombies Adventures

Usually I stay well the fuck away from facebook games.  These things don't really seem like games, just gem matching time wasters for people to whittle away hours on and then brag about their not really high scores.

But then Plants Vs Zombies Adventures came along and piqued my interest.  The original Plants Vs Zombies was something I picked up on Steam during a sale a long long time ago and I was pleasantly surprised with how fun that ended up being.  So when I heard there was a PvZ game on Facebook I felt compelled to give it a try.

Well if you were a fan of the Original this game is a lot more similar to classic tower defence games.  You have a path that the zombies walk down and you place your plants along those paths to take them out.  If they reach your RV/House then you lose and if you kill them all you win.  The good thing is the games adventure mode seems to have a metric fuckton of levels despite only being in Beta and I can only assume more stuff will be added at a later date.

The other key feature of this game is the whole home garden thing. 

You see, unlike the original PVZ you can't just unlock the plant and then use it.  You must first grow and stockpile an army of plants to use in the levels on this home screen.  Planting plants isn't free though, so you hae to spend coins that you earn from the houses that you build, but building houses costs zombucks which you can earn from fighting zombies.  Luckily the game starts you off with a nice amount of coins and zombucks so you won't find yourself struggling for resources.  There are also diamonds which is this games micro transaction but it's used mainly for speeding things up and you don't need to pay to actually do well at the levels.

All things considered it's actually a pretty fun game.  You can add your friends as neighbours and help them out or send a horde of zombies to their gardens to mess them up so they did a good job of making the social element fun rather than crap and obnoxious although I've not really used it much.

So if you're like me and you have reservations with facebook games, then throw them aside and give this a go, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

That PS4 Announcement I didn't Watch

With me living in Japan and time differences being what they are, I didn't see this conference thing which was Sony giving a little talk on the upcoming PS4.  That said I've done some reading and poking around and here is what I've discovered.

1. It's going to be really quite pretty

Well it better fucking had be.  It'd be a bit of a shock if the PS4 came out and it looked WORSE than a PS3 somehow, this isn't news.

2. It has integration with Facebook and UStream

OK, the UStream thing is kind of cool.  Apparently the controller has a "share" button, where you can upload shit to Ustream for all your friends to watch, which is a potentially cool feature.  Facebook however, needs to fuck off.  Granted that I fucking hate facebook and use it as no more than a glorified chat service to keep in touch with buddies in different countries, but I don't need to broadcast every fucking game I'm playing to my news feed.  Fucking stupid, Facebook and video games should NOT mix.

3.  The controller has some kind of funky sensor thing in it and a touch pad.

I don't see the big deal here, it's a fucking controller.  As long as I push buttons and the game does things I want it to, then I'm happy.  The light bar and the touch pad are all great and stuff but I don't know how these are going to be used yet, so whatever.  At least this one has a mic jack so you don't have to use those fucking blue tooth headsets.

4.  You can use your Vita as a screen.

As someone who owns a Vita, I'm quite happy that I can now take a shit and continue whatever game I will be playing on my PS4 if and when I get one.

5.  You can resume play right away after turning "off" the system

This isn't news either, PSP has been able to do this for yonks, who cares?

6. Something to do with Gaikai cloud gaming

I didn't give a fuck about OnLive and I sure as hell don't give a fuck about this thing.  Maybe it'll be cool but I'm just not interested when I still have a PS1, PS2 and PS3 with plenty of games sitting around.  A feature I don't need, but I'm sure some people will be happy to have.

Obviously I have not mentioned the games but Diablo 3 being announced was quite possibly one of the most disappointing things I heard.  But still, the features I'm aware of so far sound good enough.  I wouldn't say that I'm particularly hyped for the next Playstation, but things are shaping up to be pretty good at least.  Hopefully more will be revealed at E3.

Also I'm aware I probably missed some things, but I'm gonna keep reading around for more info.