The Skylanders Mom and Gamer Networking

Given some time, shopping for video games with one's parents is going to become one of those essential childhood memories. I know that I cherish such memories. During my own trips to video game retail stores, I occasionally get  a glimpse into what the whole process is like nowadays. I've seen all sorts of experiences, ranging from the nagging kid whose parent buys a game based off a cartoon, to the encouraging parent purchasing the latest Mario for their grateful child. But sometimes, you see something different.

Browsing in the Electronics section one time, I overhear a mother and son in the Skylanders toys. For the uninitiated, Skylanders is an action/adventure series of games which contains a huge library of playable characters. You gain the ability to play as new characters by purchasing the action figure of that character and using a peripheral to plug the character in the game.

In the store, I actually saw in passing the son placing an action figure on the demo booth to see the character in action. He was seriously deliberating. Eventually, he goes to his mother and says he chose that character. And this is where it gets interesting. The mother takes one look at the character and says, "This looks like a big guy. Don't you play the fast guys?" to which the son responds that he wants to try a slow-but-strong character for once. They went back and forth for a bit, including one time when the kid tried a big character at a friend's house and said he didn't like it, leading to the kid saying he wanted to actually take it seriously.

What struck me about this exchange is that the mother and son were genuinely discussing strategy and logistics about the game. Normally, we'd come to expect the mother to sigh "okay," drop the toy in, and be on with her day. But here, she actually took the purchase seriously and wanted to talk it through first. Not as the credit card-holder trying to stave off a purchase, but as someone who understands what the purchase means to the child. She knew enough about the game to talk about it on the same terms as her child.

Every character in Skylanders comes with its own unique stat spread.

I was floored to hear this. I don't know if this is increasingly common now, but during my youth parents did not try to understand video games. The norm was that video games were not something that required further understanding. They were in the same league as simple toys. It's funny I say this so firmly because one of my parents was a subversion of this norm. My mother, much like the Skylanders mom, actually stopped to look at what I was playing and rationalize the bright colors on the screen. She knew what "characters" meant to video games. She understood what a "hit point" was. She saw how to recognize who the player character was without needing me to tell her. She knew what a power-up was and could alert me to when one pops onscreen.

Hearing the Skylanders talk made me think about a discussion I had before where I tried to make the argument that video games are just as complex and conversation-worthy as any real-world sport. Naturally, the other person had all of popular culture on their side and I had to concede. In light of overhearing this conversation, I'm thinking popular opinion is starting to sway the other direction. Now that video games are on the popular culture radar, my argument for the complexity of games has more ground to stand on.

Lastly, and just as importantly, even I could understand the conversation I was overhearing. Not because I've played Skylanders, but because I've played games in general. Games have a lot of things in common. In this case, the kid was used to characters that moved fast but could not defeat enemies quickly. This new character would move slow, but defeat enemies with less hits. He is swapping out the advantage of speed for the advantage of power and perhaps other capabilities.

Fighting games, by far, most emphasize the differences between characters and topics of discussion.

Thinking on that last point, I have come up with a term for how general video game knowledge allows someone to understand a game they haven't played yet. "Gamer networking" is what I've come up with so far. That is, networking with an emphasis on video games. In this day and age, "networking" mostly refers to a person socially engaging others to build a "network" of friends and acquaintances. People often network by emphasizing things they have in common, such as what movies they like, sports they follow, what they do for a living, and so on. This way a person can have a big network to be well-connected in many places among many types of people.

Gamer networking is interesting because video games are so complex. There are entire genres of games, and each game in each genre can be radically different from each other. And yet, video games all come from the same roots and therefore contain a lot of similarities as well. For instance, Final Fantasy is a very different game from Bioshock. However, both games have in common that the players attack enemies in order to win. In both games, the damage that players deal to enemies is quantified. In both games, the amount of damage can be increased in some way. In both games, the benefit of increasing attack power is taking less time to defeat regular enemies and being able to keep up with the more difficult encounters. Therefore, if a player of either of these games mentions a time for opportunity in which they increase their attack power, the other will know right away the basic benefits of that increase. And yes, players of both of these games will be able to join a conversation on using heavy characters in Skylanders.

Gamer networking is not just for people who freely identify as gamers. People who network over sports have discussions of a very similar sort. And then there's the fact that non-gamers have stormed the scene as casual and social gaming grow. Let's take one of the most prolific games of the modern era, one that every person reading this blog has either played, played secondhand, or heard about. Yes, folks, even players of Angry Birds can get in on the action. Angry Birds is a game more different from Skylanders, Final Fantasy, and Bioshock from each other, yet the concept of "more power" exists there as well.

Though Angry Birds does not emphasize defeating enemies, you still use force to knock down buildings using your birds. The individual birds cannot power-up, but using special birds is satisfying and mostly essential for getting the best results on stages. The Big Brother Bird in particular goes along with my point because it is a straight upgrade from the standard red bird character. It may not be as precise as the red bird, but precision is less of a factor when your bird can just demolish whatever it touches. It's not exactly the sort of quantified power in the other examples, but it is a relative increase in power all the same. Kind of a stretch, but the connection is there.

Just watch the first minute to see the big guy tear it up.

You see, the more you break down a video game into relatable problem-solving tasks, the more easily someone can understand it. The less a person knows about games, the simpler you'll have to get. Getting someone on your level requires effort and patience, but it is worth it. I've had long conversations with people who have no prior interest in games but every good intention to understand what they can, and all because I worked my way up.

It seems that we as gamers also have the progress of technology on our side. The more people come to rely on bright screens and dealing with user interfaces, the less foreign video games feel. In fact, video games may turn around and help us in the real world of situational awareness and problem solving; but that's a topic for another time. Either way, the Skylanders mom provided a good window into what could be when it comes to public knowledge and attitude surrounding video games. Perhaps in the future, more complex games will work its way into global culture; and not just a split-second of Call of Duty or an offhand app reference.

So, what about you? What experiences have you had in gamer networking? Ever tried explaining a game to your parents? Invited your friends over for some game time and had some banter? Or maybe you've butt heads with another game online about the superiority of one character or another. I know we've all done it, and I want to hear it. Until then, game out.

Street Fighter IV and Owning Your Character

There's two things we know about Street Fighter character Guile for sure: His theme goes with anything and his advice to any person is that they "go home and be a family man!" Aside from these very memetic things, I wonder how much about Guile the common internet goer knows? Do they know his actual personality? His back story? His rank in the US air force? I'm sure that people who enjoy studying up on the Street Fighter mythos would know all that.

As for me, I actually did not care much for Guile. It's true. In my younger years, I COULD NOT fathom Guile's moveset. The core of Guile's special moves is the mechanic of holding the joystick in one direction, then quickly moving the other way and using an attack. For the life of me, I could not get that timing down. I guess I rather harbored those frustrated times and continued to overlook Guile for that reason.

In particular, the Flash Kick vexed me. Part of the command was 'up.' As in the same 'up' used in jumping!!

In my recent playing of Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition I made it a point to give every character a chance. When I played Guile, all that learned behavior came back. The natural aggression I learned playing Ken, Dudley, Rose, etc. clashed with the campy style that Guile promotes. One of Guile's strategies is to keep in a low blocking position so he can punish impatient opponents. Low block? Come on! This is Street Fighter! I want to go in fireballing and uppercutting! Granted I can now appreciate how intricate the fighting system is and how there IS more to it than quarter-circle-punching my way to victory... my stance on Guile hadn't changed.

In addition, I found Guile to be... well, kind of a jerk. In his win quotes, he tended to be condescending in that 'grown-up' way and put people down after winning over them. I guess that being a soldier, he feels a need to discourage others from combat and fighting and all that. Even so, I wasn't a fan.

A little later, my constant playing of the game lead me to take on a different sort of project. As part of that project, I needed to do a character study of Guile. Mind you, the reason I picked Guile was for his memetic qualities alone. All I really wanted was to get a feel for how he behaved in battle so I can build accurate fight scenes involving him. Naturally, the start of this was rather reluctant.

I got a feel for his martial arts in a narrative sense, but I was left wanting more from the gameplay perspective. Thus, I dedicated some time to practice and study.

In time, I got into it. My advanced gamer reflexes could now pull off the timing necessary for sonic booms and flash kicks. I learned the range of Guile's fierce attacks, doing sweeps to stall and charge a special move, and made it a game within a game to see if I can pull off Guile's Ultra attack, much more actually finish a match with it.

Suddenly, I was hyped for Guile. I was learning while I was mopping up and it was fun. I even took pride in his personal mannerisms like sunglasses, his dedication to his hair, and his occasionally ham-fisted demeanor. Because I lived this character, I internalized more his dedication to his mission and the merits of his patriotism. His attitude towards other fighters still left something to be desired, but I knew more than before that Guile was within his character to say those things. He wasn't particularly condescending... he was just Guile. Rather than accentuate the negative to support my aversion to the character, I looked for all the positive to see. After all, a character that I spent so much time learning can't be all that bad, right?

So... what happened here? I circled around Guile for half my life and didn't give him a second thought. Suddenly I gave him the benefit of a doubt and I'm an overnight family man? Not quite.

See, if Street Fighter came from and stuck to a non-interactive medium, say purely big/small screen franchise, I doubt I could have ever taken a shining to Guile. His no-nonsense personality was too abrasive for me. I would have supported him as a protagonist, but only that far. Expanding on his back story may give me more to judge him by, but the character we have here doesn't change much for it.

The video game angle is what caused this change in outlook. It's one thing to know where a character comes from, but it's another to actually BE that character. Having their skills at your disposal gives you a deeper insight into what it's like to be this character. Of course, we can't experience for ourselves the loss of Charlie or take on the strain of remaining a noble soldier while hatred plays your forced muse.

We CAN, however, slip ourselves into Guile's camo and wield his sonic boom. The more we learn a character and turn to them as an ambassador for the Street Fighter experience, the more influence this character can have on us. Suddenly, we are more sympathetic to Guile's mission. We are right there with him when he grips a fist in agony after a time-out loss. After Guile toasts to a temporary victory, speaking to his friend's tombstone, the word 'amen' may be on the tip of your tongue.

Then again, your experience owning a character in a tournament fighter probably isn't so dramatic or in-depth. At the very least, you'd echo a sound bite or mimic a mannerism when you're feeling particularly proud of a win over a real-life friend.

Movies, TV, books, etc. can do a lot to give you an in-depth look at a character. They can weave words and images, or make the character a consistent part of your life as you follow their journeys. Each medium has an advantage over the other to pull off the same narrative goal. Video games are distinct in that they are capable of saying, "You know what? Here. You take control and see what it's like." It's up to the game from there to use perspective, control, gameplay, scripted events, and much more at its disposal to tell its story.

Of course, not every game is an epic tale or descent into the very soul of its protagonist. Then again, what a game is or isn't depends entirely on the imagination of the gamer.