BLACKLIST

Still alive.

2010-03-23T04:01:00.000-07:00

As you guys can probably see, there hasn't been a visible update since the 18th of January. So, Happy New Year, Happy Valentines Day, Gong Xi Fa Cai and Happy Founders Day together.

It's apparent that we've all been pretty damn busy with our real lives as usual. Uni dudes (and dudette, I'm looking at you Selr) have uni, army kids have army and for the rest of us, as the Peon puts it: "Work-work".

Which brings me to justify why I'm posting all of a sudden.

Before I receive 10 messages on Steam, "Hey I thought you guys were inactive?" or better yet "Hi does Ocd want to scrim?" Let me just say it's only of something of great interest to me and everyone in this consortium that I'm writing an updated post.

I just discovered that Portal 2 is in the works as a fully stand-alone game.

The bastards at Valve sneaked in a ton of hints and coded messages secretly in the last update. I was wondering why Portal was patching when I logged onto Steam the other night. Call me slow with the info, but I can't help it... work lah.

Gameinformer has the full report here which follows a blow-by-blow coverage of Portal 2 tidbits. I'd really ask any HL conspiracy theorist in the team to go have a good read. Kenny / Rat, this stuff might also be really usefully to you in terms of taking a risk with an experimental idea that turned out to be a massive success.

An extended ending was seeded into the game to set the stage for Portal 2. I love the hype. You must watch the cutscene here.

So if your name is Truman and like to just use MWHEEL to scroll through and look at pictures without reading the appended links, I'll spoil it for you right now in the extended video, you'll hear a NEW VOICE. One that GlaDOS refers in Portal 1 when she asks you to put down the Portal Gun and get into the "Party Escort Submission Position" where her party associate will then escort you to the party. At least she wasn't lying about the associate. Stupid bitch cheated my feelings with the cake.

That voice is fucking eerie.

There are also other tidbits that have been reported online, most recently, "Chell's New Look" (if that is Chell to begin with, jeebus.) Check it out on Kotaku. Loving the look.

So much epic stuff has surfaced in such a short time. I can't believe it.

The Pyromaniac in me...

2010-01-08T11:52:00.000-08:00

... is going to craft this.

via todayandtomorrow

The Ongoing WAR

2009-12-15T19:29:00.001-08:00

Kenny, Trum and I (as a medic) are taking the side of Demoman. I don't know about the rest of you Soldiers (I'm looking at you Xeon haha) but I'm hoping the demo wins. Anyway to spur the cause of WAR, I've joined in the propaganda poster design contest.

Here's my submission:

Frequency in War

2009-11-08T01:13:00.000-08:00

Orchid vs. Zombies

2009-09-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

Contrary to what alot of people think, we originally stemmed from a TF2 clan, and then some of us formed up and became a WoW raiding guild and the same few guys branched off and became another TF2 clan with the same WoW guild name.

But it's a common misconception that we only play TF2 and WoW. I mean, we play other games competitively (lol) too. Games like Plants VS Zombies for instance.

But I digress.

Has anyone noticed these "Free MMO" adverts for this game called Evony? Well, I just found the cleanest boobiest 320x250 ad EVER for an MMO. Have a look:

So yeah, some marketing brains figured the association between boobs and a game might be the pull factors for the target demographic. I've been seeing these ads around the net for awhile now, and on "respectable" sites no less.

You folks probably saw it on Wowhead or MMOChamp. I never bothered to find out what this "game" Evony was about, but after looking at this ad, it made me wonder, is it a scam? I decided to wiki it... and I got some really interesting finds.

Clearly, sex sells and this sort of marketing works. I discovered this game has come under flak for its arguably low standards of advertising. When I say low, I mean low-blow low. Further googling revealed the marketing material frequently asks the user to "click here and save your queen" when in actual fact, there is no queen. This is the genius part, during registration, in the FAQ, you are actually told that, "there is no queen and 'the queen' is simply used as a marketing persona, hilarious!

It has also been noted that the game is very similar to the Civilisation series and the artwork, from Age Of Kings (citation), interesting, 2 games in 1 with cleavage!

Anyway, I decided to probe further and found that Sociological Images has done a trace of evolution of Evony ads, check it out here! It kinda shows how it went from something medieval looking with armor and soldiers to just plain sexually suggestive. It's a good read.

So what does this have to do with Zombies?

Because of my profession, I've usually got my cynical eyes peeled for the marketing magic behind every ad. Here's what I found:

The Escapist covers this viral marketing campaign by Popcap very well, and it's another good read if you guys have some time. There's a whole series of these PvZ ads that just spoof the hell out of the Evony ads, if I'm not wrong, they chose the same platforms for the media purchase:

Friggin genius.

So yeah, PvZ is awesome and I'm currently at Flag 51 for Survival Endless but it looks like the Giga-gargantuas are approaching the lawnmowers soon and I dont think I can hold out for much longer. There are youtube vids that have people at flags 100+ but that requires true timing and skill. I should get Severik to help me work out a PvZ strat and see how far we can go, maybe do a demo tute!

Now in HD.

2009-08-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

Not your regular W+M1.

Whoa. Dejavu.

2009-08-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd fire up the old TF2 last night, after 3 weeks of Red Bull and long nights of animation, coding and design. I find that in general people on servers tend to greet or comment on players they haven't seen in awhile alot more than the regulars. Albeit there probably is some massive sociological study somewhere which documents this sort of behavior in great detail but this post isn't one of them.

Rat would know, he was there with me, I got giddy after a few minutes of pyroing, airblast timing was all off, couldn't judge the distance I was going to push the enemy and I was getting killed by frontburning backburners - embarrassingly bad. Truman prescribed some good nights sleep to patch up the damage accumulated from the past few weeks.

What scares me though, is that I wasn't merely "out-of-touch" with the FPS, but more likely... bored.

Having brought most of you guys from the WoW guild over to TF2, don't you guys see a startling similarity with the way Valve is keeping its player base enticed?

Trum messaged me this morning to tell me that TF2 got ninja-updated, I was like, "Aiyah must be one of those patches that fixes some glitch in the inventory system" But, I was wrong. I had to pick my jaw up from the floor as I read the list of changes. This was becoming World of TF2 very quickly.

Here are some case studies:

Pistol now fires at a fixed rate, not based on the speed at which you press the firing button.

This is a typical example of a "normalisation" in WoW. You penalise players who are able to click quickly (regardless whether they bind fire to mwheel or run a script) and subject them to a hard cap. This effectively levels the playing field in the maximum amount of ammo you can empty at an enemy player and/or building to take them down in the shortest period.

It's known loosely as "casualising" the game. Keeping the game good for the hardcores, but limiting their ability to exceed their casual peers by leaps and bounds.

Here's another,

Engineers wrenching a teleporter will repair the other end as well, and remove Sappers from both if they exist.

Not only can the teleporter transport players and enemy spies, but now they form an intergalatic-time-space rift that sends wrench hits across too! Again, this is a huge boost as well as burden for public large-game server engineers and spies. It takes a piss on acute Spies who make full use of the psychological mindfuck in sapping the entrance first and waiting the the Engy to run back and rebuild it (and then killing him too), proceeding to destroy the exit and collateral structures.

Given, this is a win-win situation for both Engineers and Spies in general, the update favours the common populace of players. Perhaps this normalisation is a good thing, because it might remove the niches and elitism that existed in games previously, driving the player bases to a more active, light-hearted and community oriented one. It's probably a good thing as catering to the casual player population would generally send a clear message to the hardcores: "This isn't about you any more, so stop acting like you own it." Then everyone will just have to get along and play.

I like this.

It takes out all the e-drama in this game. The same kind of e-drama that could cause clans to unite and fall apart. E-drama has the potential to bind groups of individuals with common views. You see it happen in MMOs all the time, be it ninja-looting friends, or because of some IRL issue, the online game experience was significantly affected.

But as Hammifer once told me in one of my futile attempts to play a Q3 duel with him, "Drama keeps the community alive." This is so true in so many ways but again, it's so detrimental in itself.

I think for a game to survive in today's mass-producing video game market, it has to have staying power. Game companies wish to see their game having not only the strongest player base, but also the longest-staying and widest. Just look at the game store. so many fail games out there, games that I wouldn't touch even if you bought it for me for X'mas. Mass produced junk.

What I'm doing here is drawing a comparison between a game that has defied all the laws of video game marketing and one that is about to do the same, because for me it's truly dejavu.

No one in the industry believed WoW could charge SGD$22 per month for its game. But hey they did, and look how many of us were on board that ship. Look at how many of us went to queue up for the expansions on launch day? It became a global event man!

I believe that TF2 is now doing the same thing, if they make some skills which are achieved through experience and training of a motor muscle weaker, it "gives chance" to newer players. At the same time, the learning curve for newer players is decreased in steepness. Much like how WoW eventually made leveling up 10 times faster for players who are only entering the game now.

My guess is that this ensures more copies of the game get circulated and friends can invite other friends to the game without intimidating them too much.

So to be very honest in my opinion, where do players like Xeon the 600+ hours Soldier or myself 400+ hours Medic or Null 99999+ hours (lol) Demoman fit into all this?

No where.

It's both a pleasure and a pain to have played this game for this many hours and have it drastically changed every 2 months in a major patch. But I suppose, for me at least, it is what keeps it fresh. Adaptability and evolution, to change your gameplay again and again to come out tops in your class - always.

I think we all paid for something a little more when we sank our money into this game called TF2. It's not just a computer game, it's social analytics.

So even if I can no longer extract all my Pyro demos to make that new video, I'm pretty sure there'll be a huge amount of things to try in the upcoming days. Just like WoW all over again.

(WIP) Gaming + Industry

2009-07-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

This is a work in progress, subject to heavy edits.

Recently, several groups of friends and acquaintances became very interested in the "Gaming Industry". I encase this term in inverted commas because I am going to first discuss the loose usage of this term.

As far as oxymoron and ironies go, "Game" and "Industry" are amongst the multitude of paradoxes that are together for the sake of giving something a name. Other paradoxes include, "Microsoft Games" and "LucasArts".

The term "Gaming Industry" in the offline world, generally refers to the casino and gambling industry. "Gaming" is commonly used as a substitute for "Gambling".

The University of Las Vegas and other institutes of higher learning typically name courses related to casino management and operation as degrees in Gaming. The affinity with money and earnings is relatively obvious to any observer.

It is this relationship with money that I have a gripe with.

The online contemporary society of today knows "Gaming" as something more closely related to computer and video games. Which is why I'm questioning, if you add the term "Industry" behind it, does this mean it is only exclusive to the ones who profit from it?

If I were to ask you, "Who is in the Gaming Industry?" I would expect a list of video game companies, publishing houses, designers, developers, game shop uncles, game bloggers and media reviewers. Say I excluded all the abovementioned individuals from my survey, how often would you hear someone retort with an answer "I am"?

Almost never.

Why?

Simply because the additive term, "Industry" makes it seem as though if you were to be included in this category, you would have to somehow be profiting from it. In my honest opinion, and this is my opinion alone - The classification is absolute bullshit.

What good is the Game Industry without its most important ingredient - Players.

Very often in our online society today, we see endless advertising, immense hype and so much media banter of a new game before its release. How often does the actual game do such marketing justice? It is rare to see a game which has been much talked about and discussed yet have longevity.What I mean by this is that, in some remote part of the world, 10 years from its epic launch, will there be a thriving community still playing, modding, supporting and praying for a worthy sequel of a particular game?

I truly believe that the problem with this sell-more approach is because it reduces the gamers to mere cash cows. I find that most degrading. We (gamers) are giving you money in good faith, that you would make a game that touches more than the shallow pretty graphics or something worthy of its successor, and what do you do? Capitalise.

Just go to metacritic and tell me, how many games below the score of 80 have you played for more than a week? Toss that number against the total number of games metacritic has aggregated and bang - you've just been milked.

Time for some case studies!

Case Study #1 - Command and Conquer
I have the original release, the Gold Win95 Edition and the Collectors edition with Covert Ops. Why? Because this game was revolutionary, it changed my thinking, it changed my perception of how you control groups of units and move them around an area. The computer spoke back to you, as if you were really controlling the EVA, units you built responded to you when you clicked them, you were the commander.

Of course I finished the game, I finished it to see all the alternate endings... and the bonus footage. C&C2: Tiberium Sun, that was to be the most anticipated game of my life and I'm pretty sure many others were like me. But what happened? The game got stuck in development hell and became something else. So many people I know bought original Tiberium Sun (or as some of them call it, Tiberium Shit) have complained that it was the biggest waste of their money ever.

Wait! There's more! The GDI and Nod saga couldn't end there! Sure, Tiberium Sun could have been an FPS, but nevermind now! Because there really IS a C&C FPS, called Renegade! Holy mother! There's more! Generals! Or as I like to generally call it Lets-add-more-factions-and-races-and-make-it-modern-day-war!

Honestly, I don't have any incentive at all to reinstall any these spinoff games. Yet, I find myself downloading DOSBox to play vanilla C&C in all its DOS glory. Pixel for pixel.

Case Study #2 - Fallout
It's funny how limitations like graphics processing, 3D rendering, sound and video became the trademarks of classic games. This is especially visible in the Fallout franchise. What was once an isometric platformer, is now a over-the-shoulder real-time-turn-based RPGFPS (lol what).

Fallout 1 and 2 were awesome for its time, it had an interesting parellel universe proposal that is still immensely engaging in terms of storyline. The possiblility of what-ifs in Fallout 1 and 2 were always the core of the game play. What if I said this, what if I didn't pickpocket that NPC, stuff like that.

But as the Franchise evolved it in turn released it's own bastard Tiberium Sun in the form of Fallout: Tactics. Now don't get me wrong, I liked that game for what it was, it was a great idea to have squad controlled combat. But what sucked was that they had to link it to the post nuclear storyline that many love so much. The story that Fallout: Tactics put forward didn't even match that of the preceding Fallouts. I mean, Fallout 2 netted a metascore of 86 for a 1997 game and based on general commentary, most gamers found it was awesome because it expanded on the story and gameplay of the first one (isn't that what a sequel should do?)

So anyway, enter Fallout 3! It netted a score of 91 on metacritic. Yet, the harsh contrast and differing views between the community that has played preceding Fallouts to varying degrees is polarised. Note that I refer to user commentary as the views of gamers, because after all, these are the ones who will be playing the actual game. Most gamers found themselves torn between deciding whether it was "an Oblivion with guns" or "Gears of War done RPG".

Don't get me wrong, I think Fallout 3 i a swell game, in its own right. The concern I have is that these comparisons drawn are both comparing a new game, with other new games. Which brings me to my focal point of this discussion, "The Industry."

Some people may call me a stuck-up purist, but as an observer, I believe it is in my own interest that I pick what I like to play and not what is, quite simply, shoved in my face through marketing and hype.

What I notice most about the Game Industry is its tendency to capitalise on something which already has a fanbase to launch something into the general populace. This business model appears to rely on existing communities of avid fans (lets take TFC for example) to start an online commentary and hype generation as a springboard for new players to dive in and get interested. Remember when TF2 first came out? The oldbies came out of their holes and were actually posting shit on the forums again, some of the SDi guys I've met while clubbing actually were like, "Eh, you guys back in the scene? I wanna go back leh, revive the old fire."

With revivals, comes improvements, the industry pushing out the "same game, but totally different" and we as the followers get sucked into it. Eventually, we're sold to a totally different game. Some have realised this and have said, "Hang on, this actually sucks." But it doesn't matter! The industry has already used you! You already bought the game and you're stuck to it because your comrades are on it! Furthermore, whether you quit or not, is of no consequence to the existing player base.

Perhaps it is because those of my age group are the Doom generation and have grown up to a video game world where we always recite the common phrase, "they don't make them like they used to." So what is it? Has the Industry over taken the Gaming? Are we truly cash cows so willingly milked for a few dollars in exchange for a month of instant gratification?

Truman put forward his stance to me, which I find is a fair judgement: the Doom generation can be seen as somewhat "hardcore gamers" simply because they attach themselves to a franchise or a certain game with such conviction. The younger online youth of today can be seen as "true gamers" because they exercise diversity in purchasing games and consoles across all platforms (many would buy a console just to play a game e.g. MGS4) so although this demographic group may be less attached to one game as compared to the senior bunch, they are also the ideal group to target a new game at.

This reminds me of the Interplay slogan "by gamers for gamers." Sadly, that kind of business model is too niche to make returns of the huge amounts of money spent in developing a game. It's not surprising that so many video game companies have adopted a business model so akin to advertising and marketing - creating a need from a want.

The need to be entertained is stemmed from the human emotion to be socially involved, leading to the advent of social networking in games. People want to stay connected to their friends, track stats, compare achievements and it has almost become a need for them to do so. This is the essence of the Industry turning the fun into a grind, and ultimately, the only way to have "fun" is to spend more play hours on their game. Sometimes, this makes monsters out of people, they attempt to rush through things in the attempt to attain the intangible - eventually leading to a burnout.

My stand on this is simple. Make informed choices when thinking of committing to a new game, why play it if you rush through the story with that downloaded walkthrough you got from some torrent? Why bother playing if you want to use a character editor or some hack? Some people I ask about the WC3 story just tell me, "Oh I play all 4 races lor... then just kill some invaders and got this undead king Kel something, I think can kill him in WoW right?" which is fucking shallow. And to those of you, my fellow clanners, if you think you're not in the Gaming Industry, think again.

"Skillout"

2009-06-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

8 years ago when Truman and I were grinding the servers in search of conc and gren jump perfection, there were 2 videos that surfaced on (the then) Planet Fortress. We had our gods, AcidRenix, Caesium, Defrag, Genghis and Quarternion were among them.

After I upgraded my PC, I never managed to salvage the old videos. Truman's finally found them surfacing on youtube. This is the Skillout!

Shortly following Skillout, a video redefining the Soldier class was found on the forums. Soldiers, eat your heart out. This is b3yond.

(For those who don't know, patch 1106 was the definitive patch in TFC bhopping, you see a reference to it in this vid.)

Feeling Old

2009-06-15T05:22:00.000-07:00

You know the generation has shifted when:

1. You attempt to crack a meme joke during Setup by saying, "how are you gentlemen" and no one in the server responds.

2. You're looking at players with nicks like "O'Levels Tomorrow!" and "Submissions Over!" when you're thinking about when to buy your first house.

3. You say "Zerg the point!" and no one understands you because they never played Starcraft.

4. Someone else has a soundboard with "By the power of Grayskull!" and you're the only one who thinks it's awesome.

5. People in the server heard TF is a mod of CS.

6. You're the only one who's sad that 2Fort (the only map where your Team actually had a Fortress) is hated by every other player.

7. You're the only person in the server who feels TFC is still the most awesome thing that happened.

The Sniper and Spy Weekend

2009-06-01T03:54:00.000-07:00

I mentioned sometime back that I would record a pyro demo over the update weekend. It's not meant to be a pro frag-vid, but it's fringing on the abuse of lighter classes in game. Because of the free weekend, there were so many random players to kill!

You won't find any W+M1 kills here. Even in the face of front-burning Backburner pyros, keep cool and use shotgun.

Update - overheard in the server:
Spy 1: "rabbit is hacker, i cloak he still know where i am"
Me: "well, has it occurred to you that you're on fire?"
Spy 1: "but i using dead ringer"
Me: "haha, that won't save you man"
Spy 1: "shit you, dead ringer can put out fire hw cme u can see me"
Spy 2: "how come u still burnin?"
Spy 1: "dats why rabbit is cheat he know where i am"
Me: "if i continue burning in your general direction, you will re-ignite"
Spy 1: "but i have DEAD RINGER, YOU CANNOT FIRE ME"

Meet The Updates

2009-05-18T20:41:00.000-07:00

I believe most of your guys have been plugged in to the recent Sniper and Spy updates. Seeing how there are more than enough threads praising Valve and its marketing team for releasing groundbreaking content, I will refrain from adding to the conspiracy theories and raving "fanboys". Instead, I want to talk about what I'm most impressed with: The marketing.

Being in advertising and relatively familiar with the concepts of this disruptive art, virals can usually be broken down into 3 phases. These phases are procedural and are imperative in captivating audience attention and curiosity. The phases are known by many names and often have sub-phases but from where I come from we call them, "The Seed", "The Spread" and finally, "The Reveal".

Valve and its marketing team appear to employ these fundamental phases through its community communications channel, www.tf2.com. The blog-slash-website appears to use a hook, line and sinker tactic in feeding information to its target audience. The site appears to assume that viewers and visitors are already aware of the nature of Team Fortress and attempts to build around it... slowly. It also considers the audience as sponges for content. Most contemporary game companies have a marketing vehicle of sorts to deliver information to its customers, when the company makes a statement, no matter how long or short, it can and will be read by the audience in an unfathomable amount of ways.

Maintaining a blog simulates a casual channel for updates and communication. Readers are conditioned to believe that posts on blogs are usually frequent, honest and often light-hearted. However, what isn't often noticed by visitors is that every character and punctuation has thought put in it. The clever crafting of copy coupled with the predispositions of a blog environment stimulate an emotive response amongst players and readers. This plays to the company's advantage in "The Seeding" phase.

Once the blog serves its initial purpose as an injection tool to excite and stir, it is used to deliver "booster shots", fueling the curiosity and capturing the imagination of the community.

This is clearly visible in all of Valve's media marketing but moreso in the circle of TF2. My guess is because TF2 is already build on a rich history of coloured team attrition with familiar character configurations, expanding the universe by supplementing the distinct classes with background stories and placing them in a caricature. It is said that no one likes change, TF2 effectively avoids the argument of change and instead confuses its audience with something new... but old. This maintains the familiarity desired in order to un-alienate customers and players. Anyway, I'll save this for another discussion.

This interesting familiarity ultimately works to the company's advantage by providing an entry-point to fuel curiosity. If we look at the recent Sniper/Spy Update for example, the thought of a Sniper update is seeded in through an April Fools joke: The "Jarate" Jar. The Sniper archetype is perceived as the Aussie outback, rough & tough ranger, crude but still a gentlemen at heart (he writes to Mum, respects the dead and brushes his teeth). This seed not only furnished the Sniper character with a stronger back-story on how he contains his liquid waste when on the job, but generated a whole slew of curious questions; Is a new update coming? Throwing a jar, is this grenades?

Of course the game community has Blizzard to thank for the infectious culture of April fools pranks (Pandaren in WoW anyone?) - the jar of pee was obviously a joke. Nonetheless, it set laid the bricks for the next mind-blowing tidbit and waved "goodbye to your head, wanker."

"The Spread" kicks in when the community is alerted and aroused by an impending update. Particularly an update that claims to be game-changing.

It's actually shaping up to be the largest TF2 update yet... In addition, we've got another update in the works that should be done before the Sniper, and that one will include some new content for all classes.

Players excited by the news take the bait and often change their online handles and Steam IDs in anticipation, addressing an ever increasing demographic of socially networked individuals. Cleverly, a modification to the game itself added to the curiosity. Suddenly, a "Head" slot was available in the load-out menu. Could this be the new content for all classes? Discussions and questions were everywhere, a fantastic move (intentional or not) by Valve.

While allowing the guerrilla advertising to do its work, the next 2 bits of news seemed to posted as peripherals. If you've watched any magic tricks, you'll know that there's always the step where the magician attempts to throw you off with things like fancy talk or slick card shuffling. If you watched that 2006 film The Prestige, you would probably would remember these lines:

"Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called "The Pledge"; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn"; The magician makes his ordinary some thing do something extraordinary. Now if you're looking for the secret... you won't find it, that's why there's a third act called, "The Prestige"; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before."

While everyone was still talking about the possibilities of the next update, their attention is diverted by a game design/development post and a community feature on the new improved Gang Garrison. These make for conversation and discussion points to run concurrently with the more anticipated Sniper update, also serving as back-up content just in case the community got tired of speculating the incoming update.

And now, the Master piece. The unveiling of the first alternative Sniper weapon is the first step in the seemingly multi-faceted phase of "The Reveal" The community has already been preconditioned by the previous updates to expect a microsite which details a day-by-day unfolding of the releases. This begs the question, "Why does the Sniper Update look distinctly different from the previous?" Valve and its marketing team clearly amp'ed up its web design strategy, twisting it to communicate the message, "expect something different this time" Furthermore, the Sniper update did not have a tab to navigate within the days, leaving the number of days the updates took to roll in indefinite.

As with previous update traditions, day-by-day updates were usually built up to a weekend for Valve to offer TF2 for free or at a discounted weekend rate, thus increasing sales. The Sniper update was released on a Tuesday, fair enough, they could offer TF2 free on Sunday (Saturday in the US) and then extend it to Monday. This in itself created the hype and speculation seen in the previous updates. BUT, everything changed before the weekend when the Sniper update was usurped by the Sniper archetype's nemesis - The Spy.

The true marketing genius begins here.

They successfully managed to turn a Reveal into a Seed again. Not only that, they did so in a manner that suited the classes they were updating. The Sniper was about to reveal his final updates, much like how you would take a game-breaking shot at the Medic's head, only to be politely interrupted by a well-dressed gentleman. Surprise.

This surprise re-ignited, no wait, exploded the community. It was a Seed, Spread and Reveal all in one. A new snippet of a class update had been introduced, word got around that the Sniper's updates had been interrupted by his arch-nemesis, countless avenues for conspiracy theories were opened and most interestingly, how many more updates could there possibly be?

The marketing strategy of Valve is quite literally, mind-fucking. The style in which juicy pieces of information is fed to the hungry audience is like corporate sex with the consumer. Pleasure is conveyed in waves and always held at its most anticipated before releasing to recover for the next big wave. Each crescendo and climax is always greater and more exciting than the previous, building to an ever-more explosive finisher.

Amidst the convoluted battle of revelations and peripheral updates, there seemed to be a stealth Seed or two surfacing. Only a few managed to catch a glimpse of an "expose" made on the TF2 blog. It strongly suggested that the Pyro was female, adding on to the mystery of the flowered purse in the spawn room locker.

The line has since been changed to "Pyro's going to be inconsolable now."

However, as viral marketing goes, errors and slips are often directed and intentional. The single line not only caused speculation on what the next day of updates could be, but also brought back old discussions on the purpose of the purse. This move strengthens the already thriving Steam community as enthusiastic users align to find meaning in the little information they were given.

It's now Saturday and a time-bomb was about to go off. In the true style of Spy espionage, there was an information "leak", someone from within the corporation had released premature information (Anyone remember the Source code theft? Where did that end up? On almost every gaming portal I recall) As it unfolded. this "leak" turns out to be the most powerful media delivery package. It was a "Reveal" cluster-loaded with "Seeds". The image of an TFC MIRV comes immediately to mind.

The Meet The Spy video subtly showcased a whole slew of new game elements as well as hinted at a few possible ones. I won't go into detail on what was featured but if you're keen you can find the list of community extracted easter eggs here. What was more interesting though, was how on earth was Valve and its media squad going to deal with this breach. Skeptics like myself already guessed that this was intentional and a reveal would surely ensue, or would it?

Already I found myself asking questions like, "Is this truly intentional? It can't be true can it?" Not to mention all of this was on top of the longest and most well animated machinima Valve has released to date.

As leaks usually go (especially voyeur ones), they're usually sketchy and low resolution. Valve maintained this by using YouTube as its medium knowing full well that community members are bound to see it on the "recently uploaded" or be looking out for key search phrases like "Spy Update" and like any effective viral marketing, nothing, NOTHING, was going to stop the community from viewing, ripping and re-posting the video.

It's Monday in the US, Tuesday over here and a statement is issued on the TF2 blog. The craftiness of this line is extremely impressive:

As many of you know, the Meet the Spy video was leaked this weekend. Some of you on the forum have wondered if Valve leaked it on purpose. And until we find the clown who did leak it, the answer to that is yes.

This truly took me by surprise, Valve has successfully acknowledged the existence of leaked footage but is cleverly keeping the joke running by saying it was intentional but won't be if they find a culprit. Beautifully crafted copy.

This made a side-story possible during the course of the Sniper/Spy update throwing users off what they thought was content they had already seen. Day 5 of the update was merely a the same video that was leaked... or was it.

Most people had overlooked what they perceived as "digested" content. Valve has never made the HD version viewable on the same day the of a new video release (guessing it's bandwidth). Oddly, the Day 5 video was a HD version and it's amazing what details you can find in high definition.

Like a true great magic trick, this is "The Prestige", the answers to all the speculations were already right in front of you in the leaked video and not just that, in the first 5 seconds on the Announcer Board! You just couldn't see it clearly yet!

Perhaps at this stage I am reading far too much into the media. However, I feel the video is somewhat a metaphor for the unfolding of events. We, the Soldier and the Heavy, have hastily barged into the intel room, not questioning why the the Scout (Valve) doesn't know their own passcode. We've let the enemy in and allowed it to walk among us. An intelligent comrade (Blu Spy) shows up, detailing the nature of the situation and the character of the enemy. Of course, the enemy (Red Spy) already knows this and acts completely non-chalet. The general populace is impatient and rarely cares for detailed analysis. They demand immediate answers, personified in the Soldier's explosive behavior in blowing the head off the only thinking person in the room - our friendly Spy. With the removal of over-speculation, we are left open again for the enemy's next deadly blow to finish what he set out to do.

In closing, I'll break it down to what is derived from this. Anyone wishing to attempt new-school advertising should take note of these points. They are humble suggestions and as simple as it sounds, you'll be surprised how many advertising agencies are completely unaware of the nature of new-school guerrilla marketing.

Know your target audience - Realise that they want to know you too.
Starve them of information about you - make them hunger, knowledge is power.
Feed the hungry - hungry minds are sponges and will soak up anything.
Viral marketing is cheap, if not free, but requires extreme passion and thought. Seeded conversation in public must be fed by fresh news and speculation. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back - Reward your customer.
Explain process - it not only shows that thought has been put to every decision you have made, but also defines you as a professional. Put it in context, like the series of "Meet The..." videos. Describe each class and their personalities and explain it procedurally.

The bar is set and I'm just waiting to be blown away by the next round of updates.

How did we get so Stompified?

2009-03-24T06:36:00.000-07:00

After about half-a-year of TF2 gaming hiatus, we're back online. Many of the guys are thanking me for starting something new a fresh. Personally, it really wasn't my intention to start a "full fledged" TF2 team again. The original intent was to just jumpstart some TF action with my WoW guildies (Yes, oddly enough, I still play WoW, full Cryptstalkers with only 4 hours of raid a week no less)

What's really odd is how all the other guys saw this as an exodus of sorts. Some found it a new beginning for their gaming experience, others thought it to be a renewed agenda to "get back their A game". It ended up splintering the 10 year old establishment that I helped build an image for - I am still damn bummed about that by the way.

Anyway, it occurred to me the level of discontent and unhappiness was at an unmanageable high. Whether you're joining us out of this or in the best of personal interests, I hope you come with no malicious intents.

So yeah, welcome aboard Black Orchid.

It's been awhile since I surfed around the GS forums. I've never liked the petty arguments that go on in those threads so I tend to avoid it. Although I enjoyed discussing the benefits and shortcomings of team colours on one particular thread - kudos to the posters who were posting something worth reading.

I was just skimming the threads and their titles, then something clicked in my head; how the fuck did our society get so "Stompified"? It's so apparent and rampant in any forum, regardless gaming or political, that everything which could and should be logically discussed is turned on its head and turned into tabloid trash.

Such meager and petty arguments are fought over the most minor of things. And when detailed interpretation is exercised, it's used to dissect the most irrational topics. I recall in great detail (and I'm sure you do too) a couple of incidents that erupted because of the deliberate misuse of reading-between-the lines. Unfortunately, it was all directed at Rat (who's been at the receiving end alot of flak for some strange reason). You remember the "We are not noobs incident" prior to the commencement of a match, which ultimately led to the cancellation. Then there was the metaphorical use of the phrase "tiny eyes" to personify the shallow-mindedness and naivety of a certain individual. It's amazing. I for one am disgusted by the hypocrisy that exist in society.

I chose to describe the issue as "Stomped" because of the way in which the local "netizens" of today shield themselves behind their computers complaining and persecuting others of acts and events that they themselves are perhaps culprits or even victims of. We all know the Stomp webpage, and personally, I'm disgusted that the national paper associates itself with this tabloid trash.

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -Eleanor Roosevelt

I've been called "elitist" for having such views (among other things no doubt; stacker, lamer, egomaniac, fucker, noob, acs boy lol) But let's just hold up on the insults for a second and ask yourself, honesty, has your way of thinking changed anything for the better?

We need not look far to see examples of social degeneration in communities. On a broader scale, we see that locals who patronise Stomp-like websites and forums, are not only very well organised hypocrites, but worse still, they develop a deep sense of procrastination. They revel in complaining and in doing so, destroy whatever remaining Will of Thought they have in themselves and those around them.

A classic closer-to-heart example for us would be the TF2 community in the region. You need not dig deep to draw parallels with the mentality of the players with that of the local populace. About a year ago this "scene" showed so much promise. It truly felt like the furious days of e-station and the TFC compy, only this time it was online and happening everyday. Felt like a fucking fantasy come true - literally.

I suppose as with all online applications there is this danger of rapid consumption. Like how no one I know (except Trum lol) sips a wine or a whisky slowly, savouring the flavours and texture. Everyone seems to be going after the shooters, climbing the steep hill to high at a ridiculous rate.

Then, the comedown. With such rapid consumption and proliferation, like alcohol to minors, things get out of control and there's vomit everywhere.

I tip my hat with praise to the clans and teams who took it slow with the community but ramped up their skill levels. No names necessary, you know who you are. The best way to play politics, externally or internally, is to not play it at all - kudos to you and you have my respect.

For those who do not fall in the above category, I'm afraid that you are the cause of this sorry mess we're in. You failed to realise that, as with evolution and natural selection, diversity will always bring fresh and interesting things to the table. You have no one to blame for the stagnating local TF2 scene but yourselves.

Right now, Orchid is something I like to see as a new offering. A re-introduction of a hybrid species if you like. I hope some of you are able to comprehend my intentions now and perhaps gauge the direction we're steering this team. To those who have been unwilling to constructively contribute, your requests fall on deaf ears. As Einstein once said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

2008-12-17T18:21:00.000-08:00

After some hiatus, I logged in to my Google Reader to check my RSS feeds. I've subscribed to a WoW commentary feed. No surprise there as many of you are probably long aware that I've recently resumed playing with the release of the new expansion last month.

There is an ongoing discussion about class and raid balancing, along with some recent gripes about the game becoming too "easy mode" (sound familiar? TFC > TF2?) What interested me was a particular argument differentiating between a "casual" guild and a "hardcore" guild.

A "casual" guild of such can be equated to the likes of a TF2 team, much like ourselves. We've been around, we play the game with our own personal goals in mind (getting MVP, achievements, mass murder etc) However, we do not partake in competitive scale events. Sure, we have the odd scrim here and there when we got the numbers and the time. But never something to the extent of competing in a league, local or overseas.

Typically, a clan that participates or has great desire to participate in competitive events is seen as "hardcore", roughly equating to a WoW guild which has a raid schedule to clear all possible bosses/content in the game per dungeon per week. In addition, they maintain a good standing in worldwide arena rankings. Failure to do so, results in reprimanding from the raid leader. Generally, it's like a TF2 team where a frequent and regular match schedule is practiced in addition to playing at least 4 hours of ranked public servers everyday.

Of course, there are the in-betweens and hybrids with all sorts of names in WoW: Retired hardcore raiders, casual PvP raiders and casual-hardcore (lol) just to name a few.

As you might have already guessed, the topic which I want to talk about is between casual and hardcore. The argument which was presented in the WoW commentary was that current raid content is far too easy and hardcore guild feel that they're being shortchanged. Average (and even sucky) players are walking around with epics, blasphemy to the raiding guilds which sharpen their skills to a knife's edge.

I get the feeling.

It's almost like those players who farm achievement maps for their unlockables. Then again, I might get flamed for saying this, because clearly we're not playing World of Team Fortresscraft. But if I had to equate a MMO to TF2, this would be how I would do it.

Having been in a raiding guild on a PvE server with a serious raiding schedule, I can say that I'm a little disgusted with WoW players who put in little or no effort into acquiring their epic loot. It's almost as if no thought was put into playing their class because sometimes when I go for pick-up dungeon runs with them, they seriously know jack shit about "aggro" and optimum "dps". All they know is, "If we kill this boss, I MAY get the item that I want."

But this bleeds into the larger argument of, "what do we play this game for?" This goes for all games with some form of personal achievement. To relate, in TF2 for example, the reason I play the Pyro is to prove myself that although it may be an easy class to play, mastery is incredibly difficult.

The recent discussions and terminology, "W + M1" is pissing the hell out of me as you will hopefully soon see in another detailed post about Pyro theorycraft. I've been at the receiving end of this very blunt butter knife of insults in most games I play - particularly in WoW. "Hunter just autoshot and afk right? So easy." Everyone takes the piss on something they don't understand so selfishly. No one ever considers factors like weapon breakpoints and limitations. But I digress.

The interesting bit about this discussion is that the argument about "sponsorship" came in.

Sponsorship, to me at least, can be seen in many ways. It could be that a clan/guild is backed by an enterprise who deems their gaming efforts as "marketable" for "potential brand exposure". It could also be seen as a small group of core members who contribute monetary assets to better the development of the clan/guild. Clearly, my views are drawn from the traditional FPS world of gaming sponsorship. XsT could be classified as being sponsored, we had vent and web server paid for, domain name, and even our own private server. Not to mention the occasional free food at our barbecues.

Among the WoW community, individuals claimed that casual raiders will never get to see some of the content hardcore guilds would see. Hardcores and former hardcores claimed that they were often sponsored, which is why they have a significant edge over these casuals - sometimes gold-buying was involved.

Some scoffed at the word "sponsored", saying that they fail to see how someone paying for a guild website or vent falls into the category of sponsorship. The reply the skeptics got from hardcore players was, "you have no idea."

This was what led me to write my article. How is it that some one or some people, with the intention of taking the clan or guild one step up, can strengthen the bonds within a team by adding value with a service?

The key, is initiative.

Would a hardcore WoW raiding guild have achieved so much if they spent time worrying about who was going to pay for the next month of vent or webspace? Would the communication between the players be as effective if not for voice? Would you trust your teammates as friends if you didn't find out that little extra about their real-life through the forums or chats? Most importantly, you wouldn't have as much fun as you are having right now if not for the knowledge that your teammates are having fun with you because of who they are.

If you have to worry about the transparency of DKP for every single raid, I don't think the incentive to show up on time for the raid would be as great for anyone. DKP means loot priority and loot priority usually means you get a raidspot. The reason why so many WoW guilds fall apart is because of internal disputes and drama which usually involve loot.

I suspect that in the world of gaming, initiative and transparency from individuals is what defines pro-ness. Regardless monetary or effort. It adds value by increasing communication and awareness between members both in-game and in real life.

Even though we don't see him much, Spiddy has already kindly funded our site and vent for this whole year. Simple value-add acts which help forge a stronger relationship through communication. With no expectation of return, that in itself, is sponsorship.

In conclusion, sponsorship, in all its forms, are acts of individuals which add significant value in generating unity amongst players. It most definitely is one of the many key components to the success of any clan or guild, one that I will continue to support.

End note:
Anyway, a new vent will be setup soon so hang in there! The new vent details and passwords will be emailed to the email address that you have provided us. However, if you think that you might have changed emails or would like the email forwarded to another address, please let me know.

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2008-12-16T23:46:00.001-08:00

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