People calling their game characters TOONS and Anime are Japanese Cartoons

 People have this obsession with calling their characters in MMORPGs or other online games 'toons' but that very term conjures imagery of Disneyland or Warner Bros. shows and not the feeling of a character. Players want their in-game character to be a digital representation of themselves, not how they are but an idealized version - bad-ass and powerful, desired by others, or some other larger-than-life fantasy.

When people say "My toon" this or "your toon" that, it hurts my ears. Something in my brain does a lex lurthor from that horrible superman movie. Because really, it's a character, you've devoted a lot of time into it... arguably more than you should but that's beside the point.

Of course I've gotten a LOT of feathers ruffled by publicly calling Japanese Anime by another name 'Japanese Cartoons'. And the definition of cartoon is: 'A simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in an exaggerated way, esp. in a newspaper or magazine.' Well, it may not be in a newspaper or magazine, but certainly almost everything (THE EYES OH MY GOD THINK OF THE EYES) are in fact exaggerated drawings. Some are more exaggerated than others, I'm looking at you Chibi or Super Deformed.



So, what makes one okay and the other not? Well, an Anime (or "Animation" as you should properly call it if you are really going to get angry about it), is true to it's definition (in MOST cases); its an exaggerated drawing, mostly simplistic features. How to draw anime books are everywhere because really, with photoshop these days there's zero talent required to make it. Even the great epics like Disney's Sleeping Beauty, which have tremendously detailed artwork have simplistically dawn characters. Regardless of how great it is, you can still within all rights call it a Cartoon.

Now then, lets look at the term Toon. When I grew up, playing Shadowrun, Dungeons and Dragons-type (not actual D&D mind you, just games based on it) and others like the text-based MMO Lensmoor that still runs to this day. We called them Characters sometimes Char for short online. A character is a story concept because you want to 'get into' this fantasy world yourself. You become your character either by simply playing the game or what some people do, ROLEPLAY, thats the R in RPG, not Rocket Propelled Grenade and certainly not I CAN LEVEL UP. I have found roleplay to be a very nerdy, sometimes depending on the roleplay TOO nerdy for my tastes. That said, if you take a casual approach to it, it can be really fun.

So, how did Character become TOON?

People started using the term in Diablo and Ultima Online because Toons are NOT Characters, you don't experience the world through them, you own them, level them up, and possibly trade or sell them; to sum it up they are TOOLS not parts of a story. This in itself is very sad.

I think Diablo 2 was mostly to blame though, when you picked from these pre-defined characters you didn't feel any connection to them. You picked them depending on their game-play style NOT how connected you felt to them; this is where I felt the disconnect beginning.

World of Warcraft was responsible for the preparation of this when it drew the RTS or Real Time Strategy base into online RPGs. Those whom previously min-maxed their armies in Red Alert, Warcraft, and other similar games now faced a rich, roleplaying friendly environment which was built in the shadow of Ultima Online and Everquest. You are playing for the numbers, the imaginary items to buff up your "toon", not for the personal experience of doing it.

As many a cliche movie martial arts master will tell you, "it's the path that's important not the destination." and this is especially true in online gaming. People feel good as they achieve more and more on their characters, that's great but they loose sight of the here and now. "Gearing your toon" is the order of the day, not "enjoying your character".

I was guilty of this mindset as well, one of the major reasons I'm on break from World of Warcraft minus an occasional day or two with the wife.

So, if this rambling session had any meaning at all or not is up to you, take your Character or "toon" out and enjoy or sit down and watch your Anime or Japanese Cartoon; it's all good. Just remember to figure out if you are really having fun, because that's the point of all this.

Hackusations - Accusing people of hacking online!

One common trend in online gaming, especially first/third person shooters where twitch aiming is required is Hackusations, aka accusations of hacking. Roughly 90% of all hackusations are false.

Most of them are done by unskilled players whom don't understand concepts like Internet Latency and the occasional third person prospective creating an experience that is not identical across everyone's machines.

What does that mean? Let's put it simple. Say I'm over on the east side of the room and you are shooting at me, you see the bullets hit me, blood splatter, my character is screaming in pain but I don't die. HACKER! CLEARLY!

WRONG. This is an illusion created by client/server player prediction, a system introduced in Quake 1's official improved online client Quakeworld. Pretty much every online game these days uses some form of player prediction and in horrible unoptimized games like APB Reloaded and games like certain Call of Dutys that use P2P Networking to set up matches. You see YOUR GAME CLIENT says that that person is getting their ass shot to hell, where as the server host, whomever that may be is the true athority on what is going on and your communication to that server isn't good enough or the server is glitching.

But that isn't the end of it, wallhacks, aimbot, the list goes on and on. These hacks do in fact exist and people get banned for using them all the time. That said, except in the most extreme examples, when people think these hacks are being used most often it is either a lack of skill on their part, bad luck, or internet lag.


Just the other day I had a "OMG THAT GUY IS A HACKER!" and I go on to sneak up on him, kill him. Get into head on fight and kill him. And win the match. I am not skilled, by no means. That means the guy doing the accusations of hacking, was just horrible. And alas, that example is typical of my experiences online.

If you suspect they are hacking, use whatever game you are playing's tools to report them for doing so. Let the game's admins sort things out, the rest of us don't want to hear your wild claims, true or false. So quit the damn hacksuations!

IMO Forge is a bad game and APB: Reloaded is underrated

I was convinced to give APB: Reloaded another try and take advantage of FORGE's free weekend. I was rather surprised by the results, APB turned out to be a lot more fun than I had remembered but FORGE on the other hand was less than great. It boggles the mind because my expectations were reversed.

Perhaps I originally hopped on APB: Reloaded on a bad day the first time, because I had remembered it as a lag-infested horrible game, but the server connection was steady when I tried it again. I played both on a new character and on one of my friend's characters (in order to see the comparison between starting and higher levels as well as the two separate factions without wasting an ungodly amount of time).


Anyway, the results were so good that I went ahead and added APB: Reloaded to my game archive in the top navigation.

Now then, don't take this as gospel this is just my personal experience: After that I took advantage of the FORGE free weekend and gave that a try. Oh huge mistake. Awkward tutorial full of horrible pauses where I'm mashing keys while it displays "PRESS ONE TO CONTINUE" only to finally give in to my 10th click of mouse button 1 and let me proceed. The tutorial is forced by the way, you aren't allowed to play the actual game until you've gone through it.

To me it feels like they tried to combine World of Warcraft with an action shooter and failed horribly.I don't mind the controls but the entire game-play just feels... unpolished. I don't feel any sense of accomplishment while wildly hitting my ability keys and then spamming 1 while they are on cooldown. When I did kill another player, he showed up again almost instantly, which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't take ages to kill him in the first place.

Perhaps I missed something that makes FORGE an awesome game, but I personally doubt it. My time trying the 'free week' is over. It's a rare day I pass up a steam sale but I just don't feel like it's worth my $5... your $5? Perhaps, but I'm the one who bought BRINK and Darkspore, not regretting either purchase and if I can enjoy bad games like those, there's just something off about FORGE in my opinion.

Poppy Festival steals my weekend

I've been drafted to help out at the California Poppy Festival tommrow. Although I have no personal affiliation with them, I'll be working over at the United States PowerSquadrons tent all weekend.

The Poppy Festival is an amazing event that takes place in Lancaster, about one hour up from LA, just before Mojave.

From the 14 NORTH freeway you'll be able to see all the tents in a park just after a giant Costco.

Like any other festival there is a lot to buy, check out, and eat. If you happen to be in the area on the 20th or 21st from 10 am to 6pm, it's worth a peak.

I had hopped to be done with a couple personal projects this weekend, but they will have to wait until monday sadly.

You can learn more about the festival on it's website: http://www.poppyfestival.com

Commercial Rage: Keurig Brew - Actually I just press this button

Let's destroy the little kid's train fantasy with the stark reality that she's a high powered, successful looking woman who is too inept at living everyday life to know what's going on inside her own coffee maker.

No intelligence  No problem! Just press this button.

This is not a reflection on the Keurig Brew itself, but rather the abomination they call a commercial.