Trigger Finger

First Read This

The Memories

I identify with him in countless ways and have to say he brought back some fond memories!

Like him I had played computer games from the days when my mum used to bring home one of her school’s BBC Acorn computers for the school holidays. I was obsessed even at that early age and played a Football Manager game and various ‘educational’ games (damn school libraries had no blood or gore games in them!) and then one Christmas, I was bowled over when I unwrapped a Sinclair Spectrum 128k +2 with built-in tape-deck!!!

I continued to play games throughout my teens on this venerable machine, spending all my paper-round money on single game within 10 minutes of receiving it, every week! So I was already a keen gamer (including a few consoles) when I got my first proper PC circa 1996.

I discovered quake, but only single player as I had no internet connection being a poor student. When I moved into a flat and had my first real income I got a modem and my gaming-life changed! It took a little while but eventually I stumbled upon Team Fortress Classic and I was absolutely stunned. Here I was playing in the same ‘room’ as 15 other people from all over the world!!!

Two of my best friends came round 2 days later thinking I was ill because they hadn’t seen me. They walked in the room and sat down as I showed them a single round of TFC, setting a trap as a demolition man and defending that flag in as many devious ways as I could. They ended up staying at my flat for the following two days and nights, literally playing every waking moment, fighting over who’s turn it was and going over the strict ‘10 minute per turn’ limit would result in bruises all over your body.

From there I got involved in my first clan, ‘Fatboyz’ and my name was Armageddon giving a ridiculously long name of ‘[Fatboyz]-=ARMAGEDDON=-’ Like the author of the post above I payed for a better ‘ping’ using the Wireplay service (until it was abolished by the company now known as play.com).

We practiced together, won/lost matches (nearly all of them) and moved onto playing Unreal / Unreal Tournament. All the time we were like real buddies, we spent more time with each other than probably anyone else in our lives (unhealthy amounts of time!). After a couple of years solid with this clan I moved onto Tribes2. This was THE game for me! It was only 1999 (ish?) and yet here we were with 32 players on sprawling huge maps and vehicles (something yet to be achieved on the ‘Next Gen Xbox 360′!!!) – it was gaming nirvana and I played Tribes2 solidly for at least 18 months! I joined another clan called MoB (Ministry of Beats) and we were pretty feckin great. We won all kinds of matches and even used voice comms all that time ago (On a 56K Connection!!!). We had members that drew up battle plans, attacking formations, defence schema that Rommel would have been proud of!

Alas that was probably the last ‘clan’ I was a member of. Well a real member anyway… sure I have flitted in and out of clans for individual games, Planetside, Battlefield, Joint Ops to name a few… but it was all at a superficial level. Generally these newer clans didn’t play in any ladders or leagues, they had no relationships with other clans, no rivalries or competition…. just generally a bunch of d00d’s trying to get their stats up with the help of some teammates. They have been pretty soulless and the affairs have been brief as people moved on within weeks if not days.

The Present Day

So far in the eight days since the release of BF2:MC , I have received 3 invites to clans and I have declined them all. Not because I don’t enjoy that extra teamwork, the competitive intense matches, the sense of community and achievement as you rise up the ranks, the idle chatter in forums of the clan website… but because I doubt any of those things will happen.

My experiences in recent years have been of people just being in a clan to look good, and/or because they believe it will ‘help their stats.’ As I have said clans seem to come and go too quickly now, there is no long term commitment. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean people should drop their day-job to make sure they can attend mandatory training sessions and crap like that, just people seem simply to be in it for themselves and for no other reason.

The crazy thing is that there are more clan tools at the average gamers disposal now than we at Fatboyz or MoB could ever have dreamed of! In-game clan systems, Xbox Friends Lists, The communicator headset, Teamspeak 2 rivals corporate VOIP systems and broadband connections of magnitudes beyond what we could ever have wished for, should make creating and maintaining a successful clan easier than ever. But it seems to have the opposite effect, and I wonder why.

I remember the outfit I was a member of in Planetside had a staggering website. Really awesome with all kinds of custom coded ranking systems, forums, messaging groups, streams of clan games, the works. Yet barely anyone even knew it existed. All the tools for basic communication and notifying players of what was happening were built into the game, thus there was no need for a casual gamer to ever look at something as arcane as the websites calendar system to know when the next activity or event was. People could leave or join the clan in-game with the click of a button, nothing pulled the group together to a central resource like the old clan websites did and that was where the real ‘bonding’ went on. In the forums, sharing ideas, scheduling when we could play together, helping each other with computer problems, performance tips, troubleshooting a net connection that might mean one of our members might be pinging high for the big game tonight… it was this little community portal that was the clan website that created and strengthened the bonds between players and I have seen people write 2000 words explaining why they were having to leave the clan, kicking and screaming such was their devotion in the end.

There is one other problem that exists. The downright shitty quality of some of the games out there and the fact that the average shelf-life for these shitty games is at best 3 to 6 months. The more I think about it, the more I realise that the reason for the collapse of 2 of the last 3 clans I was a member of was the shitty quality of the games.

Sure the graphics are dazzling, the feature list as long as your arm, the sound is real 5.1 surround, but at the end of the day every potentially great game I can think of in the last few 3-4 years has been a beta at best on release. Specific examples for those 3 clan collapses are Planetside, Battlefield 1942, and Joint Ops. All of them were in a bad way on release, but players could see the potential. They banded together and formed the clans in anticipation of the magic patch that would fix everything so we could have proper games without people crashing every 5 minutes, or having to play without sound, or without lag that crippled any form of coordinated attacks, etc etc.

In each of the cases the clans grew fast… they swelled to 20, 50 or even 100 members in the first month or so…everyone waiting for the magic patch to come so we could actually play a game against opponents on a level playing-field… on each occasion the players dissapeared just as quickly as they realised they were being shat on.

EA, Dice, Ubisoft, Sony, Novalogic I name you here and now as being known as the companies that are guaranteed to never come up with the goods. Name me one of your games in the last 4 years you can say is a finished product. To be fair to Sony… I havent played Planetside for a year or so, but I DID (along with a load of clan members) wait about 18 months for you to get your act sorted out and you didn’t. But hey that doesn’t matter… you got 18 months worth of subs from 50+ players didn’t you! Likewise Joint Ops of Novalogic fame was never in a condition to be a reliable game.

And what of the latest release? BF2:MC is released in a state where I am happy to stay connected for a complete game, has annoying sound bugs, voice comms that doesn’t work 90% of the time, where mid-way through a game our team has battled like warriors to get the upper hand only for 6 of them to be dumped out at the same time effectively swinging the game unreversably to the opposite side’s advantage. How long will it take to fix? I guess 3 months after release we will see a half-assed patch that fixes a couple of things and then surprise surprise the next game will be released when the previous one never existed in a state for serious competitive play.

I’m not saying the older games were always perfect (Tribes 2 in particular) but there was a level of dedication from the companies involved to fix as fast as possible anything they could… not long enough just to keep players hanging on for the next release with extra realistic mud on the boots… but for months and even years after the original game was released. Great examples would be the Quake series before ID got too big, Unreal Tournament whose young Epic team released extra maps, game types, weapons, FOR FREE NOT AS AN EXPANSION PACK, and the venerable TFC for Half-life.

These were the games with the huge followings, with the clan ladders and leagues that there wasn’t enough hours in the day to play in them all, the games where a player base was able to coagilate and form into strongly bonded and rivalries grew between clans. The short life cycle of games these days (god I sound old saying that!) means there is nothing to motivate players to form this kind of movement, that typically and paradoxically was the reason for all the ‘Big Franchise’ games succeeded in the first place!

The Last Bastion of Clan Gaming?

I came to the conclusion some months ago that the only clans worth joining are the ones that have been around for a long time and have spanned many games over the years. Their base is in their community, usually in the form of their forums and extraneous to any in-game systems. So (by actually following a referral to one of the links on this site) happened on one that seems to fit the bill. I haven’t actually played in a game with any of them yet but got accepted into their forums and the only connection I have with them so far is their website! I am itching for the next game to come out where they start playing it seriously as I have missed the boat I think on the older ones… but I know they will be around for a while and their main acceptance criteria seems to be that you aren’t a wanker! They are happy to just to chat away and the gaming seems almost secondary at the moment… but when the next great game comes out they decide to play I know I will enjoy playing with them and a good time will be had by all!

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