“Which game character do you identify yourself with most/least and why?”

I didn’t participate – given the choice, I play western RPGs so I’m basically identifying with myself. Kinda cheating, no?

Silvercube is Luigi. Sorta.

“While I don’t really identify with him on a character level, I do like Italian food.”

Terence himself reckons he’s Gabriel Knight:

“Gabriel Knight may be a sexy adventurer, but he’s also bookish.”

(haha, out-of-context quote FTW!)

Pioneer Project also prefers self-made characters:

“…the characters that I have created, these are the personas I can identify with best as through time and emotional toil I’ve had a hand in their making. They share my personality entirely rather than me attempting to bash mine into a predefined character.”

While I think the above comment is a little harsh – I’ve never felt that I need to bash my own character into a predefined persona – I do agree with her later sentiment around the generic male persona. It does break the immersion when other characters refer to me as “he” and playing the Hulk SMASH! role can get pretty tedious.

You can tell that Aim For The Head is a zombie-lover just from the blog title, and it comes through in the choice of characters, too:

“Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2… …because the game is light on cut scenes and outside the quips and banter the characters are player or AI controlled and not just standing around, these games have given me a group of friends to survive the zombie apocalypse with. And through them and their banter, I care about them.”

Keith on Extra Guy loves Sonic the Hedgehog:

“If it wasn’t for Sonic’s love of chili dogs on the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog Saturday morning cartoon I would have never tried them because as a kid they looked like “yucky hotdogs with poo on them”.”

Next Jen is (yet) another female RPG-er who struggles to identify with game characters. I think I’m spotting a theme here:

“There’s not many characters from the video game world that I can relate to. Sure, there are characters that I like but those that I can relate and identify myself with, not so much.”

And finally, Cat from Carocat likes so many characters that he just couldn’t decide:

“Alistair, Carth, Garrus, HK-47, Mira [not a BioWare, but an Obsidian character], Mission, Morrigan and Tali are just some of them I’ve fallen in love with over the years.”

Come to think of it, years and years ago I did identify with Grace Nakimura from the Gabriel Knight series. She was smart, snarky, did her research, didn’t take crap from Gabriel and IIRC, had to save his ass on several occasions. I really liked Lara Croft too, until they gave her a bunch of annoying male sidekicks that she needed to talk her through every little puzzle.

Thinking back on it, my university room-mate when I played GK3 once accused me of being just like Gabriel Knight. “No wonder you like that game. He says exactly the same things you do. You’re both so sarcastic,” she said. Yeah, that’s me. I’m a 6-foot blonde hunky Schattenjäger that eats werewolves for breakfast. Didn’t you know?

This post was not exactly part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in taking part, please email him for details.

“We thought it was a phase that you’d grow out of.” Sound familiar? Well, these are the words spoken to me by my parents when discussing the topic of videogames. Grow out of what exactly? What’s wrong with playing videogames for the rest of my life, they aren’t just for kids you know?

When Christmas 1984 came around my parents bought a BBC Model B Microcomputer for my older brother. Didn’t make much difference whose it was as I took to it like a fish to water. Little did they know what they had started. My journey into the world of videogames had begun. Yay for parents.

Now fast forward 23 Christmases (yuk, I feel old now). There I was sitting in my parent’s living room playing Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games on the Nintendo Wii with my girlfriend. The rest of my family were sitting on the adjacent sofa looking distinctly disinterested in my rabid wiimote flailing and even turned their collective noses up at Wii Sports (but it was made for old people). The overriding feeling was that adults should be playing with children’s toys at their age, unless it’s with another child. Then it’s all ok, as you’re playing WITH the child and not acting AS a child.

Even in 2007, when the games industry officially overtook the music industry in terms of overall revenue, the sight of an adult playing videogames is still viewed as fairly childish behaviour by a large section of society. Sure there are plenty of children playing videogames. You only have to spend some time on-line using Xbox LIVE to witness many, many teenagers communicating via a mixture of swear words and grunting. However, these teenagers only account for 28.2% of gamers. 47.6% of gamers are aged 18-49 with the remaining 24.2% aged 50+ according to a recent report by Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

Now that I’ve been playing videogames for 23 years now, I’m the average gamer (33 years old). From Elite on the BBC Model B to Army of Two on the Xbox 360 (mmm, not a great game but the most recent one I’ve played) I’ve enjoyed every minute. So that makes me a gamer and an adult. I must be very childish then? Err no, in fact for many aspects of my professional life playing videogames has actually helped me in performing medical procedures (e.g. endoscopy or colonoscopy) as they have developed my hand to eye coordination.

We need to get over the fact that videogames aren’t just for children. Now more than ever they are played by adults, like me, who aren’t your stereotypical gamer (long hair, poor social skills and personal hygiene). If only the rest of society, in particular politicians, would start behaving like adults towards the games industry and the gamers themselves, we could start making some progress. Or maybe I should give up on that idea and go binge drinking down the pub and start smoking in order to be treated like a “grown up” adult in today’s screwed up society.

Check out these other Blog Banter articles: The Average Gamer, Silvercublogger, shinybento, Unfettered Blather, Boom Stick Brigade, Gamer Unit, Zath!, Man Bytes Blog, Game Couch, Video Game Sandwich, Delayed Responsibility, thoughts and rants, Hawty McBloggy

I am a hardcore RPG gamer, having cut my virtual teeth on the Gold Box D&D and Buck Rogers games. You wouldn’t know it if you met me in a pub. I could talk for hours about the people around us, your life, drinking games, English weather… all sorts of normal sensible things. But in the back of my mind, I’ll be thinking about going home. Firing up the TV. Figuring out how the hell I can beat that first Demon Wall. (FYI, you need to grind up for the Quickenings)

I loves me the RPGs… but I’m a solitary gamer. I don’t talk about myself. I don’t bring games up in conversation. I don’t need or want other people to play with me. All I want is to be left in peace to explore strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations.

So, if you want to really understand me, you’ll have to play an RPG. Planescape: Torment, the greatest RPG ever created. I mean it. What’s not to love? It has a wise-cracking floating skull. It has a useful journal system. It has the novelty of progression through NOT killing things. But most of all, it has meaning and depth and emotion.

Play it for the consequences of immortality, both glorious and tragic. Play it for the odd philosophy of belief and how it shapes the world. Play it to meet a cast of characters as yet unrivalled in the games industry. Hell, play it just to meet Annah, the hot be-tailed tiefling. She’s awesome and takes no crap from anyone.

Play it, and you’ll see a huge part of my childhood. This game has everything I love about fantasy.

[Image taken from GameSpot. Sadly, I no longer have a copy of the game to make my own screenshots]

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Silvercublogger, The Average Gamer, Game Couch, thoughts and rants, Delayed Responsibility, Boom Stick Brigade, Boom Stick Brigade 2, CrazyKinux’s Musing, Gamer Unit, Draining Souls.net, 8-Bit Brigade, Zath Games Tech, Arm the Flag, Hawty McBloggy, Lou Lantos