Keeping everyone except the most important insulated from my favorite recreation most likely comes from a fear of being judged.  Games are still the youngest medium out there and wildly misunderstood.  Sensationalists continue to label them as the cause of violence around the world.  World of Warcraft continues to grab headlines with horror stories of it causing divorce and child neglect.  There have even been stories of employers immediately rejecting candidates if they have anything to do with games.  With so much negative attention to the platform, identifying myself as one of the brainwashed, murdering psychopaths doesn’t quite seem like the smartest play.

Yet this is my medium.  I’ve written games for myself and my siblings since I was 6 and continue to do so.  Heck, my career most likely grew out of writing those little games as a child.  Raptr tells me that I still play twelve to sixteen hours per week.  I spend $80 per month on my hobby even after getting married.  It’s an important part of my life, why would I keep it secret?

Being married means I don’t have to make outrageous statements like “I’ve never touched Bad Company 2, unlike your looser ex-boyfriend” anymore, yet I would still make a similar comment out of my embarrassment over the perception of games and gamer “culture.”  Outside of potential future employers, there are not many people I need to impress for the rest of my life.  Again, why should I keep it so separate?

This all comes from my recent decision to create a Twitter account to follow peeps I’m interested in instead of going to all of the individual’s feeds.  It then evolved into an aggregator for my own thoughts on gaming to distribute them among the sites I frequent.  It’s only a matter of time before non-gaming friends find the account and start following me.  Yet I still feel like I should keep it all separate.

How integrated is gaming in your life?  Do you bring it up in casual conversation with non-gamers?  Do you update your Facebook posts with your gaming exploits?  Is your gaming habit an insulated or an incorporated part of your life?

There are a lot of games that aren’t going to make this list. A lot of great games. The four lucky titles on this list are the ones that I feel are absolutely critical to the current course of the medium.

1. Halo: Combat Evolved

If there was no Halo, I’m not convinced that there ever would have been a Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Simply put, this title showed that FPSes were not only possible on consoles, but surprisingly awesome. Beyond that, it was the title that made one company relevant in the console market. Without Halo, I doubt Microsoft would be in the market at all. It is the title that has shaped the modern course of consoles.

You could try to make the case that Perfect Dark, released in 2000, was more paramount in bringing FPSes to the thumbs and button crowd. It controlled better than Goldeneye and had more interesting multiplayer. However, at its core it was still the same game as Goldeneye, and was not yet on a console that had dual thumbsticks, which have become a key component of FPS controls. The pacing of the two games are also dramatically different, with modern shooters following the faster pace of Halo. The ability to play Halo over LAN with up to 16 players created a dramatically different type of competition than had been seen previously on console, something that Xbox Live later took hold of and expanded drastically.

2. Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 almost didn’t make this list. In fact, I’m still not sure that it should have. The title is an amazing piece of work, practically un-duplicated. The great variety of levels from the start of City 17 to killing an Antlion Queen on a beach all with a silent protagonist. Reflecting on it I am still amazed. But the real reason it is here is the unreliable product it launched with.

Steam.

In the 5 years since the birth of Steam it has entirely changed the PC gaming world. While its initial launch was highly criticized it has grown to become the leader in digital distribution with an estimated 70% of the market share. One of the primary reasons PC piracy had become so high was that it was far simpler to download a game off of a torrent than to go to the store and purchase the title. Steam gave you no excuse. When you buy a game, it’s yours, all you have to do is wait for it to download. It’s also entirely portable (unless the developer put DRM in there), meaning you can take it to whichever computer you want and install it there. The addition of Xbox Live-like achievements and a solid social component give it more features than the competition and a solid lineup of first party titles ensure that it will always be around. The other major platforms have followed Steam’s digital distribution approach, but limited by the continued reliance on brick and mortar retail for sales. With no such limitation, Steam is blazing the path for the rest of the industry.

3. Wii Sports

The Wii has irreversibly changed the face of gaming. The simple reality is that most people bought the Wii only for Wii Sports. The title is incredibly accessible and even years after release still fun. I played the title with my wife’s 89 year-old grandfather a few months before his death and even he had fun with it once his 6 year-old great grandchild gave him a quick tutorial.

The rest of the modern consoles putting out essentially duplicate devices serves as a clear sign that motion control is perceived as an important step for the genre. Without question, both the Sony Gem and Microsoft’s Natal will have a similar title to Wii Sports, but we’ll all fondly remember our first.

4. World of Warcraft

I personally struggled deciding between Dark Age of Camelot or WoW as the most influential MMO. At its core, WoW is a dramatically simplified verison of DAoC with a extra spit-shining. Dark Age was much more quest-heavy than Everquest and excelled at faction-based PvP. But the truth of the matter is that WoW’s refinement and streamlining of the quest system, easier to use interface, and quality of content set it apart from any other MMO to date. It is a juggernaut and will continue to be so. But edging out DAoC is not enough to make this list.

The real reason it’s here is the cultural impact that it has had. The world’s most addictive game is responsible for college dropouts across the globe, Night Elf Mohawk commercials, and South Park spoofs. Pastors even give whole sermons about WoW. The amount of money that WoW brings in monthly is larger than half of the world’s GDP. It is a beast the likes of which have never been seen, and although it has been attempted numerous times, never duplicated.

The next big coming change to social gaming is coming from the next update to Xbox Live, bringing Twitter and Facebook integration.  While PS3 users will correctly argue that they already have Facebook and Twitter on their systems via the built-in web browser, it is not integrated to the core of the system as it will be in the Live update.  From what I’ve seen, it allows you to do things like find friends who may also be hiding their secret 360 love affair as well as walk through people’s profiles and pictures with a controller instead of a mouse.  (Pro Tip:  You can hook up a USB keyboard to your 360 for typing stuff and keep it around for the same thing on your PS3).

In the end, I question the effectiveness of the these two to create a better online community.  I haven’t met a single person through raptr yet, and while the Facebook stuff on the 360 will reveal a few more people who I can hop on Live with, I strongly doubt that either will foster the same sense of community as a forum or blog site.  It is the lack of commitment required to use these services that will hold them back.  In either a forum or blog, you are committing at a minimum some of your time and more likely some of your personality (unless it’s NeoGAF) that increases the risk/reward to keep you coming back much like actual friendship at a greatly reduced level.  These same things will not be provided by either raptr or Facebook on Live.

I don’t mean to dog either of these services as they are great tools, but I do question their significance and lasting appeal.  For me, the best part of raptr is that it tracks the amount of time I’m spending playing games to help with accountability, and as stated previously I’m sure I’ll pick up a few extra friends on Live because of the Facebook integration.  But neither tool can currently be used adequately to foster the same sense of community that a simple forum or blog site can provide.

So where does social gaming go from here?  Are “core” games already socially behind the times because of Facebook games?

It’s beyond huge. It’s essentially 5 or 6 World of Warcraft zones stitched together seamlessly. There are a seemingly endless number of side quests that you can perform and you can even do all of this with friends. It will probably take you three hundred (yes, a three and two zeroes) hours to complete if you want to do everything between the two different campaign types.

The problem is that none of the content is interesting or even fun.

Combat is fairly bland. On harder difficulties the closeness of death can be a motivator, but there’s no real punishment for death besides loosing a chance at an achievement. There are too few abilities and cooldowns between their use are excessive. The side quests have boring non-spoken dialogue and fall under the classic three RPG types. If you do read the text, it can even be boringly derivative. For example, in one town there are four side quests all related to weddings.

I destroy this game to make the following point using hyperbole. If you believe that the length of game is important to the quality of the title, then this is the game for you. That’s $.20 per hour of play, incredibly cheap compared to Call of Duty 4 with it’s price of entry of $10 per hour. Basically, if the length of the game is important to you, this is your game of the century.

Of course the problem is that there is more excitement and fun in 5 minutes of CoD4 that the entirety of Sacred 2. In fact, Sacred 2 winds up being complete inert to me, I have no reaction whatsoever to it. It’s about as fun as plucking your eyebrows or doing laundry. But if you think that the length of the game is important, then certainly Sacred 2 is your game of the year.

EA, the publisher once hated and mocked by the gamer community has done a complete 180 in the last year to become what I consider the premiere publisher of quality games.  Last year they gave us Battlefield: Bad Company, Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space, an actually improved Madden, and the amazing NHL 09.

I see two different routes that Apple could go with this.  In reality, Apple is not a software company.  They are a hardware company that sells products that execute software.  Extrapolating the Apple business model, this could mean that we might see an overpriced console with the Apple logo, motion controls, and expensive hardware refreshes every year.  The acquisition of EA would give them a solid first-party lineup to move the platform.

Or perhaps this is Apple’s attempt to turn the Mac into a gaming platform.  Currently games are one of the few reasons to buy a Windows-based PC.  It would surely be one way to up their hardware sales.

For me this is awful because I disagree with Apple’s business model.  They have the largest profit margin per unit of any PC manufacturer and have cornered the appearance-oriented consumer.  Demand for their products is artificially high because of this, and that allows them to continue to gouge consumers.  Beyond that, they’re a hardware company that has only recently started dabbling in software with the iPhone.  In the end, if Macs become the platform for PC gaming, it means that Apple can price gouge consumers even more because there is no hardware competition to keep prices in check.

What do you think this move could mean for the future of EA, Apple, and gaming in general?

1. Battlefield Heroes is fun.  A simple enough statement, but it’s true.  The menu music is peppy (and bore-into-your-brain catchy) and the characters are almost- dare I say- cute.  Even the evil guys are likable.  The pace of combat is quick, but it takes a solid 5 seconds to kill anybody (unless you’re a sniper) which makes combat exciting.
2. Battlefield Heroes can be frustrating.  There will be times where you will be killed in one shot by a guy who’s played the game for hundreds of hours and spent tons of money upgrading their character.  When you’re playing against have a dramatically higher level character than you, they will be able to kill you fairly easily.  This can be frustrating, but see point 1 about how it will soothe you.
3. Battlefield Heroes is Battlefield.  And if you don’t like capturing control points and ticket-life systems, you may not like it.
4. Battlefield Heroes is not for casual players.  Unfortunately there is no Xbox Live-like trueskill system that will keep the experienced shooter player away from the casual gamer.  This means that there will be jerkfaces like myself that will not hesitate to slaughter the poor casual players.  In reality, Halo 3 is a better shooter for casual players than Battlefield Heroes.  The reason that it might be called casual is:
5. Battlefield Heroes can be played in small chunks.  In fact, this might be one of the things that it is the best at.  The Play Now button puts you in a game normally inside 20 seconds, and the rounds themselves last only five to fifteen minutes.  It also makes the game dangerous by having the “just one more” factor.
6. Battlefield Heroes is not for playing with friends.  Last night a friend and I attempted to play, but found that it was extremely difficult to get into the same game.  While you can join a game that a friend is in, it’s difficult because the game your friend is in will normally be full thanks to the matchmaking system.  Basically, the game desperately needs some kind of social network integration.

Without question, it is a game you should play if you like shooters.  Luckily, nearly any computer can run it, including my nearly five year old PC I’m running the Windows 7 beta on.  So have you picked up your key yet?

His latest shining moment of idiocy has become my new favorite.  My company is slowly attempting to get more modern, and it was suggested that we interface with our technicians via Twitter.  Carlos pounced on the opportunity to display his elite techy-nerd-dom and volunteered to do a presentation about it.  He put together a presentation and sent out a meeting invite so he could brag about his tweet skillz.  The only problem was a little typo.

He only missed a single character, and being the self-important bastard he is, he didn’t check the message subject.  The email went out to directors, other managers, a ton of developers and testers.

So, what service do you think Twotter.com provides?

Other days I’m just a guy that gets chunks of light to move by wiggling a mouse.