Surviving The Storm

It struck me during the course of this weekend that few game creators could pull together a crowd as large and enthusiastic as the attendees of BlizzCon (let alone charge them $100 bucks a pop). My list of folks who were doing just this came down to three: Blizzard (thanks to the massive number of World of WarCraft subscribers), iD (on the enduring strength of prior Quake games) and Square-Enix (where I'd add the caveat that the states is a hair away from being able to support the massive get-togethers that are held in Japan.

I haven't been to too many large LAN parties, but if I were to describe BlizzCon I'd call it a LAN party with some of ComicCon's DNA spliced in. Two huge banks of gaming PCs were on the convention center floor -- one for StarCraft II and another for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The lines were initially long, but by the end of the show they tapered off to nothing. If you paid for a ticket there was little keeping you from playing both games. I spent the last hour or so of the convention (while everyone else was at the Video Games Live concert) wandering around the demo zone. Though the landscape, buildings and and foliage seemed in place it was easy to tell that this was unfinished content. The organic-feeling distribution of animals, enemies and random monsters just wasn't there. Some quests, especially one where you drop bombs onto pirate ships from a zeppelin, felt half-baked. For me this just underlined how strong Blizzard are at polishing their content. What we played at BlizzCon was a work in progress that helped me better undertand just how nuanced a job they do of populating their worlds.

Here's the part where I embarass the shit out of myself. I played StarCraft II once and got my ass handed to me by the computer. It's been quite a while since I played a Blizzard RTS and I sucked pretty badly then. So while I can say that StarCraft II looks great and conjures serious nostalgia when the units repeat their old dialogue, I really can't speak to how good the game is. That would be like a tetotaller pontificating on the taste of Glenlivet. It's just wrong.

What I can say is that competitive StarCraft and WarCraft III are genuinely awesome to watch. The pros are insanely skilled and the top-down view makes matches easy to grok. I'd imagine that even non-gamers could easily grasp what's happening with only a little attention. I didnt' watch much World of WarCraft PVP, but it seems a slightly harder sell. The 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 arena matches were well attended, but the standing-room crowds and the cheers you'd hear when a WarCraft III hero was taken down were a revelation to me. I know understand the appeal of eSports.

If there's a take-away impression it's that Blizzard is really committed to making their players feel like they have input. Every panel seemed designed to inform subscibers that every in-game issue was important to the devs and that tons of changes were in the pipeline. To further underline this, every talk was ended with a Q&A where players got to grill the guys on stage. These bits were hilarious. Often, real questions and dialog took place. But frequently the sessions felt like a support group -- with downtrodden gamers spilling their hearts on the mic about all the trials and tribulations of their class, then begging the powers-that-be for some kind of help. I absolutely loved this parade of sometimes angry, frequently awkard humanity. I told my friends that each of these geeks were like snowflakes, each unique in his nerdiness -- but still beautiful examples of unfettered enthusiasm and passion. I laugh at these guys and gals not because I think I'm better than them, but because they're my people. Every Napoleon Dynamite-esque gesture or ultra-intense gripe jives with something I've felt or thought at one time in my life.

The thing I always take away from conventions like this is a sense of belonging. ComicCon, BlizzCon, AVN, SXSW or what-have-you are the meeting of a subculture, where people can go to find folks who speak the same language as them. Walking around the Hilton it was easy to overhear people passionately arguing intricacies of their character spec or recounting guild drama. The presence of civilians at the hotel (conventions for Couples for Christ and a class of 1987 high school reunion) further illustrated the contrast. The mixed crowds in the elevators couldn't have been more different. And it was hilarious to see the tourists warily eyeing gangly dorks in black t-shirts or cute Korean girls cosplaying as warlocks.

And in the '60s squares thought long hair was weird.