Q. In real life, are you male or female? (Answer!)
A. Yes, and I have a microphone
Q. How many hours a week do you play? (Answer!)
Q. Where did you get your gaming names from? (Answer!)
A. I think about them far too much. They can be from almost any source, such as ancient languages, fictional works such as characters in books I've read or even out of a Sindarin dictionary, or sometimes I use colours (e.g. Cobalt, Roan) or science terms (Volt). Very often I associate the sound of the name with the character type I want to play, for example lots of hard letters and closed vowels (M, Z, X, U, O) for evil types.
Q. How do you feel about playing characters of the opposite sex? (Answer!)
A. Never bothered me too much; I used to think they'd be nice to stare at in the dull moments (waiting for transport and such), but I've noticed that I don't enjoy the rewards the game offers me in the long run if I can't fully identify with the character I'm playing, so I do this very infrequently. It also gets repetitive to have to explain myself every time someone /flirts with me.
Q. What is your first computer or video gaming memory? (Answer!)
A. The ancient MSX console (we're talking nineteen-eightysomething). Hard drives? Pah. Floppy disks? What are they? It had to be attached to a tape player ffs. But there was this hilarious game with an eskimo on ice floes with a spear trying to hit sharks in the water...
Q. When you are not playing games, what do you do for fun? (Answer!)
A. Cycling, going out with friends, watching movies.
Q. What music do you like to play games to? (Answer!)
A. Depends on the game. I prefer games to have good enough music not to make me want to listen to something else, but it's difficult to make something that won't get repetitive after hundreds of hours with an mmo. If I'm pvp'ing I'll go for rock or metal, otherwise something more chilled out or uplifting - melodic, chillout or house.
A. I prefer to rise above such debates
Q. How do you feel about selling virtual items for real money? (Do NOT advertise RMT services!) (Answer!)
A. I'd rather separate games and business. It keeps things in perspective. Also, games should not force one to spend so much time gaining or creating an item that one might think it worth selling for real money.
Q. If you could bring any book, movie or comic to life in a game, which would you choose? (Answer!)
A. If it were done exactly right, I'd pick Frank Herbert's Dune - but I'd rather have no game at all than one which doesn't meet my expectations. Knights of the Old Republic would be a very close second.
Q. What is the most memorable flamewar you can remember? (Answer!)
A. None. I don't take part in them, and I ignore them when I see them.
Q. What sort of tools (calculators, builders, spreadsheets, etc.) do you use to plan your characters? (Answer!)
A. I always use character planners available on popular website networks. So far I've stopped short of trawling the forums for equations and plotting dps graphs in Matlab, but only just, and mainly because information of that kind is usually speculative, sometimes not entirely accurate, and subject to change without notice by the devs.
Q. What is the most overlooked or misunderstood game? (Answer!)
Q. Have you ever had a memorable real-life meeting with other gamers? (Answer!)
A. Plenty of superb role-playing sessions and meetings with people I knew from before we started gaming together, but none with those I first met online.
Q. What are your thoughts on roleplaying in games? (Answer!)
A. Very hard to pull off. One needs to be a very fast typer, and an almost unnatural sense of when someone else is still typing and when they're just waiting for an answer, or everyone ends up talking over each other's head. It's also much more difficult to get real emotion across; body language and accents are nearly impossible to replicate with a restricted number of emotes.
Q. What are the proper uses of tank guns and bubblegum? (Answer!)
A. Whatever they might be, I'm sure it involves being extremely far away from my highly water-sensitive PC.
Q. Do your quiz results on GamerDNA reflect your personality, and if not, what did it get wrong? (Answer!)
Q. Are you interested in working within the game industry? (Answer!)
A. Yes, but not just any old game.
Q. If you made your own game, what would it be like? (Answer!)
A. In an ideal world with a reasonably large warchest of funds, I'd most likely make a single-player game. It would have an engrossing, emotionally captivating story, with as many options as possible in dialogue and action. Hopefully it would have some innovative gameplay elements. Graphics wouldn't be bleeding-edge but I'd want high-quality concept art, unique environments, and very good use of colour and lighting to set a particular mood. Sound would have to be top-notch, I'd go as far as to hire a composer and an orchestra if it suited the game (like Grim Fandango). Voice acting would have to be extensive as well, with properly fleshed-out npcs to interact with. I'd like to allow the player to think and talk all the way through like in Planescape: Torment. Combat would be the trickiest issue to get right; it would have to be fast-paced, so no pausing every 5 seconds to micro-manage, but not twitchy, while still allowing enough depth for those who like to study the fine details.
Q. Other than your console or PC, what is the piece of hardware you can't live without? (Answer!)
Q. Have you ever had a romantic encounter with someone you met in a game? (Answer!)
Q. What do you love or hate about PVP? (Answer!)
A. Love: great adrenaline rush. Unpredictable behaviour.<br>Hate: when it's non-consensual, or against a friend (whatever the outcome).
Q. What are your favorite tabletop (RPG, board, miniatures, etc.) games? (Answer!)
A. Board: Risk (2210 and LotR trilogy editions)<br>RPG: Haven't found a really good system yet; d20 is decent enough I suppose; I'd like to try Hackmaster but I haven't found anyone crazy enough to play with me yet. As far as settings are concerned, I like Star Wars, Planescape, Birthright and Eberron. Forgotten Realms is hit-and-miss, it's so old and big that it's seen just about every kind of quality and theme imaginable.
Q. What are your thoughts on player-made mods/addons for games? (Answer!)
A. They can be invaluable time savers. They also send powerful messages to the devs about what elements of the UI need changing a.s.a.p. to make a game people will enjoy more.<br>With the exception of the ones that "break" a game, for example by giving some an unfair advantage in pvp, I'm all in favour.
Q. What do your characters and avatars usually look like? (Answer!)
A. Male human, medium-tall, middle-aged or old, short-ish dark (black, blue, brown, red) hair, serious looks and angular features, little or no facial hair. This is all rather less applicable to alien / hybrid races, but I tend to follow mostly the same guidelines.
Q. When do you play, including timezone? (Answer!)
A. GMT, +0 or +1, usually evenings and weekends, but not all of them.
Q. Why do you join guilds or clans? (Answer!)
A. To play with like-minded people and access content otherwise not within the reach of a solo player and for which PUGs are either unavailable or unsuited. Random guild chat can be very pleasant, too. It also depends on the game; a game that has a strong player community and a good interface for it encourages guilds to form even casually. It may be silly, but having my own home and shop in a guild-owned city goes a long way towards making me feel at home.
Q. What experience do you have beta-testing games? (Answer!)
A. Almost none. I have occasionally signed up for beta tests but never been picked because I have no experience and I'm not in a stable guild. I have only accessed an open beta once because a key was sent out with all pre-orders (D&D Online: Stormreach). For the whole 4 days I was in the beta, I submitted reports on all the bugs I noticed via the appropriate forums, trying to reproduce them and explain them clearly, including dxdiag files etc.<br>I think betas have great communities of people dedicated to a game, and great events because most companies love to reward their testers and can afford to do rather silly things to non-paying customers, but properly beta testing is a lot of effort, as far from a free trial as you can imagine and a lot closer to a real job (albeit with very friendly co-workers and bosses who actually listen, mostly), so I wouldn't want to do it all the time. It is in fact much easier to buy the box when it's (hopefully) ready and just enjoy it as it is.
Q. If you could meet any game developer, who would it be? (Answer!)
A. God.* I want to borrow his loaded dice.**</p><p >*Note: I am not religious and in fact an atheist, but life's so irrational and unintentionally amusing not to joke about it.</p><p >**A joke for physicists. I probably should have kept it to myself but I've had too much coffee to be entirely sensible.
Q. What are the specs on your gaming rig? (Answer!)
A. Dual-core Intel 2.13MHz, 2Gb RAM, ATI Radeon X1950 Pro
Q. Beside GamerDNA, what are your favorite websites? (Answer!)
A. guardian.co.uk (The Guardian)<br>nytimes.com (The New York Times)<br>phdcomics.com (PhD comics)<br>nuklearpower.com (8Bit Theater)<br>icanhascheezburger.com (LOLcats)<br>metacritic.com (Metacritic)<br>starwars.wikia.com/ (Wookiepedia)<br>bbc.co.uk/radio/ (BBC Radio)
Q. What question would you add to the Attitudes system? (Answer!)
A. What can change the nature of a man?
Q. Do you feel relationships within games are meaningful? (Answer!)
A. To an extent. It depends on the people involved. Personally, I find a real-life relationship infinitely more satisfying; there's just no substitute for meeting someone face to face on a regular basis, it allows for a much greater spectrum of emotions to be carried across. It's also very important to share many different activities with your friends to really get to know them and build a solid relationship together; the number of interactions offered by a game interface is hopelessly limited by comparison.
Q. What sort of players annoy you the most? (Answer!)
A. Griefers; those who take pleasure in disrupting other people's activities for no other purpose than getting in their way. It reminds me of those who pull out insects' legs one at a time.
A. Mods that speed up routine and pointless tasks, for example mass mailing items, mods that analyse the damage output of my character and the group it is in, and mods that change the way in which information is displayed on my screen by re-arranging icons and progress bars and numerical indicators. Occasionally also mods that keep track of market prices for me.
Q. If you could cancel any online game, which would it be? (Answer!)
A. Star Wars: Galaxies. I don't mean this in an aggressive way, but it's clearly a broken game that let down hundreds of thousands of players. The sooner it shuts down, the sooner we can look forward to a proper Star Wars MMO.
Q. What are your most memorable achievements in a game? (Answer!)
A. Discovering things before others; crafting exceptional quality items; besting difficult encounters through skill; helping others; achieving long-term goals I set myself.
Diablo II (PC)
Mass Effect (X360)
Star Wars Galaxies (PC)
Tabula Rasa (PC)
World of Warcraft (PC-MAC)
