A reflection on the EU referendum campaign.

A monumental, historic event occurred yesterday; I feel I cannot let it pass without commenting. On June 23rd the people of the United Kingdom voted in a referendum deciding whether or not they wanted to remain a member of the European Union. A 52% majority voted to leave, 48% desired to stay.

 

The people have spoken; this is democracy in action. It was fantastic to see so many people exercising their right to vote (72.2% turnout). Democracy, however, is a strange thing; it is essential to modern civilisation, wars have been fought (and are still being fought) solely to to defend the right of the people to choose who governs them, but it isn't perfect. Democracy doesn't rely on a populace being able to make an informed choice. Many voters, whether wilfully or not, are often ignorant of the consequences of the choice they are making.

Politicians will often cultivate ignorance, it is in their best interests; pre-election promises that go unfulfilled lead to disillusionment (just look at the student fees debacle in 2010). The campaign leading up to the referendum was rife with this practise on both sides. Whilst I am disappointed with the overall result (and to an extent, genuinely worried about it), it is the campaign process that has concerned me more.

Both sides' campaigns resorted to appeals to emotions, appeals to fear, appeals to consequences. ad hominem attacks, straw men, exaggeration, cherry picking,  flag waving patriotism, oversimplification, assumptions, non sequiter reasoning and seemingly intentional vagueness. In essence, propaganda at it's finest. Many leaflets I received in the post had glaring inconsistencies and illogical lines of argument. Having studied critical thinking I was able to spot these fallacies; some even made me genuinely angry - do people really believe what they are reading at face value?

  
The whole campaigning process was an absolute shambles. What this resulted in was people having to vote based on either scattered contradictory information, gut feeling, patriotism, nationalism or worst of all, prejudice. The information presented by both sides was so contradictory it was impossible to make a genuinely informed choice. It was truly disheartening. I'm not sure which is worse; voting based on poor information or not voting at all.

 

My ballot paper should have had a third option:

'I cannot make an informed decision and wish to abstain'. 

I wonder how many people would have put a cross in that box?

What do we enjoy about miniature wargaming?

I realised a couple of days ago that the release date for Warmachine and Hordes Mark 3 (June 29th) had managed to suddenly creep up on me. The third version of Privateer Press' flagship sister wargames had been announced back in April, and they've slowly been drip feeding out information about changes to the game over the past couple of months. I'm going to take the opportunity to reminisce  on my experience with Warmachine and Hordes Mark 2 and how this lead me to think about the different demographics within miniature wargaming.

I first started playing Hordes back in 2010 just as Mark 2 was releasing. I picked up a Legion of Everblight Battle Group, mostly because I quite liked the aesthetic of the warbeasts (this is my usual rule for any new game; pick the one I like the look of). I learned most of the rules and over the next few years managed to amass a fair amount of models; enough to play a reasonably large game (although that rarely happened). The game offered the most tactical depth found in any skirmish level game at the time; every model was important, every move was an exercise in precision, every attack and spell cast had to be timed perfectly. The smallest mistake could spell disaster.

Then an interesting thing happened. I discovered that my enjoyment of the game was inversely proportional to how many games I played; the more I learned, the more stressful the experience became. I was constantly trying to play as best I could; I wanted to avoid mistakes and play as efficiently as possible. This isn't to say that I won a lot of games, quite the contrary; I lost most of my games. Losing wasn't the catalyst for my lack of enjoyment however, it was the acknowledgement that this type of game simply wasn't clicking with me. This leads me into another trail of thought: Why do we play games?

Video gamers are traditionally grouped into three camps: casual, core and hardcore. It is difficult to make a direct approximation for traditional (analogue) games, especially wargames; they appeal to a number of different dispositions: competition, narrative and hobby (as well as others, but I shall distil it down to these three).

• Competition appeals to those with a desire to win, to be the best they can be at their chosen game and to prove play against opponents of similar calibre. 
• Narrative appeals to those who care about the world their game takes place in, the story that it tells and the characters and events found within, either in a historical or fictional context.
• Hobby appeals to those who enjoy building and painting miniatures; this either means they want to make their army personal and unique to them, or desire to assemble and paint their models to the highest standard. Again this can be found in both historical and fictional contexts.

These three aspects are not mutually exclusive; most gamers will fall somewhere in between the three whilst some will be found at the extremes. A dedicated competitive gamer will be found attending tournaments, building the most optimal list possible, will study the rules and will paint their miniatures to the minimum standard required, if at all. A dedicated narrative gamer is more akin to a role player; they will immerse themselves in the game's world, research it deeply and theme their miniatures to a very specific style. Dedicated hobbyists share a similar world to scale modellers; they will be found honing their craft to the highest degree, entering painting competitions or building beautiful terrain.

These demographics should not be thought of as static, an individual wargamer may find themselves concentrating on different aspects during different periods of their gaming lifetime. Thus it should be though of as more of a malleable spectrum.

So where do I currently fall on the spectrum? I would personally describe myself as 40% Hobby, 40% Narrative and 20% Competitive.

My favourite aspect of the wargaming hobby is researching and building new armies. I love picking up a new game and researching the different models available, the background therein, the types of armies you can build and attempt to put together something I will enjoy building. For a historical game this translates to researching and learning about the time period the game is set in, the key events and eventual historical outcome. My love of speculative fiction is great in this context; wargames are the best medium for exploring it. I'd go as far as to say all historical wargames are forms of speculative history.

The small 20% competitive component boils down to my appreciation of rules sets. I find great pleasure in learning and understanding game mechanics; to study the cogs and gears that make the wheels turn. This doesn't unfortunately translate into a desire to actually play any specific game for any length of time, as described above in my experience with Warmachine and Hordes. I like to know how the car works, not race it around the track.
 
With Warmachine & Hordes Mark 3 on the horizon, I'm sure I'll build a new army, paint it to my liking, read and understand the rules, but not play too many games.

I'd be interested to know where my fellow wargamers think they fit in the demographic triangle.

Let me know what you think.

Video Game Ruminations - Portal (2007)

A few months ago, sitting in the pub with my good friend Rich (having spent the day smashing up his garden with a pick axe), the topic of video games surfaced. We discussed what we enjoyed about the medium, how modern practises have ruined them etc. (grumble...grumble...).

I said at the time that I'd send him a list of some of my favourite games from the last ten years or so (specifically more single player orientated). I never got round to coming up with a list, so I'll instead take the opportunity to present it here as a new series of posts.

I find myself playing video games less and less frequently in recent years; very rarely does a game come out now that I will actually devote time to sitting and playing from start through finish. The games I'll talk about in this series are those that met that quality. Not all of them are viewed as critical successes (though most will be), often times what I personally enjoy about a game will not necessarily lead to acclaim by reviewers. I will attempt to keep my thoughts spoiler free where possible.

Portal (2007)

Released alongside Hale Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 as part of the 'Orange Box', I had no inkling of what this game was at the time (I'd bought the Orange Box solely for Episode 2). I was subsequently surprised to find that this game was definitely the best of the collection.

Portal is a first person puzzle game; the player must solve a series of increasingly challenging  puzzle rooms using the titular portal gun - a tool capable of opening two linked portals, one blue and one orange, through which the player (and objects) can pass. The player may also 'see' through these portals, as long as both sides are linked.

Mechanics are slowly introduced to the player; initially the interaction between boxes (which can be picked up by the portal gun in a similar vein to Half Life 2's gravity gun) and buttons, to the concept of conservation of momentum through portals. Obstacles are also sequentially added; moving platforms, deadly acid pools, energy balls and disturbingly charming homicidal gun turrets.

 Whilst the puzzle aspect of the game is enjoyable in itself, it is reinforced by the environment in which it takes place and the characters (or lack thereof) found within. The player character, Chell, finds herself completely alone within a seemingly abandoned Aperture Science testing facility, save for the attentions of the sentient A.I. GLaDOS (whose dark humour I find particularly delightful). The game successfully creates an atmosphere of isolation, tension and foreboding; no-one is coming to help, there is no escape.

 The story is not overtly explained, it has to be pieced together via different clues: an abandoned office powerpoint presentation, letters, posters and, hidden in some of the test chambers, the insane scrawling of a mad man. This is one of my favourite types of narrative; you have to want to piece together the story.

A stand alone sequel, Portal 2, was released in 2011. Despite introducing many more mechanics and being arguably a superior game, it was ultimately flawed in comparison to the original. What made the original so great was it's lack of characters, it's sense of isolation. Portal 2 throws this out of the window; there is rarely a time where you are not accompanied by some type of companion character, the A.I. core 'Wheatley' being the prime culprit. Sometimes less really is more.


Well, that's my thoughts on Portal. Both Portal and Portal 2 can be found on Steam. They are both well worth playing for their rather unique gameplay. Oh, and remember:

The Cake is a Lie.