The Vineyards

In retrospect, what were we thinking?

Sure, Dark Ages had a great background, even if it was a melting pot of Nordic and Celtic and a few other cultures we think about when we see a fluffybunny wiccan, but it is goes without saying – and in fact it did go without saying for a very long time, thanks to us – that the entirety of its core gameplay mechanics is aimed at powergamers, grinders, number munchers, script writers and all other forms of players who have as much fun with a spreadsheet as they do with the game itself.

Consider it for a moment. Five attributes, each governing a potentially important part of gameplay: STR for melee damage, DEX for how often melee attacks do hit and how often attacks against you miss, INT for magical damage, WIS for mana and CON for health. But WIS and CON are like compound interest (“Compound interest is the strongest force in the universe.” – Albert Einstein): the earlier you have them as high as you can, the more mana or health you have at the end. They do nothing by themselves, however, save for one or two high level skills based on them, so you will need the other non-compound interest attributes somewhere in your line-up if you want to kill anything bigger than a rat.

Not to mention each skill or spell has a specific requirement in each attribute, which requires raising them all anyway – but never forget every item you wear has the ability to add or remove points and can be enchanted by a wizard or blessed by a god to add even more points. So if you can get your hands on a Leather belt, pairs of Fiosachd Shagreen boots, Ceannlaidir Beryl earrings and Iron gauntlets, Glioca Mythril greaves, Cail Signet rings and a Dwarvish helmet, and manage to get an Acolyte of Ceannlaidir to cast Ceannlaidir’s Blessing on you for that last ounce of STR you need, you may get that next spell you wanted before becoming a master and buying enough attribute points – or, if you are going to sub-path, to get the spell you wanted at all before never having access to it again. Plan accordingly from level 1 and try to collect items as you are being leeched to 99.

But try not to get leeched too fast, or you will need to sit there casting the same spell over and over for hours or days or weeks to level it up so you may learn its next version, and a Ranger may come by while you are doing it (or your computer is doing it for you) and give you a meaningless mark. Ponder deeply about the octagram and the relation between the gods as you do, or draft an essay about the economical impact of the political implications of the continued reign of Loures over Undine in the importing of goods from Oren island.

Dark Ages was always about the numbers, when to raise each attribute for maximum long-term gain, which combination could give you the most spells before subbing, what were the most optimized sets of items and which attributes and levels you would need to use them. Pardon, not level: insight.

I played very few MMORPGs, but I can say with no shade of doubt that Dark Ages was the most complex I ever saw. Even the big names, like WoW and DAoC, were nowhere near that complicated. The analogy “checkers next to chess” falls short: it is checkers next to Go.

The only way to thrive in Dark Ages was with immense charts and tables and calculators, and time for collecting items. We, the True Aislings, picked words instead of numbers and spent our time debating in-game politics and religion and creating stories. Fun can be derived from that, no doubt, but the basis we were given to play was a numbers game, which we failed to see for what it was and complained when the kids who did see it started playing it the way it was supposed to be played. We were the kids in the sandbox wearing frilly clothes that our mothers told us not to get dirty, and we yelled at the other kids making sand castles and mud cakes.

We were wrong. And we sucked at their game.

* * *

Then I remember Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds. It is probably more complex now, but in my time all the numbers in it could fit in the back of a contact card. You picked a class at the beginning, you could learn skills or spells at certain levels, provided you had the items required. And that was it. Attributes could only be raised individually at endgame, when it no longer mattered for anything other than bragging rights and carrying capacity. What differed each character was the player’s skills, not the combination of numbers and items they had. And if they popped in Koguryo or Buya when they used a Yellow Scroll.

I had a Pure Temuairan Grand Master Wizard in Dark Ages, with all spells. My Poet never got past level 93 in Nexus. But I miss Nexus tremendously more than I miss Dark Ages.

Are girls averse to what is closer? This has bothered me since I noticed the trend in high school. Boys usually had crushes on girls of the same classroom, or of another classroom of the same year. Girls, on the other hand, seemed interested only in boys from other years or, more often, boys not from school – someone from the club they went to every other weekend, a neighbor of a cousin… Always someone multiple degrees of social separation away, and whom they could not see nearly as often.

Is that a mechanism of defense? That is, by having a crush on someone they hardly ever see, they did not have to deal with it nearly as often, had no peer pressure over “confessing” every day, no reason to feel awkward whenever he walked by during break?

Or are boys just far more limited in their social circles, barely going beyond the school walls? Naturally, then, they would fall for someone in there. That fails to explain, however, why there were fewer cases of boys having crushes on girls from other years. Could it be, contrary to established notions, that boys usually only fall for girls they know relatively well, while girls swoon over the best looking guy, even if they never talk to him?

Of course, I speak based only on my own school years. Funny, however: in college, it was very common to see people of the same classroom dating, and from what little contact I still have with the course, the trend seems to only have increased.

I conclude nothing. Guess I should had paid more attention to some neighbor’s cousin or something like that. It just annoys me it took almost a decade for a girl of my own classroom to notice me. But it is fine.

* * *

And I admit I only wanted to post something in June. I was sure I had already done it, but the 30th had to come by for it to dawn on me I had not. This post had been echoing in my head for months, but when I started writing it I realized how little I had to say about it (not that the subject is limited; my observations are). Well, it will do.

A editora em que trabalho não faz apenas quadrinhos. Tem também inúmeros livros espíritas, revistas de culinária, eventuais oportunismos, e a revista UFO. A sala onde fico é afastada desse material todo, praticamente não tenho contato com esses meios e seus habitantes.

Pois, certo fim de expediente, por volta de 19h15, fui até a recepção, onde já não havia mais ninguém, e, ao abrir o portão, vi pela câmera de segurança que havia alguém em frente à casa no que parecia ser uma moto. Não é raro me deparar com motoboys ao sair, e normalmente eles estão apenas aguardando o próximo pacote para levar sabe-se lá aonde, então apenas digo-lhes boa noite e sigo em frente.

Naquela noite, no entanto, não era um motoboy. Quem estava lá fora quando saí era Hurley, aquele personagem gordo cabeludo de Lost. Sobre uma bicicleta, vestindo apenas uma bermuda alguns números muito pequena e um par de chinelos, parecia procurar algo nos inúmeros sacos de papel picado, folhas que a impressora comeu e prints já todos riscados em ambos os lados – as coisas que separamos para a reciclagem mesmo sabendo que é uma tarefa bastante fútil.

“Ei, cara, pode ver se eles têm uma edição velha da UFO pra mim?”

Meu primeiro pensamento foi “Ele fala português?”.

“Aqui fica só uma cópia de cada edição. Não tem nada à venda.”
“Não? E você sabe onde eu consigo uma UFO velha?”
“Não sei. Eu trabalho em outro departamento, nos quadrinhos. Acho que pode pedir números atrasados por telefone, mas não tenho o número aqui. Pode voltar amanhã, todo mundo dessa área já foi embora.”
“Hmm. E onde fica o depósito, então?”
“Sei que é bem longe daqui, na Zona Leste, mas não sei onde.”
“Putz. Falou, cara. Obrigado.”
“‘Nada. Boa sorte, boa noite.”

Atravessei a rua e a praça até o carro, ele continuou ali. Só quando eu ia saindo vi que ele também se foi. Voltei pra casa pensando em como ele queria mesmo aquela UFO e eu não pude ajudar. Espero que tenha conseguido, talvez a edição que ele procurava tenha a chave pra sair da ilha. Ou ele estava tentando impedir uma invasão de Reptilians, sei lá.

Será que algum dia eu vou sair e dar de cara com algum personagem de mangá?

Cada vez me impressiona mais a capacidade que o trabalho em tempo integral tem de sugar a vida de uma pessoa. No último post eu disse que tentaria escrever com alguma freqüência, mas me falta tempo e, quando não, vontade. Vontade não é a palavra adequada: em inglês seria “drive”.

Mentiria, no entanto, se dissesse que não tive idéias sobre coisas para escrever. Tive-as, sempre em hora e lugar impróprios; esqueci-as quando cheguei a um bloco de notas ou ao próprio site. Pior: notei dias atrás que as poucas anotações que fiz e poderia usar já foram usadas, indiretamente, em algum outro post. Auto-sabotagem.

Em todo caso, um comentário rápido sobre algo que notei recentemente. Há uns dias, vi um carro com uma marca que denunciava que ali havia um adesivo de terço, aquele com uma silhueta de Nossa Senhora, ou o mapa do Brasil. Não sei dizer se foi tirado ou caiu, mas me fez perceber que esses adesivos começaram a sair de moda. Finalmente. Não achei que o “Estância Alto da Serra” era o fundo do poço, mas não imaginava que seu sucessor seria tão ignóbil.

No lugar do terço, vejo agora ao menos um símbolo da Apple por dia.

Será que isso vem com iPods? Com iPhones? Ou as pessoas os compram avulsos? Independente da origem, nunca vi um carro com adesivo do símbolo da Microsoft, do próprio Windows, da Dell, do Google, da Sony, da Creative, da Samsung, da Nokia. Nem da Motorola. Nem da Motorola!

Não sinto saudades do terço, mas o Estância Alto da Serra já começa a soar como símbolo nostálgico de uma era menos tonta.

Torço fortemente pra que, em uma ou duas décadas, todas as iCoisas, os celulares da Motorola (e sua associada abolição de vogais), os adesivos de terços e, principalmente, as redes sociais se juntem aos bigodões e às polainas na categoria de coisas “onde estávamos com a cabeça?”.

O trabalho em tempo integral também.

The reason I went so long without posting is I got a job.

Eight hours a day applying my skills for a small benefit for me and a larger benefit of someone else. I have nothing against the system itself, but the eight hours bother me to no end. I forgot who was the first to define a system of eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work, eight hours of leisure, but he had no idea what he was talking about. Unless he worked in his backyard.

I work with people who waste almost two hours to get there, then another two to get back home. Subtracting these hours from the eight work hours is not an option, so they sleep less and have less leisure. There is also “lunch hour”, which is not considered work – it is when some of them go to the bank or supermarket nearby. Such a frustrating reality.

I admit, however, to have it much easier than most. It is a fifteen minute drive between me and work. And I have the option of working from noon to 8pm, resulting in a total time away from home of only eight hours and a half. If I go earlier, I can come home for lunch and be back within an hour – actually cheaper than the shady and overcrowded restaurant nearby.

Enough complaint. For those who wonder, the job I got is with a local manga publisher. Now I read Naruto and Bleach before everybody else and get paid for it!… But I did not read Naruto and Bleach before, and “everybody else” except those who already read ten volumes ahead in scans. I am not complaining: there are many other mangas, I get the chance to change some things that always bothered me in some titles, I am forced to read things I would probably buy and “never find the time” and, bonus, I subtly suggest improvements that I can later word prettily in my resume. All good fun.

I will try to post more often, anyway.