The Alternate Gamer_152 and Other Curious Stories

It’s Monday 12th July and I’ve discovered I’m not the only Gamer_152 on the internet. I always thought my name was one that would be subject to at least some replication but in all the time I’ve spent on the internet I didn’t see anyone else using the same on-screen moniker as me until yesterday. It turns out that at both YouTube and Flickr there is now a ‘gamer152’. It didn’t seem like it would be a big deal but it feels a little strange knowing that someone out there is posting things on the internet under what is essentially the same name as I use. At least my capital G and my underscore help me maintain some individuality, if I see a genuine ‘Gamer_152’ that isn’t me anywhere I may start becoming somewhat paranoid. That’s enough about internet nicknames for now though, this is a video game blog after all.

Wednesday 7th July marked Bungie Day, the annual excuse for all Bungie fans to obsess over Halo all day long. If you can see past the hordes of arrogant elitists and 12 year olds screaming down their headsets there are some genuinely very nice and very creative people within the Halo community and I think people don’t get to see enough of them. I took Bungie day as a chance to kick back and catch up with some of the great community-created content out there as well as an opportunity to play a few matches. In the end I played 28 matches of Halo 3 over the course of the day which may seem a lot but feels like nothing compared to the eye-straining 77 matches I played last year. Yes, I too believe I have some kind of Halo-related mental illness. One of my favourite things to come out of Bungie Day 2010 was that a picture of my Halo avatar wearing one of Bungie’s flaming helmets made it onto Halo fansite Hawty McBloggy. Thank you to BSAngel for including my picture among the many.

Sci-fi shooter marathons aside I’ve spent most of this week playing Team Fortress 2 and World of Warcraft which may seem like a bit of an unusual combination but it’s worked out well. If I just want to wind down and relax with a slower game I’ll play some WoW and if I want some faster-paced combat I’ll load up TF2 and play a few games. With the final class update being added to the game it’s been a big week for Team Fortress 2 but I’ve tried not to be one of the many causing large imbalances for their team by playing the engineer at every possible turn. Even ignoring the engineer update though I’ve still found a great deal of enjoyment in the game and my once shaky Demoman and Soldier skills are steadily improving. Now I just need to learn how to play the Scout, Sniper and Spy properly.

Outside of the video games themselves one particular piece of news caught my eye this week. Pretty much everyone heard about Blizzard’s plan to start displaying peoples’ real-life full names when they post on the World of Warcraft or Starcraft II forums. The backlash from forum users was inevitable and Blizzard reversed their decision to implement such a system into their forums. I think reversing the decision was the correct move to make as the aforementioned system may have had some advantages but it did present safety risks, particularly for women who just wanted to play Blizzard games and use the forums without being harassed by the socially deranged. I applaud Blizzard for trying to crack down on forum idiocy but if it was all as simple as removing peoples’ anonymity someone would have done that a long time ago.

This closes yet another blog. Thank you all for reading and whether you’re spending this week just playing some games or scooping out the contents of a month-old can of herring make it a good one.

-Gamer_152