I've talked a little in the past about my tendency to play online games with a female avatar and probably will again in the future; maybe I'll whip up a full post or three on the subject one day. The reasons are numerous and complex, but can be summed up reasonably well by saying that role-playing as a female usually allows me to create a character that I feel more comfortable being. One thing that has always fascinated and, to an extent, amused me, is that I seem to make quite a believable female. In fact, more believable than most genuine females. >_> This can cause some issues when playing casual multiplayer games.

I forget how many gifts, "friendship" requests and marriage proposals I have received over the years while playing online games - I don't accept any of them, but still they come. It never, ever happens when I'm playing with a male avatar - only a female one. I reject the usual arguments about unbalanced online populations as I know that quite a few of the games I have played have had quite balanced populations gender-wise. I just seem to fail at male, but give off all the right signals for a friendly, fertile female.

Ragnarok Online was one of the few games I played where I managed to overcome this strange phenomenon by building up my character's reputation - somehow women who are capable warriors don't trigger the same moe response in male players as the ones who are locked in mortal combat with their first level 1 killer rabbit.

Anyway, in a quiet spell last week, I came across the installation files for Perfect World, a free-to-play MMO that I trialed briefly last year. Curious to see what had changed, I had a quick look at the website and thought a few of the updates sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a try for an hour or two to play around with a few of the purported new features. I'd lost the original installation when my hard disk died at the start of this year, but thankfully the installer I had downloaded last year still worked saving me a rather hefty download - although the subsequent patching probably made up for that.
 

 
Some of the new features - like mounts - were both useful and fun. Others - Genies would be a prime example - seemed rather pointless. The game still looked quite pretty though, so I spent some time roaming around on my shiny new mount (a Perfect World anniversary gift given to all beta accounts, apparently) with a rather garish neon blue glow. (I wonder why I dislike colourful auras in fantasy games so much?) Inevitably, I found myself chatting to a group of players about NPC locations and picked up an admirer along the way. I thought I'd share this tale as the blind will and determination of this particular individual really did impress me... in a scary kind of way.

It began as a discussion about mounts. He was a regular player with a sizable collection and proudly showed them all off. I made some impressed-sounding noises that seemed to go down well and was offered a ride on one in particular that I had remarked upon. We were an all-female group and I wasn't the only one to comment, but as usual, my character was the recipient of the unwanted attention.

Because I'm stupid and can't think of excuses fast enough, I said yes. So, we rapidly sped away from civilisation and I eventually found myself perched on a secluded rock overlooking the river. Inevitably the question came, although I was impressed at how he got straight to the point. They were the first words out of his mouth after we stopped.

Hmm, how to deal with the question this time... By far the simplest way would have been to respond with "hi, i r guy" or words to that effect. However, over the years, I've become more cautious about using that response as it sometimes provokes rather nasty reactions. He seemed the sort that might have been a little freaked out had I revealed my true nature, so I went with the ever-reliable plan "B" - maintaining the illusion but making myself unavailable.

By the way, you may be wondering why I don't say "yes". I mean, it doesn't get any simpler than that, surely? Well, past experience has shown that "yes" doesn't mean much to horny male MMO gamers. When it reaches their ears, it somehow transforms into a "not really" or a "sort of, but show me what you're offering". I have taken to avoiding "yes" wherever possible as it's a card that rarely works well and, when played, closes off other escape routes.

Success! That was easy.

Maybe too easy... I can see where this is going. Most will have given up by now, but I'd estimate that around a quarter of gamers trying their luck attempt to use this technique to get around the obstacle I have placed in front of them, gambling on any latent bisexual tendencies I might have.

This seems to be the natural progression from their previous approach when it begins to fail them. You'd be surprised at just how often people adopt this angle.

This one was proving to be quite a challenge. All but the outright desperate will usually have given up by now. Time to play the "game over" card that, until now, has never failed me.

Done! Game over! The end.

... This took me by surprise. I had to re-read it a couple of times and ask myself "did he seriously just say that?" - apparently he did. It's never happened to me before; even the most determined ones know when they're beaten. Really, how are you meant to respond to that? It was clear by now that reason wasn't going to work, so I made up an excuse to depart, rambled briefly about how I was sure he would find someone more suited to him and made my escape.

This is a rather extreme example, but the same kind of thing happens to me in nearly every MMO-type game I play. I say "nearly every" as it hasn't happened to me on Japanese game servers - only International/US ones. Are American teenagers bolder, or do I just make a very unappealing Japanese girl? A question to ponder...

There was some rather sad news floating around the Wired over the weekend that came to my attention today (thanks Max). Jeong Hoon Park, better known as SeeD/Seedark, passed away recently, reportedly after a battle against leukaemia. SeeD was a prominent figure at Ntreev Soft and arguably their greatest human asset, taking on a number of artistic roles over the years including illustrator, character designer and eventually art director for Pangya, Ntreev's popular online fantasy golf game. Anyone who has played Pangya would probably agree that SeeD's cute, colourful visuals are a large part of the appeal of the game. According to his website, SeeD had begun working on a new Ntreev project early in 2009.

The news was originally broken on the twitter feed of JinBae Park (aka ESTi), a friend of SeeD and the composer of many of the songs used in Pangya (as well as a number of other games). I have quoted the original, rather personal post and provided a rough SoZlation beneath. I apologise in advance for any inaccuracies, but my Japanese is terribly rusty.

All rather sad, and a little sobering considering that SeeD was my age. Since he was one of my favourite character artists, I thought I'd share a little of his work for the benefit of those who may not have encountered him before. You'll find image links to a couple of my favourite illustrations (click for the full image) below and a link to the gallery on SeeD's website.
 

Related articles at: Kotaku, Canned Dogs, Ntreev Pangya (USA) forum

Like many people, I collect old carrier bags to reuse around the home as handy disposable bags and bin liners. I tend to acquire more bags than I use, despite using a pair of reusable hessian bags for nearly all of my grocery shopping, so spare plastic bags are added to a cache I keep in a box in my utility cupboard.

Some months ago, I discovered that something rather nasty had started to happen to some of the bags I had in storage. Only the relatively recent Tesco biodegradable bags seemed to be affected. They had started to degrade.

It was a bit of a shock when I encountered my first specimen. It was a Tesco bag stuffed down the side of the box, its handle poking out of the top, that I had chosen on that particular day to have the honour of lining my kitchen bin. I reached for the handle and felt nothing. When I withdrew my hand, I found in it a fistful of dust, a fine white powder with almost no mass. I touched the bag again and it turned to dust before my eyes. It could have been a scene out of a nightmare. It felt really freaky to the touch too.

It took a little while to work out what was happening; that this was nature taking its course and that I wasn't stuck in a nightmare questioning the fabric of reality, nor was the smoke alarm located just above defective and irradiating the cupboard. Cleaning up took a little while as dust and fragments of bag had gone everywhere. The worst part though was knowing that I had several dozen identical bags buried at the bottom of the box. I decided to leave them for another day.

Fast-forward several months to my current intensive sorting out spree. In preparation for a move in the next few months, I'm systematically going through everything in the flat. Junk I don't need is being cleared out, things that are broken are being fixed, and everything that I don't need to have access to on a daily basis is being put into boxes. This weekend, I had reached the entry on my to-do list labelled simply "utility cupboard". Filled with dread, I set to work.

As I removed the bags from the box, dust and fragments flew everywhere and the fumes of decomposing plastic were overwhelming. About half of the 50 or so Tesco biodegradable bags (an estimate, since the decomposed ones had blended together) had undergone this change. A few more were beginning to show unhealthy signs - the first symptom, I discovered, appeared to be brittleness in the handles. I threw the lot away as it was clear they would all meet the same fate eventually.
 

 
Anyway, everything is neat and tidy again now, although I've been sneezing regularly; hopefully that will stop once the dust disappears from my system. Apparently it's non-toxic, but it still can't be all that good.

A word of warning then to all fellow bag hoarders: Don't keep biodegradable bags around for a long time (no longer than about 6 months, I would guess) and check your hoard regularly so that you can take action promptly before things get messy.