Fridays With Fumanstu #1 – The Death of Fumanstu

One of the things that I suffer from is an irritating habit of putting off anything that could conceivably be delayed.  This applies to writing stuff for The Claw as much as it does to getting pretty much anything done at work.  Perhaps, it especially applies to writing for The Claw.  In my experience things that you’re trying to fit in around the rest of your life are the things that never get done.  So in order to combat this and get some regular content up and, at a long shot, attracting some regular readers I’m launching Fridays with Fumanstu, a weekly column that will look at the world of The Claw from the personal view of..well..me.  Warning, I will talk about WoW.  But not this week.

Rewind the clock back nearly 8 years.  Microsoft was just about to launch Xbox Live into Europe.  Online gaming was still a rather new concept to me, I had dabbled a bit on the PC, mainly with MMOs (Yeah, look at how *that* turned out) and I think I might have taken my Dreamcast online once to play whatever version of Quake it had.  Luckily for me, I lived in a house with three other geeks – or two other geeks and one complete freak, has anyone ever shared a house where every occupant is normal? Anyway, the point is that securing the appropriate net connection was not something that proved an issue – sure the cabling would have probably caused any H&S officer nightmares but it (literally) hung  together.  So it was some excitement when the day came round and I slapped down the cash for an Xbox Live Starter kit and ran (well, drove) home with a spring in my step.  Later that day, Fumanstu was born.

Fumanstu was a tag that I’d used here and there for a few years, coined by a friend and it just stuck, as these things are wont to do.  However, committing Fumanstu down as my XBL gamertag was the first time that Fumanstu had been established in the online space in any sort of permanent way.  Online gaming grabbed me as I’m sure most reading this are familiar with.  Those early days were filled with late night games of Ghost Recon after my girlfriend (who is now my wife) had gone home for the night. (I wasn’t quite sure at the time that she was ready for the full geek assault).  I remember being astonishingly bad at Moto GP, after I’d worked out that if you unlocked the tracks in the full game they became available in the ‘demo’.  Not forgetting to mention how much fun stomping around in big mechs was in MechAssault.

Of course, over the years we got, amongst many many others, Halo 2, PGR2, Counterstrike and Rainbow Six 3.  It was R6 3 that really sealed my fate, I look fondly back on my time in that game and one map in particular, Carnival – I miss you.  There’s not many games that I can name the maps that I like off the top of my head but that one is forever embedded into my memory.

Time moved on and soon MS delivered the 360 to the hungry gaming community.  And with it came a cornucopia of riches.  At the time it was the best online experience out there.  Those first few years of the 360 really were a dream for the online gamer – MS really cementing online gaming not just into the gaming community but into entertainment culture as a whole.

However, for the last year or two a sense of frustration has been building in me.  The PS3 online service is no longer the shambles it once was and Steam is driving content delivery and online community on the PC.  In most of the important ways, XBL is no longer the kill of the hill.  Worse than that the 360 is slowly drowning in a sea of me-too’s and sequels with MS not doing enough to distinguish the 360 from the PS3 (presumably because MS have run out of money to buy the loyalty of any developer doing anything that looks vaguely promising)  and this is coming at precisely the time when Sony  have finally found their mojo and their development teams have gotten a grasp on the obscure PS3 hardware.

So it came to pass that Fumanstu started to see less and less gaming time.  The 360 noticed and on the occasions when it was turned on it complained. The drive started to open reluctantly and crashes became more common.  Occasionally, I’d turn it on and be greeted with a black screen.  Finally, at about 10pm on Wednesday 27th January 2010 something gave up in my 360 (I like to think a component gave a little scream and its little electric wisp drifted upwards) and I was shown the RRoD.  My 360 had a good run, lasting nearly 4 years.  Unfortunately, with 360’s a good run is the last thing you actually want.  In my case, it’s well outside the repair warranty, so I’m faced with the only option of paying for a new one.  Which is something I’m not prepared to do, there’s not enough on the horizon that would convince me to get a new 360 when I’ve already got a PS3 and I’m not about to reward MS further for making a product that isn’t up to the standards that I would expect.

So with the death of my 360 comes the death of Fumanstu.  My longest running online presence is no more, a sad day but one that I don’t want feel bad about.  Instead, its a day that I want to remember those games of R6 3 and the many many others that gave me so many hours of fun and entertainment.  To remember all people that I’ve played with and friends that I’ve made.

One thought to end on, tonight I sit down to play Sony’s new multiplayer offering, MAG.  A game I hope that will live up to its promise and move the online FPS arena forward in a number of subtle ways.  If you want to come and play with me you can.  My tag is Fumanstu.