Aurora Wants You!
by Gideon, HSM team writer
On April 17th, a unique event started in Home.
A battle has begun that will pit friends against one another and make mere men into generals. This new event lasts only two weeks, and not only seeks a victor in a North America Vs Europe competition, but also between the nations of each continent. This dynamic provides a unique friend-and-foe aspect that has yet to be experienced in Home. You may join a friend in hopes of strengthening your continent’s score while simultaneously striving to do better than them to enhance your country’s score.
AuroraWar (http://aurorawar.com) is an event in which players of the Aurora games will have their scores tallied daily to determine the victor of the two-week competition. Both Orbrunner and Aurora Defense will be used for the tallies.
Most competitions that pit countries against one another aren’t balanced, since some countries such as the United States have a much larger population pool to draw from than other countries. It seems unfair to have the United States put up against Canada when the US has ten times Canada’s population. AuroraWar answers this imbalance by using the average scores of the top 50% of players. This is a creative way to answer the many issues that arise with these sorts of competitions.
The averaging of the scores evens the battle field so that a country with thousands of players doesn’t trounce a country that only has a few hundred simply because they have more people to throw into the fray. A scoring system that relies solely on the averaging of the players’ scores could leave a country with a large number of casual players at a disadvantage. AuroraWar has accounted for this.
The usage of the top 50% of scores is beneficial to every country, but especially to those that have a large group of active participants. A country that has many users who are casually playing and not actively seeking the high score would have their overall score adversely affected if all user scores were used. By using the top 50% of scores, AuroraWars has effectively enlisted the best of the best to represent their countries since the top 50% of players are likely those who actively participate in the game and strives to achieve the highest score they possibly can.
At the end of the two weeks, there will be two players who are honored as Generals of their respective continents. That means there will only be two people who will achieve this rank. One will be from North America, the other from Europe. It is unknown if nDreams will have special Home items for these two individuals, but the recognition alone is enough to give any player a great deal of pride.
In today’s interconnected gaming community we are seeing a surge of country vs. country competition, but most tally the total scores of all players within the country. AuroraWar seems to have been able to find a way to balance the scales and allow for a fair and balanced battle to commence. This is beneficial to all those who find intercontinental war exhilarating. The attachment to one’s country fuels some individuals to pick up the controller, and might lead to some friendly and not so friendly banter.
Although this event is making leaps and bounds with community competition in Home, there are some oddities that might be attributed to the relatively new concepts being used. AuroraWar is a PlayStation Home competition, so it is interesting to see that the website is not overtly affiliated with Home, Sony or nDreams directly. There was no mention of AuroraWar of the daily announcements on Home, nor was there mention of the event on nDreams official website (http://ndreams.co.uk). The event wasn’t mentioned on the EU or NA PlayStation Blog before it commenced. On April 19th AuroraWar was finally announced on the blog.us.playstation.com, two days after the start of the event. The only connection AuroraWar had to any official group before it began was a twitter account.
Yes, the event is being run by nDreams, but its deployment is a bit different than the norm. It sits on the fringe and has had almost no advertisement. Forum chatter is at best sparse and the official website for the event is suspiciously lacking of information. The nDreams logo is absent from the AuroraWar site and there’s no fine print with legal copy. Still, the word of mouth from the community alone has been fairly massive for this event.
Is it possible that the AuroraWar event is some sort of beta-testing of a concept for a future sanctioned Home event? Could this event be a precursor for a much larger project from Sony and nDreams? Could this event be for an expansion of the PlayStation Home Aurora experience or might it be for an entirely new release from nDreams? Or is AuroraWar simply a self-contained project? Regardless, it’s an incredibly fun event worth participating in.
All we know now is that we are being called to fight.
Fight for honor. For glory. For your country.
For Aurora.
Good luck!
To honor this event, HairBrained Ideas (http://www.hbihub.com) has created a trailer for AuroraWar:
April 20th, 2011 by Gideon | 10 comments
Gideon is a team writer for HomeStation Magazine and likes cheese in all its forms. Whether it be block, slice, cream, wheel, log, string or aerosol, Gideon cant resist the pungent bitter taste of good cheese. Heck, he'll even take mediocre cheese, as long as its slapped between two pieces of whole wheat bread with a little bit of mustard.
Europe will win!like usual….(cough!cough!^^)
more seriously, almost a year ago, I was moved to tears by this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0ZJWcn9tdE
I never could say thank you to the author until that day ……
THANKS GIDEON!^^
Thank you so much Sorrow. To this day that Machinima is my favorite. Means a lot to me that you were touched by it.
Great video as usual Gideon! L am so glad you finally decided to join us on the magazine, you will be a great addition as I always knew you would be. Good article!
Thanks Linda! I’ll do my best to be a positive member of the team.
Go Canada Go !!!
Great read Gideon
Was nice to meet you at the theater last night Gideon. Nice article, welcome to the team of awesomeness.
Queen_Eli
Thanks Eli. Thanks for coming out to support the Machinima effort!
Just wondering,how will this outage affect the war?Will it be extended?
As of right now it is still slated to end May 1st.
my little canada stomping the U.S.? *giggle*