I don’t remember my first video game. Not because it wasn’t memorable, but because I was, quite honestly, playing them since before I can remember. They were introduced to me very early on in my life. A story I am fond of telling about this involves a scrapbook my parents kept when I was a baby. There is a segment for “Baby’s Favorite Games” which supposedly is dedicated for stories about Peekaboo and Pat-a-cake. My section details Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong, and Pitstop.
Mister Adequate has a similar story– he doesn’t remember what his first game was, either!
We do have very early memories, though. A few of mine include:
Video games popping up suspiciously in dreams (and nightmares.)
Getting in trouble for saying a swear word during a particularly scary part of a game (I had no idea that it was a swear word! Also, that game was called Lunar Outpost, and it really did get scary after a while.)
My dad holding me up so I could reach the controls of a Super Mario Bros. arcade machine at a store somewhere.
Greatly enjoying a “game” about Christmas on a tiny monitor– I was very, very young for this, because we upgraded to a much bigger monitor in short order. I must have still been in diapers.
Staying indoors during recess of Kindergarden year so I could play Word Munchers on a green-screen IBM. I also merrily did this to occupy myself during a Parent-Teacher Conference, and I overheard my teacher remarking to my parents that I was the class’s “computer whiz”– the first time I’d ever heard the term.
These are some of my earliest memories. I remember more and more as I get a little older, but picking an earliest is hard to do.
Do you remember your first game? What are some of your memories?
No. No it does not. Especially when you’re me, and you love Civ and you really love robots. That’s probably why I’ve had a few people recently link a couple of articles to me.
Basically, some geeks (and I use that word with utmost respect, as I always do!) have taught an AI how to read. Not some programming language, but English. Then, to test their AI’s reading ability, they had it play Civilization II both before and after reading the game manual.
Before reading the game manual, the AI won a little less than half of the time.
After reading the game manual, the AI’s win percentage jumped up over thirty percentage points, to a nearly 80% win rate.
This is super exciting to me on a few levels. Firstly, I’m superhuge into the idea of robots and AI. I envision a future where intelligent creatures of all sorts and designs live together in harmony (I ain’t ‘fraid of no Skynet). I think it’s really exciting that an AI has been taught not just to read, but to learn from a human language.
On a slightly less scholarly level, I’d love to see something like this adapted to make better AI in games. I’ve talked before about how I’d like to see improvements to the AI in Civ; bring it on, Civ-playing robot!
So yeah. As I was saying, it really doesn’t get any better. Unless you get a robot playing SMAC. Then it could be better.
Although this would hurt the poor robot's feelings, I've no doubt. :(
Lately I’ve been playing a lot of two different games: Minecraft, and Terraria (aka 2-D Minecraft.)
I know, I know, I’ve talked before about how I don’t quite “get” this sort of game, or how I prefer SimCity or whatnot. But after several months of false starts it seems that something has finally clicked, and lately I’ll merrily spend hours listening to music while… digging. Digging.
I was practically born playing this particular game, so maybe that has something to do with it.
I’m not sure what’s gotten in to me– I’m usually off playing old strategy games, after all!– but I do have to admit: it’s remarkably easy and quite relaxing to just sit down for any length of time– from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours– and mess around in a game where there is really no point. It feeds some sort of deep-seated need in the human psyche to build and create for no other reason than to build and create.
…or maybe I really am a basement-dwelling obsessive-compulsive geek who finds satisfaction in making things perfectly symmetrical. I mean, that’s an acceptable answer too.
I know, it’s hard to believe, right? Seeing as we only ever talk about the same four or five here (eheheh.)
But no, it’s true, there are a couple of games we don’t quite see eye to eye on. The Legend of Zelda series comes to mind. Ocarina of Time is one of my all-time favorites. But Mister Adequate– brace yourselves for this one– is not a fan. He’s played a good number of the Zelda games and does not “get” them. Now I can already hear the cacophony of “WHY” coming from our readerbase, but I will refrain from detail here as to let my comrade speak for himself in a future blog post, if he feels so inclined.
Another place where we frequently diverge is in older games, because I grew up a Nintendo kid and he a Sega kid. We do both see the other’s platform as a worthy rival, but trust me when I say that you do not want to start the two of us on an SNES vs. Sega Genesis “discussion”.
Or maybe you do, because the battle would be hilarious to watch.
Recently, there is Minecraft. Okay, actually, we both have a sort of weird complex where we like to pretend that we don’t play it as much as we do. At the end of the day, though, we have to admit our weak spot for the infamous game of blocks, and Mister Adequate has clocked so much more time into this game than I have that it’s silly. And also not open for debate. Sorry, sweetie! (Yes, I poke fun of him for this.)
So yes. We do, actually, diverge on opinions for a handful of games. Scary, no?
As you may have noticed if you’ve followed us for a little bit of time, we here at the Android’s Closet Incorporated subscribe to the theory that video games are a valid form of artistic expression. Not everyone agrees with us, of course, and that’s fine– but Mister Adequate and I are pretty heavily biased in that direction. We’re both writers, and we’d both like to think that we can recognize and appreciate a genuinely good narrative in any form. Hence why we’re big, big fans of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Because not only was the gameplay solid, but the story– worthy of placement along side the best of science fiction novels– blew us away.
As it turns out, our initial assessment of the quality of the game’s story was accurate. Too accurate. SMAC’s story, you see, was a Herbert novel long before it was a game.
This one, specifically.
I didn’t know this until yesterday when I randomly ran across a reference article somewhere pointing out the game’s inspiration. At first, I thought it was an interesting little tidbit– lots of media homages other media, of course, not a big deal– but the more I read, the more I was shocked and then the more I was genuinely bothered. The game pretty much pilfered the book’s plot wholesale, even down to borrowing a couple of names. Oh, and those amazing tech quotes you get as the game progresses? Guess what book had similar quotes before every chapter? Yup. Suddenly, the game that I’d felt I could hold up as a paragon for originality and storytelling in video games was actually just taking it all from an existing novel.
My face, most of last night.
The Five Stages of Grief promptly followed:
Denial: “But… but… it was just an homage, right? They aren’t really that similar… right?”
Anger: “WHAT? How could you guys do this to me, Brian and Sid? Why didn’t you tell me!”
Bargaining: “Oh Gaming Gods, can’t I please just go back to my blissful ignorant existence beforehand? Back when SMAC’s story was the best original story in video games?”
Depression: Mostly in the form of unintelligible IMs that I sent to Mister Adequate for about an hour. And that brings us to…
Acceptance:
See, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve realized three things. Firstly, despite the many, many similarities– the game did make a few fairly notable changes to the plot, most obviously in the ending, which diverges wildly from that of the book, at least as far as I can tell (I haven’t read the book; I’m going off of Wikipedia here).
Secondly, the whole discovery did not change how captivating the game’s story was to me the first time I played.
And lastly, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the very fact that the game is so very heavily inspired by an existing work of art merely cements its status as art. I have long been a proponent of the theory that the best artists are not just the people who invent tropes, but also the ones who take existing tropes and rearrange them or retell them in a new and interesting manner. Everyone’s done it, the best authors and filmmakers have done it (note how this book also inspired the movie Avatar), and heck, I’ve done it– the book I’m currently working on pilfered so much from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that it’s silly– so who am I to talk?
So in the end, I can live with this. What Alpha Centauri did was take the deck of cards that was an existing story, shuffle those cards around a bit, and present them to the audience through the unique prism that is video games. By doing so, they were able to bring the audience into the story in a way that a book alone couldn’t do. Shakespeare did something similar when he breathed life into old legends and had the resulting plays performed for the masses. I’m okay with that analogy.
Also, SMAC is still a damn fine game, and you guys can all expect a Let’s Play on it soon.
Recently I downloaded a free game called Battle for Wesnoth. Now, normally here I’d launch into a lengthy monologue about my reactions to the game, however, my exact reaction can be summed up pretty much completely in image format, so here, have a picture I made:
What I Played: Battle for Wesnoth. What I expected: Final Fantasy Tactics. What I got: X-Com.
For the uninitiated among you, Battle for Wesnoth is a fantasy turn-based tactics game, and it is not easy. Let me rephrase that. I died on the tutorial level while fighting combat dummies. Then I died in the first campaign, on the “easy” difficulty setting. I died a couple of times, in fact, once because my main character got hit in the face a couple of times and promptly bit the dirt, and once because I ran out of turns (they’re limited!) before I could get to the checkpoint I had to get to.
Granted, it’s entirely possible that it’s just that hard because I’m still learning the game, and hence suck at it. But man, when was the last time I failed so spectacularly on a first attempt in a game? X-Com? Hearts of Iron II? Those are not exactly easy games.
Now the best part of this whole thing was probably my reactions to it. I was on voice chat with Mister Adequate as I played, and he was slightly nonplussed (just slightly, though– he knows me very well) and thoroughly amused to hear my squeals of delight as my butt was repeatedly demolished by the AI.* This game is difficult and I love it!
I haven’t had a chance to play as much as I’d like to yet due to less important things like work, but I very much look forward to digging into this game in earnest this weekend.
—
* I have it on good authority that Mister Adequate’s eyes glossed over and he stopped reading and started daydreaming upon seeing the words “butt”, “demolished”, and “AI” in the same sentence.
On the one hand, I would LOVE to see an update of, say, SMAC, with an engine and graphics akin to Civ IV with all the stuff that made the original game great kept intact.
On the other hand, when we get a new X-Com that is more like Mass Effect with the X-Com name pasted on it, I’m not sure what to think. Sure, the game looks interesting and might even be pretty good, but I have a difficult time believing it’s really X-Com without all the turn-based-tactics-want-to-smash-your-head-into-the-wall-it’s-so-hard action.
"Hidden Movement" is arguably the most terrifying phrase in video gaming.
But then I wonder if I’m just either being a crotchety old gamer telling the kids about how games were HARD back in my day, or simply refusing to take off the nostalgia goggles. Or both. Can it be that my knee-jerk “do not want” reactions aren’t justified, and are purely emotional?
Well, sure. But as a wise individual in a classic film once said, “Whoever said the human race was logical?” We are emotional creatures who get emotionally attached to things we care about– and if you’re like me, you care about your games. We care about our memories of them, and we want others’ first experiences with our favorite games to be like our own.
So yeah, I want an X-Com reboot to be just as maddeningly difficult and involve just as much tactics as the first. I want everyone who hasn’t played the game to experience it like this. I want to see the keys flying off of your keyboard when you smash your face into it in frustration. I want you to lean forward when the “HIDDEN MOVEMENT” screen comes up because you actually have to listen to the game sounds as a part of the experience and I want you to jump in your chair when you do hear something. I want you to see how terribly genius this game was and why it managed to enthrall me some fifteen years after it was first released. That’s what I want from an X-Com reboot. That’s why I’m not so sure about this new one.
…oh, and yes, I am a crotchety old gamer wearing nostalgia goggles. I have no shame.
I love all sorts of video games but I make no secret of the fact that strategy games are my favorite. RTS, TBS, 4X, Grand Strategy, Tactics– I’ll eat up just about anything that falls under the big strategy umbrella.
It may seem like a bit of an odd genre to someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time in it. You’re managing not just one unit or character, but several; oftentimes you’re managing whole bases or countries as well, and winning or losing frequently comes down to who can get the biggest and/or most advanced army first. Defeating an enemy isn’t something you do by way of pressing certain button combos, rather, it’s something you do by way of planning and math.
So I was wondering why I prefer these types of games so much, and I think aside from the standard “I just plain like the style of play” answer, a lot of it just comes down to the fact that every single game is completely different. If I were to play through an RPG, it would be pretty similar each playthrough– the storyline would be the same and the characters would all follow the same growth and would say the same things. You’d run into the same enemies. Sure, lately there has been a lot of experimentation with multiple endings, different choice paths for the hero, and etc., which is adding a lot of variety to a a genre that has traditionally been very linear, but in my own personal view, nothing really tops a strategy game when you’re looking to sit down for three or four hours and have a game with a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT OUTCOME than the last three or four hours you spent on the same game last time.
I don’t know if this is more evident anywhere than in Paradox games like Europa Universalis 3 or Hearts of Iron 2, where the possibilities for total global domination by Sweden or Inca or the Confederate States of America or something is entirely possible. Mister Adequate is the one to go to if you want hilarious stories like that.
And then there’s SMAC, where you might play one game where it’s all seven of the factions duking it out for domination the entire time and then this is followed immediately by a game where everyone dies in the beginning except for you and one other team.
Or maybe something like this happens:
Honestly I just wanted an excuse to upload this and show off.
I have only seen this happen once so far. I mean, I hope it happens again, because it’s pretty darn hilarious, but Miriam is usually willing to fight to the bitter end, so seeing this happen was new and seriously amusing.
SMAC does another great thing where each three or four hour game involves a self-contained story, which goes a bit differently depending on how you win, what order you tech things in, and et cetera. Every SMAC game plays differently. As does every Civ game, and every Hearts of Iron 2 game, and so forth. I love it, and that’s what continues to pull me back in and keep me playing even after I’ve dumped days of playtime into these games already.
Yup.
What are your favorite genres? Why do you love them so much?
The other day I was having a discussion with someone on a forum about video game addiction and how one might be able to discern the difference between being “addicted” and merely playing a lot. This is the way I put it:
I’m pretty sure there was a period in my life where I could have called myself legitimately addicted to WoW. The reason I feel that I was addicted was that a.) I seriously was not ever thinking about anything else, and b.) if I didn’t play WoW for at least a few hours a day I would go to bed feeling distressed and unfulfilled.
I feel that this was different from your typical, average “I want to play a lot of videogames” mentality that I’ve always possessed. Sure, I’ve been madly in love with games before– I still get that way– and “ONE MORE TURN” syndrome is certainly not something I am unfamiliar with. :P But if it skews your worldview to the point that it occupies every waking thought for months on end and you plan your entire life around it and you play even if you don’t feel like it because it drives you to fits if you don’t, then you might have an issue.
It was weird to look back on that period of my life and admit to myself that I probably could have fallen under the category of being addicted to a game. Fortunately, however, I didn’t have it nearly as bad as some other people do, and I was able to move on from it.
This is a bit of a tricky subject to talk about, though, whichever way you slice it. Certainly not all MMO players are addicted, and even among those who could probably be classed as such, not all are having their life seriously impaired by it. Without really starting to dig into a very deep subject, I feel that “healthy addiction” isn’t entirely impossible here.
I also think that, as avid game players, we frequently have a knee-jerk “BUT I’M NOT LIKE THAT” response when this sort of thing is brought up, lest our hobby be looked down upon more than it already frequently is.
…but on the other hand, it’s probably something to keep in the back of your mind as a valid phenomena and one that you or someone you know might be familiar with. One can become addicted to anything, and games are not an exception.
The funny thing is that, for me anyway, I don’t look back at my WoW-playing-time as something that took time away from the rest of my “life”. Rather, it was something that took time away from dozens of other games that I could have been playing. Variety is, as they say, the spice of life.
And so I turn the floor over to you, readers! Ever been where I’ve been?
Yesterday I had a really weird, specific gaming urge. Namely, I suddenly felt the urge to gather up a party of stereotypical fantasy characters and go around and hit monsters in the face with swords and fireballs.
…you guys DO know what I’m talking about, right?
Aww jeah.
The original Final Fantasy is straightforward and to the point. You don’t pick up new party members as you go along, you get all of them before you even start. The “story”, as much as there is one, is pretty much laid out at your feet in the first three minutes. Oh, and there’s grinding. There’s a lot of grinding.
Playing the game yesterday went something like this:
“Oh hey, I can buy all this armor and magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
Spend about a half hour grinding monsters. Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
Spend about three minutes traveling to the next town.
“Oh hey, I can buy all this upgraded armor and new magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
Spend about a half hour grinding monsters. Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
And it was at that point that I’d filled my oldschool JRPG grinding quota for the day and I saved and quit for the time being.
Now, you’d think that a system like this wouldn’t have a whole lot of appeal. I mean, if you’re gonna spend the game grinding, you’d might as well pad it with some story and character development, right? That’s how most later RPGs work, right? I mean, if I was gonna play some classic FF, I should’ve picked IV or VI or something. Right?
Maybe.
But there’s something deliciously simple about forgetting all of that and, just, I dunno… throwing lightning bolts and fireballs around for no reason at all, other than to buy some Potions.
I actually made these, a long time ago.
And besides, who among us can listen to this song with dry eyes?
