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.
I was visiting my nephews, again. Within seconds of seeing me fiddle with my Kindle, my older nephew, Jack, who is 8, asked me, again, if my Kindle had any books on it.
“Uh, no, sorry Jack,” was my reply, letting a white lie skip through my teeth. I knew his mother and father might be none too pleased to see the two of us hunched over the tiny screen reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” or “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”
What his parents are doing is difficult. They’ve chosen to keep Jack book-free for as long as possible. Of course, Jack has gotten a taste of books. He gets to read on special occasions, and will probably read at friends’ houses where the rules are different.
I suspect his parents will persist until they can’t hold out any longer, until peer pressure from schoolmates, combined with the reality that kids of Jack’s generation will be inexorably bound to printing technology like none before them, forces them to relent.
Perhaps it’s a lost cause. Still, key questions can be raised here, and they are good ones to consider. What is the appropriate age to let kids loose in the paperback playscape? Are books OK for 8-year-olds? Seven-year-olds? Six? How young is too young?
Some books are appropriate for certain age groups and some books aren’t; obviously, no one is allowing their 5-year-old to read “The Lord of the Flies.” (Jeezum, let’s hope.)
I’m no expert, but I’ve been reading up on some of the research. For one, the trend is that each year, younger and younger kids are experiencing page time.
This article references a study saying that since 2005, “the average age that U.S. youngsters started to use printed materials had fallen from just over 8 to just over 6 1/2.”
Educational psychologist and author Jane Healy recently wrote: “My position is that children are better off without books before the age of 7. By age 7, their brains have undergone a great deal of maturation and the basics should be in there. They can start to expand the type of thinking they can do so they can actually start to get something worthwhile using good literature, for example, good travel guides.”
To my mind, the issue goes beyond the debatable ill-effects of book violence — which I debunk in this op-ed, suggesting that book violence can be a good thing.
To me, the issue isn’t about fears that books instill violent behavior, but rather that books are usurping the power of more conventional toys. There may be merits to shielding boys and girls like Jack from their vellum futures, at least temporarily, if kids can first learn to amuse themselves without automatically reaching for a bound sheaf.
The truck, the toy sword, the soccer ball, the sandbox, the board game, the pad of paper, the videogame: All can be as magical and entrancing as anything a publishing house can cook up. Perhaps this is the rule of thumb: Once a love of digital play is instilled in young minds and habits, then let kids run free through the wild world of words.
Obviously there are no definitive answers. These are questions that have been discussed on Wired.com before. But I hope this space can continue to provide an excellent forum to discuss the issues. I’m curious to hear your viewpoints. Please comment below.
And, next time I see my nephew Jack, I’ll have a better idea of how to counter his whining — sweet whining, but whining nonetheless.
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.
So as you may or may not know, the press preview beta of Deus Ex: Human Revolution was leaked to the general public a couple of weeks back. Using entirely legal methods and the appropriate channels, I have been playing said beta recently, and I’m here to tell you something about it.
But first let’s take a stroll back in time. You’ll recall from my top five games that I rank Deus Ex rather highly, and you may further be aware that this is hardly a rare position to take; it is widely and justly regarded as a true classic of the medium. Then along came Invisible War. Now, I want to stress, I don’t think IW is a bad game per se, I just don’t think it comes close to living up to the standard set by the original.
In today’s climate of nickel-and-dime DLC, two-weapons-only, and ready cash-ins rather than a desire to make a serious game I was therefore deeply skeptical of DX:HR. It sounded like they were saying what we wanted to hear, but just because the PR says something doesn’t mean it’s true. I was not at all convinced that it would be worthy.
Eidos does not make zat kind of mistake!
And you know what? It is. It really, really is a sublime game. It hits all the right notes – the atmosphere is strong and though not as gloomy as 2052, 2027 still has an edge of cyberpunk dystopia to it. The game itself plays very well, and most of all – this is the bit that really sold me – it has divergent solutions to problems. I went a particular path with my augmentations and later found that I really wished I had done otherwise, because a task would have been a lot easier if I had made different choices. That’s far too rare these days, and I deeply appreciate it. The dialog is very solid as well, characters are well-developed and a joy to interact with. And Faridah is my waifu.
Reaction to the leak has been so roundly positive that some rumor it was a deliberate one; I’ve seen no evidence for it (Though a conspiracy surrounding Deus Ex is far too enjoyable to write off entirely), but I can safely say that regardless of who was to blame, it was the single best way to get me on board, and from what I’ve seen around the Internet, a lot of other people feel the same. Further, and to their great credit, Eidos and Square-Enix not only said they’ll take no action against those who play the leak, they have specifically asked for feedback on the forums from people who play it. Don’t know about anyone else, but for me this all adds up to a preorder.
As you may have caught wind of by now, if you follow gaming news at all, the US Supreme Court has ruled 7-2 that a California law which prohibited the sale of violent videogames to minors was in violation of the First Amendment. You can read the full opinion here, if you are so inclined, but I’d recommend checking out the first couple of pages of it at least.
This is pretty cool in and of itself, because it will hopefully put an end to the ridiculous laws that spring up in the US every now and then which try and stamp on videogames in one way or another. More importantly however, this is a ruling from the highest court in the land that videogames are as meritorious in the eyes of the law, and as deserving of protection, as older forms of art. This is hugely significant, not just because it lets us go “Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah” at Ebert, but because between this and the recent decision by the National Endowment for the Arts (i.e. the Federal Government) that games are art, we’ve finally, finally reached a stage where the legal opinions have reached a point where they have caught up with reality.
This is significant even if you’re not in America, by the way. Because so many companies are American and because so much of the gaming market is in America, whatever rulings the US makes on a subject like this are going to have global ramifications. This kind of recognition and protection is not only precedent, but will have a tangible effect, as it will encourage other countries to follow suit, and will embolden the games markets in other countries to press for similar recognition and protection if it is not already forthcoming.
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?
So Pike and I have been playing a little game of Civ IV over the past couple of days. Standard enough settings; just she and I, Pangaea map, regular sized world, etc. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t play as she was expecting me to play.
See, normally we’re both turtles and techers. As I’ve said before on this blog I very much like to establish a solid defense, build up within it, establish a strong technological lead, and then strike once I am prepared and assured victory. But I knew this wouldn’t work with Pike, because she does the exact same thing, and it would be unlikely that I could establish a significant tech lead at any point for long enough to overrun her.
So I did something unorthodox, and this unorthodoxy proved successful. What I did was, I built an army. Not a vast 30-unit stack of doom, just a moderate sized stack, but enough that I could bring force to bear against any one city of my choosing and hopefully conquer it.
My I Legion. Out of... how many, I wonder?
Now, the eagle-eyed and Civ-informed among you might notice something from that picture. Nibru is a city of the Sumerians. Sumeria is led by Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is a Defensive leader. In fact, once I got eyes on the city, I discovered that she had very wisely been whipping archers out every turn, and even though it lacks a barracks, they all started with decent promotions anyway. Had I actually attacked, I’m not at all confident that I could have won. But Pike calculated that her own chances were poor, and was also fearful of a ship I had knocking around that she presumed had marine forces aboard (It was just an old unit I had sent out to explore and forgotten about entirely), so she capitulated to my demands, and several technologies were mine for free. More insidiously, her extra units both cost her population to create, thus significantly slowing her growth and causing unhappiness, and the increase in military units will also be a drain on her treasury.
I give no quarter. Talk about times you have been cruelly aggressive or trolly in multiplayer games!
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?
Just going to throw up a little thing I recently wrote in a game of Hearts of Iron II: Darkest Hour that I played. I was Japan, and I was stunned by how vicious the Chinese defense was. Enjoy!
The Heroes of Ningbo
For decades the Chinese resistance to the Japanese advances during the Second Sino-Japanese War has inspired patriotism and pride in the Chinese people. It has served as a model for all those who since resisted Japanese rule, from the remains of the Communists to the various abortive warlord attempts at semi-independence from Tokyo. Arguably none are as lauded as the men of the First Battle of Ningbo, Nov. 26th 1938-Jan 3rd 1939 by Western dating.
With a paper strength of just over 70,000, the 18 months of war had left divisions in tatters and brigades missing from the face of the earth, and most historian’s estimates suggest that the true number of Chinese soldiers involved was approximately 56,000. They were led by Field Marshal Tang Shengzhi, who had grown dissatisfied with Premier Chiang’s leadership and perceived personal betrayal, but had nobly put aside these concerns in the name of fighting for China. He had been earmarked by Chiang as the leader for the defense of Nanking but the Japanese amphibious assault on the region had been so rapid that the city fell before the Chinese could muster a defense.
The Japanese forces numbered some 60,000, all regular infantry supplemented by six brigades of Tankettes (Japanese armored car and tank technology having lagged greatly in comparison to the European belligerents of WW2). Having driven Chinese forces out of the surrounding regions of Jinhua and Wenzhou, the Chinese had been cut off in Ningbo and its environs. Some of the units had been stationed in the region for some time but the majority were those who had hastily and continually retreated from the fighting in the north. Nevertheless Tang managed to inspire his men – who were at this stage a rather ragtag group of KMT troops, absorbed warlords, and refugees from the Communist enclave which the Japanese had so brutally overrun in the spring of 1938.
Cut off, surrounded, and stalwart to the last.
Armed with outdated equipment, run ragged by over a year and a half of constant retreats and fighting, the men in Ningbo were given a stark speech by Field Marshal Tang as the Japanese drew close. A British emigrant to China in the 1900s who lived in the city had the foresight to record the speech as he sheltered a Chinese soldier who had been wounded in the fighting, and this is generally taken as the definitive copy thereof.
“Men, we have come here from many paths. I have myself served both the Kuomintang government and have served some who oppose them. I know among you are soldiers from all over China, some of whose homes are now in the hands of the vicious Japanese, some of whose remain behind out lines. It makes no matter now: We are all Chinese, and while these eastern barbarians remain on our soil we have no differences, we have no ideologies, except liberation of China for the Chinese!
“I will not lie to you. We face a grim task. Many of us shall perish in the coming battle. Our enemy, barbarous as they are, are well-equipped and well-trained. We make do with outdated and mismatching equipment, scrimped from local collections or donated by friends abroad. But we have things they do not: We fight for our homes! We fight for our country! And we fight in land excellent for defense! We have already put much effort into preparing our defense positions, and any Japanese advance shall come at a high cost in blood.
“We know taking Ningbo is crucial to the Japanese advance along the southern coast of China. As long as we remain here their forces are tied down. So do not hope for only survival! China depends on us! Hope that our actions, whether we win or lose, whether you live or die, cost the Japanese time! Every day we hold them here is a day for our brothers to train. Every hour we hold them is an hour for new guns to be built or bought, for trenches and pillboxes to be dug and built. I cannot promise you all survival, for we know the brutality of the Japanese even to those who surrender. But I can promise you victory, if you do your duties and hold to the last!”
Stunningly, the defense of Ningbo went even better than Tang had dared to promise. Casualties were very high on both sides; over 12,000 Japanese dead (Their second-highest losses until that point, only exceeded by the Battle of Yan’an) and over 15,000 Chinese estimated dead among the military alone. Yet with their outdated equipment, poor training (Only two of the seven Chinese brigades were infantry proper. The rest were militia units.), and near-total lack of heavy equipment, without hope of retreat or escape, and with supplies rapidly dwindling, the tenacious Chinese forced the Japanese attackers to withdraw after five weeks of brutal combat.
To the eternal chagrin of Tokyo, their second assault on Ningbo went little better than the first. Despite using fully rested and reinforced units, naval bombardment, air support, and facing an encircled and trapped enemy, the Second Battle of Ningbo lasted from January 30th until February 28th. Casualties on the Chinese sides were considerably lower – the Chinese had had time to dig in formidably and could repel the Japanese attacks with much greater ease. The Japanese lost almost 16,000 troops in the second battle. For the Chinese some reinforcements had been drawn from the locals of the region – not exactly front-line troops, but the few weeks of training had allowed at least a few hundred more vaguely competent soldiers to face the Japanese. Moreover, some dozens of brave souls had volunteered to assist Ningbo and had traveled there on supply ships, which faced increasingly dangerous Japanese interdiction attempts.
It was not until mid-April, when new units who had recently been readied in the Home Islands arrived in Wenzhou, that the IJA was finally able to crack the nut that was Ningbo. It cost them a total of over 60,000 lives, held up the Japanese advance along the coast for four months, and required the reallocation of two full IJN fleets to provide offshore support as well as four wings of the IJAAF’s air fleet, and a doubling of the commitment of troops from 6 divisions to 12.
It was not enough to stop Japan. But the defense went down in Chinese history as one of the most tenacious, brave acts of the entire war against the Empire of Japan, and it gave districts further down the southern Chinese coast a great deal of time to recuperate, regain strength, organize themselves, and dig in, making subsequent battles much more costly and difficult for the Japanese. Supplies smuggled in by sea helped to keep the Ningbo army in something resembling fighting condition, and it required an embarrassing degree of effort on the part of the Japanese to succeed in their attack. It was the first time the Chinese had prevailed to such a degree in engaging the Japanese and gave an enormous morale boost to the soldiers who remained facing the Empire throughout China.
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?
