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| Playing Computer Games Is Fucking Stupid (unf) by Bill Dungsroman 07/21/2003, 4:23pm PDT | ||||
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| Logan’s ROM
Remember all the great little hobbies you had as a kid? You’d dick around with your action figures, watch cartoons, read comic books and play computer games. As you got older, those self-same childish pursuits often went by the wayside, as your endocrine system had its way with you and you suddenly realized that girls weren’t all icky and foreign and weird and might possess something you couldn’t get from your old hobbies. Then, you got a little older and realized that your first impressions of girls was probably right, and you re-examined those old pastimes. Of course, a modicum of maturity needed to be inflected upon them – a half-hearted attempt to reconcile their immature roots. Playing with action figures begat collecting them (thereby justifying calling them “collectiblesâ€), watching Transformers begat watching Adult Swim, you traded up from Power Pack to the Vertigo line, and you…uh…still play video games. Hmm. Obviously, a discrepancy exists here. Look at you: you’re either approaching the Over-30 off ramp or you’ve already merged and you’re gunning the accelerator to keep up with traffic. You’re settling into your occupation of choice, you’re worried more about paying for your education than finishing it (or you’ve given up altogether with trying to finish it), and now you cobble together vacation days instead of waiting for your summer, winter, and spring breaks. Whoops – you grew up. How embarrassing. That’s fine, it’s perfectly natural, it happens to all of us – well, never to me. No, actually, it did, but it was purely by accident. One day I woke up, clipped my cell phone to the belt holding up my Khakis, and drove into to work, checked my email, and goofed around online as much as possible before my boss came in and I had to actually do some work. Pathetic. What to do now? Well, I still collect comics. I know the weird dude who runs the local comics store, and he holds my modest requests and keeps a look out for stuff I might like. None of that kiddie stuff, though, if you please. I also still play computer games. What the fuck am I doing still playing computer games? Isn’t one childish hobby, however much I have tried to maximize its maturity level, enough? And why computer games, arguably the most immature of hobbies? I’m 31 as of this writing. What’s my fucking problem? Asymptotic Illness The biggest problem with playing computer games is that computer games, for the most part, suck. Computer games made this year aren’t much better than games made five years ago, insomuch as they may be technically better, but they aren’t contextually better. Style over substance, if you will. As such, once you mature to around a pre-teen level, it isn’t likely that any game is going to be too sophisticated for you. Why not? We all know the answer to that: it’s the kiddies who buy most of the games. You’ve got to hit your target demographic, and if you’re over 25 pal, you’re out of it. There’s no appreciable return in making a game that us old guys will like. Imagine a graph of computer games’ target age demographic matched to your own age over time. The graph will curve up towards the 13 year level more-or-less linearly as your own age does, and then it will level out around 13 and continue along that imaginary line, what mathematicians call the asymptote, forever, never rising above it. So you end up in your 30’s stuck playing games geared towards a 13 year old. Define immaturity. Unlike other media of entertainment such as film and television, profits from games that won’t sell to the young demographic are never enough to justify their production. As such, the computer gaming industry is even more a slave to Look-alike Phenomenon – what gamers call “cloning†– than any other entertainment medium. Original concepts and ideas are usually deemed too risky and are discouraged overall, and nothing’s riskier in computer gaming than attempting to make a game that might not appeal to the young demographic. As a result, those games are never made in the first place or “dumbed down†to fit into the young demographic better, and any of us who would prefer more sophisticated games are, collectively, shit out of luck. Cult of the Ostrich So computer games are, for the most part, pretty stupid. What makes this worse? Well, the fact that they’re mostly stupid and we’re still playing them. This tells us two possible things: 1. We’re in partial or complete denial regarding their stupidity. There are plenty of people, of all ages (although it’s the older ones I’m more concerned with), who fall into this category. Read any message board about a certain game and see what happens if someone should suggest, however rationally, that the game isn’t very good. Amid a sea of OMG STFU FAG there are other supporters of the game who are obviously more mature, but not much less vehemently opposed to someone’s differing, negative opinion on the game in question. And you can find slavering fans for just about any game, and they’ll be of virtually any age, and if you disagree that their game isn’t anything but great, they’ll flame you mercilessly. How mature, no? 2. We know they’re stupid, but we continue playing them anyway. Why the hell would we do that? Putting this question to gamers results in various, mostly noncommittal, reasons: “It kills time;†“I know they suck but I don’t care†(or, more specifically, “I know this game sort of sucks but I don’t careâ€), “Most of the game sucks, but Feature A is kind of cool,†“Some new games (that aren’t out yet, naturally) coming out look promising,†and so on. Complacency at its finest. We’re all apparently looking for ways to waste time, so why not computer games over, say, watching TV? I’m firmly in the second camp. Does realizing that computer games suck help much? No, but that isn’t the point. The point is, here we are still playing them. We either trick ourselves or purposefully ignore how dumb and childish computer games are in order to keep paying for and playing them. Self-delusion and ignorance, I guess those might be considered adult behaviors, but they’re shitty ones. Propagating a hobby that is sorely lacking in fulfillment is ridiculous, but it’s something that we as gamers all do. The Best of the Worst Is Still Bad We can examine what are widely considered to be the “best†games for any genre and realize that even the finest available is still pretty goddamned lame. I like almost any kind of game, but if I had to be pinned down to one genre above any other it would be RPG. And in the genre of RPG, the apparent paradox of the “best†games still sucking comes in two forms: one rather obvious, the other perhaps not quite as much. Commercially speaking, the most popular RPGs are the Diablo and Baldur’s Gate series. Few games of any kind have flown off the shelf like both iterations of Diablo and Baldur’s Gate, games which were meant to (and, for a time, did) herald a revolution and explosion of RPGs. Naturally, what gamers mostly got were clones (next to Doom, is there any other game more infamous for being cloned than Diablo?) of these games, and nearly all of them sucked by any measure. However, both Diablo and Baldur’s Gate got big with a “One-Trick Pony†approach. Diablo tapped into our Skinner-esque reward compulsions, click-clicking ourselves into the night. What a stupid fucking game and stupid fucking way to waste time. And was it really that fun? That addictive element served as the basis for MMORPGs like Everquest, and you can ask players of that and similar games if they have all that much fun trudging around trying to level up. Baldur’s Gate played off our deep-rooted dorky desires to play D&D on the computer – which, interestingly enough, was a semi-mature progression from the pen and paper system. Without that license, however, Baldur’s Gate as a game isn’t very good – it’s built on severely unstable code, is somewhat poorly written and the middle portion of the game is fucking boring. If it hadn’t carried the coveted license and logo of AD&D, it wouldn’t have sold half as well, not after the reviews came out. Both games are pretty repetitious, which is the case for most games, RPG or not (although RPGs are the most notorious offender). Now, critically (and by opinion of most gamers on the internet) speaking, the most well written, deep, and sophisticated RPG is Planescape: Torment (PT). Many have found the game too verbose with its complicated dialogue trees and extensive character interactions. Indeed, a dialogue with a character in the game of moderate importance often takes up to 20 minutes. However, the progress of the story is fascinating, engaging, epic and unique. The setting, albeit in the realm of D&D lore, is still rather original and only shares minor resemblance to any other licensed D&D computer game. The quests are fairly inventive and intricate, with more than one solution available for many. Most interesting to me was that your alignment began as True Neutral and deviated towards law, chaos, good or evil depending your actions, instead of deciding on your alignment pre facto and then adjusting by reputation as you did in the other D&D games. Similarly, the ability to switch classes at virtually any point in the game was particularly inspired. Add in great music, graphics, and voice acting and you’ve got probably the best RPG ever made for the computer. I’m still trying to overlook the fact that PT was made almost four fucking years ago, with little to challenge it since. Of course, it failed to sell like a big winner, in spite (in an ironic sense) of getting a pretty cool trailer in the original Baldur’s Gate and getting released in the cocksuckingly positive press of it. Why? The kiddies didn’t dig on all them big words, philosophical thought and, y’know, role-playing – which, I may remind, has more to do with the character and the story (which PT was strong in) than with fighting battles over and over (which it was weakest in). As a matter of fact, you barely had to fight at all in PT – most quests had a nonviolent solution that you could pursue if you had high a enough Intelligence, Wisdom, and/or Charisma (PT grognards will invariably advise you to have high WIS, INT, and perhaps CHA to get the most out of the game). But here’s the rub: PT may be the best RPG ever made for the computer, but it’s still a gay and childish way to pass the time, because it’s still a goddamned computer game. Let me give you some examples. In order to engage in those aforementioned in-depth conversations with NPCs, you have to walk up to them (or, better yet, barge into their homes – although this happened far less in PT than it did in other D&D games) and, no matter who they were or what they were up to, say “Greetings!†like the fucking village idiot. Getting expository information from NPCs in these dialogues requires parroting a word or phrase from the NPC’s previous statement, so your character follows up with dopey questions like “Dead?†after a Dustmen bothers to explain his faction’s philosophy to you. Although replaying PT is more rewarding than it is for other RPGs, your choices are somewhat limited if you want to maximize your return on the game. That is, you need to play the game primarily as a mage. You can try it the first time as a fighter, but boy do you ever miss a ton of experience points with your big dumb brute plodding through the story, since so much of your potential XP comes from dialogue often dependent on your character’s WIS, INT, or CHA – none of which are considered vital traits for a fighter. Also, a fighter fights, and as I said, PT is short on big epic battles. As for playing as a thief: maybe, if you want a challenge after beating the game a couple of times. Another thing about fights: when they do come, they aren’t all that easy since besides magic, few PCs have ranged attacks (you sure as hell don’t – don’t even ask me why TNO has slots on his inventory screen for arrows or whatever). Prepare to get hit a lot. Sure, you can regenerate HP at a rate dictated by your CON, but pumping up that stat means ignoring WIS, INT and CHA, a road that leads to the Dumb Version of PT. I’d like to mention that the fighter path, the Dumb Version, reduces PT to a mere fraction of its enjoyment. That is, unless you dig waiting for generic Hive Thugs to regenerate on screen so you can kill them for a pittance of XP. So, in essence, the only real interesting way to play PT is to be a fighter first then a mage forever, with the occasional dabbling in thievery if the mood takes you. That’s a far cry from the character options available to you in Baldur’s Gate or even Diablo, of which some or all can be pretty successful without a significant loss of play value. But let’s say you want to be a fighter anyway. Besides the seriously appended playing experience, your weapons selection fucking sucks. Axes and…axes, really. Or, ha ha, clubs. Dak’kon laughs at you with his badass karach blade. Mages and thieves, similarly, both use knives. Whoopee-fucking-do, my head simply spins when I consider the myriad of weaponry I have to choose from. As a last niggling point, does TNO have to verbally acknowledge every time I click to move him? “All right.†“I’m gone.†Oh, just shut up and run, you scabby dick. Quit ruining my immersion in the game, such as it is, with your incessant babbling. I play computer games to try to get away from shit like that. I’ll Wrap This Up Now, Since You Have Better Things To Do – Like Play a Stupid Fucking Computer Game. |
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