This is more tangent than content
Someone smart once asked my why i play videogames. Okay, that person was really me, but the question is still important. So why waste all of this time in front of a screen when you could be interacting with people in real life? (And lets forget MMOG interactions for the moment). Could it be that interacting with software constructs is actually preferrable to interacting with real, flesh and blood people? As i usually say when i am stalling for time so that i can collect my thoughts, that's a tough question. So i'm just going to write support for both the yes and no answers. Not only will this allow me to contradict myself without a second thought, it will also allow me to be glib about it. I can see the validity in both sides of the argument, so take from this what you will.
Yes, I would prefer to play videogames versus interacting with people...
It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and i was working a shitty bagboy job in a shitty, upscale grocery store just down the street from my parents' house. One of my roommates had been desperate for me to get some game he was always wanting to play, some breakout hit called 'Grand Theft Auto III'. I'd heard about it, but being heavily into RPGs at the time, the free-form violence didn't seem all that appealing to me. But i relented, seeing it on sale, (used, of course) at the local Funcoland. I don't remember when i really got addicted to it, but i do remember driving home on my lunch break to try and finish a mission that had been giving me trouble the night before. And i remember how much the sport utility vehicles in the game reminded me of the ones the trophy wives wanted me to load their groceries into. I loved stomping on corpses long after they were dead, trying to get two hookers into my car, and the fact that my family thought i looked like the protagonist. But what really got me was the fact that i didn't have to do any of those things. I can't count how many hours i burned just driving around listening to the radio. Heck, i could have done that in real life with songs i hadn't heard fifty times that week already.
GTA was a way for me to escape from the drudgery of my mindless day job. It's easy to believe that i would prefer to play videogames than go to work, but what's harder to understand is why i preferred to play videogames over interacting with real people in real life. For one thing, when i brought stress home from work, there was nothing wrong with getting angry in (or at) a videogame. The character i played could be exactly what i wanted to be in real life, some silent dude who didn't take shit from anyone. While i had to smile and say paper or plastic at work, i could grit my teeth and let off a few round of my uzi at the passing cops.
And then there's the obvious, when you fuck something up in a videogame, you can press restart and keep trying. There's a lot of people out there who claim that this is making a nation of desensitized killers (fuck off Jack Thompson), and maybe they are right, but what does this say about the games themselves? Perfection of action, or as most people would call it 'getting it right' is difficult to do in life, so it's a reassuring alternative to allow people to go back and retry their mistakes in a videogame.
The next summer i worked the same shit job at the same shit store. But this time i spent the summer playing Final Fantasy X. Same drive home at lunch to level up. This time, i got wrapped up in the story as opposed to the action. Being a hopeless romantic at heart, i identified with Tidus's clumsy attempts to court Yuna. But it was extremely engrossing for me to play out these characters' lives over the course of a few short weeks. Tidus grew from an overconfidant fop to a nuanced hero, and all the while the characters drew closer together as they risked everything to save the world. I kept coming back to Spira, attempting to get a better grasp on what people (even prewritten ones) would do when they were stuck in a struggle to save the world. Obviously that's something that you can't really experience in our everyday life.
So my point is, sometimes i prefer to interact with videogame characters, because i get to meet them in a situation that i never would get to experience in my days as a “courtesy clerk.” And they were relationships that i could tap into on my own time; turning them on and off whenever i felt like it. And i'd never be told “turn that off and come to dinner.”
No, i'd rather talk to people than some prewritten, predefined script...
As much as i hate to use it, Final Fantasy VII is the perfect example for this. While i played it, i was thoroughly engrossed, even though i am less enthused now. It was a huge world i could get lost in, there were people i could meet and try to recruit, sidequests to take part in, chocobo races to win, and a complex love triangle between three of the only people able to save a dying world. But after Aeris died, i kind of lost interest. Sure, revenge is always a good gameplay motivator, but there was no way for me to ever save her. I want to play games where i am a nobody turned into a somebody, worlds where i can actually make a difference in all that i do. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, in fact, it can really make a game more visceral if connections between characters are made and then broken. But if that does happen, i want it to be my fault. Not part of a script.
Now i hope you are saying hold on, only a little while ago you wanted exotic and dangerous situations you had no idea were coming. Well, i was raised on the disney ideal of hero-gets-the-girl, and that's the way i want it to be. I like beating goombas disguised as Bowser to rescue Toad before i get to Princess Peach. I like trials and tribulations before a victory, the harder the better. But i want it to mean something when i win. I like the image of the hero riding off into the sunset. And (for now, at least) it seems to me that videogames are really only at the level of a choose-your-own adventure book. You can do what you want, but really, there's only one ending that works.
My original intent with this entry was to map out some of the things that go in in interacting with game characters. Somehow i think that i may have been unable to convey what i really mean when i asked that question. Obviously, it is very difficult for a game to approach the complexity of real life. Answers to questions can very easily come out differently, even if the words are the same.
So, if games can't replicate the subtleties of human-human interaction, what can they do to compensate. As i see it, game interactions fall into very distinct categories. You have your good and evil, your friend and foe. You have your nebulous relationships and you have your clear cut relationships. You have your brothers and your lovers. The role of characters in a videogame has some similarities to the supporting cast of a movie. They mirror the main character, and provide a deeper look into the nuances of the person the player is pretending to be. Often, though, these other characters will be developed in their own right, and even be given the chance to develop on their own. What is missing, for me anyway, is the idea that a character's actions will make a difference to the other characters. Some games have in fact explored this, RPGs mostly. But there is an important distinction here: these are the results of major choices. If you choose option x and go to location y with object z, person Q will join your group. It might take awhile, but i think it would be interesting if a game reacted to what a player did to get object z, and have another person in the group either take offense, or react positively to the way that the player got the object. Say a character chose to leave the party because the player stole and murdered to get object z.
I think that i have strayed far enough from my original topic, so i will close with this: i play games to see and do things that my fragile form could not otherwise accomplish, to interact and fall in love with people i would never otherwise meet, to see worlds i would never be able to survive in, and to make choices that i would never otherwise make. In short, i play videogames to be a person that i am not.
Yes, I would prefer to play videogames versus interacting with people...
It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and i was working a shitty bagboy job in a shitty, upscale grocery store just down the street from my parents' house. One of my roommates had been desperate for me to get some game he was always wanting to play, some breakout hit called 'Grand Theft Auto III'. I'd heard about it, but being heavily into RPGs at the time, the free-form violence didn't seem all that appealing to me. But i relented, seeing it on sale, (used, of course) at the local Funcoland. I don't remember when i really got addicted to it, but i do remember driving home on my lunch break to try and finish a mission that had been giving me trouble the night before. And i remember how much the sport utility vehicles in the game reminded me of the ones the trophy wives wanted me to load their groceries into. I loved stomping on corpses long after they were dead, trying to get two hookers into my car, and the fact that my family thought i looked like the protagonist. But what really got me was the fact that i didn't have to do any of those things. I can't count how many hours i burned just driving around listening to the radio. Heck, i could have done that in real life with songs i hadn't heard fifty times that week already.
GTA was a way for me to escape from the drudgery of my mindless day job. It's easy to believe that i would prefer to play videogames than go to work, but what's harder to understand is why i preferred to play videogames over interacting with real people in real life. For one thing, when i brought stress home from work, there was nothing wrong with getting angry in (or at) a videogame. The character i played could be exactly what i wanted to be in real life, some silent dude who didn't take shit from anyone. While i had to smile and say paper or plastic at work, i could grit my teeth and let off a few round of my uzi at the passing cops.
And then there's the obvious, when you fuck something up in a videogame, you can press restart and keep trying. There's a lot of people out there who claim that this is making a nation of desensitized killers (fuck off Jack Thompson), and maybe they are right, but what does this say about the games themselves? Perfection of action, or as most people would call it 'getting it right' is difficult to do in life, so it's a reassuring alternative to allow people to go back and retry their mistakes in a videogame.
The next summer i worked the same shit job at the same shit store. But this time i spent the summer playing Final Fantasy X. Same drive home at lunch to level up. This time, i got wrapped up in the story as opposed to the action. Being a hopeless romantic at heart, i identified with Tidus's clumsy attempts to court Yuna. But it was extremely engrossing for me to play out these characters' lives over the course of a few short weeks. Tidus grew from an overconfidant fop to a nuanced hero, and all the while the characters drew closer together as they risked everything to save the world. I kept coming back to Spira, attempting to get a better grasp on what people (even prewritten ones) would do when they were stuck in a struggle to save the world. Obviously that's something that you can't really experience in our everyday life.
So my point is, sometimes i prefer to interact with videogame characters, because i get to meet them in a situation that i never would get to experience in my days as a “courtesy clerk.” And they were relationships that i could tap into on my own time; turning them on and off whenever i felt like it. And i'd never be told “turn that off and come to dinner.”
No, i'd rather talk to people than some prewritten, predefined script...
As much as i hate to use it, Final Fantasy VII is the perfect example for this. While i played it, i was thoroughly engrossed, even though i am less enthused now. It was a huge world i could get lost in, there were people i could meet and try to recruit, sidequests to take part in, chocobo races to win, and a complex love triangle between three of the only people able to save a dying world. But after Aeris died, i kind of lost interest. Sure, revenge is always a good gameplay motivator, but there was no way for me to ever save her. I want to play games where i am a nobody turned into a somebody, worlds where i can actually make a difference in all that i do. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, in fact, it can really make a game more visceral if connections between characters are made and then broken. But if that does happen, i want it to be my fault. Not part of a script.
Now i hope you are saying hold on, only a little while ago you wanted exotic and dangerous situations you had no idea were coming. Well, i was raised on the disney ideal of hero-gets-the-girl, and that's the way i want it to be. I like beating goombas disguised as Bowser to rescue Toad before i get to Princess Peach. I like trials and tribulations before a victory, the harder the better. But i want it to mean something when i win. I like the image of the hero riding off into the sunset. And (for now, at least) it seems to me that videogames are really only at the level of a choose-your-own adventure book. You can do what you want, but really, there's only one ending that works.
My original intent with this entry was to map out some of the things that go in in interacting with game characters. Somehow i think that i may have been unable to convey what i really mean when i asked that question. Obviously, it is very difficult for a game to approach the complexity of real life. Answers to questions can very easily come out differently, even if the words are the same.
So, if games can't replicate the subtleties of human-human interaction, what can they do to compensate. As i see it, game interactions fall into very distinct categories. You have your good and evil, your friend and foe. You have your nebulous relationships and you have your clear cut relationships. You have your brothers and your lovers. The role of characters in a videogame has some similarities to the supporting cast of a movie. They mirror the main character, and provide a deeper look into the nuances of the person the player is pretending to be. Often, though, these other characters will be developed in their own right, and even be given the chance to develop on their own. What is missing, for me anyway, is the idea that a character's actions will make a difference to the other characters. Some games have in fact explored this, RPGs mostly. But there is an important distinction here: these are the results of major choices. If you choose option x and go to location y with object z, person Q will join your group. It might take awhile, but i think it would be interesting if a game reacted to what a player did to get object z, and have another person in the group either take offense, or react positively to the way that the player got the object. Say a character chose to leave the party because the player stole and murdered to get object z.
I think that i have strayed far enough from my original topic, so i will close with this: i play games to see and do things that my fragile form could not otherwise accomplish, to interact and fall in love with people i would never otherwise meet, to see worlds i would never be able to survive in, and to make choices that i would never otherwise make. In short, i play videogames to be a person that i am not.
posted by Mike at 11:53 AM
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