A New Game

I've gone over two weeks without videogames.  Sort of.  Played a little *God of War* at work, I mean, how could I not?  And then there's the DDR.  Even still, there are cravings.  I keep habitually going to Gamerankings and checking out the new games.  It looks like the PSP has some killer apps.  I've still got Halo 2 waiting to be played, and whatever was last shipped from Gamefly.  Haven't opened it yet.  Tom Forsyth pointed out a modern Windows-port of Elite I want to check out.  And then there's this text MMO that sounds interesting.

Reading *Rules of Play* I just finished the chapter on Gaming-As-Pleasure.  An intriguing chapter that I wish went deeper.  My favorite games seem to hit that pleasure thing right on.  This is probably more due to my particular tastes than to a unified theory of game pleasure, though.  Anyhow, the chapter ends discussing gaming-as-addiction, and they basically brush the idea off as stupid.  It reminded me of something I blogged about a long time ago.  Stevie Case and Mark Surfas brushed off the addiction idea as stupid, also.  I'm not sure that's the tack to take - as I said before, let's admit that it is an addiction.  But a fairly harmless one.  Like caffeine.

(On the violence thing in that old article, I now know more than I knew then.  Motor vehicles and firearms kill way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way more people than videogames.)

Taking the past couple weeks to detox has actually been good for me - I've gotten some reading done, I've invented a card game designed to lead to emergent stories (it needs a *lot* of work, but it shows some promise), and I've started submitting short fiction to Zoetrope, an online writer's workshop thingy.

And then, today, I realized:  Zoetrope is a computer game.  You turn in your short story, and then people review it.  The goal is to get better review scores.  It's a hard game.  High variance.  Tough to tell what the rules are;  and the rules are constantly changing.  You can't just copy the best story up there and expect to get the same score they got.  And it's part diplomacy;  you can butter up the reviewers when you review their stories, and increase your points.  I'd forgotten how addictive it is.  I'm sublimating.  One game addiction for another.

Comments

[Zack Hiwiller]

What is this Zoetrope you speak of? And how could one find it?

[Obi Busta Nobi]

God of War... mmm good. :o)

[Jamie]

http://www.zoetrope.com

[Zack Hiwiller]

Ah, for some reason I figured it was something more than just a literary magazine. I guess I was looking for something like critters.org.

Thanks. :-)

[Jamie Fristrom]

But it is more than a literary magazine...and it's just like critters.org, except more slanted towards contemporary lit. They also have a literary magazine, which they use the site to promote, but it's a full-on community of critique.

[Anne]

Interesting post . . . both this one and the editthispage one.

This is something The Husband and I deal with constantly, because we have the geekiest six-year-old on the planet (six days through Halo 2, and that with going to bed early on school nights).

The Boy is terrifyingly smart -- and a gamer to the core. He wants to drop out of school to go work for Bungie, because he is concerned they are going to mess up his vision for Halo 3. And he has a basic design document.

Reality vs. simulation? Simulation, of course. We know a game is good when he plays it in "real life." I got to be Cortana for an entire month, once. The Husband had to be Capt. Keyes -- guess who got to be Master Chief?

Interestingly, he does not exhibit aggression, even following extended gaming sessions. His "real life" variations lean toward rehabilitating the bad guys, and making friends with the opposing side (in Halo 3, he wants Master Chief to lead a revolution for the good aliens against the Prophets).

This may be caused by the fact that we stay very aware of what he is playing -- there must be clear deliniation between the "good" guys and "bad" guys, and no "grey" areas (sorry, Boy -- nothing from Rockstar at all).

He does have socialization issues, but they could just as easily be attributed to his intelligence (actual quote from parent-teacher conference concerning his refusal to color: "I know you need a break sometimes, and I would be happy to teach the class for you. Q needs help with this, H needs help with that, etc., etc. Just don't make me color -- it's stupid and pointless.") and lack of interest in "normal" games (why play tag when you can play Mech Depot?).

Addiction? Well, yeah.

But at least our brains are engaged. And that's more than you can say for most of the population.

[Badman]

My online grumble with Steam is that I'd rather it simply validated on installation, instead of every time you fire up the game. CD-based games don't make you type in the CD-key every time you run them, do they?

[Zack Hiwiller]

Ah ha! I see. They don't make it very clear until you have actually registered. Many thanks.