Intro. to Pem's Games Interest
12/3/2002:
On Games - Big Aside
I am quite a gamer. I always played games as a kid (Atari, NES, SNES),
and I got especially into RPGs and RTSs. I was pretty extreme in high
school, but to be honest I had the time in high school - high school spent
excessive amounts of time in lectures that covered broad topics on the surface.
In other words, there wasn't much work (and especially not in-depth work)
outside of those 8 hours of lectures. This is of course a generalization..
Anyways, college here at RIT involves lots of in-depth learning, work, and
projects in areas I like and chose. So, my gaming now of days is much more
"on and off". It's closer "off" especially when I'm taking 19 credits,
doing big projects, preparing for multiple major exams, and looking for a
co-op, etc. And when it's "on" these days, it's typically done much less
than back when I didn't have other things to do.
In general I like to play a large variety of games; often I'll play one game fairly seriously for a month or two then move to something else. But every once in a while, I get hooked (addicted) to a specific game longer than I would normally consider sane. Before I mention what types of games I generally play, here's a bit of history on the main games that I got addicted to.
Extreme Game Addiction #1 - Myth: The Fallen Lords
In these lovely days of high school, I got really into on-line games. This
started out with modem to modem games (such as Doom and Doom2, Command and
Conquer, and Warcraft-2). Eventually I got the strategy/tactical game
"Myth: The Fallen Lords", in which players could connect to games through an
chat-interface called bungie.net. This lead eventually to the creation of
an "order" (known in other games as clans) with me and some high school friends.
I was the order leader - EvilPem ~Evilmen~ (yes the order name was rather silly;
basically meant to make a joke of orders with dark sounding names). In
these innocent days, I did things like recruit members, become ranked in the top
100 or even top 10 out of many thousands of Myth players (seriously - I did this
multiple times), organize order team matches, and keep up an order web page in
addition to playing insane amounts of Myth.
Extreme Game Addiction #2 - EverQuest
After my Myth addiction died out, I still played some other games but none as
long or as in-depth as I had Myth:TFL. Until, something else knew and
exciting came out - EverQuest. EverQuest was (as far as I know) the first
MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer On-line Role-Playing Game) to feature an expansive
3D world. I never played it's major 2D precursor Ultima On-line, but I
found the 3D world so much more impressive anyways. An EverQuest server
holds a world that takes hours to travel across and many more hours to explore,
and houses about 800 to 1400 people in the world who can interact with each
other (talk, walk around together, team together, trade items, etc). I had
to get the game simply for being technically impressive, but the game-play kept
me playing longer and harder than any other game.
These next three paragraphs are for those who have heard of EverQuest, and know that it can be quite addicting. Suffice to say that I played multiple characters, and my main was eventually level 59 enchanter who spent most of his non-leveling non-raid time mastering the trade-skill jewelry and visiting the entire EQ world using his illusion and faction spells. I quit the game nearly a year prior to writing this, but have recently considered trying it again with the new expansions (or trying out EQ-2 or some other MMORPG).
One thing about EQ I have to mention is a general dislike I had about certain aspects of the game-play. Although this may be a personal preference, I considered the best game-play in EQ to be when teaming with a single 6 person group in a dungeon crawl (such as typically happened in the zone "Sebilis"). Trading and questing were also fun. I think raids were extremely over-done. This is not to say I don't think there should be any raids, but I wish the game designers had pushed the single group dungeon crawl thing and some quests that involved pure soloing more. To do this, they would have to make certain zones restricted to a limited number of people. These group-fight areas or solo-fight areas would make it so players could only earn certain exceptional items through well-organized and challenging combat (this is very different than joining a raid - which is typically an unorganized horde of as many as 20 to 70 people).
For example, there could be 15 copies of a particular dungeon crawl zone. This would not take up insane amounts of server resources, because it would be smaller than a typical dungeon zone that supports as many as 15 groups (90 people). Another way would be to have sub-parts of a zone that only a single group could enter. Entrance to such a single group-fight zone might require a Wizard or a Druid teleport. There could also be time limits on entering inside a group-fight area, followed by a periods of time being banned from that specific area. Anyways, I could explain further the specifics of this idea, but I've probably already gone too far :-)
Game Types I Like
I've played a lot more games than the two discussed above. Typically
I'm into what I consider to be more in-depth games that typically involve lots
of number-balancing behind them. This includes mostly RTS games and RPGs.
I can also get very into playing any game with a really good story - text, film,
and games are 3 very different mediums for telling stories with their own
advantages. I was into some 3D shooters for a while, but I'm long-sick of
such overly simple point-and-shoot games. I think it is still possible to
make some decent 3D shooters though (but mostly hybrids such as Hexen-2 or
System Shock, and mostly single player or co-op).
But an important aspect of what I like in a game is depth. This is not to say I don't enjoy playing some simpler games on occasion (just like I might watch some shallower movies). Yet in the long-run I generally value shallow games much less.
Brief Digression on Game "Fun" vs. "Beauty"
Yesterday, Andrew Phelps said something about CS being quite different from
Computer Games Development in that "typical CS's like algorithmic beauty"' and
that "games are supposed to be fun". I have to point out my viewpoint on
this. The type of games I like typically include some sort of "beauty of
game balance" - and this beauty is often very mathematically based. This
of course has to do with the type of games I like. Take for example a
well-balanced RPG class system or a well-balanced RTS system of units, counters,
and races. (Or a game with an exceptionally good and well-written story.)
My point is that games can have a deeper and much more intellectual "fun" to them that is based more on beauty. There are many action movies, horror movies, and comedies that are simply entertaining; and maybe worth watching to kill some time and get some cheap thrills. But some movies go beyond this. The same goes for books - there are many fun books that do not approach the depth of masterpieces. And the same goes for games.
What I'm Playing Now
Right now I've been playing primarily the following few games: Icewind Dale
2, Morrowind, Warcraft 3, and EverQuest. Icewind Dale 2 is what I've been
playing mostly. It's a pretty challenging and in-depth game if you always
play on the hardest skill level and then move on to the "Heart of Fury Mode".
I accidentally found a pretty extreme bug though, and am having to go out of my
way not to exploit it and keep hoping that they patch it.
Morrowind - I don't really play. I bought it (of course I don't steal anything - this should be obvious especially if you've read my "Brief Philosophy Aside" in Intro to me - Courses and Graphics Interest), but I'm like level 9 out of supposedly at least 80. The world was pretty impressive at first, and it seemed like a single player EQ with advantages such as more real-time style play and quests actually being saved. But, I realized that the fact that there's lots of other actual players in the EQ world is a large part of it's appeal. Morrowind got repetative too quickly for me, but I play it a little every once in a while.. sort of...
Warcraft 3 is the big multiplayer game I've been into recently. When I first got it, I was all about the single player and watching/reading everything on the Collector's Edition DVD multiple times. But after that single player stuff, the game has great replayability because of it's multiplayer on battle.net. The units and races are nicely diverse and well-balanced. I haven't played the game in a couple weeks, but I probably will again soon.
I've sort of came back to EQ. Not really. I tried to get my account back over the break; apparently someone else has it now somehow and I can't get it back (ha!). But for some reason I have two other people's accounts, so on the weekend I made a new character with my roommate who has never played the game before with these characters. We played for a couple hours, though most of this time I spent trying to give him a decent tutorial of the interface and what class he should play. (He's still such a "n00b"! By the way, he claims he mainly wants to try EQ now because he plans to play FF-11 when it comes out.)
So I'm also sort of looking for another deep game to get into for a while. Maybe. I'm pretty into my courses this quarter, and this is my first time overloading courses (19 credit hours). Plus, my two graphics courses look like they may be at least some of my hardest and most in-depth courses yet. But I'm sure I'll still have lots of free time, some of which can be used to play games.