My Life With PC Games (or why I don't play PC games anymore)

It's 1992 and I'm 7 years old. My uncle, who is a pastor of a local church is (ironically) showing me Wolfenstein 3D. It's so bloody and awesome. My favorite part is when I kill Hitler, and his body falls like a popped water balloon into a pile of bones, blood and flesh, with an intact Hitler head lying lifeless atop that heap. I've always wanted to kill Hitler that way.

PC gaming was simple back then. Before purchasing a game you had to answer only a few questions. Is your computer reasonably new? Does it run DOS/Windows? That was about all it took to run just about any computer game at the time. Wolfenstein 3D would give you graphs describing your computer's guts to you, but it all seemed pretty meaningless because it never affected your ability to kill Nazis/Hitler.

Installing the game was a simple, yet tedious process. Insert diskette 1, then 2, then 3, then 4. Boom. The game was installed, you typed in WOLF3D into the command prompt, and you sailed into bliss. That was it.

Things really started to change after that. Diskettes were easy to copy, so each time you started up the game you had to answer some cryptic question, usually about the game manual. "What object is on page 129?" Easy, an oil lamp. Annoying? Yes, especially if you lost the manual. But far from ruining your good time.

Windows 95/98 followed a couple years later and PC gaming was done mainly from there instead of DOS. Computers were getting more complex, so were games, and their technical requirements. You needed to worry about having enough RAM, disk space, processing power, and so forth. Installing games was still simple, if frought with problems. I remember feeling relieved if I was able to just install a game without any problems. Then came the initial bootup.

CRAP.

The sound doesn't work. Why not? My sound card is pretty new. Besides, it's a really popular sound card, so it should be supported. I check the manual, nothing of value. I uninstall and reinstall the game, boot it up. Whew, the sound works, good. I guess I'll never figure out what happened. Whatever, it's working now.

Two weeks pass and I'm having a great time with my game. It's working great, no problems since that sound thing.

CRAP.

The game crashed. Why did the game crash? All I got was an incredibly vague error message, and I couldn't even read it before the whole game disappeared leaving nothing but my clueless and windows desktop. Dammit, I hadn't saved in a while. OK, whatever, PC games crash, it's just what they do. They always have, and they always will, Dan, you know that. This isn't a surprise. I won't get too mad, because it only crashed once. I'll just play it again tomorrow.

Ok, I lost some progress but oh well. I don't mind doing fun things more than once.

CRAP.

It crashed again, at the exact same spot. This isn't good. Fortunately I played it safe and saved a bunch of times along the way. I can get right back into it.

CRAP.

Ok, this is a big problem. There's something seriously wrong here, because I just successfully and incidentally did a rigorous scientific test and the results are that when I reach a certain point, the game crashes. Uhhhh....

Another couple years pass. Video cards aren't called that yet. They're called 3D Acceleration cards. Before, the 3D was unaccelerated, which is really stupid. But, at the time, it's all we knew. We didn't know that you could speed up 3D, making everything prior the equivalent of playing Monopoly by yourself. 3D Accelerator cards aren't that difficult to understand, you either have one or you don't. Some games require one, so you get one for $100. There's a handful of different brands, but they're all effectively the same. They accelerate 3D and that's all you need.

Games are on CD now, and they usually require a code written on the CD case to play. Not too bad, but it felt like a big pain at the time. I get my 3D accelerated and wow. It looks good. Smoother or something. It sucks that I had to buy another computer component to get these results but whatever. I'm even having fewer glitches than before. 3D travelling at higher speeds must make it zip past bugs and glitches.

Another couple years go by. Video cards are starting to get complicated, but relatively straightfoward. Crashes are less frequent. Copy protection is getting more sophisticated and tedious. A regular computer is no longer good enough to play most headlining titles.

Another couple years trickle away and I can't for the life of me figure out which video card is the best one. Why in the hell is the 9600XT better than the 9800? How the blast am I supposed to figure this out? And that's just between one brand, and inside one numbering system. Forget about trying to compare video cards between two brands. I visit websites that benchmark the different video cards. They show me fancy color-coded graphs comparing all the different cards. I have next to no idea what I'm looking at. There's over 30 video cards on this graph, and the next graph of all the same cards looks completely different. OK, nevermind, I'll just buy a PS2.

Another few years. Man, Crysis looks fun and the graphics are remarkable. Assuming I only need to replace my video card and nothing else, it'll cost me close to $500 to get JUST a video card that's powerful enough to play this game at full graphical settings. I already tried to buy a video card once and I ended up confused and crying a lot. In reality, I'm going to need to replace every component of my PC. This will cost me closer to $1000 to play Crysis, and most PC games for the next 2, maybe 3 years, at THE LONGEST. This upgrade, by the way, will only affect gaming, as all other functions of my computer worked perfectly speedy with my current system, and will show no noticeable improvement after throwing $1000 at it. Also, when installing Crysis I'm going to have to deal with an anti-piracy system that's so pervasive and insulting that what I'm really doing is renting the game for $50. This is if I so choose to obey the law.

I could do that. Or...

I could just buy an Xbox360 and a PlayStation 3 totalling several hundred dollars less and have access to hundreds of games that I could never play on my PC. They always work, and I actually OWN the game. I don't have to worry about hardware or upgrading. I don't have to deal with copy protection. I can rent one, or buy a used copy. I can sell it. I can let a friend borrow it easily.

It really seems like an obvious choice.

OMGOMGOMGOMG EPISODE 3!!!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

EPISODE 3 IS FINISHED AND UP ON DEMAND! WATCH IT NOW! LIKE RIGHT NOW!!!

www.lcc.edu/tv/ondemand

GO TO THAT WEBSITE NOW!

THEN WATCH IT AND TELL ME HOW AWESOME I AM!!!

How the Future of Games Might Look.

Here's a sneak preview segment from the upcoming episode of Double Jump. It's about, as you'll see, THE FUTURE of gaming!

Now, I wasn't able to put everything in that segment that I would have liked, I'm dealing with modern attention spans here. But, luckily for you, I can expand on the video in this blog. Science has shown that people who read blogs to supplement local TV shows are super smart. The probably even have IQs as high as 150 or something.

When it comes to physical objects in games, as I've said, the current generation of interaction is pretty limited. If you break a crate, it just gets replaced by premade broken pieces. It's not the least bit convincing. It looks weird. But right now, there are many different companies working on simulating materials, rather than just cheat them. Here's a compilation of all the developments that are being made. It'll blow your mind.

Digital Molecular Matter, or DMM, is a relatively new development. It looks awesome, and will make worlds much more interactive. Most gamers have been playing a game and thought "Oh, I'm going to drop this cement block onto this computer monitor." Then when you do it, they just bounce off of each other and you're like "What the hell?! We're living in the future! Why isn't it breaking apart?!"

Animation is also undergoing a new development. Instead of just canned animations, you'll be able to seamlessly combine those with physics-based animation simulation. NaturalMotion has already done this, despite the fact that most games have yet to utilize it.

Everything is going to be procedurally simulated like this. That's what will make it more interactive. You'll be able to push over an old lady in a game, she'll fall over, and look at you, completely shocked. Also she landed on a crate and broke it. Something like that.

Check out the next episode of Double Jump which airs Monday, August 16th, at 8PM!

Anonymity in Gaming

Here is an interesting article related to anonymity in gaming. It's a reaction to the controversial RealID that Blizzard (developer of World of Warcraft) tried to implement on its community forums.

I tend to think that anonymity on the internet isn't usually used for good. Sure, people can use the veil to express themselves more honestly, but most of the time it's used for trolling. But those arguments aside, it brings up something about the community itself that I find interesting.

The argument in the article is by presenting your real name, you're opening yourself up for harassment. I had this conversation with a friend of mine. The conclusion we came to was "Why would you want to be involved in a community where this is even an issue?"

If you're afraid of being harassed for things that are true about yourself, such as being a woman, why would anybody want to be a part of a community like that?

There is a lot of social pressure that keeps us from being total assholes to each other. This is something I don't mind. Even if its not totally genuine, it makes life easier. Social pressure keeps people from being totally self-serving jerks.

I guess the thought of participating in this type of community really makes me question the value of that community. I'm sure most people are perfectly nice and good-natured, and that the handful of trolls make everybody else look bad. But wouldn't the loss of anonymity help deter trolls from getting out of hand? Maybe not. Maybe trolls are going to find ways of hiding their identity in order to keep trolling.

I, personally, think it would help people be more conscientious of one another if there might be real-world consequences for their actions.

The Frustration of Being Me

I think I should make a movie out of the title of this post's title. Nah,actually, I have a good life. I'm listening to Iron Maiden while writing this blog post at work. That is pretty rad.

But let's get serious for a moment, shall we? *serious face* There we go.

When I talked about E3, it was just one part of many of why it's frustrating to make so many grandiose exclamations about the potential of games, and then see the industry treat us like a bunch of post-pubescent teenagers.

It's hard for people to see what I'm talking about when all they see about games are things like Grand Theft Auto 4. It's a good game, but people aren't seeing the story or the writing. They're just seeing the beating up of prostitutes and the stealing of their money.

And then what is the (second?) most successful entertainment endeavor of all time (in terms of revenue)? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Admittedly a good game. But what about the title of the game? It probably couldn't get more vague or less interesting. It's like those old NES games: Golf. I've never played Golf, but it might have been a really good game back then. Is this how we're going to look at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? It might as well be called "Guy Shoots Gun at Bad Guys". Seeing a screenshot or short video of CoD:MW2 (ughhh) wouldn't be enough to tell people how this is any different than any other gun-shooting game.

But this is what people are seeing. Meanwhile, I'm on my soapbox going "No really, games can be artful experiences! You gotta believe me people! Please! ...I have a right to be here officer! Don't arrest me for telling the truth! It's the truth, dammit!" Then I get put in prison, and then a bunch of nerdy rock stars and celebrities write songs and make commercials about my wrongful imprisonment. You follow?

The problem is, the only way to get people to understand how games can be all of this is by actually playing the game. Playing a game is quite a commitment, in terms of time and money, one that skeptics like Roger Ebert aren't willing to invest. So even with an amazing game like Shadow of the Colossus, the only way to demonstrate it properly to people is to have them just play the whole thing. They aren't going to do this. So all they know is what they see on the news. What they see on the news isn't flattering.

The industry isn't really helping itself break out of this stereotype. The games that get the biggest ad campaigns and buzz are stuff like Gears of War or Call of Duty. So the industry itself is just playing it safe, and in the meantime, people are getting tired of seeing guys shooting guns at bad guys/aliens. And then we have guys like this that are in charge of the world's largest game publisher. This guy doesn't even like games!

Why the heck else would Roger Ebert make such ridiculous statements about games? He admits that he's never really even played a game, so do you think he reads tons of game blogs and magazines? Hell no! He gets his information about games the same places everybody else does. This is lame. Like, super lame.

I know that lately a lot of people have said some really compelling things about games, and this is very encouraging. But for now, it's very frustrating to seem like I'm talking about invisible, imaginary games that are beautiful and artful.

I'm very optimistic, and I truly believe that games will eventually gain the title of "art". But it'll take a long time. Games depend on technology so much more than other mediums. 20 years after the very beginning of film, technology for cinema had reached the point where creating art out of the medium was easy. But if you look at games, not much progress was made between the 70's, 80's, and early 90's. We're finally getting to the steep part of the exponential technology curve, and it's exciting.

But for right now, the news and the industry itself are making me look kind of silly. I think I'm also very impatient and getting a little ahead of myself, so I could stand to cool off a little...

Further reading/viewing:

Gaming Can Make a Better World by Jane McGonigal

When Games Invade Real Life by Jesse Schell

Quitting your job with a videogame.

An Ubisoft developer named William David decided to quit his job. Rather than writing a typical letter or resignation, or just putting in his two weeks notice, he made a game. The result is very moving.

Why Videogames Matter

Tom Bissell looks at games in a very similar way I do. Here's an NPR book review of his new book Extra Lives: Why Videogames Matter

These ideas are what I want to represent in my show.

Also, he's from Michigan and went to MSU, so that's cool. I'm from Michigan and I went to MSU, too. Awesome!