Thoughts on Gaming

So a little while ago, a good friend of mine IMed me and said that she took some issue with the last post. The one Sean did about gaming, difficulty, and such and stuff. She told me she disagreed with it, or at least, some of it. And it wasn't so much the post itself that bothered her, I think, as it was the potential implications of it.

Now. People using cheats and chasing achievements more readily than actually PLAYING through a game, putting real effort into a game, and actually caring about the game, those points she all agreed wholeheartedly. The point on which she disagreed, however, might just not have come through all that well.

For one thing, she felt that what we were saying is that we hate newer games, which is most definitely not true. We love new games, and recognize that over time things change. Gaming changes, just as music, film, and literature change. This is a fact we have embraced wholeheartedly. Sean, for example, constantly tells the rest of us how epic Assassin's Creed 2 is. Big Mike has probably played Mass Effect more than anyone else I know. Laughing Mike is an avid WoW player, and really about anything else he can get his hands on. Brendan smashes zombie heads in Left 4 Dead 2 with a prejudice rarely matched. (Except perhaps by the rest of us.) Myself, well, I enjoy Batman: Arkham Asylum more than a person probably should.

The vastness of storytelling in video games has become an art form as surely as filmmaking has been for many years before it. And while we love shiny new graphics, and the impressive form of visual and interactive storytelling that video games have become, we do collectively feel that many times, these things have forced something very important to the back seat; gameplay.

For me, it's not even a difficulty thing, it's the gameplay. I don't care how pretty it is if the controls are cumbersome and the system is frustrating me. Earlier games were much simpler, gameplay-wise, of course. But their gameplay was spectacularly good. If it wasn't, then the game fell apart. If I simply wanted a game which was really a movie... why wouldn't I watch a movie? You play games because they are fun and interactive. You're supposed to be DOING something.

The other thing my friend brought up was that she felt that we were were imposing a standard on people. Generally, she games just for a bit of fun, and to relax. She felt that we were saying there's something wrong with casual gaming, which is definitely not the case. Playing video games is something that has many degrees of involvement, and those of us who play them casually are generally doing it for those same reasons: a bit of fun and to relax.

The problem from our angle is that we're not hearing things about cheats from casual gamers. We're not hearing stories about how much better than everyone else casual gamers are. We're hearing this from people who are more concerned with getting achievements and rushing through each game at break-neck speed. People who play games for recognition instead of just to play. People who think that how you cheat at a game is the measure of your skill.

Those people are our problems. They are a slightly younger generation of gamers who give up when a problem or a puzzle is too hard. They are people who grew up with 3D graphics, and care more about better appearances than substance. They are people who don't care about the industry, or challenging themselves, but still think it's alright to tell others that they are simply BETTER than they are.

Another point that came up was that most games have difficulty settings, which can go up or down. It ranges from what a 7-year old with some motor function can do to the EXTREMELY difficult, at times. Older games, it is true, did not offer this luxury most of the time. Many times, they were permanently set to hard mode. That's not for everyone, this is very true. And in turning up those settings, we are making it more difficult for ourselves and being more challenged. Our problem isn't that the games can't be MADE into challenges with a bit of tweaking. We appreciate games which came from a time when thinking your way through games and building real skills were required, rather than an option. Does that make us elitist? It's very possible.

But how is that any worse than those people I was talking about before who do speedruns of games not because they've memorized them and know all the right moves, but just turned down the knob, and still brag?

I guess it comes down to this. Beating older games is an achievement in and of itself. Beating newer games is simply something you do. If a kid goes to his friends and says, "I finished Modern Warfare," his friends answer, "I already did that. How'd you like it? It took you a while." If an oldschool gamer goes to his friends and says, "I just beat Kid Icarus," once the shock has gone from them, they will answer with things like, "WHAT? How did you do it? That's AMAZING!" It's even in the language. Now, most people say they "finished" a game. It used to always be that they "beat" a game.

This is the kind of gamers we are, and it's certainly not for everyone. The main point of this blog and this project is community and nostalgia. We want to accomplish things we haven't accomplished before, and have fun doing it together.

In other news, starting Shining Force is proving difficult. I found the Genesis, but now I can't find the game. My laptop is out of commission, so I can't even get going on an emulator right now. Damn it. Ah well. I won't be beaten so easily. I'll post back when I've finally gotten started.

(P.S.- The friend who talked to me about this mentioned that she's beaten Battletoads. I now know three people who have done that.)