Coin-op@home: My flawed logic

by alzabo

When I was younger I had an almost infinite amount of free time, I spent absurd amounts of free time playing RPGs in High School. While I do look back fondly on playing long involved console games, I no longer have the free time or patience necessary to fully enjoy them. I discovered this once I graduated from High School and entered college, I still had a strong desire to play games but found it very difficult to enjoy most console games. This was the because of several factors:

Console games are generally getting more complicated. Resulting not in thick instruction manual, but instead spawning internal game training tutorials that ease you into the game. Tutorials are fine, but when you have to walk away from a game for weeks at a time to focus on school or work the important nuances of a game’s controls can slip your mind, making further progress frustrating or even impossible. Without experiencing the tutorial and the gradual increase in difficulty over many hours the prospect of resuming play of an abandoned quest can be extremely daunting, most console RPG enthusiasts have experienced this . . . “Where was I going, what skills was I trying to level, who has X piece of equipment?”

Second, the price of console games. While I appreciate the price point console games are sold at, it presents a problem for many adult gamers. Children and teens can afford them, but generally cannot afford every game they desire. By and large, they play one game at a time because that is all they can afford. Adults on the other hand can usually afford every game that catches their eye, often resulting in a large stack of unfinished and even still shrink-wrapped games. I am guilty of this, I have a large collection of games that I desperately want to play yet never got around to.

Third, a lack of large blocks of time necessary to properly play console games. While many children and people can single mindedly dedicate themselves to games, I can’t let my real world obligations slide. The fact that console games dole out the “fun” in small chunks all throughout the game makes them feel intolerably long. While I do have “free time” I like to divide it between other activities as well; friends, family & beer come to mind immediately.

After being pushed away from console games, I gradually came to understand and enjoy arcade games in a new light. They are the antithesis of everything I dislike about console games:

Arcade games are simple to play yet hard to master. Their controls are usually limited to a 8-way joystick and one to six buttons. The cab itself usually has play instructions described in pictograms or a simple instruction demo that pops up before the game starts.

Arcade games are inexpensive to play in the arcade, but generally expensive to own at home. This relegates most sane adults who choose to collect them to a childlike position, they can only afford to own those they truly enjoy.

Arcade games rarely demand more than 30 minutes of time. While they can be beat in 30 minutes on free play, a real enthusiast will attempt to beat them on one credit, ensuring good value for money via replay. They are designed to be as fun as possible from the moment you drop your coin in the slot to the second your last life ends.

The whole situation is comically ironic to me. As a child, I would save my pocket money for months and months, avoiding arcades at times in order to buy a console game. I would insist to myself that I’d get more fun out of the console game. Now I find myself saving my money, avoiding buying console games to purchase arcade PCBs. I firmly believe that I’ll have more fun replaying game designed to be as enjoyable as possible for the entire duration of play, no matter how short it is.

More like "Puns of the Gaytriots"!

by Zen

Harvest: It's like Tower Defense but it's not a mod for anything

by K1

Is a relapse imminent? Halo 3 Game Fuel, already fueling the start of an addiction?

by Nanohana

I made a special trip to the store last night to pick up some Halo 3 Mountain Dew Game Fuel. With 30% more caffeine! I was so happy to see Master Chief and the Halo 3 logo there on the Mountain Dew packaging in front of me. Yesterday was it's release day, since when does Soda have a release day? What possessed me to go to the store and purchase this and drink it?!?! I drink an average of less than a soda a week so this is unlike me. Also I generally hate Burger King's food, I heard that they are going to have some exclusive Halo 3 xbox live codes for content. I hate to say it but if this is true it will convince me to choke down some of their food. So please don't let this be true! After all I did when Sneak King came out. Also the Halo themed packaging seems to only be on the "King" sized meal cup and fries. King sized whatever that is,it involves a 42 ounce soda apparently, sounds absolutely disgusting.

I played a few times in the Halo 3 beta when it was open through Crackdown. The first time I saw all the stats tracking which made Halo 2 so addictive for me, I thought maybe I should quit this game right now. I foresee many great long and wonderful nights of Halo 3 parties in the near future though. With 4 player online co-op I know I'm going to be spending a lot of time on this one. It has yet to be seen if my game addiction will play out with this version like it did the last, I'm not very good anymore since I've been rehabbed. But does that make it less fun? There are too many other games on the horizon and I have to enjoy them all. In the 6 weeks before Halo 3 is released I will be acquiring and playing Bioshock, Blue Dragon, and Eternal Sonata. How is this ever going to work? I have no idea...does it make having a game addiction ok if I play different games or just spend all my free time on one particular one. Not sure if I even have any free time...

Cosmic Balance

by Zen

A lot of games back in the day started making a big show of having "role-playing elements" worked in. In some cases this just meant there was an inventory that may or may not affect gameplay, but sometimes it translated into actual choices the player got to make. The phenomenon began long before anyone talked about it, probably most originally and elegantly with the first Mega Man. The levels could be tackled in any order you pleased, and the weapons you got along the way would make each level a very different experience from that had by someone playing in a different order.


There are more obvious examples, like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda, that have already been talked about enough. In Mega Man, the opportunities given to the player to progress in any way he or she chose were an integral part of the gameplay, and in Metroid and Zelda they give the player an opportunity to experience the same areas from different perspectives as the game progressed. Aspects of these games could present themselves to players in ways that were determined by choices they themselves made. It was primitive, yes, but well-used, and another example of ingenious developers making the most of small games. Because this was an intentional decision made by the game designers, much effort was put into preventing the player from acquiring everything at the outset of the game and playing through the entire thing homogeneously.

In console RPGs this phenomenon became rather more mechanical. Leveling up was mostly just a means of satisfying a player's Progress Quest appetite, and while some gameplay complexity would arise from it, it was really just a way to keep certain powerful items and monsters out of reach until the designers felt they weren't imbalancing. Character progression became a way to put video games on rails, and players found that usually by the time they got that powerful spell or item, they only got it because it wasn't very useful anymore. Over time, the means of extending a game's duration have become the means of limiting the possibilities available to the player. Somewhere along the line this process became moralized.

It's a common bit of stubborn ignorance that people want everything about the world to conform to their own assumptions. Explanations of the world around us have a way of "fulfilling themselves". When Isaac Newton says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the observation becomes a moral proverb: actions have consequences. Soon we find people punishing others to teach them this lesson about the world. We call them natural consequences, but they are really imposed by people more often than by nature. The moral law set forth is that someone has to pay when something goes wrong; all forces must balance out or there can be no rest. "You can't get something for nothing."

There has never been as great an example of this warped and misguided ethical view as the Grand Theft Auto series. I'm not sure anyone has complained before that Grand Theft Auto reinforced traditional moral values to a fault, but I assure you it's the case. The games have toys and joys too numerous to mention, and the devoted player who overcomes their challenges will have a lot of fun with the bonuses he or she unlocks. But the challenges themselves are not fun by any definition of the word; they are punishments, ordeals set forth so that the player's fun might not accidentally grow out of control. The developers, when including a very fast bicycle or a well-armed helicopter, seem to have collectively decided that these things are too good to give to the player for free. The player must pay for the privilege, above and beyond the cost of the game.

The result is that every mission has about a hundred ways to lose and only one way to win. Punishment is doled out liberally, and the bonus missions that unlock great things are the purest distillations of raw agony. Powerful, useful tools and games in GTA are withheld not to develop the game experience or to prevent a trivial completion of the game, but out of spite. And those who complete the challenges will tell themselves that it is worth it. That the satisfaction of accomplishing these meaningless feats of repetition and arbitrary precision make the rewards that much more satisfying. These people will grow up to deprive their children of joys and tell them it "builds character". After all, misery necessitates equal reward. It's a law of nature.

It's not worth it. Each entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is more dehumanizing than the last. As much fun as I've had flying around with a jetpack and a dozen kinds of weapons blowing up half of a fake Las Vegas, if I could return not just GTA: San Andreas but the entire experience I would. It's more fun to watch an expert play than it is to play. It's more fun to download a 100% save file off the Internet than it is to get 100% yourself. The game allows the player to engage in violent sex acts, murder national guardsmen, and commit a terrorist act on a hydroelectric dam, all in the name of profit and power, but none of those aspects of this game is as hurtful or socially base as the "challenges" offered the player.