Category Archives: The Android’s Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

The Android's Casting Magic Missile (RPG), The Android's Custom Rims (Mods and modding), The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Yes. Yes we are, in fact, mad.

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Stay awhile and listen.

In the old days, before your time, there was a company called Blizzard. Yes yes, I know, they’re still around today, but they’re not the same Blizzard. Back then, when they made a game, you sat up and took notice. Back then when they made an expansion, it added a great deal of content.

I remember it clearly. I had just awoken, the sleep barely rubbed from my eyes, when Pike came with grim news. Blizzard. Diablo III. I thought perhaps that they had bowed to the silliness about “too much color”, and made it all brown’n’bloom. But no. Diablo III, I learned to my endless horror, would be subject to the following;

1) There would be no offline play. You must be connected to b.net to play the game.

I saw this and I was mad. It is monumentally stupid. It encourages piracy rather than reducing it. It has consistently proven to be a poor idea when previously implemented.

2) There will be an auction house where you can use real money to purchase in-game characters and items from other players.

I saw this and I was leery. I can understand Blizz’s desire to undermine gold farming and so forth, and legitimizing something we all know already happens anyway is not such a huge deal. Still, it seems dreadfully crass and overwhelmingly all-encompassing in this instance. I just don’t want to log into a game, play for awhile, decide to look for an item, and be presented with real-world prices. I’ve enough money woes as is without my escape being filled with constant reminders of it too. Still, I play single player for the most part, and this doesn’t provide anything that some grinding and luck won’t get you anyway – it’s optional, and I can tolerate it despite the bad taste it leaves.

(Though given that Diablo is essentially Grinding for Gear: The Game, my solution would have simply been to make players unable to trade anything except to people in their group at the time the item dropped. I imagine this would have caused plenty of rage too though.)

3) No mods allowed.

You read that correctly.

Now let me be quite clear about this. This doesn’t mean Blizzard won’t be supportive of modders or include any tools that make life easier for them. What they mean, in fact, is that the EULA will specifically forbid them. They are not merely not officially supported, they are avowedly not permitted. And because you have to be online to play, even if someone makes a mod, you’re likely going to have to do something like download a crack in order to actually use it. Suffice it to say, this is a truly mindboggling step to take from the company’s whose modded games have spawned such things as DOTA and Median XL. I have waxed lyrical about the virtues of mods previously, and I really cannot quite wrap my head around who at Blizzard thought this was a good idea, why anyone agreed with them, and why the nice gentlemen with the wood-paneled station wagons have not yet carted the whole shower of them off to get the help they so patently require.

In short, I cancelled any notions I had to ever purchase D3. Which is a damned shame, because I loved the first two, and I love most of Blizz’s games, and I actually anticipate that if I did play it, I’d enjoy it immensely. But I simply cannot sanction this sort of nonsense with my patronage.

The Android's an Amateur Developer (Ideas), The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Sandbox (Sandbox/Open World), The Android's Universe in a Jar (Sim)

Evolving ethics

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Here’s a thing that bugs me about videogames that take place over a long period of time; They run on the assumption that what held true in our world will hold true in that way. Absolute monarchy and aristocracy begin, and these are gradually or violently reduced in favor of either constitutional monarchy or republicanism. Divine Right gives way to consent of the governed. Religion begins as a dominant force for the entire planet, and gradually declines in importance. It’s true that most games allow you through some means or other to maintain your previous status quo, but the assumptions are always the same – later technologies unlock new governments and these are superior to previous ones. You can run a theocratic state in Civ but if your rivals are a police state or democracy, they’re likely to outproduce you by some measure due to the bonuses they get compared to yours.

Now, in the first instance, I understand that even making these value judgments can be a pretty tricky task if you’re making a game which offers a number of governmental forms, and every single thing you add to that can complicate it considerably. Let’s take Communism as a working example. Superficially it’s easy to see why a Communist state would get a bonus to industry – Stalin forced the USSR from peasant serfdom to industrial superpower within a couple of decades, and Mao attempted the same in China (Though it was Deng Xiaoping’s free-market oriented reforms which have unleashed the Middle Kingdom’s current surge in wealth). Hoxha’s Albania and the DPRK regime both put military production before any other consideration. Our real-world historical examples of it are industry-centered, militaristic, and vary from merely autocratic to incomparably vicious.

If it was like this, we'd all be Red.

The question is, does this demonstrate what Communism has to be? Or is this how it is perceived because that’s how it worked out in our world? I would argue no, that much as I am opposed to it as a system, it wasn’t a fait accompli that it would turn out as it did. Had it taken hold in a heavily industrialized country such as the UK, France, Germany, or the USA, had the Mensheviks taken power in 1917, had the CNT-FAI won in Spain and resisted Stalinist control, we might well have a very different image of what Communism is.

My point isn’t to defend Communism. I’m merely using it because it’s an excellent example for what I am talking about, which is that game makers rely overly on preconceptions rooted in our reality’s experience to inform them of how things work in their games. More interesting, I feel, would be a more gradual, evolving system, where you didn’t choose your form of government so much as evolve it over the course of the game by reacting to events and conditions. The closest example to this I am aware of is Victoria II, where different political groups have various objectives, and different ones are allowed to do different things (So the reds can build factories all over the place, whilst radical liberals can’t fund any, for example) but even so, it feels somewhat thin, perhaps because it takes place over a relatively short time period.

I would, in any event, love to see a game on the timescale of Civ or even Spore where the development of not only your country, but its ideologies and most of all, what those ideologies actually entail, changes over the course of the game. For another example, consider that during the Renaissance and Enlightenment it was argued by many (very pious) people that to understand the universe in a scientific manner was not only in accordance with being a good Christian, but indeed a form of worship in itself. The argument (Grossly oversimplified; I’m no theologian) was that as God had created everything, everything was holy, and thus understanding anything had to be an act of worship in itself. What if such a perspective had taken hold even more strongly and become as universal an attitude towards Christianity as the doctrine that Christ died on the Cross? I doubt the current perspective that religion is dogmatic and myopic whilst secularism is the route to a more accurate understanding of the world would be as deeply entrenched by any means.

So yes, what I'm saying is that no current game is spergy enough for me.

The problem is, of course, that this is an immensely complicated field. Even working on the experiences of our actual history, we have a huge amount of different experiences to draw on. When you implement “Democracy” in Civilization, is it the democracy of Athens? Is it a democracy where only the landed elite can vote? Is it constrained by constitutional checks and balances? How do you model a unicameral vs. a bicameral system? Is the President the Head of State only (As in the Irish Republic) or the Head of State and Head of Government, as in the USA? And what influence does this have on how the respective countries are run? These are all just individual factors of a single potential form of government. How they all interact, how they might all evolve over the course of centuries, is certainly a daunting thing to tackle in even the densest academic text, nevermind a videogame.

But ultimately, isn’t that what more ponderous strategy games are about? You’re not just drawing your lines on the map, you’re creating a country, wrestling with competing concerns, trying to do five things with the resources to do three of them properly, listening to the concerns of different groups in your society and deciding how to react? I admit it might be something of a niche game, but I think there would be room for something that really went into the evolution of political systems, religions, and social ideas in videogames.

The Android's an Amateur Developer (Ideas), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Self-imposed challenges

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IENANENPANLBCMO

Does that mean anything to you?

It refers to FFVII, and specifically to a challenge of playing the game with the following conditions:

Initial Equipment – You can never change a character’s armor or weapons from the stuff they come with.
No Accessories – You can never use accessories. If a character comes with one equipped, it has to be unequipped at the first opportunity.
No Escaping – Obvious.
No Physical Attacks – does not just refer to “attack”, but also to anything that is a ‘physical’ type attack, including items such as Grenades or command materia such as 4-Cut.
No Limit Breaks – take a guess.
Command Materia Only – You can only use command materia. And obviously quite a few are ruled out by other rules.

You can’t actually do this challenge from the start of the game, because you have no way to hurt enemies until you can start learning Enemy Skills. In essence, it’s an “Enemy Skills Only” play. Anyway, it’s an extreme example – my point is to highlight how a self-imposed challenge can add life to a game, or possibly change it entirely. I’m good – very good – at FFVII, but I sincerely doubt I could do this challenge without tearing my hair out until I’m as bald as Dr. Robotnik.

Who is, incidentally, the greatest villain ever.

I have done other challenges in other games though. Sometimes games encourage something in particular, but don’t necessarily require it. You can usually shoot or slice your way through what is ostensibly a ‘stealth’ game such as Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu, or Hitman. Playing through stealthily is usually better rewarded is all. Imposing the challenge on yourself can make things a lot more exciting though. Sometimes this is a fairly loose arrangement for me – such as only ever going to war in Europa Universalis when I have a realistic casus belli and suchlike. Sometimes it’s a bit more extreme, like the time I played Civ IV and was not allowed to have more than one military unit per city (Funnily, happiness problems were larger than military ones for the most part). I can be especially enjoyable in more freeform games such as Dwarf Fortress, where there aren’t any real tangible objectives in-game, and making your own

In RPGs, because I grew up on some truly spergy, grinding-centric games, it’s really hard for me to limit my levels or anything. But I did a Pokemon play where I only used my starter Pokemon, that was interesting when I came up against stuff he was weak against.

Are any of you fans of particular challenges? Have you played through anything with challenges? Do you have any particular ones you’d recommend to others to enhance their enjoyment of an otherwise-completed game?

The Android is... an Android (AI), The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Robots Playing Civ. Does It Get Any Better?

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No. No it does not. Especially when you’re me, and you love Civ and you really love robots. That’s probably why I’ve had a few people recently link a couple of articles to me.

Basically, some geeks (and I use that word with utmost respect, as I always do!) have taught an AI how to read. Not some programming language, but English. Then, to test their AI’s reading ability, they had it play Civilization II both before and after reading the game manual.

Before reading the game manual, the AI won a little less than half of the time.

After reading the game manual, the AI’s win percentage jumped up over thirty percentage points, to a nearly 80% win rate.

This is super exciting to me on a few levels. Firstly, I’m superhuge into the idea of robots and AI. I envision a future where intelligent creatures of all sorts and designs live together in harmony (I ain’t ‘fraid of no Skynet). I think it’s really exciting that an AI has been taught not just to read, but to learn from a human language.

On a slightly less scholarly level, I’d love to see something like this adapted to make better AI in games. I’ve talked before about how I’d like to see improvements to the AI in Civ; bring it on, Civ-playing robot!

So yeah. As I was saying, it really doesn’t get any better. Unless you get a robot playing SMAC. Then it could be better.

Although this would hurt the poor robot's feelings, I've no doubt. :(
The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Tales and Tropes: In Which Pike is Melodramatic

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As you may have noticed if you’ve followed us for a little bit of time, we here at the Android’s Closet Incorporated subscribe to the theory that video games are a valid form of artistic expression. Not everyone agrees with us, of course, and that’s fine– but Mister Adequate and I are pretty heavily biased in that direction. We’re both writers, and we’d both like to think that we can recognize and appreciate a genuinely good narrative in any form. Hence why we’re big, big fans of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Because not only was the gameplay solid, but the story– worthy of placement along side the best of science fiction novels– blew us away.

As it turns out, our initial assessment of the quality of the game’s story was accurate. Too accurate. SMAC’s story, you see, was a Herbert novel long before it was a game.

This one, specifically.

I didn’t know this until yesterday when I randomly ran across a reference article somewhere pointing out the game’s inspiration. At first, I thought it was an interesting little tidbit– lots of media homages other media, of course, not a big deal– but the more I read, the more I was shocked and then the more I was genuinely bothered. The game pretty much pilfered the book’s plot wholesale, even down to borrowing a couple of names. Oh, and those amazing tech quotes you get as the game progresses? Guess what book had similar quotes before every chapter?  Yup.  Suddenly, the game that I’d felt I could hold up as a paragon for originality and storytelling in video games was actually just taking it all from an existing novel.

My face, most of last night.

The Five Stages of Grief promptly followed:

  1. buy Lyrica generic Denial: “But… but… it was just an homage, right?  They aren’t really that similar… right?”
  2. http://cathedral-lonavala.org/sec-gen Anger: “WHAT?  How could you guys do this to me, Brian and Sid?  Why didn’t you tell me!”
  3. Bargaining: “Oh Gaming Gods, can’t I please just go back to my blissful ignorant existence beforehand?  Back when SMAC’s story was the best original story in video games?”
  4. Depression: Mostly in the form of unintelligible IMs that I sent to Mister Adequate for about an hour.  And that brings us to…
  5. Acceptance:

See, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve realized three things.  Firstly, despite the many, many similarities– the game did make a few fairly notable changes to the plot, most obviously in the ending, which diverges wildly from that of the book, at least as far as I can tell (I haven’t read the book; I’m going off of Wikipedia here).

Secondly, the whole discovery did not change how captivating the game’s story was to me the first time I played.

And lastly, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the very fact that the game is so very heavily inspired by an existing work of art merely cements its status as art. I have long been a proponent of the theory that the best artists are not just the people who invent tropes, but also the ones who take existing tropes and rearrange them or retell them in a new and interesting manner. Everyone’s done it, the best authors and filmmakers have done it (note how this book also inspired the movie Avatar), and heck, I’ve done it– the book I’m currently working on pilfered so much from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that it’s silly– so who am I to talk?

So in the end, I can live with this. What Alpha Centauri did was take the deck of cards that was an existing story, shuffle those cards around a bit, and present them to the audience through the unique prism that is video games. By doing so, they were able to bring the audience into the story in a way that a book alone couldn’t do. Shakespeare did something similar when he breathed life into old legends and had the resulting plays performed for the masses. I’m okay with that analogy.

Also, SMAC is still a damn fine game, and you guys can all expect a Let’s Play on it soon.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

A Re-Boot to the Head

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I’m not sure where I stand on game “reboots”.

On the one hand, I would LOVE to see an update of, say, SMAC, with an engine and graphics akin to Civ IV with all the stuff that made the original game great kept intact.

On the other hand, when we get a new X-Com that is more like Mass Effect with the X-Com name pasted on it, I’m not sure what to think. Sure, the game looks interesting and might even be pretty good, but I have a difficult time believing it’s really X-Com without all the turn-based-tactics-want-to-smash-your-head-into-the-wall-it’s-so-hard action.

"Hidden Movement" is arguably the most terrifying phrase in video gaming.

But then I wonder if I’m just either being a crotchety old gamer telling the kids about how games were HARD back in my day, or simply refusing to take off the nostalgia goggles. Or both. Can it be that my knee-jerk “do not want” reactions aren’t justified, and are purely emotional?

Well, sure. But as a wise individual in a classic film once said, “Whoever said the human race was logical?” We are emotional creatures who get emotionally attached to things we care about– and if you’re like me, you care about your games. We care about our memories of them, and we want others’ first experiences with our favorite games to be like our own.

So yeah, I want an X-Com reboot to be just as maddeningly difficult and involve just as much tactics as the first. I want everyone who hasn’t played the game to experience it like this. I want to see the keys flying off of your keyboard when you smash your face into it in frustration. I want you to lean forward when the “HIDDEN MOVEMENT” screen comes up because you actually have to listen to the game sounds as a part of the experience and I want you to jump in your chair when you do hear something. I want you to see how terribly genius this game was and why it managed to enthrall me some fifteen years after it was first released. That’s what I want from an X-Com reboot. That’s why I’m not so sure about this new one.

…oh, and yes, I am a crotchety old gamer wearing nostalgia goggles. I have no shame.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

The First Amendment

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As you may have caught wind of by now, if you follow gaming news at all, the US Supreme Court has ruled 7-2 that a California law which prohibited the sale of violent videogames to minors was in violation of the First Amendment. You can read the full opinion here, if you are so inclined, but I’d recommend checking out the first couple of pages of it at least.

This is pretty cool in and of itself, because it will hopefully put an end to the ridiculous laws that spring up in the US every now and then which try and stamp on videogames in one way or another. More importantly however, this is a ruling from the highest court in the land that videogames are as meritorious in the eyes of the law, and as deserving of protection, as older forms of art. This is hugely significant, not just because it lets us go “Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah” at Ebert, but because between this and the recent decision by the National Endowment for the Arts (i.e. the Federal Government) that games are art, we’ve finally, finally reached a stage where the legal opinions have reached a point where they have caught up with reality.

This is significant even if you’re not in America, by the way. Because so many companies are American and because so much of the gaming market is in America, whatever rulings the US makes on a subject like this are going to have global ramifications. This kind of recognition and protection is not only precedent, but will have a tangible effect, as it will encourage other countries to follow suit, and will embolden the games markets in other countries to press for similar recognition and protection if it is not already forthcoming.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Different!

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I love all sorts of video games but I make no secret of the fact that strategy games are my favorite. RTS, TBS, 4X, Grand Strategy, Tactics– I’ll eat up just about anything that falls under the big strategy umbrella.

It may seem like a bit of an odd genre to someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time in it. You’re managing not just one unit or character, but several; oftentimes you’re managing whole bases or countries as well, and winning or losing frequently comes down to who can get the biggest and/or most advanced army first. Defeating an enemy isn’t something you do by way of pressing certain button combos, rather, it’s something you do by way of planning and math.

So I was wondering why I prefer these types of games so much, and I think aside from the standard “I just plain like the style of play” answer, a lot of it just comes down to the fact that every single game is completely different. If I were to play through an RPG, it would be pretty similar each playthrough– the storyline would be the same and the characters would all follow the same growth and would say the same things. You’d run into the same enemies. Sure, lately there has been a lot of experimentation with multiple endings, different choice paths for the hero, and etc., which is adding a lot of variety to a a genre that has traditionally been very linear, but in my own personal view, nothing really tops a strategy game when you’re looking to sit down for three or four hours and have a game with a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT OUTCOME than the last three or four hours you spent on the same game last time.

I don’t know if this is more evident anywhere than in Paradox games like Europa Universalis 3 or Hearts of Iron 2, where the possibilities for total global domination by Sweden or Inca or the Confederate States of America or something is entirely possible. Mister Adequate is the one to go to if you want hilarious stories like that.

And then there’s SMAC, where you might play one game where it’s all seven of the factions duking it out for domination the entire time and then this is followed immediately by a game where everyone dies in the beginning except for you and one other team.

Or maybe something like this happens:

Honestly I just wanted an excuse to upload this and show off.

I have only seen this happen once so far. I mean, I hope it happens again, because it’s pretty darn hilarious, but Miriam is usually willing to fight to the bitter end, so seeing this happen was new and seriously amusing.

SMAC does another great thing where each three or four hour game involves a self-contained story, which goes a bit differently depending on how you win, what order you tech things in, and et cetera. Every SMAC game plays differently. As does every Civ game, and every Hearts of Iron 2 game, and so forth. I love it, and that’s what continues to pull me back in and keep me playing even after I’ve dumped days of playtime into these games already.

Yup.

What are your favorite genres? Why do you love them so much?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

When Too Much is Too Much

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The other day I was having a discussion with someone on a forum about video game addiction and how one might be able to discern the difference between being “addicted” and merely playing a lot. This is the way I put it:

I’m pretty sure there was a period in my life where I could have called myself legitimately addicted to WoW. The reason I feel that I was addicted was that a.) I seriously was not ever thinking about anything else, and b.) if I didn’t play WoW for at least a few hours a day I would go to bed feeling distressed and unfulfilled.

I feel that this was different from your typical, average “I want to play a lot of videogames” mentality that I’ve always possessed. Sure, I’ve been madly in love with games before– I still get that way– and “ONE MORE TURN” syndrome is certainly not something I am unfamiliar with. :P But if it skews your worldview to the point that it occupies every waking thought for months on end and you plan your entire life around it and you play even if you don’t feel like it because it drives you to fits if you don’t, then you might have an issue.

It was weird to look back on that period of my life and admit to myself that I probably could have fallen under the category of being addicted to a game. Fortunately, however, I didn’t have it nearly as bad as some other people do, and I was able to move on from it.

This is a bit of a tricky subject to talk about, though, whichever way you slice it. Certainly not all MMO players are addicted, and even among those who could probably be classed as such, not all are having their life seriously impaired by it. Without really starting to dig into a very deep subject, I feel that “healthy addiction” isn’t entirely impossible here.

I also think that, as avid game players, we frequently have a knee-jerk “BUT I’M NOT LIKE THAT” response when this sort of thing is brought up, lest our hobby be looked down upon more than it already frequently is.

…but on the other hand, it’s probably something to keep in the back of your mind as a valid phenomena and one that you or someone you know might be familiar with. One can become addicted to anything, and games are not an exception.

The funny thing is that, for me anyway, I don’t look back at my WoW-playing-time as something that took time away from the rest of my “life”. Rather, it was something that took time away from dozens of other games that I could have been playing. Variety is, as they say, the spice of life.

And so I turn the floor over to you, readers! Ever been where I’ve been?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

Now THIS is Podracing: Electromechanical Arcade Games

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The other day I was derping around on Google and YouTube, and found this:

Gran Turismo this isn’t, but what impressed me about it is how video-game-esque it is, without actually being a video game. This is entirely mechanical. In fact, it uses the same basic principle as a toy I had as a kid, which was basically a plastic box with a steering wheel attached and a screen through which a printed paper racetrack would scroll, with a car-shaped silhouette projected onto it. Turning the steering wheel moved your car, and even though there was really no set goal to the “game”, I’d just sit there and play it forever because it LOOKED cool and I FELT in control of the action. Anyways, it’s a direct precursor to games like Pitstop and Pole Position.

Now, if that’s a bit underwhelming, try this on for size:

First, note that absolutely gorgeous cabinet. Then, check out that beautiful luminescent missile, which grabs your attention right off the bat. And those explosions when he hits a plane! I love this. And again, there’s nothing digital about this– it’s all electricity and mechanics. It was made by Sega in 1969, three years before Pong and certainly several more years before Missile Command or Space Invaders.

Now, speaking of Sega, I have one last thing to show you. This:

Aren’t those sound effects just haunting? And that whole blue saturation thing: it makes for some incredible atmosphere. And again, no “video” to this “game”. I haven’t the faintest clue how it works.

There is a true sense of wonder tied to these old games– there is to me, anyway. When a modern game does something amazing with graphics, it just tells me that computers and software have gotten better. When these games do something amazing with “graphics”, I don’t even KNOW what to think because I have no clue how they accomplished some of this stuff. I feel the same way about movies– these days when something awesome happens in a movie, you think “Oh yeah, computer graphics.” Thirty years ago, though, those effects guys worked some serious magic.

I’m not saying that the old games or movies are necessarily better, by any means– but I am saying that they leave me mystified and very impressed with what they accomplished. And as such, they’re pretty fun to explore.

Besides, you’ve got to have some serious respect for your roots, right?