Video Games, Al Gore, And Freedom
The rants just keep on getting longer and longer, don't then? More political commentary and more of my opinion of Why Things Are The Way They Are.
I've recently picked up a few new video games, and I've noticed something.
Where has all the fun gone?
Serious question, folks. I've been playing video games for many, many years and it seems like the most recent crop of games has lacked that essential factor called fun. Fun is defined, by myself, as the sense of wonder and joy that a person experiences when they play the game and enjoy the heck out of themselves finding new things. Myself, I find that good, ironic humor is part of fun. For other people, they might find fun in killing the biggest monster they can find. Different tastes for different people, I honestly believe.
But, where has the fun gone in a lot of games? I've bought probably forty games last year, and I can tell you that there are about eight or nine that I'd want to play again, even after beating them. Only one is a 2D/3D fighting game (and it's one of the oldest out there you can get-a Bargain Bin copy of Battle Arena Toshinden), two are RPGs (Valkyrie Profile and Vagrant Story), two are RTS games (Homeworld:Cataclysm and Ground Control), and the rest are a mixed bag. The rest of the games I've bought, I either have on a dark shelf somewhere, never to be played again or they'll be traded in to get a game that I want to play. All of these games were billed as being great games, yet they weren't.
This is not a criticism of those who design games and make their best effort to keep the games joyous and full of new things to discover. Game design is a delicate and arcane art-the game has to lead you to the eventual goal, without the player feeling like they're being led around by a nose ring hooked to a leash. It takes a delicate touch, and you have to be careful, and keep the player immersed in the game world enough to suspend their disbelief and maintain their sense of wonder. Too light, and there isn't the level of immersion necessary to maintain the sense of wonder. Too heavy, and the player feels smothered by the world created and they feel any falseness in it too well and too firmly.
A good example of great game and environment design is Half Life by Sierra On-Line. The main character of the game, Gordon Freeman, never speaks in the game. There isn't a single cut scene, nor break in the flow of the game beyond level loading. The entire game atmosphere is provided by the look of the game (the environments you move in and the people and beings you encounter) , the sounds of the game (which are menacing and creepy at all times), and the music of the game (which rarely overshadows any other sounds). From the first scene, you have in essence a real world, with no movie-like cuts or anything that distracts you from the game's internal flow. For a game like Half Life, this works-the game is intended to be a horror game, where the horror and the shock and the terror are immediate and personal. Anything that could distract you from that lessens the horror.
So, why do fewer games incorporate so much plot and atmosphere? The two reasons are the simplest-cost and time. They say time is money, and there is nothing more accurate than that in game development. You have a lot of high-cost employees-developers, programmers, artists, sound engineers, testers, etc, etc, etc-all of which cost you money. To make back your costs, you have to get a game out to market at a certain time, so that the game can sell, and hopefully get you a return on your investment. Especially if you're doing a "me too" kind of game, you have to get the game out to the market before your competition saturates the market with their "me too" games. And, plot and plotting takes time-lots of time. The more developed the plot of a game, the longer it takes to create, and that costs money.
So, the developers and the people paying the bills have to balance-at what point do you just say "I don't care how hackneyed the plot is, we ship the game NOW!"? I have one opinion, that is if there is only minor tweaks needed to keep the plot in line and make it fun, wait. If not....that's a question I hope never to have to answer. But, for a bean counter that only sees the costs of hiring all this talent, they might have a totally different answer than myself. It's hard to decide-and that's what makes games occasionally come out with very poor development and plot over the proposals you read in the magazines.
Okay, here's where I make my political statements. If you want to get out now, you can check out last week's rant or head to the home page. Remember, past this point, I make political commentary, you have BEEN WARNED.
It has been about three weeks into our new national nightmare-an election where nobody won.
Wait a minute, that's not accurate. Somebody DID win, and that was George W. Bush. While the popular vote didn't push him over the top in terms of raw numbers and warm bodies, our system doesn't just count warm bodies. The electoral college vote, which is our system, after all the song and dance, put George W. Bush in with 271 electoral college votes, over Al Gore's 267. Was it a close race? Absolutely. But, was it AS close as people believe?
I don't think so. In Florida, the state of controversy, the vote was so close that a mechanical recount had to be performed. This is the law of the state, and when the recount was finished, Bush had still won. To this end, the Secretary Of State in Florida, by law, was going to certify the election. In this, she had no choice-short of a Act Of God or proof of vote tampering which caused this result, she was required to certify the election. But, as Al Gore's partisans and fans rallied around his banner, that wouldn't be fair-we had to have a manual recount.
Ignore that the ballots were intended for machine reading-for a human to read such ballots would require so much time and effort that the recount would take at least a week. As well, such a method would put too much possibility in malicious fingers to alter the vote by knocking out the little paper tabs that the mechanical reader would detect. Don't forget-the primary hand recounts were in locations that were heavily registered pro-Democrat and pro-Gore. There was honest suspicion that the Gore people, with or without Mr. Gore's approval, would attempt to steal the election by manufacturing votes. Then, two things happened, and these two things, when the history books look back on this, will see it as the final straw on the camel's back of the Republicans and conservatives in general.
The Gore camp distributed a five-page memo on how to discredit military absentee ballots. If the previous ratio of how absentee ballots from military personnel were counted applied(60% Republican/conservative, 40% Democrat/liberal), there was no way any amount of malicious fingers could alter the vote counts in the three selected counties. The memo was intended to toss out any absentee ballot that was not absolutely perfect or perfectly postmarked. Ignore that quite a few times on various military posts and ships, they grab the mail that is there, bag it up, and get it out at the first chance when a transport comes in-and sometimes they forget a post mark and as long as the signatures are good, the votes are counted. This was seen by many conservatives, and many military personnel, as the Gore/Democratic people regarding the voice of the military as not worth being heard.
The Florida Supreme Court's ruling, forcing the date of certification to be held open, on the basis of a Illinois case statue that was read both liberally and inaccurately by the Gore lawyers. This forced the recounts to stay open, and for Gore to still be considered equal to Bush in that he isn't the winner yet.
And so, for two weeks, we were treated to chads. Hanging chads. Pregnant chads. Detached chads. Chads in a pear tree. For these two weeks, people got upset-and nobody more than the Republicans. For the first time in recent memory, there were Republican protests that numbered in the hundreds-Republicans booed down Jessie Jackson from the stage where he was inciting racial bigotry and inciting a potential riot. When the Miami/Dade County vote counters attempted to move ballots to a more private location for counting, the Republican vote counters, chanted "Let Us In!" and were allowed in to count the ballots. How bad was it for the Democrats? They started using the language of the honest Vietnam protestors on the Republicans, claiming that they were "rioting" and "inciting a riot". And, when it was all over-the margin was smaller than before, yes-Bush was still the winner after a half a dozen different counts.
But, has Gore quit yet? No, he hasn't. He's stated on TV that the "voice of the people" hasn't been heard yet, regardless of the count. Gore-hired and Gore-supporting lawyers are attempting to cause electors in the Electoral College to vote against their state's popular vote and for Gore. Clinton has denied the Bush camp the money and resources to set up their transition offices and insure that the transition of power is clean and smooth. The Gore camp still won't admit defeat-and by their actions they are dragging the nation, the stock market, and the economy down in the mud. History will view Gore with less regard and general thought than even Richard Nixon, whom at least had the good sense to concede for the good of the nation.
And, perhaps, when Gore finishes, our nightmare will be over.
New rant, next week. I promise it will be jam-packed full of all my thoughts.
PS-If anyone has a legal copy of the PlayStation Ghost In The Shell game, I'd be very glad to negotiate out a reasonable price for a copy. Thank you.
You want to come here and hear my opinion, you're welcome to come by. If not, you can Go Away, and let other people in.
Check out the Previous Rant.
This page was created on 11/30/00.
Created by Jonathan Souza on Front Page 2000.
