Your Pixellated Quizo Update

Let’s talk a little bit about video games in a midly-serious, intellectualized way.

I am an avid player of video games and have been since the halcyon years of the eighth grade when my father told me I could get a Sega Genesis if I saved up the money to pay for half of it, thus teaching me both the value of fiscal responsibility and the value of splitting the cost of expensive shit with other people. I would not necessarily consider myself a “gamer,” though, since in my estimation most people who self-identify as “gamers” should also self-identify is “gigantic douchebags.” There is a mindset among a large percentage of the gaming population that the only purpose of playing a game is to win as decisively as possible. Suffice it to say that between going to a snooty prep school and growing up watching LaSalle basketball the burning need to win at all costs is not something that has been imprinted onto my psyche.

This is not to say that I am not the competitive type – I am, just not when it comes to video games. Back when I used to regularly play in good Quizos – we’re talking Johnny Goodtimes, the old Callahan’s in Mayfair, and, where I started out lo these many years ago, back at the New Deck – I was an absolutely unbearable teammate. I would flip out over missing a single question and argue answers for hours after the game had ended. Now that the only Quizos I play in, and only occasionally at that, are known as “the moron Quizo” and “the milkshake Quizo,” well, I’ve mellowed out somewhat on that score. At the exceedingly-rare serious Quizo game, though, I get very unpleasant. And, beyond Quizo, I’ve said before that the ultimate goal of my theatre company is the Sith-like subjugation of the entirety of Philadelphia theatre (complete with stormtroopers). So I still have a nasty and dangerous competitive streak in me, but it doesn’t extend to video games.

This is largely because I only get competitive about things that I actually have a shot at winning, and I realized a couple years ago that for however much I love playing video games the fact is that I’m not very good at them. In point of fact I am pretty terrible. I have the requisite hand-eye coordination to be able to play games with a greater degree of skill than, say, a lemur, but not much more than that. This, however, is okay.

It’s okay because I have long viewed video games as more of a narrative medium than a competitive one. At the end of the day video games are just a vehicle for telling stories, and my brain has been hard-wired since infancy to seek out and hoover up as much story as I possibly can. My parents are directly responsible for this; I regard the banning of sugary cereals and their constant insistence that books are great as the twin triumphs of their child-raising efforts. Thanks to them I’ve grown into a perfectly sane adult who is obsessed with Star Wars and gets nauseous at the thought of Lucky Charms.

It’s because of these things, though, that my video game tastes are strangely fractured (and that my favorite cereal is, seriously, Cheerios). When you lack the coordinative ability to frag at will first-person shooters are depressingly unamusing, so it is hardly surprising that the only ones I enjoy are those with a really strong narrative behind them like Half-Life (which has a great story I could not explain to you or even myself if I tried for a thousand years) and Medal of Honor (singlehandedly winning World War II = the most awesome story of all), both of which can be played extensively without getting your skull caved in by a 12-year old. (Someone is going to suggest “what about Halo” here, to which I suggest, “no, seriously, shut the fuck up.” Comparing the single-player in Halo to these games. Take the goddamn Bowie knife out of your skull and get back to me.)

I don’t go much for so-called action games with the noted exception of The Force Unleashed, which is currently at the top of my playlist. I’ve said before that The Force Unleashed is a great Star Wars movie (better than at least 50% of all extant Star Wars movies, at any rate) trapped inside a terrible game. That sentiment has lessened somewhat as I’ve gotten further into the game since once you get a full set of powers the game becomes stupidly amusing – never underestimate how joy-inducing it is to kill eight stormtroopers with a single button push – but the fact of the matter is that the story is SO good I don’t especially care that the game is bad because I’m not in it for the game. Twitchy cameras and sluggish targeting might matter to someone whose sole purpose for playing TFU is to jack up their gamerscore by another thousand points, but to me it’s just something that slows me down as I plow through to the ending (not the END, the ENDING), which I am starting to suspect is not going to be that happy.

Obligatory side rant: how fucking sad is it that the writing and acting in a video game are like TEN HUNDRED BILLION times better than the last three movies? Case in point if you aren’t aware of the game: the main character (Darth Vader’s Sith apprentice) communicates with people via a droid that turns itself into a holographic projection of whoever is on the other end of the line. After one time when he’s talking to Vader, after the call ends the droid collapses in a heap and says “I hate being him.” And the main character looks at the droid, and is suddenly very sad, and says, “I think he does too.” Those two lines have more real emotion behind them than every second of the first three movies put together. Congratulations, George. You spent 10 years, $400 million, and used a thousand people to make three movies that aren’t as good as one game that 30 people made in eighteen months. EPIC FAIL.

Anyway.

Mostly my gaming taste tends towards RPGs and sports games, and sports games are really just narrative vehicles anyway. Playing NHL or FIFA or whatever isn’t “can I somehow defeat my computer opponent/jerkoff guy on the internet?” It’s a story, and you’re waiting to see how it ends. Can Kansas win back-to-back BCS championships? (Yes.) Will Chelsea stretch out their six-game winning streak? (Yes.) Can Tiger break his own record at Pebble Beach? (Yes.) Will the Devils ever lose by fewer than 5 goals on Martin Brodeur’s day off? (No.) Despite the national media’s constant attempts to make them so I don’t believe that ACTUAL sports are a narrative event, but firing up NCAA Football on 360 is creating a story as much as sitting down to write the screenplay to Rudy.

And, as those of us of the gaming sort know, RPGs are basically just 40-80 hour movies with occasional gameplay bits in between scenes. The story rules still apply – I will grit my teeth and ignore reams and reams of terrible gameplay if the script is good enough (and I have). There are people, serious RPG-players, who complain that they hate Final Fantasy VIII (one of my all-time top five favorite games ever*) because “the gameplay is broken.” To that point, I remind them that A) it’s a freaking RPG, the gameplay (while in this case definitely broken) is irrelevant, and B) you KNOW the gameplay is irrelevant, and you actually hate it because it’s a love story and you’re an immature jackass. Admit it. ADMIT IT. YOU HATE IT BECAUSE IT’S A LOVE STORY. ADMIT THAT YOU ARE AN IMMATURE JACKASS. ADMIT IT!

I’m sorry, I still get a bit worked up about that one.

Also, there was something about baseball this week, but I was too busy trying to destroy the Emperor. I’ll have more on the World Series shenanigans tonight.

JLK







* In no particular order: Final Fantasy VIII, Half-Life, NFL 2K5, Final Fantasy Tactics, StarCraft