Reading11

Video games kill, kids.

Just kidding. I hope you didn’t take that seriously even for a millisecond.

When I was little, I played Diablo II 1, Halo, Fallout I/II, and a few other games that a 6-7 year-old little person (maybe) should not have been playing. Regardless, I played them. I also saw my brother play many violent first-person shooters, anything from DOOM to COD. I also played a lot of more fun and happy Nintendo games growing up. Neither of them negatively affected me; I was totally fine with killing Undead, and eventually going down into Hell and killing Diablo 2 as a young child. It was totally fine to me. Not once did I ever conflate the world of Diablo II, or whatever game I was playing, with the real world.

To me, games have always been an expression of creativity and imagination. Just like a book or a movie, it’s easy to get engrossed in the world and storyline of a game; sometimes, since you are an active participant in games as opposed to other forms of entertainment, you get even more engrossed in a good game than in many movies. At least I know this is true for me 3.

For some reason, however, parents tend to get upset at games and think that they negatively impact the character of their child. I know my parents did that; they weren’t a fan of me playing games at all. When I was little, I had to hide a lot of my game-playing because they were really unsupportive. We got game consoles from our friends/my uncle as well…the only thing my parents ever bought was the Wii. To them, one hour of gameplay was A LOT of time. Why would I ever need to play a game for more than an hour? They simply didn’t understand this, and would be afraid that I would become addicted/get to into the game and think it’s real if I played too much. They also wanted me to spend time on other things, which is more of a fair argument.

My parent’s feelings on games came from an assumption that games can negatively affect the average person’s life, even from moderate usage. They thought that violent games led to violent tendencies in people 4. As people who didn’t ever have access to video games as children, they never got on the bandwagon, and for them it’s just hard to understand. But for those of us who have played games for a long time, and even for many people who haven’t, we see that the average player doesn’t ever have tendencies to cause ill will to others, no matter how violent the games that they play tend to be. The two simply aren’t related. There’s violence everywhere we go; in movies, books, in history. Yet, you generally don’t see people talk about how history causes gun violence. At least, not in an academic way 5. There are many studies out there that support this; gamers actually tend to have a less violent tendencies than the average person. Take that as you will. I decide to take it as there is nothing wrong with violent video games.

  1. you know this. i’ve beaten it to death.↩

  2. man, describing this makes me want to play it↩

  3. looking at you Portal 1/2. also the saboteur’s universe was fascinating to me.↩

  4. actually, my mom might still believe this. idk, haven’t brought it up in a while.↩

  5. however, i did just have an interesting conversation on racism, thanksgiving, and how white-washing of history in order to “protect children” from the horrors we’ve done is actually really damaging.↩

Reading10

What do you think of eSports or competitive video gaming? Are you a competitor or a spectator? If so, which games? Is esports something that will reach the level of an Olympic event and should it receive the same level of recognition and support as other types of competitive activities?

I like eSports.

I am not a regular spectator, but I went to NA LCS in LA over the summer 1. Here’s some cool pics of me with my cool UCLA friends from that day:

Us with C9

Us with Immortals

We watched C9 vs Immortals (pictured with those two teams above) and TSM vs. Team Liquid, who we didn’t end up getting pictures with.

I haven’t really followed eSports before going to NA LCS, though I had played League, so I didn’t really understand how things worked before actually going. eSports are similar to regular sports in a lot of normal ways - there are professional commentators, there’s a stadium, each player has a camera on their face the entire game (you can really get a full experience of their emotions sometimes). It’s actually super legit, which is something that can surprise a lot of people. I’d heard of these tournaments before, even though I didn’t follow them, so not a lot of this ended up surprising me.

People train for eSports, and it becomes their lives. We talked about this in class as well; there are houses dedicated to the players practicing and it’s their full time job. They become famous, people follow their stats, people move around from team to team 2. One of my friends pictured above, Alec, turned into the biggest fangirl ever when he saw Doublelift in person. As he walked by, he did his best to say something witty to DL, who vaguely acknowledged him. He got ridiculously excited by it, more excited than I’d seen him get for most things. Alec, like many others, follows League pretty closely, and was acting like he’d seen someone legitimately famous - because he did! The point here is that these people, though the path they’ve taken is rather modern, are revered just like any “regular” athlete would be.

This begs the question - are they the same as traditional sports athletes? Do they deserve the same amount of attention? Personally, I think traditional sports athletes get too much fame and fortune anyway - and I don’t see why professional League players shouldn’t get the same benefits. They work as hard as athletes do, just in a really different way. While they don’t do something physically taxing, they do something that does require a lot of skill, and is entertainment for others, just like sports players do.

Realistically, the gaming niche is small enough that it’s never going to reach the level of recognition that an Olympic event or any other sporting event does. People have always prioritized physical strength/beauty over intelligence/skill 3. For example, athletes and actors in our culture are valued way differently than researchers/other intellectual people. Apart from the few famous CEOs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, or the occasional smart physicist like Neil Degrasse Tyson, smart/hard-working people that don’t do something physical/mainstream just aren’t famous. Also, you simply can’t compare the fame of a Hollywood actor with Neil Degrasse Tyson’s or Bill Nye’s; it’s just a totally different realm. Getting esports to have such recognition akin to “regular” sports would require a cultural overhaul of our society, which it’s most certainly not interested in/ready for. However, if it were to happen, I would have no qualms with it.

  1. if you’re a normie ape who doesn’t know what that is, talk to vector bill.↩

  2. hi there doublelift↩

  3. not to say that Olympic athletes don’t have skill, but physical skill is always prioritized in our culture.↩

Reading09

You know I went to Strikes and Spares, you saw me and my sad, destroyed phone there 1. I mostly played mini-golf, but I’ve been there a lot of times already, so I’ve had the super special Strikes and Spares experience. In fact…

Quick storytime! When I was little, I went to Strikes and Spares a lot. Like, before they painted the place red 2. I remember when they added mini-golf and go-karts, and I absolutely loved it. They have three hour passes where you can do unlimited anything (i.e. bowling, golfing, go-karting) for those three hours. We once were the last people in the place and they let us stay for 20 mins after they were supposed to close. Good times, good times indeed.

Especially when I was little, but even now, I appreciate arcades. I didn’t have a lot of experience going to arcades when I was little 3, but enough to know that I really enjoyed them. There were a few games in the movie theater, on top of Putt Putt and Strikes and Spares. I frequented those places when I had the chance, and I really loved them. I don’t see that enjoyment going away anytime soon.

There is definitely still a charm to arcades. There’s something fun about interacting with a physical system; just like pinball was way back when. Most PC games don’t involve interactions with something physical, everything is virtualized 4. While I usually, these days, don’t have a burning desire to go to an arcade, every now and then I do appreciate having a different experience. For children, since it is such a physical experience, arcade games expend energy in a way that video games struggle to do 5. This definitely makes for a vastly different experience, and that makes it valuable.

On top of the physical aspect, arcade games are generally a really different type than typical PC/console games, since they’re short and approachable games, the idea being that anyone could catch on to them quickly. In that sense, they’re very similar to many mobile games 6.

However, it’s clear that the majority of people don’t seem to agree with my thoughts on arcades, because their popularity has gone down majorly with the rise of video games on PC/consoles, and especially with the rise of mobile games. For many people, if they have a convenient “arcade” in their pocket, there’s little point in going to a physical location to play games. I would argue, just like I did with board games at the beginning of the semester, that there definitely is a point to different forms of games/gaming. Just like people still play board games or card games, they can still go to arcades and play arcade games and still gain something out of it. While you most certainly can interact with other people playing video games, and I think that there’s a large value in doing so, interactions with people in arcade games are a little different, and also have their respective value.

  1. which has gone through surgery successfully, might i add!↩

  2. it was beige and boring. boo. red made it fun and exciting, obviously.↩

  3. when you’re little, you can’t drive to one yourself, believe it or not↩

  4. somethin somethin concurrency virtualization persistence↩

  5. rejoice, parents, you can depelete their seemingly infinite energy!↩

  6. they also take your money…the similarities continue!!!↩

Reading08

While a lot of people would say “normies REEEEEEEEEE” to casual gaming, I personally don’t think it’s a bad thing. Mobile gaming has brought games, albeit in a very different form, to the mainstream. Isn’t that what gaming should be about? Shouldn’t we try to make this environment as inviting and welcoming as possible, so more people can enjoy it?

Yes, this is change, and yes, these people don’t game in the same way that your typical gamer does, but I don’t think it should be a change that angers the gaming community. In the same way that there are different types of music that people listen to in different moods, it’s perfectly find for people to have different types of games that they play in different moods, even if some of those are more casual. Mobile gaming, as a whole, is a good thing, even if it’s a little different.

I don’t think that mobile games make up the most artistic or interesting games of the genre, in general, and I personally don’t prefer them to most “normal” games that I’ve played in the past few years, but I don’t think that they should be discriminated on. Some people like mobile games, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Mostly…but we’ll get into that later.

My first experience with mobile games, if I remember correctly, was Temple Run. I found it extremely exciting and addictive; I spent a ridiculous amount of time running from monkeys and trying to not die. It’s one of the (mobile) games I spent the most amount of time playing. Since then, my usual paradigm when I find a new mobile game is to play it intentely for a few weeks, then give it up entirely as soon as I get bored. The issue with the majority of mobile games, for me, is that they aren’t all that interesting/have a storyline. If you remember from my previous blogs, one of the things that hooks me the most with games is a good plot. If you don’t have that, I get bored rather quickly, so I tend to not play most mobile games for very long. The only one I keep consistently installed is Flow Free, which funnily enough, doesn’t have a plot at all. However, it’s a simple and fun puzzle game, and I don’t play it 99% of the time since I’ve already done all the levels (I’ve played since high school, so it’s actually not that big of a deal).

However, many mobile games are of the same form, containing 255 micro-transactions. I personally hate this model; either make me pay for the game or make it free and REALLY FREE 1.

Apart from my small annoyances with pay-to-play mobile games, I think there’s a bigger issue here; these games feed on getting people addicted enough to want to pay money to continue playing. Their business model exploits the addictive tendencies in people. Some mobile games market their games specifically to be addictive and get a select few to pay hundreds of dollars, which I personally think is morally corrupt.

TLDR; mobile gaming is fine, though not exactly my thing all that much, except for when they exploit people.

  1. don’t make me wait for silly amounts of time because i’ve depleted some stupid energy resource. this is stupid. this makes your game more stupid. stahp.↩

Reading06

If a brand new technology is being experimented with, I think graphics are extremely important to the overall experience. For example, with Avatar 1, despite the storyline being predictable and honestly terrible, it was wildly successful since it introduced 3D technology to movies in a way like never before. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and still appreciate the movie for its technical challenges and innovations.

However, if a game/movie isn’t being released for the technical challenge, I think that too much CGI can be annoying. What I appreciate most about games is the storyline; this to me, is more important than the graphics. However, if the graphics are good and the story is good, I don’t see anything wrong with having lots of CGI stuff in a game or movie. For example, let’s look at a game that I’ve logged way too many days of playtime on (Skyrim) 2. The graphics were pretty damn good, I spend a lot of time just traveling from place to place and looking at the scenery (especially at night time, the sky is so fantastically done). But it’s the storyline that makes it for me 3. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent so many hours of my life for this game. Yeah, you know how people tend to skip past the storylines? No, not me.

On the flip side, really bad CGI can be super distracting. If it doesn’t look realistic, or at least doesn’t match the aesthetic of the game/movie, CGI can really detract from it. Unless the point is to meme or make you laugh, poorly done CGI is painful 4, just like seeing poorly done stunt-work. The first thing that comes to my mind here is Game of Thrones vs. Merlin. I used to watch Merlin years ago 5, and while I found it semi-interesting, it drove me crazy when I would see bad CGI, which happened a lot since they didn’t have a giant budget. Meanwhile, Game of Thrones does a pretty damn good job with CGI and stunt work. Have you SEEN any of their behind the scenes 6? They might work for days to set up one physical prop for a one-second scene. They treat CGI the same way, it’s extremely meticulous, but the end product is just amazing. They also have a significantly bigger budget, so I get it, but still. They. Do. It. Right.

For this week, I watched Spirited Away 7, because my wonderful 10/10 professor said that it would count 8. Though the movie was mostly hand drawn, they did start experimenting with computer animation, particularly through the use of a program called Softimage (now discontinued, but it was used in the early 2000s for movies, games, and advertising). However, Hayao Miyazaki (the director, but you already know that) was very careful about keeping a hand drawn feel and not letting fancy animations steal the show. While, as I said above, I usually don’t mind lots of CGI as long as the plot is great, it makes sense that Spirited Away didn’t use too much of it since it didn’t match the aesthetics of the film.

Overall, don’t do CGI if you can’t do it well. If you can, then go crazy, and I don’t mind. But good CGI doesn’t make a bad movie/game good, it just makes it not terrible. Most importantly, MAKE A GOOD STORYLINE. That’s the kicker. If you have that, then most other transgressions can be forgiven.

  1. blue people movie, not the dope cartoon. r.i.p.↩

  2. yeah, 80 days of playtime on my 360, and i played on PC first.↩

  3. dark brotherhood quest line was da best. no question.↩

  4. kids, don’t do drugs, and don’t allow bad CGI. plz. kthxbai.↩

  5. aka, i watched the first two seasons and then i got bored↩

  6. no, u havent b/c u dont watch the show REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE↩

  7. for the first time! i know, i know…↩

  8. you see that 10/10…that should be my reading06 score :]↩

Reading05

The general public associates gamers with dark rooms, teenage boys that haven’t taken showers in days 1, snacks all around them, etc. And while there are many gamers 2 that fall under that category, not all gamers are like that 3. Similarly, not all games in general are of the type that you can play in a dark room.

Anyone who knew me as a kid (and anyone who regularly attends History of Computing) knows that I used to play a lot of Stepmania as a kid, so my viewpoint on interactive games is probably pretty obvious. Nevertheless, I guess I’ll talk about it for the points 4. Also, I don’t think you need screenshot proof that I played Stepmania for this week. You’ve seen me play Stepmania, you know this is a thing. Cool. Here’s me forcing my friendly local nieghborhood troll to play Boys (on medium, ezpz can I just say)

As a kid, I had a lot of energy. I wish I still had that energy, but we can’t have it all, can we? Regardless, games like Stepmania were an obvious way for me to expend some of that energy without driving my parents insane 5. Interactive gaming adds a new level of excitement to gaming. Though games that don’t use special periphreals aren’t any less interesting, adding a periphreal to a game can make for a great experience if it’s done well/tastefully. Half the fun of Stepmania is doing things on feet, actually getting up and moving 6. The premise of the game on its own is quite simple, the dance pad is the star of the show.

Another good example I enjoyed growing up was Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. 7 It came with fancy congo drums, and you had to beat the drums and clap to make DK move/jump around. The congos took a fun, but simple game, and made it memorable. The point - periphreals are just one of many ways to make games exciting. They don’t innately make a game superior or inferior.

I can’t say that I definitely prefer “interactive” or “passive” games. Above were two examples of games that were made better by periphreals, but there are many other games I’ve enjoyed that required a more passive playstyle, and in fact, I’ve played many more passive games than interactive 8. I have fun with both, and which I prefer depends on my mood. In general, passive games, since they don’t have the excitement of periphreals, tend to have more of a storyline, so if I’m looking for that, I’ll play a more passive game 9.

I’m also a fan of VR, to an extent. Though it can make you dizzy, I’ve had a lot of fun playing games like Fruit Ninja and Skyrim with a VR headset 10. I definitely think it has a future, though I wouldn’t argue that it will replace regular gaming.

Overall, I’m a fan of both passive and interactive gaming 11. They have their ups and downs, and sometimes I really prefer one or the other, but good games exist in both categories; the presense of periphreals won’t make a bad game good, and their absence is sometimes a good thing.

  1. which by the way, I’ve seen too much of and is gross.↩

  2. programmers in general too, now that I mention it.↩

  3. #notallgamers2k18. spread the word.↩

  4. and on the off chance that anyone cares. but i doubt anyone cares↩

  5. execpt I was totally a good kid growing up. obviously.↩

  6. not to say that hands aren’t fun either!↩

  7. oh, so much of my life…I think I logged the most playtime on my GameCube when I was real smol↩

  8. diablo, final fantasy, portal, elder scrolls games, oni, all derivations of mario games, zelda, assassin’s creed, the sabatoeur, darksiders, prince of persia, to name the few off the top of my head that I really enjoyed in no particular order↩

  9. though this isn’t always the case, especially when we talk about VR! see: skyrim VR↩

  10. slicing actual FRUIT with an actual (virtual) katana is dope. plz don’t try and tell me otherwise.↩

  11. #yesallgames↩

Reading04

Don’t hate me because these are late. I just knew you were waiting with baited breath for them, but you’ll just have to deal with it for now.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but growing up for me, I was more of a PC gamer than a console gamer, since all consoles I’ve owned excepting the Wii I got on the good graces of other people, particularly my uncle 1. But I did end up playing quite a few. If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the N64, partially for nostalgia, but partially because it was really fun.

I used to play on the N64 on a tiny TV in my best friend’s RV, in the bed above the driver’s seat 2. We all were aggressively competitive while playing Super Smash Bros, and some of my fondest memories come from that time. I also played a lot of Ocarina of Time in those days. But apart from the nostalgia, I liked the controller alot. In fact, my favorite controllers have been Nintendo ones (I really enjoyed the SNES controller as well). I have some pictures of us playing on Gameboys back then, which are super relevant…

And this one too…

Wow, we used to be little. I miss those days…

What I really liked about Nintendo consoles in general growing up was the games. I felt like they were really approachable; most of my closest friends weren’t as into gaming as I was, but they were willing to play something like Super Mario Bros 3, or Smash Bros. When the GameCube came out, I got them to play Kirby Airride, Simpsons Hit and Run, and Tony Hawk games with me (all on GameCube). Most of the Nintendo games I owned were approachable enough that they were willing to play at least for a little while.

I never considered a console’s hardware specs growing up, so I wouldn’t consider that a big factor of importance when it comes to choosing a superior console. Firstly, I wouldn’t have really understood what they meant, I knew nothing about hardware as a child 3. But secondly, I don’t think I would have cared all that much as long as the games offered on any given console were playable and enjoyable.

  1. which was a big deal…my parents NEVER bought consoles/games.↩

  2. we were so small, they fit four of us and a TV and an N64 up there.↩

  3. until my brother opened up a computer tower with me and explained very generally what the different parts did. that was the first time I ever thought about a future in computing.↩

Reading03

Growing up, I did the majority of my gaming on PC. Sure, I had a SNES, N64, and original Xbox 1, but I spent most of my time on the computer growing up, playing Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Final Fantasy VII 4, Carmen SanDiego 5, Oni 6, StepMania 7, and so many others. Why no consoles? Well…

First off, consoles are expensive! I already had a computer in the house for reasons other than gaming, so why would I buy a console? Furthermore, console games were expensive too…theoretically, it’s much easier to “legally acquire” PC games than Xbox ones 8. So from a personal standpoint, it’s easy to see why I fell in love with PC gaming; even though I didn’t have a l33t gaming computer, I was still able to play all of the above-mentioned games and more!

Furthermore, PC gaming made a very positive impact not just on gamers, but on society in general. A quote from one of our readings, said by John Romero, sums this up real nicely… “I think the fact that computers were primarily used to play games really helped to get people to accept that computers were good and helpful devices instead of the negative portrayals of them in the ’60s and ’70s in movies.” Johnny Boy is totally right. Gaming made the computer much less scary and much more approachable. These lean 9, mean, computing machines can be used to just entertain yourself…it’s not so bad 10!

Looking at some of the first PC games, like Lemonade Stand 11, you may think that there’s not much of a point to paying attention to them at all. I talked about this a lot more in my last blog post, so see that for a longer discussion, but it’s important to hear again…even if you hate old games, you should at least appreciate them for being the building blocks on which the games of today are created. And even so, they still can be fun to play. I had a good time with Prince of Persia just now, instead of doing my real schoolwork…12

  1. all given to me on the good grades of my uncle/other people who didn’t want those “old” game systems laying around↩

  2. Protoss FTW, and don’t look at me like that, Zerg’s ugly dood↩

  3. my love for Diablo II will never fade↩

  4. so hard for a kiddo, but I got so excite when Advent Children came out…esp that “good to see you…Cloud” line HOLY CRAP↩

  5. where in the world was she???↩

  6. lil 2002 game by Bungie, main character Konoko is BOSS and the environmental crisis in 2032 is a real thing, git ready↩

  7. I loved FOSS before I even knew what that meant↩

  8. I’m not l33t enough to mod a farking xbox, especially not at like 7 y/o so be calme everybody↩

  9. Well, maybe lean isn’t the right word, looking at the laptop I’m writing this from…↩

  10. Tell that to DND Greg in episode 15 of Teen Girl Squad! I mean…um, nothing…coughs↩

  11. which dmattia still considers the easiet game evar↩

  12. “yeah, mom, my homework is to play games, I know it’s hard but I struggle through it anyway…”↩

Reading02

Ah…the golden age. Back in the days when everybody walked uphill both ways to school, we didn’t have fancy, new-fangled things like phones, the internet, or git, and things were overall just simpler…especially games. But even if they’re simple, it doesn’t mean that they’re any less interesting than today’s games…does it?

Well, in order for me to find out, I had to perform extensive research 1. What did I learn? Well, first off, old games are HARD. Like, pretty damn hard 2. Especially because I didn’t even know the controls for half the things I tried. Maybe people don’t play some of these games anymore just so they can feel better about themselves 3. Anyway, here’s some proof that I played games so my professor doesn’t fail me or whatever4…

I played frogger. I wasn’t super great at it, but I had a lot of fun. The speed difference between those logs is killer, though 5.

Here’s me playing turtles. Believe it or not, when these things are chasing you like crazy, it’s hard to take a screenshot. I entirely blame pbui and this blog for my low scores 6.

Finally, here’s a cute screenshot from a game called “The Mousing Cat” which I just felt like I had an obligation to play. I kinda liked this one, but not nearly as much as frogger.

Anyway, now that my ahem proof of research is complete 7, back to the original point…are these games still important today? Or do they just suck and should we leave them in the past, and tell hipsters to stop wearing their flannels and to throw away their record players 8?

Many people today would not even look twice at an Atari game from the 80’s…after all, the graphics are bad, the premise is usually simple and why am I looking at this instead of playing Skyrim VR??? What’s the big deal, anyway? These games are old and outdated, let them die!!! RIGHT? …right?

Well, apart from nostalgia, there’s a few things that looking at gaming from the golden age is good for, at least I happen to think so. I’m not saying you have to play them all day, or even any of the days, but it’s important to at least know about them.

First off, one has to remember that these games were pioneers in a world that was the wild wild west. If nobody had bothered to create any of these games, then there would be no Dark Souls, no Overwatch, no Skyrim, no League. In the same way that you’re supposed to respect your elders, you also should respect these games. Even if you think they’re dumb (which they arent!!!), at least appreciate them for that much, alright kiddo 9?

Second off, these games are still played today, in a sense. Don’t believe me? Well have you ever heard of Crossy Road? It’s an app that came out a few years ago, one of those things young whippersnappers played. And if you look at it, it’s exactly like frogger, just with slightly better graphics 10. If these games aren’t fun or useful anymore, then why are we still playing them? Sure, to make them appeal to the general masses, frogger needed a facelift, but it’s still the same dang game. I never played Donkey Kong as a smol child 11, but I played a Tarzan game with a very similar feel, again, just reskinned. There’s something innately interesting about these games that makes them come back again and again. The age of the smartphone has only brought these concepts back…with these little devices needing to attract buyers’ attention with limited memory and computational resources 12, older games have been able to make a comeback.

Here’s another thing about the golden age…have you seen commercials for early game systems? They’re very inclusive…not only is gaming portrayed more as a social event than it is now 13, but you see girls behind the console as well as boys. Look at the gaming community today, and you see lots of toxicity around women. Women and gaming is an entire topic that I’m sure we’ll get to later, so I’ll save the ranting for then, but things seem less terrible for women in the golden age.

Overall, old games aren’t as fancy as the new, shiny games of today. Especially with the rise of really crazy technology like VR, it can make these old games seem rather uninteresting at first glance. But even if you don’t like playing them, at the very least, you should appreciate that they created the foundation for all other games to build upon. And also, there’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of nostalgia…

  1. look, I may not have taken hackers, but I still believe in the hands-on imperative so don’t judge me↩

  2. something something insert NP hard joke here↩

  3. quick tip…play Diablo III if you want to feel better about your gaming ability. After II, that was such a disappointment…and I’m not even that good a gamer. This is sad. Rant over for now.↩

  4. this class is hard, alright, I’m trying to stay afloat by playing loads of games. It’s already week 3, and it’s a stressful time of year…↩

  5. no frogs were hurt in the playing of this game↩

  6. totally legitimate claim, alright? Anyone who disagrees is spewing #fakenews↩

  7. though, are we ever done researching? I might have to go back and run some more experiments…↩

  8. tfw you realize you’re wearing a flannel and listening to your record of Dark Side of the Moon…↩

  9. before you scoff and run off to play black ops, just remember that it wouldn’t exist without these so be calm↩

  10. and also way easier..trust me I played a lot of crossy road a few years back.↩

  11. shoutout to the people who still are smol children…not the worst way to be↩

  12. well, at least more limited than your average gaming device↩

  13. not that I don’t think gaming is social!!! But it’s percieved as less so today↩

Reading01

Many people (me included) consider the first “real” video game to be tennis for two. The goal of tennis for two was simple; this one dude named William Higinbotham just wanted something amusing for the annual visitor’s day at Brookhaven National Lab. Did he intend to kickstart a revolution, to start the game industry? Nah. When he realized what he’d done, he probably felt like he created something a little like this… 1

Sometimes, unintended consequences make for the best stories. This is one of those times.

At a time when computer science was young, some nerds 2 decided to make Spacewar! on a PDP-1. Ah, the good old days, when you’d do 36-hour sprints, inhaling all the caffiene and chinese food in sight 3. This game was revolutionary; we have many players here, including real-time action, shooting your friends, and hyperspace. Don’t threaten me with a good time. Spacewar! was so amazing, people still play it today, I’m sure of it…maybe even in History of Computing classes, could you imagine? Something else amazing Spacewar! did was getting you to feel frustration like you never felt before 4.

Spacewar! might have been more popular in the 1960’s and 1970’s if there was a way for most people to play it. Unfortunately, it was mostly engineering students that got to give it a go. Believe it or not, there was a time where in-home game consoles and PCs weren’t commonplace 5.

If people didn’t have ways to play games at home, what did they do 6? Soon enough, video games in arcades started to properly surface. After some failures and a lot of people sitting around, not sure what they were doing exactly 7, eventually Pong was born and placed in the back of a bar (Andy Capp’s). A few days later, the machine “broke” because there were too many coins in the coin box. People were flocking to the bar, but not to drink, to play! Finally, games were available to the mainstream, and the mainstream loved it.

These original games, of course, lacked many of the features modern games have today, but in my experience, it doesn’t make them less fun to play. While playing a VR game is new and exciting, or playing through an intricate storyline like the Portal series can make you feel all the feels, there’s an element of simplicity that I love about older games. First, they’re more approachable to the average person - I could get my best friend (who doesn’t really like games that much) to play Pong, but she wouldn’t touch something as immersive, complex, and full-featured as Skyrim 8.

Home consoles also became a thing, though quite different from the consoles we use today. The Mangavox Oddesy had no sound, hardly any graphics, and very limited features…but all revolutions have to start somewhere, right? Even so, something I think is impressive was accomplished; having a light gun peripheral. I’m a big fan of peripherals myself 9.

Anyway, as primitive as these games may seem to the average muh-lenny-uhl, they were the foundation on which everything else could be built upon. Even if you think they’re lame 10, at least appreciate that, without them, you couldn’t play any games. Even if you only play cute lil apps on your phone. Thanks Pong, Spacewar!, and real O.G. peeps like tennis for two, for creating a world that I think is not only immersive and super fun, but also, is a beautiful form of art 11. :)

  1. my brain during/after every systems assignment after.↩

  2. nerd (n): the best type of people you’ll ever meet.↩

  3. yeah, that’s right, I read that part of hackers in the bazaar. on a related note, TODO: read the rest of hackers in the bazaar.↩

  4. we’re all angry german kid deep down…↩

  5. puts my childhood struggles of always having to be Luigi in Super Mario Bros. 3 (since I was the younger one) in perspective, doesn’t it?↩

  6. i mean, other than cri agressively…↩

  7. hey, just like me all the time!↩

  8. to my dismay of course, though her first experience seeing skyrim gameplay is one of my more favorite stories to tell.↩

  9. dat redoctane Afterburner tho. was also a big fan of donkeykong junglebeat congos, which i also still own. :)↩

  10. which, uh, don’t b/c they’re dope.↩

  11. i’m sure i’ll have a blogpost about how games are art one day. if not, see me for related rant.↩

Reading00

When I was little, I really enjoyed playing games of all kinds, especially with my friends. Locally, there are a handful of Romanian families that have banded together, who all have children of similar age. Our Romanian “group” first got together when I was pretty young, maybe eight or so, and those children have become my closest friends - most of us feel like cousins or siblings. Whenever we would have a get-together, we would usually spend the first few hours just chatting or playing, but as the night wound down, we always eventually moved to playing a board game or card game 1.

I also played video games, but I found it harder to connect to some people with them. My best friend hated video games, but I would often wake up early at sleepovers and play with her little brother 2. My favorites growing up were Super Mario All-Stars for Super Nintendo, a random Bungie game called Oni that nobody’s ever heard of, and of course, Diablo II, which I started playing when I was 6 or so 3.

I played games for many reasons. For board/card games, I played them as a way to have fun and interact with my friends. We were able to learn a lot about each other and have something to laugh or yell about. I still love playing cards with new people I meet because you get to learn a lot about them that way. With video games, it was different. I played them for the same reason that I would pick up a book; my favorites had a story, an interesting universe in which the characters were placed, and kept me motivated to learn. Games like Portal and any Elder Scrolls game are some of my favorite games becuase their worlds captivated me. My favorite games were also quite challenging; I loved having an interesting puzzle/problem to think through.

I think many people play games for similar reasons that I did; they help you connect with people, stretch the limits of your imagination, and challenge you. For me, these are really important aspects of games in general. I liked having a game where I could devise a strategy, where some logic was involved, both for video and non-video games. This is essential for a good video game. While games must be stochastic in some sense, if the entire game is dependent on chance then I wouldn’t get any more enjoyment out of playing that game as I would playing a slot machine.

Board games are similar to video games in that you can form a connection with people. Though I did find it harder in some cases, it also allowed me to get close to certain people. The puzzle/strategy aspect of gaming is also the same in both video games and board games. However, when it comes to the artistic and creative aspects of a game, board games are left behind in the dust. While really well-designed board games exist and can be exciting, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a board game with the artistic quality and creativity even close to what’s found in Skyrim. Video games allow you to create an immersive and interactive world that is simply impossible with the static pieces of a board game. This is where I would say that video games are superior, but for me, it also makes the dangerous. Once I start a game, I find it very difficult to stop playing in every spare moment I have. In fact, the summer after my freshman year of college, all I did was sit in my room and play Skyrim while eating junk food 4. For that reason, I’ve kind of taken the backseat where it comes to gaming in the past few years, but that’s a different story.

  1. this tradition still remains, I just played cards with them last week.↩

  2. she got annoyed at that sometimes, but oh well.↩

  3. far too young, but I turned out alright..depending on who you talk to.↩

  4. a fun way to spend my time, but looking back perhaps not the most productive pursuit…I gained 15 pounds that summer.↩