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Up, Up, Down, Down: Part Four
A new report by PC Data says that 35% of Net users are going to buy console or PC console games this Christmas, and that PC and console gaming is no longer a male-dominated activity. The study found that while men make up 55% of gamers overall, for the first time women comprise a a majority of online gamers -- 50.4%. Women, according to the study, favor online gambling, card gones and quiz and trivia contests.
PC Data says men prefer war - and sports-themed games, and that men are three times as likely as women to participate in first-person shooter games (38% vs. 10%). "Solitaire," "Free Cell" and similiar bundled games are the most frequently played of all online and offline games. The top PC game categories are strategy real-time/turn-based, world building, and flight simulation.
Christmas is perhaps the best indicator of what mainstream America is buying and thinking about. The PC Data survey greatly underscores the idea that gaming has become a mainstream form of culture, if not the single most pervasive form of culture, in America.
You youngsters. Don't you see it? Tetris is the most addictive game _ever_. And there are millions of versions of it! And don't complain about lack of cool graphics - there is even several 3D-tetris-versions...
All these new games are just a lot of nice graphics and no new ideas behind.
And for multiuser-games: MUD just rox!
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
...as computers have become more sophisticated and graphics have got flashier, yesterdays super-addictive game simply fades away into obscurity.
However, a pick of three of high points in my experience of computing would be
MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) A text only multi player adventure played at University of Essex (UK). I believe that this was the first MUD ever (pre-1982); does anyone know better ? This was so addictive that I dedicated all my allocated mainframe time to playing this and I had to buy a BBC Micro to do my real computing projects... which leads to...
Elite for the BBC micro; one of the first wire frame 3D graphic space trading games. As you gained experience and graduated from "Harmless" through to the ultimate accolade of "Elite", you could send off to Acorn for badges to prove your prowess. Despite playing this once for 72 hours with only meal breaks I only got as far as Dangerous.... unfortunately the follow-ons to this game simply didn't deliver.
Doom I still believe that despite its age, Doom is the best 1st person shooter ever. I still play it occassionally and the sound combined with the graphics still have the power to make me leap out of my seat when something unexpected happens. Whilst Quake et al bought undeniably better effects, the magic atmosphere seems to be somewhat lacking in these games. One can only hope that the promised Doom 3 brings them back.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Well as a still active gamer I must say with a lot of this discussion about Diablo II, Everquest and games of this ilk, I find that I have to compare my gaming habits of the last few years pale in comparison to my old days of gaming.
I remember when I got my TRS-80 Mod III staying up for days on end playing Zork and Scott adams Adventures. Then again I was 10 years old, lived in a very rural area where my nearest friend was like 10 miles away. (Yeah it sounds like that old granpa school story) But my "addiction" to those games started my love of programming/debugging/etc.. as far as FPS' go. anyone remember Labyrith or bedlam??? They were out LOOOONG before Duke Nukem or Castle Wolfenstein.
I also remember inviting friends over to play Wizardy. We used put 3 or four computers together on the table and simulate multiplayer. Of course we weren't a true LAN party, but it was definately a premonition of things to come. Starting after school on a friday, and surviving on coffee, pizza and doritos till Sunday when we finally slept.
Hell, I met the manager for my company when I was 14 through a love of BTIII. We used to take turns with one person "driving" while the other one mapped, allowing the mapper the occasional nap whilst the "driver" went aroung grabbing experience before embarking down the next dungeon. I still have the maps that I drew on hex/graph paper. The 3 dimensional mazes for those bad boys were quite complex for their time.
So while I have spent some time doing the on-line multiplayer games from cards to "The Realm" to "Everquest",QIII,UT, whatever, for some reason they all seem to pale in comparison to the days I spent with the older games.
I agree with the above posters that to lose school/work/whatever for a game can be detrimental. The same goes for ANYTHING that takes ones time away from your "real-world" responsibilities. I remember getting in school trouble because I was out playing in bars with my band during finals week. Is that any different than playing games??. I don't believe so. The addiction has always been there for some of us, it's just are you responsible enough to know when it's time to quit. Well that and the carpal tunnel that starts kicking in after 8-10 hours of playing Quake or even programming would cause me to stop
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
You're absolutely right. However, if you added up the number of people who watched "Survivor" or "Who Wants to Look Even Stupider than Regis Philbin is Annoying?" I bet every game published in the last year doesn't come close to that number. And let's not forget the Bush/Gore Celebrity Death Match in Florida. This was Real History (TM) happening.
Also, while computer games are very pervasive, even my Mom plays FreeCell, there's a big difference between the casual gamers (like my Mom) and the hardcore people who had a reason to coin the term "Evercrack".
Here are some aspects of popular culture that are and probably will always be more popular than computer gaming:
Going to church
Watching Sports
Playing Sports
Listening to the radio
Reading newspapers/magazines (even if they are online)
Reading popular fiction (ditto)
Politics
Complaining about politics
Watching TV (OK, this one will probably go down over time)
Also, I do frequent stores like Wal-Mart, etc, and the book sections are always bigger than the game sections, and the local bookstores generally have about 10 times as much space devoted to such esoteric subjects as history, popular fiction, science or any of a number of other subjects than they do about gaming.
I'm not bashing gaming. I love it. I encourage my kids to play computer games (but not to excess, my wife will reel us in when necessary) and have a number of games for Christmas presents for them. Even my two-year-old is an avid computer user (her favorites are "Thomas the Tank Engine" and "Fisher-Price Toddler", but she loves to watch her older brothers play things like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Lode Runner.) So don't get me wrong, but any view that gaming is the (or even a) predominant element of culture is just a little skewed.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
That number would not not surprise me at all. I host LAN parties from time to time, and almost every female I know has either tried playing them, or does play them (except for one gal who hasn't bothered trying them.) However, it is a bit different between playing online, and playing at a LAN party - a LAN party isn't anonymous, and people are yelling and cursing at each other, and generally having a good time. Online, well, it's a bit different - I don't know how many of those same females play online. But they sure have a blast at the local LAN parties! (Which makes me think - it's time for another one soon!)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
They may be very involved and addictive, but they're just games. I guarantee you that there are people who are gamers who also brag about their sexual exploits, and having been in a combat zone myself, I can tell you I'd much rather tell war stories than describe cheats I came up with for Myth II.
To hear some people talk, you'd think they were in a real combat zone. Some people live and breath gaming now - if they gave a story to tell, it's gaming related. (And usually bores the fuck outta me. "Friendship is..." listening to some lame game-related story from a friend, and feigning interest!) Seriously, there's a good number of people who talk about games just as seriously as they talk about life. For me, talking about a video game is pretty boring - but get me started on tales of pen, paper, and dice role playing games, and you'd wonder if maybe my sanity is a little twisted based on the fact it almost sounds like *I* was there. This is just my experience , mind ya - but, people really do rave over thier exploits in games. (Geez - I have one friend who keeps relaying stories of his last games of Masters of Magic. Blow by blow. *SIGH*)
I know people who watch movies continuously. I know people who play pencil and paper role playing games for hours on end. Are they also taking part in some kind of hitherto never witnessed revolution in creativity?
Agreed. I think Jon missed something - online games aren't that much of a revolution, in many ways, and the fact that some people damned near live them is definitely not new. Some people do the same things with books, movies, role playing games, card games, majhong, etc. There's always a diversion to obsess over for anyone who's interested. It's no great revolution in thought or creativity - it's just an extension of what humans have always done in the past. Find something interesting, and dive in with both feet.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
"The PC Data survey greatly underscores the idea that gaming has become a mainstream form of culture, if not the single most pervasive form of culture, in America."
Yes, even the homeless love a good video game! Get a clue. Video games are a cultural niche. There are many things which reach across age and economic barriers much more -- books, movies, TV, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, turkey on Thanksgiving, watching sports, e-mail (to a lesser extent), and so on. You can throw it against the wall, Jon, but it don't stick...
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If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, forget 'em, because man, they're gone. -- Jack
Hm. You know, when I was a teenager, I used to covertly berate my friends and somewhat lose respect for them over the quantity of their lives they spent on what I could argue as a significant underutilization of their free time via obsessively playing console games. [It saddened me, I knew someone who would play super mario brothers for over two hours a day, but never got around to reading].
...until one day I had the foolishness to install quake. Oh my.
;)
Anyway, I never really understood gaming obsession, although I had [as a youngster] quite enjoyed some infocom offerings, such as starcrossed, infidel [and of -course- zork].
I became completely immersed in the game; my psyche simplified down to an exclusive focus on the reward and happiness of getting the hard to find ammo units, the special armour, the medi-packs. Nothing else mattered. I would sit in the dark, face up against the screen, all of my emotional energy and self focused entirely into the world of the game. And it intellectually challenging at all. I'm kind of ashamed of myself in retrospect.
I was no better then those I had once used to berate for becoming obsessed with super mario [Which, BTW, has some -strange- symbolism. I did always like the fact that you had to slam your head into brick walls constantly to earn happy money coins. I'm not even going to go into a freudian intrepetation of the mushrooms you had to squash...]
Moderators::Note(humor)
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the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
The game was a mixture of simple turn-based strategy and tactical cobat between two teams of competing robots. The robots were the typical "mechs" in several different varieties, two legged, four legged, tank treaded and flying. The innovative part of the game was that instead of controlling a mech, like a FPS, the player coded the software that dictated how the mechs reacted to their environments.
The programming system was simple and brilliant. Starting with a blank "card", the player placed and configured "chips" that created a sort of flowchart. The chips did all sorts of things like checking environmental conditions (presence of enemies, presence of friendlies, presence of ordinance, fuel remaining, weapons remaining), branching the program logic, moving the mech, firing the weapons and communicating with friendlies. The strategic part of the game was setting up factories, building the mechs, putting together squads and directing their movements on the battle maps.
I spent hours and hours of my free time playing the game (which was fascinating to watch, the game, not me playing it), but what's worse, I spent plenty of time away from the console diagramming new software configurations to try out later. Fortunately, my boss at the time was incapable of distinguishing my stacks of graph-paper flow charts from the work I was supposed to be doing.
At one point in my Doom days, I had been playing it for many hours a day for the past week. Suddenly one night, when I was trying to get to sleep, the instant I closed my eyes all I saw were various Doom levels, either real, made-up, or both, and I was playing them. For days after that point, if I even closed my eyes for a second, I would be in another Doom level, lobbing all sorts of artillery at various heinous creatures coming after me. It wouldn't stop.
Eventually, I stopped playing for a while, and my shut-eye time once again went dark. But Doom was very addictive. It paved the way for Duke Nukem, Quake, and all the billions of other FPS games out there. Hail to the King, baby.
Mr. Ska
> The PC Data survey greatly underscores the idea that gaming has become a mainstream form of culture, if not the single most pervasive form of culture, in America.
Jon, I don't know what your idea of culture is, but you have GOT to get out and see RealLife (TM, Pat. Pend.) just a little bit more.
You've got this bizarre idea that the whole world revolves around computer gaming and the Internet. Believe it or not, some people still watch TV, read books (gasp!) or even go outside and take a walk.
You've got to stop gauging the experience of 270,000,000 Americans on the poorly-spelled comments of a few pimply-faced geeks and those stupid PlayStation 2 commercials.
I am an avid gamer and Internet user, but I still spend more time reading books or playing with my kids than doing either. I'm even so radical as to have conversations with my wife. I guess I'm just a cultural throwback mired in the low-tech past.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I'm not really surprised. While I was growing up my Mom and Grandma would play all sorts of board and crad games (backgammon, hearts, canasta, etc.) At holidays it would always be aunts and female cousins that would play the more social games.
Well now it's almost 2001 and even my grandma has cable modem and one of the first things she did was get on the MSN Game Zone to play with my Mom. It's the same as it's always been it's just going over packets now.
I actually think that it's really good that this is happening. It's easier for everyone to at least stay in touch and do the things that they would have done if they were actuall there in person. If my Mom lived more than a few blocks from my grandma I would think that it is even cooler.
This is going back to some of the things brought up during the "Voices from the Hellmouth" series about the net "alienating" youth. It can only alienate you if you want it to. I'm sure that there are people that this does happen to, but I also know a lot of people that have a richer social life from the net, either clubs (LUGs are good), chatting, emailing, or (on topic) online gaming.
it's open-ended games like this, with no story other than the one you make for yourself, that are often the most addictive. how many times can i kill Diablo before i get bored? "Not even death" .. can save me from you, Diablo, yeah yeah, i know. especially since i'll respawn in town and come back to try to kill you again.
but see, in UO, if you were killed, any random newbie or PK wandering by could take from you what it took months of hard labor to accumulate. today's MMORPGs are so wimpy by those standards .. there's no risk, nothing to lose of any real value.
that, among other things, is what made UO so compelling. i don't think a game will ever match that level of sheer EMOTION involved. other UO players will remember hacking trees in the woods, making logs into shields to sell in town, every UO player remembers the SHEER DREAD they felt the first time a PK appeared out of nowhere and began attacking them. or the RAGE at being stabbed in the back by some low life while you were fighting a lich .. standing there screaming "ooOoOOooOoO" in your death shroud as he looted your corpse of everything that was important to you...
nope, today, you lose a little experience, oh well, whatever. off to fetch my stuff off of my corpse. UO players didn't have that luxury .. they're stuff was GONE. today, it's a much safer gaming world, much tamer, more mature. i miss the old days.
i could live a little longer in this prison
i could live a little longer in this prison