Greed is good. It drives us to want more, to always pursue the impossible perfection, to never become complacent. Yet sometimes, greed goes too far. Parents, your kids are greedy with their video games. I'm here to help you understand how and what you can do about it. _ A few years ago I finally managed to sit down and watch the movie “Wall Street”. Evidently there is some sort of unwritten law in business school about having to watch it before one graduates, so I gave in. I wanted to figure out what all of the hype was about and I’d heard so much about this Gordon Gekko character, especially his “greed is good” speech. Regardless of how one feels about the speech, the overall message is an interesting one. While you parents may not understand exactly how this applies to gamers, I can assure you that gamers are very greedy. What is debatable, however, is whether or not this greed is actually good. Gamers are greedy in the sense that they demand complexity and perfection all the time. There have been a number of games that, while complex, were not executed in the perfect way that suited the sometimes picky gamers and thus failed miserably. Conversely, there have been many games that have been created perfectly but due to an inherent simplicity ended up dying out. Gamers want to be entertained, but the entertainment has to last a while. Naturally, you’re almost certainly wondering why I bring this up. It’s a valid question. The answer is that I have been playing Skyrim, the sequel to what is almost certainly my favorite game of all time, Oblivion. While the game got extremely positive reviews by both users and critics, one of the most obvious problems is the amount of bugs within the game. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, the game has a lot of problems; Dragons flying backwards, AI behaving irrationally, physics performing in a way that it wasn’t originally intended to do, etc. These problems are all very well documented and the developers have been doing their best to find solutions. _Unfortunately, a good portion of the gaming community has been lambasting the developers for releasing what they see as an unfinished product. The gamers argue that the developers should have spent more time testing the game to iron out these types of seemingly obvious bugs. It’s a valid argument and, for the most part, the gamers have been relatively civil in making this point.
But where this desire for perfection falls short is in the fact that most gamers seem to overlook the reasons why these bugs exist. Skyrim is an unbelievably complex game with hundreds of different systems all working together to try and create a seamless yet realistically unpredictable gameplay experience. The game not only has to calculate all of the normal elements (i.e. visuals, sound, physics), but also conversations, player interactions with the world, the world’s interactions with itself, NPCs interactions with each other, etc. The world that the developers created isn’t some linear landscape where the player is forced along a set path and forced to look at particular objects. The entire game is open world. If you see a mountain, you can climb it (with a few rare exceptions). Blocking volumes only exist along the edges of the expansive world-space. Dungeons are not cut and paste versions of each other but each a new experience. What I’m saying is that greed is good when it motivates developers to reach new heights. Skyrim is certainly an example of those new heights. Greed, however, is not good if it punishes developers for even attempting those heights. We should always demand better and point out the flaws in a system, but we should also celebrate the achievements that a game manages to reach. After all, isn't that what we demand for ourselves? Positive reinforcement? We need to be shown our flaws so that we can improve on ourselves, but don't we all love it when our successes are praised? I know that I work far better when I'm in an environment that praises the work that I achieve, especially when those achievements reach far beyond the norm. So parents, make sure your kids aren't too hard on their games. Maybe ask them what's awesome about the game if they're upset with it. If they're anything like me, they'll talk your ear off no matter how frustrated they get.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
The Legendary Carmine
Andrew Clayton (a.k.a. The Legendary Carmine) is SSG's Executive Editor. He toils at the stone to make sure this site brings its readers valuable content on a daily basis. Like what we do? Want to see more? Donate to the site using the button below!
Archives
July 2015
|