‘The Complex God Complex’ by Ronald Diemicke
Did you ever try to hold your breath when you were a kid? I know I did. I use to see how long I could hold my breath and then try to break that time. In retrospect – this was a pretty stupid idea. I know I used to make games out of all sorts of things: not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk or between tiles, counting the light posts on highways, tracing the crisscrossing power and telephone lines with my eyes. Ok – so maybe I was a very weird child.
The point is that we as human beings look to create something from nothing. In the case of my childhood, creating games where there was none. In the case of many other games, a metagame is over laid over the existing material.
You’ll see how many cops you can outlast in Grand Theft Auto 4 or how fast you can race through Contra without using the Konami code. Some of this may be boredom, but I think this has much more to do with people looking at a game and see the endless possibilities to make their own game inside of the game that shipped in the box.
Childhood permits kids to run to their friends and bag about the biggest, baddest thing they did with their friends attempting to ‘one up’ their achievement. Now, with the level of sophistication in the technology, you can strive to get all of the achievements in a game to prove your superiority by participating in the ‘gamerscore / trophy rush’ metagame or complete a speed run of a title or exploit glitches allowing you to do things gamers didn’t intend and then post a video to youtube to brag to the internet about your accomplishment.
With little effort, you can turn almost anything into a game of some sort or another.
Time is not the enemy of the gamer – if anything, it just increases the levels to which we’ll go to make things interesting.
This ranges from fans taking the source code for certain ‘released to the public’ games and overhauling them graphically or doing major additions such as in the case of Freespace 2 or Jagged Alliance 2 to companies realizing the value in their older properties like Lucasarts just has with the reskinning of Secret of Monkey Island. With a little polish, love, time and effort, what’s old is new again.
Furthermore, some games don’t even need that.
Games are not like computer hardware that is outdated upon or shortly after its release. I fall into the camp that considers video games to be art. Like much art, sometimes time is needed to appreciate how much a game has had an effect on altering the direction of all those after it.
Say what you will about Halo’s story or fun, but it did quite a bit for evolving the mechanics of First Person Shooters. From the idea of regenerating health (well shields in the first game, but almost the same thing), to the ability to only carry two weapons at a time, and vehicles with spots for multiple players – Halo started or mainstreamed certain trends that began to be heavily ingrained in almost all FPSs in recent memory. People will go back to play Halo because it was a landmark title, and most heavily enjoyed that game for either what it was or for the nostalgia they had when they played it the first time.
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Mishotaki
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Empires Release Candidates A while ago, i was playing a mod to Half-Life 2 calles "Empires" the games features competitive tank and infantry battles. In this game you had multiple classes, the class i used for it was the demoman, he could lay mines.... the thing is: you had 8 mines in your inventory, but you could refill.... you could lay down 8 mines at one time, when you put the 9th mine, the first mine you laid was blown up, usually blwing up every other mine if they are too close to each other... usually that skill was used offensively, but the mines explosions would affect allied vehicles physics without damaging them.... therefore i got on a city map and started using an APC vehicle, that allows allied troops to respawn in it and refill ammo and health over time when inside... so i take my APC near buildings and had my fun blowing it up... and up... and up to on a building! then suicide myself and respawn inside of it! making myself go into places where you could not go normally... and launching my vehicle with a lot of force to make it go to akward positions... it seems i only got one picture left of my fun times, the time when i got my APC wheels caught on the ledge of a building, almost vertically http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/Mishotaki/verticalproblem.jpg reading this article made me remember that time so well.... too bad that the 9 mine trick doesn't work anymore.. i had a blast goofing around with it ^_^ |
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Justin
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... While playing Atlantica Online, there's an auto-follow option so you can follow players or traveling NPC's. My harmless form of entertainment is to auto-follow random people. One day I was bored and looking for some fun, so I gathered about 50 people together and we all set a new player straight from the tutorial stage on auto-follow for about an hour. We observed his battles, gave him tips, cheered him on, and of course, mourned his death. He was a good sport about it, so we gave him a pretty good haul of gifts. I think this is exactly what games want us to do when we're not in the grind. The more time we play and find ways to entertain ourselves in their games, the more money for them. Intended or not, it's win-win for the players and the companies. |
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Rob Alvarado
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... Just typical. I didn't expect many people to read either my article or Ron's rebuttal to it but I was still looking forward to seeing some thoughts come up in our comments section. Since we've been posted on Slashdot we've got a ton of really unexpected traffic, and of course, all the comments I want to read in response to our article are being posted to Slashdot. FFFFFFFFFF... well, thanks for sharing here with us Justin and Mishotaki. Your presence here is appreciated. |
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war4peace
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... Rob, the reason people don't comment in here is because the extra step of creating a new account on a website just to post a comment proves to be too much to ask. Anyways... I am a fairly new World of Warcraft player and I sometimes metagame by finding and using weird fishing spots. I go out and swim around, trying to find a very secluded place where I can fish from. Sometimes I try to complete a quest by killing the least amount of beasts/humanoids possible. Such quests are "get that item from a named boss humanoid/beast located in a specific area". So I go ahead and only try to kill THAT enemy, leaving all others alive. In Fallout 3 I have set up a HUGE weapon/item cache in the Nuka-Cola Factory. Whenever my inventory gets full, I go there and empty contents in the cache, after repairing ever weapon to bring it to 100%. I think I have well over a thousand weapons only in there. In GTA4, a particularly fun "achievment" is trying to cover the longest distance in a car or on foot while drunk. Among other things, I try: - getting ran over by my own car; - getting police cars to kill pedestrians; - start a bar brawl; - bend a car so much that it can't move anymore, WITHOUT making it explore or catch fire. In Quake 3 I try to find a secluded corner where I would wait for the whole battle to end, making a point in not getting killed and also not kill anyone. A 0/0 score after 30 minutes proves particularly hard to achieve. I take Hitman and change the playing method: I try to kill EVERYONE so that in the end I am the only fella roaming around on that map. Yes, this makes a level last for hours and hours until I beat it but it's too fun to miss the action. And so on... |
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Eric Palmer
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... As far as metagaming goes, I don't do it. I don't have time for it. There are too many games coming out that I need to be able to play, so I need to be done with what I'm currently playing. More importantly, there are too many games already out that I need to be able to give a decent playthrough too, so I need to be done with what I'm currently playing. More importantly, there are too many games I already own that I haven't played yet, so I need to finish what I've got efficiently so I can get to the next game. A person would only start metagaming after they've become bored with what was intended to be done in the game, really. But, there's a lot of games out, and a lot of those are very good and worth playing. I never really 'metagame' because I play the game how it was intended to be played, then I move onto the next game. Less games=more of this metagaming. I see metagaming as something that would be done for lack of something better to do, and currently, there's too many good games out for it. I know a lot of people do this sort of thing, but for all those people, maybe it's time to play something else? as far as comments here go, this should site should go google. I've been reading here pretty frequently since I found the site from slashdot friday night (saturday morning, depending on how you look at days) and I've never commented until now, because I didn't have account and never bothered to make another one. If I could have used a blogger login, I would have commented earlier, and I'm sure other people would have as well. Blogger logins are the same as google logins, and who doesn't have an account with google? Rob, if you want people to actively discuss your postings here, you need to make it easier to do so. Using an interface that people are already registered into would be the easiest way to bring active people into the site, whether it be through making the whole site a blogspot deal, or by making the registration easier to get through. There is alot of good content here, and I'm sure it's being read, but it should be easier to post on. At least while people aren't actively looking for ways to comment. Win the people over with content and ease of use, and people will keep coming back here. |
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Ronald Diemicke
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Working out the kinks.... I just want to take a second to thank everyone who's come to the site and all the users who've commented. You're feedback is extremely important to us. Eric - I take full blame for the complexities of posting here. The site is only two weeks old. We're still working on some of the growing pains and making it easier to use. Your suggestion on using blogger logins is definitely helpful and something worth us looking into. Truth is, I'm just thankful the whole thing didn't crash under the weight of 38,500 page views over 14,000 visitors. No one expected the reaction to the article we got and we're extremely thankful for the coverage on Slashdot. I've always wanted to open my own gaming website but for two reasons never did : 1) I wasn't going to do it alone (so I found others to help) and 2) I was afraid no one would ever read it (which after this weekend may not ever be a concern). So to wrap this up and go back to discussing the article - I think there are things technology wise we can be doing better and I'm certainly intrested in improving what we've got. Content is the least of my worries as I think we've got many talented writers (although we could use a couple more dedicated staff!) and we have a lot to say. Thank you for taking the time to speak your mind and I hope we'll be able to continue to meet the bar set for us and even raise it. UPDATE : Actually, turning on Google logins was VERY easy and I'm not sure why I didn't do it before. So anyone can now loging with their google account! I've gotta add a bit of text to the site in certain places to let people know - but it is working  |
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DamianWilliams
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... Very entertaining and informative article, I'm surprised you guys have only been going about for a couple of weeks, well done. Reinventing the gaming review website must be hard but you have pulled it off. I loved the article, some of my most memorable moments playing computer games were from Hitman Blood Money: executing every single NPC in every level. Leave none alive!  Also finishing Deus Ex 1 with out firing killing a thing. For me that is a yearly thing where I dust it off and play it again. I look forward to more in the future, I have RSS'ed you. Yeah registering is a huge hassle. I noticed you have Google logins somewhere? I could not see it. |
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Inso
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... > Who among you is more excited about throwing together another game of Left 4 Dead than you are for the November release of Left 4 Dead 2? Actually, i am and all my friends are. l4d is a meta-gaming paradise when it comes to versus mode on the infected side. I could go on for hours about the various idiotic but fun ways to die _and_ win that we've accomplished for the past year doing about 4-6 versus matches a week. |
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ezeager@gmail.com
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... Sandbox style games seem to be the best for metagaming activities. I like performing some non politically correct acts in GTA. Like Pacino in Taxi Driver, cleaning up the streets of drug dealers and pimps. Or just shooting white guys in nice cars. Half of the fun of it though is creating the situation where this becomes more efficient (ie creating a car pileup in a rich neighborhood or riding the scooter to more efficiently identify women of ill repute and their handlers. Outside of GTA, I like to use Oblivion and the Hitman series. Hitman is nice because it offers alot of opportunity to do the mission in a different style. I like getting an outlandish outfit and trying to use it while completing the mission(ie using the butler's clothes while infiltrating a mafia meeting "Crumpets anyone?"). Oblivion is just so open and with the stealing mechanic, vampire sideline, and the way shopping works, you have alot of opportunities to metagame. Feeding on strictly soldiers, setting up shop after murdering the owner, and robbing money back from people you bribe offer hours of fun to the aspiring metagamer. This sort of play adds alot of replay value to a game you've been done with for months. |
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