The Sims Then and Now

For me the Sim games started on a black and white Mac with the original SimCity. I’ve heard people joke that their phone now has more power than their old desktops. But SimCity is the first game that I saw had been ported to my iPhone with more features than the first version of the game I played. It’s SimCity 2000 and it has color, two things that I salivated over when they first came out.

The Sim franchise is right up there with brands like “Levi’s” and “Coke” to me. If the Sims comes out with something new, chances are I’ve heard about it and considered buying it. If we’re talking the Sims 1 or 2 I’ve bought every expansion back and stuff pack sometimes more than once.

The Sims recently lost me when they moved away from Stuff Packs into the pay per item model. For $20 I would buy the pack of items from my local Target, but I can’t justify buying individual items for a $1 or $2. When it comes down to that level of detail I’m thinking I should be shopping for my own new clothes instead of my sims and it starts to feel like real work. Pressing Play is fun to me, not pressing Buy.

So while the Sims in all it’s incarnations has been a constant backdrop in my gaming life it might now be at the point where the Sims have moved into the RMT world and I’m not ready to followt. Fortunately , the base game runs just great without the add-ons.  When the mood strikes I can play, even if it means looking at a few ads while I log in.

Growing Up Gaming: Arcade Games

I’ve been experiencing massive nostalgia for the arcade games I used to play on my GameBoy and NES. I’m the happy owner of a shiny pink Nintendo DS but I still miss that GameBoy despite its unfortunate name.

But enough of that train of though, the game that has probably stolen more hours from my waking moments than any other has to be Tetris. I knew it was a game developed in Russia, which was more than I knew about the development of any game at that period.

I used to try to play for as long as I could, giving up some of the big bonuses in exchange for playing longer and longer. I’d alternate between playing at high and low levels to see which would keep me going, but I’d often get bored with the easy levels. It wasn’t until recently that I found John Brzustowski’s thesis which states that you can’t play Tetris forever. I’m a little crushed, I was convinced that some day I’d get the perfect game and keep going till I just couldn’t move my thumbs anymore.

The other game I cut my teeth on was Galaga. The one thing these two games seem to have in common is the incredible number of versions and variations that have been made. They are also still widely available after 20+ years. I was at Best Buy this weekend and saw a hand held Tetris game. A quick google search found an online version of the Galaga which is eerily similar to what I remember. It has significantly delayed me writing anything for quite some time.

Most recently I’ve been playing Cooking Dash and Zuma. The difference between what I’m playing now and 15 to 20 years ago seems much smaller than what is the same about these games. They all have some obvious things in common:

• A numeric score
• Repetitive and simple actions
• The concept of putting something ‘right’ or organizing
• An endless play mode with light or non-existent goals

A score seems so tiny and yet is so important to me while playing these games. With a lack of social play and the lack of defined goals the score becomes the focal points for both. While you may never seen another person playing Galaga at the arcade, you can feel some competitiveness and camaraderie with the people on the high scores list. With no elaborate goals to track your progress the score is usually the only thing that signifies how you’re doing.

Zuma is something I drown into when I really don’t want to have to think about the game I’m playing. If you’re trying to pay attention to the storyline in a game like Zuma or Galaga, I think you’re missing the point of the game. Click, click, tap tap tap click click “Boing”.. it’s like music to my tired brain at the end of the day.

I’ve come across a few articles that seem to imply that Time Management games like Diner Dash might help people learn to organize their time. I’m having a hard time believing that. While I was playing Diner Dash I learned that it’s more efficient to feed everyone at the same time even if it means some people are blowing smoke out their ears, don’t tip or just plain walk out. While this might make for a better score, in real life if I was told by a waitress she couldn’t serve me right now cause Table A hadn’t paid yet and she didn’t want to break her combo bonus I’d be beyond pissed.

I don’t see any big leaps coming up in the future for this category of games. Almost any of the leaps I’ve seen in other games like graphics, great writing, voice acting, cut scenes, interactive stories and massive online communities would detract from the engaging simplicity of what makes me play and continue shelling out when a new one of these games launches.

Growing Up Gaming

Having recently hit the big 3-0 there has been a nagging desire to reflect on life and the one part I keep going over is games. This isn’t surprising since I spend my work hours making games and at home I spend a good chunk of my free time gaming or thinking about games. I’m sure that when I’m on a Sims 3 binge I spend more time planning out their day than I spend planning out my own. While in the shower, driving or doing dishes, sometimes it’s just more fun to think about what my sim will be doing tonight than what I’ll be up to.

I’ve been trying, but I can’t remember a time in my life where video games weren’t in the house in some form. Before I could read, I recall watching my Dad playing Adventure and Zork. I found the screenshot of Zork but it’s a bit fancier than I remember. We didn’t have a color screen then.

Soon, I became the player instead of the voyeur. Arcade games, MUDs, MMO’s and simulations are some of the high points. I think the lowest point was the time I saved up all my pennies and then wasn’t allowed to buy a Nintendo system because my parents were concerned about the epilepsy warning (I’m not epileptic but that warning was scary to young parents). We’re not talking a fancy Nintendo here, but the blow-on-cartridge-to-fix-every-problem kind.

They must have caved at some point, because not only did we have an NES for quite a while, but I remember my Mom really getting into shooting those ducks in Duck Hunt. By some quirk in the storage of memories the horror of being told ‘No’ to the NES stands out to my adult self but the time we actually got the NES is a long lost memory.

So I’ve grown up with games as a household fact. I’ve been influenced them for most of my 30 years and we know that in the computer world that’s a VERY LONG time. So my question to myself is, have my tastes changed in those years? Have games?

I’m thinking that this is more than a one post topic. So next time puzzle and arcade games get my attention.