Playing God

This was a completely random post, inspired by a friend's status update.

Why did God place the Tree of Knowledge in such an easily accessible place? Why does He make it so easy for humanity to face temptation? Why does He, to put it bluntly, screw around with our heads with the whole issue of 'Does God Exist?'
The whole concept of Faith - believing in something greater than ourselves, moral codes, denying our natural instincts - raises some pretty deep questions. Foremost among which is that if He really existed, wouldn't it have been all too easy for him to completely and unequivocally answer all these issues once and for all? Why does He screw around with our heads?

I think there are 2 answers.

• The sociological answer: God does not exist. We created an anthromorphic personification of the needs of society, some rules to make sure society can survive, with guilt and fear as the stick and life beyond death and paradise as the carrot.
  
• The gaming answer: God does exist. He created the universe as a gaming map, laws of nature as game rules, and intelligence as a collective AI. He then created scenarios that unfold according to those rules, just to see what happens.
  Think about it. Ever played Red Alert? Or any RTS war game? Scenarios, rules, behaviors, certain responses to certain stimuli. Get too close to an enemy soldier, and he will shoot at you. Built-in speeds and firepower. Objectives and goals. But the fun comes from the randomness created when large numbers of these rules interact with each other. When you do a tank rush, are you really controlling each unit? No. You've just unleashed them. You can send a spy into an enemy base, but even though you have the power to make him invulnerable, and the enemy deaf, blind, dumb, and weak as kittens, would you do it? It takes all the fun out of the game.
  When a game protagonist plays with cheatcodes, he knows that God exists. God is stopping the bullets, letting him fly, achieving superhuman feats, untouched by fire, falls, teeth and claws. But is the gamer having fun? No. Fun comes with the unexpected. With setbacks. With risk. When you have something to lose, you feel that you have everything to gain. Winning is a rush. When nothing can kill you, you're just a rat wandering through an empty maze.
  

Maybe there were super-civilizations, masters of the Earth and all creation, intelligent, aware, kind, caring, responsible, in harmony with nature and with each other. Enlightened, perfect, and utterly, butterly boring. What more is left to achieve? A perfect civilization will never go beyond it's city, it's kingdom, it's planet at the most. Even planet is unlikely; they will be smart enough to control birthrate, eradicate threats, handle all contingencies. A civilization under constant threat of destruction fights, struggles, spreads, creates backup plans, fallbacks, contingency bases. DNA spreads. Launches generation starships, sets up lunar bases and buried bunkers with hibernating colonists. Reaches for the stars because the planet is on the edge, reaches across galaxies in the face of all-destroying interstellar war, slips into parallel dimensions when the fabric of this reality is likely to be torn.
Perfection is stable. Imperfection, combined with intelligence, explodes like a bomb across creation.
Sweden, with social security, order, sufficiency, and all amenities and comforts has a negative birthrate, because people have all they need. India, with it's near-billion starving and barely able to feed itself, has a population explosion.
A perfect, harmonious civilization, at it's pinnacle with no possibility of a fall, looks like a giant bulls-eye from space, with cosmic arrows all around pointing to it marked Asteroid Strike Here.
Innate imperfection. A flawed human being is unhappy, greedy, fearful... and drives ambition. Knows that life is unstable. Knows he is surrounded by other flawed creatures, by frightening randomness and intransigence. Knows he must amass resources far greater than his immediate need to prepare for this randomness. Establish his escape routes.

And for a gaming God, this is entertainment. Not perfection. Not stability. With an entire universe to explore, why would he tolerate a game protagonist who does not go beyond his own self? Wouldn't it be so much more fun to watch how the randomness manifests in extraordinary leaps of intellect, art, beauty, strength, achievement, skill, discovery... beyond even what He may have originally conceived?
When we do leave the planet, we will meet Others. They will be like us. They will be flawed. Galaxies will sparkle with a million wars, extinctions and escapes, dominions and insurrections, and everything else that is this infinitely varied, kaleidoscopic, random, churning, intoxication explosion called Life.

After all, anything else is so boring, isn't it?

game on!

My TV table has started resembling my PC room - enough cabling to build a fully functional elephant hammock, and LEDs that, if not the bridge of the Enterprise-D, are at least good enough for the Reliant.
Borrowed a PS2 and picked up a second joystick, discovered a new (good) games supplier, and I'm all set for the summer vacations, had I had any. Man I miss summer vacations. Nothing I want more than, not much, just a few weeks of AC, PC, PS2, and gametime.
Do I buy a PS3? or an Xbox? Am beginning to see the benefits of a dedicated gamesystem - consoles let you switch onto a game instantly. No bootups, no switching off inessential apps, no messenger windows popping up, and no Blue Screen Of Death. On the other hand... I do need to buy an engagement ring.
Decisions, decisions...

Roommate has acquired a 3-DVD set of Mr Bean, and we have just the single TV.

I'm also converting every plugpoint into a lethal firetrap, begging for a short. Pray with me, as I appease Raiden.

Gaming - the next level

Most probably a hoax, but lookit the completely awesome concept. Reality Gaming.

Game puts player into trance, then evil mastermind game coordinator puts player into game. A zombie FPS is replicated in real life in a warehouse, and knocked-out players are put in. Watch them wake up, the completely disbelieving 'this-is-not-happening' look slide into near-madness when the zombies start making their appearance.

Also says a lot of how people react. It took him just a few seconds to start shooting at the people. I can't even say he's adapting to the situation because he's not taking the classic approach to zombies as popularized in hundreds of movies - i.e., zombies can be disposed of by removing the head or destroying the brain - but not a single headshot do we see. He's just opening full-on fire at anyone and everyone. Including the game coordinator, despite his obviously non-zombie look.

Maybe there is some truth in the studies that correlate violent behaviour to games; sadly, one more thing that come through all to clearly is how educational content - removing the head or destroying the brain - tends to be completely discarded in stressful situations.

gamers: catchin 'em young!

The kid on the left must be, what, three? Four, max? His head is at the same level as his controller... and he still drives better than me, with a twenty-five year head start.

The boy has a future, mmm?

Not to miss the sibling rivalry at play; the elder one on the right hogs the Xbox, while the younger is fobbed off with a PS2.

Going Postal 2.0

Can't remember the last game that made me fall off my chair laughing, ROTFL. After the failure of Quake Wars, Carmagaeddon, and Manhattan Project, I was fairly skeptical of even getting this to work... hah! Worked first time, as a pleasant surprise. No codes to hunt, cracks to download.
[Current score: Colaba Pavement 3, uTorrent 2.]
The graphics are a bit old; I remember playing the original 2D Postal back in '95, so this can't have been too far ahead, though the responsiveness of the Unreal engine is awesome. But it's a laugh riot because of the twisted, fast, and completely bonkers sense of humour that it overflows with.
'Save a Tree, Burn a Book.'
'Did you place an offering in the Donation Box? Then you are Forgiven.'
The ability to stick your shotgun up a cat's bum to use as a makeshift silencer.
The only, and repeat, ONLY, game in history I have played where I can pee on people.
The Church or Our Lady of Infinite Avarice, disgorging boomstick-toting priests to take on Osama clones.
Me getting captured by hillibillies and waking up... in the Gimp's leather suit, in his trunk.

The physics engine isn't up to HL2 standards, sadly; if you kick a corpse, there's a good chance it'll stick halfway in a wall, straight-edged and angular, until kicked again, and the 'rag-doll' effects are bit too ragdoll. Bloodsmears too smeary. Textures crude.

But is still so totally awesomely rocks. When will they build the next version with the HL2 engine?! :)

Though on a serious note, it kind of gets you thinking. This game is violent, disgusting, bloody, and disrespectful. And it's precisely for those reasons that it'll be loved by it's target audience. Even the protestors, most of the time, object on the basis of an idea, or a principle. A stereotype. Games are bad, they make you mad.

Does the human psyche actively seek out violence? Since the Deterrence principle effectively stopped war for the First-world nations, and now all nuclear nations, crime rates have been rising. I don't know if it's been directly since then, but it's close enough. Is crime - and all other forms of both real and virtual violence - a direct expression of the need to fight, and frustration at not being able to?

In primitive cultures, kids start fighting by fifteen. In more advanced societies, it's later, but the promise - and conditioning - begins from much earlier. It's only now, in the developed countries, that kids grow up knowing that, in a legitimate, socially acceptable way, fighting - violence - is not permitted, and never will be. Does that block off some outlet, some safety valve?

Notice how the US homicides graph spikes with the end of the last major war the US was involved in? I guess we'll know for sure when VR tech advances to the point that virtual violence is indistinguishable from the real. If actual crime rates drop - I'm vindicated.

In the meantime, I continue to go on a murderous citizen-hunting spree... and it's only Wednesday.

boo hoo

Quake Wars won't run 'coz my AGP is underpowered. I can't upgrade my AGP card because my motherboard isn't compatible. I can't change my motherboard 'coz I then need to change my processor as well. I can't buy a 22-inch flatscreen monitor and a 7.1 GigaWorks system 'coz I don't have any games that'll justify it, and I can't buy those games 'coz my AGP won't run them.

For want of a kingdom, the nail was lost.

...and Bioshock refuses to install without an internet connection. For some reason, Tata Indicom broadband doesn't fall into Bioshock's definition of 'internet'.

can I bang my forehead on my pitiful 15-inch CRT now?

Runaway 2

Basically a glorified puzzle-solving game where you need to discover the sequence of using items found, talking to people, and picking up on past clues. What I really liked about this was the intensely rich, immersive experience - from music, to background sound, to conversations, accents, situations, and the extremely... fantasy-type feel. A sense of somewhere, somehow, this can happen, and a sense of being part of a bygone age and place that was fun, adventurous, and relaxed. In fact, everything that a Catalina stands for. Every time that flying boat has entered my life, these are the feelings it brings - from Duck Tales, to Commando comics, to Indiana Jones, to Tales of the Gold Monkey. Wonder if there's a message in the pattern?
At a stage right now where the story's becoming... interesting. I've outsmarted a drunk monkey, a dyslexic marine, befriended a nymphomaniacal waitress, impersonated a top secret government official, brought a cockatoo back from the dead, desecrated a witch doctor's grave, stolen a toy from a child, helped a Hawaiian kahuna rediscover his roots, taught an australian surfer to surf without waves, taught a genius idiot-savant to speak again and learn dentistry, unlocked an alien portal, and am currently avoiding a psychotic killer and a megalomaniacal renegade colonel.
The characters are awesome. Kordsmeier has references to god knows how many megalomaniacal colonels from Hollywood lore. Platoon's Sgt. Elias Grodin, Forrest Gump's Lt. Dan, Apocalypse Now's Col. Kurtz and Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore. A dead Indiana Jones makes an appearance, as does an aged Baloo in a human avatar. Ehrich von Daniken is profoundly present, and a tropical Area 51. This is where it scores over Myst - Myst was too abstract, too alien, too unfamiliar. Here, you can use what you know from modern-day legends. It's an awesomely entertaining experience, and you do need to use your brains.
Let's see what happens next...

gaming

Why do I game?

It eats away time, money, sleep, healthy eating, good posture, fills the head with nightmares and daydreams, opens your computer to infection risks, overwhelms my HD, and blows my bank balance in associated costs - AGPs, peripherals, networking...

yet I game. Compulsively, obsessively, incessantly. And I enjoy it. I love it. I live it.

I guess one bit of it is... escapism. The same reason you read, or listen to music, or watch movies... or plays, or art... there is a story in here, and it's long, complex, rich, and often fascinating. It's not just shoot-and-watch-the-gore-spatter; the background stories can be expansive and imaginative as any SF. When you read, you don't just look at the words; after a point, there's a direct flow of thought from your imagination to your conscious mind, with the words on the page just the occasional trigger. This can be as immersive.

Entertainment. Adrenaline. Reflexes. Will you rather play cricket on the road, on rock-hard tarmac? You also play with traffic. Or travel for an hour each way to get to the ground, after having booked it in advance, of course? Sad fact of life, but real-world play in an urban environment is becoming more and more inaccessible. And in a city, finding a safe nice place to play in is way easier than finding a nice, safe person(s) to play with.

On the other hand, you can curl up on a bean bag in an AC room, and immerse yourself for a couple of hours.

Ever done puzzles? I'm not talking about the crap that passes itself off as 'puzzle games'. Even stuff like Tomb Raider, like a lot of movies and books, require significant suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. Stand back and look, and you know that Ms Croft can get past the cunning trap in one way and only one way, and that one way has been conceived and created by Eidos Interactive long long before you came on the scene. You're being forced to walk down a corridor, wearing a chicken suit, with a pause every five seconds to sing the chorus lines from Eminem's Stan. If you don't do any of this, you die.

On the other hand, look at cheatcodes, easter eggs, and cracking. You're getting inside. Edit the default values in the config files, and suddenly all your tanks mooove like rocketbikes and fire unlimited nukes, our soldiers wear tank armour, and your buildings are invulnerable, and you yourself can fly, walk through walls, never run out of ammo, and use level 9 weaponry on level 1 minions, the poor creatures. The getting in, figuring it out, trying a hypothesis, seeing it work, applying it for a better experience - dopamine overproduction! It's a high of just using your head to make something happen!

More than that, sometime around 2 AM, when suddenly, everything clicks, and you're past the block, in the zone, on fire... it's a quasi-religious experience. Superego and id in perfect harmony for once, in perfect coordination, needing each other, working together. Higher brain functions shut down, worries evaporate, stress vanishes. It's just you and the game, in a world where none of the constraints apply. And it's amazing what a relaxing feeling it can be for the soul when all your troubles get boiled down to 2 simple counters - your health level and your ammunition level - and your hindbrain, too, believes that with all it has.

Stopping play is like... waking up, or falling asleep, depends on how you see it; between

.

.

Do you really want to quit? Y / N

.

.

and shutting down, getting up, water, roll into bed, drifting off... is a dreamlike, fugue state anyway. As soon as I slide into unconsciousness, REM kicks in almost instantly, picking up where the other side of that Y/N left off. Talk about an immersive experience - like most immersive experiences, this one sticks to you after you've climbed out. The next waking in the morning is even more disjointed.

It's an experience that extends way back in it's foreplay before the actual gameplay. The entire wandering through Fort, leafing through the pavement titles, one eye open for cops, making the selection, the bargaining, the wrapping up of the purchase in the inevitable black plastic bag, quick turn-down of the offer for porn ("saab english / hindi / double / triple / latest") and walk home; and the entire installation adventure, decoding the crack instructions written by a technically gifted but linguistically retarded cracker, and that rush when the game executes perfectly for the first time... this is entertainment that you work for, that you take risks for. Is that why it's that much more enjoyable?

That's it for now - I stocked up on Gears of War, Q4, Bioshock, and Max Payne 2 and HL2:Ep1 is still left with a little to go... have a good Winter-een-mas!

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Play. Evolve.

Images thanks to Ctrl-Alt-Del and Explosm.net