Game Hard
What’s most perplexing, wonderful and horrible about this article is the feeling that I get having quoted Gary Gygax just days before his passing. The fact that ‘Master of the Game’ was integral to this article wasn’t even on my radar, until when scrolling down that first page I saw the picture with hexagons and twenty-sided die. And I was as shocked as any nerd when he died, it’s just that the pieces only came together just now.
On some level, I think that I was really hoping to meet Gygax someday. I had always mulled over the idea of having him as an interviewee for my book, thought about little excuses to just sit down with the man and have a conversation. I wondered what Gygax would say about gaming’s juxtaposition with “games,†especially of the online and massively multiplayer online variety.
I think I’ll be curious for awhile.
But I’m allowed to guess. I think that there’s an essence to console games like Rock Band and Wii Boxing that portend an enormous potential, co-existing with the pure experience of new kinds of real “worlds.†You can jack yourself into the latter, but the former opens up more the soul of a relaxed get-together. When you play a single player game, you’re having an experience, when it’s an MMO, it’s a shared experience, and more fun when you add a level of creativity and spontaneity with the people that you enjoy.
Don’t forget to love and respect your fellow players. You can’t keep them forever.
Neils Clark :: Apr.03.2008 :: Games ::
