Hello Vox, greatly enjoy your blog and articles. In ref. to your post on gaming, the article got me thinking that perhaps from a ‘reaction time’ and ‘mental sharpness’ standpoint, I should invest in something for my aging mind too.
So I am looking for some guidance (without having to ask the local teenagers) on platform and game choices. I am a 47 yr old guy with young kids (boy 8, girl 10) and obviously grew up with Space Invaders, and never really touch them since. The kids have a DS each, but no big game setup (xBox, etc.).
I have deliberately not bought anything to avoid having slugs for children, but now starting to think there may be some advantages to a controlled, limited use (and maybe some fun family time to boot).
So, questions:
1. Platform suggestion? (don’t really have the money to buy new, but perhaps last year’s model from the local pawn shop?) 2. Games? (We are attempting to bring our children up in a Christian household, so the beloved wife will not support a blood fest, but perhaps there are combat or ‘pilot’ type games that help with mental sharpness/reflexes, but keep the gore down?) 3. Any other suggestions or comments.
1. PlayStation 2. The games aren’t very different than the so-called nexgen ones, and in fact, some new games are still being released for it. You can buy one used for around $50 and excellent games for as little as $5. And, of course, download D-Fend Reloaded for playing great old DOS game like Wing Commander and TIE Fighter.
2. Madden 2008 for PS/2 is still fun and I prefer it to the newer X360 versions. NCAA Football is good too, but I don’t know what year is best since I haven’t played NTSC games in years. Some of the classic Arcade compilations are really good. Downloading MAME and classics like Ms Pac-man, Donkey Kong, and Sprint 2 is free and the games can be played on any system bought within the last five or six years.
3. Check out the emu scene and don’t be afraid to dig deep. There are tons of great games that no one plays anymore but are still great fun. Games like Pilot Wings 64 or Castle Wolfenstein aren’t any less fun even if they are technologically outmoded.
Dr Micklewright was equally surprised by the number of characteristics gamers did share with top athletes. He said: ”Their reaction time, motor skill, competitiveness and emotions were pretty close. Elite athletes have unusually high levels of positive feelings and low levels of negative feelings such as depression and fatigue.”
Okay, granted, you still have to get to the gym. But combining the gym and games is the way to turn yourself into an elite physical and mental specimen. And best of all, you never have to enter The Big Room.
The second part of the interview with Marc Miller, the designer of Traveller, is now up at Black Gate. If you’re interested in creating your own Traveller-style little black books, there’s a neat little online tool with which you can do so.
If you missed it last week, the first part of the interview is also available.
I know we have a reasonable amount of gamers here, so I’m wondering if anyone might be interested in a multi-genre gaming tournament inspired by the Apprentice Adept series. Obviously, it would all be online, but the Sprint competition between Jamie, Markku and I made me think that it might be fun to have different categories such as Arcade, Console, Wargame, and Classic (Chess, Go, etc). Thanks to RK, VASSAL will make it possible to throw down in everything from ASL to Wooden Ships and Iron Men. You could challenge someone and they’d have one month to get the game started, another month to finish it, and this would allow us to determine precisely whom is the Ultimate Gamer here. Forfeits would not only be permitted, but encouraged, so if you blow the game selection game and wind-up facing Spacebunny at Pooyan, Markku at Sprint, or me at Cod:MW2, there is no point in wasting anyone’s time.
Obviously, this could become an ongoing ladder, but I think it would work best initially as a tournament. We can do something like give away a mouse to the winner, a personally inscribed copy of RGD to the second-place finisher, and TIA for third place. (I was going to suggest SE, but I only have two copies of that.) Anyhow, if you’re interested, speak up, and if you have any ideas for what the categories should be, the selection process, or what games should go in what categories, fire away.
I’m just brainstorming at this point, so everything is on the table.
After a speedy game of old favorite War at Sea in which the brilliant and extraordinarily handsome Axis admiral took advantage of Ender’s inexplicable failure to control the Mediterranean in order to steal an early Turn 5 Axis Major Victory, it was decided that we would give the Avalon Hill classic Gladiator a try.
Ender’s first attempt in the Arena was remarkably short, coming as it did to a speedy end in the fifth phase of the first turn. His medium gladiator, Felix, was arguably the most inaptly named gladiator to ever stumble across the sands of the Colosseo. Felix collided twice with my champion Varius, a light gladiator who didn’t wear much armor but carried a large shield that gives +2 Impact Factors. Felix stumbled after the first collision, at which point Varius charged him, crashed into him behind the weight of that large shield, and Felix was out cold. Ender was more amused than disgusted, but wouldn’t even bother to consult the Moment of Truth chart to determine the unlucky Felix’s fate. *schlunk*
The undefeated Varius, whose wins date back over a period of ten years thanks to some old battles with Big Chilly and the Missile Digit, next met Ender’s light, but brawny Aptus. Aptus quickly put his massive +4 Strength to work, smashing into Varius and stunning him, then methodically bashing Varius’s large shield to bits. Varius repeatedly sought to get positional advantage to counteract the stun penalty he could not seem to shake, but to little avail.
After a few furious engagements, the two gladiators found themselves facing each other. Varius was vision-impaired, bleeding from a serious head wound, and was lacking both his shield and his weapon, which had been knocked from his grasp when parrying a thunderous head stroke. Aptus had clearly been getting the better of the combat, but was badly wounded in the chest due to four targeted attacks that had been inadequately blocked. Varius managed to elude Aptus’s subsequent charge and circled around behind to retrieve his sword, then immediately spun around to score with an all-or-nothing thrust to the chest that brought Aptus to death’s door.
In the first two phases of the fifth turn, Aptus tried to retreat, but Varius successfully anticipated his loss of nerve and forced two more engagements that both came within a single point of finishing Aptus off. But in the third phase, Varius made the mistake of sidestepping forward while Aptus turned and plowed straight ahead into the smaller, lighter, and shieldless gladiator. The combination of strength, shield, and movement advantages gave Aptus a +7 mod to the collision roll; Ender picked the perfect time to roll boxcars for a 19 that sent Varius sprawling unconscious on the bloody sands.
We were in accord that Varius merited Missus, as his Attack CF – Defense CF was +44 in only eight engagements. But the fans in the Colosseo were apparently in a bloodthirsty mood that day, as they nevertheless turned their thumbs down. *schlunk* And Varius the light gladiator was no more.
Yes, I’m still posting there. This one is for the old school gamers. It’s an interview with Marc Miller, the designer of Fifth Frontier War, Azhanti High Lightning, and, of course, Traveller. It offers substantial evidence in support of the hypothesis that designing games is a natural talent rather than the result of experience and interest in playing games.
I have a random idea for something that may be of interest to a small and masochistic fraction of the Ilk. Most of you will recall that we have, on occasion, collectively contemplated the possibility of Japan invading the West Coast. Being a game designer, I have often found that a wargame nicely clarifies one’s thinking on the range of practical possibilities. However, since there does not appear to be a wargame dedicated to this proposition, for what I believe to be the obvious reason that it wasn’t considered even a remote possibility by any of the functional military minds on either side, my thought is to design one which will clearly illustrate the various points I have repeatedly explained to those who bought into Michelle Malkin’s thesis.
If anyone is interested participating, the first thing we’ll need to do is work out orders of battle for both sides, decide on a scale for the map, and settle on potential victory conditions. I intend to work out the Japanese OOB circa spring 1942; I have already reinstalled the War in the Pacific complete with the latest updates to assist in this process. So, if you’re a wargamer or WWII enthusiast, feel free to share your thoughts on the idea here.
It isn’t an exaggeration to say that I am a highly skilled gamer. I have been playing a variety of strategy, arcade, console, and computer games for nearly five times longer than Malcom Gladwell claims it takes to become unusually skilled at something. Now, I’m not a freakish game savant like Big Chilly, who has blown away even the most hard-core gamers away by playing through console games that he’s never played before without losing a single man. (Note: by hard-core, I don’t mean guys who like to play the occasional PS3 game online, but junior high friends who happen to be long-time editors at the one of the game industry’s leading magazines.) But if you give a me a shot or two at any given game, I can usually figure out the basic mechanics and figure out how to make effective use of them.
A teenage friend of ours once challenged me to a game of Maddens. He was in high school, was better than all his friends, and was utterly convinced that he would have no problem at all pwning the old guy. Not even a gentle pre-game reminder that I’d been playing Maddens since the original Genesis game dented his confidence. A 63-7 loss, on the other hand, just about had him in tears. Score one for the Original Gaming Generation!
Anyhow, Advanced Squad Leader is the Game of Games in my opinion. It occupies six shelves in my office, and while I’m not a rulesmeister or a member of the tournament elite, I can more than hold my own. I started playing Squad Leader and Cross of Iron by myself when I was ten, and over the years I never lost a single scenario at the monthly TCASL meetings, was well on the way to victory playing the Red Barricades campaign game as the Germans when we had to stop playing, won my beach in the two-day Normandy landings in Geneva, and have a ROAR record over .800. I now have the pleasure to be introducing a young commander to the game, and it’s wonderful to see the combination of interest, wonder, and awe at the vast horizon of possibilities that the game system contains.
We’ve started out with the excellent ASL Starter kit that MMP put together. I have to admit that I’d been a little annoyed by the switch to custom starter kit boards, since the first scenario I’d ever designed had been accepted for publication when the kit was going to make use of the standard boards. (It was a unique setup that involved the use of the Japanese counters against the Germans in a simulation of the 442nd’s rescue of the Lost Battalion.) But it’s really well-done, the abridged rules make for relatively easy reading, and the bite-sized scenarios are perfect for beginners. We started with scenario S1 Retaking Vierville, as you do, and my young apprentice chose the defending Americans with my encouragement since it’s usually a little easier on defense.
The image above showed how it finished. He was too cautious, as beginners usually are, and I took advantage of that to quickly grab the victory condition building hex L3. I didn’t give him time to react to that, and even briefly managed to punch two squads with an 8-1 leader into a second VC building, M4, before being broken and driven back by point-blank fire from three elite squads of 7-4-7 paratroopers. The key tactic was sending my reserve of two Fallschirmjager squads with a 9-1 leader to ambush the incoming American reinforcements coming from the north. They bounced back quickly from breaking thanks to their 9-2 leader, but it delayed their attack on the western edge long enough that not even repeated charges from a pair of HoB-created fanatic squads managed to drive all my second-line Grenadiers from L3.
He wasn’t bothered by the loss, as I’d warned him beforehand that it’s possible to play for a long time before you chalk up your first win, particularly if your only opponent is a very good player. We went on to play S2 War of the Rats, and again I had the attacking Germans. I thought his setup was much too exposed to the initial German prep fire, and expected that my death star under the command of the 9-2 leader would quickly blow a hole in the heart of his defense and allow me to hit the remnants from both sides after I rolled over his two conscript squads in the east and took the key VC L6 building with the 9-1 platoon. Things went exactly as I expected, the bulk of his forces were broken and my eastern platoon had L6 open for the taking when I made the mistake of deviating from the plan and advancing into close combat in the hex marked with the yellow-bordered red star in order to finish off the one remaining squad.
That was when he hit on a 1 in 36 chance and eliminated all three of my squads and my leader… and I blew my kill roll. That left me with no troops on the eastern side, which would permit him to regain control of all the buildings I’d just taken and force me to grab those buildings before his shock group of three 5-2-7 squads under a 9-2 showed up as randomly determined reinforcements. It looked pretty good for me, as they didn’t show up in turn four and I was rapidly rolling up his forces until two of my squads got locked in melee in the hex marked with a white-bordered red star with a half-squad in the process of taking control of the last Russian-controlled hex of building L6. Despite reinforcing the melee, I just couldn’t kill that conscript half-squad, which slowed me down enough so that I only had one squad in position to shoot at the reinforcements as they moved up hexrow O to claim VC building O6. I finally killed the half-squad and brought all my forces to bear on the shock group. I forced them out of O6, but my need to focus on the reinforcements allowed his broken 7-0 to rally a broken conscript squad in M2 and move in behind my forces to reclaim L6 and win the game.
Big Chilly plays ASL from time to time, so he knows how difficult it is to beat a more experienced player. He absolutely howled with laughter when he found out that my young apprentice not only wasn’t discouraged after playing his first two scenarios, but had actually beaten me without me pulling any punches. We discussed how his early decision to attack all three of my squads and leader at a 1-4 disadvantage instead of the more usual one-to-one attack had led to the timely snake-eyes looked like beginner’s luck, but concluded that it was actually the right decision to make given that 1 in 36 was probably better odds than you’d normally give a boy to beat a veteran ASL player.
“Did you give him the Balance?”
“No! I didn’t.”
“Good grief! He’s Ender!”
The next day, Ender and I set up S3 Simple Equation. Ender wanted to play the Americans despite being warned that it was a little more difficult being the attacker. And then he beat me again!
Gosh, my palms are sweating even now as I prepare to write his name. I am not a teenager, but a happily married 37-year-old. And yes, I have fallen madly, painfully, utterly in love with Robert Pattinson, along with ten million other women…. I can understand exactly why a crowd of 5,000 frenzied girls queued for hours in London’s Battersea Park on Wednesday to get a glimpse of him (while he was promoting the release of Twilight’s sequel, New Moon), just as it is perfectly clear to me why he was chased into the path of an taxi by a stampede of women in New York.
Of course, I am not the kind of person who’d ever normally consider writing ‘Bite me’ on my forehead, as one girl did on Wednesday, or scream my head off at some actor, but I would have gone to Battersea Park – if only I could have got a babysitter. Instead, I’ve been sleeping with the December issue of Vanity Fair, which features Pattinson as a cover boy, under my pillow, much to my husband’s mirth.
If that’s the real world, then by all means, count me out. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off racking up head shots in MW:2 for the next few hours.
