I’ve been playing computer games for…<shudder> decades. The first computer game I played was probably a text adventure game I hand-typed into my Apple II from a magazine. I saved it to cassette tape…I think the game had something to do with exploring an abandoned mine, but I’m not sure. That would have been about 1979/1980 or thereabouts: my memory is a bit hazy.

I still remember calling the support line for the first Ken and Roberta Williams game I played on my Apple, maybe a year later- I’m not sure what it was called, but it had graphics and you typed in text commands, and there was a snake I couldn’t figure out how to kill. I’d been playing for hours, and it was about 2:00 am, when I flipped the zip-lock baggy over that held the documentation and noticed a phone number. I called and talked to Ken Williams…yep, at 2:00 in the morning, one of the founding fathers of computer gaming was programming away and answering his “tech support line”. I apologized for bothering him, he said something like “No problem, I was awake programming”, and then he gave me a hint…look at the rocks. I did, found a rock I could pick up, and bashed the snake. I was hooked…computer games were fantastic!

When I met my wife Irene we were both about 25 years old. We met at a stable- she was “horsey”, and so was I, although for me it was a passing thing- Irene still has a horse and, although I still love the equines, I’m not a rider any longer. I was still playing computer games when I met Irene. I’m still playing computer games today. Now and then I’ve managed to convince Irene to play on a game or two with me: Golden Axe on the console, Baldur’s Gate on the PC…just her and me, and always fun. But until fairly recently, I haven’t been able to convince her to play a massively multiplayer game. But then there was EverQuest 2…

I’ve tried to pin Irene down on why she has been playing EQ2 with me, and not other online games in the past. What has changed? She’s not sure…maybe it was the fact that she had time on her hands because of not being able to ride much lately- her hips have made it too painful to ride for a while, and more recently she’s had hip surgery which has reduced her mobility quite a bit. Or perhaps it’s because EverQuest 2 has the Kerra- cat people. And Irene is a cat person…although without the fur and claws. Or maybe she wants to have some shared time with me…although why, I’ll never know

Whatever the reason, now she comes to *me* to ask when we are playing EverQuest next. Sure, we just play as a duo, and our gaming sessions are fairly short (an hour or two at a time), but we do play, and it’s fun. I’m a lucky guy: a lot of married men who play computer games never manage to convince their wives to play alongside them. I just wish I knew how I managed to be so lucky

I’ve heard people say that they prefer the graphics in World of Warcraft over those in EverQuest 2. The discussions I’ve had with people about why they feel this way seem to boil down to a description of the characters in EQ looking “plastic”, “like corpses”, or “not cool”.

I like the graphics in EverQuest 2. But I’ve heard reference in the past to something called the “Uncanny Valley“, and now that I’ve spent all of five minutes reading up on it, I think I see how this applies to this discussion.

The basic premise behind the Uncanny Vally goes like this: at one end of a scale lies something which is somewhat human like but obviously artificial (E.G.: the characters in World of Warcraft). Such characters tend to inspire empathy in people: we feel “sorry” for them, or overcome their limitations by filling in the blanks between their obviously artifical nature and something “human”. At the other end of the scale are things that look and act truly human: we feel empathy for these things as well, since, well, they are “us”. Somewhere in between are things that look very human, but are subtly wrong: corpses or the seriously ill fall into this category. They move wrong, or don’t sweat, or have skin tone that is a bit “off”…such characters make us uncomfortable.

I think its possible that the characters in EQ2, somewhat like the characters in the movie Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within, are somewhere in that “valley” of empathy. They look just a bit too realistic for some people, and the things that are “wrong” (skin tone, motion, lack of sweat…) are disturbing. Although this makes sense to me, it does raise a question: why didn’t Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within bother me? And why do I like EverQuest 2? I know the characters aren’t “real” people, yet I appreciate their proximity to reality. I don’t find the flaws jarring: I think I would find it more jarring if they were so perfect that I couldn’t distinguish the real from the machine generated.

And that difference between the way I perceive things in regards to this so-called “uncanny valley” and the way some others do intrigues me. My threshold is at a different point, I guess. The day I watch a movie with a computer generated character that is so human that I can’t believe it isn’t human is the day I’ll feel a bit spooked out. I wonder why other folks feel that discomfort at an earlier point than I do?

Technorati Tags: Computer games, Graphics, Uncanny Valley

Back in the bad old days (circa 1999), massively multi-player online games allowed player to player interaction. I’m not talking about player killing: I’m referring to the ability of one player’s actions to impact another, for good or ill. Then things began to change…and I don’t personally believe the changes were all for the better.
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I play massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs, or sometimes MMORPG if the game is of the roleplaying type). At times in the past seven years or so, playing these games has consumed the lions share of my free time: up to about 20 or so hours a week.

When I first started playing, there was really only one: Ultima Online. I hated the PvP environment in UO so much that I would never go back after I quit, and nearly didn’t ever play a MMOG again…but thankfully (?) I tried EverQuest at the urging of my nephew. And for a couple of years, that was really the “only game in town”

I’ve found myself with more and more “good” games to choose from as the industry has matured. So has everyone else: this has fragmented groups of old gaming companions as we’ve ended up in various games. More choices has, for me, actually been a little bit of a curse along with the blessing.

I’ve bounced around through several games over the past couple of years- sometimes because I personally wanted a change, sometimes because someone I played with regularly wanted to move. Each time I move, there is a period during which I usually find it difficult to cancel the “old” game…just in case.

Once again I find myself paying two subscription fees: one for World of Warcraft, one for EverQuest 2. Since I was initially playing EQ2, then played WoW, then went back (about two weeks ago) to EQ2, I’m really in a bit of a quandry.

I should just cancel my WoW account and be done with it….but what if we change our minds again? Sigh

Another strange thing about MMOGs is the fact that they have now spawned real world model searches. I’m not playing EverQuest 2 any more really, but this sort of got my attention.

Teresa Noreen has a striking resemblance to the in-game Antonia Bayle, and is a gaming girl (or “grrrl”) besides. She has a website of her own, and has a full fledged computer in her car…although I kind of get the impression her husband is actually the car nut: either that, or she is talking about herself in the third person. Unfortunately for the single male gamers out there, she’s already married. I can imagine her husband cackling gleefully as he took close up pictures of her various postage stamp and dental floss bikinis on their honeymoon. Be sure to scroll down for the closeups of the knitted bikini.

Apologies, Teresa- I’m a typical randy male, as my wife will attest.

My life is made up of little patterns…things that I do that fit together in a way that makes me feel comfortable. I get up at a certain time, I read my email, I check my websites, I go to work…pretty much always the same sequence. It makes me feel comfortable and good.

One of my “patterns” for several years has been playing massively multiplayer games several times a week. First it was Ultima Online, then EverQuest, then Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Asheron’s Call 2, Star Wars Galaxies (beta only), Final Fantasy XI Online, EverQuest 2…and most recently World of Warcraft. Throughout all of these games I’ve had a partner in crime: my Nephew, Shane.

I’ve cut down quite a bit on my MMOG playing time during the last year or so. Back in my EverQuest days, I was playing 20+ hours a week. At the end of 2004, I was down to maybe 8 or 10 hours a week playing EverQuest 2. That’s all been good: I still have had my “prime” play time on the weekends.

My Nephew recently started cutting back his MMOG play time as well. Now, between us, we are down to maybe one day a week, usually Saturdays. Sometimes I come home on Friday from work and I’m not really sure what to do with myself. There is a “gap” in my schedule that I haven’t quite figured out how to fill.

I sometimes miss the old patterns. But change is healthy. I usually go for years with the same patterns, then boom, change a bunch of things, often rather radically. For example, for years I was getting up as much as two hours before I had to leave for work, spending that extra time puttering around reading and such. Recently I’ve started sleeping in until half an hour before I have to leave, and flying through my morning ablutions without “wasting” any time. I’ve started to sort of like that extra sleep time. Likewise, I’ve started to find things to fill the time I used to spend playing MMOGs.

Who knows what I’ll be doing a month from now? But those comforting patterns that rule my life sometimes become a rut. Its good to check out other alternatives now and then