Lionhead games released a game called “Fable” (note: site uses Flash plugin) a few years ago. I dismissed it because a few folks who liked “goofy/cartoonish” style games thought it was a great thing.

I picked up a discounted XBox version of Fable over the weekend. Not XBox 360, but XBox- it runs under emulation mode in my XBox 360, though. This means that the graphics aren’t great. But after playing the game for (according to it’s in-game stats) a bit over 7 hours, I can say I truly regret not trying it sooner.

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Okay, so I’ve had a few too many “Second Life” posts lately. I’ll do my best to make this the last one for at least a few days.

The other day I bought my land- yesterday I put the finishing touches on my house.

I like the “rustic” look as opposed to the modern appearance many favour. The house itself is something I purchased at a shop.

I’ve also been working on the interior…

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In real life, I own a home. Well, actually, the bank owns most of it. But in Second Life, I now actually own a piece of property.

This is a view from 30 metres or so in the air- my view of the ocean is not so good at ground level, but I like the area. I didn’t pick this area using a great deal of logic- I was looking for land, flying around looking at lots, and in the game saw me flying by and called me over. Jessica spent about an hour chatting with me about land ownership. She invited me into her home and let me wander around to get some ideas regarding how many primatives (”prims“) a lot of a certain size can support. She also pointed me in the direction of some lots a friend of hers was selling. I decided to buy my property more or less based on a snap decision.

So why own virtual land? One reason- if you want a place to “put” your stuff in Second Life so other people can see it, you want land. Every object consists of primatives, and land is what is required for those primitives. Another reason, and the main one for me, is that its “neat” or “fun”: sort of like having a virtual house construction kit. You can change the topology of the land you buy, construct your house (which you can buy in prebuilt modules if you like), and then you get to furnish the place. I spent four or five hours just assembling my house- I’ll have pictures of that later, once I figure out how to get that pesky tree out of my living room

There is a lot of buzz in the on-line community lately about a “game” called Second Life. And not just amongst traditional gamers- there are folks within many big companies that are experimenting with this world which relies almost entirely on user created content. What’s the big deal?

I “get” the concept behind Second Life. Firstly, in essence it’s like a big playground. There are some basic physical laws, but no real “game”- instead, users can create their own content. Objects like a table, a chair…or even a pair of ears or a new face…heck, even an entire new body for their character to wear: all of these things can be created by any user. Objects a user creates can have scripted behaviors- a table could have a fold out extension, or those ears I mentioned could wiggle. Even more intriguing, an objects behavior could be based on something outside the game: virtual weather in an area could be based on real-world weather reports, for example- or a soccer ball could move based on telemetry from a real-world soccer ball.

Secondly, anything a user creates in Second Life is “theirs”. Unlike other games like EverQuest or World of Warcraft, anything new a user creates actually “belongs” to them, not to the folks who run Second Life. The user can copy, buy, or sell items as much as they want. Add to this the fact that in game money (Lindon dollars, or L$) can be bought for real world money via an official money exchange. So…if you are artistic, you could create a new painting for someone to hang on a wall in their virtual Second Life house (assuming they have a house…that costs money too), and you could earn a real-world living from it. Basically everything is for sale. People have bought Second Life “land”, subdivided it, and sold it out at a real world profit. Thousands of dollars of profit, actually.

What kinds of things can players make? Anything, really- cars, planes, helicoptors, horses. Houses, stadiums, entire islands. A mouth, an ear, different eyes, or sex organs. A tattoo, or a different hair style, or a dance animation. A completely new player avatar…it doesn’t have to be remotely humanoid- one I saw was a butterfly. A networkable vendor kiosk complete with financial management and automatic emails to the owner of sales status, or a security system complete with “repulsion fields” that can be attached to a home.
All of this is interesting enough, but is it a game? The game itself is free to download: you pay a subscription fee ($9.95 a month) if you want to own land, which at least to start is probably beyond most people. So I downloaded it and tried it out. My opinions? Well, I can see how people could get addicted to Second Life, even though I can’t really detect a “game” here in the traditional sense. Anyone who comes to Second Life expecting to go out and slay some monsters or something is in for a rude shock.

So what did I do in Second Life? Here’s a brief list:

• First, I went through an orientation that told me how to walk around and change my appearance

• I made an avatar that sort of looks like me: dumpy looking, skinny with a pot-belly, red hair. I couldn’t get the face quite right

• The clothing I’m wearing in the picture above came later: the default clothing you get is basically a pair of blue jeans and a white T-Shirt
• While experimenting with my appearance, I discovered that the method for changing your appearance is not only very flexible, but that you can have multiple appearance “packages”, including body shape, physical attachments, and scripted behaviors…and just drag and drop to switch between them
• then I “teleported” into the main part of the game world; I found a car dealership which offered to give me a free test drive. I spent five minutes driving around a car that really couldn’t be said to be much more than a dressed up roller skate: fun, but its not a simulator
• I wandered around near the car dealership, and stumbled through some private homes- some had “security systems” that kicked me away. Those that let me in varied in terms of furnishings and details radically
• I talked to another player who’s name indicated she was a “Trainer” from something called TeaZers University…at the time, I had no idea what this was, but I’ve later learned that TeaZers is a fairly well respected educational community within the game…I have no idea how or why this exists, but apparently they even pay their instructors. Anyway, this young lady gave me some guidance (including a landmark so I could find the University) while I admired her ears…yes, her ears. She was a normal human avatar, except for a pair of “cat” ears that were swivelling and and wiggling realistically- scripted objects attached to a person
• I wandered some more and found a shop selling complete new avatars- critter avatars (wolfs, felines, etc). I liked what I saw, so I made note of where the place was- they also had “freebies”- the T-Shirt I’m wearing in the above picture, which has an advertisement for their shop on the back
• Off I went to check out the location of TeaZers University- I found a bunch of people (instructors) playing with different body modifications and outfits, and also received some more free items- the pants and boots I’m wearing in the above picture plus many other odds and ends

Netting it out…I still really don’t know if Second Life would keep me interested over any really extended period. A lot would depend on the social network that you build in the game, and I’m generally anti-social. Another thing that might keep me interested would be if I got involved in creating things…but from what I’ve seen, this market is flooded with highly talented people with lots of spare time. Making something purely for my own amusement would become boring after a while, and I lack the artistic talent to make the visually appealing things people would want to buy.

Second Life is an intriguing place. It’s not for your “average” gamer…I’d say its more appealing for people who might like the Sims, or who want a graphical chat program they can customize. People who partake of more free-form MUDs and MUCKs would likely find much to appreciate here. And, from the large selection of “functional” sexual body parts and animations that can be acquired, I’d say Second Life would appeal to people who enjoy pixellated sex.

But then I’ve barely even skimmed the surface- I’m sure there are much greater depths to be found in Second Life. I know some schools are using the “restricted” (PG/teen) areas for on-line education. I could also see businesses using Second Life for informal presentations for the same reason they have streaming videos of conferences: it “personalizes” things. Thus far it seems like whatever it is Second Life offers has attracted enough participants to make it sustainable, and that in itself is intriguing.

Oblivion has been and continues to be a fascinating game for me.  I know full well that some people claim to have completed the main quest in as little as a couple of days, but I’m now up to over 70 hours of play time…and I’m still not finished. 

The main quest isn’t hard and, in fact, it’s arguable that its easier to complete if you do it quickly.  Oblivion “scales” your foes as your character goes up in level- so if you work on a quest when you are level 5 your opponents will all be around the same level as you.  If you wait until you are 20th level, your opponents will have “kept up”…and although this may sound like the challenge is the same, the powers (spells, items, and so forth) at higher levels are (in my opinion) more challenging
to deal with. 

So how is the game keeping me busy?  Well, I’ll give a few examples, including my most significant accomplishment to date…

***** WARNING *** SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW *** WARNING *****

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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 have spent every spare waking hour of the day lately playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Its an awesome game: if you like deep, open ended single player computer role playing games, then Oblivion is definitely worth a look.

Oblivion is set in the Empire of Tamriel in the world of Nirn, a world that may be familiar to people who have been playing computer games for a few years as the setting for the Elder Scrolls. The Elder Scrolls series has been around for a while, starting over a decade ago with Elder Scrolls: Arena. The last release in the series before Oblivion was Morrowind in 2002, a role playing game that was lauded for its open ended style, huge size, and depth of backround materials. It also received some knocks for its initial bugs (most of which were fixed in subsequent patches). I personally played Morrowind- it was a very good game, but I found it hard to get engaged- it was, for me, a bit *too* wide open. I couldn’t really find a plotline to hook on to. I played it for weeks, but never finished it, and have no idea to this day what “finishing it” would have looked like. That’s both good and bad- good, because I had weeks of gaming and came no where near completing the game. Bad, because I never really felt like I was “part” of the game’s main plot.

Oblivion seems to have kept all of the good features from Morrowind (open ended, massive game world, incredible depth) and ditched some of the less than positive features (lack of hooks into the main plotline, game ending bugs). Right from the start, Oblivion’s story line is pretty obvious. But you can still veer off into the open country side, read hundreds of books, go off on your own adventuring paths…and, with the help of the quest journal, find your way back to the main plot easily.

WARNING: some spoilers follow
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I rarely actually finish big RPG games. You know, the ones that take 100 hours of play time to complete. Generally, not finishing the game makes me frustrated and a bit disappointed in the whole process…and less likely to buy the next one.

One significant exception to this a few years ago was Elder Scrolls: Morrowind. No, I didn’t finish the game. But I didn’t really mind, either. The game was so open-ended that I just enjoyed wandering around and poking at dungeons. I’m not even sure that I ever really was working on the main quest/story line. But because of the richness of the game, that apparent lack of “progress” didn’t really bother me a lot. I probably got 40 or more hours of play time out of the game and, as I said, never finished.

The next chapter in the Elder Scrolls series will be released soon. Its name is Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. A few years have passed since the last chapter was released. Naturally, this means the graphics and such are improved. But I’m really pleased to see that, at least based on what can be read, the developers have kept their focus on the things that really matter. The world in Oblivion looks as “huge” and opened-ended as the previous chapter.

The main improvements in the richness of the world, aside from graphics and such, come from improvements in NPC AI. The old NPCs in Morrowind were a bit static, but in Oblivion they all have drives/goals/interests that direct their lives independently from interaction with the player. So much so that sometimes the NPCs even surprise the developers. Sneak around and steal from some NPCs and, if they don’t see you, they might start blaming each other. One might run home and grab a sword and start poking around in corners. I look forward to seeing this in action.

The graphics and such are also very impressive. You can download and view a few in-game movies to see what its like. Or watch the trailer, which is all rendered in game. Note that you’ll need the Divx codec installed in Windows Media (available for free download) or some other Divx player to watch that trailer.

And yes, that’s Patrick Stewart’s voice as the Emperor. These games are becoming big production deals now. Also note that Oblivion will be available for both Windows PCs and XBox 360 consoles. I’ll be buying Oblivion when it comes out, theoretically sometime later this quarter (rumours say the end of February).