Playing Catch In the Backyard

A thought occured to me last night as I lay in bed, after a couple of hours of Baldur’s Gate 2 (oh baby, there’s a bundle of love I’d completely forgotten about since playing it a few years back).

Computer gaming has evolved backwards.

Allow me to paint a picture (I’m only good with finger-painting).

As you grow from a bub, you get to play. Playing makes up a big part of being a kid, especially before school. Seeing my kids these days, my oldest is a few months away from school. For them at least, that’s how it is. And it was that way for me and my siblings too.

Playing together is another fundamental skill that comes early, especially if you have more than one kid. The more the merrier. Regardless of that too, sending the kids away to some kind of schooling (or daycare) would definately kick this up a notch.

Playing.

Now I’m going to go back against my original statement.

I wanted to show how computer gaming started backwards, that we begin life playing together, playing tips and hide-e-go-seek and lego and ..

But that’s wrong. We don’t. Playing originates depending on a bunch of stuff, siblings, parents, family life in general.

Let me go back.

As previously mentioned, I’ve been spending a bit of time with BG2 (and the exp, but haven’t got into it’s content yet, still on the original, taking my time). It’s been an utterly enjoyable experience. I’m not rushing, I’m just having fun.

It was built primarily as a single-player game, unlike NWN, which I believe was built to properly allow for dungeon-mastering in the computer land.

Anyway. Single-Player.

These are the first games I played. Single-Player. They consumed much of my early adulthood (and maybe some later too :)). The Bard’s Tale games, Ultimas, countless shareware rpgs.

But then I thought, that’s different to how we grow up as kids and then adults. We play together mostly. How do you play brandings by yourself? Or Hide-e-go-seek? Sardines, Tips, Bullrush, Cops/Robbers, Releaso, Fresh .. all AWESOME games ..

.. all of them Multi-Player.

For me, my experience, it’s been most definately Single-Player until the last few years. Multi-Player really kicked it up a notch (for me) with World of Warcraft. Before then, I was kind of scared to go in against real people.

Single-Player obviously gives you something pretty special, otherwise I wouldn’t enjoy it so much. I guess it’s the loner geek buried inside of me.

But Multi-Player is something more. Running around like a mad-man in the dark chasing people is just some of the best fun you’ll ever have. Punishing someone by pulling off the biggest tackle of your life in a rugby match, or outwitting the backline as a prop by stepping when you shouldn’t really be able to step .. computer games mimic these moments, or they try to.

Man alive, this post has gone nothing like I thought it would.

I’m straying deep into non-development territory, plus, most of this is just plain babble. So thanks if you’ve stayed the course thus far.

I guess my original thought has gone through the usual process of change once I put some actual brain-power into thinking it through.

I’m all out of creative-energy .. I’ll leave it here and see how it turns out.

‘Nuff Said Most Definately,

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