{"id":1291,"date":"2007-08-28T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2007-08-28T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1291"},"modified":"2008-08-16T10:19:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-16T15:19:00","slug":"the-perfect-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1291","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

I realize this DRMShock business is occupying an awful lot of my attention lately, and is thus occupying an awful lot of my blog. The whole thing is an injustice in my view, so, I’ve been “fighting the power” (by complaining ineffectually) and “sticking it to The Man” (by calling The Man lots of names) in accordance with the great traditions of impotent geek uprisings.<\/p>\n

But why am I so worked up over this? I’ve come to realize that there are four ingredients to the “perfect” game for me:
\n<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I love games which are “survival horror”. I enjoy games where you’re intended to fear the bad guys instead of mow through them.\n<\/li>\n
  2. I love first-person games.\n<\/li>\n
  3. I love Roleplaying games. (In the sense that I love games where you “level-up” or become more powerful as you progress.)\n<\/li>\n
  4. I love non-linear games, where you can move freely and re-visit previous locations, and where changes made to the world are persistent.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If we look at this like a Venn Diagram:<\/p>\n

    perfect_game.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

    My affinity for certain games is related to how many of these four elements they contain. Note the sweet spot in the center, the spot which contains all four, is the perfect game for me. It’s like my own personal genre. In the history of videogames, exactly three games have hit that spot: System Shock, System Shock 2, and BioShock. The latter I’ll never play because of the asinine and invasive DRM. <\/p>\n

    This may help explain why my ire has risen above normal levels and attained some higher state of continual, transcendental rage. <\/p>\n

    Which means I’m likely to keep writing about it. <\/p>\n

    Also, the next person to tell me to run out and buy a $400 XBox so I can play this game gets a brick to the head. People who suggest this are missing the point by several nautical miles. Economics aside, I can’t in good conscience give any<\/i> money to 2kGames. Period. This is about principals. No I won’t pirate the game. No I won’t buy it and then download a crack. I’m going to go without, because right and wrong are more important than videogames, even once-every-seven-years treasures like BioShock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I realize this DRMShock business is occupying an awful lot of my attention lately, and is thus occupying an awful lot of my blog. The whole thing is an injustice in my view, so, I’ve been “fighting the power” (by complaining ineffectually) and “sticking it to The Man” (by calling The Man lots of names) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}