Pookoko
Sigma Sagittarii Inc.
51
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Posted - 2014.08.26 15:04:00 -
[1] - Quote
I've been playing computer games for nearly three decades now (started on Apple II computer with those green pixels), but for the last decade and a bit longer only three games remained constant in my gaming life.
Eve online. Civilization. Football Manager
I have played other games here and there, been in MMORPG guilds and FPS clans, some great single player RPGs, racing games, simulations, etc, etc, etc. But EvE, Civilization and Football Manager - to these games I ALWAYS came back to.
I'm not insightful enough to analyse what's common between these games to get me hooked for over a decade. Maybe it says something about me more than about these games.
But I remember this quote from a UK PC Gamer review of Civilization 4 when it first came out (which was a God sent gift to all the civ-fanatics) - the reviewer said that this game made him realise that 'great games are like toys that gives you stories when you poke them'.
These words left deep impression on me and I can apply them to my three all time favourite games, eve, civilization and football manager. All these games allow you to build stories yourself - both with the game and the AI and other players.
Playing a game of Civilization will churn out a brief (or sometimes epic) history of the world that you shaped. Football Manager will give you a career story you build by yourself. Every eve vet has his own story in New Eden.
And what's more - all of them have very strong element of the 'uncontrollable'. In football manager, you could plan and craft everything so carefully. Got the best players, best tactic, everyone in top condition - and then, your star player gets sent off two minutes into the champions league final. This heart breaking miserable fate, which is totally out of your control, and the fact that you have to accept the defeat and proceed with no reload to actually enjoy and experience the game - that you accept that the life of a football manager brings both joys and despair - this is what makes FM so special.
Consider civilization - you start with the map you are given. Sometimes it's not fair, but you live with it. It's not your fault that your Indian empire with Ghandi started squeezed between Tokugawa, Napoleon and Genghis Khan. But what can you do? You play diplomatic, you use every trick you know as a player to survive, expand, and then to conquer. It's exactly this uncontrollable element, the cruel joke of fate that makes the game fun, and once you live through it you will have a story to tell.
EvE Online? Need I say more? On one hand this is a game you can control so many things, but yet you can never be free of influence or control from other players too. The fact that you can put so much into one thing, and that one thing can become space dust in split second by a random passing gank squad. The fact that you can build an empire and it slips away through your fingers because one man you trusted stabbed you in the back. The fact that anything can happen to you, that you will never be untouchable or invincible. This, in my opinion, is what makes this game classic.
People have tendency to want control over what they do. But total control doesn't have a long lasting appeal. You can have total control in some single player games by using cheats. It gets old. Real fast.
Games are fun when they contain elements, whether by clever game design or by virtue of other players, which you cannot control. It's only when you carve up your own story in this uncontrollable thing that you feel like it IS your story. Not a story told to you by someone else, but story you made for yourself.
Well, it was a long ramble, but to cut it short - to me at least, eve has already reached a status where it will not die. It has become classic to the level of games like civilization or football manager. Sure they are single player games mostly so it is somewhat different, but nobody asks when these two other games will 'die'. Asking when eve will die is like asking when football will die. It's a silly question.
However, football CAN die. For example, if FIFA enforced a rule that if you score from outside the penalty box you get three points, the game will die (serious, wtf would that be like).
Only thing CCP has to do now, and players should be vocal about and help CCP sustain, are the following two things I mentioned,
1) Give tools to the players to craft their own stories
2) Don't let anyone be invincible
As long as these two rules are followed, the game will last really long time.
Just my two cents. |