Newbie

So I tried a new online game called Flow. It’s very, very cool. And it feels just right for me. This is what the first screen looks like (I put a red circle around the little creature that serves as my avatar):

The point of the game seems utterly straightforward. Despite the fact that it features very soothing background music, Flow is about the dog-eat-dog world. You move your mouse around to guide your creature and make it eat other creatures so it’ll get bigger. And that’s it.

It’s so easy that I wonder whether I’m missing something. So I check the directions:

Now these are the kind of directions the Newbie loves! No huge tome like “The Sims 2”; just a short description that makes the game seem like a piece of cake.

I really get into it and enjoy gobbling up the little creatures. It’s tremendously engaging for something that seems so uncomplicated. In that way, it reminds me a bit of Pong - a simple game scenario that creates compelling (and potentially addictive!) game play.

I will play more of this game.

Here’s an image from Will Wright’s new game, Spore:

In this game, players will be able to build creatures at the cellular level and ultimately adapt/evolve into more and more complex creatures until they basically have the smarts (and I guess, the need) to populate other planets. It sounds like heady stuff. It also sounds like it would make my head explode.

Will Wright is an amazing guy. In every interview I’ve ever read with him, he has come across as an interesting and interested super-genius. In spite of the fact that he designed my arch-nemesis, “The Sims 2,” I see him as a great force for good in our world.

And I recently read that just like me, he’s 46.

How in the world did this happen? The most celebrated and popular game designer in the world is the same age as me? He makes stuff. And I make that stuff die. And we’re the same age???

I must be an old 46….

“You can not only watch TV, but now you can actually live it.”

So says an MTV executive in a recent article about the latest craze among the young people, Virtual Laguna Beach. (The NY Times piece is available here if you’re a subscriber.)

My television watching is generally pretty lame: sports, news, a few HBO shows and that’s about it. So I wasn’t up to speed on “Laguna Beach.” But now I’ve learned that it’s way hot and of course, I’m on-board.

Virtual Laguna Beach looks like this -

Don’t you want to be him/her???

Virtual Laguna Beach is another one of those role-playing thingies, only this time you get to act out some of the “real” plotlines from the popular TV show. The first step on the road to bliss is to choose an avatar. Here’s the one I chose:

I tried to pick one that wasn’t too “hot,” because I was worried that I might not want to walk it like my avatar talked it. He seemed fine – sensitive, a little bit sad, no doubt misunderstood – in short, a young me with no glasses or beard.

The next step was to download the software. I’ve got a speedy connection and a powerful computer, so this should have been no problem. Then I saw this -

It’s a dreaded (for Mac users like me) .exe file!!! Windows only!!! I ain’t going to Laguna Beach after all. Oh well….

But it all gets me to thinking about the appeal of not just watching the show, but “living it.” Make-believe and storytelling are older than dirt. I definitely believe that they’re in us, part of our DNA. My kids love to pretend. I love to pretend. But the role-playing in these games feels a little different to me. And I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m an old dude or whether there’s really something weird about it all.

I mean I have problems just like everyone else, but I really like my life. I don’t want to live someone else’s life. I’ve enjoyed “The Sims 2” (well, kind of…) because it feels like a puzzle to solve, not because of the appeal of the vicarious experiences. Does someone who spends endless hours playing Virtual Laguna Beach and games like Second Life invest so much in these games because he doesn’t like his first life???

I wonder what I’m going to think if my girls become immersed in these games when they’re a little older….

My daughter Gracie just had a birthday, and she decided to make her party invitations on the computer with me. So we ventured together into the land of Photoshop, a land with which I am very familiar but which is still pretty new to Gracie.

While we worked, I made a point of having her hand be the one on the mouse. I had to explain some things to her, but she navigated beautifully and seemed to be very, very pleased with herself. And of course, this made me very pleased with her, too.

And then she messed up a little. And she got a little bit frustrated. And then I introduced her to the awe-inspiring power of “Undo”:

Gracie thought this was just fabulous (because, well, it is, right?). I could tell that she felt much more free to take chances and experiment in Photoshop once she realized that “Undo” was now a tool in her toolbox.

And she did a great job:

So happy birthday, Gracie.

We’ll explore and do lots of experiments together.

Even when we don’t have “Undo.”

There are a lot of issues that would impact any “mature” person like me who is trying to become a gamer. For instance, I didn’t grow up with games. I didn’t even grow up with computers. Games seem kind of foreign to me and make me feel, as I’ve often said, “old and stupid.” I think that many of my age peers have very similar response to games, pretty much across the board.

But then there are the issues that are just mine.

A bunch of years ago, when I was a young video guy (yes, as opposed to an old video guy), I was working at a small production company and learning some new video editing software. And I was having trouble figuring out what some of the controls did. This, of course, isn’t the exact screen, but is a suitable enough approximation:

At the time, I didn’t know what the sliders did, so I stared at the screen and did nothing. My boss happened to walk into the room and observed my confusion/stupor. He asked what the problem was and I explained that I was struggling to learn the new software. He didn’t know the software either, but he immediately sat down next to me and said “If you don’t know what a control does, first pull it all the way to the right. And then pull it all the way to the left. Then you’ll see what it does.”

Whoa….

This seemed mind-boggling to me. You mean you’d just mess with the controls and probably create a mess (since who knew what those controls would do?) and then go from there??? My boss was older than me and we worked together before games became outrageously popular. But I bet he would have made a great gamer. (And he probably is one now if he’s ever had the inclination.)

Pull the slider all the way to the right. And then pull it all the way to the left.

The stuff you’re making will look weird and not so nice for a bit, but then you’ll know how to use the tool.

I have a hard time with things looking weird and not so nice… even for just a bit.

I guess that at some point, anyone who’s trying to learn something hard is going to have to confront the things that make it especially hard for him.

Knowing that this blog has a relatively small audience, I am always tremendously grateful to those who link to it and who send in comments. Sony game designer Raph Koster recently discussed Newbie on his blog. He, of course, views my trials and tribulations from his particular perspective as someone who makes games:

“I think one of the hardest tricks in the world of game design is to put yourself in the shoes of the player. It’s particularly hard when we’re designing games for an audience that isn’t like us — and the audience that is usually least like us is the newbie. There’s a blog of relatively recent vintage called, appropriately enough, Newbie, that illustrates this…. I strongly encourage designers to go back to the first post and work their way through the narrative chronologically. It’s a great illustration of how much expertise counts in the games we make today — even the ‘mass market’ ones.”

Raph goes on from there to talk about some of the implications of trying to make games for folks with a wide range of gaming experience. It is very interesting stuff and you should check it out.

Another reader sent in the following comment:

“As someone who’s converted a lot of non-gamer friends and family into game enthusiasts, I empathize and agree with a lot of your frustration. Playing games is a hard thing to learn with no context!”

To which I would add that it’s hard thing to learn even with context!

So all of this got me to thinking about the complexity of the games I’ve been trying to master. Prior to actually firing up “The Sims 2,” I thought that games were well, games. I knew that I hadn’t had any experience with them. But come on, they’re games! How hard could they be???

Well, one dead avatar later, I now know how hard they can be.

The way gamers describe games and the game-playing process makes me feel like games are a little like classical music. You’ve got to learn the rules and really understand the terrain before you can appreciate it. But ultimately that analogy doesn’t hold up for me. I know very little about classical music, but there are certain pieces that I can listen to with great pleasure. I couldn’t tell you why they’re good, but I enjoy them.

Games are different. I can’t just sit back and enjoy a game the way I can enjoy listening to Mozart. And that’s because I’ve got to do stuff! I can sit and look at the pretty pictures while playing “The Sims 2,” but unless I do something, I’m going to wind up with a dead avatar (and even if I do do something, I might wind up with a dead avatar!). So games aren’t like classical music. They’re really more like a language. You take stuff in, try to understand it, and then you do something (in the case of language, you speak; in the case of the game, you play). If someone were to speak to me in a language I didn’t know, I’d stare and nod my head and scream back a nonsensical response in English…. This, of course, would get me nowhere.

In terms of my game-playing, I think the games have been speaking German or Mandarin or Hindi or something… and I’ve been screaming back in English. We don’t really understand each other yet. But considering the complexity of it all (and extending the analogy to consider how hard it is for adults to learn a new language), I don’t feel quite so stupid. This is truly a hard thing….