Monday, March 09, 2009
What's in it for me?
Last night I found myself in quite a predicament. Facing off against a silver muscleman with a yin-yang for an abdomen, trapped inside a massive secret laboratory designed to test my abilities and improve my opponent's, I had no choice but to beat him to a pulp and ruin him and his experiment forever.
In other words, I was trying to beat Street Fighter IV.
The real predicament had nothing to do with a lab or or an opponent or fighting at all, of course. Everything that took place was between me and my PlayStation 3. But when playing a game like SFIV, I get very...what's the word...agitated. Excited, yes, but agitated. When things go right, there's a moment of pleasure, a feeling of a job well done. But when things go wrong and my opponent wins (be it human or computer controlled), there is the painful sting of failure. Worse, it hurts because I feel frustrated. I don't understand why I didn't win. Soon, I perceive victory as an impossibility. I couldn't have won because he/she/it was being unfair - "cheap" is the term used in fighting games all too liberally when we see tactics that we do not approve of. What's "cheap" can vary player to player and game to game, but rarely does it actually apply to cheaters. No, "cheap" simply labels a strategy or style of play as something that is inappropriate in the eyes of the defeated. In SFIV, this usually involves throwing.
Fighting games have long featured throwing as a close-combat tactic and it has always garnered the most anger from players, even though we couldn't play the game without it. Since fighting games require blocking to protect combatants from attacks, players could theoretically do nothing but defend and hold off an opponent forever (such a strategy is known as "turtling"). By using throws, which cannot be blocked, it forces players to keep moving and be alert. However, the ideal time to execute a throw is ambiguous, as there are many (including myself) who feel downright insulted or cheated when an opponent is aggressive with throws. There's no particular word to describe this strategy of attack, but players who throw a lot are often accused of being "cheap." As someone who is quick to throw that word out there, I honestly can't justify my angry use of it.
Yet I digress. The actual methods of playing Street Fighter IV are of little importance today. What I need to ask myself, and all of you out there reading this, is why do I play this game if it gets me so riled up? Why did I invest over a hundred dollars (if you include the joystick) in bringing this game into my home if turning it on takes me to such an ugly place?
Not all games do this to me, of course. This weekend, the critically-acclaimed World of Goo was offered on Steam for the insane price of five dollars. As Noby Noby Boy can attest to, I will play just about anything for five dollars, especially when it has such a glowing reputation. I put in about thirty minutes with this puzzle physics game that involves building rudimentary structures out of "goo." It's much more adorable and enjoyable than it sounds and I was quite taken in by the whole experience and look forward to playing it again. However, it paled in comparison to the feeling I got playing SFIV later that same night when I finally managed to smackdown that silver jerkoff Seth and beat the game, unlocking a new character in the process.
In answering my own question, I suspect the reason I keep coming back to games like SFIV over much more relaxing fare like World of Goo, PixelJunk Eden or any number of free web games over at Kongregate is that the peaks are very high, even when the gameplay takes me through some particularly low places. I get downright wicked when I play SFIV. I smack my hands onto things in anger, I raise my voice even though no one is listening, and I declare that the pile driver that just floored my on-screen avatar was "cheap." Who am I yelling at? Who cares about my complaints? No one; I just get so emotionally involved that I must let out the twisted, gnawing feelings inside me by any and all means available. If I lived alone in the woods I'm sure firing a weapon into the air would suffice.
So what is it about games like this that appeal to me? Is the brief, warm embrace of success worth all the aching failure that precedes it? I spent at least two hours playing SFIV on Friday night before I went to bed, facing a variety of opponents online and off, and I'm sure that I was in a foul mood for no less than three hours as a result: about 1:45 of the time I played the game and at least another hour after I quit in frustration. But those isolated moments when I pulled off that tricky combination of moves or beat some guy on the Internet in a close contest? Those were fifteen sensational minutes.
This may strike some of you as completely insane. Maybe you're starting to side with Mako in her quest to keep the Xbox out of our apartment and sell the PS3 while we're at it. I don't blame you for not understanding. But let me ask you this: don't we all have things that frustrate us again and again until we get it right? Isn't most of life about pursing X despite the problems that pursuit may bring? Aren't all successes, no matter how trivial, weighed against the struggles that were overcome en route?
Consider this radically different example: I know when I look back at my dating experiences of 2005, I remember an entire summer of being rejected and rejected and rejected again. Trying to meet someone on Craigslist is like a failure marathon. You have no choice but to repeatedly offer yourself to anonymous strangers in the hopes that they might write you back, and in the tantalizingly rare cases where they DO respond, there are a surprising number of people who will abruptly decline to reply to your follow-up email. Was it something you said? Was it the picture you submitted? You never know and it kills you inside trying to figure it all out. But I couldn't just stop and play "World of Goo" all summer instead, if you catch my meaning.
Because when it works...when you encounter someone who does think you're funny and clever...when you agree to meet in the real world and there's a silent acknowledgment that you like each other...when you first kiss each other in Hankyu Umeda station after watching a terrible movie but it didn't matter because the two of you were busy connecting on an emotional level...well, I need only to think about the brewing baby boy inside my wife's uterus to think about how great it was that I risked rejection and responded to her online personal ad in August of 2005. That was a "game" that I definitely beat, and the best part is there's no end in sight.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
In other words, I was trying to beat Street Fighter IV.
The real predicament had nothing to do with a lab or or an opponent or fighting at all, of course. Everything that took place was between me and my PlayStation 3. But when playing a game like SFIV, I get very...what's the word...agitated. Excited, yes, but agitated. When things go right, there's a moment of pleasure, a feeling of a job well done. But when things go wrong and my opponent wins (be it human or computer controlled), there is the painful sting of failure. Worse, it hurts because I feel frustrated. I don't understand why I didn't win. Soon, I perceive victory as an impossibility. I couldn't have won because he/she/it was being unfair - "cheap" is the term used in fighting games all too liberally when we see tactics that we do not approve of. What's "cheap" can vary player to player and game to game, but rarely does it actually apply to cheaters. No, "cheap" simply labels a strategy or style of play as something that is inappropriate in the eyes of the defeated. In SFIV, this usually involves throwing.
Fighting games have long featured throwing as a close-combat tactic and it has always garnered the most anger from players, even though we couldn't play the game without it. Since fighting games require blocking to protect combatants from attacks, players could theoretically do nothing but defend and hold off an opponent forever (such a strategy is known as "turtling"). By using throws, which cannot be blocked, it forces players to keep moving and be alert. However, the ideal time to execute a throw is ambiguous, as there are many (including myself) who feel downright insulted or cheated when an opponent is aggressive with throws. There's no particular word to describe this strategy of attack, but players who throw a lot are often accused of being "cheap." As someone who is quick to throw that word out there, I honestly can't justify my angry use of it.
Yet I digress. The actual methods of playing Street Fighter IV are of little importance today. What I need to ask myself, and all of you out there reading this, is why do I play this game if it gets me so riled up? Why did I invest over a hundred dollars (if you include the joystick) in bringing this game into my home if turning it on takes me to such an ugly place?
Not all games do this to me, of course. This weekend, the critically-acclaimed World of Goo was offered on Steam for the insane price of five dollars. As Noby Noby Boy can attest to, I will play just about anything for five dollars, especially when it has such a glowing reputation. I put in about thirty minutes with this puzzle physics game that involves building rudimentary structures out of "goo." It's much more adorable and enjoyable than it sounds and I was quite taken in by the whole experience and look forward to playing it again. However, it paled in comparison to the feeling I got playing SFIV later that same night when I finally managed to smackdown that silver jerkoff Seth and beat the game, unlocking a new character in the process.
In answering my own question, I suspect the reason I keep coming back to games like SFIV over much more relaxing fare like World of Goo, PixelJunk Eden or any number of free web games over at Kongregate is that the peaks are very high, even when the gameplay takes me through some particularly low places. I get downright wicked when I play SFIV. I smack my hands onto things in anger, I raise my voice even though no one is listening, and I declare that the pile driver that just floored my on-screen avatar was "cheap." Who am I yelling at? Who cares about my complaints? No one; I just get so emotionally involved that I must let out the twisted, gnawing feelings inside me by any and all means available. If I lived alone in the woods I'm sure firing a weapon into the air would suffice.
So what is it about games like this that appeal to me? Is the brief, warm embrace of success worth all the aching failure that precedes it? I spent at least two hours playing SFIV on Friday night before I went to bed, facing a variety of opponents online and off, and I'm sure that I was in a foul mood for no less than three hours as a result: about 1:45 of the time I played the game and at least another hour after I quit in frustration. But those isolated moments when I pulled off that tricky combination of moves or beat some guy on the Internet in a close contest? Those were fifteen sensational minutes.
This may strike some of you as completely insane. Maybe you're starting to side with Mako in her quest to keep the Xbox out of our apartment and sell the PS3 while we're at it. I don't blame you for not understanding. But let me ask you this: don't we all have things that frustrate us again and again until we get it right? Isn't most of life about pursing X despite the problems that pursuit may bring? Aren't all successes, no matter how trivial, weighed against the struggles that were overcome en route?
Consider this radically different example: I know when I look back at my dating experiences of 2005, I remember an entire summer of being rejected and rejected and rejected again. Trying to meet someone on Craigslist is like a failure marathon. You have no choice but to repeatedly offer yourself to anonymous strangers in the hopes that they might write you back, and in the tantalizingly rare cases where they DO respond, there are a surprising number of people who will abruptly decline to reply to your follow-up email. Was it something you said? Was it the picture you submitted? You never know and it kills you inside trying to figure it all out. But I couldn't just stop and play "World of Goo" all summer instead, if you catch my meaning.
Because when it works...when you encounter someone who does think you're funny and clever...when you agree to meet in the real world and there's a silent acknowledgment that you like each other...when you first kiss each other in Hankyu Umeda station after watching a terrible movie but it didn't matter because the two of you were busy connecting on an emotional level...well, I need only to think about the brewing baby boy inside my wife's uterus to think about how great it was that I risked rejection and responded to her online personal ad in August of 2005. That was a "game" that I definitely beat, and the best part is there's no end in sight.
Labels: Craigslist, dating, flash games, frustration, PixelJunk, PS3, Street Fighter IV, video games, World of Goo, Write or Die
つづく...(Click here to read more)
