NetHack

In a recent post, I had written about my love of video games. Somehow along the way I had become sidetracked and began ranting and raving about the hardships of being a youth in Western society. Though I did explore some interesting issues, I did not discuss what I had inteneded. I never explained what I "get out" of playing these games. I apologize for this, but realize that the purpose of this blog is a lot about these rants and raves. Free-associative writing (as I believe it is called) is a powerful tool psychologists use to probe into the deep workings of a troubled mind. But that's another story altogether.

Before I went on my completely unrelated tangent on bullying, I was giving a brief synopsis of the evolution of the modern coin-operated video game. I expect that these huge cabinets do not make the same amount of money they did twenty years ago. I just don't see arcades around town like I used to. There was a time where there were arcades and pool halls all over town, where teenagers would spend their evenings and weekends shooting pool, playing video games or pinball, trying to get high, drunk, or find a date. Most of these places are now empty and out of business. I suppose it a sign of the times, but I'd sure like to know what these kids are doing nowadays. Where are they going?

I imagine that the rapid advancement of technology has a little something to do with it (certainly not everything!). Computers and Game consoles are the main staple of the video game economy now. Video game fanatics are quite comfortable staying at home playing the newest game on computers with the latest graphics cards, chatting with their buddies over MSN, ICQ, AIM, or iChat. In many ways, the advent of the Internet has connected the world in so many ways that the world feels like a much smaller place. In other ways, it has severed huge populations from the world. This is a subject that will have to wait for another posting to discuss.

Like I had said, I love the old retro computer games like Donkey Kong, or Asteroids. They are great fun, but the boredom level can set in rather quickly due to the repetitive nature of these games. There is a certain type of video game that I can't seem to get sick of. These are games of the Role-Playing persuasion.

Some people can't stand these games. Either they believe it to be too complicated, or perhaps it takes too long to complete a specific task, or maybe there are too many controls. I know a lot of video game fanatics who can't stand to sit through reading a number of paragraphs of text in the opening credits of the game.

This is exactly why I enjoy these games. First of all, it can take weeks or months to play a game form beginning to completion. Realistically, if you could play one of these games from start to finish with no breaks, it may take thirty to sixty hours to complete, which is still a daunting task! When you spend that amount of time playing the game, you tend to develop a kinship towards the characters. You learn their personalities; you watch them grow and develop their skills. You watch them fall in love, and you watch them battle evils of epic proportions.

Nowadays, these Role Playing computer games are big money for the developers, but this wasn't always the case. In the very beginning, adventure and role-playing games had rather humble beginnings. It is difficult to understand why, but perhaps to better understand the problem, we might have to look a little farther in the past.

The role-playing phenomenon had its humble beginnings with the development of one game: Dungeons and Dragons. Over the years, D&D has had a rather bad reputation, largely thanks to uninformed religious groups. I agree, that it is unfortunate that in the game's infancy, a few teenagers abused drugs, got carried away, and took their own lives, but that is not what the game is about. Even if you think dragons are minions of the Devil, and dice are wicked, this is little ground for creating a whole moral panic against the genre. Others say impersonating another character, role-playing, or acting are sins and should be forbidden, but for those groups, I would like to ask them how many of their church groups employ members of the congregation to participate in a Nativity scene at Christmas? Sorry people, but playing a shepherd or one of the three Wise Men is no different than playing a Knight who is commissioned to rid the world of evil. Apples are apples.

Role-playing is not a new thing. Children role-play all the time: They pretend they are firefighters, parents, athletes, superheroes, etc. It is one of the ways that these children learn about the interactions of our world. The major difference between children playing "make-believe", and Dungeons & Dragons, is that the creators of the game were clever to discover that they could use statistics and the randomness of dice to determine outcomes. An outcome could have to do with the outcome of a battle, or the ability of detecting a trap, bribing a guard, or what kind of item is locked within a chest. Using these statistics, a player who was good at picking locks, for instance, would have a higher percentage of successfully picking the lock than a novice would. This adds excitement to a game where what happens next is a big part of the fun of the game.

To successfully play the game, you need a minimum of three players. You need two or more players who are willing to play characters (the roles). These characters are the heroes who will depart for adventure, in whatever form they desire. But the player needs to communicate these ideas to a referee, or game master, who tells the players of the outcomes, describes the places, situations, and characters they meet. It is these interactions that bring a role-playing game to life.

If you ever played a game of Dungeons and Dragons, you will probably know that when a battle sequence ensues, it can take hours to finish. It can be fun, but it is sometimes a slow and painful process, especially, if you are sitting on the sidelines. Sometime in the late seventies or early eighties, somebody discovered a way to speed up the process -- with a computer.

A computer is quite good with statistics, calculating modifiers, variables, and (somewhat) adequate with random numbers. A computer game could crunch a few hours' battling into a mere minute or two. So people began writing adventure games for the computer, and the first ones were rather disappointing.

The first we will discuss are the text-based adventure games. They featured no sound or graphics, and often began with a corny phrase like: "You are standing in a dark and narrow passageway with exits to the north and east". Commands were given in a cryptic form that rarely resembled the English language, and commands were quite limited. Some of these games managed to have some success. The Zork series fared quite well, but I think the interface was more or less lacking. It did have the heart and soul of the Role-Playing game. It was descriptive, and unfolded much like a Game Master would describe the scenario to the players. The problem is that computers do not work well with human creative thinking, and creative actions are pure fun in role-playing situations. A programmer would have to think of nearly every possible situation and outcome, and attempt to program it into the computer. The next problem, of course is that the computer often ran out of memory before the programmer could code the number of possible commands a human could conceive.

Around the same time, programmers devised a dungeon exploration game called NetHack. It could be argued that all role-playing games are derived from this creation in one way or another. This game used a number of the statistics from Dungeons and Dragons, as well as a low-res GUI to represent dungeon walls, creatures, doors, or objects. The difference in this game is that there were only a set number of commands given for the player to use -- but there were still dozens of them. In NetHack the character is given armor to wear, weapons to wield, spells to cast, monsters to slay, and treasure to plunder. The character obtains experience by killing monsters, and with greater experience, the player become more powerful in his abilities. Like the role-playing games that followed, NetHack is a game that can take hours to play.

NetHack still exists to this day and runs on every computer platform imaginable. Code-wise, it is a very small game, though programmers develop new code and add it to this game that is approaching 25 years old. Within NetHack, there are scenarios and commands that still have not been integrated into the super RPG's of today. I sometimes like to get away from all the heavy graphics and sound and play a simple round of NetHack. Beware, you might get hooked!

Computer and Game Console RPGs have increased in complexity with the increase of memory, storage, and processor speeds. The latest games now have three-dimensional graphics, and automated battle scenes. This often speeds up the play of the game, but sacrifices the strategy of turn-based battle engines. Not to say this is a bad thing though.

I have watched the Final Fantasy game series evolve from its humble beginnings on the Nintendo console to the computer phenomenon it is today. The length of the newer games, the storyline, battle engines, strategy, races, spells, and objects are absolutely breathtaking.

So why do I love these games? I guess it is the idea that I can immerse myself in the plot and the characters. I can escape the real world for hours at a time, and become a hero of my own will. I don't play these games for the violence; I play for the advancement of plot and character. New objects and spells are always exciting to test on unsuspecting enemies. Best of all, in these games I am the best and strongest, and good always prevails over evil!