Hi Jeremy.
interesting thoughts, however one fact which distinguishes those games from
a lot of computer games is that they are exclusviely uniquely social events.
Until the invention of computers that could act as human opponents, all of
those games required people to get together.
There is a very big difference between a game played face to face with your
friends and a game played at odds, even across the internet. This is one
reason why, though I love games like muds or browser rpgs or games like
entombed that give me a huge world to explore and a character to play, I
have no interest in rp on the internet. To mye, roleplaying via text chat,
mud character actions etc, particularly when there is no human gm to
interact with your characters, insert npcs and give you an over all plot is
just a poor second best.
The same might be said for various of these games. with the exception of
chess, monopoly, scrabble, and I believe sorry, (which exists in the Uk but
probably is less common, sinse while I've heard of it I've never played it),
are all social games with multiple players that require the players to talk
to each other and interact, especially monopoly.
Indeed, there is a very interesting write up in the start of the second
edition D&D manual which characterizes snakes and ladders as a simple form
of an rpg, sinse it involves a clear goal, a number of players, and hazards
and rewards as well as using dice.
It is likely that with real time voice chat etc, this level of human
interaction is possible with online games, but I've not really seen anything
in text that does the job, neither have I seen a specially built game
interface.
So, while I see the arguement characterizing games as social activities, I'm
not entirely sure how much this applies to the popularity of computer games,
especially those classics of the 80's like space invaders and packman, or
can say why for example Super marrio became a landmark title for the
nintendo in 1985, yet only a couple of months earlier Nintendo's Ice
climbers, was a pretty major flop despite being a rather unique title with
mechanics which on the surface seem just as interesting as those of Mario
brothers.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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