If Christopher had his way, this episode would have been called “ALL HAIL GOAT SIMULATOR!!!” But that would be a bit limited in scope — especially when the world of video games practically knows no bounds.
We live in a time when many who complain about how much time their children play Call of Duty spend just as much time on their phones playing Candy Crush and other mobile games. Lines have been blurred from the days of the Atari 2600 and arcades full of cigarette smoke and stand-up cabinet games. Today, almost everybody in America plays digital games of some sort.
We start out in the 70s and 80s, discussing the first video games we remember seeing…and asking if they were actually the first game we ever played. Then it’s a hop to the future, asking what the last game we’ve played is. (Hint for Christopher’s last game played: “BAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!”)
Video games have come a long way, crushing movie box office totals and pushing well beyond what we could imagine in their infancy. We dedicate some time to discussing whether or not video games can be art.
Since we both write, we take a side road into the writing of video games, which is often secondary…but have some games hit on great writing? What’s the future of writing in games? In this section we talk about:
- The influence of video games on our writing.
- If video games can even be as interactive (or more interactive) than a novel, evoking the same experience one gets from reading a great work of fiction.
- Our general feelings about writing in video games.
Putting writing aside, video games get a bad rap for being the same old things. Is there truth to that, or are there original games? After that, we talk about how mobile devices have changed the way we look at video games.
Many people view video games as frantic, loud things, but…can they be a meditative experience? We also devote some time to these questions:
- How have video games linked us socially?
- Is there a place for video games in education?
We close this episode out listing some of our all-time favorite video games and discussing what we think the future of video games looks like.
So grab a handful of quarters and listen. If you’re so inclined, share some of your thoughts about video games in the comments.
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Funny enough, Christopher and I just started playing Lord of the Rings Online. It’s my first MMO, and I’m hooked now that I’ve started figuring it out. I can definitely see spending a lot of time in that little world, but of course I have many things to work on as well, so I hope I don’t get too hooked.
Also, Christopher didn’t mention it, but there are some Wii games we adore. The Go Vacation and Sports Resort (there are actually two resort games I think) are our sort of things. I love the Vacation one, because if I wanted I could either “ride” a horse around the island and just look at the scenery, ride a jet ski and mindlessly do tricks, or go into the actual many many games within the sections of the games. As far as the resort games, we looooove the bowling and some of the other more casual and quick games (frisbee dog anyone?). These are the sort of games I’ve enjoyed — and I’m not really a video game person! (says she who remembers Space Invaders and Pac-Man, as well as the old console games, although we had a TI computer, so Parsec and Burger Time were the two games I remember. Not sure if we had an Atari or if I just played those and some of the earlier console games too).
Yeah, there are few things I love more than Wii archery and just knocking around the Resort worlds. Lord of the Rings Online is fun. It can suck up my time, so I’ll limit play, but…since it takes an effort to come up with a table top RPG, MMORPGs can fill that void.
I definitely love the hell out of games. I wasn’t kidding in this episode when I said one of the reasons I’d love to make it writing fiction is to have time to game an hour or two a day.
Burger Time is one of those early games I can’t believe I forgot to mention. I still have dreams (or nightmares) where I’m stuck in the dystopian universe of Burger Time.
The only MMORPG that got me for a while was City of Heroes
All the others (even Champions) left me sort of ‘meh’
I still don’t get WoW, but I’m not a real big fan of fantasy.
MMORPGs always fascinated me in theory, but I’ve never really played one and thought, “I can do this, here and there,” until Lord of the Rings Online…and mainly because I know some other people who play. WoW…I can see the pull, which is why I never tried it. I liked the original strategy games, but once it became an MMORPG, I stopped.
My first game was Midway’s Gunfight at the Olde Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Ft. Worth
http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8039
I still have my Sear Tele-games (Atari knock-off) Mark gave me his Atari, a Colecovision, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx (Okay, so I like Atari) Sega Genesis and N64…
…oh yea, my kids have a PS4 and XBox 360…pfft…whatever.
Gunfight may have been my second game. They had it at Bill’s Pizza in Mundelein, Illinois. I think they had two cabinets, but that’s the only one I remember.
I still have some older home systems. I think I still have a Sega Genesis and I need to drop off my Playstation 1 with a friend who wants it. Oddly, I never owned any Nintendo systems until we got a Wii.