Distributed Mind

I have been playing some Pokémon lately (since my sister and mom bought me a GameBoy Color and Pokémon Red, so I can lose to Hannah at it), and I have to say I was hooked for a while. I have to admit it is not one of the all time great video games, but it certainly has its appeal. It's very, well, cute. And it can be somewhat entertaining, at least for a computer RPG fan such as myself.

Certainly, many people who played Pokémon (i.e. all those 8 year olds) wouldn't realize that it was an RPG, but it definitely is, if a rather simple one. One character goes on a quest, building his party up (though in this case it is pokémon, not people) as he goes, collecting items, and completing certain tasks necessary to achieve his goal; these are classic RPG elements (well, not all RPGs have parties, but most do these days).

So, as usual, I, an admitted RPG hacker ("Look a number/rule; must exploit it to achieve maximum effectiveness!"), am mostly entranced with building my party in the most effective manner. The game allows the party to consist of six pokémon at a time, though the player is allowed an almost unlimited reserve. There are 150 species of pokémon in the game, and there are several types (e.g. grass, water, fire, poison, ghost) that that 150 divides into (and an individual species may have up to two types). Each type has certain weaknesses and strengths. Additionally, individual species may have certain strengths or weaknesses, apparently, and the type of attacks that can be learned (up to 4 at any time by any given pokémon) vary both by type and species somehow. Anyway, you can see where this could have a lot of potential to be tweaked, which is where much of the strategy comes in. It's sort of like building a deck in the Pokémon Trading Card Game (a good though not great strategy card game in its own right; and superior to Pokémon, anyway).

So though the game is not that great on the whole, I find myself still drawn to tweaking things. I love ghost pokémon like ghastlies and haunters, since they are immnune to most physical attacks (It is so much fun watching some ground pokémon try an attack that would devestate almost any other pokémon, and cause no damage at all...). My most effective pokémon in fact is a haunter (named, so originally, "Ghost"). Though, I have to be careful because ghost pokémon are relatively weak against certain kinds of attacks. My original pokémon, Harvey, a venusaur, is pretty good in his own right, especially with his razor leaf attack which will devestate just about anything. I have a ratticate too (named, urm, "Rat") whose hyperfang attack is sehr deadly, though he is not getting much use right now as I try to build up the levels of some of my other pokémon (I need six solid ones to finish the game, and I only have about 4, and really only about 3 since I don't have enough types represented in that 4). Can you tell I get excited by this kind of thing?

See, the problem is, this game is reminding me why both (1) why I don't play video games anymore, (2) why I don't play RPGs when I do, and it is reminding me how much I enjoyed Baldur's Gate 2. As per (1) and (2), first, video games waste time, and specifically, RPGs waste a lot of time. For some games that almost a sort of sport (especially racers and some so-called "fast-twitch" games) that isn't so bad, since what they are usually something I play to take a break, and they are good for the brain (wake me up, build fast reflexes, that sort of thing). For other games, and especially RPGs, they can be a waste of time without accomplishing anything. When I finish Pokémon, what will I have? When I finished BG2 what did I have? Well, I might have some cool characters/pokémon that I could go around and beat people up with again, but that just means more time in the game again. Noone ever realy gets anything out of it except "the experience" - and what is that except a thoroughly manufactured one? It's sort of like a movie, except much longer (it took Dave Bunge and me over a week full time to finish BG2 the first time; I'm already up to 36 hours of Pokémon by the in-game clock and I haven't finished), or sort of like a book, without the pretensions to philosophy or the deep art. Not that there isn't some art involved, but Doestoevesky they aren't, usually. And all that time spent is never satisfying when it is over, at least for me; it is a very empty experience. Second, they are addicting. Anyone who knows me personally has heard the recovering addict story out of me; ironically, it was 5-6 weeks straight of BG2 that ended it for me (though I did buy and try playing the expansion; for even more irony, I got bored and gave up!). I had a minor relapse with Pokémon, but I am better now (I think).

But at the same time, I remember why I liked BG2. I loved picking classes (i.e. types) for my characters, and trying to balance their stats (attributes), and picking which spells to teach the spellcasters, and finding them good weapons and equipment. I loved tweaking things to fully exploit the game's rules. Since most rules were explicitly specified in the manual, that wasn't usually very hard. Granted everyone else who owned the game was doing the same things (and finding and buying, incidentally, the exact same weapones and equipment), but I could always humor myself that my combination would be unique, and to a certain extent that was true. Anyway, in the end I had some good characters which were floating around Dave's hard drive and are probably dead by now, so who cares in the end? There was some entertainment to it, but... it was both too scripted, and too time consuming. Still, I liked it. Maybe most people can't understand it, even many role players who play for slightly different reasons, but it brought out the tactician in me. And that was what really captured my imagination (though unlike in, say, chess, here there was a certain kind of color to the strategy and tactics, so it used other parts of the imagination as well, which may be why I was a lousy chess player but an okay RPGer). I would sit in bed dreaming up new multi-classed characters and what items or spells to give them to make them the most deadly. After long enough, I just had to walk away. It was sort of a boredom, sort of a waking up, but I just walked away, and have played about 12 hours of BG2 in the following 3.5 years, including the time I spent playing the expansion.

Of course, BG2 also featured some elements that I am not really as fond of anymore. I am not some sort of paranoid fundamentalist or anything, but some of the fantasy elements wear on me (though I admit I probably wouldn't really let that stop me, though maybe I should? I don't know). Some (not much) of the content was a little iffy as well, and the whole thing was obviously rather violent. So, I am not sure I could go back to the good old days now. Maybe I will stick to strategy games and Pokémon and Nethack or ADOM (er, but those have lots of the same stuff, hmm) if I feel particularly tactical. I could find another RPG that is less violent and questionable, I guess, but that would just be to risk finding some game to obsess about again, and what would be the point of that? I haven't played a good game of Alpha Centauri in a while, come to think of it...

(Incidentally, circa 2001 I thought that RPGs (and RPG-influenced action games) were the highest form of evolution for computer games, and where were most computer games would eventually end up. The second part may be right, but I definitely think they aren't generally the kind of games I would want to play anymore for the most part. My thinking has drifted back to the way I felt around 1998: Those old, simple Atari 2600 games were really the best, though I will concede strategy games, racing games, and of course flight simulators have a place as well. Having said that, I do occasionally sit down to play a "roguelike game" such as Nethack, or usually, Slash'Em - in text mode, of course; but then, I can play - and lose - a game of Nethack in 10 minutes, unlike BG2 where it took 10 minutes to get through character creation, 10 minutes to get through opening segment with its cinematic sequences, and then I still had a week of playing ahead of me.)