Gaming Vacation

If only Hitler had Civilization 4

Normally, I play no games of any kind. With my Attention Deficit, I've got to draw the line somewhere, so I refuse to play them. I figured if I don't play them for the first time, I won't get sucked into them.

However, there was a game I got hooked on before I made that resolution: Sid Meier's Civilization. I've bought every version of it up to Civ 5.

But Civ 5 sucked, even though it had some great advances (hex rather than square tiles, limits on stacking units, elimination of transport ships.) It seems that 2k suffered layoffs like everyone in 2008.


Moreover, turn-based games are on their way out, so I've read. My playing Civ 4: Beyond the Sword officially makes me old-fashioned. "Old" in the Internet age is five years ago, about the time it takes the average computer-thing to become worthless.

A few weeks ago, when my writing group gave me a daunting revision task, I decided to take some time off writing, just for a change. I hadn't had a vacation of any sort for 18 months. I couldn't afford a real one, so took the cyber variety.

(Don't worry, friends, I'm not going to go into too much detail about the game.)

I discovered that Civ is a poor substitute for writing in terms of my mental health. I played it for about 55 hours. The first game I played the Americans under Lincoln, I resigned. I had great initial resources, but the land around was arid plain with no sign of easily available strategic resources, like horses, copper and iron. Worse, it also put me right next to the Mongols and the Vikings to the west, nothing but ocean to my back.

Start again. The next game was much more satisfying, putting me out on a large continent with enough space and fair resources. I had the Koreans over a mountain range west, the Arabs to the North above a big lake, the Aztecs to the Northeast, and further in that direction, the Malaysians. I was playing the Americans under FDR. I usually go the conquest route, and I really don't know how to win any other way. The only complaint I have about the tech tree is that I can't get catapults before the 10th century AD. This is not just silly from historical standpoint, but it slows the game down when you can't besiege cities until that late.

It's a paradox in any game that it becomes work, and building and maintaining a military is a lot of work. It requires infrastructure, attention to detail, and this all doubles when war starts. You have to manage a war economy while trying to keep your science going and your citizens happy.

It's more work than writing, and I discovered, not nearly as satisfying. My vacation has ended and I'm not near done with it. I still have the 20th century to get through, so I might just delete it.

What if God had decided to delete the world rather than flood it?

I do have a thought, though: perhaps we don't need war in real life. Yes, there's fear, rage, scarce resources, and all that, but to some degree, people enjoy it. I think that's demonstrated by the violence in video games. In first-person shooters, like Call of Duty, which give people all the excitement of a battlefield with no danger, no trauma, no physical activity. It fulfills what people desire about warfare, while leaving out everything about it that's truly horrifying.

Indications are that video games make people more violent. I think that's an oversimplification though. Entertainment, and especially video games might make some individuals more violent, but I believe the populace would be far more restless without them. If Marx described religion as the opium of the people, video games are both crack and heroin, the speedballs of the people. 

Right now I'm reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and it's stunning to me how restless and unstable this country was before the 1940s. The nation was continually riven and wracked with class warfare prior. Then, TV was introduced to consumers. After an adjustment period, where TV got better and people got more interested, the US populace went quiet.  Then, generations raised on the tube thought that class distinctions were unimportant, which led to Reagan and the Conservative movement.

I digress on my digression. One thing I find humbling: I can't win Civ 5 without war, in fact, without being Hitler. Of course, the game designers might have set it up that way, but maybe that's true of real life, too.

Yes, this speed reading stuff, BTW rocks. I took Zinn's book out of the library Thursday, started reading it on Friday. It's over 650 pages long, and I've read 450. I haven't been spending reading, either. Next, for my reading I want to educate myself about Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling. That's all leisure, though.

This morning I wrote a second review of American Mary on IMDB. Right now I'm going through the one and only season of Firefly, so I'm catching up on all the shows I missed.

I wish I were as swift writing as I've become at reading. I'm off vacation now and I'm writing fiction again. Same novel. Let's see if I can put it on the fast track.