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Before the Playstation was even a twinkle in it's designers' eye, games were bringing out highly focused emotions in all but the most battle hardened gamer.
I'm talking Pacman, I'm talking Thrust, I'm talking Defender. You have to be mentally unstable not to feel emotions upon playing these gems, and they have wafer thin plots and dodgy visuals. No sophisticated 3D rendered graphics, no cut scenes, no high-level AI sub-routines. Pure, simple, unfettered gameplay.
Don't get me wrong. I'm just as likely as the next gamer to sit slack jawed in awe at the latest visual orgasm to have slinked out of Westwood Studios, or those wonderful graphics from Square. But at the same time, I've spent the last 2 weeks battling through 50 levels of Bomberman, whose graphics do leave a lot to be desired, but that is easily forgiven once the gameplay draws you in to the 'Zone'. You know what the 'Zone' is, right?
The Zone is that place of high-level gameplay, where if you have to spend a split second thinking about what you have to do next, it's probably too late to do it. You know what I mean. Where you stop thinking, and start, well, feeling your way around the game. Your brain starts to access some higher mental state where you at once seem to lose control of your senses, yet you are taking in everything that the game is throwing at you and coming right back at it with
everything you have.
There are only 2 games in recent history to have taken me into The Zone. Quake III and Unreal Tournament. Whilst I admit that these games are extravaganzas of high-res, strobing, 3D eye-candy, there comes a point, somewhere amidst the high-octane kill frenzies, when you start reacting to the environment with sub-second speed, where you begin to distill the graphics down to the point where it does not matter what the "bad guys" look like, you just know they are there to be targetted and disposed of, to your utter joy and contentment. And if they dispose of you first, well, there is always the re-spawn button and vengence can be yours within a few rounds of ammo. This is emotion.
New hardware and software routines simply give games a fresh look and feel. But we gamers have always been excited by the rush of winning, or the desperate sadness of losing. No matter what the system we are playing on. You want to win. You must beat the game. Is that not emotion in it's purest, distilled essence? And you don't need a multi-million dollar PR machine to tell you that it is some kind of Third Place.
I'm talking Pacman, I'm talking Thrust, I'm talking Defender. You have to be mentally unstable not to feel emotions upon playing these gems, and they have wafer thin plots and dodgy visuals. No sophisticated 3D rendered graphics, no cut scenes, no high-level AI sub-routines. Pure, simple, unfettered gameplay.
Don't get me wrong. I'm just as likely as the next gamer to sit slack jawed in awe at the latest visual orgasm to have slinked out of Westwood Studios, or those wonderful graphics from Square. But at the same time, I've spent the last 2 weeks battling through 50 levels of Bomberman, whose graphics do leave a lot to be desired, but that is easily forgiven once the gameplay draws you in to the 'Zone'. You know what the 'Zone' is, right?
The Zone is that place of high-level gameplay, where if you have to spend a split second thinking about what you have to do next, it's probably too late to do it. You know what I mean. Where you stop thinking, and start, well, feeling your way around the game. Your brain starts to access some higher mental state where you at once seem to lose control of your senses, yet you are taking in everything that the game is throwing at you and coming right back at it with
everything you have.
There are only 2 games in recent history to have taken me into The Zone. Quake III and Unreal Tournament. Whilst I admit that these games are extravaganzas of high-res, strobing, 3D eye-candy, there comes a point, somewhere amidst the high-octane kill frenzies, when you start reacting to the environment with sub-second speed, where you begin to distill the graphics down to the point where it does not matter what the "bad guys" look like, you just know they are there to be targetted and disposed of, to your utter joy and contentment. And if they dispose of you first, well, there is always the re-spawn button and vengence can be yours within a few rounds of ammo. This is emotion.
New hardware and software routines simply give games a fresh look and feel. But we gamers have always been excited by the rush of winning, or the desperate sadness of losing. No matter what the system we are playing on. You want to win. You must beat the game. Is that not emotion in it's purest, distilled essence? And you don't need a multi-million dollar PR machine to tell you that it is some kind of Third Place.
Before the Playstation was even a twinkle in it's designers' eye, games were bringing out highly focused emotions in all but the most battle hardened gamer.
I'm talking Pacman, I'm talking Thrust, I'm talking Defender. You have to be mentally unstable not to feel emotions upon playing these gems, and they have wafer thin plots and dodgy visuals. No sophisticated 3D rendered graphics, no cut scenes, no high-level AI sub-routines. Pure, simple, unfettered gameplay.
Don't get me wrong. I'm just as likely as the next gamer to sit slack jawed in awe at the latest visual orgasm to have slinked out of Westwood Studios, or those wonderful graphics from Square. But at the same time, I've spent the last 2 weeks battling through 50 levels of Bomberman, whose graphics do leave a lot to be desired, but that is easily forgiven once the gameplay draws you in to the 'Zone'. You know what the 'Zone' is, right?
The Zone is that place of high-level gameplay, where if you have to spend a split second thinking about what you have to do next, it's probably too late to do it. You know what I mean. Where you stop thinking, and start, well, feeling your way around the game. Your brain starts to access some higher mental state where you at once seem to lose control of your senses, yet you are taking in everything that the game is throwing at you and coming right back at it with
everything you have.
There are only 2 games in recent history to have taken me into The Zone. Quake III and Unreal Tournament. Whilst I admit that these games are extravaganzas of high-res, strobing, 3D eye-candy, there comes a point, somewhere amidst the high-octane kill frenzies, when you start reacting to the environment with sub-second speed, where you begin to distill the graphics down to the point where it does not matter what the "bad guys" look like, you just know they are there to be targetted and disposed of, to your utter joy and contentment. And if they dispose of you first, well, there is always the re-spawn button and vengence can be yours within a few rounds of ammo. This is emotion.
New hardware and software routines simply give games a fresh look and feel. But we gamers have always been excited by the rush of winning, or the desperate sadness of losing. No matter what the system we are playing on. You want to win. You must beat the game. Is that not emotion in it's purest, distilled essence? And you don't need a multi-million dollar PR machine to tell you that it is some kind of Third Place.
I'm talking Pacman, I'm talking Thrust, I'm talking Defender. You have to be mentally unstable not to feel emotions upon playing these gems, and they have wafer thin plots and dodgy visuals. No sophisticated 3D rendered graphics, no cut scenes, no high-level AI sub-routines. Pure, simple, unfettered gameplay.
Don't get me wrong. I'm just as likely as the next gamer to sit slack jawed in awe at the latest visual orgasm to have slinked out of Westwood Studios, or those wonderful graphics from Square. But at the same time, I've spent the last 2 weeks battling through 50 levels of Bomberman, whose graphics do leave a lot to be desired, but that is easily forgiven once the gameplay draws you in to the 'Zone'. You know what the 'Zone' is, right?
The Zone is that place of high-level gameplay, where if you have to spend a split second thinking about what you have to do next, it's probably too late to do it. You know what I mean. Where you stop thinking, and start, well, feeling your way around the game. Your brain starts to access some higher mental state where you at once seem to lose control of your senses, yet you are taking in everything that the game is throwing at you and coming right back at it with
everything you have.
There are only 2 games in recent history to have taken me into The Zone. Quake III and Unreal Tournament. Whilst I admit that these games are extravaganzas of high-res, strobing, 3D eye-candy, there comes a point, somewhere amidst the high-octane kill frenzies, when you start reacting to the environment with sub-second speed, where you begin to distill the graphics down to the point where it does not matter what the "bad guys" look like, you just know they are there to be targetted and disposed of, to your utter joy and contentment. And if they dispose of you first, well, there is always the re-spawn button and vengence can be yours within a few rounds of ammo. This is emotion.
New hardware and software routines simply give games a fresh look and feel. But we gamers have always been excited by the rush of winning, or the desperate sadness of losing. No matter what the system we are playing on. You want to win. You must beat the game. Is that not emotion in it's purest, distilled essence? And you don't need a multi-million dollar PR machine to tell you that it is some kind of Third Place.
Just what I was about to post, you beat me to it. ;)
I do agree though, UT does it for me.
I do agree though, UT does it for me.
This post is kind of an antithesis of the "Emotional Gaming" post which seems to call for more plot and character and stuff like that.
Whilst I beleive that is a good idea, I still don't think you can beat any kind of game that takes you into The Zone in the way that those games I have mentioned can.
Whilst I beleive that is a good idea, I still don't think you can beat any kind of game that takes you into The Zone in the way that those games I have mentioned can.