Gaming

by Joe Babinsack

The gaming world, to many, is a source of addiction that rivals the best of Columbian cartels, Beverly Hills plastic surgeons and Starbucks Coffee.

Each decade, a new product arrives, and pushes its habits on another generation of otherwise innocent children. In the 70's, a couple of nerds stopped playing with their leaden soldiers (the hashish of the 60's) long enough to imagine a fantasy battle, then a small scale fantasy battle, which blossomed into this crazy game called Dungeons and Dragons, which subsequently addicted millions of impressionable minds, and purportedly caused several to kill themselves, or others, with modern day implements.

Ok, had they done so with battle axes and two handed swords, I would have worried.

So along comes the computer age, and with it this simple minded, abstract rendition of a fantasy world that could be played on University networks. Moria. Countless academic lives were lost to this plague, and another generation subdued by the horrors of the gaming world.

A decade ago, it was games on trading cards. Wizards of the Coast produced Magic: The Gathering. Or, as those in the know call it, Crack: The Addiction. The twisted genius that brought together the demented fandom of collectibles and the warped sensibilities of the competition prone was richly rewarded. Millions of others were deprived of large sums of money. Anyone want to buy my collection? It's worth five large.

Now we live in another modern era, in need of another widespread affliction upon the youths of America . So the newest style of gaming is rising to the surface, threatening society like LSD, Pop Rocks or Cocaine had in the drug world. These twisted geniuses have combined the internet with a basic fantasy game, where tens of thousands of gaming geeks with no social lives can fight fake battles over fake gold. The best part is that there is an inherent top ten list, expanded and modernized to keep track of hundreds of thousands of data points and keep crazed gamers coming back on a daily basis, if not hourly, to play a 'real time' game of historic proportions.

Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games are here, and they are set to grab each and every game fanatic, and run them through an intense addiction that knows no cure. Through several devious innovations, these games capture the imagination, the attention and the continuous need to play.

See, in the past, games were one on one. Sure, multiplayer games came and went, but the better ones challenged solitary users and single game buyers, and taxed their skills and later, their wallets. Even those really good multiplayer games came down to one winner, unless you played Dungeons and Dragons, which became a lifestyle and created a subculture best left under a rock. I know, I've been under that rock for years straight.

But when someone creates a game that cannot be truly won, a game that cannot be truly conquered without the assistance of many other people, through alliances, through teaming up to outsmart the programming, or through gaming the rules, not mastering the game, then that game takes the concept of competition and applies advanced calculus to it. The human mind cannot fathom the inherent ability of a gamer to want to fight with, compete with, and do better than a dozen other gamers. But this game raises the odds and the competition exponentially.

Another major component of gaming is cost. Sure, it's easy to freeload on other gamers. University clubs, a rich buddy, and numerous lonely, antisocial types who have no other friends are all sitting out there, waiting for someone to play with.

But along came the aforementioned Crack: The Addiction, and suddenly all gamers interested needed start up money to get involved. And I'm not talking the $6, then $10 dollars for a starter box, nor even another ten bucks in "booster packs" to gather enough for a half-decent deck. No, I'm talking outlays of one to three hundred dollars to collect the entire set, and probably about as much to make sure that multiple power decks are always at hand. So when it comes to MMRPG's, being a web based product, the cost is virtually nil. Yep, nothing, nada, zip! All one needs is a computer and an internet service provider, and who doesn't have that in the year 2005?

Another aspect of this addiction is availability. Up until now, almost every game needs a warm, live body to sit across the table. Sure, there are play-by-mail varieties of games, but anyone who wants to game with a week or two between turns is truly desperate and unworthy of mention. And the biggest problem with live bodies is that they get boring really quick. Plus, most of them actually need to sleep, go to work, class or do social things, and not every person can consist on a diet of pizza and diet pop.

But a web site is not a live body. It's a program. Which means that, unless it crashes (which does happen, and I just shudder imagining the desperation and/or panic on ten thousand gamers needing a fix at 4:30am , their time, who cannot connect to the game site) the web site is up and running 24/7.

So basically, with a Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game, there's immense competition, free play, and continuous play. What's more to love?

Cheating.

As I mentioned earlier, gaming the system and out programming the program are aspects well at play in this realm of gaming. And what's more attractive to the average win-at-all-costs gamer than being able to cheat? Creating programs to exploit loopholes combines the competitive addiction of the gamer with the insatiable appetite of the hacker, always searching for a new way to subvert computer technology.

And thus, the ultimate game, removing such trifling details as face to face interactions, the emotions of winning or losing in the company of humans, and the reliance upon skill, game play or outwitting the opponent.