Useless Skills

I've lost my ability to sit down and play a one-player game.  It started happening when I was in high school, but I only really noticed it after I started playing World of Warcraft in college.  I had heard Bioshock was a great game, so I sat down and fired it up.  I couldn't manage to play for more than an hour - I had no motivation.  Sure the game looked great, but I couldn't find a reason to keep playing.

I used to play games like this all day as a kid.  Through middle school my weekends usually consisted of renting a game from Blockbuster and beating it that weekend.  I would play the game from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep.  I would explore games like Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Banjo Kazooie for hours.  Why was it that I could do this as a kid, but now I can't even get an hour into Gears of War?  Aren't these fancy new games supposed to be better?

It's not like I'm not playing games anymore.  I play a lot of Magic, and I can put entire days into World of Warcraft when I have the time.  What's the difference between the games I play now, and the games I played as a kid?

I think the answer lies in the skills your acquire while playing a game, or at leas the skills you think you're acquiring.  When I went to play Bioshock, one question kept coming up: why am I not just playing World of Warcraft?  What I'm doing in Bioshock isn't contributing to anything - I'm just making a saved file on the Xbox.  When I'm done with the game I have nothing to show for it.

You could easily say the same thing about World of Warcraft, that I'm still not contributing, but for some reason it doesn't feel that way.  Not at all.  For some reason when I walk away from World of Warcraft I feel a sense of accomplishment.  I level up in Bioshock, and I could care less.  I level up in World of Warcraft, and I accomplished something.    There is something in the way that game is designed, probably having to do with being connected to a server full of people, that makes the hours you spend playing the game seem valuable.  The character you are leveling feels valuable (similar to how a kid looks at his card or comic book collection) and as you get better at the game you feel like you're acquiring a valuable skill.

Now I'm having a hard time identifying how valuable these skills actually are.  I've been playing magic for over six years and I gotten a lot better at the game since I started.  I feel like the skills I picked up by playing Magic are pretty aplicable to the rest of my life.  I find myself making other decisions better because of the decision making skills I've learned by playing Magic, so it does seem like I'm gaining something valuable there.

When I look at Dance Dance Revolution, though, is that a useful skill?  Directly translated, there is little chance that being able to push a button with my foot in response to an arrow will come in handy.  But, as another blog post talked about, I found that learning how to play other games, like Guitar Hero, a lot easier because I had played Dance Dance Revolution.  This makes me feel like my learning process has improved, but I'm still not sure if it has.

So what about World of Warcraft?  Am I actually learning a valuable skill?  I can't tell.  There is probably something to be said for learning about teamwork and cooperation, as well as resource management.  Looking back, however, I see a lot of hours spent questing and leveling, and I can't imagine that was useful, yet somehow it feels useful.

The problem is that now when I play a game, if I don't get that feeling of building something useful, I can't find the motivation to play.  It doesn't matter how good the graphics are, or how intricate the level design is, or how well-written the story line is - I just can't find the motivation to keep going.

Rock Band

The first time I saw Guitar Hero was at a friends house.  Her brother, who was away at college, bought Guitar Hero for her and mailed it to her house.  I heard about the game with the funky controllers, but hadn't seen it yet.  We plugged it in, started playing, and it was pretty cool.

I quickly recognized the game as DDR with your hands, and a lot of the same skills transferred.  It  was about following the beat, not looking at the line.  I knew you had to associate a color and a position with a muscle movement.  You can't spend time thinking that a green line means you have to use the top button with your pointer finger.  You start to know green and red at the same time as its own combination.  Then you stop seeing individual notes and instead see groups of notes, patterns.  Soon you're going through whole sections of the song on instict, not even sure yourself how you're hitting each note.

I stopped playing Guitar Hero when I went to college.  I eventually moved into a house with five other guys, one of which bought Rock Band.  It was the cool new toy to have, and the whole house started playing it.  I spend too many nights struggling to fall asleep while Jesse (poorly) wailed Maps into the microphone.  I had gotten to the point with Guitar Hero where the guitar was getting really hard, so I thought I'd try the drums in Rock Band.  Sure enough, it was just like DDR and the guitar.  Using the same techniques I quickly climed the difficulty tree of the drums.  I could do a lot of the songs on expert, though probably 30% of them were still too difficult.  There were concepts like drum rolls that eluded me.

Soon after we got Rock Band I secured a job working on a kids card game, Xeko.  It turns out my boss played Rock Band with his friends, and he invited me over to jam with them sometime.  They had a full band - guitar, bass, drums, and singer.  Fortunately for me, their drummer had a new baby on the way and was running out of time to devote to the band.  I slipped into his position and was drumming with those guys regularly.  It became a ritual of rock band, sandwiches, and watching bad TV ever other week or so.

We started to take our act on the road.  There was a bar they took me to on my 21st birthday that had a rock band stage set up.  We showed up and played a set.  Even though there weren't a lot of people there, we still had a great time, and we've been there a coup times since.  Child's Play had a Rock Band event at another bar, and we went to show off our act.  We didn't do very well, but again, we still had a good time.  We weren't a very skilled band, but we got to watch some real acts perform.  By that I mean they got a high score, but I'd like to think we were the better performance.  When Rock Band II came out we even played a challenge online.  A few weeks from now we'll be trying to find a place to play in Las Vegas.

It's amazing how these games can network people together.  The DDR type game has evolved, taking on a mainstream theme (of rock!) and really playing off of its IP.  It seems silly to get a lot of gamer nerds together to watch other gamer nerds play a game, much less get non-gamer nerds to watch, but Rock Band can do it.  A little IP can go a long way.

Dance Dance Revolution

Going to the mall and playing in the arcade used to be a once-every-other-month activity, usually a settlement with my mother so she could get me to the mall to get new shoes. Tht was until one day, while I was there with my best friend Shawn, we encountered a new game called Dance Dance Revolution. We decided to try it, set the difficulty on easy, picked "Kung Fu Fighting," and failed miserably. We continued playing other games in the arcade, and I didn't think much else of it that day.

Shawn, however, looked into the game a bit more. On another visit to the arcade, he played again, figured out the basics, and liked it. He got me to try again, and soon we were dance dancing on medium. It didn't take much to get us completely hooked. For a lot of my 7th grade year I would go to the arcade every Saturday with Shawn and spend about $20. After playing the game for so long I would see colored arrows whenever I closed my eyes. (The DDR effect.)

We started to get to know the regulars, many of whom were a lot better than us. Heck, we started to become the regulars. There was a whole culture of DDR players that we just getting to know. We got to know the customs, like using a coin to save your place in line. We became very familiar with the neighboring Panda Express, which had free water for all the tired revolutionists.

There were even DDR groupies, like Natalie. She was one of the player's girlfriends who started hanging around. Eventually they broke up, but she stuck around, and eventually started playing with us. She became one of my close friends, somebody I hung out with a lot in high school.

It wasn't long until a tournament was scheduled. Shawn and I were so excited, but we still weren't nearly good enough. Shawn was a lot better than me, and while we were both speedily improving, we still couldn't compare to the good players. Even though neither of us did that great in the tournaments, I really enjoyed it. I've always been pretty competative, so a new outlet is always nice.

I moved away from Missoula, the town with the mall with DDR, and thought my DDR days were done. They were for a while, until I found a friend that had it for their Playstation, and decent pads! I barrowed her sistem for about two weeks and played almost non-stop. I would set the system on endless mode and play-play-play for hours sometimes, only stopping when I would occasionaly fail a song. I got to the point where I could pass almost any song.

Then the school talent show came up. I was already concidered somewhat of a goofball (I did get spunky spirit) so I thought why not do DDR for the school talent show? I practiced a lot more, and got my act down. I could even do part of a song backwards - it was great. Unfortunately the judges didn't appreciate my video-game driven dancing, but I'd like to think I was a crowd favorite.

Since then I have only played a smattering of DDR. Any time I see an arcade, I'll look for a machine, hopefully playing a song or two. It still gets me winded, I'm nowhere near the shape I was in when I used to dance, but it makes me feel good. The sound of the music, the lights, the pads - it all brings me back to that first day in the arcade. It's amazing what a silly arcade game can do for friendships.