Taking the First Steps in the Quest
Two weeks ago I wrote an article about the beginning of my quest to become a gamer. In short, I am the co-founder of a gaming industry startup, GameWisp, Inc. But I have never really been a gamer, and certainly not a desktop gamer. With this new business venture, I decided to change that. And so the quest began.
My experience with epic quests in books and movies tells me that most of the time the character knows two things at the beginning of the quest: the starting point and the ultimate goal. It is the journey between those two points that must be discovered. But it is also in discovering that journey where adventure happens.
Like all good fantasy characters, I have a simple, if somewhat abstract, goal: to become a gamer. I also know the starting point: a clear lack of experience with desktop gaming. But over the last couple of weeks, amidst wrapping up a previous job, packing up a lot more things than I knew my wife and I possessed, and moving across the country, I have been faced with the question of what direction do I take from my starting point to my ultimate goal. With several gaming genres to choose from, and numerous games in each genre, the task seemed somewhat daunting. But a quest cannot be a quest without a first step.
Building a Civilization
I have been a writer for most of my life, so I decided to apply some old wisdom to my first steps: when undertaking a new endeavor, start with what you know. Now, I have long been a fan of fantasy literature. My earliest memories are of reading The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. As I have gotten older, I have branched out in that genre and found myself drawn to a particular type of fantasy author: the world builder. Masters like Tolkien and Steven Erikson have consistently captured my imagination with massive, complex worlds populated by intricate civilizations. Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite studies in school centered around the rise of great civilizations such as Greece or Rome. So when I saw a game that would allow me to build my own civilization based in historical societies, it seemed appropriate to take the first step in my quest with Sid Meier’s Civilization V.
I expected Civ V to be a game in which the domestic civilization was essentially a means of growing military power until a player could conquer the world. But from the very beginning, I was introduced to a game that sought to provide a much deeper understanding of building a society than sending huge armies to destroy one’s opponents. The intro was a simple scene in which an elderly patriarch handed the reins of a people group to his son with the prophecy that the son would build a great society. I was struck by the subtle way that the game introduced the concept that the people was not some conglomeration of chess pieces to be moved around a board, but made up of people, to be cared for and protected.
This theme certainly affected the way that I played. Instead of focusing on how to destroy the other civilizations around me, I spent much of my time growing into unoccupied space, and finding ways to trade. In fact, I spent so much more time on expansion and economic pursuits, that I soon lost sight of military considerations. I was quickly informed of my omission by an invasion from Germany, my neighbor to the west. I barely managed to beat back the onslaught, with my city of Osaka’s defenses being much more important than the few military units that I could produce and throw at the German invasion. I have always tried to learn from my mistakes, and my army was ready when Germany sought to invade again.
One of my favorite aspects of the game is the ability to conduct research and put in place social policies. Research is really what drives the game forward, providing the opportunity to build knew technologies and explore further. Social policy, on the other hand, tends to affect the people by making the society more effective in certain areas and more content in others. In both of these areas, I have taken a broad approach, rather than focusing on particular areas. On the lowest difficulty, this seems to have worked. But I am interested to see what I more thoroughly planned and focused approach would yield.
Moving across the country has prevented me from finishing my initial play through, but I am currently moving into the industrial age. My strategy is to push economic relations as much as possible. I will, of course, let you all know how effective that strategy turns out to be.
Helping Build a World
Quests rarely contain one type of adventure, and mine is no exception. Even while building a civilization, I was introduced to another game requiring me to build. But while Civ V provides strong guidelines for building a society, Minecraft requires the player to literally conceive of his world and pull that world from the ground.
Over the last couple of months, the guys at GameWisp have been slowly pulled into the world of building blocks. Being in the gaming industry, we were aware of Minecraft and its legions of loyal players, but had not really experienced the game for ourselves. But at the RoosterTeeth Expo (or RTX for those of you in to the whole brevity thing), we met so many people adorned with the characteristic blocks that we knew this was a game that we all wanted to experience. So a couple of the guys established a server and started building.
I have always been late to trends. In fact, I still had a classic flip phone without internet access until June of 2012 when I finally bought an iPhone 4. This particular trend was no different. The GameWisp guys had been building for probably two weeks before I finally downloaded the game and joined their server. Unlike holding on to my flip phone entirely too long, waiting to join in on the GameWisp Minecraft world turned out to be a good move for me. When I entered the world, it already contained towers, treehouses, a castle, and a farm. More than that, I had friends to teach me the basics of crafting and how to get back to shelter before nightfall to avoid the various monsters waiting to devour those unfortunate enough to be outdoors in the moonlight.
Minecraft is interesting because it requires the player to actually work for what they achieve. If you want a house, you have to collect the materials, refine those materials, and then build. If you play without mods on survival mode, there are no shortcuts to obtaining what you want. But that also means that the potential for constructing is endless. So I decided to add my mark to the landscape. No society is complete without somewhere to meet and feast. There are a number of potential structures to accomplish this task, but I have decided to go in a more Norse direction.
Atop a mountain overlooking a snowy forest and the ocean, I have begun laying the foundation for a Great Hall. The plan in my head is to build something akin to the hall of Rohan in the Lord of the Rings. The foundation will be stone, with the structure itself made of wood. The specific plans are still in my head, and I have a lot of work preparing the ground for such a large structure, but the completed structure should be fairly impressive.
Answering the Question
So the first two steps of my quest both involved construction in some way. But that begs the question: is it better to build a civilization or a world? For me, the answer was surprising. Initially, I had thought that the ability to manipulate a whole society, with all of its complexity would have more appeal. My background and interests seemed to make Civ V the perfect game for me. While I do enjoy building my civilization, there is something so enticing in the ability to imagine something and then go out and create it. There is a level of personal satisfaction that comes with “working with your hands” as Minecraft in many ways requires of the player. So, I think if I had to choose between them, I would rather spend my time building in Minecraft. What about you? Would you rather build civilizations or worlds?
Anyway, thanks for reading! More adventures in becoming a gamer next week! Oh, and as always, don’t forget to check out GameWisp.com!
If you missed the introduction to our little quest, you can read it here: http://www.gameskinny.com/oq1b0/game-industry-startup-co-founders-quest-to-become-a-real-gamer.
And you can read the next episode in the quest here: http://www.gameskinny.com/yz7hv/the-trouble-with-moving-targets-the-quest-continues
Images:
- Header: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/07/05/minecraft-game-of-thrones-project-builds-a-blocky-westeros/
- Civilization V: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CIVILIZATION-V-FRONT-OF-BOX.jpg
- Minecraft: Putt-Putt Trys To Sue Mojang Over Minecraft LevelsPutt-Putt Trys To Sue Mojang Over Minecraft Levels
