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elise_rashaThis first entry is actually going to cover a lot more than just my history with gaming and what I like to play. Some of it is going to hash out what a lot of people already know, too, and that there's at least one person out there who thinks it's okay to be hesitant about what types of games we buy. There's this misconception out there that, in order to be a "true" gamer, you have to play every game out there, and it's just not true. I'm going to be the first one to admit that, as a geek and a gamer, I'm very much on the selective side. In my personal view, there's nothing wrong with being an avid gamer and wanting to collect as many games as you want or even collecting only those that appeal to you. There is no such thing as a game for everyone and everyone for gaming. We get exposed to certain things in our youth, be it misspent or well spent, and we cultivate the things that start to interest us when we become teenagers.
Now I know some adults that used to like gaming, but they'll tell you that you're supposed to outgrow it after a certain point. These are also some of the most miserable people I know because they're also not cultivating anything new in their lives. They're not seeking other forms of enjoyment, instead just allowing the daily grind to, well, grind them away. I'm 41, about to be 42 in the next month and a half, and I still enjoy playing video games. I still enjoy movies, music, and I'm getting back to where I enjoy being outside in moderate temperatures. I enjoy browsing for comic books.
And, as I sad at the beginning, I admit to being selective about what I play, watch, read, and so on. I will encourage anyone and everyone who wants to chase every shooter game out there, be it Call of Duty or Fallout or Halo, to go for it. It is your life, and, if that's part of how you enjoy your life, then by all means enjoy it. I just happen to be selective, and, in reflecting upon the portions of my misspent youth, I've actually always been that way.
You see, I go back to the days of the dying arcade system in a small town - Pizza Hut and one of the laundromats (it's now out of business) were the only places I knew of in my small town that had arcade games - and the rise of the personal console system, aka the original Nintendo gaming system. Some of the games you see in the movie, Pixel? Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, and the game with the spaceship shooting the aliens and asteroids? I played those, but I wasn't die-hard about them. Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt were okay, but the one game as an early teenager I could spend hours playing? That would be Dragon Warrior, now known in the States as Dragon Quest. (Fun, secondhand history note: Dragon Quest has always been Dragon Quest in Japan. Upon coming to the U.S. in the 1990s, the name had to be changed because of something else called Dragon Quest, but, when the rights to that expired, Enix made the change, and everything is now synced as Dragon Quest.) Mind you, there were days when the game couldn't keep my attention - I'd play for maybe five minutes and be bored; then I was shutting down my game and handing my gaming hour over to my brother or stepbrother - but I could definitely play for hours. Then there was the classic tabletop gaming I did with an ex-boyfriend, brother, stepbrother, and former friend. It was technically Dungeons and Dragons but in the Dragonlance realms. That's also where I got my first taste of gaming fiction but not in the way that I write gaming fiction. Margaret Weis has told some stories on Facebook! ;)
Since the private console took off, I've played on almost every system that there is, minus the Atari Jaguar, the Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo64, XBox, and XBoxOne. If Sega had something before or after the Genesis, I don't recall. My family never owned it. And RPGs weren't actually a big thing. I never got super into Final Fantasy or Ultima, Castlevania or Legend of Zelda. I believe there was a one other big fantasy-style RPG out there during the 1990s for the Nintendo system, but I just wasn't into a lot of the games at the time. Shining Force and Journey to Silius were the ones I played mainly, and they were on the Genesis. Sadly, during this time, the main versions of Dragon Warrior/Quest disappeared in the states for a while, appearing in shoot-offs for the GameBoy, and I either wasn't too interested in the GameBoy or just not fortunate enough to get one of my own at the time - probably both. Nintendo had a slight monopoly at the time, and, even though times were somewhat better financially then, we were still poor so buying a lot of gaming stuff was just not possible. And, in truth, I have no regrets about not getting every RPG game out there. Here's why.
Finding the right role-playing game (or any game, for that matter) is like finding the right book: it has to interest you, from the cover art to the summary on the back. Then the game play has to live up to what's being advertised - are you hooked enough or even more than enough to keep going? Are you really wanting to spend upwards of $30 or more for a game or a book? How do you even answer these questions to know enough to make that kind of an investment?
Just like with books, the answers are simple enough: you ask to borrow from a friend, a library, or, in the case of games, your local movie rental company, if you're fortunate enough to have something similar to Blockbuster hanging around.
In my case, when it comes to the games I love, I've watched others play. Dragon Warrior was something my brother, stepdad, and stepbrother were into so I got to watch them play first before I played the games myself. In fact, most of the RPGs I've played on consoles are because my stepdad played them, and I liked them enough to want to play for myself, at least where Dragon Warrior/Quest and Shining Force were concerned, Final Fantasy to some extent but not as much. Star Ocean is because of old friends. If your friends don't mind you watching them play, that's actually the absolute best way to determine whether or not a game is right for you. Barring that, if they're willing to part with the game or if you have a place where you can borrow games like you would movies, getting them on loan is the next best thing. I only put money down on games I've never played before because I know the series, and I know my enjoyment of the series is high, though I daresay Final Fantasy is the one more on shaky ground than either Star Ocean or Dragon Quest. A couple of duds here and there with that one!
If you're wondering about reading reviews, be it from the New York Times or whatever big name magazine is out there as well as the reviews from actual players on Amazon, I say use those as well. Please just bear in mind the following: What one person enjoys, another person does not, and vice versa. Just because I enjoy Dragon Quest and Star Ocean doesn't mean other people have. On that individual level, we know what appeals to us (which is why I'm saying it's okay to want all the games for those who do and it's okay to be selective for those don't want all the games; this is what makes being a geek so great; there are no hard set rules on what you can enjoy from all of the nerdy things out there). This is why I encourage a try-it-before-you-buy-it approach, especially if you're on limited funds a good portion of the time, especially when it comes to games. Games tend to be more expensive than most books, including hard covers but excluding rare and out-of-print editions (like an original of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens or The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien). If you don't have access to a movie rental store, check out your nearest anime convention. Many of those tend to have gaming rooms as well, and you can find some of the classics there as well.
As a gamer and a selective one to boot, one of the most important things that's going to draw me in immediately upon starting up that game is the setting for that story and where it transports me to. I'm not necessarily one for dark and grungy and apocalyptic for my games. I reserve the apocalyptic styles more for movies and some books. When I game, I want to be transported into a brand new world. Yeah, it can kind of look like the world I live in, but, if it's unable to evoke a sense of wonder in me in the opening credits, in the initial starting scenes, and throughout the entire game, I'm probably not going to stick around for very long. I have to have a story to munch on as I play, and, yes, I know many shooter-style games have stories to go with them. As with books and movies, the story in the game has to interest me for me to play. If it seems ho-hum somehow, I'm not playing, and I won't care how many people scream about the game in question being awesome. If I find it boring, I can't endure it, at least on a fictional level. And I expect others to feel the same way about the things they find boring. Again, this comes down to individual tastes and interests. For me, setting is one of the biggest key elements. This is where Star Ocean, some of the Final Fantasy games, and Dragon Quest have one leg up for me over all other games. They appeal to that science-fiction and fantasy geek within, they fulfill that need for wonder in my surroundings. And, yes, it has helped that gaming graphics have made leaps and bounds over the last twenty-some years! (And, on that note, I don't compare the original Dragon Warrior games to the ones being released now - everything done at the time of release was top-notch and still provided everything I was looking for in the game for the time. This is just my personal take here, it's like comparing apples and oranges because we have this insane need to compare instead of just enjoying having that apple or orange in that moment. No shame in having enjoyed games with pixelated graphics on an 8-bit gaming system! And no shame for thinking that they're great.)
Second, as mentioned, is the story and how it affects the game play, and, yes, it's going to get repetitive. A lot of stories, no matter their format and genre, tend to follow the same tropes and rituals set forth by industry standards. The Hero's Quest tends to be the most popular for fantasy nerds and geeks. (And if you think for a moment that a lack of story is hardly an issue for most, I point to you in the direction of the Alien Vs. Predator movies. Filled with action? Yes. Actual story? No, that's why a majority of the Aliens and Predators fans disliked this movie, and I can shred both of those movies to bits to this day. I can shred the story behind the game, Star Ocean: The Last Hope to shreds, too, but I also enjoyed that game greatly because of the futuristic and planetary exploration aspects. I'll even tell you I want to rewrite that game's story some, modify it, and make the game play longer just because there were things left undone. Same goes for Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness. Both are examples of where the developers flopped but decided to not learn from their mistakes, as they have with Final Fantasy, but more on that in another entry.) It doesn't matter if the quest is taking place in a video game, movie, book, or at the table with friends, The Hero's Quest is about overcoming all of the odds, and that's one of the things I love. Hell, I don't play for just the graphics alone at this point. I don't abandon series I love because something else, according to someone else, has better graphics than something that's older and a product of its time. Give me the story and give me the following.
Finally, I get to the characters. I gotta love the characters, or the story and setting still ultimately mean shit to me in the long run. Even the graphics can't save a game if the characters are cookie-cutter or two-dimensional. Growth and development are musts, not just for the main character in the questing parties but for the so-called side characters as well. I know many people who gravitate to the side characters more than the main characters. I can guarantee, based on the number of fanfiction out there in Star Ocean alone, that a secondary character is going to get more love than a main character. Hell, when I played Final Fantasy XII, I switched Vaan, the MC, out for Balthier just because he was more suave and less whiny than Vaan. He also had the more interesting backstory than what Vaan did. And going back a little to Final Fantasy X? Oh, dear gods, I hated Tidus. I called him a whiny ass bitch. He annoyed the shit out of me. I was more fond of Seymour and Jecht than I was Tidus, and they were boss fights! Now, mind you, Tidus did end up growing by the end of the game and coming to understand his father a bit better, but he was also proof that Square Enix and tri-Ace tried to capitalize in on the emo hero archetype they created in Cloud Strife for Final Fantasy VII, who, again, had the more interesting back story. (Note: Final Fantasy gaming on my end has been limited to VII, X, XII, and XIII as well as the first Tactics game. Of them, VII and XIII are my favorites due to story and characterization.)
And, because I am a sucker for a really excellent RPG, I don't care if a game takes me over 60 hours of my life to play and I still haven't defeated the final boss. In fact, for me, that's the final requirement. I don't care about grinding levels for the most part. Dragon Warrior II was the worst I've ever played for level grinding, and I almost had that game beat before the game cartridge wiped out all of the adventure logs. I'll grind for levels if I've got to in order to reach an objective. (Just don't make it ridiculous to reach levels, like Dragon Warrior II. I swear, you had to get like 50k for the next level, but the enemies to get to that were too strong so you were grinding against groups that left less than 500 experience points per battle. It took you a while!) And I say more than 60 hours of game play before reaching the final boss because that's where some of my disappointment in The Last Hope has come in - I put 60 hours into that game, including defeating the final boss and clearing out most of the post-game dungeons. I put more hours into Till the End of Time than that! When it comes to my RPGs, I want it to feel like an actual hero's quest, and those aren't completed in days or even weeks. It took Frodo and Bilbo a year at least before they returned from their adventures in The Lord of the Rings. The quest creating the story, the secrets unveiled, those are what makes an RPG the most enjoyable for me. That was driven home for me yesterday when I finally picked up Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age yesterday. As a gamer and a reader, I was like, I want to go there. I want to go to that world and live. As an author who is also looking into gaming design or film-making to coincide with the author aspect, that's what I want to create. I love and live for that sense of wonder.
I know it seems like a tall order to ask for in a video game and a book and a movie. Or maybe it doesn't. This is just what I prefer as an individual and what I'm striving for as an author.
In the next entry, I'll be talking about the missteps done in the Star Ocean series. Right now, this whole gaming discussion looks like it's a three-parter, and I'm going to thank the creators of Dragon Quest for that.
Until the next time, my friends!
Now I know some adults that used to like gaming, but they'll tell you that you're supposed to outgrow it after a certain point. These are also some of the most miserable people I know because they're also not cultivating anything new in their lives. They're not seeking other forms of enjoyment, instead just allowing the daily grind to, well, grind them away. I'm 41, about to be 42 in the next month and a half, and I still enjoy playing video games. I still enjoy movies, music, and I'm getting back to where I enjoy being outside in moderate temperatures. I enjoy browsing for comic books.
And, as I sad at the beginning, I admit to being selective about what I play, watch, read, and so on. I will encourage anyone and everyone who wants to chase every shooter game out there, be it Call of Duty or Fallout or Halo, to go for it. It is your life, and, if that's part of how you enjoy your life, then by all means enjoy it. I just happen to be selective, and, in reflecting upon the portions of my misspent youth, I've actually always been that way.
You see, I go back to the days of the dying arcade system in a small town - Pizza Hut and one of the laundromats (it's now out of business) were the only places I knew of in my small town that had arcade games - and the rise of the personal console system, aka the original Nintendo gaming system. Some of the games you see in the movie, Pixel? Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, and the game with the spaceship shooting the aliens and asteroids? I played those, but I wasn't die-hard about them. Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt were okay, but the one game as an early teenager I could spend hours playing? That would be Dragon Warrior, now known in the States as Dragon Quest. (Fun, secondhand history note: Dragon Quest has always been Dragon Quest in Japan. Upon coming to the U.S. in the 1990s, the name had to be changed because of something else called Dragon Quest, but, when the rights to that expired, Enix made the change, and everything is now synced as Dragon Quest.) Mind you, there were days when the game couldn't keep my attention - I'd play for maybe five minutes and be bored; then I was shutting down my game and handing my gaming hour over to my brother or stepbrother - but I could definitely play for hours. Then there was the classic tabletop gaming I did with an ex-boyfriend, brother, stepbrother, and former friend. It was technically Dungeons and Dragons but in the Dragonlance realms. That's also where I got my first taste of gaming fiction but not in the way that I write gaming fiction. Margaret Weis has told some stories on Facebook! ;)
Since the private console took off, I've played on almost every system that there is, minus the Atari Jaguar, the Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo64, XBox, and XBoxOne. If Sega had something before or after the Genesis, I don't recall. My family never owned it. And RPGs weren't actually a big thing. I never got super into Final Fantasy or Ultima, Castlevania or Legend of Zelda. I believe there was a one other big fantasy-style RPG out there during the 1990s for the Nintendo system, but I just wasn't into a lot of the games at the time. Shining Force and Journey to Silius were the ones I played mainly, and they were on the Genesis. Sadly, during this time, the main versions of Dragon Warrior/Quest disappeared in the states for a while, appearing in shoot-offs for the GameBoy, and I either wasn't too interested in the GameBoy or just not fortunate enough to get one of my own at the time - probably both. Nintendo had a slight monopoly at the time, and, even though times were somewhat better financially then, we were still poor so buying a lot of gaming stuff was just not possible. And, in truth, I have no regrets about not getting every RPG game out there. Here's why.
Finding the right role-playing game (or any game, for that matter) is like finding the right book: it has to interest you, from the cover art to the summary on the back. Then the game play has to live up to what's being advertised - are you hooked enough or even more than enough to keep going? Are you really wanting to spend upwards of $30 or more for a game or a book? How do you even answer these questions to know enough to make that kind of an investment?
Just like with books, the answers are simple enough: you ask to borrow from a friend, a library, or, in the case of games, your local movie rental company, if you're fortunate enough to have something similar to Blockbuster hanging around.
In my case, when it comes to the games I love, I've watched others play. Dragon Warrior was something my brother, stepdad, and stepbrother were into so I got to watch them play first before I played the games myself. In fact, most of the RPGs I've played on consoles are because my stepdad played them, and I liked them enough to want to play for myself, at least where Dragon Warrior/Quest and Shining Force were concerned, Final Fantasy to some extent but not as much. Star Ocean is because of old friends. If your friends don't mind you watching them play, that's actually the absolute best way to determine whether or not a game is right for you. Barring that, if they're willing to part with the game or if you have a place where you can borrow games like you would movies, getting them on loan is the next best thing. I only put money down on games I've never played before because I know the series, and I know my enjoyment of the series is high, though I daresay Final Fantasy is the one more on shaky ground than either Star Ocean or Dragon Quest. A couple of duds here and there with that one!
If you're wondering about reading reviews, be it from the New York Times or whatever big name magazine is out there as well as the reviews from actual players on Amazon, I say use those as well. Please just bear in mind the following: What one person enjoys, another person does not, and vice versa. Just because I enjoy Dragon Quest and Star Ocean doesn't mean other people have. On that individual level, we know what appeals to us (which is why I'm saying it's okay to want all the games for those who do and it's okay to be selective for those don't want all the games; this is what makes being a geek so great; there are no hard set rules on what you can enjoy from all of the nerdy things out there). This is why I encourage a try-it-before-you-buy-it approach, especially if you're on limited funds a good portion of the time, especially when it comes to games. Games tend to be more expensive than most books, including hard covers but excluding rare and out-of-print editions (like an original of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens or The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien). If you don't have access to a movie rental store, check out your nearest anime convention. Many of those tend to have gaming rooms as well, and you can find some of the classics there as well.
As a gamer and a selective one to boot, one of the most important things that's going to draw me in immediately upon starting up that game is the setting for that story and where it transports me to. I'm not necessarily one for dark and grungy and apocalyptic for my games. I reserve the apocalyptic styles more for movies and some books. When I game, I want to be transported into a brand new world. Yeah, it can kind of look like the world I live in, but, if it's unable to evoke a sense of wonder in me in the opening credits, in the initial starting scenes, and throughout the entire game, I'm probably not going to stick around for very long. I have to have a story to munch on as I play, and, yes, I know many shooter-style games have stories to go with them. As with books and movies, the story in the game has to interest me for me to play. If it seems ho-hum somehow, I'm not playing, and I won't care how many people scream about the game in question being awesome. If I find it boring, I can't endure it, at least on a fictional level. And I expect others to feel the same way about the things they find boring. Again, this comes down to individual tastes and interests. For me, setting is one of the biggest key elements. This is where Star Ocean, some of the Final Fantasy games, and Dragon Quest have one leg up for me over all other games. They appeal to that science-fiction and fantasy geek within, they fulfill that need for wonder in my surroundings. And, yes, it has helped that gaming graphics have made leaps and bounds over the last twenty-some years! (And, on that note, I don't compare the original Dragon Warrior games to the ones being released now - everything done at the time of release was top-notch and still provided everything I was looking for in the game for the time. This is just my personal take here, it's like comparing apples and oranges because we have this insane need to compare instead of just enjoying having that apple or orange in that moment. No shame in having enjoyed games with pixelated graphics on an 8-bit gaming system! And no shame for thinking that they're great.)
Second, as mentioned, is the story and how it affects the game play, and, yes, it's going to get repetitive. A lot of stories, no matter their format and genre, tend to follow the same tropes and rituals set forth by industry standards. The Hero's Quest tends to be the most popular for fantasy nerds and geeks. (And if you think for a moment that a lack of story is hardly an issue for most, I point to you in the direction of the Alien Vs. Predator movies. Filled with action? Yes. Actual story? No, that's why a majority of the Aliens and Predators fans disliked this movie, and I can shred both of those movies to bits to this day. I can shred the story behind the game, Star Ocean: The Last Hope to shreds, too, but I also enjoyed that game greatly because of the futuristic and planetary exploration aspects. I'll even tell you I want to rewrite that game's story some, modify it, and make the game play longer just because there were things left undone. Same goes for Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness. Both are examples of where the developers flopped but decided to not learn from their mistakes, as they have with Final Fantasy, but more on that in another entry.) It doesn't matter if the quest is taking place in a video game, movie, book, or at the table with friends, The Hero's Quest is about overcoming all of the odds, and that's one of the things I love. Hell, I don't play for just the graphics alone at this point. I don't abandon series I love because something else, according to someone else, has better graphics than something that's older and a product of its time. Give me the story and give me the following.
Finally, I get to the characters. I gotta love the characters, or the story and setting still ultimately mean shit to me in the long run. Even the graphics can't save a game if the characters are cookie-cutter or two-dimensional. Growth and development are musts, not just for the main character in the questing parties but for the so-called side characters as well. I know many people who gravitate to the side characters more than the main characters. I can guarantee, based on the number of fanfiction out there in Star Ocean alone, that a secondary character is going to get more love than a main character. Hell, when I played Final Fantasy XII, I switched Vaan, the MC, out for Balthier just because he was more suave and less whiny than Vaan. He also had the more interesting backstory than what Vaan did. And going back a little to Final Fantasy X? Oh, dear gods, I hated Tidus. I called him a whiny ass bitch. He annoyed the shit out of me. I was more fond of Seymour and Jecht than I was Tidus, and they were boss fights! Now, mind you, Tidus did end up growing by the end of the game and coming to understand his father a bit better, but he was also proof that Square Enix and tri-Ace tried to capitalize in on the emo hero archetype they created in Cloud Strife for Final Fantasy VII, who, again, had the more interesting back story. (Note: Final Fantasy gaming on my end has been limited to VII, X, XII, and XIII as well as the first Tactics game. Of them, VII and XIII are my favorites due to story and characterization.)
And, because I am a sucker for a really excellent RPG, I don't care if a game takes me over 60 hours of my life to play and I still haven't defeated the final boss. In fact, for me, that's the final requirement. I don't care about grinding levels for the most part. Dragon Warrior II was the worst I've ever played for level grinding, and I almost had that game beat before the game cartridge wiped out all of the adventure logs. I'll grind for levels if I've got to in order to reach an objective. (Just don't make it ridiculous to reach levels, like Dragon Warrior II. I swear, you had to get like 50k for the next level, but the enemies to get to that were too strong so you were grinding against groups that left less than 500 experience points per battle. It took you a while!) And I say more than 60 hours of game play before reaching the final boss because that's where some of my disappointment in The Last Hope has come in - I put 60 hours into that game, including defeating the final boss and clearing out most of the post-game dungeons. I put more hours into Till the End of Time than that! When it comes to my RPGs, I want it to feel like an actual hero's quest, and those aren't completed in days or even weeks. It took Frodo and Bilbo a year at least before they returned from their adventures in The Lord of the Rings. The quest creating the story, the secrets unveiled, those are what makes an RPG the most enjoyable for me. That was driven home for me yesterday when I finally picked up Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age yesterday. As a gamer and a reader, I was like, I want to go there. I want to go to that world and live. As an author who is also looking into gaming design or film-making to coincide with the author aspect, that's what I want to create. I love and live for that sense of wonder.
I know it seems like a tall order to ask for in a video game and a book and a movie. Or maybe it doesn't. This is just what I prefer as an individual and what I'm striving for as an author.
In the next entry, I'll be talking about the missteps done in the Star Ocean series. Right now, this whole gaming discussion looks like it's a three-parter, and I'm going to thank the creators of Dragon Quest for that.
Until the next time, my friends!
