Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Devising the Ultimate Video Game
It's like a reality show, only it's based on reality.By Bob Wire, 1-21-10
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Video games have not really captured my attention since I held the high score for three straight weeks on the Asteroids machine at Pocatello’s College Market in 1981. And even then, I wasn’t the most trigger-happy player. I racked up points by flying around the tumbling space rocks more than blasting them to bits. My dad was a naval aviator (“Hell, son, you put wings on that coffee pot and I’ll fly the son of a bitch”), and I guess the appeal of aeronautics rubbed off.
Oh, I dabbled with Pac-Man, and goofed around a bit with Donkey Kong. When my own kids were in grade school I picked up an original NES at a yard sale for a couple bucks, and we whiled away a few hours with Duck Hunt and a couple of crude racing games. For a guy raised on Pong, it was a whole new world.
Now, of course, our household has a couple of different game consoles, multiple Nintendo DS’s, and all the sophisticated games you can fit on a DVD bookshelf. I’ve had brief obsessions with Wii bowling and tennis, and currently I’m hooked on Wii disc golf. But my attention wanders after 18 holes, and I move on to meat space activities, surrendering the console to Rusty, who is amped up to play his latest fave, “Destroy All Humans.” (I’d probably join in if it was “Destroy All Humans Who Refer to Montana as ‘Montucky.’”)
It seems half the world is plugged into World of Warcraft, HALO, Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto, and dozens of other games I’ve never heard of, and they all share one thing in common: you move around the landscape, killing other people or creatures. I kind of got over the need to do that when I was nine, frying ants with a magnifying glass or shooting house sparrows with my air rifle. To each his own. (I’m the first to admit that I know next to nothing about such hugely popular games as Halo or World of Warcraft, and I don’t care to. I have a social life.)
If you’re still reading at this point, rather than jumping right to the comments box to share your elegant, thoughtful defense of murder-by-proxy games, congratulations on your open mind. You might be interested in my proposal for an alternative to the bloody, hyper-realistic shoot-em-ups so many of our kids (and friends and coworkers) are hooked on. It’s based totally on my opinion of the real-life desires of adults who live in the real world, trying to navigate our way through a frequently nonsensical and cruel existence armed with nothing but our wits, our experience, and the freedoms granted us by the country in which we live. And, hopefully, a debit card.
It’s called “From the Basket to the Casket: The Game of Real Life™.” It’s first-person, of course, since each of us believes he or she is the center of the universe. And we’re right. Life is all about perception, and the universe is that great big greasy ball of action, feeling, energy, pleasure and pain that spins around each of us. Everyone’s universe is uniquely theirs, so they HAVE to be the center of it. You follow me? (This is where you say,“As far as I’d like to.”)
So your player drives around in a 12-year-old Chevy “Suburban.” No CD player, the air conditioning is busted, and it burns oil like crazy. You must accrue enough points every 5,000 miles to get a “lube job,” and every so often you’ll be saddled with a crushing penalty from your “mechanic,” like a worn out transmission or a blown head gasket. That will require you to sell one of your “children,” or swap your new 52” flat panel TV for a collection of old National Geographics.
The goal of the game is to try and survive the constant onslaught of vicious external forces, which are intent on sapping you of your “money” and your “pride.” The key is to boost your money and pride levels as the game goes on, but as one goes up, the other usually goes down. You only get one life, but as long as your pride level shows any pride at all, you can keep going. When your pride is gone, the game is over and you have to liquidate your cache of possessions in order to pay off your “debts” and distribute any leftovers to your “heirs.” If your money level hits zero, you have to declare “bankruptcy” and enter the area known as “government assistance,” which causes a massive hit to your pride level and also slightly lowers the money levels of all the other players.
As you pilot your aging gas hog along the unpredictable State Highway System (SHS), which is interrupted by many “construction zones” and frequently changes back and forth between two and four lanes, you try to dodge the oncoming drunk drivers and texters while three “kids” are screaming in the back seat, and a “spouse” is haranguing you from the passenger’s side. The “spouse” steals your attention from the road by attacking you with weapons like “guilt,” “shame,” “disapproval,” or the most powerful weapon of all, the “silent treatment.” If the “silent treatment” goes on for more than 30 miles, your pride level will start to fall dangerously. You might have to find an all-night pharmacy to pick up some “Zoloft” or “Prozac” to deflect these attacks.
The SHS winds through a messy, dangerous land known as your “career.” Orc-like creatures known as “middle management suck-ups” lurk around every corner, waiting to slow your progress or steal valuable pride points by hurling “team-building exercises” and “sexual harassment lawsuits” at you. If you can dodge these nasty projectiles, you just might reach the final level, a shining mirage known as “retirement.”
Hopefully you’ve shed your “kids” by that level (although some of them may be in your Suburban well into their thirties, causing a slow drain on your money points). If you make it to the “retirement” level, your “Suburban” automatically becomes a “Cadillac” or a “Lincoln Town Car.” You may have swapped out “spouses” four or five times, which has caused your pride levels to fluctuate wildly, occasionally sucking your money points dry enough to force you to trade your “Suburban” for a “1978 Ford Maverick,” in which you will have to live while you try to remove a tenacious “Wild Turkey parasite” from your player. No “retirement” for you.
But if you manage to make it to the end, with money points AND pride points at a reasonable level, way to go! You win a free game. The next game is known as “Nursing Home,” where you basically sit there on a ratty couch in the community room, watching “The Price Is Right” on TV and playing with your joystick, which no longer works.
[Bookmark NewWest.net/BobWire and check back frequently. Maybe the next column will be more to your liking. Or maybe not.]
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Comments
I second that.
Thanks for the laughs.