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HAIL, PLAYER! | PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ever since I spent hours of my youthful afternoons and weekends rolling dice and pushing little squares of cardboard across paper maps representing battlefields from Carthage to Constantinople, I've been a sucker for a well-executed "god game." And I'll even concede that "Age of Empire's" relative cleverness, judged by itself, is no earthshaking affair. There's probably a limited supply of megalomaniacs who delight in both the micromanagement aspects necessary for successful empire building and in the gorier details of massed cavalry charges and hand-to-hand combat between phalanx spearmen and sword-wielding centurions. (Although maybe not that limited -- a recent Microsoft press release claims that 650,000 units of "Age of Empires" have been shipped since its Oct. 31 launch.) But in the larger context of cultural entertainment, one can argue that a game like "Age of Empires" is significant. It isn't the only good computer game in the marketplace. But it is the most recent proof that computer games are continuing to improve and continuing to become a more and more attractive magnet for consumer entertainment dollars. And that has a number of people worried. There are critics (among whom one could probably count my wife, and soon my 3-year-old) who believe that computer games are the ultimate escapist joyride -- a giant productivity sinkhole whose maw keeps widening. In the view of such critics, a better game is an even bigger threat. Whither our own civilization, when every able-bodied citizen is paralyzed in the basement, hands locked around a joystick? Will modern empires collapse because of too much time spent reliving the glories of our predecessors? Perhaps not. The most intriguing thing about "Age of Empires" is how it weaves real historical information and experience into game play. "Age of Empires" can teach as it captivates. If, for example, an "Age of Empires" player chooses to play the Shang, he or she will discover that new Shang "villagers" require less food than do new Phoenicians or Babylonians. And Shang villagers turn out to be capable of building particularly strong walls. There, in a nutshell, is the key to the historical Chinese rise to power: Build a lot of walls and depend heavily on peasant labor. Similarly, Minoans and Greeks are great ship builders. "Age of Empires" even includes, as part of its online help system, a 40,000-word primer on ancient civilizations. But "Age of Empires" isn't exactly 100 percent historically accurate. The very possibility of an ancient Greek "centurion" is a historical atrocity, but you can march them off into battle in "Age of Empires" -- directly against Shang "hoplites." The game could use more historical detail: Personally, I'd rather my Chinese peasant farmers waded thigh deep through emerald green rice paddies rather than hoeing away at square fields just like all the other imperial peons. Bruce Shelley, a lead designer on "Age of Empires" (and, in a previous incarnation, a designer who worked on the influential "Age of Empires" predecessor, "Civilization"), shrugged off the historical inaccuracies in one interview, arguing that it is important not to let attention to detail get in the way of good game play. But Shelley, as he emphasized that computer games are "entertainment" and not history texts, is ignoring the salient point -- whether we approve or not, computer games, as they grow in popularity and break out of the teenage-boy ghetto, could become as significant a vehicle for informing the public about the world at large as are movies and television and books and newspapers. And, as computer games are increasingly played online, they may even become one more interface directly connecting us to our civilization's stored body of knowledge. This doesn't necessarily mean that games will replace books or documentaries as a distribution channel for historical information. But at the very least, they can play a stimulative or interactive role in pointing us toward what we need or want to know. I myself felt impelled to do some reading on the Assyrian Empire after a few hours spent impersonating Sargon II. I read the full text of Byron's poem and discovered that I had repressed the fact that the poem, far from glorifying the Assyrian might, is actually about the divine destruction, via plague, of the Assyrian army the night before it was about to sack Jerusalem. Further research then informed me that said destruction never took place -- Sennacherib, Sargon's son, conquered most of Palestine and exacted heavy tribute from Jerusalem. I used an encyclopedia, the Web and Norton's Anthology of English
Literature to make my discoveries. Perhaps one day, as I take a breath from
game play, I'll just click straight from inside the game. And, just
possibly, the best games will encourage me to do so. |
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