My Gaming Biography

I’m continuing to discover the energy-giving properties of peanut butter which today resulted in a couple of new cartoons (I'm very proud of the parrot), a Madeley post, some tinkering on ‘the book’ and now this post. There was also some less cerebral action taking place on the PS3 where my love for computer games has found a new outlet in the ‘Valkyrie Chronicles’.

I rarely (if ever) talk about my gaming activities. I suppose it’s not something I’m particularly proud of admitting to. It’s like saying that you like to sit watching Coronation Street with a large box of tissues and some Cadbury’s Roses. Well, I don’t watch soaps, I’m not so keen on chocolate, and I have no idea what the tissues might be for. But give me a packet of pistachios and a good game and I’m set for the evening.

I began gaming way back when computers first hit UK homes. I was among that generation of programmers who began with a BBC Model B, which all of its 32kb of memory. I taught myself BBC Basic and then 6502 assembler, discovering every ‘peek’ and ‘poke’ of the machine's operating system. (I once got into trouble at school for writing a program that enabled one machine to take over another. A friend abused the power I’d given them by sending messages across the network to the teacher using another machine. It was the only time I got into serious trouble at school but they did ‘punish’ me by putting me in charge of the network and allowing me to do an ‘A’ level in computers. I suppose it was their way of keeping me out of further trouble and curtailing my career as a hacker.) My early enthusiasm for all things ‘geek’ was beat out of me at university where I spent three years learning to program in Cobol (such an ugly language -- I hated it!) on an old Vax system. It was hardly a cutting edge course but I didn’t have cutting edge exam results. I was always too busy teaching myself how to program. On the third year of the course, we touched on assembler language and they introduced us to the concept of pushing and pulling from ‘the stack’. I’d done that when I was about 12. No wonder I hated the course and came away with a lousy 2.2. The only thing left of my computer proficiency is that I’m pretty good at hacking my way around HTML, SQL, PHP and whatever is thrown at me. I keep telling myself to learn C or C++ and get a decent job as a programmer but I have neither the time nor motivation. I used to be red hot at Clipper and dBase IV but it all changes too quickly and when things went ‘object orientated’, I couldn’t be bothered to start again.

Gaming comes from my early love of computers. Back then, I’d sit for hours pressing down cassettes into tape decks to get games to load. I’m probably one of the few people who still have an original ‘Elite’ badge after attaining that legendary rank on the BBC (‘Right on Commander!’). Then disk drives came along with the five a quarter inch floppy on the BBC and then 3.5 on the Atari ST. I celebrated my first hard disk when I bought an Amiga 500 (a great machine!) before I finally moved on to PCs, a slight detour to and from Macs, and then to the consoles.

I suppose I feel slightly self-conscious about admitting to my history of gaming because the majority of computer games are so poorly written. Most but not all. I recently finished playing ‘Far Cry 2’, which on TV is advertised as a generic shooter, when, in reality, it’s a less then generic shooter with lots of references to ‘Heart of Darkness’. Good writing makes the world of difference but it’s so hard to find. This year I’ve been blessed with a few exceptions. I finished ‘Fallout 3’ (I had already played 1 and 2) and found the post-apocalyptic world surprisingly fresh. I finished ‘Mass Effect’ on the XBox 360 and cried my eyes out at the end, something I’ve not done in such a long time. I always enjoyed the wit of Lucasarts adventures (the Monkey Island series or Sam & Max) and regret that adventure games have become a rarity these day. Fable 2 was fun but not particularly gripping, though Stephen Fry provided a welcome touch of humour.

The thing I look for in games isn’t the repetitive tasks that make them addictive as much as the mental problems I need to overcome. It’s the thing that most people who knock gaming seem to forget. It’s much less passive than TV and the best games are really just large and complicated logical problems that need solving. ‘Valkyrie Chronicles’ is one such game, which brings out the military strategian in me. I can spend a relaxing couple of hours deploying my troops to make flanking manoeuvres or conserving my forces for the right moment to push home an advantage. It’s also one of the most radical looking games I’ve seen in a while. It has some fancy techniques for producing a cross-hatched effect on the cell-shaded characters. I love to see great programming. Reading great code, like following a great mathematical proof, can be like poetry. I just wish I were better at all three.

There: another little known fact about me. I’m a one-time geek, now a ‘graphics whore’, and I’m proud of it.