I'm considering pitching an expanded version of this written-from-the-hip draft to the Escapist for their upcoming issue about singleplayer gaming. Feedback would be appreciated.
I wonder if I'm alone in my deep, abiding love of singleplayer games that are, by definition, endless. I've spent most of the last two weeks playing ESPN NHL 2K5, starting a new franchise with the Boston Bruins, populating the league with a fantasy draft, and playing through what will become season after season, developing, drafting, and running my franchise into the far future.
I've been doing the same thing with College Hoops 2K5, although in that case the franchise/dynasty I started way back when I bought the game in November of 2004 is still the same save file I'm using today, over 700 manually-played games (at an average of 40 real-time minutes per for a total of over 500 hours on the save) later. My Mount&Blade character is going this route as well, accumulating castles, villages, and skills and currently at level 29 after less than a month.
I'm going back to college starting next month and one thing I've decided I want to do is install Patrician III on my wife's laptop (which she's generously lending me for use at school) and see if I can get a similar save-file going that I may very well still be using when I finish my degree...in 2012. Seems oddly fitting that an accounting major would pick a trading sim, no? As soon as I finish typing out this post I'm going to start a Port Royale 2 save entitled "Dutch Project" and work on it as well.
Point of the matter is, I love project gaming. While it's not completely unique to singleplayer (anyone who's put thousands of hours into a World of Warcraft character knows exactly the sort of obsessive-compulsive urge I'm talking about), it is a distinctly solitary and anti-social pursuit to build entire worlds that nobody will ever see and that people will hem, haw, and change the subject if you talk about in public. Even my wife, a gamer herself, rolls her eyes at me when I talk about how Saku Koivu broke Wayne Gretzky's goals record or how my fifth wheat field just came online in Turk Islands so I can feed the new workers at my sugar plantation...and she plays World of Warcraft and talks about it, seemingly unaware of the irony.
These worlds are to be celebrated. When my Sims' son goes to college, meets the girl of his dreams, and gives them a granddaughter, when Fuchs von Rostock wins a re-election battle for Lord Mayor of his hometown, when the Bruins win a Stanley Cup and Martin Brodeur wins the Conn Smythe for his 0.45 goals-against average in the playoffs, I can look at the screen and say "Yeah...I built that. And it's pretty badass." Show me a multiplayer game that can do that.
I wonder if I'm alone in my deep, abiding love of singleplayer games that are, by definition, endless. I've spent most of the last two weeks playing ESPN NHL 2K5, starting a new franchise with the Boston Bruins, populating the league with a fantasy draft, and playing through what will become season after season, developing, drafting, and running my franchise into the far future.
I've been doing the same thing with College Hoops 2K5, although in that case the franchise/dynasty I started way back when I bought the game in November of 2004 is still the same save file I'm using today, over 700 manually-played games (at an average of 40 real-time minutes per for a total of over 500 hours on the save) later. My Mount&Blade character is going this route as well, accumulating castles, villages, and skills and currently at level 29 after less than a month.
I'm going back to college starting next month and one thing I've decided I want to do is install Patrician III on my wife's laptop (which she's generously lending me for use at school) and see if I can get a similar save-file going that I may very well still be using when I finish my degree...in 2012. Seems oddly fitting that an accounting major would pick a trading sim, no? As soon as I finish typing out this post I'm going to start a Port Royale 2 save entitled "Dutch Project" and work on it as well.
Point of the matter is, I love project gaming. While it's not completely unique to singleplayer (anyone who's put thousands of hours into a World of Warcraft character knows exactly the sort of obsessive-compulsive urge I'm talking about), it is a distinctly solitary and anti-social pursuit to build entire worlds that nobody will ever see and that people will hem, haw, and change the subject if you talk about in public. Even my wife, a gamer herself, rolls her eyes at me when I talk about how Saku Koivu broke Wayne Gretzky's goals record or how my fifth wheat field just came online in Turk Islands so I can feed the new workers at my sugar plantation...and she plays World of Warcraft and talks about it, seemingly unaware of the irony.
These worlds are to be celebrated. When my Sims' son goes to college, meets the girl of his dreams, and gives them a granddaughter, when Fuchs von Rostock wins a re-election battle for Lord Mayor of his hometown, when the Bruins win a Stanley Cup and Martin Brodeur wins the Conn Smythe for his 0.45 goals-against average in the playoffs, I can look at the screen and say "Yeah...I built that. And it's pretty badass." Show me a multiplayer game that can do that.