Articles

by Jeff Strand August 16, 2002

The Seriously Whacked Point of View "Real Life and Adventure Games" by Jeff Strand

And the Seriously Whacked Point of View is back! The contract negotiations were heated, but in the end my demands were met, and I should be receiving my special edition of The Longest Journey (with personalized dialogue and an altered wardrobe for April Ryan) in the mail any day now.

To be honest, I haven't been playing many adventure games these past few weeks, unless you count the comical adventure game of trying to renegotiate my credit card rates. I got this card when I was in college and so it was equipped with Dumb College Guy rates, designed to prey upon individuals during a time in their life when financial planning consists of buying the cheap beer so you can afford to dry your laundry. (Obviously, this decision is not applicable three weeks before any visit home.)

In the years since, however, I have gotten credit cards with decent rates, enabling me to rack up immense debt without guilt. After leaving my Dumb College Guy card unused for quite some time, I decided to give the company a call and ask them to lower my rates to match my Not A Complete Deadbeat cards.

I called and explained that my current rate was [ridiculously high number] and that their competition's rate was [substantially lower number], and that I'd like to get my rate lowered. The friendly gentleman on the other end assured me that this would be no problem, and typed for a moment on his keyboard.

"Would you accept [rate that's not even one full percentage point less than my current ridiculously high rate]?"

"Uh...is that the best you can offer?"

"No, I'm just asking if you would accept that. I can go lower."

"Yeah, I'll need you to go lower."

"I can offer you [rate that's only a smidgen of a fraction less than the previously quoted rate]. Is that okay?"

"I guess, but my other card is [rate that even a complete mathematical dullard could tell was much, much less than the rate I was being quoted]."

"Well, then, I can offer you [yet another absurdly small reduction in the rate]. Is that okay?"

"The thing is, it needs to be equal to my other cards or I won't use it."

"Well, sir, that's why I'm trying to negotiate with you."

I finally got tired of this conversation tree puzzle and just said "sure" to a rate that was higher than my other cards. At which point the representative tried to convince me to do a balance transfer. I selected "no" from the list of available options.

"May I ask why you're not interested?"

You would think that somebody who stares at credit card stuff all day would be able to figure out that transferring your debt from a lower rate to a higher rate is a poor financial decision. Or maybe he was looking through my records and saw that I once paid more money calling the hint line for Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist than I'd spent on the game itself and figured I was an easy mark. Either way, I finally solved the puzzle, got the rate I wanted, and swapped my balance, thus guaranteeing me approximately 2.7 telemarketing calls per day from the other credit card company. And I didn't even have to consult a walkthrough.

See, some of us have to take our adventure gaming wherever we can find it. A normal person might be upset when they can't figure out how those ants are getting into their house, but for a dedicated adventure gamer, it's a hunt-the-pixel puzzle! We have to search for keys all the time in adventure games, so why not relish the opportunity to find our car keys in real life? (I know a lot of you hate timed puzzles, so don't try this one before work.)

At the same time, real life could stand to take the lead of adventure games, particularly where the "save" and "restore" functions are concerned. There's really no excuse for not being able to save your game before you go into a job interview, or on a first date, or eat the Mystery Paste in the cafeteria.

I was thinking about save games because my sister recently let me borrow her Game Boy Color and I was playing Quest For Camelot, a role-playing game based on that animated movie you never went to see. It's actually a moderately entertaining little game, but I was surprised to discover that your character has to "pay" to save her game. If you don't have enough gems, you can't save.

This is a problem for people like me who are married adults. If you're a kid and your mom calls you to dinner, you can probably say "But Mom, I need to collect thirty more gems or Kayley will lose her grappling hook!" and not have it seem really, really sad. I can't do this. When it's time to go grocery shopping with my wife, my butt is going grocery shopping with my wife regardless of how many knights I'll have to re-kill when we return.

I realize that in a game with action elements, allowing for unlimited saves can take away a lot of the challenge. What they should have done is include a feature where players fill out a personality profile beforehand. If you're a college student, forget it...you probably shouldn't be allowed to save at all. Children under 18 would answer a series of questions about how mean their parents are and their save-game privileges would be determined based upon that. Married adults like myself would be allowed to save within a sixty-second notice, whereas if you have children, the game would be constantly saving your progress automatically, and also routinely give you back any damage points you lost due to external distractions.

So really, adventure games have a lot to learn from real life, and vice-versa. Until next time, may your real life adventure game puzzles not be those damn sliding tile ones.

Jeff Strand's latest novel, MANDIBLES, was just released as an e-book from Double Dragon Publishing. It's about oversized killer ants. You know you want to buy a book about oversized killer ants. To see the cover and read an excerpt with no peer pressure to buy anything, such as a really cool book about oversized killer ants, visit http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com.