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by Jeff Strand December 6, 2002

The Seriously Whacked Point of View "Passing the Buck" by Jeff Strand

Frequent readers of this column have probably thought, at one time or another, "Y'know, a monkey could write that thing." Rest assured that this statement is incorrect. A couple of weeks ago I purchased not just any monkey, but a genetically enhanced monkey, and set it in front of my computer. The monkey's entire column looked like this:

jkj

And then it befouled my keyboard. That's because, though it may look easy, coming up with ideas for this column is harder than Al Lowe at a mudwrestling match. Now, if I were a lesser columnist, I'd resort to that tired technique of writing an entire column about the fact that I can't think of anything to write about. But I'm not a lesser columnist, I'm a bottom-of-the-barrel columnist, and this week I figured, why write a column myself when I can get other people to do it for me?

So I went to the Gameboomers bulletin board and asked people to write mini-columns for me to string together into one full-length column, thus fulfilling my word count requirements without having to write any words, except for an introduction where I talk about genetically enhanced monkeys. And as I returned to the site, ready to see what delightful material I'd be able to put into my Very Special column, here was the first response:

Syd: "Deadline? We have a stinking deadline???? Sheeeeezzzz."

Yes, that's right. Honorary columnists for three seconds and they've already learned the official Seriously Whacked technique of griping about deadlines. For most columnists, that takes weeks of practice!

My call for contributions mentioned that rants were acceptable, and thus the second contribution was:

MaG: "If this game crashes one more time, I'll... I'll.. I'll blame it on Jeff Strand! It's his xxxx fault!"

I'm not sure what the "xxxx" stands for. I guess it could be "damn," which wouldn't really require the letters to be replaced with x's, at least not in this column, but other four-letter expletives don't seem to work, unless each x stands for multiple letters, in which case I take serious offense.

Somebody code-named "Lasanidine" wanted to know where the contributions were supposed to be posted and thus obviously didn't read the instructions, which clearly said "here."

The next message was from Yvonne, whose handle is "Ladyyve." Yvonne decided to spit in the face of Seriously Whacked policy and actually try to bring up an interesting issue for discussion:

"I have a question for you, Jeff... why aren't 'Adventure' games given any space in gaming magazines? By that, I'm referring to the 'printed' ones, of course.

Are the reviewers too young to appreciate them? They seem to favor 'Action' games.

Is it a question of advertising budgets?

If I want to find out anything about an adventure game, I can only find information on it online. Thank heaven for Just Adventure!"

The answer, of course, is "probably, but nobody tells me anything."

"Mugsy" posted something with an animated smiley face that sticks it tongue out at you. I stuck my tongue back out at it, but then the monkey grabbed my tongue and dug in its claws and the rest of my evening became a blur.

The next post was from Nancy Griffin, who calls herself "Burpee." I like Nancy, because she frequently starts topics about my latest column, and because she calls herself "Burpee." She said:

Adventure gaming goes way BEYOND TIME. It's a form of story telling, a pastime as old as the SKYE or the DUNEs, as magical as the stories of ATLANTIS and EL DORADO. A trip into the realm of a game can be an ODYSSEY that is NIGHTLONG. It gives me SHIVERS to think that my obsession with games could lead to a JEKYLL AND HYDE effect and I could end up in a SANITARIUM or worse, EXILEd. Oh, on I will go because after all is said and done, I'm a SURVIVOR. Do you want to be a SURVIVOR 2?

Wow. How the ZORK did she think that up?

The ambitious "mszv" posted a rant about people who bash popular adventure games just because they figure if something's popular, it can't be any good, followed by "PS - Jeff, don't include this next part. Apologies to Gameboomers, everywhere, no one on this site is like that!" Then she posted about people who refuse to admit that they're playing adventure games just to look at pretty pictures, followed by "Don't include this next part. Sorry it's too long Jeff. Also Gameboomers, of course, none of this applies to anyone here!"

Then "mszv" talked about a recent car accident, and the reaction: "If this was a game, I could go back to the last save!" I'm sure everybody reading this has had thoughts like that. That's why we stay indoors glued to our computers rather than outdoors where we might accidentally socialize with innocent people.

"Horsedancer" went and got all serious on us, talking about kids being influenced by violent behavior they see in games. I know that I, personally, grew up on Pac-Man and I'd frequently walk down the hall at school going "wacka wacka wacka" and biting people. I'd also shout out point values when I ate fruit at lunch. It was pretty sad. I was such a nerd.

Burpee posted a couple more times, hoping I'd mention her again in this column, but I don't fall for such obvious attention-hogging tactics.

Then we heard from "Acornia," who presented the following theory: "A good adventure game is one that completely stumps at least once during the game but no more than three times."

If I wanted to be argumentative, which I do, I'd say that a game that only completely stumps you three times is for SISSIES!!!! In my day, we'd get stuck on the friggin' INSTALLATION procedure, except we didn't get to install games, we just played them off the DISKETTES, and if we wanted to save our game we had to put in a DIFFERENT diskette, and if we were the kind of SISSIES that saved our game every couple of moves we'd be swapping diskettes HUNDREDS of times in any one gaming session and we LIKED doing it!

(Discussion Question: How many times is too many to be completely stuck in an adventure game? Send your answer to Jeff@justadventure.com so I can weasel another free column out of it.)

At this point the first page of Gameboomers responses came to an end, and, coincidentally, so does this column. But tune in two weeks from now for another Very Special column as I continue to make shameless use out of the hard work of others. See you then!

Jeff Strand is the author of several novels that were written by stealing bits and pieces from fashion magazines over the years. You can visit his Seriously Whacked website at http://www.jeffstrand.com.