Strategy: a young humans game?

I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again, remembering the hours, becoming days, becoming weeks lost as I struggled to build a virtual empire.

In my teens I played such games as Command & Conquer, Sim City 2000, and Settlers. There was a beauty in making my own little world and watching it grow. I even played Theme Park but I wasn’t interested in becoming the next (more liberal) Walt Disney even if you could make people sick (add lots of salt to the theme park’s burgers).

I started playing Civilisation but It never truly grabbed me, or to be more honest I never grabbed it. I would direct my civilisation to economic bliss only to have my centurions bombarded by an enemies F15’s. I would forge formidable armies only to have cities revolt about not having enough cheese. I went back to Sim City arguing that I preferred my war and economic sims to be kept separate as after all ‘who wants to talk politics when you’re building a swimming pool?’ then Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth appeared on the Steam store and I sat and stared at it.

Once again a creation of Sid Meier beckoned me with the chance to build my new world, but this time in space. Space! The word reverberated whilst the mass of Sci-Fi Master Works books I’d read offered up a mental montage of all the cool things future space could offer. I brought the game, and six hours later realised it was 4am and I had work in the morning. I haven’t played it since.

This weekend Steam offered a free two day trial of the turn based Strategy game Endless Legend. To put it simply Endless Legend is like Civilisation but with cool monsters, heroes, and a expanded battle system involving a battlefield.

To those of you who’ve never dipped your mouse fingers into the deep well of Civilisation (or Endless Legend) they are games where you build cities and using these cities (and their surrounding regions) resources build army units (like spearmen or as the years tick by tanks) to defend your city and invade others. These war/economic strategy games can be great fun, but like a complicated board game can take a few hours to master the basics even.

Once the free trial ended I was faced with a dilema: Do I buy this game? Yes, it’s beautiful. Yes, I can build elven cities and giant tree ents, but i’d also have to figure out how to actually play it. Most 'civilisation-esk' strategy games have several ways to win (like complicated board games). These win conditions tend to be things like obtaining military dominance (killing everyone), achieving diplomatic victory (gaining peace and cash, lots of cash), or obtaining a technological victory. For example in Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth you could win the game by researching technology to a point where you could build a giant teleporter and start shipping in relatives from your home world. I pondered watching some YouTube tutorials and to be fair, in this age of video I’m sure some nice human has made a good video about how to play or, more importantly, make your tree ents wear little hats. Then I realised:

I don’t have time for this.

The thought shocked me.

I don’t have time for this.

Then I realised: I’ve matured as a gamer. Not in my choice to avoid Endless Legend as that's just my call, but that I realised that it's a type of game doesn’t fit my lifestyle. At present I’m trying to write an hour long stand up show, several scripts to finish, and a book to plan. Plus I really need to dust my lego. This means I can play games to relax but only really as reward for progress on my main hobbies.

When I was a kid I would play anything and I could because in each game, good or bad, there were things to explore. As an adult I have to focus my time to explore what I can then mine and use. Big, epic, and intricate games although fun take too much time and I end up feeling guilty I wasted a day trying to get a tree ent to wear a hat. But you know it was nice to spend some time with that tree ent and to marvel at the depths a game can reach. Maybe I’ll play it one day… once i’ve cleaned my Lego.

Endless Legend and the likes are turn based strategy not a real time strategy game.I could never truly wrap my head around Endless Legend, like you say it takes time.. Beautiful music though

@tothenines: Ah yes, Thank you. Thinking about it I am talking about both (C&C and Endless) so is there a term? 'Strategy'? Yes, there is a track which feels like a variation on the GOT theme tune which works well!.

Turn based strategy games are very different from Real time strategy games.. Its almost as if they belong to different genres. And your point applies to any time consuming game rather than any one particular genre.

@scroll: My point doesn't apply to all time consuming games. These days most triple A titles are long and I play them. I can dive in. I also enjoy intricate games that take time to comprehend. I recently played Mirror Moon which was a lovely couple hours muttering WTF to myself. For me it is something specifically about Economic and war strategy games which on reflection I think is the fact I often don't know if i'm playing badly until it's all over. Yes I can check the graphs but graphs don't show how cool tree ents are.

@tothenines: PS I've ammeded my error. Thanks,

Isn't it a little weird to be ripping off your own blog?

http://verbsandpixels.com/?p=646

@yothatlimp: I wouldn't say so. GB is great place to actually talk about these things. Just posting this was useful as it pointed out some errors I made and helped me be more concise. I wouldn't say comments like yours are particularity encouraging but posting it here (and amending it) has helped me improve it. I think you can actually see that over the two versions.

I have the thing about feeling guilty if I play for too long too (although yours is due to work). Even on vacations when I'm completely free and have weeks to do whatever I want. If I play for more than two hours or so at a stretch I feel like I'm wasting time and should be doing something more creatively productive. So I paint, work on some sort of video projects, play football etc.

And once I've done those things I can guilt-lessly return to the game I'm playing. I know your situation is a bit different but maybe you could continue playing the games you love by keeping some sort of a time limit/ alarm? (unless these games don't allow you to save and quit between sessions or something) An hour a day would be nothing! :)

@armaan8014: I think I might try this! Although even with quick set-ish time limit games like Hearthstone I find myself saying one more game... for ten more games. Would be exciting to try learning discipline through gaming though. Way better than dog biscuits.

@jaycowle: Yeah and it feels so much more rewarding when you finally sit down to play that game :) Like you've earned it.

I think its totally the opposite. Or maybe I read Rock Paper Shotgun too much. I mean there's a pretty big audience for war and 4X games. And I hardly think all the young 'uns are running off to buy Crusader Kings 2 or Commander: The Great War or all of the historical based strategy games on Steam and everywhere else. I do think Civilization games like Endless Legend and City Builders like Cities: Skylines fall in the middle though, in that they are way more approachable and widely played.

I do see where you are coming from though. You sounds almost like my dad. He used to love playing building bases and his army of troops until it was time for the objective. RTS were his strong suit. I tried to show him Civilization 3 at one point and he had none of it. Turn based combat isn't nearly as cool and long technology trees are just so much more work. I believe the last RTS he finished was the 1st Starcraft 2. Now he just plays games like Clash of Clans.

Basically games are hard and take work. I can totally see why sitting down after a day of work and learning a game(whether it be figuring out tech trees or practicing combos) does not seem appealing.