Good Game, Bad Game...

This weekend has been pretty busy so far, and it is going to keep that way. Normally, I would try to be a little more productive over the weekend, but this weekend is filled to the brim with activities.

To wit, I hosted a poker party for some friends last night. It was a small crowd - 6 of us - really just the perfect size for a poker game. I grabbed some great BBQ from a local dive that just opened last week (and which I discovered completely by accident), and we enjoyed a very relaxed couple of games while chowing down.

We played Texas Hold 'Em and a variant called Blind Man's Bluff, which I personally find very entertaining. For those who know how to play Texas Hold 'Em, Blind Man's Bluff is played exactly the same way, with one distinct difference: each player holds his (or her) hand on his forehead, and never actually sees his cards. It's a great variant for mixing up the game a bit and is a ton of fun.

Of course, it also helps that won our Blind Man's Bluff game, so that might skew my opinion of it a bit.

But not all the games I've played this weekend have been so satisfying: I finished a video game I've been working on for the last couple weeks called Prince of Persia.

Now, some of you might not care so much about video games, but bear with me, as the game has shown me some good insight into my own writing:

The series itself is well known as being of high quality, and the production values on this game are no less superb. It features a beautiful soundtrack and gorgeous graphics that look like a mix of high quality sketches and watercolor paintings. The two main characters, "The Prince" (you) and Elika, are likable, well-defined, and have plenty of clever dialogue, as well as a good chemistry.

So what exactly, is lacking in the game? What lessons might one take from it, especially an aspiring writer? Well, for starters, when I play a game, I usually look for two main components: a) a good challenge, and b) an engrossing world/story. Unfortunately, the game's goal is the agent of its own destruction: This new version of Prince of Persia is designed with the Nintendo Wii generation in mind. That is, to be simple and easy enough to be accessible to all.

And this is where I saw a parallel to my own writing and something I think has been the biggest improvement in the edits that I have been working on - in order to keep things simple and moving along quickly, the rest of the world never gets the same treatment that "The Prince" and Elika do. Never the same development. You understand their quest, but you aren't attached to it. Nothing special distinguishes each location other than a variant color palette (each place is actually different looking, but for all intents and purposes, plays exactly the same). And although I am always a fan of simple, intuitive controls, the simplicity of it and absolute zero death penalty makes it so you never feel like you are really challenging yourself or developing your skill. Although "The Prince" is extremely acrobatic and does plenty of fantastic moves, you never feel like you are the one performing them, or that you somehow, by improving your play, can do something someone else cannot. This was a striking parallel to some of the weakest parts of my book: an amorphous, almost intangible place that poses some amorphous, intangible risk. To keep things moving, I kept things too vague and simple. You want to care, but because the world hasn't been better defined, you cannot. It really was a fascinating look into the downfall of trying to keep everything overly simple.

But I stuck with the game, as I really liked the characters, and there is some element of fun (it is a game), despite the challenge truly being almost zero. When I say zero death penalty, I mean "ZERO DEATH PENALTY". If you jump off a cliff to your doom, Elika's magic immediately rescues you and teleports you back to her. If an enemy is about to kill you, Elika's magic knocks the enemy back and prevents your untimely death. No matter what situation arises, Elika has a solution, and her magic, NEVER, EVER runs out. I literally searched the game for a way to kill my characters just so that I could feel like there was some element of challenge and that The Prince has more to offer than just witty banter. Alas, my efforts were to no avail.

And then, the game commited the most grevious of sins - after all the effort (time, really - you can't die, but you still have to run everywhere), it gave me a BAD ENDING! And when I say bad, I don't mean bad as in poorly written (it is actually a unique ending for a game, and raises an interesting moral question). I mean bad, as in the bad guy wins and does it by having The Prince help him. You don't even get a choice - no, after fighting to keep the evil god Airhiman imprisoned all game, The Prince undos all your work in about two minutes to save Elika, thus allowing the Airhiman to escape and win. Very unsatisfying.

But then it got worse. I made the mistake of thinking that, like most other games (including prior Prince of Persia games), I failed to collect all the stupid "Light Seeds" that appear in the levels, and thus didn't have enough power to save Elika. Surely, if I were to devote the time to collect every single one, I would have the power to change my fate!

No, collect all ONE THOUSAND flippin' Light Seeds and you still FAIL. Curse you, Ubisoft - Curse you for all time!

So, what did I get for my efforts, you ask? The ability to play through the game again in a different outfit!

And also I arrived at the realization that one should never, ever, have your main character sacrifice everything to save the love interest when said love interest would hate his guts for doing it and by making said sacrifice undo everything else that was achieved in the game.

OK, so I already knew that and it isn't really applicable to my writing, but still! And again I curse the name Ubisoft, once respected developer of Prince of Persia.

So now you know - it's not all fun and games this weekend. Video games are hard work!