"Good Morning, Commander Shepard"
"At ease Lieutenant. What's was in this mornings briefing from the council?"
"Today we've got to organize the warehouse and check on the cable supply for the upcoming network clean up. Then later someone needs to sift through the logs on the mail server and see why sendmail is failing to send low memory alerts and CPU spikes to the group e-mail account."
"Did Joker put you up to this?"
"No sir!"
"Seriously? That's the assignment?"
"Yes sir! Then you have a 30min break for lunch at 12:15 with a turkey sandwich, baked Doritios and some 'me' time with your latest Grisham paperback."
"This is the worst video game I've ever been in..."
My life would make a lousy game. I'm sorry to say but most peoples lives would.
"Okay, You've almost got the kids ready for school. Now you need to navigate the local highways while singing along to a Raffi hit parade..."
In fact even people that have exciting lives probably only have excitement for short bursts of time. I doubt that cops, military or even heads of state sustain more than 15 to 20% of excitement on any given day. Paperwork, stake outs, international flights, and even restroom visits are not great additions to a gaming storyline. Real life would make a lousy game. Even the Sims, sitting in a pile of their own filth, ordering pizza delivery, are more exciting than you are! How does that sit with you?
Video games, like movies need excitement intrigue and loads of plot twists, not boring mundane duties. When is the last time Jack Bauer ever took a leak? But that's life. We have to take showers, brush our teeth, listen to commercials instead of music, sit in mindless meeting and wait for 34 minutes at the Great Clips with nothing to read but Entertainment Weekly. None of that would be a good seller for a video game!
Player 1 - READY?
The foreign dignitary is visiting from the former Eastern Bloc country of Estonia. Your job for the next 3 hours will be sitting at your computer filling out his itinerary. You will also have to complete the I-G87 and P-923 forms in triplicate and check for any error or grievous misspellings that might provoke an international incident!
Right now there is an editor out there reading this post and pumping her arm in excitement at the anticipation of this games release.
For the rest of us, we'll just have to endure with the high action escapes from reality that are littering the shelves of video game retailers across the planet. Unless of course you'd rather pitch birds with a slingshot...
2 comments:
Level 4: Diarrhea Races
Your mission: Get to the bathroom within two minutes, avoiding co-workers and bosses with other assignments...
Oh, I dunno. Bits of my life might make a passable game. At least a very simple one. Like, remember that one Flash game where you need to guide the drunk home? You could make a similar one of me, early in the morning, trying to make my way to the fridge to get to my precious caffeine, without impaling myself on the decorative display of bayonets on the wall.
Ooh, hey. My Sunday afternoons would even make a first person shooter game! Okay, granted, one where you only get to shoot at bits of cardboard, and badly, at that. Still, perhaps that could classify as some sort of non-violent FPS? :p
It's all in the way you look at things, isn't it?
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