Eileene introduced her sister Ella to World of Warcraft last night, and was rewarded with much enthusiasm. Ella duplicated Eileene’s excitement over every element of the game, inspired by nothing that I could see apart from the element being in the game. The following exchange illustrates this inexplicable excitement perfectly:
Eileene: [Ella’s character] starts off on the eastern continent. That’s cool. Why are you laughing?
Me: What’s cool about it?
Eileene: I didn’t know that.
Me: Well, yeah. She’s an undead, and they start off on the northern end, north of the dwarves.
Eileene: That’s cool.
Me: If she had started in the western hemisphere, would you have thought that was cool, too?
Eileene: Yeah. [I start to laugh again.] What?
There’s only two hemispheres. Everybody has to start on one of them. How can both possibilities be cool, when there aren’t any others?
But there sit the two sisters, bubbling over not just abilities and functions, but over the names of cannon fodder monsters and what outfits characters wear. They’re having far more fun with the game than I ever will. I’m tempted to feel envious, until a thought strikes me.
They’re having more fun now, but in two months, both will be looking for something else, no matter how good World of Warcraft is. I might be looking for something else by then, too, but that depends on what the game has to offer. If it’s a good game, with plenty of strategic (or at least tactical) depth and interesting decisions, I can happily pick away at the underlying engine for years, long after Eileene has decided that she’s seen everything, or that getting to any new areas isn’t worth the trouble.
Like any engineer, scientist, or mathematician, my attention is always focused on the system, and how the parts relate to one another. What techniques produce a desired result efficiently? Which strategies outperform others? How simple can actions be while still producing interestingly complex results? How far can a boundary be pushed before the model starts to break down? Not all games provide meat for analysis like this, but those that do can entertain indefinitely, and mayflies who flit eternally toward the next piece of eye candy will never know the joys of cracking a system, discovering how to win with minimal effort and how to make a game do everything it possibly can.
I have no cause for envy. I’d trade the thrill of enthusiasm for the satisfaction of achievement any day.