This week new atttitude takes a look at why we still play some games, even though their graphics have long ago paled in comparison to some of the newest offerings on the market.

Read on…

New Attitude - looks aren’t everything

by Julie Whitefeather

Back  in my college days I knew someone I will call “John” - mostly because that’s his name. As guys go John was a good looking guy and while the rest of us who were upperclassmen where looking for our diplomas (and spending  most of our waking hours doing it) John spent most of his waking hours looking for his next drink and the perfect woman to date. Oh, John had his standards alright; as long as the woman looked like she had just stepped out of the centerfold of some men’s magazine or other, John didn’t care if the woman was dumber than a box of hammers. As I said, John had his standards. They weren’t very high, but he did have his standards.

Now wait a minute you might ask, if this guy was trying to find some “drop dead gorgeous” woman to date, isn’t that a high standard? And besides, you might ask, what the devil has any of this got to do with video gaming?

The answers to those questions are as follows…

1.) No, spending  time with someone only because of how good looking they are represent quite low standards; the sort one would pay for by the hour.

2.) It has plenty to do with gaming. Be patient. If you have read any of my articles, by now you know that I eventually get to the point, but sometimes (like now) I just want to have a good time getting there.

Back to John.  As I said, John was just looking for someone that was good looking and he didn’t care if she could hold a train of thought from the beginning of a sentence clear through to the end.  Oddly enough, for whatever reason, John never did find the sort of woman he was looking for.  If he ever did, I would say that it was a good thing that he was a drinking man.  Why?

Simple.

As I pointed out to John once, his idea of a “perfect woman” - good looking and stupid - will get boring pretty damn fast.  Eventually the boredom is likely to drive him to drink.  W.C. Fields perhaps said it best when he said, “my ex-wife drove me to drink; for which I shall be eternally grateful.”

Now let me tell you about another man. This man I dated for awhile. Let’s call him “George”; not because that is his name, but because he is a published author and you might have heard of him.

George was not the sort of guy that looked like he had just stepped off the cover of “G.Q.” magazine; yet he had women falling all over themselves to get a date long before his books had ever hit the shelves. Why? It had nothing to do with his looks, but it had everything to do with how interesting it was to spend time with him. In a word, George had charisma.
And that (yes here is the point finally) is what I look for in a game. I look for a game that has charisma.

Think about it. There are plenty of games out there that have those “oh wow” moments when you ride across the virtual landscape. Such was the case when I first logged on to  World of Warcraft and saw the gates of Ironforge. Lord of the Rings Online? Well, to be blunt the entire game looks like moving through a moving painting. Everquest 2 has moments like that as well; all you have to do is take one quick look at Greater Faydark. But Everquest has something that the previous two games don’t have - it has what I used to think of as the “ugly step sister” - Everquest 1 (EQ1).

Like many  others, I had heard a lot of negative things about EQ2 in it’s early days.  It reached the point where it got to be like a hobby for some people - even those who had never played EQ2 before.  Let’s face it, Sony bashing is popular in many circles. Sad to say I even stared to buy off on the garbage, despite having played EQ1.

But in a world full of Virtual Worlds that knock socks off why do games like Everquest 1 still have such a loyal following? It is going on nine years and counting and that, my friends, is staying power. Why? Because the Everquest games have charisma, and EQ1 is a good example of that charisma.

When you compare EQ1 to the multi-gigabyte games with system requirements that look like a run down of a Cray supercomputer it pales in comparison. 

Still, even though EQ1 may be the MMO equivalent of the friend who has “a great personality” but what a personality that is! She may not be much to look at but EQ1 can tell a great story, provide so many places to explore you can easily get lost. But most of all, like a woman with a great personality it has depth as well.  That depth is a little something called gameplay. It is that nebulous quality that you know is there when you play a game. It is why some games have such a loyal following year after year - no matter what critics say, no matter what other gamers say. When you see that in a game you know a game has charisma.

So next time you pass the box on the shelf with the woman that looks like she got her armor out of a victoria secret catalog take the time to go back and look through some of your old EQ1 screenshots.  She may not be the best looking game on the shelf but boy has she got a great personality!

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather