Don’t bother me, I’m Sporing…

I picked up Will Wright’s latest game, Spore, yesterday. Wright created SimCity, one of my favorite PC games of all time, and The Sims, the best-selling game of all time with approximately 100 jillion copies sold. This is one story that I really wish I had remained a reporter long enough to cover. The reason is that Wright is supposed to be a brilliant guy, even a genius. He’s one of the gaming industry’s true deep thinkers and intellectual lodestones. He not only has an unsatiable appetite for knowledge, but he processes that knowledge in weird and wonderful ways. His creations are Miyamoto-like in their ability to extract something fun from the mundane.

In Spore, you start out as a microscopic organism and eat and discover your way up the evolutionary ladder, moving onto land, forming tribes, creating a civilization and finally conquering the galaxy. Not surprisingly, the game has been getting a lot of attention from the science press, who see a good cross-over story when they see it.

One of the best articles has come from Seed, which asks, “If this is the ultimate evolution simulator, why does it feel so much like intelligent design?” The answer, of course, is that while the game is inspired by science, it is in the end a game that is supposed to be fun. (Though not directly addressed in the article, I would add that publisher Electronic Arts, which delayed the game a couple times, really needs it to be a hit, so making the game as approachable as possible makes good business sense. Wright himself alluded to that in this Q&Awith MTV Multiplayer.)

I really liked this bit about people designing genitalia-inspired creatures:

For game designer Frank Lantz, it’s this evolving ecosystem that is the perfect example of the game’s ability to be science rather than teach science. Initially, it was living, bouncing models of the human reproductive organs that proved wildly popular — a trend quickly dubbed “Spornography.”

“Here’s a game — supposedly about evolution — in which sexual reproduction is tastefully absent,” says Lantz. “And then as soon as the editor comes out, there’s this enormous Cambrian Explosion, a Burgess Shale of digital erotica. And then those images were really good at reproducing themselves as players sent links and images around to each other. So, it turns out that sex is good at reproducing itself. How funny and ironic is that?”

The kicker line is great, too:

This isn’t a game for re-educating the intelligent design proponents of the present; it’s a game for inspiring the intelligent designers of the future. Because, of course, if you zoom back one more level from Spore and the computer screen which hosts it, what do you see? Yourself.

One other interesting twist to the buzz around the game is the reaction it is getting on Amazon, where reviewers pissed off over the draconian copy-protection have driven the game’s rating down to a single, solitary star.

I was going to break it down but why tell when you can show?

 

 

 

 

 

The bizarre twist on this is that EA was once on the other side of a similar campaign last holiday when the sci-fi epic role-playing game Mass Effectcame out. (The game was published by Microsoft but EA ended up buying the studio that made it and thus ended up being on the frontline of this particular crapstorm.)

What happened was that Fox News did a totally irresponsible and scurrilous segment about the game, which featured a brief, PG-rated love scene of the main character bedding an alien woman. One Fox commentator said the game was like “Star Wars meets Debbie Does Dallas“. Fox had an author named Cooper Lawrence on the show to criticize the game for its shallow depiction of women, but when asked by the pro-game commentator Geoff Keighley, she admitted she hadn’t played the game.

What happened next was that hundreds of outraged gamers flocked to Amazon and drove down the rating of Lawrence’s book. She ended up issuing an apology (though Fox never apologized for its blatant and willful misreporting that would have been the cause of an embarrassing correction and probable probation for the reporter if it had occurred at Reuters) and the whole saga was chronicled by The New York Times. In one of those fish-that-got-away stories, I actually had a story primed and ready to go a full day before The Times, but a miscommunication with editors meant it was overlooked. Oh well.

Anyway, it looks like the mob has turned against EA. Amazon ended up deleting the bulk of the negative reviews for Lawrence (though it looks like many have returned over time), so it will be interesting to see how they’ll handle this. On the one hand, it seems to be a legitimate gripe with the product. On the other, it’s clear many of the “reviewers” haven’t bought the game but are just parroting details they read elsewhere.

How the DMV is like a role-playing game

Keep that headline in mind. I have a tale of DMV woe to relate first, but it will circle back around to make a gaming related point.

I finally resolved to get Tala her learner’s permit. The first step in that process is to take the written test. I had today off (Good Friday as a work holiday is about the best thing $1,000 in annual union dues buys me) and told her I would take her to the DMV and set her up with the test. Should be easy, right?

We got to the DMV around 10:30 and the wait wasn’t that bad. We were called to the counter in about 20 minutes. In the meantime we had filled out the application. The only thing that had me a little worried was that they needed her Social Security number, which I didn’t have. Oh well, I figured that if they needed that, at worst Tala could start taking the test and I would drive back home and get it. Silly me.

They need the number right then and there to even register you for the test. Okay, it’s still not really a big deal as we live less than 10 minutes away. I drive home and pull the number off our tax returns. I don’t think she ever had an actual Social Security card, or if she did, we lost it right away.

I was back within 20 minutes and it was another 20 minute wait or so to get back to the counter. Same clerk. Give him the number, and he goes off to validate it. Five minutes later he comes back and says the number doesn’t match her name. Turns out her SocSec number is under her maiden name while her green card, the ID we used to fill out the form, is under her married name. Never mind that we are waving both her green card and her Chinese passport, which has her maiden name, under the nose of the clerk. The rules say the names have to match, and the only way to do that is to go to the SocSec office and change the name.

At least they have directions to the nearest SocSec office, which is about 6 miles away. So we tool on up there. 

“Well,” Tala said, “at least this should be easy. We’ll show my ID and get it changed, and go back to the DMV.”

To which I replied: “Don’t underestimate the government’s ability to complicate even the simplest tasks.”

After another 20-minute wait, we get up to the counter. I tell the pleasant young woman on the other side that my wife’s Social number is registered under her maiden name and she wants to change it to her married name. I give her the number, the green card and her passport. She scans everything for a moment, then looks up and says:

“And where’s your marriage certificate?”

Marriage certificate?

“Yes, we need the marriage certificate to confirm you are married.”

Well, the green card proves we are married because in order to get the green card — issued under her married name — we had to prove to Immigration and Naturalization Service that we did indeed get married. That proof entailed showing them our marriage certificate.

But of course the INS database doesn’t talk to the SSA database, or at least what you do in one realm doesn’t matter to the other. So, our next task is to come up with the marriage certificate. I am reasonably sure I have a copy in our home files, but if not, we’ll have to contact the records office of King County, Washington, 900 miles away, and get a copy sent to us.

And anyway, I don’t have any time off from work to go through this rigamarole for another two weeks, when I take some vacation during Harlan’s Spring Break. Apart from the massive inconvenience, there’s something that just chafes at the revolutionary American character to have to provide a federal identification number in order to just take the first step of obtaining a state driver’s license. Sigh.

Back to the title of this post. Chances are, if you’re a fan of role-playing games you already know where this is going. The comparison is high in my mind because I’ve finally been working through Mass Effect, the sci-fi RPG for the Xbox 360 that came out late last year to much critical acclaim.

A main feature of RPGs is the quest system. The player has a goal, but to achieve that goal and push the story forward, there are a number of hoops the game makes the player jump through.

For instance, in Mass Effect, my character recently arrived at a spaceport on a remote planet that services a system of privately run research labs. I was on the trail of a person who has crucial information needed to make sense of the larger mystery I’m ensnared in. But my status as an elite intelligence agent gives me little authority in this private facility and I have to seek a way to leave the spaceport and gain access to the lab where my quarry is holed up.

I learn from an official who greets me off my starship that I need a permit to leave. She suggests I seek out an administrator. I track him down and he gives me the brush-off. Fortunately, on my way out his assistant drops hints about a couple alternative avenues.

I opt to talk to a merchant who asks me to smuggle something. It requires a trip back to my ship to retrieve the item, which I then carry back to the station administrator. He thanks me by granting me a pass to leave the spaceport.

So here are two thoughts. It actually helped me a little to think of this DMV goose-chase as just another quest in a real-life role-playing game. I was just going through the 2008 California-resident version of trying to leave the spaceport.

That thought was immediately followed by one wondering if Mass Effectis at its core just a series of mundane, frustruating tasks when stripped of its 720p graphics, biotic implants, vast universe of worlds and detailed character development. When I plant my butt on the couch for an hour trying to figure out how to leave the spaceport, am I not really just trying to take the driver’s test?

What accounts for the difference between the two? Is it just in the graphics, story and rich background of Mass Effect? That’s exciting to me, but for my character who is living in that future, wouldn’t this just be the kind of craptastic bureaucracy that frustruates us today? Are Mass Effectand other RPGs just bureaucracy simulators? Or does this sort of thing become more interesting when you know it’s part of saving the galaxy and not just trying to satisfy a very basic part of living in modern society?