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Would things have been different 40 years ago if solo gaming was practical? Getting half a dozen people together for 3 hour sessions is difficult to do once a

by II2II 9y ago

Would things have been different 40 years ago if solo gaming was practical? Getting half a dozen people together for 3 hour sessions is difficult to do once a week, never mind twice a day. Playing these board games alone would have been more of a research project than entertainment. I recall bringing a then-obsolete Mac SE into a private student lounge about 20 years ago. One of the games installed on it was Harpoon, which seems to be in the spirit of these old board games. Almost no one was interested in it. I had installed it because it was a novelty. One student played it ravenously. It leaves me wondering what computer gaming would be like if it focused upon detailed simulations rather than graphics and reflexes.

codingdave 9y ago
If you think solo gaming wasn't practical 40 years ago, you weren't around 40 years ago. Those Atari 2600s rocked our world, man. But the change that really started to make people put games first in their lives was when it became social -- MUDs/MUSHes. When you could interact with other people through the game, that is when people started to play them all night and fail out of school because of them, etc.
- jhbadger 9y ago
  Well, the games on the 2600 were simple shootemups and the like requiring little AI, not solo play of serious games like this. But by the mid 1980s wargames with reasonably capable computer opponents were available.
knome 9y ago
Probably something like this : http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ An interesting article about a bug from various features interacting in unexpected ways http://www.pcgamer.com/how-cats-get-drunk-in-dwarf-fortress-and-why-its-creators-havent-figured-out-time-travel-yet/ http://www.pcgamer.com/how-cats-get-drunk-in-dwarf-fortress-... The game is incredibly detailed, and rife with unexpected and hilarious outcomes. The interface, however, is a ASCII-like overlay of characters controlled by the keyboard alone, like the old rogue games, if you're familiar with any of those. You should give it a try. If you do, just remember: losing is fun.
TheCowboy 9y ago
I haven't played it, but the descendant of Harpoon is Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, with some of the creators of Harpoon having developed it. It's described by players as being bigger in its ambitions and more detailed than the original Harpoon, and something that can actually be useful for learning.
AimHere 9y ago
Those detailed simulations are out there, though. The rather expensive-to-make military flight simulation games are getting rarer, but Falcon 4.0, ILM Sturmovik and DCS did, or do, have sizeable niche followings. Fairly detailed car racing simulators (Assetto Corsa, Dirt:Rally, iRacing) are also fairly popular. Board-style wargames remain a small niche, but they do exist - I remember the early iterations of Close Combat being particularly good (real-time platoon-level engagements with well-modelled soldiers that had a propensity for panicking under fire, or perhaps displaying extreme bravery). Detailed simulations of fictional entities are a bigger thing - Prison Architect, Kerbal Space Program and Dwarf Fortress are all popular games, each of which simulate complex interlocking systems (the Prison Industrial System, Orbital Mechanics, and an entire fantasy world, in amazing detail), and all of which are starting to pick up imitators. Then there's the Paradox series of big historical games - Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV and Victoria 2, among others, let you pick any country you like in their given time periods (medieval, early modern, 19th century respectively), and attempt to model a sort of alternate history through gameplay, with war, economics, politics, diplomacy, religion being part of the systems at work. If you want to try your hand at the Swedish colonization of South America, or to halt the Protestant reformation in it's tracks, or keep Byzantium alive into the 18th century, these games are what you after. There's sports management games too - the likes of Football Manager and Out of the Park baseball model much of the entire professional range of their sports (OOTP Baseball has more or less the entire history of the top US Baseball Leagues in it's database) in considerable depth. Games are a very broad church, and complex, detailed, simulations are very much a part of it. A lot of the future you're wondering about actually happened; they just formed into various subcultures and coexisted with the shinier, simpler games you're thinking of.

by II2II 9y ago

codingdave 9y ago

If you think solo gaming wasn't practical 40 years ago, you weren't around 40 years ago. Those Atari 2600s rocked our world, man. But the change that really started to make people put games first in their lives was when it became social -- MUDs/MUSHes. When you could interact with other people through the game, that is when people started to play them all night and fail out of school because of them, etc.

jhbadger 9y ago
Well, the games on the 2600 were simple shootemups and the like requiring little AI, not solo play of serious games like this. But by the mid 1980s wargames with reasonably capable computer opponents were available.

knome 9y ago

Probably something like this : http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ An interesting article about a bug from various features interacting in unexpected ways http://www.pcgamer.com/how-cats-get-drunk-in-dwarf-fortress-and-why-its-creators-havent-figured-out-time-travel-yet/ http://www.pcgamer.com/how-cats-get-drunk-in-dwarf-fortress-... The game is incredibly detailed, and rife with unexpected and hilarious outcomes. The interface, however, is a ASCII-like overlay of characters controlled by the keyboard alone, like the old rogue games, if you're familiar with any of those. You should give it a try. If you do, just remember: losing is fun.

TheCowboy 9y ago

I haven't played it, but the descendant of Harpoon is Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, with some of the creators of Harpoon having developed it. It's described by players as being bigger in its ambitions and more detailed than the original Harpoon, and something that can actually be useful for learning.

AimHere 9y ago

Those detailed simulations are out there, though. The rather expensive-to-make military flight simulation games are getting rarer, but Falcon 4.0, ILM Sturmovik and DCS did, or do, have sizeable niche followings. Fairly detailed car racing simulators (Assetto Corsa, Dirt:Rally, iRacing) are also fairly popular. Board-style wargames remain a small niche, but they do exist - I remember the early iterations of Close Combat being particularly good (real-time platoon-level engagements with well-modelled soldiers that had a propensity for panicking under fire, or perhaps displaying extreme bravery). Detailed simulations of fictional entities are a bigger thing - Prison Architect, Kerbal Space Program and Dwarf Fortress are all popular games, each of which simulate complex interlocking systems (the Prison Industrial System, Orbital Mechanics, and an entire fantasy world, in amazing detail), and all of which are starting to pick up imitators. Then there's the Paradox series of big historical games - Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV and Victoria 2, among others, let you pick any country you like in their given time periods (medieval, early modern, 19th century respectively), and attempt to model a sort of alternate history through gameplay, with war, economics, politics, diplomacy, religion being part of the systems at work. If you want to try your hand at the Swedish colonization of South America, or to halt the Protestant reformation in it's tracks, or keep Byzantium alive into the 18th century, these games are what you after. There's sports management games too - the likes of Football Manager and Out of the Park baseball model much of the entire professional range of their sports (OOTP Baseball has more or less the entire history of the top US Baseball Leagues in it's database) in considerable depth. Games are a very broad church, and complex, detailed, simulations are very much a part of it. A lot of the future you're wondering about actually happened; they just formed into various subcultures and coexisted with the shinier, simpler games you're thinking of.