Happy Hanukkah
Today I was on a 6 hour call with my brother. My brother and I talk possibly a few times a day, but a 6 hour call certainly seems like a record. The call started out normally. I intended to play video games later in the day so I was trying to set up the Nintendo Switch dock on my monitor, since I don't own a t.v. Then I decided to ask my brother if he wanted to play Overcooked.
We spent way too much time playing the same level over, and over again on Overcooked. For the uninitiated, Overcooked is a co-operative game where you work together to cook and deliver meals. Fulfilling a single order in overcooked is quite easy, but balancing that with different people working on different tasks, and trying to optimize things it can get chaotic.
We must have spent hours on a single level that truly wasn't that hard. We did dry runs where we walked through what we would do in the level. We masterminded how to use the game mechanics to our advantage. When the level would start Sam would first throw meats that I needed to cut onto my side, because my side had the cutting boards. Then he would throw rice into my pots, while I threw the cut meats into his pan. The rice would be placed on plates to free up the pots for more rice. Taco shells would be used to grab the meat and the chicken because this way we didn't need plates for that food.
In this level one of the mechanics is that the inventory would switch sides. So sometimes a cutting board and certain foods would be available on one side, and later they would be available on the other. We also strategized that throwing food on the floor was effective, because if the inventory changed you might have an ingredient you needed readily available. Despite all these optimizations it was easy to get overwhelmed and to miss orders. Having a bunch of ingredients all over the place was also problematic because it would take up counter space, or make it so you grabbed something you didn't mean to. A lot of the time the order would expire, and we weren't working on the next item.
Our breakthrough came when we decided that we would only focus on two orders at once. After we decided to do this we passed the level in one or two tries, and we cleared the level at higher than the standard mark. Once we got tired of playing Overcooked we switched to Tetris. Sam is very talented at Tetris so I didn't stand a chance in the competitive modes. We played a cooperative mode where we compete against an AI alongside another AI on our team. We made our teammate the lowest skill level and had a great time calling our teammate a rookie.
Throughout our childhood Sam and I have had a great time playing video games.
I've briefly written about video games here, and about some of the games we owned here, but in different contexts. One of the first games we played in a very dedicated fashion was Super Smash Bros. I would play as Samus and Sam as Donkey Kong, and we would play against the computers. We also played the campaign a lot. In Super Smash Bros. the way you unlock new characters is by beating the game at different difficulties. I feel like we were trying to unlock a super Donkey Kong (not sure anymore), and we made up some arbitrary requirements of what was needed to unlock it. I remember my brother crying in desperation, as he would fall just short of these goals. In hindsight it's funny that the game was causing him such an emotional reaction, but upon further reflection it's sad how much an influence games can have on children.
For P.C. games we played a lot of Freddy Fish, and Pajama Sam. These games were very fun puzzle games, and although the games weren't as interactive the characters, art, and music were very engaging. On Gameboy color we played this game called Warlock together. For some reason our uncle told us that if we learned to manipulate our hands (think doing the star trek greeting, but slightly more involved) and or learned to whistle that he would reward us for learning. Sam and I did a terrible job learning these two skills. Hilariously though one of us pretended to whistle while the other one played an electric keyboard, and then we broke out in laughter over how clever we thought we were. Anyway our uncle still wanted to give us a gift and Warlock was the game we picked out at Toys R. Us.
In Warlock you control an army and the goal is to have your army fight against the opposing army. Warlock supported gameboy color link so we were also able to play against each other through that. On Xbox we played a lot of Halo both local multi player and the campaign. I also remember playing a lot of NFL street. An incredibly fun, and well made game that we put a lot of hours into was Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. To this day we may find ourselves singing tunes from the soundtrack, and reminiscing on how enjoyable the game was.
On Xbox 360 we played a lot of Halo 3, specially via Xbox Live. We weren't very good competitively, but online play exposed us to the idea of elevating our game, and the way you could try to play more thoughtfully and strategically. I'm sure we had many days similar to today where we spent large parts of the day playing video games. I remember the nights where our parents might go out to a holiday office party, and we would spend the night playing with our cousin Gabe. Visiting Gabe's house and playing games there was also a common occurrence two classic games that stand out from his house were Playstation One Pong, and Crash Bandicoot.
Somewhere along the way my joy for video games dissipated. Online games felt very competitive, and I didn't have any chance. Single player games felt more like a chore than anything else. Last year as a holiday gift from our last company my brother , and I both got Nintendo Switches which is how we are here today! I have barely used the Switch, but I do have loose goals to make it through Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
A contributing factor to not enjoying video games as much has been the guilt associated with playing video games. When we were younger what our parents were trying to grapple with was how to strike a healthy balance with how much we play video games. However, the way this was communicated was in the form of "I can't believe you spent all your time playing video games". Sometimes it was also communicated in the form of these games make you so rude, and aggressive. Instead of being communicated as acknowledging the tradeoff, and giving us the chance to thinking about how we wanted to use our time. Nonetheless, it is true that time is limited, and if you are spending your time playing video games then you can't spend your time doing something else.
I am super grateful to video games for the hours of entertainment they've provided, the childlike wonder they helped capture, and for the bonding opportunities with my brother. There's no doubt we fostered some collaboration abilities along the way. Although the collaboration abilities have a huge asterisk because of my inability to share things, but that's a story for another time. Happy Hanukkah!