Upon being published, video games, and adventure games

I have been published. Not in the trivial self-publishing sense of the word, which even this blog would qualify for. Everyone seems to be getting in on vanity e-publishing to the point where it seems like we have more people generating content than reading it. I've been published in the sense that someone has been kind enough to seek out something I've written, offer me financial remuneration for my efforts, and present the edited work to a forum which has a wider audience than my immediate friends and curious onlookers. The result can be seen here: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20080804/newheiser-a.shtml

I realize there's even a fair chance you've stumbled across this blog thanks to the article, and find this level of personal insight into my character to be somewhat unnerving, like being offered into a stranger's home or unmarked white van only seconds after he hands you a screenplay. If that's the case, welcome aboard, and I promise you'll find less self-aware musing on things you already know throughout the rest of my content.

The piece that's been published is a fairly academic discussion of adventure games, which had its roots in a project I did for a course on interfaces I took while pursuing my master's three years ago, and morphed into something approaching an exhaustive encyclopedia I've had self-published on my website for the last couple years, where I've been trying to promote it to the world. Since I spent every word they gave me in the article laying out precise formal details of the genre, it seems appropriate to tell the personal side of my story in this medium.

When I was a kid, I played games very differently than I do now. For one thing, I was almost never able to beat them, despite having more time to invest on my failed attempts. Any of you who aren't gamers but can only look on wistfully into our world of magical delights can probably relate to this: a video game for me was just a flashier, somewhat less socially acceptable version of any other toy. It could be a fun little sandbox-like activity to mess around with, but I had nowhere near my present state of honed reflexes, keen spacial awareness, or prized penchant for puzzle-solving. Like a kid fumbling around with a Rubik's cube, I could mess around with it a bit but I was only able to a small fraction of all the things I was supposed to be able to do. But for whatever reason, I persisted, until I reached the point where I came to see games as interesting challenges I knew I was able to master, sometimes even as engaging story-telling experiences, and ultimately appreciate them as a kind of art and interesting exercise in design.

But even in my earliest days, adventure games held a certain interest for me. It's a genre composed almost entirely out of puzzles and riddles, you're placed in a world with a number of problems to be solved and have to figure them out, sometimes by participating in some classic-form games such as sliding-tile puzzles, but mostly by building up a collection of useful items and figuring out which one could be used to solve a particular dilemma.

But the unique thing about an adventure game is that you don't have to complete several minute-long reflex-intensive sequences to get through them, you just have to know what to do. I can't tell you how to beat Super Mario Bros without expecting you to put in a lot of practice stomping koopas and timing jumps. But I can tell you pretty much everything you need to know to beat Myst, and expect you to have no trouble doing it, so long as you know the answers to the puzzles you'll need.

My immersion into the genre came right around the fledgling days of the internet, just as communities around hobbies like video games began to form. I spent some time seeking out answers to puzzles and even corresponded over email with fellow adventure gamers, although I was still a little too early to enjoy the fruits of walkthroughs available on all imaginable topics. And in the days before I had the resources to look up the answers, a few games lay fallow and unexplored in my collection, possibly due to a lack of ingenuity on the part of my younger self or because of the devious machinations of adventure game designers determined to make a killing on hint books or charge by the minute hint lines. In the modern era I suppose, that's all changed. You can railroad yourself through any adventure game if you're willing to sin against your conscience and simply look up the solutions you need in a walkthrough. But once you've made that devil's bargain, it's hard to ever go back and view the game with untainted eyes as you slip deeper and deeper into an abyss where you're no longer truly playing the game, but living a dull echo of a gaming experience where you race through puzzles you never truly tried to solve, and will never get a chance to.

These days, I can call myself an actual gamer with enough experience and tricks up my sleeve to where I'm probably pretty far above the curve compared to what's expected of the average button-presser, which has given me ample opportunity to reflect and consider games and gaming less as a player and more as a designer. And it's in that mode of thought that I decided to pick a topic I know well, Adventure Games, to write up for the benefit of the world, even as I try to deal with my last minute stage fright for a moment that's been three years coming. It's been an interesting trip, and it's an interesting field, and I hope to see you on this blog again to talk about the next piece I should be getting published, on video game music.