{"id":2746,"date":"2010-11-21T13:36:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-21T18:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=2746"},"modified":"2010-11-21T13:39:52","modified_gmt":"2010-11-21T18:39:52","slug":"i-still-have-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2010\/11\/21\/i-still-have-this\/","title":{"rendered":"I Still Have This?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I reorganize my office (i.e., put things in boxes), I keep stumbling upon the leftovers of a life spent playing some very unusual games – things I had forgotten altogether. The dry and dull Age of Sail game Salvo<\/em>. A bunch of modern era RTSes that blend together in my memory (Act of War, Joint Task Force, World in Conflict<\/em>). Manuals for Spiderweb Software RPGs that I never finished even though I had walkthroughs. Flight sims, sub sims, Sim sims… I am sure that some day I will answer a Formspring<\/a> question saying that I have never heard of a game only to find it on my shelf the next day.<\/p>\n

My manuals are such a mess that I can’t even find my Age of Empires<\/em> manual, which would probably come in handy as I write the National Character series<\/a>. I found the foldout chart thing, but the manual had all this history stuff that might help me make sense of some of Ensemble’s decisions. So while packing this stuff has to be done, it’s also a reminder of how things constantly go missing in the clutter that I’ve built up.<\/p>\n

Now that so much of the PC gaming world is going digital, I will not accumulate this sort of driftwood at the same rate. I was sent a Collector’s Edition of Elemental<\/em>, for example, that had the manual and a miniature, but no game – that was on my Impulse account.<\/p>\n

In some ways, opening a new game was a ritual for me. I don’t keep boxes – I’m a hoarder, not a collector – but I remember reading the box copy with great interest as I installed games from disk. Then I’d be prompted to put in the next disk and I would turn to the manual. Manuals have gone the way of the dodo, or gone PDF to be more accurate, and I don’t read them while I wait for the game to install. Steam or Gamersgate or Impulse take care of everything and the removal of the Insert Disk ritual means that there is no reason I can’t be working or multitasking on something else.<\/p>\n

Now, the ritual isn’t some great awesome thing that changed my life. I mean, it’s not like I miss the experience so much that I will reinstall Cuban Missile Crisis<\/em> or Morrowind<\/em>. But I do have fond memories of preparing to review a game and seeing stuff in the manual or on the box that set off my spidey senses as the disks spun.<\/p>\n

Steam calls your collection of games a “library” and I suppose it is. And digital delivery is a big step forward for the PC gaming industry. But there is something special about the material good that can’t be replaced by code. I have the manual for Ancient Art of War<\/em> – an oversized booklet with a black cover and red printing. Caesar III<\/em> had a handy little recognition guide for your citizens so you knew who was whom as they walked around and told you what a crappy you were doing as governor. It is cute and unnecessary, but I like that I have it and that someone thought of it.<\/p>\n

Maybe my console focused friends have it better, even if their games aren’t. They get boxes that they can scan the spines of and see what they want to play. I have to read a table on my PC. I think real libraries have spines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I reorganize my office (i.e., put things in boxes), I keep stumbling upon the leftovers of a life spent playing some very unusual games – things I had forgotten altogether. The dry and dull Age of Sail game Salvo. A bunch of modern era RTSes that blend together in my memory (Act of War, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-Ii","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2746"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2750,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions\/2750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}