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Back in the early 90s, I used to have a Commodore Amiga 500 computer. Used it for a lot of things until I went Mac then learned Windows as well (auspiciously late in the game!). The Amiga was a poor purchase in some ways because I found its OS to be maddeningly slow and limited, and yet, I have so many good memories of that time in my life before heading to my next computer (which happened to be an Apple Macintosh Centris/Quadra 660AV).
One of the best memories involved a game called Shufflepuck Cafe. If you've never played it, at least take a look at THIS?get a decent impression of a 32-color palette being put to the test. It looks so crispy and jaggy, yet the grease is literally dripping off of those pixels and onto your plate. Now, you may be familiar with a game called shuffleboard, found at family fun centers and old folks's homes all over the world — or at least North America. Shufflepuck Cafe is like that, but with way more menace and edge. It's up to you to go tete-a-tete vs. all the smarmy bastids you see in this den of digitized iniquity, and then some! Being a multi-platformer, apparently there was also an offbeat Japanese version for the NES?including a screwy-eyed version of Eneg (the pig).
How in the heaven does this relate to Second Life? Well, okay, one of the things I noticed on Shufflepuck, long loading time from disk?aside, was how smooth and responsive the thing was, and how nice mouse control was. You could even adjust it for more customizability. True, the mechanics were rather simple, and apart from the glaring grimace of your opponent at the other end, there wasn't much character animation. But that — and superb characterization manifested in the form of different playstyles by each rival?– is?what kept me in the zone, coming back for more: the intense focus on the puck and two paddles. AND IT'S OLD!
Here's another parallel: avatar customization in SL is bodacious. You can tweak all those sliders until the cows not only come home, but spray milk all over your body as you roll in your quilt with glee. In Shufflepuck, the same thing could be said for the adjustment of the dynamics of gameplay. You could change your paddle in a great number of ways, and although you couldn't retexture it, it would really feel like YOURS when you were done. That's the personal empowerment that comes with SL, knowing that you may have started with a base template, but boy did you take that and make it your OWN. There are the complaints about how the many slider previews slow the process down once you really know what you're doing… which leads us back to…
A main problem for me with games within SL is how sluggy they can be at inopportune times. Not just FPS, but responsivity. (THANK GOODNESS FOR NEW GLOWY MOUSEOVERS ON BUTTONS!) Even the mighty Tringo has a hard time, which is a shame because it's such a great social game. Responsiveness is a key factor to me, because in my head, it's like I'm racing down some quantum slipstream overdrive (whatever that means) and I really want my points and clicks, each and every one of them thankyouverymuch, to be counted. Then I can feel I am "one with the machine" and in control of what I am doing, instead of the inverse.
Tangentially, I look with great excitement towards future versions of SL as well as the foreseeable GameDev contest. I am reasonably certain that these entries will not only be great games in their own right, but lead to new pathways into light for later SL development. Things like custom inworld HUDs are a possibility, and better vehicle motion is inevitable. But those features will mean little if usability, the fluid flow,?isn't at a level of most excellent triumphantness. It's some manic mode of Bit-Fu (103-HIT COMBO, FRAWRESS VICTORY!!), an ascension to not only a higher plane of FPS but like punching ice and finding it doesn't shatter, but is almost like a gel, yet retains all of its firm properties. I've heard auto buffs refer to their cars in such a way after tune-ups, and this ain't just eye candy: it's the next piece of machinery that ironically allows us to feel more human through a computer.
The gears will turn, the cogs will churn, and . . .
Simple thing, this: the day I can play a game within SL with that kind of "liquid intuitivity" and Shufflepuck Cafe hits me returning '93, I know we will have arrived. Where? I don't know. The last stop of the journey? Most certainly not! But a newfound feeling of enwonderment and achievement like the next climax in a beautifully sequenced, creatively chaotic, spontaneous-yet-choreographed dance of being alive? Absolutely.
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