Back in high school I thought video games and girls were interchangeable.

Like a lot of nerds through junior high and high school I was a late bloomer. I had some girlfriends here and there, mostly for 1 week at a time, or at a max… a whole 2 months! Nonetheless it bothered me quite a bit, unless I was really into a video game. Final Fantasy Tactics [& VII], Counter Strike, Starcraft, Baldurs Gate [especially Shadows of Amn], Halo and so on. When I was playing those games I didn’t think about much else. While in English class I’d scribble down weapon stats and optimal party arrangements to take on Irenicus. If I wasn’t playing a game though, I’d drift off to whatever girl I had a crush on at the time. It was either one or the other and at the time I never struck much of a balance. So… if (Girls == Video Games) {

Then everyone gets confused by my addled metaphors. But really, the purpose of this post isn’t to talk about my romantic high-school struggles. There is another, much more useful similarity I’ve found when it comes to comparing women and video games. Attractiveness. Chemistry. Lust. Call it whatever you want, there is a primal level of attraction we have for the gender that draws us in. I’m not talking about any sweaty-palm-heart-palpitations, that’s something else entirely, but the kind of personal barometer for deciding who is attractive enough and who is not. Consider it a line that may be a bit fuzzy, but certainly we all have our lines for measuring our prospective mates.

For me, this line isn’t all that important, though I still adhere to it. Try as I might, attraction is still more or less a Boolean value [true or false] and a lot of that has to do with visual appearance. But that’s not what is really important when it comes to cultivating a relationship with a mate. That first step is merely the barrier to entry, after which many more complicated hard-to-explain details start to surface. This is largely how I view graphics in video games.

Graphics aren’t the only barrier to entry, but they contribute a large part towards the initial attraction a player might feel for a game. Over time that aesthetic that brought them over in the first place begins to lose its appeal or, at the very least, fades out of perspective. As the player gets further into the game the boundaries and rules of the game become the reality of their experience. Sitting around a lunchroom table you probably wouldn’t hear:

“Yea man! That one orc model seemed out of place on the 8th level, the rendering was all wrong.”

More likely, you’ll hear:

“Ugh, no kidding! That warthog teleport exploit is BS!”
“Yea! And I got standby’ed like 10 times last night, I’m thinking about just sticking to LAN it’s not worth it anymore.”
“Yea maybe… What about SC? Have you played against zerg since the new patch? Guardians’s are way OP now.”

Granted, all of these complaints are somewhat wrongheaded and certainly from the mouth of a dyed-in-the-wool fanboi, but they are on the minds of most gamers. The most you’ll hear them talk about a games graphics is that “they’re sweet!” and move on to griefing their friend about the lashing they received from their chainsaw last night. This is the reality, and it’s not much different with a discussion about women from the cafeteria round-table. Nobody sits around comparing the facial structure of the three prettiest girls in the school. Nor do they have lengthy debates about the pros and cons of a Brunette. Discussions about girls have much more to do with the delicate dance of courtship and anxiety.

“Oh man, Sally looked at me today from the front row. Do you think it means anything?”
“Well, I dunno. Ask her out! I’ve got my own problems with Alice, she didn’t call me last night…”
“Well at least you have a girlfriend! You’re lucky. I heard Sally was talking to Phil at homeroom, maybe they’re together now.”

And so on…

Look, I’m not saying graphics aren’t important. Hell, that’s 80% of my job, but I think too often we put importance on things that are ultimately empty. This is incredibly true in mainstream games where an inordinate amount of time is either spent creating mind-boggling graphics [of a realistic nature] or supporting the technical requirements to display something like that in real time. AAA games are the trophy wives of the video game world. We play them, run off with them into the dark corners of the world and have a hot love affair. Afterwards though, we trade them in for the next shiny bimbo stacked neatly at our local nerdery. I still love them though, and a lot of these games are lots of fun. I still play Halo 3. Street Fighter IV seems fresh and looks beautiful and I’m not a sucker for playing those games. At their core, those games have amazingly fun, well-tuned designs that will stand the test of time.

But where’s “The One” we’ve all been looking for? Is it WoW? Not for me, but maybe for some. Maybe it’s golf. That’s a life sport [I consider it more of a game than a sport] I’d play for the rest of my life and live happily ever after. Maybe I’d be better off with chess. Who knows, I’m pretty noncommittal at this point. As for a video game though, I’m still searching…