Articles
 by Jeff Strand August 16, 2002 |
The
Seriously Whacked Point of View “Real by Jeff Strand |
And the Seriously Whacked
Point of View is back! The contract negotiations were heated, but
in the end my demands were met, and I should be receiving my special
edition of The Longest Journey (with personalized dialogue
and an altered wardrobe for April Ryan) in the mail any day now.
To be honest, I haven’t
been playing many adventure games these past few weeks, unless you
count the comical adventure game of trying to renegotiate my credit
card rates. I got this card when I was in college and so it was equipped
with Dumb College Guy rates, designed to prey upon individuals during
a time in their life when financial planning consists of buying the
cheap beer so you can afford to dry your laundry. (Obviously, this
decision is not applicable three weeks before any visit home.)
In the years since, however,
I have gotten credit cards with decent rates, enabling me to rack
up immense debt without guilt. After leaving my Dumb College Guy card
unused for quite some time, I decided to give the company a call and
ask them to lower my rates to match my Not A Complete Deadbeat cards.
I called and explained
that my current rate was [ridiculously high number] and that
their competition’s rate was [substantially lower number],
and that I’d like to get my rate lowered. The friendly gentleman on
the other end assured me that this would be no problem, and typed
for a moment on his keyboard.
“Would you accept
[rate that’s not even one full percentage point less than my current
ridiculously high rate]?”
“Uh…is that the
best you can offer?”
“No, I’m just asking
if you would accept that. I can go lower.”
“Yeah, I’ll need you
to go lower.”
“I can offer you [rate
that’s only a smidgen of a fraction less than the previously quoted
rate]. Is that okay?”
“I guess, but my other
card is [rate that even a complete mathematical dullard could tell
was much, much less than the rate I was being quoted].”
“Well, then, I can
offer you [yet another absurdly small reduction in the rate].
Is that okay?”
“The thing is, it
needs to be equal to my other cards or I won’t use it.”
“Well, sir, that’s
why I’m trying to negotiate with you.”
I finally got tired of
this conversation tree puzzle and just said “sure” to a
rate that was higher than my other cards. At which point the representative
tried to convince me to do a balance transfer. I selected “no”
from the list of available options.
“May I ask why you’re
not interested?”
You would think that somebody
who stares at credit card stuff all day would be able to figure out
that transferring your debt from a lower rate to a higher rate is
a poor financial decision. Or maybe he was looking through my records
and saw that I once paid more money calling the hint line for Freddy
Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist than I’d spent on the game itself
and figured I was an easy mark. Either way, I finally solved the puzzle,
got the rate I wanted, and swapped my balance, thus guaranteeing me
approximately 2.7 telemarketing calls per day from the other credit
card company. And I didn’t even have to consult a walkthrough.
See, some of us have to
take our adventure gaming wherever we can find it. A normal person
might be upset when they can’t figure out how those ants are getting
into their house, but for a dedicated adventure gamer, it’s a hunt-the-pixel
puzzle! We have to search for keys all the time in adventure games,
so why not relish the opportunity to find our car keys in real life?
(I know a lot of you hate timed puzzles, so don’t try this one before
work.)
At the same time, real
life could stand to take the lead of adventure games, particularly
where the “save” and “restore” functions are concerned.
There’s really no excuse for not being able to save your game before
you go into a job interview, or on a first date, or eat the Mystery
Paste in the cafeteria.
I was thinking about save
games because my sister recently let me borrow her Game Boy Color
and I was playing Quest For Camelot, a role-playing game based
on that animated movie you never went to see. It’s actually a moderately
entertaining little game, but I was surprised to discover that your
character has to “pay” to save her game. If you don’t have
enough gems, you can’t save.
This is a problem for people
like me who are married adults. If you’re a kid and your mom calls
you to dinner, you can probably say “But Mom, I need to collect
thirty more gems or Kayley will lose her grappling hook!” and
not have it seem really, really sad. I can’t do this. When it’s time
to go grocery shopping with my wife, my butt is going grocery shopping
with my wife regardless of how many knights I’ll have to re-kill when
we return.
I realize that in a game
with action elements, allowing for unlimited saves can take away a
lot of the challenge. What they should have done is include a feature
where players fill out a personality profile beforehand. If you’re
a college student, forget it…you probably shouldn’t be allowed to
save at all. Children under 18 would answer a series of questions
about how mean their parents are and their save-game privileges would
be determined based upon that. Married adults like myself would be
allowed to save within a sixty-second notice, whereas if you have
children, the game would be constantly saving your progress automatically,
and also routinely give you back any damage points you lost due to
external distractions.
So really, adventure games
have a lot to learn from real life, and vice-versa. Until next time,
may your real life adventure game puzzles not be those damn sliding
tile ones.
Jeff Strand’s latest novel, MANDIBLES, was just released as an
e-book from Double Dragon Publishing. It’s about oversized killer
ants. You know you want to buy a book about oversized killer ants.
To see the cover and read an excerpt with no peer pressure to buy
anything, such as a really cool book about oversized killer ants,
visit http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com.
