Something about Simon

This post - while touching the subject of "Killerspiele" lightly - is none of my rants. It's a post about one of my favourite hobbies: computer games. In this case about an adventure - or rather a series of adventures: "Simon the Sorcerer".

The first "Simon the Sorcerer"-adventure was one of the first adventures I played. I got the English version and it was extremely funny - very much like the books by Terry Pratchett I discovered a few years later.

Hero - if this he could be called - of the game was an 11-year-old boy named Simon who, after touching a magical book hidden in the attic of his home, found himself in a strange fantasy world. The interesting thing about Simon was that he was an obnoxious, foul-mouthed little brat. By the looks of it, this hasn't changed over the years.

The adventure itself was both funny and challenging and I loved it - especially after I got the English "Talkie"-version (as this, you see, was in a time when games did not have voice-overs by default).

There were a few scenes I was especially fond of - like the "spying mirror" (answering to the old fairy-tale question about "who's the fairest of them all" "well, it ain't you, that much is for sure"). Or the scene with the four wizards trying to act like normal country lads ("Oi bain't be seeing any wizards"). The answer one needed to give in order to get them to help actually was "When I move my mouse-pointer over you, it says 'wizards'.".

The story ended with Simon returning to our world - after defeating the evil sorcerer Sordid, as he was supposed to. On the road from the beginning to this end lay a lot of interesting and logical puzzles and a lot of strange people like the Swampling with his swamp stew, a two-headed ogre always arguing with himself, a were-frog druid and two rather stupid demons.

A few years later the second game came out. This was during a time when most games were produced in two versions: one on floppy disk and one on CD, because not everyone had a CD-drive then (today hardly anyone has a CD-drive, because DVD is the average). First I owned the floppy disc version of the game, later on I bought a bundle of "Simon the Sorcerer 1" and "Simon the Sorcerer 2" on CD. The second game was just as funny as the first one, even though things had changed in that fantasy world (in which Simon this time arrived with a dimension-travelling wardrobe [which he still owns in part 4]). The nice little village had grown into a large city, Calypso (the good wizard Simon was supposed to save in the first game) had opened a magical shop and the Swampling (who tortured Simon with his swamp-stew in the first game) had become the owner of a renown chain of fast food restaurants (resembling surely not by accident a certain chain of fast food restaurants with the trademark golden arcs).

Calypso had sent the wardrobe to fetch Simon, because his (Calypso's, that is) granddaughter had disappeared - probably kidnapped by Sordid. Someone (a wizard in training named "Runt") had brought Sordid back - but into a mechanical body, as Sordid was originally shoved into the lava by Simon in the first game. Now Sordid wanted both revenge and Simon's body.

Just like the first game which had a lot of jokes about fairy tales and fantasy stories, the second one featured strangely deformed, but recognizable characters (like Goldilocks who is a burglar and hunted by Papa Bear who's head of the police). The subtitle of the second game alone - The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe - was an allusion to "The Chronicles of Narnia", even though all three things (the dimension-travelling wardrobe, the wizard Calypso and the pet-lion of his granddaughter Alix) turn up in the game.

In the end Simon rescued Alix, but got caught by Sordid and Runt. Sordid returned into his body and Simon ended up in the mechanical body Sordid had inhabited.

The third part of "Simon the Sorcerer" is something fans rather tend to stay silent about. It was all in 3D (which was the rage then), but horrible. While Adventuresoft (the company behind part 1 and 2) showed with the Sci-Fi adventure "Floyd" that they were able to produce a good 3D point-and-click adventure, "Simon the Sorcerer 3D" - not produced by Adventuresoft - was abysmal. Apart from the simple fact that first-person perspective and an adventure only rarely fit together well (even though I've got fond memories of the adventure "Normality" which was completely from first-person perspective and felt a lot like an ego-shooter - even though there wasn't a weapon around), the game was bug-ridden and simply not up to the first two parts. Simon was brought back into his body and (as I've never finished the game due to the bugs, I'm checking an old magazine full of walkthroughs here) fought Sordid (who, it seems, had discovered modern technology by then) again. It's quite probable that character from the first two parts turned up there again (especially the Swampling has too much of a fan-base to be neglected).

Now, finally, a new part has been produced. "Simon the Sorcerer 4" does still have 3D - but three-dimensional characters in adventures instead of the old 2D bitmaps are standard these days. Luckily they have returned to the old ways as far as the controls are concerned. Simon may still be in 3D, but he's controlled with mouse-clicks, just as the hero (if such the by now about 16 years old boy can be called) of an adventure should be.

I've just bought the game this Saturday - and it came out on Friday -, but what I've seen (not much, admittedly, currently I'm trying to outsmart a bridge-troll, but I spent most of the evening working on a new version of one of my websites) is good. I've already met Little Red Riding Hood who turns out to be a feminist brat with a skate board and - after I'd solved the puzzle - black base-cap instead of the red one.

There seems to be a second version of Simon around (and could this be a new trick Sordid is trying out?) who is everything the 'real' Simon isn’t: polite, friendly, helpful, reliable ... or - in the words of Alix who seems to have had a relationship with him - boring.

I just can't wait to learn more about the story of this new part of one of my favourite adventures (as the other are more or less dead, it seems). I'll return to saving the world in "Oblivion" later on.

"Killerspiele" Update (The "I really wish the TV-stations would finally get something right" Edition)

Yes, it's still the same old story with the TV-stations.

Whenever they produce something about computer games these days, they work with the good old description "Killerspiele" and usually get about 40% and more of the actual content (and I don't mean things like the different point of views of psychologists about such games) dead wrong.

This Thursday I watched "Panorama", a usually quite good TV-magazine about political and social issues. They had - after the law, that should have forbidden "Killerspiele" for good, died a lonely dead - a short documentary about those games. This time they did not start off with "CounterStrike", but instead with "Call of Duty" which is set in World War II. Actually players only play on the side of the Allied Forces in this game, so you actually fight against the Nazis in the whole game, but "Panorama" seemingly didn't get it ... they pointed out that people play on the other side as well. (And even if it would be different, the point still is that it won't be the absolutely immortal Nazis against the helpless Allied Forces, both sides would be about as likely to win.) Then they went on showing scenes from "Grand Theft Auto San Andreas", which actually is a very bloodthirsty game with a lot of violence - but therefore it's strictly for adults -, to show how violent some 'ego-shooters' are (neglecting to mention the fact that by definition a game in which you can see your own character while playing isn't an ego-shooter - because in an ego-shooter you see the world from your characters perspective).

They are probably - as someone who started playing computer games before the graphics became something you could remotely call 'realistic' (you should see "Dark Forces" and "Heretic", the first ego-shooters I played, from a modern point of view, they look absolutely ugly and unrealistic), I can't judge that from an objective point of view - right about those games looking very bloodthirsty and violent to someone who has never played them before and is just watching. A lot of things in real life look a lot worse that they are. The way some people can bent their body looks quite painful to me, but to them it's not painful at all, from what I've heard.

In short: While some basic information was correct, most of it - especially those parts people really are interested in - are basically wrong. That is what I can't stand about the way journalists write about computer games these days: They don't do it right and they don't even try.

"Killerspiele" Update (The "There could well be a new party around" Edition)

During one of my posts in the MangaSzene-forum, I mentioned I wanted to create a new political party in order to work against the current politics.

The law I wanted to fight against, is by now clinically dead (it didn't pass the Bundestag, which would have been necessary to become a real law). But the whole "Killerspiele"-issue is not the only issue that is of interest to the normal people the politicians ignore. The "Deutsche Gamer Partei" could become a new strong party - "Die Grünen" already did it, after all. Maybe this new party could become a real force, since I've got a few ideas about it.

First of all, I want to put it down in our charter that no member of this party is allowed to take money from lobbyist groups. Whoever gets caught doing so, will immediately be kicked out of the party. The members of the "DGP" are supposed to serve all people in Germany - not just those who happen to have enough money to pay them.

This brings us to the second point. The "DGP" will have a website on the internet - it's high time the parties in Germany put more emphasize on the new media. On this website we'll have forum where everyone can post - this way the people in Germany can tell us, the party, what they really worry about and want to get done. After going through the threads, we will decide what the people want - and this will be what we'll fight for in the parliament. Of course, we can't do it the right way for everyone, but we'll at least try to find out what most people want.

The third point will be that the "DGP" will not allow itself to be 'used' in a coalition. We are, of course, ready to build up a coalition with other parties, but we will not be forced to agree to issues we know the people don't want solved this way (see the second point, right above). We'd rather always be opposition instead of - like the FDP has done in the past - become a little 'addition' to a major party that uses our votes in parliament to get what it wants.

This rather short statement of the new party might sound strange to you, but the fact alone that so many people react favourable to my short remark about creating a new party, was just as strange to me. Nevertheless I have to admit I have the mouth for it - and probably the mind, too. There's other people I've met over the internet who also would make formidable members of the party, especially in the Bundestag.

The way I see it, the modern media makes it more possible for all people in Germany to vote - or at least let the politicians know what they really think about - and the political parties should use this possibilities. What better to do?

There will be people writing very dumb stuff, of course, there will be people making fun of the whole forum on purpose, but even that is part of the process of democracy. Currently there's only very few places where people can make fun of the political parties: comedians are allowed to, mainly. There's a few satirical pictures and of course there's the more or less political correct jokes.

What is the problem with "political correctness"?

Even though in Germany the whole issue of "political correctness" is not as prominent as it seems to be in the States (from what you hear in the media or from people you know who were there), the phantom of "political correctness" nevertheless rears it's head here as well.

Basically, as a member of a group always discriminated in the past (the women), I like the idea of laws or at least guidelines protecting my right not to be discriminated against. But if you take a deeper look at the whole issue of "political correctness", you realize it's not the great thing it is supposed to be.

It's nice to tell people not to judge someone by his looks, gender or the colour of his or her skin. But what does that basically mean? It means people don't get it themselves that all those things do not define a person. So what should we be doing? We should, if you ask me, teach our children that those things don't matter. We should make sure we get to know someone first before we judge him or her. The problem in those sentences is the little word "should", because as long as not everyone is doing it, we'll always have discrimination. No amount of "political correctness" will change the human mind, it will only change the way they talk, hiding what is really on the people's mind.

And there's times when the pure idea of "political correctness" doesn't even help. Of course, we Germans tend not to speak bad about Israel, as there's the whole World War II issue - and a lot of people probably think we should keep very quiet in foreign politics -, but the really bad point is, we can't speak bad about Israel because of "political correctness". What the Israelis - or at least the government in Israel - does to the Palestinians, is bad, no matter who says it. They were there first. The war going on there is - if seen with the eyes of someone who's not from that area - absolutely pointless. I know, to them - all of them, actually - it's the Promised Land, but to me - and most people not currently fighting for it - it's just a great stretch of desert not able to sustain half the people living there. I could understand two parties fighting for, say, Bavaria. It's a nice place, there's a lot of fertile land, good climate and you can make tons of money with tourism. Yes, I really could understand people fighting about who has the right to live in Bavaria, but fighting for Israel or Palestine?

Finally "political correctness" makes it very difficult to say the truth sometimes. Just because in the past people went around saying that most foreigners were criminals, today people hush you when you say that one certain foreigner is a criminal. While the first statement about all foreigners (or most) being criminals surely is wrong, the second statement quite often might be right. There's foreigners committing crimes in Germany - and a lot of Germans doing it, too, of course.

I don't really think "political correctness" will help the world to change, because the seemingly happening changes are not from within. People don't stop saying something against certain minorities, because they believe it's wrong, they just stop because it is not "political correct". And what exactly is "political correct"?

The word itself suggests two things. There is something "correct" and it has something to do with "politics". So that would suggest that there are things in politics which are not correct at all. Such things might be discriminating remarks against women, foreigners or other groups in a country that are considered "minorities", even though that does not necessarily mean they're really a small part of society.

But "political correctness" has grown into a monster which watches us very carefully and tries to attack us every time we say something that could be seen as a discrimination of minorities - even if it's objectively correct.

So maybe the real problem by now is no longer the discrimination (although it's still a problem), but the corset we've created for society by obeying the rules of "political correctness".

Something New...

I've been working with "CoolPage", a program for creating websites, for quite some time (I've redone "Night-Shade" at least twice with it). But now I've found something better.

As I'm learning to be a webmaster, I've installed the "Dreamweaver" today. I also started working with it and it's great. Unlike "CoolPage" I immediately get the website, I don't have to export it first. I can also see the coding (html is a programming language and as a such has a code) and the design ("Dreamweaver" is some kind of 'what you see is what you get'-editor) simultaneously, which helps me to learn more about html, while at the very same time making the design of the page easier to do.

The most useful thing about immediately getting the website is that you can test it out completely, including the links, not just the looks. In addition "CoolPage" could not incorporate flash-animation into a website, "Dreamweaver" has no problem whatsoever with it. That's useful for me, because a) I've downloaded a lot of flash-games over the last couple of month and always wanted a real menu to call them up (I've build it this afternoon within about one hour and a half; including one homepage per flash-game) and b) I want to learn how to program flash-animation when I'm through with learning to be a webmaster.

I will have to put a lot of hours into learning how to do everything with this new program, that much is for sure, but I know it will be worth it - and I'll put off working out my second website ("Geschichtenschmiede") until I've mostly mastered the program. It'll look much better for it (and I might go over "Night-Shade" again as well) and I will feel much better about it, too.

"Killerspiele" Update (The "I can't believe what some people say" Edition)

Yes, here's yet another update about "Killerspiele". This one, surprisingly enough, was not sparked off by the politicians themselves - even though I do have a few words I'd like to say to Mr. Beckstein ... and he won't like them. This one comes from going through the MangaSzene-forum this afternoon.

There are two discussions about the topic going on in this forum, one in the "news"- and one in the "off topic"-section. The posts which I read and had to write about here were in the "news"-section. I can remember - from a thread I created myself in the old forum - that the person writing these posts is a member of a political party (the CDU even, if I remember it correctly). And I find it only normal for him to defend his party's view on the topic. That's not the problem I have with his posts. No, the problem is his arguments. One of them, especially.

Answering to my own post, he asked whether the discussion would be the same if it were about bullfights instead of "Killerspiele". This, to me, made him look absolutely mad. I think everyone has the right to stand on the topic of "Killerspiele" the way he or she wants. But comparing a computer program, in which the beings suffering are made up of bits and bytes and do neither lead a 'real' life nor feel pain, with a real-life 'game', which I find absolutely disgusting and which makes real animals suffer just for the people's amusement, is more than just a little bit odd.

The man - and I'm quite sure the user is male - is very aggressive which I can understand to a certain degree, as he's the only one defending the party. It's a good thing someone is doing it, because that gives the whole discussion balance, but the way he does it, he's not - from my point of view - doing his party a favour. Most of his arguments basically are from the deepest instincts (the kind of argument you use when you've realized there's nothing qualified you can say). I know those kinds of arguments and I have used them myself, in scientific essays I had to write during my time at university, in forums and even in my blog sometimes.

But he's overdoing it because, I suspect, he doesn't have a lot of real arguments to sustain himself. He doesn't seem very acquainted with computer games and so - unlike the rest of the users posting, who are fans - he's not well equipped with positive or negative examples.

Where he overdoes it a lot is whenever it comes to how horrible the games are. Yes, there is blood in those games and usually it's red. But the games he refers to are for grown-ups (people above the age of 18 are considered grown-up in Germany, as I've already written before) and I highly doubt they'll be easily impressed with red blood. Some of them are quite disgusting and there's a couple of them I surely don't want to play. But I doubt they have such a big influence on the people playing them. That's where the whole "Killerspiele"-issue starts for the parties.

All the bad things, they say, come from the brutal computer games. The same thing, a couple of years ago, was said about videos (that was a long time ago, before the DVD was even created). To most logical thinking people who go through the world with their eyes wide open, the suggestion alone that there's but one reason for the way society has started to decline is ridiculous.

The others who are arguing in that thread mostly claim it's because kids often grow up with nothing but TV, DVD and computer games as examples for their behaviour. That's the real problem, if you ask me. It's called socialisation and it's supposed to take place why a child is still young and easy to impress. That's when the parents should make sure the child learns about what is right and what is wrong in the society (as that differs from society to society). Of course, there's still no guaranty that there will be no people running amok, but maybe our society would be off a little bit better if more parents did that ... or if we finally got workers for the kindergarten who are actually trained to teach the kids right (unlike all other European countries, Germany does not have studied educationists working there).

There are countries around in which even more kids are sent to kindergarten early (in Germany most kids start at kindergarten at the age of 3, in France, for example, they can get in when they're 6 months old), but they don't have all those problems we have.

Another reason for the cold society in Germany might be our 'survival of the fittest' point of view when it comes to work and success. We are told that only the best will survive and that there's nothing really forbidden to achieve success (provided you don't get caught). Kids learn that, too, at school and practice it there. So we've got a lot more mobbing there than any other time in our history (for as long as we've had public schools).

Just because of computer games? I don't think so. Because there's so many unemployed people and kids are basically taught from their first day in school "you can either be the best, no matter through which means, or you can be a looser"? That sounds far more likely to me.

But back to the main topic and the way this user argues. He's always accusing the rest of us to be 'polemic' whenever it comes to the CDU and Mr. Beckstein - and sometimes we have been, we're not too blind to see this and I'm not too proud to admit it - and at the same time he uses even more polemic words when it comes to "Killerspiele" or other things.

Some of his arguments - a lot of them, actually - just don't really fit. Yes, the CDU traditionally has more voters in southern Germany (where I live as well), but that doesn't mean we're attacking the area as a such (and especially I would be attacking myself in that case...). So arguing that Munich is very modern just because there's a lot of nude - or at least top-less - sun-bathing people in the English Garden during the summer doesn't really work. There's a lot of sun in Munich in the summer, it's a very large city, there's a lot of students from all over Europe there and - finally - there's a lot of tourists coming to Munich. I highly doubt those sun-bathing people all vote for the CDU.

Surely people who have been in World War II do not find it amusing to see a game in which their grandchildren can 'play soldier' and rather realistically kill people with machine-guns or grenades. But I doubt those people will like the war movies any better - both brings up the same memories.

I can basically close this blog with the English translation of a motto I've read in another forum once, because here it seems to fit. But first I'd like to point out I like a good fight, provided the other one fighting it does it well. Now, here's the motto:

I don't go into intellectual fights with unarmed people.

"Oblivion" and "Killerspiele"

This isn't a regular "Killerspiele"-update - there's one right above this post. But I've been thinking about what that new law would mean for "Oblivion" which I currently play.

As I've already pointed out, "Oblivion" leaves a lot of freedom to the player. That doesn't just mean you can do a lot of different things in this world, it also means you can do a lot of evil things in this world.

There are four groups in "Oblivion", for one thing: Fighter's Guild, Magician's Guild, Thief's Guild (there's one of those in a lot of role-playing games, simply because fighter, mage and thief are the three basic character classes) and the Dark Brotherhood, which you could also call the Assassin's Guild (I'm translating the names of the groups from German here, they might be different in the English version of the game). None of them has a very high moral codex. You're usually not allowed to steal from or attack the other members (though that should be logical), but apart from that they mostly (the Magician's Guild seems to be a bit more caring about this) don't give a damn about whether or not you go around and steal from and kill other people. Especially the Dark Brotherhood (to which you can't belong without committing at least one murder) isn't a group for the 'good' guys.

Why I'm telling you this?

Well, the new law states that all games with "violence against humans or humanoid beings" will be forbidden - and most adversaries in "Oblivion" are human or humanoid (if you count goat-legged demons as humanoid). There's blood in the game and you can actually see the arrows sticking in your adversary - provided you really hit.

In addition to this the game does not punish you for killing innocents (provided, inside cities, you don't mind getting attacked by the guards who are always a lot stronger than you) and - if you want to be a member of the Dark Brotherhood - it even encourages it. You need to murder an innocent person for this (people who attack you don't count as innocent, but normal people living in the cities or outside them do count).

You're free to do as you want and a lot of people, including one of my ex-colleagues, like playing the bad guy even more than playing the good guy. I've got problems with being bad, even in a computer game, which probably shows my parents have taught me well when I was a kid.

So what the law actually wants, in regard to this game, is taking the freedom away. A game which allows (and in some ways even encourages) anti-social behaviour would be forbidden in the future, not because it forces people to be bad, but because it allows people to be bad.

In reality this freedom is known as 'free will' and has - if you're religious - been given to mankind by God himself, who obviously does not favour controlling His creation ... instead He'll judge us when He's ready.

It's strange to think that the political party with the "Christian" in their name does not want to give people the right to decide for themselves God gave us all.