Net Family News: Online-Safe Resources for Kids and Families

Dear Subscribers:

This is a continuation of our 11/16/01 piece "Gamers on games," featuring the views of Jake (15) in California, Glen (15) in Utah, and Sean (19) in Florida. We felt their comments - on the phone and in email - were too thoughtful and insightful not to be made available to you. For example, see some interesting thoughts below from Glen on anonymity and friendship and on gender in games. (A caveat on the links below: Some are provided by the gamers themselves, some by us. The latter, found via Internet search, just seemed the most useful and informational to us gaming novices; they may not be the definitive locations from a gamer's perspective!)

Jake's '3-5 faves'

On a computer ("in no particular order")

Fallout series (Fallout, Fallout Tactics, Fallout 2) - "The first game begins in Vault 21. You are sent out 80 years after the nuclear fallout to find a replacement for your water purification chip. The world is now a strange world, full of mutants and danger. Great great great great games (I haven't really played through Fallout Tactics and 2 yet, but from what I've played, they are still great)."

Unreal Tournament - "one of the cooler first-person shooter games. Also has some great modifications like Strike Force"

Quake III: Arena - "The only reason I like Q3A is because of some of the mods and upcoming mods like Urban Terror and Bid for Power."

Editor's Note: Jake mentioned "mods" several times in our interview, and here he does again - so what is a mod?! We found a great explanation at Planet Namek, which says that a mode is "any piece of software that changes the original game in some shape or form" - from the game's layout to the way characters look to every aspect of the game (with "TCPs" or "total conversion packs").

Baldur's Gate series - Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur's Gate 2, and Baldur's Gate 2: The Throne of Baal

RPG (role-playing games) - "Games with thinking are cool. Based off the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules, in the Forgotten Realms."

StarCraft - "one of the all-time great strategy games"

Diablo II - "Although this game is linear (not as linear as Diabo 1, but still the same concept), it can still be quite satisfying and fun. And like most games, it can get boring after a while."

Favorite console games ("no order, and there are tons")

Chrono Trigger
"absolutely classic RPG ["role-playing games"] for SNES [for "Super Nintendo Entertainment System"], proving that retro games still kick total butt"

Final Fantasy series (up to FF7)
"another great RPG game"

Gunstar Heroes
"another fabulous [Sega] Genesis game"

Streets of Rage series (1-3)
"oh yes, more retro goodness on Genesis"

Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
"probably the best Zelda game"

Bomber Man (I'd say 5 was the best)
"good fun with bombs and friends"

Raiden
"big-time retro fun"

NFL Blitz
"Football meets violence. It's like the XFL, but cooler, better, and it actually worked."

Glen's favorite games (all online)

StarCraft - "a science-fiction game set many years into Earth's future. It takes place many light-years away from Earth, however with some terrans who went out to colonize new worlds. There are three different species: the Terrans (nomadic people possessing flying buildings and nuclear missiles); the Protoss (a race of religious warriors who use their minds to power their ships and kill the enemy); and the Zerg (a species that is completely biological - their buildings are simply mutated drones; they evolve very quickly). I love this game because, one, it is science-fiction and I'm a sci-fi fantasy nutcase and, two, its great strategy, offering a great deal of control and options. It also has many different and new ideas, like the different species, each with its own special weapons and abilities, making you use a different strategy for each."

WarCraft 2 - in the style of the classic fantasy world of elves, dwarves, orcs, men, wizards, and dragons. It is set in the world of men, which the orcs are attempting to invade via the dark portal, a gateway between the two different worlds. You an play either the orcs or the humans/elves. Orcs are a race of strong and warlike creatures with really big armies, armed with catapults, battleaxes, steel fists, and other similar weapons. They are assisted by goblins, dragons, dead humans, elves, and other frightful creatures. The humans are like most humans in fantasy - strong, great, noble men of old with only rudimentary technology. They have flying machines, mages, rangers (upgraded elfen archers), and knights. They are of course aided by the elves, as well as dwarves, gnomes, and griffins. I like this game for many of the reasons I liked the above-listed reasons for StarCraft, but the variety isn't there.

Sid Meir's Alpha Centauri - another strategy game of my choice, it is also set in the future with a group of terran colonists but that's where its similarity to the StarCraft storyline ends. Seven different colony pods are dropped from the spacecraft that brought the colonists to Alpha Centauri. In each of these pods is a different faction of people, each with a different agenda. All have to contend with the odd fungus growth that is all over the planet. This strange fungus is actually semi-sentient and uses a creature called mind worms to protect itself. These mind worms are voracious and will eat right into the human and lay its eggs. They are very hard to stop because they psionically attack their victim and fill them with paralyzing irrational fear. The seven factions are: The Gaia's Stepdaughters (led by lady Gaia, they're extreme environmentalists); The University of Planet (a group of people devoted to science and research led by Academician Provost Zacharov); The Human Hive (led by Chairman Yang, these people try to run their society like that of an insect colony); The Spartans (a group of people, led by Col. Corazon Santiago, who believe in getting what they want by violence and being ready for anything); The Peacekeepers (people who want to keep the peace and enforce the original UN charter; for this mission their leader is Praven Lal); Morgan Industries (the capitalists of the Planet, whose leader is CEO Nwabuda K. Morgan, they believe in acquiring wealth); The Believers (led by Sister Miriam, these people are religious fanatics who believe in the teachings of Christ but don't always live and act by them). These factions all compete for dominance on the Planet. Each has certain strengths and weaknesses that the player must lean to utilize or deal with.

Worms World Party (here's a review ) - the newer version of Worms. The original version was called Worms Armageddon. This game I like because it is funny and offers a number of options. You get to blow the other worms up in amusing ways and you can play it alone or use it as a great party game. The game is actually fairly simple in principle: take out your opponents' worms with your weapons of mass destruction before they take you out. There are a variety of weapons available to the combatants. There is the bazooka, the primary weapon of the game. It is very versatile and can be used in most circumstances. There is the Robin Hood bow, which delivers two arrows into your opponent with such force as to knock him flying. There is my personal favorite, the holy hand grenade, the game's most powerful single explosive weapon. There are also a sheep launcher that shoots out an exploding sheep; the mini-gun, an automatic weapon that shoots the enemy dead; and the skunk, which is dropped and sprays poisonous gases until it self-destructs. There are all kinds of special ways to play the game, e.g., instant-death mode, double-explosive power weapons, etc., etc.

Sims - Sim City 3000 and 2000, Sim Copter, Star Trek Star Fleet Command (1 and 2), Final Fantasy VII (there are others, but I won't list them here). Star Trek Star Fleet Command is a game in which you must command a starship. You do it from a third-person angle, and you watch from above as your ship obeys your orders as you complete the missions given you by Star Fleet Command to earn prestige. This prestige is the currency with which you buy newer, better vessels to do more interesting missions. Many of the missions have to do with battle, but a few do not, such as one where the basic idea is simply to beam an ambassador to the planet below and not crash into it. It is a fun game and I love it since it is Trek and I'm a hard-core trekkie, and also because it is so different from most mission shooters.

RPGs - Final Fantasy VII is a well-known game all over the world. It is a role-playing game and is usually for PlayStation, however there is a computer version as well. You are Cloud, a mercenary for hire, and you're hired out by a group called Avalanche. Some people are devoted to destroying the Mako reactor that is apparently sucking the life right out of the Earth for energy. I don't even understand everything about this game. I like this game because you must solve its challenges and because it has such a fascinating story to it.

IM and email games - IM and email are related but used in totally different ways. I could never put the same detail into an IM game that I could into an email game, but in the IM game you get more action, and the reactions of other people are much quicker and can be reacted to more quickly.

First-person shooter games - I like shooter-type games also. Two of my favorite games that I play often are Quake 2 and Doom, which are shooter-type games with nice weapons. I like them because they are difficult, and they give me a nice outlet for my pent-up emotions, a place where I can just pick up a gun, use a little bad language, and blast the guts right out of the enemy.

More comments from Sean on specific games

Operation Flashpoint - "Takes place in the '80s, and you're in Soviet Russia on a special-ops team. I played it in a store, and a Vietnam vet saw us playing it and said it was very realistic. You get hit once, and you're dead." Is it more interesting than a first-person shooter game? we asked. "It is a first-person shooter game, but much more cool because of the environment.
"In Quake 2, you just shoot whatever moves, but games that take strategy are different. In them, sometimes it's not a good idea to kill the guy. Some games actually promote not killing, because that can cause problems, for example if you're hiding and don't want to give away your position. You need to use stealth thinking."
Metal Gear Solid 2 (also an article at GameSpot and the game maker's site) "is another interesting game. It's about terrorism - takes place in NY and includes the World Trade towers. The designers had actually been working on it for about 3 years before September 11. They took out the World Trade Center part and are coming out with it [this week]. It starts out on the George Washington Bridge, and there's a nuclear weapon on a boat in the harbor. It runs on PlayStation 2 and they have plans for an Xbox version."
Also great is Silent Hill 2 (also GameSpot's page) - "The director of the game took inspiration from movies like Fight Club. It really will scare you - it's like a nightmare world, successful because the sound effects are what will get you freaked out. The music is literally dread-ful. stops for no reason. I love it. I like it because the game is so successful at what it's trying to do.
"Some developers have the goal of making players scared after they turn off the system - that's a new trend now. They've dubbed the genre 'survival horror' - the main plot of the game is just to survive." It's not "violence for violence's sake? we asked. "Right It requires some intelligence."
The Age of Empires (fan site and gamer maker's site) "takes place in Medieval times - you collect food, wood, stone, gold, take out enemy. You have to think really hard. Whenever I get done with this long game, I'm exhausted."
Two others - "GameCube has more of a lighted-hearted feel to the games [designed for it]. Some people call them childish games, but I don't agree. Sometimes those games can be the most fun ones. A couple of examples are Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin - very colorful, nowhere geared toward violence.... They're adventure games. And Pikmins is a strategy game too."

On where gamers get their news and community

"A lot of gamers use either magazines or Web sites for news on games. Magazine-wise, there are some great magazines such as Next Generation and Game Pro. As for Web sites, there is ign.com and GameSpot.com. These Web sites are like online magazines with up-to-date news, information, and reviews of new games. They both are very reliable.

"Community-wise, it's hard to find a community on just the subject of gaming alone. Since gaming has become so specific on genres and styles, it's hard to find one site with a community on gaming in general. One Web site, though, has a huge community of games (console and PC) and a huge multiplayer community. GameSpy.com is probably the best example. The site may be broken down into other Web sites (such as their PlanetQuake, Planet Half-Life and Planet Unreal sites ), but they have a pretty good community on just gaming and multiplayer gaming in general. By the way, ign.com does have a forum community (I don't visit often, but I hear it is rather extensive on the subjects discussed on those forums)."

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Other comments from Glen...

On anonymity and friendship with fellow gamers

"I almost always email with fellow gamers since it's so hard to get friends to do it with you, especially if there is a specific time you need them to [join in]. I often become friends with some of these [fellow gamers], though. Those that I [do games with] I can get to know quite well, and for some reason they are usually friendlier than people you meet at other places. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm only there in words and not in person."

On gender in games

"There are female gamers online, although there are not nearly as many of them as there are male gamers. Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which - I'll go on as a female gamer sometimes just for the heck of it and I have female characters on the multiplayer email sims. Nobody takes it too seriously. For the most part your sex isn't a big issue with these games.... I think there are fewer female gamers online for the same reason that I believe that there are fewer female gamers period. Most of them don't seem to enjoy games very much - don't ask me why."