CHENNAI: Alright readers. This week, there’s no time to discuss PUBG (except for this tiny update that season 3 is out for the mobile version, and that I’m extremely unhappy that I didn’t make it to the diamond rating last season). Let’s have some real talk. There’s this entire section of video games in the ‘serious’ genre that’s hardly discussed in the mainstream. What are these serious games? Do they really take the smile off of your face?
Imagine yourself playing a game with extreme concentration. Sometimes, concentration is not just when your hand is constantly on the controls. Imagine a game that makes you screw up your eyes and think of a possible solution for minutes at a time. It’s not like you can even write it down to figure out the answer — math would be simpler, you’d think. If this ever happens to you — give the game a ranking of 3/10 on the ‘Seriousness’ spectrum. This constant (although less intense) seriousness in Portal — a game that deals exclusively in physics-based puzzles, is why I have so far failed to finish the game.
There could be another scenario, where you’re clearly playing a video game and people around you realise it. They try to engage in a conversation with you and you say “Don’t interrupt me, I’m playing a SERIOUS game”. They say “Haha, serious game is an oxymoron. You must be seriously joking right now”. In reply, you turn the screen to their ignorant faces to display “Total War: Attila”, a strategic, but still casual wargame. You explain to them that it uses real-time tactics, and the complexity of the economic and political decisions you take in the game.
Explain about the faction choices you make, and the danger faced by your decentralised settlements whose productivity could be hindered by other factions. You could start waxing about the game’s replayability — but the people around you are already completely lost. If you play ‘Total War’ and the like, rank yourself capable of handling 6/10 seriousness.A full 10/10 means that the game is 100% purposeful, 0% entertainment — like the idea of the completely virtual world ‘Second Life’ or even a Medical Simulator, which is beyond my understanding. So you see, video games are the solution even when you’re looking for the opposite of fun.