gaming – Grey Patterson

Diane Duane

Not a first-time read, but apparently I’ve never written up a review, so I’m finishing up a comfort-reread by talking up this book that I really enjoy.

The general setting here is a vague “near-future” kind of thing; having been published in 2010 or so, I think it’s pegged as being approximately 2015, but the technology is all vague enough that it still works as “vaguely near-future.” It’s recognizable concepts – we all get the idea of video games, of massively-multiplayer games in particular, and VR. It’s just turned up a little bit; the sort of voice control that we always hoped the Siris of the world would turn out to be, VR that uses hand-wavey technology to explain how it can be a fully tactile experience, and the hilariously-named “hyperburst memory” that is never even remotely explained. It works; that’s just silly enough a name that I can totally see someone coming up with something genuinely innovative and world-changing… and then naming it that.

Past that, this absolutely feels like a book written by someone who tinkers with computers for fun sometimes. There’s enough of a grasp of the concepts, enough talking about programming and thinking about tech, to make that clear; but it’s also just as clear that Duane is a really good writer, because she’s given it all a much more visual, visceral sense. I’m more than willing to accept the hand-waving science fiction aspect, because it means I get to skip past the boring bits of debugging that I am oh-so-familiar with, and instead get to imagine a world where the tech tools are to the point that it is visually interesting.

Lastly, I like most of the characters in the book. There’s some fun interactions present between Dev, the CEO of the game company, and Delia, the reporter sent to interview him — since we’re switching back and forth between their viewpoints, we get to see her suspicion that he can’t really be like that, and then get his own perspective on the fact that, yeah, he kinda is just like that, but also a lot more of why and how he is.

Overall, I just love this book. I did mention that it’s a comfort-read, didn’t I? A book doesn’t become one of my “I’m stressed and need to wind down” go-tos by being bad. Check it out.¹

This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩

I may or may not have spent four hours yesterday playing Cities: Skylines. It was, to me, a worthwhile use of my time.¹ The game is very enjoyable, and I’m planning to spent a lot more time playing it over the next week.²

Seriously, go check it out.³ The game’s really nice, looks great, and runs on approximately every operating system.⁴ I had fun gaming on my MacBook⁵ – it is what I refer to as a beast of a machine, because it’s got the best specs you can cram into a MacBook without doing your own modifications, and it runs the game at near-maxed settings with ease. Sure, the fan is screaming and the battery percentage drops faster than a lead weight in a vacuum, but I’m gaming on a laptop, so I really can’t expect more.

I’ve got one or two issues with the game, but they don’t come up until later – the most noticeable is the same thing that my favorite “reviewer” mentioned when he talked about it – there’s no real way to lose. No disasters, and no negative levels on the RCI demand.⁶ Now, I’m not really complaining about the lack of disasters – I was always too frustrated by them in SimCity 4, because the learning curve on that game was too steep for me to ever really get off the ground. Cities is distinctly easier – more ‘casual,’ I’d say. And I like that lot.

Oh, right, I said I had one other issue, although it’s not technically an issue with the game. I wanted to tinker with the sandbox-style settings, so I used the built-in mods⁷ to give myself unlimited money and unlock everything. Except… the ‘unlock everything’ one only pushed the population numbers to max just long enough to hit those unlocks. Plenty of things were still locked due to not having hit their prerequisites, and that really bothered me. Mostly because I just wanted to build the fusion reactor, and I couldn’t! It was very tragic.

Oh well, I got to build a space elevator at least, so I’m still happy. It’s a good game, and now I’m going to go write a paper so I can play some more. Priorities!

I don’t do much gaming anymore because I’m so very busy, and I tend to find lower-time-useage ways to get rid of my stress. ↩
Some people party over spring break. I am not one of those people. ↩
Today the link is to the Humble Store, instead of AmazonSmile. Humble has a lovely bit in their checkout process where they split the proceeds of the sale between the developers, a bit to ‘keep the servers running,’ and the rest to charity. Plus, you get Steam keys! ↩
I believe it’s listed as being compatible with Linux, though I’m not sure which distros. If you’re running linux, though, I figure you’re smart enough to make it work. ↩
If you’re going to be gaming on a MacBook, though, go into Steam’s settings and disable the in-game overlay, then quit out of Steam, then use Activity Monitor to force quit the inevitable bits of Steam that locked up instead of closing, then reopen steam, then launch the game. Otherwise, it’ll crash instantly. Shoutout to Valve, you’re doing good work over there. ↩
Okay, there’s clearly negative numbers, but they aren’t visible to the user, they’re just used to run the internals. I can tell by the way the demand for everything says ‘zero’ but the map says ‘all these buildings are being abandoned because nobody wants them.’ ↩
Somehow that feels wrong to say. ↩