Bluejo's Journal

What I've been doing -- with thoughts on computer games
It's been a funny sort of week. Rysmiel's away, and Zorinth has had exams, and it's been incredibly cold. I've been feeling sort of tired and sort of restless and not like doing anything in particular. I haven't written anything at all. I've spent too much time doing nothing online. I've also read a lot.

I also played Civ yesterday, and conquered the world (except my protectorate of Canton) and got to Alpha Centauri. My economy wasn't great, and there was a time when all my good cities were building city walls and selling them again, and my newly conquered ex-Roman and ex-French cities were selling their city walls, which they no longer needed under Pax Jo, and I wondered how they felt about it. I mean, the people in my cities had never had city walls, and they considered that building them every year, and having a great party tearing them down was the least they could do for the Empire, and rather fun. But the people in ex-Rome and ex-France had walls with tradition. They'd been there a while. They accepted the idea that city walls implied enemies, and now the world was utterly at peace, and tearing down the walls was a symbol of that peace, but on the other hand they were used to going up there for picnics and to see the view, they didn't think of them as protection, they thought of them as historical landmarks. They tore them down anyway, because they didn't have any choice, but they resented the conquerors a little for making them, even though we were bringing them the benefits of temples and libraries and cathedrals and universities and mass transits.

I told Zorinth some of this when he asked how my game was going. He thinks I'm nuts.

All the same, when my economy was back in shape, and I was building my spaceship, I allowed that they might have a point and benevolently let the ex-French and ex-Romans build their walls back.

I have a great computer game called "Lords of Midnight". It's not a PC game, in fact I have a Spectrum emulator especially to run it. It's a game where you go around the countryside (in four colour graphics) recruiting lords, and gathering armies, and defeating the dark lord, or more usually, being defeated by the dark lord. There's nothing to it but some landscape and some people and evil armies coming against you. The people consist of names and stats of how afraid they are and how tired they are. Most people think it's a strategy game. It takes up 48k. I love it, because I love the dialogue -- not the dialogue on screen, because there isn't any, the dialogue in my head. I actually made myself cry playing it once, when we were making a last stand in Thimrath, and Luxor the Moonprince made a speech to the surviving lords (Thimrath the Fey and the Utarg of Utarg and Farflame the Dragonlord and Lord Grarg) saying that the memory of good would not utterly perish while he had such brave companions to stand beside him in the face of peril.

In some of Zorinth's games the characters actually do talk. I bet they only say "Let's play sch-oo-ul" and "My name is Rosebud" like a very disappointing doll I had once. You see, all my other toys would say whatever you wanted them to, just like Lords of Midnight.

I had a very cool phone call with my aunt this afternoon. Some family stuff, some talk about the book, mostly just chatting. I miss her. I wish she wasn't so far away.

And Zorinth and I went out for lunch to celebrate finishing his exams, and then I bought him some of the Discworld books he was missing and needed for his re-read. He'd read them from the library originally, but they don't have the ones he needs in the library here, and anyway, if he's going to re-read them he may as well own them. I almost bought Trollope's He Knew He Was Right for myself, but it was $17 and had a dirty mark on the back cover of the only copy they had in Indigo, so I didn't.