Gumshoes of the world, Untie!

It's those little incomprehensible differences between the sexes that get me. What better way to say "I love you" than playing a computer game where you try to kill each other? Love is all about making yourself vulnerable, like when you only have a revolver and your partner has an uzi. It is Mr. and Mrs. Smith without the secret agent training. My wife doesn't see things this way, so I am often forced to kill computer-generated wood-elf armies when I could be killing my wife's hand-picked elite fighting force of undead hordes.

I finally figured out why she refused to play games like Warcraft 3 with me. It was not simply that she disliked computer games; it was because she wanted to make me so desperate that I would play any computer game with her, even if it had a girly phrase like "Nancy Drew" in the title. I won't lie to save my reputation. I grudgingly admit that it is a fun game.

However, what I really wanted to comment on is "Gumshoe online." You see, my wife didn't start off my slow descent into womanness territory by saying, "Why don't we play Nancy Drew?" She started by saying, "IF you really want me to play a game with you, let's play a detective game." She appealed to my sense of frugality: "The 1st game is free." It starts you off with a rippling masculinity private detective, but he behaves so stupidly that you will play Nancy Drew out of desperation.

Now don't get me wrong. I grew up playing the King's Quest series, a fun fantasy adventure game where a lovable King Graham wandered the countryside and, in MacGyveresque fashion, always found a use for seemingly pointless objects. Sure, to the untrained eye, a tambourine seems useful only for goofy praise and worship music--but it can actually scare a life-threatening animal! Shazam! Every object that is not bolted to the ground will end up serving a useful purpose. It's the sort of world that would be an atheist's nightmare: "Look, I just found this smelly old fish that enabled me to save the entire bee colony from a bear! Are you trying to tell me the fish just happened to get there by chance, silly atheist person?" So, in principle, I can handle a game in which you start off with nothing but your wits.

Yet for some reason, it really bothered me that Gumshoe Online has the same basic premise of your owning nothing. You begin the game with an office. The only things within this office are an empty desk and the air you breathe. Now for your first challenge: you have to sneak into a house with a locked door. You'd think that maybe, seeing that you are a detective, you would own a prybar, or at least know how to find a store that sells prybar. No. You need to walk around town a little, look around, and notice that someone has just left a conveniently placed prybar lying on the ground. And while I’m on the subject, what kind of freak private eye doesn’t even own a flashlight? What kind of freak private eye has to wander around in houses looking to permanently "borrow" someone else's lockpicks because he doesn't have his own?

Forced to be self-critical, I wondered whether I was employing a double-standard, blaming the Gumshoe Online game for criticisms just as applicable to King's Quest: aren’t both characters just wandering around looking for objects they ought already to own? Happily, C. S. Lewis convinced me I was perfectly justified, so the self-doubt is gone and the merciless mockery can continue. Lewis talks about different forms of “realism”: “realism of content” refers to works which depict a likely (or “realistic”) situation—for example, it is “realistic” for private eyes to exist. However, there is also “realism of presentation,” which refers to works which may depict an unlikely situation (you are a ruler of a fantasy kingdom and wandering around to find your castle that an evil wizard has stolen) but may realistically depict how a person might behave under those circumstances. The real difference between the two games is that they observe two different kinds of realism. King’s Quest has “realism of presentation”—if my kingdom and castle were kidnapped along with all my personal possessions, then like King Graham, I’d behave by going crazy in the kleptomaniac department and hoping to pick up something useful. Gumshoe Online is trying to have “realism of content” (a private eye with an office) but then makes him incapable of functioning in a realistic way—such as owning office supplies. The game must contradict itself in order to instantiate itself. (I don’t know what that means, but it sounded good, so I figured I’d write it.) If that crisis in the game's self-identity doesn't bother you, then by all means, play the game, it's not bad.

I did learn from the experience that, even if I thought the game had these fundamental aesthetic flaws, it was fun to play a game with my wife. Since then, we’ve been playing the Nancy Drew game, where you also have to go around picking up objects, but since you don’t have an office, and the winter snow storm means that you’re trapped in the haunted mansion, it does not merit my indignation. Except I really wish it were a Hardy Boys Case Files mystery instead.