Trigger Happy
Now, I have conscientiously played these games in the interests of research, and I find them exceptionally tedious. Even so, God games are highly successful. Many people who aren’t at all interested in any other sort of videogame—such as the high-speed, colorful action experiences of racers or exploration games— will often confess a sneaky addiction to Civilization or Age of Empires. Some people simply prefer the challenge of fiddling relaxedly with a process to that of a high-speed test of reactions.
It seems, anyway, from the method by which God games model dynamic processes, that they are not primarily about cities or tribes or any of the putative content. They are process toys. Time is transformed from prison to Play-Doh. Perhaps the fantasy appeal is really about a chance to observe the world over a longer, more sober chronological span than that of a single human life. But if the classic shoot-’em-up or platform game is triumphantly individualistic—one hero against the hordes—the God game is quite the opposite. The individual doesn’t matter. He or she may as well be an ant (in SimAnt, the individual actually is an ant). The gameplayer doesn’t count as an individual: he or she is, after all, God. What matters is the inexorable march of the corporate machine. There
68
