Playtest

We’ve just had a long weekend down in this part of the world due to public holiday celebrating the birthday of our erstwhile monarch who curiously isn’t even a citizen of our country and lives on the other side of the world, and also has her birthday on a completely different day to the one celebrated. The curious outcome of a constitutional monarchy not yet quite over its colonial roots no doubt.

In any case I had a bit of extra time off, and given that the weather outside was strongly encouraging indoor pursuits, I decided that some extended computer game play sessions were in order. Particularly I finally got around to playing Bethesda’s Oblivion, which I picked up a few months ago but haven’t got around to yet.

I should point out that I played its predecessor Morrowind a lot, both for my own enjoyment, and as I analysed it for my Honours thesis. Needless to say, I am very accustomed to the way Morrowind plays, and the feeling and experience of playing it. I think it is this familiarity that caused Oblivion to feel kind of strange at first – it’s similar enough to Morrowind that I expected the experience of play to be like Morrowind, yet different enough that things kept happening in ways that were unexpected and jarring. This was particularly true of the combat mechanics, gone were the fairly simple tactics at play in Morrowind (do more damage more quickly than your opponent), in were all sorts of being knocked back and around, movement, and timed blocking. And lets not mention the changes to the GUI menus, which have me constantly clicking around looking for things where they ’should’ be.

Though I’ve gotten used to it now, I think these misplaced expectations are a good example of some of the things I’ve been writing about with regards to the importance of familiarity in videogame play. Importantly the expectations I had about Oblivion weren’t some sort of consciously held belief about how the game would play, I just sort of implicitly expected to be able to stand there and belt my opponent with my sword, ala Morrowind.

Speaking of the thesis, I believe my work plan to have it finished some time in August has been approved. Of course this will mean that I’ll remain too busy to post much here, which of course is largely the previous situation for the last 12 months extended anyway.