Last week I mentioned that I picked up a copy of Age of Empires at a garage sale. It didn’t hold my attention. Felt like a Warcraft re-tread.

However when I got home I found that Aidan had a copy of Age of Mythology, built on the same engine, but with very nice new artwork. The game play still doesn’t excite me all at much, but on the very first level (actually level 0, as its the training level), there is a lovely little spot where a waterfall cascades down a granite face, to splash into a shallow turquoise pool, with water so clear you can see its sandy bottom. The spray glisten on the rocks, and water lillies sway in the rhythm of the current as the tide sweeps gracefully up the long narrow estuary to mix in the lagoon. Farther out you can see a school of bluefin tuna playing in the sparkling sapphire waters.

Why can’t more people make games like that? Not sure you can call it a game, more a toy, as I don’t want to have to build anything, or kill anybody, or worry about resource management, or struggle. I do that at work (except the killing people part), and feel sufficiently challenged by life’s various pursuits. Why can’t people build more toys, more Mediterranean paradises to be explored, and delighted in. Myst was kind of like that, except it was devoid of life (except that one butterfly), and you had to explore it from an awkward first person perspective. People, and animals can make a landscape interesting. Also I found Myst’s quasi-photorealism more interesting then actual photos would be, but less interesting then the hand draw quality of Age of Mythology.

Settlers II had an aspect of this for me, your could create bustling little villages where life (mostly commerce) were transacted, and people wandered hither and to across a network of paths you laid down. Still it was too telelogic for me, all that commerce, and pillage, and periodically some neighboring group of dark skinned savages would attach you (badly), and you were supposed to do something about it.

Maybe what I’m looking for is SimNationalPark, circa Ansel Adams, a fictious, but breath taking landscape, with the odd loon, or picnicking couple wandering across it. (but not something where I have to lay road, accommodate tourists, take tolls, and juggle which 6 languages my “Don’t feed the bears” signs are in)

And because its a toy, it doesn’t have to take over my entire computer, dominating all screen real estate, and IO. No reason why I can shrink my window to the point where all I can see is that one bird’s nest, I shouldn’t have to care about what else is going on. (I actually in one of my crazier moments went digging out in AofM to see if there was some obvious way to just extract that single 1inx1in scene from the game. Predictably there wasn’t)