He makes the point that multiplayer is unique to our medium, so why not celebrate that? Investigate it in relation to meaningful games or “art games” as some call them. I think it’s an interesting idea, so I’ve been mulling it over, and I guess what I’ve come up with is not so much a counterpoint, but more of an abstraction as to the “why.” And that starts with the best case for a meaningful single player game I’ve ever come across: golf.

I’ve talked about this very subject before on here, but I think I’ve come up with something a bit more applicable to games. You see, I started playing golf a long time ago at a very young age and there is nothing multiplayer about golf. It is the most single player “real life” game I’ve ever played. Instructors, mentors, pros or anyone who’s played long enough will tell you it’s a battle between you and the course. Of course it’s more than that. It’s an internal battle as well. To withstand the unforgiving and impossible physics of it all you’ve got to keep your eye on the horizon, unfazed by the weather, wind and that last shank into the woods. Things will go wrong, and if you’ve ever seen a tournament on television you’ll notice most of the pros drive it into the trees more often than you’d think. But somehow they keep their composure, line up their shot, and make it out of their with a chance for par.

I consider golf to be the hardest game [I don't like to consider it a sport] on the planet. Not the most athletic, the most strenuous, [that's for sure] or even the most competitive, but certainly the most challenging. The difficulty is baked into the laws of physics. “Get this tiny ball into that tiny hole 450 yards away in 4 strokes with this piece of metal.” Of course you won’t get it in there in 4 strokes without years of practice, and even then making par is a victory over the course. By scoring par on any hole, you’ve met the challenge and can hold your head high, because the odds were entirely stacked against you. It’s this insurmountable challenge with hundreds of variables, many of them mental, that makes golf such an intriguing game. All of these things pose an illusive, yet massive challenge to the player so that he might go out to the same golf course hundreds of times and find new challenges every time.

Sounds a lot like traditional multiplayer games actually. Instead of the system being incomprehensibly complex, it is relatively simple. Games like Chess, Go, Counter Strike and Starcraft are all played within a relatively restrictive simulated environment. There are no fluid dynamics, weather models, elaborate sets of muscle memory, friction issues and so on. The real world provides something incredibly desirable when it comes to designing a game in it. It’s so complex that instead of experts “gaming it” down to a series of procedural maneuvers and tutorials, it must be felt. The player uses their intuition. [Cha-ching tagline! ;) ] If I’m facing someone in Starcraft there are a million things running through my mind and none of them could be read off of a ready-made laundry list. The human being is actually the incredibly complex portion of multiplayer games. You’ve traded the real life laws of physics for a real life human being.

When these real life human beings get together in a head-to-head game using real life physics we usually call them sports. No big news flash there. But sports have historically had a big leg up on traditional games [table-top] until the internet came around. The games that have gripped me over there years have been consistently those that must be felt [due to their multiplayer modes]. The real-time gameplay of Halo, Starcraft, Counter Strike, and Street Fighter is so intangible and unpredictable that it allows for an unparalleled depth of experience. These aren’t my all-time favorite video games, because others might have secondary elements that provided a sense of nostalgia that the others couldn’t match. Though, I think that cuts to the core of what a single player experience can be. Because it’s played alone, there are certain experiences and feelings that could not be felt if there were other people playing with you. The intimacy of the single player experience has a tendency to reflect certain truths about oneself, just like it did with me during all those years on the golf course.

If you’ve never played it, chances are you take full-speed swings at a few balls on The Range and call it a day. That’s fine, but it doesn’t scratch the surface of golf’s depth. My Dad started teaching me around 7. Learning how to golf that young is quite a feat since golf is so incredibly mental that at a young age results become… sporadic. Without any kind of emotional fortitude, lessons would soon degrade into frustration and whining etc. These lessons were important to me appreciating the game [and building my own character] though, without this basis I would never have grown to a skill level high enough to appreciate the finer and deeper lessons the game had to offer.

Skip ahead a dozen years or so and I’ve grown enough as a human being to understand how to control my mental state. In fact, my particular philosophy on life [Taoism] plays directly into succeeding and enjoying the game of golf. You see, through my whole prior career as a golfer [junior tournaments, high school varsity squad etc.] I never once understood the proper mental frame of mind necessary to be consistent on the course. I remember one tournament I played in I came out of the gates 2 under par on the first three holes at an incredibly difficult course for my age [Eagle Ridge's The General]. I was so excited that I began worrying about losing the streak I had going. I hesitated on my putts and soon that incredible score ballooned to something in the mid to low 80s [well over par for 18 holes]. Not a terrible score for me at the time, but a terrible disappointment for someone watching my first few holes from the gallery.

It has been this journey of learning how to control my behavior, collecting my attitude no matter what the previous shot dealt me, that has been of the utmost importance in golf. As just the slightest bit of mental minutiae can alter the smallest fraction of your swing causing a chaotic chain of events that will ultimately leave the ball in a less than desirable position. That’s where the Tao comes in.

A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good,
And is therefore not good.

A truly good man does nothing,
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.

[...]

Tao Te Ching #38

It’s these words that seem so laughable, such a paradox that why would anyone even attempt to buy whatever this stanza is selling; it’s this that unlocks the secret to controlling your temper on the course. To play golf without a memory of the last shot or the next one. Living in the moment for the sheer enjoyment of being there. To play just to play without caring. Some people have witnessed this, often by accident. Perhaps you have sunk a long distance hook-shot throwing away a crumpled wad of paper without even thinking about it. Then your office mates say “you couldn’t have done that if you tried.”

It’s true. You couldn’t have. Now I’m not going to discount effort here. Effort is huge. You certainly could do better by constantly practicing that shot day-in-day-out but my point here is that at that moment in time, it behooves you not to try.

It’s only when I forget the long checklist for the golf swing that I can be consistent. Analyzing a putt, working it over and then reworking it once I’m over the ball seems like a logical and necessary exhaustive process for making it. But if I do that and then somehow discard all desire to actually make the putt and simply hit the ball, I’ve found I’ll be much happier with the result.

This is just one application of Taoism. In this case its put to golf, and quite effectively in my opinion. While I think the Tao is neat and all that, to me, what’s very interesting about this little tangent is the implication of getting deep meaning and learning long term life lessons from a game. I’ve talked a bit about what football has taught me, and now golf.

I’m not going to cram it all in this post, but I think there’s something here. Maybe it can’t be applied to simulations on a video screen, and if not, then it’s just as important to rule out what can’t make a meaningful video game as it is to point out what can.

More on this later…