Explaining Extra Lives

Video games are pretty much designed for you to fail, try again, and eventually succeed. (In a sense you might say that’s one of their moral shortcomings, since you can essentially avoid consequences by repetition – which is in total contradiction to the way the real world works. But as long as you treat them as entertainment and not your actual lifestyle, I don’t have a problem with that. But I digress (already).)

The idea of extra lives can create a continuity problem in a game’s story. There are a few ways of explaining what happens when your character loses a life and starts a new one:

1. The straightforward way: Your character actually experiences everything you do. When the character is defeated, he or she is somehow transported back to some checkpoint to try again. The enemies and obstacles behave in essentially the same way each time the character attempts the level (or battle or whatever). The repetitive nature of enemy behavior can cause concerns with plausibility, as can the notion that your character is somehow transported backward.
2. The “ideal path” way: Only successful attempts “count” in the context of the game. In other words, if you take five tries to complete a level, only the last one “really happened.” If you explain the game in this way, your character essentially completes each goal on his or her first try; the other time in game play represents an inaccurate attempt to explain what really happened. Again, this may raise plausibility issues. Worse, though, is the continuity problem that arises if the game allows you to save accomplishments you made before losing. In this case, you can’t disregard the character’s loss of a “life” while still explaining how the character acquired the saved item.

Ultimately it doesn’t really matter, because the real story of the game is about the decisions and progress that you as the player make. (That is, the straightforward explanation is generally acceptable regardless of its weaknesses.) But some games really do offer a reasonable explanation for how extra lives work. At least if you interpret them correctly (meaning if you interpret them as I do). Others aren’t so easy to explain. Here are a few examples:

Mega Man

In Mega Man games, when you run out of energy, Mega Man appears to explode – but really it’s just expanding circles flying outward from his last location. I believe this is actually an emergency teleportation. We know Mega Man can teleport, since this is how he enters each level. I think that he can set a limited number of teleportation beacons. He sets one at the beginning of each level, and an additional one near the middle of most levels, and yet another before most boss battles. When his energy is about to run out, he automatically teleports away to refill, then teleports back to the last beacon. If he has only energy for one more teleportation and his energy runs low, he teleports back to his base instead of the last beacon. (This allows him to refill his health and weapon energy, but any temporary beacons he has set are lost.) That’s what happens when you get a Game Over. (This explanation may also explain why you have to re-fight the Robot Masters in each game near the end – they may also do an emergency teleportation when their energy runs low.)

Metroid

Metroid games have specific save points. If you lose, you lose everything since that save point. I think it’s reasonable to say that everything between a save point and a game over never really happened, and Samus is successful on her first try. (Of course, I mean your real first try. If you replay the game, knowing the most efficient path in advance, the story element makes less sense.)

Zelda

Zelda games are harder to explain. You can save wherever you want, and if you quit you’ll start at some checkpoint – the beginning of the current level or some central Overworld location. The same happens if you get a Game Over. It’s not clear how Link gets back to the continue point, but warping is a common practice in Zelda games as well. I guess you could say that Link “Saves and Quits” right before losing his last heart, and only the “falling on his face” scene is not part of what actually happens.

Types of Gifts

People give a lot of gifts this time of year, with varying motives and effects. For whatever reason I was thinking about the different kinds of gifts, especially the less noble ones. So here is a memory dump on the different types.

Charitable

A charitable gift is when you see a need or want in someone else, and your only motive in giving is to fulfill that need. Ideally this type of gift is given anonymously, so that the recipient is not burdened with the need to repay you, and so that their gratitude can only be directed toward God. (This is obviously the kind of gift mentioned in Matthew 6:2-4.)

Sentimental

It’s a slightly different story when you’re giving a gift to a friend or family member. You generally put “From: Me” on the tag so they know it’s from you. It’s not to force them into gratitude; rather, it’s because this type of gift is motivated less from fulfilling a need as from a desire to express appreciation for a relationship. If this type of gift were sent anonymously, it would actually become less meaningful, since the recipient would not know that you were thinking of him or her.

Transactional

A transactional gift is when you give something with the expectation or hope of getting something in return. An example would be an item in a gift exchange – you bring a gift, but you may feel shafted if you leave with something less cool than what you brought. Another example would be company swag (designed to boost morale and loyalty).

This type of gift has no moral value, positive or negative. It’s essentially a business investment. And that’s fine, as long as that’s what you intend it to be. The problem comes when you give a gift that’s ostensibly charitable, but really you want something in return. For instance, you give a decoration and then get mad if you don’t see it displayed. You were acting like you were giving a sentimental gift, when really you were asking for a favor. (Same story if you give a wedding gift and then get offended when they re-gift it.)

Implied Obligation

This category is more complicated and is sort of orthogonal to the others. The idea here is that you give a gift, and you expect nothing in return, but receiving the gift implies some obligation – not to the giver, but to some third party. And this is always a bad thing.

For instance, if you drop by your neighbors’ house and give them a new puppy (without any hint on their part that they would like one), you may leave feeling like you have given them something, when really you have asked them to spend money to keep the puppy healthy and to feed it every day for the rest of its life. Or else they have to go to the hassle of finding it a new home. The gift you have given is essentially of negative value.

That may seem obvious, but you do see this kind of thing in normal life. I’m trying to come up with a more common example but it escapes me at the moment. But if you catch yourself planning something like this, stop!

Monopoly for Preschoolers

My kids like Monopoly. But they’re too young to do addition. And the biggest hassle of that game is always making change. So my wife and I came up with some alternate rules to facilitate playing as a family without driving any one member of it insane.

• All bills count for the same amount: $1. There are enough $1 bills for each person to start with 10 of them; you can add $10s in if you need more.
• All money values are single digit values: take the maximum of $1 or the hundreds digit specified. (i.e. Math.Max(1, originalValue % 100).) So a property listed at $280 would be worth $2. A fine of $75 would cost $1.
• Instead of needing a monopoly to build houses, you can build a house when you land on a property you already own. It costs $1 to build a house. If you land on a property with a house, you can add another for $1. Likewise, if you have four houses, you can replace them with a hotel for an additional $1.
• If you land on a property owned by someone else, you pay that person $1, plus $1 for each additional house (or a total of $6 if there’s a hotel).

Defining “Mature”

People talk about media as having “mature” content. It’s kind of an odd term. I think people tend to think “Oh, I’m mature, so I can ‘handle’ that stuff.” Or even worse, they turn 18 or 21 or whatever and decide that since they’re now recognized as “mature,” they might as well go experience all the stuff that’s labeled as such. I avoid stuff with that kind of label, but as a sort of “public service” I’d like to point out what I think the intended meaning is.

It means that whatever is being restricted will have harmful consequences, and that people of a certain maturity level are responsible for deciding whether to accept them. It does not mean that people of a certain maturity level can indulge in it without consequences. That’s where I think a lot of people metaphorically shoot themselves in the proverbial foot. They don’t bother to think how a movie they watch or a game they play could possibly have a negative influence on them. They’re “mature.” They can “handle it.”

So what consequences does it have? Let’s consider smoking as an example, since that’s the least socially accepted “mature” activity I can think of and so should have the lowest chance of pulling in extraneous stereotypes. I can’t speak from experience, but I hear that the first time people imbibe carcinogenic tar into their lungs, they gag and choke. (Big surprise.) If they repeat the process enough, the reaction goes away because people become desensitized. But you’re supposed to be sensitive to that sort of thing. When you can’t feel it, it doesn’t mean you’re safe – it just means you’re likely to hurt yourself even more. You keep kids away from smoking because they might damage themselves without realizing it. You let adults do it because they’re considered to have the right to damage themselves, not because they’re safe.

The same principle applies to graphic violence, pornography, profanity, etc., although the effects are perhaps less noticeable at first. You start out sensitive to the sanctity of life, marital intimacy, enlightened thought, etc. If you choose to disregard it, you lose that sensitivity.

That’s enough on that subject, except to add that one could argue that what’s really mature is to consider the long term consequences of one’s choices and optimize for long-term benefit, even when it would be easier (or more exciting, or whatever) not to.

Chess

I’ve played a few games of chess with one of my coworkers over e-mail. I think I’m getting better, although I still occasionally do something really stupid, or almost do something stupid but catch myself before I hit Send – although if I were in a real game I probably would have made the move. So that’s lame. I sort of think of the following levels of chess skill:

• Novice: Learning the rules
• Beginner: Knows the rules, learning tactics like forking and forcing checkmate with limited material
• Intermediate: Knows about forking, pinning, etc. and how to watch out for them. Learning overall strategy
• Advanced: Understands strategy, learning patterns of moves like well-known openings
• Masterly: Can look at notation and form a picture of what happened, thinks a zillion moves ahead, etc.

I’m in the Intermediate category, and I’m pretty content to stay there, for two reasons:

1. I have no interest in memorizing sequences of moves.
2. Almost nobody is advanced, and the game’s no fun if you win all the time.

I don’t actually have a lot more to say on the matter except that I‘m pretty pleased with a comeback I recently had. Here’s where it all turned around. I had lost a rook due to stupid oversight (got my king away from a potential fork only to lose my rook anyway to a rook + queen fork). But instead of capturing my opponent’s knight, I sacrificed some material in order to lure his king out into the open.

(Excuse the bad HTML – one of the few weaknesses of Windows Live Writer.)

Oh, and for the record, this same opponent has beaten me soundly on his fair share of games. I’m not gloating here – I’m just glad my last-ditch effort pulled off!

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8	N					R	K		8
7	p	Q		p	N	p	B		7
6		p	N					p	6
5					p				5
4									4
3					p		B		3
2	p			N		p	p	p	2
1		R		Q	K			R	1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

So my opponent (White – as in white text) has just captured my rook at A8. I could take his knight with my rook and even things out a little, but I figure his king is just waiting to castle. And if he does that, I’m in big trouble. (Note how he’s already punched holes in my line of pawns – my own king isn’t exactly safe.)

So instead,  I (black) move N E5. Now I’m threatening N D3 + (the “+” is “check”). White is evidently not worried though. He moves N B6 – his knight is still in danger, but now he’s got an additional pawn out of the deal.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8						R	K		8
7	p	Q		p	N	p	B		7
6		N						p	6
5									5
4									4
3				N	p		B		3
2	p			N	K	p	p	p	2
1		R		Q				R	1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

Now, finally, I take his knight. But now he gets to take my knight too – so instead of being behind in a knight-rook trade, I’m behind by a whole rook (plus the extra pawn he already had before this disaster). But here comes the good part: Q A6 +

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8						R	K		8
7				p	N	p	B		7
6	Q	p						p	6
5									5
4									4
3				K	p		B		3
2	p			N		p	p	p	2
1		R		Q				R	1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

As an aside, I had recently read about “fianchetto”, which is where you stick your bishop next to the corner (in this case, G7) and leave it there, guarding the long diagonal. In this case, it works out beautifully because my queen and bishop are working together to create this huge space in the center of the board where the king can’t go. His only choice is to move farther and farther out into the board. I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out where to go from there, but here’s the final board.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8							K		8
7				p	N		B		7
6		p						p	6
5						p			5
4					K				4
3					p		B		3
2	p			N	Q	p	p	p	2
1			Q		R				1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

(Note how Q A3 would have prevented me from advancing that pawn until I got my king clear of that diagonal, but it would have just delayed the inevitable.)

(Maybe a better exercise for the reader would be go figure out how to win as white. But whatever.)