Be like me

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 27, 2005

Filed under: Random 21 comments

This week I was talking to the group before the D&D session and I was trying to explain to them why I love the game Fallout so much. It got to the point where I finally fired up the game and played the intro movie. As it ended, I turned around and I could see they were totally unimpressed. I tried to explain the deep character development system, the action-points based combat, the unique setting…. the… the…

And then I realized they just didn’t care. They just were not into this game and no salesmanship on my part was going to convert them. What is it about people that makes us act like this when it comes to games and movies? When other people like the things we like, we get that little burst of satisfaction, and when they don’t it feels frustrating. I don’t know why we’re wired this way, but we are. Geeky guys in particular. Why do I care if they like the game or not?

But just so you know: The game is really awesome.

 


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21 thoughts on “Be like me

  1. TaliEaterOfWorlds says:

    I love Fallout and Fallout 2. I never got anywhere in them, I ussually just wandered around for hours collecting guns and killing people, but thats just because when I tried to actually play it I always got stuck.

  2. Oleyo says:

    I agree Shamus! Those little caricatures convey the attributes so well and with humor. This game has so much of what I can only describe as flavor. Down to the deadpan, sort of jaded narration of the back story. I enjoy character creation and browsing my items in the stylish interface almost as much as the game itself. A masterpiece of atmosphere is what sets this game apart I think. It pervades the entire game from art to interface…wow I just realized that this post is mega-old. Oh well. :(

  3. Shamus says:

    Nice to see people read the archives. I’m always glad of that.

    1. M says:

      Now the psot is really mega-old. Also, what was the first post for this site?

      1. Deoxy says:

        This one might be

        http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=290

        It’s the earliest in the D&D category, which is how I think this blog started.

        And yes, making new comments on old posts is fun.

    2. sofawall says:

      Not only are people reading the archives, you get odd people like me going through, reading and commenting on your stuff almost five and a half years later! Six and a half since the post went live!

      I’d wager that back when you started this blog, you didn’t think that it’d still be going strong (stronger, even) the better part of a decade later.

      Also, having some sort of ability to start at the start and read everything in order, regardless of category, would be totally awesome for wasting my time. Is there such a thing?

  4. MoirSolace says:

    i think people feel that if someone else does not like what we are currently “in to” we feel that somehow our interests are “dumb” or “boring” or maybe that it takes very little to entertain us. and we want to defend the contrary.

  5. Adam says:

    I remember my stepfather’s first experience with Fallout:

    Made his character, gave it plenty of luck. Stepped out into the world, and found a huge truck wreck, full of bottlecaps. Then he wondered why you would need bottlecaps.

    Then he went to town…

    (If anyone doesn’t understand, play Fallout)

  6. chitzk0i says:

    A high luck is good. Combat-wise, a crit-tacular sniper is pretty great in any Fallout game, especially if you trade up to energy weapons later on. After you’ve gotten Extra Criticals twice and Better Criticals, every once in a while you’ll do several hundred points of damage with a single eye-crit. One time I critted a super-mutant for just over 1,500 damage in Fallout: Tactics.

  7. PanDeSal says:

    I agree that the Fallout setting and games are awesome. But some genres are not for everyone. Fallout is set post-apocalypse. Now who wants to play in a world that got reamed by a couple thousand nukes when you’ve got D&D, Star Trek, and so on? It’s hard to show a trekkie the interesting side of piloting a garbage scow in a galaxy of other equally ugly, filthy, leaky space-faring vessels.

    It’s like trying to get goths to hang out with a bunch of hippies. Or, for a lack of a better example, getting a ninja and a pirate to be friends.

  8. oleyo says:

    Give me, a kiss to build a dream on…

  9. droid says:

    I just ordered the game after the ‘top 10 rpg’ post by Rampant Coyote. If you also enjoyed it I am confident I will.

  10. Tsunemori says:

    I’ve often had the same experience. I hunt retro games, and upon acquiring one that I used to play when I was a kid, I’d get so excited, and when my friends watch me play a game under 320×240 resolution, they just can’t understand why.

  11. tomas says:

    “Or, for a lack of a better example, getting a ninja and a pirate to be friends.”

    go have some Savory Deviate Delight (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=8238#comments)

  12. Bryan says:

    I agree. I’m not sure where that feeling comes from either. I could talk about Planescape: Torment until I’m blue in the face. Most people have never heard of it and will politely listen but not really care.

  13. Dannerman says:

    I usually have that problem with music – I’ll be peeved when one of my friends (we all have similar music tastes) does not like a new band or a song that I play or claim to like.

    Maybe it upsets us, because as geeks, we feel that our hobbies are meant to be shared and appreciated as a group?

    I know this post is really old, but I, also, have always wondered just why I care so much when my ‘geek’ mates don’t like the stuff I do.

    A counterpoint is that many of my ‘geek mates’ love cheesy anime such as ‘Dragonball Z’ and I really hate that stuff and have to really make an effort not to show distaste if they mention it around me. (Again, why should I care what they are into? It annoys me that I have to struggle to not mention how much anime generally annoys me.)

  14. dyrnwyn says:

    well human beings are social animals so it should affest you if someone doesn’t enjoy what you enjoy if they do like what you do that’s good and you can be good freinds . you just can’t think of the situation rationally why would you care. you would care becouse it’s natural to care.

  15. Man, I want Fallout 3 SO much… :'( But I heard that it was really scary later in the game.

  16. Diamondwolf says:

    /\ /\
    If you level up corectly and you kill everything that moves, loot everything that doesn’t move, and loot everything that once moved but doesn’t anymore then you will be far scarier than anything in the game (except maybe deathclaws, ghoul reavers, supermutant lords, and albino scorpions) <The last three only appear if you have broken steal.

    Anyways, I recently bought a Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics triple pack. I am still seeing how it feels. (I started with Fallout 2, wasn't fond of how Fallout 1 felt)

  17. Andrew says:

    Fallout 2 is probably one of the only M-rated games that I actually couldn’t beat as a kid. And it wasn’t even difficulty, really; the game was just so… intelligent. Things like actually holstering your weapons when entering a city were completely alien to me. To this date, I don’t think I’ve seen a single game that was as well thought out and written. A shame, too- if a group like the Bethesda crew could get their work to even comparable levels, they’d have some truly mindblowing games on their hands.

  18. Elec0 says:

    Necropost, but I have an answer for you, Shamus. The reason we feel passionate about having other people believe exactly as we do–or that they must like something we like–is that we, as humans, do not ever want to feel like we are wrong. When we like something and someone else doesn’t then it makes us feel like we are wrong, so we strive to convince the other person that they are in fact the ones that are wrong. Of course, they don’t want to be seen as wrong either, so then they argue and it turns into an endless pissing match.

    My two cents.

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