Have Geek, Will Travel

Well, what a bizarre day today turned out to be.

The story begins just a couple of days back when I was given an assignment by Playworks to cover some of the gaming events that will be occurring around the island. Tournaments for real time strategy games like Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, or fighters like Soul Calibur 2. Since I’d never covered a gaming event (usually just sitting around spectating) I was kind of curious to see how I’d fare as a journalist this time.

Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

The head honcho of the magazine called me in as I was playing around with Flight Simulator 2004. I had to go down to the office because they needed a review of the game and my PC (at a paltry 450 MHz) was in simply no condition to run it, let alone store the 3 gigs it demanded in terms of hard drive space. So while I was playing the game (Yes, I picked a 747. Yes, I took off from La Guardia. Yes, I flew to Manhattan. Yes, I crashed it into a building. I couldn’t help it…) I was taken in by the Chief and asked if I could go down to the Eastern end of the island (Called Pasir Ris, I lived there for my first two years) and attend a Microsoft press conference that was going to cover all the X-Boxy goodness coming to Singapore in the next few months. I figured that would be interesting and said, “Sure.” Then I found out it was on the same day as a Soul Calibur tournament I was supposed to be covering and, for reasons that escaped me at the time, the Chief took me off that and put me on the press conference instead and told me it was all fixed.

Then he asked me if I could demo a game.

I didn’t understand, and he said that at the press conference, they were also going to be previewing a couple PC games, and one of them was going to be Flight Simulator, so he wondered if I’d be willing to play it. Apparently Microsoft Singapore had been reading the magazine recently and asked for Shoeless Wayne Santos to comment on the games since he seemed so knowledgeable about gaming.

“That’s it?” I asked rather suspiciously.

“Well, and talk about it a little bit. Just what you like or don’t like about it. Don’t worry, it’s not a high pressure situation, just a little room in a chalet, with a computer, people sitting around. Almost like talkng to your friends when you show them a new game.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay, that sounds cool. I’m in.”

“Can you do Rise of Nations too?”

“I didn’t play Rise of Nations, I don’t know anything about it.”

“But you wrote that Rise of Nations feature.”

“I read the ‘net and lied through my teeth. Come on, you know my PC can’t handle it. You’d better let the reviewer do it.”

He nodded glumly and I went back to trying to skim my Cessna off George Washington’s nose on Mt. Rushmore.

So yesterday, while doing research on the ‘net, I got an SMS request on my phone to get onto MSN messenger by the Chief for a talk. I don’t have MSN and so I resorted to using the Girlfriend’s computer since I stubbornly try not to take in a more than necessary Bill Quotient on my machine.

Chief: The reviewer can’t make it, can you talk about Rise of Nations?

Me: I’ve never even played it.

Chief: Can you come down today and give it a try? We’ve already installed it on the Uber Rig PC.

Me: … … … *sigh*… okay…

So I went down and took it through its paces, indulging my usual anachronistic tendencies and pushing my civilization’s rate of technological advancement to such ridiculous proportions that by the time my nearest enemies had discovered how to make Pole Axes, I was already assaulting them with tanks, bombers and machine guns… I love technological advancement in RTS games…

Today then, I got up, hiked outta’ the ol’ pad and made my way down to my old stomping grounds, where this recreational area called NTUC Downtown East had been put up (Basically a family chalet/weekender sort of place away from the hustle bustle of the city) and found the area I was supposed to go to.

Which was not a chalet.

Which was not in a little room.

It was a conference hall. With huge ass projection screen. And someone was handing me a microphone.

Thank GOD for my gift for useless facts and details. I ended up sitting AT the Microsoft table, with a PC in front of me, with a flight stick, and the huge projection screen behind me, and was told, “So play the game and tell us a little bit about this…”

At which point, for Flight Simulator 2004, I riffled off all the trivia, like how it was supposed to celebrate the December 17th centennial of powered human flight. How it had in game flight lessons by John and Martha King of King Aviation Flight School, one of the biggest in America, how it had coaching by Roy Machado, another revered flight instructor, how it used the new Garmin 295 and 500 series GPS indicators with 24,000 real world airports, both towered and non-towered. All the while casually picking another 747, taking it from Kennedy International and driving it through Manhattan.

And was once again reminded of how different the mindset is of Westerners from Singaporeans.

They were a pretty quiet bunch, and I had to keep checking to see if they were following me, since I was probably speaking at warp speed (As usual) and frequently had to stop and say things like:

“Any questions? Anyone? Anyone? No? What did George Bush call Regan’s economics program? Something economics. Anyone? Anyone? D-O-O economics. Voodoo ecnomics. QUE HABLA CANADIAN ENGLISH, OR WHAT?!?”

Sigh…

Then I had to sit down and watch some corporate propaganda program where Microsoft had insightfully decided that people who played games were broken up into four groups. On one end of the scale, you had what they referred to as “Time Killers” who were people that played for a few minutes or an hour at a time as a momentary distraction. On the other end, they had what they called “Committed Gamers”.

“Like our friend, over here,” the MS Marketing guy said, motioning towards me. “Committed gamers look like… HIM! Long hair, casual clothes, beard… pale complexion because they spend every waking hour playing games. Games, games, games, right?”

“Uh… yeah…” I said in a less than definitive tone of voice.

Then they showed more videos of upcoming games and it was time for me to play Rise of Nations. More trivia about strategy games, the differences between turn based and real time games, and Rise of Nations was supposed to be a marriage of the two genres. My little farmers farmed, my miners mined, my soldiers killed. That was it.

More game videos, propaganda, goodies bags handed out (I am now the proud owner of a) an X-Box t-shirt, b) X-Box polo shirt, c) X-Box towel, which I think will become our new doormat) and eventually it was time to take to the X Box consoles and start playing the new games we’d just seen. Or a few of them anyway.

The X Box marketing guy congratulated me on winging it. I asked him when the X Box Live stuff was coming to Singapore and he said in a few months. He told me he’d look forward to my reviews of the X Box live games.

“I’m not reviewing them,” I said.

“What? Why not?”

“Can’t afford an X-Box Live account, come on, I’m a writer, man, look at me…”

He smiled and said, “You’re also a games reviewer. Don’t worry, I think you’re all set with us when the time comes.”

Later, while smoking outside, the Chief also congratulated me, since he wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to say and was just glad I actually knew what I was talking about. He wondered if I wouldn’t be interested or able to take on more reviewing/writing chores and asked, “Is it possible?”

My only reply was, “Well… it is and it isn’t. It is ’cause I can crank it out, yeah, and I have fun doing it. It isn’t ’cause… well… look at my PC. It’s crap. I can’t review PC games ’cause I can’t run them, and I can’t do GameCube reviews ’cause I don’t have a GameCube.”

He thought about it, nodded, and said, “I think I can set you up for that. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

So after an odd day where I not only had to play games to an audience but TALK about them too, I scored a free X-Box live account, a free gaming worthy PC and a free Nintendo GameCube.

I. Love. My. JOB.