man plays single game of civ2 for 10 years

[Arwon]

When he says he's been playing for ten years I don't think that means he's been playing frequently

 

[Murky]

I can understand someone who's only played a couple games plus the tutorial playing their 4th or 5th game until 3100 AD or whatever on an easy difficulty setting and still struggling to survive, but the whole point of this story is that he's been playing for 10 years. It's hard to understand how you can do anything for so long and still be so terrible at it. To be sure, I am indeed a superintelligent min-maxer, but you don't have to be one to be incredulous about this.

Lots of people have hobbies they are terrible at. I know people who couldn't sell any of their artwork because it's so bad, but they keep right on doing it because they like doing it. I also know some writers in the same situation.

 

[FriendlyFire]

How is it GotM? He's one of the worst players I've ever seen. What's sad is that he's at least 10 years old, considering he's allegedly been playing the game for 10 years. What kind of 10 year old can't learn to play and then beat a game of Civ on easiest difficulty? And this is Civ 2 even, so AI is even worse than what most people here are used to.

Oh yeah and CNN fails for reporting on this. They might as well just turn their homepage into a bunch of embedded youtube cat videos.

So thats what G.W.Bush has been doing for ten years !
(eight of which were during the presidency of the USA)

 

[MobBoss]

Was his name Andres Breivik?

 

[woody60707]

I loved this story. Then I read the comments that more or less say "He's terrible". I hate the internet./

 

[Kraznaya]

I loved this story. Then I read the comments that more or less say "He's terrible". I hate the internet./

People are annoyed about how no one cares about their own badly played single player saves.

 

[Mise]

When I first saw the story on Reddit, I was really, really interested in it. I was interested in it for two reasons....

SPOILERS FOR POSSIBLE SPOILERS THAT COULD RUIN YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE GAME

Spoiler :

First, I assumed that the player hadn't won because he didn't want to win by conquest, and instead just carried on playing after 2020AD for 10 years because he really liked how his empire had turned out. Then, I assumed, at some point, due to the AI being insatiable warmongers, and their propensity to nuke the crap out of everything you love, the world turned to crap. That was a really interesting scenario, as it broadly recalls the kinds of dystopian futures depicted in a lot of science fiction writing.

Second, I was interested because I wanted to win the game. Who doesn't want to win things? I think it's weird when people say they don't want to win things. I don't trust them. Anyway, reading the story, and reading how he described how each thing he tried resulted in failure, I assumed that this was close to an intractable problem. A lot of people in the Reddit thread said similar things - that there was a stable equilibrium created by the combination of a warmongering AI, nuclear weapons, and global warming, and disturbing that any change you make to the system inevitably returns that system to its stable state. That was a really interesting problem to solve, and loads and loads of people, here and on the reddit thread, tried to solve it.

The combination of those two things created the most interesting question of all: Is there something inherent about Civ 2 that, if played two thousand turns after the intended end point of the game, inevitably results in chaos? Science fiction writing replaces "Civ 2" with "human nature" and "two thousand turns etc" with "two thousand years into the future". Good science fiction doesn't merely say "this is one possible future"; rather, it says "this is the only possible future, because <human nature>". The exposition of what exactly it is about human nature that inevitably results in dystopian chaos is a huge part of science fiction's appeal. And science fiction often tries to resolve its dystopian future: "How can we get out of this mess? How can people survive like this? Is there a solution to this horrible vision?" Again, these questions are all linked back to human nature, often requiring the "resiliance" of humanity, or its "compassion" or something in order to overcome the adversity of the dystopian nightmare. The game garnered interest not strictly because the future was dystopian, but because of the story that was unfolding.

So imagine my disappointment when I open the save file and realise that, actually, neither of those things was true. It was very, very easy to avoid the stalemate in the first place, and it is also very, very easy to overcome. The world was a mess not because of some inherent feature of Civ that the human player acts against, but because the human player himself is just really bad at it. My interest turned to incredulity very quickly. What I thought was a really interesting science fiction story for which an entire community was helping to write the ending was instead a terribly written science fiction story with a very disappointing ending.

So yeah, that's why people are hating on the guy now for being so crap at the game. It's not actually that interesting; in fact, as Kraz says ironically, it's no more interesting than any of my badly played saved games.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Well, thanks a lot for bursting my bubble as well with that extra info.

I was hoping it'd be like a game of warlock I was playing. Spawned near 2 main capitals who both declared on me the moment we said "hi". Third coming in from the west. Need to be spawning Veterans and Rangers just to keep everyone at bay, only managed to make 3 settlers and I have 1 city I nicked from the neutrals. Able to recruit wizards now, but they be expensive with my minuscule 'empire'. Struggling to survive, probably dead-last, and awaiting the moment someone ends the game with a Unity spell. And it rocks!

But. So. This is different.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Was his name Andres Breivik?

Only if he sat alone while he played it.

 

[aelf]

Meh. Once I played an all-night game of Risk with some friends and we formed teams quite naturally. The game ended with me and my team mate duking it out. He controlled all of the Americas and Oceania while I controlled all of Europe and Asia while sharing Africa with him. I had a manpower advantage but eventually lost due to repeated bad rolls in battle.

I think that's a better allegory for a game, and I certainly did not play it alone for 10 years.

 

[BvBPL]

For the sake of this man's life, we must not let him know about Fall From Heaven or other Civ mods!

 

[Mr. Dictator]

For the sake of this man's life, we must not let him know about Fall From Heaven or other Civ mods!

This story hit reddit a day or a few after I reinstalled my Civ III passion. I'm wondering how he'd do with some of the total conversions like Worldwide or Rise and Rule, myself.

 

[Patroklos]

I am more interested in how he played so long without some bug crashing him to the desktop and corrupting his save...

 

[timtofly]

When I first saw the story on Reddit, I was really, really interested in it. I was interested in it for two reasons....

SPOILERS FOR POSSIBLE SPOILERS THAT COULD RUIN YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE GAME

Spoiler :

First, I assumed that the player hadn't won because he didn't want to win by conquest, and instead just carried on playing after 2020AD for 10 years because he really liked how his empire had turned out. Then, I assumed, at some point, due to the AI being insatiable warmongers, and their propensity to nuke the crap out of everything you love, the world turned to crap. That was a really interesting scenario, as it broadly recalls the kinds of dystopian futures depicted in a lot of science fiction writing.

Second, I was interested because I wanted to win the game. Who doesn't want to win things? I think it's weird when people say they don't want to win things. I don't trust them. Anyway, reading the story, and reading how he described how each thing he tried resulted in failure, I assumed that this was close to an intractable problem. A lot of people in the Reddit thread said similar things - that there was a stable equilibrium created by the combination of a warmongering AI, nuclear weapons, and global warming, and disturbing that any change you make to the system inevitably returns that system to its stable state. That was a really interesting problem to solve, and loads and loads of people, here and on the reddit thread, tried to solve it.

The combination of those two things created the most interesting question of all: Is there something inherent about Civ 2 that, if played two thousand turns after the intended end point of the game, inevitably results in chaos? Science fiction writing replaces "Civ 2" with "human nature" and "two thousand turns etc" with "two thousand years into the future". Good science fiction doesn't merely say "this is one possible future"; rather, it says "this is the only possible future, because <human nature>". The exposition of what exactly it is about human nature that inevitably results in dystopian chaos is a huge part of science fiction's appeal. And science fiction often tries to resolve its dystopian future: "How can we get out of this mess? How can people survive like this? Is there a solution to this horrible vision?" Again, these questions are all linked back to human nature, often requiring the "resiliance" of humanity, or its "compassion" or something in order to overcome the adversity of the dystopian nightmare. The game garnered interest not strictly because the future was dystopian, but because of the story that was unfolding.

So imagine my disappointment when I open the save file and realise that, actually, neither of those things was true. It was very, very easy to avoid the stalemate in the first place, and it is also very, very easy to overcome. The world was a mess not because of some inherent feature of Civ that the human player acts against, but because the human player himself is just really bad at it. My interest turned to incredulity very quickly. What I thought was a really interesting science fiction story for which an entire community was helping to write the ending was instead a terribly written science fiction story with a very disappointing ending.

So yeah, that's why people are hating on the guy now for being so crap at the game. It's not actually that interesting; in fact, as Kraz says ironically, it's no more interesting than any of my badly played saved games.

People may hate on him for letting them down, but that is also human nature. I still think that "the game" lasts just in the concept of "one-more-turn". Even though he was bad at it, he refused to give up for ten years.

III and IV were different. V went back to the simpleness of it all and a lot of people hated on it. I have played for hundreds of turns after a "scored" ending in both II and V just for the fun of seeing what one more turn would bring.

@ Patroklos

especially if it was the same computer for ten years.

 

[History_Buff]

@ Patroklos

especially if it was the same computer for ten years.

No, he's said on reddit that he had to pass it between quite a few PCs as the years went by. I'm guessing he lost quite a few games, but always had enough backed up to press on.

Civ 2 had an autosave feature right?

 

[Zelig]

I am more interested in how he played so long without some bug crashing him to the desktop and corrupting his save...

Crashing during gameplay isn't going to corrupt a save, save games are going to be unaffected by any crashes during play.

 

[Flying Pig]

Actually, not sure if this is the case in Civ, but some games get quite stroppy if the computer crashes totally during play; this can sometimes invalidate a save (it's as if it doesn't 'finalise' the save file until you actually quit that session)

 

[timtofly]

I probably have a Gig of saved CivII game files and I play TOT. By that time the game was very stable and did not crash at all. Today's games are not static and are being "upgraded" and added to all the time. It is the patching and what not that causes games to crash when it comes to saved games.

 

[LucyDuke]

I find the Civ 5 expansion pack plug at the end of the article really tacky. But not surprising.

 

[sophie]

I find the Civ 5 expansion pack plug at the end of the article really tacky. But not surprising.

lol, I liked that bit too.