Forget drama, forget storyline and forget character
Its hack, slash and retail therapy.
I know, I know, last month I said gaming was all about fashion. Yet only a short while later it came to me that gaming is actually all about shopping. What comes before fashion? Shopping, of course, you get the idea. In fact shopping is a pretty serious business in just about any game more complex than Pacman
In fact shopping is a pretty serious business in just about any game more complex than Pacman
. Ah I remember playing Baldur’s Gate, essentially a wandering brawl interspersed with visits to the shops. Did you have a favourite vendor? Did you lust over that special sword? Games like The Sims are essentially one big shopping extravaganza. First you shop for your house. I’ll take the nice middle class brick please. Get your finishes. Hmm the faux wood panelling looks nice. Then force your sim to work so that you can go crazy shopping. Woot, shiny garbage disposal unit, must have, sigh, fancy sculpture, pot plant, armchair- must have, must have, must have.
Other games feature what I call the killer shopping instinct. That’s where you slay your way through vast swathes of enemies in order to loot them and build up your bank balance, thus allowing you to go shopping. If you think about it, killing monsters in World of Warcraft is just a randomised shopping event. It’s corpse shopping, where every kill comes complete with a random item and money. Smite an ogre, not only might you get a fancy hat but wait there’s more… every kill comes complete with eleven silver coins, but wait there’s more, you also get this free health potion. The first one hundred customers also receive this amazing piece of cloth. How cool is that shopping and gambling and combat all rolled into one. It’s not shop till you drop, but more shop in a drop.
That’s before you even visit the World of Warcraft auction house. Ahhh the auction house……drool. Think of it as the Warcraft supermarket where you can buy everything from some coarse gorilla hair to a finely crafted epic sword, everything the dapper adventurer needs. Not all 14821 items for sale are of the highest standard though. Just like the two-dollar import store you can find items of the most extraordinary pedigree. Just exactly why anyone would buy a rotting bear carcass or 2 bits of gnoll spittle I have no idea. Other equally useless items are more appealing …….oops accidentally clicked on buy steamy romance novel.
Strategy games transcend the usual shopping experience. Instead of buying swords you buy whole squads, assuming you have built up enough currency. In Starcraft it’s not gold or dollars that buy your shopping experience, legal tender comes as vespene gas and blue crystalline minerals chunks
In Starcraft it’s not gold or dollars that buy your shopping experience, legal tender comes as vespene gas and blue crystalline minerals chunks
. The amount of items you can buy may not be large and choice is limited, so choose carefully - your warranty doesn’t cover mishaps involving large amounts of elven archers. But, oh my, the things you can buy out of those little buildings, once you have bought the building of course. You can buy tanks or legendary heroes, cavalry and flying airships out of the most unassuming shopfront. Go on buy a mumakil in Battle for Middle Earth 2 just to see it burst out of a small shed. Buy more buildings to increase your shopping experience. You are retailer and customer all at once.
Games environments are just one big marketplace where even the most unassuming vegetation can become an exciting retail opportunity. Hit that unassuming tree and watch money fly out of it. Look under that stone to find a weird mechanical object that you just know will come in useful somewhere, sometime, approximately twenty levels from now just after you have thrown it away. Never mind I just found a ready-to-use health pack in this 3000-year-old tomb that is still in date. Strange huh, but what I find stranger yet is that in every game there is always someone who is prepared to buy the crappy item that I have just shopped out of the landscape. Yes I will trade your slime, tree roots, old fungi and a dried up piece of fur for a set of shiny platinum boots.
Yes games are about shopping. What you say there is no shopping in FPS games! Are you sure? Let me ask one question. Did you pick up every weapon you saw or did you just stick with the pistol? Yes I knew it …. you went shopping under enemy fire and I hope you didn’t pay till you saw the whites of their eyes. Not every shopping experience is about frou-frou fashions, shopping can be about guns too.
shopping can be about guns too.
An online map in Unreal Tournament is basically an aggressive limited edition shopping experience. Liken the players waiting to get onto the server to the rampageous mob outside a major department store on sale day. Let me in so I can grab the awesome weapon of my choice. One size fits all.
Okay so there was no shopping in Myst (dang I knew there was something weird about that game) and Gordon Freeman wasn’t so heavily into retail therapy. Ok, ok so not all games are about shopping. But you have to agree most games are all about shopping, so go forth and shop.
In fact shopping is a pretty serious business in just about any game more complex than Pacman 
