Original Starcraft

I played the game starcraft for a couple weeks.

It was a game I had played before online, but never indulged the single player option. I went through the story as best I could, but found myself needing the cheat codes to complete the game. I found myself interested in different things having revisited the game as a more educated gamer than when I first played it many years ago. When I was younger, I noticed more the ability to micromanage a small city/army. Before, most of the games I had played placed me in the position of a single character capable of action within the narrative or world of the game. My fascination with Starcraft rested within the ability to do many things at once with many different characters. The terran (human) campaign starts you off by making sure you can perform the basic functions of the game. They ask for you to build necessary buildings and raise 16 fighting units. The game moves sequentially utilizing the skills you attain from the levels before. In a few missions, the game strays away from the multi-tasking, town management aspect and takes you into puzzle oriented levels. Much of the game forces you to manage resources, as well as special characters (which of course cannot die during the mission).

Revisiting the game now, I notice things such as the personalities behind the characters you click on. If you click to alert the characters, they give different responses and gladly follow your orders…..unless of course, you continue to click them. They start to send you the message that they are annoyed with you wasting time and poking them. I notice the fact that even though you are managing different characters, you technically are a character as well. The position of power the game places you in presents an interesting take on omnipotence and reification in games. If you were to pretend to be in the world of starcraft, your character would be in a similar position of telling a mass of soldiers what to do from some kind of computer.