(Not) A Whole New World
Alright, another session of Civilization. After the successful, yet unexpected end, of my last run, I decided to step it up a notch. On this playthrough, I increased the difficulty by two levels and went with 7 civilizations. I also decided to go with China as my civilization in honor of the upcoming Chinese New Year. As I did last time, I explored the map a little bit and built my first city very quickly. I unveiled all of the map that I could and, yet again, I’m the sole civilization on a tiny island. It was quite bare as well so I wasn’t feeling good about this run. I went with it anyway and built a fast second city near the river area hoping that it would supply my cities with some resources. I soon had a nice road & irrigation system supplying my two cities and I even managed to set up a road into a jungle tile with some gem resources. At this point of the game, it was pretty peaceful on my tiny island; however, other civilizations were already attacking and conquering each other. I didn’t know if I should be happy that I have less enemies or scared at how strong other civilizations could possibly be. Oh well, having been left alone up until this point, I was able to improve on my city developments quite a bit. That peace all came to an end soon after though. Some barbarians started coming onto my island and attempted to attack my cities. Luckily for me, I had all of this time to fortify my cities with several chariots and phalanxes. The two attacks were thwarted quickly and their diplomat unit always went off running. I was actually grateful that I was attacked. It was reassuring to know that my cities were defended quite well. This gave me the motivation to go out and travel the world…
Finally Some Success
After almost 4 hours of playing Civilization, I finally feel like I have a good grasp of the game. I have clear objectives and can actually accomplish them with a (small) sense of knowledge. I’m progressing steadily towards my goals and feel like I’m fighting to be the strongest rather than just trying to survive like my previous games of Civilization. However, while doing all of this, it brings me to question whether I’m actually playing games or doing some kind of work. Previously I felt like I was playing games by trying to survive and learn gameplay mechanics. Yet now, with some knowledge under my belt, I see myself trying to manage my resources and building towards sustenance. This brings me back to the idea of the ambiguity of play that Sutton-Smith refers to. There are so many facets to what I’m doing in this video game that sometimes it feels as if I’m managing instead of playing. However, this feeling I’m having is proof of the concept that play is so ambiguous. I mean, at the end of the day, I’m having fun – and to me, in the simplest form, that means I’m playing something.