Bring Back The Internal Clock
I remember a boom about ten years or so ago of real-time internal clocks in games. Pokemon Gold & Silver had a night and day system where certain Pokemon would only show up at specific times of the actual day. Animal Crossing is easily the most famous example: events and holidays mirrored the real world. Tom Nook’s shop had real hours and if you stopped playing for a month, weeds would take over your town and your animal buddies would be like “where have you been?” Animal Crossing and the Pokemon games were huge, so what the hell happened to real-time games exactly?
I asked my DAMNLAG compadres Zack and Steve how they felt about internal clocks. The consensus was that being restricted to real-world time limitations in a game is ultimately annoying and not worth the effort. I think they speak for a good portion of gamers as a whole. A lot of people only play games at certain times of the day so they want games they can pick up and put down easy, others just don’t want to be bothered and want everything a game has to offer available from the beginning,
Fuck that, though.
People enjoy their games for different reasons, but as far as immersion goes, real-time clocks offer a level you can’t get otherwise. I call it the “Tamagotchi Effect.” Every cool ’90s kid knows that those little keychain pets were badass because if you kept them fed and happy you’d wake up and your little guys would have grown and evolved as if they were actual creatures. The passage of time made it seem like it’s existence was completely independent of the player and all the more real.
Isn’t that why we play most games? Don’t we want to be immersed and feel like we’re in the game world we’re playing? Hell, we have a whole genre called “role-playing games.” Imagine a superhero game where you have to keep regular tabs on the city. The city never sleeps and crime never stops even if you do. Patrol the city or post up on a gargoyle looking over it like Batman, stopping thugs up to no good on the spot and on a good day: the occasional supervillian. What happens when you don’t play for a long time?; the internal clock picks up that you haven’t in awhile, so next time you do the game changes. The city is in disarray, the Daily Bugle’s asking “Where is Spider-Man?” and you have to clean up the mess. Throw in time-triggered events (i.e. swinging through the city on New Years Eve to see people partying in Times Square) and you have a game where you’re living the life of a superhero. Fantasy escapism in a pure and awesome form.
But no one’s taken the real-time game concept to that next step by putting it in an action title. Admittedly it’s a lot harder to do in a game where you’re fighting and can die than in one where you’re fishing and catching bugs like in Animal Crossing, but it’s not impossible. Developers just haven’t put in the time and effort into the mechanics because it’s easier to make all games like they’ve always been made, and there’s a level of uncertainty surrounding how a title like that would be received. There hasn’t been a major real-time release this generation (not including Pokemon).
It’s not like this is some niche market, though. The ridiculous popularity of Facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars and the continued use of real-time in modern Pokemon titles shows that even if it’s not your particular cup of tea, there’s plenty of people who dig the clocks. Heavy Rain, Mirror’s Edge; games that ditch modern conventions to try and bring it closer to reality are in these days. It’s the perfect moment for developers to revisit a concept that I think the industry just wasn’t ready for at the time.
About the Author
Jaleel is an editor on The DamnLag and author of "Combo Breaker". A video game journalist since 2004, he's had to churn out every cliche article imaginable. Combo Breaker is his initiative to inject real, investigative journalism into the industry. Just don't ever tell him he's wrong (he probably wouldn't believe you anyway).
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