Vintage Game Club plays Alpha Centauri

The Vintage Game Club is something I’ve been interested in for a while and finally got around to joining this last month. It’s basically just a forum started by Michael Abbot of The Brainy Gamer where members vote on and then play a classic game together every month. They then discuss segments of the game with each other. Think book of the month club, but for video games. This idea immediately appealed to me and they do it at an incredibly casual rate so that anyone can join in despite busy schedules. However there is the obvious problem of non-linear narratives and branching story lines causing issues with organized discussion.

The club is just about to finish up their playthrough of Alpha Centauri. It’s the first game I’ve played with them and my first Sid Meier game. Alpha Centauri is one of those games I mentioned above that doesn’t break up easily into discussable parts. The game can start off several different ways based on which group you choose to play as and the possibilities skyrocket from there. In order to discuss the game, the topics were divided into Early, Mid, and Late Impressions, Strategy, Narrative, and various others.

This didn’t seem to work well, but I wonder if it is more because of the structure they chose or the game itself. The reason I say it didn’t work well is because compared to the other games they’ve played, all of which are fairly linear, the amount of discussion is considerably less. I don’t think the problem was with the topics chosen; they seem to cover all the major aspects of the game. The problem, at least for me, was with the game.

Like I said, this is the first Sid Meier game I’ve ever played and from what I understand he has gotten exceptionally better at teaching his overly complex games in more recent years. Alpha Centauri has almost no tutorial for controls and an incredibly overwhelming tour guide of all the many menus for managing your civilization. I found this to be an immediate turnoff, but gave the game the benefit of the doubt and played it for several hours. I can honestly still say I have very little idea about how to play the game and it should be noted I spent an additional hour or two reading the manual as well. I suspect all the other newcomers encountered similar problems, grew wary and gave up.

The experienced players on the other hand ran into a completely different problem. It seems the genre has evolved and changed so much with Civilization 3 and 4 that playing Alpha Centauri proved to be a lot more tedious that everyone remembered. It’s interesting to see what was once considered excellent now be thought of as tiresome because of changes in sequels. It happens with tons of series and genres, for instance I played the original Halo at a Xbox LAN party a few months ago. We were super excited when we found out someone brought enough copies for us to play. After about an hour we decided the game was crap, or at least was different enough from Halo 3 that we didn't want to play it anymore. This was the first time most of us had touched Halo 1 since Halo 2 came out. Yet there are still plenty of others whose early games stand just as tall as the later ones. The big three Nintendo franchises, Mario, Metroid and Zelda, all come to mind.

Alpha Centauri didn’t seem to resonate with the players in the way required to get everyone interested. It’s kind of funny considering it was voted for and won, but I’m guessing most of those votes came from either people like me that were curious or fans biased by nostalgia. Nostalgia is a powerful thing when it comes to games. We as gamers tend to jump to the next big thing almost immediately, but it wasn’t like that when we were children with limited income. We would play the same games for years. Looking back on those games, we have nothing but fond memories of our youth, but games have changed immensely over the years and what was acceptable then hardly is now.

It’s a shame that Alpha Centauri didn’t spark the same caliber of discussion all the other games did. I really wanted to like it and I did enjoy what everyone else had to say, this game just wasn’t for everyone. I encourage everyone to join the Vintage Game Club however. It’s a great idea and I wish I found the time to participate during their previous games. They are playing a Zelda game next and I guarantee that one will spawn more discourse than I’ll have time to read.