Give Us a Clue

                     An article by Sue

Recently, I upgraded my computer. Now, I'm quite happy footering
about with software - I don't say I'm supremely confident or even
competent but I'll have a bash. After all, if it goes wrong, all I
have to do is reinstall the program - or at worst reformat the
hard drive.  Hardware is another matter. I don't like to think
about my own "innards" (as far as I am concerned, I'm solid, right
through!) and I take a similar view of my computer's giblets. Until
recently I have always refused to take off its lid and poke about 
inside. What if I touch the wrong bit?  Could I blow the whole 
thing? No, I'd much rather ask someone for help and get a more 
knowledgeable person to do the honours.

That, to me, seems a logical way to behave. I don't understand
hardware, I have no urge to understand it, and as far as I'm
concerned, it's best left to those who DO understand it, or WANT
to.  If I persisted, I could probably do it myself - eventually -
but what's the point? I'd rather make coffee and encouraging
noises while someone else pulls bits in and out of the case. I
don't feel I've failed in any way by not doing it all myself -
I've merely had help with something that I can't easily do
unaided.

Then why is it that if I have help with a puzzle in a game, I feel
I've 'cheated'? If a particular problem is holding me up, maybe
stopping me progressing at all in a linear game, what's the point
in NOT getting help? I might never be able to complete the game
without a hint, and I'd lose the fun of playing the rest of it. I
think we'd all agree that there is something very depressing about
an unsolved game.  We keep going back to the point we're stuck,
trying other things, or retrying the SAME thing in the hope that
THIS time it will work. But, no; we have to get help or consign
the game to the 'unfinished' box.

There was a time, more than a decade ago, when an unfinished game
was a challenge to me, not a frustration. I wouldn't have dreamed
of asking for help - but then, who would I ask? I didn't know
anyone else who was crazy enough to play these games! All I could
do was check out the monthly glossy mags in the hope that they'd
print a hint for exactly the place where I was stuck -- it didn't
happen very often. Sometimes that meant that I just had to give up
on a game. But at other times I kept mulling over a problem,
hating to be beaten, and sometimes I eventually got the answer. My
sense of satisfaction at such times was overwhelming - I felt
extremely pleased when my patience and persistence paid off.

In the mid 80s I joined Prestel and found the ClubSpot 810
Adventure Helpline, met Marion, Richard and other adventure
addicts. Thus I gained access to help from people who logged on to
the system and compiled hint sheets or replied to messages that
were posted on the Helpline carousel. If someone was stuck in a
game, our Helpline team could invariably find someone who knew the
answer so no-one had to stay 'stuck' for long.

Now, there are loads of magazines (including SynTax) and
helplines, and, of course, the Internet. Solutions appear on the
Net with amazing speed - sometimes before a game is officially
released!  There are FAQs, walkthroughs, hints, maps, cheats and
codes. Need more lives? Someone will be able to tell you which
codes will give them to you. Need better weapons in an RPG? Again,
there are often hacks or editors available which will let you kit
out your hero in the best style giving him just the edge he needs.

But is it always a good thing to be able to give your alter ego a
boost in this way? It can backfire. An old friend of mine, who was
an RPGer, always souped up his characters using an editor if one
was available before he started playing a new game. One day he
added an interesting sounding item to his inventory, started the
game and immediately got a congratulatory message thanking him for
recovering the Dooberry of Thingummy or whatever the thing was.
Oops - he'd inadvertently given himself the main quest object from
the game!

I don't subscribe to the view that people should be made to
struggle because they 'haven't tried long enough'. It's their game
and they can play it however they like. If they bought a game
today and are stuck already, I have no objection to helping them.
But do we sometimes strip some of the fun out of a game by making
it too easy with hacks or by peeking at a solution?

I don't know about you, but years ago, I didn't have such a busy
life. I spent more time gaming and I accepted that big chunks of
that time would be spent thinking about a puzzle on which I was
stuck. (It was also one of the reasons why I had several games on
the go at once - while stuck on one, I could move across to
another). Now my time is more limited and if I've only got an hour
to 'play' I don't want to spend half of that time staring at the
screen looking for inspiration.

Games can also take much longer to complete because they're more
sophisticated. If you don't want to spend hours - if not days -
going down the wrong route, or using the wrong characters, a hint
can be very useful. I vaguely remember one RPG coming out some
years ago where one member of the party had to be of a certain
alignment or profession for you to be able to complete the game.
Thankfully designers don't often build in such traps for unwary
adventurers who could spend ages building up their party, only to
have to replace one member at a late stage. But it can still be
helpful to know that a party with extra magic skills, for
instance, would be helpful in a particular game.

I know a number of you have a similar strict attitude with
yourselves regarding getting help, whereas others are more relaxed
and, I must say, realistic about it. I wish I was like that! What
causes this difference? Is one attitude more healthy than the
other? And is there a middle ground?

Once again I called on leading psychotherapist Adrian Blake to
give me some explanation and comment. He told me:

   "It probably links to old shoulds and oughts. If we have no
   experience of plumbing and don't come from a family of
   plumbers, it would probably be 'acceptable' to get someone else
   to mend a leaking pipe. Old family expectations of us from our
   childhood would not come into play. But for an intellectual
   puzzle, we may feel 'stupid' if we can't find the answer. To
   avoid feeling stupid, we WILL try to solve it unaided. We are
   caught in a double blind: we CAN'T find the answer - but we
   MUST do so. As long as we carry the old 'should' with us, it's
   a no-win situation. If we can't do it we feel stupid, if we ask
   for help, we are inadequate.

   "The answer is to work on getting rid of the 'should' so that
   we come to rightly believe it is a sign of strength to ask for
   help when we need it, not a sign of weakness. Now that's a
   really useful belief to carry around!"










                              - o -