Not to mention that I acted essentially like a deity in the game. I cheated with codes to stockpile resources that normally would have taken hours of gameplay to collect; I sped up time so that little soldiers could be mass-produced as if barracks were toothpaste factories; I sent them into battle only to see them cut down and decay into digital skeletons before melting into the screen. In the midst of this excitement, history began to coalesce in my mind as a distinct phenomenon, a construction created through the click of a mouse and the movement of a cursor. It was rooted, primarily, in the belief that human agency is the paver of all paths to the future, which I begrudgingly admit was influenced however slightly by the supreme agency I wielded as a godlike figure in Age of Empires II.
By the time we left England for Johannesburg in 2007, I still played Age of Empires II assiduously, gobbling up sequels and expansion packs as if I had been rationed on them my whole life. Sometimes in my spare time, I hung out with my friend Frasier at his house, just a bike ride down the street. Most days we had no plan and would just waste the hours away playing Xbox 360. My family’ s frequent travelling gave me many memories, but the constant variable of hanging out with friends, new or old, gave me a sense of stability I held close as a kid.
Frasier’ s room was musty. It smelt of fuzz and dust, and had a low ceiling that looked higher than it actually was. Light streamed in through thin horizontal windows near the top of one wall. Once the television was flickered to life we’ d spend entire days playing games together. One day we soon grew tired of head-shotting each other in... I think it was Call of Duty... and he mentioned trying out a new game, except it was single player. I thought,‘ Single player? The hell is this nonsense?’ Turned out being a spectator for a change wasn’ t too bad. It gave me time to think, to stretch my cramped legs( because playing video games for long enough can make you suffer from severe pins-and-needles). Besides Frasier and I would hand the controller off to each other whenever one of us died onscreen in a typically unflattering, stupid manner.
At first I thought Assassin’ s Creed was okay. It was fun and interesting, the story was compelling, but the actions and controls were clumsy and blocky. It lacked dynamism, a fluidity that makes gameplay easily and subconsciously enjoyable. But the world- a fictional recreation of the Crusade-era Levant- was engrossing. Unlike Age of Empires, Assassin’ s Creed did not make me, the player, an overlord. Instead I was a character with personality, an arrogant but later stoic man known as Altair, who sported a bleached arabesque