By Tanner Nypen ’15
THE ROUNDUP
No matter what interests students may have in common, there is diversity among the video games they play in their free time.
Video games can go from sports to warfare to farming simulators.
One current style of game however has found a growing following on campus.
Trent Meekin ’15 is one example of a student who plays RTS games, or real time strategy games.
Real time strategy games are bird’s eye view games, such as “StarCraft” and “Company of Heroes.”
In these games users create bases and armies and fight opposing forces on maps created by the game.
Most RTS games have some form of resource pool or economy for building armies and bases.
“My favorite game is currently ‘Rome II: Total War,’ because it is a grand strategy game, where there is a turn-based stage, where you manage cities, raise your armies and move around the map,” Meekin said. “Then if any conflict arises you go to a real time strategy format, where you can actually control your men.”
“Rome II: Total War” is an authentic representation of the Roman Empire that players can control.
“The Roman hastati fight like Roman hastati did, the Carthaginian navy will fight like the Carthaginian navy would, etc.,” Meekin said.
Students who play video games after school branch across the four classes as well.
John Moran ’14 is a senior who also plays RTS games.
Moran plays the game “Crusader Kings II,” another RTS game that puts users in place of a king of a nation and leaves them to control political affairs, war time affairs, betrayal and peace time affairs.
“You assume the character, or the persona of the person in the game that you chose to be,” Moran said. “You can manage your empire, you can have vassals, you can take over land and territory through marriage, there is a lot of political intrigue in it.”
The game takes place in the middle ages and includes many aspects that could affect nations at the time.
The game includes civil wars, wars for succession, betrayal by allies and setting up alliances.
Mark Meshcheryakov ’16 spends his time playing the popular game “Minecraft,” a first person sandbox game.
Minecraft is an open sandbox survival game that allows for endless creativity through building towns, cities, houses and anything else that can be thought of to be created.
“The game is a day/night cycle…, during the day you collect your resources to create what you want, build your house, tools, food,” Meshcherykov said. “The reasoning behind my interest for ‘Minecraft’ is not a lot of games emphasize sandbox and the creating of whatever your imagination can think of.”
On the other end of the spectrum are first person shooter games.
Omar Moreno ’15 plays “Team Fortress 2,” a first person shooter game for the computer.
“The game itself is pretty basic, you have a team composed of nine different types of characters going against another team of other characters,” Moreno said. “The most popular mode I can think of is capture the flag, where you pick one of those nine character and try to capture the other teams flag.”
“Team Fortress 2” is a free-to-play game for computer that allows players to have complete freedom in the customization of their characters.
“The game gives you a sense of freedom, because you can make your character look however you want, whatever weapons you want, there are different classes for different types of players,” Moreno said. “Even though it’s a shooter, it’s still pretty unique, like there is nothing quite like it out there.”