Comment Articles

Control freak

Rob Beattie AnchorDesk

Published: 02 Mar 2000 15:14 GMT

In reality, with a world where so much is out of control, it's important to feel like you've got a handle on something, even if -- sadly -- it's only your modem settings. It's this, I'm convinced, that software authors play on when they stuff their programs with such mind-boggling nested menus and tabbed dialogue boxes where every teensy setting can be fiddled with and tweaked and poked obsessively. I mean, who needs to be able to define whether or not the menus swish out of the menu bar in a word processor? Yet, there it is, beating with an ugly, pointless life of its own in some just-because-I-can-OK? dialogue box deep inside Microsoft Word.

This search for control is what also drives people to -- I believe -- unnecessary extremes, like purchasing a personal finance program, my own particular bête noire. I mean, I'm as interested in money -- or at least my money -- as the next person, but do I really need to keep track of my belongings with a home inventory, or "read financial articles written by some of the UK's leading financial journalists"? (both of which are claimed benefits of the Money 2000 Financial Suite).

I don't think so. True, I like the idea of sitting monk-like at my keyboard, desk as spartan as the day it was bought, everything in its place, rawhiding those little pixels round the screen, making them work for me; but in practice, it's as much a fantasy as waking up one day to discover I'm a previously overlooked attacking English wing back with a sweet left foot. I have neither the interest nor the discipline to make it happen; nor in the case of the fantasy, the left foot in question.

I do though, like playing real-time strategy games like Command & Conquer and its ilk (ilk are like elk but smaller) because it gives me the go-there-do-that-I'm-the-boss kick but requires very little effort on my part -- a few mouse moves, a couple of clicks and my armies are marching all over the place.

Clearly though, for grade-A control freaks, games like this lack realism. What we want is to control real people.

And now, with a new game from Maxis, we can.