Why We Love Tower Defense

Orc bits -- bloody and numerous -- filled the air. Acid coated the mine floor. Archers let loose a hundred arrows against a lumbering threat. While playing Orcs Must Die 2 a strange thought came to me as I hurriedly reinforced my defenses: why do we love tower defense games so much?

We often call tower defense a "genre," but it's more accurately grown and evolved alongside preexisting types, from shooters to strategy games. It's touched every platform in the video game space and returns time and time again, perhaps in different forms but always with the same core principles.

How do we explain this infatuation? Games like Orcs Must Die 2 have immediate appeal. They make sense, not only because we've seen the formula before but because the fundamental actions we take resonate with something deep inside us. Tower defense plays off of our need for security, ownership, and a desire to protect the people closest to us. Like children building forts, we build defenses against the denizens of the digital dark.

If you were anything like me as a child, you built forts. They came in many shapes and sizes, and were crafted with various materials. The cushion fort was an affordable and easy-to-access classic, but the legendary cardboard fort was a rare treat. Did your parents give you the box to the new refrigerator? The stuff of dreams!

While I can't and won't offer a professional, psychological deconstruction of this behavior, we as amateurs can recognize some obvious themes. We build forts to feel safe. We put up walls to repel our fears and insecurities, be they real or otherwise. In a world much bigger than our childhood selves, we design our defenses and -- at the same time -- satisfy our common need to create.

We can say the same for tower defense. In Orcs Must Die 2, as a recent example, the War Mage and Sorceress build defenses to repel the dangerous orcs as they rush in from other worlds. There's nothing quite like the feeling of watching a host of invaders fall before your defenses, keeping you safe from tooth and claw. In Orcs Must Die 2, I favor small, narrow spaces to concentrate my efforts. Such areas not only offer strategic advantages but also satisfy my need to feel safe.

We never see the inside of the house. But we know it's important.

We also build forts to create personal space that we can call our own. We desire ownership over things. This not only gives the fort intrinsic value, but makes it feel like home. This, again, plays right into the design of tower defense. Many games present levels as obstacles; they're challenges to overcome. In tower defense, they're your home turf. For the period of that level/stage/chapter/whatever, your play space requires care and consideration. You make it your own.

And of course, we build forts to protect our loved ones. How often did we invite our friends, even our parents, into the ramshackle concoctions hanging from the side of the living room sofa? We brought people in to share our safety and gain a sense of companionship. No one wants to fend off the darkness alone.

Once again, the core principles of tower defense echo this desire. By definition you defend a point of interest, precious person, or vulnerability in every tower defense game. What made PixelJunk Monsters so compelling? The adorable villagers -- defenseless and needy -- that scuttled about in fear as monsters came crashing through their woods. Your mighty plants and flowers, smiling in the sunlight, protect you (the player) in the essential Plants vs. Zombies.

There's always something familiar, something vulnerable, behind those defenses you build. And, in most circumstances, the ghastly invaders represent the "other." Perhaps the aforementioned orcs, or pulsating insects. Name something scary and it has very likely invaded a tower defense game. This urge to protect and preserve fuels our need to keep playing. And it drives us to play well.

Not all tower defense games follow the exact same formula, but these themes of safety, ownership, and protection pervade the "genre." We gladly defend our mines and dungeons and forests and cities for hours on end, and we've been doing so for a long time. We have to -- it's in our nature. And we'll likely keep on building for many years to come.

So when you see a child building a fort, just remember: you're looking at a future tower defense champion.

Ryan Clements writes for IGN. He spent many afternoons as a child inside various boxes... for better or worse. Follow him on IGN or Twitter. Or both!

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IGN @ Tokyo Game Show: What You Need to Know

The Tokyo Game Show starts next week, and IGN editors are Japan-bound this weekend to bring you the coverage you crave. We'll be scouring the show floor for those obscure, bizarrely-fascinating Japanese games, you'll never get to play, as well as digging deeper into upcoming AAA releases we can't wait for.

So when is this thing? What's going to be there and what are we excited to tell you about? Where can you find our coverage? Does Japan really have awesome giant robot technology? Well, since you're asking...

The show runs from September 20-23 Tokyo time. For the Westerners, that means we'll kick it off Wednesday, September 19. Because time-zones. We'll be at a few pre-show events, including Namco Bandai, the PlayStation press conference, and Tecmo to tell you about Japanese publishers' latest and greatest games ahead of the show, as well.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Certain members of IGN's TGS squad are huge Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance fans (ahem). The slicing mechanic works, the action is fast and tense, and Raiden is just super cool. So now that we're in the homeland of Kojima Productions and Platinum Games, cross your fingers for more from Revengeance's story, setting, and complex combat system in a brand new demo.

Yakuza 5

We heard rumblings that Yakuza 5 is in development some time ago, so we're thrilled to finally be able to get back into the seedy underworld with Kazuma Kiryu -- and four other characters. Yakuza 5 is the first series entry since Yakuza 3 to rebuild its engine, so we're expecting gorgeous scenery to complement the massive story, now with five open-worlds in which we plan to kick dudes and woo ladies.

Bayonetta 2

Nintendo shocked everyone when it revealed Bayonetta 2 as a Wii U-exclusive action game. How will it use the GamePad, who's involved in its development, and what's changed as Bayonetta makes her way to a new platform? We want to know as much as you do, so we're going to explore Bayonetta 2 as much as possible and report from the field. Expect lewd images and video to come alongside our coverage...

Lost Planet 3

The Japanese series may be in American hands, but, despite the developer's past faults, we trust Spark Unlimited to pull it off with Lost Planet 3. We want to learn more about the single-player focus and its main character, and see what threats still exist on this frozen ice world. We'll report right to you when we sink more time into killing Acrid in a big, bad Vital Suit.

E.X. Troopers

The Lost Planet spinoff is definitely a different kind of action game than its source material, both aesthetically and tonally -- but hey, slaughtering bugs and exploring planets is the core of what makes it interesting. We can't wait to finally jetpack around an ice planet, take Vital Suits into space, and interact with the colorful cast of new characters in this comic book-esque spin on the series. E.X. Troopers could be something special.

We're also pumped to check out more on Resident Evil 6, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, Project X Zone, Zone of the Enders HD, Monster Hunter on Wii U, Tekken Tag Tournament 2's incredible Nintendo costumes, Remember Me, and dozens of others.

You can catch every last piece of TGS-related content on good ol' IGN.com, of course.

But if you'd rather filter out unrelated news, the IGN Tokyo Game Show hub will pump all of our TGS coverage into your veins.

We'll have articles and videos going live every day during the show, so be sure to keep it locked to IGN from September 20-23 to learn all about the best, smartest, and craziest games in the east.

Until then, IGN's Daemon Hatfield will be training his arcade skills so he can compete with this dude:

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor for IGN's Xbox 360 team. He’s definitely going to get lost in Japan. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.

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Chilling 9/11 note reaches family 10 years later

“84th Floor west office 12 people trapped.”

The words were scrawled on a note by Connecticut resident Randy Scott on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked. Scott perished that fateful day, but the note withstood the collapse of the towers and was passed from hand to hand for nearly ten years before it finally reached his family, according to the Stamford Advocate.

Scott’s wife, Denise, learned about what her family refers to as “The Note” in August 2011. She had previously believed her husband died instantly after Flight 175 flew into the tower near the offices of Euro Brokers, where he worked. The scrap of paper has robbed the family of any illusion Randy Scott died a quick and merciful death.

"I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn't trapped in that building," Denise, 57, said to the newspaper from her Stamford home, with two of her three daughters, Rebecca, 29, and Alexandra, 22, at her side. "You don't want them to suffer. They're trapped in a burning building. It's just an unspeakable horror. And then you get this10 years later. It just changes everything.”

"I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn't trapped in that building."

- Denise Scott

The Note not only has the final words written by Scott, it also has a trace amount of his blood, according to the Advocate. DNA testing confirmed a match and helped the New York City Medical Examiner’s office track down his family, the paper reported.

Randy had phoned Denise before writing the note at the school where she teaches first grade, but believing that the first crash was minor, he simply left a message with the main office letting her know that he was fine, Scott recounted to the Stamford newspaper. Denise Scott said she did not know about the attacks until later that morning, when daughter Rebecca called her from Ohio.

For the next few days, the Scotts frantically checked around at hospitals, hoping the family patriarch had dodged death. Hope slowly gave way, yet they were able to believe that because Scott's office was close to the point of impact, he had not suffered, according to the Advocate.

Just over a year ago, as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Denise Scott was contacted by Dr. Barbara Butcher, head of forensics investigations for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York, the Advocate reported. A tiny note had been determined to have been written by the hand of Randy Scott. 

"She said, `It's something written.' And that's when I just fell apart," Denise Scott recalled in the interview with the Advocate.

When Scott saw the note, she knew her husband had written it.

"The minute I saw it I didn't need to see the DNA test," she said to the paper. "I saw the handwriting. It's Randy's handwriting."

Butcher informed Scott that she had retraced where the note had gone for the past decade. The note was dropped from the 84th floor. It was discovered by someone on the street, who immediately handed it to a guard at the Federal Reserve Bank just before the building collapsed.

"He [the guard] went to radio, and the building was gone. The building collapsed," Scott recalled being told.

The Federal Reserve branch held the note for safekeeping before turning it over to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which worked with the Medical Examiner’s Office to trace its origin.

“[The note] is "exceptionally rare. I don't know of anything else like it," Jan Ramirez, chief curator of the museum, said to the Advocate.

"There have been other pieces of paper that came out of the towers that day, to which we have been able to attach some powerful stories, but none have been quite as rare and unusual and inspiring and sad and touching as this particular one. It really is in a class by itself," she said Saturday.

At Butcher's request, Scott granted permission for the museum to exhibit the letter once she told her daughters about it. But the right time didn't come until last January, after her own father's death.

This past March, Scott and Rebecca took a hardhat tour of the museum and was shown where Randy’s note will be displayed, as part of an exhibit on the final moments inside the towers.

"It's so amazing to think that Randy Scott wrote it and it eventually ended up with his wife and three daughters, which is an amazing arc of a day," Ramirez said to the Advocate. "We are incredibly proud to be able to show it and I think it will be one of the most powerful artifacts in the museum."

Some families of victims have chosen not to be notified by the medical examiner's office when fragments are found.

"I can't do that," Denise Scott said to the paper. "The last notification of remains I got was in 2008. And I can't do that. I can't leave him there."

Click here for more from the Stanford Advocate

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