Games

Hi, my name is Joe and I’m addicted to computer games. There, I’ve said it finally. It all started with Atari; I purchased one of the first ones, and ended up with a stack of the (very expensive) game cartridges. I just loved those little space invaders marching back and forth as I shot them from the skies. From there I moved on to an Apple 2, which I did purchase in order to write programs for, but probably spent more time playing games on. Apple Panic was one of my favorites, jumping over things and digging holes occupied many hours. Then I moved on to an IMB PC, which had a disk drive and let me get many more programs.

I am not very speedy of reaction, and so do not really like the shoot them up games. My sons are always on line, playing the soldier type things with their Xboxes, jumping around and shooting people and getting shot. I purchased several of the games they used, but got killed within a few seconds of getting on; with one (rather expensive) WW2 shooter I couldn’t even get through the stand alone training session on the wimp setting. So none of that interaction stuff for me, I don’t mind losing but I would like to be in the game for at least a few minutes.

I like the games that make you think, try out things and find stuff, and that let you try and try again to get better. Duke Nukem was interesting, it let me wander around and shoot things and find things, and if I got killed I could go back and try it over doing something different, Doom was similar. I am in the middle of Fallout, where you wander around a landscape after a nuclear war looking for stuff and trying to survive. Yes, you get shot at, but it’s by the computer and you can go back to a previous position and avoid the area or do something different, like having a second (and third and fourth) chance. Before that it was Spore, a different game where you fly around between planets and build cities and look for combinations of things. No getting shot in that one and it’s really big – you can go to hundreds of stars looking for stuff and build cities on thousands of planets. No real way to ‘win’ it, you just keep on going until you’re tired of building and looking because eventually everything seems the same.

My latest obsession is Starcraft 2, which I picked up last week. In the Starcraft games you direct little people/aliens/equipment around a map and have them construct buildings and wage mini wars. I just love setting up a sequence of events, then sitting back and watching those little figures scurry around the screen building things and running back and forth. Sometimes I get so involved in watching what’s going on that I forget it’s a game, and then the bad guys show up and destroy my base and I have to start all over. I tried to go on line and play with others, but again I’m thinking about things and building stuff and when I look up a whole army is descending on me and all I have are workers and factories and nobody to fight back.

I joined Facebook just to play Farmville and Café World. Yes, I put up a few pictures, but those are mostly for my European friends that don’t come here, and have more family shots than interesting Vegas images. Facebook games are similar to Starcraft, where you can just sit back and watch those little people wander around and do things. There is something soothing in watching your Café and seeing all the guests walking in through the door, sit down and be served a meal. Endless hours of productive time can be spent just moving a mouse and watching a computer screen. But then that’s very similar to the programming I get paid to do, so what’s the difference? (except I don’t get paid to raise crops in Farmville, at least not in money I can send to my mortgage company).

Quite a lot of people I know are on Facebook. A number of them used to be listed over there on the right but they enjoyed the short posting formats and quick responses there and have stopped updating their blogs (I mean you too Dana and Terri). I usually drop people off of the read list after three months of no posting, so my four queens are now down to two. A few have gone over to Twitter, and seem to Tweet more than blog (Suzy says she does) but until there are games I don’t see much reason to let everyone know what I’m doing in 140 characters or less. It might be interesting to hear (sorry, read) Suz’s jokes and thoughts but I’m not sure if I can handle my cell phone continually vibrating as new tweets come in.

So, here I am, not posting as much as I want, so it’s back to walkng the Strip and taking some more pictures.