Gamers Explained?

OK I'm a gamer. I admit... guilty. And if I am to add it all up I think I've spent several thousands of hours of my life playing games since I was about 14 or so.

I still remember the summer I was supposed to learn for my university admission exam; really serious business if I ever wanted to get a bachelor degree/education; I remember all I did that summer, from morning to dawn, was to play hot seat games with my friend trying to postpone the inevitable (having to prepare for the exam).

Was it wrong? Not a chance it was probably the best thing to do, I would have gone crazy had I spent all that time learning instead. It actually helped me study much faster, because it was in the way, I needed to get it done so I could play. :)

Now at some point in a gamer's life comes the question: "was I really wasting all of that time doing totally unimportant things when I could've been saving the world instead?". Or substitute "world" with whatever feels important for the person. This question, while important I admit, won't last long as soon the next gaming session starts in a try to forget about it and evade any answer :)

Jane McGonigal doesn't answer that question either, but she changed it from "Are gamers wasting time?" to "How can we make RL more like a game?" or "How can we design games that have an impact on RL?". Nice twist:



Who knows maybe our jobs would be so much more cooler if it were like an RPG. "Awesome, I've submitted another CL and got 200xp so I got to level 10 software engineer!" :D

And I share her believe, if you make a gamer believe it's a game... they can accomplish almost anything! As soon as we think the outcome doesn't really matter as "it's just a game"... we're doing so much better.

Mai e tinereţe şi după 30 :)

Dorin face o postare imensă despre lucruri învăţate în 30 de ani: aici. Varianta mea pentru "viaţa de după 30" şi ce am învăţat e foarte scurtă:

Timpul le distilează pe toate.

There's Beauty... in evil and diversity

Beauty is lost when rationalized.

It's me... Like we all are.

Alone on a preset path. Trying to do my best. Trying to get as far.

The Hermit

" - You have grown in the shadow of others and are found of it. But when lights go off and darkness takes you, when silence quiets you... you are always alone. The demons you face came all from within you."

Bacteria... know what they're doing

So apparently bacteria function like organized criminals or the secret societies: quiet until they reach the required infiltration level to be sure an attack cannot be stopped and then they fully launch their attack. I like the thought that even single cell organisms outsmart humans at times.

Aging into God

When all else fails, God is left.

Piese instrumentale favorite - repostat

Dorin îmi propune o leapşă. Nu prea cred în asemenea chestii, dar te fac să scrii pe blog când n-ai nimic interesant de zis.

Deci piese instrumentale favorite, incredibil de greu de găsit:


Şi ar mai fi, dar îmi e foarte greu să găsesc preferinţele mele pe net. De obicei ascult şi îmi place ceva, ce aud odată, din întamplare, pe fundalul unui film, pe la radio, pe la alţii... şi apoi caut şi caut cine a cântat acele 3 sunete de mi-au atras atenţia :) Şi în cazurile fericite le găsesc.

Nu prea am clasică în top pentru că nu prea ascult clasică. E foarte multă muzică clasică ce îmi place, dar nu intră neapărat în favorite. Dar... îmi place la nebunie: mai întăi vioara (tristă sau jucăuşă, cum e ea) şi apoi pianul. Dar nu numai, sunt atâtea instrumente şi sunete superbe pe lumea asta şi de la atâtea civilizaţii şi culturi. De ex. Tan Dun - In the Chess Court. Deşi nu ştiu pe unde să o găsiţi.

Said in the '70s... to no effect?

We will see how very important it is to bring about, in the human mind, the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness. A crisis that cannot, anymore, accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. And, considering what the world is now, with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression, and so on… Man is still as he was. Is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive. And, he’s built a society along these lines.

J. Krishnamurti

Perhaps more than 30 years after these words were spoken I sent them to most of my friends in the form of a video. Some fell asleep on it in the first minute. Some didn't find the time for it, considering the demands of modern life. And in my opinion, all are cases of the omnipresent ADD of the modern man.

I (used to) enjoy sharing and discussing matters of the life. Yet now, my rare occasions of a discussion resembles web surfing. My conversation partner reads through my words and before I could finish my statement follows the links in a word. In less than a minute we're talking about completely different subjects. But just like web surfing, we both have the vague impression that somehow the conversation is still linked to the "home page" we've left of.

EDIT: Initially I didn't want to post the videos just to make it more entertaining to search and find it, for the easily distracted :-)

Farming

Farm·ing
a.

Pertaining to agriculture; devoted to, adapted to, or engaged in, farming; as, farming tools; farming land; a farming community.

Farm·ing
n.

The business of cultivating land.

Or so Webster's Dictionary says. I think I have a vague memory of that. But I am not sure. Think I might have met a farmer once, and he was doing exactly that, but it was early in my childhood and my memory wasn't well formed.

Farming is the killing of monsters for the purpose of gathering items, experience, gold, Faction, or promotion points and is considered to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to amass wealth.

Ah, now that sounds more familiar. You learn more about it here.

So yes, I do like playing video games and I happen to play Guild Wars, why that and not something else is besides the point (they're all the same). Now let's go back to the dictionary again:

game
n.

An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.

So... who exactly was the sick mind behind the idea of "farming" in video games? I can imagine the following discussion in a team developing games:

"- Oh shit! We worked 5 years on this game and the test users finished it in 10 hours! What do we do? What do we do?"
" - Oh well... we can't provide new content, that would actually mean working to make the game interesting and exciting. And even if we did that for a month or two, we definitively don't want to do that for the next two years! I mean that would mean us really working on the thing!"
" - Yeah, but what to keep our players busy with while we monthly take money out of their accounts for doing nothing?"
" - Well... I know! We can make them like work!"
" - Work?"
" - Yeah, you know like when you have a daily job and you have to go mine for ore or something."
" - Hmmm... mine for ore. So we just put some ore mines here and there... oh I have an even greater idea make the mining succeed or fail randomly! I mean it's not like a real miner in a mine, though some of them were dying weren't they?"
" - Yeah, that's a great idea! If we make mining to give in return random items and the cool ones will be rare I bet players will just mine forever hoping to get the rare items. I mean you know hope dies last!"
" - Excellent! That should keep many busy, but how about those that don't like mining?"
" - Oh well... make them farm!"

Brilliant, just brilliant. From game "an activity providing entertainment or amusement" to "mining and farming". Brilliant I tell you. No one would ever want to farm or mine in RL (that is Real Life) but they would all do it online! As if the modern man has so much free time and his job is not "job" enough, so we need to give modern man another "job" for the spare time.

---

WTF? Really! WTF are you people doing? WTF are you gamers doing? Farming? And WTF are you game developers doing? Throwing work at people and *charging* them for working??? And making millions while at it?

I want a *game* I am *not* looking for a job! And I find mining and farming to be crappy jobs even if i was looking for one.