Variety of Blogs

Throughout this paper I have been exposed to such a number of different games that I would have never have come across. I was actually really taken with some of the games on the list for the Stage 3 essay like The Majesty of Colours. I thought it was a really beautiful and emotive game that was different than I had ever played before. I hate fast games as I get overwhelmed and frantic playing them like that stupid Zombie Run game on iPhones. The Majesty of Colours allowed me to slow down and interact with the game however I wanted and I enjoyed that. I was also interested by the thought of ‘Amusement Capital’, as I and many of my friends are absolute suckers for it. As hard as it is to admit… I have to say that I was actually obsessed with FarmVille. I got jealous of everyone posting about their nice farms so I checked it out and became addicted straight away. It got to the point where I asked to use a friend’s computer when I was out as I had to harvest my crops. Trust me I know how sad that is but you only had half an hour to harvest them before they withered!!! It doesn’t stop there unfortunately. I then found SmurfVille. You not only build their village but you get challenges with steps up the entertainment level a notch. I think these simple time waster games are like the modern day Tamagotchi or Nano Pet. You build them from scratch so you feel like you are invested in them. If they fail, you have failed and wasted lots of effort. I was even one of those annoying people who sent out FarmVille requests (sorry!). For someone who doesn’t spend much time playing computer games, I became extremely obsessed which makes it clearer how the games then use this emotional investment to turn a profit. If you were an impatient person you could easily throw a few dollars on your account and buy plenty of crops and tools to build your farm. Hmmmm :/. From there I started noticing advertisements for free online Poker! Great! What better way to procrastinate. Again, it is very easy to chuck some money on your account and keep playing. My most recent addiction is a game by Zynga called Words with Friends. It’s like Scrabble but virtual and you play with people you know. As I was wasting hours on it a few days ago I started to think about this paper and how it was interesting that I was becoming obsessed with these stupid games and was embarrassed of it. They are like a guilty pleasure. A few years ago I was spending the weekend at and ex-boyfriends house with his little brothers and we decided to have a gaming night. Everyone got to pick one game and we decided to spend a bit of time on each game to avoid arguments. Away we went and when we got to the counter the boys had chosen pretty similar games like Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Combat and so on. I was pretty excited about my choice but when I showed the boys they were horrified. I got the Play Station version of Monopoly! Apparently we weren’t going to play my game though. The transition between real life games and digital ones is interesting… Monopoly played through a play station was much less cool (I guess in comparison to what they could be playing). It’s also interesting that people are prepared to pay $50-150 on a board game yet loading some money onto an internet game is a scam. A friend of mine got very excited about a board game involving Zombies so she made a group message and sent us a YouTube video of kids playing it. I thought this was bizarre in itself. It ended up with the group having an intervention with her and refusing to let her buy the game. Do we expect games to come free now that the internet provides so many?