Back to Work

[rowyn]

Whee.

It's July. My vacation is over. I'm back at work during the day, and my quota on Prophecy is back in effect.

I spent last night trying to squeeze in just a few more things before my free time evaporated. Oddly, I've found that "being productive" is habit forming, as I continued to work on other stories, work on the "Just Trust Me" campaign, do a little sketching, do writing exercises, etc. As opposed to, say, playing games during all my free time.

I've been really reluctant to take up any new games, for just this reason. I don't want to be addicted to another game the way I was with EverQuest, or even with JumpGate. I don't want to devote thirty or forty hours a week to playing computer games. I'd rather have something to show for my time when I'm done. I like playing those semi-mindless games, but I'd rather have something to show for my time. Even if it's just entries in my LJ. Of which I had quite a lot last week, I note. You may not have noticed that I was gone from the 16th-20th, but I'll bet you can tell that I'm back at work, and not at home any more.

I wrote this during lunch. Now to see if LJ will let me post it now ....

Comments

[krud42.livejournal.com]

I got the strangest sense of deja vu while readng this...

>"I don't want to devote thirty or forty hours a week to playing computer games. I'd rather have something to show for my time when I'm done."

I totally agree with this sentiment. Unfortunately, it's at odds with my addiction to Morrowind.

[rowyn]

I'll admit that my resolve to not get sucked into games is helped by the fact that most of the last several I've played didn't appeal that much. I enjoyed WC3 quite a bit, for several months. But games like "Diablo 2", "Dungeon Siege" and "Baldur's Gate" never really grabbed me. I've got friends who spoke highly of "Morrowind", but I have the feeling I wouldn't get all that into it, either.

Considering how you feel about your addiction, I don't know if I should say "I'm glad you're enjoying it" or not. Er. Good luck!

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

It go double ya? Post is twice-twice.

?

[rowyn]

(lemme try that again)

Did this entry get posted twice yesterday? I'm only seeing it in my journal once right now. Or were you refering to something else?

[krud42.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the most annoying thing about it is, Morrowind is not a good game, in my opinion.

That is, the story line is tired and cliche' (from what little I've managed to piece together), the open-ended structure results in little sense of direction and/or accomplishment, the AI is so atrocious that you can thwart a magic user by standing behind a stalagmite or tree, and nobody ever seems to remember having talked to you, even from the day before. Dialogue is repetitive to the point where you stop paying attention to it, the music gets grating after a while (assuming your system can even run adequately while it's playing, which ours isn't, despite being 1.6Mhz w/ 512MB RAM), the interface is so menu-centric that the environment itself is merely an obstacle course, albeit one that's beautifully rendered. And the ever-pervasive problem in games of this type, in that it seems two dozen people were cloned a thousand times over, and you keep meeting their identical twin in numerous cities.

But the weather effects, character animation, water effects, lighting, sound effects, magic particle effects, and modeling in general are all very impressive, which I think is partly what keeps me playing.

The fact that it can have so many problems and still feel immersive on some level says something about the design, I suppose.

Part of me just wishes they would have scaled back the graphics some and spent more time on character AI and dialogue.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Whoo! Deja vu, too!

I certainly hear you when it comes to games. I really like video games. I'm glad that they exist. I would love to make them. But to spend hour after hour playing them? Forget it. I'll play for a bit, then find the cheat codes, so I can blow through the game, see the eye candy, see how it ends, and get on with life. I know I'm missing a lot that way ... but I get on with my life more quickly, too! =)

Though, if I ever get Half-Life 2, I resolve to go through the whole game WITHOUT using cheat codes, just as I did with Half-Life. That would be worth not missing anything over. But even when it's available, I think it'll be a long time before I get it. I just don't have time to fill.

[rowyn]

I've never been one to use cheat codes, m'self. I gotta admit, my feeling about most of the eye-candy and "stories" in games nowadays is "If I want to watch a movie on my computer, I'll rent a DVD." Maybe I'm just the odd one out here, but I think the best part of playing a game ought to be PLAYING it, not getting to the end. :/

And you're a bad influence on me, wuf. Before I started hanging around you, I didn't have this urge to be PRODUCTIVE all the time. I was perfectly happy noddling along, playing games, wasting my free time. Then I had to go and start talking to you, and now here I am thinking I should be writing stories and doing art work and MAKING something of myself.

Well, I hope you're proud of yourself.

;)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, if I were to BUY a game, I'd want to get all the way through it sans cheat codes, though I would reserve the right to run back through it again, just to see what'd happen if I had rocket launchers, et al., from the very beginning. (There's something mindlessly fun about running around in God mode with a rapid-fire rocket launcher which I can use at point blank range with impunity ... but it's not something that lasts for long. Just a bout of silliness.)

However, the games that I so promptly resort to cheat codes are generally borrowed games - i.e., I'm at someone else's house, seeing his or her cool new game (and not really having the TIME required to fully appreciate it), or else I've got it borrowed, and thus I feel a certain pressure to get done with it soonish, so I'm not holding onto it for extended periods of time.

But, anyway, regarding productivity ... whoo! I hope I haven't spoiled your fun. =)

[krud42.livejournal.com]

>"I think the best part of playing a game ought to be PLAYING it, not getting to the end. :/"

Amen to that!

Of course, no matter how much I enjoy the major portion of a game, I can't help but be annoyed if the ending is a letdown.

But then, I rarely finish games any more; I've probably bought a hundred games in the past five years (most of which were bargain-bins or part of compilations), and of those, I've finished seven of them: both Fallouts, Arcanum, Escape from Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Deus Ex, and Zork Grand Inquisitor. I don't think I've EVER finished an RTS campaign (though I came close with Warcraft II), and withmost action games (Half-Life, Freedom Force, etc.) I either lose interest or patience before the end.

But then, if I were to try to finish every game I currently own, I would probably have to play games non-stop (not counting sleeping, eating, and bathroom breaks) until I'm ninety-two.

I am not proud of this statistic.