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

[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.