That second life I live
My friend Noor (okale) sums up more or less how I feel about online games in his post, which I'll be reposting here:
I'm kind of a weird gamer. I've got the casual gamer mentality, but my playstyle is more hardcore. Essentially, once I get into a game, I really get into it, but once I decide to put it down I can leave it alone for a while.
I just don't like taking games super seriously. To me, it's for entertainment. If I take it seriously, it starts to not be fun anymore. Why play a game that I don't genuinely enjoy? Doesn't mean once in a while I'm not gonna sit down and play a game for 10 hours straight, because that's pretty much exactly how it goes. I tend to get lost in the game and I get the maximum enjoyment out of it. Once I'm bored, I can stop playing. There's no need for me to push it; that'll just ruin the whole point of playing the game in the first place.
Some people treat games like a bad relationship. I hear things like "it's bad a lot of the time but overall it's worth it." Why play it at all during the bad times? MMOs are complicated, because people are complicated. It pains me to see people who play a game only because they feel obligated, even when they seem to hate every second of it. If you aren't having fun, you're doing it wrong.
Excerpt from something I posted on eRO's forums a while back:
"Furthermore, this is a game. If you consider what you do in this game "hard work" instead of fun/entertaining, then maybe you should be doing something else. There is effort involved, yes, but if you feel like it's work and you don't find it fun, it may be a good idea to find something that doesn't feel that way."
Having similar thoughts put down into words by someone different makes me feel better for being able to pick up and put down games as often as I seem to do.
The best line of this whole post in my opinion though is this: MMOs are complicated, because people are complicated. I agree with it completely, and I think it explains a lot of things about the games we play and the things I manage to get myself into.
I'm kind of a weird gamer. I've got the casual gamer mentality, but my playstyle is more hardcore. Essentially, once I get into a game, I really get into it, but once I decide to put it down I can leave it alone for a while.
I just don't like taking games super seriously. To me, it's for entertainment. If I take it seriously, it starts to not be fun anymore. Why play a game that I don't genuinely enjoy? Doesn't mean once in a while I'm not gonna sit down and play a game for 10 hours straight, because that's pretty much exactly how it goes. I tend to get lost in the game and I get the maximum enjoyment out of it. Once I'm bored, I can stop playing. There's no need for me to push it; that'll just ruin the whole point of playing the game in the first place.
Some people treat games like a bad relationship. I hear things like "it's bad a lot of the time but overall it's worth it." Why play it at all during the bad times? MMOs are complicated, because people are complicated. It pains me to see people who play a game only because they feel obligated, even when they seem to hate every second of it. If you aren't having fun, you're doing it wrong.
Excerpt from something I posted on eRO's forums a while back:
"Furthermore, this is a game. If you consider what you do in this game "hard work" instead of fun/entertaining, then maybe you should be doing something else. There is effort involved, yes, but if you feel like it's work and you don't find it fun, it may be a good idea to find something that doesn't feel that way."
Having similar thoughts put down into words by someone different makes me feel better for being able to pick up and put down games as often as I seem to do.
The best line of this whole post in my opinion though is this: MMOs are complicated, because people are complicated. I agree with it completely, and I think it explains a lot of things about the games we play and the things I manage to get myself into.