Online Gaming - ANYONE FOR TENNIS?
It’s like the cell-phone, and cars that have more electronics than mechanics, computers, ipods, the internet, facebook and twitter; it sneaks up on you.
One has to keep up of course, but with the speed of the technological explosion one finds it necessary to draw a line somewhere. There are certain things one decides one will just simply never get round to doing. For me one of those things was online gaming. At the risk of giving away my age, I will confess that I was a wee thing in the era of the pinball machine. It was usually located in the corner diner, inevitably occupied by young kids playing truant from school, and young men who could not hold down a job and had nothing better to do with their time. I never really saw the fascination myself, and as my own children grew and the ‘Arcade game’ became the pinballs’ ‘next generation’, I stoically discouraged their use, convinced that such game ‘Arcades’ were the hangout of lowlife’s and hooligans!
But quickly technology forged forward, and before I could blink, the old computer ‘tennis’ game, and Tetris, had given way to The Mario Brothers, Dungeons and Dragons, and Tomb Raider. From scary flashy and loud Arcade areas in the back end of low-market malls, gaming quickly re-invented itself as a slick, intelligent, in-the-comfort-of-your-own-home entertainment activity. It was even in some cases, we worried parents were told, quite educational and developed speedy eye-hand co-ordination in children! Not that I believed a word of it. Although I did relent to small degrees, purchasing “The Yellow Schoolbus” for my kids to play under my watchful glare. But I was determined that ‘gameboy’, and ‘playstations’ would not see the light of day in MY house!
So it was odd that online gaming did manage sneak up on me, insidiously plucking me boldly downward to a place I never dreamed I would go. I started using computers extensively in the early 1990’s, so by the mid ‘90’s I was diving headlong into the World Wide Web. Well, as headlong as the limitations of my not-yet-quite-Pentium computer would allow. Soon, and often, I absolutely NEEDED to upgrade hardware and software….it’s a common enough tale. I found myself involved in a couple of fan sites, and inevitably ended up on facebook.
It appears innocent enough, this interaction and re-connection with friends old and new. But beware, it is a devious and demanding master! Soon a friend of mine sent me an invitation. An invitation to build a farm. Now those who REALLY know me, know that I don’t ‘do’ farm, I don’t even ‘do’ smallholding. In fact, I don’t even do five miles beyond city limits! I am a city girl, through and through. But I was still under the impression that if I ‘refused’ something a friend sent me, they would know, and I’d hurt their feelings in some real and tangible way, and they would ‘defriend’ me, and I would have to live with the disgrace and misery!
So I accepted. And started trying to build up a cyber farm. I did find a lot of my friends who seemed to like farming, and soon I had neighbours who could help me out, and water my lands when I forgot! Oh the shame of allowing a crop to die!
Dead wheat, rotting apples, dried up ponds. I wondered that my few pigs, sheep and horses (mostly ‘gifted’ by my neighbour farmers) did not seem to lose much condition, and wandered around a brown dry landscape with supercilious smiles on their mugs. I was reminded of the year of the ‘virtual pet’. A time I would rather forget. My daughter bought herself one with birthday money. I had the ‘day-shift’ as these pocket-watch sized devices were banned at school. I shall never forget the horrid feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched the puppy on the small screen sprout wings and fly up to ‘heaven’! I had missed a couple of feedings! I think my daughter and I wept over that poor ‘puppy drawing' dying, than we did when she inadvertently killed her (real) goldfish by trying to pat it too much!
I was finally brave enough to admit to my friends that I really did not enjoy farming much, and wanted ‘out’. My sigh of relief did not last long. Another friend invited me to run a café. Well, I told myself, a café is much more up my alley (excuse the pun)! And I did not entirely HATE the idea of having something I could build up myself, albeit nothing but bits and bytes on a computer screen. I told myself it was the FARM I didn’t really like, and plunged headlong into starting up my café. Perhaps once again my software and hardware were showing their age, as for some reason the graphics-heavy operations involved in running my modish café made my poor computer hang itself so often that trying to run the blasted thing just was not fun anymore. I told my friends my woes, and quit the café business.
What I really needed was a game based on a theme I enjoyed, that was not very graphics-heavy, and that did not require that I sit hours in front of my computer screen trying to load applications and do the necessary cyber-business to advance.
But did I really NEED a game, for goodness sake? After all, I had found they are somewhat hard to get oneself weaned off. The guilt and failure when one wanted to quit! The friends one would let down, the weeks of hard work that would sit there in cyber-space somewhere untouched, uncared for, unloved, with its little cyber-figurines waddling around, trusting little smiles on their faces, till their bits and bytes finally melted into that space where unused cyber creations go to die….wherever that may be.
Yes, I do get altogether too attached.
But we live and learn! Yet another invite came via facebook, from yet another friend. And it looked oh so tempting and appealing! No pithy little farm, café, aquarium, zoo or girly shopping spree, this. Here I could be part of a new medieval empire, building my own village up to a small town, command troops, plunder silver, and the best, it seemed to need little by way of time. It loaded quickly, and did not seem to confuse my poor old compute at all! What more could a girl want? I, defender of the “Lord of the Rings”; “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” fan of old! Facebook was at last talking my language.
So I joined “Realm of Empires”.
I found myself in a whole new world (again, excuse the pun)! I was now surrounded by rather more serious ‘gamers’ than I had ever been before. Way out of my league, I thought at first. But I have found the online gaming community, at least in this game, to be wonderfully helpful, and tolerant of my silly rookie questions. I have gone further along the advancement path in this game than I have ever managed in a game before, and despite my daughter arguing “It looks just like Evony to me, Mom!” it seems more than obvious that though “Realm of Empires” may resemble games like Evony in many aspects, it is a much less consuming, more casual game than most, suitable for those who are not, nor intend to become, game-tied to a computer.
All this has been just another reminder to me to “never say never”. I may not last very long or go very far in this game, but I am enjoying the experience immensely! And who knows what the next ‘invite’ might bring? I have probably also learned not to be quite so scared of new technology (I have just upgraded my cell phone to a touch-screen! Heavens, will be using a Blackberry next!) and can totally see myself one day hobbling around my house on my Zimmer-frame, emailing my geriatrician, skyping my kids, while programming my dinner requirements, all using floating virtual screens a la “Ironman, the Movie”!
I remember when a ‘game’ entailed putting on a very short white dress, draping a cardigan casually over one’s shoulders, bouncing into a room and announcing “Anyone for Tennis?” It was all about getting a daily dose of Vitamin D (in my case usually getting a serious case of cancer-causing sunburn - this was pre-SPF factors), working up a bit of a ‘glow’ (in other words, sweating like a horse), interacting with friends old and new (dealing face-to-face with their gloating when they won), and enjoying a refreshing G & T afterwards (well, ok, that part wasn’t so bad). I can’t say I miss it.
LLAP
Dif-tor heh Susma!
(Just found out that means Live long and prosper, in Vulcan)