Thursday, January 27, 2011

Victory or Death: My Guilty Pleasure



It's probably pretty easy to guess what my guilty pleasure is. From the time I was in sixth grade and discovered Bard's Tale on my Apple II e, I've been hooked on computer games. (I seem to recall I had an ancient version of The Hobbit as well...truly horrible on the monochromatic green screen.)

From there things moved on as the computers got better - King's Quest, Zork, Death Knights of Krynn, Doom, Doom II, Quake, Masters of Magic, Dungeon Keeper, Dungeon Keeper 2, Ravenloft, Elder Scrolls,IceWind Dale, Planescape: Torment, Heroes of Might & Magic I, II, III, IV, V, Civ I, II, III, IV, V, Caesar I, II, III, Grim Fandango, Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle,The Sims, Sims 2, Sims 3, SimCity, Baldur's Gate I & II, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Fable, Fable 2, Ultima, Ultima Underworld, Spore, Syberia, Syberia II, The Longest Journey 1 and 2, Vampire: The Masquerade, Myst,  and a crapload more.

And yes. World of Warcraft.

I don't know how many hours I've spent wasting time on building virtual cities or conquering hordes of advancing orc armies and that's okay. I did try the pencil and paper type of D&D when I was younger - but I was the only girl in 6th grade who wanted to play and the boys weren't overly interested in helping out the n00b.  I tried again in college, but unfortunately I discovered I really didn't like having to watch the guys roll for how long their male character's penis was or how many inches my female character could "take". I gave up when the one guy made his pet wolverine have sex with a tavern wench and never returned. *ahem*

Bad luck on my part, I suppose. Computer games at least gave me the dignity of being able to play at my own pace and use my own logic to solve puzzles or take down a dragon. Or romance a pixel hottie. Or cut a swath through ravening hordes of daemons. Whatever flavor I'm in the mood for, I can find it.

Gaming is the one thing that I really do enjoy and rarely have the time for these days. In fact, when I'm under any sort of writing deadline I don't really even load anything up, because it's far too easy for a simple five minutes at the auction house to become a case of "just one more quest" or "just a few more mobs to kill and then I'll go up a level" and the next thing I know it's 2 in the morning and I haven't done anything productive at all.

So these days I play in binges. When I finish a project, I'll do a weekend bender here or there, but overall, it's definitely not as much as like. 

14 comments:

  1. I love computer games. My favorite is Civilization. If I start a game of that, I'm in the chair until I conquer the world.

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  2. A girl never forgets her first wolverine.

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  3. I'm not into computer games that much but I've played Fable on xbox 360 and loved it ;)

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  4. I think "Hunt The Wumpus" on my TI pretty much killed any yen I have for playing computer games. But, I am always impressed by the art that goes in to making some of these characters.

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  5. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2!!
    Soooo addictive.
    I started playing both in December and Did two playthroughs of Mass Effect and am on my third playthrough of Mass Effect 2.
    Must confess that Garrus and Wrex are my heroes!

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  6. I used to be addicted to Tetris. Now it's Spider Solitare, not quite the same...but still video games. I lack the hand-eye coordination for the controllers my kids use. :-D

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  7. OMG. I don't do MMORPGs but you just named over ten titles that I've probably killed over 10,000 hours playing. This post is FOR THE WIN!

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  8. Nice. My husband is currently addicted to Red Dead Redemption. Our house is filled with the sounds of crickets and gunshots.

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  9. I played WoW for about a month before I got tired of it (or my eyes got tired). For 10 years though, I played a text based RPG Multi-User Dungeon. I LOVED that game and it's a shock I graduated from college because I spent so much time on it. I eventually became a wizard on the game and developed areas for other players to adventure through.

    Since I've been writing though, I haven't been back. I sometimes miss the excitement of making new areas for people and yes, I miss hacking and slashing my way through the Drow Temple although I don't miss dying all the bloody time!

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  10. From one gamer girl to another I highly suggest you going on a binge and playing Dragon Age Origins. Graphics are beautiful and the characters can have *ahem* special naked moments. I'm currently addicted to Allods, I have a wicked level priestess on Shaiya. I haven't gamed in like two bloody weeks because,like you, if I start at 9 p.m., I'll glance up 5 minutes later to it being 2 a.m.

    Oh, and I play the pen and paper D & D. I've gotten lucky, my groups don't do crap like the above mentioned tales. Of course, I tend to play a Drow >;}

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  11. @DF - I have Dragon Age and all the expansions and I've prordered DA2 *cough* Obsessed? No, not me. No. Not at all....


    @Danica - Yay MUDs and MOOs!


    And incidentally, I run a gaming forum. For chicks. Over at http://www.petalsandthorns.com

    (It's a little quiet right now because we're sorta in between games, but it's a pretty well natured lot). :)

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  12. Gnomish Fire Mage FTW! No. Really. The rumor that the great Oopsifizbang (Feathermoon) was killed by a rampaging, lvl 1 squirrel is erroneous. That bugger was rabid.

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  13. My husband is into Counter Strike, but we enjoy PS3 and XBox together. His friends are jealous because his wife is as hooked on Halo and Modern War as he is. :) I can relate to the D&D, I tried when I was in middle school and left for the same reason. LOL

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  14. I am a misfit here, lol. The only game I ever got semi-addicted to was Bounty Bob. I don't suppose anybody remembers poor old Bob and his endless efforts to get - somewhere - . Yep, played on my Commodore 64. I realize this ages me. The kids play constantly - enough for me to know this is a world in which I would be instantly lost. I know my weakness. I have enough addictions already and I'm going to stay away from this one.

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