Thank you games

I've read many blogs about why games in general make you a better person, so I think it's time i gave myself an honest answer.
How games made ME, specifically a better person? What skill-set did they have an impact on?

Well the first one , and most obvious one is the language.
Since I'm not native english speaker, they familiarized me with a vast amount of words, not to mention the middle age English used in some of the old RPGs. Also, I remember playing some of the old adventures with a dictionary next to the keyboard :) Sigh , those days ( nights also )...
Thank you : Every game.

Second one is the sense of orientation and navigating a map.
The allmighty TAB ever since Doom (as one of the first game I've played) many of the games had it, and in pretty short time it comes natural to locate the vital points of the map, recognize the surroundings and discern my next course of action. Also , in cases of multiple routes to get to a point, to calculate the most effective(usually fastest) one.
Thank you : Every game with a map.

On to the pragmatical math skills and resource management.
Ranging from the basic buy/sell mechanics in many games to calculate the profit or the amount of funds needed to gain a certain item , the calculation of damage/hit-miss ratio to the more complex resource management in many turn-based strategies which enhanced my planning skills and also time management.
Thank you : Heroes of Might and Magic 2/3, Civilization 1/2/4, Colonization, Command and Conquer, Starcraft ...

Of course all the things that impact directly the character traits , like : Patience, Persistence, Reflexes, Problem solving, anger management :) ...

Living together - The poll

Since i recently started living together with my gf, we took a poll to see what do we enjoy doing together, and the results i got were great (as I expected :) .

1. Watching movies with friends
2. Watching SF Movies / Co-op gaming / Movies and sex .

Friends, please come visit.
Game developers, please make more co-op games.

Let the movies and games begin. :)
Also, sex. :P

A test of skill and patience

I recently stumbled upon this site , and all sorts of things started to pop up in my mind. Some pleasant memories, some of them not. Okay most of them pleasant, or pleasantly rewarding i should say :) .

So to sum it up , i'll write a tribute to some of the moments that filled my rage meter . The ones that i can remember that is.

The first one i can think of , is Chapter 3 in Betrayal at Krondor . I've been roaming the area for about 3-4 days unable to find the entrance to the nighthawks hideout, until a friend of mine told me that you had to use the chess piece on some well and solved that for me. Yeah I know it's lame but i wasn't much into reading "the boring text", of course this changed that for me. :)

The second one , is Ming Xiao (Vampire : Bloodlines ), some sort of serpent/hydra creature. I spent more than 2 days of continuous save/load routine and the closest i got to beating it(her?!), i think is around 20% of his health before he got me. One of my two rage-uninstalls :)

The third one is the Lich in the Baldur's gate II : Shadows of Amn . The one that appears after completing the golden skeleton set armor. Man i was resolved to beat that mother fucker. I spent 2 days trying all the approaches i could think of , only to recently discover , that i was underleveled/underequipped for that battle . Such a relief , i thought it was me (which it was ...in a way) :)

When i stop and think about it the appearance of a problem in the beginning ( 16 years ago ) presented more of a challenge , than it does now. That was just how i perceive it anyway. Now the effect it has on me is rage. I guess through all these years , i'm starting to lose it . Oh curse you super tough bosses and uber weird puzzles!

I like the SOUND of it

Often , during some of those awesome moments in my life , i get that feeling that something's missing , like i'm one step away from feeling perfect. In all the cases i find it to be the lack of proper background music (Thank you, Coca-cola commercials) .
So you guessed it , this post goes out to all the game soundtracks that we've listened , all the epicness we were part of while this songs played , and some of the most annoying moments also. Because "People Will Forget What You Said, People Will Forget What You Did, but People Will Never Forget How You Made Them Feel." - Found on teh internets.

Baldur's Gate
Dragon Age : Origins
The Witcher
Fallout 3
and my personal favorite
Betrayal at Krondor

Curiosity killed the cat , Satisfaction brought it back

I remember the days when i was little , when i used to stand beside the glass-wall of our local arcade , and i used to watch people play . (Cause my dad wouldn't let me go in , he'd notice the cigar smoke smell on me instantly).Those days i perceived games as an world as is , with it's well-defined rules , with it's magic , with it's glory .. As any gamer should . As i did .. right until i was somewhere mid-college education , when i started reading books about game development and all the works behind the world .

It was right then when my perception of the entire game-world changed . It lost it's magic .

It all became constants and variables interwined with methods and classes . Kinda like Neo first saw the matrix . All it's beauty and aesthetics vanished . Just like that. The world lost it's "immersiveness" . I no longer felt inside it any more , i no longer marveled at it's beauty . instead , i pondered upon question of how stuff is implemented , how much work this'll take to do this and blah , blah ... boring stuff.

I felt kinda like i lost my "gamer eyes", and in combination with the lack of free time , due to work , i was forced to change my hard-core gamer status , to casual.

Just recently i started working on a game as my master thesis (2d platformer , nothing fancy). As i was nearing till the end (which i found that's a moving target , i constantly find ways and ways to improve my game) , i presented my work to my favorite criticist - my girlfriend. She played the demo like , a minute or so , and as i watched her face while she was playing it , i saw myself from 15 years ago (yeah , i went to college like 10 years now). The awe in her stare , the hunger for excitement , for the New . Ah , at that moment , i felt glad .

I felt at peace .