(They're all driving to the **** park, too . . .)

You people have a park devoted to that activity?

Wow.

You people have a park devoted to that activity?

Wow.

I actually did used to live quite close to Clapham Common, so: indeed. In Greenwich we just get Roman ruins, competing 'Military Fitness Camps', and the Olympics ruining everything.

#23 Zimbalist's study on free agent signings is quite old, but the generalconclusions were:

11% worked out very well
48% very clearly did not work out

And the rest basically worked out as you'd have hoped going in.

It'd be worth repeating the study starting after the strike, but my sense is that it's not going to yield results that are very different than what Zimbalist got.

Zimbalist found that as a group free agents were paid about 1/3 more than they were objectively worth. Again, worth repeating the study, but I doubt it's changed an awful lot.

I wonder how many people, & how many people's grandparents, never played Trivial Pursuit. (Which actually, I did. I'm still undefeated, by god.)

I assume that such individuals were utterly disconnected with the American psyche circa 1990, or whenever.

You keep coming back to single, very specific examples, which is missing the point entirely. I'm not talking about one specific video game. I'm talking about the entire genre of video games. And you keep saying "played," which also is far too narrow. I'm talking about knowing practically nothing about video games.

If you're limiting the discussion to merely having played video games, then the only thing I'd say is that such a person is really missing out. There's enough out there in a broad enough genre that it is practically impossible for there to be no video game that you wouldn't find to be an interesting experience.

You may respond that you have enough interesting things in life that you don't need to expend the effort to search the genre for that sort of game, and I completely respect that. I think it's worth the effort, and I think at the end, you would also find it worth the effort. Reasonable folks may disagree.

But, more to the point, I wonder how many people with the means to do so have never played any board game whatsoever - chess, go, Monopoly, Life, and so on. I'm not comfortable arguing that such people would be "utterly disconnected", but I'd be happy to claim they had a small, and easily-fixed hole in a long list of experiences that many of their peers find interesting and intellectually/emotionally stimulating.

I agree completely with this, but take it a step further. Not only have they never played board games, but they know practically nothing about them. I think that person is absolutely disconnected. Disconnected, not divorced.

Could such a person function normally in society? Of course. But does such a person really understand how the overwhelming majority of people think? Almost certainly not. Our entertainment, especially entertainment that we experience through childhood, not only influences our personality, but our cognition.

Seems a shame to pass up such an opportunity so casually. But then, I've never driven a car, so I'm a fine one to talk.

I think it's weird (although certainly not some sort of character defect) to have never driven a car. You'd have to be some sort of hermit to not know some basic things about cars, though: what an SUV is, that they mainly run on gas but there are some alternatives, that car ownership has been a major influence on our culture, etc.

hello boys

you can't imagine how people go through lives without playing video games. i can't understand why i would want to be some character in a kind of storybook who goes on "raids" or goes through castles to steal something that doesn't belong to me and kill people on the way. or goes to set up her own country. why would i want to do THAT? i'm not interested in playing at being some kind of dictator of millions - hard enough being dictator over 4. i mean, assuming i had time for 3 hour "raids" where it didn't interfere with work, baseball or my family. or play a game whose point is to go and steal cars (oh THAT is a great one for my kidz) or be a soldier and go out and kill people. i don't WANT to play out non-existent fantasies about killing and stealing. and am not sure why exactly you think that this means i am somehow missing out on 21st century american culture.

on the other hand, i can't imagine having to live without the freedom of a car. even if we lived in a very very nice area with everything we could possibly use, including jobs, within a mile, i wouldn't like knowing that i would be living my life confined to that small area, like my grandparents and my ancestors - leaving out my NA ones, in which the males sure nuff got around a lot, and the ones who were brought to this country against their will, and the ones who had the money and means to leave their tiny cramped villages/spaces in which their ancestors had lived for centuries.

i mean, judging by your comments, you should be spending a lot of time noting how few females (6 of 20 K+ registered viewers here) go to this site to discuss and post and how they are all missing modern american life - or something

do any of youse have any data about how many females play stuff like call of duty or grand theft auto or WOW?

you can't imagine how people go through lives without playing video games. i can't understand why i would want to be some character in a kind of storybook who goes on "raids" or goes through castles to steal something that doesn't belong to me and kill people on the way. or goes to set up her own country. why would i want to do THAT? i'm not interested in playing at being some kind of dictator of millions - hard enough being dictator over 4. i mean, assuming i had time for 3 hour "raids" where it didn't interfere with work, baseball or my family. or play a game whose point is to go and steal cars (oh THAT is a great one for my kidz) or be a soldier and go out and kill people. i don't WANT to play out non-existent fantasies about killing and stealing. and am not sure why exactly you think that this means i am somehow missing out on 21st century american culture.

bbc, I'd just like to mention that there are lots - LOTS - of alternatives to the killing/stealing/governing model of game. That's not to suggest that you need to play those, or that there are not plenty of females out there who do enjoy them. I'm sure a fair percentage of World or Warcraft is female, for example. (Link I just found says 16%, which isn't much, but well over 1 million.) And, absolutely, the killing/stealing/governing models tend to sell the most and get the most press. Just like 'Transformers' sold a lot more tickets than 'The Big Lebowski', but we don't write off all movies because of that . . .

If I were experimenting with gaming, and wanted to steer away from the killing/stealing type, I guess I'd try something like Plants vs. Zombies, which is generally considered funny, challenging, and absorbing. I'd definitely try a baseball game, probably The Show on PS3, but there are alternatives - MVP 2005 is very good, and probably cheap/easy to run on a home PC. Out of the Park Baseball is great for the strategy side, and Baseball Mogul may still be available for free.

For more abstract, Tetris-type stuff, I'd go for Bejeweled or Peggle. There's The Sims, which can only be fairly described as 'virtual dollhouse'. And I've posted before about my personal love for 'Journey', which is like a cross between Super Mario Bros with a friend helping, and meditation. Many of the browser-based games are dominated by female players; I think Farmville is most famous for this.

I'm just saying: summarising games as "fantasies about killing and stealing" is like describing baseball as "overpaid fat men striking out". Yeah, sure, that happens a lot, but . . . well, you get the idea. By all means, do or don't play. I'm just saying that there's variety out there.

you can't imagine how people go through lives without playing video games. i can't understand why i would want to be some character in a kind of storybook who goes on "raids" or goes through castles to steal something that doesn't belong to me and kill people on the way. or goes to set up her own country. why would i want to do THAT? i'm not interested in playing at being some kind of dictator of millions - hard enough being dictator over 4. i mean, assuming i had time for 3 hour "raids" where it didn't interfere with work, baseball or my family. or play a game whose point is to go and steal cars (oh THAT is a great one for my kidz) or be a soldier and go out and kill people. i don't WANT to play out non-existent fantasies about killing and stealing. and am not sure why exactly you think that this means i am somehow missing out on 21st century american culture.

Also, this.

And for me (& I suspect bbc as well), the different approaches that Ben cites are just about as appealing. I.e. not even remotely. They simply don't sound interesting. If anything is being offered that I can't get from a book or a comic or a movie or even real life, it's escaping me.

And ... Farmville? That stupid Facebook plague where people are always reporting how they got a chicken & need a wheelbarrow or something?

You're joking. Please tell me you're joking.

on the other hand, i can't imagine having to live without the freedom of a car. even if we lived in a very very nice area with everything we could possibly use, including jobs, within a mile, i wouldn't like knowing that i would be living my life confined to that small area, like my grandparents and my ancestors - leaving out my NA ones, in which the males sure nuff got around a lot, and the ones who were brought to this country against their will, and the ones who had the money and means to leave their tiny cramped villages/spaces in which their ancestors had lived for centuries.

I think the car (particularly when it became affordable for most people in the second half of the 20th century) probably was a great democratizer in this sense, allowing freedom of movement never before experienced. In the larger sense I think it's great that cars exist and they have opened up the world (or at least your surrounding continent) to people who never would have been able to afford travel before. Though in my life personally I manage to do quite a bit of traveling without owning a car. Just this weekend I went to Lancaster (about 3 hour train ride) for a conference. I'm flying back to Canada for July (though admittedly I am making use of a car got a week as I tag along on my friend's road trip honeymoon - long story), and going to Germany in September for the WBC qualifiers. Heck, I live on a different continent from where I grew up never having driven a car. Of course, if I'd never ridden in a car I'd have missed out on a lot in my life. Road trips with my parents as a kid, getting to Little League baseball games...etc.

I know cars vs. mass transportation has been done on here to death, and a lot of it depends on where you live, what your life is like (ie. having kids makes a car almost a necessity I would imagine). I think historically you make a convincing argument on the importance of the car, it just doesn't necessarily apply to all individuals.

As for games themselves, I can certainly see where you're coming from. I'm not much of a fan of the killing games, but there are video games for most all interests. You need not be a soldier or a dictator, you could be a baseball GM, or even a player. One game I ordered the other day because of this thread is a Japanese one where apparently you play a character who's cheating on his girlfriend and you struggle through the guilt and fear of commitment associated with that. I'm sure it's not nuanced enough to simulate actual real life, but I'm curious to see what it's like...and it has the benefit of me not actually having to cheat on a girlfriend to experience it! I suppose it could be the product of a deeply disturbed and unsatisfied psyche, but (depending on the role) I quite like putting myself into unfamiliar roles and playing them out.

I was actually playing one the other day, I think based on the Walking Dead show. I'm not usually one for zombies, but it was pretty interesting in that I played for about two hours and I had only fought one zombie. The game is mostly you being placed with a bunch of people in a crisis situation and how you inter-act with each individual forms the progress of the game. Helping out one guy makes another guy hate you...the game appears to be just a series of inter-personal decisions that come with consequences.

In the end, they are games, which are luxuries. Not everyone has the time or money to play them, just like not everyone has the time or money to watch a ton of movies or read a ton of books, or watch baseball every day. Nor is escapism or role-playing everyone's cup of tea. But video games do provide quite a large range of roles to play beyond killing and tyranny.

You're joking. Please tell me you're joking.

Of course I'm not joking. I'm not saying that you personally should or should not be playing those individual examples of game genres. But, to point:

a) Videogames exist in a lot more varieties than killing/stealing, in answer to bbc's post
b) Some genres of videogame are dominated by females, again in answer to bbc's post

You, personally, may do as you please. I'm sure I would be stultifyingly bored by some of the things you find fascinating, too, but I guess I'd like to believe I'd want to understand what it was that I was rejecting before I rejected it. Maybe I give myself too much credit.

Okay, last try, and then I leave you to be as offended or appalled by the concept of videogames as you like. When you've read a book or a comic or a movie, have the characters, or the universe, or the concept, ever stuck with you afterwards? Have you ever found yourself, mentally, exploring those elements in your spare time, re-processing or extending the concepts delivered to you via the book or comic or movie? Have you wondered what the characters might do after the final chapter, or how the town next door might look, or what might have set in place the actions you read about?

Videogames, at their best - and they are often far from their best - can offer a unique tool. For you to be the one to set those events in motion, or for you to be the one to walk those characters through their next moments. And you can invest as much or as little creativity in that as necessary/desirable. And you can share those thoughts with others graphically, not just verbally. And they can add their own input, and you can communally build those ideas and characters and concepts. Or you can simply continue to expand your thoughts, and challenge yourself, and experiment to see what comes out of your actions.

If you want to reduce videogames down to Gears of War and Angry Birds, feel free. Really. That freedom is open to you, just as I can dismiss the (incredibly boring) sport of golf down to the last perambulations of overpaid corporate whores, dressed appallingly, and too unfit to play a real sport, flaunting their money and their poor taste.

I'm just saying that the possibilities that some people, myself included, find in videogames aren't invented ("pretend" was the word I think you used). Just like, for many, golf may be a relaxing an exacting sport of some skill, taste, and social value. I'm not with CrosbyBird on the "you're missing out" logic - or rather, I am; but we are all missing out on many things. It's unavoidable. Attacking those forms of art on which we are missing out, through lack of interest, money, time, or opportunity, is an odd form of opprobrium, though, and unnecessarily confrontational in my entirely personal opinion.

Okay, last try, and then I leave you to be as offended or appalled by the concept of videogames as you like. When you've read a book or a comic or a movie, have the characters, or the universe, or the concept, ever stuck with you afterwards? Have you ever found yourself, mentally, exploring those elements in your spare time, re-processing or extending the concepts delivered to you via the book or comic or movie? Have you wondered what the characters might do after the final chapter, or how the town next door might look, or what might have set in place the actions you read about?

Or as Boltie would say, "the stuff that goes on between the panels".

just as I can dismiss the (incredibly boring) sport of golf down to the last perambulations of overpaid corporate whores, dressed appallingly, and too unfit to play a real sport, flaunting their money and their poor taste.

I would like to subscribe to that section of your newsletter.

Okay, last try, and then I leave you to be as offended or appalled by the concept of videogames as you like. When you've read a book or a comic or a movie, have the characters, or the universe, or the concept, ever stuck with you afterwards? Have you ever found yourself, mentally, exploring those elements in your spare time, re-processing or extending the concepts delivered to you via the book or comic or movie? Have you wondered what the characters might do after the final chapter, or how the town next door might look, or what might have set in place the actions you read about?

Videogames, at their best - and they are often far from their best - can offer a unique tool. For you to be the one to set those events in motion, or for you to be the one to walk those characters through their next moments. And you can invest as much or as little creativity in that as necessary/desirable. And you can share those thoughts with others graphically, not just verbally. And they can add their own input, and you can communally build those ideas and characters and concepts. Or you can simply continue to expand your thoughts, and challenge yourself, and experiment to see what comes out of your actions.

We're clearly not speaking the same language. Are you suggesting that something about these games somehow represents the next stage after ...

When you've read a book or a comic or a movie, have the characters, or the universe, or the concept, ever stuck with you afterwards? Have you ever found yourself, mentally, exploring those elements in your spare time, re-processing or extending the concepts delivered to you via the book or comic or movie? Have you wondered what the characters might do after the final chapter, or how the town next door might look, or what might have set in place the actions you read about?

Because unless I designed the graphics, setting or what-have-you, it seems to me that I'm still as beholden to some creator somewhere as I eer was, no matter how much you want to talk about how I'm "to be the one to set those events in motion, or ... to be the one to walk those characters through their next moments."

Unless, while I wasn't looking, video games have plunged straight into virtual reality, no holds barred. Hell, maybe they have.

Or as Boltie would say, "the stuff that goes on between the panels".

Able to drive or no, Greg (U)K definitely knows the way to my heart.

(Man, the drawing at the end of that scene gives me goosebumps even as I type.)

Unless, while I wasn't looking, video games have plunged straight into virtual reality, no holds barred. Hell, maybe they have.

I do think there's some middle ground though.

To take Skyrim for instance. If you want to be a pure-hearted soldier of light who refuses to use any demonic arts no matter how useful, or harm anyone no matter how dickish, in his quest to save the world, you can. If you want to be a lovable rogue who goes around robbing from the rich you can. If you want to be an arrogant young blade who takes on all comers, you can. If you want to be a cowardly merchant who buys and sells goods you can. If you want to be an evil villain who breaks into people's houses at night and kills them you can do that too.

If you want to be a vanity lisence plate manufacturer and distributor then no, the game limits your creative abilities in that sense.

We're clearly not speaking the same language. Are you suggesting that something about these games somehow represents the next stage after ...

Videogames - again, potentially, and only at their very, very best - provide both the same stage, and the next stage. The really good ones can give you the template for characters, setting, and concept that help draw you into that world - the "stuff that goes on between the panels" - and then give you the tools to decide for yourself how to explore that stuff. You explore those gaps, or those next steps. Then you see where it takes you.

A popular thing in games over the last 5-10 years has been to 'unlock' the end of a game. I mean by that: a game will give you a narrative, with a (hopefully) satisfying and fulfilling ending, and, by default, that's it. Game over. But many times, fans have requested, and developers have provided, the functionality to go on exploring the world afterwards. See the bits you missed. Experiment with the characters, and tools, you picked up along the way, in your setting, and in your own time. Try the world on for size, and even start creating your own narrative around the provided one.

People do this in their heads with movies, comics, and books all the time. They do it with games, too. And we're just at the start of what games can start to provide in terms of letting people articulate that, experiment with it, and share it. Perhaps you'd rather keep it in your head than see it in front of you. Makes perfect sense; it's a very valid artistic choice. I'm just surprised that there's no capability to comprehend the attraction of articulating those visions to yourself, or to others. And then challenging yourself by seeing how the world you're envisioning reacts.

Because unless I designed the graphics, setting or what-have-you, it seems to me that I'm still beholden to some creator somewhere, no matter how much you want to talk about how I'm "to be the one to set those events in motion, or ... to be the one to walk those characters through their next moments."

Unless, while I wasn't looking, video games have plunged straight into virtual reality, no holds barred. Hell, maybe they have.

They're getting there. It's slow, and a lot of the content is provided by fellow players as optional (usually free content). Often this takes the form of art, or locations, or characters with which you can populate your world; sometimes narrative is added, for you to use, adapt, or discard as you like. And then you combine the different elements into something you want, and re-share those elements with others. AI is still a long way behind the other elements, like graphics and sound. Computing is only ever getting better at AI, but AI doesn't sell a game in a 15-second ad, just like great writing doesn't sell a movie in a trailer.

It's primitive, and often embarrassingly bad (fan fiction has nothing on this lot), but the tools and ability for genuine emergent gameplay are there, and people are using them in ever more inventive ways. And, absolutely, billions of people will go happily through their lives not caring about it, and that's A-OK with me. But it certainly does exist, and as an artform, videogames are exhibiting all the classic traits that music and comics and movies and TV shows did before them: They're often cringingly earnest, over-eager, or un-subtle. They're blamed for all manner of ills in society. They appeal most directly and viscerally to a certain age group. And, occasionally, far too occasionally, there are flashes of genuine genius; moments of invention that will be talked about 200 years from now.

So . . . yeah. I quite like some videogames.

If you want to be a cowardly merchant who buys and sells goods you can.

People want to do this?

People want to do this?

It doesn't make for hours and hours of playability like other characters you might delve into, but I've taken a couple runs at Elder Scrolls games as a guy who avoids conflict at all costs and just collects/steals junk to sell or fashion into slightly more valuable junk. It's fun to sort of...set your own rules for how you play the game. My ideal game would be a reality that you can save before trying out all manner of crazy decisions...like being an accountant or spending the whole day on your virtual couch playing virtual video games.

People want to do this?

Yeah, some of us get enough heroism, valiantly fighting off the hordes of darkness and rescuing damsels in distress, in our day jobs.

If you want to be an evil villain who breaks into people's houses at night and kills them you can do that too.

OK ... who squealed?

And here I was trying to convince my next-door neighbor that the feral cats were the ones who'd kicked in her front door.

(Which actually happened about a week ago. Well, not the part with the cats. And not the part with me doing it. And not at night. Rather disconcerting, especially since it happened in broad daylight, at some point after she & I left for our respective jobs before 8 a.m.).

Yes that's the definition of the "cheap goal" I mentioned in my post. Despicable, ungentlemanly play. It's no coincidence Roenick is the best at it.

In my mind most satisfying goals in NHL94

1. Clean break-away where you pull the goalie to one side then flip it back the other way (bonus points for doing this at such great speed that you don't actually shoot it, just have the puck continue into the net after you slam into the goalie and fall down...though only if the goalie's already been thoroughly beaten. Inteference is bad form.)

2. One-timer. Ohhhh NHL94, God bless your one-timers

3. Al Iafrate slap-shot from the middle of the ice at the blue-line. No movement to open up a side of the net, just straight and hard through the 5-hole so that it looks like it literally passed through the body of the goalie.

I'm fairly well convinced that NHL 94 was not played at a level higher than it was played in my freshman dorm. I'm sure there are many others who will make the same claim. They're wrong. I'm quite certain that there was an NHL '93 or '94 game being played on the floor 24 hours/day from the moment we moved in in September '93 to the moment we left in May '94. I had friends who did not live on the floor who were convinced they were quite good at the game. I crushed them all. I also had about a 2.0 GPA my freshman year. But whatever - I was really good at NHL '94.

Perhaps you'd rather keep it in your head than see it in front of you. Makes perfect sense; it's a very valid artistic choice. I'm just surprised that there's no capability to comprehend the attraction of articulating those visions to yourself, or to others.

Yeah ... I just don't have that desire. If I wanted to explore "the attracting of articulation those visions to (my)self, or to others," I'd be trying my hand at fiction, which unfortunately appears to lie outside my wheelhouse (or at drawing, I suppose, an ability I seem to lack). More power to those who can & do, though.

Katherine Heigl is beyond awful and her success is inexplicable to me.

It's not to me. She can do gorgeous, pretty, cute. ...

If you work around her limitations (ie that she can't actually act. Admittedly a pretty big limitation) ... well she brings something to the table. I think she's an asset in small doses.

If you want video games that don't involve killing or stealing, there's always this...

I have a friend who once served Katherine Heigl at a butcher's shop in Calgary. He said she was very attractive and asked for some Italian sausage.

If you want video games that don't involve killing or stealing, there's always this...

That almost makes me want to buy a Wii. I would definitely be the sexy polar bear.

Speaking of horror movies, which I believe were on the table a couple of days back, yesterday I finally dug up, after months of desultory searching, the bootleg DVD-R I'd bought years ago of the 1989 British ITV adaptation of The Woman in Black, scripted by the great Nigel Kneale (& featuring an abrupt ending that in that respect reminded me of the finale of his The Stone Tape, from BBC Two ... though for all I know the Susan Hill novel ends the same way). Haven't seen the new cinematic version, but it should be arriving Wednesday or Thursday from Blockbuster. I'll be interested in seeing how they compare.

He said she was very attractive and asked for some Italian sausage.

I'll bet she did.

That almost makes me want to buy a Wii. I would definitely be the sexy polar bear

Oddly enough, in my mind's eye you've always been a sexy polar bear.

To take Skyrim for instance.

I used to be a videogamer like you. Then I took a controller in the knee.

I used to be a videogamer like you. Then I took a controller in the knee.

Some people call video games junk. Me? I call them treasure.

do any of youse have any data about how many females play stuff like call of duty or grand theft auto or WOW

I'm not sure about those games in particular, but women made up 40% of gamers: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/07/esa-study-40-percent-of-us-gamers-are-women/

And at least in WoW, when I played regularly the guild I ran with had a large number of women players, especially amongst the guild leadership which had more women than men. And we were a raiding guild, ~5th on our server in progression, with probably 30-40% of our regular raiders being women.

Women play games, which is why it's so frustrating to see so much money tossed into the same boring game types that are so clearly targeting a young straight male audience. At the same time, this is part of the point CrosbyBird is making- gamers aren't who you think they are. Which is why there's real value in the overall field of video games, and why it does behoove a person to have some knowledge of the field even if they don't play themselves.

People want to do this?

I was so upset when I couldn't do a proper pacifist run in the new Deus Ex due to the boss fights. Likewise, I've put 100+ hours into two Skyrim characters and never gotten beyond a short way into the main plot because I was too busy exploring and hunting and adding mods to the game that required me to eat 2000 calories a day and stay hydrated and get 8 hours of sleep a night or that made the bandits actually run away when I hurt them so I wouldn't have to kill them or that added tons of new cooking recipes to the game. And in Minecraft, the entire point of the game is to build something, not knock it down. I played on a persistant shared server where I ended up building a replica of the Boston Federal Reserve Building towering over my little village. It's advanced legos, with all the imagination that requires.

I know cars vs. mass transportation has been done on here to death, and a lot of it depends on where you live, what your life is like (ie. having kids makes a car almost a necessity I would imagine). I think historically you make a convincing argument on the importance of the car, it just doesn't necessarily apply to all individuals.

This. It doesn't apply to me, for example, because I live in a city where having a car would in some ways be a greater pain in the ass than not having one. I live 3 minutes from a subway line, which costs vastly less per month than a car, and any time I do need a car I have a ZipCar membership that's affordable and convenient. If I didn't live in the city with such easy access to mass transit not having a car would be a huge problem, and it would really make my life more difficult. As is I hop the train in the morning and have 20 minutes to read until I get to my stop rather than spending 20 minutes driving to my office.

Yeah, some of us get enough heroism, valiantly fighting off the hordes of darkness salmonella and rescuing damsels in distress from poor wine choices, in our day jobs.

Right chef?

I play videogames, board games, you name it because I love the competition, the challenges the strategizing and planning. There's nothing more enjoyable (other than sleep, maybe). I absolutely love planning, figuring out puzzles, organizing things. I would be a cracker jack logistician. I particularly am susceptible to games that dribble out rewards steadily over time -- my brain absolutely loves those.

Just last week I finished a board game that took 20 hours over three sessions to play, and that was the short version; we are soon going to try the full campaign that will require about 35 hours of play, give or take. I've designed games, I have a game about to be published, I love everything about them. I am going to Rome for five weeks this summer and am already strategizing how to spend my free time, which monuments to visit (or revisit), itineraries to take, working out least-cost paths in my head, planning how much to do, what to see, what photos to take, where to eat. The best part of travel is that it is one giant brand new puzzle.

Which incarnation of NHL '9x had the bug where if you pulled the stick back for a shot, then skated across the goal, the goalie would freeze on one side of the goal, leaving an easy shot two seconds later?

We had to ban that move.

I play videogames, board games, you name it because I love the competition, the challenges the strategizing and planning. There's nothing more enjoyable (other than sleep, maybe). I absolutely love planning, figuring out puzzles, organizing things. I would be a cracker jack logistician. I particularly am susceptible to games that dribble out rewards steadily over time -- my brain absolutely loves those.

I think I have a friend like you. I absolutely hate playing board games with him, mostly because he's really good at it. He'll usually figure out the best strategy in a game early on and execute it with ruthless efficiency.

I'm more of a role-play kind of guy. To use a simple example - I don't like playing Settlers of Catan for points, I like to play as if I were the governor of a competing island community. So getting the longest road may net me points that will end up winning the game, but if it doesn't make any sense for the organic growth of my community to build a road I'm not going to do it.

Designing games sounds like it would be a lot of fun (though more work - and more exacting work - than I would be capable of) One of my favourite projects as a kid was making a room-sized map of the world for a massive game of Diplomacy with about 30-40 playable nations. It probably could have used some play-testing but it was super fun to just muddle through.

Speaking of video games...I had one on a Mac about 15 years ago called "Medieval Empires" which I dearly loved and haven't been able to find again, at least not for PC. It had Crusader King-y elements in that your kingdom had a King with Diplomacy, Military, and Economy attribute scores and if he died without an heir you'd lose a bunch of your territory in a civil war (though this happened at random, there was none of the active dynasty building through marriage of Crusader Kings). Best of all you could play as all playable nations at once, a crucial aspect for me. It's the one thing I would change about the Paradox games, you can only play one nation at a time. Of course the fact that they aren't turn based makes that difficult to change, but a guy can dream.

I'm more of a role-play kind of guy. To use a simple example - I don't like playing Settlers of Catan for points, I like to play as if I were the governor of a competing island community. So getting the longest road may net me points that will end up winning the game, but if it doesn't make any sense for the organic growth of my community to build a road I'm not going to do it.

Actually, I prefer games that generate narrative, also, so I know where you're coming from. But Settlers is so damn abstract that I would never approach it in that way.

And I've posted before about my personal love for 'Journey', which is like a cross between Super Mario Bros with a friend helping, and meditation.

By the way, thanks for the rec. Journey is the most "game-like" of the set, in my opinion, and I really enjoyed it. That's a perfect example of something that can only be done effectively through the medium of video games.

Journey is interesting as a "communication without language" experiment as well.

If you're limiting the discussion to merely having played video games, then the only thing I'd say is that such a person is really missing out. There's enough out there in a broad enough genre that it is practically impossible for there to be no video game that you wouldn't find to be an interesting experience.

I first played a video game, of sorts, in 1974. It was asteroids. We played it on a mainframe at MIT.

Then there was Pong. Then Pac Man and whole variety of arcade games that stressed how fast you can move your hands and fingers and point at things.

Now there is a whole universe of video games that stress how fast you can move your hands and fingers in a variety of combinations and point at things.

Meh. While I could have been spending my time trying to overcome my limited hand-eye coordination and train myself for these ventures, I instead went to Broadway and movies, traveled to India, Nepal, Alaska, Kenya, and other spots, and moved to Hawaii.

But I will say, I did enjoy the theme song for Mercenaries 2. Very catchy. Do any of the other games have catchy theme songs?

Meh. While I could have been spending my time trying to overcome my limited hand-eye coordination and train myself for these ventures, I instead went to Broadway and movies, traveled to India, Nepal, Alaska, Kenya, and other spots, and moved to Hawaii.

As was mentioned on an earlier page, anyone that posts regularly on this website loses his credibility when making these "get a life" arguments.

Tom Bissell, the video game journalist that people keep mentioning, was a Peace Corps volunteer and his first published work was a book on Central Asia.

I taught English in Thailand, and one of the pastimes I enjoyed was going down to a little shop where you could rent time at an XBox. A waste of time to be playing video games in an incredible, beautiful, exotic land? I thought it was a pretty nifty little lesson in the modernity. Most of the other customers were 10 and 12-year old Buddhist monks.

709. Ben Broussard Ramjet Posted: May 21, 2012 at 11:49 AM (#4136802)

Okay, last try, and then I leave you to be as offended or appalled by the concept of videogames as you like. When you've read a book or a comic or a movie, have the characters, or the universe, or the concept, ever stuck with you afterwards?

- actually, no
movie characters are very VERY unreal to me. normal people don't look, talk or act like movie or tv people and their worlds/universes are unreal. i mean, I love watching the movie bull durham and have probably watched it eighty zillion times, but not only can't i accurately quote anything from it, i can tell you that i have no interest in creating a world where annie figures a way to watch crash manage his games while somehow managing to teach part time and find the money to keep up that big, expensive house she's got on very little salary. not to mention managing to never miss any of the durham bulls games...

hmmmm - actually, it sounds a lot like my life - too much to do and very little time and how you gonna do it all? who needs a video game? i freaking LIVE it.

- as for comics, i suppose you mean the superhero kind. i think they look beyond absurd in those idiotic tights and masks and BOOTS and bad guys who wear tights and masks too? a green goblin? The Riddler? it is to laugh, not to imagine this world or think about how dreamy bruce wayne would be.

Have you ever found yourself, mentally, exploring those elements in your spare time, re-processing or extending the concepts delivered to you via the book or comic or movie? Have you wondered what the characters might do after the final chapter, or how the town next door might look, or what might have set in place the actions you read about?

no, because the people and situations are so extremely artificial that there is really nothing I "wonder" about. am i honestly, SERIOUSLY supposed to wonder what happens to neo in The Matrix? it's as unreal as superman managing to hide an enormous red cape and huge red boots under a business suit. or katharine heigl actually staying with that icky guy who got her pregnant in knocked-up. i got ZERO trouble believing that some female thinks that any sperm is the same as any other sperm and besides, what's that got to do with HER baby? but in real life, females like her do not stay with whatshisname guy. why would i wonder about their universe? what's to care about? if i need drama with stupid females messsing up their lives that's what my REAL LIFE gf and female relatives are for.

i took my kids to see a shark tale when it came out. do you really think i should have any interest whatsoever in creating a world where it is possible to have a vegetarian shark ??!! live a happy life? REALLY? Why???

Videogames, at their best - and they are often far from their best - can offer a unique tool. For you to be the one to set those events in motion, or for you to be the one to walk those characters through their next moments. And you can invest as much or as little creativity in that as necessary/desirable. And you can share those thoughts with others graphically, not just verbally. And they can add their own input, and you can communally build those ideas and characters and concepts. Or you can simply continue to expand your thoughts, and challenge yourself, and experiment to see what comes out of your actions.

- i just don't have any interest in playing some unreal character in someone else's pre-determined 3 dimentional stories. i just don't. and i can't get it up for farmville or mafia wars or the jewel thingy or the dress up the doll thingy or any of it.

- and as for diamond mind - well, you have to run a league and make up your teams and honey it is a LOT of work and if i was gonna do that much work i would want to get PAID...

I don't mind if other people do as long as they somehow manage to remember that it's just a game and has nothing to do with their life or reality. and believe me, i understand ALL about spending too much time in a world that is fantasy where you don't belong - just look at me and all the time i spend here with youse guys.

now board games - i like those.

I don't like playing Settlers of Catan for points, I like to play as if I were the governor of a competing island community. So getting the longest road may net me points that will end up winning the game, but if it doesn't make any sense for the organic growth of my community to build a road I'm not going to do it.

Having tuned into this thread rather late, I was wondering what your thoughts might be on that game.

For me I think the whole game breaks down when it comes to the trading portion? It is so tedious and it happens on every turn and every player often has good reason to engage in it. So every time the dice is thrown the guy who threw it is looking at the fields to see what product he produced, and maybe a few other players are looking to see if stone is produced say...

And then the rest of the gang goes back into this trading fest while the guy is thinking of his turn. But the trading is always so well...niggardly (this triggered not unnaturally a large thread of its own somewhere in cyberland) becuase you are always dealing in small increments (owing to the robber rule, I suppose) that nothing decisive is ever accomplished with a trade unless it puts someone over. BUt of course you always sort of know not to trade with the guy at 9 pts...

Or anyhow that is how it appears to me. Other opinions?

I like books. I like movies. I like television video games, and comics. Some people don't like those things. In fact, I know several very awesome and sweet-natured people who like pretty much none of those things. My opinion: who gives a ####? As long as they don't look down on my own preferences, why do I care? Attempting to make them feel guilty for not enjoying them is counterproductive. Let them live their lives, and they'll let us live ours. There's no real reason to create conflict when none needs to exist.

For me I think the whole game breaks down when it comes to the trading portion? It is so tedious and it happens on every turn and every player often has good reason to engage in it. So every time the dice is thrown the guy who threw it is looking at the fields to see what product he produced, and maybe a few other players are looking to see if stone is produced say...

Actually I'm not a fan of Settlers at all. I actually play it every now and then because I have a group of friends who love it, and it's kind of bad form to sit in the corner and refuse to play. I can't stand the tradingg aspect of the game either. I pretty much never trade, and it drives me nuts when someone asks for wheat after every turn. My usual tactic is to tell everyone that I have the card they desire (even if I don't), but I refuse on any account to trade with them. Or I'll trade, but only for an outrageous return. I also use Settlers as an opportunity to practice my cheating. It's really quite easy, just grab a bunch of cards every turn with confidence and no one asks questions. I only do it because I never win and it doesn't hurt anyone else's chances...I consider it a chance to exercise my deceitful side, just in case a situation ever comes up where I need to lie or cheat. I do the same thing with lying in every day life. If I can tell a lie that gives me no advantage and doesn't hurt anyone else I'll often do it just to keep my lying bone limber.

I'm not sure if it's in the rule book, but we always play that only the person who's turn it is is allowed to initiate a trade. It cuts down on a bit of time, but I'd still push for a "no trading" rule. Use the ports you cheap bastards!

But the trading is always so well...niggardly (this triggered not unnaturally a large thread of its own somewhere in cyberland) becuase you are always dealing in small increments (owing to the robber rule, I suppose) that nothing decisive is ever accomplished with a trade unless it puts someone over.

I've always played that only the person whose turn it is can initiate trades. And it may be just me and my friends, but I've seen people create collateral debt obligations in a Catan trade. It's fun!

- as for comics, i suppose you mean the superhero kind. i think they look beyond absurd in those idiotic tights and masks and BOOTS and bad guys who wear tights and masks too? a green goblin? The Riddler? it is to laugh, not to imagine this world or think about how dreamy bruce wayne would be.

Why would you suppose that I mean the superhero kind? I mean, there are lots of different kinds, and people read all sorts. Some are fiction, some are non-fiction. Some have superheros, some don't.

no, because the people and situations are so extremely artificial that there is really nothing I "wonder" about. am i honestly, SERIOUSLY supposed to wonder what happens to neo in The Matrix? it's as unreal as superman managing to hide an enormous red cape and huge red boots under a business suit. or katharine heigl actually staying with that icky guy who got her pregnant in knocked-up. i got ZERO trouble believing that some female thinks that any sperm is the same as any other sperm and besides, what's that got to do with HER baby? but in real life, females like her do not stay with whatshisname guy. why would i wonder about their universe? what's to care about? if i need drama with stupid females messsing up their lives that's what my REAL LIFE gf and female relatives are for.

i took my kids to see a shark tale when it came out. do you really think i should have any interest whatsoever in creating a world where it is possible to have a vegetarian shark ??!! live a happy life? REALLY? Why???

Uh, your examples are weirdly specific. But talking about the generic - many people like to imagine things. Many people indulge in flights of fantasy in their heads. Going to see a movie, even an action movie like 'Avengers' isn't necessarily about "yay, **** blows up", and then you walk away from it and it's done. It can be that, of course, if you want, but it can potentially be more, depending on how active your imagination is and how you apply it to the material fed into it. Not all films are 'The Matrix' or 'Knocked Up'.

And the beauty of it is that everyone's list of which films drive their imagination is different. It doesn't need to be every movie you see, or book you read, or anything. I don't spend my free time thinking about 'Battlefield: LA' or 'Submarine' if I can help it. But there are probably people out there who do.

I don't mind if other people do as long as they somehow manage to remember that it's just a game and has nothing to do with their life or reality. and believe me, i understand ALL about spending too much time in a world that is fantasy where you don't belong - just look at me and all the time i spend here with youse guys.

Fair enough. I guess my point is not that you should play videogames or read comics. It doesn't sound like you'd enjoy them no matter what. My point is that:

1) Just as a non-baseball fan might assume that there are no baseball fans like you, bbc, who likes to spend time on an internet forum predominantly populated by men, and talk knowledgeably and insightfully about the sport they all love

2) Non-videogame and non-comic fans might assume that videogames and comics all about killing, and stealing, and superheroes in silly costumes, rather than the opportunity to talk about ideas, and characters, and settings, that are interesting and imaginative. I could reel off a list, but why bother? You won't want to read/play them, just like if someone reeled off a list of their favorite golf courses or favorite cars, it wouldn't make me more likely to want to visit/drive them.

So just like the non-baseball fan who might laugh at the idea that baseball chick exists, I'm suggesting that people should try not to laugh at the concept that interesting, challenging, and different videogames and comics exist that are worthy of consideration as 'art', without being about shooting things or wearing your underpants on the outside. Feel free to ignore them; I'm just suggesting people should know what it is they're ignoring.

That's not meant to be confrontational, that's meant to be explanatory. I tend not to post in threads about stuff I'm not interested in, like NFL/NBA/NHL/soccer, but I like to think that if I did, it wouldn't be to tell everyone that the things they like suck or are stupid.

now board games - i like those.

I like those too.

By the way, thanks for the rec. Journey is the most "game-like" of the set, in my opinion, and I really enjoyed it. That's a perfect example of something that can only be done effectively through the medium of video games.

Glad you liked it. I hope it sticks around; I guess it needs dedicated servers to run, and I really want to be able to pull it out in 5, 10, 20, 40 years to re-experience it. YouTube replays won't be the same.

I've always played that only the person whose turn it is can initiate trades. And it may be just me and my friends, but I've seen people create collateral debt obligations in a Catan trade. It's fun!

Don't think I've ever played non-videogame Catan. I do like 'Citadel' and 'Dominion' quite a bit - very elegant mechanics, and they make for some good interactions, 'Citadel' particularly!

In some ways, Settlers is like the Pac Man of "Euro" board games. It was pretty dang cool 15 years ago (obv. Pac Man is older!) but there are better games.
Someone once told me that in Germany - where these games were really invented and took off - they just play them very casually and don't minimax their points and aren't hypercompetitive. So you can PLAY a game of Settlers in 50 minutes or whatever it says on the box. Typing it now, it seems like a totally bogus claim.

But come to think of it, I have never seen a game that had the amount of time to play remotely accurate -- always way too short.

I am not a big fan of Settlers because it's a very straightforward optimization game with little player interaction. I just don't find there are very many interesting decisions to make as a player. Ironically, it's quite similar to the original AH Civilization board game -- although that was much less random and very much a trading game. Player interaction "wars" were allowed but generally just destroyed both interactors... so they were mostly used as a MAD threat. Man, I haven't played that in 20 years I don't think.

Even a game like Tikal has harder choices than Settlers.

Two board games I really like that you really CANNOT play competitively (yet are not coop games like Arkham Horror or LotR) are:

Tales of the Arabian Nights - basically the worlds biggest choose your own adventure book - you encounter a ADJECTIVE NOUN, which VERB do you pick? Go to section 442! 120 minutes (hah). Only off by a factor of 2. I guess if you played it A LOT you could blitz though it in 2 hours.

Lords of the Sierra Madre - weird historical hybrid rail/war/politics game about the exploitation of Mexico 1898-1918. You can be William Randolf Hearst! You can hire General "Black Jack Pershing" to go and root out Pancho Villa! You can be President of Mexico! "240 minutes". Double hah. You'd be lucky to finish in 8 hours.

Neither of these games should be played competitively because they are SO random. LotSR also has a not very tight set of rules. It's playable but there are dozens of randomly weird conflicts between rules and cards so you have to sort of arbitrarily decide priorities etc. Imagine playing MTG with the current sets ~12,000 cards) but NO internet or consolidated rules, just what comes in the intro packs!

Also with a lucky card draw one player can get a commanding lead in $, and it's not a "king of the hill" game where everyone piles on the leader and takes them down.

Wow, I sold it so well. No wonder I can't get anyone to play.

A gamer friend family of mine REALLY like Dominion... I think it's a cool game, but the learning curve is VERY steep (especially with all the expansions and the possible card change everytime). I am very good at games and it took me 4-5 games before I was even remotely competitive with them.

Other games I like that are more accessible than Lords of the Sierra Madre:

Tikal - but really is missing a "sacrifice the grad student into the volcano mechanic"
Ursuppe (Primordial Ooze)
Arkham Horror (well, not sure how great a _game_ this is but it brings back fond memories of Call of Cthuthu



My wife really loves Gloom, a goth card game. It's not bad, but I find the transparent cards kind of irritating if you don't have a bland background.

I think Mansions of Madness is much better than Arkham Horror. Having a human adversary makes things that much more compelling.

For pure simplicity and player inter-action I love a good game of Diplomacy. Though ideally that's more of a cottage weekend thing (or a weekly move via e-mail type thing). You need the time to work out strategies inbetween turns. Plus it has the added benefit of paranoia as you consider whether it's coincidence that Turkey and Russia are having some beers in the lake by themselves or not.

I was always horrid at diplomacy although I only played via email. I never believed anyone would ever believe my lies.

I was always horrid at diplomacy although I only played via email. I never believed anyone would ever believe my lies.

I have a group of 8-10 friends I play with every now and then. Of the group I'm probably in the bottom third, but I absolutely love it. Once playing as Italy I managed to stab Austria in the back THREE times! It was glorious. I didn't end up winning but it's still my favourite game. In one game I had a regular meeting with a friend at the pub on Friday to discuss our moves due every Sunday. We'd bring out little maps and lay out plans...I think I actually followed a sub-optimal strategy and stayed allied with him just because it was fun to hang out like that.

Diplomacy definitely is a "journey not the destination" kind of game for me. Even when I'm in it at the end I get kind of bored when it turns into two or three super powers at the end. I think I'd enjoy the game more if it was just open-ended and certain built-in elements made it almost impossible to actually maintain a huge empire.

But come to think of it, I have never seen a game that had the amount of time to play remotely accurate -- always way too short.

Squad Leader! Cross of Iron!!!! WHOOOO!!!

Via e-mail ... geez, I remember when people would play Diplomacy via snail mail. Also remember postal chess ...

For pure simplicity and player inter-action I love a good game of Diplomacy. Though ideally that's more of a cottage weekend thing (or a weekly move via e-mail type thing). You need the time to work out strategies inbetween turns. Plus it has the added benefit of paranoia as you consider whether it's coincidence that Turkey and Russia are having some beers in the lake by themselves or not.

A fun, fun game. There's nothing like pulling the back door, stab-in-the-back steal of Sevastopol twice in one game on the same guy who was prone to freak outs about being betrayed.

Actually I can see Diplomacy by post being pretty fun. Everyone gets nation-specific stationary...

One e-mail game we played anonymously by setting up e-mail addresses for each nation in the name of the Head of State. Mostly because one guy whined about how everyone ganged up on him all the time. (Though to be fair, this was entirely true...he won about 80% of the games so eventually everyone just decided to team up on him from the get-go.)

Diplomacy by email or mail is a lot of fun. When I've played we end up writing propaganda broadsheets about the perfidity of the Hun and whatnot.

Pandemic is a very fun co-op boardgame, which is pretty fast. It has varying difficulty levels too.

Squad leader and iron cross dont even crack the top 50


I played a game called Guderians blitzkrieg II. We played 6 turns of a 100 turn campaign. In a full 3 day weekend. It takes 8 hours to set up. It mates with another equally large game (Case Blue) so you ccan recreate the eastern front from Velki Luki to Grozny... In real time. Assuming you have
2.5 ping pong tables to play on. Fantastic game system though.

To be fair, "monster games" like this dont have "suggested playing times"

As was mentioned on an earlier page, anyone that posts regularly on this website loses his credibility when making these "get a life" arguments.

Except I do it at work, so no real time lost.

This is rumor and speculation, but there is chatter that an Avengers Director Cut could be released to theaters in August with 35 more minutes. If that was done, it should pass Titanic and could take a swing at Avatar.

I had read earlier that Wheedon had a 3 hour version of the movie that got cut down to the released version and he had no interest in there being a director's cut for a DVD. He was very happy with the final version and felt the extra stuff was, well extraneous.

Apparently Prometheus is a severe letdown.

Apparently Prometheus is a severe letdown.

I wouldn't go that far. I found it generally enjoyable despite the various goofy plotholes and horror movie cliches. The 3D technology was used especially effectively and didn't seem gimmicky, enhancing the cinematography rather than being a distraction.

I thought Prometheus was excellent, and the 3D a real asset.

Prometheus was good. I could have done without the focus on Big Questions, and there were some stupid quirks. But the art/visuals were impressive, and the scary parts were scary.