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Games. Why? What on earth about videogames specifically that makes us want to play 'em for hours upon end. Here's why:
- I have no social life. Then again, considering the stinking cesspool of morons that passes for "the in crowd" in my school, I'm not too concerned about that. Most people my age think getting completly drunk by drinking cheap beer is a good night out, they also think if you don't do that you're a loser/nerd/fag - the list goes on. I don't like to get peessed out of my mind. I prefer to own some guy halfway acrosss the world at Allied Assault.
- People online seem to be much nicer (most of them anyway) - they dont judge by looks/job/social standing etc.
- Games are the most fun things I've ever had the pleasure of expieriencing
- I'm so damn good at strategy games.
- Escapism. I play games to boldly go where I've never gone before and experience and do things I cannot do in real life. And to escape the humdrum of every day existence. It allows me to get away from the mundanity of life in the 21st Century (get up, go to school, go home, go to bed, repeat). Like killing for example, but without the moral and psychological repercussions. Or witnessing the sunset on an alien landscape. Or any number of things. Just for the experience really. Much like the way in which certain works of art allow you to see, hear or feel things which don't actually exist. Oh, and to have emotions evoked in me to an extent that films can't do. Fear in SS2, sadness in FFVII, etc, etc.
- Enjoying a (hopefully) decent story.
- The competetive aspect - whether you go up against some friends or complete strangers in multiplayer, or against the designers in the single-player or co-operative.
- Because competition and challenge without any form of risk = fun. And we like fun. For some reason. Why not ask a geneticist, or God.
- To satisfy my violent urges.
- To challenge myself.
- To have fun.
- I find TV immeasurably boring in the main, and after sitting at school staring at a blackboard for 7 hours, I'm in no mood to watch the insane scheduling that plagues us. There's little on that's made with me in mind, when it is on it's on later than I'd like it to be. So, in order to engage my mind, I read books, watch films and play videogames. Simple as. Videogames are the most immediate of these pastimes, enabling me to get instant feedback, and instans shot of adrenaline straight to my frontal lobe.
- It's fun that you have control over. Novels and films are good for telling you a story, games are good for letting you create your own stories, or making your own fun. That's why games that do everything for you are always naff.
- To relax.
- To blow somebody's spleen out.
- Obsessive compulsive disorder.
- Because the sense of achievement possible from games is infinitely more than can ever be extracted from television. They are a far more rewarding way to spend your spare time.
- I lack will-power.
- Games are much more interesting than real life, don't you think?
- Well, in the simplest terms, I get to do what I want to do.
- There's no such thing as a non-linear book. You can't choose what happens in a film. But with games, you're in control. Even if it's as linear as Max Payne, there's always plenty of choices available in everything you do; even if it's just deciding whether to shoot someone with a Berreta or stab them with a knife.
- Game developers create worlds for you. So do book authors, but now we have the technology to bring it alive; a whole world waiting to be explored right in-front of you.
- For me, it's also about progressing and seeing what happens next. You come home from school each day and see if you can get past that level, beat that baddie and reach the next tantalising cutscene.
- Then there's characters. In films you watch characters, in books you follow a character's story (and vice versa). In games you can actually be that character. You can be James Bond in Goldeneye, you can be a man with nothing to lose in Max Payne, or you can be a lowly criminal in GTA.
- It's personal to you. You will watch exactly the same film as your friends, but you won't play exactly the same game.
- Long term addiction (pushing 10 years now, and I started gaming when I was 4.)
- They're more intellectually stimulating than TV. Then again, so is mold.
- For want of something better to occupy my life with perhaps?
- For the challenge to my mind and my reflexes.
- For the stories.
- The new worlds unfolding before me.
- For thoses great moments where you sit back and give thanks to the programmers for coming up with something so cool, be it a great set-piece, a moving script or that moment when you have two health points left in a deathmatch with one match point, and walk away with the victory.
- Because I enjoy watching a new medium grow and develop before my eyes. The feeling of being there and experiencing everything as it happens is enchanting.
- Because gaming is my religion.
- So that I can don a cape and smash goths using a hammer, without being arrested and looking like a cheap strip-o-gram.
- Because the rest of the time my PC's just an internet box. In proportion to travel time out to the cinema, gaming is cheap(er) and as long as you're not playing Max Payne or AVP2's mission pack, lasts longer. Given you can get PC games for a fiver, that practically makes them free compared to the PC's cost.
- Because this reality people talk to me about scares and confuses me.
- And I enjoy blowing the shat outta things in giant stompy robots.
- Because it's the newest art form out there, and it has more potential than any other. It fascinates me to see how gaming is progressing - games might not be life-changing yet, but one day they will. There are, of course, the escapism and excitement factors too. But I rarely buy a game purely because it is entertaining - I buy it because it does something new, something that advances gaming as a whole.
- Planescape: Torment, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Speedball 2 are three games which cured my blues through originality and re-playability (if such a word exists).
- Playing a game is like having an argument - even when it's not fun anymore, you always want the last word.
- Consider all those dodgy film licenses which were always being released for pretty poor Amiga titles! I guess they sold a fair few though - since people wanted to pretend they were the lead character.
- The Sims - this to me is like the amusement of owning a pet. Except you can be evil and nasty to them without getting locked up (not that you would want to do that do a cute ickle puppy dog). Personally I liked creating lesbian colonies.
- Operation Flashpoint - I want to experience the horrors of war.
- Flight Sim 2002 - I want to know if I can fly a plane. It's also quite educational if you're learning to fly a light aircraft I guess.
- Any Racing Game - I want to get all sweaty. Or is that something else I'm thinking of? Hmmm.
- MS Excel - I want to do my accounts, thus discovering the tax man owes me some money and I can go buy more games.
- In the context of Counter-Strike, I like feeling superior to others. It's that simple.
- I love computer games purely for the fact that for an hour or two I can be a soldier crawling in the mud, taking out the Reds with an automatic rifle. I can be the western commander that leads my army to victory against enormous odds.
- Interactivity allows you to mould the outcome to your liking. Immersion takes you to another world and puts you, convincingly, in another (something even most books and films struggle to do).
- I play computer games because they’re an interactive, aesthetically pleasing form of escapism. Films with bells on :0D
Films: great, but last only a few hours and replay value poor.
Books: Last longer, but replay poor and not that 'fun'.
TV: mostly banal, no interaction (as with the above, unless you write, natch)
Hangin': Dull, and stupifying. But good in moderation.
Sport: Too malcoordinated for it, plus you get tired.
Games win.
It's like smoking, once you try it once, you might not be able to stop.
Obviously some reasons don't apply to some games. UT and the such-like I play primarily for competetive reasons, adventure games I play mostly for the story. Some games combine all of them, but the third reason is the most important bit for me, which is why I'm mostly a single player man.
*bows in front of altar of PC and hums fervently*
*panics when Christian wife enters temple er room and finds candles around PC and me prostrate on floor*
If games are the fruit of life, I'm a vegetarian.
Thanks for reading,
Flux.
- I have no social life. Then again, considering the stinking cesspool of morons that passes for "the in crowd" in my school, I'm not too concerned about that. Most people my age think getting completly drunk by drinking cheap beer is a good night out, they also think if you don't do that you're a loser/nerd/fag - the list goes on. I don't like to get peessed out of my mind. I prefer to own some guy halfway acrosss the world at Allied Assault.
- People online seem to be much nicer (most of them anyway) - they dont judge by looks/job/social standing etc.
- Games are the most fun things I've ever had the pleasure of expieriencing
- I'm so damn good at strategy games.
- Escapism. I play games to boldly go where I've never gone before and experience and do things I cannot do in real life. And to escape the humdrum of every day existence. It allows me to get away from the mundanity of life in the 21st Century (get up, go to school, go home, go to bed, repeat). Like killing for example, but without the moral and psychological repercussions. Or witnessing the sunset on an alien landscape. Or any number of things. Just for the experience really. Much like the way in which certain works of art allow you to see, hear or feel things which don't actually exist. Oh, and to have emotions evoked in me to an extent that films can't do. Fear in SS2, sadness in FFVII, etc, etc.
- Enjoying a (hopefully) decent story.
- The competetive aspect - whether you go up against some friends or complete strangers in multiplayer, or against the designers in the single-player or co-operative.
- Because competition and challenge without any form of risk = fun. And we like fun. For some reason. Why not ask a geneticist, or God.
- To satisfy my violent urges.
- To challenge myself.
- To have fun.
- I find TV immeasurably boring in the main, and after sitting at school staring at a blackboard for 7 hours, I'm in no mood to watch the insane scheduling that plagues us. There's little on that's made with me in mind, when it is on it's on later than I'd like it to be. So, in order to engage my mind, I read books, watch films and play videogames. Simple as. Videogames are the most immediate of these pastimes, enabling me to get instant feedback, and instans shot of adrenaline straight to my frontal lobe.
- It's fun that you have control over. Novels and films are good for telling you a story, games are good for letting you create your own stories, or making your own fun. That's why games that do everything for you are always naff.
- To relax.
- To blow somebody's spleen out.
- Obsessive compulsive disorder.
- Because the sense of achievement possible from games is infinitely more than can ever be extracted from television. They are a far more rewarding way to spend your spare time.
- I lack will-power.
- Games are much more interesting than real life, don't you think?
- Well, in the simplest terms, I get to do what I want to do.
- There's no such thing as a non-linear book. You can't choose what happens in a film. But with games, you're in control. Even if it's as linear as Max Payne, there's always plenty of choices available in everything you do; even if it's just deciding whether to shoot someone with a Berreta or stab them with a knife.
- Game developers create worlds for you. So do book authors, but now we have the technology to bring it alive; a whole world waiting to be explored right in-front of you.
- For me, it's also about progressing and seeing what happens next. You come home from school each day and see if you can get past that level, beat that baddie and reach the next tantalising cutscene.
- Then there's characters. In films you watch characters, in books you follow a character's story (and vice versa). In games you can actually be that character. You can be James Bond in Goldeneye, you can be a man with nothing to lose in Max Payne, or you can be a lowly criminal in GTA.
- It's personal to you. You will watch exactly the same film as your friends, but you won't play exactly the same game.
- Long term addiction (pushing 10 years now, and I started gaming when I was 4.)
- They're more intellectually stimulating than TV. Then again, so is mold.
- For want of something better to occupy my life with perhaps?
- For the challenge to my mind and my reflexes.
- For the stories.
- The new worlds unfolding before me.
- For thoses great moments where you sit back and give thanks to the programmers for coming up with something so cool, be it a great set-piece, a moving script or that moment when you have two health points left in a deathmatch with one match point, and walk away with the victory.
- Because I enjoy watching a new medium grow and develop before my eyes. The feeling of being there and experiencing everything as it happens is enchanting.
- Because gaming is my religion.
- So that I can don a cape and smash goths using a hammer, without being arrested and looking like a cheap strip-o-gram.
- Because the rest of the time my PC's just an internet box. In proportion to travel time out to the cinema, gaming is cheap(er) and as long as you're not playing Max Payne or AVP2's mission pack, lasts longer. Given you can get PC games for a fiver, that practically makes them free compared to the PC's cost.
- Because this reality people talk to me about scares and confuses me.
- And I enjoy blowing the shat outta things in giant stompy robots.
- Because it's the newest art form out there, and it has more potential than any other. It fascinates me to see how gaming is progressing - games might not be life-changing yet, but one day they will. There are, of course, the escapism and excitement factors too. But I rarely buy a game purely because it is entertaining - I buy it because it does something new, something that advances gaming as a whole.
- Planescape: Torment, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Speedball 2 are three games which cured my blues through originality and re-playability (if such a word exists).
- Playing a game is like having an argument - even when it's not fun anymore, you always want the last word.
- Consider all those dodgy film licenses which were always being released for pretty poor Amiga titles! I guess they sold a fair few though - since people wanted to pretend they were the lead character.
- The Sims - this to me is like the amusement of owning a pet. Except you can be evil and nasty to them without getting locked up (not that you would want to do that do a cute ickle puppy dog). Personally I liked creating lesbian colonies.
- Operation Flashpoint - I want to experience the horrors of war.
- Flight Sim 2002 - I want to know if I can fly a plane. It's also quite educational if you're learning to fly a light aircraft I guess.
- Any Racing Game - I want to get all sweaty. Or is that something else I'm thinking of? Hmmm.
- MS Excel - I want to do my accounts, thus discovering the tax man owes me some money and I can go buy more games.
- In the context of Counter-Strike, I like feeling superior to others. It's that simple.
- I love computer games purely for the fact that for an hour or two I can be a soldier crawling in the mud, taking out the Reds with an automatic rifle. I can be the western commander that leads my army to victory against enormous odds.
- Interactivity allows you to mould the outcome to your liking. Immersion takes you to another world and puts you, convincingly, in another (something even most books and films struggle to do).
- I play computer games because they’re an interactive, aesthetically pleasing form of escapism. Films with bells on :0D
Films: great, but last only a few hours and replay value poor.
Books: Last longer, but replay poor and not that 'fun'.
TV: mostly banal, no interaction (as with the above, unless you write, natch)
Hangin': Dull, and stupifying. But good in moderation.
Sport: Too malcoordinated for it, plus you get tired.
Games win.
It's like smoking, once you try it once, you might not be able to stop.
Obviously some reasons don't apply to some games. UT and the such-like I play primarily for competetive reasons, adventure games I play mostly for the story. Some games combine all of them, but the third reason is the most important bit for me, which is why I'm mostly a single player man.
*bows in front of altar of PC and hums fervently*
*panics when Christian wife enters temple er room and finds candles around PC and me prostrate on floor*
If games are the fruit of life, I'm a vegetarian.
Thanks for reading,
Flux.
Fosbe wrote:
> Flux what hve you got to say about copying that other topic? Fool.
Read here, you'll understand why! =)
http://ukchatforums.reserve.co.uk/ display_messages.php? threadid=65001&forumid=416¤tsort=desc
((there's some spaces somewhere in that address btw, it was too long))
> Flux what hve you got to say about copying that other topic? Fool.
Read here, you'll understand why! =)
http://ukchatforums.reserve.co.uk/ display_messages.php? threadid=65001&forumid=416¤tsort=desc
((there's some spaces somewhere in that address btw, it was too long))
Flux what hve you got to say about copying that other topic? Fool.
I'm not stalking ya...
but i seem to agree with a lot of stuff you say... hmmm
=)
but i seem to agree with a lot of stuff you say... hmmm
=)
Games. Why? What on earth about videogames specifically that makes us want to play 'em for hours upon end. Here's why:
- I have no social life. Then again, considering the stinking cesspool of morons that passes for "the in crowd" in my school, I'm not too concerned about that. Most people my age think getting completly drunk by drinking cheap beer is a good night out, they also think if you don't do that you're a loser/nerd/fag - the list goes on. I don't like to get peessed out of my mind. I prefer to own some guy halfway acrosss the world at Allied Assault.
- People online seem to be much nicer (most of them anyway) - they dont judge by looks/job/social standing etc.
- Games are the most fun things I've ever had the pleasure of expieriencing
- I'm so damn good at strategy games.
- Escapism. I play games to boldly go where I've never gone before and experience and do things I cannot do in real life. And to escape the humdrum of every day existence. It allows me to get away from the mundanity of life in the 21st Century (get up, go to school, go home, go to bed, repeat). Like killing for example, but without the moral and psychological repercussions. Or witnessing the sunset on an alien landscape. Or any number of things. Just for the experience really. Much like the way in which certain works of art allow you to see, hear or feel things which don't actually exist. Oh, and to have emotions evoked in me to an extent that films can't do. Fear in SS2, sadness in FFVII, etc, etc.
- Enjoying a (hopefully) decent story.
- The competetive aspect - whether you go up against some friends or complete strangers in multiplayer, or against the designers in the single-player or co-operative.
- Because competition and challenge without any form of risk = fun. And we like fun. For some reason. Why not ask a geneticist, or God.
- To satisfy my violent urges.
- To challenge myself.
- To have fun.
- I find TV immeasurably boring in the main, and after sitting at school staring at a blackboard for 7 hours, I'm in no mood to watch the insane scheduling that plagues us. There's little on that's made with me in mind, when it is on it's on later than I'd like it to be. So, in order to engage my mind, I read books, watch films and play videogames. Simple as. Videogames are the most immediate of these pastimes, enabling me to get instant feedback, and instans shot of adrenaline straight to my frontal lobe.
- It's fun that you have control over. Novels and films are good for telling you a story, games are good for letting you create your own stories, or making your own fun. That's why games that do everything for you are always naff.
- To relax.
- To blow somebody's spleen out.
- Obsessive compulsive disorder.
- Because the sense of achievement possible from games is infinitely more than can ever be extracted from television. They are a far more rewarding way to spend your spare time.
- I lack will-power.
- Games are much more interesting than real life, don't you think?
- Well, in the simplest terms, I get to do what I want to do.
- There's no such thing as a non-linear book. You can't choose what happens in a film. But with games, you're in control. Even if it's as linear as Max Payne, there's always plenty of choices available in everything you do; even if it's just deciding whether to shoot someone with a Berreta or stab them with a knife.
- Game developers create worlds for you. So do book authors, but now we have the technology to bring it alive; a whole world waiting to be explored right in-front of you.
- For me, it's also about progressing and seeing what happens next. You come home from school each day and see if you can get past that level, beat that baddie and reach the next tantalising cutscene.
- Then there's characters. In films you watch characters, in books you follow a character's story (and vice versa). In games you can actually be that character. You can be James Bond in Goldeneye, you can be a man with nothing to lose in Max Payne, or you can be a lowly criminal in GTA.
- It's personal to you. You will watch exactly the same film as your friends, but you won't play exactly the same game.
- Long term addiction (pushing 10 years now, and I started gaming when I was 4.)
- They're more intellectually stimulating than TV. Then again, so is mold.
- For want of something better to occupy my life with perhaps?
- For the challenge to my mind and my reflexes.
- For the stories.
- The new worlds unfolding before me.
- For thoses great moments where you sit back and give thanks to the programmers for coming up with something so cool, be it a great set-piece, a moving script or that moment when you have two health points left in a deathmatch with one match point, and walk away with the victory.
- Because I enjoy watching a new medium grow and develop before my eyes. The feeling of being there and experiencing everything as it happens is enchanting.
- Because gaming is my religion.
- So that I can don a cape and smash goths using a hammer, without being arrested and looking like a cheap strip-o-gram.
- Because the rest of the time my PC's just an internet box. In proportion to travel time out to the cinema, gaming is cheap(er) and as long as you're not playing Max Payne or AVP2's mission pack, lasts longer. Given you can get PC games for a fiver, that practically makes them free compared to the PC's cost.
- Because this reality people talk to me about scares and confuses me.
- And I enjoy blowing the shat outta things in giant stompy robots.
- Because it's the newest art form out there, and it has more potential than any other. It fascinates me to see how gaming is progressing - games might not be life-changing yet, but one day they will. There are, of course, the escapism and excitement factors too. But I rarely buy a game purely because it is entertaining - I buy it because it does something new, something that advances gaming as a whole.
- Planescape: Torment, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Speedball 2 are three games which cured my blues through originality and re-playability (if such a word exists).
- Playing a game is like having an argument - even when it's not fun anymore, you always want the last word.
- Consider all those dodgy film licenses which were always being released for pretty poor Amiga titles! I guess they sold a fair few though - since people wanted to pretend they were the lead character.
- The Sims - this to me is like the amusement of owning a pet. Except you can be evil and nasty to them without getting locked up (not that you would want to do that do a cute ickle puppy dog). Personally I liked creating lesbian colonies.
- Operation Flashpoint - I want to experience the horrors of war.
- Flight Sim 2002 - I want to know if I can fly a plane. It's also quite educational if you're learning to fly a light aircraft I guess.
- Any Racing Game - I want to get all sweaty. Or is that something else I'm thinking of? Hmmm.
- MS Excel - I want to do my accounts, thus discovering the tax man owes me some money and I can go buy more games.
- In the context of Counter-Strike, I like feeling superior to others. It's that simple.
- I love computer games purely for the fact that for an hour or two I can be a soldier crawling in the mud, taking out the Reds with an automatic rifle. I can be the western commander that leads my army to victory against enormous odds.
- Interactivity allows you to mould the outcome to your liking. Immersion takes you to another world and puts you, convincingly, in another (something even most books and films struggle to do).
- I play computer games because they’re an interactive, aesthetically pleasing form of escapism. Films with bells on :0D
Films: great, but last only a few hours and replay value poor.
Books: Last longer, but replay poor and not that 'fun'.
TV: mostly banal, no interaction (as with the above, unless you write, natch)
Hangin': Dull, and stupifying. But good in moderation.
Sport: Too malcoordinated for it, plus you get tired.
Games win.
It's like smoking, once you try it once, you might not be able to stop.
Obviously some reasons don't apply to some games. UT and the such-like I play primarily for competetive reasons, adventure games I play mostly for the story. Some games combine all of them, but the third reason is the most important bit for me, which is why I'm mostly a single player man.
*bows in front of altar of PC and hums fervently*
*panics when Christian wife enters temple er room and finds candles around PC and me prostrate on floor*
If games are the fruit of life, I'm a vegetarian.
Thanks for reading,
Flux.
- I have no social life. Then again, considering the stinking cesspool of morons that passes for "the in crowd" in my school, I'm not too concerned about that. Most people my age think getting completly drunk by drinking cheap beer is a good night out, they also think if you don't do that you're a loser/nerd/fag - the list goes on. I don't like to get peessed out of my mind. I prefer to own some guy halfway acrosss the world at Allied Assault.
- People online seem to be much nicer (most of them anyway) - they dont judge by looks/job/social standing etc.
- Games are the most fun things I've ever had the pleasure of expieriencing
- I'm so damn good at strategy games.
- Escapism. I play games to boldly go where I've never gone before and experience and do things I cannot do in real life. And to escape the humdrum of every day existence. It allows me to get away from the mundanity of life in the 21st Century (get up, go to school, go home, go to bed, repeat). Like killing for example, but without the moral and psychological repercussions. Or witnessing the sunset on an alien landscape. Or any number of things. Just for the experience really. Much like the way in which certain works of art allow you to see, hear or feel things which don't actually exist. Oh, and to have emotions evoked in me to an extent that films can't do. Fear in SS2, sadness in FFVII, etc, etc.
- Enjoying a (hopefully) decent story.
- The competetive aspect - whether you go up against some friends or complete strangers in multiplayer, or against the designers in the single-player or co-operative.
- Because competition and challenge without any form of risk = fun. And we like fun. For some reason. Why not ask a geneticist, or God.
- To satisfy my violent urges.
- To challenge myself.
- To have fun.
- I find TV immeasurably boring in the main, and after sitting at school staring at a blackboard for 7 hours, I'm in no mood to watch the insane scheduling that plagues us. There's little on that's made with me in mind, when it is on it's on later than I'd like it to be. So, in order to engage my mind, I read books, watch films and play videogames. Simple as. Videogames are the most immediate of these pastimes, enabling me to get instant feedback, and instans shot of adrenaline straight to my frontal lobe.
- It's fun that you have control over. Novels and films are good for telling you a story, games are good for letting you create your own stories, or making your own fun. That's why games that do everything for you are always naff.
- To relax.
- To blow somebody's spleen out.
- Obsessive compulsive disorder.
- Because the sense of achievement possible from games is infinitely more than can ever be extracted from television. They are a far more rewarding way to spend your spare time.
- I lack will-power.
- Games are much more interesting than real life, don't you think?
- Well, in the simplest terms, I get to do what I want to do.
- There's no such thing as a non-linear book. You can't choose what happens in a film. But with games, you're in control. Even if it's as linear as Max Payne, there's always plenty of choices available in everything you do; even if it's just deciding whether to shoot someone with a Berreta or stab them with a knife.
- Game developers create worlds for you. So do book authors, but now we have the technology to bring it alive; a whole world waiting to be explored right in-front of you.
- For me, it's also about progressing and seeing what happens next. You come home from school each day and see if you can get past that level, beat that baddie and reach the next tantalising cutscene.
- Then there's characters. In films you watch characters, in books you follow a character's story (and vice versa). In games you can actually be that character. You can be James Bond in Goldeneye, you can be a man with nothing to lose in Max Payne, or you can be a lowly criminal in GTA.
- It's personal to you. You will watch exactly the same film as your friends, but you won't play exactly the same game.
- Long term addiction (pushing 10 years now, and I started gaming when I was 4.)
- They're more intellectually stimulating than TV. Then again, so is mold.
- For want of something better to occupy my life with perhaps?
- For the challenge to my mind and my reflexes.
- For the stories.
- The new worlds unfolding before me.
- For thoses great moments where you sit back and give thanks to the programmers for coming up with something so cool, be it a great set-piece, a moving script or that moment when you have two health points left in a deathmatch with one match point, and walk away with the victory.
- Because I enjoy watching a new medium grow and develop before my eyes. The feeling of being there and experiencing everything as it happens is enchanting.
- Because gaming is my religion.
- So that I can don a cape and smash goths using a hammer, without being arrested and looking like a cheap strip-o-gram.
- Because the rest of the time my PC's just an internet box. In proportion to travel time out to the cinema, gaming is cheap(er) and as long as you're not playing Max Payne or AVP2's mission pack, lasts longer. Given you can get PC games for a fiver, that practically makes them free compared to the PC's cost.
- Because this reality people talk to me about scares and confuses me.
- And I enjoy blowing the shat outta things in giant stompy robots.
- Because it's the newest art form out there, and it has more potential than any other. It fascinates me to see how gaming is progressing - games might not be life-changing yet, but one day they will. There are, of course, the escapism and excitement factors too. But I rarely buy a game purely because it is entertaining - I buy it because it does something new, something that advances gaming as a whole.
- Planescape: Torment, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Speedball 2 are three games which cured my blues through originality and re-playability (if such a word exists).
- Playing a game is like having an argument - even when it's not fun anymore, you always want the last word.
- Consider all those dodgy film licenses which were always being released for pretty poor Amiga titles! I guess they sold a fair few though - since people wanted to pretend they were the lead character.
- The Sims - this to me is like the amusement of owning a pet. Except you can be evil and nasty to them without getting locked up (not that you would want to do that do a cute ickle puppy dog). Personally I liked creating lesbian colonies.
- Operation Flashpoint - I want to experience the horrors of war.
- Flight Sim 2002 - I want to know if I can fly a plane. It's also quite educational if you're learning to fly a light aircraft I guess.
- Any Racing Game - I want to get all sweaty. Or is that something else I'm thinking of? Hmmm.
- MS Excel - I want to do my accounts, thus discovering the tax man owes me some money and I can go buy more games.
- In the context of Counter-Strike, I like feeling superior to others. It's that simple.
- I love computer games purely for the fact that for an hour or two I can be a soldier crawling in the mud, taking out the Reds with an automatic rifle. I can be the western commander that leads my army to victory against enormous odds.
- Interactivity allows you to mould the outcome to your liking. Immersion takes you to another world and puts you, convincingly, in another (something even most books and films struggle to do).
- I play computer games because they’re an interactive, aesthetically pleasing form of escapism. Films with bells on :0D
Films: great, but last only a few hours and replay value poor.
Books: Last longer, but replay poor and not that 'fun'.
TV: mostly banal, no interaction (as with the above, unless you write, natch)
Hangin': Dull, and stupifying. But good in moderation.
Sport: Too malcoordinated for it, plus you get tired.
Games win.
It's like smoking, once you try it once, you might not be able to stop.
Obviously some reasons don't apply to some games. UT and the such-like I play primarily for competetive reasons, adventure games I play mostly for the story. Some games combine all of them, but the third reason is the most important bit for me, which is why I'm mostly a single player man.
*bows in front of altar of PC and hums fervently*
*panics when Christian wife enters temple er room and finds candles around PC and me prostrate on floor*
If games are the fruit of life, I'm a vegetarian.
Thanks for reading,
Flux.