Gamers, please come here

[Giggly]

That game does sound fun.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I didn't actually like Settlers of Catan that much.

As far as the semi-obscure to very obscure boardgames go, I prefer Cosmic Encounter, Carcassonne, Robo Rally, Small World, and San Marco the best.

 

[CzeCze]

Of all else, there was a load of damage dealers and not enough tanks and healers.

Seems to be the common theme of MMORPGs. Next time I play, I'm gonna be a healer so everyone will loooooooooove me.

What have I learned from

Aside from entertainment reasons, what things (physical, mental, social etc) do you learn from gaming?

1) People (MEN) don't seem to understand that the person with a female stripper avatar is not necessarily a stripper or even female.

2) There are perfectly normal, well-socialized, gainfully employed people who play MMORPGs. And then there are the ones bad jokes are made about.

3) No one role plays enough in MMORPGs for my liking.

Also, what kind of games do you enjoy playing the most and WHY?

Dancing and rhythm games. Random [strategy] games (Stacking). God games (Sims, Black and White, etc.) Story games (Heavy Rain). Survival Horror Games (Silent Hill). Cute open world games (Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon). Business games (Lemonade Stand, etc.) Before my carpal tunnel/f*cked up hands/wrists syndrome hit, I loved playing 'time management games' and 'casual' games like what you find at pop cap.

I don't like real time strategy games like StarCraft or FPS. I didn't even know what 'FPS' was until I asked someone I think...

I also like brain games, I subscribe to Lumosity. I am nerd.

How many hours per week do you estimate you spend playing?

Right now, none. When my subscription was active, at least 20 hours a week. That's being conservative.

 

[The Outsider]

I enjoy video games just like I do any other medium of art, as a form of escapism that can provoke a range of emotional responses in me.

 

[Totenkindly]

Love this game. We had a routine Friday game night for some time, and played with the Seafarers and Cities and Knights expansions. Unfortunately, after a while our differing play styles started to make the games less harmonious. My ENFJ girlfriend and ISTJ friend would move rather quickly, and didn't implement much strategy, but my IsTP friend and I would spend quite some time plotting our moves. It got to the point where it was simply a question of whether the IsTP would win or I would, and the ENFJ and ISTJ stopped enjoying it.

I think that can be a problem with any game -- the amount of investment/approach that the other people bring to it, if there's a difference in approach.

I remember having issues with Bridge, since if there's a big difference between the casual game and the serious game. And Risk was kind of messy in that people who play badly/casually can do lots of damage to people who take the game seriously. ("Why would you just put all your armies on one square and then attack my boundary until we're both ruined??! You know we're going to lose -- you'll lose -- if you do that!" // "Well whatever. I might get lucky.") Totally insane.

 

[Sizzling Berry]

How criminal of me to forget this masterpiece...

a masterpiece of everything, not sound, not story, not vivid emotions for pixels, not a game, not the greatest-quest-ever

It is brilliant. That is all

And no game will ever be comparable

Beargryllz, I dedicate this one to you :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZOuy4YM0AI&playnext=1&list=PLCE54BB320A24DE05

 

[CzeCze]

("Why would you just put all your armies on one square and then attack my boundary until we're both ruined??! You know we're going to lose -- you'll lose -- if you do that!" // "Well whatever. I might get lucky.") Totally insane.

Heehee, I haven't really played Risk but I understand the concept.

I experienced it first hand in MMORPGs when 'casual gamers' (I realized I'm a middle level 'casual gamer') team up with hardcare gamers or on the rare occasion an even more casual gamer (noob) for an instance that should take a couple hours turns into an excruciating exercise in repeatedly dying and reading angry invectives bandied about in chat. Sometimes people use acronyms and say things and I have no idea what they are saying. I once did a run 3x times in a row in Rift with some veteran MMO players (came over together from WoW) who were looking for a specific drop and I had NO IDEA what they were talking about. It's like they were speaking a new language. Eventually I stopped asking what they were talking about. I think they ended up moving to a new shard.

 

[Fluffywolf]

You have to try out these games! A friend said to me. They are sure to keep you busy and right up your alley! And you will love them!

Whilest he wasn't entirely wrong, I bought portal and portal 2 today after a friend pushed me to. And I actually quite enjoyed them while they lasted. But now, 5 hours later I have finished both games and I'm back to square one.

Seriously, if you play through two video games in such a small time, can they really be considered games? It feels like demos to me.

 

[Giggly]

You have to try out these games! A friend said to me. They are sure to keep you busy and right up your alley! And you will love them!

Whilest he wasn't entirely wrong, I bought portal and portal 2 today after a friend pushed me to. And I actually quite enjoyed them while they lasted. But now, 5 hours later I have finished both games and I'm back to square one.

Seriously, if you play through two video games in such a small time, can they really be considered games? It feels like demos to me.

Maybe time for a new hobby?

 

[Fluffywolf]

Maybe time for a new hobby?

I try out new hobbies all the time, but they rarily keep me happy for an extended period of time, usually the discovery of the hobby is interesting and fun, but then when the hobby has been fully discovered, I grow bored by it.. It's an xNTP thing.

 

[Habba]

Love this game. We had a routine Friday game night for some time, and played with the Seafarers and Cities and Knights expansions. Unfortunately, after a while our differing play styles started to make the games less harmonious. My ENFJ girlfriend and ISTJ friend would move rather quickly, and didn't implement much strategy, but my IsTP friend and I would spend quite some time plotting our moves. It got to the point where it was simply a question of whether the IsTP would win or I would, and the ENFJ and ISTJ stopped enjoying it.

Year or two ago I used to play this game quite often too.. I had (all?) three expansions too. I liked to optimization aspect of the game, but I felt the gameplay was too restricting. Having the best starting place quite often was enough to secure your win, because changing/adapting strategies was just painfully slow.

Another similar game is Dominion. For the first two games I thought the game was awesome. And then I realized how boring game it is. There's next to zero interaction with players, most of the cards are hopelessly imbalanced. I've won about 90% of games I've played of this, mostly because of ruthless abuse of imbalanced cards.

 

[GZA]

I'm not exactly sure if I would describe any gaming I do as being a learning experience... it isn't intended to be educational, so any learning that occurs is incidental. I'm sure I've realized interesting things while playing video games -perhaps something in the game clicked my thought process into just the right place for a new idea to be born. And I've certainly learned a lot about video games playing games hahaha

My favourite games tend to be Nintendo's in house games like Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Star Fox, ect. I grew up on N64, then bought a Gamecube. I've played tonnes of games on the other consoles that I thought were really fun, but I never owned any of them, so they don't stand out as much to me. I also love real time strategy games like Age of Empires 2 and Age of Mythology -the strategy is fun, and I absolutely love exploiting the cheat codes in these games . What I'm somewhat of a meta-gamer for lack of a better term. I'm not interested in immersion and the illusion that I am actually participating in the game world. I like understanding the mechanics of the game and exploiting them to achieve the goal of the game. Platforming games generally suit this the best. Because, for example, the world of Mario was created and designed solely to be a fun environment for a video game, everything in it is worth exploring and is part of the fun I get from video games. On the other hand, a game like GTA where the world is designed to resemble the real world is only fun for me if I am doing things that are completely impossible in real life, which essentially destroys the illusion of it being real at all and brings it in to meta-gaming territory (everyone does that in GTA though...). The strategy games are also fun because I enjoy tactical thinking and resource management, but I always reach a point in the game where I just decide to do something a bit ridiculous and spoil the game hahaha. I love Zelda because the game is super fun, the mythology is really cool, especially at face value. I love the Legend of Zelda mythology because when you look at it in depth, it makes absolutely no sense at all. There is no real continuity, it is a confusing mess an every time a new game is released it gets worse. This is because they didn't seem to really think about the over arching story until recently, so it is a clusterfuck after 25 years. I love this because the stories are really cool, but they also give plenty of space to my sort of distant, unimmersed approach to gaming.

I love video games, but I don't play them that much cause I love playing music and devote all my time to that. I probably play 3 hours a week... some weeks more, some less.

 

[entropie]

Aside from entertainment reasons, what things (physical, mental, social etc) do you learn from gaming?

english

 

[1487610420]

C&C:TW&KW; QL

 

[Fluffywolf]

english

Word. I was playing text based adventure games from the age of 4 or 5 on the PC. Long before I got english in school. At no point in my school history did I ever need to study or even give much thought during English classes (apart from stuff like old english or actual english words like 'the tube' and english spelling like -our instead of -or. Games tend to be in american english after all.)

 

[Habba]

Here's a great article by Magic's head developer about lessons learned from gaming.

Live Like a Gamer : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering

 

[entropie]

Word. I was playing text based adventure games from the age of 4 or 5 on the PC. Long before I got english in school. At no point in my school history did I ever need to study or even give much thought during English classes (apart from stuff like old english or actual english words like 'the tube' and english spelling like -our instead of -or. Games tend to be in american english after all.)

Well my english is more limited. It basically all evolved around "Fire in the hole" or "I'll take point"