http://gamerbrasilis.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/thats-why-i-like-games/

i think the time map is bit wrong, as i got my night watch badges out of the blue, i did it at GMT 1-2pm, the time map said 7-8pm.

The first two games I ever played were Wordtris and Sim City. Wordtris had me solving puzzles, trying to make words out of falling blocks. Granted, being 4, I didn’t have an amazing vocabulary, so I found the game to be quite challenging. However, Sim City was a different story, because I could start laying out houses and factories and buildings… AND THEN HAVE GODZILLA BLOW THEM ALL UP!

It’s that “getting away from it all” bit that I like, while at the same time, stimulating my brain. For example, just a few hours ago I was playing through “Max Payne 2,” starting from a part where I was having trouble previously where you have to provide cover fire so Max can find a way out of a construction site. This part had been challenging previously because Max was seriously low on health, and when he dies, game over, start from last save. Well, thank god for quick saves because after SEVERAL attempts I finally got through the part and am looking forward to finally finishing this compelling tale of death and romance.

Some people like a good book, or a good movie. I like a good game.

* Please select four starting members from the Roster.
* One of your members has left the band! Do you wish to select new members from the Roster? Y/N
* Go to studio and record? Y/N
* Get addicted to drugs? Y/N
* Throw microphone stand at fellow band member? Y/N
* Have sex with fellow band member? Y/N
* Record second album? Y/N
* Break up personal relationship within the band? Y/N
* Record a couple more albums, just to pay off expenses (rent, travel, clothes, equipment, etc.)? Y/N
* Your lead female singer has recorded a solo album! Do you wish to kick her out of the band? Y/N
* Your lead guitarist has left the band! Do you wish to break up the band? Y/N

Some fantasies aren’t so pretty, but damn if they don’t make for some compelling gameplay.

As a developer, I like games because it’s a new medium with a lot of possibilities. I think with enough tenacity I could become a writer if I want, but that medium is well-established and hard to break into. It’s also really hard to write something that isn’t a reflection of something that has come before it in the centuries of history that the written word has. In order to be really original, you sometimes have to go way on the fringes, and some people have little patience for that type of thing.

Games, on the other hand, aren’t so limited by history (although all designers can benefit from learning about history before trying to blaze new trails). Take storytelling, for example; games have told stories in the past, but we’ve mostly relied on lessons from other (non-interactive) media for telling stories; cutscenes and meaningless player “choices” in a non-branching plot are the norm. So, thinking about how to tell stories using the interactive nature of games is very exciting for me. Even if there are a ton of naysayers that don’t think it can be done.

My thoughts.

For me, games were always part of my identity growing up. My family were all board/card gamers (mostly traditional stuff — Spades, Hearts, Scrabble, Boggle, Chess, Go). Still, we played on a regular basis; games were the family bonding activity and I remember it fondly.

When I was 6 and was first introduced to an Atari VCS (that’s “2600″ to you youngsters out there), I took to it immediately. I was never particularly skilled at sports, but I totally had video-game reflexes. More than just playing, though, I wanted to make my own video games. That desire got me into programming, which I always saw as a means to an end rather than a pursuit in its own right. (As much as Brenda regrets giving up programming, I sometimes regret taking it all the way through a four-year CS degree before realizing that you no longer needed to know how to program to design video games, the way you had to in, um, 1981.)

I found a gaming club in college, and was pretty much at ground zero of the original Magic: the Gathering explosion and the Eurogame revolution in the US. I had some great times finding new and creative ways to procrastinate in my CS classes.

Anyway, for me, board games represent the familiar, the warmth and love and attention I received as a young child, and the desire to achieve (it took awhile for me to reach a point where I could give the adults in my life a serious challenge with any skill-based game, but I kept trying). Video games represent the time I had to myself, and time spent with my peers. Eurogames bring back memories of some of the best days of my life at college. I first met my wife while playing Hearts, even. Throughout my life, games have been front and center at the greatest and most memorable moments. So in my case, I guess it’s not much of a surprise that I love games…

Part of it is because you invest a lot of yourself in a creative endeavor, and it’s hard to separate criticism of the creative expression from criticism of yourself. That’s one of the biggest things a game designer has to do as a professional. Especially when budget and schedule limitations make you take a long, hard look at the design and determine what can’t fit in this time around.

And, as Ian points out, you have the problem of authority figures, too. A professor in front of a class or a “big name” in front of a group of peers has to worry about losing face. As someone who has worked on a PvP-focused online game for years, people expect me to know all there is to know about PvP. Of course, some people take extra delight in showing me up, too.

Unfortunately, the only way this gets easier is to have nothing invested in the creative work, a game in this case. That generally makes for terrible creative work that fails to reach people on the necessary levels.

My thoughts,

And some things hit both categories — playing face-to-face games, board or role-playing mostly, but maybe a bit with video games too, is social which triggers the “wrapped in love” criterion weakly (usually) and the “solving problems” criterion strongly (again, usually).

As far back as I can recall, I’ve been playing games — the standard 70s American board and card games when I was young. Around ‘79 I gained access to both mainframe and Commodore Pet game time and was in love with the new medium. As I was socially awkward, my mom was always on the lookout for prosocial and intellectual pursuits and she found D&D in a newspaper article in ‘80 or ‘81 and we started playing as a family shortly thereafter and then branching out into the broader social context of local game shops. Maybe in ‘83 I got an 8-bit Atari and had friends with Apples and Commodores and TRS-80s and while I also learned basic programming techniques — BASIC and rudimentary assembler, the primary function of these machines was gaming platform. Once you were hooked into the warez network there was a stunning array of games available. I think my history with games is pretty standard from there. BBSing through the 80s, internet at University in 90, a bit of MUDding, programming on LambdaMOO (presaging my interest in Second Life), MMOs (but only starting with EQ — while being a loyal fan of Ultima I-IV I somehow missed UO), the eurogame invasion starting in 95. Now I play indie RPGs but I’m also reading the new D&D to see what’s noteworthy.

My life has been shaped by games. They have been, I think, the most significant external influence on my life. Many of the important skills that I’ve learned have been because of gaming. And unlike some people, I’m comfortable wearing “gamer” as a label. It’s really how I identify — even as a cringe watching RPGs and the poor behavior exhibited in public venues.

So, I have this powerful motivator of personal, immediate happiness and also a powerful historical context. I think those are the primary reasons why I like games as much as I do. There are other things that are nice — a safe for geeks social environment, something fun to do with my family (whether we’re playing an MMO or geocaching in the woods), a way to demonstrate mastery to an appreciative audience, but I think they’re all secondary contributors.