No longtime gamer has failed to notice how much easier video games are nowadays compared to their early days. The New York Times Magazine recently speculated that today’s easier video games may be a reaction to the increasing difficulty and chaos of modern life. More to the point, we can Read more
Many years ago, more than half a lifetime by now, I took my first steps into gamer girl territory. Except I didn’t really see it as being a gamer girl. To me, I was simply a gamer, full stop. Now that we’re nearly at the 40-year anniversary of the classic Read more
Nowadays, these games studiously court players who might only have a few minutes a day or a couple of days a week that they can spend ingame.
Excessive nerfing can lead to an erosion of trust in the playerbase. It hits at the heart of our sense of fairness. And perhaps more than anything else, gamers want games to be fair—or at least skewed in their favor.
In gaming as in real life, teamwork skills matter. When one player didn’t get the memo, the game master makes the kick.
Imagine this: It’s the 6th century. You’re a peasant toiling in the fields outside of Constantinople. It’s a mean and simple life. Most of what you see, all day every day, is dirt. But four times a year, you make the trek into town to the Hagia Sophia, the center Read more
Hi and welcome back! Over the years, I’ve played and administered a whole bunch of games — both in real life and online. In that time, as you might expect, I’ve encountered my fair share of absolutely awful gamers. But there’s one kind of gamer who just takes the cake Read more
Permadeath is a gaming term that means that once a character dies, that’s it: they’re gone forever. I still remember the first time I ever heard about it and played a game that featured it. And life sure does look different–and better–when one looks at it from a permadeath perspective.
Like so many ex-Christians before me, for just a brief time I dangled on a tightrope between belief and disbelief as I moved from one world to another, from one worldview to another, from one entire working paradigm to another. For some of us that time lasts a good long while, maybe even years. For others of us, that abrupt flash of sudden comprehension, that crystallizing gasp of awareness, that feeling of all the puzzle pieces falling right into place, it happens in a heartbeat.
Ever met one of those people who with one sentence changes the whole way you conceptualize something? Today I want to tell you about a couple of times that’s happened to me and what resulted from those shifts in mindset. I’ve told y’all that I used to admin on MUDs, Read more