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JackEmpty comments on The True Rejection Challenge - Less Wrong
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I should play games (of the video, card, or board variety.) I get told this a lot, by very intelligent people.
Reasons I don't:
I already have a hard time getting work done while having a side project, a relationship, and imperfect discipline; I dread adding another hobby.
It actually takes a lot of work to get good at a game, and if I'm putting in work, I want to have something to show for it.
Certain kinds of video games (i.e. Portal) are viscerally unpleasant for me; I'm not used to navigating a 3d virtual environment since I never played video games as a kid, and so I spend all my time bumping into walls and wondering why other people pay for the privilege.
I could maybe justify poker to myself as useful practice in strategic thinking, but the only people who'd want to play with me live out of town.
For number 1, single-instance games. An RPG with 30 hours in the MAIN storyline and 100 more in optional sidequests would probably not be your ideal. But drop-in, drop-out type gaming might be better. TF2 is one I've started playing, especially since it's free. And the learning curve is fairly gentle, especially with tutorials. Find a class you like, play it until you're comfortable. Then find another. The only issue is that it would require a sufficient investment in hardware if you don't have it already.
Playing on (and joining, if you're so inclined) Kongregate.com is another option. Some "hardcore" gamers look down on flash gaming as a lesser form, but I've seen some wonderfully crafted games on Kong. They have a rating system and actual submission criteria. They don't accept any crap, so the quality of games are better.
There's also a lot of puzzle games, so the whole learning-something-gathering-skills-while-playing area is covered.
For number 4... it requires a larger number of people, but it's a decent party game: Liar's Dice. Yes, Liar's Dice as seen in Pirates of the Carribean. All you need is at least 5 dice per player (dollar store in bulk, you can probably spend only a dollar per player) and some dice cups (I cut down and taped up some paper cups.) Deception, strategy, all the elements of poker. Just with some added novelty.
I wouldn't recommend Team Fortress 2 to someone with problems with 3D virtual environments. Nor to someone with discipline problems.
I took the specification of Portal to mean more highly visually disorienting games. It's why I didn't recommend Mirror's Edge. Maybe I parsed it incorrectly? If so, yes. Yes you do have a point there.
And I didn't really find it all that gripping, in the getting-addicted-to-it sense. I am generalizing from my own personal experiences here though, so I may be an outlier, where the majority of players do get sucked in?
My reasoning is more that there's no real plot. You don't need to "finish" the game, you can just play it whenever and it is just as satisfying from an entertainment standpoint.
shrugs I will take your dissent as evidence, however. I am quite new to the game.
Well, TF2 doesn't seem like a disorienting game per se, but the generally fast pace of the game can and probably will add to the disorientation.
Personally I wouldn't call it addictive either. But from the sample of people I have around me, I'd say that games with instanced gameplay tend to take up a lot more time than expected, especially if the next round is loaded automatically. It's what I like to call the "One more level" problem. Every round is relatively short, but the number of rounds has a slight tendency to get out of hand.