Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion #1 AS Web Support Group Computer Games = Pain

bought a macbook air (MBA) because with being small and having back problems, even my mackbook pro (MBP) was too heavy to travel with. thought i'd basically use it when i went to meetings (so i could finally have my computer with me!) and if i wanted to take a computer home to work on, wouldn't have to lug my MBP the 1/4-1/2 mile walk out to the university parking lot with all the other things i lug (tried pulling a cart, but that tore my bicep tendon....but i digress).

anyway, since i've been mostly home, have had my MBA at home with me. now that my back is getting better again and can sit in the recliner again and finally got wireless in the house (thanks to Dow's persuasion), sit in the recliner with my MBA, not to game, but for everything else. still sit at my desk on the swopper too, or stand at the kitchen counter some, good to mix it up, and the combo of the MBA and wireless allows that. but the lightweightness of the MBA makes it so much easier to use in the recliner. hands are good right now, so can use the touchpad and don't need the mouse, that would be tricker leaning back in the recliner.

I know the feeling Jimmy. I used to be a big time game junky - mostly RPGs as well as some strategy stuff. I've abstained for the longest time but every once in a while a scene from some game flashes across my mind - used to be Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Baldur's Gate, Settlers and the like for me. I think that it will always be a problem for us but if you play for short spells and take breaks it might be possible to still enjoy some of them.

One of the problems I faced with games is I would immerse myself in them and hold one position for a long time with a repetitive hand movement - no, I'm not talking about my joystick! Besides which I'd find myself tensed up and would have to remind myself to let my shoulders relax. I think that would be the problem regardless of what console you used - now if they could invent something that just responds to thought and eye movement... hmmm.

Yeah I owned a business back in the early '90s and at 4.30 every Tuesday we would shut down and startup the rts World of Warcraft - not to be confused with the current online one. From memory I think we could have a maximum of 4 players I think, and we would divide ourselves into nearby seperated offices for orcs and humans. That way we couldn't see what the opposition was doing, but we could shout insults.

This one you would click on the peasant and he would say "Yes", then if you clicked on him again without giving him an order he would say "what do you want!".

We would start playing at 4.30 and finish around 3 in the morning - having a pizza break around 6.

When you eventually went to bed, and shut your eyes, all you could see were the little soldiers and orcs that were burnt into your eyeballs!

In the late 90's we switched to Starcraft and the Age of Empires.

In the 2000's we switched to Empire Earth which could have up to 8 players (from memory?) and we would play online, with four of us teaming up against 4 unknown online players. The advantage of EE was that we could save a game, but we still couldn't stop until around 2 or 3 in the morning - it is so addictive, then continue the game the next Tuesday.

Those were the days!

James

Thankfully, I don't really care for online gaming. I tried EVE a while back but found that my obligations to people I have never met started to interfere with my family life. So I quit.

I like single player games since I can pick them up or put them down with a click of a button and I never have to tell my family that I cannot come to the dinner table because this guy is bringing me a really cool component for my ship but he is five galaxies away still and I can't just walk out on the guy while he's on his way to meet me.

In the early days it was always about how good your computer was and nothing to do with player skill at all. Some nine year old kid on his mommy's computer could kick your AS before you ever saw the guy. I don't enjoy feeling pressured into getting a new system just so I can compete.

I bet The Age of Conan would be pretty cool though.

Chris

I haven't enjoyed the online games much either, mainly, I think because the ones I have tried, such as the shoot-everybody-no-matter-who-they-are-ones

just have no story, no progression, no plot, other than getting your name on a scoreboard

Course, I might feel differently, if I was good at it, I always get shot by some three year old before I can figure out where I even am (I know it's a toddler, because I can hear the voices from their headsets)

But regarding competition being unfair because of the computer quality being unequal, I think that's one of the reasons that I like the consoles, each generation of a console has the same computer chip, so they are equal to each other performance-wise. There is the issue of internet connection speed with online gaming, but I think for the non-internet experience, it has improved gameplay, because the programmers can design and fine-tune their games better knowing exactly how fast the display rates will be, and thus the reaction times of the players, that helps with the action games

I'm with you guys on the shoot em ups. Hate them (except for battlefield II). The other ones like World at War are just kids running around shooting everything in sight. So unrealistic.

The first multiplayer in our office was a flight sim game - we would all man a bomber - it was brilliant. One person would pilot and be bombadier while the others manned all the machine guns. We then moved onto 4 player Doom, where, like you say, the youngest programmer in our organisation would kick all our butts.

The good thing about the RTS was that you normally played with a team of guys you knew, against faceless online foes you didn't. Also, picking a standard time normally ensured you wouldn't be disturbed.

It was interesting when my 83 year old Dad went online with Battlefield II. The irony was that he had been a sniper in World War II (he was wounded on Crete), and here he was on a virtual battlefield in the 2000s - we could only let him play the modern warfare ones, not ones with Germans.

Unfortunately he didn't grasp the concept of teams, and HE would shoot anything that moved, and kept getting kicked for team kills

James