11.13.2002
| /\/\ s0 l33t
Being stuck in the middle of nowhere, or a bit west of nowhere depending on your perspective, leaves you with a limited number of options when it comes to spending free time. I ejoy the outdoors, but I hate the cold. The bike is pretty much done for the year, and I don't see any icelimbing or winter camping in my future. In my mind, winter and camping are mutually exclisive terms.
So what to do with my time......
It's somewhere between couch potato and geek. I enjoy the TV, mainly because I can yell at it and never worry about it snapping and killing me for it one day. But even more of my time these days is spent on line. And much of that time is spent playing Unreal Tournament.
I've been playing Video Games regularly since the days of the Atari VCS (which some of you younger kids may remember as the Atari 2600), and there were 2 arcades withing walking distance of my house by the time I was 12. So when you read articles in Businessweek about how demographics for Gamers are skewing older and older, I'm partly to blame. Between my Atari, my C-64, Amiga 500, and finally PC's I have been playing games on Cathode Ray tubes for about a quarter of a century now, and I see no reason to quit. But back to Unreal Tournament (UT for Short).
UT is a first Person Shooter, which is to say the game is played from a first person perspective, you don't see yourself, per-se except for the extension of your hand and any particular weapon you might be deploying at any given time. The goal breaks down to basically 2 game types that I play regularly - Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, there are variations, but these are the two most common types. Deathmatch is a race to see how quickly you can score a predetermined number of kills, and Capture the flag involves runing to your opponents base, getting their flag, and returning it to your base without them grabbing your flag. I played Unreal Tournament for some number of months as a stand alone game. It was plenty fun. But since I got DSL in March 2001, I have become full on obsessed with this game. Beacause now instead of playing a program as an oppponent, I get to play with real people. It completely changes the dynamic of the game, and in my mind is where the future of gaming lies - period. Stand alones will always be there, but the bread and butter of the gaming industry (and it is a lot of bread and butter - videogames grossed more than hollywood last year). But what i find most interesting is the social dynamic that goes on in these games, as you can type messages to your team mates and opponents as you run around laying waste to all that you can. Anyone familiar with Instant messaging is knowledgeable of shorthand lol=laughing out loud, ty=thankyou, IMHO= in my humble opinion, and so on, but in games it goes a step further - i'm talking about l33tsp43|< - or in plain english 'leetspeak' - I guess after typing on a keyboard for so long, some folks got tired with the same old same old, and strted using the alternate charachters, and numbers to represent traditional text. What amazes me about its poularty, is that I find it incredibly inefficient. I understand the economy of lol, but to write something as simple as L4/\/\3rz takes 3 extra keystrokes than writing lamers - add it up, and the economy is completely blow in the other direction. It's a weird phenomenon, and sure there are more than a few English teachers trying to figure it out right now, for me, I don't practice it outside of pointing out I have a basic understanding of it, but still sometimes b3l|\|g l337 0\/\/nz d00d!
go and tell me all about it
Being stuck in the middle of nowhere, or a bit west of nowhere depending on your perspective, leaves you with a limited number of options when it comes to spending free time. I ejoy the outdoors, but I hate the cold. The bike is pretty much done for the year, and I don't see any icelimbing or winter camping in my future. In my mind, winter and camping are mutually exclisive terms.
So what to do with my time......
It's somewhere between couch potato and geek. I enjoy the TV, mainly because I can yell at it and never worry about it snapping and killing me for it one day. But even more of my time these days is spent on line. And much of that time is spent playing Unreal Tournament.
I've been playing Video Games regularly since the days of the Atari VCS (which some of you younger kids may remember as the Atari 2600), and there were 2 arcades withing walking distance of my house by the time I was 12. So when you read articles in Businessweek about how demographics for Gamers are skewing older and older, I'm partly to blame. Between my Atari, my C-64, Amiga 500, and finally PC's I have been playing games on Cathode Ray tubes for about a quarter of a century now, and I see no reason to quit. But back to Unreal Tournament (UT for Short).
UT is a first Person Shooter, which is to say the game is played from a first person perspective, you don't see yourself, per-se except for the extension of your hand and any particular weapon you might be deploying at any given time. The goal breaks down to basically 2 game types that I play regularly - Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, there are variations, but these are the two most common types. Deathmatch is a race to see how quickly you can score a predetermined number of kills, and Capture the flag involves runing to your opponents base, getting their flag, and returning it to your base without them grabbing your flag. I played Unreal Tournament for some number of months as a stand alone game. It was plenty fun. But since I got DSL in March 2001, I have become full on obsessed with this game. Beacause now instead of playing a program as an oppponent, I get to play with real people. It completely changes the dynamic of the game, and in my mind is where the future of gaming lies - period. Stand alones will always be there, but the bread and butter of the gaming industry (and it is a lot of bread and butter - videogames grossed more than hollywood last year). But what i find most interesting is the social dynamic that goes on in these games, as you can type messages to your team mates and opponents as you run around laying waste to all that you can. Anyone familiar with Instant messaging is knowledgeable of shorthand lol=laughing out loud, ty=thankyou, IMHO= in my humble opinion, and so on, but in games it goes a step further - i'm talking about l33tsp43|< - or in plain english 'leetspeak' - I guess after typing on a keyboard for so long, some folks got tired with the same old same old, and strted using the alternate charachters, and numbers to represent traditional text. What amazes me about its poularty, is that I find it incredibly inefficient. I understand the economy of lol, but to write something as simple as L4/\/\3rz takes 3 extra keystrokes than writing lamers - add it up, and the economy is completely blow in the other direction. It's a weird phenomenon, and sure there are more than a few English teachers trying to figure it out right now, for me, I don't practice it outside of pointing out I have a basic understanding of it, but still sometimes b3l|\|g l337 0\/\/nz d00d!
go and tell me all about it
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