Gave it up almost entirely with career/starting a family 7-8 years ago. We’re talking cold turkey, gave the systems away, deleted steam etc.
Ever since quarantine started, I’ve been gaming like a fiend every night. Big, open world games especially. Partner has been chill about it as I wait until the kiddo is asleep, but it’s been one of the most sanity-saving activities for me while we hunker down.
I’m making an exception for video games during this time because honestly it’s pretty low on the unhealthy scale in my current usage, especially with the accountability of a spouse who knows I can be this way and will call me out if it gets bad.
Sure, there might be different grades of quality and value but I think it's all just culture and feeling guilty about filling a free evening or two with such activities seems quite alien to me. However to each their own.
When you login you join a team of 30 (60 players in total). One team is USA one Japan.
You can choose Bomber, Sub, Aircraft Carrier, Battleship. Each craft is manned by multiple players (ie one player controls guided missiles, one flies and has a regular gun etc).
There are 3 islands on the board in the middle and anyone can control them.
When you control an island you can teleport to it and spawn a plane from there which is a shorter run to bomb the enemy. You win the game by blowing up the enemies main naval base at the other end of the board.
You can also change the balance of war by spending a few cents on spawning aircraft carriers and battleships.
Any time you pop in, the server is always full so it's always a great game, but also you can create a private server and bring your own group.
A lot of kids play the game so sometimes the strategy is not the best BUT if a group of adults played on a private server the strategy is very deep.
Graphics are totally basic but it's a great mix of real strategy, action/skill and randomness of playing with 60 real people.
Works beautifully on any mobile or any pc no heavy graphics card needed. SO much fun!
Perfect game for a group of hackers/colleagues looking for easy to learn fun over few beers. Also perfect for these remote times we live in.
https://www.roblox.com/games/2210085102/Naval-Warfare
[BTW I don't know the creators, just a fun game my son showed me!]
We were raided multiple times a day but it was so much fun. Never quite got that again.
There was the year where I set up a server and played with my flatmates and, in another country, a sibling and his close friends. A big part of my daily routine was coming home and checking out what they'd been up to. Some built elaborate structures and 'cultivated' their home, others mostly went for massive railway projects, and yet others just wandered around exploring.
After a few years of no Minecraft, what with the quarantine, a friend of a sibling set up a server again, and I've started playing again.
The game got more expensive, and there are other versions now. And there's a ton of new stuff.
But the experience has been just as much fun. The server I'm on provides a handy map of the world, and apparently I decided to set up base quite near the edges of the 'explored' (generated) world. The owner created a massive base at the spawn point, and I spent a good few days finding a place of my own, getting the resources I need, and then making a railway to the spawn. My younger brother did the same, and has also been working on a railway to spawn. He got distracted though because his gf might want to play, so he spent a bunch of time making his home safer.
What strikes me most is that feeling of immersion and comfort that so far only the best of Metroid(vania) games give me. I've become intimately familiar with my home area, which now has cows and chickens and pigs. I've been landscaping it a bit with massive trees. And under my home there's a sprawling cave system, parts of which I've explored and 'tamed', and parts of which are still full of resources that I keep getting lost in.
I 'know' much of my home region and cave system by feel, and I can tell when I start getting lost. There's a weird 'bubble' feeling when I take my minecart to the spawn point, because I am unfamiliar with all but the area directly next to the tracks, and the 'town' at spawn.
It feels a lot like the real world, but blockier and entirely virtual. It's one of those 'gaming' feelings that I often wish I could convey to others. I've had similar feelings about WoW, the culture and familiarity of de_dust2, and Animal Crossing/Stardew Valley. It's difficult to argue with 'well why don't you just go walk in a real forest'
Yesterday I was planing to randomly dig a hole in the game to mine whatever there is before go to sleep. Two minute into the digging, I found something blinking, it's "Sliver"! So I mined the whole chunk, look at the time (23:20) and decided to call it a day. But just before I quit the game, I noticed another chunk is blinking, turns out it's "Gold"(!!!) ... The pattern repeated until my clock says 1:40(!!!) Man! I'm over 30 years old now and that little game tricked me out of my schedule (!!!), again!
I think game like this is definitely designed to do that. They always trying to create an attraction loop so the player don't have chance to break out and quit the game.
Half-Life is not designed like that. In Half-Life, you have break points, for example, every time the loading screen shows, player may start to think "Hey, maybe I'll just pause here?". Plus, Half-Life gives you a lots of "Solitude moments", allowing you to break out the game during that.
Another thing I guess, is games like Minecraft and Terraria requires player to be able to immerse themselves into the game. Many people I know thinks Minecraft is a game that lets you "Cut trees and build houses. Boring!", not a single one of them would play the game for more than 5 minutes.
If you can pass that 5 minutes test, I guess then you probably have the ability to find some interesting things to do in the game all by yourself (Meaning you are a self-immersive kind person).
100 million things are constantly happening on screen while gundam type space robots fire plasma at you, some Independence Day ship in the background blows up a city and a horde of ants charges your troop.
All at consistent 60fps with early PS2 graphics and gameplay (almost all weapons have infinite ammo).
It's a true video game at heart and realism doesn't stand in the way.
Nowadays I just figure if there weren't video games, I would be drinking or doing hard drugs with much worse effects on my health. I'm also able to moderate better, going through dry spells when I find something else to do for a while, and now and then playing nights (not too late) for a month or two at a time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19213696
>gjs278 on Feb 21, 2019 | parent | favorite | on: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and ...
>go into your profile and mark the ability to see [dead] comments. a lot of them are useful.
None of yours are. That's why you're dead.
Largely as an alternative to vodkonferencing.
I noticed that my approach is different this time. I always regarded Counter-Strike as a glorified shooter, but this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=237KtKF9MDU
changed my mind entirely. Apparently over the years the doodads in these maps started serving as waypoints for throwing grenades.
And at the same time none of this is obvious for anyone who's not "in the know".
Another interesting thing about gaming is that it taught me at a very early age that reward requires effort. Even if the process as a whole, and we as humans, are still insignificant. Well, it taught me that, and I was blessed with an extended vocabulary of middle age weapons. Gaming these days and especially playing old games can be quite relaxing.
I think the main reason is that it’s an opportunity to turn my brain off (or parts of it off). TV isn’t doing that for me any more, too much opportunity for idle thought!
I bet the devs of KSP 2 are pissed that they’re not yet ready to launch. This would’ve been the perfect time to release that game.