Games šŸŽ²

I did a similar thing, but not a club. I discovered a way to get access to the computer lab room in the engineering dept from a side door. We used the lab to run battlefield 1942 lan games after 9pm. I think one time security discovered us and we just said we had access to the room for project work and they let us be.

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do you think social media such as Instagram are like a game?

No, the difference is: gaming is fun, social media is depressing :upside_down_face:

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Well I guess for people who get hundreds and thousands of likes and comments, social media is fun too, isnā€™t it? They often think theyā€™re great artistsā€¦
And probably for someone who is a looser (keeps loosing) gaming isnā€™t really so much either?

Most games are balanced in a certain way that almost everyone can have fun, or at least not lose every time they attempt it, and those that arenā€™t probably are not what the person is looking for in the first place.

For most people social media is not a game in my opinion. I think people who find it fun to receive attention on social media probably view it in a game like fashion, as they compete with other people for attention and their place in the spotlight. This must only be a small subset of highly narcissistic people though, would be an even sadder world if it wasnā€™t the case. Of course Iā€™m not taking into consideration the people who do it as a job, itā€™s a different case.

Talking about the ā€œloosingā€ aspect of computer gamesā€¦

Unless you are playing competitive online games, there is no loosing - usually if you screw up, then you just reload and try again. And if I get board at one point, I just lower the difficulty, get skip the boring part and continue.

Donā€™t get me wrong, there are frustrating games and some people like the grind, but one can just play something that isnā€™t frustratingā€¦

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Whatever you do, stay away from Destiny 2 PvPā€¦

Destiny used to have a skill-based matchmaking algorithm which would lead to you being matched with people who were close to you in skill level.

The streamers and tryhards whined and complained because the streamers couldnā€™t reliably show themselves curbstomping randos, and the tryhards complained because at the top end of the spectrum you got transcontinental matches and long queues.

Rather than fix the corner cases of SBMM, Bungie went to full blown connection based matchmaking. So you will randomly either get people who curbstomp you, or the system somehow finds 11 players who are so bad that I am the top scorer on the winning team.

I have a love/hate relationship with D2 - Bungie has done an incredible job with the storyline recently, but itā€™s getting to be quite time consuming and grindy.

Back at around 25 years ago at this point, my friends and I in high school had an ā€œindependent studyā€ period for a variety of reasons. (In my case, I was taking classes at the local university for most of my day, but some days I did not have classes there immediately following my scheduled high school classes so would hang around. They were ahead of schedule on their stuff, so occasionally we would have ā€œnetwork load testingā€ sessions (Quake).

We were also the sysadmins of the high schoolā€™s web server. No one viewed school web pages at night, so the machine was also a private QuakeWorld server. :slight_smile:

Yeah, games stop being fun when you need to actually train for them in order to reach the minimum level of mastership that provides entertainment.

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I donā€™t mind if a game has a progression mechanism, if itā€™s well designed. But that is a delicate balance between ā€œIā€™ve got everything that can be obtained and Iā€™m bored nowā€ and ā€œugh, Iā€™m running three gambit matches per week only for the pinnacle reward after the third matchā€.

Warframe has pretty decent ongoing progression, but it can be REALLY brutal and grindy for new players because there is so much to catch up on.

Social media is about outrage, fame or infamy, expression or oppression and most importantly monetization. True could be said about toxic game cultures with the difference that games can also be fun. Social media for the most part is a means to an end for most people.

People tell me to join LinkedIn to increase my prospects for my protracted job search. I really donā€™t want to join it. I have a non-active Facebook account and that is more than enough for me.

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If you think the rest of social media is toxic you havenā€™t seen anything yet until you get to LinkedIn. I mostly just go on there to troll and irritate. So much corporate sycophancy. I figure Iā€™m probably not the type of person to get a job from some place using it too seriously anyway.

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Since I have a Linux machine now, I am getting back into Battle for Wesnoth. Always sucked at the campaigns but then I usually set it to high difficulty. I always play alone. If any of you want to coop a match against the AI (not confident against real people), let me know.

PS - it is multi-platform, so you can play it on any device.

Video games have actually been with me forever. My first console was the SNES when I was 4 years old. Since then, the hobby has expanded a lot. I like RPGs the most. Movies and series donā€™t trigger as many emotions in me as games do (for example Witcher 3 or Valiant Hearts).
Meanwhile, the board game collection is also growing, although here I focus on games where you play against the game.
Yes, I have already put a lot of money into this hobby, but for me it was and is worth it.
(I also spend a lot of money on books, comics and manga).

The SNES was my first and last console. We could not afford one but my uncle bought it for me. I played home brew games enabled by third-party hardware. Gaming usually happened at school (educational games), at friendsā€™ places (earlier and later consoles) and sometimes on the family computer.

The SNES was also the only console I owned for a long time. At some point I was allowed to play Command & Conquer on my fatherā€™s PC from time to time. Since then, Iā€™ve been buying game magazines and collecting the game CDs that were in them at the time.

I enjoyed watching character animations in games, especially the engineers doing push ups. Ha ha.

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I never had so many games for SNES and Gameboy. But I loved the animations on ā€œAlfred Chickenā€, even though I never managed to finish that game. From some point on, it always became so extremely hard that I always died.