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Facepalm: Will Trade Sex for Everquest

Would you be willing to let other men sleep with your wife in exchange for phat l00tz? Well, some abhorent slime is.

Posted Jan 30 2009, 05:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: cole stryker, addiction, everquest, facepalm

4bidden Fruit - The Methadone For Your Eden Addiction

Pixeljunk Eden was the first game to make me happy I'd "invested" in a Playstation 3. Unfortunately, I wound up investing a lot back into it. First there was the HDMI cable so the game –specifically designed for HDTVs – wouldn't be blurry and vague. Then there was the lack of sleep as Eden hypnotically pulled me through its lush gardens full of vibrant lights and sounds. Finally, there was the lost sense of reality, as I started to imagine myself as a grimp and looked up at the towering buildings in Manhattan, estimating how far I could fling myself from the top of each one in fruitless efforts to collect pollen.

Dear reader, if you're like me, you need a gardening experience to wean you off of Eden safely and comfortably before you find yourself on a fire escape eyeing the opposite rooftop. Might I recommend 4bidden Fruit.

Posted Jan 27 2009, 06:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments

Filed under: derrick sanskrit, addiction, eden, pixeljunk, pixeljunk eden, browser

Galaga Helped Alec Baldwin Come Down

Christopher Kennedy Lawford's new book about addiction called Moments of Clarity features a comically depressing story about Alec Baldwin's boozy days as a young actor.

Posted Jan 12 2009, 02:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with no comments

Filed under: cole stryker, addiction, arcades, galaga, alec baldwin

Video Game Addicts Dropping out of School

Game Politics reports that FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate has declared the following:

You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft - which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide.

Taylor provides no hard data to back up this claim, but it got me thinking about some of the casualties I knew, not necessarily from online gaming, but gaming in general.

During my freshman year in college, there was a guy who literally punched a hole through his laptop monitor after repeated losses in Counterstrike. He didn't drop out, but he had to shell out for a new monitor. I don't think nerd rage was covered by the university insurance policy.

Posted Dec 11 2008, 06:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 4 comment(s)

Filed under: world of warcraft, prince of persia, super smash bros, counterstrike, cole stryker, addiction, battlefield 1942

Facepalm: Gaming While Driving

Two Facepalms in two days? Madness! A bus driver has been supsended for playing a PSP while driving.

HONOLULU -- Less than a day after KITV broke the story of a city bus driver playing a video game while driving a bus, the driver is on unpaid leave and being investigated Wednesday.

The president of The Bus apologized for the incident and said he's "embarrassed" by it less than a month after another bus driver was arrested for drunk driving while operating a city bus.

Posted Sep 25 2008, 10:00 AM by Cole Stryker with | with no comments

Filed under: psp, cole stryker, addiction, facepalm

Games You Keep Coming Back To

There are a few games out there that I know I'll never finish, but will continue to perpetually play for the rest of my life. The greatest offender (in the nicest of terms) for me is Final Fantasy XII; I bought it the day it came out in 2006, and to this day I still play it ten hours at a time in shifts five to six months apart. Even now, nearly two years later, I'm thinking of picking up my old save to try out some of those trickier hunting sub-quests, mainly because my brain has been completely ignorant of the game's story since pre-2007. I know it has something to do with evil twins, but I might be confusing FFXII with an episode of The Patty Duke Show.

Honestly, I can blame Final Fantasy XII itself for my bipolar feelings; director Matsuno gave the franchise a much needed shake-up (which will be all but forgotten by FFXIII), but the game's skill system is in dire need of refinement--which is why it was refined, in a Japan-only re-release. As things currently stand with America's only version of the game, all the characters in your party are basically the same, and any kind of planned specialization soon falls apart when you realize just how counter-productive this strategy is. With the addition of refined license boards built for specialization in the aptly-named Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System, it's possible that XII might actually be my favorite Final Fantasy; but I'll really never know.

Final Fantasy XII isn't the only game that I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with; while there are many games that I never finish and which subsequently haunt my dreams, I've come crawling back to quite a few others after months of downtime.

Posted Sep 11 2008, 01:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 9 comment(s)

Filed under: dragon quest, addiction, bob mackey, the wind waker, final fantasy xii

Ragnarok Online Reminds Me Why I Don't Like MMORPGs

I've recently re-entered the hyper-colourful world of Rangarok Online because I must play it for work purposes (honest). I say "re-entered" because I've been down this road before.

It didn't take me a whole lot of time to remember why I left Midgard to its fate in the first place. Lots of people are capable of playing massive multiplayer online RPGs casually, but others can become hooked for life, even abandoning work and family for the sake of riding on a tiger. I'm not one of the latter. Sure, MMORPGs are a fun distraction, but I can't concieve of why anyone wouldn't tire of it after a few hours of grinding.

I'm playing as an archer named Fuzzy Stone and I've been killing bugs and rabbits for hours upon hours just so I can get strong enough to safely beat up differently-coloured bugs and rabbits. If I stick with it, I can blend in with hundreds of other generic mid-level warriors as we band together to fight the menace of--what are we fighting against, exactly?

There are a chosen few who Lord over the rest, who stride through the n00b fields, literally radiant with power while we collect ten-zenny clover dropped by catepillars. Some might aspire to have their name echo through the servers. I don't. I remember when I initially played, I was so proud when I gained enough levels to ride a pecopeco, a sort of Chocobo ripoff. When I rented my ride, what was around me? Dozens of other riders who looked just like me, except I was wearing a jaunty hat.

I once talked to 1UP's Solid Sharkey about the appeal of the vague goals MMORPGs dole out and he more or less agreed that there's little to keep you going after a certain point. When he got his pecopeco, he said, "I can ride Big Bird now, so does this mean I won?"

My disdain for MMORPGs is partially the fault of my own quirks: I have no interest in cooperating and forming a party. I kind of like doing that sort of thing with my friends, but they all inevitably lose interest and leave me with fifteen-year-old acolytes who beg me to join the Sephie x Cloud Yaoi guild.

Posted Jul 22 2008, 08:36 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: gravity, distraction, ragnarok online, mmorpgs, addiction

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.