Have you ever had one of those days?

[Atrocities]

Have you ever had one of those days were you just didn’t feel like doing anything? As of late I have been having more and more of those days. I’m not feeling overtly depressed, just run down and tired. I lack intrest in gaming in general, and have found it very hard to get into the mood to play any game. I tried to play Tribes Last night, the first multi-player strategy, first person shooter game ever invented, but even my dogged love of that game was not enough to keep me going. So I tried Tribes 2, and that was fun for about the first game or two when I realized that all the human players had left and I was just killing BOTS.

So I re-installed Simcity 3000 Unlimited and started playing it. Then realized why they are making SimCity 4 and shut down the game.

Left with nothing else to do, I finished off Jedi Night, Jedi Outcast, a fun game to be sure, but still I found my self in that mood. You know the mood; nothing is interesting everything seems dull.

Hell even playing SEIV Gold is difficult for me. I love the game without question and enjoy it tremendously however, something is just lacking. My interest in actually playing.

I figured that I wanted interaction with people on line, you know no-body likes to play alone, when it occurred to me that “that” was exactly what was wrong. I’m lonely. Don’t get me wrong, I have family and friends in RL and I enjoy being with them a lot, but in this digital age, friends and family don’t mean much when you’re gaming on line.

I like playing against the AI, its fun, but really it has become utterly boring in the Last 6 months. That’s why I love Tribes so much, each person is real, each game is different. But lately the level of game play has decreased as my skill has returned to its elitists standard. I find that the competition is just now learning the tools of the trade that I had learned 3 years ago. So in essence, I am playing against a bunch of newbies who are easy pray for me. That is unless they are cheating. Even then, they are easy pray. Tribes 2 is more of an equal gaming experience, however fewer and fewer people are on line and playing Tribes 2. A sure tell sign that the game is dying I think. Sierra shutting down Dynamix was a massively horrible management move and an extremely short-sided affair to say the least. Kill the creator, and the created will soon die off as well.

SimCity, Birth of the Federation, Rebellion, and even Starcraft all seem like fun games to play until you start to play them. Then the appeal is quickly lost and I once again left with this lonely despaired feeling of hopelessness. I feel so alone on line these days.

So I visit Shrapnel Forums and I get no relief, the forums are slow right now, and that really seems to be the telling factor that times are a changing.

I am in two PWB games right now, and the one thing about PBW that really seems to be a downer is the slow game pace. I know, I know, that is just the nature of the beast. I realize that, but I find myself wanting more out of my gaming time with SEIV multiplayer. However, given the nature of the game, this will always be the way the game is played. One turn every 24 to 48 hours.

I guess I could always give Civ III another chance.