Sunday April 27 2008

Bejeweled ate up plenty of our time today. But that wasn't the only thing keeping us occupied over the weekend. We watched a bundle of films, ploughed through an entire animated Terry Pratchett tale and occasionally even played World of Warcraft. This was an upsetting experience for me. At home, I use a strange looking device called a Nostromo, essentially a third of a keyboard with a little directional pad and a few extra buttons which fits your hand snugly. It took me at least three days of cack-handed uselessness to acclimatise myself to it, which means at least three days of re-adjustment lie between me and the ability to do anything meaningful in-game with a proper keyboard.

This wasn't the case for Brodos, who became surgically attached to the PC within moments of firing up the game. I had played in his digital company many times over the preceding 18 months but it was interesting to watch him in person,gradually getting more and more irritated, while at the same time being very reluctant to stop. After spending more than a week near permanently in the company of a friendly, affable and boisterous Brodos, it was quite striking to see such a clear change when he started playing WoW. It was as if the game had reached inside his head and flipped the anger switch.

I've been there myself plenty of times, albeit unobserved, soldiering on despite the fact I know I'm falling into a foul mood. WoW's odd like that. Its addictive nature means that you often carry on playing past the point at which you'd angrily turn off many other games, and so your experience of something which is, essentially, designed to be a fun hobby, becomes peppered with negatives as well as positives. Endless grinds, repeated raid wipes, soul-destroying fights against other players, abuse, drama and the whole gamut of social emotions - online games come with all the challenges and rewards you'd expect from a videogame, but the presence of other people lends some of the dynamism of the real world. And so it's often very annoying, because it's full of other people, and other people - especially the ones sat behind the safety and relative anonymity of a screen somewhere else in the world - are often very annoying. But that also makes it interesting, helping to keep you hooked despite the fact you're sat there swearing at your computer, like Brodos.

It's no wonder MMOs are so successful. Once a game has cracked the problem of remaining desirable despite, sometimes even because of, its emotional downsides, it's well on its way to claiming an extremely devoted following. You could, if you like, skip the analysis and just call it addictive. It certainly is that.

So we watched Brodos play WoW for some time. We also took a confused look at Swedish television, watched a little Danish television - Aakarp pointing out how silly Danish was despite it sounding no less insane than Swedish to us - and we munched on a variety of traditional Swedish foods. Pizza, for example, and sandwiches. Aakarp also treated us to the traditional Swedish dish of pasta carbonara, which was especially good. Even my limp wristed vegetarian version featuring mushrooms instead of pig.

And, what with us having an early start the following morning, we turned in at a reasonable time for once. Naturally my brain refused to comply, and four hours later I was still playing on my Nintendo DS, trying to ignore the fact that it was getting light outside.

Next week: Brodos and Pixelsmith get the hell out of Sweden.

Read from the start:
A Geek Adventure

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