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twincovesgame · 2 months

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Romance in Twin Coves

Something I've been thinking about while working on the script for Twin Coves is how the romance works. I think I've talked before about how the romance in the game isn't just about flirting with the ROs enough. It's about who the MC is as a person, and thus not all ROs are going to fall for every MC. (You will know about halfway though the game if your MC has caught your desired RO's eye.)

I read an article awhile ago about treating romance in games like kindness coins vs a house of cards. (The article was here, but it now directs to a 404 page sadly.) With kindness coins... you just say the "right" thing the correct amount of times and voila romance unlocked. And that's a fine way to do romance. Certainly makes it easier on the writer. But that's not really how romance... works.

Saying the "right" thing to someone 15 times in real life doesn't equal romance. What about who you are as a person? What about who they are? Do you have things in common? How do you treat other people? Just complimenting someone, saying flirty things, and giving them a gift isn't how real love works.

Something I'm trying (emphasis on trying) to do in Twin Coves is have the romances be based on more then just saying a nice thing to get a point towards winning over the RO of your choice. The choices the MC makes throughout the game outside of the romance also effect the romance. Even little things like the song they pick in the car.

Of course, some ROs are easier to woo than others. That's true to life as well. Some ROs already have feelings for the MC, so there is probably very little the MC could do to ruin that. Some ROs are quite determined to keep their feelings out of it, and will take more effort. Not just flirting, but getting to know them and them getting to know the main character back. Building up a sense of trust. There is one RO who is very difficult to romance. I think it may even make some players mad as there is a very strict requirement for entering into a romance with him I don't think some players will want to make. (Actually, there's probably a couple that fit this description.) However, that's also true to life. Some things are deal breakers, for either the MC or the RO. Good news: there's eight other routes to pick from!

And, in a similar vein, not every route is going to appeal to everyone. You may have thought Eli was hot, for example, only to realize he's not for you once you get to know him. Or maybe a route you thought you'd hate will surprise you. That's definitely happened to me a few times. I put off a route thinking I wouldn't like the RO... only for that route to become my favorite.

This is also why there are no flirt indicators in the game. Because there are no kindness coins. I don't want players to think about choices as right or wrong - only as what's true to their MC. You may be surprised as to who you attract. Also, any option that is romantic is going to be pretty obvious. I also don’t want players to feel they have to make a certain romantic choice to win their RO over. Whether you go in for a kiss or feel it’s more true to the MC to wait… the RO isn’t going to be secretly keeping score on you.

(I am keeping score though. Just don’t look too far behind the curtain. Point systems are the only way I know how to program. I just don’t want it to feel like a point system, ya know?)

And for those who just wanna kiss everyone, goddamnit!! There is always the walkthrough 💙

#twin coves game #twin coves #visual novel #amare game #romance #otome #indie otome

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robins-egg-bindery · 9 months

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The Sorcerer & The King by winterhill

Canon AU -- Merlin's death is only the beginning; with no-one to protect the kingdom, Camelot falls to an enemy sorcerer and Arthur is forced to serve in the court that he once ruled. When an escape attempt goes horribly wrong, Arthur is rescued by someone he never expected to see again -- and it's their destiny to put things right.

fic by winterhill

art by lukita

404 pages / 85,529 words

Title Font: Neoteric, Ever, Celticmd

Body Fonts: Pilgrim, Far From Homecoming, YOZAKURA, Aliya Ramsey

More on the process below the cut!

Ah, this wonderful fic! This was a fic I hadn't read before @runawaymarbles put it on my radar, and it was utterly wonderful! Proof still that the well of fic is deep and vast, and there will always be another beautiful story waiting for you.

I had a lot of fun binding this one; aiming for a tome kind of vibe, with a full Better Than Goat leather case, deckled edges, and gold accents coupled with the Celtic medallion, which boasts both a dragon and a trinity knot. I thought this was fitting, given that the coin analogy between Merlin and Arthur comes up quite a bit in this fic - the idea that, because it's a canon AU, they've strayed away from their destiny, and what that could mean for Camelot. The trinity knot also symbolizes the cyclical relationship between life, death, and rebirth, which is another recurring theme throughout the story.

I also chose some medieval, old-style elements for my typeset, include the side ornaments, and making the margins bigger on the whole. I definitely need to bind more Merlin fic; I forgot how much of a delight this fandom is!

#fanficbinding #fanfiction #fanfic #fanfic bookbinding #fanfic binding #fanbinding #fanfiction bookbinding #ficbinding #fic binding #fanficbookbinding #renegadepublishing #me myself and i #merlin #bbc #merlin bbc #merthur #arthur pendragon #merlin/arthur

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pansear-doodles · 10 months

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The peculiar rw ship pipeline

@dieselpvnk Coined Error 404 I coined(?) Nightlight @pookapufferfish Coined Oreo Sunday @faelingdraws Coined Lightswitch

#rain world #rainworld #slugcat #rainworld downpour #rain world downpour #fanart #my art #shipping

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nevzatboyraz44 · 22 days

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Maraş merkezli depremler sonrasında enkaz altından çıkarılan ve şu ana kadar teslim alınmayan 197 çelik kasa açıldı.

İl Emniyet Müdürlüğünden yapılan yazılı açıklamada, Valilik oluru ile oluşturulan komisyon koordinesinde açılan çelik kasaların içerisinden çıkarılan eşya ve belgelerin sahiplerine veya varislerine teslim edildiği aktarıldı.

İl Emniyet Müdürlüğü tarafından muhafaza edilen 197 kasadan 119'unun içinin boş çıktığı, 57 kasada değersiz evrak ve eşya bulunduğu ifade edilen açıklamada, 21 çelik kasada ise 5 kilo 90 gram altın, 21 çeyrek altın, altın kolye ucu, 3 altın kaplama kol saati, 2 gümüş bileklik ve 4 çift gümüş küpe, 458 bin 198 Türk Lirası, 58 bin 700 dolar, 404 euro ile eski madeni para bulunduğu belirtildi.

Açıklamada, bazı kasalarda 3 tabanca ve bunlara ait 397 fişek ile 38 parça tarihi eser, 960 yeşil ve kırmızı reçeteye tabi hap çıktığı, 18 kasanın sahibine, tarihi eserlerin ise Müze Müdürlüğüne teslim edildiği ifade edild

تم فتح 197 خزانة فولاذية تم إخراجها من تحت الأنقاض بعد زلزال مرعش ولم يتم استلامها حتى الآن.

وجاء في البيان الكتابي الذي تقدمت به إدارة شرطة المحافظة، أن الأغراض والمستندات المستخرجة من الخزائن الفولاذية المفتوحة بتنسيق من اللجنة المشكلة بموافقة المحافظ، تم تسليمها إلى أصحابها أو ورثتهم.

وذكر البيان أن 119 خزانة من أصل 197 مخزنة لدى إدارة شرطة المحافظة كانت فارغة، و57 خزانة تحتوي على وثائق وأغراض لا قيمة لها، و21 خزانة فولاذية تحتوي على 5 كيلو و90 جرام ذهب، و21 ربع عملة ذهبية، وقطعة ذهبية. قلادة و3 ساعات يد مطلية بالذهب، وذكر أنه تم العثور على 2 سوار من الفضة و4 أزواج من الأقراط الفضية و458 ألف و198 ليرة تركية و58 ألف و700 دولار و404 يورو وعملات معدنية قديمة.

وذكر في البيان أنه تم العثور في بعض الخزائن على 3 بنادق و397 خرطوشاً تابعة لهم، و38 قطعة أثرية تاريخية، و960 حبة دواء باللونين الأخضر والأحمر، كما تم تسليم 18 خزانة لأصحابها وتم سرقة القطع الأثرية التاريخية. سلمت إلى مديرية المتحف.türkiye🇹🇷

197 steel safes, which were taken out from under the rubble after the earthquakes in Maraş and not received until now, were opened.

In the written statement made by the Provincial Police Department, it was stated that the items and documents removed from the steel safes opened under the coordination of the commission established with the approval of the Governorship were delivered to their owners or heirs.

In the statement, it was stated that 119 of the 197 safes kept by the Provincial Police Department were empty, 57 safes contained worthless documents and items, and 21 steel safes contained 5 kilos and 90 grams of gold, 21 quarter gold coins, a gold pendant, 3 gold-plated wrist watches, It was stated that 2 silver bracelets and 4 pairs of silver earrings, 458 thousand 198 Turkish Liras, 58 thousand 700 dollars, 404 euros and old coins were found.

In the statement, it was stated that 3 guns and 397 cartridges belonging to them, 38 pieces of historical artifacts, and 960 green and red prescription pills were found in some safes, and that 18 safes were delivered to their owners and the historical artifacts were delivered to the Museum Türkiye 🇹🇷

#deprem #kahramanmaraş #türkiye #doğa #kasa #travel photography #travel destinations #travel #manzara #view #natural #il emniyet müdürlüğü #emniyet kemeri #europe #africa #Spotify

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lionofchaeronea · 1 year

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Silver tridrachm of Samos, minted between 404 and 394 BCE when the island was under Spartan domination following the Peloponnesian War. The coin depicts the infant Heracles strangling two snakes sent by Hera to kill him in his cradle. This type - the so-called Herakliskos Drakopnigon ("Little Heracles the Snake-Strangler") - is associated with the Spartan general Lysander, who claimed descent from Heracles through his father. Now in the Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen, Altes Museum, Berlin. Photo credit: ArchaiOptix/Wikimedia Commons.

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lykoi-licks · 1 year

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Droopycatgender

Droopycatgender (also called Droopcat for short) is a catgender related to cats who are slumped over in silly positions, cats who are droopy, cats who are sagging, and cats that are curled into strange and silly positions. This gender may feel goofy, playful and dazed.

[FLAG IDS: Two side by side flags, they are identical apart from the centre icon. The flags have 5 scalloped stripes. From top-down the colours are an eggplant purple, a storm grey-blue, robin eggs blue, smoke grey and a grey-tan. The emblem on the left flag is of a cat hunched over. The icon is dark-grey with a near-black outline. The emblem on the right flag is of a cat head with whiskers. The icon is dark-grey with a near-black outline. END ID.]

This may be seen as a similar gender to soppingwetcatgender (coined by @sunnymogai ) or wetcatgender ((coined by @404-coining (also coined by deleted user @thefungiarchive )) but without the gender-influence of water.

#mogai coining #mogai flag #mogai label #xenogender #xenogender coining #xenogenders #xenogender flag #flag coining #new xenogender #catgender #new catgender #pro mogai #cat xenogender #catgender coining

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404shcats · 1 year

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So today i started using a notebook to write down all the gender coining ideas I had at school and um

I think I’m gonna need to coin more often (holy shit)

#also I might need multiple notebooks for this #and these are only from today #ignore the shitty handwriting #i genuinely didn’t know there would be this many #coining blog is @404-coining btw #I still have to check that these haven’t been coined yet but oh well

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meadow-of-mogai-melodies · 1 year

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fantasimulity!

fantasimulity-

a gender related to the following concept- your whole world is a simulation- just strings of code- but you don’t know it yet. everything feels like a perfect life, like the kind of life you’d fantasize about. every day, everything stays the same- perfect. all the houses on every neighborhood have the same beautiful gardens, the sky is always the same beautiful blue, the grass is always the same emerald green, the birds always chirp the same sweet song- but maybe it’s all TOO similar. maybe you start to, here and there, notice a crack in this perfect foundation of sameness. maybe this fantasy life you live, manipulated by a code whose existence treats you like a puppet, starts to become too perfect- and you start to see this world, this simulation, this lie of a life, for what it really is- but as you do, the ones who run this simulation find out that you are waking up. they know you’re a threat to their perfect little lie, so slowly but surely, your code starts to come undone. fantasy becomes reality and reality becomes fantasy as you take a desperate stand to escape this simulation... but as you reach out your hand, dissolving into code, towards the door to this simulation, the door that will take you to the real world... the only thing that remains of you is this message:

ERROR 404: NOT FOUND.

[Image ID: A flag with nine equally-sized horizontal stripes. From top to bottom, the colors are red, orange, golden, pale yellow, white, pale green, light dull orange, red-pink, and hot pink. End ID.]

term and flag by me for day 5 of my 1,000 follower coining event! tagging @spirgender @epikulupu @neopronouns !

#reigns terms #xenogender #xenogender coining #new gender #gender coining #im ngl yall i think this is one of my favorite terms ive ever coined on this blog like #i dont want to brag but this is really fucking cool im so excited about this term asdfa #unreality #cw unreality #unreality cw #tw unreality #unreality tw #im not completely sure if this counts as unreality but im tagging just in case

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osrs-stonks · 7 months

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OSRS Stocks: Ensouled Chaos Druid Heads

Old-school Runescape has a mechanic where some enemy mobs drop ensouled heads when you defeat them. Usually enemies will drop some standard items like bones, ashes, coins and/or meat, and then have a small chance of dropping some other stuff like weapons, ammunition, armour or runes. The ensouled head is an occasional drop that - as you've probably guessed - gives you their head with a little bit of their soul inside of it.

The purpose of this mechanic is to help you train your prayer skill. Prayers are basically just buffs, and the higher you make your prayer skill, the more prayers you unlock. You also get an extra prayer point per level so your buffs last longer. Before ensouled heads were added to the game, the primary way to train your prayer skill was to bury bones; you had regular bones, big bones, monkey bones, dragon bones etc. that would grant you higher amounts of prayer experience when you buried them. Other remains came a bit later.

Unfortunately, burying bones is a very tedious task with a very middling XP reward. The lowest class of bones grants you 4.5 prayer experience, and the highest class - superior dragon bones - only grant 150 XP. There are ways to amplify the payoff, but you're still looking at a maximum of 600 XP per pile of bones.

Ensouled heads can be resurrected at an altar, summoning an astral body to be refought so you can gain prayer and combat experience. The "worst" ensouled head, the goblin one, grants 130 experience - again, the bog-standard bones that just about everything drops only grants you 4.5 XP per pile. The best head - a dragon head - gives you a massive 1,560 prayer XP.

The ensouled chaos druid head nets you 584 prayer experience, just shy of the superior dragon bones.

Superior dragon bones - which I might make a post on in the future, because there was a massive dip in value in 2022 - cost 7,861 gold pieces to buy on the GE at the time of writing. These bones are only dropped by a story-relevant boss named Vorkath which has a minimum combat level of 392 (compared to the player character's maximum combat level of 127).

Ensouled chaos druid heads cost 404 gold pieces, and the mob that drops this item seems to only exist at level 13.

The low value of ensouled chaos druid heads has interested me for a while. In this post, I'm going to go deeper into the value of other ensouled heads and speculate as to why the ensouled chaos druid head is the second cheapest head to buy on the Grand Exchange.

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The value chart for the ensouled chaos druid head is interesting, in that the peak of its value is when the item was launched on OSRS:

After which it dipped significantly, and stayed mostly in the same ballpark.

You can see that there was a brief boom in 2020, where the price almost hit 1,700 gold pieces:

After which it hit its lowest value of 352 gold pieces per head:

The ensouled chaos druid head is the second cheapest ensouled head you can buy on the GE, compared to the ensouled goblin head which only offers 130 prayer experience. And sure, it's no ensouled dragon head with its 1,560 prayer XP, but the next best option is the ensouled giant head at 650 XP, and that head is almost twice as expensive as the chaos druid head.

I'm starting to believe that the price for this head is so cheap because of the daily volume of ensouled chaos druid heads being sold on the GE.

Like - unicorns are rare and kind of a pain in the ass to farm for heads. According to the wiki at the time of writing, the daily volume of ensouled unicorn heads being sold on the GE is like 170. Ensouled dog heads only drop from two hostile dog mobs ranging between combat level 44 and 63, and the daily volume of that item is 117.

The daily volume of ensouled chaos druid heads - again, the DAILY volume - is just shy of 6,000:

So case closed, right?

Well, maybe not.

Ensouled chaos druid heads grant 584 prayer experience when you resurrect them at the Dark Altar in Arceuus. They're preceded by ensouled dog heads which grant 520 prayer XP when resurrected and defeated, and they're succeeded by ensouled giant heads which grant 650 prayer XP when defeated.

Over 26,000 ensouled giant heads go through the Grand Exchange every day, and the price is almost double what ensouled chaos druid heads are worth:

And I think I might have an answer for why the figures are the way they are.

Chaos druids are kind of common. There are five or six outposts of them in the entire game, and they're only ever at combat level 13, so they're easy enough to mow down and farm heads. Low combat level, easy to farm, common enough mob compared to dogs and unicorns. I'd imagine they're also a lower level slayer task.

Giants are fucking EVERYWHERE.

You've got hill giants, moss giants, ice giants, fire giants and cyclopes. They're a common slayer task, and they're often a reasonable option to train your combat skills and farm key drops to take on Obor and Bryophyta.

Giant heads might be the single most common ensouled head you can get in the game. And because of that and the slightly superior XP gain, giant heads are always moving through the GE and are always fairly valuable.

In my opinion, chaos druid heads are fairly common compared to its contemporaries, so it faces a sort of mundanity that keeps the value low and the daily volume high. Giant heads are plentiful and popular, so the value remains much higher than that of the ensouled chaos druid head despite not being all that different. Chaos druid heads are mundane, like toilet paper. Giant heads are popular, like McDonalds.

Other heads that grant less XP are more valuable than the chaos druid head only due to not being as common of a drop, presumably due to their mobs not being as common in the game world or not being a popular mob to grind. Like who's out there grinding scorpion mobs? They barely drop anything. Low daily volume, low item reserves, higher price. You can say the same for pretty much every mob with an ensouled head prior to the chaos druids, except for the common goblin.

I like ensouled giant heads well enough, but ever since learning about the ensouled chaos druid head I've come to feel kind of sorry for it. It's not much worse than the ensouled giant head, but it's not nearly as popular and it's extremely cheap on the Grand Exchange. I love an underdog, and honestly using chaos druid heads to train your prayer is probably the best coin-to-XP value due to its reduced value compared to giant heads.

So the next time you're considering training your prayer level, consider the humble ensouled chaos druid head. They're not quite as good as giant heads, but you're not missing out on much and you're getting a fantastic bargain.

#osrs #old-school runescape #oldschool runescape #runescape #grand exchange #ensouled chaos druid head #osrs stonks

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virtualfreespirit · 7 days

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W-A-S-D

Dear reader,

It's been a while since I last posted anything, hasn't it? My bad.

I have been juggling between Don't Starve Together (now that we have the Scrappy Scavengers expansion), Stardew Valley (now that the 1.6 update is finally out), Game Dev Tycoon, - all financed by my boyfriend - and greedy good ol’ Time Princess.

I'm starting to understand why my mom doesn't want my baby brother to play video games at a young age considering my… uh, outstanding dedication to them.

Like I said before in my now 404-ed Blogger page, this isn't even close to being my first time gaming around, so I’m well acquainted with the myths that can surround this infamous activity.

I'm no Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler’s character in the 2015 movie Pixels), but according to a few online dictionaries I found, I am a gamer, a.k.a. a person who enjoys video games. As a hobby, not as a profession.

If you never cared to Google it like me, you might ask yourself, what’s a video game? Where do they even come from?

Did aliens bring them to Earth, maybe?

Well, not quite.

I hope not to disappoint the world's most beloved gamer, Henry Cavill, with my poor research skills...

But yeah, taking Wikipedia as my source, video games can be defined as a form of entertainment that involves interacting with an input device, such as your keyboard if you're a PC gamer, to generate visual feedback on a display device, e.g. a monitor. It's similar to how Newton's Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.

During their earlier history, video games were mostly related to research projects at universities and large corporations as academic and promotional devices, rather than to the general public's entertainment.

One of the first examples of a modern video game that we know of was patented in January 1947 by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and it's a thing called a "cathode-ray tube amusement device”.

It basically consisted of an analog device that lets you move a dot on the screen to simulate a missile being parabolically fired at paper drawings fixed to the screen, inspired by radar display technology. And, yes, the first video game ever was essentially an Angry Birds prototype.

Over the following years, other game patents were created with different means of display and whatever, but none of them were able to achieve the commercial success of Atari's inaugural arcade game, Pong, in 1972.

The release of this timeless video game played a pivotal role in establishing the industry as we know it today, not to mention that one of the first consoles ever was also released a couple months before in that same year; I'm talking about Magnavox' Odyssey home console.

Speaking of the Xbox’s great great great grandmother, it's well-known that video games tend to be classified by platform because of the differences there can be when comparing one piece of hardware to the other, so we have:

Arcade games

You can play these in the coin-operated machines of the same name, as seen in the beginning of Adam Sandler's Pixels movie. The classic single-game cabinet only allows you to play the one game it was designed for, yet this concept has been popular in the US since the 1970s, until it began dying down by the late 1990s when people started to bring the arcade experience home with consoles’ growing popularity and ever-developing technology.

Console games

These can be enjoyed in specialized electronic devices that consist of a main unit - the “console” - that has the hardware that you're supposed to connect with your display device of choice and a game controller like this one: 🎮.

Let's take a moment to reminisce here because, back in my days, you needed to buy a game's cartridge to be able to play it, which meant offline and immediate access at the cost of lower storage capacity and physical bulkiness. But, even before the world wide web, Control Video Corporation (CVC) was an early pioneer in downloadable games and cloud saving for consoles... before it went bankrupt during the 1983 video game crash and was merged with AOL.

CVC introduced the GameLine, a dial-up game distribution system designed for the Atari 2600 console and introduced in 1986. Despite its innovative concept, it was ahead of its time, lacked licensing from most video game companies, and ultimately failed, like most good things in life. Had they waited for the modern Internet and the Cloud to be created, they could have seen the same success as Xbox Live and PlayStation Network years later!

Due to coding and/or hardware incompatibilities, you can only play games in a console if they are designed for it, meaning you can't directly transfer a PlayStation 2 game into a PlayStation 4 despite them being brand models developed by the same company. Sony not sorry.

PC games

You can always download them to your desktop computer or laptop from their official website, if there's any, or from a trusty storefront like Steam�� as long as the software requirements match. Since computers are not gaming-exclusive devices, there may and most likely will be differences when running the same game on another computer!

Mobile games

You can download these from a trustworthy website as an APK file to be installed on your cellphone or tablet, or just go ahead and use a digital distribution service like Google's Play Store or Apple's App Store, like the system might recommend. Though, much like PC games, these tend to have specifications that your phone must meet for them to run properly.

Smartphones and tablets are probably the only case of being both the input and the display device simultaneously without having traditional buttons as an input option, unlike the Nintendo Switch or the PlayStation Vita, and that must be exactly why so many people dislike mobile gaming.

Admittedly, some games can become more challenging with the whole “inaccurate touchscreen controls” part, notably in PUBG Mobile and Don't Starve Pocket Edition. Except the latter has shittier controls, per its Google Play reviews.

I haven’t played arcade games in a LONG time because my favorite arcade got super expensive in its last few years before closing down, leaving me with nothing but fond long-term memories of grabbing digital eggs using a basket, playing Coldplay's Yellow in a plastic guitar EVERY time, table-hockey-ing, etc.

However, I have been consistently trying out PC and mobile games across my lifespan. Especially the free-to-play ones, since my family didn't allow me to spend a single penny on video games when I was younger.

And, oh boy, isn't the list of games I've tried criminally long.

Blaming my unending passion for video games on my predisposition is only fair. I mean, I remember my mom was able to defeat Mario Bros.’ Bowser in a single day when I was a child, and hearing similar stories about her older sister's gaming prowess.

Come to think of it, we must've had a NES console back when all that happened, considering my faint memories of being thrilled to play Duck Hunt. That couldn't have happened irl otherwise.

Also, my cousins had a living room computer BRIMMING with, uh, ✨ free copies ✨ of various popular games that we often played together when we were in elementary school.

I did have a couple of consoles of my own, including some sort of green, translucent knock-off GameBoy I was gifted at a school event and what I think was a PlayStation, but quickly lost both.

My cousins were gifted a PlayStation 2 of their own later on, when it was a thing, until it got damaged because they were using pirate cartridges. Or so we were told back in the day; it could’ve been a dirty reading laser in reality, but, you know, my cousins lived in a very small town, so it was a miracle that they had that console in the first place.

I didn't get to bond with console games much because I found the controllers too difficult to use with my poor hand coordination, and couldn't practice much, so I was stuck with mobile Tetris and Bounce Tales, both of which I found in my grandpa's phones.

It wasn't until some time after my middle cousin passed me down her old Facebook account that I found what would be my main source of entertainment for the next year or so: social network games.

They were THE SHIT when I was middle school aged and Facebook kept spreading across all corners of Spanish-speaking countries.

Ever heard of FarmVille or Dragon City? These ancient Facebook games, and other titles, are a type of online game that is played through social media. They tend to have multiplayer gameplay mechanics and use real-time analytics to sort of motivate you to spend real money on in-game resources and/or consistently log in for rewards.

All social network games used to be browser games at first, meaning you could play them exclusively on Facebook desktop for instance, but as mobile gaming took off, many of the games were re-released for mobile as well.

But Facebook is not the only one who ventured into browser games. This category includes anything you can play using a web browser like Ecosia. They're mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer, and are also grouped by their software platform, for example, Flash games.

A couple of famous examples include Club Penguin and the McDonald's Video Game, but personally I was more into Moshi Monsters and whatever “girly” games you could find on the in-browser hubs JuegosJuegos.com, friv.com and DressUpGames.com, in particular.

Even TV channels like Disney and Discovery Kids had TONS of Flash games available on their official websites when I was a kid, and so I spent a lot of my free time visiting those.

Then, tragedy struck: Adobe Flash stopped being supported between December 2020 and January 2021, mainly due to security concerns, dealing a debilitating blow to browser gaming. This sort of forced me to dive a lot more into what the Google Play Store and Steam had to offer.

While I’m pretty flexible in terms of the platforms I’ve tried, I remain selective when it comes to the genres. Although, that doesn't exactly mean I dislike any, just that I may prefer to watch the gameplay videos on YouTube most of the time.

For instance, I'm a big fan of the first 5 Five Nights at Freddy's (survival horror) installments and everything that came out after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (action-adventure), yet I have no intent of playing any of them myself. I'll stick with simulation and strategy games, which I excel at and relax with.

About video game genres, they're not really related to the setting or story of the game as literary genres are, but by the way the player interacts with the game.

I’m not diving into specifics here because games often incorporate key features from all genres all the time or blend them together into hybrids, making it useless to try to differentiate them. Plus, there are countless sub-genres to consider. Even the Dark Souls saga is considered to have its own genre!

Now, it's no secret that females and minority groups tend to get harassed in shooter and MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games’ communities, so that can obviously make me feel hesitant about joining those spaces.

Highly competitive environments often amplify the toxicity of the yappiest players, especially in multiplayer games, and that can lead to the misconception that, for instance, all League of Legends players are disgusting, when in reality it might only be a small percentage of ill-mannered people that's deterring potential new players. Then again, it is League of Legends that we're talking about here…

Circling back to Dark Souls, much like what SORRYLAG narrates in this video, I'd add that there's this weird pressure in the video game world about who can beat the games with the most challenging gameplays with no health penalties, or who can speedrun the fastest, or who discovers the most convoluted easter egg, that I just can't relate to as someone who's obsessed with Stardew Valley’s more peaceful essence.

It's hypocritical to bash or segregate others for enjoying the exact same thing you're doing just because they have less experience or different preferences.

I'm always up for a challenge, sure, but stressing over completing a difficult and super precise video game mission isn't my idea of fun.

And I refuse to think I'm less of a gamer just because I like mobile gaming, don't want to beat Sekiro and won't even pick up Duty's Call. I'm not doing this as a profession for a reason, you know? I am barely able to face one of Don't Starve Together’s bosses solo with the help of frog ponds.

Setting aside the standard fandom issues around them, I wouldn't say video games are a problem on their own. It's not Donkey Kong's fault that we've created so many stereotypes around a lifeless entertainment format.

Do they cause aggression and violence? No. A kid will not grow up to be violent because of a video game, unless their parents, teachers or community fail to teach them that it's not okay to act like that. Take it from someone who grew up playing Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (not knowing it wasn't about driving around and stealing hookers' money), and thus had all the potential in the world to become a samurai gangster, apparently.

Are they addictive? Look, those sneaky strategies to make us play more frequently like real-time statistics don't help, but truth is anything that makes you produce dopamine and other happy hormones will become addictive if you struggle with discipline and self control in general. Even food. We're just too scared of taking accountability as humans.

Do they cause loneliness or social isolation? It can be the case for some, but that doesn't mean all gamers are lonely. I mean, my boyfriend and I found each other, didn't we? Not to mention you'll fail at most multiplayer games with no teamwork or proper communication, and there are tons of online communities out there that welcome anonymous users, so how do you even get lonely if it's not by perspective?

Are they for kids, teens or men only? We're in 2024, come on. There's plenty of options for everybody.

Such a shame that some people will never get to experience the joys of playing video games because they're too stubborn to believe anything other than what one news article of dubious origin said.

We can't really force a person who dislikes video games for any reason to love them, of course, but it's always nice to see them understand that respecting others' likes and choices will not cause the end of the world, isn't it?

Personally, I tend to choose playing whatever video game I'm trying to (slowly) complete at the moment over asking people to hang out whenever I'm free, because going out is expensive anyway. This isn't affecting my quality of life any more than pollution does because I still do my chores and work despite the suffocating heat of a tropical summer, so there's that.

In conclusion, as long as video games don't get in the way of your self-care, daily habits, finances and overall health, you should feel free to play them as much as you can, and want.

Unlike the mistaken belief that video games will ruin your brain or contribute to obesity per se, you can get benefits from most of them, actually. As of today, we have the VR goggles + omnidirectional treadmill + exploring Skyrim by foot combo for fitness purposes, puzzle games for cognitive skills development, strategy games for planning and problem-solving, action games for reaction time improvement, and so on.

But, once again, gaming shouldn't negatively impact your life. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read about that one Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament where a female participant had to step out due to the odor. Even sports athletes shower before competing, so my hobby is not their excuse for being dirty!

What do you think about video games, though? Yay, or nay?

Until next time!

- N

#spotify #stardew valley #mr qi #video games #dark souls #dst #league of legends #gta 6 #gta san andreas #blog #mobile games #pc games #arcade #console #history

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