Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: laziness

Casual game devs need to up their game

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Before I played hardcore games, I was into casual games. Hidden Obje.ct Games (HOGs), Match-3s, and Time Managements, mostly. I also liked word games and solitaires. One really interesting thing was back then, maybe 90% of the games had women as protags. In fact, one of the rare times there was a male protag, a user commented in approval. It was a guy, and he said that it was nice to have a male protag for once.

I kinda laughed because welcome to the other side, bro! Every other anything at that time was heavily male-dominated, so I didn’t have much sympathy with that complaint. In fact, I was thinking, “Let us have this one, my guy.”

I mention this because I think the fact that the gamers in this case are overwhelminingly female is a big part of the reason why what I’m about to complain about happens.

In the hardcore gaming community, there is always griping about how certain devs just make the same game over and over. Two of the most notable examples are the endless iterations of Call of Duty (which I call Collar Duty, and the dev is….well, ultimately, now it’s Microsoft. Let’s leave it at that) and AssCReed (Ubisoft).

They come out seemingly every year, and there is very little to differentiate between them. At least that’s how it seems from the outside. I will give some credit to AssCreed in that at least it’s in a different country each time.

You can’t say they don’t spend money on each iteration, though. You have to give them that. And, they do iterate and innovate in some of the games. From what I’ve seen, anyway. I’ve only played one AssCreed game (Syndicate) and no Collar Duties.

I still have a membership to BigFishGames, which is a site that sells casual games. And develops some of them (though not under their own name). They’re the Steam of casual gaming, but unlike Steam, they have not really pushed casual gaming forward in any significant way. Plus, their client is not great, and every iteration of it seems to either stagnate or be slightly worse.

I still play casual games in between my sessions of hardcore gaming–especially if I’ve gotten obsessed with a hardcore game for several weeks. And, wow. There is such little innovation in the casual gaming world.

On the one hand, I can see why. The genres are pretty rigid and rely on so many tropes. In addition, they are an easy sell–especially because the standards are so low.

To be clear, I’m part of the problem. I will buy a casual game if I’m halfway interested because I get a free game per month with my subscription to BigGameFish. I have so many freebies, I will spend them on anything halfway interesting. Or, to be brutally honest, repetitive enough to scramble my brain weasels.


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Inertia is not my friend

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I have said several times that one of the reasons I chose Taiji is because it’s the lazy martial art. My teacher told me this in the first few classes I took. It’s about exerting as little energy/effort as possible for the maximum output. It spoke to me because I’m lazy. Or rather, it’s really difficult for me to make myself do things–even things I want to do.

When K used to live here, We would go out roughly once a month–usually dancing. We would set a time and I would drag myself to her place right on time. But it would take me a half hour to talk myself into getting up and getting dressed. Then, I would sit and watch her for half an hour as she dithered over what to wear. Usually, her husband would finally tell her what to wear, and she would reluctantly put it on. He has great fashion taste, by the way.

Finally, about forty-five minutes after the time we were supposed to get going, we’d leave. she would drive us to where we had to be, and I would get the drinks from the bartender–even if I didn’t want one (I had one a night). This is one reason we’re such good friends–we complement each other. I hate driving; she loves it. She hates getting drinks from the bar; I don’t mind at all. When we went to dinner, we’d split the tab equally and she would pay the tip because she had drinks and I did not.

I have said to her repeatedly that we will be at the same old person’s homeand heckling the other inmates. She laughed, but she knows it’s true. Or maybe not because we’re the opposites when it comes to environment. She grew up in Miami. I am Minnesota born and bred. She’s happiest when it’s over 80. My sweet spot is freezing and below. Though, to be honest, since perimenopause, she has preferred lower temps. And for me, perimenopause has made me actually have chills.

Anyway! We have talked about how difficult it is to get going, even when it’s something we want to do. I think that’s another reason we work well together–because we both understand that overcoming inertia takes a lot of energy. We both like just sitting on the back porch and chilling (used to smoke. Don’t any longer). We don’t even need to talk. That’s the thing I like best about being with her and Ian. With both of them (separately), I can just be me. I don’t have to perform. At all.


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My confessions

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There’s a thread in the weekend forum post on Ask A Manager about guilty confessions. I liked the idea so I’m going to do a post about it because why the hell not? Guilty or not, here are some confessions.

1. I hate traveling. I hate it a lot. Everyone talks about how great it is to travel and visit other places. I agree with the latter to a certain extent, but not the former. At all.

First of of all, I get motion sickness when I fly. I used to take Dramamine, but I didn’t like the way it made me groggy and lethargic. When I flew to Taiwan once, I slept the entire way with the aid of Dramamine. That was…not a good thing. I switched to ginger capsules, and that was so much better. It eradicated the motion sickness, and it did not make me sleepy. Yay!

I don’t like crowds, and I don’t like strangers. I don’t like loud noises, either. This is another reason I hate flying. Not to mention being squished in and talked at by the alpha male who doesn’t recognize that I am icing him out.

But. Here’s the reason I don’t like going to a new place, regardless of how great it is. I have so many issues, physical and mental, but mostly physical, that it’s really difficult for me to cope in a different environment. When I moved to the East Bay (Bay Area) for a year, my allergies ran amok. I had to give up my contacts because my eyes were in agony.

So, yes. I have to deal with a completely different environment, including weather. I hate heat. Anything over 65 makes me cranky, irritable, and lethargic. Put me in 80+ weather, and I will lose my goddamn mind.

Then, add to that the fact that I am allergic to everything including the air. I’m even allergic to mosquitos, which means if they bite me, the bites swell to the size of a grapefruit. Minnesota’s nickname is jokingly Land of 10,000 Mosquitos, which is not far off.

This is why I don’t like the outdoors in general. When I got the allergy test on my thigh (dozens of pricks to see what I’m allergic to), my entire thigh swelled up. I very much see the outdoors as trying to kill me, so I act accordingly.

In addition, I can’t eat dairy or gluten, which means the food of many countries is off-limits to me. This is why I don’t like to travel, and I think it’s a fair reason not to like to go anywhere.

2. I don’t like children. Or rather, I am not particularly fond of them. I don’t dislike them, either, but I’m not one who gushes about how great children are. Kids under five drive me crazy with their repetition and their myopic vision. I know that’s their thing and I’m not down on them because of it, but I just don’t care to hang out with them.

I have liked individual children, but not the concept of children in general. I think it’s because I don’t like people in general, and they are just a subset of that major group. I am so glad I realized I did not want to have children when I was 22 and stuck to my guns, no matter how much shit I got for it (mostly from my mother).


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Maintaining is progress, too

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In the Before Times (before hospital, that is. Not before COVID. It’s funny how the latter has gone from huge in my mind to almost an afterthought. That’s not this post, though, so I’ll leave it there for now), I was very much an all-or-nothing person. Well, let’s back that up even further. Before I took taiji, I bought into the idea of ‘no pain, no gain’. Kind of. I didn’t believe that when it came to physical pain, but pushing myself mentally/emotionally? Yeah, I did that on the regular. I didn’t push my body as much, but that was only because I was lazy. I did mess with my sleep quite a bit, but that was because my sleep sucked. I wasn’t doing it on purpose; in fact, I was trying to make it better. But that did mean I didn’t sleep much or well on most nights, which contributed to my body feeling like shit.

When I was in  the hospital, sleep was hard to come by because they took my vitals every four hours or so. Despite that, I was zonked out hard whenever I did manage to fall asleep. I had powerful sedation medication and narcotics coursing through my veins so I’m sure that’s part of the reason I was able to sleep so much in the hospital.

It has continued now that I’m home, however. The most shocking part is that I’m in bed by 10 p.m., 10:30 p.m. at the latest and up by 6 a.m. I get a solid 7 1/2 to 8 hours a night, only waking up once to pee. This is unheard of for me, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. At first, I was unnerved by my sleeping schedule, but the early morning is a lot like the late, late evening if I squint. Nobody is up and it’s dark outside. There is a chill in the still air and it’s as if I’m the only person awake in the world. Mentally, I still prefer going to bed at this time than getting up, but I’ll take what I can get.

It’s funny, though, how quickly the brain can adapt something into being the norm. I’ve struggled with sleep issues all my life and now, they’re gone in the blink of an eye. Now, it’s just normal for me, and I rarely think about it. It’s the same with, well, the whole experience. I woke up from nothingness, mad, disoriented, and scared. My brother explained everything to me (along with the docs, of course, but I mostly remember my brother’s explanation) and once I absorbed the news, I rarely thought about it again. Or rather, when I did think about it, it was more in the vein of, “Huh. That’s a thing that happened to me.”

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Suggestions From a Filthy Casual

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mad libs in effect.
I need to find a shoe, a hammer, and a cellphone!

Way before I ventured into the strange world of hardcore gaming, I was a dedicated practitioner of casual games. I’ve never given them up completely, and now while I’ve been sick for three months, sometimes, a casual game is all my brain can handle. Hidden Object Games (HOGs), Match-3, Solitaire, Time Management, I like ’em all. I have a much lower expectation of them than I do hardcore games because one, they’re churned out like processed meat at a rapid pace, and, two, they’re much less expensive than hardcore games. I am a member of BigFishGames.com, and a Standard Edition (SE) game is $6.99, whereas a Collector’s Edition (CE) is $13.99. In addition, the expectations are different when I play a casual game than when I play a hardcore one. I play casual games just to relax, so I’m not as critical about them as I am with hardcore games. That being said, there are several tropes in casual games that are way past their expiration date, and I would like to make some suggestions as to how to make them better. Most of my suggestions are for HOGs, but some of them apply across the board. I’ll indicate which games are the worst offenders for each trope I’m going to dissect.

Let’s start at the beginning. Literally. When I start up a HOG, I know I’m going to be greeted with a cutscene. Here’s a weird fact about when I play casual games–I play them with the sound off. It’s weird because I always play with the sound on with hardcore games, but I play with the sound muted for casual games. Why? First of all, the sound is jacked up in comparison to how loud it should be. Additionally, many of them have music that plays throughout the whole game, and I don’t want that in my ear the whole time I’m playing. Secondly, voice acting in casual games is usually atrocious, and I’d rather read the text than hear them speak. Anyway, the fact that I can’t fiddle with the settings before the cutscene starts is irritating to me. I would sit through the cutscene and read the text if that were an option, but because it isn’t, I simply skip the cutscene instead.

By the way, there are some things in casual games that will make it a no-go before I even get started. Oh! One of the best things about casual games and using a client service like BGF is that every game has a free demo. It used to be an hour, regardless, but now it’s more like a set amount of story/scenes that a developer wants you to see. I’m fine with that, but it seems as if more and more games are creating their games for that hour point and end on a cliff hanger, which is understandable, but somewhat irritating. Anyway, my top egregious sins are: One, not allowing for windowed mode. There is no excuse for this. None. Two, not being able to mute the music. Again, there’s no excuse for it. I have a hunch that the developers of casual games are not as experienced or knowledgeable as are hardcore developers, but it can’t be that difficult to code window mode or muting the sound. Not being able to skip cutscenes is also a non-starter for me. Basically, if I’m not in control of my gaming experience, I’ll tap out. I’m not as strict about resolution settings because that doesn’t matter as much to me, but sound and window? Yeah.

Here are some of my micro annoyances with casual games. One, making it so I have to continually press a button to mute the sound–especially if you have to do each aspect separately. I don’t even like sliders, but they’re better than having to repeatedly press a button. I wish more games had a ‘mute all’ button, but that doesn’t seem to be a thing. Another is once I’ve fixed all the settings to my liking, as the game continues, it ignores what I’ve done and reverts to previous settings. If a game does that (say with cutscenes and sound), I instantly stop playing. Another weird thing many HOGs do is that you can change the difficulty in the settings, but if you do it before they specifically ask you to select your difficulty, they’ll still ask you, even if you change the difficulty. In addition, some games will change your whole computer’s resolution when you choose window mode, and that’s another game stopper for me. Obviously.

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Taking Charge of My Health

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Many moons ago, I had to deal with bronchial issues on and off for several years. I would be coughing and sniffling and have mucus draining in the back of my throat for a month, get better, then have it start all over again. Once, at the nadir of those years, I was coughing for nine months straight. In desperation, I begged my doctor for antibiotics, even though I knew they wouldn’t help. She said as much to me, and I told her I knew it was folly, but I had to try something. She reluctantly prescribed them to me, and they made me feel worse than the bronchial issues instead. I Googled the side effects (which I should have done before I took the pills), and they were basically the same as the symptoms I was suffering. My therapist gave me the name of a naturopath, and she suggested giving up gluten, dairy, and sugar. At the same time. You can imagine how pleased I was with this suggestion, but as I said, I was desperate, and I was willing to try anything.

Taking a deep breath, I did it. I gave up everything dairy, gluten, and sugar. You have to remember that alternatives were not as plentiful and tasty, so it was a struggle. For the first month, I was stuck on the idea of finding a one-to-one substitute for each thing I had to give up. I wanted to find a bread that tasted like wheat bread, ‘cheese’ that tasted like dairy cheese, etc. That is folly, for your information. The trick, I found, was to find things that were tasty and not compare them to the original. It still wasn’t easy, but I found acceptable alternatives. Cheese was the hardest thing to give up, and the only fake cheese that was edible was Lisanatti Foods Almond Cheddar Cheese, and that was only when it was melted on something like a sandwich.

Of the three categories, sugar was the hardest to give up completely, especially since I don’t cook. I don’t add sugar to anything, but everything comes with sugar. Plus, I love chocolate, sooooo…..I would just look for chocolates with natural substitutes at the co-op and try to eat less of it. I wasn’t as stringent with the sugar as I was with dairy and gluten. By the second month, I felt great. My cough was gone, and most of my intestinal/nasal problems were cleared up. By the third month, though, I was literally dreaming of pizza. Because my symptoms had cleared up, I decided to gradually introduce dairy, gluten, and sugar* back into my diet.


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