What is a Game?

For me, games are part enjoyment and part competition. They are a way for me to sit back and smile. They are a way of showing I am better at something. They are something to pass the time.

The first game I played extensively was Railroad Tycoon, a simulation game that involved building a railroad and beating all of your competitors. I dabbled a little in first person shooters, but, eventually, found my way to the Final Fantasy series. I played two of the GameBoy versions (I and III) and three of the Playstation versions (VII, IX, and Tactics). With VII and tactics, I played through the first time enjoying the story line and going where it made sense. Then, I took a second trip through the game trying to do everything possible. My end-character in tactics was eventually able to defeat the final encounter without any help (usually you have a 5 person party).

The intellectual challenge from the FF series was in the Min-Maxing of my characters. To minimize flaws and maximize their effectiveness was something I always wanted to push. Many times, I wished there was a way to pit two parties against each other just to test which builds were the best.

The first online game I played was Utopia (http://games.swirve.com/utopia). In this game, you are one province in a kingdom of 25 who work together to grow and be larger than everyone else in the world. Available were different military operations, exploration, magical, or thievery attacks that you could use to weaken your opponents and take their resources. At one point, I wound my way into a kingdom that was in the top 20 in the world (there were, maybe, 1000+ individual kingdoms). I quickly got burned out on Utopia, though, mostly because it wasn't something I could do with my friends (the province placements were completely random). It simply stopped being fun.

About a year ago, I started a new online game: World of Warcraft. After learning the game through the levels, I joined a raiding guild and started running through the 20-man dungons. That blossomed into 40-mans and now we've cleared BWL and most of AQ40. WoW has been great because it is competition with thousansd of others in the world, aiming to coordinate 20-40 people for the same goal. New in the expansion are other, much more complex areas that I'll be exploring in the coming weeks.