I’m not one for playing video games, online or otherwise. There was a time, about thirty years ago that I loved playing PacMan but once my first child was born, that stopped. And later, when my kids had video games, I took a liking to Duck Hunt and around that same time, to Tetris. But that didn’t last long because I had to share the video game system with my three kids. It has been a lot of years since I’ve played video games.
I got my first smart phone three years ago. One of the neat things was that I could play games on my phone and I didn’t have to share my games with anyone. Of course, by then the games that interested me were word games and Sudoku. I know. Not very exciting. But that’s what I like.
While I do use Facebook, I don’t play games on Facebook. I played Scrabble with my youngest daughter on Facebook a few times. But that was it. This year I began playing Words With Friends on Facebook after my son recommended it. I don’t play that a lot. I seem to be in a level of play where I either beat my opponents every single time or there are a couple of people that will beat me every single time. I haven’t yet found opponents that are somewhat equally matched so it’s not as fun to play. So now, for the most part, I don’t play that either.
Then last March I discovered DrawSomething on Facebook. You can’t really play on the computer (although I think there may be a version that can be played vía a computer but I’m not sure). You sign up through Facebook but play on your touch screen phone, tablet, or other device. It’s a lot of fun. It’s not really a competitive game and I think I like that about it. It’s more of a team game. To get the points (called coins) you have to draw a picture that will best help the other player to guess the word. Then if it is correctly guessed, both players get the same number of points. You play on your own time, sending drawings back and forth to other players who open the drawings whenever they get to them and return a drawing to you. The object of the game is really to get the longest possible streak of correctly guessed drawings. I’ve gone as far as 999 turns in playing with one of my sisters. In fact, the counter stays at 999 until someone misses a word/picture so we’ve actually played beyond 999. That is an incredibly long streak. The highest streak I’ve had other than with my sister is around 127 or something like that.
I think one of the things that I like about it is that you can see, when you accept the drawing, each stroke that the other player makes to draw the picture you are supposed to guess. It’s like being right there with the other player, watching them draw, yet you are (mostly) miles and miles away. It brings the other person to you and you to them. You can sort of see how their mind works as they are drawing the picture. It’s a connection, across the miles; it’s a connection that a lot of us don’t have, a lot of us who live alone. It really is a lot of fun. It’s a thinking game because you have to think of how best to draw the word so that the other person will guess it correctly. And you kind of have to know a bit about the other person so that you can pick the right word to draw. (You are given a choice of three words to draw.) For example, if I am picking a picture to draw for a friend my age or older, I am not going to pick a rap singer or a celebrity known mostly to the younger crowd. In the same way, if I am drawing a picture to send to a younger friend, I’m not going to pick to draw something that is associated with previous decades where the other player’s age might interfere with that cultural knowledge. So you do have to learn a little about your opponents/game mates. There are some tricks to playing more successfully and it’s a bit of a challenge, for me anyway, to figure out the little tricks and tips to the game.
So now, if I play a game, it’s Sudoku, Words With Friends, or DrawSomething. I know. Not too exciting but it’s fun. To me anyway. It’s fun.
What games do you play?
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