Re: The importance of gaming

From: dagibbs@qnx.com (David Gibbs)

Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000

In article <htp-2202990128520001@htp5500.metropolis.net.au>,
Henry Penninkilampi <htp@dove.net.au> wrote:
>
>There's something that hasn't been touched upon - the importance of gaming.
>
>I'm wondering roughly how many hours a week you folks spend playing these
>sorts of games, and whether you consider them to be your primary form of
>(non-TV) recreation?

Why the (non-TV) qualifier?  I don't own a television.  I've probably
watched less than 4 hours of TV in the last year.

>I have fond memories of spending about 8 hours each week on a single VGA
>Planets game.

8 hours a week isn't too bad.  I don't play PBEM much anymore, but
back when I was playing a lot of Galaxy, I expect I was probably spending
on the order of 40 hours/week playing.  For some games, it would have
been 4-8 hours/turn, 3 turns/week at the peak for a particular game.
(Actually, it might even have been worse during some nastier wars.)

I also used to play a fair bit of PBeM Diplomacy (and ran a few games
before the Judges were written).  Time consumption was generally a lot
lower for Diplomacy than Galaxy -- far less complicated setup and orders.

Now, my time is chewed by other things... I'm playing a lot of ADOM
(recent roguelike game), playing and coding Omega (another roguelike),
playing the occasional board game (7 hour game of Iron Dragon yesterday),
but really feel like I should get back to PBeM soon.

As to the tools for Galaxy discussion...

When I started playing, (took over an empire in Game 7, fairly large game)
I didn't use any tools... but as I played more I grabbed
a few of the simple tools available, then started writing my own.
I never got into the full screen order viewer type tools, but
did have a fairly good set of analysis, data extraction, and
data mangling tools.

>I'm curious about how much time players are willing to spend on such
>games, and where the point of "burn-out" lies.

40 hours/week was the burn-out point for me.

-David
--
David Gibbs
dagibbs@qnx.com

References

The nature of the beast
htp@dove.net.au (Henry Penninkilampi)
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: The nature of the beast
htp@dove.net.au (Henry Penninkilampi)
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: The nature of the beast
Carl Burke <cburke@mitre.org>
Fri, 19 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000
The importance of gaming
htp@dove.net.au (Henry Penninkilampi)
Mon, 22 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

The nature of the beast
htp@dove.net.au (Henry Penninkilampi)
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: The nature of the beast
htp@dove.net.au (Henry Penninkilampi)
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: The nature of the beast
Carl Burke <cburke@mitre.org>
Fri, 19 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000
The importance of gaming
htp@dove.net.au (Henry Penninkilampi)
Mon, 22 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000