danconley.net

One thing that you should probably know about me is that I play video games. It’s just one of those ways that I relax, along with reading and poorly-played street hockey. My primary platform has become the Xbox 360, which has at its core the Xbox Live service that allows you to play over the internet with other people. These games can be “hardcore,” which is basically a way to say that they’re complex and a bunch of idiots take it too seriously, but they can also be easy and fun games. I play Halo, sure, but a good round of Marble Blast Ultra (if you played NES, it’s a lot like Marble Madness) is always appreciated.

The most recent (as far as I know) game to be released on Live Arcade (which tends toward the simpler, saner games) is UNO. Yes, you can just go out and buy the game if you want to play it with your family — this version doesn’t even have local multiplayer — but now it’s possible to play with people all over the world. If this doesn’t seem fun to you, then imagine continually playing the nasty cards on a British college student (Mark knows I love him): it’s the same evil pleasure, times the internet.

So, four of us are playing a game and discussing the gaming weekend we have planned in a month. A bunch of people, who mostly have never met in person, are going to be getting together at a resort outside of NYC for almost a week. We’re debating whether or not playing UNO will lead to physical violence, and trying to figure out how to play it if they don’t have internet access. We’ll have enough 360s, sure, but can we hook them up on a LAN?

My wife, who has been listening the entire time, suddenly bursts out, “Why don’t you just play with cards?” We all got silent, and felt very dumb. Ah, the internet…

This entry was posted on Monday, May 22nd, 2006 at 11:54 am and is filed under Gaming, Personal, Technology. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.