Fifty-five months.
By my reckoning, that’s how long we’ve been playing Defense of the Ancients, a popular mod off of the also-popular Warcraft III. Through the better part of a decade, we’ve engaged in a series of sometimes-epic, usually-fun battles built on top an aged engine (). Matter of fact, I had to go back to a previous version of the site to find my blog post about the game; it was that long ago.
I’ve probably obtained more value out of this one game than pretty much any other form of entertainment or vacation. It comes out to about 20 cents an hour – assuming an hour a week of gaming for 5 years – on a $40 purchase price. Certainly more economical than, say, a movie ($5/hour or so) or slamming down drinks at a club ($20+/hour, depending on alcohol consumption limits).
It was the sound of mating mice which alerted me to something wrong.
Fortunately, I didn’t have a rat infestation problem. What I did have sounded like a hard drive on its last legs, grinding out the reminder of its 1′s and 0′s as diligently as a half-dead piece of machinery could. A few minutes more, the operating system would finally play heed to its requiem and terminate the farce, freezing my machine in the middle of an online game.
It’s always in the middle of game.
Street Fighter IV makes me feel like a child again. Back then, I was one of those Asian kids who’d hang out at the local arcade/convenience store on a rainy day (). Holding a buck to frugally dispense over the course of an hour, a lot of time was spent watching other people play; y’know, those teenagers and their disposable income.
The game of choice for the longest time was Street Fighter II and its derivatives. I wasn’t good enough (nor had the cash) to play the game well, but watching a line of skilled players made me appreciate their craft, the time and effort used to hone their virtual fighting prowess. Of all the stupid things people choose to compete in, controlling virtual characters with a joystick – which in no way mimic fights in reality would dictate – is probably one of the sillier mediums.
I’ve spent years reading and listening to the Mac experience. I’ve never actually bought a Mac, but I was interested in some of its software and how cool it looked. The exercise was mostly academic; I didn’t care for paying for the privilege of Mac ownership, and the Windows alternatives worked well enough despite the clunkier interface.
When I jumped over to LOLapps, I figured it may be time to try my hand on the supposedly superior system (). I almost bought one for myself, but abruptly realized that I don’t need multiple personal computers in addition to a work laptop. Plus, my gaming needs still demand more-flexible PC-compatiable hardware.
Yet another lesson in the law of unintended consequences, the malleability of statistics, and the stupidity of robots.
Courtesy of the Counterize II plugin for WordPress, I’ve been trying to analyze traffic charts like this for the past few months:
Could it be that, in addition to the lack of coherence embodying this site’s namesake, I’m also providing five times more value to my readers? Maybe MSN Live () is providing subtle commentary on the value of incoherence?
I’m moving up the software ladder. Nine months ago I was writing desktop applications for Factset; three months ago I was writing websites for Tagged; and now, I write Facebook applications for LOLApps. This trajectory predicts a soon to-be career in creating tiny web widgets and, inevitably, living off of single lines of code.
With every shift up the ladder, it seems like the pace kicks up a notch, and change comes about much more rapidly. The programmin’ is also a bit easier, but there are more technologies and layers of software to worry about, out here on the guzzlin’ edge of the web. And of course, the competition gets heavier and stiffer.
