Getting old

[IBBoard]

I've now reached the grand old age of a quarter-century! Nothing much special is happening today (the in-laws are taking our son for the afternoon and evening and we're going to the local pub for a meal) but I got a couple of presents and some money.

The new Placebo album has already been converted to MP3s, I'm wearing my new long-sleeve, I've bought a new MP3 player as a "birthday treat" (before I got the birthday money), and we've got a couple of new 'Point and Click' games to play through as well as the Appleseed Ex Machina DVD.

[NBKFuzzy]

Well, that sounds incredibly weird, but grats on the birthday! I am not to far behind you.

No offense on the weird part, but I'm not British(redcoats!). Mostly what I do for my birthday is go to a pub or bar, get smashed, go shoot off fireworks, or my rifle into a few old dumpsters or the shooting range, before I'm drunk. Then buy myself something the next day.

Yes that is the only time I do that, and most likely the only time I will get drunk.

[David256]

Happy B-day!

[IBBoard]

David: Thanks.

NBKFuzzy: (I was going to say "Fuzzy" but I didn't know what you'd think ) Which bit is weird? I just played a social computer game with my wife and went for a meal/drink at the pub. Okay, so no guns were involved, but it still involved alcohol

[NBKFuzzy]

Everybody calls me Fuzz, Fuzzy, Fuzzmonster, ect.

Even in real life sometimes. That is weird. I meant the "social game" part, I don't know what it is.

[IBBoard]

"Social games" are actually the next big thing - basically cobbling together the fads/ideas of social networking and gaming to make something that couldn't in any way be like old gaming (honest!). What we were doing is the old-school version - both sitting down at a PC and playing a point and click game together.

And if you don't know what a point and click is then it's an old style of computer game where you're puzzle solving by exploring a normally 2D world through pointing at stuff and clicking on it

[NBKFuzzy]

Still don't get it. But yes I know what point and click is. Must be a British thing. Not like I have anything against Britain. My favorite shows are Doctor Who and Torchwood.

[IBBoard]

The "social game" I was playing was being social (i.e. cooperating and not hiding in a small room on my own) while playing a game because me and the wife could cooperate in solving the puzzles. It's not a British thing, it's just not a normal gamer thing

The other "social games" based on social networks are probably just a fad and something that some marketing guy came up with somewhere as a way of "leveraging synergy" in "social media" to "provide the next Facebook" and other phrases that make him sound like he's a winner who's got the pulse of the Tech community but really just mean he's a good sheep who knows how to pick up on random phrases that have been coined.

[NBKFuzzy]

You mean, like a LAN party or internet/gaming cafe? I used to have gaming tournaments in Command and Conquer 3, Team Fortress 2, Battlefield 2142, and Age of Empires III at the same church(again, I don't go to church, just play my games at them since they are good social gathering points) I played 40k at.

[IBBoard]

Kind of, only given that it was a point-and-click then we were both just sat at the same computer trying to work out the puzzles together.

The other type of social game is more like the crappy little "steal your personal data and then give you a naff game" things that Facebook has, I think. The "social" part seemed to be having a link to social networks so that you can compare your scores against your friends'. As I said, it sound very much like a fad that some marketing guy cooked up on the back of social networking sites being popular.