1 post tagged “multitasking”

Someone once asked me: "Why MU* games? What attracted you to text-based games and what has kept you there since all of these graphical games (MMORPGs) have emerged since Ultimate Online, NeverWinter Nights and World of Warcraft?"

The easy answer would be "a love of writing". But the easy answer doesn't a good blog post make. (If you can make sense of that sentence, you have kudos from me.)

While I enjoy graphical RPG games as much as the next veteran (read: dino) gamer, I generally play these games while doing something else. They are a break between house chores or projects. They are not something that I play for hours and hours on end consecutively as I once did when I was in high school or university. I have a husband. I have a full time job/career. And I have responsibilities in my real life which must be juggled with my 'fun time'.

The Short Attention Span Multitasker

Also, graphical games, to me, are just a step or two up from watching tv or reading a book. I get bored with the act of watching tv, believe it or not. The content might be intriguing and holding my attention, but I truly get bored with just sitting there, drooling as the images wing past my eyes with a hand dangling into a bowl of popcorn or some other snack. It's that mindless info-dumping which I can't stand. I need to be doing something. Now, for anyone who knows me in real life, they also know that I'm not exactly the athletic, outdoorsy type, so my definition of 'doing something' is vastly different than others

You see, I am, by nature, a multi-tasker. Where did it begin, ladies and gentlemen?

Shows like Sesame Street, the Electric Company and the Muppet Show all contributed to this interesting ability (read: curse).

At a very young age, I was taught to switch my attentions back and forth between points of interest at a fairly quick rate. Yes, because of shows like this, my friends, I have what is known as the Dreaded Short Attention Span! ONE! ONE SHORT ATTENTION SPAN!! AH AH AH!! Ahem, anyway, you get the point. I am easily amused and distracted by 'teh nEw sh1ney!!!!1!!!' It is just oh, so easy to distract me and get me involved in something when I was already working on something before and so on and so forth and--err, what was I talking about again?

Right. I remember now.

The act of tv bores me. I need something more engaging than that. So reading is a step up, in my opinion, because I have to envision the events within the text myself. It engages my brain a little more than television or movies do. I have to picture the characters, the settings and what they are doing, what is going on. But even this gets boring after some time, not because of what I'm reading but just the act of it gets 'old'.

The next step up for me would be graphical games or a craft or something to this effect -- though it depends to some degree on how complex the craft is. Knitting is something I can do while watching tv, so on its own, I find it boring. If I can couple it with a good chat (like in a 'stitch and bitch' session) or while watching tv, then this actually isn't too bad and satisfies my short attention span needs.

If it's making things like cards, scrapbooking (I'm an amateur, honest!) or sketching, then all I really need while doing this is maybe a bit of music in the background and someone on an IM program to chat with on mini-breaks (eg. glue one thing down, then type a message while I wait for the glue to set a little, then go back to the project). Sketching is something I tend to have to focus upon almost completely, but having the music on in the background and an IM program open in case I need to get up and stretch is alright. But even with these fun things, I find times when the act gets dull and boring and I must find other things to do.

This finally, in a round-about way, brings me back to MU* gaming. It appeals to the short attention span multitasker in me in a very large way. You see, when roleplaying in a text-based environment, a 'turn' or pose for your character may take 4-10 minutes to type, as a general rule, depending on several factors (which I'm not going to go into right now). So if you are in a scene with three other people, you may wait 12-30 minutes (based on that model) to pose again.

This gives you time to be in other computer windows doing other things (such as playing Mahjongg or writing a story or emailing), then walk out of the room to quickly do some dishes or even make food. You can watch tv or read a book between poses.

So, MU* roleplaying satisfies the short attention span multitasker in me, but it's so much more than that. Let me see if I can explain a little bit more about what I love about this hobby.

The Siren's Call -- Interactive Stories

Some people who play World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs tell me that you can get storylines going in the games. Perhaps this is possible and I won't shoot this possibility down just because I don't play the games. However, I guess I have always seen graphical games as something much more task-oriented. While I have no issue playing games like this, it doesn't satisfy this insatiable urge I have to write.

Currently, I have about seven or eight blogs on the go and about four characters on two games, two books in the works (as in being written by me) and a myriad of other writing-based projects, so it's not really likely to be surprising that I enjoy writing. I used to write and write and write. I had reams of paper filled with short stories. Shelves of paper journals littered my room when I lived with my mom.

I got into Dungeons & Dragons around the age of thirteen, though my parents didn't want me playing it, so I usually just sat around listening to my friends' games as they played. Finally, once I hit university, I got into Vampire: the Masquerade and found a telnet address to my very first MUSH (which was a World of Darkness game, at that).

For many years, I was involved in table top gaming, primarily with Vampire: the Masquerade but also others such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Seven Seas, Deadlands, etc. I loved being a part of the on-going story that we were creating while sitting around, rolling dice and telling the Game Master what our characters were doing in response to scenarios as set by him.

So, when I found text based gaming environments, it was the perfect mesh between gaming and story writing. In a nutshell, they represent interactive storytelling/writing. PERFECT! It's just like those Choose Your Own Adventure books except that you decided what possibilities were coming up next, not the author. (Gods, I used to love those.)

And so there you have it: these are the main reasons why I love text-based gaming and have continued to participate in this hobby since 1993 and haven't given up yet. I love this community. And I think that's the bottom line: I love the community and the people who play on MU*s. I love the social aspects of it. Having been involved in the old BBSes prior to getting onto the internet, I have been immersed in text-based environments for nearly two decades.