Silly Gaming Habits

The great thing about gaming is that if a small group of people play a game then they'll usually play it in slightly different ways.  Weather it's going stealth or guns blazing in Deus Ex, genocide or pacifist in a game like Undertale or even something as simple as party selection in an RPG, everyone experiences a game in a slightly different way.

That said, there's a couple of weird habits that I have when playing games that I think are shared between quite a large number of players no matter what your play style is.  So because I'm feeling a bit lazy today here's a numbered list of weird habits I have while gaming 

1) Item Hoarding 

This is a bad gaming habit that I feel A LOT of people have.  Probably the most prevalent when playing a survival horror game but present in all genres.  Let's say your playing Resident Evil and you find a sick grenade launcher and a handful of grenade rounds.  That's going to come in handy for when you fight a boss or come across one of those Hunters right? Fuck no! What if you need it for later?! That constant worry that if you blow through all your cool shit now you'll make the next part an almost impossible struggle.  

What this results in is you getting to the end of the game with stacks full of all the best shit and the credits roll with all the cool stuff rotting in a box or at the bottom of your pockets.  This is disgustingly true for almost every RPG I've played.  I end up killing the big bad guy and he goes down in a ball of flame while my inventory spills over with max heals and other useful crap that I never used "just in case".  Even know as I play Dark Souls 3 I have so much ember I could probably use 3 in all the remaining boss fights and still have some left over but there's something in the back of my mind that just won't let me use them.  

2) Rounded Item Numbers 

This one is extra stupid because it doesn't affect ANYTHING but if I don't do it I get a deep feeling of disgust for myself.  

Let's say you're playing an RPG and you come across a town.  You go to the shop and they are selling  potions.  You look into your inventory, you're carrying like 63 of the things and you haven't needed to pop one in a LONG time.  Well that doesn't matter because now you HAVE to buy two more to make that 65 or you ain't ever leaving this town.  In extreme cases even 65 is no good, and you'll either have to buy 7 more to make it 70 

I knew one guy with such an extreme case of this that when playing Final Fantasy 1 together I tried to leave a town with 19 potions in my inventory and he violently wrestled the controller off me to backtrack into town to buy 1 more because "it's just not right".  Never fuck with a man and his supply numbers 

3) Multiple Saving
I feel that this habit comes from the same part of the brain that's responsible for making you horde items.  You've finished a session in whatever you're playing and you go to save.  You hit save and you watch it until the "save complete" sign comes up.  Then you reach for the power button but you stop dead right before you push it....."did I just save?"  So you sit back down and do it again and this process can repeat a number of times before you're fully convinced that your progress has been properly recorded.

This creates an extra layer of mental torture when you play a game that doesn't have traditional saving and just auto saves everywhere.  You see the little icon for the save and you turn off the system but you just can't trust it.  You spend the whole day wondering if it really did save and it eats at your sanity until you get home only to realise that everything was totally fine.  I've had situations where I've turned off a game like that, only to return to the console about 5 minutes later and powered it back on again JUST to make sure.

4) 100%ism
Now if you're the kind of person who buys only one game, completes it fully and then trades it in then congratulations you're some kind of mutant that needs to be captured and tested upon by the government and also this point doesn't apply to you.

Many however suffer from the dreaded backlog.  Games sitting on a shelf or in an online library just waiting to be played but you can't yet because you've not finished the X amount of other games that came before it.  A backlog is made worse if you're the kind of person who's obsessed with seeing a little 100% marker or getting the platinum achievement or whatever for whatever game you buy.

Personally, my backlog is so huge that I can't bring myself to even consider buying certain games because I know that if I start playing it my backlog will never progress or, even worse, I'll never get around to playing it.  Breath of the Wild is a great example of this since I really want to own my own copy of it but I know that I'll chase that 100% so obsessively that the hundreds of games in my steam library alone will continue to sit, unplayed, for god knows how long.

---

These are the ones that plague my life but if you have any other weird ticks or habits when it comes to your gaming let me know in a comment! 

Not So Different After All

So I know I said I'd be uploading They Bleed Pixels but I find myself with more time today than I thought I did, so I'll be doing a normal post instead.

With the rise of the "dudebro" this stereotype has fallen off a little bit, but it's quite common for people who enjoy sports to dislike video games (with the exception of sports games of course).  But what's funny about the rabid Football or Baseball fan is that when you really think about it, a game nerd and a sports fan aren't really all that different.

Let's just take a couple of things about nerd crap and a couple of things about sport crap and compare the two.

Any search on the internet for any kind of popular nerdy thing may lead you to images of people performing cosplay.  Just in case there are people who don't know what this is, cosplay is where you dress up as your favourite character and then take pictures or go to a convention or something, I dunno exactly I don't do it.  Now I bet if you asked your typical sports fan they'd laugh in your face and call you something unpleasant, but what's funny is that they do exactly the same thing.  Where I'm from in the UK around Manchester, people are very much into their Football.  Quite often I would see people walking around wearing football T shirts which were replicas of a players shirt down to the name and number on the back.

A replica...of what your favourite player wears....sure sounds a lot like cosplay to me.  OK granted it's not as ridiculous as wearing some of the strange shit that anime or game characters wear but the basic concept is still the same, if you are the kind of sports fan who has worn a players shirt, then you are essentially guilty of cosplaying, so laughing at those Trekkies for those Klingon outfits seems a bit hypocritical.

The other thing I want to touch on is Dungeons and Dragons.  Now this IS looked down on even by people who don't like sports and I have friends who have laughed at me in various ways for enjoying it.  But those same friends who laugh at me for playing a bit of DnD also like to spend their time playing Fantasy Football.

From what I can understand, Fantasy Football is all about putting a dream team together and then based on their performance in real Football matches various stats regarding your team will change.  Sounds a lot like DnD to me, just replace adventurers with football players and worlds of magic and mystery with a football pitch and you're essentially doing the same thing.  While DnD nerds like to pretend to be elves, football fans like to pretend to be hotshot football managers and both things are fun in their own way to the right people

Either way, I don't have a problem with sports fans, even I have a couple of sporting events that I enjoy watching.  This was just a silly post to point out to some people that being a sports fanatic and a nerd of some description really aren't all that different, although being 23 I don't really know if kids who enjoy games still get bullied by kids who enjoy sports like I did.

How to improve your CV/Resume with video games!

If you are as old as I am, chances are you are keeping and up to date resume in the event that you have to apply for a job.  A perfectly logical think to do, as one requires a job in order to earn money to do pretty much anything in life.

Now in a resume, you need to big yourself up a bit right?  But how does one who has video games as his or her main hobby write that into a resume without instantly making an employer frown and throw your application in the bin.  Well the obvious answer is to never write "I enjoy video games" on your resume, but instead, put a spin on it to make yourself seem really fuckin' awesome.  So here we go!

 First of all, if you're a PC gamer, you can instantly write "I'm good with computers", because chances are you fucking are anyway.  All the crap you have to go through to make some shit run, don't let all those hours spent raging over something not working go to waste, big up those IT skills!

Now, you can write different things depending on what genre of games you're into, so use the following list

FPS= I'm a good team player/I'm good at handling tough jobs alone
RTS= I'm good at making quick decisions
RPGs (Western or Japanese)= I'm extremely creative
Platformers= Good spacial awareness
Horror= Able to handle pressure/stress
Rhythm= Good at multi-tasking
MMO's=I'm a good team player who enjoys meeting new people
Fighting=Excellent memory

I'm sure there are more you could come up with yourself!  It's just a case of applying those gaming skills to the real world!

As a disclaimer I'm not intending for anyone to take this seriously, it's just a bit of fun, but it might give someone an idea or two.