Odd Player

Perhaps nothing, other than tantalizing dinner smells, brings people to the same table as well as a jigsaw puzzle. Especially at holiday time, when after unwrapping presents, families and friends often welcome an activity that unifies the generations.

“Growing up, there was always a puzzle under our Christmas tree,” recalls Anne Williams of Lewiston, Maine, a leading jigsaw puzzle historian. “After we opened the presents, we’d get out the card tables. You can drift in and out; you can talk or not talk; you can compete a little bit if you want to see who will finish their section first. For most people, it’s a very relaxing, pleasant activity and you have the satisfaction of seeing a picture emerge as you continue your efforts.”

In the Williams household, the goal was to start a 1,000-piece puzzle at Christmas and complete it by New Year’s.

Stevanne Auerbach, an expert on child’s play known as Dr. Toy, considers jigsaw puzzles a group entertainment bargain.

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Lately, IVe noticed that some games (such as Unreal Tournament 3 and Clive Barker’s Jericho) require you to install the software version of Ageia’s physics engine onto your system. It bathers me, because it’s wholly separate from the game and integrates itself into Windows as a service, and you also have to uninstall it separately from whatever game is using it. Why can’t this software be just part of the gaming code itself, like the Havok system (from Source games) or earlier physics engines? Ageia has already been all but laughed out of existence for its silty hardware “physics accelerator,” so is the engine worth the extra intrusiveness into my system?

This brings up a larger point: Lots of online games require other add-ons to facilitate matchmaking. Personally, I despise GameSpy and its ilk, and I wonder why more games can’t have their own integrated software that doesn’t need to be installed separately on your system. Is the industry just specializing? Are developers just outsourcing more and more of everything?

Am I the only person who gets annoyed by the intrusive third-party apps? What do you guys think of all this?

Kids play many games–baseball. basketball, video games, board games. But unlike those activities, there’s one so-called game that is injuring and even killing young people.

It goes by many names, such as the choking game, the pass-out game, space monkey, and American dream. But in spite of the fun-sounding names, the effects of the game–where kids make themselves pass out on purpose–can be very dangerous. The game can even be deadly.

First things first: The “choking game” is not actually a game. “Sometimes things may not be what they seem,” says Samuel Mordecai, of California, whose twin brother, Gabe, died from playing it.

The Danger

So why would someone do something so dangerous and call it a game? Some people say fainting makes them feel good, and others think it’s funny to watch their friends pass out and then recover. But what happens to the brain when a person causes himself or herself to pass out is no laughing matter.

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An oldie, but a goodie:

A Boston Red Sox fan, a Chicago Cubs fan and a NY Yankee fan were all in Saudi Arabia, sharing a smuggled crate of booze. All of the sudden Saudi police rushed in and arrested them. The mere possession of alcohol is a severe offense in Saudi Arabia, so for the terrible crime of actually being caught consuming the booze, they were sentenced to death!

However, after many months and with the help of very good lawyers, they were able to successfully appeal their sentence down to life imprisonment. By a stroke of luck, it was a Saudi national holiday the day their trial finished, and the extremely benevolent Sheikh decided they could be released after receiving just 20 lashes each of the whip. As they were preparing for their punishment, the Sheikh suddenly said, “It’s my first wife’s birthday today, and she has asked me to allow each of you one wish before your whipping.”

The Cubs fan was first in line (he had drunk the least), so he thought about this for a while and then said, “Please tie a pillow to my back.”

This was done, but the pillow only lasted 10 lashes before the whip went through. The Cubs fan had to be carried away bleeding and crying with pain when the punishment was done. The Yankee fan was next up (he almost finished an entire fifth by himself), and after watching the scene, said “All Right! Please fix two pillows on my back.”

But even two pillows could only take 15 lashes before the whip went through again, sending the Yankee fan out crying like a little girl. The Red Sox fan was the last one up (he had finished off the crate), but before he could say anything, the Sheikh turned to him and said, “You support the greatest baseball team in the world, your supporters are the best and most loyal baseball fans in all the world. For this, you may have two wishes!”

“Thanks, your most Royal Highness,” the Red Sox fan replies. “In recognition of your kindness, my first wish is that you give me not 20, but 100 lashes.”

“Not only are you an honorable, handsome and powerful man,you are also very brave,” the Sheik says with an admiring look on his face. “If 100 lashes is what you desire, then so be it. And your second wish? What is it to be?” the Sheik asks.

“Tie the Yankee fan to my back.”

Just wanted to offer a word of encouragement to developers trying to find more than just “Six Million Ways to Die” in gaming. Indigo Prophecy’s David Cage points out that now that he’s 19, he “expects more from the medium than cutting off heads,” Well, I’m 19, too. In fact there are a buttload of us. The first generation of videogamers is ripening, but not diminishing.

We - birthed by Commodores, Ataris, and ColecoVisions; weaned on NESand Sega; now settling into the glorious PC evening of our days - are still gaming. Now is the time for industry innovators to look to the maturing future of gaming and cash in on a market that will only grow from now to forever.

Cutting off heads was a biast - now let’s see what else we can do.

You may know that I play a sport called Floorball. You may have even seen me play. Here I have decided to tell you a little more about this excellent sport.

If anyone is interested in taking up Floorball then comment me.

Wikipedia describes Floorball as “an indoor team sport played using composite sticks with a plastic vented blade where the aim is to put a light plastic ball into the opponent’s goal.”

Floorball as a game comes from northern Europe. It is similar to Bandy, a kind of sport considered the predecessor of ice hockey. It is sometimes likened to ice hockey without the ice skates, but there are considerable differences in the rules.

The game is played on an indoor rink by two teams. Each team consists of five outfield players and one goalkeeper, although generally these players are from a larger squad and may be substituted at any time during a game. The outfield players use a lightweight stick with a curved plastic blade. The shaft is shorter than an ice hockey stick (at around 99cm in length) and round, which makes it very maneuverable. The goalie wears special equipment incorporating long, padded trousers and shirt and a helmet. There is no puck or heavy ball; instead a lightweight, plastic ball is used. The ball is extremely fast and can be easily lifted, bounced and deflected.

The rules of the game require fair play, do not allow for any high sticking, stick contact or body contact, so the game tends to be less physical and more skill oriented and fast paced. The mixture of endurance, power and precision make Floorball a popular game for people of all ages and abilities.

Floorball is a fun, quick, and active sport. It provides a great workout in a fun environment!

Information in this post has been taken from the GBFF website and Wikipedia.

The new floorball season will be underway shortly. The Northern League will now host seven teams:

Chapel
Balwearie Bees
Balwearie Thunder
Dundee
Glenrothes
Hawick
Linlithgow

It looks like it will be a very close season.

Glenrothes have strengthened their squad considerably and will be aiming for the top.

Chapel (my team) have lost and gained players and will look to keep their position as the Northern League Champions.

Dundee will be even stronger and, as always, games against Chapel and Dundee will be heated with Dundee looking like they can take something from a game against any of the big teams.

Balwearie Thunder will fight hard for 3rd/4th spot. This team have potential to do well this year.

Balwearie Bees will have the strong determination they have always had yet will continue to enjoy the game. They have the potential to get some results this year.

Hawick have come back from retirement with a very strong team and who knows what they can do.

This will be Linlithgow’s first season in the league and it should be interesting to see how they do.

I think that you have just expressed some of the biggest distinctions between “mature” gamers and actual nOOb gamers. Like the benevolent martialarts masters of so many cheesy films circa 1970.

Gamers like me (I’m almost 19 and have been gaming since I was 14) are somewhat tired of repetitive cliches when it comes to formulas for gaming.

I want to be able to play a game any way I want to. not the way the designers intended, even more so when the game design is full of artificial devices and unflexible gimmicks.

I bought Doom 3 and after one hour found the cheat codes and played through. For me, the enjoyment came from the physics and the lighting effects, not so much from shooting the demons. My game consisted in walking the map. appreciating what the designers did. The same goes for Far Cry and many more.

So I subscribe to your war cry! Do you want me to play your game? Challenge my skills, don’t make me think like a game designer and figure out what the designer intended to do. Give me hours of gameptay. not reload screens and already walked maps!

I just finished reading the Ultimate Gaming Machine article (GfW) and saw that the winner, VoodooPC, underperformed Falcon Northwest on all of the test-run scores on pages 122 and 123. To me, it looks like Falcon won. What’s up with that?

Over the last 10 years, I’ve had to buy three PS2s, two Xboxes, and two Xbox 350s. You can do absolutely nothing when you see the PS2’s “Disc Read Error” or the 36O’s “Three Lights of Oeath.” except hope that the overlords will be kind enough to break down and fix your problem for free. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case for me, and I’ve found rTjyself spending just as much - if not more - on unreliable consoles, games, controllers, and memory cards than on a gaming PC.

The real injustice: the fact that I’m doling out so much money for games that (at best) are half the quality of PC titles. Keep up the great work, guys, and I’ll keep telling even my non-PC gaming friends to read.