Becca Jane St Clair

I am not a gamer. I’ve never been able to get into gaming the way a lot of other people do. Even when I was in high school, I think the longest I lasted at a D&D campaign was maybe 2 or 3 meetings. I thought I finally had caught onto gaming while I was visiting my friend A in Ann Arbor. His sister, V, came over and brought along the PS2 game We Heart Katamari. After spending several hours rolling up stuff in the Katamari balls, I thought I finally found something I’d like to play more of. I also would occasionally watch A play one of the RPG games for the PS2. One of the Final Fantasies, possibly Kingdom Hearts, but he usually was in the middle of something when I visited.

I eventually purchased a Playstation 2 (which I’m now trying to sell, along with We Heart Katamari if anyone is interested*) and I honestly think I played with it a dozen times. The controller hurt my thumbs, so I could only go at it for an hour or so before my hands would hurt (I have small hands!). While playing the game was fun, it often cut into my time for doing other things – reading, crafting, other hobbies – but it was still a nice distraction. I even bought a used copy of Kingdom Hearts (which I never played).

Another friend of mine, D, plays Second Life. Since Second Life had a free version, I thought I’d try it out. I also discovered another friend of mine, (another) D, also played it, so I spent some time hanging out with whichever of my friends was on at the time, met some of their in-game friends, and did a bit of exploring on my own, going so far as to create a character for myself that had fairy wings. I think I lasted about 10 days before I deleted the program off my computer and gave up.

Ditto for the Sims. I had the original Sims installed on my laptop when I was in college, and I sporadically played with it so much that my people kept dying on me from neglect. When I got a new computer 6 months later, I didn’t bother re-installing The Sims.

I think I might have even had a Tamagotchi at one point,or at least a cheap knock-off. My pet “died” because I neglected it. Even the hand-me-down Furby a friend gave to me stopped responding the way it should because I lost interest. Funny, I love my real cat and pay attention to him all the time!

Even online role-playing games. I was in 2 Harry Potter related games, and 3 Torchwood games. You would think with HP and TW being two of my main interests that playing an RPG and getting to be one of my favourite characters would hold my attention. Nope. Although, in all fairness, most of these games fell apart on their own through everyone’s lack of participation, and not just my own.

Recently, several of my friends started sending me invitations to play Farm Town on Facebook. I checked it out, and it looked like fun. You set up crops to grow, harvested the crops, and then sold them for “money” which you could use to improve your farm – buying fences for your animals, planting new crops, and when you have enough money (and a high enough level), you can even purchase things like houses, barns, silos, and windmills. You also earn points and money by visiting your friends farms or by helping other farmers harvest their crops. I’ve steadily gotten myself up to level 10 in the two weeks I’ve been playing….and I’m ready to quit. The game is so monotonous – plant, visit, harvest, sell, repeat. The levels are a bit ridiculous, too. You can buy a house at I think it’s level 7…but only if you have 70,000 coins. Since most crops give you 50-200 coins when you sell them, and you have to “buy” the crops to plant, it seems near impossible to get that many coins…yet I know friends who have houses and barns (and even windmills and silos) on their property, so it must somehow be achievable. Then, there’s the “get more coin” offers, which almost ALL require you to purchase something off another site…or you can even buy your coin. $10 gets you 10k coin (I think that’s the correct number). I really don’t see myself lasting much longer. The past two days, I’ve logged on maybe 3 times and that was just to harvest my crops so they didn’t “go to waste”. I didn’t even visit any of my neighbours.

I am not a gamer**. I will never be a gamer. So why do I insist on getting involved in games?

*Playstation 2 comes in the original box with one controller, an 8MB memory card, and We Heart Katamari. I was asking for $75 with local pickup, $90 if shipping is needed, but am considering knocking $10-15 off the price. E-mail me if interested.

**Board games and card games on the other hand….I love.

[Image used at the top of this post is a screenshot of my farm in Farm Town, and is © slashkey.]

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