Blaugust the 31st: The Masks We Wear

Well, here it is, the last day of Blaugust. Unlike NaNoWriMo, there wasn't a strenuous thirteen hundred word pace to keep up. But developing the habit of posting every day is good practice for that endeavor, I suppose. I did miss one Saturday, but made up for it by posting twice the next day. Congratulations to everyone who managed to post 31 times this month. I doubt I will keep up this pace, but I don't feel nearly as exhausted about it this year. So hopefully, Slacktember won't be the two-post month it was last year.

Scooter challenged me to make this final post of Blaugust a deeper post than some of the others I've written during the month. I was reading Xanziee's post the other day that was, in turn, inspired by Syl's post about the masks we wear, and whether they allow our true selves to be displayed. This thread of posts goes back even further to Jeromai and Psychochild, if you're interested in delving that far.

Syl and Xanziee both quoted from Oscar Wilde (if you can't see the pic): "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." Wise words, to be sure. But another wise man once said, "What I told you was true... from a certain point of view." There is a darker side to this story. "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Nothing insulates people from the consequences of their actions quite the way the internet does. From relative safety and anonymity, people harass and harangue others, threaten them, and even cause serious situations, all without apparent consequence. The mask can be a powerful, freeing thing. But is it the truth or a fantasy? And if it is your fantasy, how can you be sure people won't understand it to be the truth? What we do or say in cyberspace can have consequences in meatspace.

There is a school of thought that games and other activities online allow us to live out fantasies that we would never dream of doing in reality. I'm not a murderer, but I can play a ruthless Sith Warrior on my PC. I'm not a street thug, but there is a game for that, too. Is the set of pixels that I control in the game a role or an avatar? Another school of thought, reflected in the Wilde quote above, is that these games offer us the opportunity to act outside the normal constraints of civilized society. Some people take that opportunity too far, becoming assholes—or worse—online. Are you a dick? Or do you just play one on the internet? Is there really a difference?

There's yet another side to the discussion of online masks. While they are not completely separated, I have one online persona that is represented here, on Twitter, and on G+. Rowan Blaze, intrepid gamer and blogger. I don't advertize that persona much on Facebook and other places, where I use the name I was given by my parents and where I still communicate with family and friends, despite any differences in philosophy we may have. Which is the "real" me? Is either? How am I different at home with Scooter or with my kids than I am here on the blog or at the office? Am I an extrovert? An introvert? Something in between?

Do I talk about the dark thoughts that occasionally run through my mind? [I've edited this sentence a dozen times, still trying to keep the mask in place.] I know a few bloggers who have discussed their depression (and other ailments, other conflicts) that they can escape for a while here in cyberspace. But that escape has its consequences, too. I wish we could gather for one big group hug, and that that would solve everything. But it won't, and many of you would probably recoil from the crowd anyway. We can find solace with each other here, and offer our meager support with words of kindness. /Hugs to you all until we can find a way to shed the masks forever.

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It's over! Congratulations again to all the Blaugustian Aggronites. For hundreds of awesome posts, head over to the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 30th: Darth Glember and the Merciless Marauder

In the end, I am not sure how far Scooter went to the Dark side with her Sith Sorcerer. She's mostly Dark, though, and it was kind of fun. I'm no longer interested in choosing all one way or another, myself. Morrenia is almost completely Dark. But just tonight, I was finishing up a companion story with Vette where two of the choices were Dark, but cost a great deal of affection from the Twi'lek. The only choice that gained affection was Light, so I made the "sacrifice." What can I say, I have a soft spot for the little treasure hunter. And she deserves to stay relatively innocent.

So Glember now sits on the Dark Council as Darth Nox, and, having defeated Darth "Butterball"(as Scooter calls him, because he's a turkey), Morrenia sets out to destroy the enemies of the Empire as the Emperor's Wrath.

In reality, these two are on hiatus while Scooter and I turn our attention to my Bounty Hunter, Silverleaf, and her Agent, Ginie.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 29th: Morrenia Hits 50!

Even with the current level cap of 60 (soon to be 65), reaching 50 in SWTOR is still a pretty big deal. At least, it is for me. And so just after 11 p.m. local time this evening, I reached 50 on my third character: the Sith Marauder Morrenia the Merciless.

Scooter is on my heels with her Sorceror, Lord Glember, but didn't quite reach it before we quit for the night. We're just about done with Corellia, the original final storyline planet, and there will only be a few climactic scenes after that to finish the original stories. I also brought Pierce's affection to max, but not really any romance (other than a single tryst). I now know why people had such an issue with Quinn, maybe more so than Corso. But sadly, it looks like he truly is the only option for the female warrior to romance.


One of these days, we're going to have to take a pair of our characters through the 51-60 content, hopefully before KotFE launches in late October. Not to mention who will be boosted to 60 (if necessary), so we can start in on the juicy storyline on Zakuul.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 28th: Captain Albarossa

Albarossa

Sith Pureblood, Gunslinger
"Sorry about the mess."

His name comes from an Italian wine grape cultivar, and means "Red Dawn." It kind of sounds like a good name for a pirate. And Albarossa is decidedly Dark.

Captain Naqis Albarossa is a free trader who family is from the planet Ziost. Unlike many of his species, Albarossa is not force sensitive, and his parents were also free traders, piloting the XS Freighter Apex Fynock. There were more credits in semi-licit arms deals, and Albarossa was among the best until a deal went south on Ord Mantell. Double-crossed by a thief name Skavak, who stole the Fynock along with its cargo of small arms and explosives, Albarossa was stranded on the civil war-torn world with a price on his head from the crime boss Rogun the Butcher, the owner of the stolen merchandise. Scrounging tickets to Coruscant with the help of the Mantellian mercenary Corso Riggs, Albarossa managed to reacquire the Fynock, even though Skavak continued to elude him.

I had issues with my first smuggler that I have documented elsewhere. With Albarossa, I decided to make him Darker, more brutal, and that has helped. He is definitely type to shoot first. To avoid lost affection with the overgrown boy scout Corso, I have run through Nar Shaddaa before Taris, and picked up my wookiee companion, Bowdaar, a.s.a.p. Unfortunately, this means the story missions on Taris are grey and give almost n points, 12x or otherwise.
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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 27th: SWTOR KotFE Livestream (with Cantina Code!)

So the folks at BioWare did a livestream on Twitch last night, and it was pretty cool overall. I guess they had planned to go to Pax this year and have a Cantina Event, but that plan fell through ("We've chained the devs to their desks to work on KotFE"). And so they gave away an infinitely redeemable code for the Prinawe Aggregate (pictured above). To redeem your own speeder, simply log onto the SWTOR website and then click the following link (or copy-paste into your browser address window).

http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/26nqz2

You'll also receive a version of your own code to share; but again, this one is supposedly infinite. After getting the confirmation, you'll receive the Cantina reward through in-game mail on every character.

They were only about five or ten minutes into the show when the video froze, even though the audio was still working. Over 10,000 people tuned in at one point (which may or may not caused the stream to crash). The chat was going so fast that I could hardly read any of the things people were posting. Trolls, ignoramuses (e.g., people asking for the Cantina Code even though it was part of the stream title), and the folks trying to silence them made up the bulk of the chat anyway, but the occasional item from "SWTOROfficial" was lost as well.

Once they got the technical difficulties worked out (I was playing the game in the meantime, so I did not get upset), they showed a bit of the game (more of the Jedi Knight seen in the gameplay trailer) and explained how the player's decisions would make even more of an impact on the plot than in the current content. The cutscenes are much more cinematic—as has been commented upon elsewhere—with sweeping camera moves and other flourishes. As I was going through a few cutscenes on my Smuggler at almost the same time as I was watching the stream, and the differences were really noticeable.

I took notes for Scooter (who was otherwise occupied) but forgot to put them somewhere they would be of advantage as I write this. A few highlights that I can remember:

• The expansion will be included "free" for anyone subscribed at launch (27 October 2015). So basically, $15 gives you full access to Knights of the Fallen Empire. Ironically, that's the day my 60-day time card will run out. (Of course I will be getting another one, Silly!)
• The expansion will have nine (9!) chapters available from launch for subscribers. I think they're assuming everyone will subscribe to the game who is interested in the expansion.
• While, based on your class, there will subtle differences in the choices you can make (e.g., Force Persuade for the Knight), I got the strong impression every class will get mostly the same story, at least at the beginning. I think this will be a good thing: if our choices really do impact the plot, the story should change significantly as we move through it. They may have devoted the resources to enable those dramatic changes instead of having the most significant plot choice be made at character creation. And personally, I'd rather have a story where I am actually making a difference than eight stories where I am mostly just along for the ride.
• From a story perspective, your companions are scattered, and part of the plot will be finding out what happened to them.
• However, from a game mechanic perspective, none of them are lost. No one will lose any investment in time and resources in the game, like effort spent to gain max affection, reputation, etc. Opportunities may be lost, however. For example, they specifically mentioned a current Makeb achievement that will be rewarded in KotFE, but that may not be available after KotFE launches.
• All companions will be able to fulfill any role. I noticed that Lana, clearly a Marauder (DPS) with twin red lightsabers, was healing the PC Knight during the demo playthrough. This will free up the players to choose the companion they want rather than the companion they need to complement their own playstyle.
• They referred to the KotFE launch period as "Season 1," which will be followed by a "break" coinciding with the launch of Star Wars Battlefront and the release of Episode VII in theaters. Then, Season 2 will come out next year.

They closed out the stream with another video showing Kira piloting the Defender in an attempt to rescue the Knight from a burning battle cruiser. More exciting cinematic style. I don't feel this was too much hype train, though I may be overestimating the degree of player impact on the plot. Now all I have to do is decide which of my stable of characters will be my first "Outlander."

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Wow, has only four posts of madness left! Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end of Blaugust. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 26th: Every Day

In columns from left: Moina, Zane,
Bella, Chico, Lucy, Dexter,
and Quintus.

To think, five years ago, I wasn't much of an animal person, much less specifically a dog person. I mean, I didn't hate animals. We had a cat when I was growing up, and fish (which are more like a decoration), and even a bunny that really belonged to my children, but that I helped take care of. I felt that animals should be treated kindly, but never felt any particular attachment to one.

Things changed in 2011, when my older daughter and I adopted (feels warning) Zane the Magnificent from the local pound. I was already known at my future lovely bride's house as "The Treat Man," but that was more to ingratiate myself with her pups—treats are so exciting!—than any particular love for them. Zane was special, though. And I am so glad he picked us (because that's what he did by being the dog he was).

As you may know, Dear Reader, if you've been following this blog for any length of time, a series of adoptions and rescues followed, culminating in the birth of my favorite little devil, Lucy and her angel brother, Ivory. The pack is down to six now, but we love them all. Every day is National Dog Day at our house.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 25th: Game Time

Scooter and I are nearing the the end of our four month term in SWTOR, and debating the best way to continue our sojourn. We are of course very excited about the upcoming Knight of the Fallen Empire expansion, and current subscribers are receiving in-game swag related to Nico Okarr, the Smuggler first seen in the cinematic trailer "Return." Since my original idea for a smuggler revolved around a Nico expy, I am thrilled that he is being featured here.

We ended up getting 60-day game time cards at Walmart, since they sell for about a dollar cheaper there than online. Strangely, even though most cards of this sort—including SWTOR's own cartel coin cards—come in barely any packing at all, these SWTOR time cards came in DVD-sized cases. While I guess such cases are not particularly expensive, they do seem like a big waste for something that we are going to throw into the recycling.

In any event, we are set till about the end of October, when we'll probably get more time cards. While not quite as convenient as a recurring subscription, I like the prepaid time with an expiration. We can decide every couple months whether the game is worth a continuation; and if not, we just let it expire.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 24th: My Own Favorite Posts

Murf is looking for some great non-Blaugust posts to talk about for his Blogging Bonanza column on MMOGames. We often worry about how popular our posts are, but what are the ones we are particularly proud of? Including this entry, I have posted 727 times on this blog. Perhaps not as many as some others out there, but enough that I don't even remember off the top of my head everything that I have written. This list may not even include my best work by some measures, but these are the ones that stood out in my mind when I read Murf's appeal. In no particular order:

"Developing Character Backstories in MMORPGs"

In which I share my philosophy and advice on how having backstories enriches character development and, perhaps, player immersion and enjoyment of the game. One of my first "guide posts" and also the first time I guest-posted on someone else's blog. I posted for Steve "Slurms" Lichtsinn of Multiplaying fame, and co-host of the recently retooled MMO Show podcast.

"Ascended"

In which I relate the first moments of my Guardian Warrior's rebirth into the world of Telara. One of my many attempts at creative writing. Again, perhaps not my best, but it's the one I immediately thought of. "Ascended" is as much a word painting as a story of any kind. I had an impression, a few images and sounds, that I tried to convey through the written word. You can judge if I was successful or not.

"A Little Player in a Very Big MMORPG"

In which I discuss how I do not need to be the Big Damn Hero of the world in an MMO, and how I think MMOs miss the mark when they attempt to make the player feel that way. Strangely enough, I am right now heavily involved in a game that seems to do just that: SWTOR. One of my gaming design philosophy posts, and one that involved quite a few respondents.

"Cloud Atlas"

In which I try to encourage folks to see this awesome film. One of the few movie reviews I have attempted, and by far the best, partly because of the way the movie itself affected me. Perhaps by coincidence, this was also by far my most popular post for a long time, and even now it is my third all-time most popular.

"My Lovely Bride"

In which I defend this term of endearment for Scooter. Another post that had a lot of commenters; some for, and some against. It was a lesson to me of how our own personal gestalt tinges the way we see the interactions of others. Any long-time reader of this blog knows how much Scooter means to me, this post may have been the first time I articulated it in writing.

So that's them, my personal favorites. As I said at the top of the post, you may think I have written better posts than these. I certainly have written posts that got more hits or comments. Let me know what you think of my list in the comments below.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 23rd: Under the Wire

The plot moves along for our Sith. Glember and Morrenia have left the prison planet Belsavis in their ion trail and are headed to new and exotic locales. Not really. Morrenia must head back to Hoth to muster some troops, and Glember is headed back to Nar Shadaa to secure some military weapons components with the help of her very own personal cult.

I don't know about Scooter (I've been encouraging her), but I've been choosing almost every Dark choice for Morrenia that I can, or at least avoiding Light choices. But it's wearing, and I'm not sure it makes the story more interesting. I've touched on it before, but I don't think the best choice or the most "human" choice in every situation in the game properly lines up one way or the other.

What remains to be done? Other than some running around to old planets, I believe only Voss and Corellia are left for the original main stories. We'll probably return to our Hunter and Agent at that point. We're nearing the end of our original four-month "subscription" time, but are already planing to continue up through the Knight of the Fallen Empire expansion I want to get all eight classes through the original story before 12x ends in October. But I am not sure whether and which characters we may take to through the 50-60 content prior to the release of KotFE.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 22nd: Oh, the Humanity!

I missed a day! I knew I should have written something in the afternoon. But I spent some time editing stuff over on Holosuite Media, and didn't feel like it right then. Wait, back up.

So yesterday morning, after feeding the dogs and uttering around the house just a bit, I headed over to my ex-wife's home to assist in moving my oldest back into the dorm for her last school year in the local area. To save on costs, she's been going to the local community college to knock out lower level core classes before heading off to a more distant four-year school to finish her bachelor's degree. While her return to the dorm was less involved for me than I expected (just one car trip, since we caravanned in multiple vehicles), it still took the better part of the morning, and I returned hot and sweaty around noon.

After a shower and some lunch, I settled down to catch up on my editing duties, then didn't really feel I had anything to blog about. I decided to play a little SWTOR, this time on my smuggler, Albarossa. I honestly didn't get very far before Scooter came home and we took our aluminum, plastic, and cardboard over to the recycling center before returning to eat some dinner and watch Wing Commander, which I had never seen. The movie isn't great, but it's not horrible either.

After the movie, we logged onto SWTOR again and made some progress on our Sith, Morrenia (my marauder) and Glember (Scooter's sorceror). We're in the middle of the Belsavis missions now, but will probably be done and on to Voss (I think) before the end of this evening. I'll report on that later—for Blaugust 23.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 21st: To Side Quest Or Not to Side Quest

Syp is talking about the SWTOR side quests, and he thinks they should be done away with. I'm of two minds on the subject. And I have a couple questions. First, which side quests are we talking about? The planets you visit all have story quests that help explain why you're there. I feel that if those are done away with, there would be little point in having the planets in the first place. You could just shuttle from one portion of your story to the next, with out all the elaborate set dressing. I realize that there are additional side quests that contribute little to the planet story nor of course to your own class story. Perhaps they're expendable, but how many of those are there, really?

Second, are we talking about eliminating the side quests on the current planets or only for future expansions? Either way, I think that would cause SWTOR to become extremely linear, which it already is to some extent. As a counter example, I think Vanilla WoW was pretty wide open as far as what the player could choose to do. It may be a theme park, but at least at Disneyland, I get the choice of a several of themed areas and then I get to decide which rides to ride when I get there.

"Who would have wanted to see Luke Skywalker actually go into town and pickup those power converters?? I feel like it’s a film moving along at a great pace. I just wish they would keep the idea and just have the story line."
~Pedge, the original inspiration for Syp's post.

Do you really want just a film's worth of content? That's neither the way MMORPGs are done, nor the way BioWare's SPRPGS are done. There's a ton to do in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect games that are not directly related to the character arcs. And yes, if Star Wars had been a multi-season TV series, we would have seen Luke go to Tosche Station and hang out with his friends in an early episode. Also, is it so hard to follow the various story plots? Do you not watch multiple different TV series during the week, sometimes even on the same night? Or do you only ever binge watch on NetFlix? How do you ever follow all the threads of Game of Thrones? SWTOR is not a film, it's a game—and in many ways, a complex one, from a story/plot perspective.

I admit that Balmorra & Taris some of the planets seem to bog down a bit . But some of the planet quests are quite epic on their own. Like Vagrant Zero, I like that the option is there. Just last night I stepped onto Alderaan on my story-only Jedi Knight. However, it's my first time on the Republic side, and I realized that I have no idea what is going on around me (other than seeing it from the other side). Quite frankly, it was disorienting. Going through the full planet stuff is cool at least one time, but I appreciate the ability to just run the main quests if I want to, due to 12x XP. And as Syp pointed out, getting companion affection and DS/LS points becomes a lot harder without the planet quests, since they're not 12x. Please keep our options open, BioWare.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Blaugust the 20th: You Game Too Much

Braxwolf has a post up about setting priorities, of which gaming is only one, and perhaps not high on the list. His post was inspired by The Couch Podtatoes' latest, Episode 58 "AMA," wherein Izlain and Eri discuss, among other things, regrets they have due to their gaming habits. They've neglected schoolwork, potential careers, and even relationships due to their gaming. Because of the age at which I started playing MMOs, I don't think such games have affected my life in any horrendous way. I do neglect things and procrastinate, but that is more a personality flaw than a result of my choice of pastime. I could just as easily have gotten involved in golf, weightlifting or some other activity that actually interests me, and the only real difference would be my level of physical fitness.

People make all sorts of economic decisions (jobs and purchases) that increase or decrease their wealth and happiness. One might "get ahead" by knuckling down in school and snagging a higher paying job. But will that actually lead to more happiness? Higher education certainly helps improve economic outlook on average, but there is still a huge wage gap between a teacher and a dotcom CEO, for much the same degree of schooling. And which person would be more joyful?

(As an interesting side note, while writing this, I got involved in a discussion with "Fel Bubbles" and another individual that seemed to place a great deal of value on the discrepancy between his accumulated wealth and hers, disregarding the fact that she works, helps her ill mother, and attends medical school full time.)

The most important thing about this discussion is how gaming might affect your relationships with other people. Izzy commented both during the podcast and on Braxwolf's post that the fact that his ex-girlfriend was not a gamer, combined with his own tendency to retreat into the game, had a tremendous impact on their relationship. But I don't think this is a problem exclusive to a gamer/non-gamer relationship. My parents own some four-plex apartments, and my dad insists on doing most of the maintenance on them himself, when my mother would rather he pay someone else to do it and spend more time doing things together with her (and not building maintenance, either). There's no denying the maintenance needs to be done, but he prioritizes his time (and money) differently than she wished he would. How many people go out on the links or spend time at church when their significant other would rather they be doing something else?

Scooter and I game together. Additionally, I game when she is unavailable, whereas she is more likely to watch a TV show or something if I am unavailable. You could ask her, but I don't think the fact that we are both gamers increases our addictive/obsessive tendencies the way Eri mentioned might become a problem. A big key is that neither of us feels that gaming is an immature waste of time. Also, with the kids grown, we don't have many time-consuming priorities outside of work. Again, are there things we procrastinate due to gaming? Perhaps, but they are not necessarily things we would be prioritizing more highly if we did some other pastime together.

One last thing about gaming and relationships. Obviously, as with any incompatible pairing, there will be a certain amount of tension in a gamer/non-gamer relationship, depending on how they deal with the issue. However, gaming online can also have a wonderful impact on one's social and romantic life. Obviously, we need to prioritize our life in a way that leads to our long term well-being, and gaming (just like any pastime) may need take a back burner while we take of our needs and the needs of others. But you never know when gaming may drastically change your life for the better.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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