When to Abandon a Game

Stacks of unfinished games fill my shelf, longing to be played. Like the unloved toys in “Toy Story”, I imagine them patiently waiting for their day of glory that may never come.
Recently, Bioshock got some love as I bumped down the difficulty and gritted my teeth to finish it, even though the little sister aspect of the game bothered me. I enjoyed searching for items but didn’t like the hacking puzzles.
While I enjoyed the end of the game, getting there was something of a chore. Since I don’t play games as often as I used to, I started to question if it was worth the effort. I asked, “Why am I playing this game? Am I having fun?”. My answer was,”Kind of”.
With Bioshock complete, I turned to Assassin’s Creed. The concept of the game was a real draw for me: a stealthy, tough killer in the holy land at the time of the Crusades. I read all the reviews about the monotony of the game but that didn’t bother since I’m a veteran World of Warcraft player, and WoW gets very repetitive.
At first, jumping across rooftops and scaling viewpoints was really fun. Combat was simple but the finishing moves were exciting. But in order to advance the game, you have to do investigations like interrogation, pickpocketing, eavesdropping, and flag collecting. I found pickpocketing tedious and flag collecting simply stupid. I got to the Jerusalem level and found all the waypoints and investigations. I decided on the eavesdropping but found it to be broken. How can you eavesdrop in a church if the guards won’t let you in, you can’t kill them, and there’s no way to sneak in? That left me with pickpocketing or flag collecting to advance the game. So I have to choose a route that aggravates me to complete a game? How is this enjoyment? Am I having fun? No. Why am I playing? I’m not sure now. But I paid $60 for this game so I should get my moneys worth right? But to me, time is more valuable than money. So I’m considering abandoning Assassin’s Creed because I have many other games to choose from. But is this the problem in the first place: game gets annoying so I’ll buy another one? If so, I’ll never need to buy another game again. I’ll just play to frustration with everything I have. Stay tuned…

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Beyond Check-in Spamming: Useful Ideas for Location-Based Apps

Josh Williams of Gowalla said checking in is the gateway activity of location-based applications. In my last post, I raised the question,"Gateway to what?" Here are some ideas I have to make these programs more useful:

* Create local Gowalla trips of state parks, art museums, historical sites, etc.
* When you create a spot in Gowalla, go back to the website later and add a detailed description including dates, history, and other information.
* Add at least one tip for every place you visit in Foursquare even if it's bad. Enough bad reviews of the lasagna at an Italian place, and they just might take steps to improve it.
* Add a to-do for each of the places you normally visit in Foursquare. When you do this, you will remind yourself to try something different the next time you visit.
* Don't just road munch and go after icons in Waze. Go to their website and edit roads, post to the forums, and add location names. You will be helping your community by updating the information around them.
* If you use Traveler's Quest, don't just dig or bury treasures in the comfort of your car. Walk to out of the way locations and bury the items.
* Take your kids with you when you use any of the geocaching applications. This is a great way to spend time with family and get outdoors to explore.

There are several other applications like MyTown, BrightKite, and Flook that I think could contribute to the value of society. With it's rapidly growing user base, MyTown could turn it's real estate game into something really big.

I hope you've enjoyed some of my ideas and I hope we can start to utilize these crowdsourced technologies for the benefit of all and not just for the egos of the players.