Fun (and Fascism)

Sorry for the lack of postings. A former love of my life has reentered my world. (No. Not Burt Convey.)

Right around the turn of the century (I love saying that), I found the internet game WordRiot by Pogo. I loved it and played it religiously for about two years. Great game. If anyone remembers the old gameshow Password, it’s kinda like that but with a bunch of people. Sounds like fun, right? Well, it was fun for me. for a while… then it turned ugly. One of the features of the game was that you could boot any player if a majority of players on one team decided so. I liked this. If you sucked at playing the game, you were gone. Yeah, democracy at work! The game also became increasingly cliquish. If you said the wrong thing, you were gone (I got booted for calling someone a Nazi).

In the end, Pogo yanked the game. Flash forward 10 years. Pogo will now let you play WordRiot for the small price of $20. I bought it (and changed my user name). I’m loving it again. You can no longer boot someone. Now you can anonymously rank the cluegivers. Bad cluegivers get less stars. Free markets at work. And it’s much more fun this way.

If you want to play WordRiot for yourself, see here for free trial. (and I’m John in IL there too)

Taboo (or Games black people like)

I’m so disappointed. Barack totally lost a teaching moment here:

The marathon Democratic primary means stressed out candidates—so how do they relax? In the case of Democratic frontrunner Senator Barack Obama it seems as though board games are his choice for a break. This evening on a flight from Washington, DC to Portland, Oregon Obama was challenged to a game of Taboo. The game pits teams against each other to guess different words, but players are forbidden to say certain clues. Instead, teams have to describe the word to elicit a response out of their team members. The game is something the press corps has picked up on recently to endure the long flights.

The game got competitive pitting the press versus Obama and his staffers. At one point a reporter standing next to Obama gave the clue, “This is where Senator Obama said his bitter comments.” The answer: California. Obama chuckled, “I came back here to get away from this.”
…
In another round, one staffer gave the clue of where a Gay person shops. Senator Obama guessed “Abercrombie and Fitch,” but the staff member was trying to get his team to say “Gap.”

Now if he wanted to score some points, he would have said this:

“Because of George Bush’s economy, teh gays can no longer afford to shop at anywhere but Wal-Mart, whose employees aren’t paid a living wage and aren’t provided health care benefits. And since teh gays wouldn’t be caught dead in a Wal-Mart anyway, they are unfairly forced to wear last year’s fashions. Teh gays need change too.”

(and for the record, I haven’t shopped at The Gap since 1992 (when I stopped matching my shirts to my socks))

(h/t Gay Patriot)

The heart of darkness (aka level 10)

I did ok until I got to African capitals (and Micronesia).

Too much time on my hands (part 2)

For those of you who are bored at work or have lots of time on your hands in general, I recommend my two latest internet game obessions to fill the void:   Farm Hustle and Desktop Tower Defense. Both games are equally annoying (and addicting).