Sara Barakat
SLM 521
Online Gaming

Online Gaming

I am not a novice to the online gaming world.  Most of the online games I have played are through consoles such as Play Station 2 (PS2), Nintendo Game Cube, and Microsoft X-Box.  My experiences with all of the consoles have been good.  I usually play role-playing games where you take on the role of a specific character.  My first online game experience with PS2 was Final Fantasy IX.  Final Fantasy is a traditional role-playing game that has been around since 1980 but this was the first version online.  The other players I ran into were super helpful.  I was scared that they wouldn't be but I found that RPG nerds (what they call us) are very helpful to their fellow players.  If they saw I was at a beginning level, they would join me and help me level up.  I met some nice people online through that game.  Working with the Game cube and the X-Box I played first person shooter games.  I found out very fast that these were not nice games to play with other people unless you are super experienced.  No one was really helpful and they just got angry if I messed up.  I played other online games through the computer such as War craft.  I found that to be a fun experience with the people being fairly nice.

    With the previous experience I had, I moved onto gaming through Yahoo for the write-up.  I played pool, hold 'em poker, checkers, and spades. As soon as I turned on the communicator, very nasty people were online making comments.  I couldn't take it anymore and I turned of f the communicator because I didn't want to deal with that.  I found the games to be fairly easy and the directions were easy to follow.  One of the things I did not like about the yahoo gaming was that an oppenet/s would just quit half way through if they knew they were losing.  This became frustrating because if you had a nice game going, the other person would just quit.  This happened about 90% of the time. I’m not undefeated like I was aiming for, but I did a fairly good job.  I honestly thought that Yahoo gaming would be a friendlier environment to that of the other Internet games but I was wrong.  I think the main purpose of Yahoo is for people that get bored and want to trash talk others they don't know.  I found other systems of gaming to be much better.  I guess it is just experience that makes the other gamers nicer and more helpful.