Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Play your fantasy game, and write.

A couple of weeks ago, my writer-friend David Dalglish (author of the Half-Orc series among others) gave me a great game to play that would not interfere with my writing. Not too much, anyway.

You see, I had to give up video games five years ago due to the fact that they had completely saturated my life, causing me to become the greatest slacker this world has ever known. It was amazing that I did not lose my job. My habit? Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies and Age of Mythology. By the time it was said and done, I was in debt, had neglected all my friends and had all but given up on writing.

The best thing I ever did was quit. I subsequently killed my debt, got promoted multiple times at work and started writing again. My life turned around.

But with my first book published now, The Budget of Your Life, and my life back on track in general, I have been fiending to do some sort of gaming, conscious of the fact that anything too heavy could destroy me.

Warily, I posed the question. Is there an online game out there that is not completely devastating to one's life? David's answer, Might and Magic: Heroes Kingdoms. You can pretty much play for free (or pay a little something) and you do not need to install any special software. It is a combination SIMs and Age of Empires.

Basically, you set up a kingdom, build alliances, create cool characters and go to war. You make a few moves an then come back later to see the results. So far, it has satisfied my need to pillage things and hasn't had much of an effect on my spare time, especially my writing. It has had just enough of an effect to be fun.

Thanks a lot for the suggestion, David! So...play your fantasy game, and write.

2 comments:

  1. I believe my son is suffering from the same thing right now. I'm glad you got away from it and found something much less detrimental. Good for you ~

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh my gosh Kenny I did not know that. But hey, couldn't those on line games have been a research of sorts for your published fantasy stories?! And way to go for the promotions, it's just not an easy thing to climb that corporate ladder, I'm so proud of you!! ~Lili

    ReplyDelete