This message was found in a blackboard by Valve’s latest horror hit – Left 4 Dead.

(via Cool Graffiti in Left 4 Dead)

One of this century’s most terrible problems – the addiction to video games. It is a real and growing problem inside the general population and it even treatens to reach the levels of the drug and alcohol addiction.

Another bad thing with this is, that video game addicts can be little children as well as an 80 year old grandmother.

The starting point to video game addiction becomes when a person usually has personal problems in his life and career and he seeks for an alternative reality where those problems don’t really matter. Later, this alternative reality be comes so attracting and inseparable, that the person refuses to

come back and face the real issues around him. This bound is purely psychological. Some people say that this “diseases” is standing on the person’s choice and will, so there is no real treatment. It is clearly see able that 1 out of 10 of the youth is a video game addict.

In the clinical field, the video game addiction is described to have very similar symptoms like any other kind of addiction, like drug, cigarette or alcohol addiction. When people experience a trauma, highly emotional moment or they are just having a hard time in their life, they seek for an alternative world to hide into. However, in general, the video game addicts seek for a new life, because they don’t like their current social situation, so basically anyone can become an addict at any time.

For the addicted video gamer, it is not a problem to play 15 hours a day in his bedroom at his game console, but that is not really a thing that this person should be bashed for. In fact, the person is doing pain to himself by being anti-social and separated. Sooner or later, every game addict realizes this.

All this said, the video game addiction is a growing, global problem and there will be a lot of speech about it through the years to come. There are different treatment programs for the “sick”, but it all depends on the persons strong will and motivation to quit playing games.

Do you play a lot of games?

Quake III was released back in 1999 and it quickly became the top played online multi-player action game. Now, around 10 years later, it is still doing pretty well and even I have it on my computer. The game was developed by the big America-based company – ID Software, the company that later revolutionized the first-person market by releasing the Doom III game from the Doom franchise.

There are different online multi-player game modes

in Q3 Arena, including Duels, Capture the Flag,

Rocket Arena, Frag for All, Team Death Match and Clan Arena. At first, the Frag for All (or Free for All) game play mode was the most popular one, but about one year later (in 2000), people started focusing on team game play in the Team Death Match mode.

When the time Quake 3 Arena was at it’s peak (in 2001-2002), the Team Death Match mode was becoming even more popular and several tournaments have been run. That led to the need of clans being created and endless hours for those clan players to improve their team play skills. As the Internet connection broadened out, the players increased too and the competition became harder and harder to beat.

While the popularity of Quake III Arena is still good, it has declined through the years. Most of the tournaments and leagues are history now.

Today, the most popular game play mode in Quake III Arena is Capture the Flag.

I am a big fan of the Mortal Kombat game series, however, I have learned that there is a new game just last week. I heard that it is called Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. This is so great game, that I’ve been playing it for years now, and Midway has not released a new sequel to the game for so long time now, that this new game is a fresh air and I think it will be a great success.

In the previous games from the Mortal Kombat series, I was almost always playing with either Raiden, Sub-Zero or The Scorpion and I will now love to see how good they can fight against the “baddies” from the DC Universe. The front cover of the game looks truly amazing. There are Batman and The Scorpion looking face to face and it looks kind of tense and terrifying.

I would love to see how this game will be played on the new, next-gen game consoles like the PS3 or Xbox 360.

I guess the gameplay and graphics will be amazing, because the technology is so much changed now. I also saw around mentioned that there are two views you may play the game with. The first is the classic 2D view mode, which allows you to play the game in a style like the old games from the series. The second one is the modern 3D view mode, which is well…modern. This is the feature I was looking forward in

the previous installments of the series.

The only downside I see here in the game is the fact that a super hero from the comic books that usually no one is supposed to bead, is up for a fight for an ordinary mortal, who has only his Kung Fu knowledge. It just doesn’t seem right the most super-strong people in the world with ultra-extraordinary powers, getting their ass beaten by some kung-fu masters in Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe.

PS: A bonus wallpaper from Flickr:

A long time, in the RPG gaming field, all stuff was 2D and with big pixels. The wise man were telling tales to every creature, thus the talest for humans, elves, trolls, midgets and more appeared. And as all those creatures came to this life, the tale continued with telling their battles, drama, romance, villains and heroes. As technology and creativity grew through ages, those 2D games became more detailed, less pixelated, realistic and every moment of a game was like a professional photographic-made picture.

The tales evolved and became more complicated and dramatic, sometimes making us cry.

It is clear that not all RPG games are matching the description above, but those are the main elements of making an RPG game entertaining. In the modern game market, it is very close to impossible that we play all of the available RPG games, considering the fact that 100s of games are developed and released every year. In this crowded market, people usually pick the best of them, because there is no time to play RPG games that will bore us to death.

Here are the biggest elements that should be focused on when making an RPG game, so a mass of us (the gamers) sit in front of our computers or consoles for countless hours.

The Good Story

You need to have a great story in an RPG to motivate people to unfold it with their progress. It doesn’t matter what sub-genre does the RPG fall into, if it’s fantasy, horror, Gothic, sci-fi or something else, if it doesn’t have good and compelling story – a lot of gamers will simply be bored and go away. Also, within the story, there must be characters that capture your attention and that you love to control. Imagine if you were controlling a character that you hate. That wouldn’t bring much fun to the gaming experience. And also, as great heroes can capture your attention, so can bad villains.

The Battle System

In most of the games, half of the time you spend in playing it, is in battles with either creatures or other people. That is a proof that this process should be as entertaining as possible and doesn’t make people cry when they want to upgrade their character. The battles must be rather easy, challenging, fast, interactive and fun.

Game Navigation

If you can not even control your character in a good manner, that game is not good for me. If your character can do a lot of interactivity like run, jump, climb, crawl, run and so on, the player must have a good chance to customize that controls by his likes.

Not only controlling, but camera rotation, menu and map navigation should be as easy to control or conveniently placed, so the players attention is captured to maximum.

Graphics and Art

We have to admit, we don’t like being the ugliest character in the game. We don’t like if the game art and environment are ugly too. Cutscenes included. But that doesn’t mean that the game should be cluttered with cinematics every 2 minutes, but means that they should be well balanced and related to the story. The battle environment and menus should be as clean and beautiful as possible.

Simplicity can be a winner in most cases. If a given spell or magic in the games takes tens of seconds for the graphic processor to draw, the gamer will not like to use that magic again.

So, now you know. Not that those are all the factors that make an RPG entertaining, but those are the most important ones. Others include music, mini-quests, secret places and so on.

I admit that I respect every RPG created, no matter if it’s bad or good, because I know how much time, efforts, resources and patience it takes, so I try to finish every RPG I start to play, but I have to also admit that I’ve quitted playing a lot of them before finishing. However, you never know when will the RPG capture your attention, it may be in the end. I hope that you have learned what to look for in an RPG from my points about what makes an RPG interesting. Now, get playing!

The games that people usually play on their personal computer are called personal computer games (or PC video games, PC games, computer games). When the compute games were at it’s dawn, they were with simple graphics, characters and gameplay. However, modern games are more complex and detailed than ever and they are evolving each and every year. They are like a bid budget Hollywood movie with all the effects and computer rendered animations.

LAN games

Gamers were able to compete against each other only through the local area networks. Later, the broadband internet came out, because the Dial-Up speeds were not satisfying for the new internet users. This allowed masses of players to join and play together, either against each other in massive RPGs like World of Warcraft or fighting in a group against hordes of enemies, like in the recent World War II shooter Call of Duty 5: Warld at War or Valve’s Left 4 Dead.

The LAN games require at least two computers, connected with a wire and a router to include them in a network. Optionally LAN may include an connection card for external Internet (Internet outside the local network, which the PCs in the network can use).

Online Games

Multiplayer games have evoluted to a level, where competing just against a bunch of your friends is not satisfactory enough. That is where the online gaming kicked in. Using the modern broadband internet capabilities, people are now able to communicate, compete, collaborate with other players from all around the world. Online gaming allows players to compete against masses of other players in online RPGs and multimillion games such as World of Warcraft

and World War II Online.

You may play online games with dial-up connection too, but in order to reduce the “lag” between players, broadband is a necessity. Online games also require a virtual environment that the players play, which is usually called a Game Server. Those are either created by players that can spare an old PC or resources on their current one to run a Game Server, or provided and supported by the game developers. Blizzard is the company behind the World of Warcraft games and they provide several official servers which can be played by all people who buy a legal copy of the game and pay the monthly fee to play on the server.

That’s how those companies can afford to develop such expensive projects like the “endless” world of WoW.

The best part of the online games is the ability to customize your character and environment as you like. There is currently know that there are more than 10, 000 free server in Bulgaria (an small country with population of 8 million and around 30% internet usage).

As you have probably suspected, I have a PC of my own. But, what is a PC without Windows and what is a Windows without the traditional pre-installed games. I often play on one of the default games of Windows called Solitaire. Actually, there are 3 games pre-installed on my PC that I love to play: the regular Solitaire, Spider Solitaire and Free Cell. Those are the games that are freely available on almost all new PCs in households and those are the games that keep your brain waves jumping around when you are playing them.

And why do we need to keep our brain active? So we make sure that it doesn’t disappear or go out of use.

Until recent times, I didn’t ever liked board games, but recently I decided to give a try to Rummikub using tiles. At first I thought this game would be another boring one, but it wasn’ t, for my surprise.

If you are really up for winning this game, you need to use your brain in a very active manner and do some unimaginable twists with playing the tiles. The main aim in the game is that you must go out as soon as you can. This game had really made my brain jump around and believe it or not, I even once won. I guess it was just the luck of the beginner.

However, if you are up for the pre-installed Windows games and you are focused on the Solitares, I belive Spider Solitare will feel the hardest for you. I may confess you right now that I have not won more than 5 times over the past couple of years I was playing that game. However, I applied the twists from the Rummikub game and, imagine, I won 4 times in a row. That is because of the power of the brain and it’s ability to think “outside-of-the-box”.

I find it very terrifying living in the current world full of crime and intension.

Just considering that I might lose my mind and not be able to watch after myself makes me feel very scared. So, my best recommendation is that, even if you are from the “lazy” people types, you should at least keep your brain active with simple games or activities like playing card games, online or offline puzzle games, computer games, reading and talking a lot with people, because communicating is the main thing to expand your knowledge and brain capacity.

I hope you enjoyed my first article for this special Gaming Tips Blog and stay tuned for more great articles.