cybergeisha

…or, my life in San Francisco as a game metaphor.

San Francisco is HARD. I feel like I’m playing a video game with the difficulty set to “Legendary,” even though I’ve only played once before. You probably know the feeling. It just maes you want to throw down the controller or push away the keyboard and say “The fucking game is broken, fuck this noise, I quit.” That’s how I feel whenever I go to one of these interviews and it’s like… “sorry, we aren’t hiring,” or get the “sorry, we went in another direction and you didn’t get the job.” It’s how I feel when some douchebag parks taking up two spots on the curb and I have to walk 4 blocks with two armloads of groceries. Somehow it’s all made worse by being in San Francisco - like I wouldn’t be as stressed out if I wasn’t here. San Francisco is the difficulty level.

That’s how I feel when I get so frustrated by the game being hard, or rather, the game being hard and me not knowing what to do, or especially when I play with people who do… frustrated and angry and I just want to give up so I don’t have that feeling anymore. I just want to stop playing, even though I know it’s a good game. And it’s a fun game that I want to play.

And then I you pick your keyboard back up, think “I’m not going to let those bitches pwn me, time to show them who’s in charge.” And then you keep playing, getting killed or keep dying or keep losing at the game, and join in with the “dude, did you see how hard I just wiped I can’t believe I just RAN INTO THOSE GUYS!” A sense of humor goes a long way with how you play games. And eventually, you get good at it. And you realize one day “Holy shit. When did I get good at this?!”

That’s happened to me with LotRO - when I first started I was a total n00b. Not just to LotRO but to MMO gaming in general. So I was confused and bewildered and frustrated by ***EVERYTHING***. And I just wanted to STOP but Kurt was very, very helpful and soothing to me - and willing to play a low-level character with me so that I did not feel like “the big kids” were just leveling me up. And now I know what’s going on in the game, and what’s more, I can *seriously* hold my own, and I realized “Hey. I’m good at this!” That’s a good feeling. And then you STILL get a glitch like I had tonight, where I spent two hours doing an instance with Kurt, and we won, and were turning in the end of the quest items with the end guy… but instead of finishing the quest, as soon as Kurt left, I was taken out and was not allowed to talk to him and finish - so I didn’t get the prizes, experience points.. nothing. One of those “Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” moments, when you want to just leave and say “fuck it!” But you get over it, say “that sucked, but I learned something from it, and here’s what it is: ___________.”

That’s what I want here. I’m at the level in life where I constantly want to throw down my keyboard and say “Fine! Fucking fine! I’ll never be good at it and this game sucks anyway!”

What I say in real life is “I can’t believe this bullshit! Why is it so hard?! Why?! I hate it here! Who set the difficulty level? EVERYTHING IS WRONG. EVERYTHING IS WRONG AND I HATE IT HERE. Someone turn it down to NORMAL please!” But they won’t and I want to give up…

But I won’t. I know it doesn’t suck. I know it’s what I want. I know it’s the best game of the season and everyone loves it and I would too if I was better at it. I’ve just got to stick with the frustration and difficulty of being the n00b until I can realize that I’m good at it and I’m enjoying my life.

I feel whiny.

And I’m not going to give up trying to get a firm grip on a life here.

No matter how much it feels like I’m getting pwned over and over in Halo 2.

Zachary, a friend from the InSoc Livejournal Community, has released this hilarious short film based on The Legend of Zelda, my favorite video game series:

Legend of Zelda: A PAIN IN MY ASS

PART ONE:

PART TWO:

I am the Gamer Profile of the Month on XXGamers.com. Yay! :D

I found a true gem of a brain teaser this morning that has been driving me batshit crazy, if you’ll pardon my language. But driving me crazy in a good way! n.nfshost.com is a thus far nameless number puzzle in which you have to deduce the next number/phrase/word in the sequence to go on to the next page by typing the answer into the URL as the name of the HTML file.

It sounds a little confusing but it’s pretty easy to figure out what you’re supposed to do. Get ready to hit “back” a lot, because it gets really challenging after about #9. I’ve been stuck on #15 for about 20 minutes. Have fun!

How Far Can You Get? | Found via digg and del.icio.us