I need a life, recommend me a good forum ;)

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Mon May 18, 2009 11:11 am

You know the SPCR forums don't cut it for talking about RANDOM stuff... I have a great social life but GEEZ the internet is boring the hell out of me. Any good forums out there where people are relatively smart?

I know this sounds very stupid but it's a must for me. I don't know stuff about girl/boyfriends being top priority then any part-time activities, etc... For example today I was out with my sister in the mall and then when both of us were pretty bored and I had a bit of spare money my sister got the ultimate idea of going to the movies but not to watch a movie; there's a Dancing Stage (Dance Dance Revolution) machine

Ok so I put in a few euros and jump away with the beat. After a couple of rounds my sister gets a call from her friends and went so I was there alone with the DDR machine... Decided to take a break so I bought a coke and then I come back there are two GORGEOUS japanese beauties playing DDR. DAMN THEY COULD PLAY WELL! I don't manage most songs in Standard mode but these hot chicks got through many songs in Difficult mode! Ok so they talked English and the other said "Do you have money??" after their credits went out.... so they were like preparing to go and I just wanted to play a game so I put in my 2 euro coin (equals two single player or one 2 player game) and then -- without thinking -- I told this hotter girl how about she comes and plays a game with me... she said "No no but I suck at this" and I said "So if you suck I suck more, I saw you playing at difficult mode and I can't beat most songs in standard mode" so then she replied "ok but only one game". HAHA I GOT TO CHOOSE THE SONG! So I took the song I know and have played the most and said "this is my first time trying this song but I have practised a little". HAH in Standard mode she beat me, but guess who got better in Difficult? Yup, I had just a slightly longer combo giving me the edge, she did seem to "fail" on purpose though (girls are complex!) at any case after this breathtaking moment I just opened my mouth and asked "so will I be seeing you here again so we can have a new match?" and she said "do you have Yahoo Messenger?" I said yeah (even though I DONT) and she gave me her yahoo messenger address. Now I quickly registered at Yahoo and am logged in and am EAGERLY waiting for this girl to show up!! Damn you can believe me she is one FINE girl.

Oh and sorry if this is too OT for SPCR

Olle P · Post by **Olle P** » Mon May 18, 2009 1:32 pm

If you're fine with reading/writing Swedish I can recommend Polemik.se.

Cheers
Olle

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Mon May 18, 2009 2:28 pm

Nej, jag vill inte tala pÃ¥ svenska... Min svenska Ã¤r jÃ¤tte dÃ¥lig och jag kan inte svÃ¤ra pÃ¥ svenska, om jag mÃ¥ste lufta

^ Too lazy to write English translation but yeah preferably a forum in English please. Thanks!

EDIT: Btw, this japanese girl came online and we settled out a day where we go play again, I pay of course

Me = LUCKY, should rename account to LuckyHacker or LodeLuke xD

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Mon May 18, 2009 3:54 pm

Nice one Lodehacker, I love Japanese chicks. Keep us informed!

yefi · Post by **yefi** » Tue May 19, 2009 7:37 am

Do Sesame Street have a forum?

Cov · Post by **Cov** » Tue May 19, 2009 12:15 pm

LodeHacker, you really have to take some pictures next time you meet up.
Tell her they were just for memory purposes and next thing you do when you arrive at home, load them up to this thread !!!
Alright ? I will be waiting to be updated on this one.

By the way, my surname apparently is the japanese word for dark.
I found out via googling some years ago, but I don't think any of my ancestor were involved into the asian ethnicy.

Oh, and regarding finding a life, I personally have given up looking though.
I have so much fun with computer games, but I must not tell anyone.
People think from a certain age you're not entitled to have fun with PC games anymore.

It looks like you have discovered some alternative fun there ?
No, I don't mean the DDR machine

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Tue May 19, 2009 3:10 pm

Cov wrote:People think from a certain age you're not entitled to have fun with PC games anymore.

In UK, the average gamer is 23+ and has been playing for over 10 years.

In USA, the average game player is 33 years old, the average game buyer is 40. In 2005, 25% of Americans over the age of 50 played video games. 40% of all gamers are female.

Perhaps most people think it's still sort of underground (...) but the game industry makes more money than the movie industry. Some platforms are partially aimed at "older" people, indicating there is no real age limit.

Personally, and in this case, I don't allow what people think withhold me from the fun I have when playing games

Over the years, some of them have turned around 180 degrees.

shleepy · Post by **shleepy** » Tue May 19, 2009 3:49 pm

spookmineer wrote: In USA, the average game player is 33 years old, the average game buyer is 40. In 2005, 25% of Americans over the age of 50 played video games. 40% of all gamers are female.

If you take away a few games (Sims, WoW and maybe 2 other MMO's, Guitar Hero... not to mention Solitaire and the like, hehe), the percentage of female gamers would drop DRASTICALLY. The other factor is the amount of time spent playing. So, again, taking away a couple exceptions (MMO's), you'll find a lot lower number of hours played by older people.

Why am I mentioning the exceptions when the exceptions are so prevalent? Because there are a couple of very different "gamer" cultures. On one side, you have a huge group of people who either play games very casually, got into a specific game or two because of friends and otherwise don't play a lot, and the people who only play console games with their friends. On the other side, you have "hardcore gamers" - the younger, nerdier people who are likely to spend a LOT of hours playing, mostly by themselves (not with friends next to them), are more likely to play first-person-shooters, and who take the games and the hardware they play on a lot more seriously. In my opinion, it's very important to distinguish between these two separate groups. The first group HAS a social life - that's how those people got into playing those games in the first place. The second group is a lot less likely to have a good social life.

Anyway, sorry for going off-topic, but that's the nature and name of this forum.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Wed May 20, 2009 10:43 am

Yah when we meet up again I'll take a picture or two, but will need to reconsider the effects if I'm posting them here. So we were today playing DDR again and yup I've trained the same songs with StepMania at home and now I can play the same levels as she can at difficult!

BY THE WAY the most interesting thing is, she was today with her (girl) friend and after I had fun playing with her (I MEAN DDR OF COURSE) she played with her friend.... I had to go for business (I hate my job, need to transport packages like FedEx but hey the money is great)... So then after I came back I went to buy myself a coke, actually I bought two and thought I'd give the other one to this girl (her name is pronounced "Gin" but don't know how it is written) well anyway so she was still at the DDR machine and played with her friend, apparently a difficult song which both failed and I came with PERFECT timing there when both hit their head against the monitor and said NOOO, I come up from the side and say "might this cheer you up?" and gave both cokes to them and they were like "thank you thank you"... So since I still didn't knew her phone number before going I made a small act; I said "Bye bye..... oh almost forgot! If you have time call me on this number" and I gave her a paper with my phone number written down AND AM NOW EAGERLY WAITING FOR HER TO CALL. This romance just keeps getting better and she is for some reason every time we meet EVEN MORE HOTTER.

Yo I'll update this thread whenever there's more to say, it seems you guys really want to know how it's going

EDIT: mmmmm I have no camera in my phone (a BlackBerry) so will need to carry my crappy stone aged 3.2 nanopixel camera (well it definately doesn't look like capable of megapixels xD ).

Cov · Post by **Cov** » Wed May 20, 2009 11:13 am

LodeHacker wrote:Yah when we meet up again I'll take a picture or two ...

I have vivid iamges in my head now ...

Please don't forget to keep us updated immediately dude ...
I have extra special urgent binding long term platin membership subscribed to this thread !!!

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Wed May 20, 2009 11:51 am

Ah you must be the new kid, there's no platin membership here; so who was the guy who scammed ya?

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Wed May 20, 2009 6:06 pm

@ shleepy: Do you have a source? Personally I think at least some of the above is (again) prejudice.
I meant to point out that gaming has become much more accepted and mainstream then some people realise. The demography is varied enough.

shleepy wrote:
spookmineer wrote: In USA, the average game player is 33 years old, the average game buyer is 40. In 2005, 25% of Americans over the age of 50 played video games. 40% of all gamers are female.
If you take away a few games (Sims, WoW and maybe 2 other MMO's, Guitar Hero... not to mention Solitaire and the like, hehe), the percentage of female gamers would drop DRASTICALLY. The other factor is the amount of time spent playing. So, again, taking away a couple exceptions (MMO's), you'll find a lot lower number of hours played by older people.

Depending from what perspective you look at it, this is of little or no relevance.
From a developers standpoint, the games have been sold, whether they are being played once a week for an hour, or daily for 4 hours.
Compare this to how people treat the DVD's they buy: some will only watch a movie once, and just like to have the DVD in their collection, while others will have watched the same movie dozens of times.

Statistics can be moulded into what you want to prove, but the fact that 40% of gamers are female can hardly be disputed. That is 40% target audience from a developers point of view.

The average female gamer plays games 7.4 hours per week - perhaps mostly casual games or the games you mention (do you have a source for this?) but they do represent a big target audience for developers still.
Also, there is not that much difference in hours spent gaming by older people vs younger people [source below only shows people up to 49 years though].

shleepy wrote:Why am I mentioning the exceptions when the exceptions are so prevalent? Because there are a couple of very different "gamer" cultures. On one side, you have a huge group of people who either play games very casually, got into a specific game or two because of friends and otherwise don't play a lot, and the people who only play console games with their friends. On the other side, you have "hardcore gamers" - the younger, nerdier people who are likely to spend a LOT of hours playing, mostly by themselves (not with friends next to them), are more likely to play first-person-shooters, and who take the games and the hardware they play on a lot more seriously.

I know there are different type of gamers, but defining the borders of them is arbitrary (i.e. when is a gamer a hardcore gamer - at 4.5 hours a week, or 12.3 hours?), anyway I know what you mean.

This pfd: ISFE Consumer Research 2008 Report is extensive. On page 7, it shows the amount of male gamers gaming 11 hours or more per week is roughly twice as much than female gamers.

Interestingly, twice as many females always play alone as opposed to males, and 3 times as many males always play with others as opposed to females (opponents are regarded as other people as well here, I assume even online and not sitting next to them - this might indicate a sharp cut between fps games and casual web based games - I know this differs from "no friends next to them" - on the other hand, females hardly have human interaction at all: neither opponent nor someone sitting next to them engaged in the game).
It seems the females are the loners here.

The differences are there, but not as much as to warrant a generalisation.

shleepy wrote:In my opinion, it's very important to distinguish between these two separate groups. The first group HAS a social life - that's how those people got into playing those games in the first place. The second group is a lot less likely to have a good social life.

I think that's an absurd statement. It's like saying, people who watch news programs by themselves have no life. Or people playing DVD's by themselves have no life.
What people do with their free time when they are by themselves is no indication for how well their social lives are.

As shown above, females seem to be the loners here. Casual gamers according to you, not hardcore.

shleepy · Post by **shleepy** » Thu May 21, 2009 9:17 am

spookmineer wrote: What people do with their free time when they are by themselves is no indication for how well their social lives are.

My argument is pretty subjective, but I don't think you're arguing against me too much, or I against you.

You pointed out that "male gamers gaming 11 hours or more per week is roughly twice as much than female gamers." And the fact that females "always play alone" more often really doesn't say much - that goes along with the stereotype of girls playing light single-player and/or online but non-hardcore/non-competitive games (Sims, Solitaire, light MMO's, other light games), especially when taking into account that they are more likely to play a lot less hours per week. It makes sense that males play more often with friends, too - it's why consoles have multiple controllers.

But I'm just talking about the extreme cases - the predominantly male, 11+++ hour / per week crowd who virtually always plays alone. When I used Xfire, it was pretty scary to look at some random people's profiles and see gaming numbers over 60 hours per week for working people. Those are the people that society should rightfully be worried about. There's no danger in how most mainstream people consume games - but at a certain point, it is (1) detrimental to your social life and/or (2) a sign of not having a good social life, to begin with. And I'm speaking with some personal experience, of course, hehe. In your DVD-watching analogy, the difference is between people who are home alone (or maybe with someone else) late at night and want to watch a DVD before bed every once in a while, and people who spend all of their time alone in a movie theater, watching the same couple of action movies over and over again. I don't think that the latter is normal...

Anyway, this really has nothing to this thread, so sorry for continuing my random pseudo-rant. I promise this was my last post in this thread.

Good luck, LodeHacker.

floffe · Post by **floffe** » Fri May 22, 2009 4:21 am

To get back to the original topic, I have a forum I can recommend: Wotmania (although it's being shut down in August or September, with most people migrating over to a new site. The format is quite a bit different than phpBB-style boards, but the community is great. And don't let the name discourage you, the general message board no longer has any discussions about the fantasy books that once spawned the site.

lm · Post by lm » Fri May 22, 2009 6:15 am

LodeHacker wrote:I pay of course

I thought that here in Finland we have so advanced equality of the sexes that the man is not assumed to pay everything.

I guess you would like her to like you and not just the fact that you pay for things.

However if you just enjoy paying things for others, I'd have a few rounds too =D What's the most difficult song you can pass?

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Fri May 22, 2009 7:24 am

lm wrote:
LodeHacker wrote:I pay of course
I thought that here in Finland we have so advanced equality of the sexes that the man is not assumed to pay everything.

I guess you would like her to like you and not just the fact that you pay for things.

However if you just enjoy paying things for others, I'd have a few rounds too =D What's the most difficult song you can pass?

I'm Arabic so shove ya tradition in your own shoes, ok? We do like each other; she told me today, but if it makes someone else happy then I'll be happy to pay. Hmmm hardest song would be either La Senorita at Difficult or Afronova at Difficult.

But hey tell me why should the man not pay? It's not a thing about equality it's about pride I think

Sure why not if you come we can play together and I'll kick your ass

EDIT: Just read your signature! Ok any song you like at Difficult / Expert and if I win I get your VelociRaptor and should you win you get my MOTU 8pre: http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/8pre

Deal?

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Fri May 22, 2009 8:04 am

Picz pl0x.

lm · Post by lm » Fri May 22, 2009 8:12 am

Sorry, it's against my principles to gamble. I would probably lose anyway

In fact either of us would probably send an agent who is expert at ddr to win, if there were such stakes. So no thanks for any bets. The system in my sig only says I spend far too much time in front of it. I don't have a car for example.

However if I see an arabic dude around the ddr machine at the movie theatre, I'll say hi and we'll take a couple rounds without any bets.

I think modern girls are proud to make money themselves, instead of depending on men to pay for them. Aren't they just as capable of good income jobs as we men are? Paying for them kind of implies that men will eternally be the ones who make money, and women not.

But if you both agree, I guess that's fine.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Fri May 22, 2009 10:53 am

I have no car either

Ok so where do you live? I want to see ya in person and then battle against you in DDR.
@lm read this: http://www.polishforums.com/english_men ... 763_0.html

lm · Post by lm » Fri May 22, 2009 11:31 am

Since I'd rather stay somewhat anonymous on the internet, we can continue in priv msg?

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Fri May 22, 2009 11:43 am

lm wrote:Since I'd rather stay somewhat anonymous on the internet, we can continue in priv msg?

Sure, hook me up on PM.

EDIT: LOL over 400 views! xD

Cov · Post by **Cov** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 3:49 pm

I feel cheated

I have been promised some kind of evidence in form of a picture

But where is it ???

Pic ... or it never happened !

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 5:56 am

Cov wrote:I feel cheated
I have been promised some kind of evidence in form of a picture
But where is it ???

Pic ... or it never happened !

There are pics, but in order to respect the privacy of every individual you get nothing to see

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 7:02 am

pix or it didn't happen...

Ch0z3n · Post by **Ch0z3n** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 10:13 am

so black out your face... or your whole body if you'd like... and post 'em.

Cov · Post by **Cov** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:27 am

Yeah right Lodehacker, it's not you we wanna see.
We wanna see the evidence !!!

C'mon, you can't make a promise and then chicken out !?
I won't tell her and I'm sure as hell none of our online buddies would either.

Alright you bugger, how much do you want ?

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 1:39 pm

Cov wrote:Yeah right Lodehacker, it's not you we wanna see.
We wanna see the evidence !!!

C'mon, you can't make a promise and then chicken out !?
I won't tell her and I'm sure as hell none of our online buddies would either.

Alright you bugger, how much do you want ?

I didn't promise anything. "Yah when we meet up again I'll take a picture or two, but will need to reconsider the effects if I'm posting them here." Of course I take pictures of myself and my girlfriend, but as I said before I wanted to reconsider the effects if I'm posting here. I came to the conclusion that I won't publish any pictures, even if your intentions are pure curiosity. I asked my girlfriend about this and she does not feel well with the fact that basically everyone could see her face on the net. I'm not "chickening" out. You want evidence come here and see us live or you won't see anything. So believe what you want, but pictures are not coming. Thanks for understanding!

Cov · Post by **Cov** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 4:51 pm

LodeHacker wrote:You want evidence come here and see us live or you won't see anything.

Nope, you both come and visit me.
You can sleep on my sofa.

Ksanderash · Post by **Ksanderash** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 12:52 am

LodeHacker wrote:You want evidence come here and see us live or you won't see anything.

Neither of my friends or neighbours have even seen a Japan girl live, realy. That's not the cause, I know, but, hey, we want to appreciate your ceratainly discriminating taste!

new2spcr · Post by **new2spcr** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:21 am

Ksanderash wrote:
LodeHacker wrote:You want evidence come here and see us live or you won't see anything.
Neither of my friends or neighbours have even seen a Japan girl live, realy. That's not the cause, I know, but, hey, we want to appreciate your ceratainly discriminating taste!

I guess I've been blessed - my wife is Japanese. She doesn't really conform to the typical (stereotype?) and traditional style Japanese female, but there are still streaks and specks left of above mentioned qualities that are probably rarely found among Western women.
I would classify her as a typical modern woman, somewhat affected by Western feminism and ideals but just enough that it isn't obvious. And that's fine with me.