I must admit that I play more Facebook games than is probably healthy for a grown woman. I am, in fact, relatively embarrassed by my level of involvement, and I actually try to mask the extent of it by only allowing posts for a particular game to be seen by other friends who are already playing. (Yes, my friends are nerds like that, too.)
Some games I got into because a friend or relative asked me to get involved so that they could level up. Many of these games I’ve abandoned because I figured out that I don’t actually have to play for them to get something out of my addition of the application. Some games I got into because I saw them in other people’s posts and wanted to see what they were about. Many of those I have found not to be nearly as interesting to me as they first appeared. Some games have absolutely sucked me in for various reasons. Some things I don’t even really consider games. I’m going to try to analyze my and my husband’s Facebook gaming styles here.
(NOTE: I am a recent stay-at-home mom living far from family and friends, and we’ve moved each of the last two summers to a new area because of my husband’s career track. My online connections are sometimes my only connections since I take a long time to get acclimated to a new group of people (and then we pick up and move!). I didn’t used to be like this!) J
YoVille. One of my college friends was already playing when I signed up for Facebook shortly after having a baby and moving cross-country. He asked me to be his neighbor (to advance his game play), and I accepted. Then my internal interior designer started raging because I was living in a tiny rental and couldn’t do anything to my actual home. I did what I had to do to make my apartment (and later, my house) look like I wished my real-life house looked. Unlike a lot of younger users, I always make my avatar as much like me as possible, but the rest of the game was purely vicarious living. I didn’t interact with other players; I just created my own little happy place that I could call my home. (Now that I’ve made my living spaces just like I want them, I rarely visit anymore except to occasionally redecorate when I’m procrastinating for something else.) I am embarrassed to ask my husband to play this one. He is not into interior design.
Mafia Wars. My brother is the one who got me into this one, and no one less than family could have made me do it. This is one game in particular of which I am ashamed, but clearly not enough to stop playing now! The first time I clicked on “Kidnap a Businessman’s Children,” I felt a terrible pang of guilt. You don’t see a picture of it happening. You don’t act it out yourself. You click on a button and your completion percentage bar fills in a little bit more. That’s it. But the required tools include an automatic rifle, and my maternal instinct balked at doing this job. However, my somewhat obsessive personality took over—I just couldn’t leave that job tier incomplete!—and I did the job. I actually don’t even look at what the job is anymore; I just systematically complete the jobs, one country at a time, one tier at a time, one level at a time, in decreasing energy requirements, until I’m done. Another item crossed off my list. (That is, by the way, the way I do chores around the house as well—one room at a time, biggest jobs first, moving on to the next adjacent room when I finish. That’s how I roll.) Sadly for me, they keep adding new countries to the game, so I just keep going! My husband also started playing, but his play is somewhat sporadic, so he goes in little spurts of strategy and game play and doesn’t get far. He also randomly selects jobs to complete, so he’s never quite sure of where he still has progress to make.
FarmVille. Yep, I’m one of those people. I started playing when my husband invited me to be his neighbor and because my dad was a farmer before we were born. It also seemed like a peaceful kind of game, like the online version of one of those Zen gardens with the sand and the little rake. My focus is not so much on advancing as it is on making my farm look cute. Sad, I know. My husband and other guys I know play by making as much of their farm plot into profitable space as is possible, even if it means all their animals are layered so close to one another that you can’t tell what’s there. (I actually know one woman who also does this.) This is aesthetically offensive to me. :P I play Café World in the same way. (My brother-in-law is at fault for this one, and he doesn’t even play anymore!)
Wordscraper. Ah, Wordscraper. It’s like Scrabble, except you can play it online. I therefore like it. All my consistent opponents are male. I generally lose because I like to make big words and don’t plan very strategically. I still like it because I have to think about words, and I like words.
African Safari and Willy’s Sweet Shop. These are the non-game games. I have no idea why they call them games or say they’re fun. They’re really not. I go to them religiously, however, because participating supports a worthy cause (Nothing But Nets and St. Jude’s, respectively).
Where does this leave me in terms of the readings? I don’t know. I guess they’re all rather passive games, so I’m stereotypically female in that way. I don’t know that any “game literacy” likely applies to them since there aren’t really characters and, the way _I_ play, at least, the ones there are don’t really do anything. I don’t play most console-based video games because my hand-eye coordination is abysmally poor and they give me a headache from how fast they move. I do play Wii games with my husband, though, because the physical movement of the controller is more natural to me than poking buttons, so I have a little more success. (I can’t be game literate if I am “simply hopeless,” now can I?) We never had a game console in our home growing up although we borrowed a Nintendo a couple of times and we played Tetris, Sleuth, and Sim City on the computer growing up. I’m sure that influences my gaming choices, too (although my computer-programmer brother has every console known to man in his home and is quite proficient). Does anyone else have a similar gaming style to mine, or am I the odd (wo)man out?
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I have to disagree with your assessment that you aren't really a gamer and that no "game literacy" applies to what you are doing. In all of the games that you are playing, there is an interface that has to learned, controls that have to be manipulated and understood, and a narrative of sorts to understand. Whether you're fertilizing land or just laying out words to get a higher score, all of your actions are things that are not actions that you would necessary complete in your "real" life and expect the same consequences. To me, that means that you've become literate in those gaming domains.
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