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The Daily Grind: How do you relax in-game?
It's no secret that I'm kind of big on roleplaying. So you might think that when I log in to Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft or whatever I'm playing on a given day that roleplaying is how I chill out... but you'd be wrong. Roleplaying is just as high-intensity for me as challenging content. How do I relax? Dailies. Repeatable quests. Just slowly working up to better gear or more money or otherwise zoning out and enjoying myself. Yes, it's all automatic and a little boring, but it's the equivalent of sitting in front of the television and spacing out. I'm not forced to think about it too much, and next thing I know it's time for something else and I've got a pile of money and stuff. Everyone has their own ways of relaxing. For some people, roleplaying is that way. Some people find high-level dungeon relaxing. Some people craft or just chat with others. So how do you relax in-game? What's your low-stress way of just derping around? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Free for All: My top four MMOs for relaxation
Say you come home from a long day's work, dreaming about the vacation that you've yet to take and how nice it would be to turn off your brain for a while, to kick back and watch the wide world walk by. Unfortunately, vacations cost a pile of money. You have to pay someone to watch the dogs and water your plants and work is a real pain about letting you out of the shackles even for a week. The good news is that much of the benefit of vacation comes from the mental release. Sure, nothing beats the real, true feeling of pressing your toes into warm water and sand, but it can be fun and relaxing to visit virtual worlds, to take in virtual sights and sounds. MMOs are perfect for blowing off some steam, for taking a moment to realize just how nice it is to have access to such landscapes from the comfort of your desk. Here are some of my favorite virtual worlds that bring on that feeling of relaxation.
CES: HeartMath's Inner Balance helps you find your center
HeartMath is a company that's been dealing with emotional health and stress relief for several years. While I don't go in for measuring one's emotional state with a gadget, I have to say that visiting HeartMath's booth here at CES 2013 was very disarming. They sat me down, and plugged a clip on my ear that was connected to an iPhone. This is HeartMath's new Inner Balance device, an iPhone-enabled heart rate variability detector that works in conjunction with HeartMath's app to try and reach some sort of emotional center. There is some science here. The ear clip does monitor heart rate information (although accuracy can't really be expected from a measurement like that). When you begin a "session," you're asked to choose your current mood from a wheel of smiley faces. The app then goes into a "breathing" mode and displays a graphic meant to help you breathe easier and relax. As time goes on, the app tracks a few status figures from your body, and fills in a circle with red, blue or green segments, depending on how much more relaxed your body is getting. My circle started red, and then went blue and green pretty quickly, as I focused on my breathing the iPhone's display. I must admit, despite what seemed a lot like pseudoscience to me (though HeartMath's rep shrugged off any suggestions that this was anything but legit), the breathing did seem to help calm me, even on the noisy floor of CES. Once I was calm, the display stayed green, showing that I was making progress. At the end of the session, I was asked to choose from another wheel of smilies, and I choose a face slightly more smiley, indicating that the device had worked. You can log a journal entry for each session, describing how you felt and how it worked. You can also track your progress over time, seeing if the device makes you feel calmer from point to point and session to session. Obviously, there are no guarantees here. Like so many other stress relief products, Inner Balance's effectiveness depends, more or less, on your belief in it. Personally, I get just as much stress relief out of a great iPhone game as I would an app like this, I think. But for the right person, Inner Balance could indeed help you to achieve the state it's named after. The device should be available in February, according to HeartMath, for a price of US$99.
The Soapbox: Using MMOs to relax and unwind
Every now and then, everyone needs to take a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to relax and unwind. The outside world can be loud, and the stresses of work and home life can add up quickly, so it helps to be able to switch off for a while. Some of us find relaxation in sitting down in front of the TV, others in zoning out to their favourite music, and an increasing number of people now wind down with computer games. I've personally found MMOs to be incredibly effective refuges from stress and anxiety, but until now I've never really thought about why that might be. Any game can provide a few hours of escape from the daily grind, but there's something special about MMOs that seems to make them more comforting places to be. Certainly MMOs are manufactured to give a sense of solid progress as you play, a fairness that the unpredictability of real life often can't deliver, but there has to be more to it. Do the music and ambient sounds in EverQuest II's virtual forests and glens produce the same reaction as walking through a real life wood? Likewise, does EVE Online trick us into slowing down, and is spending time in a virtual world just more appealing than slogging along in the real one? In this opinion piece, I look at some of the most relaxing areas and activities I've found in MMOs and try to figure out what makes them tick.
TUAW's Daily App: Zentomino HD
There are lots of frantic action games available on the App Store, but sometimes all you want to do is get home, sit down with your iPad, and relax with a fun puzzle. Zentomino is a game that lets you do exactly that. It's a very zen take on the "pentomino" puzzle game, requiring you to fit a certain set of shapes into a specific outline. The game's about as relaxing as it gets. While the music is somewhat repetitive, you're free to move as many pieces around as much as you want, and just pushing the big, colorful shapes around can be almost as entertaining as actually completing the puzzle. There's not a lot of flair, but what's there is intuitive and fun, and when you just want to sit on the couch and relax, that's what you need. Zentomino HD is the brand new iPad version of the game, and it's available as an ad-supported app. The first set of puzzles is completely free, with others available through in-app purchase. The game's also available for iPhone (either as a US$1.99 paid version, or a lite version with ads).
The Daily Grind: Out on the town
There are an awful lot of things to do in most MMOs. Sometimes it's the diverse spread of activities available in a game like Final Fantasy XI; other times it's the tiered progression of dungeons in a game like World of Warcraft. Either way, it's all fun, but with a long-term goal in mind. Except that sometimes you wind up getting sidetracked, and the next thing you know you're rolling a new character just to participate in a massed player event, or dancing in the middle of nowhere and giving money to passersby. Everyone needs a break from the serious from time to time, a chance to head out and just do something silly but fun. One could even argue that roleplaying is by and large something unnecessary for the game itself, but still a fun diversion. In a genre that's occasionally prone to feeling a lot like work, it's good to get the option of stepping back and just enjoying yourself. What's the last activity you took part in that wasn't even remotely progress-oriented but was just fun for the heck of it?
One Shots: The day of rest
Today's One Shots is another wonderfully colorful shot or Lord of the Rings Online from Jose, who sent in a few different pictures for us to share with you. As today is Sunday, we thought it would be nice to share with you a sunny picture of a traveler enjoying some rest that Jose took for us. We certainly hope you're all enjoying a nice peaceful day today relaxing in whatever game world you call home! Do you have any great screenshots of people from your favorite game? Perhaps you'd like to send in a picture of your Guild, Clan or Corp triumphant over the body of a fallen enemy, or you just want to show off a cool bit of scenery you found. We happily take all those screenshots and more. Just send them to us here at oneshots@massively.com so we can feature them in an upcoming column! %Gallery-9798%
