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The Daily Grind: What game do you feel bad about liking?
When we were young, all of us had one or two bands that we liked that we never talked about with our friends. After all, if you were listening to Nirvana and Soundgarden with your friends, they probably wouldn't look all that kindly upon your affection for Boyz II Men. But even then, you can't always help what you like. The same goes for MMOs, which are halfway to being social cliques in and of themselves. Maybe you would really like to feel indignant at Star Trek Online's handling of the franchise but enjoy the gameplay. Perhaps you want to be too cool and jaded to like World of Warcraft but you have too much fun with the game to manage that. Hey, you might even really like EVE Online for its PvE content but be embarassed to say it. We all have games we play or have played for reasons other than the game itself, and this is the inverse -- you like the game, you just don't usually want to mention it. What game do you really like that you kind of wish you didn't?
The Daily Grind: Do you share what you love?
Let's say you had a busy weekend in Final Fantasy XI. After a couple months of practice, your Dynamis group finally managed to down the Dynamis Lord, and you're understandably pretty pumped about that. Especially since you're also getting close to having another job at 75, which has taken you a while because you kept dying while running low-level shellmates through quests. When you go into work on Monday morning and someone asks you what you did, do you shuffle and stare at your feet while mumbling that it wasn't anything special? Or do they get to hear at least a brief description of what you accomplished? It's certainly a lot cooler than it used to be to enjoy video games, but some of us can still be reluctant to talk even briefly about our MMO hobbies with others. Sometimes we're afraid of embarassing ourselves, other times we just don't want to bother explaining, and at still other times we just don't think it's worth the effort. Where do you fall on the spectrum? Do your co-workers know that you enjoy frequent sharkish behavior in EVE Online, or do they think you spend most of your weekends and evenings in a catatonic state?
