Gaming

Even though I'm not a professional gamer (and I'm not considering a career in game development at the moment), computer gaming is still a non-trivial portion of my life.

Unlike some others, I don't play games to relieve stress by indulging myself in simulation of destruction and excessive amount of violence. In other words, I don't enjoy games like Counter-Strike in which people just play for the great amount of stimuli in the game (explosions, blood, gun shots).

My preferred genre is Real-Time Strategy, even though I do occasionally enjoy good First-Person Shooters and Role Playing Games. I prefer games that require a higher level of thinking - ones that emphasize decision-making and precognition over reflexes. This is exactly why I resent Warcraft 3 and Counter-Strike under some particular circumstances - these games have distorted/simplified the genres with the excessive emphasis on reflexes. (Don't get me wrong, I love micro, but it's just not a dominating component of a strategy game.)

For Real-Time Strategy Games (RTS), I prefer games like Command and Conquer Generals, the Age of Empires series and Rise of Nations due to the richness of strategic components. The reason why I don't enjoy games like Dawn of War and Warcraft 3 as much is because the units in either of the two are categorized mainly by special abilities instead of by lethality of offense (or by class). Thus, the tactical aspect of Warcraft 3 and Dawn of War dominates the strategic aspect, which shifts the mastery of the game from decision-making to reflexes/unit-control (or some like to call micromanagement). As far as the definition of strategy is concerned, Dawn of War and Warcraft 3 are moving away from the RTS genre and turning into action-based games - It's not necessarily a negative thing (considering most people enjoy action games more than they enjoy strategy games), but I just prefer playing something more sophisticated on the level of thought. (Micromanagement is concerned with reflexes, the level of information processing in your brain is too low to be considered "thought")

With First Person Shooters (FPS), I prefer games that require precognitive skills or team coordination, such as Jedi Knight 2 and Battlefield series.

It all boils down to the role of gaming in my life: when I game, I want to be challenged on an abstract level. Thus, instead of playing games that emphasize the speed and precision of manipulation, I'd play games that make me ponder.

Games I still play:
none - I think I'm gonna take a break from gaming