Slept a little better last night, and I am in a much better mood. Kids are at school, I have gymmed, and I have started work on Skintree again this morning. I have 1200 new words, gone over some of the work from yesterday and I am having fun with it.
I had some issues for discussion this morning but I forgot what they are! I was mildly ranty on the treadmill but by the time I got home I was ready to hammer the book instead! yay!
Maybe if I have my coffee I will remember what i was going to talk about...
Nope, I have the coffee and no idea. Ah well, in that case lets talk about Castleville.
What is Castleville?
Castleville is a Facebook game produced by Zynga. It's a game template I have enjoyed before, having once played Frontierville and also Farmville in the past. I was pretty addicted to Farmville for a long time, Frontierville never quite kept me going, whereas Castleville has probably been the longest of my addictions so far. Apart from Bejewelled Blitz, but that's not so much an addiction these days as a useful tool.
Why do I like Castleville?
I like the fact there's goals all the time. I like dragons. I like to re-arrange the castle so looking at it brings me pleasure. I loved setting up a hedgemaze on there once, with little secret pockets of things in it. In one corner was a hot tub under a gazebo with lavender around it, and in another a sundial in a bed of tulips. One day I would love to write a book that uses that sort of scene. It brought me pleasure to just look at it and it made me smile. The goals can be as simple as collecting money or as complex as building several tiered things in my kitchens, workshop, studio, or random building they like to hand out occasionally. There's also a lot of goals, which I rather like.
What don't I like about Castleville?
Ooo, this list might get wordy.
- I don't like needing to ask other people for stuff all the time. At one stage, all ten of my goals needed me to ask for stuff and then wait. Any one who knows me knows my opinions on "waiting"!
- I don't like it when it breaks my flash. Which at present happens every time I use it. When i have a break from writing, I log into Zynga, and play until it crashes. And then I have to restart my browser if I want to play again, and that sounds like work so I go back to working on my novel or reading FB or Reddit instead.
- I don't like the drive to move us from FB to the Zynga webpages. Now it crashes all the time but there's benefits to logging in. I can ask *strangers* for crap rather than my friends. Yay?
- strangers friending me on Zynga causes hass for FB sometimes
- FB causes hass for me on Zynga sometimes. if people log into their game after a few days and accept all my requests, it can be enough to crash my game. I don't know why CV can't handle the influx of crap while I am playing. But hey, then i go and do something else for a bit so it can't be all bad.
- The current "save space by storing animals and harvest everything with just a few clicks!" thing right now is giving me the heebiejeebies. Which segues into...
- I'm already very aware of the sexist and cliched "love" tropes they are using in developing our characters and giving us new goals, but seriously Zynga, there's more to life than sex.
- Oh how silly of me, there's pirates. We now have another demesne which is PIRATE themed, which was recently followed up with a demesne which is LOVE themed. My genitals quiver with pleasure to be catered to in such a fashion. Yay?
OK, so your list of dislikes is, like, WAYYYYYYY longer than your list of likes. So why play?
Well... I enjoy the game. It does get frustrating and silly, and it's hinky in annoying ways. I know this won't last forever (like seriously, I didn't even know you could decommission a FB game until they killed Restaurant City. I expected RC to be there for me for ever! *sob*) I also like the progression of stuff, which is something I am trying to feed into my real life activities. I am trying to view getting my businesses and stuff off the ground as a series of small acts which eventually lead into a larger thing with a more tangible reward. I also use it as a spacer. It gives my brain time to recover from the intensive creative stuff, and tune out for a bit while I click on animals and look at greenery. That's probably the most key thing, I would say.
Have you ever paid Zynga money for Casteville?
Yes.
Let's look at what you said about the animals and the love themes. You don't like them but you still play. Does this cause problems?
Not particularly. There's a great article out there about loving problematic stuff, and my own theory is "this is the world we live in." Which means that we're fish in water and we don't know what the water is like, we can only guess. I have to take what I can from my experiences and remember that my actions are what counts - what I do means more to me than what I think. The act of blogging is a feminist and activist act for the day.I can sit around thinking feminist and activist thoughts until the cows come home, but until I actually do something, it's meaningless. I can't lead a perfect life where I avoid everything that's hinky, but I can do my best to avoid being hinky myself.
Also, loves to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alias_sqbr for that word 'hinky'. I am loving it today!
Anything else you want to finish with?
Buy my book! It's good!
Edited to add: DW has a dreadful spell checker. Just in case no one knew. :)
I had some issues for discussion this morning but I forgot what they are! I was mildly ranty on the treadmill but by the time I got home I was ready to hammer the book instead! yay!
Maybe if I have my coffee I will remember what i was going to talk about...
Nope, I have the coffee and no idea. Ah well, in that case lets talk about Castleville.
What is Castleville?
Castleville is a Facebook game produced by Zynga. It's a game template I have enjoyed before, having once played Frontierville and also Farmville in the past. I was pretty addicted to Farmville for a long time, Frontierville never quite kept me going, whereas Castleville has probably been the longest of my addictions so far. Apart from Bejewelled Blitz, but that's not so much an addiction these days as a useful tool.
Why do I like Castleville?
I like the fact there's goals all the time. I like dragons. I like to re-arrange the castle so looking at it brings me pleasure. I loved setting up a hedgemaze on there once, with little secret pockets of things in it. In one corner was a hot tub under a gazebo with lavender around it, and in another a sundial in a bed of tulips. One day I would love to write a book that uses that sort of scene. It brought me pleasure to just look at it and it made me smile. The goals can be as simple as collecting money or as complex as building several tiered things in my kitchens, workshop, studio, or random building they like to hand out occasionally. There's also a lot of goals, which I rather like.
What don't I like about Castleville?
Ooo, this list might get wordy.
- I don't like needing to ask other people for stuff all the time. At one stage, all ten of my goals needed me to ask for stuff and then wait. Any one who knows me knows my opinions on "waiting"!
- I don't like it when it breaks my flash. Which at present happens every time I use it. When i have a break from writing, I log into Zynga, and play until it crashes. And then I have to restart my browser if I want to play again, and that sounds like work so I go back to working on my novel or reading FB or Reddit instead.
- I don't like the drive to move us from FB to the Zynga webpages. Now it crashes all the time but there's benefits to logging in. I can ask *strangers* for crap rather than my friends. Yay?
- strangers friending me on Zynga causes hass for FB sometimes
- FB causes hass for me on Zynga sometimes. if people log into their game after a few days and accept all my requests, it can be enough to crash my game. I don't know why CV can't handle the influx of crap while I am playing. But hey, then i go and do something else for a bit so it can't be all bad.
- The current "save space by storing animals and harvest everything with just a few clicks!" thing right now is giving me the heebiejeebies. Which segues into...
- I'm already very aware of the sexist and cliched "love" tropes they are using in developing our characters and giving us new goals, but seriously Zynga, there's more to life than sex.
- Oh how silly of me, there's pirates. We now have another demesne which is PIRATE themed, which was recently followed up with a demesne which is LOVE themed. My genitals quiver with pleasure to be catered to in such a fashion. Yay?
OK, so your list of dislikes is, like, WAYYYYYYY longer than your list of likes. So why play?
Well... I enjoy the game. It does get frustrating and silly, and it's hinky in annoying ways. I know this won't last forever (like seriously, I didn't even know you could decommission a FB game until they killed Restaurant City. I expected RC to be there for me for ever! *sob*) I also like the progression of stuff, which is something I am trying to feed into my real life activities. I am trying to view getting my businesses and stuff off the ground as a series of small acts which eventually lead into a larger thing with a more tangible reward. I also use it as a spacer. It gives my brain time to recover from the intensive creative stuff, and tune out for a bit while I click on animals and look at greenery. That's probably the most key thing, I would say.
Have you ever paid Zynga money for Casteville?
Yes.
Let's look at what you said about the animals and the love themes. You don't like them but you still play. Does this cause problems?
Not particularly. There's a great article out there about loving problematic stuff, and my own theory is "this is the world we live in." Which means that we're fish in water and we don't know what the water is like, we can only guess. I have to take what I can from my experiences and remember that my actions are what counts - what I do means more to me than what I think. The act of blogging is a feminist and activist act for the day.I can sit around thinking feminist and activist thoughts until the cows come home, but until I actually do something, it's meaningless. I can't lead a perfect life where I avoid everything that's hinky, but I can do my best to avoid being hinky myself.
Also, loves to
alias_sqbr for that word 'hinky'. I am loving it today! Anything else you want to finish with?
Buy my book! It's good!
Edited to add: DW has a dreadful spell checker. Just in case no one knew. :)
