Unreal Tournament 3

2007, age 25

I was nervous about playing this, as I hadn't played a PC FPS since Doom II, but I fell into the swing of things quite quickly.

The best thing, of course, about this game was the social context. Playing together in the bullpen as a form of stress relief was an incredible bonding experience, especially since most everyone played (even having never touched a FPS in their lives).

The fact that we were all together in the same room sealed the deal, as the physical aspect of shouting and cheering and people laughing in half-shock when I rambled out obscenities really connected us.

Peggle

2007, Age 25

This game introduced to me the incredible power of gratuitous, candy-like feedback. Who wouldn't want to play this after how good you feel when you get extreme fever?

When I'm feeling down, sometimes I just play a round of Peggle just to feel better about being alive.

Spectacle might be the least important of the Poetics, but it sure can release the endorphins.

Yahoo Scrabble

2004, Age 22

At this point in my life, I was up in Connecticut away from my many Kentucky friends. We fell into the habit of playing Scrabble with one another on Yahoo games.

Now, I love Scrabble as much as the next girl, but playing it in person and having to wait for turns is torturous! By playing it online, one could casually perform one's other internetly duties whiles't waiting for one's turn.

It was a nice solution to Scrabble's fatal flaw (the only thing that can top it is Facebook Scrabble, where you can play with one another asynchronously).

Text Twist

2004, Age 22

This simple casual game is fun to play with multiple people in the room. During my work at the theater in Connecticut, the props carpenter and I made a habit of playing at lunch. I was the typist, and he (and anyone else who wandered by), helped by shouting out words in the jumble as he saw them.

The fact that people can join in and drop out with as much ease as wandering over to the computer to peer over your shoulder makes me very cheerful. Playing the game alone is fun, but never so much as with a group of eyes behind you.

Doom Level Builder

1995, Age 13

A continuation of the previous entry, imagine my joy when I found software that would let me build levels for my favorite game!! How exciting! This was a game in and of itself. I would spend hours carefuly crafting tricky, artsy levels, trying to create my own stressful surprises, fighting with the flakey software, and forcing my best friend to play through them.

The biggest problem with designing Doom levels was that the levels aren't truly 3D height-wise, in that you can't have things like rooms on top of one another, or bridges you can go both over and under. I once built a level to represent my high school, and had to use cleverly placed wreckage to block off stairs, and teleporters as "elevators" to different floors (which were, in fact, different units altogether).

Note: this was well before Columbine, thus no one thought I was gonna go shoot up my school because I did this. Anyway....POWER! CONTROL! I wants them.

Doom II

1995, Age 13

The first PC first-person-shooter I ever played, I'm not even sure how I obtained it…I think my dad brought it home from work, where one of his employees lent it to him, because he thought I might enjoy it (I love my parents).

This was a whole new perspective on video games for me (wah wah waaah), and I was very easily immersed in the world. It got to the point where I would creep nervously up to a corner, then physically lean out of my chair, attempting to physically peer around the on-screen bend.

I usually caught myself and felt rather silly and embarrased, but Doom set up enough stressful surprises that it had me well trained in caution.