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| | March 31, 2006
Having a Jane Austen Moment
It’s been an odd week around here. Apparently Pride and Prejudice is now out on DVD, because our dear friend and coworker spicygumbo@Zone has been… excuse me, hath been speaking like a Jane Austen character for the past few days. While this has made conversations a lot of fun, I have to admit that it’s much, much tougher than “Talk Like a Pirate Week.” | |
| Why? To put it bluntly, “Arrrrrrhhhhh” is considerably easier to remember than the proper usage of “forthwith.”
You know, what this world really needs is a Modern Online English to Jane Austen English translator. So you could just plug in “C U L8R,” click a button, and get “It is my fondest wish that we should see one another anon,” or something equally sublime. An instant return to the days when English was not merely graceful, but in fact comprehensible by somebody over the age of 20… what a concept! | |
| No, It’s Not an Oxymoron
Today’s apparent contradiction in terms is brought to you by MSN Messenger Games. What the heck am I talking about? Multiplayer solitaire.
No, really.
Back in my college days (and I refuse to admit when those were), my dormmates and I occasionally pulled all-nighters. Even more occasionally, these were to study for exams, but on the whole they involved a form of multiplayer solitaire variously called Nertz, Nerts, Pounce, Racing Demon, Peanuts, or Squeal. Setting aside any beer-consumption aspects, the game went something like this:
Each player started with a deck of cards, each of which had a unique card back (blue, red, beer logos, or whatever... mine had kittens). Each player shuffled his or her cards and dealt them out into five piles: a "pounce" pile of 13 cards with the top one face up, and four piles of one card each, face up. The game played out in typical Klondike fashion, with one big exception; the Aces became common piles that anyone could play on.
You're probably already getting a mental image of the sort of fracas this would become.
Once an Ace was down, any card played on top of it was worth points (hence the unique card backs, so you could tell who had played what card). The goal of course was to play as many cards into the common piles as possible and, even more importantly, to empty your pounce pile. Once somebody played the last card from their pile, they scored a bunch of bonus points, and the game was over. In the race to get rid of cards, gameplay was fast, competitive, and even a bit dangerous, assuming that you were attached to your fingers.
Okay, fast-forward a bit. Several years ago, some of the MSN Games folks (who obviously shared my history of misspent midnights) hit on the idea of making a digital version of Pounce (or Nertz… or Peanuts…). They designed and built the game for MSN Messenger, and called it Solitaire Showdown.
Needless to say, I was all over that.
Okay, I will admit now that I had my doubts. Could it live up to the same thrill of playing in the dorm lounge with real cards and face-to-face, if sleep-deprived, opponents? There were no unique card backs, no diving for the common pile, no disputes about which player was first to lay down a card. And hey, let’s be honest: there was no way to claim you’d lost just because somebody jogged your elbow during a critical play.
Of course, the truly creative player can always find something to blame his or her losses on; around here, UnfailingBat routinely cursed the network router and connection, Shine@MPlus favored the “imminent meeting” or “somebody’s in my office” excuses.
And me? A few (hundred) rounds later, I can safely say that this is one of the most fun games I've ever played on the Web. | |
| Tech Time
Since I’m rambling about Messenger games, let’s go for a Messenger issue. Today’s digital conundrum is courtesy of Quinton, in the UK (hey, that’s where Jane Austen was from!):
“Dear Moxie: When I click on the instant games button, it says 'List of activities or games is temporarily unavailable. Please close and try again later.' When I try it again later it says the same thing.”
Well, if you only see this once or twice, the server might actually be down. But if the message appears repeatedly, it’s probably just a caching problem. Just sign out of Messenger, clear your cache, and log back in!
Check out this support article for all the details.
See you next week! | |
