Through my eyes

"Take care of him" the young boy would always tell his grandmother before leaving on a class trip. He was always very kind to me, just like the rest of his family. His mother was always working, but she was the one who had bought me for the boy's 12th birthday. Although sometimes rough, she was kind and loving. I spent a lot of my spare time with his grandmother. When the boy and his mother were working between 8 AM and 3 PM, she would make sure I always had enough water or biscuits. And when she finished cooking and washing, she would always talk to me and I would respond in my own language. You see, even though the boy's 15th birthday was approaching, the old lady still thought of me as a strange creature due to my colourful feathers or round beak.

And last but not least was the boy, always friendly and joyful to see me. He would talk the most to me, about what was happening at a place he called "skuul", or what his homework was. When he wasn't watching TV or writing on pieces of paper strange symbols, he would press two buttons and a large, rectangular machine would awaken along with its 32 inch partner. After a few minutes, the "scrin" would lighten up and show many i9mages which apparently made the boy laugh or get angry, though I never understood which made him happy and which didn't.

Still, there was one small, rectangular white box the boy liked the most. It had a hand held device which magically controlled it, which needed regular cleaning and battery changing. And sometimes he would put my cage next to the couch so that I could watch how he played. He played many games. When he was angry, he would play a game in which he either was or controlled magic sticks of different shapes and colors which would make loud noises whenever the man in front of them fell to the ground, never to rise again. With one press, the sticks would shoot small coconuts that made even louder noises and released more colours, mostly yellow and orange. When he was happy, he would play games in which a man would either steal cars and use the aforementioned sticks or he would use a sword and fly through the air killing ugly monsters. When he was bored, he would play a strange game in which you couldn't see the main character (although everyone called him "President") but you could see the city and decide wether to build buildings or not, what buildings to build and how much of that green paper with people's faces on it you would give to the workers.

I was always admired by friends that came by. His best friend would comment whenever I sang, but he liked me, while his class mate admired me since he had a parrot like me too. The two little cousins and neighbors would always stare at me with round eyes and pat my head while the adult guests would tell them not to, fearing that I may bite.

I can't say I long for my homecountry of Colombia, or for my spouse who died a year ago. I am well fed, always entertained, always happy and I am only 7 years old, so I will live to see the boy graduate from "skuul". But I've always wondered why he played the games in the first place. Was he addicted to them? I don't think so. Maybe he just liked to relax, like any other human, and everyone has his own ways of relaxing. Still, I wonder if he could give me some of the coconuts he throws to other people...

The gamer's Christmas carol

NOTE: After every lyric Tra la la la la, la la la la follows!

Deck the socks with games for Xbox

Tis the season to be addicted

To GTA and COD

Assassin's Creed from 1 to 2

And let's not forget about Fallout!

Put on your sword and fight the Horde!

But be careful, there's that Warlord!

Don we now our cool apparel

Check the ancient DOTA map

See the blazing Orc before us!

Strike that troll and join the server

Follow me on Left 4 Dead

While I tell of how I pwned!

Fast away these old games pass,

Hail the cool ones, lad and lass!

Play we joyous all together

Join me now on Multiplayer,

Heedless of those 10 year old gamers!

Tra la la la la, la la la la

Merry Christmas everyone!

Am I the only one who thinks this is strange?

The game industry, as big as it is, has had its share of strange games. Some never went past the first few screen shots, while others were released and even became successful. It is sometimes hard to clearly define strange, since its meaning has changed over the decades. In the '80s, the very concept of video games was strange. Are they still strange today? The answer: some of them yes... And they can be cataloged: strange by longevity, strange by innovation and simply strange.

The first type, strange by longevity, is best represented by the Sims franchise. From Sims 1 to Sims 3, the franchise has probably the most video games ever made on a single subject: life. It has expansion packs with magic tricks, pets, new jobs, new entertainment facilities, new characters, college and new life stages. It even has the three Sims Stories game that have, as the name suggests, a story mode, something new from the rest of the games which are freelance. Not to mention the Final Fantasy series, with at least 13 games.

The second type, strange by innovation, is best represented by games that bring new things to the industry (that doesn't mean games that have new things, but games that are new as a genre or at the core). At first, RPGs were deemed strange since they allowed you to make the character that you want. Now, strange games are games that I hate or don't like; games like Total War or stealth games. Total War puts you in the role of a general commanding an empire, so you have to not only do battle, but make sure your population is happy, take into account religion, gather taxes and build buildings in your territories. Also, the way you battle is strange since you control armies of units and have to strategically place them to win (I managed to defeat 70,000 French soldiers with 60,000 Byzantine soldiers by luring their army with the pikemen and hitting their flanks with my hidden Cataphract cavalry; but by the time all the turns were up and the game ended, I had only conquered Turkey, North Africa, parts of Araby and the Balkans). Let us hope that Empire Total War or Napoleon Total War will be better. Stealth games are also annoying since you have to sneak, assassinate, hide bodies, dress up like soldiers and avoid detection; why can't you just barge in guns blazing? I mean, at Hitman 2, I needed to read a walkthrough twice to manage to pass the first mission and at the seventh mission I used cheats to become invincible so that I can just massacre all those sons of b*tches, and at the end I was rated the worst hit man EVER!!!!!!

Finally, the last type, simply strange, has some prime examples: there was a planned SimMars in which you would run a Martian colony just like you would run a city in SimCity, but that was canceled in 2000. But another EA game, Spore, got more attention and was praised by critics. In it, you have to build your own creatures and guide them through Cell, Animal, Tribal, Civilization and Space stages (awkward, at the very least). And last but most f*cked up of all, a Japanese Nintendo DS game called Love Plus in which you need to be a girl's boyfriend (which includes kissing her by touching the screen or saying 'I love you' a hundred times in the Nintendo microphone). It is so popular in that Far Eastern country (and I'm happy it's far from me!) that one guy even married the video game character. THAT is strange...