Playing games is a way of life

Quite some of my quiet time has been taken up with playing a variety of games. When I was living as a student I used to play Sims a lot. I would buy a new computer just so that it would be able to handle Sims 3, souping up the graphics card and all. Yes I do remember fondly just opening up the chassis of my PC as I was chilling/chatting with a friend in my room at a grand old house in Leamington Spa, to replace the RAM. She was so surprised at how nonchalant I was. Now I no longer have a PC at home – why? Because both my PCs broke while moving, so they were sat gathering dust, and Apple makes damn good laptops. I now have a toaster-looking thing through which I can connect my old hard drives via USB.

But I digress! Games. Games have evolved a long time. Gone were the days where you definitely had to download an *.exe file for 4 days over a 56.6kbps connection. (At this point, my entire neighbourhood lost electricity for 5 minutes. Incredible! Thank God for battery power). Or go to Gamestation to buy a second hand game which sometimes has awful scratches on the CD so it cannot be played. Now you can play for free on Facebook, with your friends, online, with strangers, and also with the transition of traditional offline games to online, makes millenials like me to switch on to…. wait for it… Bingo!

I played Bingo for the first time six months ago at a working men’s pub up north in a countryside village near Barnsley. Man I was so excited. Special round markers, marking out numbers?! I was determined to play again back in London, as there is a Bingo joint opposite the Premises studio where I rehearse sometimes. But then I discovered you can play Bingo on the iPad. I can play Bingo in bed!

I love the music on this, there are different ‘rooms’ you can play in, each with different music, one of which bears an uncanny resemblance to Girl from Ipanema. There are many Bingo apps but Bingo! is the best. There is no money involved, which is a good thing… but sometimes you may get more excitement from betting on outcomes. I don’t promote gambling, kids… just wishful thinking :). The National Lottery mini-games are quite engaging too, have won a few quid on them… for Bingo, WeLuvBingo.com is a cute site with a community behind it where you can interact and ask questions. For newbies like me you can go to a chatroom to ask for translations of Bingo-speak. A whole new world!

When I play Bingo I find it hard to think about anything else because it takes up my concentration to listen out for numbers and mark out the numbers on all the tickets. And Eckhart Tolle promotes non-thinking and just being, in the thick of all these random numbers coming at you. See, Bingo can be quite a zen exercise…

Another particularly addicting game is Real Racing 3 on the iPad. It is incredible. The graphics on it are awesome and the tilt-controls are startlingly responsive. Each car has it’s own idiosyncracies (like, well, being slow if you don’t upgrade it enough) – although the Dodge is really quick, I really like Nissans. My first real life car was an ancient Nissan Micra. How I loved it, I felt I could go anywhere in it. I would get my drummer to drive us to gigs in it, and we even fit in a drum kit. I wasn’t too confident driving the band up and down the country myself, but I’d be sitting nervously in the backseat while my then drummer Matt does 90mph in the rattling grey box at 2am, while the rest of the band snored away. Anyway yes, Real Racing 3, where you get to compete with drivers all over the world via Facebook and Sina Weibo (they must have a big Chinese fanbase) and earn trophies. Where you can visit the shop and drool over 360 degree CGI views of luxury cars.

So recently my evenings have been spent racing with Lone playing the background. He makes great electronic locomotion music. I think he is a genius. The importance of music in games cannot be overstated. That, my friend, is another post in itself.