If someone had told me that they could make an addicting game out of progress bars, I wouldn’t have believed them. That is… Until I ran into “Starfleet Commander” on Facebook.

Blow Away the Opposition in Starfleet Commander

In Starfleet Commander, you enter the universe on a small outpost in a large galaxy.  You have a small amount of Ore, Crystal and Hydrogen to build up a massive space empire and armada.  Unlike games like Mafia Wars or Castle Age, everything in Starfleet Commander happens in real-time.  Building your first levels of Ore Mines and Power Stations takes only minutes.  In later levels, it takes hours, and sometimes days to build things.  So for a lot of the time, you will be seeing a bunch of progress bars across your screen.

Is it done yet?

Yet, this is what makes the game incredibly compelling.  After a few levels of being immune in “newbie” status, you are thrown into a pretty cutthroat world.  Once you are out of newbie status, anyone can attack you and steal your resources, and harvest the remains of your fleet from orbit.

I started the game with a friend of mine who was unlucky enough to live close to an incredibly aggressive player named “Caesar.”  That player plundered most of his resources from neighbors who happened to be weaker than him.  This sparked a massive arms race which also led to an alliance formed by many players disgruntled with becoming a feeding ground.

So, these progress bars become everything – how fast your fleets can move, do raids against other players, or how fast it takes to research technologies or construct buildings that are necessary for you to climb the tech tree.  And for some strange reason, organizing fleets, transporting goods among colonies, and arranging the flow of traffic becomes incredibly compelling.

Maybe I should work for Air Traffic Control

Now, the monetization of this game is fairly light compared to the Zynga games of Mafia Wars and Farmville because you can really only buy technologies or buildings with in-game credits. So there is a limited number of places a person could “buy” their way to the top. And I have to admit, I have been tempted more than once to swipe my credit card or to take these surveys or offer deals on in their store to get ahead in the game.

However, recent news has been showing that these games are full of scam-ridden surveys and offers.

To be fair to Blue Frog Gaming who created Starfleet Commander, they aren’t part of this massive class action lawsuit against Zynga. But if anyone is considering putting money into these games, be really careful. I personally would give money directly to the companies for credits because their games are just that much fun.

And to be honest, Starfleet Commander did contribute to my insomnia.

If anyone tries Starfleet Commander out and wants an alliance to join, look up my alliance – “Fading Suns“.

"Rain" by Paolo Munoz (c. 1996)

A quote from ON FAIRY STORIES, an essay by professor J.R.R. Tolkien:

We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

Reposted from Sci-Fi Author John C. Wright.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with bouts of insomnia.

Here is the set up:

1) Exhausted from long days and weeks at work without break.
2) Habitually wake up due to night calls.
3) Four years of waking up when the young’uns cry/have nightmares/wet the bed/etc.

Now that I’ve passed a massive deadline and actually have free time, I had a week where I couldn’t sleep. The mental cycle went like this:

1) Feel too tired to work on your projects.
2) Refuse to sleep unless you do something productive.
3) Cannot work to be productive because you are too tired.
4) Refuse to sleep because no work is being done.
5) Check the time and see an hour has passed but refuse to sleep.
6) Barely get any sleep that night because you’ve spent the night trying to work on projects but not getting anywhere.
7) Repeat step 1.

Can't sleep... Must work...

I have been thinking of taking a break, but the first immediate thing I start doing is that I attempt to write on my blog. It’s almost like my mind is refusing to just rest and regroup. So I am writing this publicly to force myself to postpone any projects until Thanksgiving – after my wife’s fashion show and when I take my first real vacation.

I’ll be back. I just have too much to say, create and do. But I know I have to call it when I’m beat. And to spend some time with my family who has missed me.

Gone Fishing!