Looks like I have to rethink my calling.

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“.

Can you imagine living in a time without cell phones, internet, computers, when it would take weeks to receive mail and months before hearing news updates?  Imagine that a single issue of the New York Times contains more information than what could have possibly been learned by the average person in the 15th century.  Yet, the very word “boredom” doesn’t appear in the English language until 1852.

Could it be that no one knew what boredom was until the modern age?

Work it!

One of the major changes happening in the middle of the 19th century was the second wave of the Industrial Revolution.  The world was seeing massive advances in technology resulting in faster means of production, communication, travel and convenience.  This freed up many middle class people and introduced to them a novelty only the rich and powerful had – leisure time.  For the first time for many people in the new age of  Industrialism, there was a time in the day that was not dedicated to work or to prayer – but a time solely dedicated to personal enjoyment.  And yet, this is the same era that words like the French “ennui” and the English “boredom” are introduced into the common language.

It would seem like innovations such as the telephone, television, and personal computing would relieve this existential anxiety, but in many ways, it has made it worse.  And even the creation of cellular technology and the wireless Internet where absolutely anything and anyone can be reached with a touch of a button, has not made anyone more at ease.  In fact, you could argue that people are a lot worse and don’t even stop to wonder why.

Part of the problem lies in the difference between a consumer and a creator.

When I was a young boy, I repeated a line I heard on a TV show to my mother. “I’m bored,” I said. My mother took a moment, looked at me and replied with much love, “The only people who get bored are boring people.” I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to tell me, so she underscored the point, “A person only becomes bored because they aren’t creative. Do you want to be a boring person?” I quickly said, “No!” “So, find something to do.” And that was the last day I was ever bored.

People today are trained to be consumers. People consume music, television shows and games at a voracious pace. And when music starts to sound repetitive, television starts rehashing old plot line, or games start to lose their novelty, people sometimes get anxious and even angry that they aren’t entertained – as if it was someone else’s fault that they cannot stave off the boredom. And as much as reading is better than television, even books are a consumer medium as well.

You know you want to buy some hot Vampire Love!

Perhaps now that everyone has a lot less money to throw around, it may be a good time to look at your hobbies and ask yourself, “Do I have a hobby that actually creates something – rather than consumes something that someone else makes?”

Speaking of creative hobbies…

I have completed all my freelancing work and probably won’t have anything lined up for the rest of the fall into next year.  My wife’s business is off and running, but we are holding off on an actual web page until a later date.  Her current focus is creating some dresses and modeling at a Steampunk/Victorian fashion show in November.  She is busy completing her pieces.  After that, she will start focusing more on the web page and I am more than happy to start getting her business off the ground.

So in the meantime… I can get a Flash Game done between now and Thanksgiving.  Hoo-rah!