Observations of life based on games

 Observations of life based on games

Currently, my online games are Words with Friends TM, reDecor TM, and Glow TM. It’s nice to see people enjoy some of the things I enjoy; playing with the English language, thinking about how I would decorate expensive houses, and trying clothes on a skinny model. 

As an adult one might wonder about the person who would enjoy these challenges. 

But we am not here to analyze me but my opponents. 

First, I’ve noticed there are two types of Words with Friends opponents. The first one of course is a bot. The bot keeps me playing. It will lose by two or three points. Matches my skill set almost Word for Word, get the pun. The second is an actual opponent somewhere. Often a man trying to pick up a woman who will text me if I accept the text. Or a man in a foreign country. Trying to get a little money. 

I don’t care if they text me. I don’t respond. And if that’s all they want then they will drop out of the game. But if they are truly trying to develop a relationship with me, they will continue to play. Not sure how many games they will play with me before they drop off my list of most common opponents but eventually they do. 

But there are actual people, in fact, I have a friend that I play words with friends with that I’ve played words with friends with since 2014. She and I both taught SAT prep classes outside of Houston. She’s still teaching there. Oh my God that sounds so pathetic! Not that she’s still teaching there, but we are both still playing words with friends. 

Onto the analysis. The real life opponents are people that play with words like I do, keep their brains active, challenge themselves in one way or another. I use my letters to create the most number of words and not necessarily the most points. If it is someone I have played previously and they’ve beaten me by a point or two then I’ll focus on the points. But otherwise, it’s about being creative, making sure my letters touch the most letters on the board. Then I get extra points for extra words! 

I think I’m still in analyzing myself. 

I wonder how my opponents play. Do they play strictly for the points to win? Do they play words that are unique, colorful, slanted? 

Sometimes I get lucky with just the right letters but you still can’t play “fuck.” The board has rules against certain words. Even if “fuck” is a perfectly good English word. I don’t understand why they won’t let us play it. You also can’t play the word “gay” I don’t care how happy you are. You can’t play that word on Words with Friends.

Let’s get back to the idea of competition with my other two games.  Glow is a new one. It’s probably made for 12 to 16-year-old girls, chubby and lonely, who wish they were models. Oh well, maybe it’s made for 60 year old women that are home alone, chubby and wish they were models. Anyway, you start off with a thin blonde character that you can design how do you wish to. She can have darker skin or darker hair. She can have an curly hair or straight hair. But she is Caucasian looking. Some of the challengers have made their models to look more Asian, black, and indigenous by changing their skin and hair color. 

The interesting thing about this game is you have to earn the clothing or purchase it. The challenges however looks for specific styles and events. If they ask for beachwear and if all you have are black pants, then you’re probably not going to win the challenge. 

You also challenge yourself by helping your clientele as a stylist get dressed for different events. This is fun because you have a large array of clothing that you can offer them. They come in with different looks and different desires. So if you send them in the ripped-edge blue jean mini skirt to a gala event, they probably won’t come back for your services. Although, maybe it’s the MTV awards who knows. You get to vote on each other’s designs and so it’s a quick way of judging somebody by their first look. 

Now that I think about this game, I probably shouldn’t keep it on my iPad much longer. I don’t like being judged by first look.

Anyway, let me get to the analysis. My challengers seem to vote based on look and not the category or purpose of the styling. They just look at the outfit. If someone’s looking stunning in an evening, dress, glamorous earrings, and nice footwear, they will probably win, even though the challenge is that they were supposed to dress to go to the dentist. They are impulsive, judgmental, players. 

What does that say about the females lying in bed playing this game right now? Or the ones lying in bed writing about this game? OK enough about me, let’s get back to the third game.

The third game called Redecor, I have been playing since 2020. It was my pandemic go to. It’s about looking at houses or businesses or apartments and choosing what colors and textures things should be. It’s fun because if you want a concrete bicycle you can do that. Probably not gonna win the challenge but you can have a concrete bicycle. You can also paint your flower pots with a van Gogh painting if you choose. And sometimes they actually ask you to do those kinds of things. There are specific challenges, but I never read the directions. For me, it’s all about trying to make it look like someplace I would love. 

My head-to-head challenges called duels use beige, white, and black. These are their go to colors for just about everything. Make a 1950 style kitchen. White refrigerator, black and white floor white cabinetry. They don’t even throw in a red coffee pot! They want things as plain and simple as a staged house. 

I remember staging my house when I moved from Austin to Houston. We only had a bed in the master bedroom and the realtor had asked us if we had an extra bed for the guest bedroom to show how big the room was, to stage it. Well we didn’t but I had milk crates. So I put up 12 milk crates put some yoga mats on top. Put a bedspread and some pillows on it and made it look like a bed. I only had one realtor who reported that someone try to sit on it. 

Staging is an important part of life. It’s every place we go when we go to the store to purchase anything. I don’t care if it’s a can of Campbell’s soup. You’re gonna get the one that has the label facing you and not the one that’s turned around backwards even if you have to move the one that’s turned around backwards.

I’m good at staging. I have sold four houses successfully.  And I appreciate staging. The house I most recently bought was staged so well I bought the furniture, the artwork, the dishes and everything. I must admit it is a condo. 

So what do I learn from my competition in Redecor? I learn they want their life to be bland. They want their life to be calm and settled and blue on blue when it’s next to the water, fabric without patterns, and predictable wood tones for furniture. 

I never win if I have a purple desk in the office with a paisley chair in the duels. But that’s the world I want to live in. I will continue to challenge my friends and the strangers at the other end of these apps to think outside the box by playing outside the box myself. Maybe they’re analyzing me too and wondering why I am so colorful.