Getting Your Game On

I never really thought about it before, but my sibs and I are really into gaming. I guess it's something we just grew up with. We were all placed in various sports, mostly the kind that is played on ice in particular (What? We're Canadian, did you expect differently?) Though I did love swimming, tennis and bowling too!

Our family desktop computer was lovingly nicknamed the Most Expensive Solitaire Machine Ever and the whole family would try to one-up each others' scores in various games, including spider solitaire and mahjong. We grew up on competition, and its something that I kinda sorta miss today.

My bro was always into Nascar and video games. In fact, despite my mother's near-daily nagging for him to put down his game controller and hit the school books, he wound up with a career at a sports radio station, that includes a weekly radio show on… video games.

Take that Mom!

My sis played on most, if not all, school sporting teams throughout her school career; hockey right up into Varsity, and wound up graduating in Kinesiology (layman's term: Sports Medicine). She recently tried out for the Red Bull: Crashed Ice series, which I think is all kinds of awesome. When she visits home on her school breaks, she'll compete at least once against our mom on a fun game of sudoku!

Me? I was on the high-school swim team. LOVE both on and offline games of sudoku. And I love playing mahjong online. But what I really enjoy doing is finding the newest ways to play online.

Did you know you can play Monopoly and Scrabble online? Though not new, I think these games have been online for at least a decade now. Heck, I think you can even play them in facebook. But it was so exciting to find and play these games as stress relievers way back when I was in the middle of writing thesis statements!

Facebook has a TON of virtual games in their pocket. The weirdest part is that people actually pay to play them. It's one type of gaming that I never got into; I've yet to understand the draw of Farmville, and I don't believe I ever will.

One thing I find really cool about online gambling (and if you choose to, please do so responsibly), is that you're not limited to staying within websites that were built in the same country that you live in! I'm not sure what it is, but the fact that we have this technology and ability to consume a product from any place on the globe really interests me. For instance, I could take that honed skill of timed Spider Solitaire and try to beat other player's best timed scores at WorldWinner.com (an American site… though that also means I have to pay tax on the winnings… bummer.)

Or if I wanted to play bingo instead, I could go to FoxyBingo.com, which from the looks of it, is one of the most popular sites in the UK (even if no one in Canada would have heard of it, unless they knew where to look online.) It really is weird, but you can study cultural differences by watching how each country builds their gambling sites online.

The newest type of gaming that I just found out about, takes on both a virtual and “real world” applications, which is SO FREAKIN' COOL. Qriket is essentially a treasure hunt game where you search for QR codes wherever you travel, and then upload them online to your gaming account where you can win points or even cash prizes. The top three scoring teams during each seasonal challenge wins thousands of dollars to split among themselves. It actually reminds me of an episode of Numb3rs, Season 4 Episode 7 “Primacy” – if you have Netflix, I completely recommend watching this ep, heh. The fact that a good portion of this episode can now be found in a real game is all kinds of awesome!

So yeah, if you ever need a break, there is just so much to do online to have a bit of fun!

But you knew that already, didn't you? 😉

This post was sponsored, but all words and points of view are my own.