I've been embracing the ennui (boredom) by playing Wurm. Even using the word playing seems completely out of place. Wurm is more like a boredom simulator. The developer has created this giant virtual world where you basically start with an axe a shovel and a mining pick. Now go create a civilization.
A player starts with virtually no skill in anything, so everything takes forever. Since some Penny Arcade folks have a civilization, I figured I'd go bore myself into oblivion doing some grunt work for them. I moved thousands of pounds of dirt for a temple foundation. I tried my hand at cooking and pottery. I only once managed to make one dish my character would eat. But then my character refuses to eat hand picked berries when he's starving, so he's apparently some kind of food critic caveman. I hacked a few trees into logs, then sawed the logs into planks and performed maintenance on some buildings.
Everything in the game (tools, structures, even piles of dirt) deteriorates, so it's not enough to build houses and temples and weapons and tools. Then you have to maintain and improve your houses and temples and weapons and tools. And roads. You have to maintain roads, too. And carts so you can carry all of this stuff around. And boats because we live on an island and may need resources from the mainland.
There's a certain sense of accomplishment, I'm sure, from being able to point and say "I did that! I made that from nothing!" And I appreciate that. It seems like once every year or two, I'll enjoy picking up a building game like Roller Coaster Tycoon and try to make some virtual people happy. One of the nice things about Wurm was that I was able to make some real people somewhat pleased. That was good. It was something of a palette cleanser. Now it's time to see if I can't get interested again.
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