So does anyone play WOW here?

Hobby or addiction, fellows?

Anybody who says gaming is a bad outlet should do some introspection. Assuming you aren’t making it a habit instead of a hobby, and that you allot your time responsibly for “business” and for pleasure, gaming is no different than watching movies, reading secular books, or playing chess. Anybody with a hobby who calls gaming bad is an outright hypocrite who is too blind to see his/her own faults. I personally play games only when I’m on vacation from school and have plenty of downtime to spare. Boredom is deadly, and gaming is a healthy and often very social outlet for when I just can’t be sitting and learning. Gaming today is not of the anti-social nature that it had in the late 90s. That is simply a stigma that refuses to die among those who know less about modern gaming than they do about quantum mechanics.

oneofmany: i really wasnt trying to tork you off. if you enjoy gaming you should care what everyone else says anyway.

Absolutely, oom. I wasn’t going to address it anyway. So.. who do you follow on DeviantArt? Are you part of any groups? It’s hard for me to go through all the submissions by all the artists I’m following, there’s so many! I skim them and check out the the ones that stand out most. Photoshop question for you: is there a way to create a reflection of something, by use of a tool, besides by just copying and pasting an altered version of it onto a new layer? Because that would be so helpful. Thanks!

QB, maybe a little Blur can get your driving skillz back up to “awesome” -). I’m in middle of Fable again, actually. Also in the middle of Driver: San Francisco, and I never finished Fallout New Vegas.

besalel: Thanks. 🙂 So no hard feeings?

QB: lol yeah, back when that was my subtitle. ^_^ I’m in middle of Kingdom Hearts 3D. I just finished it a few weeks ago and I’m trying to beat it on critical mode (wish me luck :P).

And talk about driving skills…I can defeat secret bosses without breaking a sweat, but I can’t get past those racing minigames in less than eight tries. I generally just hand the game over to my little brother lol.

MP: Haha I’m not part of any groups – I’m not really active enough. I mostly lurk and grovel in dumbfounded awe in the shadows of artists I hope to emulate someday. ^_^ A couple of my favorites, off the top of my head: alice-chan, Mr–Jack, vinegar, strongstuff (best ector art I’ve ever seen). There are a lot more, but I can’t pull up my favorites righ now…

Yeah, Painter 12 has some sort of feature that reflects as you draw, right? 😛 I don’t think Photoshop has someting dedicated like that. There is a tool that you can you use to reflect selections in the transformations menu (unless you knew about that one already?), but do you have to make a copy first. You don’t have to make a new layer – I wouldn’t unless I had to tweak the selection further.

I ran over so many innocent people in Noire… The driving responsiveness is horrendous!

It was actually kind of funny now that I think of it.. I would drive around trying to solve murders, while committing them at the same time.

Did anyone have the pleasure of checking out “Forward Unto Dawn” yet? I heard it can be viewed online for free on the Halo website, but haven’t had time to look at it yet. How was it?

OOM, those artists you mentioned on DeviantArt are very impressive! Hadn’t seen their work till now. There are so many great artists there. I recently discovered this guy named Christian Gerth on there, and his work is really amazing. His fantasy settings are mind blowing.

Yea, the Painter 12 has a tool like that, but I actually have Painter 11, which doesn’t, unfortunately. I’m unclear about which tool you are referring to in the transform menu. You mean in the bar where you can choose Warp, Perspective, etc.? Because I didn’t see a reflect option there. You’re right about the new layer, but I have an addiction to creating new layers for just about everything :P. And the worst part is, I don’t name them, so I always get confused. Oh well.

QB, good to hear that Blur is helping you drive properly in other games too -P. About Fallout New Vegas, it definitely has its moments, but I just found it, so far, to be a bit dull and drawn out. Perhaps it gets better, though.

ej, thanks, I just saw some gameplay screenshots of it and it really does look great. I’ll check it out further.

Curiosity, haven’t checked out Forward Unto Dawn yet, though I’ve never been such a Halo fan. I know it’s a great game, but it just never really did it for me.

I saw a gameplay demo of the new Fable game for Kinect, it looks really awesome. But I don’t have a Kinect. Oh well.

By the way, I finally decided to activate my Painter trial and play around with it last night…now I’m hooked! lol I spent the entire morning painting! It’s super cool! ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

lol, Photoshop also has a brush like that – the Impressionist brush. Only Elements has it though…not sure why. I used to love playing with it, but I never really put it to practical use…apparently its purpose is to give photographs a more “painterly” feel.

Yeah…Ilustrator is the program for reflecting. Their reflecting tool is really good. Their manipulation tools are very comprehensive. My favorite is the Shear Tool – it’s great for creating shadows in perspective and stuff.

I’ve never used that tool – I don’t use very much more than the basic artistic filters. Will go and try it out.

Still trying to figure out the displace tool…

Actually haven’t opened Photoshop in a while. I’ve started using Painter and Illustrator (which I am using for class). AND AUGH ILLUSTRATOR CS6 IS THE CRASHIEST PROGRAM EVER. T_T All I am using is pen tool and fill, and the thing’s crashed MORE TIMES THAN I CAN COUNT. I’ve begun saving my work just about every ten seconds…do you have this problem? D:

And yes, I really really like Painter. It’s much more specialized than Photoshop for digital painting. Although Photoshop is better with pen pressure sensitivity…but other than that, I am a convert. 8D

Checked out Hamsterfly – nice! Exellent speedpainting (I always judge an artist by their speedpaintings :P). Here are two for you: pyrotensive and Aseo (I am a little into vector right now :D).

Actually haven’t opened Photoshop in a while. I’ve started using Painter and Illustrator (which I am using for class). AND AUGH ILLUSTRATOR CS6 IS THE CRASHIEST PROGRAM EVER. T_T All I am using is pen tool and fill, and the thing’s crashed MORE TIMES THAN I CAN COUNT.

It wasn’t developed by the firefox people was it -_-

Oh, didn’t realize Illustrator doesn’t let you do all that. Did you find out why it crashes?

I recently discovered a cool color adjustment tool in Photoshop, it’s under Image/ Adjustments/ Color Lookup, and try out all the options under each bar. I’ve found “FuturisticBleak” to be great for sci-fi drawings.

Anyone getting Assassin’s Creed III?

And Paperman when La Luna didn’t? They really have it all backwards…

There’s more important things in life to do then sit around playing games. Even if it is only after a long hard day at work or learning. There are better things to do for relaxing then sitting around playing games. In life there’s no time to play games. Life is no joking matter or game, “U’vacharta Bachaim” you should choose life, i.e. don’t take life for granted. Hashem doesn’t say on each person this person will live until 98 and this one until 107 but actually in truth Every day and hour is a decree that you should live another day. Don’t just take it for granted and instead appreciate every moment of life. Maybe use your time of relaxing to make a learning Seder daily.

People who are sniffing down their noses at those plebians playing silly video games probably wouldn’t think twice about spending half an hour writing comments on CR, or reading ESPN dotcom.

Just wondering why would you play games like L.A. Noire which is rated M not just for violence when there are so many appropriate games out there?

I’m not saying you, specifically. But there’s a double standard when it comes to bitul zman. People like to call out video games, television, goyishe novels, and movies as bitul zman, but things like following sports or cell phone plans (which is an honest to Hashem hobby for many) are seen as “acceptable” time wasters.

Ok, that was a bit much.
Yserbius- “People like to call out video games, television, goyishe novels, and movies as bitul zman, but things like following sports or cell phone plans (which is an honest to Hashem hobby for many) are seen as “acceptable” time wasters”

Those things you mention are not bitul zman issues (in regards to the complaints against them). I stopped participating in all those things in my late teens because of shmiras einayim issues and pritzus. The exposure visually to very inappropriate behavior, immodest pics, nivul peh and even a lot of the violence (i used to love murder novels).

Refraining changed me so much, but it took a long time to get the visions and concepts out of my brain. And it really did resensitize me.

On the other hand, I was still a master at bitul zman. Those habits didn’t take as drastic a change until 9/11.

It’s very important to have down time. Nobody should question that. But i always took the approach that if i wanted to do something mind numbing, it shoulx be something with the option to stop in 25 minutes, 45 minutes etc. Sitting down at a gaming console or video that you know (if you’re honest with yourself) “commits” you to 90 plus minutes is volunteering a too big minimum.

To philosopher
You’re right about the nature of certain video games but to call them immature and juvenile is just being uninformed for most gamers are not children but adults it’s like saying sports are juvenile you personally may not like it or enjoy them but a lot of them have a great deep chucmah and it helps exercise your brain especially with someone with ADHD if done right could be a great tool in service of Hashem
When discussing this with my rov he told me that Hashem made video games so that we can enjoy them just like anything else you made it in this world for us to enjoy if done right and not abused it’s a great way of relaxing

Chess is not addictive nor filled with immoral imagery.

Great Rabbis played chess and they had no problem with the chess pieces but I promise you they would never look at video games and they’d be extremely angry that there are frum Jews looking at improper images that most computer games have today.

As for chess being addictive, it is far, far less addictive, if addictive at all, than computer games. One can walk away from a board game much more easily than from a video game.

I’m not saying you can’t ever play with computer games, if the game doesn’t have immodest characters then 45 minutes of unwinding by playing a computer game is ok, but more often than not the games today are completely immoral in character, not with a person knocking down a boardpeice, but with the killing of 3-d lifelike characters and lifelike immodest characters as part of the game, and a player most often does not stop after 45 minutes
of playing immersive games.

Dear uninformed listen to the lecture by rabbi weinberger on ADHD on Torah anytime and you will see that ADHD brain needs extra stimulation in order to relax that is what the medicine does and that’s what computer games do by overstimulating the brain you create a sense of calm that’s why fidget tools work so well with someone who has ADHD