Commodore Creates C64 for the 21st Century

By David Delony

From http://walyou.com/

 

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If you grew up in a certain era, it’s likely that the first computer you ever had was a Commodore 64.
Sure, you probably played games like Impossible Mission and Boulder Dash, but the real magic was the built-in BASIC language. You might have typed in a program like this:

10 PRINT "WALYOU RULES!"
20 GOTO 10

This would print “WALYOU RULES!” over and over again until you hit the break key.
Commodore USA has acquired the rights to the original machines, including the Commodore 64.



This new version features the familiar brown-and-beige design of the original, but with 21st Century features. The machine is powered by a dual core Intel Atom processor. The keyboard features Cherry brand key switches, which give it a feel similar to those old IBM keyboards that real geeks swear by. In place of the traditional “Windows” key, there’s the famous Commodore “chicken head” logo. The new C64 doesn’t run Windows but a custom Linux distro, Commodore OS, instead. (It is possible, however, to dual-boot with Windows.) You can either boot into Commodore OS or directly into a classic Commodore 64 emulator to play your old favorites.


There will also be a media center application that will allow you to download classic C64 games. Commodore also plans to ship each system with a variety of open source software, including 3D games. They also promise to install a Microsoft Office-compatible suite. (This will likely be OpenOffice.org or its offshoot, LibreOffice.)
The machine comes with 2 gigs of RAM, expandable to 4 gigs.

Instead of that bulky old 1541 5.25″ disk drive, there’s a DVD/RW drive built into the side of the machine, with Blu-ray as an optional extra. There are the standard ports, including USB and Ethernet, card reader slots,  and even an HDMI port so you can hook it up to your HDTV. Add the Blu-ray and you’ve got yourself a nice living room computer.

I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this machine, both as a fan of Commodore and a fan of Linux and open source in general.

If you’re a Commodore fan, you’ll probably like the Commodore 64 Laptop and the C64 8-bit keytar mod.
Via: Commodore USA

How well can you really multitask?

By: Matthew Humphries

From: http://www.geek.com/

Multitasking is something we all think can be easily done when sitting at a computer with multiple applications open flicking our attention between them. But in reality, humans just aren’t that good at it. In fact, you sacrifice focus in order to carry out multiple tasks in a diminished capacity speaking from my own experience. You can still do multiple tasks, but don’t expect to do them all well.

Have you ever really sat down and focused on just one thing? If you have the patience to do this, something that seems to be disappearing fast in our instant-gratification world, you will probably find you perform that single task much better. Be that learning, playing, reading, writing etc.

To test how good or bad you really are at multitasking, Kongregate developer IcyLime has created a game called Multitask. It involves you looking after an increasing number of objects on screen as time goes by. You start with balancing a ball, then have to avoid some arrows, then interact with some boxes. At every stage the multitasking gets that little bit harder.

I am admittedly terrible with a top score of just 56. But I’d liked to know just how bad I am compared to others so post your scores below so we can compare.

If you play and enjoy Multitask, then IcyLime has done a follow-up game called Multitask 2 with slightly different tasks to manage. It’s not easier or harder, just different.

Here’s a video giving you some idea of what you end up coping with when playing:

Play at Kongregate, via HN

Any tetris fans out there?

http://www.firstpersontetris.com/

First-Person Tetris is a non-commercial project
inquires: hello@firstpersontetris.com

FarmVille players outnumber actual farmers in the United States by more than 60 to 1

RASPBERRIES? In the FarmVille game on Facebook, livestock and crops take a lot of time.

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

AT high schools and colleges across the country, students are hard at work, tilling their land and harvesting their vegetables.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

PLAYING Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga, says his game company is profitable.

“It is clear this obsession with FarmVille is an issue, especially since it is taking away time from studying and schoolwork,” Danielle Susi wrote this month in The Quad News, a student newspaper at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.

Adults, too, are blaming their problems on FarmVille, an online game in which people must tend their virtual farms carefully. On blogs like FarmVille Freak (slogan: “I can’t stop watching my crops!”) and others, people share tips on fertilizer and complain about, for example, a spouse’s addiction. An anonymous blogger who said she was pregnant wrote: “I was starving ... and he told me I’d have to wait a few more minutes so he could HARVEST HIS RASPBERRIES! I waited ... in the car and waited for his stupid raspberries to be harvested.”

That there are actual farmers who spend less time on their crops is beside the point. FarmVille has quickly become the most popular application in the history of Facebook. More than 62 million people have signed up to play the game since it made its debut in June, with 22 million logging on at least once a day, according to Zynga, the company that brought FarmVille into the world.

Crazes on Facebook seem to come in waves — remember sheep-throwing, Vampire Wars and lists of “25 Random Things About Me?” — but devotion to FarmVille has moved beyond the social network. Players gather online to share homemade spreadsheets showing which crops will provide the greatest return on investment. YouTube is rife with musical odes to the game, including versions of its theme song. There is a “Farmville Art” movement, in which people arrange crops to resemble the Mona Lisa or Mr. Peanut. And many a promising dinner date has been cut short to harvest squash.

“I can’t hang out with any of my friends without talk of apple fields and rice paddies,” said Taylor Lee Sivils, a student at the University of California, Riverside, in an e-mail message. “I have to wait for my friends’ soybeans to grow, because we can’t chill until they’ve been harvested. All I want is to be able to go back to talking about anything tangible, but FarmVille overcomes.”

The game starts off simply: You are given land and seeds that can be planted, harvested and sold for online coins. As you accrue currency, you can buy things, from basics like rice and pumpkin seeds to the truly superfluous, like elephants and hot-air balloons. Impatient players can use credit cards or a PayPal account to buy more money, although purists tend to frown on the practice.

But like The Sims and Tamagotchi pets, FarmVille soon becomes less of a game than a Sisyphean baby-sitting assignment. Crops must be harvested in a timely fashion, cows must be milked, and social obligations — like exchanging gifts and fertilizing your neighbor’s pumpkins — must be met.

The game seems to have mesmerized people from all walks of life. Every night for the last two weeks, Jil Wrinkle, a 40-year-old medical transcriber in the Philippines, has set his alarm for 1:30 a.m., when he will wake up, roll over and harvest his blueberries.

“I keep my laptop next to my bed,” he explained by phone. “The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is harvest, then I harvest again at 10 in the morning, then again in midafternoon, then in the evening, and then again right before going to bed.”

Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, said he had seen the craze firsthand among his students.

“Just like Guitar Hero lets you feel a little like being a rock star — you get to pose and dance a little while you’re doing it — with FarmVille there is a real sense that you’re actually doing something that has a cause and effect,” he said. “The method of dragging food out of the ground and getting something for it is really satisfying.”

FarmVille isn’t the only popular farm-theme game on Facebook. MyFarm and FarmTown, which are made by different companies, also have huge followings. Some academics have gone so far as to suggest that their collective popularity points to a widespread yearning for the pastoral life.

“The whole concept of ‘I’m sick of this modern, urban lifestyle, I wish I could just grow plants and vegetables and watch them grow,’ there is something very therapeutic about that,” said Philip Tan, director of the Singapore-M.I.T. Gambit Game Lab, a joint venture between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore to develop digital games.

Of course, real-life farming is quite a bit messier and more dangerous than FarmVille (perhaps just one reason that FarmVille players outnumber actual farmers in the United States by more than 60 to 1). Yet some of the game’s biggest fans are farmers.

“I was having all these deaths on the farm and hurting myself on a daily basis doing real farming,” said Donna Schoonover, of Schoonover Farm in Skagit County, Wash., who raises sheep, goats and Satin Angora rabbits (real ones!). “This was a way to remind myself of the mythology of farming, and why I started farming in the first place.”

Zynga, which is based in San Francisco, specializes in games that are easy to learn but hard to walk away from. It also makes Mafia Wars (25 million players) and Café World (24 million), the second and third most popular games on Facebook, respectively.

Mark Pincus, the founder and chief executive, said that Zynga earns money from advertising, sponsorships and players who buy in-game cash. Zynga has been profitable since 2007, he said.

“It’s really the same formula that makes Facebook successful,” Mr. Pincus said, “the ability to connect with your friends, to express yourself, and to invest in the game.”

FarmVille takes advantage of Facebook by allowing — nay, nagging — players to become “neighbors” with their friends, even those who have not joined the game. Players can earn points by helping with their neighbors’ work. They can also irritate friends who don’t want to play FarmVille with endless notifications and invitations to join, which has led to a vocal backlash.

Cropping up alongside fan blogs like Farmville Freak, which after just one month is getting 25,000 unique visitors a day, are Facebook groups for people who are tired of listening to their friends talk about their eggplants. On “I Hate FarmVille,” the largest of the anti-Farmville affinity groups on Facebook (it has more than 17,000 members), one person commented, “No, I will not give you a tree! No, I will not be your neighbor!”

This Is "The Gamer's PC" (1995)

http://www.cchronicles.com/files/f1ab...

Watch the full episode at the link above.

A review of the best new games of the year. Games covered include In the First Degree, Buried in Time, Mech Warrior 2, ImagiNation Network, and Phantasmagoria. Plus a visit to Microsoft's Judgment Day, a conference for third-party game developers in Redmond, Washington.

Zombie nazis are coming to get you in the next Wolfenstein

By Tina Sanchez



With the press all in town for the New York Comic Con, Activision took the opportunity to walk us through the latest build of id and Raven's new Wolfenstein. It was a good chance to get a sense of how the game plays out through the first few levels. As you've likely heard by now, our hero B.J. Blazkowicz is back for another FPS in set in a WWII fictional German city. Though, this is time around it's a much more fleshed out experience -- some of your supporting NPC characters help narrate your story. For lots of people, the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to Wolfenstein is zombie Nazis. I didn't see any of those today (we only saw two levels, so maybe they'll show up later), but I did get a chance to get a better sense of how the game's weapons and special powers work.

B.J.'s introductory mission sees him at the destruction of a train containing an unknown Nazi experiment -- the premise behind the sci-fi elements within the game. During his battles, the environment periodically loses its gravitational pull, sending rubble and unsuspecting Nazis floating into the air. For whatever reason, this has no affect on our protagonist, who remains firmly planted on the ground while continually shooting at the now vulnerable and motionless enemies. It would be nice to witness the villains flailing around while spraying bullets from their weapons -- I mean, the game makes it obvious that they're still alive because when gravity sets back in, they stand right back up and fight -- so why would anti-gravity place them in a lifeless state? But maybe there's a good reason that I missed. Anyway, it's not quite as appealing to kill unresponsive and defenseless enemies while they're seemingly floating on cloud nine, but I assume this only for that part of the game, since this never occurred in the "Church" level, a third of the way into the campaign.

Somewhere between the first level and Church, B.J. discovers a Veil Amulet, a device that gives him access to the Veil dimension. In this dimension, the environment around you retains its shape and form, but everything has a shade of green coating; the combat with the Nazis still persists although they and B.J. are in two different dimensions. And from what I was told, the Nazis don't have access to the Veil, but are continuously seeking the energy that comes from it called the "Black Sun," the focus of their experimentation.

Click the image above to check out all Wolfenstein screens.

The Veil Amulet has an energy meter that is drained during use. It slowly regenerates over time, but to quickly fill the meter back up, you can find pools of Veil energy. This can be done easily with the help of Geist creatures -- floating bugs that are always gravitating towards the energy pools. The Geist creatures can also be useful during combat; if they are near a Nazi, shooting them will unleash Geist energy, sending out what looks like an electric current that kills the enemy.

Now, the Veil Amulet has its uses for combat; one such example is that B.J. will unlock powers in the duration of the campaign that are only usable in the Veil dimension. During the demonstration, I noticed that the Amulet has four round stones, and only one of which looked activated. While in the Veil dimension, console players will have a power designated to a direction on the D-pad. So I'm going to go on a whim here and assume that only four powers total are unlockable. The single power Activision was willing to show during the Church level was Mire -- an ability to slow down time.

In addition to the Amulet having unique powers, the Veil dimension will also grant B.J. access through walls that have a Black Sun symbol on it -- giving him the ability to surprise the enemy (maybe puzzle elements will also be included in the campaign). Another important use the Veil dimension provides became apparent when B.J. fought a Heavy Trooper (the Heavy Trooper is the product of Nazi experimentation -- a heavily armored soldier equipped with a Particle Canon, which channels the veil energy into a deadly laser). The Veil dimension revealed the enemy's weak spots by highlighting them in a red hue.

After destroying enemies, B.J. gets to keep the weapons he acquires in his inventory. Upgrades can also be purchased, although the details of how were not revealed. Also, multiplayer is going to be available, but it remains a mystery as to how the Veil Amulet and such will be implemented in that.

Wolfenstein is using id's Tech 4 engine, is being ported to PC from console, and carries a release date of "when it's done." We suspect it'll be out late this year. For more info on the game, make sure to check out our recent interview with the game's creative director.

Windows 7 - what it means for gamers

Will Windows 7 achieve the respect that Vista failed to win?

A slightly tweaked Games Explorer brings support for auto-checking for game patches

The Windows Experience Index has increased its maximum rating from 5.9 to 7.9, to account for upcoming beefier components

It's telling that one element of Windows 7 Microsoft isn't especially trumpeting (amidst the cloud of self-congratulation about how the new OS is slicker, faster and essentially the Barack Obama of networking) is its gaming clout.

There's one simple reason for that - it's built on Vista, an operating system that gamers at large have spurned after all its outrageous performance promises turned out to be performance penalties instead.

Sure, SP1 helped a lot. And yes, there's been a ton of exaggeration from the operating system's counter-propagandists to contend with. But the truth is that three years on DirectX 10 remains a niche option of debatable usefulness, while the back of most game boxes coldly state you'll need an extra half-gig (or more) of RAM to run 'em on Vista instead of XP. Even the notoriously hyperbolic Microsoft is unlikely to attempt a similar massaging of the facts this time around.

So we can largely expect 7's gaming performance to be pretty much on a par with Vista's, and the recently released beta bears that out: give or take a few frames per second, benchmarks match those on the same system running Vista SP1.

More RAM available

It's the RAM issue that's likely to be 7's biggest boon to gamers, however. While the new OS is fundamentally an optimised version of Vista rather than a brand new platform, it's significantly more efficient, especially in terms of memory usage.

This means there'll be that much more RAM optionally available to gamers, as less of it is sacrificed to the OS's bottomless stomach. It also means there's the potential for smoother-running, faster-loading games for those with ample RAM, and for more games to run in the first place for those toting just a Gigabyte or so.

Unlike fat old man Vista, 7's even happy on a netbook, so there's more scope for Eees, Winds et al to be decent mini-gaming platforms.

In the long-term, we hope Windows 7 will achieve the success that Vista didn't quite manage and, more importantly, the respect that it definitely failed to win. If most gamers decide they trust 7 enough to finally step away from their faithful XP, that means DirectX 10 (although Win 7 introduces DX11, it won't be the major shift that 10 was from 9 and, importantly, it'll also be available for Vista) will be that much more established. That, in turn, means more games will support it, so we get better-looking titles all round.

It's likely, too, that the fairly insulting Vista-only tag carried by the few games unfortunate enough to get caught up in Microsoft's marketing misfires will seem less offensive when it now means the game will run on two operating systems.

Solid 3D stability from day one

Speaking of which, the early days of 7 shouldn't suffer from the really severe performance hits that blighted Vista's first months. While Vista's launch saw 3D card makers scrabbling to write drivers for a whole new architecture, we're told that this time around what works on Vista will work on 7.

While there's bound to be a few casualties, the current beta version certainly installs the latest Vista Nvidia and ATI drivers without complaint, which should mean rock-solid 3D stability from day one. Outside of drivers, however, the beta's not quite proving the plain sailing Microsoft is promising 7 will be - there's a few weird-beardy errors such as Mirror's Edge not playing sound during its cutscenes.

While most current games run solidly and developers working on upcoming titles have most of 2009 in which to ensure maximum 7 friendliness before the OS's retail launch, there's a worrying chance some older titles will remain unpatched and only partially functional.

In the end, though, Windows 7's main appeal to dedicated gamers is that it's simply a more pleasant place to be than Vista ever was. It looks better, it loads quicker, it's more responsive and it gets in your face a whole lot less. It may not offer gamers much that's new, and it's certainly not going to revolutionise performance, but as a nippy, cheerful background platform to launch games from, it's probably Microsoft's strongest-ever hand.

I live out my sexual fantasy as an online escort

Virtual sex pays real money.

by Emma Boyes

"Palela Alderson" is a 26-year-old Italian who works in communications. She likes sports, skiing, shopping...and selling herself as an online escort in the virtual world of Second Life.

This is Palela's story…

"If you met me in real life you would think I'm a good girl. I come from a middle-class family and I have wonderful parents. I live with my brother, graduated from University with a degree in communications, and have a job in that field that I like very much.

"But there is something else, something I have kept to myself since I was a teen. It's what I think of as my dark side: I have always very excited by the idea of being bought and used for pleasure.

"We have street prostitution here in Italy, and I have always wanted to be one of them. As a teenager I would watch these sexy women walking the streets, waiting for the cars to stop, teasing the guys, and then hopping in and getting out sometime later. I'm not sure why I find it such a turn-on. I think it's because when a man will pay to have you, you know he really desires you. It's proof that you're really wanted.

"I tried to be an escort in real-life -- freelancing, not with an agency or anything. I browsed the net and found some escort sites; I chose one, bought a disposable mobile phone, and published some of my pictures. I was really excited -- I couldn’t wait for my first date. I took my new mobile with me everywhere, waiting for it to ring.

"But in the end, I refused all the [offers of] dates I got. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it, not at all. It was because I was afraid of being discovered by my family. They would have never accepted it, and I didn't want to hurt them or make them ashamed of me. They have done so much for me, I wanted to be the good girl that they raised. If I hadn't had a family, I wouldn't have hesitated.

"Nothing is off limits. When I say a full evening, I underline the 'full.'"

"The first time I heard about Second Life was in 2006, when I read about it in a newspaper. I thought it sounded interesting but not really worth investigating. However, in the summer of 2007 I heard that there were sexual aspects to Second Life, and I had the idea that this could be a way to live out my dark fantasy life without my family finding out. I joined a couple of months later, and have now been an escort for fourteen months.

"I set myself up immediately as an online escort. It took a little while to learn how to do things, but within a few days I had my first client. In Second Life I look similar to the real me, even if I don't use the red hair extensions every day. I try to minimize the differences between real life and Second Life -- my avatar looks like me because it's me that's doing these things, not a character or an actress.

"What I charge has to be realistic for the Second Life economy. To give an example, a pair of thigh high boots (I'm crazy for them) cost 600-800 Linden Dollars, and it's 400-500 for a short dress. But I don't have any fixed "price"; I prefer my clients to give me something as a present. They already know that the average fee in Second Life is around 2000-3000 Linden Dollars for one full evening. In terms of real money, it's less then a drink -- about 7-10 euros. [That's around $9 to $13. Drinks are, apparently, quite expensive in Italy. --Ed.] Money itself is not the reason I'm doing this. It's just that I get a thrill out of it.

"And nothing is off limits. When I say a full evening, I underline the 'full.' I spend two to three hours several nights a week 'working' in Second Life. I dance in escort clubs, and people know what they're coming there for; they know where to find me. But I take new clients very rarely -- I tend to be quite selective.

"At the moment I don't currently have a real-life boyfriend. Right now I prefer to be single. It would be hard to find a partner who could understand my feelings and fantasies. And of course he'd have to approve of my 'second life.' Personally, I can completely separate sex from emotions, but I can't pretend a boyfriend would believe that, or be happy about what I do. It would be really difficult."

Xbox 360 Vs. PlayStation 3 Graphics Comparison: Now With PC!

gamespot.com — You asked for it. We went back and looked at several games from past Xbox 360 vs. PlayStation 3 graphics comparison features to see how the graphics compare when we add the PC to the challenge.

Fallout 3

A Washington, DC, teeming with automotive executives seeking government aid isn't nearly as dismal as the postapocalyptic DC setting in Fallout 3. Shadows and lighting change according to the game's day-and-night cycle, and we made sure to match timestamps for our comparison shots. In what will come as no surprise, the PC shames both consoles in the image-quality comparison. Everything from the textures to the antialiasing to the reflections looks better on the PC. Foliage, piping, and far-off buildings look far superior on the PC due to transparency antialiasing effects. Even draw distance is better on the PC, as the rocks and a fence near the burned-out bus aren't even visible on the consoles.

PC Xbox 360 PlayStation 3

(click on the different system above to see the compare)

many more below.

See the rest of the compares at The Gamespot

Ten celebrities who play World of Warcraft

First of all, I should come clean about something.

I’m not really a Warcraft player or fan. Over the past few weeks I’ve had to report on a number of World of Warcraft events (see here and here). This has allowed me to meet and befriend many hardcore players and given me a better understanding of the game. These days, I’d describe myself as more of a WoW sympathiser.

But this new-found interest led me to think, out of more than 11 million players worldwide, some of these people have got to be famous. So here, in no particular order, is a top ten list of Warcraft-playing celebrities:

10. Dave Chappelle

British audiences may not be too familiar with Dave Chappelle (maybe you caught him in The Nutty Professor telling your mama jokes with Eddie Murphy? No? You missed out). He’s actually one of the most popular comedians on the planet, with a hit show Stateside.

"You know what I've been playing a lot of?" the comedian reportedly asked a crowd a few years back. "World of Warcraft!" When a few cheers broke out, he responded, "I knew I had some geek brothers and sisters up in here!"

9. William Shatner

Celebrities that appeared in World of Warcraft adverts also play the game apparently. That advances this list quite a bit, so I won’t use them all. For example, I’ve deliberately missed out Steve Van Sant from The Sopranos (for not having a long enough spot) and John Claude van Damme (for talking in French).

First up is Denny Crane from Boston Legal Captain Kirk from Star Trek:

8. Mr T

A night-elf Mohawk (and don’t try to tell him otherwise…)

7. Verne Troyer

Mini-me is a Mage.

6. Kevin Werbach

Who? OK, so Mr Werbach isn’t strictly a celebrity. But he gets into this list because he is influential. He has the ear of President-elect Obama and is on the changemonger's transition team. More importantly, he’s part of not one, but two guilds.

5. Matt Stone and 4. Trey Parker

The South Park creators wrote an episode based on the game. It was so good it won an Emmy. There’s no way they could have done that episode which is filled with so many Warcraft in-jokes without having played the game first.

Watch the episode here.

3. Jay Mohr

You may have spotted this actor as the evil agent in Jerry McGuire, or on his guest appearances in shows like the West Wing and Scrubs. But he’s something of a World of Warcraft comedian, and hosted the proceedings at Blizzcon - the Warcraft convention in Anaheim, California - this year.

I was there. Jay was hilarious throughout. This is my favourite moment from the weekend – when he starts to ride the mount of the winner of the costume contest.

2. Mila Kunis

She plays Meg in Family Guy and was great in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. What are her gamer credentials? When she was quizzed about her WoW knowledge, she could name 8 of the 10 playable races. For goodness sake.

1. Macaulay Culkin

When Mila started to struggle with the questions, her boyfriend Macaulay “Home Alone” Culkin got involved.

He’s a level 70 Paladin apparently.

So there.

Posted by Murad Ahmed on November 25, 2008 at 05:34 PM |

6 Reasons Why I Hate the World of Warcraft

A very interesting article....

My Boyfriend won't quit World of Warcraft!

Anonymousca120 is flaming WOW.

My ex boyfriend started playing wow about a year and half ago, in March 2007.

Back then, we were still dating (we had a 3 years long term relationship). The first year when he was playing wow, we were spending time mostly apart from each other ( I was finishing my BFA in LA, and he works and lives in SF the whole time). I could never tell how much time he spent on playing wow during that day when we were apart, but I knew,HE PLAYED WAY TOO MUCH.

This year, when I finally finished school and moved in with him in SF, I saw the real pattern of his life. He wouldn't eat unless I bring him food (to his computer desk), he wouldn't hang out with his friends anymore or even me(no social life AT ALL), he complained and blamed all to this country economy and prejudices, and became really really cynical. Every time I tried to talk to him in logic, he wouldn't listen. From time to time, I tried to pull him away from wow, but it never worked. This May 2008, our relationship came to an end. Lot of reasons. He broke off with me. I can't blame it to wow, but there is a thing: our relationship just went straight downhill (like a free fall) since he spend about 18 hours a day playing that game, I was never again important in his life. I spent sometimes to cool off from the break up, and now, I'm still seeing him play wow every moment he is awake, and the situation has gotten even worse............He lost basically all his friends,social life, he hates the life in the US, and himself.........
Now, as friend of his(or last one in SF...), I still deeply concern about his physical and mental health even he and I are no longer together. I didn't study psychology in college, so maybe I wasn't using the right methods to help him realizing how important is getting his normal self back on track.

Can anybody provide informations to help quit the game?
Have you ever helped a friend to quit successfully?
Any tips?

Here are his conditions:
1, He tried to uninstall the game many times, but installed it back within 1 week. He specially told me one day,that when he was a little boy, his mom had hide his games to prevent him from playing too much, and he really hated that. I had never tried to hide the install CD since then because of what he had told me about his childhood gaming story, and his obsession of playing more and more games all the way till now (he is turning 28).

2,He would occasionally wanted to quit, but could never really resist over one week.

3,He lost all his interests of networking and socializing. Recently, he had told I am his only friend. How sad....

4,I tried to get his roommates to help him, or take him out once in a while. He later told me,"they are not my real friends, they just wanted to humiliate me, because I'm such a loser who's spending all day playing game". So my effort failed.

5,He hates being in America(he was born in east coast), and he feels he is a minority in the bottom of the society, and no one respects him; he said something like white man gets all the girls, ABCs can only stay home playing video game ..... he expressed how much he wanted to go to China to start his business; the reason he is playing so much is --- he has nothing to do in this country until he escape from this "living hell".

6,I can go on for an hour.

Please... someone help me (him) figure out what to do? He was a really really loving man before. He used love to travel (we drove all the way from CA to Canada, and traveled many times to east coast),love to make new friends; He had great sense of humor. He is very smart and did awesome in college (3.9 GPA). I can't watch him like this............................................................................................

I will be really appreciate if some one offer me any tips to help me help him quit wow.

My AIM:
CrestfallenX

Thanks a lot for reading this!!

(Life,Gaming)