The Meme

While kelkyag gave me a bunch more pick-a-day-prompts, I’d been thinking about this, so I wrote it 🙂

Today I’ve been thinking about Farmville (big surprise there) – as well as Civ, Sim City, and Carcassonne, and how they relate to my writing.

The thought first came to me a week or two after I’d gotten enmeshed in Farmville, which really can devour quite a bit of time. I was running Addergoole scenarios in my head (like ya do) and I realized that the character was sort of playing Farmville IRL.

My first thought was “I’ve been playing this so much that it’s leeching into my characters.”

But THEN I thought about the backstory for Elle and Reynard: rebuilding Buffalo, complete with farms. I thought about the backstory for the Planners: (they started out as) hippy survivalists, with farming, including urban farming. Dig far enough into many of my settings (not, say, Dragons next Door), and you find gardens, farms,and rebuilding buildings: reclaiming, generally, unused or underused land.

The thing is, for all that games like Farmville and Civ, Sim City and Carcasoone are immensely engrossing games, part of why I play them so intensely has to do with how they speak to me. They’re world-building games, creating something out of nothing and making it work to your own plan.

Brb, my electronic cows need feeding.

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