I have a shameful secret.

(my latest acquisition)

I am an electronic sportsman.

Another way for saying I like computer games.

With the modernization of Western Civilization in particular, mankind has been given a boon.

TIME. Disposable time.

Demands of survival seem to have lessened. If one had to go back only one hundred years and look at the working hours that were demanded of the average worker, it is easy to see how conditions have improved.

Of course the greatest reason for games is the computer. The microchip.

The first arcades had pinball, the real deal with metal balls of shiny silver. My mother frowned upon them as the “rougher” elements of the neighbourhood boys hung around them and SMOKED!! I had one truly great game that I remember playing. I must have been about ten years old. It was at the café next door to my primary school, Amalinda in East London. There was just one machine. I never really had money to play too often but this one time when I was by myself, I played a game. I hope there was nothing wrong with the machine but I earned so many free games, 32 to be exact. I seemed to play for ages. Never again did that happen to me on that particular machine (or any other if I remember).

In the early 1980’s the world changed with the emergence of fellows like Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak. The PC, the personal computer was made.

New arcade games came out, the most memorable of these were Space Invaders and Pac Man. I still remember the sounds of those games. At that stage of my life I had the Suzuki Katana. I was in my early twenties. I used to get a pile of twenty cent coins and my youngest brother would get on the back of the bike (while I battled to keep it upright). We would then go to the video game arcade. They also started building the big consoles where you could sit in it like a car or get on seat like a motorbike, lots of sound and bright colours, while you swayed and tilted trying to pass other vehicles and remain on the race track. I loved it but I was not very good.

Through the years I have dabbled a bit here and there with more modern games but chess, reading and sport were my favoured forms of entertainment. The modern games require the player to weave, duck, shoot, jump, chop and so on, this is way out of my league! I watch my nephew play without really knowing what the hell he is doing.

Then in 2015 a problem developed, a big problem.
With the constant upgrade of cell phones, the small games on these phones evolved into massive sophisticated games that used up loads of space and RAM. A concept of “freemium” games were developed. To my understanding, you can download the basic platform and a few basic “things” but to get the really cool fancy “things”, you have to pay money, real money.

I am a capitalist in a capitalist world and I fully understand concepts such as development and research costs, profits and so on. So I don’t really whine about the structure of these games, you like it and if you lack patience and you have a few bob on the side then fair enough, go for it. Otherwise be patient and let rewards accrue.
Anyway in 2015 I found my ideal game. It is called Real Racing 3. It is about racing cars and various tracks you can race them on.

In those early days I had no idea what I was really doing. I had a Blackberry back then and it had a less fancy version of the game. I got addicted. I am still addicted over three years later. Even though I play it a lot, I am still not very good.
So here is this guy, in his late fifties, playing a car game. How did they keep me hooked for so long? And I am still hooked!

(my daily farming race)

Here are some reasons for my secret shameful addiction:

1. Have a limited resource (gold coins) that can be earned very slowly.
2. Have a huge variety of cars.
3. Have a large number of upgrades for each vehicle where a common currency can be used for some levels of upgrade and the rare coins be used for other upgrades.
4. Have weekly competitions and sometimes competitions to win higher level cars.
5. Create a website where news and the racing community can communicate tips, tricks and strategies.
6. Give options to purchase coins at various “bargain rates” with real money.
7. Watch adverts to earn coins on a daily basis.
8. Reward those who log in to the game on a consistent basis with escalating rates.
9. Be able to play with the cars set on various levels of difficulty, for those who can play on the more difficult levels, have their cars perform correspondingly better.
10. To earn more coins, you can "farm". This means you repeat playing the more profitable races which allows one to eventually earn more "gold". This requires time.

Well, as you can see by my stats, I have been playing for a very long time, yet there are those out there whose times and skills dwarf my own. I must be a pretty boring person as I seem to like doing the same old thing, but it is the statistics, the measurement and progress of my skills, the vehicles acquired, that is what has me trapped in "pleasurable pursuits"

When I upgrade my cell phone every couple of years and I go to the cell phone dealer, the key question always is, “Can this phone load Real Racing 3?”