We’ve all been there. We’ve all sat in the lobby listening to some wannabe rapper spouting lines about popping caps in people’s (fill in the blank), or that kid who isn’t even old enough to be in the game to start with. And some of us have even endured hounding from members of the opposite sex hoping to get some pictures or voice chat for their trouble.

Some of them aren’t even interested in getting much gaming done at all. They just want to complain or mess things up for others.

If you haven’t seen them, now you will. They’ve been conveniently collected in one place. For your entertainment: the top ten most annoying online gamers.

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Note: This is part III of my write-up of EA Sims Bloggers Day. You can read Part I, Part II and Part III here.

MySims. You play as a wide-eyed chibi, thrust into a run down town and given a goal: attract citizens. You do this by building furniture, houses, and unlocking super-computers and pin-ball machines. Once you’ve got what people want, you’ve convined them to return home.

When we saw this game demoed, it was hard not to notice the gap between this and MySims Kingdom. In MySims Kingdom, the producers talked about how they’d elimiated the annoying loading screens. Moving from that into MySims PC, you see the loading screens first hand. Everytime you switch between building mode and town mode, in fact. Where the PC port does come into its own though, is the online arena.

Each player gets given a little social zone to invite their friends to. You can build there, so you can each get your own ‘hangout’, there are the usual chat-programs and minigames - tag being the version we saw - and the whole thing is like a slicker, cuter, smaller, faster-loading Second Life.
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Every gamer has their problems. Some are exceptionally loud, others don’t like to share their controllers. These quirks aren’t necessarily bad, but sometimes they just get in the way. I’ve had friends who could only play while eating. When I was littler I was really horrible about giving my controller up to someone if we were taking turns on a game. Yes, I was one of those: “No you gave your turn to me…again” people. Also, my friend and I used to lean to the side we were turning whenever we played Mario Kart on the SNES. I think we thought that if we leaned in real life, we’d turn corners better in the game.

My problems have changed over the years, but I’m here to admit my latest issue. Gaming puts me to sleep. And I don’t mean this in the negative sense that the games are boring or whatever. No, gaming is like the warm milk and blanket to my inner child. It’s perplexing.

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