STUPID GAMES

Pointless Games For The 140-Character Crowd

By Marc Sakol

I ADMIT IT: I AM NOT A FAN OF Twitter.

I don't think it's a pox on humanity like texting, I just think it's Facebook without the "fun," if you want to call it that. I just don't get Twittering, and now they've got Twitter games.

Still, being a gamer, I checked out the newest fads on Twitter to stay in the loop. Here's my take:

SNODS: -- I've been playing games my entire life and I can't figure out what to do in this sorry excuse for amusement. The point seems to be to go around and "capture" other Tweeters who have lots of followers. You then get an arbitrary amount of credit that increases every hour and lets you upgrade your character. The objective is to hold on to your captives long enough to accumulate ridiculous amounts of cash that then all gets blown on one upgrade. Of course you can lower the prices of the upgrades if your willing to pay a $15 charge to become a special agent. Note: that's 15 real dollars, not fake ones.

Game play seems to be nothing more than, "Here are three random tweeters, pick one to capture." Its simplicity is on the level of the old T1-calculator games I used to play in high school. I played five minutes and was done. So if you have five minutes to waste -- totally go play this game.

Tweetfight: This brings out the bully in everyone. Apparently you pick a random person to fight, but you don't actually fight them. Tweetfight just looks at your Tweetrank (whatever that is) and whoever has the better Tweetrank wins. This means that it would be impossible for me to ever win without spending copious hours self-promoting myself 140 character at a time. In a word, stupid. Because anyone with lots of followers automatically wins. Just like in real life.

140 Mafia: Because you don't already have enough mob games on Facebook. 140 Mafia plays just like the rest of them; hit a button five times and wait an hour to hit it five more times. I gave it 10 minutes before giving up and going to play a real mob game like GTA.

Spymaster: One of Twitter's hottest games right now. It's also apparently one of it's best if you like simple and boring.

It's nice to know that the gaming industry is big enough now that we can have a casual gaming market. But these games are so played out that I just can't believe people bother with them.

And, by the way, shouldn't you be working?

Marc Sakol understands the kindness in strangers, which is why he abandons hope of actually getting to know people. He spends his time falling head first into video games, watching every movie ever made and writing for his blog Sarcasm Not Included.