not 
A better class of computer game
Posted by Aphra Behn on September 29, 2007
For no good reason that I can think of, I signed up to play Fantasy CEO with the Times. Essentially, you make the decisions which run a manufacturing company – one year’s worth per week – every week for eight weeks, and at the end I guess they see who’s a billionaire and who’s bust.
Why did I do this? The first round of decisions have to be in on Monday and I haven’t even finished reading the effing manual. There are a lot of manuals to read, tutorials to watch, and practice runs to try. I’m impressed by the slickness of the whole thing, even if I did have to install MS Excel because their seriously fancy spreadsheet wouldn’t work in OpenOffice.
I do know why I did it – I did it for a dare. I dared myself to do this complicated, competitive thing. There are, apparently, 3880 of us. The problem is that it’s already stressing me up – the first round closes on Monday, and I haven’t read the manuals, watched the tutorials, practised with the spreddy, considered a strategy or anything. And I was given the whole week to do it.
It’s making me nervous, and that’s why I have to do it. Which I guess is an interesting learning in itself.
anticant said
You do seem to have a lot of time on your hands!
Aphra Behn said
Well, I live on my tod and I work an average of 35 hours a week, so maybe I do.
On t’other hand I don’t watch television. Any television. Ever.
A couple of times a month I’ll watch a video or a DVD while doing something else such as building the Legendary Bookcase or sorting out the books in it or hemming curtains or something.
As a result I have a good four or five hours available to me every evening. You can do a lot of stuff in twenty to twenty-five hours a week.