Waiting for the call to fight

I sat at my desk, more like a caged animal than a man who toils nobly in the fields of information technology. I could not help clicking on the website every few minutes, waiting for some good news. I got up to freshen my coffee … still no luck. I opened the mail … nada. I was beginning to worry.

Sorry if I am starting to sound like an expectant father. That is not the case. The news I awaited did not concern family, or even politics or birding. I wasn’t waiting for news on the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers or Sixers.

I was waiting for a challenge.

I hadn’t been called out for a fight. I was waiting for my favorite online gaming site, Pogo.com, to release the weekly challenges, a Wednesday tradition for players on the ultra-popular website. Like any good addiction, Pogo starts out in a benign manner, offering free trials of around 80 games for players willing to sign up.

“Poppit” is the signature game over at Pogo, and it is one of the freebie titles you can try just by signing up. The object of the game is to pop pairs of balloons and release the prizes hidden inside them. While I was writing this column, an associate here at the Institute signed up for a free account. It took him about two minutes, and then he started playing “Poppit.” He’s still playing it.

The selection of free games is impressive. You can play “Bejeweled 2,” successor to the immensely popular “timeburner” that swept the Internet a couple of years ago. “Bookworm” is just the thing if you are looking to bolster your vocabulary with hundreds of three- and four-letter words, while “Scrabble Blast” will help you build from there.

Never bored when on the board

There are traditional board games in their online forms, along with familiar card and casino titles. Most computer-gaming fans can count on blowing several hours on the first visit, so make sure that you have plenty of time set aside before visiting the site at www.pogo.com.

Pogo is by nature a pay site. It is owned by gaming superstar EA, nee Electronic Arts, and is dedicated to providing a good time for a price.  My yearly membership cost me $29.95, and so far it has been worth every penny. While you can visit Pogo and play for free, membership in Club Pogo, its pay service, opens the broadest selection of games and challenges to players of even the most limited ability … like me.

Fee-based online gaming is nothing new. People dump hundreds of dollars into contests like “World of Warfare” and devote their every waking moment to it. Other players are so enamored of “The Sims” that they actually decorate their real-life house to match their online abode.

I got hooked when longtime friend of The Wire Shilfiell sent me a five-day free trial to Club Pogo. Shilly told me that I was working too hard here at the world famous Granese Institute of Technology and that I should relax more, suggesting a nice game of “Poppit” as a cure for my stress. I took advantage of the free membership, played for six or seven consecutive hours, and signed up for my own account.

At this point, the cornucopia of games spilled out in front of me. The selection of solitaire games alone stopped me in my tracks. I had a choice of conventional Klondike-style play, “Payday Free Cell,” “Tri-Peaks” and two unusual games based on world travel. My day was finished.

The play is just part of the fun

It took me a while to realize that Pogo is more than just gaming. It is also a community where people met, not just to play, but to socialize as well. As I poked around the dozens of online game rooms, I noticed that conversations were buzzing along in the background. The effect is like keeping an IM client open while playing your favorite video game, but much less cumbersome.

Better still, the conversations are self-censoring. Any hint of off-color vocabulary is immediately rendered into unintelligible symbols. Certain rooms are labeled uncensored, but most keep their chatter at a family-friendly level. People were actually being social rather than combative, with an occasional unavoidable exception or two. It was great fun.

The system also includes a private chat facility where you can attempt to psych out your opponent during the game without everyone in the room laughing at you when your strategy backfires. Sensibly, the private chat is blocked out in games like pinochle, where the temptation to inform one’s partner of that double run in hearts could be too difficult for even the straightest arrow to resist.

Other card games include hearts, spades, bridge, cribbage, gin, and euchre. You can bring your own opponents and enjoy a friendly game among friends, or let the system set you up with a tableful of pleasant company. I have had great times playing pinochle against people I have never met. Believe me, taking a whipping from strangers is far less painful than enduring one administered by friends.

The selection of games is immense, and there is always someone ready to play. I have never logged on to find fewer than 150,000 persons connected. Even with that kind of membership, Pogo always offers quick response over my broadband connection. I have not tried to play there over a dialup connection.

The weekly challenges were announced just in time for my lunch break. First, I would have to earn ten rather rare symbols in the “Hog Heaven Slots” slot-machine game. Then, even trickier, I would be required to reach the speed round 100 times in “Word Whomp Whackdown.” I snickered with glee. This was a piece of cake.

Racking up tokens and badges

The token is the coin of the realm in Club Pogo. You cannot buy much of anything with them, but your token total is displayed in your online profile. At a glance, prospective opponents can see how dedicated you are to your gaming activities. When I first started playing, I shied away from people with, say, 10 million or more tokens. Now I seek them out, emboldened by the 380,000 tokens I have earned in the past couple of months. I hope to reach the million mark later in 2007.

Colorful badges are awarded to players who achieve various levels of proficiency. These are even more highly prized than tokens and are proudly displayed by all who win them. I have managed to accumulate more than 60 of them already and have my sights set on the centum mark soon. It is good to have goals.

If you think you’ll get hooked on an online game when pigs fly, “Hog Heaven Slots” is the game for you. The porcine-themed slot machine features nine pay lines and the chance to rack up a respectable token total in short order. A matrix of flying pigs on the top half of the screen adds an extra element of entertainment.

Pink, blue and gold pigs are arrayed at random in a grid pattern. When you match three pigs of the same color in a row or column they turn into tokens and disappear. Their replacements could trigger another match, and another. Sometimes the flying pig game yields more winnings than the slot machine. During the latter contest, the game logo occasionally turns up. When ten of these appear, the player gets a bonus. That was what I needed to accomplish my first challenge. It did not take me long.

Buoyed by my success, I moved along to “Word Whomp Whackdown.” This popular game features an array of letters that players use to form as many words as possible in a limited time period. The more words you make, the more time you get. If you reach a certain score, you are invited into the speed round.

The game has a garden theme in which you play as a gopher sniffing his way around a vegetable garden. As the scores mounts you assume the ranks of different vegetables. The more you play, the tastier your personality. I’ve already moved up to dandelion level, appropriate for a South Jersey player.

In the speed round you are charged with deciphering a few more words. This time, your gopher is being chased by a sniffy bloodhound. If you identify all the words correctly, your burrowing buddy is rewarded with a giant carrot. If you fail, he literally goes to the dogs. Again, the challenge fell at my feet. My gopher munched 100 giant carrots, and all was well with the world.

You may be thinking that I blew a great deal of time that could have been put to better use elsewhere, and you are probably right. Still, I had a great deal of fun, managed to relax, and completed my challenges. For me, that made it all worthwhile. If you are a Pogo badge hound, I would love to hear from you. Drop me a note at granese@juno.com. If I do not answer immediately, I am probably playing “Lottso.”