Computer Games for Women
All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl. But not all computer play is mindless shooting, bombing or scoring — these are five computer games which may actually teach you a thing or two, from crisis management to communication skills.
The Harry Potter Series
Learn to finish what you start
I didn’t know Harry Potter’s eyes’ were green.
Ever feel that with a little more will and perseverance you could really make something of yourself? Many of us have a tendency to let challenges bring us down, and get discouraged too easily. Adventure games build your resolve in a way other entertainment cannot.
The beauty of the Harry Potter series
Each time you complete a Professor’s course, Professor Dumbledore does a House Points Count. The House with the most points gets to go to a bonus level, where you collect as many Beans as you can within a limited time. Beans are the currency of Hogwarts (in this game, at least), and can be used to buy stuff like ingredients for magic potions, Life Points and other useful stuff. And then you go through the whole gamut again, picking up a new spell with each new cycle.
The game tests your patience in several ways, not least of which is going over a lot of the same ground and zapping the same enemies before you finally complete your mission. Along the way there are many ‘secrets’ to be revealed, many of which you discover accidentally. Persevere, however, and you will learn the satisfaction that comes with conquering your discouragement and finishing what you start.
Zoo Tycoon
Mastering crisis management
What with traffic summonses appearing in your mailbox out of the blue, getting dumped by your boyfriend and your hairdryer spewing smoke on a bad hair day, it’s easy to lose your grip these days. How do you keep things in perspective? A fun way to learn this skill is with Zoo Tycoon.
Zoo Tycoon
First, your animals will start complaining that there’s too much grass in their new home. Then, it’s too much sand. Then, they want a toy. Then, the water is too murky. Then, they fall sick. Visitors don’t like seeing unhappy animals (there’s a bar that shows the animal’s happiness level), and they make scathing remarks like, “We don’t think much of your zoo.”
While all this is happening, of course, your money is depleting with wages and salaries. Suddenly, you find yourself in the red — you’re going broke! And then the National Animal Welfare Foundation says you’re not taking care of your animals properly, and bans you from adopting any new animals. People get bored and your ratings drop. You can view your zoo’s financial data and statistics in real-time, helping you keep track of how you’re doing.
The game gets more complicated as you go along, throwing increasingly tougher challenges at you, which you must overcome with panache in order to succeed. If it starts getting boring, you can increase the level of difficulty or download interesting stuff like the Endangered Species Expansion Pack
The Sims
Brush up your people skills
What makes the difference between a good manager and great manager? — people skills. The ability to empathise with others and to understand human nature, whims and failings gives great managers a useful edge when it comes to motivating subordinates and handling bosses.
As far as human computer games go, nothing beats The Sims
Except that they don’t. Things can go wrong. They miss a couple of days’ work, and they lose their job. They have affairs with neighbours. They fight, and run away (never to be heard of again in the game). They are lazy and selfish, always complaining… very much like real-world people, don’t you think?
The Sims live on a few basic necessities just like we do: food, rest, companionship, entertainment, comfort… the usual. You can improve your Sims’ mood by giving them better living conditions and making sure they get enough rest. A Sim in a good mood often gets better prospects at work, and can therefore bring home better paycheques. A Sim in a bad mood does not even want to look for a job.
Get ready to have your management skills and human insight tested to its limit with The Sims. They start sleeping on the bathroom floor, playing basketball at midnight and hitting on married neighbours. Keeping your family of Sims happy is tougher than you think, especially when (like humans) they have nearly infinite wants, are fussy and behave in surprisingly stupid ways. Oh, and if you think that money solves everything, it doesn’t — housing your Sims in a mansion with all the frills of opulence in no way guarantees success. You’ll have to think out of the box for this one, I’m afraid.
Diamond Mine
Sharpen your eye for detail
If you have a habit of letting even the simplest errors get by you when sending in reports, then you ought to look into how you can improve your eye for detail. Bosses like to spot mistakes on subordinates’ work, so the less you have of them, the better.
Diamond Mine is very much like the PDA game, Bejewelled: a single-player game where you need to switch the gems around in order to get three (or more) in a row. This may sound easy enough, but when you’re looking at 64 gems all packed together side by side, you’ll be surprised at how many times you end up slapping your forehead exclaiming, “How could I miss that!”
The trick to playing Diamond Mine is to think at least two steps ahead so that you don’t end up having no more moves (in which case your diamond stack collapses — Game Over!). This small-time strategy will help you construct your work-day better, too. Just don’t get addicted — this game is hard to put down once you get the hang of it.
You either play the free web version of Diamond Mine (with limited features) online . Or, if your internet connection is sucky, you can download the application onto your hard drive for free, which has better graphics and sounds, but comes with an expiry period. Or, if you have some spare plastic cash, why not get the full version for USD19.90?
Internet Scrabble
Tickle your brain
A lot has been said about what playing Scrabble regularly can do for your word power and presence of mind. If you’re one of those people that frequently have embarrassing lapses during concentration when you just cannot find the right word to use, playing this popular word game will soon set you right. The trouble is playing Scrabble with your partner can often lead to miserable tiffs… especially if he’s a sore loser.
The Internet Scrabble Club is every avid Scrabble-player’s dream website, plus it’s free. Registration is simple — username and password — and they don’t make a big deal of fancy graphics and stuff so that your game can proceed uninterrupted. All you need is to download a small file to your hard disk, have a reliable internet connection and you’re good to go!
You can specify the type of player you want to play with. Some use official American Scrabble dictionaries, some use French, Dutch and even Italian (seven to choose from, altogether). Select one you’re comfortable with. Also, some players like to use a dictionary during the game, which you may or may not be comfortable with. This, too, you can specify when you’re looking for a challenge. Supposing you cannot find a suitable one (or no one wants to play with you), a computer is assigned to challenge you — a very tough opponent!
There are some ‘commands’ you need to learn to play Internet Scrabble effectively like SEEK (search for a suitable opponent), WHO (see all players logged in to the ISC server) and MATCH (set up a game with a specific player). To make the Internet Scrabble Club experience more realistic the TELL command lets you send a personal message to your opponent so you can really tease them into making a bad move. But if you’re like me, just clicking on the buttons work great… if you’re not fussy about the details of the person you’re up against.
