If you knew computer games only from the likes of Grand Theft Auto IV, you'd have the wrong idea about them. - Yes, there Are grim armies of violent, soulless, but technically astounding games waiting to swallow you whole and spit you out a few weeks later, with only dead brain cells to show for the experience. But there are also lots of games out there that make you think, or at least, figure.
Thanks to a global population of programmers who were playing Minesweeper almost before they were walking or talking.. puzzle games are having a heyday as much as anything involving thuggish street life, or zombie invasions.
 
Puzzle games don't involve hand-eye coordination, much less the spilling of blood. Most have a small number of simple components that are laid out in a progressively more vexing manner; down a path, in fact, that can lead to madness. While they often have capable graphics, the essence of a puzzle game is a problem of logic that exists independent of anything visual. You can almost play some puzzle games with your eyes closed.
 
Their descriptions never do them justice. Who would want to spend any time "connecting pairs of colored squares on three sides of a Ribik-like cube"{?} But fire up "3D Logic," and you marvel at how quickly it moves from the absurdly simple to the seemingly impossible!
 
That game, and thousands of others, are available on free sites, {for their Web-links, see, the end of this post}.-- Most of these sites are sensible enough to leave you alone, to trudge along slowly from one game-level to the next. Some, though, insist on inflicting on you, annoying Web 2.0 features, such as social networks that allow you to see what games your "friends" are playing. The quotation marks are necessary because Real friends.. true pals, are much too polite, ever to presume to ask, how much time you've been wasting with 'Bloxorz'{?}
 
To appreciate the provenance of these games, meet Ozzie Mercado, a 22-year-old college student from East Bangor, Pa., a typical 'puzzlepreneur,' in that, by his own admission, he spends all day thinking about new games he can write.
 
One cold day this past February, Mr. Mercado was walking through a doorway in his apartment, when suddenly he was gripped with the idea for a puzzle game involving.. doors! Not regular doors, of course, but puzzle doors; doors that open only in one direction, and that stand between you, and the other end of a maze.
 
The first thing he did was to do a Google search, to make sure no one else had done something similar. Then, he spent a few hours working on a rough prototype. After that, he devoted two weeks to thinking up the 15 maze levels that would make up the game, getting friends to help sort them, from easy-to-hard. Some of his best thinking, he says, was done sitting in class.
 
"Open Doors" was released in March, and has since been played nearly six million times, making it, as these logic, online-games go, a modest hit. Game {Web} sites often give developers a small cut of the revenues their videogames bring in; and those, combined with some sponsorship arrangements, have meant a payday of $1,500 to date, for Mr. Mercado.
{'HoM's comment: Let's see, 1,500/6,000,000 .. aarrgh!; it'll need to wait,'til later}.
 
But the real payoff, he says, is that "Open Doors," has.. well, opened doors for him at gaming companies. He's talking to some about a full-time job "writing-code" for games, which in this world, is about as good as it gets.-- It's better than what will appen to the vast majority of game developers.. ie., nothing. Most of these games use a programming language called "Flash," which is exceptioally easy to learn. Competitors, thus, appear out of nowhere; Hey, that could be the makings for another game!
 
I called Mr. Mercado because I'm a fan of "Open Doors." I'm also in the thrall of "Hoshisaga"; google: tinyurl.com/3944cq which in Japanese, means "Star Hunt," and which is also a good description of the game.
.. Actually, "Hoshisaga," isn't so much a game, as it is variations on a game theme. You're pre-
sented with dozens of squares, each of which contains a hidden star. Sometimes, finding the star involves something as banal as clicking on the right part of a square. Other times, though, you need to figure out an entire system of physics.
 
..Most of the time, the actual unveiling of the star is a moment of remarkable beauty; the sort most Westerners would regard as distinctly Japanese. Enjoy the sequel, too, at: tinyurl.com/2mtklw
 
I don't want to fall into the trap of romanticizing these puzzle games, or claiming that compared with, say, first-person {'Real-world'} social encounters, that they will make us better or smarter people. After all, at the end of two hours of {playing} "Bloxorz," in which you move a domino along a path, you will no more have read a book, helped a homeless person, or learned how to make puff pastry, than if you had spent the same amount of time playing the mainly reflex-
oriented, "Doom." ..I just fret about the decline of our civilization less, when playing a puzzle game.
Go ahead and try one. If your boss walks in and wants an explanation, just say that you're following up on something that you read in the Wall Street Journal.
 
Links, to several of the aforementioned, online {puzzle} game-sites:
http://www.armorgames.com
http://www.addictinggames.com
http://www.newgrounds.com
http://www.kongregate.com

Hall, you are a master debater and a cunning linguist. I see you still borrow all of your ideas from other people. Do you walk up to people in the library and hand them books?