My Secret Life as an Expat Gamer – Entertainment, Pure and Simple

This post is part of an ongoing series that is being written through April. It covers gaming or, more specifically, MMORPGs and how they have benefited me personally over the years in terms of business relationships as well as entertainment value while on the road living the nomadic existence. Stay tuned for later installments of “My Secret Life as an Expat Gamer”, as well as “The Secrets of My Success”, which is an upcoming series starting in May covering early retirement and how to get yourself out of debt and into living a life of absolute freedom as an expat in countries around the world.

When you get right down to it, playing video games is a form of entertainment. And like all forms of entertainment it’s a type of escapism where you can shed your daily responsibilities for a wide array of activities ranging from shooting pool, watching a movie, hanging out at the beach, surfing, skateboarding, reading a book or any other hobby/activity performed for pleasure’s sake.

Something that I think really sets the pace in the modern era is how when a new book series begins to become popular and gets made into a movie or a TV show, it is usually accompanied by at least one or two video games that can be played alongside the other media. In some cases it’s a stand-alone game that mirrors the source material, and in other cases it’s actually an interactive social media campaign meant to draw players in through a series of extra story lines and media that is otherwise unavailable to the normal viewers. Nothing sells more copies of a product than a social media campaign that gives the participants additional source material.

A perfect example of what I mean by this is the current phenomena that is The Walking Dead. It started out as a comic book/graphic novel, then moved into a television show, which has since spawned merchandising and more important to this conversation, a video game title as well. That means they are maximizing their exposure to far more people than just those who read comics; it’s targeted towards the television market as well as the gamers, which means they have a fairly wide spread of the “nerd” market. Yes. I’m a nerd. Yes. I know what boobhats are. Lawlz, woot, and I know the birthplace of the word/phrase newb/n00b.

Now, when you are traveling on the road there’s usually downtime here and there. I also happen to watch a lot of shows, one of which is The Walking Dead. For me…it’s the TV show that got me into the franchise. I never read the comic, and have no desire to. But I love the show I’ll be playing the video game at some point this summer, just because it’s part of a franchise I enjoy.

Which brings me to the point of this whole post: you don’t have to worry about missing your shows, games or anything else when you are on the road. Too many people think that a life of continual travel means giving up your shows, your games and your normal routines and that’s just not the case. All of this entertainment can be had anywhere in the world, so you can just as easily be camped out on the shores of Lake Michigan as you could be tucked away in the Rhodopes on the border of Greece; entertainment is global.

What are your favorite types of games to play when on the road or in between adventures? Leave a comment below and let me know!

 P.S. Who else played the Diablo III open beta this last weekend? I was in Playa for 5 hours on Saturday, but I still managed to level up a Wizard and Demon Hunter through the beta. Looking good so far, but Guild Wars 2 has my eye drawn towards its release date….I’ll be biding my time in SW:TOR until then