Offline Or Flatline?

“Now who is going to be capable of trouncing me without internet connection?”

Self-proclaimed experts, sceptical pessimists and attention deprived grandparents, generously verbalizing their matured experience and respective maladies, have always proclaimed that you never fully appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone; whether such statements refer to youth, the sad expiration of a close relation, or my current affliction, reduced internet connection. Do you recall those rustic, conventional times before the intrusive probing of interactivity? Those passive propensities that motivated our excursions? Reclining in your leathered upholstered chair, attired in maroon coloured robes made from the finest silks, percussing the crimson embers of tobacco from my pipe and sipping herbal teas in a variant of exotically brewed colours? Recanting with eloquent lucidity your greatest, historically accurate gaming accomplishments, barely perturbed with your online statistical prowess or the fickle, dismissive antagonists,  obscured by the anonymity of secluded ambiance? No, me neither. Without the elasticity of social interactivity I feel confined, claustrophobic and isolated by severance. The rapidity of division is immediately crippling, but not necessarily the emotive response I would have anticipated.

An accurate definition, is likening to severing cartilage in your ligaments, that is pronounced mutilating sensation, with debilitating eventuality. I can still freely game, still capable of attaining those alluring though insatiable virtual trophies, though its surprising what limited dispersal of availability is at your disposal, with the reduced physicality to your interactive profile, as well as the enjoying a game to its full potential is like purchasing a television without a controller. You take its enigmatic presence for granted, depreciate the significance in conjunction with utilising your console to its full inherent specification, which doesn’t bode well for the developer’s immediate tutelage for future sensitivity to virtual connectivity.

“This is what 2 weeks without internet will do to you.”

Of course there is interactive reprieve seldom experienced from the increased preservation of solitary interactions, that allows for more intimate receptivity to my games. The exhilarating, though definitively intimidating frustrations of online activity is exhausting, and is somewhat of a masochistic endeavour to continually undertake, and my overt scarcity to offline gameplay has enabled me to provoke interactions that nurtures sadistic perceptions of gaming satisfaction. The most obscure consultation that has resulted with my offline intimacy however, is how equally crucial and trivial interactivity has on gaming, and especially how heavily reliant we are on its ambiguous occupancy, irrespective of how intermittent its used. I can only evaluate this situation by suggesting–in typically British levity–is like clumsily relinquishing that final salted, potato based snack from your packet of monster munch, but due to your hurried anticipation it falls exasperatingly to the floor, and though in actuality you know it lacks the required sustenance to amend your nutritional hunger, somehow you still feel that despite its nutritional irrelevance, it would have made the difference.

PS: your probably speculating as to how I’m still capable of blogging. Well its largely attributed to a very patient, accommodating and nurturing girlfriend. I humbly appreciate your patient servitude to my cause.

How would you cope without online capabilities? Or do you consciously avoid using such functions? Let me know what you guys think. Cheers.