I’m used to playing games with friends, but recently I had the opportunity to play video games instead of board games. I got together with some friends of a friend today, and we all played two very different games: Wii Sports and Defense of the Ancients (the Warcraft III mod).

Today was my first experience playing the Wii. While we only had one controller, it was a lot of fun to take turns and comment on each other’s playing. One of the guys was trying to coach my Wii tennis technique (i.e. “Watch your wrist”). During Wii boxing, cell phone movies were taken of the person playing (but not of the game). It was great fun watching ourselves and the ridiculous amount of effort we put into our Wii-mote punches. It’s easy to lose sight of your body when focusing on a game that requires motion control. Just like people in my class moving the PS3 controller, I wiggled and ducked around like there was an invisible bee trying to sting me.

I started to really fall in love with the Wii and its happy music. I love the fact that the sensor responds to the Wii-mote like a mouse on many of the menu screens. The design is sleek yet practical. I am going to get a Wii soon and now I’m way more excited than before. It’s hard to describe how fun it is – you have to play it for yourself.

After playing the Wii for a while, we started playing Defense of the Ancients (DotA). My friend is in love with that game, and we all needed to practice for a DotA LAN party taking place this Friday. We had three labtops and a desktop, so the player with the desktop was at a disadvantage (as you could see where his player was at a quick glance). We promised not to look, but our own characters kept us busy enough that it was hardly necessary.

Playing DotA with more people was definitely fun. Early on, I could see that one of the guys was Bartle’s killer player type because he loved to stalk characters and sneak up on people when they least expected it. Another guy had a great knowledge of items; he always knew what to get for each character at every stage of the game. As a new player to DotA, I had primarily been focused on fighting and found their player preferences to be inspiring. I never realized there was so much strategy involved in what had seemed like a fairly straightforward game.

While I didn’t win, I still enjoyed playing because it was an incredibly social experience. I loved having your friends and enemies in the same room and being able to trash-talk or strategize. There is nothing quite like hearing your enemy scream out of shock when you kill them. I hope I can experience that someday as I become a better DotA player.