Games in the Workplace?

Anonymous Coward asks: "Back in the day it was not uncommon for games to contain 'Escape Buttons' and other commands to quickly exit a game. These games appealed to the Geek at Work as he could fill in his Friday afternoon and as soon as he heard his boss' shoes approaching, he could escape from the third dungeon and return to his spreadsheet. Yet games today are not allowing such activities to occur. Most games are requiring so much dedicated action that it is impossible to play a game and still switch back and forth without long delays. Where are the games for the worker?"

Comments

Also a couple of Work friendly games

[Kasmiur]

Emulators!!!
Many of the NES and SNES emulators will run in windowed mode or will let you freeze the game and alt tab out of it.

Also there are a few emulators with network enabled so you can play multiplayer with other people.

Also Diablo II works good.
Destruction Zone a old tank combat game from the old days of 94(still quite fun to play)

feel free to add to the list.

Also I imagine many people at work wont be useding win98. they are forced to use something along the lines of Windows NT or 2K based upon thier job.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

play QUAKE at work!

[theCURE]

There is a new version of xquake that allows you to set a variable fastquit. a simple config like:

fastquit 1
bind F12 "quit"

and you're golden. the screen goes back into windows very quick, and no trace of the game is left. It works, trust me :)

BG and Hiding windows from prying eyes...

[gabec]

OK, I would feel insanely uncomfortable playing a game at work (well, during work hours and without the consent of the work community), but here's an option for those that don't...

First, Baldur's Gate has a great option... in the Options tab you can set BG to run in a window instead of full-screen. This can kill the playability on older PCs but BG isn't an action game so it's still a viable option.

Also many games support the (on windows) ALT+ENTER hotkey to switch between normal and full screen mode (like if you're watching a DVD or MPEG you can switch this way).

But whatever your game of choice, if, unlike at Kasmiur's, your workplace does not allow games, you might want to look into an insanely useful program called "Watchcat." First of all, it's FREEWARE. The program, either by clicks or hotkeys, will hide any or all applications currently running... so if you're a Solitaire freak and you hear someone coming up, smack that hotkey and not only is the game off the desktop, it's off of the taskbar too. This program ROCKS.

Here's a small article about the program on Tech TV

Re:Ah - the secret is to..

[EboMike]

[Windows + M]
All open windows are minimized.
Perhaps its a new "feature."

Actually, this "new" feature has been in all Windows versions since 98, possibly even since 95. There's several more, like Windows + R (Run), Windows + E (Explorer), etc.

Re:More like: Where's the Work?

[Lemmy Caution]

People don't like to be reminded that Supply and Demand giveth, Supply and Demand taketh away.

I was just reading a history of the potato that made an interesting observation: how rare and new wages that allow one to get more than just food and a tiny bit extra really are. The debates during the 17th through 19th centuries in England and Ireland about the potato involved questions of morality: by introducing a subsistance crop that was cheaper to produce and had little market value, it drove down the price of labor to where the peasants had less market clout than before. The enclosure act already had reduced the food-gathering options of the peasantry.

The realities of the situation were pretty complicated: there were landlords, reformers, Irish, and English on both sides of the potato debate; it ended up involving Malthus and Ricardo, for whom the potato had symbolic force (for Malthus, it represented the minimal human, the man of appetites who would, despite all enculturation, follow those appetites to the detriment of the common good; for Ricardo, it represented a breakdown of the market economy by being a foodstuff outside the market.) Actually, I don't know what this has to do with the post I'm replying to. I'm kind of delerious: I just got Virtua Fighter 4 and Pac-Man World 2, and haven't been sleeping much. But it was a very interesting article.

Re:Ah - the secret is to..

[GregWebb]

Ahh, no, you've just used the system menu (the one which comes from the icon in the top left of the window) and you've also just moved not minimised :-)

Alt-space-R - restores (unmaximises)
Alt-space-M - moves (use the cursor keys or mouse, enter or click to confirm)
Alt-space-S - sizes (cursor to grab edge, scroll in and out, enter to confirm)
Alt-space-X - maximises
Alt-space-C - closes. Yes, that's a destrictive shortcut next to another key, not bright...

This is saying there's a bunch of other keyboard shortcuts triggered by the Windows key. Off the top of my head:

Windows M - minimises all active windows.
Windows D - shows the desktop. Toggles.
Windows E - open windows explorer
Windows F - open Find Files
Windows R - open Run dialog
Windows Pause Break - opens System Properties
Windows F1 - opens Windows help.

There's probably more, they're just the ones I know :-)