This is the Poll Questions category

Regular (used to be weekly) polls to stimulate interesting and intelligent discussion.
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Poll Question 302 – Do you play too much?

I recently tweeted “I nearly jumped over the balcony of the last flight of stairs I was working down this morning. Definitely been playing too much HL lately!” I lied. I actually haven’t been playing that much lately.

In fact, I probably play less video games than all my visitors. I’m too obsessed with the site! I DID think about jumping over the balcony, but not because of the amount I had been playing, but because I can’t get HL out of my head.

The whole episode got me thinking about how much time we spend playing games.

26th October 2014 25 Comments

Poll Question 301- How old is your main gaming computer?

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

In the first in a short series of hardware polls, this week’s poll is about the age of your main gaming computer.

The question was suggested by a reader who is building a mod and has decided to ensure his son’s computer can run it, since it’s quite old.

It’s a sensible philosophy but when he suggested it to me, we couldn’t find a good way of classifying PCs.

28th September 2014 35 Comments

Poll Question 299 – How many Steam games do you own?

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

Somebody recently mentioned that he thought I had a lot of games. I had to look on my account to see how many I actually had. If I had had to take a guess without looking I would have said about 30. It was actually 60.

Then on Saturday I was chatting with somebody and looked at their account and they had 257, which I thought was a lot and just now I checked somebody out who has 513!

1st September 2014 19 Comments

Poll Question 298 – How often do you play the free trials on Steam?

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

Originally, this poll was going to be about “Have you ever found a game in your Steam Library and have no idea how it got there?” because I saw Borderlands 2 in my Library and tweeted about it and helpfully Dan Jordan told me it was on free trial.

But then I realized that it probably never happens anyway – or does it?

So, this idea came from that one.

To be honest, I don’t think I have ever taken advantage of a free trial. Basically, if I like the look of a game I buy it. That sounds a bit snobbish and I recognize that I should use these trials to play games outside of my usual genre.

I kinda wrote something along the same idea years ago called Game Radio Idea.

Well, there you have the background to this poll, but now it’s time to let me have your thoughts on these free trails and don’t forget to vote…

21st August 2014 9 Comments

Poll Question 297 – Would you replay the games to find clues about HL3?

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

Imagine this for a moment.

Valve release a press release saying something like the following.

A randomly selected 10% of Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode TWo have been updated with minor clues related to a forthcoming game announcment.

All the above games get updated but only 10% from each game will contain the clues.

A website has been created to track clues that have been found.

Now, the question is, would you replay the games to find the clues or would you just wait until somebody posted them on the Net?

HL3 is not mentioned but assumed for the sake of this post and poll.

29th July 2014 22 Comments

Poll Question 295 – Which games have you finished?

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

I was just checking Reddit and started reading a thread entitled I Just Finished HL2: Ep2 and there wa a message on there by somebody saying he/she hadn’t finished Ep2 because not having HL3/Ep3 made him sad and it got me thinking, how many PP readers haven’t finished the games.

I’m pretty sure we had the discussion before but because readers come and go, I thought it was time for a new one.

I sometimes don’t watch the last episode of a TV series and wait for the next series to come on, so I can watch it just before. I HATE cliffhangers.

If you haven’t finished a game or games, why not?

8th July 2014 20 Comments

Poll Question 294 – Do you think Valve made a mistake in making Gordon Silent?

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

There’s been some recent talk on Reddit about Gordon, specifically related to “Is anyone else annoyed by the level of undue praise in HL2?” and “The Success and Failure of Silence: Gordon Freeman in Half Life and Half Life 2”.

I mentioned the first thread on the May 2014 General Chat but I have wanted to re-start the Poll Questions for some time and this seems an interesting enough topic.

Clearly Gordon is “special”, both in terms of in-game and as a game character. Not speaking allows players to slip into his shoes more easily than if he spoke, but is that sort of wording just me regurgitating commonly held views?

How do women feel about playing as a man?

Is it really that important?

I think in the Second Unreal, the player is a woman and it didn’t make any difference at all for me.

Perhaps once we get into hardware that more completely immerses the player then it will matter, but not at the moment.

Thoughts and votes?

4th May 2014 27 Comments

Poll Question 293: How do you feel about Valve’s Early Access initiative?

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

In case you missed the news, Valve have started what they call the Early Access initiative.

Here is the intro spiel: “Get immediate access to games that are being developed with the community’s involvement. These are games that evolve as you play them, as you give feedback, and as the developers update and add content.”

A lot of people like to be the first to play games but I can’t help feeling there’s something not right about this and I’m not the only one.

25th March 2013 32 Comments