Whats the attraction?

You're not their landlord, you're their God/Goddess. You can give them full autonomy and they will just happily go about their lives, or you can command them to do stuff. They won't care.

I wonder if you could appoint a manager? 

I have been put off computer games. My son enjoys them and they see to be very fast noisy and busy. When he was younger I had a go with him and he got impatient with my lack of ability to do things quickly. That's just how I am, I don't do quick reactions. Also as I work in front of a screen all day I prefer pastimes away from a screen. I wouldn't read a book on kindle, I prefer a book I can pick up. I watch TV drama or comedy to switch off as the screen is a distance away. I like logic and strategy things, but would rather do them in a book or a game. To relax I also enjoy listening to music or playing patience ( I too am an only child).

I don't play board games, except by myself. nor do I write creatively. Its probably just me, but I'd feel guilty being an absentee landlord to SIMS, lol.

Hi again Catwoman

As D has explained, co-op is where people get into teams and play against others. You can also play against other single players online. But I don't do this and I also wouldn't want to join a metaverse - I'm a bit like you in that I like to play things on my own. There are lots of games where you can just play as a single player though, and they are not all adrenaline fuelled fighting or racing.

In Sims 4, the first thing you have to do is create a household of between one and 8 Sims to move into a home in the game. You can decide their age, gender, appearance and choose 3 personality traits for them and an aspiration (a goal for them to achieve) But if you don't want to play with them, you can move them into a pre made home and then leave them there while you go off and build houses on other lots. There are also pre made Sims in many of the pre made homes, but you can evict them and then change their house or knock it down and rebuild it. You can also create parks, museums, pools, bars, libraries and gyms.

I quite like chess, but I'm not very good at it. I don't like playing it with other people, but I have a chess game on my Xbox where I can choose the skill level and then play against the AI. I also have the video game version of cluedo, which is a board game I enjoyed as a child.

I've also always loved scrabble, and I have a game on my kindle tablet called "classic words" which is the same as that, and I also enjoy trying to make up good words with it.

So, online worlds are not for me, but I spend time in fantasy worlds in single player games. To me, it's not a lot different to reading a novel, creative writing, puzzle solving, D&D or board games.

RPGs are generally about questing and gaining or improving skills that will help you on quests. Some RPGs put you in the shoes of an established character, but I feel the best ones are where you're given a blank slate to make your own, like old-school pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons.

Ah, thank you.

I'm often too tired to read or watch TV, so games help me escape while keeping my mind engaged/active. They've also helped me with my hand/eye coordination over the years.

What about games where you look after your own little farm and help the community, or games where you drive trucks, etc ...?

I dont play with others only single player mode. I'll come back later & explain more

Ohh, team work, big no no, theres no I in team, I'm told, but there is a me if you mix the letter up!

Co-op is short for co-operative. Multiplayer where you're working as a team rather than against each other. Can either be "couch co-op" (in the same room) or online. A good example is It takes two (https://youtu.be/ohClxMmNLQQ) or Little big planet.

D you lst me there, what are co-op games? I know what solo ones are, I think thats where you play alone and some are multiplayer games.

As I have PTSD theres no such thing as good adreniline, adreniline means danger, fighting for my life and freedom, I'm borderline adrenal burnout, so if I get in a situation where adreniline is involved theres massive amounts of it, way to much for the situation, my brain and body can no longer make the distiction between a spider in my bedroom and someone who means me physical harm. It also takes days to come back from an adreniline release.

I used to play D&D, proper old school pen and paper, this was before computer games became sophisticated enough to even begin to compare with what the mind could conjure. I don't do sport and am not competitive to be bothered about the outcome, i'm more of a you have it, if its that important to you person, I just can't be bothered, I find competitive people overbearing and boring and the PTSD starts to flicker as competitive people are unpredictable and sometimes dangerous.

With Sims, do you have to have people live in your spaces? When I was little, my Dad built me a dolls house and I loved it, but everything had to stay the same and I remember having a massive freak out when somebody put some dolls in there. It was my house, not the house of these miniture invaders!

I wonder if part of the problem is that being an only child, I never really played with others much, and in common with many only children, my parents would buy me board games, so as I had something to play with my friends with when they came round. Only I rarely had people round and when I did, we didn't play board games, so I sort of learnt to play board games by myself. I still sometimes play scrabble by myself, I don't compete, just make good words from the 7 tiles your'e allowed in one go.

I know this is a difficult thing to answer, and I ask the question in the OP, because I genuinely want to understand, I guess I feel like it would be useful to have a mask that would enable me to engage, however briefly or imperfectly with these online worlds. But in order to create a mask I need facts, I need to know what the attractions are as well as what the things, games, metaverse etc actually are. 

For me, it's a way to keep my mind active - particularly now I'm older and retired. According to research conducted in 2017, video games "help seniors with cognitive training and reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's".

I like to play RPG (role playing) games - they provide puzzles to solve and in the case of assassins creed Odyssey (set in ancient Greece), Origins (set in Cleopatra's Egypt) and Valhalla (set in England at the time of the Vikings) they also gave me lots of historical information about what it was like to live in those times. Sometimes there is a choice between good and evil - like in BioShock, where you can choose to harvest genetic material from genetically modified little girls, or save them all. And sometimes it's just playing out a fantasy, like being able to do magic and defeat evil in Hogwarts Legacy.

I also enjoy Sims 4 which is a life simulation, and allows me to build and decorate homes, restaurants, museums, etc. It satisfies a creative urge.

Computer games is a very broad category. It's like talkimg aboit "sports" or "books". Different genres and activities invoke different responses, and different people like dofferent ganes/sports/books.

Fast paced games and shooters are about the adrenaline rush. You might not be moving like in sports, but you're using a lot of similar mental processes, and it triggers the same adrenaline response as a "fight or flight" as a result. "Move from A to B while dodging enemies and reacting to any you encounter", describes a number of sports and video games.

Strategy games are more about mental stimulation, same as people doing puzzles like sudoku. It's a workout for the mind, and helps you learn new ways to problem solve.

There's simulators, which are probably more about occupying/redirecting the mind with slower and less intesive/important tasks.

You've also got solo vs co-op vs competitive games, obviously for the social aspect, and couch co-op vs online.

Lots more not covered.

Metaverse I think is a bit of an odd one. The idea is straightforward. A digital universe to match the physical one as much as possible, and possibly go further. In theory it might have worked well in pandemic. People could have "met" and been more experssive than on video calls, and taken part in activities that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. All without the issues of illness transmission, commuting./business travel, etc. Unfortunately I think the technology was and still is far too young. The all-in-one headsets are a big improvement (no computer required), but there are still a lot of restrictions on movement, expressions, sensory feedback, interactivitiy, etc.

RPG = role-playing game

Not sure what to say to that….i don’t agree with your remarks but everyone is entitled to their own opinion 

I suppose you could say the same about books and tv too, if you want to take things to their extreme?

Yes video games are used by military intelligence to delete people empathy by desensitizing them to gun and knife violence

What are RPGs? Although I don’t play computer games, I understand the value of time set aside for immersion and escapism.