::A Geek in Korea::

My wife was putting our daughter Glow down into the bed after one of her many diaper changes.  Glow only has a few tricks up her onesie at the moment. She can take off her sock as soon as you look away from her, she can drool, she can vomit at the worst possible time, and she can almost do a sit up crunch. She can’t yet walk, scoot, or move around, or even roll over yet. When you put her down, she’s stuck like a turtle. It’s basically this fact that keeps us having a sliver of free time. If you put her down to go to the bathroom, she’ll be in the same place you left her when you return.

My wife put Glow down for a short time to wash her hands, and when she returned to the room, Glow was attempting to sit up again. She’ll raise her arms and head cleanly off the bed, then lift her legs, which throws off her balance and pushes her head back to the bed. She can do more sit up crunches than I can do, but she still can’t lift herself off the ground to levitate, which it normally looks like she is trying to do. This is your clue to offer her a finger, which she will use to hoist herself up to a sitting position so she can look around. She can stay upright and sitting for a minute without a hand to steady her before she leans too far one way and falls over. Then you lay her back down on her back and the game resumes.

During one of these Glow work-outs, offering a finger, having her grab it and pull herself up, and her falling down again, Glow let out a powerful little grunt that my wife claimed to have sounded like the word, “Help!” She never said it again, so we have to just take it as noise. It  is different than the sort of vowel soup Glow normally says all day. “AwwwwooOOOoooooAAAAhhhhhhuuuuUHHHHaaaahhhhh!” is very different than a short distinct “Help!”

I told my wife I wouldn’t be surprised if the first word Glow manages was, “Help!”, since my wife and I are constantly using it around her. My wife is always trying to get Glow to say, “Appa” or “Daddy”. I’d be happy with that, but there would be a few other words I’d also like for actual first words too. “Mommy” is fine, but it’s not that far from the word, “Zombie” either. Glow is certainly exposed to either one enough while I am home buying something like Left 4 Dead on STEAM that they have an equal chance of being a first word.  Either one would make me proud.

I’ve been teaching in South Korea for nearly a decade now, and I’ve worked my way up the later from lowly kindergarten teacher to teaching freshman at a National University. I’ve been here long enough that I might have some useful advice for first timers, or at least I’d like to think I do.

In general:
If you like teaching children, don’t mind food or culture that is sometimes very different, can deal with institutional racism without recourse as a foreigner, and generally don’t have culture shock, you’ll do fine. That’s no small order, but if you can approach it as things being “Different” from time to time, it helps a lot. It’s not always bad, but everyone has a war story now and again.

Hagwon/Academies:

The private school system is FOR PROFIT first, teaching second. There are few holidays, but you’ll basically work 50-51 weeks a year, weekends off, no sick days in most cases. There are no substitutes. If you don’t teach, your school loses money and parents complain. You can work like crazy and make a lot of money for school loans or paying off debt. Cost of living in a city outside of Seoul is SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper than the States. If you live within your means you can pocket 50-80% of your salary easily. Even if you party a lot you’ll have cash to burn, which can get a lot of people in a lot of trouble.

Where to live:

Housing is either subsidized in richer areas, or paid for in places outside of Seoul. Rural countryside jobs are hard to tolerate because you’ll run into intolerance and racism far more often, and there can be shit else to do but drink to forget your problems. It’s better for people to start in the city. City jobs are better because you can meet more people and have more friends right away, but depending on the area can be competitive and stressful for both you and the students. It depends on the school, region, and type of program you are put into on your salary and apartment.

Where to look for work:

If you want to know competitive salaries look up some recruiters on Facebook. Dave’s ESL Korea job pages is also a good source of info, but for the love of god forgo their forums. That place is a den of hate for Korean burnouts.

There is very little actual recourse with teachers in abusive schools, so working with a recruiter to find a really good school can be important. They let you dictate terms and do a little leg work for you. Finding a good recruiter is also important, because some are on the take from schools. Recruiters get a headhunting fee paid to them if you don’t burn out after a month. They will tell you all sorts of shit to get you over here, but it might not match the actual case on the ground. Ask recruiters to contact other people they’ve placed in schools to see if they have a good reputation.

About the teaching:

Schools push students through book series and classes, sometimes regardless of actual ability. Standardized testing has created a system where students study for 18 years for a single college entrance examination. It’s ULTRA competitive and that is why people are willing to spend mad cash on English teaching. Responsibilities for first year teachers range from foreign speaking monkey to actual teaching of grammar, phonics, or reading skills. Students as young as 3-5 years old are in immersion classes with foreign teachers at some schools. I know. I used to teach them. That’s “normal” here. Deal with it.

How to approach the work:

Teaching is secondary to surviving Korea. If you can’t handle your culture shock, or can’t adjust to the food, you won’t be a good teacher because you’ll be too overwhelmed. If you are taking a long term approach, you won’t have a clue what is going on until you’ve got a little experience. It takes time to adjust. Good schools let people that can’t adjust burn out, then they hire the survivors when they finish their contracts. Don’t be one of those culture shock victims!

If you end up at a school with a positive learning environment and people that care about work, you’ll have a kick ass time. My first year in Korea was the time of my life. I had hard times, but it was rewarding and totally life changing. If you end up with some dead enders, you’ll have a rotten time and will take a negative opinion away from the country and the work.

What the fuck, I’m a teacher now? What the hell am I doing?

Even at the best school I ever worked at, I got no training what so ever. My second DAY in Korea I was tossed into a class, jet lag and all, with no training. They just point you at the door and say, “TEACH!”

Controlling a class in a second language is a daunting challenge. Looking for a school with a Korean co-teacher is what some people try their first year. I never had the luxury, but I’d look into it if you are going to be teaching kids, especially if you are with pre-kindergarten classes often. It’s pretty common at places that teach young children and hire first year teachers.

As long as you show up for work, try your best, and keep your temper around misbehaving students you’ll have a job. Also, don’t do anything that could be considered drugs other than alcohol, or be a pedo. Obviously. Korea is much more conservative than the United States, but by and large people still respect teachers. Korean students are great, as long as you keep in mind that in any given day they might study 10-15 hours as a middle school/high school student. Kids have been studying English all their life, and you are just one more reason they can’t go out to play Starcraft. Sometimes they accept that, sometimes they don’t.

Getting a better job:

Some places are awful to work at, some aren’t, like anywhere else. Stick out a full year’s contract so that you can get your feet wet and find a better place. Finishing your first contract might be Herculean, but it’s seen as a big plus when you go to renegotiate for a job in Korea. Any place that routinely or exclusively hires people with a BA straight from the States is looking to save money. It might mean they don’t actually care about the quality of their teaching in my experience.

If you find a place that is trying to actually teach students that pays on time every month, look into it in greater detail to see if you are interested in what they are doing, where they are located, and try to find a job there. Some schools can’t find anyone to hire and are desperate. You might get lucky. If you do a good days work, you can find a better job somewhere else eventually.

If you stick around for a year or two, you might get enough Korean under your belt to make your life a little easier. Then you’ll have a network of contacts and relationships that can help you find better work at a school that actually knows what they are doing. When you go looking for a better job, a director that sees you’ve stuck it out will be much more likely to take a chance and offer you a higher salary to boot.

Why do you need to stay at a crappy job sometimes?

Your visa as a first year teacher will be E-2. The E-2 visa is provided on the terms of your employment as a teacher. Your boss OWNS your house, owns your visa, and pays your salary. See how this could potentially be abused? The foreigner basically only has control of their own reputation as a teacher, and showing that they can do the work asked of them whenever they can. If you get screwed over, and you might, you can look for work before your visa expires, but it is a tiring prospect that is really difficult to do. The law and the money is on the school director’s side most of the time. People with E-2 visas aren’t going to get special protection from the law 9 times out of 10. Talking to a good recruiter to find you a school that has a good reputation will save you a lot of headaches.

Post any help you might have learned for people that are thinking about coming over to Korea for the first time.

Last night everyone sleeping in the bedroom had a hard time staying asleep. Glow had a stuffy nose, possibly from an irritant in the air, and was snorting in her sleep. This kept my wife up, as she was worried Glow wasn’t breathing well. Glow wasn’t in any danger, it’s just she wasn’t going to be restful. I also was having nose problems. The air wasn’t dry due to the humidifier, yet I had something also tripping my allergies and filling my sinuses. All three of us were miserable, and no one got any sleep until Glow fell asleep much later in the morning.

We went on a cleaning crusade in the bedroom trying to root out any cause to the allergens.  I vacuumed the floors, curtains, and all the bedding. We wiped down the floors, and we also steam cleaned too. Then we went to clean the air humidifier, as well as anything else that might have dust. We also decided that if somehow Yoshi was the cause of the problems because of dander, he would need a trim. It might be in the middle of winter, but Yoshi’s skin dramatically improves when he has less hair on him. We’ve already got his new dandruff shampoo, but we wanted to keep any possible source to a minimum.

I took Yoshi to the vet to get him trimmed. While I was out more cleaning was being done while Glow got her beauty rest. Eventually he was shorn and I went back to pick him up. The lady who trimmed him came out and talked to me for a little bit, but I had my headphones in and was just giving her the, “Nod, nod, yes, it’s fine,” routine. I don’t have much in the way of dog cleaning vocabulary besides, “Cut off his fur please, Clean his ears too.” She had rubbed his back and said the word ‘dander’, so I thought she was commenting on Yoshi’s skin.

When I got back home, I told my wife that the lady had been trying to say something. It turns out when my wife called back to follow up on the situation, the lady had actually been asking if we had been feeding our dog enough. When she shaved him, she said she could feel some of the bones in his back, and that he looked like he had lost weight since the last time we had seen him. This is true. He has lost a little weight, but he is looking better than he has in a few weeks since I’ve been home. Anyway, I felt really bad that she thought we neglected our dog’s food. It’s not true! He’s cold and hairless in winter now, but really, we do feed him! When we walk him he puts on doggy sweaters to stay warm too! Really! We don’t neglect our dog!

The latest round of STEAM games on sale included the entire Popcap series that was available on the service. While I didn’t buy the entire package, I did pick up Plants vs. Zombies. This is a much more casual gaming experience compared to some of the other things on sale through STEAM. People like their shooters, and I like them from time to time, but they really aren’t my thing anymore. While Team Fortress 2 or Stalker can occupy my time, I feel like I’m just treading water on them because I don’t have the time to invest my skills to be very good at them. I’m too old for those sorts of twitch gaming experiences.

Plants vs. Zombies is fun for more than the quick reaction aspect. It has a good sense of humor and is well made. Right now it is a little easy for me, but I hope with the different unlocked plants and different modes there might be a challenge in there somewhere. It’s fun enough that I might just replay it later too. There are also STEAM achievements, so playing in one particular manner or another might provide more gameplay for me. I already sunk a few hours into it and have really dug everything so far. I wouldn’t pay the full price for it, and even the 50% off price was too steep. The 75% off price was just right to get me to purchase it.

It’s a well made, replayable flash game. It’s got a cute style and is funny, yet has a enough depth to keep me playing level after level. I’ve been on a big zombie kick recently, with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, World War Z, and now Plants vs. Zombies. I actually went out of my way to purchase non-monster related fiction because I had been dipping into that well a little too frequently.

Everyone in the office at work was talking about “The Wire” for a long time. They were passing around the DVDs so that people could catch up on the first season. I hadn’t heard a bad thing about the show, but I didn’t get in on borrowing them because I didn’t have the time to watch a cop drama while managing all my new responsibilities. I’m always up for new materials to watch. Hearing people recommend the show was fine, but most of the people heaped on so much praise that it was hard to believe anything could live up to the hype involved. The Wire had been praised by everyone for so long that I just figured I’d get around to it eventually and I didn’t want anything spoiled for me. I wasn’t in a rush to see it, but I would watch it when I got the chance.

I’m currently watching the first season, and I’ll start on the second season not long after. It’s good stuff. It’s not as hard hitting as “The Shield” in my opinion, but it’s played way more real to life. They take their sweet time with their case, and it feels like each episode is a slow progression on a story of two sides playing a game of chess with one another. It’s all morally grey, but occasionally speaks a clear truth that comes from a good story. The characters feel self-motivated and self-interested in a very believable manner, which is where it has the upper hand on The Shield.

Anyway, I hope to finish at least the first season of the show so that I can have something to talk about in the office when I’m back there next week. While it isn’t my favorite show, it is a very good, well written show that I’ll watch more of in the future. I’ll have to listen to other people’s recommendations in the office since they proved right in this particular case.

I don’t get out much with the baby occupying most of our free time, but I made a wife-sanctioned break for it today. She suggested I head up to Seoul and do whatever I want for the weekend. I had planned to see a movie or something, but it turns out one of my friends was in Seoul also killing time waiting for a friend to arrive from Japan. We went around town hitting some places of interest. I wasn’t up for all that an exciting weekend. If I could catch a 3-D IMAX movie in Seoul or something, I would, but otherwise I’d just head back to Daejeon after I got done with everything.

While we were taking one of the many rides on the subway we would need to get around town, there was an incident. There was a loud, drunk, noisy homeless guy selling something on the subway. Usually the businessmen that ride the subway selling useless items are quick efficient businessmen that quickly want to conduct a few transactions then move on to the next car. This guy started yelling as loudly as he could in Korean, “It’s winter! You need gloves! Gloves for winter! 1000 won! Winter gloves!” and stumbling around the car as soon as we got on.

I don’t usually mind people selling obnoxious stuff on the subway very often. I was telling my friend about this extending washing machine hose I once saw a person try to sell on the subway. I was relating the story when this guy stopped right behind us and got right in my face. Had I been here for a short time, I might have been scared by a drunk guy selling gloves, but I looked over him with the practiced disinterest of a Seoul-ite. His garlic/soju breath was blowing right up into my face. The person I was traveling with didn’t have any gloves on, and this guy had picked him out of the crowd to try to shill his gloves on us.

He went for the “Creepy as hell” sales tactic. In staggering drunk Korean, he managed to say, “YoooooU! You….arentwearing any GLOVES! You! No gloves in WINTER!” He had no front teeth in his upper or lower gums. His molars in back were rotten and black. I could see all this as he spoke to me inches away from my face.

I politely declined anything. “Oh, it’s okay.”

“You! Have…no gloves…in…WINTER! You will DIE!”

This is actually a common expression in Korean. Someone will say, “Oh, I’m lacking a basic item necessary for a task I need” and someone else will reply, “Oh, you’re going to die.”  The only difference is usually when you say “You will die”, you do it in a mocking tone. A student might say, “Teacher, I forgot my homework!” a joking Korean teacher might reply, “You’re going to die!” as to say, “Don’t do it again, alright!?”

This guy came  up inches away from me, with his rotten teeth and bad manners to say, “You don’t have any gloves! Buy these gloves or you are going to die!”

Instead of doing trying to get me to buy the gloves with a nagging, annoying tone of someone that knows better and is looking out for you, he did something else. He used a husky, threatening voice, then he stuck out his tongue, squinted his eye, and mimed slitting his own throat with the back of his thumb. “You are going to DIE!” he said again, to get his point across. He pantomimed his threat a few more times, then waited for what I would say. Even the person I was with got the message. It was not exactly subtle.

I looked at him dismissively, then just told him in Korean that we wouldn’t be buying anything from him. It takes more than a drunk getting in my face to get me to spend 1000won on some crappy gloves I don’t need. To his credit, he gave me the stink eye once more and moved on down the line to bother someone else. This is the first time one of these salesmen ever got pushy on me. No one else answered him or put up with him in their face either, but no one cared to help us when he was harassing us on the crowded subway. Luckily it wasn’t as big a scene as it could have been.

Other than that, I had a nice time in Seoul. I got a few new books to read, and I got a little shopping done for my wife and daughter. It was an okay day, minus the weird guy.

I am not one for traditions, but I do require one thing for the holidays. I ask for a gift on Christmas. It can be something I ask for, or something I wanted but never thought about purchasing. It could be a surprise, but I want at least some sort of gift from my wife on Christmas. A few years ago we had worked out what we were getting beforehand to save money, and when it came to be Christmas morning and I had nothing new under the tree I got a little upset by it. Too much for someone my age to be upset about it at least. It’s really one of the few holiday traditions I’ve got, and it might make me a big softie, but I want to hold onto it.

This morning I didn’t expect any Christmas surprise. My wife and I had been spending time together pretty much all day every day for the past two weeks with our daughter. It’s hard to be surprised when you have no time apart from each other. I woke up this morning expecting to open some gifts from my parents and nothing else. My wife knew that I would be disappointed and told me that there was a gift under the bed waiting for me. A gift?! A hidden gift?! FOR ME?! That was the best news I’ve heard all vacation!

I got a Mr. Resetti plush doll from Animal Crossing. He is something I had wanted for Christmas when I saw him, then completely forgot about it. It’s a giant pissed off mole that looks like it is digging out from my desk. He berates you for not saving your game in Animal Crossing, and is well known for his foul temper and course manners. It’s perfect! I love it sitting on my desk, and I’m debating if I want to bring it to work or not. Just looking at his pissed off demeanor makes me want to get to work. Bundled with Mr. Resetti were several bottles of imported beer. Beer AND a thoughtful gift? Awesome.

After I opened my present, my wife held out her hands. “Where is my gift? You didn’t get me anything?”

Little did she know that her gift was literally months in the making. When my daughter was born I decided I’d stop shaving. Mostly it was because I was tired and felt like trying out some facial hair for some time. My goatee choice lasted for a while on a whim, also because I couldn’t be bothered to grow a whole beard. I kept it because it rankled everyone in Korea that I’d meet on a semi-regular basis. I’d get backhanded compliments all the time to the effect of, “You look so handsome…I bet that if you shave you’d look even better.”

Every time I heard something like this I would tack on another week to my facial hair experiment. I never had my hair remain unkempt, or get disgusting. The sheer fact that it existed irked a lot of people for some unknown reason. Everyone’s got to look the same. NO facial hair EVER! If one of the damn Korean pop stars could actually GROW facial hair, then my look would have been copied by everyone else.

My wife dropped any comment about it after a few months, but I’d still hear things from relatives or students now and again. I didn’t mind having the goatee, but it annoyed everyone around me to the point of commenting on it, hell yeah it was going to stay! It wasn’t my intention to garner attention, but if that’s how people treated me, I was going to keep it around. Even when I got a portable shaver for a Secret Santa gift I hung on to the beard. I resolved that I’d get rid of it for my wife on Christmas, backhanded comments or not. I had enough resentment fuel to keep it growing for a while longer with all the comments I got from relatives about a family portrait we had taken, but my point had been made, and in the spirit of the season, I decided I’d just shave it off and start over some other time.

Today I got up early, pretended to take a shower, and worked on trimming down my facial hair for a nice close shave. When I finally got out of the shower I kept the towel over my head for a minute to pretend I was drying my hair, then made sure my wife could see while I poked my head out of the bathroom to say, “Merry Christmas!”

She loved my gift. She called several people to say I gave her the best Christmas present she could have asked for this year. Hah! I miss my goatee now. Stroking my chin lacks the effect it once had. It’s all about the gravitas and age it represents! It’s gone! Now my face is cold, too. I think I’ll pick another arbitrary date next year to start the project again. Possibly Movember? I don’t know if I can pull off an obnoxious mustache as long as I could my goatee, but if I just went feral and grew and entire beard my wife might go nuts. Anyway, we capped off Christmas presents with a call home with Skype and got to talk to my parents.

Yay! Good Christmas.

We’ve been trying to get in touch with my parents via Skype for the holidays, but have ran into typical poor web design from a Korean website that prevents us from getting the work done. Korean credit cards sometimes require an online verification code program to be run to make sure that there have been attempts at making sure that the Internet purchase was made securely. It’s not always needed. Any purchases we’ve done in the past six months haven’t needed this step. All of a sudden for Skype we have this extra hurdle to jump through and we can’t get it done.

This is all because Korean companies insist on using Internet Explore 6 for everything. Internet Explorer 6 is horrible, and I can’t believe Korean people still demand that is used for anything on the web. It’s just bad in basically every way a web browser can be. I’ve been prevented from buying stuff at a Korean website because the Korean rendering in Internet Explorer 8, the version the rest of the world is forced to use, can’t decipher the cryptic Korean web design process. I don’t like using Internet Explorer at all, but at least it is a somewhat modern browser with tabs and an attempt at security. Using Internet Explorer 6 for online shopping is like going to a hooker without using a condom. When you catch something dangerous that makes your life hell, not only is it your fault, but you deserve it because you know better than to do something that stupid.

The Active X popup (shudder) that is mandated for use with this particular arcane process is so rudimentary that it can’t even display a drop down menu without truncating the last digit of the year to verify the credit card. The part of the popup that ISN’T a poorly antialiased image is unable to render Korean characters, so I have to agree to a Terms of Service agreement rendered in random ASCII characters. Do I agree? I don’t even know what you wrote! There are three mystery steps to the verification process, and even on a computer with Korean fonts and Korean input installed I can’t complete it. There is NO logic to the steps required to complete this. I have to go to the bank’s website, dig through FOUR menus to even begin, and even then I can’t read anything in their application.

At least the process is somewhat possible with Internet Explorer 8. Google Chrome marks the website as a dangerous attack site that wants to install malicious software onto my computer. I agree with Chrome. If I wasn’t forced to use Internet Explorer 6 to log in, I wouldn’t NEED that mandatory Active X web virus software suite, or the keylogger they forced me to install. This is why a mono-culture is bad. You assume everyone has the same problem with a shitty insecure browser, then demand that everyone follow the same stupid security practices. If you just designed the shit correctly the first time and made people upgrade past something released in 2001 maybe fraud wouldn’t be such a big deal. I got a lot of hassle from my ISP and every service or install guy that came to the apartment for running Linux, but now that I am back to running Windows I still have to deal with this stupid shit. Ugh.

So, Merry Christmas everyone! Mom, Dad, if you read this, YOU need to call us in Skype, because we have no offline credit to call your phone, and we won’t till after the holidays.

There is that cliche that women love to shop for shoes. How many episodes of Sex in the City would exist if it wasn’t built around that exact premise? Two? Three? To be fair, not all women follow that particular trope. My wife, thankfully does not like to shop at all, let alone for shoes. She’s comfortable with herself enough that she doesn’t need to go shopping for things. She happens to be a restrained shopper that waits for sales and only buys things she absolutely needs that she can afford.

I usually only shop impulsively when I end up in an English book store in Seoul. I can plan out purchases of almost anything else, but I usually just end up getting whatever strikes my fancy when I end up with an overwhelming stack off books to read. Now though is the STEAM sale for the holidays. I’ve got a point and click interface, a credit card, and English video games delivered digitally to my computer as easily as could be possible. Some of the games I’ve been looking forward to playing for years. Right now they are on sale for 80% off. It’s insane. I’ve been shopping pretty conservatively for the past few days, asking my wife if it was okay if I bought a few games for myself now and again.

Every one I’ve gotten has been throughly researched and well reviewed. Now they are steeply discounted and I can actually purchase them for less than the price of the cup of coffee I bought on my walk with my dog yesterday. It’s so cheap it’s almost criminal…and this sale continues for a week. There will probably be games worth buying every single day! It’s not even really started yet and I’m purchasing stuff impulsively. Last week I didn’t own a single digitally distributed game. By the end of the sale I’ll have more than a dozen. Forget about console gaming. If I can keep this trend going and always pick things up on sale, I’ll gladly upgrade my computer from time to time. As long as they “just run”, I’m fine with this model. Hell, not needing to deal with discs or going to the store to pick up a physical copy is worth the price.

My wife just gave me the budget for the rest of the month I am allowed to spend on video games. This is usually what I’d be spending on one or two games if I bought them at a physical store. It’d be like me going to the English book store ONCE, not including the price of traveling there and back. Instead of spending that sort of money on a few items, I can get a bunch of digitally bundled discounted items cheaply and play them all next year.  Since I haven’t played computer games in such a long time, it’s fine with me if they aren’t the newest things. I’m fine with having a backlog of games. If I find the time to play one a month I’ll be happy. By the time I finishing playing all my old games, I’ll be ready to upgrade my computer again so I can purchase games that are coming out now. Either that, or another sale will come along and I’ll pick up a few more along the way.

Basically, what a woman is in a shoe store, I am in a digital computer game store with a steep discount for the holidays. I’ll be buying things to play for the next year or more if all things go to plan. I’ll have too many games to play, and not enough time. This is a good problem to have.

Playing the hell out of Torchlight.

This game is a natural progression from when I was playing Dungeon Crawl. That game was an ASCII or Tiles based game in which you were on a quest to delve to the bottom of a dungeon to get a Rune of Zot to return to the surface and win the game. You had level progression and character customization, randomized items, and a primitive interface. Torchlight, much like Diablo before it, draws from elements of Roguelikes and then puts them in a blender with lots of pretty other things, and refines them to work with a mouse and keyboard in an active time context.

It’s pretty. It’s addictive. Best yet, it’s fully customizable. The developers of Torchlight are using it as a test bed and way to raise capital before releasing an MMORPG that I will never play. They released this single player only game to make money, but they’ve let the community playing the game customize it and improve upon it. You can still play a vanilla game of Torchlight and enjoy yourself, but any nagging problems that remain can be handled through user created modifications that can be installed easily and removed just as simply.

There are three classes with three different builds. You can mix and match, or create pure builds depending on how you want to play. There are different difficulties, as well as randomized infinite dungeons, which means you could keep playing this for quite some time. I was never one for Diablo, but this game hits all the right buttons for me. I can play it all day and not notice the time slip by. I’ve only got a few days of free time left to enjoy, so I don’t really want to lose it all to this game, but it’s so good and I’ve barely scratched the surface. I picked it up when it was 50% off of it’s normal price. It was a total bargain then. Even at full price there is a lot to do and see. With the modding community embracing it, there could be a lot to do in the future as well.

The only thing that is going to stop people from playing this game is when Diablo 3 comes out with a similar play style, but that might be a few months away. This game would benefit from Co-op, but it doesn’t have that feature…yet. Who knows if some intrepid modder might try to write that into the game to extend it beyond what it is capable of right now?

Anyway, since I have easy access to STEAM on my computer for games now, I can see a serious problem of having too little free time and too many games to play.