by Nan Demers

Created on: November 29, 2008   Last Updated: February 28, 2012

I got a membership to an online game site two years ago, intending to play only occasionally, but I gradually became hooked on some of the games, and that's when the fun began. I started earning badges and accumulating tokens. Pogo.com offers weekly badges for playing. Certain games are chosen each week by Pogo, along with a personal challenge. Players earn badges and extra tokens for completing the game.You choose your personal challenge depending on the games you like. Things get interesting in a room where everyone is working toward the same badge. If a player isn't familiar with the game, someone will usually offer tips on how to play, and sometimes the conversations get downright silly, but who doesn't need to laugh more?

One night I was playing for a badge in a game called Lost Temple Poker, a form of video poker. The hero in the story is a character called Tex Carter. Tex must make his way across a booby trapped bridge to reach the Lost Temple, and he has all kinds of mishaps along the way. A strange looking little icon with a spear jumps up and down when you win a lot of tokens in the hand. One of his friends hides in the brush near the bridge and throws rocks at Tex. Sometimes he knocks him off the bridge. Tex also manages to fall a lot when he runs into one of the traps. When this happened one night, one player remarked, "This guy is like Indiana Jones klutzy cousin," which brought a round of LOL's from the room.

Members on Pogo each have a mini, a small icon which represents them. Some members design their minis to look as much like them as possible, while others go for the most outrageous costumes, and features that look nothing like them. Special backgrounds can be purchased with gems or with tokens, you can find a special pet to include in the pet store, and you can even take snapshots of your mini for your album so other players can see how creative you are. Special background scenes are deluxe which are purchased by using tokens, or premium which are purchased with gems. Currently, autumn and Thanksgiving scenes are among the more popular backgrounds, and a lot of members have their minis dressed as pilgrims or Indians.

Part of the fun is when someone asks where everyone in the room is from. I've met people from all over the country and as far away as Australia and New Zealand. A woman from Scotland began talking one night about how she had met Sean Connery when he was visiting her town, and that got the interest of every woman in the room. I commented one day that I had lived in Houston for awhile, and a woman in the room mentioned that her husband is involved in a ministry that provides Christmas baskets for the sailors who come into U.S. ports during the holidays and can't be with their families. It turned out that she lives about 10 miles away from the town I grew up in in Massachusetts. It really is a small world.

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