Addicted to Gaming Multiplayer Gaming
I created this blog for a couple of reasons: to post links to
videos and other content me and my friends have created; to write
poorly-thought-out, flame-bait posts on games, gaming, multiplayer and
disconnecting from reality; and to pass the time by talking about an addiction
I’ve had as long ago as I can remember. As far as linked content goes; I plan
on pinning up some posts on KSP, Minecraft, Heroes of Newerth, DOTA2 and EVE
Online in short order.
I’m going to make my
first post a two-parter since I feel like rambling. Part 1 will cover why I got
into gaming. Part 2 will cover multiplayer and “modern” gaming. Feel free to
skip either or both posts and wait for “content”.
Why am I such a nerd?
My earliest memory of computer/console gaming (beyond arcade
games) was probably Street Fighter II on my childhood friend’s NES/SNES. I
could only play Blanka, Chun-Li or E-Honda (and I’m sure you can guess why).
Blanka OP. That first 30minutes of spamming one button on a controller triggered
a bigger dopamine rush than it should have. That combined with the
“cool-factor” of being able to play games on your TV in the early 90’s, planted
the seed of a gaming addiction.
Beyond Street Fighter II on the SNES, my brothers and I wouldn’t
get regular exposure to gaming until I was maybe 11-12 years old. We didn’t
have a family computer or console so gaming was limited to Episode 1 of Wolfenstein
3D, Simcity 2000 and various educational games on the local primary school’s
Apple Macintosh*; or pleading, begging and bargaining with mum to hire a Sega
from the local video store so we could play Sonic. Beyond these special
occasions I was a normal kid. I played outdoors and everything.
*Yeah. Wolfenstein 3D on a school computer. And I didn’t even
turn out to be a mass murderer. Go figure.
The magic of DOS
The first computer we got was an old 486. Windows 98 was out,
so we were already behind the times. It booted up in DOS and had a very basic
mouse-input(!) GUI that you could launch Windows 3.11 from. I quickly worked
out how to get into the admin controls (username: admin, password: password),
and learnt how to install programs in Windows and DOS, configure the GUI and
arrange directories. Basic stuff now, but when you’re 11 years old and know
more about computers than anyone in your family, it feels pretty boss.
After acquiring a whole slew of shareware on floppy disks
from the cool uncle, I was firmly entrenched in gaming. Raptor, Wolfenstein 3D
(all episodes), Alien Carnage (Halloween Harry), Major Striker and Duke Nukem
(the 2-D side-scrollers) were my core games. I still love Raptor to this day
and managed to get my hands on a legit copy from Good Old Games (GoG.com) a few
years ago. It is exactly as fantastic as I remembered it, and it still kicks my
arse like only an old-school game can.
To the Millenium and Beyond!!!
My brothers and I were still smashing through our allocated
computer time when mum finally learnt of the interwebs and my pleading for a
better computer must have gotten through. We drove 2h to the closest
decent computer store and after a bit of searching, found a deal that she was
happy with. I only knew about DOS and Windows 3.11 so I had no idea what was
decent hardware. Also had no easy way of finding out since this would be our
first computer that actually had internet. And thus it was! We got a Pentium 3 with a
128MB(?) GPU, a 20GB harddrive and Windows ME. It wasn’t until a few years later that I could
look back and fully appreciate the abortion that was Windows ME. Downgrading to
Windows 98 SP2 wasn’t an option either since it was too expensive.
The new computer was a godsend for me. Finally I could play
proper games that all my high-school friends were into like Age of Empires,
Crimson Skies, Microsoft Flight Sim (WWII Combat of course), Red Alert and of
course, a massive catalogue of LucasArts Star Wars games (starting with the
best one of all: X-Wing Alliance). I tried counting all the games my brothers
and I put onto that computer but stopped after I went beyond 40. At a guess
20-25 of these would have been LucasArts games. If it was released in 2002 ± 3years or got down to $30NZ, I’ve probably
played it.
 |
| Best. Game. Ever. |
Acknowledging is the first Step
I think I could only acknowledge that gaming was becoming
such a truly massive part of my growing up once I got into multiplayer gaming
proper. For me, at that time, multiplayer gaming was MMOs and Halo: Combat
Evolved. I’ll cover multiplayer gaming
in the next post.
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