FF8 started it, Ocarina of Time solidified it. WoW set it in stone. Everything since has made me question why the hell I spend so much time playing games. Oh that's right, the real world is so f'd up that the only way to forget about it is to get deeply engrossed in a fictional world with rules that allow even those born without silver spoors in their mouths to enjoy it.
Started with Chutes and Ladders and Candyland. Then came Monopoly, Life, Mouse Trap. Got older played every board game such as Statego, Risk, Masterpiece, Broadside, Battleship. As a young adult I played Axis and Allies, Conquest of the Empire and a few others.
From a computer game perspective it was Space invaders that really drew me in, then on my Trash 80 Dungeons of Dagoroth helped set my love for RPGs.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
My father bought the family a Commodore 64 but was oposed to buying us 7 children games to play.
Rather, he purchased a programming book with a few games one of which was called balloon. We spent a couple of days programing and after finding the typos we played our first PC game.
As a boy I was not a gamer but I played games occasionally as well as went outside. I loved games like Mario, Zelda, until I discovered the computer and found Windows 3.1 and DOS games, some of which weren't really for kids, but that's because I had two older brothers. It wasn't until I became saved that I started drawing parallels to gaming and God. Parallels like game developer and game, computer programming and program. I was also interested in things like Star Wars, Tron, and interested in why the world existed today (then) as it did. I was interested in why we have to do certain things. I was interested in creation itself and the things we humans created from physical objects to ideas like government, religion. As a Christian I took interest in letting God be my God of gaming, unlike today when trolls like to say that Gabe Newel is god of gaming. Gabe Newel is certainly a man of great interest in gaming, and certainly a leader, but I often find myself wanting to lead people away from Gabe, to check out what Nintendo is doing, or to check out what people are making in flash games even if that is a toxic place due to porn. Creation is always interesting, and I never cared if no one else sees the same things in it as I do, because even people who are different I find I am interested in too. I think God is a gamer Himself, and that is why I game. I think God likes to play as us, like there's a big computer in heaven where God sits and plays. You can see this as a blessing or a curse. Like that instead of that being a good thought to you, maybe you see it as that God is mind controlling you, but I don't see it that way and I don't think that's how it's done. Don't think too much into it. It's just what I believe.
Originally posted by Zontas_Hierospirit As a boy I was not a gamer but I played games occasionally as well as went outside. I loved games like Mario, Zelda, until I discovered the computer and found Windows 3.1 and DOS games, some of which weren't really for kids, but that's because I had two older brothers. It wasn't until I became saved that I started drawing parallels to gaming and God. Parallels like game developer and game, computer programming and program. I was also interested in things like Star Wars, Tron, and interested in why the world existed today (then) as it did. I was interested in why we have to do certain things. I was interested in creation itself and the things we humans created from physical objects to ideas like government, religion. As a Christian I took interest in letting God be my God of gaming, unlike today when trolls like to say that Gabe Newel is god of gaming. Gabe Newel is certainly a man of great interest in gaming, and certainly a leader, but I often find myself wanting to lead people away from Gabe, to check out what Nintendo is doing, or to check out what people are making in flash games even if that is a toxic place due to porn. Creation is always interesting, and I never cared if no one else sees the same things in it as I do, because even people who are different I find I am interested in too. I think God is a gamer Himself, and that is why I game. I think God likes to play as us, like there's a big computer in heaven where God sits and plays. You can see this as a blessing or a curse. Like that instead of that being a good thought to you, maybe you see it as that God is mind controlling you, but I don't see it that way and I don't think that's how it's done. Don't think too much into it. It's just what I believe.
That's deep man. I think God is a gamer too and I think we are roleplaying a game right now as we speak. A game where we don't even know it's a game until it's over.
Now Playing: Bless / Summoners War Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
I was in kindergarten. I went to a friend's house after school and learned what the NES was. I played Mario and Track and Field (with the Power Pad of course)
It was at that point that I realized I had to have that thing.
been playing since Road Runner on the NES but the game that got me more into "serious" games, was Final Fantasy VII. I think 6 or 9 are the best but VII is what got me into mmo's, action games, jrpg's, adventure games etc
In fairness, I'm not a gamer. I just dabble and mod.
Unreal Classic, Half-Life, and Heretic II really nailed it for me. From there, Morrowind (huge favorite), Oblivion, and WoW.
WoW had me thinking that I was an MMORPG Gamer, but playing other MMOs only proved how much I dislike MMORPGs.
What I've always wanted from MMORPGs is a cooperative multiplayer version of Morrowind, designed for solo and small groups.
I'll be dead before that happens, unless I build it myself. I keep threatening to try.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Originally posted by Eladi My first game was Ping-pong programmed from a book on a Schneider CPC 6128 from 1985 (my dad owned it in 1991 ) I was 12 back then.
Then moving on to 8088->8086 the age of commander keen and prince of Persia came with the 286 and 386 .. Doom, duke nukem, sim city on the 486 and the first mmo (mine) Ultima online on the early Pentium systems.
Then I started working in shop selling and fixing PC's so yea.. My live is all PC :P
IM a true PC gamer, played nearly all mayor and a huge lot of minor famed games ..
These days I find I play less, seen it all, done it all kind of thing.. Might try the witcher 3 ..maybe .. And currently no mmo's coz non really can keep me interested but again, its more me then the faults of the games.
Maybe I should try tabletop
edit: small not needed txt removal & spelling check (web automated)
Thanks for reminding me of good old games I have been playing, too. :-)
Started in 1978, playing pong on my great aunts tv console. Then progressed to space invaders on the atari.
Spent the 80's playing hand held games like astro wars. Then when the fete came around in the autumn we had defender, vanguard and missile command. Discovered girls and pubs in the mid 80's so had a three year break. Then spent the 90's on the mega drive and ps 1. Switched to the pc in 2001 aand never looked back.
Some of my earliest memories are of playing the original NES with my older brother after our parents got him a NES one Christmas. I just loved playing it and I'm pretty sure it amused my parents that I spent far more time playing with it than with the Barbie corvette they bought me the same year.
A few years later they gave me my own SNES and it was probably A Link to the Past and FFIV/FFVI that really solidified my love of video games from them on.
My journey to becoming a gamer is different than what made me a gamer. Let me explain.
My journey to becoming a gamer started with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition in 1978; the greatest gaming gateway drug to gamers of my generation. I tried it because one of the local priests was preaching that D&D was demonic and wanted it banned and I, being raised by libertarian parents, was like, "If they're trying to ban it, then I gotta try that!" One afternoon and I was hooked. Gary Gygax is to blame!
I made my shift to video gaming when my brother and I got an Atari 2600 in 1979 and I spent the 80s playing Combat, Warlords and Pitfall along with stand up video games like Joust, Dig Dug, Dragon's Lair and Space Ace in Video Arcades.
I kind of fell out of it when I went to college and law school. I just didn't have the time. A friend had a PC at college and on rare occasions we played some tank type game where you blew up houses and then ran over the people that came out leaving a bloody smear on the ground. It was sufficiently gruesome to keep me mildly interested. He also had the DoS based Ancient Art of War and Ancient Art of War at Sea. Graphics were a bit dated, but again it was fun to have a beer and play a bit. I didn't play anything during law school. Too much work and no computer or console access. What little time off I had was spent with my fiance or sleeping.
After law school I bought myself my first PC with a 75 MHz Hard Drive. It was STATE OF THE ART, BABY! I used it mainly as a glorified word processor for work until one day on a whim I bought a game called Frontlines, which was some kind of RTS simulator.
I tried other games as I upgraded rigs from time to time. I enjoyed a Jane's Submarine simulator (learned to read sonar screens from the game) and I bought several of the NASCAR racing simulator games by Sierra. I never played on line because I never had internet access that was cost effective. Around this time I also got married, bought a house and started traveling the world with my new wife while getting into my career. Basically I gamed sometimes, but not regularly.
Then in 1999 my first child was born and my wife and I did what every couple with children did; we stayed home and didn't go anywhere. I picked up a copy of Star Wars : Force Commander (widely panned by critics but I enjoyed it) and by this time I had cable internet access. So one night while I was sitting up keeping watch over a sick baby, I fired it up and hooked into an online game. I remember waiting for 30 minutes for the game to start because you needed 4 to play it and there were only 3 of us in the lobby for a long time. I think that's when I discovered Gamespy.
Then in 2001 I picked up a copy of Starfleet Command II : Empires at War. My second child arrived in February of 2001 so we were even more home bound. I played the single player campaign again late at night between diaper changing shifts and the like and rapidly discovered the single player campaign suffered from a bug. After downloading a patch I discovered I could hook onto the Dynaverse which was a series of servers set up by Interplay where people could play the game on line. There I met a bunch of guys and I started playing with them at regularly scheduled times on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I was amazed that we could get 60 to 70 people on a single server playing the game at the same time and fighting each other.
By the end of 2001 SFC II : Orion Pirates came out and split the Dynaverse playerbase. That kind of ended SFC II for me. On the suggestion of an on line friend I'd met in my SFC II days I picked up a copy of Dark Age of Camelot to play with him and with that I became an MMO gamer.
Since then I've tried most major titles including CoX (beta tested CoH and CoV), WoW, WHO, LotRO, Allods, STO, SWToR, Runes of Magic, Age of Wushu and a few others I've tried and forgotten.
Now a days if I get time to game (kids are older and I run my own business now so time is limited) I log into Planetside 2 equip my shotgun and go Banzai Madman for 20 to 30 minutes. I'm not in an Outfit and I never join a unit because I like to just charge in like a wildman and I don't care if I die a lot as long as I get that one spectacular kill a night that makes me laugh.
One of the highlights of my gaming career has been to actually game with my children. I was able to take them to the battlegrounds of DAoC and have fun with them there. My kids also have an XBox I watch them play with their friends on line. I never could get back into console gaming after I left the Atari 2600 behind. I can't get into smart phone gaming either. Probably because I'm always talking or texting on the dang thing.
Am I a gamer? Aye aye, sir! Gung Ho, Gung Ho, Gung Ho! Dyed in the wool and tried and true. You name it and I did it, so I figure I qualify under any definition.
But as for exactly what it was that made me a gamer I'd have to say one thing and one thing only.
An imagination.
YMMV.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Being raised by a violent schizophrenic, early on I subconsciously adapted self-defensive mechanisms to root out and solve any presented problem, regardless of how preposterous the circumstance. Eventually, because I was good at it to survive, and this gave me a noticeable edge, I started to really enjoy it. Having never been subjected to outlandish amounts of atomic or cosmic rays, I decided I could never be a superhero, so I settled for "gamer".
My journey to becoming a gamer is different than what made me a gamer. Let me explain.
My journey to becoming a gamer started with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition in 1978; the greatest gaming gateway drug to gamers of my generation. I tried it because one of the local priests was preaching that D&D was demonic and wanted it banned and I, being raised by libertarian parents, was like, "If they're trying to ban it, then I gotta try that!" One afternoon and I was hooked. Gary Gygax is to blame!
I made my shift to video gaming when my brother and I got an Atari 2600 in 1979 and I spent the 80s playing Combat, Warlords and Pitfall along with stand up video games like Joust, Dig Dug, Dragon's Lair and Space Ace in Video Arcades.
This, this and this....
I was far too addicted to ADnD. I remember being about 10 years old at Camp Wonposet watching some older kids play and trying for weeks to join them, unsuccessfully I might add. When camp ended I used all my allowance to buy everything related to ADnD at the time. I still have some of my original books which are now quite collectable apparently. I still manage to play 2nd edition with some friends on occasion.
That same year I bought my first hand held, the Mattel Electronics Football game and my first pc, a TRS-80 with a cassette drive. This was followed by a Franklin OMS, an Amiga, a Commodore 64 etc.
And of course the 70's and 80's was the era of the Arcade where you actually left your house to play games with friends. I remember running to the bank after school to convert my cash into rolls of quarters so I could avoid the lines at the bill changer.
Like you, my family and career forced games to the back burner but I returned with a vengeance once my kids were grown and my wife found other hobbies.
It just amazes me every day just how far gaming has evolved. Its been a lot of fun watching and living through the last few decade of gaming history.
Del Cabon A US Army ('Just Cause') Vet and MMORPG Native formerly of Trinsic, Norath and Dereth. Currently playing LOTRO.
Countless hours playing Pac-Man, Asteroids and Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 as a kid.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
Comments
2 games:
- Yoshi's Island
- Final Fantasy 7
Ever since I've finished those 2 games, I was totally in-love in gaming.
From a computer game perspective it was Space invaders that really drew me in, then on my Trash 80 Dungeons of Dagoroth helped set my love for RPGs.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
My father bought the family a Commodore 64 but was oposed to buying us 7 children games to play.
Rather, he purchased a programming book with a few games one of which was called balloon. We spent a couple of days programing and after finding the typos we played our first PC game.
Haven't looked back since.
I blame Atari. I was hooked on Combat and it went on from there.
The three games that made me know that I love games were:
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Specific to MMOs it is a 3-way Tie between World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - LOTRO - Rift Vanilla / Storm Legion (game is shite now)
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
That's deep man. I think God is a gamer too and I think we are roleplaying a game right now as we speak. A game where we don't even know it's a game until it's over.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
me too
and I still own them!
I was in kindergarten. I went to a friend's house after school and learned what the NES was. I played Mario and Track and Field (with the Power Pad of course)
It was at that point that I realized I had to have that thing.
In fairness, I'm not a gamer. I just dabble and mod.
Unreal Classic, Half-Life, and Heretic II really nailed it for me. From there, Morrowind (huge favorite), Oblivion, and WoW.
WoW had me thinking that I was an MMORPG Gamer, but playing other MMOs only proved how much I dislike MMORPGs.
What I've always wanted from MMORPGs is a cooperative multiplayer version of Morrowind, designed for solo and small groups.
I'll be dead before that happens, unless I build it myself. I keep threatening to try.
Thanks for reminding me of good old games I have been playing, too. :-)
Spent the 80's playing hand held games like astro wars. Then when the fete came around in the autumn we had defender, vanguard and missile command.
Discovered girls and pubs in the mid 80's so had a three year break. Then spent the 90's on the mega drive and ps 1. Switched to the pc in 2001 aand never looked back.
Some of my earliest memories are of playing the original NES with my older brother after our parents got him a NES one Christmas. I just loved playing it and I'm pretty sure it amused my parents that I spent far more time playing with it than with the Barbie corvette they bought me the same year.
A few years later they gave me my own SNES and it was probably A Link to the Past and FFIV/FFVI that really solidified my love of video games from them on.
My journey to becoming a gamer is different than what made me a gamer. Let me explain.
My journey to becoming a gamer started with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition in 1978; the greatest gaming gateway drug to gamers of my generation. I tried it because one of the local priests was preaching that D&D was demonic and wanted it banned and I, being raised by libertarian parents, was like, "If they're trying to ban it, then I gotta try that!" One afternoon and I was hooked. Gary Gygax is to blame!
I made my shift to video gaming when my brother and I got an Atari 2600 in 1979 and I spent the 80s playing Combat, Warlords and Pitfall along with stand up video games like Joust, Dig Dug, Dragon's Lair and Space Ace in Video Arcades.
I kind of fell out of it when I went to college and law school. I just didn't have the time. A friend had a PC at college and on rare occasions we played some tank type game where you blew up houses and then ran over the people that came out leaving a bloody smear on the ground. It was sufficiently gruesome to keep me mildly interested. He also had the DoS based Ancient Art of War and Ancient Art of War at Sea. Graphics were a bit dated, but again it was fun to have a beer and play a bit. I didn't play anything during law school. Too much work and no computer or console access. What little time off I had was spent with my fiance or sleeping.
After law school I bought myself my first PC with a 75 MHz Hard Drive. It was STATE OF THE ART, BABY! I used it mainly as a glorified word processor for work until one day on a whim I bought a game called Frontlines, which was some kind of RTS simulator.
I tried other games as I upgraded rigs from time to time. I enjoyed a Jane's Submarine simulator (learned to read sonar screens from the game) and I bought several of the NASCAR racing simulator games by Sierra. I never played on line because I never had internet access that was cost effective. Around this time I also got married, bought a house and started traveling the world with my new wife while getting into my career. Basically I gamed sometimes, but not regularly.
Then in 1999 my first child was born and my wife and I did what every couple with children did; we stayed home and didn't go anywhere. I picked up a copy of Star Wars : Force Commander (widely panned by critics but I enjoyed it) and by this time I had cable internet access. So one night while I was sitting up keeping watch over a sick baby, I fired it up and hooked into an online game. I remember waiting for 30 minutes for the game to start because you needed 4 to play it and there were only 3 of us in the lobby for a long time. I think that's when I discovered Gamespy.
Then in 2001 I picked up a copy of Starfleet Command II : Empires at War. My second child arrived in February of 2001 so we were even more home bound. I played the single player campaign again late at night between diaper changing shifts and the like and rapidly discovered the single player campaign suffered from a bug. After downloading a patch I discovered I could hook onto the Dynaverse which was a series of servers set up by Interplay where people could play the game on line. There I met a bunch of guys and I started playing with them at regularly scheduled times on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I was amazed that we could get 60 to 70 people on a single server playing the game at the same time and fighting each other.
By the end of 2001 SFC II : Orion Pirates came out and split the Dynaverse playerbase. That kind of ended SFC II for me. On the suggestion of an on line friend I'd met in my SFC II days I picked up a copy of Dark Age of Camelot to play with him and with that I became an MMO gamer.
Since then I've tried most major titles including CoX (beta tested CoH and CoV), WoW, WHO, LotRO, Allods, STO, SWToR, Runes of Magic, Age of Wushu and a few others I've tried and forgotten.
Now a days if I get time to game (kids are older and I run my own business now so time is limited) I log into Planetside 2 equip my shotgun and go Banzai Madman for 20 to 30 minutes. I'm not in an Outfit and I never join a unit because I like to just charge in like a wildman and I don't care if I die a lot as long as I get that one spectacular kill a night that makes me laugh.
One of the highlights of my gaming career has been to actually game with my children. I was able to take them to the battlegrounds of DAoC and have fun with them there. My kids also have an XBox I watch them play with their friends on line. I never could get back into console gaming after I left the Atari 2600 behind. I can't get into smart phone gaming either. Probably because I'm always talking or texting on the dang thing.
Am I a gamer? Aye aye, sir! Gung Ho, Gung Ho, Gung Ho! Dyed in the wool and tried and true. You name it and I did it, so I figure I qualify under any definition.
But as for exactly what it was that made me a gamer I'd have to say one thing and one thing only.
An imagination.
YMMV.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
"What made you a gamer?"
Being raised by a violent schizophrenic, early on I subconsciously adapted self-defensive mechanisms to root out and solve any presented problem, regardless of how preposterous the circumstance. Eventually, because I was good at it to survive, and this gave me a noticeable edge, I started to really enjoy it. Having never been subjected to outlandish amounts of atomic or cosmic rays, I decided I could never be a superhero, so I settled for "gamer".
This, this and this....
I was far too addicted to ADnD. I remember being about 10 years old at Camp Wonposet watching some older kids play and trying for weeks to join them, unsuccessfully I might add. When camp ended I used all my allowance to buy everything related to ADnD at the time. I still have some of my original books which are now quite collectable apparently. I still manage to play 2nd edition with some friends on occasion.
That same year I bought my first hand held, the Mattel Electronics Football game and my first pc, a TRS-80 with a cassette drive. This was followed by a Franklin OMS, an Amiga, a Commodore 64 etc.
And of course the 70's and 80's was the era of the Arcade where you actually left your house to play games with friends. I remember running to the bank after school to convert my cash into rolls of quarters so I could avoid the lines at the bill changer.
Like you, my family and career forced games to the back burner but I returned with a vengeance once my kids were grown and my wife found other hobbies.
It just amazes me every day just how far gaming has evolved. Its been a lot of fun watching and living through the last few decade of gaming history.
Del Cabon
A US Army ('Just Cause') Vet and MMORPG Native formerly of Trinsic, Norath and Dereth. Currently playing LOTRO.
Pong : Playing with my brother as we made the bar go up and down to bounce back that little dot to make a goal.
"Coleco Vision": Burger Time, Centipede, B.C. Quest for Tires ... I thought I'd seen everything...
Then I got "Intellivision": Utopia, Skiing, AD&D "Treasure of Tarmin" (played for hours on B/W TV)
Later With the money I saved up from my 'paper routes'
I bought an "Atari 2600": Dig Dug, Pitfall, Pac Man, Joust, to name a few...
My "AWAKENING" as I trembled .... For Christmas:
"NES" Nintendo's 8 bit came with Super Mario and I thought nothing could EVER beat that... until I opened another present...
The box was Black: inside was this game called "Final Fantasy" ... nothing Final about it! lol
The next game I got would for EVER change my gaming life...
The Legend of Zelda "GOLD Cartridge" At this point I had already died and been in "Gaming Heaven"
Yet nothing could prepare me for the impact "Link" would have for the rest of my natural Life! Even my pet rat is named Link...
I'm 43 now... That's what made me a gamer, as I will always be a gamer!
simple answer, my dad
bought the first atari console when i was like 6, got my first c64 bout 6 years later and from then it's history
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
yep, we are all vets of the 80's war of the invaders :P
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"