My Life and Gaming

[Kyon]

I saw the Overrated Games thread and I was going to post this here, but then it got way off topic from that and decided it should be its own thread instead. This is basically how games affected my life. Nothing really more than that.

 

Halo, I was 6 years old and I didn't care about map design (First time I was truly exposed to video games). That got me playing all kinds of games until my mom got scared that I was going to hurt someone (when really I wasn't, just her being overly paranoid). Flash forward to 2005 when I was first exposed to Half-Life 2, Far Cry, and Doom 3. All 3 of those games challenged me in some way. Half-Life 2 taught me to look at the details and to respect a story. Far Cry taught me to keep going no matter how hard something is or the conditions you are put in. And Doom 3; it taught me to not be scared at anything that came around the corner. That even if I was scared of what was next, I still had to move forward. Also, these games got me into computers and working with scripts and later into programming.

 

This was in a period where I was 8 to 11 years old. I was smarter than my dad was at scripting and I always thought of him as smarter than me. There were a lot of ways my dad was a horrible one but if he didn't let me sneak video games I probably wouldn't be here right now. My mom thought she was helping me by cutting me off from video games when honestly, I'd probably be dead right now if my dad wouldn't have been there. At that age, I was an adrenaline junkie, a bully, and many more bad things. Problem was, I was way more of an adrenaline junkie then most people. At age 9 I got myself in an accident (it was entirely my fault) so bad I could've been paralyzed from the waist down, but I was lucky. I still have leg problems today. A year before that I had nearly cut my little toe off. I was in a very bad direction and was put into therapy. My therapist didn't do crap, he didn't help me, I would barely talk to him.

 

I told my mom I was sneaking video games at my dad's when I was 12. She cut me off from him. At 11 I was at an all time high in my life. At 12, I fell into a depression and contemplated and attempted suicide. Contributing to that was the fact that I had just come to the realization my grandparents had died (they died when I was 8). This wasn't because video games were distracting me. This was because for the first time somebody else was gone. My best friend moved out of state. Apparently he wanted to tell me goodbye before he left but alas, I was not able to go. Again, it was my mother being too sheltering. I had nothing, he was practically my only friend mostly because I drove the others away. I attempted suicide and failed. Luckily my parents never found out or I would've inpatient at a mental health hospital for a 4th time. Oh yeah, did I mention I had all F's at the time.

 

Finally, I was allowed to see my dad again, when I was 13. My problems started to go away. Fast, extremely fast in fact. My dad went from being a horrible parent to a god awful one and somehow, that made me all the better. He was a pissed off wreck and somehow because of that, it made me so much better. I was smarter than my mom on all aspects when I was 13. My stepdad when I was 15. I'm 16 now and am trying to figure out what I want to do in my life. I am in 2 college courses and am trying to decide whether I should become a physicist, an IT worker, a game designer, or go into the business field. Apparently each one of those are very reachable careers for me and I could probably do even more difficult things.

 

Right now at both parents' house I have free reign over what games I play and I am better than ever. I still play video games often and I can look back on my good moments when I was younger and I realize how capable I was back then and if I had video games all this time, I have no clue where I would be right now. I mean, when I was 11 I was modding games, albeit they weren't very good but they were better than most adults could do.

 

PS: I don't know if those ages are entirely correct. My memory is spotty from all of the things I have done (I can't remember my entire 5th or 6th grade years.

 

TL;DR: Video games shaped my life.

[Pinkie Pie]

Wow. Thanks for sharing that, I'm not sure if that was easy to do or not. It seems like you had a pretty rough childhood. I wouldn't say videogames shaped my life but they've always been a part of it ever since I first picked up a Playstation controller at 4, and I haven't been a PC gamer for many years so I just started learning about the basics of anything having to do with coding or game files. I still don't know a lot. In a way though, I suppose videogames do kinda shape us as any kind of entertainment does especially if it's the prime reason you get into PCs at all. Teaches you stuff at least.

[Doublenature]

I played my first FPS at the age of 9 (Day of defeat) and had only played ps2 adventure games before that so it was really mindblowing playing a shooter. I talked with people in the game (in english ofcourse) and people would ask: "how can you live in a non-english speaking country, and speaking english at that age?" my reply: "I play games in english, watch TV in english and I like speaking english." Today I realize that all my learning (except math) comes from games and movies/series. In school they still teach us what "Dog" means (Im in the ninth grade comon!) so I havent learned any english from school since the 1st grade or something. My point is: gaming has taught me a new language, and I didnt even know I was learning because I had so much fun playing. I would have failed school if it wasnt for games. You come home from a tough day at school and you start your beloved one up, and just starts playing. You just sit there and have fun, playing whatever games you prefer, and just loving it. And people say: "Gaming is bad for you!" Why? Is having fun not good? And who made you professor of video games? Mr. 65 year old dude who doesnt even know what a computer looks like? And since Ive learned so much simply by having fun, that proves the school teaching plan awfully wrong. "Everyone learns the same way" yeah, right.

[Lord Sinister]

You're a programmer then, Dalipose?

[Koach]

Well i began at 5 years old with Need For Speed 4 (IMO still one of the best NFS games ever). I got my first PC in 2000, when dad got promoted and money began smiling at us. Then a year later i moved to my current house. As unbelievable as it may sound, NFS 4 was the only game I played until 2002. The only game that lasted me that long.

 

After 2002 things began changing. Blame GTA 3 for that. I never actually finished the campaign until 2009, mainly due to me preferring fuckaround in that game rather than playing the missions.

 

In 2003 started my PS1 fucktard period, in which i played at least 50 different games per year (all pirate bay DL, no exceptions) and lasted until my return to PC in 2005 with Empire Earth and the introduction to FPS via Team Fortress Classic and Counter Strike 1.3. 2006 and 2007 were exclusively dedicated to CS 1.6 and Runescape, then in 2008, i found the game that defined my whole gaming history.

 

Imperial Glory, a Medieval 2 Total War Napoleonic TW mod wannabe, introduced me to musket warfare, line infantry tactics and volley fire. Soon i grew addicted to it, and became my main game for 2 years, until 2009, when i joined WoW with some friends. BAD IDEA. Lasted me for a short while, though, but for that short while i failed 5 school subjects and almost had to repeat 9th grade. Shit.

 

Then i got my hands on MW2 in 2010, starting my online competitive gaming, then came TF2 in may, DoD:S in july, Napoleon Total War in august and, guess which game came in October...

 

BattleGrounds 2.

 

BG2 marked a before and after in my life as whole. I joined my first clan (47th Regiment of Foot), began texturing and making skins, specializing my skills in history of 1770's, learnt lots about muskets, old warfare, politics, ways of doing things, even poetry and art.

 

Now i'm actually planning to join the development team, possibly helping around replacing the HL2 and DoD:S textures for my own, allowing the mod to be released on Steam.

[Alyxx Thorne]

I've been around computers and consoles as long as I can remember. My father, being a PC enthusiast, let me watch as he built and repaired computers and also let me play them as much as I wanted to. The first game I can really remember playing is Duke Nukem 1 on DOS, way before he went 3D and got his attitude. It's one of the reasons I'm so fond of Duke, he's sort of part of my childhood and I feel I grew up with him.

 

 

Another early gaming memory is BlackThorne which probably sparked my interest in action/adventure games and one of the reasons I love the early Tomb Raider games so much as they felt like BlackThorne in 3D in a way. BlackThorne on PC was actually uncensored and featured much bloodier death animations and sprites than the Super Nintendo version, so it's kind of weird my father allowed me to play it, but it was a great game still and to this day I still play it now and then if I have the chance. I also remember playing Wolfenstein 3D very early on but my father wouldn't allow me playing it so he'd turn it off. I'd later revisit Wolfenstein 3D at an older age though and it definitely, together with Doom and Quake, sparked my initial interest in FPS games, which is my main genre atm.

 

 

One early racing game I played a lot was Grand Prix Circuit, which my father would play a lot too. It was fairly realistic for the time and even had vehicle damage, and the amount of realism depended on the difficulty you played on. The graphics were awesome by EGA standards, of course limited to 16 colours, and looked fairly realistic for the time, though the sound hasn't held up that well as it was limited to PC speaker only.

 

 

When I wasn't at my father's place I was mostly playing the SNES at home, where the games I played the most were Super Mario World, Starwing, X-Zone (a Super Scope title), B.O.B. (a sidescrolling shooter), and Super Mario Kart. I'd also play the N64 and PS1 at my friends' places. We would often sit down with some pizza and soda and have a long evening of GoldenEye or Perfect Dark. On my dad's computer the games I'd play the most were definitely Tomb Raider II (my favourite in the franchise, and still is to this day and one of the reasons Lara Croft became a big icon to me), and the adventure gem Grim Fandango, which I heavily recommend to fans of adventure titles as the voice acting and especially the graphics still hold up today. I was also heavily into EA titles like MotoRacer 1 and 2, and Need For Speed III (the original Hot Pursuit) which I'd play with my father's force feedback steering wheel or joystick. It helped keep my interest in racing games.

 

 

Later on I got my own computer and started checking out some games my mother got from a magazine she subscribed to. One of these was Fallout 2, and it definitely was the sole reason I skipped a lot of classes in junior high. It helped me gain some interest in a genre I had completely ignored up until that point, being the RPG genre, and Fallout 2 was the first RPG I really got into, probably because it wasn't like any RPG I had seen before. To this day, Fallout 2 is the best RPG I've played, even overshadowing its sequels in my opinion.

 

 

I'd also play a lot of classic id Software games like Doom and Quake, and of course Half-Life which I absolutely loved, though to this day I haven't completed it without the aid of cheat codes. I also played a lot of the game Sin, which I personally consider superior to Half-Life and around this time my taste in gaming mostly revolved around FPS's and still does today.

[Kyon]

You're a programmer then, Dalipose?

Well, starting. I woudn't expect any AAA games coming out by me for a while

[Lord Sinister]

You're a programmer then, Dalipose?

Well, starting. I woudn't expect any AAA games coming out by me for a while

 

What language(s)?

[Kyon]

You're a programmer then, Dalipose?

Well, starting. I woudn't expect any AAA games coming out by me for a while

 

What language(s)?

Taking a class on Visual BASIC and am kinda self teaching c++

[Lord Sinister]

am kinda self teaching c++

 

[Average Internet Guy]

Let's see...

Well, way back in the late 1990's-early 2000's, my family had multiple Super Nintendo systems. I played a lot of Mario RPG, Final Fantasy, Star Fox, lots of platformers. In addition, my cousin had a Playstation. My dad would often go over there and play golf and football games with my uncles over there, while my cousin, my sister, and I would play Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Army Men, lots and lots of GTA, games like those. By 2001-2002, I played my first FPS-Timesplitters for the Playstation 2. My sister and I would spend days playing BagTag on that chinese restaurant level, and that was some of the best time I had bonding with her. From then on, I would spend a lot of time on the PS2, playing a helluva lot of Ratchet & Clank. From on, I was playing mostly Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, but then I switched to mostly Halo PC and Custom Edition at my dad's house. I would stay up to 4 most nights, but since it was a weekend (it was installed on my dad's computer, since my parents were divorced, he would get custody on the weekends) it didn't affect my grades at all. By the time 2007 came along, I got into Halo 3, but I soon turned to CoD4 (imo best one in the series), but that caused my grades to drop, but my parents didn't care. Later, I bought L4D, The Orange Box, and played HL2 for the first time, although I had heard of it before then. Since then, I have been playing mods mostly, but in my spare time not occupied with school, I have been learning how to map in the source SDK (about 1600 hours), but I haven't released anything yet.

[Alyxx Thorne]

Taking a class on Visual BASIC and am kinda self teaching c++

Visual BASIC is a good place to start.

[Ross Scott]

This is my favorite testimony on growing up with videogames:

 

http://tiredgamer.ytmnd.com/

[Alyxx Thorne]

This is my favorite testimony on growing up with videogames:

 

http://tiredgamer.ytmnd.com/

He sounds like the principal from Beavis & Butthead.

[Ray]

This is my favorite testimony on growing up with videogames:

 

http://tiredgamer.ytmnd.com/

Is it wrong if I teared up a little, Great performance truly deserves an oscar.

[Alyxx Thorne]

Two other games I'd like to mention are MDK, a game by Shiny Entertainment that I consider one of the most groundbreaking games of all time, and a game that still holds up today. I played the heck out of it growing up and to this day I still play it now and then. The most groundbreaking aspect of MDK was that it introduced a weapon staple found in every shooter since, the Sniper weapon. MDK pretty much pioneered the idea of sniping someone from the other side of the playfield and achieved this by making it a seamless integrated part of the gameplay. I think we can all thank MDK for bringing sniper weapons into gaming. The game also had an enormous variety in gameplay, as there was more to it than just running and gunning. Some levels required bomb runs, some levels required snowboarding (of all things), and there was plenty of rather unusual and inventive powerups to be used in unconventional ways. For instance, a miniature nuclear explosion was used for opening door locks. The game also brought players out of the dark corridors of Doom and Quake and into vast open fields with no lag at all. It also has quite a nice design to it, some of it highly reminiscent of HR Giger, who is famous for designing the alien and its environment in the Ridley Scott classic Alien. A sequel was made some years later by none other than BioWare and it surpasses the original in some aspects, expanding on the other characters as well.

 

 

I'll also like to mention Descent 2 and Forsaken, two games very identical in gameplay, which I played the hell out of as a kid.

 

 

Both Descent 2 and Forsaken became benchmark titles for the PC that any owner of a powerful gaming rig needed to have and to this day they hold up very well. Both were also ported to console, with Descent 1 and 2 coming to PlayStation One and Forsaken coming to both PS One and N64.