I’m a gamer. Have been a gamer for close to 23 years now. I’ve forgotten more matches, stories, and adventures than most casual players will ever experience in my years. I’m not the best, far from the worse, and I always strive to have fun. Something about that has been changing over the last few years.
When I was a kid, I gamed with my three brothers. We played hours and hours of NES, PC, Sega, and eventually Play Station and X-Box games. Singleplayer, multiplayer, saved or fresh game, it didn’t matter. A lot of my childhood revolved around games. Not that I spent my time only in gaming, but there was a great deal spent around electronic interactive entertainment.
As a teenager and young(er) adult, I still gamed a great deal, but I became more introduced to the true multi-player experience. Gaming with your buddies and family was fun but over time you learned them, you could tell their strategy, and for the most part there wasn’t as great of a challenge (Yes Alex, you still kept surprising me and I still say we were equals when we played the same games). It was still a blast to play with them, but for those who were only casual gamers, or at least casual in the genre of your choice, it wasn’t as challenging. Fun for sure, but you like to test yourself.
So steps in online gaming. Here you are open to a world of challengers and champions. Will your next opponent be a newer player who hasn’t learned the gaming system yet or will you face someone with less of a life than you? You could never tell and there was such pleasure in facing opponents that were your equal. The adrenaline, the comradery, and the joy of defeating odds where you really didn’t know where the coin would land. Such is the pleasure and addiction that is online gaming.
In the last year, I’ve drawn more away from single player gaming nearly completely. Sure there was the joy of Oblivion, but honestly I don’t enjoy it unless I’m sitting on Ventrillo listening to my friends chatter about their characters. I’ve drawn myself away from story and more into action. This worries me, in a way. especially since in the last (except for very recently) I have always drawn myself away from writing as often as I have. Interactive visual medium seems to have taken over a great deal of my leisure time. I still feel the urge to write, but when I do I tend to think in action games terms.
So what’s the point in all this? I’m not sure. I suppose it’s observation really. I know part of me wants to get away from all the gaming, yet at the same time I’m finding it hard to. When my friends are online, I want to hang out with them, after all, they are my social group really. I’ve a few friends offline here in Tampa, but the uprooting after the storm in ‘05 sent most of my close connections to internet online interaction. Personally, I don’t find this too bad, or at least I didn’t last year when I wasn’t working 5pm-1:30am. These days, working the night shift has pulled me away from my other friends too. Saturdays are my only social days for the most part.
Let me wrap this up before this becomes a “woe is me” post. I’m going to lay out some plans for my life in the coming weeks. The hard drive I mentioned yesterday is coming later tonight instead. I’m going to use that to start learning more useful skills centered around the PC. In addition to that, I’m going to try to take some Dragon Page and I Should Be Writing Advice and put butt into chair and start writing. I’m the only one providing excuses for why I can’t be writing. I’m going to lay off the games more, at least I will try to. It’s not too easy because despite what people say, gaming is an addiction. That adrenaline high is powerful and exciting stuff and will hook you.
Gee, if I spent this time writing fiction instead of blogging I’d have another page or two. Aw nuts.
Justin
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