I think the first time I realized I was a heavy gamer was when in high school I (along with quite a few of my classmates) got hooked on Runescape. In those days Streamyx hadn’t arrived, so you tended to rack up huge bills playing on dial-up. It was also then which I did one of the evilest things I’d ever done which was to pick up a Jaring password floating around the classroom (those days your account wasn’t tied to your landline) and use it in place of mine, which meant some poor guy was being charged 1 sen for every minute I was online. Got a big whupping from mom for that.
Swearing off online games (for the time being) meant that I had more time to discover other games. Being not exactly the most sociable person I never got much into Counterstrike which was the rage at the time. Rather, I treated games as storybook replacements. The days spent exploring Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Arcanum, Fallout, Planescape, The Longest Journey, Deus Ex, Grim Fandango, etc were in my humble opinion worth as much as time spent poring over novels.
Lest you think me some kind of gaming snob, I did pick up the more mainstream titles as well. I would play pretty much anything – Need for Speed, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Civilization, you name it I played it.
And don’t forget the multiplayer games like DotA which is pretty much the staple of any university male.
Ugh if I could convert the hours I spent playing that game into money I’d be a rich man. Or the calories I got from guzzling Pringles and Mr. Potato while playing. Maybe if Twisties’ new multigrain Lurve chips had been around back then, I wouldn’t have felt so guilty!
The first major purchase I made when I started working was a spanking new PC. And not to Facebook with either, oh no. With a 22″ monitor and a blazing (at the time) Nvidia 8800GT I was all set.
While I was initially euphoric to see Half Life 2, Call of Duty 4, and Bioshock in their full glory, I soon felt something missing after I got past the graphics and action. I still have Neverwinter Nights 2, The Witcher, and Fallout 3 left unfinished.
I’d thought it over and eventually realized why I don’t dig games as much any more. Somewhere along the line games became much more about graphics than the gameplay or story. Ironic how during the years before I could afford original games and good hardware, I thought that I would enjoy gaming much more, that something was holding me back from the “full experience”. But when I finally got the bells and whistles I lost interest. Perhaps my high school friends would tell me I sudah insaf. Or I belong to an older cadre of gamers. But that’s how an affair works, doesn’t it? One day you realize it’s time to go and spend time on more important things…and people :).
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Tags: baldur's gate, Games
Awww sad. But it’s probably also true that you read less novels now, and read less in general. I’d also guess you sleep less… in general.
Priorities in life do change, but whether those are permanent shifts, time will tell…
Hoi why lah you let your mom know about you stealing the Jaring password one?
Imma going to write about my lurve affair with the internet.
now i feel bad for all the time i spent on gaming. :(
haha.. yeah.. people! or person.. :)
@Marvin haha I’ll still try Starcraft 2 though. But I they aren’t going to put in LAN support for it, so sucky!