Gamer for life
Monday July 8, 2019 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments
I have always loved playing games. Doesn’t matter the format. Board game, card game, video game, sports, like whiffle ball, golf, two-hand-touch football, basketball, all the games. From my earliest memories I have loved them all. Well, that’s not true, there are some that bored me, like Candyland. Played that a thousand times with my kids when they were little. But for the most part I have enjoyed playing games all my life.
When I was a kid I would cajole my brother to play with me. He would until he lost. That was usually the last time he would play that game. He just wasn't all that interested in playing games. So, I would often lose on purpose to get him to keep playing. Pathetic right?
I have bought tons of supplement books for games I never played. I still have my second addition AD&D books. I played a lot my freshman year in college. The spine is taped together. I have boxes of books for Traveller and Vampire the Masquerade.
I started playing video games from the beginning, with pong. We have an Atari game console and Sega Genesis, GameCube and PS2-4. Lots of handheld games as well.
Are you old enough to remember going to the Game Arcade? I spent hours and hundreds of dollars there.
Then the Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) started. We played the first one on America Online. It was an AD&D Gold Box game that they converted to allow a whopping hundred people on the server simultaneously. Then Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft. Eve Online, and many more. I missed a few, especially now. They keep proliferating and I don’t have the time, nor the energy to devote to all of them.
That’s not even talking about all the great single player games that came out, like Diablo in all of its incarnations, Earth and Beyond, Homecoming, Star Wars Outcast Jedi Knights games, all of the Star Wars games. So many good ones over the years.
Some of my kid’s earliest memories are sitting on my lap while I played a video game. My youngest son was typing in cheat codes for Jedi Outcast before he could read. My eldest daughter is a guild master for Final Fantasy. My eldest son just got a degree in game design. I rubbed off on them, unfortunately for them.
It continues to this day. I still enjoy playing card games and video games and even role-playing games. Currently I am regularly playing Eve Online (still, going on ten years) and Star Wars the Role-Playing Game: Edge of the Empire. I also started playing Munchkin CCG, with my sons. I actually gave up playing games while I was working on my MFA. I don’t think I played a game for three years.
I am looking forward to The Outer Worlds. I will probably give that a try. I am back to dabbling with Guild Wars 2 and even a variant of City of Heroes.
I try to limit my time playing games now, so I can do more productive things, like write.
What are your favorites? Is there something coming out that you are looking forward to?
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