My history of gaming.
Too long didn't read conclusion below.
If I didn't have a pretty busy work life, I would probably regularly hang out at lan parties, play many games, and find myself to be completely lost in the mmo's of these days.
My history of gaming goes way back, when I was very little I played on systems like the atari, but I only vaguely remember that, but soon enough my father had bought a PC, a 286 with 5Mhz and a turbo booster to 10Mhz, 600Kb of memory and a 4MB hard disk. This PC marks the beginning of my love for PC's and gaming in general. I particularly liked playing those really early RPG's back in those days. Games were black and white, like paratrooper, and I also remember this depth bomber game and such.
But one game in particular I really liked was named Hotel and it was command based, like "Go east" "Look floor" etc, and it would just output text of what you saw etc. I was very young, dutch, and despite that seemed to pick up the english language really fast. I could find my way through those games by trial and error and finish them no problem. I loved the intruigue of finding something and solving puzzles.
Ofcourse, pretty soon games started to hit off and turn CGA, and even EGA and they became more visual, for a while I indulged myself more in arcade like games like Airborne, Street Rod, NBA 1on1, Prince of Persia, Grand Prix, etc, etc. Which were mainly about setting and beating highscores.
Then I was introduced to sierra's adventure games, such as Space Quest, Kings quest, Leisure suit larry (lol yes, 6 year old playing lsl, ftw!) this marked another big moment of me indulging myself in the English language and although these games were much more visual then Hotel, it was still command based and great to hone my skill in English.
By the time I actually got english in the 6th grade of elementary (bare in mind, that the grade system is different here then in the US, I don't know which grade it would be in the US, but I was 10 years old at the time) I could already read english books pretty well with good understanding.
Anyway, gaming turned into becoming more of a guru on all things computer, I started programming in qbasic and batch files and made simple games or handy programs myself, also the inner workings of the PC interested me and before I knew it I was building PC's from parts before I was 12 and it continue'd on until I was 16 and I started playing one game in particular which was groundbreaking in terms of online multiplayer, before this, all multiplayer I did play was based on lan, or inhouse. Me vs my brother playing some RTS game and the likes. Or split screen on the same keyboard, that sort of stuff, but then when Action Quake 2 became a hype, I started playing with many friends from school, and we were just fragging around. I was still on a dial up modem at the time, much to my parents distress since those connections were expensive to maintain.
Anyways, I played that game regularly for over two years which was alot more time then I ever spent before on one single game.
However, the hype died down, people went on to counterstrike was was the new hype, and despite counterstrike being a fairly decent multiplayer game, the playstyle and speed never matched up to action quake 2 so I never really gotten into that myself, and turned again on more RPG element games, like diablo and arcanum. The latter of which I used my programming skills to patch all the bugs for the community, since the game was released before it was really ready, the code was full of holes and mistakes. I probably spend a good part of a year on playing, and replaying it quite some times as well as fixing all the bugs.
Until WoW was released, and everything grew dark after that. I was already working fulltime at this time, but nonetheless I spent every evening playing that game, first taking my time messing about and very slowly leveling in the world, to eventually getting into one of the more elite endgame raiding guilds, after which I spend like 7 months just raiding, raiding and raiding some more with 39 other people. Experienced many fun moments, many not so fun moments, but ultimately it just had to stop, work was becoming a problem to keep up with the guild and irl friends I didn't have anymore by this time. Or well, I had, but I didn't see them anymore.
After I quite WoW, I spend a good part of the year on casually roaming about the internet looking for tv shows I'd find fun watching and single player games I keep just stop and continue again a week or two later without falling behind like in an MMO such as WoW. Eventually though I picked WoW up again, but now not to do any endgame raiding, but to roleplay with other people. Which was quite a lot less stressful, I could just roam about and create stories with other people and have fun, and log off again for a few days or whatever and not feel like I'm missing out on so-called dragon kill points or loot that would be important if one would be raiding.
I also grew bored by that however, and for the last few years I've played through a few single player RPG games and played a few multiplayer games that, unlike MMO's, don't force you to keep playing, like heroes of newerth for example. Meanwhile, my job has become much more encompassing the past two years, I travel alot nowadays and find myself in different parts of europe almost every week, sometimes having to make up to two or three trips a week.
Next to that, I also enjoy keeping up with a few of my favorite television shows as well as watching the occasional anime.
But as for programming, I haven't done much of that at all for several years now. I just don't have the time to commit myself to any long term projects anymore.
Too long didn't read:
I have learned the english language through gaming. And have repeatedly honed and perfected that skill throughout my gaming history. It has also been a great stimulater for my brain that loves to solve puzzles and advance storylines. It allowed me to show my creative side particularly in terms of programming and creating new software and has fulfilled a lot of my needs over the years.
Downsides however are there too. The need to compete, especially in an MMO environment where this need requires a constant stream of attention and devotion, has resulted in a lot of sacrifices in terms of my social life. One could argue that an online community is also a social life, and I would be inclined to agree to a certain height, but it is insufficient to completely take it over. An internet community is a fleeting one, and you might go from forum to forum, server to server and community to community, but they rarily stick or be lasting. And therefor also not as rewarding as a real life social life. A good balance should probably be maintained at all times. Also, a gamer's life doesn't fit well with a job that isn't 9-5, much to my regret!
How often do I game nowadays? Anything ranging from 0 to 10 hours a week, it's all I can spare.
How much do I used to game? Probably ~20 hours a week in during my childhood, peaking at ~40-50 a week when playing WoW in a raiding guild, next to a ~40 hour fulltime job. Nowadays I work about 60-80 hours a week, so I guess my work/gaming ration hasn't changed much at least. xD
Have I learned a great deal? Yes. Can everything that 'should' be learned, learned in gaming environments? No.
As for RPG games. Most are just pretty bad, but there are a few RPG's that were to me like reading good books while being interactive with them. It's great! Plus, I really like fantasy settings and such. And ofcourse there's much that can be learned through them, but most of the time a lot of it is quite simplified. Political and economical structures in fantasy worls etc, rarily match up to the real thing. Are often full of loopholes and such. Sure people can learn from them though, but there are more effecient ways to gain knowledge. First and foremost, games are a source of entertainment. The rest is extra.
