Looking back at my computer and gaming experiences

Yesterday was a good day. It started out when I was looking through all my old Magic cards, which ranged everywhere from Revised (3rd Edition) all the way up to Onslaught block. I've heard word that several "old school" commons and uncommons had risen in value, so I took a look to see what I may have. As expected, there were a number of cards (Wasteland, several Portal cards) which had risen substantially. I'm probably holding onto everything for now, but it sparked memories of days' past when I used to sell cards online, through my website and Usenet.

I first got a taste of the internet in late '95 (my freshman year of high school), began Magic in '96, and began participating in online purchases and trades that same year. Things were very much different back then, especially without credit cards (I had to use money orders for EVERYTHING), but the experience was enjoyable enough that I scaled up my "business" in hopes of making real money.

Everything pretty much came together in the second half of 1998, as I now had a steady income stream from my $5.75/hr ice rink job. My parents found me a second computer for very cheap at an estate sale, and I began learning networking. From that moment onward, I was enthralled by multiplayer LAN gaming, and wanted even more. At the time I had 2 lowly 486-66 machines, which were barely capable of playing any game besides Warcraft II or DOOM. A new milestone was reached in late November of '98 when I bought my first custom-built 350 Mhz PC. I didn't build it myself, but I learned quickly that it was very simple, and was affordable enough to enable me to build an entire fleet of new computers for LAN gaming.

A couple years went by and I quickly ramped up operations (in my parents' basement, of course!) My friends came over just about every weekend and battled in Starcraft, Age of Empires, Diablo II and several others. Since I was always looking for the cheapest parts possible, it also meant I was running into hardware problems left and right, as well as unforseen software issues (and let's not get into Windows ME). The weird part was, this probably excited me more than playing the games itself, since it gave me vast technical knowledge in the process. To me, managing the computer and network became a "game" in itself!

Once I began my full-time IT job (in 2002/2003), two things happened: First, I was making more money, which meant I could afford to make upgrades and standardize my hardware. Second, I was working 40 hours a week working on systems, which meant the time maintaining my own home computers was far less valuable to me. Even so, I still enjoyed computer gaming enough that I still hosted LAN parties regularly. The game of choice for the past few years has been Warcraft III, and more specifically a custom map called DotA (short for Defense of the Ancients).

In the past two years, I have all but abandoned the idea of building my own desktops in favor of purchasing new, pre-configured laptops. The reasons behind this are really quite numerous, but are as follows. Laptops are inexpensive (about the same as a desktop nowadays), portable, take less space, use less heat, don't require a separate monitor or speakers (even though headphones are preferred), are very reliable, and have built-in wireless networking capabilities. While laptops cannot be upgraded, and a good video card is expensive, most of the games we play do not require a great deal of graphics capabilities, so this has never been an issue.

The question that I have asked myself in the past few years has been "how much do I 'really' like multiplayer gaming and would I consider joining a larger group of gamers?" Initially, I would have embraced it and ran, but after some introspection, I'm not really that big of a gamer, outside of a select few games. And that being said, I was always very happy with my occasional small-scale LAN parties that it really didn't add much value to pursue the hobby any deeper. My largest event to date was my de facto "housewarming" party with 18 guests. It worked out extremely well, but was rather unfocused as I had a mix of gamers on non-gamers, and others I didn't know very well and therefore couldn't sustain anything beyond the first event. So I'm guessing this really isn't where I want to be heading in the future, and that's perfectly fine by me.

Getting back to last night -- we revived computer gaming once again for the first time in (probably) over a year. After some minor bugs, everyone was running, and getting crushed by our online opponents. I had just as much fun as ever, and now I need to decide where I want to go with it for the future. I'll probably not make any big decisions as I am now in the final 6 months of my "five-year plan" (more on this in another blog), but I think it is fair to think about this a little bit since I believe gaming will ALWAYS be a part of my life in some capacity. Since it's summer and I want to try to focus more on seasonal activities, this will probably sit on the backburner for awhile. Hmmmm....