Whether it’s something with dice and a board or whether it involves a joystick and a keyboard I suppose games have been a pass time that has been with me since my childhood.
I don’t remember it but when I lived in Colombia my dad brought back one of the first home consoles for the game Pong and apparently I took to it immediately.
I started board games as a kid when one of my older brothers bought a copy of Dungeons and Dragons and I buried my nose in the rulebook for days and couldn’t wait to try it out with my elementary school friends.
From those humble beginnings I graduated to the Atari 2600 and more conventional board games like Monopoly, Life, and Risk. As time carried on I graduated to text-based games on the Commodore 64 and Battletech.
In college my gaming opportunities became a bit more refined as I was introduced to card games like Hearts and Bridge but I was also introduced to the M.U.D. or Multi User Dungeon. These were early text-based games played on the early internet against players from all over the world. They would one day blossom into a billion dollar industry but back then we were just amazed that it worked at all. I also developed a taste for gaming conventions those days. A chance to just get together and forget school or other worries and just play games for a couple of days.
After college my gaming pass time took a back seat. I was focused on getting established at work and had little time for gaming in person or money to buy a PC for gaming.
Around ’95 I finally bought my first PC and I found Battletech had taken a leap from paper and pen to the computer. For it’s time the graphics was amazing. With a little tinkering and some prayers you could connect to other players in a LAN party and play them.
In 2001 at the urging of my then girlfriend I got into EverQuest. The first really big online game. A graphic version of the old M.U.D. The relationship didn’t last but the game did, and no it didn’t cause the relationship to fail. I will cover that in another blog. Maybe.
Called Evercrack by its detractors for its seemingly addictive nature it kept players on for hours at a time. Why was it so addictive? Perhaps the contact with hundreds of others online, the fact that it was so well made and detailed, the competitive nature of the game?
This game added concepts that you never associated with games up to that time. Things like weight. If you were too greedy and collected too much loot you would be stuck. You had to keep food and drink on you at all times or your character could starve. You had to deal with racism, religious bigotry, and politics as these might determine where you would or would not be welcome.
The biggest quirk was the online trading. Quite organically and by chance players began to build up surpluses of goods and began to trade them. Some went so far as to trade actual world money for goods via email. At one point this fake, make-believe land had a net worth higher than Bulgaria
Of course over time these things come and go and World of Warcraft took over. I tried it but the magic wasn’t there. Warcraft is a simpler version. Nowhere near as many restrictions or as technical as EverQuest. Anyone could come in and start playing it immediately.
Truthfully though I think that phase of my life is coming to the end. Earlier in the year, the last old computer that held any EverQuest content was donated to charity and I don’t play Warcraft anymore. I could say that I just don’t have the time but the truth is that it just doesn’t hold the appeal it once did. These games had their time but I think now it’s over.
I will still go to conventions but more as a spectator nowadays than an active participant. Maybe one day I will go back to the beginnings and try my hand at the simple board games for the companionship more than anything else.
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