Rant of the pwned n00b

I've always considered myself to a be an electronic gamer. Every since my dad got me an Atari 2600 way back when I was a kid and we had A TV channel, I was hooked on electronics games. The Atari came with a game call Combat. In retrospect it sucked. Blocky characters, 2 colours and not much of a game play but it was all we had so it was the BOMB. Other games came alone that were better but not by much. I was a kid and didn't know better and so was captivated by it. Pretty soon new consoles came out but my ole man would have no part of it. Why? Because he dropped a wad of cash on a killer personal computer. I was stuck. Craving games that my friends had, I had to suffice with being able to type documents and do trivial calculations in a spreadsheet. As time went on, my dependence on a computer grew. PC hardware was getting cheaper and offered more in the way of colour and processing powers. Then one Christmas day, we got a new computer. Not that there was anything wrong with the old one, which was 5 years old by now, it was just that I monopolized the time on it and nobody else got a chance to use it. Poking around with it, I was amazed at the advances features it had. It was colour. Yes folk, 16 colours and could show in resolution up to 800 x 600. Not only that. It had a Graphical User Interface (GIU). No longer did I have to type in those (in my ole man words) Cryptic commands to do anything. Just point and click. Well, almost. An interesting thing about this computer. It came with a game. Golden Axe! I had seen this game in the local arcades but never had money to play. But now I could stay home and play all day. This was the birth of a new era for me. I could play games on my computer. Not only that, more and more games for computers were being released. Pretty soon I was the envy of my friends. My computer games looked better and were more interactive. This equated to more fun. FYI I was a little pirate back then. Any games I wanted, I just copied. That was so because of ignorance and not because of greed. Few years later we got another computer. This one was now the BOMB. I could do 256 colours and (get ready for it) had sound! Man, gaming took on a whole new dimension there. Consoles were play catch up at this point. My joy-stick, keyboard and mouse totally pawned game pad. The games were 10x better than what a console could offer. I consider myself a god among gamers for what I had. Fast forward a few years and I’m at university (get this) doing a bachelors in Computer programming. My room mate had a PC. We hooked up via a serial cable and tada, head to head combat. Years (literally) were wasted behind gaming. As networking hardware became cheaper (around 1997) we invested and BAM, 4 of use were running around a simulated grid try to blow the hell out of each other. Later on, a small event became popular among us gamers. The LAN (Local Area Network) party. It's where you would pack up your (heavy assed)computer and CRT made of lead, carry it over to someone else's house, spend 2 hours trying to get them to communicate, order KFC and play games all night. This was huge! You couldn’t have more fun with a bottle of Viagra and brothel. I was one of the better players in first person shooter games. In fact, I was DAMD GOOD! But, as in the Garden of Eden, all good things must come to an end. Why? Age! My reflexes gave way, motion sickness kicked in and any other age related handicap you can think off. This little thing call the internet had caught on by then and mad it possible to play games online. There, this little local server I connect to regularly that’s a launch point for a particular game. It was my chance to get back into gaming. So I go waste a few hours a day playing. What struck me as odd is how competitive gaming has gotten. Back in my days, if I won a game, Whoppie ding! Time to start a next game. These kids are the total opposite. They only play to win. To them it’s like a life or death scenario. Some don’t join a game unless it’s a sure victory. Just to pacify myself I googled the word game. Here’s the best answer I got. :

“an amusement or pastime”

There you go. Games are basically an activity for amusement, not to have a heart attack over. Now, I play regardless of my team skill set. I don’t care if my team is the shit snakes or oppressors. I’m just in there to have a little R’n’R . It amazing the length those folks go to, to validate their position. Needless to say I’m often on the receiving end of these games. That’s okay though. When I do win, its comical.