This is a post that is long due. About two decades due. I got my first shot at gaming when I was about 10 years old and my dad gave me my very own DCM Tandy pc. For all those FPS cracks and graphic card crunching freaks out there, you have no idea of how slow these early systems were. But it provided me with immense joy. A few games out on it that I spent my better part of childhood gave me the roots in gaming today. Digger, Pacman were my best buddies throughout growing up. Incidentally my BFF and I became that way because of our passion for games. The years rolled by and with that technological advances. And with that, better games and with that need for better systems. I too fought the battle for upgrading my system from time to time to match my gaming requirements. It was a battle that was being fought in all households across India and the world. For some reason my dad would give me any upgrade that i asked for in the system( reasonable of course) but never ventured to get me any of the early video game systems. (twisted logic there somewhere). But soon I lost the battle of the upgrades and began to slow down the rollout of upgrades. You got to realise that this is no way in comparison to the current time gap that you people need to upgrade your system. PCs were getting better at an exponential speed, unlike now, where you can stick with your system for six months or a year at most and then too think about additional components to spruce up your system.( or wait for the next Crysis game to come when you need to rebuild your system ground up). Back then it was a battle every other month. Lot of companies came in all looking to capture the market with their new age technologies and we were literally like kids in a candy shop or like a baby in a strip joint. Confused. We didnt have the luxury of the WWW back then and had to rely on peer experience or the silver tongue of the dealers in Ritchie street regarding upgrades.
At a point I just gave up the battle of the graphics card and did a system renewal once a year or more than that. The good thing was the market was opening up with new developers and I always had something or the other that would work on my system to keep me occupied and out of trouble. That was the period that I started using my system for more than gaming and entered into programming. A decent coder at most, I soon started surpassing the basics of programming on a self-study mode and needed professional training( my dad jokes sometimes that i needed a professional's help really .. but that of a psychiatrist). Then began the exodus of computer institutes. Aptech, NiiT, Verbatim. Name it and I have done them all. Then I did a course at Vector institute, a part of Prasad studios on 2D and 3D graphics and animation. That was an eye opener. Remember I am still talking about all of this before I got into my 7th grade and that translates to more than 17 years. My trainers were half competent at the most and soon there wasnt much they could teach or train me in. But it was good learning as I kept exploring the options of what more I could learn. This however didnt distract me from my pursuit of games though.
This was the time that the 8 bits, 16 bit , the Dreamcast and the PSone made its debut in the town. My dad still stuck to the policy of no consoles for me and I had to look around to check these out. The school halls were filled with rumors of dark parlours in strange buildings where one could play with these machines at a cost. I set about finding these places and to quench my thirst for more games. I stumbled upon parlours after parlours before I got into a decent setup and there I met people who are part of my lives even today. From then it was a rollercoaster ride. I have done plenty of things in games, in the industry , in various aspects of the business. I have played, run parlours of my own, participated in competitions, and at one point in time even took up the distribution of the consoles in South India and all through that my passion for games hasnt remained constant. It has ebbed.
There is something about games that is fundamentally part of the psyche of the male(Feminists, read this as humans). Lot of people say that its a place where one loses themselves completely and becomes the game's character. Hogwash!!! . I think the reason that boys or men like games and video games in particular is the fact that you are in control. In control of another person or persona. Your actions determine the output, the result, the destiny, the fate of someone else, be it a grenade tossing commando, or a mushroom munching plumber. Being God, judge, jury, executioner and in some cases the victim is so so fundamentally endearing that games become irresistible.
So here I am, 2 decades later, still playing games. Still thinking I am god. Still thinking there is something more that I can do. Still playing my game.
( This was an autobiographical rant of me. and I really dont have any purpose in writing this off right now. Think of this as my own way of justifying what I am doing and what I am going to do)
At a point I just gave up the battle of the graphics card and did a system renewal once a year or more than that. The good thing was the market was opening up with new developers and I always had something or the other that would work on my system to keep me occupied and out of trouble. That was the period that I started using my system for more than gaming and entered into programming. A decent coder at most, I soon started surpassing the basics of programming on a self-study mode and needed professional training( my dad jokes sometimes that i needed a professional's help really .. but that of a psychiatrist). Then began the exodus of computer institutes. Aptech, NiiT, Verbatim. Name it and I have done them all. Then I did a course at Vector institute, a part of Prasad studios on 2D and 3D graphics and animation. That was an eye opener. Remember I am still talking about all of this before I got into my 7th grade and that translates to more than 17 years. My trainers were half competent at the most and soon there wasnt much they could teach or train me in. But it was good learning as I kept exploring the options of what more I could learn. This however didnt distract me from my pursuit of games though.
This was the time that the 8 bits, 16 bit , the Dreamcast and the PSone made its debut in the town. My dad still stuck to the policy of no consoles for me and I had to look around to check these out. The school halls were filled with rumors of dark parlours in strange buildings where one could play with these machines at a cost. I set about finding these places and to quench my thirst for more games. I stumbled upon parlours after parlours before I got into a decent setup and there I met people who are part of my lives even today. From then it was a rollercoaster ride. I have done plenty of things in games, in the industry , in various aspects of the business. I have played, run parlours of my own, participated in competitions, and at one point in time even took up the distribution of the consoles in South India and all through that my passion for games hasnt remained constant. It has ebbed.
There is something about games that is fundamentally part of the psyche of the male(Feminists, read this as humans). Lot of people say that its a place where one loses themselves completely and becomes the game's character. Hogwash!!! . I think the reason that boys or men like games and video games in particular is the fact that you are in control. In control of another person or persona. Your actions determine the output, the result, the destiny, the fate of someone else, be it a grenade tossing commando, or a mushroom munching plumber. Being God, judge, jury, executioner and in some cases the victim is so so fundamentally endearing that games become irresistible.
So here I am, 2 decades later, still playing games. Still thinking I am god. Still thinking there is something more that I can do. Still playing my game.
( This was an autobiographical rant of me. and I really dont have any purpose in writing this off right now. Think of this as my own way of justifying what I am doing and what I am going to do)
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