Part One: I'm an O.G.

I am an OG .. Original Gamer .. I am from the first generation of children that had video games as an affordable entertainment option. My first video game device was Super Pong. I also had a couple handheld games like Coleco Head to Head Football and Electronic Quarterback. In the arcade I started with Space Invaders, but of all the games there were, three were always my favourites: Popeye, Tron, and Galaga. I never owned an Atari 2600 or a Colecovision, but many of my friends did so I played them quite a bit.

In the early 1980s I got a Commodore 64. Then in 1988 Brie and I got both a Tandy 1000 HD personal computer (it had a huge 10 Mb hard drive!) and an original Nintendo Entertainment System (aka NES), together they marked a significant change in what I would prefer as my home entertainment. On the PC my first game was Leisure Suit Larry 2 and I can remember getting so frustrated in playing it that I would have to call Sierra's Tips Hotline to figure out what to do next. I was not impressed by early PC gaming. Though the premises tended to be more adult oriented, the mechanics were harsh and often terribly unintuitive to someone who had a background in Arcade and console gaming with the easy to use joysticks, D-Pads, and other input devices. Why spend hours trying to figure out the right text to input in LSL2 when Super Mario Bros. was as easy as pushing buttons.

For the next 5 years I would be a console gamer until the release of Doom. Doom was a huge jump in gaming graphics and offered a true 3D world to inhabit. For me Doom was never about the "Twitch Factor", I was never interested in it's "first person shooter" gameplay, what I marveled at was the idea of this 3D world with secret passages and hidden power-ups. I typically played with the "God Mode" on because I wanted to explore, not kill everything in site.

With the birth of the web I got very interested in VRML Worlds and became a resident in Cybertown. I was involved enough to become a club owner and learned to create VRML Avatars. VRML worlds are the precursor to Second Life. They were social gathering spots were you could buy and furnish homes, make friends, have get togethers and explore the creations of others. When I first heard about Second Life I got very excited, but after several visits over the last year or so I find Second Life to be a joke. All you find there are people trying to make money and sell you stuff, there is no sense of community and no focus on creating places to explore just for fun. It seems to be a community based on greed, not my idea of entertainment.

What I wanted was a game that combined my love for online social interaction and easy to pick-up gameplay. That all came together when I discovered the MMORPG. Like most people I was first introduced to the MMORPG through news coverage of Everquest. Stories of "Evercrack" and how people were losing jobs, spouses and even their lives over this game that takes place in a virtual world where you were simultaneously playing a game for experience, more/better powers, and money you would use on better in-game items intrigued me. There was one thing that kept me away, the idea of pretending you were a knight or a lord or lady was completely unbearable to me. I have never liked "Fantasy" and I certainly was never a fan of Dungeons and Dragons.

I continued on playing video games mainly on consoles and handhelds, the N64 and Playstation brought 3D graphics to the mass market, no longer did you need a top-of-the-line PC in order to enjoy 3D Graphics. Then one day I heard about a game in development called "City of Heroes" it was going to be a MMORPG game for the PC based not in a "Fantasy" world but the world of Comic Book style heroes. I was definitely interested.

stay tuned for part 2 ....

Posted by John at March 28, 2007 12:23 AM