EPTMy earliest memory was asking my mother to get my older bro to turn on a light in our room. It was dark, and I was afraid, and the reason I wanted in our room? To play our awesome new SNES.
The first game I ever played specifically for the multiplayer aspect in those days was Super Bomberman 1 & 2. But as every casual gamer does, I moved on to bigger and better things (lol), RPGS!
What started this was a little memorable game called Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Since that game, I played such games like th Final Fantasy series, the Grandia series, Morrowind, etc. Of course, I played other games as well, like Super smash bros. and DDR.
Then 8th grade happened. I had friends. We were the Advanced-classes-nerds. Of course, we all played video games. What nerd doesn't? In 8th grade, since we all had computers, all had internet, and idea came about us. "Let's play DOOM online!" One of my friends (Let's call him "J") discovered Zdaemon, which I often use to this day for all my online doom needs. Now, I watched a little show called Pure Pwnage. Since I was young and foolish, I of course imitated whoever I idolized. I thought FPS's were lame, because Jeremy, the star of the show, thought they were. Reluctantly, I gave in. And we played. J and I were the best, and were nearly equal in skill, although I remember him beating me by 3 kills (in a 30 frag limit game) or something similar in most 1v1 games.
To follow up on this exiting new thing that connected us, the internet, we tried out starcraft. Being my foolish self once again, I immediately pushed the idea aside, saying that Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 was better. Another friend of mine (Let's call him "L", and has nothing to do with the TL member L) "acquired" this game, played it, and still told me that starcraft was more fun. "In korea, they have 2 TV stations dedicated to starcraft, because its so good!" This never really struck me as much as it does now. Back then, Asia was where people floated around on hover chairs and robots did all the work.
Finally, I agreed to play starcraft. Ahhh, the innocence of not being the best. In FFA games, we'd all lose to L because he spammed carriers. We thought it was so cheap. I knew there was a way to beat carriers. I tried everything. Dark archon mind control? Nope. Mass goliaths? Nope. Ghosts' lockdown? EMP? Scourge? All failed. Now I know that all of those will easily beat carriers, I just sucked back then. We eventually gave up starcraft. It got boring.
Looking back at my life from THAT point, I realized... I watch the show pure pwnage, I consider myself a gamer. I consider myself good. But what have I done to deserve that title? Played lots of RPG's? ha. I need something I can win in. Something to, how Jeremy would say, "pwn" in.
And so I picked up Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium wars (aka cnc3: spam wars). I innocently played, unknowing of a 'competitive community' or anything. I played to get better. And I did. I reached the top 5000 at one point, something I think is laughable by my standards today, but at the time, I was king of the world. EA says something about WCG. Wait, what?
I look it up. Competitive gaming. Money. Team Liquid.
Team liquid? What's that? Oh, a place to talk about starcraft. Lots of theories, I've tried some of these. Let's look up carrier spam. Nope, these guys are idiots. None of these counters work. Carrier spam is overpowered.
Then we all got back into starcraft. I still lost. I went back to this "team liquid". Turns out you're supposed to make more than 12 scv's. Oh. That makes sense. Build orders. The meta game. After learning all this, I was instantly the best in our group in starcraft.
And the rest is history. I joined teamliquid, I get on iccup. I can maintain a D grade, but thats about it. My growth in the game feels exponential. Back then, I read a lot about "timings", but never really used them, because they were always wrong for me. Now I do, because I learned you need constant macro in order for them to work.
Nowadays, I play Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 competitively. Its turning into a 200apm game, actually. Its a lot of fun, and no doubt EA will buy its way into wcg 2009, so that's what I'm working towards now. I also am playing Quake live, but not really competitively, granted its competitive in itself. I'm also playing SSBB, getting into poker and chess as well.
I'm writing this kind of as a final decision. I often explain to people "There's a certain magic in starcraft, where if you get good at starcraft, you are by default good at every other RTS." I'm going to go where everyone else is going, so if starcraft dies, I probably won't be playing it anymore. My goal, then, is to at least reach D+, if not C-, on iccup, so I can say "Yeah. I played starcraft better than 99% of the starcraft population, and I've beaten quite a few people who play the game competitively. I can be the best in another RTS later on, if all goes well."
So if/when sc dies, I will have gotten all the experience out of it I need.
If it all works the way I'm hoping.
