EPTMy Story of Gaming with a Non-Supportive Family (1) 9/28/2012
Hi everyone! This is going to be one of my first posts on the TeamLiquid boards, and I am going to write about my history as a gamer thus far, and the many problems it has presented me. I hope some of you will stick around and read it
. Excuse the typos, I'm tired and will review it tomorrow 
Edit: AMA I suppose. I'm sure some people are curious about some stuff and I don't really mind doing AMA unless it's REALLY personal lol.
After watching the famous and ultimately inspirational Day[9] Daily #100, I felt massive motivation to do something similar, only in text form rather than a vlog form. I might get around to doing that some day however. If you have no clue what that is, I highly recommend watching it by clicking below. If you ever stumble across this Day[9], thank you for making such an inspirational video. It made me, and I'm sure, many others turned a new leaf immediately after watching it.
+ Show Spoiler +
This will be a group of chronological snippets which ultimately tell the story of my hardships in gaming, and how my strict parents interfere with my friendships and gaming. Without further delay, here is the first part I will be submitting.
Just as a quick aside, I have a pretty awesome English teacher who basically takes free writing and grades it equivalent to a timed write or a test. I will be submitting these articles to her, and that is why I am not going to essentially keep it essay-like and try to stay away from slang/abbreviations. I have a stream of conscious writing style, so please bear with me.
My History of Gaming Before Starcraft 2
My gaming life all started with the N64. Ahh, the Nintendo 64, I used to play that system all the time with my brother at my cousin's house when I was on a "sick" leave from elementary school. My favorite games to play were Mario Kart 64 and Super Smash Bros. These games were certainly gateways to other games, particularly other Mario games.
Many of the subsequent games that I played afterwards were games like Yoshi Story. That was until my dad got the game Descent, one of the first 3D roaming shooters ever made. A particularly notable leap in the graphical and mechanical aspects of gaming, Descent offered players a 3D world to roam, and often times my brother would be in charge the directional controls, and I would be in charge of the weapon deployment. Ahh, the nostalgia that it brings.
Upon entering Elementary school, I began to play hand held games. No consoles, my parents did not want to purchase one. My first gaming device that was really mine and not my cousin's was my Game Boy Advanced. I had a purple one with a couple of games, some of my favorite included Pokemon Leaf Green, Super Mario Bros 3, and Wario Land 4 (one of the best platformers that was originally designed for the Game Boy Advanced). Of the little games that I owned, was Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, which was a very fun, and important game in my life. I say it is important because of the relationship that I had developed with someone that I played that game with. This particular person would later be my "other half" as he describes me, who I would stick with no matter how many problems he presented me. This person is none other then my trusty pal, best friend, and casting partner: SCMothership. (You can see a picture of us here if you are curious, I am the one on the left, and he is on the right). We played this game in a co-op style with him controlling the D-pad, and the left trigger, and myself controlling the right trigger and the "A" and "B" button. Every battle, we would synchronize and conduct "bro" moves together, rather than just a single person controlling it. If you have no clue as to what I am talking about, the concept is vaguely similar to the custom gameMacroMicro in Starcraft 2. My friendship with this guy, Michael Novak, up until this point was essentially acquaintanceship, even though I knew him since kindergarten. I would soon find out that he would be a valued and cherished friend that helped me in times of need, although he didn't know that. (The childhood friendship and elementary school stories can be another story, that's beside the point.) He recommended games for me to play, and we often times discussed games. His story will be paused for a bit as I continue about my early gaming life.
I started to enter PC gaming when a close (now lost... where are you?
) friend of mine, Alex brought Starcraft 1 in to the Daycare (Which will be the topic of yet another blog... my Daycare adventures were rather interesting). My brother had bought Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 1 before, but I was never really exposed to the games and I never really got interested in them until I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, when Alex brought them to Daycare, which had a computer. Being exposed to Starcraft 1 for the first time was kind of scary actually, I remember seeing Zerg units for the first time and being horribly terrified of the Hydralisks and the death animation of the Terran Marines. However, the game was rather intriguing, I was extremely interested in the ability to manage your own army to fight another army. After watching many games of Starcraft 1, I decided that it was my turn to play, and when I finally managed to scrounge up enough courage, I began to play Protoss. I was never really good at Starcraft 1 in elementary school, I never used hotkeys and only knew how to mass carriers against other noobs who only knew how to mass ZEE-LOTS as I pronounced them back in the day. I watched my brother beat the campaign and played the game casually, on and off in short bursts of sporadic games against the AI or my brother. I discovered that one of my friends at the time, played Warcraft 3 in the 2nd or 3rd grade as well, and that kick started a boost from the acquaintanceship status to the best friend status immediately (Although there was a period in the 5th grade where he hated me for no reason... I still don't know to this day why). Conner M, better known as Holy, among his other million aliases, one of the better ones being the random strings of characters azrykflg. He was decent at playing Warcraft 3 (I'm referring to Frozen Throne of course) and was known among the community of screen name creators. We often times played 2v2 Ladder, he being Night Elf, and I being Orc or Undead. We were not the best, but we managed to use hotkeys and have an average apm of around 30-70 (remember, we were in 4th grade
). Custom games became a big part of my early gaming, and I can easily say that I invested about 500 hours of my 3rd to 9th grade gaming time into custom games specifically in Warcraft 3, 200 of which were invested in Line Tower Wars. And it was at this point of my life that things started spiraling downwards slowly. My parents were NOT supportive of gaming at all. In fact, they were not supportive of me sitting in front of the computer at all! I would be limited to one measly hour a day of playing games until my mom would force me to get off. There were a few exceptions to playing video games more than one hour a day.
- If I ate food while playing games, then I can play my Gameboy while eating (I was a picky eater... now I am a slob haha)
- On Fridays, Daycare let us bring our Gameboys in to play after school. Thats how Pokemon battling, Co-Opping Super Star Saga with Michael, and Mario Bros. battling over link cable was done. (Daycare was more of an afternoon care, because it was after school.)
- I could walk to Michael's house, about 1.5 miles away up a steep hill to game with him for a bit.
The last strategy was almost like salvation from what seemed to be prison, because among the limits of gaming, there were many other strict rules and punishments. If any of the rules were broken, I was punished physically severely, as well as had my gaming time taken away, which soon became the worst part of the punishment, as my physical endurance was increasing because I was being punished so much. I am not going to go into the punishment that much. Lets just say Child Abuse service came over once because a teacher saw a bruise on my brother after he was sent to school a day after he wanted to play games for 61 minutes, a single minute over my limit (not joking one bit). Don't worry, nothing too severe has happened ever since physically, but psychologically, it's a different story. A story for tomorrow or some other day, I'm tired lol.
Bye for now folks! The next one will be about more in-the-house dealings and my blossoming friendships, and how gaming has kept me calm and sane.
