My history of gaming culture is really my history with gaming, I'll try to truncate it but it's gonna be a long tale, sit down kids.
My first console was a NES, I didn't actually get one until the SNES was already a thing, probably the reason I got one at all to be honest. It was a hand-me-down from my older cousin, along with a handful of games, none of which really stuck with me. My dad really pulled me into gaming with RPGs, mostly by happenstance as he knew I liked the fantasy genre, movies, books, TV, and so on. So he got games with a fantasy twist to them, which happened to be RPGs, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Ultima, etc.
Well it wasn't long after that I got really into playing games, VERY into it in fact. I would sometimes go to the store and see a Nintendo Power and my parents would get it for me, I never had a subscription to the magazine but I had some early good ones. Later on I got a Gameboy and a Super Nintendo, and was really developing my gamer identity and what kinds of games I liked. I remember an early Nintendo Power article, I think called Pak Watch that previewed upcoming games showing The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for Gameboy, and after playing it realizing that many of the screenshots shown in the pak watch weren't actually in game. Early on in games, I was enthralled by the magic of it, never really thinking so much of them as "designed" experiences, but as actual worlds that contained more than what was just being shown. I remember playing a game on SNES, Secret of Evermore where in a forest there were lots of signs pointing to locations, all of which were just comical names and a little humor in the game, but I remember writing these places down in a notebook imagining they were real parts of the game.
It wasn't until about 1996 when I picked up a gaming magazine (not sure which one but it covered all consoles, kind of like Game Informer) and saw a preview of Final Fantasy VII that things really changed and got shook up. I remember seeing commercials for the Playstation on TV before but it didn't even really click with me that it was a full on game console. I also saw previews for Oddworld. I remember getting really into wanting both these games, and in Christmas of 1997 I got a PS1 with both Oddworld and Final Fantasy VII, and I was blown away by it. Those articles in the magazine, the previews and the multi page spreads really communicated to me this idea of games as designed experiences, especially as they were talking about Final Fantasy VII's departure from the previous games in the series (up until this point I'd only played the NES original).
Around that same time my parents had gotten a PC, and one of the first games I got hooked on for it was Dungeon Keeper, and I played it a lot. When my dad finally upgraded to a newer PC, I got the old one and started getting more games for it, Diablo, Nox, Baldur's Gate, Lands of Lore, to name a few and started dabbling into the world of indie games with freeware titles I could download. I still had a big love of the old NES and SNES RPGs I grew up with though, and I looked for these kinds of games, and found ones that were made by others who loved the genre, small studios or just a lone programmer making games. This is when I really began getting curious about how games were made, and more importantly, if I could make my own.
My first real sense of online community was the RPG Toolkit, which was as it sounds a visual editor that let you make classic 8 and 16 bit style RPGs, very similar to the modern RPGMaker (at the time it was actually a much more powerful editor than RPGMaker, but that time is long past now with the likes of XP and VX). I became a member of the RPGToolkit Forums, and while I dabbled making my own games, I stop-started about 30 different projects across a few years, I ended up spending more time online in the community than I ever did making games. Just being able to share this love of RPGs with other people was great, and I had a real sense of community with other kids my age wanting to do the same thing I did, become a game developer. Towards the end of this period I got a Playstation 2.
My PS2 days were a bit more blurry for whatever reason (those dang teenage hormones) but I remember having a subscription to GameInformer, going to Gamestop to buy games, and where I started transitioning more towards being a PC Gamer with games like Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind. I remember first hearing about Morrowind on a Gamespot TV episode with Adam Sessler, where he showed some trick you could do to make enemies giant. I thought the game looked awesome and went to try it. I got it, and tried to play it using a crummy on-board mobo graphics chip, and it worked... for about 15 to 30 minutes at a time, then I'd crash HARD, blue screen of death or just instant reset. I still was so enamored with the game I must have put hundreds of hours into it before I ever got a Graphics Card finally and was able to play it without crashing. Then I discovered the realm of modding, and began downloading mods like crazy altering the game. Combined with my love for creating things I played around with the Creation Kit that came with the game and then got involved a lot with the online Morrowind community (back when Fishy Sticks were still a thing). I of course got super hyped when I saw the Oblivion preview in Game Informer, and it became the next big thing for me, and I got just as addicted as I had with Morrowind, modding it and playing for hundreds of hours.
Then World of Warcraft. Oh I'd heard about this game a bit, but I was rather dismissive of paid subscription game services. I was a young adult at this point, had my first job working at a truck stop diner. I remember seeing a trucker in there one day, with a nice laptop playing a game, I asked him what it was and he said World of Warcraft. I was very intrigued by the little bit I saw. It wasn't until a friend of mine bought Warcraft III and gave me the "free trial CD" for the game though that I fell into it. I got hooked right away and for the next couple of years I got very addicted to the game. I became pretty active in the forums, and played it just about every day. I got in towards the middle of the Burning Crusade expansion. I was getting a bit disillusioned with the game about half-way through the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King (right after Ulduar patch) and left it for another way more indie MMO called Darkfall, once again becoming involved in it's community. I snuck back into WoW a couple of times, usually after a new expansion, but it never roped me in fully again.
2011 was also when I found The Escapist, I can't recall what brought me here originally, but I don't think I was highly active for the first few years. Around the end of 2011 is when I finally broke my MMO kick, with 2 games, Minecraft, and Skyrim. To be honest I couldn't play Skyrim at first because I was living temporarily way out in the country with dial-up and Steam just doesn't work with such a slow connection so I couldn't install and play it. By 2012 when I finally moved somewhere that I could play it, I got hooked, between it and Minecraft I probably spent a good year just bouncing between those games, occasionally dipping my toes into others. I got into their communities of course, but I spent way more time playing the games.
Skyrim got me to install Steam on my computer, then I purchased Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Terraria, and Gnomoria and really had a blast playing all of them... then July 2013 hit and my first experience with a Steam sale. I entered a 2 year phase where I went crazy hog wild on Steam. I now have a steam library of over 900 games. I would pour through bundle sites, wait for sales, and just got insane deals on things. I finally broke out of that Steam Disease realizing I had way more games than I ever could or would play. That relentless search for new game deals and learning about games really burst open the internet for me. I got more into youtube, I found reddit, I became more active on The Escapist, and developed an avid interest in the business side of gaming.
Now today I'm definitely still heavily interested in gaming culture and it's future. Following the likes of the Nintendo Switch, and seriously considering buying a Playstation Vita to round out my handheld collection. I have experienced a lot of big events in gaming, but so much of it also passed me by without me noticing, and in some ways this is probably a good thing. My late entrance into keeping track of gaming news allowed me a lot of unique perspectives. Enjoying Fable without the hype of Molyneux, experiencing Minecraft before it became popular to make fun of people that played it, playing Baldur's Gate back before it got enhanced and re-released, and so on.
My exposure to the culture of gaming was often very isolationist, staying in forums and communities centered around one particular game, and in many ways I still do that, just with many more communities and far less lurking per capita. It wasn't really until my first exposure to Steam that I became heavily involved with the wider world of internet gaming culture though. On a local level, I never really connected to very many people who were into the same kinds of games as me, at least not growing up. My Dad was the biggest sounding board, as he also enjoyed RPGs and we would often talk about the retro games we liked and the mechanics of them. There was also my best friend growing up, who would often spend weekends at my house where we'd play games. Instead of couch co-op games or competitive party games, we'd play RPGs and developed a strong interest together in the genre and had a lot of fun playing them together.
Apologies for the long winded and winding nature of this, very much typing as I think of it. Always good to reminisce and see how other's experiences differed and were similar to your own. I am 31 years old now, and have been gaming for at least 23 years.
