Date:  Thu, 09 May 2002 15:18:09 -0500
To:  C. Li
From:  Co-Worker Buddy
Subject:  and there was much rejoicing

Bullet News

• EA announced that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 will be coming to PC.

Now even though I didn't receive this during one of our daily office visits, it still counts as a Pretty Useless Piece of Information (PUPI).  However, for some reason, this news gets me pretty excited, as its been a while since a decent driving computer game has been released.

Now for those uninitiated into the world of Computer Gaming (gasp!), there are several categories in which computer games are placed.  First person shooters?  I could care less.  They are too violent IMO & they give me a nasty headache after only a few minutes of playing.  Tactical strategy games?  Forget it, I have the patience of a 5 year old when it comes to that genre.  Sports/Combat games?  Not even.  Fun as some of them might be, I lack the coordination to control one person while pressing 5,581,175 other button combinations.  And there's no way on earth I can remember that Left-Right-Left-Left-Button A-Button B while Twirling in Place makes so-and-so do a Quadruple-Flip-Kick-Punch-Kneel-Crouch-Crawl-Backward Handspring-Eyes Closed Special Attack(TM), much less get my fingers to do that in the nanosecond I have before my character gets his Butt Kicked(TM) by the 8 year old who can do all this without breaking a sweat.

But give me a quality driving computer game and you'll have me hooked for weeks (if not months) on end.  :)  I don't know why, but there's just something inherently fun about driving a virtual sports car at 160mph trying to outrun cops or racing for the finish line.  Probably some testosterone-related Guy Thing(TM). 

The last time I was this excited over a driving game was probably a good year or so ago, whenever Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed was...well, unleashed.  Hehe.  I tell you what, after weeks of playing this simulation, I was ready to climb into my boss's Porsche 944 and take off, tires screeching, rubber laying, head whiplashing, into the sunset.  But somehow, I don't think that would be too conducive to me retaining my job anytime in the Near Future.  Hey, we can all dream, can't we?

This interest of mine in computer games goes way back to my youth, where many moons were spent in front of the computer.  It all started back in 1982, Mrs. Strine's fifth grade class.  I remember trudging begrudgingly into the classroom that morning (yes, I was still not a Morning Person back then either), and noticing a strange boxy machine on a cart in the back of the room.  It looked like someone had spliced a TV, a typewriter, and a tape recorder together.  "What a weird contraption, I wonder what it is?" " I remember thinking...(ok, so maybe I don't remember what I thought 20 years ago, but that's probably what I *did* think).  My question remained unanswered for most of the morning as I sat at my desk, hardly able to concentrate.  The machine seemed like a magnet drawing my attention to it endlessly as I fought to ignore the attraction.

Just as soon as I resigned that I was *never* going to find out what it was, a man I had never seen before entered the classroom.  Mrs. Strine introduced him to us, and told us he was going to show us something very interesting.  My heart leapt, "this is it!" I nearly screamed.  He said the machine was called a "computer," and it could do some interesting things.  He proceeded to do some demonstrations, making the machine ask us our names, and then magically print out a message with our name in it.  I was hooked, and from that moment on, my life would never again be the same.

While most of the other kids went outside to play during recess, I stayed glued to the computer with a few other kids and the instructor (yes, I was a geek even back then), with him showing us how to load programs from cassette tapes, how to write simple programs in BASIC, and most importantly, what games we could play on the machine.  Hehe.  Many a hour after that was spent playing our favorite game, Road Race.  The game involved the person playing using the keyboard to move a car back and forth to dodge obstacles.  We took turns, seeing who could get the highest score.  But somehow, in all our time playing the stupid game, with as high of a score as we got, no one actually "won" the race.  See how pointless computer games are, kiddos?

Now, had my dad not brought home an IBM XT Personal Computer in the following years, this Story might have turned out very differently.  But sad to say, once we had a computer to use at home, there was no turning back for me.  I had hopelessly traveled down a path of Wasted Time, Unhealthy Obsession, and Misspent Youth.  Especially when my Best Friend got the next fastest computer at the time, an IBM AT clone - we would spend hours between our two homes, playing various games.  Oh yes, while our playtime prior to the Era of a Home Computer was spent playing outdoors, riding around the neighborhood (we were good little boys then), in the Post Home Computer Era, we were hopelessly Lost, sucked into a Land of Zeros and Ones.

Hours were spent solving adventure games such as Zork, King's Quest, and Space Quest.  Days were squandered playing computer role playing games such as Ultima and Wizardry.  Weeks flew by as we ventured into simulation games like Battlezone, Arctic Fox, and Pirates.  One of my favorite arcade games at the time was Star Wars - there was nothing more thrilling than flying an X-Wing Fighter against the Evil Death Star.  Yes, we didn't know it at the time, but we were True Geeks(TM) before even being geeks was uncool. 

At the time, our parents pleaded with us to do other things than play on the computer, and we abided their wishes, for at least a few hours anyway.  And while we had other interests such as fantasy role-playing, BBSing, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books, (see?  I told you we were the geekiest of the geeks), not a day went by without us spending some time playing on the computer.  We were so convinced that what we were doing was not harmful in the least bit that we ingrained the rationale into our brains.  "We're learning problem-solving skills, dad," we'd tell my father when he saw us in the 7th hour of continual play of the Game of the Moment during the weekend.  "Look how fast I can type," I'd tell *his* father, "I bet you didn't think we could learn typing so well."  What's even funnier is that I think at some point in high school or college, I actually wrote a paper detailing the benefits of computer games.  [Author's note: boy, was I deluded or what??]

Our parents let us be for the most part as we were both doing pretty well in school, and actually had some other interests.  At least we weren't doing anything Truly Horrible, like listening to 70s disco music.  As we grew older and went to college, the computers got better, the games more complex, and we were there through it all.  In 1992, King's Quest was in its 6th sequel, Ultima was up past No. 4, and Doom had taken the gaming world by surprise.  We were experts at taking games without instructions and figurirng out what keys did what and how to play the game.  We were masters of the keyboard and could driveflyrunshootdodgecastspellsattack with the greatest of ease. 

And on one Fateful Day in the spring of 1993, little did I know then, but Something Happened that would change the course of my Life and bring us to where I am Today.  It was a week before spring break, and that year for break, I was going to visit my Best Friend at Emory University.  He called me on the phone and told me he found something I absolutely was going to love.  He talked about a game called a "MUD" (whose name was Farside) that some of his friends had started playing - which was essentially a multiplayer online fantasy role-playing game.  Our dreams had finally come true - we finally had a computer game that was similar to what had been playing all those previous years, but now we could play it with and against people from all over the world!  I couldn't wait until I visited him so I could try out this new revolution in Computer Gaming.

Several weeks passed, and though I officially joined the game while visiting my Best Friend, we didn't get much opportunity to play.  And when we did play, it was mostly me sitting around watching while he and his roommate took turns playing.  As we all know, that is a *whole* lot of fun.  NOT.  So I resigned myself to try it out again when I returned to school. 

Sometime in late March of 1993, I got onto the Internet as we know it today.  Armed with an email address, telnet access, and a web browser called Mosaic, I took my first steps onto the Information Superhighway.  And the rest, shall we say, is History.  I logged back onto Farside MUD and discovered it was actually much more fun when you actually got to Play.  After playing for a few months, my friends and I ruled our little kingdom - we had the administrators of the game wrapped around our fingers, and whatever we wanted, we pretty much got.  Over the next year, all my free time was spent MUDing.  What started as a fun hobby turned into an addiction, and then an unhealthy obsession.  Aside from the few friends that I lived with, my new best friends were all people I had never met, and that I held countless hours of online chats with.  I knew some of the people online better than I knew my roommates.  I went from playing one MUD exclusively to two, then to three and four.  When I got bored with one MUD, I'd simply login to another one and play from where I had left off there.  I'd stay online simply for the sake of waiting for my friends to show up. I'd meet interesting girls, fall in love, & fall out of love (at least I thought so at the time).  I even got MUD-married on Farside MUD.  [Author's note:  I was interviewed for a paper about MUDs which you can read here.]  

However, the plot had another twist that I was yet unaware of.  One girl I was friends with online, she told me of MUDs that were completely reserved for chatting, and that she had been hanging out on some of these.  Where the MUDs that I was playing usually had anywhere from five to forty players on at any given time, these talker MUDs consistently had hundreds of people on.  At that point, I was less interested in playing the game, but more interested in chatting with people.  A shy, introverted, person in real life, I found that I could portray myself as a confident, outgoing, courtesan online that could woo women with ease.  So over to the talker MUDs I went and pretty soon, I had another large group of friends that I chatted with on a frequent basis.  I was the Don Juan deMarco, the Scaramouche, the Cyrano de Bergerac (minus the large schnoz) of the Internet.  Hidden behind a virtual veil, I was able to flirt my way into women's hearts, all the while hiding my actual lack of self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy.  I don't think I was being deceitful or dishonest - I was simply putting forth the person I wished I could be IRL - the charming, dashing prince on a white stallion always ready with a rose and a poem, ready to rescue any damsel that may have been in distress.

After falling "in and out of love" several more times, I finally realized that MUDing was contributing to the depression I was in at the time (though I didn't know I was suffering from depression).  I was hardly participating in any "real life" activities other than going to class.  Most of my friends were all online.  And my future became more and more uncertain as I became more disenchanted with my major.  This also wasn't helped by the fact that I had been madly in love with a girl in real life (who had a boyfriend) for *two* years.  Two years of hoping and unrequited love. [Author's note: Boy, was I a schmuck or what?]

To make a longer story shorter, I completely changed my outlook on life while at geology field camp in the summer of 1994.  I made a decision to get online less, to enjoy my last year of college, and to do things I've always wanted to do.  Upon starting the fall semester, I took up ballroom dance, signed up for voice lessons, and went out more with my friends in real life.  By the end of the fall semester, I was dancing 3-4x a week, enjoying school, and having the Time of my Life.  I still got online to chat with my friends, but nowhere to the extent I had in the past.  I was still a geek, but now at least I was a Geek With a Life.

Then in December 1994, while on Foothills (the original talker MUD I first started on, which is still around btw), I met the woman who would one day become my Eternal Bride.  :)  But that's a Tale reserved for Another Time. :)

My interest in computer games has never fully gone away.  Ever since my dad brought home that IBM XT, I've always had some computer game present that I played (sometimes daily, sometimes not).  I went from playing Microsoft Decathalon in 1986, to various PC games until I left for college in 1989.  During college, aside from the online games, I played exclusively Apple Macintosh games such as Tetris.  I played Tetris so much that I dreamed I played Tetris while sleeping (I know I'm not the only one).  And then once I left college, I was back on the PC gaming bandwagon again. So far this year, I've gone from playing Yahoo Graffiti online (similar to Pictionary), to Midtown Madness 2, and now Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D.

Today, however, I don't spend nearly as much time on computer games as I once did (even in the recent past).  Do I regret spending all that Time "wasting away in Computergamingville?"  Yes, I do admit a lot of the Time could have been better spent.  If I had to do it all over again, would I?  Not on your life.  Because the experiences that I had shaped and sculpted the Person I am Today.  And ultimately, the Journey that I had, even with its low points, lead me to Jen, and I wouldn't trade that for the anything.  :)

But to tell you the truth, I still get an intense rush when I take off in my X-Wing Fighter and open my blasters on Imperial Tie-Fighters.  I guess some things never change.