When did your gaming career start?
Actually, I suppose I use the word career extremely loose
and I mean Hobby.
I admit it must be just a personal thing when I say career
as it makes me feel at least half good that I’ve achieved something through the
years, hours and minutes I’ve spent gaming (supposedly wasted).
I was 30 years old on June 23rd 2013; and it’s
made me realise I’m not where I want to be career wise.
I’ve gamed since as far as I can remember, from the day my
father brought back a Spectrum the love grew and luckily with my father having
4 children (me having 3 brothers!!) and his passion for latest gadgets we were
fortunately (or is it unfortunate?) to end up with some lovely home computers.
I recall games like Jet Set Willy, I remember my brothers
and me smashing buttons on Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and so many memories of
waiting so long for our games to load on commodore 64 and then crash….to then
go through another painful and torture of the ears of loading screeches and
time consumption.
Actually one of my fond memories of gaming is on the Amiga
A600, my older brothers got it as a combined Christmas present with the 512mb
upgrade (they had 1 Meg ram!!! WHooooOOooo)…..anyway this memory was when we
randomly got a copy of Leisure Suit Larry 3 (I can not actually remember how or
where we got it from, as back then it was considered a game for adults!).
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| The pack we had! |
Myself and the 2nd oldest brother (2 years my
senior) sat there on the quiz part asking our mother in the kitchen making pies
“What’s the answer to this Mum….” And she
would shout out the answers which on the most part were correct! Wahey! We were now in for the virtual pixels
of boobs through the binoculars…..hardcore mode!
Don’t get me wrong, my mother never had the faintest what we
were doing, after asking 2 to 3 questions she always asked why, or what we were
doing. We just ‘sighed’ and said it’s a
quiz game!
We had Nes, Master Systems, Mega Drives (I and my oldest
brother played Bulls vs blazers till the death). I recall having a Mega Drive with
Sonic for my Christmas gift, my parents bought it second hand a few months
before Xmas and put it away. I randomly came home from playing out with friends
and no one was in the house, I went to my bedroom and found my older brother
sitting there playing on my Mega
Drive! He snuck it out whilst my parents were out
and did it often, so he admitted….I was devastated!
I had Sega Saturn, we’ve had Dreamcast, I had an Atari
Jaguar (Bruce lee!!) and the family have had many PC’s. To a geek’s life (or gamer) you would say we
were pretty spoilt for entertainment systems and we probably were (we never had
more than 1 system, most of the time they were sold to get the next etc).
Back then things were different, if we had a system and a
game (i.e. mega drive and Sonic) it’s all we had unless we got a game for our
next Birthday or Xmas. It’s not like now
when children will get every new release or at least a game every few months,
boy no…we never had that. It was
literally playing the 1 or 2 games we had to its full extent and really appreciating
them as the only chance to get another game was on a holiday season/Birthday
and to pick was even harder…to ensure that one game or possibly two a year
would have to be the right pick…the best pick!!!
So... my gaming career (Hobby?) really started from getting
Duke Nukem 3D for Christmas, I remember standing in the store holding in one
hand Quake and the other DN3D and debating which one to get. I read PC Gamers review so many times for
Duke I could have reiterated back from mind… I used to stare at the screenshots
in the magazine to satisfy my thirst of excitement, I went with DN3D (God knows
what would have happened if I went with Quake. You will understand later…).
Duke Nukem was awesome game and it opened up the door way of Game Developer for
me, the real kick start for my passion of what I wanted to do in life (Work in
the games industry!)
My older brother one night was printing off this massive
(and I mean massive!) document that looked like it was written in DOS…It had
all this code and random stuff that meant nothing to me. He was reading it and drawing out these
vector lines on the screen, this turned out to be the Level Editor for Duke and
the booklet (bible?) being the manual of codes to tell the system if the brush
is a door, glass etc.
I eventually jumped on the PC when I could to learn myself
and started to create some awesome levels with trucks moving, city’s and
awesome levels we could do over link up on our 486 pc.
It was marvellous! If we had the web then and released our
content I am sure it would have been a big hit (I was only 12 years old or so).
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| Craft before Minecraft! |
Jumping a few years head at the age of 16 I received a
cheque which was a child’s savings my parents did for us children from when we
were born. It was not a huge amount but the most money I ever received in my
full 16 years of age (approx £1000!).
Now, most parents (bless mine always supportive in what I do?!?!?) they
would ensure that hard saved cash would be put on driving lessons or something
for the future….. Lucky for me my Dad loving all the latest new hardware of
computers and my passion for gaming they actually allowed me to buy a top of
the range pc?!?!?!?! After years of jumping on my older brothers (Think his was
a AMD CPU with an ATI 1mb gfx card…forgot finer details) when he was out to fulfil
my fix or using our old run down systems that only ran Day of Tentacle and doom
etc which we used for years.
We bought computer shopper every time the latest edition was
in to find the best deals and hardware, in the end if I recall correctly I got
a P3 866, Geforce 1 etc. It was the
bloody bee’s knees… I felt like a king trying all the PC Gamer and PC Format demos’
full whack…
Unbeknown to me at the time, this PC was going to open up a
new world for me, new experiences and mould me as the man I am today! (Over the
top I know but say that in your husky cinema trailer voice and it’s pretty
awesome!)
This blog post is getting too big so from here on out it
might get a bit jumpy and itchy of detail as a lot will be skipped out!
When ‘Jedi Knight Dark Force 2’ was released (1997) I came
across it by accident, actually as it was Christmas and I asked for Blade
Runner which I completed in one sit through. So my parents took me back to the
store to return BR and I saw JKDF2, got it and actually fell in love with it
enough to play it through and through about 20+ times. The story, the real actor video sequences etc
was the best! Not mapping for Duke for a long time and sort of forgetting about
it all I randomly found JK Edit which was the map editor for JK2. I played around and again was making awesome
Star Wars levels (I say awesome but in fact to anyone else they were pretty
shit. You see, I’ve never been artistic or having an architecture flare) but to
me and my family they rocked!!
Then came Half Life I got this for Christmas 1997, again I
stood in the store one hand HL and the other Quake 2……..you guessed it I went
with Half Life. Again I read PC Gamer
review so many times I still have a pure hard built image in my mind of sitting
at the parents dinning room table reading and staring at the images and going
in my own little dream land of playing the game and loving it! As a side note I also got FF7 too and that
was actually surprisingly one of best games I’ve played to this day. Half Life
to me will always be a soft spot in my heart, it really showed me what games
can achieve with cinematic scripted sequences, emotions and story in a First
Person Shooter (FPS). It also excited me that on the back of the box it advertised
the map editor ‘Worldcraft’ and so again I started creating maps and absolutely
loved it, I so wish I saved them till this day just to look back…hindsight heh.
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| Still have my original copy.. no box though (cry) |
After playing HL single player so many times and loving it
eventually internet started to get a bit more mainstream (at least accessible).
I recall finally having internet 56kb although expensive we were allowed an
hour now and then and that was it!
Half Life was the first game I ever did online, Death Match…the
OZ MOD (
http://www.ozdeathmatch.com/)
which myself and my older brother came across randomly by joining a server and
we were addicted!
Online started to open me to game development even further,
creating mods and skins and all for free! I was astonished and I recall
explaining to my older brother that people in their spare time for free
programme mods, make maps and models that change the entire game! (Total
Conversions!!!).He never believed me!!!!!!!!!!, for free? No way! But it was
true.
One random mod I came across in Alpha version was one as
Police and terrorist, I think it had 1x map and a few guns… known as Counter
Strike and so began mine and my brothers Counter- Strike addiction (another story
for another day).
I recall communities like Barry’s World, Jolt, Gamespy
server browser (it actually owned back then), Roger Wilco, Wireplay, ICQ (when
everyone used it) etc.
Internet then got better, Screaming.net provided free
internet and hence we changed ISP and so began the gaming sessions online! (Slow
as hell still on 56k)…..
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| Good Old Barry.. We miss you! |
Jumping time again, another Xmas came and I got Quake 3 and
tried map making (although did not enjoy it as much as HL mapping). With Quake
it opened me up to Esports, I entered online leagues, FFA, TDM whilst everyone was
jumping on the Fibre Optic and ADSL bandwagon of 512kb internet I was still the
High Ping Barstard (HPB), ironically still coming top of the tables either due
to lag or sheer skill?!?!
I got great a duels and at the age of 17 after leaving
college I got a job and jumped on the Fibre Optic wagon (512kb for £40 a month….no
phone, no tv just the web!).
I got in to Q3 duels (1v1) and got good!
Many games, many engines and many attempts at mapping always
loving it but always quitting, same as getting great at online games…quitting
eventually because it was routine to just quit….never having the balls to say “I’m
going to attend a Lan tourney”.
I’ve also loved to programme and did attempt several times
with Java, Blitz Basic, C++ and again the furthest I got was making a asteroids
game in Blitz Basic but always quitting due to attention span or finding
something else that took my fancy.
If you’ve got this far through reading…well done and I
apologise for dragging this out to actually get to the POINT!
Many more years, many more games and always attempting to
get into something productive gaming wise (i.e. mapping on HL2, Unreal, editing
Source SDK animations, sound etc) but quitting/stopping.
The present…..30 years old, a wife and daughter (15 months)
who I love and adore with all my heart, mind and soul (oddly enough not quit on…...like
most of the stuff I take on!). ). It’s unbelievable how much my wife supports
and believes in my 5 minute wonders or adventures I jump on. One minute pro gamer, next a level editor and
tomorrow Card Magician! Or this blog (lets see how long this lasts).
I’m fortunate and grateful for the job I have which is very
stressful, holds high responsibility but has great pay and job satisfaction (albeit
not in the gaming industry).
It’s time to face facts……….do I still want to achieve the
dream of working in the games industry? Yes!
Do I want to be involved in the development of games, put my
pure passion, love and enthusiasm in to games and a team that feels the same as
I do? Hell yes!
Then the fact is that I’m not artistic, I’m not made to be a
programmer or have the skill set to map (although I understand the process). It’s
not that I’m going to be the next John Carmack or Cliffy B! I need to work on
my strengths that I’ve gained away from gaming and combine that with my passion
for the industry and the experience I’ve had through learning the basis of the
development cycles.
Management, project managing, out going, good motivator and
speaker….. And a whole lot more are my strong points.
Am I selling myself here to hope a random reader will offer
me that dream job? No, I just hope in writing this it will make me feel that
all the years spent gaming, all the years attempting to learn a tool of the
craft has not gone to waste and all it takes is defining one’s strengths and
applying those.
One day I hope to be writing “I made it”, until that day
please tell me of your gaming stories funny or serious. Do you work in the gaming industry now as a
developer, marketing or business. Post your comments below and tell me!
Other items that I like to think are defying moments in my
gaming career (hobby!!!):
- Beating
Voo in PK online prior to CPL World Tour kicking off (no screen shots or
anything to show!). I got awesome at that game…but like everything I quit
it.
- Winning
a Gamecube and being one of the first in Europe
to own one! I won on a news paper competition call in. I rang up drunk and
said some random funny stuff and some how won?!?!!
- Writing
for an Xbox site (name escapes me) and being sent Aggressive Inline
skating Xbox game from publisher to review!
- Winning
a Duel tournament in Ultima Online. I got to the semi-final by using magic
items which were not allowed… some how they never caught me!! It came to the final and the referee
passed over the winning cheque some random reason before fighting the
final. I ticked ok, took the money and ran!
- Attending
my first ever LAN @ Multiplay (i15) with mine and my fellow attendees PC’s
blowing up on route we left only after a few hours. We made a come back at
i19 and many more thereafter.
