A life in gaming
When I was a kid we went to a carnival once a year, a travelling carnival with rides. When I was 12 (early 1970s) or so they included a tent of very primitive video games, and that became the highlight of the annual event for me.
A few years later a friend in school introduced me to war games, of maps and cardboard chipts. From then until 1980 I was an avid mover of stacks of chits, joining a college wargaming club as well.
College also re-introduced me to video games: Space Invaders in particular. I spent countless quarters at the game.
I was losing interest in the war gaming despite the appearance of higher-quality games such as Squad Leader (yes, there was to ‘A’ in front of the name back then) because finding players who would not cheat, argue about rules, or lose interest at the first difficulties was tough. But in the same room as the war gamers met we started seeing other people showing up, talking about ‘Traveller’ and D&D (likewise, no ‘A’ back then.
These new games were harder to understand (first question: what are the victory conditions?), but the players were easier to find and while there was still plenty of arguing about rules, it was less frustrating and more part of the game.
In the Army video games were common; we had Space Defenders in a bar twenty feet from my first unit barracks, and RPGs caught on fast in an environment where over a hundred people lived in the same building and had the same schedule. War gaming was not, oddly enough, popular.
When I got out of the regular army in the mid-80s I found an RPG group easily enough, but war gaming was nowhere to be found, and video arcades were less interesting.
When I bought my first PC around 1990 (VHS monitor, 286 processor, 40mb hard drive, $2000) I discovered Red Baron, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, and others. A new venue opened up for me.
A move due to a job change in 1992 ended my RPG group, but I still had a succession of ever-better PCs and computer games, including a return to war games, now playing against an AI, or by email with a banker in Luxembourg.
In 2002 I stumbled across a RPG group looking for a GM, and I agreed to run a campaign; as of 2018 I am still GMing weekly, changing games every 12-14 months. Two of my five players are alumni of that original 2002 group.
In 2009 I purchased my first game console, an Xbox 360, and my PC ceased to be a major gaming platform for me (except for the Hearts of Iron and Civilization series). Later, I transitioned to a PS4.
How did gaming affect my life? Well, besides being a hobby that brought me countless hours of enjoyment (and cost me a lot of money), it brought history alive for me, and history was a love of mine before I started gaming. It also led me to learn to use a PC, something that was of tremendous help to me in my career; I am certain that I would never have purchased a home computer if it wasn’t for games.
But most of all it fulfilled and nurtured my love of storytelling, and the computer skills it taught me brought me to the author’s single greatest asset since the printing press: word processing. Without gaming I would never have honed the skills (however limited they might be) that has led me to having eighteen novels in print and more being worked upon.
I am not saying that gaming is for everyone, but it has been a good part of my life since my pre-teens, and thanks to that hobby I was able to fulfill one of my greatest dreams, which was to be an author.
