Oddbean

I'm a gamer and am writing a long ass article which I will post on Nostr. It's about the most life-changing game I ever experienced and about meaningful games in general. It will be a while before it's finished though.

Very cool... I have played half of them and Talos changed me too... Can see you come from I guess singleplayer gaming being your life changing catalyst? Mine actually came from multiplayer gaming I guess so can't wait to read about your journey.

Correct, it's all about the single player experiences for me, though I did play many multiplayer games in my teens. But I found them to be mere entertainment at best, and generally a waste of time. It seems you had a very different experience so I'm interested to hear more if you feel like writing about it.

Yeah sure! I'll try to do the tldr; as I could probably rant for hours. Got into multiplayer gaming over null modem cables and IPX networking with Coaxial and that. Sometime when Ultima Online (the first real mmo I guess) appeared, I had dial-up and that just transformed my entire vision of the internet and it's potential. Kinda like discovering Nostr isn't just one site, but potentially thousands if not millions. I realized that gaming could enter his sphere too with ease with accessibility being open to everyone, this truly culminated in the year iD software released the shareware Quake demo. Even though I was hitting like 400-500ms (I consider anything above 30 to be noticeable and laggy!), it was so groundbreaking at the time to be loosely connected albeit virtually to people all around the globe. Fast forward 10-15 years and I started getting my certifications in IT industries. ALL of them came with great ease to achieve and I was even approached to become a teacher even though I was in my junior year. All this from playing online games and also going to LAN parties a shit ton. These days though there is no emphasis on users running their own servers on dedicated hardware or even their own. It's all centralized and sadly creates for a subpar gaming experience in my eyes when it comes to latency and network/latency stability. Besides the learning experience on the IT side, I also did play for the best Team Fortress and also Quake clan in Australia and that was a fair achievement for me at the time and I still cling onto it deeply. Sad thing was I met and trusted a few clan members and they turned out to be total douches not to be trusted. However made countless other friends so they're merely dust in the wind in the big picture. I guess multiplayer gaming grew my social circle, allowed me to speak my mind in a place where that was frowned upon in school or home, and really gave me a place to belong. It was also a source for me discovering music and other underground scenes which I am forever grateful for finding out about! Thanks for reading if you got this far 😅

Nah thank you for writing this, I hadn't even considered the possibility that multiplayer games could potentially have a positive outcome. Usually you only hear the bad side of it and for me personally it indeed was like that; A waste of time and a severe addiction, jumping from game to game after reaching max level and best gear etc. I might include your statement as an exception to the rule if that's alright with you, but I'm not sure yet, the article is 15000 characters atm and I'm just getting started. I'll let you know!