I began life as a gamer like a lot of people these days, with Nintendo. Me being born in 1993, I started playing Mario games, luckily for me we had the Super Mario Bros. All stars pack, so we got to experience just about all Mario had to offer at that time. Also Duck Hunt, our lightguns never, ever worked and we couldn't find any that did. As far as we knew, working lightguns didn't exist. Also I think it's worth mentioning that we were pretty broke. We were a family of four living in a trailer with two very under paid parents, so if I was playing games that seem a bit too old, you know why. We played a ton, it was really the only thing aside from cleaning to do around the house, and getting my family together to do something fun that we all understood was great, and I miss those days. Then, one stormy night, tragedy struck, lightning. Somehow lightning hit our house, which killed our system completely, and I was devoid of gaming for quite awhile.
Luckily we got a PlayStation, so not all was lost. The PlayStation is where my fondest gaming moments are. Not only was the family together and playing games, this was cool. The games were in 3d, and I wasn't jumping on goombas or hitting boxes, I was straight up slaughtering velociraptors with two pistols as Lara Croft. Oh yeah. That T-Rex. The scariest freakin thing I had ever seen. Every time I saw it, I'd hand over the controller and go use the bathroom. The first times I was really just hiding, but after awhile my brain sortof started associating pointy t-rex with the bathroom, so every time I saw it I had to go, which was awful because my brother would make fun of me hiding, when I really had to piss. This game had it all, action, puzzles, and extremely sharp breasticles. After playing this for awhile I started to feel my family move away from gaming. My dad would go off and play a baseball game every once in awhile, and try hopelessly to get me into it. My older brother would play occasionally, but it was mostly me infatuated with ledge climbing as Lara, and fire breathing as Spyro. I just couldn't help it, I loved this stuff. I played through Tomb Raider at least 7 times and every time was as cool as the last, and I kept learning more about the story, just why I was blasting endangered animals in the face with a shotgun, and why there were demon mutants in secret, organ like tunnels. At school all I could think about was getting home to play Tomb Raider, and how cool it would be if Lara was in different places, writing my own stories of ancient artifacts and animals getting blown to bits. Even though I didn't know it, this was my first experience with the thought of game development.
Another fun fact about me is that my entire life I've had the yearning to create. I would walk into the kitchen, stretching my hands and everyone knew what I needed. "I need to make something." to which the reply was usually "What?" I needed to paint, draw, glue, or piece together something to show people and say "Isn't this cool? Look what I made!" which the response to that was most of the time "What is it?" or simply "No, that's not cool." and I understand why. My creations were odd abominations, weird faces made up of some old unused Styrofoam balls from a solar system project, nail polish, hot glue gun, string, an old broken Christmas ornament, and whatever I could find in anyone junk drawer. Don't ask me what a junk drawer is, you know what it is, we all have one. Even though I had made (and thrown away) so much, I had never really scratched that itch to create. There were three problems. 1) I was confused, never knew what I was making or why I was making it. 2) I needed a wide audience, three people just wasn't enough. 3) Lack of resources, see "junk drawer" I was basically dumpster diving for creative inspiration. This itch was persistent for quite awhile, and I was constantly frustrated with others for just not getting it, my need to make things.
My parents got my brother and I the PlayStation 2 on the Christmas it was released. I saw this, the amazing graphics and new tomb raider as a new way to get my family back into gaming. Sadly my dad took on the "They don't make them like they used to." attitude, and my brother while interested for awhile didn't really stick around like I did. My mom, she's never really been into gaming, except Tetris. BrentalFloss didn't lie, the only game my mom would touch was tetris. She kept a whole phone book full of level codes, the only save system the game had. This game was one that made me close to my mom and dad, I didn't really like it but when we all played it there was a happy tone to it all that offset the tension that a budding family living in a trailer had. Of course the PS2 stuck around for awhile, and the graphics got better and so did the gameplay. Tomb Raider Anniversary was great for nostalgia, my dad would sit around and watch, and even though that "They don't make em' like they used to" attitude was quite blatantly present, it was good that he at least stuck around and watched us play. Critics sometimes look down on games like these, but for me it was a great time.
When my thirteenth/fourteenth birthday rolled around my brother promised me he'd take me to gamestop and buy me a game. I didn't really like my brother. We never really got along, so this was a very interesting olive branch for us, and the one real time I'm so glad he was around for, he made one of the most pivotal decisions for me. We were at the PC games rack, and saw two titles we might want. I see Halo (1 or 2, I can't remember) and the Valve Holiday pack. I wanted halo, all the kids at school said it was the coolest game out there, and I had barely had any interaction with Valve, I remember sneaking back to a friends house and playing a naughty rated M game called Half-Life, which scared the shit out of me, some weird twitching creature strapped to a chair staring at a flashing screen is all I could remember... that and the tentacle monster. My brother decided that the Valve pack was the best, since it had so many games, and I reluctantly agreed. My god. I'm so happy he existed. My brother, the one I have NEVER got along with, turned out to be one of the most positive influences on my entire life. Thanks to him I'm not aimlessly gluing paper together or drawing on the walls, I'm not walking into the kitchen stretching my hands, popping my fingers with the need to make something, anything. I took the pack home, played all the games and noticed the steam store said something about a level editor. I looked it up and saw amazing work done by other people, beautiful maps I couldn't find anywhere in the games, characters I had never seen before. Surreal scenes set in unknown worlds in some other
dimension. And shit, lots of shit, fullbright shit that even I as a total non-modder non-mapper could tell was shit, and I didn't want to make shit. So, I started reading tutorials, joined Interlopers.net in late April of 2008 after spending time in the now clusterfunk of a community Facepunch. Looking on that thread it's funny to see I called zipfinator kind. I really should get that deleted before he thinks I actually like him. Srredfire actually said "'allo", and even KILLA COW greeted me.
Interlopers.net was and still is a place for me to show what I've created. My vast audience, one that not only says "That's neat." but also "That's neat, here's what you can do to make it better." and "That's neat, look at this". I no longer lack resources, I can easily make my own, (I still need to learn to model, but I can do most texturing, particle work, and level design myself.) This was the place where I could grow not only as a modder but a person as well. Many different people with ideas and opinions of their own, if I hadn't discovered this place, (or some place like it) I might
have turned out to be a much less open minded person, raised in a conservative home, in a conservative town, in a conservative state. Where I grew up, you took the ideals you were handed and stuck with them. Of course this is all so silly for me to be writing, I'm seventeen years old, I have so many years ahead of me (assuming I don't die in some freak accident.) I have valuable concepts to learn, I still need time to grow as a person, to screw up and learn from my mistakes, to have fun, to make a name for myself like many of my peers here have. I think as long as I have this place and the semi-supportive, not really understanding family I have, I should turn out fine, if not great. There are still hurdles to jump over, and like many others I've yet to release something worth anything. Just screenshots and videos. I look forward to seeing how everyone else evolves, and I had a really fun time going down memory lane and reading a few posts of mine from way back in 2008. Happy early New Years everyone.
