Seems only fitting to follow up Harry’s post with one of my own. I am a relative newcomer to games and gaming in any serious way. As a kid, I never had a console system. My dad briefly owned an Atari that we set up every now and then but most of those games were too hard for me when I was so young and it never captured my interest. I’m an only child so I didn’t have older siblings (or a brother in general) to insist on owning a console. None of my girlfriends had console systems either, or families that did. Some of my younger cousins had Nintendos and the like, but they were all boys and all younger than me, so while I did at least see Super Mario and Sonic and all those classics of the era getting played at holidays, I generally wasn’t included and would get bored and wander off.

My Dad is a huge tech nerd, but his particular flavor of dorkieness ran in the direction of Apple computers which also limited my exposure. Thankfully my best friend Melissa’s family had some PCs and (come to think of it, I have no idea why) lots of games. We spent hours and hours playing Doom and Wolfenstein, but it wasn’t until much later that I had any connection between playing those games in her basement and the larger culture and history that existed in the 80s around this new media. Plus most games, I thought, were for boys or little children. My family did have most games that came out for the Mac, primaraly strange nerdy things like 3 by Three (which is still an incredible puzzle game if you go download it) and I really liked the, for their time, pretty dynamic hypercard driven exploration games like The Manhole and Spelunx (which, now typing them sound SO DIRTY. But I digress). The latter two were produced by Cyan who went on to make Myst, etc which my family was a HUGE fan of. Mom and Dad had always liked text based adventure games, so Myst was something they were familiar with. We played them as a family fanatically every time a new one came out. And this fit pretty well with my speed as a kid, I did not like fast, frenetic things. I read a lot. I liked drawing and art. Nice, slow, quiet, contemplative activities.

Games got dropped all together for a couple of years between middle school and the end of highschool. I was far too busy trying to be artsy and eclectic and generally weird. I should have realized that any child who went to the state and regional science fair competitions every year for 7 years running would never be able to escape nerddom but I was trying really hard. Somewhere in there, during college, I managed to buy a PS2. Maybe for Dance Dance Revolution? I can’t quite remember what made me spend what I’m sure was a month’s worth of my expendable cash on a system. I certainly didn’t know many titles. I can only assume I saw DDR or Katamari over at a friends house and fell in love. Or, hm, I think I also decided that I really needed a DVD player and thought a used PS2 would be a more fun way and the same price. Couldn’t tell you. Regardless, somehow this made it in to my house and then I actually started paying attention to games. I was AMAZED to find that there were cute! fun! non-twitch demanding things out there. I killed a ton of time playing stuff like Sly Cooper, Dark Cloud 2, Jax and Daxter, Katamari, Final Fantasy, etc. The introduction of adventure, RPG and platformers changed my gaming perspective completely. I was only really familiar with FPS, and assumed Mario was only for 6 year olds since that’s the age my cousins were when I saw them playing it. T’was a revelation unto me.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’ve broken up with my then-boyfriend, let him have the PS2 (grrr) and then I met Harry. When I broke up with my then-boyfriend, I decided I’d had it with artsy-fartsy musicians and pretentious hipster scenes and awkward goth clubs and the whole nine yards. I finally let myself settle in to the hopeless reality that A) I’m a big dork. B) I need to date a big dork. I was specifically looking for my nerd-in-shining-spectacles when Harry arrived on the scene. And then all the glory of heaven and the soft glow of a flatscreen monitor did shine upon me. Our descent in to being Gamers-with-a-capitol-G happened quickly. He started introducing me to console games I had missed, and then he started up WoW.  I had, up to that point, NO idea that the technology in WoW was possible. I was blown away that I had somehow totally missed the newsflash that MMOS of this level of sophistication were possible. And it was pretty! And totally ridiculous enough to be self-consciously silly (something I always appreciate in fantasy games). And, glory be, it ran (well, kinda) on my ancient MacBook. I remember seeing Harry playing his hunter in Uldaman and going “well shit, I want to do that”.

From there I’ve been hooked. I wrote my college senior thesis on games, MMOS in general and WoW in particular, I’ve gone to conferences, I play a mean Guitar in rock band/guitar hero. I pew pew with my Heavy in TF2. I’m slowly, slowly working my way back through the canon of video games to catch what I missed. Yes I’m picky, and I’m not terribly good at fast-reaction games, and there are still too many games out there that are way to “boy” for me to work up a lot of interest in, but I feel, in gaming and by being a self-proclamed “gamer” that I’ve finally found my home. An identity that fits, that aligns me with like-minded people who I genuinely enjoy, rather than my failed attempt at being artsy which aligned me with a group people who’s aesthetic I enjoyed but who my personality never meshed with. I still struggle to know how to define myself within this community, especially when it brings up so many gender stereotypes, but it challenges me and has connected me to more wonderful friends and intellectual stimulation and flat-out fun than I would have ever known.