Now, this might be for a commmunity contest. But am thinking of doing a series like this, where I get to talk about my early years of gaming exploits. Playing games online didn't start for me till some point in my life, That was because my first time playing multiplayer was through LAN games.
This story goes back over a decade ago, where online gaming has yet to hit the mainstream within the Asian market. Around that time, most people would huddle up in one location where all the computers are connected to one another. No connection to the online, just local network all set up from one box.
I met a lot of interesting people around there, interesting is a particular word I would use because we were only engaging with one another just based on the games we played. But outside of that, some of us kept stuff to ourselves. Others were open and friendly. I stuck with around with the latter. Even remembering them to this day.
But the first time I started playing a game in multiplayer was in a LAN cafe, with my brother. We were both fans of Unreal Tournament 2004, so we played that together and man, I couldn't forget the adrenaline rush I had that day. My older brother had experiences with online games before so he had quite an advantage. Yet, I was cutting it close, I had him at the last point before I finally won. Never imagined that was possible, yet I took that win as a gateway to online or LAN gaming for me.
Oh, also I played Unreal Tournament with bots so many times, maybe that part factored into me winning. Lmao, still couldn't forget that grin on my brothers face. Treasured memory. Reminder tho, that I was just a kid at the time.
A few years later, I was deep in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare scene. Damn, I wouldn't let this one go. A lot of people were jumping into the LAN game hype, so much so that even sponsored tournaments were being held around the cafes I went to. I couldn't enter one because nobody was going to pick a kid.
Yet, for a guy who had nothing better to do most of his life other than playing video games, I stood out pretty well. I was kicking butts and taking names. I was so good, I got lucky one time with so many spawn kills that my KDA was more than a cut above the rest.
Playing with the pros around the cafe was exhilarating, I was pumped. Setting up claymores, doing grenade launcher kills, playing chicken with snipers, and flanking out campers. All's fair when you're playing a Call of Duty title. Same applied to the Counter Strike games, from with Source and 1.6 . Everybody had some trick up their sleeves.
The Part About Online Gaming
Alright, so the first online game I've ever played was the first Borderlands game. I just joined a server with a bunch of misfits, trying super hard to play the game with a co-op group because I've only played multiplayer competitively. The other thing I've noticed was that my latency was ridiculously high. Like I couldn't figure out how that happened, but it did. Wasn't much knowledgeable about network and latency around that time. So I thought 300-500ms ping was well...within tolerable grounds.
After school, I would at times crash into my friends place and play with his Xbox 360. He was rich and the dude could afford games and the online subscription. So I played a few games either on local co-op with him or online against a lot of screaming manchilds. It kind of turned me off after awhile, maybe because of THAT.
Compared to where I am nowadays with my own gaming consoles and expensive PC peripherals to get the best of the experience, I was using an old rig with a Core 2 Duo and GTX 550 Ti running at 2GB DDR2 RAM. In 2011, that was a lot even for me.
But my first, really legit online experience that put me where I am now, is Battlefield Bad Company 2 in 2012. Now, if you're reading, you're wondering if I was playing these games on a legitimate basis. Ahhh, not quite. This is because around the time, digital purchasing and regional pricing hasn't entered the Asian market until some time later. So yeah, people played the games via illegitimate ways.
So, to hook up bootleg Battlefield Bad Company 2 server, I had to apply a patch of sorts and run the game via servers from Tunngle client. Ah yes, Tunngle, takes me back. Of course, this fun lasted for shortwhile before EA ddos the absolute crap out of the Russian bootleg servers. So yeah, pirated BF2 died. But that short run, I couldn't say I didn't have fun though, I really did. This was where I started turning away from CoD to better games that used open-world sandbox design to create rich multiplayer experiences.
I hope you enjoyed the read, I know the competition has ended. But hey, I still want to share my stories. I really enjoyed writing this. Hoping to do more here. Am either playing on my Switch/PS4 or going easy on Valorant. Am not as sharp as I used to be on shooting games.