Almost forgot to do this… 
GAMING HISTORY
First games I played were Pong and Night Driver on the original Atari VCS (2600 with wood) in the early 80’s shortly after I had learned to walk. Had friends over time with Segas and NES’s but I always stuck with Atari in the 80’s and into the early 90’s.
First PCs I played were… some geometric drawing game and some of those primitive text based adventures at school on the Apple II’s… or whatever was before the Apple II in the mid 80’s. I have a passionate hatred for the zombie following of Apple tech. Then the first REAL PC in the early 90’s with an Amstrad… something or other. It was capable of EGA graphics so I got to play a mix of those classic silly games few people remember like Sopwith, Dig Dug, Mach3… and a swarm of other titles I don’t even remember off the top of my head. Back when Sierra adventures were king. Got to experience the shareware days from its birth to its death… good times.
Kind of went off games after Warcraft 2 and having finished high school until Half-Life came out. Played alittle of my brothers PS1 at the time and haven’t consoled since.
W:ET was the first multiplay game I actually felt worth getting into. I think I went through 5 periods of burning out on that game and saying “okay, I’ve played enough of this for a life time and it’s time to move on.” Maybe a 6th that wasn’t as hardcore (and only because that’s when the pub community had finally dropped markedly in skill and intelligence). Back then I was an above average player, the kind that would be a game changer if joining mid-match in most stale-mate pubs (that one extra motivated person to help stack the team they joined), and ultimately end up dominating at least the class award I felt like playing that map at the end of game awards. Tried a few forgettable start-up clans but those never stuck, and at the time I was putting more focus on my career aspirations than taking competitive gaming seriously. I am of the opinion I could have been pretty bad ass competitively at the time. A premium support/objective team member. K/D’s have always been a secondary concern for me.
I also played a hell of a lot of Savage at the time as well. W:ET and Savage were my multiplay addictions for quite some time. Both with varying classes and per-battle-XP-leveling-perks. I was less effective in melee in that game due to dial-up syndrome, but I was pretty good tactically, and had a dominant win ratio when I sat in the RTS comm position. I think I tried clanning in that too but from memory the dial-up situation made it less viable since that game lost its local aussie servers pretty quickly after release (which was a real shame). The foreign matches were still a LOT of fun. Hour long + battles that were as intense at every step of the way as W:ET was with a good stable of players.
Been pretty disillusioned since really. Sure there have been some cool games that were very memorable like Vice City and such, but I still haven’t been infected with dreams where I’d actually hear those voices “WUNDERBAR” and “Zay Have Stolen Ze Gold, STOP ZEM.” Not since W:ET.
I tried ETQW only after the 1.5 patch came out cause it took me awhile to upgrade my rig, so I think I missed the golden era of the game, but nevertheless I was pretty satisfied with the locals that kept it alive.
I had high hopes that Brink would be the new W:ET as I’ve been itching since trying ETQW (and disappointed that it didn’t shine like it deserved to) to try and retrain my skill up in a game that I could take seriously and be competitive with… a return to the speed-tactical satisfaction of W:ET. Where every nook and cranny of a map was known by the regulars and finding new ways to exploit everyone’s expectations of optimal mine placements and other tactics… always a satisfying challenge.
I am one of these old timers that has a purist’s memory of the best titles out there… accurate too I might add. The best executed and most satisfying FPS titles are still W:ET, UT1999 and Q3. Greatest sense of true FPS control of movement/power/map tactics. (I never had a chance to play Tribes 2, so I plead ignorance on that… and I think Counter-Strike is good, though largely overrated).
DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
Hey, hey… first open beta was W:ET. I’ve wanted to get into game development since I was a kid but nothing really followed through with the folks I got involved with. As an artist… first I recall there was a C&C RTS… next thing I remember was something that was going to use id Tech 3… then a vertical shooter ala 1942.
I’ve been in some closed betas in the past too. Last ones I can remember were Heroes of Newerth (which reminded me how much I despise MOBA nerds) and Test Drive Unlimited 2 (which was a great example of everything not to do during a beta by a developer).
I put more of my focus into independent filmmaking during the era up to say ETQW, so my enthusiasm in game development wasn’t necessarily my primary focus. I have kept fairly close tabs on the industry side of things all along though, and I have dabbled with some modding tools over the years… can’t say I entirely liked Unreal regardless of the engine iteration. It just seemed unnecessarily more convoluted than 3DS MAX’s layer-cake approach to sub-menu-ing, to me anyway. I’ve dabbled with CryEngine 2 for an animation concept I’ve slowly been developing, and I’ve briefly looked into Unity for the purposes of making some phone friendly games in the future. Also trying to find the time to learn Blender because I am done dealing with 3DS MAX instabilities that are rooted in Windows… and the malware bloated Photoshop of today. I’ve put off making the conversion to Linux for far too long.
Otherwise, I have been focusing on a day job for the last 2 years too while re-evaluating my attack strategies to the film/animation side of things and to basically self-fund projects properly. The industry in Australia, post production houses and what have you… it’s not the environment for me. And sadly I’ve already reached a point where I’m making more in my 2nd year of the joe job I’m working than I would within my preferred industry if I had spent 10 years climbing the ladder in a production house… where there’s a very strong degree of getting down-on-your-knees to advance, at least from the many encounters I had in the Brisbane area. So there’s absolutely no incentive for me to take a pay cut and give someone else control over what I should be doing with my creative skills.
BUT, back on topic… my competitive interests have me committing/contributing to the testing/development of the 3 games I’ll probably only end up playing over the coming years:
[ol]
[li]Dirty Bomb[/li][li]Project CARS[/li][li]Star Citizen[/li][/ol]
I might get into Arma 3 when it comes out too, but I doubt I’ll have time for a fourth title… unless maybe an amazing RTS comes out, but even then I have no interest in studying unit stats so an RTS would be just for casual satisfaction.
