When I was growing up I didn’t know girls weren’t supposed to play video games.  No one told me.  I might have ascertained this, had I sat down and analyzed the fact that I hated pink and all my friends were boys, but I didn’t.  I was having too much fun getting lost in beautiful worlds and bending my brain around obscure puzzles.

There was a feeling of isolation during that time.  Maybe I craved it.  I was a bookworm, after all, and used to being left alone for hours at a time to amuse myself.  My games reflected that.  In these worlds, I seemed always alone, in some way or another.  That’s how it is with most puzzle games.  Even when there were occasionally other characters to interact with, it always felt superficial and short-lived.  Soon I was on my own again (Zork: GI is a notable exception to this.  Play it now.  I don’t care that it’s a few years old).

This part of my life came to an end, rather abruptly I might add, when I accidentally bought EverQuest (long story).  I had met a few gamers at my school, one of whom even lent me Lands of Lore 2 in an attempt to guide my gaming out of the realm of puzzles.  Our connection was tenuous, though.  I was ever-wary of other people after middle school, and uncomfortable dealing with them.  EverQuest changed that, to a point, and just about killed me in the process.  My addiction, when I found out I could play a never-ending game in this enormous world with thousands of other players who happily welcomed me, was all-consuming.

That was my first real experience in a gamer society.  It was overwhelming, in a lot of ways, but I also felt like I’d found a home.  It wasn’t long before I was sneaking play time in excess of my 2-hours-per-day limit.  You can’t do anything in just 2 hours in EverQuest!  Try telling that to parents who grew increasingly concerned that I had so few “real” friends to counter-balance my growing list of online ones.

I won’t go into the time following, since there’s not much to tell, but suffice to say that online gaming was an enormous step for me.  It was heartwarming to look at the server loads and see thousands and thousands of other people playing the same game as me as the same time.  I was in a room by myself, but it felt like I had some form of social life, which was a refreshing change.  It was the first time I felt like I really fit in among the people with whom I shared an interest.

Eventually, I made real friends who played games as enthusiastically as I did.  Shortly after that my rabid EverQuest addiction faded away.  Shortly after that I was skipping my prom to go across the street (literally, as chance would have it) to my first LAN party.

There’s something magical about LAN parties, where gamers haul all their gear and run mazes of cords and spend several hours shouting obsceneties at each other from across the room, while participating in some of the most immediate action known to mortals.  At the time it was Half-life, Unreal Tournament, and Quake 3.  I wasn’t much of a shooter gamer, but after that I was hooked.  Something in the air wriggled its way into my brain and settled comfortably in the warm fuzzy region.

What the games were didn’t matter so much to me.  It was the experience of gamers in a traditionally isolated environment making the effort to come together to play something they could have played just as well over the internet from the comfort of their homes.

Like the proverbial snowball, my gaming-as-a-lifestyle grew faster and faster after that.  After my first time sitting in the same room as other gamers and feeling my twitch reflexes kick in, I felt like I had finally earned the right to call myself a gamer.  I was still timid among non-gamers, but when I came among other gamers immersed in their matches, I felt like I could talk without being mocked about my geekiness.  Hey, I was a geek, and I learned to raise my chin and take pride in that.  It’s amazing how much I can talk when I have that kind of pride and that feeling of belonging.

I’ve gone to a lot of LAN parties since then.  At one point I helped host a LAN party every week for my “crew” (yes, my social contacts had grown far flung enough for me to have a “crew.” RIP isolationism).  I might have expected that initial magic to fade away, but it never has.  Every LAN party is different, but they all find that same spot in my brain and make me feel sentimental.  I can’t outwardly reflect that, because it would mess with my eyes and interfere with my gaming, but the inclination is still there.

I want to thank everyone who goes to that effort, who has ever rigged a harness to lug their case and monitor and cords with them to a party.  It takes a lot of effort and inconvenience to travel somewhere else to play games.  Through other gamers I’ve learned to take pride in being a hardcore gamer, and that gaming doesn’t have to mean mean sitting alone in a dark room hunched over a keyboard for hours on end.  It can just as easily mean sitting in one of 1000 seats in a dark room hunched over a keyboard for hours on end.  And that makes all the difference.

- Jinx

what else should i be?