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Written by David Murphy
The moment before Dustin and I sit down and get in on some Bombshell thanks to 3D Realms and XoticPC.
My gaming experience started back when my parents got me an Atari 2600 for Christmas. I was hooked. I played it every chance I got. Eventually I grew up got married had kids and gaming had taken a back seat. When my kids were very young we got them a NES. My oldest loved to play Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros.
I decided that they would need to be able to work on a computer as they grew so I bought an “upscale”computer for the time, it was a Pentium 2 and I upgraded the ram to 16MB from 4MB and the hard drive to 2GB from 256MB. We played Doom, Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein. What an upgrade from the NES.
Gaming took a backseat in my life at that point. I had a family to take care of so keeping up with the technology just wasn’t in the budget. As things improved I started getting back into games a little. It was mainly with my sons as a way to connect and spend time together. By this time I was way behind on PC gaming so I mainly played console games with them. We had so much fun and spent a vast amount of quality time together. The kids are grown now and moving on with their lives but we still keep our gaming time.
My photo of In Win’s rig on display at QuakeCon 2015. An amazing piece of machinery. Go check out in win’s website.
This year my oldest son had me go to QuakeCon with him. I had helped sponsor his gaming page since it started and it was time I saw what gaming has become. QuakeCon was a whole different world. The line on Thursday for the people headed to the BYOC seemed to go on forever. I had never seen so many gamers in one place. The rigs they had with them were amazing.
Thursday afternoon I went through the BYOC just to look at the systems. These people must be some of the most talented PC modders out there. I saw a rig that looked like just like the proton pack carried in Ghostbusters. All the lights and cooling systems they had on these rigs had me in a trance. The longer we were there the more I had to have one.
Later that evening Bethesda had a wonderful get together at the House of Blues. I was sitting there with a beverage and people would stop by and just chat. I was so very impressed with the hospitality of all the people. We talked about the DOOM PvP, motorcycles and everything in between. I met Alex Kurikh (Cooke) from Russia. He was there for the gaming contest. He showed me that we are all just people with similar interest and there to enjoy life. Later that night my oldest told me who several of these people were who I had enjoyed talking with. They were high position people with the different companies at the convention. I think that impressed me more because they were so down to earth.
We spent two more days there and the longer I was there the more I appreciated the people within the gaming community. They were all there for the same reason. They enjoyed gaming and the technology. I know I constantly was asking stupid questions because I’ve been out of the loop for so long, but I was not once treated as a burden. If I showed an interest in something they would take the time to explain it to me. This sparked my mind and I’m now looking at building a rig of my own.
With so many people in the same place I waited to see how long it would be before someone with an attitude went off. The days kept going and I never once saw it happen. Instead what I saw were people helping each other. If someone had a problem with their system others would help them with it. They were all there to make sure that the best gaming experience possible was enjoyed by all.
The Doom PvP was phenomenal to watch. It was so fast paced and the fact you had to move forward to survive instead of hiding and reviving was something I liked seeing. It was gaming as it used to be. I got the opportunity to play the trial of a game called Bombshell. It was a short demo but this game will be a blast. Unfortunately for me the demo was on PC and my keyboard skills are weak but it was still fun. I can’t wait to try it on a console. Then there was the Fallout showing; it impressed me enough that I preordered it and the Fallout Anthology so I can work on the keyboard skills and learn the game.
In the end my experience at QuakeCon was time well spent. Everyone there was there for the same reason. You had several thousand people in the same place and I never saw a single attitude. Bethesda Zenimax, id Software, 3D Realms, Alienware, Modders Inc., MSI, In Win, Nvidia, XoticPC, DXRacer, Altex, Corsair, FSP Group U.S.A. and all the other sponsors and venders were the best. I can’t wait for next year. I plan on being more in the loop and ready for the thrill of the gaming word.
About the Writer:
David Murphy is an old school gamer that has recently stepped into a new world of gaming. When not playing games such as Fallout, Destiny, Diablo 2 or Diablo 3; he can be found sitting back stomping on Goomba’s on his classic NES or shooting down some pesky ducks on Duck Hunt.