So I kinda got back into gaming

I have heard girls saying that they hate the “gamer girl” stereotype, because it implies that girls don’t usually game, so they must be some kind of special breed if they do. I don’t have much of an opinion towards the label, but I admit that I used to wear it with pride.

Used to. You know, back when I played Doom and Quake and Duke Nukem. As a child, I was brought up on computers, as in, on Windows 3.0.1. Or something to that effect. I played King’s Quest, to begin with, and when I started primary school I became less adventurous and would look for more creative and educational games to play.

Freddi the Fish was one of my favourites, though I couldn’t help but notice that the game was, subtly, not the same each time I played it. You had to generally find all the sea urchins on about thirty different game screens, as well as finding messages in bottles. Super easy cartoony educational stuff. I was smart, though. I realised that the game had the same outcome all the time, you always found the kelp seeds at the end1. But later I noticed that sometimes you would have to do slightly different things to find certain sea urchins. If it wasn’t in that weird underground cave, it would be in the shipwreck at the end. If you walked back to a previous screen you already looked in, it would appear there. Little things like that. Through playing a lot of these educational games, I realised I was far too smart for the ones I was playing, haha.

During primary school I had a The Little Mermaid creative program on my computer where I could create nice notepaper, stickers and cards. I didn’t have any stickers to print on so I just made do with making cardboard badges. But it was really fun.

I was about ten years old when I started playing Supaplex2, a pacman-like game with very different rules and more complicated ways out. At the time, it was the best game ever. Well… it was on par with Commander Keen.

I would fight with my dad over who got to play the next level of Commander Keen. And every time he failed the Miragia stage I would absolutely insist on playing it.

Reality check: I always got stuck at the same place he did.

I also played Minecraft addictively a couple of years ago with James and Mike. I was obsessed with that game. It was just the best. But first-person-shooter games like Doom and Quake and Duke Nukem were my favourites, which began when I was about ten years old. I finished Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake II, and from what I can remember, I think I finished the first ones too. Or at least with the help of my dad… yeah, he was obligated to share his computer with me. :P

I know I have been mentioning a lot of PC games, but I should also add that I played a myriad of games on my Sega Megadrive II (yes, Sonic games included), and I was just all over Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on the PS2.

The one game I couldn’t stand though? The Sims. I kid you not. I would spend literally an hour doing up my sim/person, get bored, and stop. Brandon would say to me that that wasn’t even the point of the game. Hahaha.

Sooooo, soooo, sooooo, when Tristan convinced me to get Steam late last year so I could play Terraria, get Steam I did. Here’s a fun fact for you: When I created my character, I spent a little bit too long customising the character’s look. #typical

Because a lot of my friends were also on Steam, I guess it was about time. I was flipping out at all my favourite games being there. I was just thrilled. I have only played Terraria and Commander Keen (I am heygeorgie on there). Brandon pointed out that I have not logged in for 31 days, and I exclaimed that I was on holidays and the last thing on my mind was Steam (and job-hunting).

By the way, Liz asked me some curious questions last month, some of which are hilariously linked to my mention of gaming.

How long have you and James been together?

Five years, eleven months, four days.

How did you get into blogging?

I kept a personal, written diary when I was younger. After some time I let my friends read some entries. Around the same time, I started using a computer for the internet rather than just playing King’s Quest and Supaplex over and over. I could type faster than I wrote, and I was pretty good at mixing potions and working my way into the minds of old folk in an 8-bit game, so the transition to write on a public internet-space seemed normal.

Have you ever had biscuits and gravy? Do you like it? Would you try it?

No, I have not. I don’t eat gravy anymore since most of it is basically chicken stock (I’m pescetarian). If you have a recipe for vegetarian or seafood-based gravy though, holla @ ur grl. :P

How do you decide what picture to take/use for a thumbnail?

Sometimes it’s a picture from the post, just cropped, and I take the photo myself. Sometimes it is a recent image from my Instagram profile. If there are a few, I choose the best one, or maybe one from the same photo shoot. Otherwise I use a stock image, which is related to the content of the post. A lot of the more contemplative/abstract posts of mine have really cheesy vintage-style thumbnails. I started doing the thumbnails in early 2012, and it was only a couple of months ago that I, honestly, in all seriousness, went through the past/remaining 550 posts in my blog archives and created thumbnails for each and every single one.

How do you feel that blogging has changed since you started blogging? How do you feel that you have changed (in the blogging sense and in life in general)?

I guess blogging has changed in the sense that “anyone can be a blogger” (this I learned in my tertiary studies of media). Dudes on tech blogs or movie reviewers and things like that. Anyone can do it. In the past, I think it was kind of taboo. People with personal blogs also wanted to keep things fairly private. Also, now there is a ridiculous generalisation that all bloggers are narcissistic suck-ups. Which was said by someone on Twitter when I was randomly browsing retweets and trending topics, so sorry, but that person cannot be recalled and be slain or have deadly nightshade fed to3.

I do feel that people are more open to each other and more acceptable of meeting “strangers” on the internet because blogging is a different kind of way to meet people. You’re meeting people through windows of their lives rather than in some strange chat room.

I was always a writer as a kid. I wrote poems and I wrote short novellas when I was in secondary school. I have always liked to share my writing with people. To answer the second part of that question: as a blogger, not very much.

Like Seb said when he did the Confessions of a Blogger questionnaire, or at least, similarly — I would like to think that I have changed due to events in life, and my blog has recorded that — rather than my blog changing me as a person. Since I started blogging, I have obviously grown up, since I was eleven-or-so years old when I started and now I am twenty-two. In a decade I have lost friends, gained friends, met great people, struggled through studies, worked multiple jobs, fell in love, fell out of love, got depression, broke two bones — which is life, really.

I will admit that I like blogging (and web designing) more than a lot of the other hobbies I have. I can imagine that without it, I would be cooking more often, going on more walks, maybe recording more music or writing a novel.

Or, you know, shooting monsters in Quake.

1. There were a few different games of Freddi the Fish, but I had the one with the kelp seeds. ↩
2. A few years ago, I recalled this game and realised I remembered the visuals but completely forgot the name. Completely. You should read my post where I rediscovered it. I am deeply amused because apparently I helped so many people find the same game. ↩
3. Back when Tristan and I were reminiscing over King’s Quest, I told him that I had deadly nightshade in my inventory and I assumed it was something magic so I typed “eat deadly nightshade” and consequently died. Thankfully I had saved game beforehand. Also, I was six years old at the time, so forgive me. ↩