Very shortly it will be 2010, back in the late seventies this milestone was a future filled with hover cars and anatomically correct cybernetic butlers ready to do your bidding; while you lounged amongst minimalistic surroundings on chairs made from recycled space shuttles and pondered the meaning of your universal existence.  Money was a thing of the past, since the reality of replicators had been discovered and the “hole in the ozone layer” patched up using nanobots and three million metres of yarn shorn from a new species of genetically engineered sheep.  At least that’s how it would have been in my mind.

The reality is quite different; we still struggle with the daily truth that our butlers are called wives and are usually anatomically incorrect, that they turned out to be in charge and that we have been enslaved by these false cyborgs into a life more ordinary than we could have ever imagined for our futures.  Often while I have the coarse grinding of inhuman cyborgs chatter in one ear and news of protestors trying to stop the development of my dreamed up genetic wool giver filling the other, It can be said I do contemplate a life less ordinary. Fortunately this did come in a smaller but no less interesting package.

 Gaming for most of us who are heading, like a disabled space cruiser with its screaming crew staring from portals as they are drawn helplessly into this large vacuous space entity, into our middle age is a way to see the future, participate in past events, or enjoy the realities that we would otherwise never encounter.  We boldly go into space and visit strange new solar systems, encounter new species of life and then we shoot them, blow them up, or find other ingenious ways to purge the universe off their foul inhuman existence.  We may wish to visit the past and fight as a lone soldier in a war that surely can’t be won, or maybe command and army differently to see how the outcome of a famous battle can be changed. We can fly jets worth 40 million dollars and just crash them into the ground and get given, without official enquiry, another to do with what we please.

 Gaming for me at least was predictable, it’s been a gradual constant of graphical improvement, don’t get me wrong, I could have never imagined the things I have seen in million years, but if you would have told me when I was seven that I would fight alongside Luke Skywalker in the battle for Hoth one day I would’ve assumed you where an idiot or one of those adults I was warned about.  Never the less, there were some aspects of the developing market I never imagined would be so popular. Some of the most exciting times I can remember with my friends were trying to hook three computers together and play duke nukem 3d as a group or doom and quake. The idea that we could play a game on separate machines so far away from each other, about three feet, and be rated on our  skills was frighteningly addictive. Soon you where playing online, the internet was developing and the snowball was pushed from the top and was slowly but surely gathering speed. Multiplayer gaming was born, the exciting news that with the release of Quake II came an American competition circuit crushed that little niggle you had about wasting your time, people where being paid to play games and you where the best player the three way LAN circuit of your front room had ever seen. Ironically this niggle was to return later in life with a new anatomically incorrect persona.

 One major thing has been the factor for me before.. the everlasting strive to be better at a game, to improve , just that next cap/lvl, just one more quest and so on.. 

Allthough this has changed lately. I don't play much games other than wow at the moment, but I am pretty happy to log into CS to be your target practice now and then, simply cause all you guys are such a good crowd, and make me laugh a lot! So for me it has changed to the social bit. As my play time on the pc is limited, you don't see me online very often - Yet every time I log on you guys are all very friendly and talkative.

Laughter is good medicine” (Stensi, Oldliners forum)

 With the development of multiplayer games came the gamers community, you had said “hello” to your regular friend via in game chat; you had formed friendships and then clans. Wireplay was a very imaginative all in one software package that gave you access to a community news board, a friends list and the ability to see and connect to the games other gamers where playing. Amazingly a clear forerunner for clients like Gamespy but this also included ISP hosting, I will actually never understand to this day how such a good idea fell so short so quickly in a market that was growing faster than a GM tomato.  Forums sprang up all over the internet and gamer specific communities where becoming second place. Clan matches where being played and people where giving up hours of their own time to create leagues and referee matches. The scene was an exciting bubbling melting pot of activity and ideas; its only restraint was the still extremely limited access and an even more extreme cost. Astronomical phone bills being paid out for the privilege of being crowned leader of a community in a particular game and the adulation and glory that was showered upon you for it and still no sign of a UK competition that was going to make all of your mad maniacal plans of world gaming domination come true, but they couldn’t be far away now; Could it?

“the online side is the big big factor, socializing from your armchair” (Toad, Oldliners forum)

And here we are, in the future, our present as 2010 looms what stands out most on our minds?

Well I am still not being paid to play games, and for the time being the only way I can get a recycled lounger is if I buy a set of Blue Peter DVD’s and some double sided sticky tape, however I have friends, friends I would have never met from my limited social time due to my crippling game playing addiction. So we have evolved into a clan, ok maybe evolved is the wrong word since the beginning of man clans have been formed, but a clan relied on locality, not on common interests; that is the amazing part of this gaming evolution we are united on common, although often varying ground. Whether the ground is alien terrain or ancient foreign soil, we stand together. Communities such as Oldliners have grown into a place where men & women folk alike can hide from the ordinary, can interact with people who understand them and respect their particular desires and are always on standby to help defeat and evil horde or just talk shop and share a joke.

One day I may or may not have a android butler, one day the word “plasma” is going to lose the ability to give me a warm glow as it’s every letter spells a future I always dreamed off, whatever the future holds I know my life is slightly less ordinary now because I am a member of a community who understand me and my passions