Where did Crane go? (part 1 of ?)

Where did Crane go? - a multipart blog series that will explain how I found 2old2play, why I "left", and why I'm coming back ASAP.
Part 1 of ? - Who is getting my "next-gen" dollars?

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It looks like I may finally have to give in and pick a side in this so-called “next-gen console war.” I am a notoriously late adopter of new technology, both in gaming and just geek-toys in general. I don’t go in for hype, I wait for prices to drop, and I have to see enough value in the new gadget and its services before I move on to the purchase phase. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I am a miserly gamer, and I like it that way. But recent events have combined with my historical experiences to start pushing me in the direction of dropping a major wad of cash on a new game system. Two years ago I would never have seriously considered dropping half a grand on gaming, but now I am just about ready to make that leap. Why? Well, it is kind of a long story, and not necessarily a funny one, but if you are bored at work it will give you something to do besides… um… working. In fact, this may become a multi-part blog post, but I feel like I need to write this all out, whether anybody reads it or not. Here we go.



In 1999, when I purchased my Playstation for $129 (the original PS1) it had already been on the market for 4 years! And that was the first gaming console I had ever bought for myself. Everything else I had ever owned (Commodore 64, TRS 80, Atari 2600, original Nintendo) was given to me as a hand-me-down by one of my cousins when they upgraded. Through most of college I bummed off of my friends and roommates to get my gaming fix. Through the years of 1996-1999 I was strictly a freeloader, but I basically got to play all of the GoldenEye and MarioKart I could handle. What can I say? I had (and still have) very generous friends.



I only bought that Playstation because I had some scholarship money left over after buying books in the first semester of my senior year. I had gotten hooked on Gran Turismo 2 and Final Fantasy 7 while sharing an apartment with a Playstation owner over the previous summer, so when I moved back to the dorm I had to buy my own system because none of my roommates had one. (Cheap bastards!) So I bought it, I loved it, and I still have that system and it’s original box. I haven’t played it in years, but I’ve kept it around for the memories.



I had a similar experience with the original Xbox. I was very excited about it when it was in development and read just about everything I could find on it. I remember getting all geeked out about the built in network card, the advanced graphics processor and the integrated hard drive. And that was a year and a half before it even launched! But when it finally did launch in November of 2001, I had to face a harsh reality: I was flat broke.



I got married in November of 2000, and the first year was not exactly what anyone would call “wedded bliss”. Don’t get it twisted though, there was nothing wrong with my relationship. I loved my wife (love her even more now) and we were happy with each other, but I had a hard time holding down a steady computer programming job for the first year and a half after college, and that resulted in a pretty tumultuous start to our life together. Between my graduation date in April of 2000 and the Xbox launch in November of 2001, I had 4 different jobs in 3 different states and had spent nearly 3 months unemployed. We had moved from Georgia to Ohio and finally to South Carolina, and our finances were nearing a breaking point. Clearly, the idea of laying out nearly $400 for a new game system, a game and sales tax was not very appealing. I guess I COULD have done it, but I would have wound up single and that is distinctly not fun.



Living in Charleston turned out to be fairly stable, and our life and finances got settled down enough for us to buy a house in August of 2002. At that point, buying furniture and other boring stuff like paint, wire shelving, comforter sets and ceiling fans seemed a lot more important than a video game system, so I continued to make due with my aging Playstation and spent copious amounts of time with Final Fantasy Tactics (a game whose greatness still haunts my dreams).



It wasn’t until January of 2004 that I finally purchased an Xbox. At that point I think the price was down to just $149. I had just landed a nice new job and my lovely wife agreed that I should be able to reward myself. She actually was with me when I bought the console and a copy of the original Halo. I took my new treasures home and proceeded to have an absolute blast with a game most people had probably gotten tired of two years previously. It was new to me though, and I loved it.



In fact, I loved the heck out of my Xbox in general. Since the console had been out for more than 2 years there were plenty of used games available, and a lot of them were quite good. I was picking up titles for less than $10 that provided me with weeks and months of quality entertainment. About a year after I bought the console, I convinced my wife that we needed a new TV for “watching Netflix movies”, but the real reason was to make my games look better. I didn’t spend a lot of time playing, maybe only 3-5 hours per week, but that was enough to satisfy my gaming needs. If you had asked me at the time if video gaming could get any better than that I would probably have said no. For goodness sake I had a used copy of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic that I paid $8 for and then played for more than 100 hours. I bought the GTA III double-pack for $20 and spent hundreds more hours cruising the virtual streets of Vice City. I thought I had it all, but fully a year and a half after first buying the Xbox I had yet to discover the true entertainment potential of the console…online gaming.



I didn’t get an Xbox Live membership until August 8th of 2005, which is probably a good deal later than most of the people on 2old2play. The reason for the late adoption of what would turn out to be one of the coolest services I have ever paid money for is that I just wasn’t all that excited about playing games with “strangers” via the internet. My previous experiences with online PC gaming in college hadn’t been that great. It was difficult to find a good server, and then usually you just got destroyed by people who played all the time. Trying to communicate by typing into the keyboard while hoping that you didn’t get shot was frustrating and slow. The multiplayer experience that I longed for was crowding onto a couch with three of my best friends, and then drinking and swearing at each other while racing go-karts or shooting machine guns through maze-like corridors. THAT was fun, THAT was what I wanted, but all of my college friends lived in different states (Alabama, Georgia and Virginia) and we could only get together once a year. That was kinda lonely.



Adding to the loneliness factor was the job my wife got in the spring of 2005. She started working at a library, and that meant she didn’t get home most evenings until nearly 7 o’clock. On Monday’s she didn’t get in until 9, and she had to work some Saturdays and every third Sunday too. Conversely, I had a very regular work-a-day schedule that got me back to the house at about 4:30 every day. I had a lot of free time on my hands and I hadn’t really managed to make any friends at work or in my neighborhood, and playing video games “all by me onesy” was getting old. Usually when I played my wife was at least in the room reading or something. Since I had shared my games with my siblings when I was a kid, and played with groups of people in college, I really wasn’t very entertained by playing all by myself. And so, somewhat reluctantly, I decided to sign up for Xbox Live.



I had heard about Live from a buddy at work, a 2old2play member with the tag “Free_at_Last”. My first few experiences with online play were cool enough to let me see what all the fuss was about. I liked the headphone chat, and the fact that I could wind up playing Burnout 3 against people from Scotland (they shore ‘nuff do talk funny). Within a week I purchased Halo 2, but after 2 days I was regretting it. The “timmies” on Live almost killed my online gaming experience before it had a chance to get off the ground. Fortunately, I remembered to ask “Free_at_Last” for the name of this website and I signed up. He was also kind enough to introduce me to his clan “Old Man Mafia” and get me in some games with them. The day I signed up with the site was August 25th, 2005, and when I look at the names of some of the folks I played with that night, I realize that I still know most of them. Webmonkee, Skeyewalker7, ARMnHMR, Gaius Caesar, DanLeCrinque, carl spackl3r, HoudiniHamster and of course Free at Last and my longtime highschool/college friend Raste. (Being able to play with Raste was especially nice, since we lived more than 8 hours apart. Did I mention that I missed my friends?) I would never have guessed that one day I would actually even MEET some of these people. In REAL LIFE! And one of them would even hug me! Honestly, if I had known that at the time it probably would have made me uncomfortable and I might



Right away, I was hooked. Here was a group of mature and fun-loving adults that didn’t think I was weird for playing video games. Everybody was just showing up to have a good time, and nobody cared that I SUCKED at Halo. (In fact, 2 years later, I’m not sure I’ve gotten any better.) In fact, I even accidentally shot one of my teammates in the back with a rocket, killing us both, and the dude just LAUGHED IT OFF. I knew I was in the right place. I immediately sent PMs off to Lonewolf and Rockcrawler to ask for membership into the OMM. They had an opening, and I was in like Flynn.



… well, boys and girls, that is enough of the saga for today. You will have to come back tomorrow to read about my first experiences with becoming part of an “internet community”. Oooh, fun times, fun times! In the meantime, you can venture a guess as to which gaming console I am considering picking up. Hint: It rhymes with “Flesh-Crotch Pee-Shitty”.