Welcome , this section of your list made me smile. You have excellent taste :)
Joint pain might be related. I am not jesting: this is my case.
Woah, talk about something long forgotten that was lurking in the back of my brain!
I loved reading your computer history. It’s something I always find myself resonnating a lot with others, when they share it.
Lemonade
Word up for MECC games! Played so many of those when I was a kid.
Hell yes. Odell Lake, Oregon Trail, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (Brøderbund games were equally important to me), Number Munchers, I played them all copiously, especially since they were on the Apple ][e in my grade school. Any time we had indoor recess you could bet that’s how I spent it.
Its Minnesnowta, dont cha know! Okay then.
Loved your game list! I too me back to a time when Sierra, Microprose and SSI were simply killing it with SO many game releases. I miss those times, with the 100 page manuals and all.
Seven Cities of Gold is one for me as well. I would have loved to see what Bunten would have a come up with had cancer not struck.
OK. my turn. I’m Dutch, 42 years old, I’m married and I have two daughters, who are 9 and 11 now. I joined somewhere around 2011 (I think, I tried looking up my first post and found one of 2011, but I doubt I posted that as my first-ever post on this board…).
In real life, I’m an archaeologist, so that has nothing to do with gaming at all. Outside my job, I’m working on a PhD-research (4 years in now, hopefully done next year) which eats away almost all the time I used to spend on playing games. I try not to mention that research too often here, as it is of no importance to anyone here, but I am well aware that I do bring it up every now and then. Sorry about that, it’s just hard sometimes to not mention something that is constantly on your mind…
As far as gaming goes: my first fond memories of gaming are about playing SWOS with friends. I got my first pc (Pentium 286) in 1995, and I distinctly remember playing Civ 2 and Colonisation on it, in black and white. The transfer to a Pentium 486 with full-colour screen was huge, and for some reason, the image of Civ3’s South America, with the jungle and bananas, is etched in my mind forever!
I then had a spell on the Nintendo 64, playing Mario Cart and James Bond, and fishing in Zelda. I haven’t found any fishing rods in the new Zelda on the Switch yet, unfortunately!
Other games that ‘shaped’ me, as I proceded to better computers, are Morrowind, Diablo 2, MoH, Red Alert, Rome Total War and WoW. Recently, the ME-trilogy, the Witcher 3 and most definitely The Last of Us are worth mentioning.
Loads of games I haven’t played yet but would love to try, someday. And when I do, I will look up the appropriate forums here, for tips and tricks. That’s how my browsing career started, and I’m sure it’s how it will continue!
No, I thought it was some kind of PvP crafting survival game from all the accounts that I read of it. Perhaps Ill check it out now that I know it has a PvE / Single Player mode.
My lack of posting in P&R isn’t so much that I am afraid to post. I am not exactly sure of my reasons for not posting, but its closer to something like, “Everything is FUBAR and I have no idea what the real solutions are. IE: Give me the power of a king and I can change any laws I want, I still have no idea what to do to fix things. There are no useful arguments I can make for anything.” I just read it to keep up of what is going on, and for the insightful posts of some of the forum members. Ill make a special callout to @Timex for this, but he isn’t the only one.
Oh, my wish list is long of games in EA that could be good or could turn out to be pure crap. Time will tell, but at the moment I am not interested in play them. Also there are genres that used to be of great interest to me, but are no long for whatever reason.
For example I used to love RTS games. While these games are rare to come out, the last several I played didn’t hold my interest for very long. I bought ashes of the singularly, and I couldn’t even make it through the tutorial before being bored to death. Maybe its a bad game, or maybe I am just no longer into RTS games. I also tried grey goo which promised some very different ideas and that was very “meh”. The last RTS that I remember getting into was Command and Conquer Generals Zero hour, and that was a LONG time ago.
Then there are ARPGs. I played a ridiculous amount of Diablo 2 and Titan Quest. Yet D3 just doesn’t do much for me. I also tried grim dawn, and again, it doesn’t do it for me. GD just seems so generic to me. The landscape is dull, the monsters… I can’t even tell the difference, other than these are the green dudes, and those are purple dudes, and over there are orange dudes. Compare that to the monsters in Titan Quest which had rich, colorful monsters I could relate to and understand. TQ also has a beautiful world to explore.
Is it the games or is it me?
I think you’d be surprised how much interest there may be for some fairly obscure stuff. Probably most of us wouldn’t understand the details anyway, but I suspect you’d find an appreciative audience for a summary of what you’re doing!
Dude, are you kidding? If you started an Everything Else thread, I’d read it! After reading the first sentence of this paragraph I was already planning on asking: What region/people/area do you specialize in?
As a game designer, I’d also be curious about your thoughts on archaeology in video games. Are there any games that do it well? One of my dream projects is basically Stardew Valley but with archaeology instead of farming. Think that could be done well?
Just to continue what others have mentioned, you’d definitely be ok with talking about your work.
In fact @Otthegreat in particular might be, since I believe he has also worked in that field.
Thanks guys, it’s very good to hear that people here might be interested in my PhD and my work, and I may indeed start a thread about it (although considering the rather technical topic of my PhD (disturbance caused by piling), I suspect you don’t quite know what you’re getting yourself into :-)).
I graduated in Roman archaeology of the Northern Provinces (Northern France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, pretty much), but I have been working in a medieval/post medieval city for most of my career, so I know quite a bit about those periods as well (not in extreme detail though, I am more of a ‘know who knows this stuff in detail and ask them when needed’- kind of person. I specialize in something completely different: mitigating the impact of building activities on the archaeological remains, thus creating ways of building over archaeological sites, preserving them in situ. Which is a long way from -and far less sexy than- the Indiana Jones-kind of archaeology, but then again: most if not all real-life archaeology is…
As for games with archaeology done well: I don’t know that many, to be honest. I kind of liked the way they implemented it in WoW, as silly as that was. And I also remember a discussion about archaeology in Far Cry Primal (wasn’t that on this forum???), but I never played that game, so I wouldn’t know if they did it right.
Basically, archaeology in games is nothing like the real thing (but then again the real thing can be quite boring for long periods of time). It’s the amazing discoveries every now and then, the ones that reach the front pages, that make archaeology so interesting, and if that feeling can be translated to a game, it could work. A whole game just about archaeology though…? I think it would work best as a ‘side dish’, so to speak, but I would love to hear your ideas on how to implement it in a Stardew Valley-setting.
But anyway, that’s not what this thread is for, so I wont continue about it here. I’ll think about it some more, and perhaps indeed start a thread in Everything Else!
What about a played metaplot unlock? The master launching point of the game being some ruins or digs, but you launch into those times to do some thing and upon reaching that goal you step back into the launch point and are rewarded with details about an interesting true archaeological site. I’m probably describing a mix of a few games here, but something that thrills with learning through gameplay before you discover that in reality, this was what we actually know.
Having almost minored in Classics in college (I took basically every 3-, 4-, and 500-level class in Greek and Roman history they department offered, more than many Classics Majors had taken, but never took Classics 101, so they technically couldn’t award me the minor, lol), I am definitely always interested in hearing more about that kinda stuff :)
I also feel like I missed out on some really amazing games reading through this thread, y’all. The first computer game I remember truly getting obsessed with was Sim City 2000, which was already 3 years old when I found out about it–but it was basically the reason I begged my dad into getting us a modern Windows (95) PC for Christmas in '96. The late 90s and early 00s of PC games, and the early-to-mid-00s for PS2/Gamecube games are basically my golden era, with dimly remembered memories of the Sega Genesis games I played as a little kid shoring up the rest.
My real name is Diana though baba is not my last name. I live in Toronto. I joined in Aug 2007 (I had to look it up). I didn’t remember how I found my way here initially but when I read DeepT’s post, well that is what probably happened to me, Lum’s forum closing and me not having a forum to visit.
I was starstruck! Tom and Bruce posted here! OMG theres Desslock! All kind of names that I remember from the magazines. I figured there was no way I could get in since I’m just shy and ordinary, but messaged Tom with two words, I’m nice and got in. I’m not a huge poster as I always worry that I’ll post something stupid and then I usually do.
I started gaming in the 80’s, I was living at home and the siblings all chipped in a bought a Nintendo. I was invited to participate but said no.
They bought the darn thing and started playing. I was in the next room and heard them having fun and saying odd things like ‘whip the candle’ ‘you missed a candle’. I came over to investigate and ended up taking my turn. The game was Castlevania and I was hooked. I ended buying an enormous amount of games to make up for me not initially chipping in.
I moved out, and then graduated to the Atari ST and spent huge amounts of time with Ultima 5 and Dungeon Master (gotta love smashing doors on mobs and screamer slices) I played a bunch of other games on that including Manhunter but U5 and DM were the stars for me. My brother got a 386 and U7 and as soon as I could afford it, I bought a screaming fast 486dx4, it cost 5000$ lol. My brother looked at it wistfully and said, ‘you can run anything’. I bought Betrayal at Krondor and was inordinately proud of myself that I was able to create my own boot disk, a task that would be repeated over and over for pretty much all the games on that machine. I couldn’t have hopped faster on the windows bandwagon.
My interests are primarily RPG’s and turn based strategy, but will dip into other genres, but usually regret this. So no more shooters regardless of how well received they are. I also like MMO’s but nothing in the last couple years have interested me. I am convinced this is due to the shift to free to play where design is centred around microtransactions and not game play. Or even more maddening, have some decent gameplay and ideas but ruining with MT and PTW, I’m looking at you Archeage. Though that game also had a ridiculous amount of cheating and hacking. I liked the sub model dammit! Yes, more expensive but I felt like I actually got value for my $, and a team that was looking to better the experience and not just shake you down for spare change and more.
In real life I am a travel professional, though I largely just handle escalations and problems. I also am not ambitious and have stuck with my employer not due to any particular loyalty but due to the ability to work from home, have good benefits and lots of vacation time. Finding a new job when I am satisfied with what I have just sounds exhausting. I however, do not consider this a character flaw, it allows me to pursue my interests without any baggage. It helps that I am single no kids, too.
Games (and gaming) in the 80s and 90s were a serious investment. If I remember correctly, they were like $40 in 80s dollars, which is like $100 today. I remembering dropping so much money on the D&D gold box games. On the other hand, there were only a handful of ones worth buying each year, so it wasn’t the deluge that you get today.
Man, I loved Betrayal at Krondor. Almost as much as I loved Mission Force: Cyberstorm.
This reminds me how completely perplexed I was by the move to first person 3D interface in RPGs. I remember playing the Elder Scrolls, Ultima Underworld, Dungeon Master and the like and just being lost. Never bothered me in shooters, I took to Doom immediately, but it took me a long time to warm to RPGs. And now I can’t remember which one finally broke through to me, maybe Fallout 3?
The early 3Dish Might and Magic series was easy to get into, as was Ultima Underworld in that it was NOT free roam, but rather, turn based movement. I’m trying to remember the actual first full roam 3D RPG I played? I think Elder Scrolls: Arena? It was certainly after Doom, Heretic and the lot.
OK now hang on, you’ve reminded me that I played World of Xeen and enjoyed that quite a lot. But it was a little more 2D I guess, in terms of art and pixels rather than polygons. Whether that made a difference I don’t know. Maybe I’m full of crap.
Master and Magic turned based / real time feeling stuff was pretty awesome. I’ve purchased that collection a few times over the years. Birthright did it too but it was years after whatever the first one was.