I was reminded of a time in high school when a gaming center called Crazy Planet opened up near home.
Crazy Planet had 10 computers hooked up to each other where you could play LAN games. This was a new experience for us. We hadn’t played too many video games (Playstations were too expensive). Computer games tended to be single player experience. Crazy Planet unlocked the opportunity to play together at a reasonable 30 rupees per hour to get into this dark room with haptics and amazing sound.
The game of choice was Counter Strike. We teamed up, 5 vs 5, went onto one of the maps, and played against each other.
It was our first taste of being in a virtual world while we screamed at each other in the real world. I remember how much it gripped us. It’s a core memory from that time.
There was even a time when I was extremely sick – with a fever well above 101 degrees. And it was on a day when a (wealthy) friend decided to host his birthday party with 3 hours at Crazy Planet.
I so badly wanted to go that I somehow convinced my family I was okay. It was a blast. I’m sure being sick was bad already. This didn’t help. I ended up missing school for a week and needed to treat a low platelet count.
But if you’d asked me then, or even if you ask me now, I would have taken that trade any day of the week.
We all graduated high school and went our separate ways to college. Many years later – I think it was 3 years after we started working – most of that group got together on a New Year’s evening.
We were debating what we should do to celebrate New Year’s. And someone came up with the idea that we all play Counter Strike. After an hour of set up, we spent the entire night playing Counter Strike. We played for 8 hours straight until the morning.
That was the last time we played Counter Strike and it was probably the best New Year’s get together we ever had.
It’s amazing to think that this simple game was part of such core memories. This trumped any educational trip or formal milestones. It was simply a dark room with friends playing video games.
And we appreciated it a whole lot more because we didn’t grow up with it. It was a lovely period of time – but in just the right amounts.
Many lessons there about shared experiences and moderation.
A Learning a Day 