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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
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<p><a href="../2.2/pipe/index.html">&lt;&lt; Back to Normal View</a></p>
<p>URL: <a href="../2.2/pipe/index.html">http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.2/pipe/</a><br>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 2<br>
                November 19, 1999<br>
                </b>
              <br>
              <br>
               
                <b><i>Down 
                  the Pipe</i></b></p>

                <b><i> 
                  Birth of a Gamer</i></b></p>
                by 
                  Russell &quot;RadPipe&quot; 
                  Lauzon</p>
              
              <p> 
                

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              <p>
              I&nbsp; 
                want to call today&#146;s column, &#147;Birth of a Gamer&#148;, 
                because it fits in more way than one, but I think Heather 
                Haselkorn would lop my head off. She owns the rights to that 
                title here at loonygames and that&#146;s fine. You go, girl.</p>
              </p>
              Here&#146;s 
                why I wanted to use the aforementioned name. My son Zachary is 
                a gamer. He&#146;s been a gamer for over a year now. He plays 
                games such as <b>Total Annihilation</b>, <b>StarCraft</b>, <b>Quake</b>, 
                <b>Quake II</b>, the <b>Unreal Tournament</b> demo, and a host 
                of others that I&#146;ve dragged out of my archives for his enjoyment. 
                Now, he&#146;s not the greatest gamer in the world, and he has 
                more trouble with RTS games in general because of the high level 
                of concentration when it comes to resource management, but I think 
                he does dang fine for his age. Oh and by the way, he&#146;s a 
                little over 3.</p>
              </p>
              I remember 
                the day when he sat down at the computer and with utter bewilderment, 
                made the astounding leap of intelligence and noticed that when 
                you move the mouse a little to the right, something on the screen 
                changed. Same thing when moved to the left. Then up. Then down. 
                I had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. <b>Quake 
                II </b> was loaded and he was sitting at the start of Base1. (Instinctively 
                I knew that the connection would occur faster if he were looking 
                at an environment that felt familiar). Next was the first mouse 
                key, which would fire that badass blaster in his virtual hands. 
                That was an easy one. When he got used to looking around the place 
                he was in, and shooting the blaster until all the walls, floor, 
                and ceiling were quite dead, I showed him the Up arrow key. He 
                never looked back. He was 2.</p>
              </p>
              Thus, 
                my story about Zachary is a true Birth of a Gamer story, in more 
                way than one.</p>
              </p>
              I quickly 
                found that Zachary wasn&#146;t fond of running around levels with 
                monsters (they scared him), but I got lucky when I showed him 
                Capture The Flag. Facing players just like himself didn&#146;t 
                seem to bother him at all, plus the maps were of simpler design. 
                And he loved being on a team. It took him a while to figure out 
                what it meant to capture the flag, and when he did, he almost 
                ignored the objective. I&#146;m not sure why. To save some grief 
                over connecting to the Internet every time he wanted to play (plus 
                dealing with the confusion of dealing with real people coming 
                and going), I downloaded the Eraser bot with the funky front-end 
                loader. I created a batch file that would load him up with q2ctf 
                and 6 bots per team. Zachary knew which desktop icon was &#147;Zach&#146;s 
                CTF&#148;, and after that I didn&#146;t even have to turn the 
                computer on for him. He could spend hours playing the game and 
                I wouldn&#146;t once have to check on him.</p>
              </p>
              Now I&#146;m 
                sure every parent is proud of their kids, and Zach&#146;s playing 
                Q2CTF may not seem all that special, so let me get to the real 
                point of this column. I consider myself old school because I&#146;ve 
                been around the community for a while. Anyone who says he played 
                First Person Shooters more than 8 years ago is yanking your nose. 
                So what am I talking about? The next generation of gamers, of 
                course. These are our kids that rise up learning everything we 
                teach them about games, and showing us what we&#146;re doing wrong. 
                Because they&#146;re confident? Egotistical? Heck no. </p>
              <p></p>
              <p></p>
            
            
              <br>Kids 
                that age don&#146;t know how to be egotistical. Zach plays for 
                love of the game. I see traits in him that I see in great gamers. 
                He tries things just for the heck of it. He sees straight through 
                problems to simple solutions. I remember once in Q2CTF, he had 
                grabbed the flag and was heading back to base. I stood behind 
                him saying, &#147;Run! Back to your base! Run!&#148; He stopped 
                right in the middle of the map, despite my urging, and started 
                flipping through his weapons. &#147;What are you doing?&#148; 
                I cried. He switched to grenade launcher, resumed running, and 
                started laying a path of grenades to catch the enemies in his 
                wake. Shut me up pretty good.</p>
              </p>
              I often 
                come across Zach playing a game, completely oblivious to what 
                is going on in the game around him. He&#146;s played for hours 
                upon hours with the grappling hook, seeing where this odd device 
                will take him. I&#146;ve found him sitting on wall lights, on 
                other players, on small outcroppings that can&#146;t be seen unless 
                you&#146;re standing on them. I once watched him play for over 
                an hour using nothing but the railgun. He was missing almost every 
                shot but it didn&#146;t bother him at all. He just kept shooting. 
                I&#146;ve only see dedication like that in hardcore gamers. Me, 
                I&#146;ll use the railgun for all of 5 minutes before giving up 
                in frustration and returning to a weapon I can actually use.</p>
              </p>
              I loaded 
                up the <b>Unreal Tournament </b>demo and was very pleased it had 
                a system for loading bots much like the Eraser. Zach loves it. 
                And it kills me the stuff he comes up with. He can show me something 
                I didn&#146;t know almost every day. For example, when you use 
                the Shock Rifle and secondary fire, it shoots an exploding ball 
                of, um, something that looks like electricity or plasma. Bud did 
                you know, if you quickly switch to primary fire (which shoots 
                kind of like a railgun) and shoot, you can use it to detonate 
                the ball before it hits? I came across Zach using this technique 
                just other day. There was an enemy shooting out of his line of 
                sight, so, he shot the ball, then exploded it after it passed 
                a corner. It makes me want to shout, &#147;Kid, you&#146;re only 
                3 years old! Who do you think you are? Stop it already!&#148;</p>
              </p>
              There&#146;s 
                no fanfare. No bravado. He doesn&#146;t jump and shout, &#147;Look 
                what I can do Daddy!&#148; He doesn&#146;t gather his friends 
                around so he can gloat on some technique he has learned. He does 
                it because it works. He does it for love of the game. And he moves 
                on.</p>
              </p>
              Where 
                does it end? I came home the other day and found Zach checking 
                my e-mail. He can&#146;t read, and can&#146;t make heads or tails 
                of what&#146;s coming in, but that doesn&#146;t matter. He dials 
                the ISP, loads e-mail, clicks &#147;Send and Receive&#148;, and 
                watches it come in. I have to be careful and stop him before he 
                starts trying things, though. </p>
              </p>
              I know 
                what you&#146;re thinking. Can he whup me? No. The reflexes of 
                young children are nowhere near as refined as adults or teenagers 
                at such an early stage. My 8 year old can show some resistance, 
                but he&#146;s got a ways to go too. I own them every time.</p>
              </p>
              How special 
                is Zach? As I said before, I&#146;m a parent and so I&#146;m proud 
                as all heck of my little boy, as I&#146;m sure all parents are. 
                So I&#146;ll give the masses the benefit of the doubt, and it&#146;s 
                why I talk about the next generation of gamers. If our kids are 
                all like Zach, what&#146;s in store for us? Will we one day fall 
                prey to our little tykes, as they jump online and &#147;own&#148; 
                us in droves? Will we one day start all our stories with, &#147;in 
                my day...&#148; while we watch the next generation inherit the 
                online community? I dunno. I bet this is how it starts.</p>
              <i>- 
                Russell &quot;RadPipe&quot; Lauzon is currently exhausting all 
                his free time researching Beer Goggles.</i><br><p>&nbsp;</p> 
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
  &copy; 2000 <a href="http://www.square8.com">Square Eight</a>. Used with permission. 
  Article is &copy; 2000 its original author. All other content is &copy; 2000 
  loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. You got that??</font></i></p>
 