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      <h5><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">//<a href="../../../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">loonygames</font></a>://<a href="../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">issue 
        2.2</font></a>://<a href="index.html"><font color="#7C420E">down the pipe</font></a>://1, 
        <a href="index2.php"><font color="#7C420E">2</font></a></font></b></h5>
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              <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E"><img src="../../images/icons/pipe_final.jpg" width="193" height="239" align="left"><loonystart>Vol. 
                2, Issue 2<br>
                November 19, 1999<br>
                </font></b></h5>
              <br>
              <br>
              <div align="center"> 
                <p align="center"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="3">Down 
                  the Pipe</font></i></font></b></p>

                <p align="center"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="6"> 
                  Birth of a Gamer</font></i></font></b></p>
                <p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">by 
                  Russell &quot;<a href="mailto:radpipe@loonygames.com">RadPipe</a>&quot; 
                  Lauzon</font></p>
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              <p>&nbsp;</p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="../../images/letters_new/i.jpg" width="10" height="39" align="left">&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 <a href="../boag/index.html">Heather 
                Haselkorn</a> would lop my head off. She owns the rights to that 
                title here at loonygames and that&#146;s fine. You go, girl.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">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.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">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.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thus, 
                my story about Zachary is a true Birth of a Gamer story, in more 
                way than one.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">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.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">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. </font></p>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Illustration 
  &copy; 1999 Dan Zalkus. Down the Pipe is &copy; 1999 Russell Lauzon. All other 
  content is &copy; 1999 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. 
  So don't do it. Please? Pretty please? Okay, fine...be that way. But don't ask 
  me for your allowance, young man.</font></i></p>
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