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Comment by 2Pacalypse- | Hacker News Reader

I've been playing a single video game for more than half of my life (I'm 30 now). I've dabbled with other games, but this game and the community around it contributed a lot in making me the person I am today. I don't plan on stopping any time soon. In fact, for the past few years I've shifted most of my free time from playing that game to helping a friend develop cool shit[0] for it, so we can hopefully prolong its lifetime. Programming and gaming go so well together that I'm pretty sure I'll continue hacking on some old games when I'm 60.

[0] - https://shieldbattery.net

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From your first sentence, I knew it was BW. We're the same age. I remember very clearly all those nights fighting away on WGT and later, the PGT ladder. I remember when the patch hit that allowed everyone to save replays. I remember BWChart and how revolutionary it was at the time. The anti-hack programs you needed to run in the background. Traveling to play in the world cyber games once a year. Fighting for a spot on the national team to be involved in nation wars. Although it was virtual, team 88) and team [LighT] made those years for me.

The game is the medium, the people are the message. Other people say the same about an online forums, some people might even say it about war. I'm not being snarky, but I thought about it for myself, and the genuinely great memories in gaming I have involve other people, and are equal to other memories involving people. So it's not the games, it's the people, at least for me. Maybe sometimes that can just be the mind of the author who wrote the game, like it can be with a book. But there's always someone, somewhere, in some form.

Hey 2Pac. While not nearly as focused on BW as you are, it and a handful of other competitive gaming scenes I feel were pretty key during my formative years as well. I loved the attitude to improvement: break down an issue you're having into simpler pieces and figure them out to paraphrase a Spooky adage of yore[0]. Considering that's the essense of what we do in math and CS, it's hard to not see a connection. Sounds cheesy but learning how to play 3rd Strike as a young teen made me see I could help myself much more than I previously believed.

Unlike some SC2 posters in this article, being a part of long-established communities as opposed to one explosively (and unsustainably) growing one, I didn't have ambitions of grandeur and was just able to enjoy it all at my pace, too. I think my only regret is forgoing single-player games with that time. Trails in the Sky FC put on hold to ladder on Fish while the iron's hot, heh. Everytime I had thought my video game interests shelved, all it took was a friend to bring their console over where before long we're talking about best approaches to X, a trip to a Japanese arcade or for TBLS to all qualify for the largest BW offline tournament in recent history before I developed a hunger for it all again. So yeah, I don't see myself abstaining in the long, long run even if it's just to develop a little something. Best of luck with SB, didn't know you were part of the team!

[0] https://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

> Brood War has a life of lively to live to life of full life thanks to ShieldBattery.

Intentional?

Hello brother, this game almost broke me and then, I guess, made me in many ways. I can't play without getting too into it, though to be fair, I haven't tried in a while.

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