What are your gaming influences?

Boardgames
21

Computer game influences…

Élite (original 1984 BBC Micro version obviously) probably helped sustain my enthusiasm for the Travellerish space trading model.
Carrier Command (1988, early RTS) made it clear to me that I enjoyed the production queue management much more than the actual fighting. Pity really that it starts you with a full load of everything, so what you actually want to do is go straight for the enemy rather than building up your replenishment economy. I played it through again a few years ago on DOSBox and still enjoyed it.
The Sims 2 (2004) (happened to be the one that was out when I was interested): while the narrative support is very basic, it’s something verging on a solo RPG (for me, much closer to that idea than “go down a dungeon and hit things”).

These are also how I discovered how to recognise when I’m getting addicted to something. If I have to say to myself “all right, finish this boring thing first, then you can do the other thing for half an hour” that’s a dead giveaway.

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22

I think the earliest computer game I remember playing is superfly.

After that, I’ve mostly played Sim, turn-based, and real-time strategy games. I believe I have played all of the Civ games, and have lost an enormous amount of time to Theme Park, Sim City, Theme Hospital, the Sims… etc.

Thinking on it, I’ve also leaned towards puzzly and deduction-based games. Lots of point, and click adventures with a side order of The Incredible Machine. I’ve never been much into combat-based games, which is also reflected in my board gaming habits. I think the main difference between my computer and board game preferences is the importance of narrative. I can really get into the story of a video game, but find it almost completely unnecessary in board games.

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23

I’m not sure if any computer/video games from my childhood inspired my boardgaming preferences - although such games were a different animal altogether in the 1980s. Sure, the text based rpgs of The Hobbit and Valhalla were fun - Mary was rarely amused by my choices! - and titles like Atic Atac and Gauntlet may have helped get me into rpgs-in-a-box although no more so than boardgames I was playing around then.

Thinking back on early boardgames though there is more of a heritage. Combining Scotland Yard and Game of Dracula, possibly with a bit of Talisman thrown in, leads nicely into The Fury of Dracula. My Dad was a regular boardgamer in his childhood too and used to play Avalon Hill wargames like Gettysburg and Blitzkrieg by post with his uncle before I was born so that led me to dabble in some more complex games then, although I prefered easier titles he owned like Mine a Million, leading to an interest in some economic games, and Exploration, which also had some rpg elements.

One title a family friend had which my brother and I loved playing was Survive (possibly before it was called/subtitled Escape from Atlantis) and I’ll probably rebuy that soon with the expansions so I can try it with five social gamer friends this year. By the mid 80s though like almost all UK gamers I was loving D&D, trying other RPGs as they sprung up and also delving deep into the many Games Workshop boardgame, wargame and miniatures titles. Even if they weren’t always that great or enjoyable, the pleasure of opening a big GW game box and looking at the minis, card templates and counters while trying to learn the rules with a few friends was a wonderful experience.

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24

I want to note–as many of you seem to think I asked only for computer game influences… quite the contrary. Anything that influenced your gaming… early childhood habits, people you met. Whatever you think defined the way you play games today. (I just gave an example that involved a computer game…)

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I have been gaming in one form or another for pretty much all my life.

As a kid, I played games with my parents and grandma. Yahtzee, Uno, Aggravation, Clue, Go Fish, etc. I also had an Atari 2600, so had exposure to video games at an early age as well. Won a Nintendo in 4th grade at a school raffle, which widened my video gaming horizons. In 6th grade, was introduced to the Top Secret S.I. RPG, which was my first intro to pen and paper RPG’s, though it was only after I purchased the books for it myself that I learned that we had been playing it completely wrong.

The same friend who taught us Top Secret unwillingly ran us through a quick D&D game (just threw us up against a green dragon to kill us because he didn’t really want to play D&D), which was still enough to hook me and one other friend on the fantasy theme, and the two of us would run games for each other for the next few years, moving on to AD&D 2nd after a short while. He also got Hero Quest at some point, which we played pretty often together.

Around this time, Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars trilogy came out, which rekindled a love of Star Wars for me, so I also got into West End Games’ Star Wars RPG, which I played with the same friend who got into D&D with me.

Board gaming did not really expand until high school, as my school had a gaming club. The teacher who ran it had a huge cabinet full of games I had never heard of. Axis & Allies, Fortress America, Shogun, Fury of Dracula (1st ed), Buck Rogers Battle for the 25th Century, Nuclear War, Quest for the Magic Ring, Space Hulk, Awful Green Things from Outer Space, Battle Masters, Kingmaker, Diplomacy, Talisman, the Dragonlance board game, and what felt like countless others. More importantly, I found more friends who were interested in the same things I was through this club. The teacher would organize a couple of trips per year to the vendor halls at Strategicon, which was always fun, and how I was the first of us to pick up Magic the Gathering, which became a big thing for the club. I branched out into a couple of other CCG’s as well over the high school years, which some people joined in with me.

High school is also when I got my first computer, and was thus introduced to a much broader scope of video games. X-Wing was one of my first games, and it was so fun to be able to engage in the SW universe in this new fashion. But also got to play new styles of games that Nintendo (and Super Nintendo, by that point) didn’t really offer. Strategy games like Warcraft, the old TSR/SSI RPG games, space flight sims, first person shooters, etc.

Gaming interests continued to evolve as I went to college, encountered more RPG’s mostly in the World of Darkness line, and more video games as Playstation was released. Also learned Star Fleet Battles and some other games I was not familiar with. After college was a bit of a gaming hiatus outside of video games, as the friends I hung around with then weren’t really gamers of any stripe. It was only when I reconnected with a few of my gaming friends who were in the area a couple of years later that I resumed role playing and board gaming.

So due to my wide exposure to games, overall I’m pretty open to any kind of game and in any format. There are games that have lost their shine over time, but that I’d still play if asked (Munchkin, for instance), and there are certainly types of video games that don’t really interest me at all (sports games, mostly), but in general I’m happy to play anything.

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26

@COMaestro It’s amazing how much of that post I could just outright steal, post as my own, and still be 100% true.

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27

I see… @VictorViper and @COMaestro are one and the same. I see…

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28

I call dibs on being the original. You can be the clone me.

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