For me to talk about online games and especially my first experience in these is something strange to say the least, my whole life with video games have always focused on single player games and rarely allowed us to use the internet connection when I was little, what can I say, the era of Facebook and meet anyone no matter where you are was a pretty dangerous idea in view of my parents, something normal but that if quite delayed my journey to the online, I started using the internet well into my 11 years and I had already been playing video games since I was 6, so when I saw that there was the possibility of playing a few games with someone at the other end of the globe I didn't pay much attention, after all I remember that even for those years where the internet was a fact and everyone used it for social networking in my house it was a double edged tool, for studying it worked and we accepted it but when someone mentioned something about "connecting" and "with other people" all the alarms went off.
So there I am, a girl entering her early teenage years, making friends in person and studying when suddenly one day I get out of class early and I see it, I don't know if you have this kind of memories and sensations that never go away but this is one of them. A few streets away from where I was studying there were these stores where you could rent computers to play games, and boy did they have great games: Vice City, Left 4 Dead, San Andreas, and the protagonist of this story and the one that would become my first online game, Counter-Strike, the point is that the first time I entered this establishment I just looked at it but as the weeks went by and my friends constantly inviting me to go I finally gave in, I had no idea how to play it even being in LAN with my friends but I almost always ended up leaving those games to join other more interesting ones, there was a website where there were several servers that I could join so I chose a game mode, some server with a cool name and I got right into it.
At first there were a few problems with the connection that threw me out of the server but after a few tries I was in a game with about 5 people who were in one of those classic Counter game modes, I could not believe it yet how easy it had been just click and be playing with someone in Asia or the United States, best of all is that you could hear what they were saying to me and we could build tactics as we went along, There were some headphones that had small microphones so I could also talk to them even if the audio quality was horrible, it was my first experience also with that technology to contact someone from another country via Wifi because in my mind it could only be done by phone and the rates for international calls were huge.
Needless to say that this establishment became for me and my friends in an almost daily meeting point similar to what the arcades were for the boys in past decades, we left class and before going to our homes we went to play some games, I of course after playing a little in LAN I went online and there I was practically one of the only ones who stayed until late at night, after getting into this world I started to notice that several games that had my brothers consoles also included an online function so I was playing Animal Crossing or Star Wars on online servers many times a day, and so it has continued until today, maybe I never went back to that establishment after I left school but I want to retake those Counter Strike afternoons, they were fun and I still want to buy a new pc to play again, with luck maybe with Hive I will make it.
If you still do not know @hivegc are doing a contest where we can tell our first experiences with the online video game, in fact that's where I got the idea for this post and all that trip through my head recalling all those days, I recommend you participate! surely find enough players with the same experiences as yours and a great post to read!!!