Whimsee

Since you mean gaming in any form then yes, most if not all of my friends are closely connected to gaming in one way or another.

It's probably because of where I grew up but I had an easy time making friends through gaming. I remember having my first friends when Final Fantasy VIII just came out and we were stuck at the early boss battles because we were young and stupid. It eventually escalated to in-depth talks about boss strategy and general frustration with the GF boost system.

Later on Asian MMOs, Counter-strike, Red Alert 2, Generals and WC3 DotA happened and I also made friends just geeking out and discussing just about everything about the game and what we do in them.

As for single player games, I have a best friend who just plays them exclusively since he can't handle FPSes (because it makes him nauseous) and won't play Multiplayer games because it's too stressful. We bonded over Red Alert 2, Generals, and Bioshock.

There are others and some of them include other types of games like MtG and Resistance: Avalon. And some I was already friends with before we dove into other games so yeah... Outside online interaction, I kinda grew up having friends through gaming.

I dunno if it's completely licensed but the Tony Hawk and SSX games had some awesome tracks. I think one of the older burnouts (pre-paradise, maybe revenge) also had a great lineup but I was young back then so I could have mixed up one thing with another.

And GTA San Andreas. I don't know why but me and my sister got hooked into K-Rose, a country music station.

Though honestly, my favorites are from east asian rhythm games and doujin game soundtracks. Makes for great walking around and podcast filler.

You can always replace the individual parts that break and upgrade those you think need upgrading within compatibility constraints, of course.

That said, start cheap-ish but buy a good and future-proofed motherboard so you'll have a lot of options in the future then upgrade once you have the cash. It will get expensive as time goes on but once you get your perfect setup, it will last you for years without upgrading and you can still play the latest games with only a small drop in performance and graphics quality if you're into those kind of things.

And yes, they're very versatile. If you're smart or do a lot of things that involve a computer, you can do just about anything with it and it's still useful even if you fall out of gaming. I built mine primarily for gaming but I've done so many video side projects with it (because it was powerful enough to render video quickly) that it doubled as my workstation and eventually upgraded with that in mind.

World of Tanks? I mean, it still fits in the genre of MMO and free-to-play, right?

The game can get complex as you get to the higher tiers but it's a blast and mindless fun on the lower tiers. It's eventually a grind-fest though with diminishing returns, again in the higher tiers, but that's what you can expect from an MMO.

I think I agree with it probably be a way for players to feel more in control with their Player Character but in recent games where technical limitations should not be much of a problem, I think it's because giving a protagonist an apparent personality in games where it is appropriate or necessary to have one might run the risk of driving people away from the game.

Granted, this really just goes down to the writing and design of the character and it's probably situational but there were games that I wasn't into as much because the protagonist had a personality that I didn't like to play around with. Conversely, there were games that I wanted to play because the protagonist was fun to "role-play" with and I simply wanted to know what reaction they'll make in certain situations.

As to why it's more prevalent in FPSes, probably because that's the development norm for now. I mean, some people blame Half-life 1 for the prevalence of FPS silent protagonists so, coming from that, there probably was a time where that wasn't the case and that was when there were obvious technical limitations.

@sinusoidal: I agree. I admit, I liked KotOR 2 more than the first because the whole experience felt better in terms of gameplay, story and I honestly felt more into the characters (probably because I played it 4 years ago and could only remember KotOR 2 characters now).

But damn, it was an imbalanced (both in a good and bad way) and unstable game especially at the last boss when you really just have to scum your way through the RNG. -_-

It's not the only music I listen to but they're the only kind of music (tracks from rhythm games primarily because they're catchy) I bring with me on-the-go because I use them as podcast filler when I run out of podcasts to listen to or when I feel too tired to pay attention to what the guys and gals are saying.

Hi. I'm Jerico. 21 year old living in SoCal but recently emigrated from the Philippines. Completely new to this community forum stuff.

I love all kinds of games from the mainstream to the obscure and because I grew up at a weird time and place to enjoy video games, my experience with it in general is a little stranger than most.

Hope to know more about you guys, see ya!